Chapter 86 Damon
Damon
‘So what happened the day Daisy died?’ I ask.
‘Your mum came home early from work to find you burying a bloody T-shirt and jeans at the bottom of the wash bin,’ my grandmother recalls.
‘You tried to talk your way out of it like the born liar you are, claiming it was another one of your nosebleeds. But she didn’t believe you.
Too much blood. Finally you broke down and admitted to what you did.
Bobbi called Ralf, bawling, and we got to hers to find her pinning you up against the fridge.
She was hysterical. It was only after Ralf dragged her off you that you told them you didn’t mean to hurt Daisy but that she didn’t like you in the way you liked her. ’
I should want to fold in on myself in shame, but I don’t. I remain strangely collected.
‘It was your mum who wanted to call the police,’ she continues, ‘but your dad talked her out of it. Said he’d sort it out. That what goes around comes around, whatever that meant.’
I’m about to ask why he did that, when I answer my own question.
I assume he never forgave himself for making me complicit in covering up the death of Callum Baird.
He told me before he drove away, leaving me to get help, that he was supposed to protect me, not the other way around.
I don’t mention this to my grandmother because I don’t know if she’s aware of what he did.
Besides, she is satisfied with her own interpretation.
‘Told me it was his fault you turned out a wrong’un because you didn’t have no father figure around to set you straight,’ she continues. ‘Regretted he didn’t fight harder for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
She hesitates, as if she doesn’t want to continue this story. As if whatever she has to tell me might be something I want to hear.
‘What do you mean?’ I repeat.
‘He never wanted to give up on you even though he fucked it up for himself by getting into trouble with the law. He wasn’t a bad boy – not like you – but he served three years for kicking the shit out of that bloke your mum was seeing, the one who knocked you both about.
Crushed a bunch of discs in his spine. Never walked properly again.
Then later Ralf got done for robbing a corner shop when your mum went all looby loo and locked herself in the flat and couldn’t work or afford to keep a roof over your heads.
The gun didn’t even have a bloody trigger, but they threw the book at him.
He gave all he stole to Bobbi, and what’d he get for it?
Her stopping him from seeing you when he was released.
He begged her for access, threatened to go to court, wanted shared custody, but she wasn’t having any of it.
She knew a court would never side with a criminal over a mum. ’
For all these years, I’ve thought he gave up on me. Like so many other assumptions I’ve made, I was wrong.
‘What did Dad do after I admitted I’d hurt Daisy?’
‘Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? You didn’t only hurt her. You fucking ruined her.’
Another attempt by her to get a reaction. I don’t respond.
‘Once you told them what you’d done with her body, he drove there and put her in his car to hide her somewhere else.
Took her clothes off in case your DNA was on them.
He didn’t spot the security cameras recording him from a building nearby.
That’s why he was arrested a few weeks later and her hair and blood was found in his car. ’
I return to something my grandmother said earlier. ‘You said it was Mum who wanted to call the police?’
She glares at me through a grey plume of smoke.
‘Bobbi had a total fucking meltdown. Started believing what some old alcoholic neighbour told her about seeing you chasing that Callum kid shortly before his body was found. Refused to believe it at the time, but couldn’t hide from the truth any longer.
Convinced herself you battered him because you were jealous.
She couldn’t handle having a kid capable of not just one murder but two.
Your dad said he’d get you help. But she didn’t want you anywhere near her.
He wanted to bring you to mine, but I wasn’t having any of it either.
I said you should be locked up, that it wasn’t safe for you to be out on the streets.
Turns out you weren’t safe to be indoors either. ’
‘I don’t understand?’
My grandmother takes a last drag on her cigarette before stubbing the remainder of it out in the footwell. She gives me a hard stare.
‘You really don’t remember, do you?’ she asks.
I shake my head. It feels heavy. She makes me wait for what she has to say next. The mean old cow is loving this.
‘’Cos indoors was where you killed your mum,’ she adds.