There were many, many places that would have been more pleasant to be than the Hendersons’ house—the rim of an active volcano, a plague-stricken village, a war zone … in fact, it was hard to think of anywhere I would have less liked to be.
I sat very quietly beside Will on the windowsill, trying to look pleasant and unthreatening, as Karen Henderson watched me from her wheelchair. Her narrow face was implacably hostile, as usual.
But I was there for Will, not for her, and he had his fingers laced through mine, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
We were in a room I’d never been in before, and for good reason: it was Dan Henderson’s bedroom. He lay on the bed, motionless under a white sheet.
“How are you feeling?” his wife asked. She sounded as if she was talking to a child.
Dan shifted, irritated. He had a bandage on his head and his skin was gray, but being ill didn’t make him any more willing to suffer fools gladly. “I wish people would stop asking me that.”
“It’s only natural. You almost died. You both did.” She shot a venomous glance in my direction. “You shouldn’t have been there in the first place. If it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened.” The second you was meant for me.
“You’re not the first person to point that out,” I said. Will’s fingers tightened on mine—I hoped because he was supporting me. Possibly it was a warning. Please don’t fight.
“Jess saved us,” Will said quietly. “You should thank her.”
Karen snorted and looked away. No chance.
“It worked out well,” Dan said. “John Lowell is going to prison for a very long time and when he gets out, he’ll never work with young people again. Gilly—well, if there was ever someone who needed help, it’s her. She very nearly killed her mother. She was bloody lucky she didn’t succeed. And she was even luckier that she can blame John Lowell for some of the things she did, like leaving Jess to die. She’s being charged with attempted murder. Her lawyers are going to point the finger at Lowell all the way through her trial, and honestly, I don’t mind if they do. She’s a victim too. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t set out to separate her from her friends, her family, and everyone else she trusted. He manipulated her. He has to take some responsibility for what she did, and what she became. As it is, she’s going to be spending time in a young-offender’s institution until she’s eighteen and then I’d guess another few years in an adult prison and by the time she comes out she should be a lot wiser about what she does.”
“I feel sorry for her,” I said.
“That’s generous of you, considering.” Dan sighed. “I hope she’ll get some help in prison. The best thing for her is to be away from the media attention, anyway. The story has been all over the papers and not everyone is sympathetic to her. You’d think it was all her idea and that Lowell was the innocent one.”
There was a clatter from downstairs: someone opening the front door.
“Hello? Where is everyone?” It was my aunt’s voice. She had a key to the Hendersons’ house and she had been practically living there for the past week, while Dan was in hospital.
“Tilly.” Dan’s face softened. “Someone go and tell her to come up.”
“I’ll go. I want a word with her.” Karen spun her chair round and wheeled herself out into the hallway. Tilly got on quite well with her because she simply ignored her little digs and complaints. She was probably the closest thing Karen had to a friend. It didn’t surprise me that Karen wanted to talk to her alone—probably to complain about me, and how ungrateful Dan was. It should have come as a shock to no one that he was a terrible patient.
Will looked at his dad. “Wishing you were back in the hospital?”
“A bit.” Dan raised an eyebrow. “Hospital’s not fun, but at least there are always nurses to look at.”
Grim. I made my expression completely neutral as Will shook his head, mortified.
“Dad…”
“Sorry.” He didn’t look it. Dan was getting back to his old self, despite the skull fracture, the chipped scapula, the cracked ribs, the torn ligament in his back that meant he wasn’t allowed out of bed yet. Not to mention the near-drowning. He’d been lucky to survive.
We’d all been lucky.
“I am grateful,” Dan said, as if he’d been thinking along the same lines as me. “But you should have let me go, Will. You could have been killed, and what good would that have done?”
“I couldn’t.” Will’s voice was flat. “Sorry.”
“I thought you hated me.”
“So did I.” The three words hung in the air. Will wasn’t going to say anything else. That was all Dan was going to get. That was all he deserved.
Dan looked at the ceiling, blinking hard. “Jess told me I was going to lose you.”
I felt Will tense. “Did she?”
“And it made me think I probably haven’t been a very good father. I did what I thought was right.”
“How,” Will said carefully, “could it be right to try to make me hate you?”
“Because I want you to go. I want you to get out of this town and not look back.” Dan wasn’t looking at either of us. “I don’t want your mother to make you stay. I don’t want Jess to. I want you to be free.”
Will’s hand tightened on mine again. “Because that’s what you didn’t get to do. What if that’s not what I want out of life?”
