Strange Sally Diamond

47 Sally

Everything was back to normal in the village. And I had a job that was perfect for me. At weekends, I would drive out to Farnley Manor and play the piano. Sometimes on weekdays too, if there was a wedding on. I also got unlimited tea and coffee and dainty sandwiches and pastries during my breaks. I couldn’t have asked for a better job.

By mid-November, I had over €2 million in my bank account from the sale of Conor Geary’s house. It would have been €3 million, if it hadn’t been for the taxman. Geoff Barrington urged me to seek financial advice regarding how best to invest it, but it felt like dirty money to me. I made a large anonymous donation to Stella’s homeless charity and to the young people’s mental health charity that Aunt Christine had been involved in and left the rest in the bank until I could think how to deal with it.

Mark found it hard to settle back into the village. Despite my assurances, both Martha and Angela regarded him with suspicion. Tina was shocked when I brought him to our next therapy appointment but, once I explained, she said she would help us both. Mark cried a lot in that first session. It was distressing to me, and we all agreed that Mark and I should see Tina separately for a while before we did a family meeting again.

Mark was obviously distressed, particularly when I handed over all the files and he saw those photos of his emaciated, toothless sister for the first time. Tina told me to be honest with him, but to give him time to come to terms with his own feelings. She warned me that he might be angry. But I knew that, and I understood. He loved my new home and soon became my most regular visitor.

Life was going well until I got a call from Mrs Sullivan in the post office the day after I closed my house sale on 28th November.

‘Sally,’ she said, still shouting at me. She had never understood that I wasn’t hard of hearing. ‘The sorting office in Athlone had a letter addressed to Mary Norton at your old address. They’ve left it with me. Shall I drop it in to you?’

I put on my coat immediately and went around the corner to the post office. I took the letter from Mrs Sullivan with a pair of tweezers. ‘It might be evidence,’ I said. ‘The guards might want your fingerprints.’

She was amused. ‘Oh, Sally, you are funny. What are we playing at now? CSI Carricksheedy?’ She hooted with laughter.

When she realized I wasn’t smiling, she started to explain, shouting, ‘It’s a television programme, Sally, about forensics.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Sullivan, I know the concept.’

I left without smiling. The handwriting was familiar at once. It was ‘S’. It had an Irish stamp on it. When I got home, I rang Mark. It was 4 p.m., but he said he’d come straight over.

We looked at the envelope together. It was thicker than the others. I wondered if we should call the police first, but neither of us could wait. Mark had brought some surgical gloves with him from the factory. He opened the envelope carefully and I pulled the letter out. A small box came out with the letter as well as another larger box, which was labelled DNA ACTIVATION KIT.

Dear Mary,

My birth name is Peter Geary, and although my birth was never registered in Ireland, or anywhere, I was born there. My mother was Denise Norton and my father was Conor Geary. I am your brother. I was born seven years before you in a house in Killiney. Our father took me away from Denise as soon as I was toilet-trained. I was not allowed to see her, or you, even though my bedroom was next door to yours in an annexe our father built.

I was allowed to enter the other parts of the house as I got older. You and our mother were kept under lock and key. In the early years, I never saw another human except for on the pages of his newspapers and, later, on television.

I have no recollection of meeting my mother until I was seven years old, when I spent a terrifying weekend in that room with her. I realize now that she had been terribly mistreated and brutalized. She was heavily pregnant with you and was frightening to me. I won’t go into detail here as I don’t want to upset you. I know that you were born the day after I left the room and I didn’t see you again, except once, on the day my father escaped, taking me with him. Do you remember? You must have been five years old.

I do not understand why nobody was looking for me. I know you and I were separated, but I believe that my mother missed me, at least until you were born. Did she simply forget about me?

In London, our father arranged to get us fake passports and we moved to New Zealand. My life there has been difficult. I was homeschooled and, even after that, he continued to keep me isolated for a long time. The good news for both of us is that he died many years ago. He is no longer a threat to either of us.

And yet, I do not feel free of him. My life has been blighted and destroyed. It is only because of the age of the internet that I was able to get any information about you or him, or my mother. I finally learned that my mother was dead. After you hit the headlines when you disposed of your adoptive father’s remains two years ago, I began to investigate what happened to you and where you had been. Previous reports gave the impression that you had been adopted in England.

When the newspapers subsequently confirmed that you had not murdered Dr Diamond, and that you were ‘different’, I realized that you were probably like me. That’s why I sent Toby to you. I thought he might bring you some comfort at such a difficult time.

It didn’t cross my mind when I sent you the teddy bear that it would lead to a police hunt for our father in New Zealand. I didn’t think it through at all, but obviously you must have thought that he had sent it to you to torment you. The police tracked me down and questioned me, but I lied and denied everything. I was a coward. I am so sorry, but I did not want to be dragged into a public scandal. I showed the police Dad’s fake passport. I guess they didn’t investigate that too much, because they didn’t come around again. And anyway, they weren’t looking for a man with a son. I don’t understand that. They didn’t seem to be aware that our father had a son?

This year, I realized that you would probably not know your date of birth so I sent you the birthday card, but I did not know how or if I should reveal myself to you. I hope that my existence is merely a surprise rather than a shock. Or perhaps you have always known about me?

The main reason I am contacting you is because I have nobody in my life. I have never had a friend or a colleague, but now I find a sister who might understand me. Do you think that is possible?

I am currently in Dublin in a hotel. I bought a pay-as-you-go mobile phone and even though I am not used to talking on the phone, I will make an effort if you would like to talk to me.

The only thing I beg of you is not to alert the media or the police. I cannot stand for people to look at me, I am noise-averse and I hate fuss and attention. As it seems that nobody knows I exist, I would like to keep it that way. I therefore include my saliva sample and a DNA test kit which you may use to confirm that I am who I say I am. You may send off the kit and wait for the results before calling me. I promise I will not come to your village unless I’m invited.

I will understand if you do not want to call me at all. I have taken three months’ leave of absence from my job as Head of Cyber Security at Aotearoa National Bank. I have a return ticket to New Zealand and can only stay here for a maximum of ninety days. If things don’t work out, or if you don’t want to see me, I can go back and continue to live my life in isolation. I guess it’s not so bad when you’re as used to it as I am.

Steven Armstrong

086 5559225

‘Wow,’ said Mark and, unconsciously, I began to pull at my hair. Mark knew me well enough to steer me towards the piano. My hands, on autopilot, found Bach’s Partita Number 2 in C Minor.

‘Tea or wine?’ said Mark.

