Chapter 62 Damon
Damon
‘You don’t randomly hit your thirties then suddenly start killing kids,’ I press.
‘There must have been more. And, FYI, if you can’t be honest with me, I’ll get myself killed again tomorrow and come back with the truth anyway.
’ I can tell by his expression that my statement of intent has once again wrongfooted him.
‘I’m going to drown myself again,’ I clarify. ‘Each time I’ve done it before, I learn more.’
His jaw drops. ‘You . . . you can’t. It’s insane.’
‘You almost sound like you care.’
‘This is not worth dying over. Nothing is. Please, don’t.’ He runs his fingers through his beard then tugs at it.
‘Then spare me the trouble.’
He moves swiftly from bravado to exasperation. ‘There were no others,’ he insists, his voice rising.
‘Did Mum know what you’d done?’
He says ‘No’ too quietly for me to believe him.
‘You’re lying. She found out, didn’t she?’
And then a sudden, unsettling thought appears from nowhere.
‘How did that fire start in our flat?’ I ask. Dad doesn’t reply. ‘Was it deliberate? Did you do it? Did you kill Mum too?’
‘I absolutely did not hurt her.’
‘Then what does she want from me? Because I know she’s trying to tell me something.’
I might not know this man, but I recognise his mannerisms. His rubs his thumb against a tattoo on his wrist when he’s anxious, as do I. He is holding back.
‘You didn’t answer when I asked if the fire was deliberate,’ I say.
‘They investigated it. Said it was likely a cushion set alight by a fallen candle.’
‘I don’t care what an investigation said. I’m asking you. And please, no more bullshit.’ I hesitate before I ask my next question. ‘Did Mum kill herself because she knew what you’d done to those kids?’
Dad’s gaze leaves mine, which gives me my answer.
My emotions jump back and forth like a needle on the Richter scale.
After years of believing Mum’s death was suicide, I moved to grappling with the truth that she’d died because her only choices were to leap from a burning building or burn in the flames.
Now I know he gave her no choice. He took her away from me.
He might as well have pushed her himself.
Dad looks up and catches the storm escalating in my expression.
I lose who I am and return to the person I became when I killed the man in the car park.
It doesn’t matter how much larger and stronger Dad is than me.
Adrenaline numbs the pain in my ribs and I rush towards him, tackling him by the waist and sending us both tumbling to the ground.
The back of his head slams into the wooden television unit and I clamber on top of him.
I have never hit another person in my life, but here I am, fighting with my father.
I punch him in the face. When I raise my fist again, he turns his head and this time I catch his brow.
Now there’s a sharp, shooting pain burning its way through my knuckles, but I don’t give in to it.
Instead, I hit him again and again, colliding with his nose, his eye, and then his mouth.
‘I fucking hate you!’ I scream. ‘You should be dead, not those kids or my mum.’
Now I raise both my hands and bring my fists down upon his face once more. He isn’t trying to defend himself. He is letting me hurt him. He wants to feel my pain for what he did, because somewhere inside him, he knows he deserves it. And I am all too willing to oblige.
The first time I killed was because I had to. This time it’s because I want to. I am a carbon copy of him. Bad apples never fall far from trees.
Then the expression on his battered face alters. It’s momentary: his eyes flit to something behind me. I don’t have time to process it or turn before something heavy crashes against the back of my head.