‘It wasn’t my decision. You should thank your lawyer.’
‘I will write to him this evening.’
Howard also informed me that the bear had finally been forensically examined. Despite our cleaning, they were able to find pollen spores in the seam on its back. The pollen had been found to be indigenous to flowers only grown on the North Island of New Zealand. The shoebox came from a shop in Wellington. The box was somewhere between eight and ten years old. The guards were reopening the cold case of Conor Geary’s disappearance and Interpol were now involved in the search. A forty-three-year-old photograph of my birth father was circulated and published in newspapers in New Zealand and Ireland.
All my dad’s files and tapes were taken away, though I was given copies of everything.
A further flurry of media activity ensued. More phone calls and letters from international journalists. I hung up or closed the door in their faces. Martha started a local WhatsApp group to deter journalists from finding me. And to give them false leads as to where I was and what I was doing.
I completed my computer course by the end of June 2018. There were five people in my class. They all knew exactly who I was, but they were a lot older than me. When they asked me questions, I became anxious. Tina suggested that I should tell them the truth: I had no memory of the abduction or anything of that time. That worked. My fellow students lost interest and treated me normally. They took it in turns to bring cake every week. I made brownies from my Delia Smith recipe book. Everyone said they were lovely.
Under Tina’s guidance, I tried out conversation with them before and after classes. It amazed me how much they wanted to talk, about their drug-addicted grandchildren, their in-grown toenails, that week’s bargains in Lidl. I didn’t have that much to say but they didn’t seem to notice and I didn’t mind listening. They laughed a lot. I rarely knew what they were laughing at, but I don’t think it was me.
I now had an email address and could google whatever I wanted. I watched the news every night and I registered to vote. I got rid of the house phone and learned to use a smartphone.
I found several articles written about Conor Geary over the years in newspaper archives through the library services. He was compared to Lord Lucan, an aristocrat who had murdered a nanny and then vanished off the face of the earth. There were true crime websites that speculated as to where he went and what had happened to me, all now updated with the news of my incineration of my father and photographs of me at his funeral.
There were old black-and-white photographs of the small extension we had lived in. The bolts on the outside of the doors, the boarded-up window. The grim-looking toilet and washbasin. The mattress with its thin blankets. My small, empty bedroom. None of it looked familiar. Former dental patients of Conor Geary described him as quiet and antisocial. ‘He kept himself to himself,’ they said.
24
Peter, 1980
Years passed. I regularly asked Dad if there was a cure for my disease but, each time, he shook his head sadly. As I was twelve now, he explained more about it. I wouldn’t turn to stone, but human touch from somebody unrelated would rot the skin all the way through to my bone and the necrotic tissue would spread quickly throughout my body until it reached my inner organs. I would simply decay from the outside and the pain would be fierce. Dad guessed that it would be quick, but when I asked if he meant five minutes or ten hours, he said that I shouldn’t think about it.
I did have other Special Days Out but I was terrified when we went to the circus, not of the lions but because of the children and parents who sat either side of me. I crawled into Dad’s lap, even though I was far too old for that, and he wrapped me in his coat. Other children laughed at me.
Knowing of my disease gave me nightmares. I begged Dad to have our Special Days on our own, and he hired a projector and we watched cowboy films on a big screen. Another time, he bought me a catalogue of books and I could choose whatever I wanted. I picked books about Neil Armstrong, and World War Two, and an illustrated encyclopaedia of dinosaurs. Dad thought they were great choices. The best time ever, we left the house on foot and walked down a long winding avenue to a train track. Underneath the train track was a tunnel that led to a beach and the sea. Dad had bought me swimming togs. We sat on a rug on the gravelly sand until Dad suggested that he could teach me to swim. I noticed strange marks on his stomach and shoulders, but when I asked Dad about them, he just shook his head and I knew that meant they were not to be discussed.
I squealed when my toes hit the cold water and Dad carried me in on his shoulders and then gently immersed me, while I screamed with fright and excitement.
‘Peter! Don’t scream like a girl.’
That was always the worst insult Dad could throw at me and, for a moment, I cried, but the salt water disguised my tears and soon we were splashing around and I was in the water up to my neck, laughing with my dad. I learned to swim that day. I could float on my back and look at the whispering clouds in the blue, blue sky. Afterwards, we went back and dried off with towels and sat on the rug. Nobody came near us, and it felt normal. I asked if we could do this every year, and he said ‘we surely can’ and I felt like the luckiest boy alive.
Shortly after my eighth birthday, Dad stopped locking me into my bedroom when he went to work. I began to help with preparing meals. Dad rotated my books often, so that I only ever had two or three at a time. He said I had grown out of toys and when they disappeared along with the clothing I had outgrown, I wondered if my sister had them next door. Dad was strict about me keeping all of my belongings in my room. I didn’t have many, just books and clothing and copybooks, and a few toy soldiers I kept hidden because I was afraid Dad would say I was too old for them.
I began to realize that our lives were far from normal, mine and Dad’s, as well as the two in the room next door. I could hear them all the time, moving around. I could hear my dad visiting at night. The sound was always muffled and I could never make out the words. The ghost often shrieked and the child often cried. I read hundreds of books and nobody in them lived like we did, or like my mother and sister. I asked Dad about this. Why couldn’t I sleep in one of the bedrooms upstairs? Why did I have to sleep in the room in the annexe next door to her? Why did he not have any friends? Why didn’t we have a telephone? He said he had lots of friends that he saw every day at work. I asked him about his work as a dentist, what exactly he did, and he explained about fillings and dentures. My teeth were in excellent condition because I was diligent about brushing first thing in the morning, after dinner and before bed. I asked him did he not want to go to the pub with his friends after work. He replied that he didn’t drink alcohol, and that he would rather not leave me on my own in the house for any longer than he had to. I wondered why there were no other mad and dangerous women locked away and he gave me a book called Jane Eyre to read. ‘It’s written by a woman, but you’ll see what I mean.’
Indeed, Bertha Mason was terrifying, but Jane was nice. I had never read books about women. Denise Norton hadn’t tried to hurt me, I said, and then Dad said, ‘I didn’t want to ever have to explain, but …’ He pulled up his sweater and there was a scar all the way across his stomach. ‘She stabbed me.’ He reminded me of the bruises and black eyes he would sometimes have in the mornings. He had told me they were a result of his clumsiness, but now he admitted it was her who had inflicted his wounds. He pulled down the collar of his shirt and showed me the latest, a bite mark on his shoulder. He was like poor Mr Rochester in the book. I was shocked, and surer than ever that I never wanted to see my mother again.