‘Tea,’ I said. Tina had advised that turning to alcohol in times of stress was not a good idea.

As soon as I took my fingers off the keyboard, they trembled, until Mark pushed the hot mug into them.

‘Wow,’ he said again. ‘Should we call the police?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I have a brother.’

‘We don’t know that yet. He could be anyone, chancing his arm,’ said Mark.

‘Why though? Why would anybody do that? What would he have to gain?’

‘I don’t know. Unless he’s a journalist?’

I lifted the small box and opened it. It contained a sealed cellophane bag, inside of which was a plastic tube containing a viscous liquid, his saliva. The larger box contained a full kit for me to use. There were no names, just code numbers.

I held up the DNA test information leaflet. ‘It’s easy to find out. Doesn’t it seem true to you, Mark? I believe him. He says he won’t come unless I invite him. Mark, why would he come all the way from New Zealand if he wasn’t sure I would want to meet him?’

‘How do we even know he was in New Zealand? This guy could be –’

‘Toby. He sent Toby.’

‘But Denise never mentioned him – unless …’ Mark’s eyes widened.

‘What?’

‘At one point, in the taped interviews, she mentions “my boy”.’

‘I don’t remember that?’

‘Yes, I’ve been listening to them over and over. I hoped it was a reference to me, but it didn’t add up. She said something about not letting go of you, because “he took my boy”. Your father quizzed her about it, but she clammed up. The recording was full of static. I thought she was talking about Toby.’

I remembered it now. I had also thought she was talking about Toby. There was nothing in the written files to note this reference. Dad had missed it too.

‘Oh God,’ I said, doing the maths in my head. ‘She was twelve years old when she gave birth to him.’

‘You’re right. Fucking hell.’

‘I have a brother –’

‘But he sounds so damaged, he could be dangerous.’

‘You’re describing me, exactly two years ago.’

‘Fine. Fine. But I’m doing a DNA test too, to make doubly sure. If you’re my niece, then he’s my nephew.’

‘Mark!’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Conor Geary is dead!’

‘Let’s not jump the gun, Sally. According to these DNA instructions, we may have to wait up to a month, and then if the results prove it, you have a phone call with this guy, okay? Not until then. You must promise me. I’m speaking as your uncle now, okay?’

I poured more tea from the pot. After the initial shock, I felt elated. Conor Geary, the bogeyman who loomed over my entire life, was dead. And I had a brother, someone who sounded exactly like me. Someone who might completely understand me.

The waiting was agony. We sent off our samples as soon as Mark had ordered his own kit. Mark did it all online. He labelled us all with initials rather than surnames. ‘Who knows what other relatives might be out there, Sally? Conor Geary may have fathered other children. We don’t know what Peter is like. We need to protect our privacy.’ I was SD, Mark was MB and Peter was PG.

After two days, Mark found the audio that contained the reference to ‘my boy’. These recordings had been made in the pre-digital era. Dad was asking Denise about her extreme attachment to Mary (me).

Tom: Denise, I notice that you watch little Mary all the time. You know that you’re safe now, right? Nobody will hurt you ever again?

Denise: [unintelligible]

Tom: Sorry, Denise?

Denise: I’m still afraid.

Tom: What are you afraid of?

Denise: He’ll take her away.

Tom: Denise, he’s not here. You will never see him again.

Denise: He took my boy.

Tom: What?

Denise: It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want him.

Tom: [a tone of exasperation in his voice] Denise, do you understand that it’s not good for Mary’s development for you to be so close to her? The child needs to learn a little independence. Mary?

[Sound of whispering]

Denise: Don’t talk to her.

Tom: Why not? Do you think I could hurt her?

Jean: Tom, perhaps –

Tom: Hush, Jean. Denise?

[A hissing noise, followed by silence and then the tape shuts off]

‘I wonder what she meant by “I didn’t want him”,’ I said. ‘Why wouldn’t she want him?’

‘We can’t be sure that she was talking about Peter.’

‘Who else would she be talking about? She said, “He took my boy.”’

‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’

Mark was annoyed with my dad. ‘Do you think Jean guessed something?’

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps she was hinting to Dad that he needed to be more patient with her. The way he said that about hurting me, Denise could have interpreted that as a threat.’

‘Was he like that with you? Impatient?’ said Mark.

‘Not at all. He was kind and indulgent with me. But I guess I was always compliant. That tape is dated almost a year after our rescue. I’d say he was exhausted. He hadn’t made any breakthrough with Denise. She wasn’t exactly cooperative, was she?’

‘After what she’d been through? Are you surprised?’ Mark raised his voice.

‘I’m sorry. I forget that you knew her. She was your big sister. I wish I remembered her.’

‘Another thing we can thank Tom Diamond for,’ Mark said, a bitter tone in his voice.

‘He was doing his best, what he thought was right for me.’ I was fed up with people talking badly about my dad. He might not have done everything he should have, but what he did do, he did for the right reasons. I’d had plenty of time to put myself in his shoes and imagine what I would have done if I had been him. Tina made me see it. I had forgiven him. ‘We can’t change the past,’ I told Mark.

‘One thing I can’t understand,’ he said. ‘If Peter has known all this time about you and about Denise, if he remembered what Conor Geary said and did, why didn’t he ever go to the police? Being afraid of publicity is a lame excuse for shielding a paedophile, especially after he’s dead.’

‘I get it, Mark. I would be the same as him. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Why should he be associated with his – our psychopathic father?’

I ignored his glare.

48 Peter, 2012

It took Lindy five years to forgive me for giving the baby away. She had called her Wanda. Throughout the pregnancy, I had pretended to go along with it. I thought it was easier to let her have this fantasy. It made her so happy.

I had taken the baby in the box to the front door of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland in the middle of the night. It was cold. I hoped she would survive and tucked her as tightly into the blankets as I could. As I walked away, I heard her begin to mewl. I kept walking through the deserted streets until I got into the car and drove home.

Lindy was beyond hysterical when I got back. At first, she thought I’d taken the baby to the hospital because there was something wrong with her. I didn’t tell her anything.

During the following years Lindy attacked me so often that I had to put the shackles back on. She stabbed me with knitting needles, knives and scissors, scarred my arms badly with a solution of sugar and boiled water, attempted to strangle me with a home-made noose. I ended up in the hospital’s A & E twice. The staff there assumed I’d got into fights with my peers. I let them think that. One matron threatened to call the cops, but when she looked at my medical records and saw that I was that Steven Armstrong, who had been orphaned so young, she relented and instead gave me a lecture about mixing with the wrong crowd.

