And despite the loathing he feels for his dad, Theo can’t help the emotion that sits heavy on his chest, suffocating him until he’s forced to let it out in sobs. He sits there for a while, his forehead resting on the steering wheel of his cold little car, and lets the tears flow. He doesn’t really know who he’s crying for. Definitely not his father, who he hopes will rot in jail. Definitely for his mother, whose young life his dad had stolen, and partly for himself for being robbed of his lovely mum.
He sits back in his seat and wipes away his tears. His mobile is still in his lap and he sees there’s a text from Lorna, sent hours ago, which he’d never noticed as he’d been so busy at the restaurant. He presses the screen and it lights up, illuminating the inside of the car.
It simply says: It’s official. You’re my brother.
53
Saffy
I follow Tom into the cottage, standing on the threshold to shake out my umbrella. It’s cold and damp for June. From behind the hedge a man steps out and I exhale sharply, expecting it to be Davies, somehow released from police custody. But it’s just a pensioner walking past with his dog. When he notices me he tips his cap in greeting and I wave half-heartedly before turning and closing the door.
We’ve just come back from dropping Mum at the airport. She suddenly announced yesterday that she’d booked a flight for today, that she would love to have stayed longer but it’s been two weeks and she had no choice but to return. There was so much left unsaid between us as we hugged goodbye. There never seemed the right time to continue that discussion we had in the car, or for me to reassure her that I love her. After finding out Gran is really Daphne, everything between me and Mum just got buried underneath it. Mum can barely process what she’s feeling about all of that, let alone dredge up our past.
‘Right,’ says Tom, bending down and unclipping Snowy from his lead. ‘Shall we order a takeaway for tea? I could murder fish and chips.’
‘I’m going to miss Mum’s cooking,’ I say wistfully, kicking off my trainers and slipping out of my Puffa. The cottage suddenly seems too big and quiet without her. I hang my coat on the rack by my study. Tom follows suit. We were drenched during the dash into the house from the car.
‘I know. I’m going to miss her too. She’s a force to be reckoned with.’ He heads towards the kitchen.
‘Do you think she’ll be okay?’ I ask, going to the kettle and smiling to myself to see that Mum has moved the toaster into the corner. She never could leave things alone. ‘It must be a shock for her, finding out her mother isn’t actually her mother.’ I glance out of the window at the garden. We’re still waiting for confirmation that the body does belong to the real Rose Grey. DS Barnes said we should get the results tomorrow.
‘It’s the same for you,’ says Tom, gently. ‘You thought Rose was your grandmother all these years.’
‘I still love her. I can’t …’ I gulp, tears springing to my eyes ‘… I can’t just stop loving her. I can’t forget everything we’ve been through together – everything she’s done for me, you know? But then I think she could have killed my actual grandmother …’
‘I understand.’ He comes over to me and wraps his arms around my waist. ‘I can’t believe – whoever she is – that she’s a killer, though. There could be some other explanation if the body does belong to the real Rose.’
‘She killed when she was ten years old. All the things I thought I knew about Gran were wrong.’
Tom falls silent as we digest this. ‘We’ve read all the reports from the time,’ he says, after a while. ‘She had an awful upbringing … she was abused herself. And she was rehabilitated.’
We’ve had this conversation many times since we found out about Daphne, of course. And we always end up in the same place. Because there is no getting away from the fact that Rose, Jean, Daphne, whatever her name really is, was the best grandmother in the world. People can change, reverse their circumstances, adapt to a new way of life. ‘I think all of this has fucked Mum up,’ I say. I shiver, feeling cold to the bone, and Tom holds me tighter. ‘I think she’s repressed memories from that time. She was nearly three. It’s not like she was a baby when it happened. I think it explains why she’s always running away. Like now. Once again things get tough and she scarpers back to Spain. We moved around a lot when I was a kid. I was born in Bristol, then we moved to Kent and then out to Brighton, back to Kent and then she moved all over Europe. I don’t think she even knows what she’s running from.’