fifty-three
I stared bug-eyed.
“Mentally.”
I so wanted to shout at her for scaring the crap out of me I almost missed what she said next. “Otto put absurdly unrealistic expectations on Nicholas’s shoulders and when he failed, Otto did a number on him. It went on for years and years.”
“What are we talking here—humiliation, subjection, abuse?”
Paris let out a weary sigh. The circles under her eyes bulged. She looked more fifty than youthful forty. “Emotionally, you name it, Otto subjected him to it.”
The combination of early physical abuse from his mother and extreme mental abuse from his adoptive father would leave a toxic legacy. Fuck. “What about Mimi?” I remembered what Otto had told me about his little girl.
“Mimi was inviolate.” She leant forwards. “You have to understand that Nicholas was sensitive.”
For this, I read vulnerable. Any form of abuse would have a stronger impact on him for that reason alone. “Is this why you spirited him to Devon?” I could tell from her guarded expression that she was uncomfortable with the line of questioning. “I know what happened when Nicholas disappeared, Paris.”
She didn’t deny it. “I helped him survive.”
“Financially, put a roof over his head, that kind of thing?”
“Yes.”
“What about the money trail, bank accounts, paying bills, and so on?”
In a toneless, detached manner, she continued, “Nicholas taught me how to deal with it. Online, there’s a way around everything if you know how. He had to get out. Otto was breathing down his neck about what he should do with his life.”
“It wasn’t such a big deal, was it? Why the cloak-and-dagger? Why go to such extremes? He was eighteen. He could easily make his own way in the world.”
She looked me in the eye. “Nicholas felt as murderous towards his father as his father felt toward him.”
“Nicholas feared he’d do something he’d regret?” I had to be careful not to push too hard, to put words into her mouth and mess it up.
“We all did.”
“All?”
“Me and Mimi.”
Was it simply Paris’s dramatic take on a bitter spat between father and son, or was the situation as dangerous as she painted it?
“Is that why you accused Otto of killing Nicholas?”
“He did kill him. He killed all that was good and decent in my boy.”
And what had emerged in its stead? I couldn’t escape the fact that Nicholas had crushed Mimi’s spirit by leaving her. Would a sensitive boy who hates his father kill another man as part of a warm-up before the headline act? Had he possibly killed before? Were his parents covering for him? Stannard’s warning voice murmured in my ear.
“Would Nicholas go to any length to protect his anonymity?”
Paris’s laugh was as sharp as lemon juice on an open wound. “You can’t mean Troy.”
“Why not? He was poking around.” And so was I.
“Because it’s ridiculous. Because …” She broke off and looked at me for what seemed like a long time. I noticed that same reluctance and fractional hesitation she’d displayed earlier, as if she were trying to subdue an unpleasant memory.
“Paris, is Nicholas still in touch?”
She didn’t answer. Her blank expression didn’t tally with the light in her eyes.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“I don’t remember.”
She did, but wasn’t telling. “Did you see him a year ago when Mimi spotted you together?” She dropped her gaze. Her hands bunched tight. “Did you?” I pressed.
She flexed her neck and gave a barely perceptible nod.
“Why the hell did you lie to your daughter?”
Her eyes flooded with tears once more. She spread her fingers as if she didn’t understand herself. Screw that.
“You accuse Otto of torturing your son. What do you think you were doing to Mimi?”
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t know how to explain.”
“Try,” I hissed. “Why did Nicholas meet you, Paris? What are you hiding?”
She didn’t answer. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed one. Her chest rose and fell at speed. She was running out of road and she knew it.
“He was obsessed,” she mumbled, “like a man on a mission.”
Obsessed rang my alarm bells.
“Where is he?”
She glanced away.
“Is he in town?”
“I think so.”
“Whereabouts?”
“He’s moved to another address. I have no idea where. It’s what Nicholas wanted,” she added defensively.
“But he’s still here?”
“Possibly.”
I read it as probably. “A risk, surely?”
“I persuaded Nicholas it was better to hide in full view.”
“You wanted to keep him close.”
She met my eye.
“For your benefit, or his?” I demanded.
She swallowed hard, placed both her tiny hands on her temples. I noticed that the nail varnish was chipped and the little fingernail on her left hand was bitten down to the quick. Fear returned to her eyes, which fastened on the door as if she was about to make a run for it. She was plainly terrified.
