Tom stepped back and looked up at the sky, enjoying the feeling of the cold rain on his face. Lightning flashed again, and he knew he wasn’t looking up at God. He was God.
20
“Did you hear the storm last night?” asked Jake.
“No,” said Kate. It was early the next morning, and she still felt bleary. They were walking down the cliff to the beach for a swim.
“It was like, raging. Thunder, lightning.”
“I must have slept through for a change,” she said. The sun was glinting golden off a bank of low clouds and scattering diamonds across the still water. Kate could see a tide line of rubbish on the beach thrown up by the storm. She was usually a light sleeper, so it was a refreshing change to feel rested.
Jake waded into the rolling surf and dove headfirst under a breaking wave. Kate waited for the next wave to break and dove in after him. The water enveloped her, and she kicked out lithely, moving through the growing swells, feeling her heart pumping and the zing on her skin from the salt water. The six-inch scar on her stomach tingled in the cold water, as it always did. It was an ever-present reminder of the night she’d learned that Peter Conway was the Nine Elms Cannibal and confronted him. She’d been unaware that she was pregnant with Jake at the time, and Peter’s sharp blade had missed him by millimeters. But having Jake here with her, now a grown man, swimming out strongly beside her, made her feel that there was good in the world.
Kate stopped a hundred meters out and floated on her back. She looked over at Jake, his head bobbing in the water, smiling up at the sun, which had just broken over the horizon.
“You know, you’re welcome to invite your friends to stay over,” she said. Jake turned and swam back to join her.
“Sam might come for a weekend, if that’s cool. He loves surfing,” said Jake.
“Sam is one of your housemates?” said Kate, trying to remember. Jake had mentioned a lot of new friends in his English lit classes.
“Yeah. The others are off working in Spain . . .” Jake bit his lip, and Kate could see he wanted to tell her something. “I’ve made another interesting friend,” he said.
Kate looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. “Oh yes?”
“Not like that. Her name’s Anna. Anna Tomlinson. I met her on Facebook last year . . . We’ve been messaging back and forth.”
“You kids are so lucky,” said Kate, moving her arms lazily back and forward in the water. “I had to write letters to my friends during the holidays.”
“Anna’s the daughter of Dennis Tomlinson . . . I don’t know if the name rings a bell?”
Kate sat up in the water. The name did ring a bell. Dennis Tomlinson had been one of the serial killers she’d lectured on in her Criminal Icons course at the university.
“Dennis Tomlinson who raped and killed eight women?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Dennis Tomlinson serving eight life sentences?” asked Kate. She didn’t feel relaxed anymore.
“Yes. She contacted me, unexpectedly, asking if I wanted to talk to someone who knows what it’s like to have a father like . . . that.”
“Where does she live?”
“The north of Scotland. She lives on a farm in the middle of the mountains. She wrote a book fifteen years ago, and she used the money to buy the land.”
Kate shivered. The water no longer felt zingy, and her fingers were numb.
“I hope you’re not thinking of writing a book.”
“No. Why would you think that? I’m happy working here. I love doing the diving lessons, taking the boat out, being here with you.”
“Okay, I’m happy you’re happy,” said Kate.
“Did you think I wasn’t happy?”
“I worry that I screwed you up.”
“You didn’t screw me up. You made me appreciate life,” he said. Kate was surprised by this and didn’t know what to say. “Anna wasn’t lucky like me. She was all alone when her father was arrested. She was seventeen. Her mother died when she was sixteen . . . It’s been good to meet someone who’s had a similar experience . . .”
She looked at Jake treading water beside her. The sun glinting on his hair, shiny as a conker.
Why shouldn’t he talk to someone who’d had the same experience? Peter Conway would always be his father; Jake would always be his son. Kate would always be the link between them, and it was her actions, her affair with Peter Conway, when he was her boss in the police, that had led to all this.