‘Rachel? Rachel?’
I come back to the cellar as it is now. This place is dead for me, but I can’t breathe down here. No natural light. No air. Can’t find my balance. The echo of my breathing wheezes inside my hurting head.
In a rush, I tell Keats, ‘I need to get out of here. Now.’
Oliver’s voice carries down the stairs from the hall. ‘Hello? Where are you?’
Keats calls back. ‘We’re in the cellar, Oliver – we’re just coming.’
Keats has to lead me up the stairs; without her support I’m going to tip over. She takes the glass of water Oliver offers and drinks it herself before announcing, ‘Harriet’s feeling a little queasy, so perhaps we ought to go. Thanks so much for your time.’
Oliver seems surprised our visit is so short but he escorts us back down the hall to the front door. ‘Did you know your uncle, the previous owner, well?’
Keats laughs. ‘Oh yes, such a lovely man. Everyone loved Uncle Danny!’
Oliver’s nod by way of an answer is unconvincing. Keats immediately picks up on it. ‘But kids are innocent of course. They don’t know any better. But there were all sorts of rumours about Danny, some of them a touch unsavoury; I expect you heard about them?’
We’re at the front door. ‘I did indeed after we moved in.’
Keats drops her posh girl act. ‘Okay. So what were they?’
Oliver is alarmed. ‘It was just gossip of course, in the village and among the neighbours. Probably exaggerated, no doubt.’
Keats’s squinting gaze won’t let him go. She looks menacing, as if she’s going to squeeze the truth out of him if necessary. ‘Please, there’s no need to be embarrassed. What I said about him being lovable isn’t true. I was forced to live here for a time because my parents had a very messy divorce. My mum was his sister. What were the rumours?’
His gaze zeros in on Keats and this time it’s him who won’t let go. ‘Let’s drop the act. I know you aren’t related to Danny Hall.’ Keats’s mouth surges open, no doubt with plan B, but Oliver hasn’t finished. ‘I let you come in because I thought you might be lawyers for one of his victims looking for historic evidence against him and I’m all for that.’
It’s me who speaks. ‘What do you know?’
He switches his attention to me. ‘That he molested and assaulted women, especially his female staff. He was notorious for it. Women locally wouldn’t work for him. Of course, it may just have been gossip. It was whispered nothing came to trial because he paid his victims off. But I have to say, there were some people around who weren’t sorry Danny Hall was killed in that fire. They thought he got what was coming to him.’
‘Why did you send me to work for Danny when everyone knew he assaulted and attacked young women?’
Dad’s pleasure at my unexpected visit doesn’t last long. I’m barely through the door before the question pours out like acid. We’re standing in his immense hallway facing each other, behind Dad a mounted framed photo of him and Mum taken the first week we moved here. Dad lives exactly five miles from Danny’s former house. That summer it would take me thirty minutes cycling carefree from our place to there. Correction: carefree. A word that’s all about not having a trouble in the world has no business being in this tense scene.
I step closer, air tipping in and out with such quickness my straining body must be leaking. ‘Everyone knew.’ I spit it at this man I have loved so very much. ‘His staff, the local villagers, the neighbours. Even Philip knew. He warned me not to be alone with your old friend Danny.’
There’s no reaction from Dad. Not a change to the colour of his face. Not a widening of the eyes. Not a tensing of his muscles through his blue T-shirt or his loose washed-out jeans. I suspect he’s been in the garden tending his tomatoes, runner beans and, his pride and joy, his berry bushes and trees. I was once his pride and joy too, wasn’t I?
When his response comes, it’s calm. The gentlest of breezes threading through the raging storm I’ve brought inside. ‘I can see you’re upset. Why don’t we take a drink together in the kitchen and you can tell me who’s been filling your head with a lot of silly nonsense. Then I can put you straight.’ His tone shifts gear, not exactly stern but there’s a stiff belt to it that suggests he’s nearing the tipping point of losing his patience. ‘And if you’ve got any manners, you’ll be apologising to me.’
With that, he walks with steady long strides to the kitchen.
I stay in the hall for a while, haunted by the images of Mum around me. I sense her disapproval in what I’m doing, but I have to do this.
I find Dad already at the table with a bottle of brandy and identical snifters filled half way. Back in the day, when I was young, I remember how he’d take swift drinks of spirits from mugs not fancy glasses. So much has changed about him over the years. Maybe that’s the real problem here; he’s moved on while I’ve remained stuck in time. If he’s guilty, Dad’s doing a great job of hiding it. He keeps his eyes fixed on mine. My defiant body language tells him clearly I’m refusing the drink and I remain standing. Maybe I’m staying out of reach of his razor-sharp claws.
‘Now then, where did you hear all these fairy stories about Daniel Hall?’ His clenched irritation resounds in every word. ‘For the record, he wasn’t actually my friend. He was my business associate. Business associates aren’t your friends, Rachel; on the contrary, they’re more likely to be your enemies. Remember that.’
Unconsciously, I coat a layer of wet over my dry lips. ‘But I thought Danny Hall was your friend. Wasn’t that the reason you sent me to work for him that summer after—?’
‘Your mother left us for good?’ The strain heightens the colour of Dad’s face. ‘We met in passing at the golf club one day. He asked me if I knew of anyone young looking for summer work experience. I thought of you because I knew how much of a toll Carole’s death had taken on you. I thought…’ Dad sips once from his liquor. The brandy glistens on his bottom lips as he continues. ‘I hoped that it would do you good to get away from the house. To have space to breathe.’
A few days ago we were laughing, hugging as he put my life back to rights when all the time it may have been him snapping me, piece by piece, apart.
My voice is clear, but I hear the fragility in it too. ‘I went to Danny’s old house and spoke to the owner. According to him, everyone knew about Danny and his behaviour, everyone. Are you saying that you were the only one who didn’t?’