Lindy stayed angry for years. We went back to the old ways. I lived in the house and dropped her groceries inside the door once a week. I still visited every day. I’d make idle conversation about stories in the news. She did not respond. The abandoned baby at St Patrick’s Cathedral made national news and, with radio and TV, I followed the story, up to the point when the baby was adopted six months later. I breathed a sigh of relief. I hoped that Lindy might accept our circumstances now, but without uttering a syllable, she made it clear that our relationship was over.

When I tried to touch her, she violently repelled me. She barely spoke full sentences and, when she finally did, it was to renew her demands to be released. ‘I’m never going to touch you again, Steve, never. You might as well let me go and get my baby, or kill me.’

She had refused to do any further knitting for the stall too, and money was becoming an even more pressing issue. I needed to do something else for a living. I was clever. I should have gone away to college and made something of myself. I had studied so many books in my younger days, I could have been a scientist or a doctor or an engineer. The reason I didn’t was because I couldn’t leave Lindy. So, I became a gardener, and now we were living on the breadline. I still couldn’t let her go. I held on to the hope that one day she would forgive me.

I signed up for computer classes in the local community centre and got some basic skills. I got a job as an office junior in a real estate agent’s office. They liked that I kept myself to myself and didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t want to go for a beer with them on a Friday after work. After three months, they wanted to promote me. It meant more money, but I would be showing people around houses. I didn’t want the promotion. I knew from TV how normal families worked. I’d never had one and I didn’t want to be confronted with them in somebody else’s domestic setting.

I moved on and got a job working for a cancer charity. It involved cold-calling businesses all over the Bay of Plenty region and asking them to sign up to a monthly donation. I was not good at this. I was so unused to talking to people, and the manager said that I sounded like I didn’t care. I was supposed to tug on these people’s heartstrings. The job was commission only. After the first month, I’d made less than I had with the real estate agent. I kept going back to the recruitment agency.

A job had come up in a bank in town. It was full-time, cataloguing accounts for their new computer system. The interviewers were impressed by my self-education. One of them remembered my father’s death being in the papers; he had contributed to the fund for me. They treated me like a minor celebrity: ‘You’re that kid?’

I admitted I liked to keep to myself, and I’d prefer to work alone. They seemed delighted with that answer. The job I was applying for was one I’d be expected to do on my own after some initial training. I was offered the job a week later, which I was glad to accept in September 1999.

The training on their computer system was a residential course in Wellington. There was no way I could commute there and back. I’d have to leave Lindy on her own. The day before I left, I brought her the usual bag of groceries, but when I tried to talk to her, to tell her that I would be gone for a week, she turned up the radio full blast to drown out my voice.

The course could have been done in a day. Most of the other attendees were younger. They seemed to be slow on the uptake. It was incredibly easy to learn the system. At the end of the week, they gave us booklets that explained the whole process anyway. In the evenings, we went back to the low-grade hotel. The girls went to dinner together. Several of them turned up every morning with hangovers. I got sandwiches and ate them in my room and watched TV. I shunned their requests to join them. One of the course instructors warned me that my social skills could use some improvement. But she praised the speed of my learning.

I was frustrated to be away for so long. Even though I was sure Lindy hated me, my feelings for her had not abated. I often thought of the look of ecstasy on her face when I placed the baby on her chest. She had never looked at me like that. But she had told me she loved me. Until the baby came, that was enough for me. I often thought of setting her free and then disappearing, but where could I go? I didn’t have the money to get on a plane, though I had kept my passport renewed, in case. Originally, I had kept money aside for escape, but I’d had to use that to pay the bills. Lindy knew my real name and my whole history. She would tell. I’d spend the rest of my life in prison. She might truly have loved me once, but she certainly didn’t now. I had changed the locks on the barn door many times in the previous years. I knew she would never be able to get out.

When Friday came and the course was over, I drove the six hours back to Rotorua at top speed. I got home at midnight and went straight to the barn.

She was lying on the bed but sat up immediately. ‘Where were you?’ she asked. Her face was tear-stained and her voice was subdued.

‘I tried to tell you on Sunday night, but you didn’t want to listen.’

She burst into tears. ‘I thought you were dead. It was like the last time when your father died, but I … I missed you.’

I moved towards her and held my arms out to her. She collapsed against my chest.

In the weeks that followed, we talked more than we ever had before, almost as if we were making up for the silences of the past years.

‘I was so angry with you. I accepted that you had taken my freedom. I gave up trying to escape. I fell for you against my will. You were always so kind and so considerate. The opposite of your father. But then, all I wanted was a baby. I didn’t trick you into it, I promise. That’s why, when I did get pregnant, it felt like a miracle. I’d never asked you for anything, not for years. A baby would make us a proper family. Someone to love unconditionally.’

That hurt me and I told her. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘babies get sick all the time. I could never take her to a hospital or a doctor. Would you want your baby to grow up here? Like this?’ I indicated the windowless room.

She looked around, a puzzled expression on her face, and I realized that this barn had been her home for longer than anywhere else. She had lived here for sixteen years, and once Dad was gone, she felt safe here. She was thirty years old. This windowless room, as nice as I had tried to make it, was normal to her. I regretted reminding her of how abnormal her situation was. Her escape attempts had been nothing to do with finding her home, but everything to do with finding her baby. I knew that keeping her captive was wrong, but she was no longer aware of it.

Gradually, we became close again until finally she let me return to her bed. She didn’t ask about having a baby and, as soon as I could afford it, I had a vasectomy, a relatively painless day procedure. Once again, I took away the chain and she was full of gratitude. I felt like a monster. That’s the word my mother used to refer to my father. I remembered that.

At work, I got through the digital cataloguing of accounts quickly. I wrote to the head office IT department and suggested improvements to the programme they had developed to make it more user-friendly. I taught myself how to use other software programmes, and then after I had turned down the offer of promotion to Assistant Head of IT in the bank’s head office in Wellington, I began to look for other jobs. I went from one to the other – a year in a small stockbroking firm, two years in an insurance company – but never far from Rotorua. In 2004, I became an IT specialist in the Rotorua Rabobank. This time, I had my own office. Things were looking up.

During the crash of 2008, the bank downsized and I took a pay cut but I was needed and kept my job. In 2009, after a massive credit-card fraud was perpetrated in America, I applied for a job in our cyber security department. I was successful. My earnings were now good enough to support Lindy and myself comfortably.