“What is it, Paris? What are you so afraid of ?”
She regarded me with beseeching eyes. I’d seen the same terror many times in the consulting room. Please keep my secret safe. Please don’t use it against me. Please don’t probe.
“Sometimes,” she gulped, “Nicholas has episodes.”
The sunshine that had flooded the room vanished behind the drapes.
“He isn’t always himself,” she explained.
“In what way?”
She hitched a shoulder. “Difficult to describe.”
“Panic attacks?”
“Sort of.”
“When did it start?”
“Around the time he was twelve. The doctor said it was connected to hormonal changes associated with puberty.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“How would it manifest itself ?”
“He’d be manic, talkative. It never lasted very long,” she added as though this somehow made it all right.
“How long? Days, hours?”
She looked vague. “Hours, and then he’d return to lethargy.”
Not exactly an unusual state for an adolescent, which was what I told her, in spite of believing something else was in play.
“I guess not,” she said, a doubtful note in her voice. “Then he started having bad dreams.”
“Did he say about what?”
“Mostly, he couldn’t remember.”
“Did you ever suspect violent tendencies?”
Her voice rose in protest. “He was a sensitive boy.”
“Even sensitive young men indulge in violent fantasies.”
She tore away, refused to look me in the eye. “I was never frightened of him. Never.”
It seemed a strange admission. “Does he have a history of delinquency?”
“Not really.” I levelled my gaze. Collapsing under my stony expression, she said, “Does truanting count?”
I suspected I wasn’t getting the full story, which was illuminating in itself. “Anything else?”
“He talked about seeing a woman.”
“A girlfriend?”
“I don’t think so. She sounded too old.”
“You didn’t meet her?”
“Never. Whoever she was she caused him a lot of pain. It was as if he became someone else when he was with her.”
“When did the relationship start?”
“Not long after he found out about his birth mother.”
“But before he disappeared?”
She chewed her lip, nodded.
I stared hard. She looked at me and then blinked with realisation at where I was going with it. “His biological mother? Impossible.”
I shrugged. It seemed a long shot. “And he never confided in you?”
“That was the funny thing about it. He usually told me everything, but each time I pushed him on it, he’d become upset, tearful even.”
“Is he still seeing this woman?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought about it. “With his quest to find his real dad, did you help with that? I’m not sure how the adoption system works.”
She chewed her bottom lip. “I …” she faltered.
“It’s all right, Paris, take your time. Would you like some water?”
She shook her head; eager it seemed to get it out into the open before she clammed up forever. “Both Nicholas and Mimi were the subject of placement orders. In the usual run of things, adopted children have the legal right to obtain a copy of the original birth certificate and the name of the agency that arranged the adoption.”
“Can they access background details and addresses?”
“They can trace a fair amount online and, if they wish, send for a copy of the original birth certificate.”
“I’m guessing it would state the birth name given to the adopted child and names of both parents.”
“Name, age, address, occupation if any of parent, and address of the hospital where the child was born. We were informed that, in both instances, the father’s name had not been noted on either child’s birth certificates. ‘Father unknown’ was the phrase used.”
“Do you know if it was the same father for both children?”
“I don’t know. We’d always assumed so because of the familial likeness. As I said, in a routine adoption, adopted children are given an opportunity to contact their birth parents and vice-versa.”
“Providing both sides agree?”
“Yes.”
“But your case wasn’t routine?”
“Not with the courts involved, no. Because of the court order, there was no way either parent would be allowed to make contact even if they desired it.”
“I gather there was a protection issue.”
“Who told you that?”
“Lyn Mason.”
Paris flicked a bootleg smile, cautious, edgy.
“Did you keep paperwork relating to the adoption?”
She nodded.
“You had a social worker assigned to the case?”
“Yeah.” She glanced away.
“Name?”
“It was a long time ago.”
Her face told me all I needed to know. She was deliberately stalling. “I’m sure I could find out,” I said, not at all sure that I could.
Paris rolled her eyes in exasperation. “A woman called Joyce Conway.”
“Which you told Nicholas?”
She nodded slowly.
“And?”
The weight of silence that followed almost swallowed me up. “Paris?”
Forced to explain and unhappy about doing so, she said, “She’s dead.”