Strange Sally Diamond(95)
Over the following week, we spent a lot of time together and with our Uncle Mark. I liked her. She said the weirdest things sometimes. She wanted me to see a therapist but I was afraid of someone being able to see into my head. Sally was the only woman I’d talked to properly since Lindy and, when she invited me to stay in her house, I was relieved. I could tell she was pleased with me. Sally seemed to have plenty of money but it wasn’t my business where she got it. She wanted me to meet all her friends but pretend to be a cousin. I couldn’t do that. I had so many lies to juggle that I couldn’t cope with any more.
As much as I liked her, I couldn’t help feeling envious. She had grown up with a mum and dad, gone to school, played sports, all the things that had been denied to me. And by her own account, she had squandered all of those opportunities to live in a solitary way until just the last few years. Now, she had friends, now she had some kind of job playing the piano. I had nobody in my life except her, and I could never be fully honest with her.
The connection I yearned for was not in Ireland. Neither Sally nor my Uncle Mark could give me the feeling I craved. Sally was so pleased to have me there, Mark less so, but I couldn’t relax. The tension in my head never dissipated, even for a moment. I needed Lindy, or someone like her.
I checked in with work regularly on my laptop, and said I was dealing with my medical issues. They knew me well enough not to pry. Several problems arose that I could handle remotely, often in the middle of the night. I needed to stay on the payroll until I figured out what I was going to do next. I couldn’t stay with Sally indefinitely, but could I stay in Ireland? Should I go home to New Zealand? Where was home?
Over Christmas lunch, Sally mentioned Amanda Heron. It hadn’t occurred to me that she would show up on the ancestry website. In the beginning, I denied all knowledge of her, but Mark was so suspicious, I lied and said I’d had some short affairs. They showed me the website. There she was, the baby I had delivered, ‘50% DNA shared’. I told them I didn’t want to know. My initials that were connected to her on the website were PG. That, at least, was some comfort. If anybody went looking, my initials in New Zealand were SA. Mark and Sally had provided no other information, not even their birthdates.
But I had underestimated those amateur podcasters. On 12th January, an email landed in my inbox.
Dear Mr Armstrong
I apologize for bothering you again. By process of elimination, we believe you are the son of Conor Geary, also known as James Armstrong.
Some information has recently come to light which has made us focus more particularly on your father. It has not been possible to find a birth certificate for him in this country, nor is there any record of a James Armstrong studying dentistry in Ireland in the years he might have qualified. We believe the certificate he had was a forgery.
We heard from a retired cop who met James Armstrong when he accompanied a woman to the police station to report the disappearance of her teenage nephew, Rangi Parata. Parata drowned in a lake a few miles from your home in Rotorua. I believe you lived next door to Parata? The circumstances of his death were not deemed suspicious at the time, but in the light of recent events, we wonder if your father might be connected not just to the abduction of a girl in Ireland, but also to the drowning of Rangi Parata and potentially to the disappearance of Linda Weston.
There is something else. As you know, this podcast story was originally all about the disappearance of Linda Weston in 1983 and Amanda Heron’s quest to find out what happened to her mother. Just in the last few weeks, Amanda’s birth father has appeared on an ancestry website. We know nothing about him but for his initials – PG – and the fact that his DNA shows him to be 98 per cent of Irish descent.
We know that James Armstrong could not be Amanda’s father as he died eleven years before she was born. But he lived outside Rotorua at the time Linda disappeared. He lived next door to Rangi Parata. He did, as far as we know, live in Ireland for some period, and he also practised as a dentist for five years in Rotorua. The man wanted in Ireland was a practising dentist, and a father of one child, Mary Norton, born to the girl he kidnapped there.
I know that this is a lot to take in for you and I apologize for presenting you with such potentially upsetting information.
Is it possible that you were also abducted? We would really like to gain as much information about your father as possible. This may all be a misunderstanding but one we would love to be able to clear up, with your help.
I understand that you are currently on leave from the Aotearoa National Bank and, understandably, we cannot get any information as to where you live or even a mobile phone number for you. If you are monitoring your email, please get in touch at your earliest convenience. All of my contact details are at the top of this email.
Ngā mihi
Kate Ngata
I stared at the screen, reading and rereading the email. The amateurs were far closer to the truth than the police. Kate Ngata had not mentioned going to the police with this new information but surely it was only a matter of time before she did?
A cursory look at Hoani Mata Productions website showed that it was a one-woman operation. But Kate was clearly smart. She had found a retired cop from Rotorua, and knew we lived next door to Rangi.
I felt a tightness in my throat. I was trapped. I needed to decide what to do. I wondered what Sally would say if I told her that Dad had abducted Lindy. I could lie that she had escaped, that I never knew what happened to her. Sally might believe it. She seemed to accept things as fact, but Mark was always suspicious of me. It was obvious he didn’t trust me and he never believed that Dad stopped being ‘an active paedophile’ the day he left Ireland. They would force me to go to the police. I couldn’t let that happen.