As I gradually rose through the ranks and found myself on interviewing panels, I tried to hire every Māori applicant I could. The casual racism of the past was now rightfully seen as shameful. Māori culture was being embraced by the Pākehā population. Now, the Māori language had been incorporated into our everyday correspondence and every email was signed off with Ngā mihi as well as Kind regards. I often thought of Rangi and his potential to take any of the jobs we were advertising. He had been naturally good at mathematics, something he only discovered when he applied himself to it. Times and attitudes had changed for the better.

I’d installed skylights on the roof of the barn so Lindy had natural daylight. I’d lined the walls with bookshelves at the far end of the TV area. I upgraded her bathroom. She didn’t ask for anything but she laughed with delight at every gift or improvement. When we walked to the hot pools in the summer, I didn’t need to use the chain any more. She put her hand in mine and we walked side by side. I applied suntan lotion to her soft skin so that she wouldn’t burn. We made love in the grass. She began to knit again.

It was all building to something, and one night in the spring of 2011, I did not lock the door. Then, for a whole weekend, I did not lock the door.

‘Why aren’t you locking the door?’ she asked me.

‘I trust you. I love you. You can come into the house.’

‘No, it’s okay, I’m happy here.’

Wasn’t she even curious about the house? When we walked towards the lake, we never passed the house. She couldn’t see it from the barn door. I invited her again, the following weekend. I unplugged the phone that never rang and hid it in the car. She tentatively stepped inside the front door and went from room to room. ‘There’s so much space,’ she said, and I guess, compared to the barn, there was. I asked her to stay the night, but she couldn’t get comfortable in my bed and eventually nudged me to tell me she was going back to the barn. I nodded my agreement and pretended to go back to sleep. I watched from the window as she made her way. I followed at a distance until I saw her pull the door of the barn open and disappear inside. She closed it behind her. I stayed up all night, watching the door, waiting for her to sneak out. She didn’t.

The following week, I called the office and told them I was sick. Every morning, I’d drive out on to the dirt road and park the car out of sight. I walked back to the bushy area opposite the house and watched with binoculars to see if she would try to escape. Every evening I’d come ‘home from work’ to find her contentedly watching TV or knitting or preparing dinner. The most she had done was walk around the outside of the house, looking in the windows. She didn’t even try the door, though I’d left it open. She greeted me cheerfully every evening, her gap-toothed smile broad and her blue eyes twinkling.

Eventually, I persuaded her to come into the house for dinner sometimes, but she was always nervous there. ‘It’s the ghost of your father,’ she said, and indeed, some of his belongings were still around the house. I don’t know why I’d held on to his spectacles and his dentist’s bag. I threw them out immediately. I password protected my laptop, not that she had a clue how to use it. I had a mobile phone for work. Lindy had seen them on TV but wouldn’t know how to turn it on. I kept it hidden anyway.

A few months passed. Lindy was free to go anywhere she wanted. She presented me with a handmade quilt for Christmas 2011. We celebrated in the house together for the first time. I’d bought a tree and decorations and she festooned the tree with tinsel and fairy lights. I’d also bought a bottle of wine. Neither of us was used to alcohol and got drunk quickly. It was a pleasant feeling. We sat on the porch in front of the house shaded from the blazing midsummer heat and toasted each other like a real married couple.

I thought about whether it would be wise to bring Lindy into town. I dismissed the idea quickly. She had never asked about it and we would both have to agree on a new name and backstory. Lindy seemed to have forgotten that she had been kidnapped. I didn’t want to remind her. And I guessed she might behave strangely around other people. No, Lindy was mine. I did not dare to share her with the outside world. I was happier than I had ever been. So was she.

I came home from work one day the following March, and went straight to the barn because she still preferred it there, but realized she must be in the house. I called her name and went from room to room. I found her, passed out on the bathroom floor. Her face was clammy and hot to touch. There were pools of vomit on the floor around her.

The previous two nights, she had complained of stomach pains and I’d asked her to describe her symptoms exactly. I always did this when she was unwell. Then I’d go to the chemist and describe the same symptoms and bring home whatever they wanted to sell me. She had described it as a rumbling pain across her lower belly. I assumed it was period pain and she agreed that her period was due but she said this pain felt different. That morning, she’d felt worse, and she did look pale.

After work I’d gone to the chemist and described the pain. The chemist asked me to press the right side of my abdomen, and when I didn’t express any further pain, she gave me some Domerid for nausea and paracetamol for pain. ‘It’s not appendicitis. It might be something you ate,’ she said, ‘or a stomach flu – there’s one going around, you know.’

In a panic, I doused Lindy with cold water to reduce the temperature and wake her up. She screamed in pain and clutched her right side. ‘Shit! It must be your appendix, I need to get you to a hospital.’ I didn’t hesitate. It would be quicker to take her myself than to call an ambulance. She screamed again as I lifted her and vomited over my elbow.

‘I’m scared,’ she managed to say.

‘Don’t be, they’ll fix you right up.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m scared of them. People.’

She passed out again as I carried her to the car. I no longer cared what the consequences were. I didn’t even think of a name or a backstory or the jail sentence that awaited me. I laid her on the back seat on her left side. She began to shiver violently but appeared to be unconscious. At every corner, I reached for her. I was approaching the main road when she made this strange gurgling sound. Her whole body stiffened and then she went limp. I pulled over to the side of the road and climbed over the back seat. Her eyes were wide open in shock, but she wasn’t moving. I held my hand over her heart but could feel no heartbeat. I shook her and held her close to me. A spill of bile fell out of her mouth, but I kissed it anyway. ‘Please, no,’ I whispered. ‘Please, please, come back.’

I brought her home and washed her in the bath. Her skin took on a mottled colour. I washed and combed out her hair, careful not to let her head fall below the waterline. When she was clean and dry, I dressed her in her favourite clothes, a green cotton skirt, rubber-soled boots and a soft blue sweater. I wrapped her carefully into the sheepskin rug from the barn. Before I could put her in the car again, I had to clean it out with disinfectant.

It was about 2 a.m. when I drove to Lake Rotorua and parked in the deserted car park. It was a particularly chilly autumn evening. I carried her to the part of the lake that was closest to the forest trail where I’d first seen her, a brave little girl climbing a tree. I unfurled her stiffened body from the rug and gently folded her into the water. It must have been deep in that part, or maybe it was because it was dark, but she disappeared from view almost immediately.

49 Peter, 2019

When Lindy died in 2012, I was distraught. She was the person I was living for. I took extended leave from work. I had plenty of colleagues who had never turned into friends and, even if they had, how could I tell them that the love of my life, my only love, had died. I could not explain this to a bereavement counsellor; the intensity and length of our relationship, the co-dependency. Who would understand it, even if I told the truth? And I could not tell the truth.