“Then I’ve failed,” Dan said simply. “You’re better than that, Will. Too nice for your own good, if anything. I didn’t think you were tough enough to go unless I pushed you. I couldn’t let myself mind about you hating me. That was the choice I made.”
It wasn’t what I’d have chosen myself, but that was Dan all over. The end justifies the means.
Will sounded very tired when he spoke again. “I can’t leave Mum. Not how she is. You know that.”
“You have to go to university.” There was a warning note in Dan’s voice.
“I’m deferring my place.”
“This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” Dan snapped. “You’ll waste your life just like I have. These aren’t your obligations, Will. You didn’t ask to be born. This is about me and your mother, not you. Don’t let her drag you into the middle of it.”
Tilly threw open the door and bounced in, beaming. “Dan, you’re back! How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts and I’m hungry.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Soup? I made vegetable soup. You’ll love it. It’s got lentils in it.”
Dan’s face was a picture. “I hate soup.”
I couldn’t help it; I started to giggle. Will grinned, then started laughing too. Dan glared at the two of us, and it made it worse.
“Sorry,” I said, gasping for air, “but you’re such a grump, Dan. Who hates soup?”
“I do.” He was starting to smile, though.
“All soup?” Tilly asked. Her eyes were huge, pleading.
“Pretty much.” Dan sighed. “All right. I’ll try the lentil soup.”
She clapped her hands. “I’ll go and heat it up.”
As Tilly clattered down the stairs, there was a ring at the door, and I heard her answer it.
“I wish everyone would just leave me alone,” Dan said. “No more visitors.”
“No soup, no visitors. Got it,” I said.
“More painkillers.”
“In half an hour,” Will said, checking his watch.
“Oh, come on.”
“No, Dad.”
Dan leaned his head back on the pillows and breathed deeply through his nose. Relying on other people was pure torture for him. As if to compound the agony, Karen pushed open the door and propelled herself back into the room.
“I hope you didn’t miss me while I was gone,” she said archly, and was ignored. “Who rang the doorbell?”
“No idea,” Will said. “We didn’t see. Tilly let them in.”
As he said it, Tilly opened the door and came in, her face blank with surprise. She tried to sound cheerful, though. “Look who’s here.”
Mum walked in, closely followed by Dad—Dad? She looked over at me, and I couldn’t read the expression on her face at all: shock, mainly, and anger. Dad was looking noble, which was a bad sign.
What have you done?
Karen looked up at Mum with pure loathing, but her face changed when she saw Dad. It was—but it couldn’t be—terror I saw.
“I’d better go,” she said, and started to wheel herself toward the door.
“Stay.” Dad’s voice was firm. “You need to be here, Karen.”
“What’s going on?” Dan demanded. He was struggling to sit up in bed, evidently feeling at a disadvantage lying down.
“How are you feeling?” Mum asked, and instead of exploding at her, Dan grinned.
“Like hell. But grateful to your daughter for getting me out of trouble.”
“She has her moments,” Mum said, trying and failing to hide how proud she was. Then her face went serious again and she looked behind her to Dad, obviously nervous.
What’s going on?
Dan looked past her and frowned. “Why are you here, Chris?”
Dad seemed to be roughly as cheerful as someone walking to the scaffold. “I have something to tell you. Something you need to know.”
“Stop,” Karen said, her voice faint.
“Dan, I had no reason to like you, but you put yourself in harm’s way for Jess. She told me what you did.” Dad swallowed. “And I’m grateful. So I want you to know the truth, no matter what happens.” He looked across at me. “I’m sorry, Jess.”
“Why? What are you talking about?” I was already sitting on the edge of the windowsill. Now I stood up. “What do you mean by the truth?”
“I’d like to know that too,” Dan said.
“I need to go.” Karen’s face was red. “Will, take me out of here.”
He stood up too, but hesitated beside me, not sure what to do.
“Leave her where she is. You should be here as well.” Dad took a deep breath. “You all know why I came to Port Sentinel. I wanted to persuade Molly to come back to me. I wanted me and her and Jess to be a family again. I knew she was happy here and would never come back to London. I thought we could make a new life together here instead, and maybe I could make amends for the things I’ve got wrong.”
Dan snorted. “As if.”
“I didn’t get the chance to prove I’d changed,” Dad said with dignity. “But I did get to talk to Karen. We have a lot in common, Karen and I. We’ve both suffered from the fact that you and Molly regretted breaking up in the first place, and getting married to other people.”
“This is ancient history,” Dan said. “I’m not hearing anything new.”
