Dad knew Adriana?
It’s 3:30 p.m. on Thursday and I’m still trying to get my head around this bombshell, having recently got back to the house after my meeting with Trevor. When Adriana told me she came from Devon, I didn’t think much of it. Just because she and Dad grew up in the same place, there was no reason to think they’d known each other. Particularly given their age difference. But it appears they did, and that her dad worked for my grandfather. At nineteen, Dad moved to London for university, returning to Devon for the holidays and later to train for three years at a local chartered accountants, before transferring to Brighton where he met Mum. He loved the sea but said he grew bored of Devon. Told me it was too provincial, and that he craved the excitement and diversity of big cities. But now I wonder if there’s more to it than that. Whether something else spurred his move.
I’m desperate to discuss all this with Adriana, to ask her what she and Dad chatted about that night in the restaurant and, more importantly, if she saw him again that week, before he died.
But I also know that if I do that, she’ll realise I’ve been lying to her all this time. Lying about who I really am, about my past. To say nothing of proving the person who’s been watching us right – that I am hiding something. Something dark. Something I’m deeply ashamed of.
Like Trevor, like all Dad’s friends and acquaintances, she’ll doubtless be aware of the scandal that erupted soon after Mum received Dad’s suicide email. She’ll know that the very next day, after she showed it to the police, they raided our house and found indecent images of older teenage girls and women on his laptop. Discovered that he enjoyed watching women being beaten and abused during sex, and that he belonged to a group of similar sick-minded individuals who indulged their fantasises via the dark web. Not only had he enjoyed watching women being tortured during sex online, he’d practised this in real life courtesy of online sites that exploited mainly young, vulnerable foreign women who’d been smuggled into the country against their will or in the belief they’d be given honest work.
I can still recall the shock on Mum’s face when she learned the truth. I remember her collapsing on the spot, and me screaming for help, barely able to comprehend that our perfect world was suddenly crashing down around us. One of the officers had been kind. He’d called for an ambulance, and they’d checked her over, sedated her. All I could do was sit by her side and watch, feeling helpless, still not fully able to take on board that my dad, the man I worshipped, had this whole other side to him behind the kindly façade he presented to the world. A side we never had any notion of. I was only fifteen after all, and it was as if someone was playing a horrific trick on us, and any minute now Dad was going to walk back through the door and assure us it was all a big misunderstanding and everything was going to be fine. But he didn’t, of course. It was all too frighteningly real, and nothing was ever the same again. Including my darling mum.
His suicide email hadn’t explicitly stated what he had done. I guess he was too chicken for that. All it said was that he wasn’t the man Mum believed him to be, that he had done some terrible things in his life, committed crimes he was so ashamed of he no longer felt able to live with himself. He said there was something wrong with him, a defect he was born with that was impossible to tame. He said he was sorry. That he loved her, and hoped she’d find happiness again. That she’d be so much better off without him.
The police were never able to trace Dad’s email. They said it was likely he’d sent it using a virtual private network, because he hadn’t wanted to be found. On reflection, I thought this odd. After all, if he was dead, what did it matter? They’d wasted no time in searching our house, in confiscating Dad’s laptop and other electronic devices. They did the same at his office. The humiliation for Mum had been too much to bear, the effect on my mental health huge, which is why we sought refuge in Nigeria. Where we could lose ourselves and escape the looks, the stares, the constant whispering behind our backs.
My name was Lucas Stevens back then. But before returning to the UK I changed it. I no longer wished to be associated with the name Stevens. I became Sebastian Walker from the moment I stepped back on English soil. But the worry that someone would unearth my real identity was always there, despite me doing everything possible to ensure that never happened.
It still niggles me that Dad went away that weekend giving no hint of being suicidal. And why send Mum an email? Why not a handwritten note? A typed note even. And how has his body never been found? The police orchestrated a nationwide search, but to no avail. Their only conclusion was that he must have gone out to sea somewhere, but why bother going to London for a reunion at all if he was planning to end his life? Unless he saw it as his final hurrah.
I think about the name Dad wrote on the back of the business card: Scarlett. Who is this woman and what is her relation to Dad? Is it just a coincidence that her name is written down, or is she connected somehow with the charity which, I note, is one of Adriana’s? Perhaps Adriana knows her?
My head tells me there’s little point in my pursuing this path. It’s not going to change what Dad did or bring him back. But my heart is saying otherwise. That I need answers, because the way Dad chose to end his life, the timing of it all, the email, makes no sense to me.
It’s going to be a deeply uncomfortable conversation, I know that. And I almost can’t bear to see the look on Adriana’s face when she realises I’ve been lying to her. But I don’t see that I have a choice.
I have to confront her about Dad. About what he said to her that night in the restaurant. Whether she had any insight at all into his state of mind. Along with the kind of person he was back in Devon.
If I don’t ask her, it will gnaw away at me, and I’ll never have peace.
Who is Scarlett? Hopefully, Adriana can tell me.