Dad stands, the force of his large body scraping back the legs of the chair against the floor, leaving a noise like nails on a chalkboard. He braces his arms against the table, the length of his veins leaping under the surface of his skin a reminder of the rope that’s helped guard my life and my sanity. He leans forward, not with menace but with a power that overshadows my presence in this room.
‘Do you really think for even one moment I would have sent my eighteen-year-old daughter to work for a man with that type of reputation? There’s no way on this earth you would have been allowed anywhere near a man like that, much less go to work for him. Give me strength. I’d have taken a bat over there and beaten the bastard bloody until his bones cracked.’ Dad’s arms don’t look so steady anymore. I realise he’s shaking. ‘Did he attack you?’
My lips stitch together; I want to deny it. Only Philip and I ever knew. Our secret and the rest. There’s no running away from it this time because I can see from Dad’s horror-struck expression he already knows the answer.
So I reveal, ‘Yes. Yes he did. Philip was upstairs, heard my screams and stepped in. Otherwise I might have been raped.’
With one mighty sweep of his arm, Dad knocks the bottle of brandy flying from the table. It smashes and spills, some of the liquid splashing across the photo of Mum pregnant with me that lives on the fridge. It’s the action of that other dad. That dad who struck Michael and warned him, ‘you know what I’m capable of.’ The dad who smashed Jed’s nose. That other violent father I’ve been denying I knew I had.
‘You should have told me. You’re my daughter, for pity’s sake. Why didn’t you tell me?’ He staggers back from the table, his palms roaming wildly over the crown of his head. ‘If he were here now I’d kill him.’
I want to go to Dad. I want him to come to me. His distress is so real. But… but I still can’t understand how a man like my dad, with his ear to the ground, could have missed the rumours and rumblings about Danny’s predatory nature.
My voice is only a hush. ‘How can I believe you when seemingly the whole world knew?’
Whether it’s the light or the way he’s holding them, his eyes seem to have changed colour to flint. His voice has hardened too. ‘Sit down, Rachel.’ When that doesn’t happen, he shouts, ‘I said – sit down!’
I do as he says, perching on the edge. He knocks back the rest of his drink as soon as he’s facing me. ‘I suppose you’ve been talking to Michael, have you? He’s tracked you down?’
How I manage to hold back the show of stunned amazement at the mention of Michael, I have no idea. That Dad’s admitting to knowing him. Does he know that Michael lured me to the basement? I test my theory. ‘I don’t know who Michael is. I certainly haven’t been contacted by anyone of that name.’
A scoff is the response I get. ‘I know all about Danny and Michael – all about them.’
This unexpected twist shatters the breath inside me. ‘Danny Hall knew Michael?’
Dad settles back in his chair, the hardness of his gaze becoming more solid. ‘I did a lot of business with Danny over the years. I saw him in action, a man a bit too jagged and jaded around the edges sometimes but it comes with the territory. I’m accustomed to it. We did a few deals together, that’s why I was shocked to hear about his death. After that, his son took against me.’
I’m gasping, I can hear it. I know what’s coming.
Dad tells me. ‘Michael is his son. Danny had an affair with one of his secretaries and Michael was the result. So when Danny got himself killed in that fire, Michael turned against me because I bought one of his father’s companies.’ Dad lets out a bitter laugh. ‘Do you know why I did it? Because when Danny died, it came to light that his finances were in bad shape, so I bought that particular company to help his family out. A few years later it rebounds back on me when Michael accuses me of buying it on the cheap. Since then, him and his mad mother have been a thorn in my side making all types of threats.’
Dad looks lost before stiffening again. ‘And you know what really sticks in my craw? After Michael was born, Danny dumped the pair of them for another woman. And you know who it was that helped them out then after Danny died? It was me. I helped them because I thought I owed it to Danny. I didn’t expect any gratitude for it. But I didn’t expect this either.’
Dad gets out of his chair, large and brooding. He stands tall and erect and seems to have gained a couple of inches in height. He looms over me like Michael’s tenement and jabs his finger in my face. ‘And I didn’t expect any gratitude for all I’ve done for you. But I didn’t expect this either.’ He turns his finger towards the photo of my mum, me nestled within the protection of her body. He looks on the verge of tears. ‘I’m just glad your mother isn’t alive to see you betray me like this.’ He loses the extra inches that he gained; weary. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had enough.’
The house is suddenly silent when I’m alone in the kitchen. As silent as it was the night my mum died. Everything Dad’s just told me makes sense and fits in with what I know. It explains his visit to Michael. Why he asked to see Michael’s mum. Except for one thing.
I still don’t understand how someone as savvy as Dad could’ve been unaware of Danny’s brutal reputation with young women.
My Uber arrives outside Dad’s, so I hurry down the hall towards the front door. I don’t know where my father has gone. It’s a relief to climb in the cab and get away. As the car sets off down the drive towards the main road, when I look back towards the house, the light is on in Dad’s office at the front side of the house. Dad’s stalking like a caged animal. I tell the cabbie to pull over out of sight and scamper back up the drive, ducking low. When I reach Dad’s office window, I peer inside to see my dad’s on the phone. He’s shouting at someone but I can’t hear what he’s saying through the double glazing that keeps out the winds that blow off the North Downs. Then I hear him. A bellow so loud no glass can be a barrier.
‘You know I don’t make idle threats. If you don’t get back on my side, I will kill you.’
I’m in the back seat of the cab. I’m half concealed in the shadows as I pull out my mobile. It’s time for me to admit that Dad maybe isn’t the man I once knew, if I ever knew him at all.
The phone line connects. ‘It’s me. I’m ready for you to tell me the information you found out about my mum.’