“I’m getting there,” Dad snapped. “Just let me explain. We never got a fair chance at making our marriages work. There was always a shadow between me and Molly, and I know Karen felt the same about you, Dan. But we got on with it, and we had children, and watched them grow up.” He took a deep breath. “And as they got older, we both became aware that the day would come when the children were old enough to be independent, and when that happened, the chances were that we would find ourselves separating—getting divorced.”
“So you thought you’d get in first and cheat on Mum with girls who were at least ten years younger than you,” I said, unable to bear the self-pity any more.
“I handled it badly. I’m not saying I didn’t.” Dad sighed. “Anyway, I set Molly free. And as I’d expected, once we’d split up she came down here.”
“That wasn’t because of Dan,” Tilly said. Her voice was tight with anger. “That was after Freya died, so she could support me.”
“Nonetheless, she was back where she grew up. Where you were, Dan.”
“Nothing happened.” Dan looked at Mum with a smile I’d never seen on his face before. “She wouldn’t, and I couldn’t, and you are lucky, Chris, that I’m stuck in bed because if I was fit, I’d be showing you what I think of you for even suggesting Molly and I would get together again.”
“But you did sneak around,” Will said. “You saw each other a lot. I saw you together, Dad, in your car.”
“Look, I’d be lying if I said we hadn’t thought about it. We loved each other very much, once upon a time. That doesn’t go away. But we’d both moved on since then. We’d changed.”
“We were just friends,” Mum said. “The only reason we didn’t want anyone to know we were meeting was because we didn’t want to upset Karen. Dan thought she wouldn’t like it”
Karen laughed, and it was a horrible sound. “Of course. No one wants to upset poor Karen.”
“Karen had her suspicions,” Dad said. “When I came down here, she confided in me. She wanted me to keep an eye on the two of them, because she was housebound.” He paused, probably for effect—in spite of himself he was enjoying being the center of attention. “Or should I say, she seemed to be housebound.”
“What do you mean by that?” Dan asked. His eyes were watchful.
“Christopher,” Karen said, “I hope you’re not going to suggest—”
“She’s lying,” Dad said, cutting across her. “She pretended to be ill. She told you she had motor neurone disease, but she’s faking.”
“The doctor said—” Will began.
“She saw Molly at Freya’s funeral. It was then that she started developing symptoms. She picked a disease that progresses in unpredictable ways. She found one that couldn’t be diagnosed easily, with symptoms she could fake easily enough. Your doctor referred her for tests. She went to London for them and you couldn’t go, could you, Dan? You had work, and she didn’t want you there anyway. And then she came back and said it was bad news. She was dying. So how could you leave her? You’d have to be some sort of monster. Even if the love of your life had come back and was living in her old house, practically within touching distance.” Dad waited for someone to speak, and when they didn’t, he laughed. “Don’t you believe me? She was convincing, I grant you. She fooled enough people to get by, and hid from anyone who might have spotted the truth, and you threw yourself into your work, Dan. You didn’t have a clue that she might be tricking you. You just wanted her to get on with dying so you could get on with living.”
“That’s a flaw in the plan,” Dan said. “How were you going to manage the dying part, Karen?”
She was as white as the bedclothes. Her fingers made little plucking movements on the blanket she had thrown across her knees.
“A miraculous recovery, I imagine,” Dad said. “A misdiagnosis. Wonders will never cease. Let’s all live happily ever after.”
“He’s lying,” Karen ground out.
“I’m not.” Dad smiled grimly. “She told me everything herself. She wanted me to help her. She wanted Molly to be safely out of reach, and preferably out of Port Sentinel, before she revealed she wasn’t dying after all. She knew that was the only thing that was keeping Dan by her side. She thought he would leave as soon as he heard she was healthy—but a brokenhearted Dan might stay.” Dad turned to Karen. “I have every reason to keep your secret, Karen, except that it makes me sick to my stomach. I can’t stand it any more. Dan needs to know the truth.”
“I can explain,” Karen said in a low, terrible voice. She looked up. “Will, I can explain.”
For the first time I looked at Will, and my heart twisted. He looked stunned. Devastated. In the space of ten minutes, everything he believed had been turned upside down. He walked out of the room like a sleepwalker, stumbling a little, away from the sound of the tearing sobs that were shaking his mother’s thin frame.
“Jess, go after him,” Dan said. “Make sure he’s all right.”
As if a spell had been lifted, I found I could move again. I heard the front door bang and I ran down the stairs. A car engine started: Dan’s Range Rover, parked on the drive. I pulled open the door in time to see Will reverse into the road and accelerate away, his expression set. I ran out, too late to stop him, too late even to see him drive away. I listened to the engine sounds change as he went up through the gears, faster and faster, trying to outrun something he couldn’t ever leave behind.