I saw no reason to shower or change my clothes. Twice, I went to the lake with the intention of drowning myself, but when I hit the bottom of the lake, Rangi was there, pushing me back up. ‘It’s not your time, e hoa,’ he said, or I think he did. Three deaths on my conscience, Dad, Rangi and Lindy, kēhua, and all three of them came out to play, both in my nightmares and in my waking hours. All of them pleading with me to save them, and I could have saved them all.

I dismantled the barn bit by bit. I took the pieces of furniture and left them on the side of the road in remote areas all over the North Island. I was left with a pile of sheetrock and corrugated iron. I couldn’t be bothered to have it taken away. At least it no longer looked like her home. In the house, though, her presence remained.

The mystery of the unidentified woman found at Lake Rotorua three weeks after she died was a big story. The media reported that she had not drowned, that she had died of appendicitis, that she was fully clothed, that she had been in the water for less than a month. They made much of her missing front tooth. It would be a significant identifying factor, according to the police. Reports commented on the fact that the body of this woman was discovered at the same lake where a young girl had gone missing almost thirty years earlier.

I needed to get away from Rotorua. I had turned down job offers in Wellington and Auckland before but when I eventually went back to work after five months, I put myself forward for those jobs. There was nothing to tie me to Rotorua. Maybe a fresh start was what I needed. Another reinvention. I was appointed Head of Cyber Security at the Aotearoa National Bank in January 2013 in Wellington. The pay and conditions were excellent.

In preparation for the move, I removed what remained of the barn, and scrubbed the house clean with bleach from top to bottom. I kept very little of my father’s belongings, apart from his old fake identification documents. I had lived under a false name for so long, but I needed some back-up in case anybody ever questioned it.

I had promised Lindy that I would never read her notebooks. I tore them up and scattered them on long journeys in the middle of the night.

I sold up in Rotorua and rented a waterfront apartment in Wellington Harbour and tried to settle in, but I could hear people in other apartments, talking, laughing, watching TV together. I could smell their family meals. I bumped into so many people on a daily basis that I felt ill. After just a month, I moved out and bought a small detached house on South Karori Road. I had no neighbours that I could see. My commute to work was a thirty-minute drive.

Work kept me occupied. As usual, I kept my distance from my workmates, and refused their invitations to parties and after-work drinks. I did not join in the water-cooler conversations.

I was desperately lonely. I did some internet dating but I never forged a relationship. I slept with some of the women anyway, if they wanted it. Sex was hasty, physically satisfying but emotionally empty. The need for connection could never be satisfied by strangers.

Almost a year after her death, in January 2013, DNA tests definitively linked Lindy to her surviving brothers, Paul and Gary Weston. Both of her parents had gone to their graves never knowing what had happened to their daughter. Her brothers were left with the burning question of where she had been for twenty-nine years.

I thought about my mother and my sister in Ireland. I googled them regularly. There was a lot of information. True crime websites compared my father to Lord Lucan but my father had not killed anybody. Not directly. Denise Norton had died in a psychiatric hospital a year or so after she was freed from my father’s house. My sister, Mary Norton, had been adopted in England. Conor Geary had gone on the run. I looked everywhere for mention of Conor Geary’s son. Had Denise not told them about me? Had she forgotten about me? Was she mad? Or just terrified? How brainwashed I had been. My father was evil. And I was half evil, at least. I had to live with that. It became my habit to check on updates to the Denise Norton story at least once a month.

In December 2017, a story broke in Ireland. Mary Norton, my sister, had tried to cremate her dead adoptive father. I saw a photograph of her. Tall and strong in a black coat with a jaunty red hat, at Thomas Diamond’s funeral. She looked like me, her nose, the shape of her eyes. Thomas had been my mother’s psychiatrist and he had secretly adopted my sister after Denise’s death. I knew where Mary was, her village, her new name.

A spark lit inside me. I had a chance to do something good. To right a wrong. I remembered tearing that teddy bear from her tiny fingers. I could return it to her. I packaged it carefully in an old shoebox and sent it anonymously with a short note.

Six months later, my father’s real name started popping up in internet searches, and then on the pages of the New Zealand Herald. A very old photo of my father, clean-shaven and without spectacles, taken back in Ireland. An artist’s impression alongside it of what he might look like now in his early eighties. Why were they looking for him now? How had they tied the missing paedophile Conor Geary to New Zealand? Who told them he had been here?

And then I realized – it was me. Sending Toby had alerted them to a Kiwi connection. How stupid of me. I was a cyber security expert. I had always been able to hide my Google search history by setting up privacy software and I wasn’t dumb enough to have any social media presence, but I was the person who had alerted the Irish authorities to New Zealand. Now the police were looking for him. A retired Irish dentist. No mention of a son.

But in August 2018, I got a phone call from the New Zealand police. They wanted to interview me about my father, James Armstrong. They came to my home. It wasn’t hard to pretend to be upset about the circumstances of his death in 1985 in a burning car. They asked me where I’d been born and where he had been born. My story was so well rehearsed after thirty-eight years, they hardly pressed me on any issues. They asked if the name Denise Norton meant anything to me. Had my father ever used any other name? Where had he studied dentistry? Where had I lived in Ireland? Had my father taken any special interest in other children? Why had my father homeschooled me?

I was able to paint a picture of a strict but indulgent father, in deep mourning for my mother ever since we left Ireland. His distinct lack of interest in other children and his belief that the New Zealand education system was sub-par. I was able to produce his Irish dental qualification document on which the name Conor Geary had been expertly replaced with James Armstrong.

My father, I said, was an eccentric but a loving father and an excellent dentist as any of his patients might testify. I missed him every day. I teared up at the hypocrisy of my words. The detective apologized for the intrusion and said they would not bother me again. They implied they knew they were on a wild goose chase. The man they were looking for did not have a son.

I continued to monitor any news of my sister, Mary Norton, living as Sally Diamond in Carricksheedy, Co. Roscommon, Ireland. I felt some warmth towards her. All of the reports I had read described her as ‘a loner’ or ‘a misfit’ in school or her village. I couldn’t find any record of her having a job or a career. I felt for her. Was that kinship?

Her date of birth was recorded as 13th December 1974, but I knew it was earlier, the 15th September of that year. I remembered that date very clearly. As the New Zealand police had ruled my father out of their enquiries and had no link between either of us to Denise Norton, I risked sending my sister a birthday card in September. I thought she should know when her birthday was. She would never be able to guess who sent the card.

