Trust Me - Sheryl Browne Page 0,114

Tom be turning off the alarms on the life support machine?

A second later, he understood. His heart slammed against his chest as he watched him reach towards her breathing tube. Jesus Christ. He hadn’t been covering for them. He’d fabricated the whole story. He was covering for himself.

Jake shoved the door open. ‘Don’t you fucking dare,’ he warned him.

Fifty

‘I couldn’t have her broadcasting things all over the village.’ Tom looked beseechingly at Jake as he was led away by the police. ‘We were making progress. After all these years, you’d finally started looking at me with something other than contempt. I couldn’t have her spoil what we were building together, don’t you see?’

Strangely, Jake didn’t feel contempt any more. Other than pity, he wasn’t sure he felt anything.

‘I never meant to hurt your mother, Jake. I never stopped thinking about her. There hasn’t been a day when what happened to her hasn’t haunted me.’ Tom searched his eyes hopefully. Jake turned away.

‘Jake,’ Tom called desperately. ‘Please …’

Jake kept walking. He had no idea what his so-called father thought they’d been building together, but it wasn’t fucking fences, that was for sure.

Banging out of the entrance doors, he strode across the car park, cursing the tears that slid from his eyes. Don’t. He swiped them away. The man wasn’t worth wasting the emotion on. He never had been.

‘Jake, wait.’ DS Regan caught up with him as he reached his car. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, placing a hand on his arm.

Jake laughed sardonically. ‘Never felt better,’ he said.

Regan gave him a smile of commiseration. ‘They have a lot to answer for sometimes, don’t they, parents?’

Too choked now to speak, he nodded and dropped his gaze.

‘Your father’s sins are not yours, Jake,’ she said, and hesitated. ‘Mine was a teacher, a headmaster actually.’

Sensing from her silence that there was more, he looked quizzically back at her.

‘He liked children. Not me. Fortunately,’ she added, smiling tightly.

He saw the flash of humiliation in her eyes and understood. ‘Sorry,’ he managed.

She shrugged, her gaze flicking down and back. ‘It’s okay,’ she assured him. ‘I’ve moved on. You need to do the same. You’re not responsible for your father’s actions. Let go of the guilt and get on with your life. Be there for your family.’

Jake couldn’t help thinking he was responsible in some way for all that had happened. In coming back here, attempting to build a life from the ashes, digging up old ghosts that were better left buried, he’d lost sight of what mattered. His children. Emily. He should have been there for her. He hadn’t been.

In his car, he leaned his head against the headrest and tried unsuccessfully to get his breathing under control. As for letting go of the guilt, he didn’t think he would ever be able to do that.

Pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, he swallowed hard and reached for his phone to tell Emily he was coming home.

Could they get through this? he wondered. Come out the other side of it intact? Would Emily want to stay with him once he’d told her all he had to? He thought again of Liz Regan’s comment about him not being responsible for his father’s actions. He couldn’t help wondering whether, if he hadn’t despised him so passionately, Tom might not have been driven to do the unforgivable thing he’d done. But he’d tried, hadn’t he? To let go of the hatred. He’d been wrong, as it turned out. His father was fundamentally who he was. Jake wasn’t responsible, though growing up he’d felt he was. In the same way, Ben wasn’t responsible for his father’s actions. Whatever happened between him and Emily, he had to make sure the boy knew that.

Jake was responsible for his own mistakes, though. He couldn’t escape that fact.

Fifty-One

Emily

Emily had no idea what to do. She was so tired. She sat in the kitchen for a while, too stunned to even contemplate making a cup of tea – as if that would help, as if anything could. Wine might possibly. A vat of it. But she wouldn’t go down that route. Wouldn’t drinking herself into a stupor make her exactly what Paul Lewis had wanted her to be: a woman out of control? Dependent on drugs? Emotionally volatile?

Pulling herself to her feet, she headed for the lounge. Bypassing her vitamin pills on the worktop next to the kettle, she smiled ironically. She kept a bottle here and one at the surgery. He’d