Chapter 65
PETER
Peter watches his mother pegging out the washing from inside the lodge.
Her auburn hair is hidden beneath a scarf and hat, her cheeks ruddy from the harsh Scottish elements.
There is nobody around to see them: they’re safe here for the winter at least. She turns to smile at him.
Marielle Morgan. His mother. He can’t believe he’s found her at last. He no longer calls himself Kit.
He should never have been given that name in the first place.
He’s Peter – Peter Morgan – now.
It wasn’t like he had a bad life as Kit Cooper. His adoptive parents were kind, if a little bland. But he’d never felt he fitted in, and he had spent his life wondering what his real parents were like and if, perhaps, he’d taken after them.
He thinks back to that balmy night four months ago.
When he’d turned up at the Morgans’ house, Henry was in the kitchen attending to Marielle’s neck wound. Their front door had been left slightly ajar, and he wondered if they were getting ready to run away.
‘What’s going on? Why aren’t you leaving?’ he’d asked.
‘Who are you?’ snapped Henry. ‘A cop?’
And Kit had laughed. ‘No, Dad. I’m the son you abandoned on the steps of the hospital back in 1999.’
Henry just stared at him, his jaw slack with shock.
Marielle, who had been watching him intently, stood up, brushing Henry’s hand away from her neck.
‘Peter?’ she’d gasped. ‘Oh, my God, it’s Peter.
Henry, he’s come back. I knew it. I knew he wasn’t dead.
He’s got your eyes, Henry.’ She stood before Kit, reaching up to touch his face.
She looked wild with her unruly hair and the large padded plaster on the side of her neck.
‘How … how did you know?’ Henry asked as he joined Marielle. Kit could hear the doubt in his voice.
‘Look at him, Henry,’ she marvelled. ‘He’s the spitting image of you when you were younger.’
Kit cleared his throat, trying to remember his prepared speech.
He’d imagined this moment for a long time but had never thought it would happen, that he would find them.
He had Lena to thank for that. ‘My adoptive parents had always been honest with me about how I was found on the steps of a hospital,’ he began.
‘Old records from St Calvert’s mentioned Simone and Lena.
I searched for them both, but Lena was easier to find, thanks to Charlie.
I hoped she could give me some answers, but when her son told me she was suspicious of the two of you and she thought you might have kidnapped a woman, well …
’ he shrugged ‘… I was intrigued. I broke in here one night and found the newspaper cutting.’ He reached into his jeans pocket and handed it to them.
‘Your wall of newspaper articles tells quite the story. I didn’t know for certain, of course, but things started to click, especially when I saw you, Henry.
I was leaving Lena’s house and you were washing your car and I noticed our resemblance. Why would you abandon me?’
Marielle grabbed his hands. ‘We never abandoned you, Peter. They said you’d died.’
‘Who said?’
‘Hugh Warrington and Simone Harvey. That’s why …’ She swallowed, not finishing her sentence. She turned to her husband. ‘Didn’t they, Henry? Tell him.’
Kit saw a look of defeat in Henry’s face and watched as his father slumped onto a chair.
‘Henry?’ Marielle rounded on him. ‘Henry, tell him.’
Henry groaned, head in hands. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ he mumbled through his fingers. ‘I’m so tired of it.’ He removed his hands from his face, revealing anguished eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Mari, I really am. If I had my time again I might not have done it.’
‘Done what? You’re not making any sense, Henry.’
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ said Kit. ‘You arranged this. Why?’
‘I thought … Hugh told me they’d found a family for you. I never thought they’d pretend you were abandoned. That wasn’t part of the deal.’
The air in the kitchen stilled as his words sank in. Then Kit heard a noise that sent chills down his back. It was coming from Marielle. They both turned to where she stood by the worktop.
‘You took the one thing from me I’d always wanted, Henry!’ she wailed. ‘What kind of man are you?’
‘We’re the same, my love,’ Henry replied, standing up and going to her. ‘We’re both the same.’
The way he spoke made Kit feel sick.
‘No, we’re not!’ Marielle screamed. ‘You’re the murderer, Henry.
Not me. I know what you did to Hugh. To Simone.
I understand it all, now. You let me believe I’d killed her, but it was you, wasn’t it?
You killed her to stop her telling me the truth about what you did.
How much did you pay Hugh Warrington to take our baby and pretend he had died?
That’s why he was hanging around our house last year, wasn’t it?