In early November, I received an email from a team of podcasters to my work email address.

I took a deep breath and cancelled my schedule for the rest of the day. My daughter, Amanda Heron, was out there, looking for answers. I googled her and found a glut of information. Young people have no idea how available their data is. Within minutes, I had her address, her phone number, her school records, her Master of Arts in Music qualification from the University of Auckland, photographs of her with her adopted family going back to when she was a baby. Photos of her singing with a choir. Photos of her with two different boyfriends, Amanda on a motorcycle crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Amanda in a camper van in Montana. And very recent photos: Amanda in an evening gown just last week at a New Zealand Symphony Orchestra performance.

Amanda was twenty-three and stunningly beautiful like her mother. I was startled by the sight of her lovely grinning face, with its intact teeth. Our daughter, Wanda. I stared at the photos, wondering how I would begin to have a conversation with her, before realizing that it would not be possible. I had to get away.

I sent a very polite reply to Kate Ngata, wishing the company well with their series, but ‘as head of Cyber Security with New Zealand’s premier bank, it would be entirely inappropriate for me to comment on any personal matter. I’m sure you understand.’

I knew this would merely add to her frustration, but I was grateful that the New Zealand police was not sharing information with amateurs.

I did not exist on the internet, except as an employee of the bank. There were no photographs or entries except for the ones from the Rotorua Daily Post in 1985, detailing my survival of the horror crash that killed my father and the subsequent fundraising on my behalf. Hoani Mata Productions must have sent the same email to every Steve Armstrong in the country.

I sent a note to the COO of the bank, saying that I had to take leave as a matter of urgency on a private medical matter. It would require three months, I said, but I would be contactable by email. I briefed my second-in-command on issues relating to the bank’s relationship to bitcoin and cryptocurrency, which was becoming a problem for us. I then left.

I went home and used my laptop to book flights to Ireland. I needed to go back. I needed to find my sister. She was the key to the connection I needed.

50 Sally

The results, when they came within twelve days, were unequivocal. Peter/Steve was my brother. Mark was our uncle, but there was something else that showed up in the results on the ancestry website. I had a niece called Amanda Heron and she was Peter’s daughter. He hadn’t mentioned a daughter or a wife or girlfriend. His letter had led me to believe that he was a loner, possibly like me. But he wasn’t asexual like me.

It was time to call him. I wanted to have this conversation on my own. The ancestry results had come to my home and Mark didn’t yet know.

Peter’s phone rang once before he picked up.

‘Mary?’ he said.

‘It’s Sally, it’s been Sally since I was adopted so I’d prefer if you called me Sally.’

‘Okay.’ There was a tremor in his voice.

‘Are you still in Dublin?’

‘Yeah, I’m in a park now beside a church in the city centre.’

‘Right. So, I got the DNA results.’

‘Yeah?’

‘You are my brother.’

‘I knew that. I’ve known about you all my life.’

‘So why did you never get in touch before?’

‘I explained it in the letter. I didn’t know where you were. You didn’t show up on any internet searches until Thomas Diamond’s death.’

‘Sorry, yes, you did explain. But if you knew about me and my mother and you knew what our birth father had done, why didn’t you ever go to the police?’

‘It’s hard to explain. He had me brainwashed for a long time. He told me I had an illness. I hardly knew right from wrong – I can’t say it all over the phone. Will you come and meet me?’

I had discussed what would happen with Mark if the results proved that we were siblings.

‘Peter, we have an uncle, Denise’s brother.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, he’d like to meet you too. He will collect you in Dublin and bring you to my home.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow?’ The next day was Saturday. I would cancel my weekend piano playing. Lucas would have to find a replacement.

‘That would be good. Thank you. Mary – I mean, Sally, do you remember me?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Did my mother, Denise, did she talk about me?’

‘We have so much to talk about, Peter, let’s wait until we’re face to face.’

There was a pause. ‘I’m not very good at talking.’

‘Oh well, we’re definitely siblings. It’s taken me nearly two years of therapy to get over that.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. Do you have friends? A wife? Girlfriend?’

His voice trembled. ‘No.’

It wasn’t time to ask him about his daughter. ‘I can’t believe I’m talking to my own brother.’

‘You haven’t told the media, or the police?’

‘Absolutely not.’

He gave me the address of the hotel and we ended the call. Mark wanted to vet him, to make sure he wasn’t violent or threatening in any way, and he arranged to collect Peter early the next morning. Peter wanted to know how he would get back to Dublin afterwards. Mark told him not to worry. We could put him up in the Abbey Hotel in Roscommon for a few nights. We had no real plan for what would happen.

I was on tenterhooks the next morning, constantly going to the window at every noise to see if Mark’s car was parking. I received one text from Mark.

Stopped at a service station. He seems normal but extremely quiet.

Sue and Martha called to the door to see if I was okay. I’d missed my yoga class that morning. I didn’t invite them in for coffee the way one is supposed to do with friends, but I didn’t tell them a lie either. ‘Sorry, I should have told you I wasn’t coming. I have some family business to attend to.’

‘Are you okay?’ said Sue. ‘You seem a little agitated?’ and indeed I was looking behind her down the lane, hopping from foot to foot.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine, thank you. I’ll see you during the week, okay?’ I closed the door and went back to the kitchen. I had prepared sandwiches way too early. They had dried out. I set about making fresh ones, chicken, ham, tomato and coleslaw. Peter could be a vegetarian. I knew nothing about my brother.

51 Peter, 2019

It took me twenty-eight hours to get to Ireland, compared to the three-month ordeal it had taken to get to New Zealand almost forty years earlier. I ordered DNA test kits to be sent to the hotel in Dublin I had booked. I wrote my letter to Mary. Then I wandered around the city on foot. I bought some winter clothes. I’d travelled light. I’d never been in the city centre before, even as a child. Dublin was modern and multicultural and unfamiliar in every way.

The pay-as-you-go mobile phone rang over two weeks after I sent the letter. Mary had not alerted the police. There was an uncle, Denise’s brother, Mark. He collected me in Dublin on 14th December and drove the two hours to Mary’s cottage. He grilled me in the car about his sister. What did I remember? Had she ever mentioned him? What was she like? The questions were like an assault, and I avoided answering as much as I could.

We drove across the country mostly on a motorway. The day was dark and grey and wet. The sun did not appear. The land was flat. We stopped at a service station for fuel and we had bad coffee. I didn’t know what to think of Mark. He seemed way too young to be my uncle, but we discovered he was only five years older than me. He said grimly that Denise was twelve when she gave birth to me. Neither of us said much for the rest of the journey.

52 Sally

Peter said he was seven years older than me but he looked much older. His wrinkles were deep and his face was weathered. His hair was short and grey, receding. He was clean-shaven. There was a faint white line across his forehead. An old scar? Inflicted by Conor Geary? But his eyes – the shape, the hazel colour – and his nose were identical to mine. My brother.

We didn’t have an immediate connection. It was more gradual than that. Mark and I knew it would be awkward. It was hard to know what to call him to start with. I was adamant that I was Sally Diamond. He had been Steven Armstrong for most of his life, but now, he asked us to call him Peter. He was not forthcoming in conversation, and I was nervous at first. It was the Christmas season, so I was called on to play at the hotel a lot. I paid for Peter to stay in the Abbey Hotel in Roscommon and we would meet in my house whenever I was free. Mark always tried to be there too.

On the first day, there were long silences and occasional small talk. But Peter’s small talk was even smaller than mine. It was only on the second day that we broached the subject of our father and who he was. Peter insisted that he wasn’t physically harmed by Conor Geary in the same way my mother was. Peter lived most of his early life in solitary confinement, fearing that a made-up disease was going to kill him. A disease designed to keep him away from everyone and to make him entirely dependent on Conor Geary. Our birth father was cruel and manipulative. My brother was as isolated as I had been, but not through choice. He had desperately wanted to go to school and make friends but, by the time his father died, it was too late and he didn’t know how to be social. It was hard to get this information from him, but Mark was good at coaxing him, and later, after Peter had gone back to the hotel, Mark would come back to the house and parse what Peter had said and what he didn’t say. Mark was good at reading between the lines.

Peter still felt guilt about Conor Geary’s death because he’d been driving the car. The scar on his forehead was a result of that, and the terrible burns on his arms, from when he had tried to pull his father from the burning car. We assured him that his father, my father, was not worth saving, but he looked out of the window, refusing to meet our eyes.

We clashed over that. Despite everything Conor Geary had done, Peter felt loved by him, as if that cancelled out the horror he had visited on our mother, on me, and on Peter himself with this terrible story of a deadly disease.

‘How can you defend him? I’m so glad he’s dead,’ said Mark.

‘Don’t you understand?’ said Peter. ‘People aren’t one hundred per cent anything. You say he was a monster, and yes, he did terrible things to all of us.’ He looked towards Mark. ‘He took your sister, destroyed her in every way. He kept Sally locked up. He went on the run and dragged me to the other side of the world with him, took my name from me, lied to me, isolated me, but I know that he cared about me. I know he did.’

Mark used sarcasm, I think. ‘Oh well, that’s all right then. As long as he cared about you.’

I felt distressed. I went to the piano and they both shut up then. I played for a while and then asked Mark to take Peter back to the hotel. It was so difficult, but Peter was like me in so many ways. I couldn’t help feeling drawn to him. Over the course of a week, we were able to get a fuller picture of Peter’s life in New Zealand.

On the internet, Mark and I found the archive from the Rotorua Daily Post that told the story of the death of a respected local dentist, James Armstrong, and the survival of his poor orphaned son, Steven. Conor Geary had lived in New Zealand for the best part of five years working as a dentist under a fake name. Peter’s passport was in the name of Steven Armstrong. He was wary of getting his status regularized, although Mark and I both felt that he should reclaim his name and nationality officially. He was here in Ireland on a ninety-day holiday visa. We suggested looking into the practicalities of doing it through my solicitor but Peter was reluctant and terrified of the media. This had to be handled with kid gloves, or not at all. We agreed that Peter should take his time and decide for himself when he wanted to go ahead with it.

After the first week, I invited Peter to stay in my home, for Christmas, and as long as he wanted thereafter. He smiled for the first time that day. We shook hands. That was as close as we had dared to be physically. I drew up a roster for use of the bathroom and breakfast and bedtime. We would take turns to cook for each other. He balked at the idea of being introduced to my friends. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I’m not used to people. Maybe one at a time?’ and I understood that too. Mark was no longer present for all of our conversations. He found it more upsetting than I did.

On Christmas Day, Mark and Peter and I had lunch together. There was something I had wanted to ask Peter about, but Mark had said we should take things slowly, so I waited until Mark cut the Christmas cake and I poured us all a glass of port.

‘Peter, you know, when we got the DNA results, there was a record of your daughter, but you’ve never mentioned her?’

‘I don’t have a daughter,’ he said. I opened the laptop and showed him the website and there it was clearly stated:

PG [his initials]

Amanda Heron

Parent/Child 50% DNA shared

I clicked on Amanda Heron’s name. Her date of birth was 1996.

‘You definitely have a twenty-three-year-old daughter. I thought you said you didn’t have any relationships or girlfriends?’

He knocked back the glass of port and refilled his glass, and the silence grew.

‘Peter?’ said Mark. ‘What’s going on? Did you know about her?’

‘I never knew her name,’ he said. ‘I had a few, you know, one-night stands, and one of those women came and told me she was pregnant, but I didn’t believe her, or at least, I thought anyone could be the father.’ All the time he spoke, he was looking at the floor, ashamed, I think.

I was perturbed. He was not asexual like me. Tina had told me it was not the kind of thing I could quiz Peter about. People’s sex lives were private, she insisted.

‘My … encounters were drunken. I was never able to talk to women sober,’ said Peter.

‘Well, I guess you got more family than you bargained for,’ said Mark, ‘but let’s take one step at a time. Everything must be overwhelming for you now.’

Peter nodded and when he looked up his eyes were full of tears. That was another difference between us. He cried. I didn’t.

‘I reckon she’d be better off without me. I’m not good with people, especially strangers.’

‘But maybe she’d like to get to know you.’ Mark pushed it.

‘I wouldn’t be a good dad, it’s too late for me. I don’t even remember who her mother is.’ He wasn’t interested in his daughter. Mark wanted more answers than me, but I told him to leave it.

Over the following weeks, I noted that Peter was as anti-social as I used to be. I could empathize with him. He seemed so alone in the world, but he was never aggressive or threatening in any way.

I asked him to come and see Tina with me, but he didn’t want to. He always made an excuse to go to his room if I had visitors, and refused second-hand invitations from my friends. We told everyone he was Mark’s cousin, my second cousin, and that he was visiting from Australia, which was almost the truth. We didn’t want to mention New Zealand because too many of my friends knew about the weird post I’d been getting from New Zealand. But we didn’t fool everyone. Angela asked me if there was something going on with us.

‘With who?’