He was blackmailing you. How could you have done such a wicked, wicked thing? ’
In one swift movement Marielle grabbed a knife from a wooden block and waved it in front of Henry’s face.
‘Put down the knife, Mari …’
Kit stood, waiting, a tiny thrill at what was unfolding in front of him growing in the pit of his stomach. These, he realized, were his people. For so long he’d felt adrift, directionless, different from everyone in the world because of the kind of thoughts, desires he had.
Marielle lowered the knife, but she still gripped it tightly.
‘I did it because I loved you,’ Henry said eventually. ‘And you love me, for all my faults. Because we’re the same …’
‘Will you stop saying that!’ she cried. ‘We are not the same, Henry.’
‘We are. I know you killed Violet all those years ago. You’re no different from me.’
Kit stared at his mother in shock. She’d killed someone too?
‘What are you talking about? Of course I didn’t kill Violet. I’m not saying I wasn’t glad she died. I hated her, as you know. She was a horrible stepmother to me. But I didn’t kill her. She drowned after taking too many pills.’
Kit watched as the colour drained from Henry’s face. He could tell that Henry believed her. In that moment he looked as if he had lost everything he ever thought to be true. He stepped closer. ‘No, that’s … but I always thought …’
‘I’m not a killer, Henry. You are.’
‘You helped me kidnap Simone. What did you expect we were going to do with her? Let her go again after you got answers?’
‘Well, yes. She’d hardly have gone to the police, would she? She was on the run.’
Henry looked visibly shaken. Marielle was still clutching the knife. ‘Mari, darling, I love you so much. Nothing else matters to me but you,’ he said softly.
‘You took my baby and let me believe he’d died,’ she yelled.
‘And why? Because you were threatened by how much I would love him?’ She reached for Kit’s hand and squeezed it.
‘I knew you weren’t dead,’ she whispered to Kit.
‘I knew it. I always knew.’ Then she turned back to Henry.
‘I hate you. I hate you for what you did.’
‘Marielle, please …’
‘You don’t know what love is. This, how a mother feels about her child, that’s love. And you tried to take it away from me.’
‘No, Marielle.’
Henry suddenly lunged at her, knocking the knife out of her hand. The three of them watched as it clattered to the floor. ‘You don’t mean what you’re saying,’ Henry cried. ‘The love we have trumps everything.’
‘No, Henry.’
It happened so quickly. Henry and Kit pounced on the knife at the same time, but Kit was stronger and managed to wrestle it out of his father’s hand.
The three stood frozen for a few seconds.
Kit gripped the knife, not sure what to do next.
He glanced at Marielle, his mother, and their eyes locked, understanding passing between them.
Henry must have noticed because the next thing Kit knew, Henry leapt at him, his piercing blue eyes full of hatred, as though he blamed Kit for all of this.
Kit didn’t think twice. He plunged the knife into Henry’s chest.
Henry’s eyes widened, and he stumbled backwards, blood blooming from his wound and seeping through his linen shirt. He crumpled to the floor.
Marielle turned to Kit, her face ashen. ‘What have you done, Peter?’
‘He would have hurt you, Mum. Didn’t you see? He went for the knife. He would have killed you and maybe me as well.’
She softened at the word ‘Mum’. She touched his cheek gently. ‘You’re right. You’re right, Peter.’
‘We need to go,’ he urged. ‘I’ve got a car outside.’
Marielle glanced down at Henry lying comatose on the kitchen floor, blood darkening his shirt, his face unnaturally pale, his eyes closed. Kit doubted his father was dead. If they called an ambulance now they could save him.
Or they could leave him bleeding out on the kitchen floor.
He knew which option he preferred.
He wondered if Marielle would waver. He watched, his breath in his throat, as she knelt beside her husband and stroked the side of his cheek. ‘Goodbye, Henry,’ she whispered. And then she got to her feet. ‘Okay,’ she said to Kit, matter-of-factly. ‘Let’s go.’
It didn’t take Kit long to shake off his old, fake identity – the face he had presented to the world to fit in – and become Peter, the son of psychopath Henry Morgan, who had only ever loved one thing, even if that love was warped and twisted and sick.
He doesn’t know what the future holds, but it doesn’t matter because he’s with his real family now.
Not the too nice but soft adoptive parents to whom he had always felt such a disappointment, a freak because of the darkness that ran through his veins.
But he’s with his mother, his real mother, who understands him, just like she once understood Henry.
And he doesn’t have to pretend any more.