‘With you and that Australian fellow. Is he your boyfriend?’

‘No. You know I don’t have boyfriends.’ The thought horrified me, but I was sworn to secrecy that he was my brother.

‘It’s unusual for you to welcome a strange man into your home.’

Sue had said the same thing. And it was definitely awkward even though Peter and I liked each other. He got up at dawn and went walking for hours, and eventually would turn up at dinner time. We stuck to our bathroom rota. And we did not enter each other’s bedrooms under any circumstances. He only showered every second day, even though my shower was beautiful. I couldn’t understand that. He stopped shaving shortly after he arrived and looked generally unkempt. Conversation was often stilted. He didn’t seem to like it when I played the piano. As soon as I started, I heard the front door bang. It was rude. But it was my house and if I wanted to play the piano, I would.

We continued to talk, though. Why had my birth father chosen to keep Peter by his side and abandon me? Peter described a loving, benevolent, indulgent dad, clever and hardworking, and yet, we both knew what he had done to my mother, and how he had manipulated Peter.

The hardest thing for Peter to learn was that my mother hadn’t spoken of his existence. We gave him the tapes and files but we kept from him the tape on which she said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want him.’ He read through everything and listened to all of the recordings.

‘She was screwed up,’ he said.

‘Yes, by your loving father.’ Mark was increasingly annoyed by Peter’s defence of Conor Geary.

‘What about other “relationships”?’ said Mark.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you were living with him there for five years. Did he have access to other children? Didn’t you worry that he might kidnap another little girl?’

‘I only really worked out what had happened with my mother not long before he died. We fought about it. But Dad only took adult dental patients. In New Zealand, kids’ dental care is subsidized by the government but adults are more lucrative, and even the receptionist that Dad hired in the dental office was a man, and that was unusual. He never went after another kid. I’m sure of it.’

‘I find it strange that a paedo who had been so active would just stop and change his ways, especially when he’d got away with it? Maybe he found a way to hide it from you.’

Peter looked away. ‘Look, I know you don’t like me defending him. I don’t think he ever went after any other kids. But he was a misogynist. He always referred to women as stupid or ugly or opinionated. He didn’t like them, that’s for sure.’

‘You know,’ I said carefully, ‘I think Conor Geary might have been messed up by his mother at a young age.’

‘Yeah?’ said Peter. ‘I asked him about his parents once or twice. I was curious about my grandparents, you know? He got tight-lipped and changed the subject.’

‘Why do you think that? About his mother?’ Mark asked me.

‘It was something his sister said.’

‘His sister?’ said Peter. ‘You mean I have an aunt as well?’

‘Yes, sorry, I should have mentioned her before. She died a few months ago. I only met her once with Aunt Christine, after I hit the newspapers. She got in touch. I don’t know why. She was distressed. I suspect Conor Geary ruined her life as well.’

‘What did she say about their mother?’

‘It was kind of an off-the-cuff remark, but I’ve thought about it a lot. She said their father died when they were young and that their mother expected Conor to fill his shoes in every way. She said it was perverse. It was the way she said it.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Mark.

Peter was silent for a moment. ‘Was she … normal?’

‘Margaret? I guess so. But I think she met me out of some sense of duty?’

‘Don’t you feel anything … about her death? You never mentioned it before,’ said Mark.

‘Why should I? I met the woman once. She seemed nice. Isn’t it amazing how different two siblings can be?’

Peter looked at me. ‘We’re different.’

‘We’re not that different. Two years ago, I used to pretend to be deaf so that I could avoid talking to people.’

He smiled at that. ‘That’s a good idea.’

On another evening, Peter told us about the two nights he had spent in the room with Denise. Mark wanted to know every detail, but Peter was only seven at the time, he reckoned. His memory was hazy. All he remembered was that she was terrifying and heavily pregnant. Mark pressed him for details but the only other things Peter remembered were that she didn’t appear to have any front teeth and that she was in pain. She seemed old to young Peter. When the internet came along and he was able to start researching, he was shocked to discover that our mother was only nineteen years old at that time.

I contacted the guards and asked for the return of Toby, my teddy bear. They agreed, saying he was of no further evidentiary use. Now that I knew Peter had sent him to me, I was happy to have him back.

As we moved into mid-January 2020, Peter became morose and silent. He more or less stopped talking. When I pushed him to explain what was wrong, he said something about missing the summer in the southern hemisphere. I asked him if he intended to stay in Ireland, if he would look for a job with his experience and qualifications. He reluctantly admitted that he didn’t know what to do. I offered to teach him how to play the piano, but he shouted at me then. ‘You can’t solve every problem by playing the fucking piano, Mary.’

I was taken aback. He slammed the door behind him as he took off, leaving me upset, shouting, ‘My name is Sally!’

I didn’t want to tell Mark because I think he didn’t fully trust Peter. When Peter came back later, he went straight to his room. The next morning, he muttered an apology. I thought of all the coping mechanisms Tina had taught me. I calmly told him that I needed to be respected in my own house, that I was also dealing with anger issues, and that if he didn’t seek therapy, he would need to leave my home.

For weeks, we were careful around each other. He kept making promises to see a therapist, but when I pressed him for details he gave me the silent treatment. As much as I cared about him, he infuriated me. Tina said that was normal for siblings.

I finally realized what I had to do with the money in my bank account from the sale of Conor Geary’s house. It was Peter’s inheritance too, though Margaret never knew it. He was entitled to 50 per cent of it. When he asked me for a loan one day, I told him all about it.

‘You can start over, Peter, here in Ireland, where you belong,’ I said as I started to explain where the money had come from. ‘You can afford a comfortable home here in the village, and there’d be enough to start your own business too. You don’t have to work at all if you don’t want to.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘That’s your inheritance from the sale of your father’s house.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Margaret left me that house in her will.’

‘You sold the house?’ His voice was raised.

‘Yes, but I’m giving you half of the proceeds from the sale.’

‘If I’d known … I’d have kept that house. It’s the only place that ever felt like home. I lived there with my dad, happily, until you came along.’ Tina would have said his anger was irrational. I hadn’t known he existed when I sold the house.

‘But your mother was chained to a wall, you never saw her. You never saw me.’ He didn’t answer.

He was even less communicative with me than before, but he was businesslike about the money and, after all, he worked in banking so he knew what he was doing. He suggested that I transfer the money into cryptocurrency as he had no way of setting up an Irish bank account yet. I assured him that I could give him as much cash as he needed until such time as we were able to regularize his citizenship and identity, but he was afraid of the publicity that would inevitably follow if the media were to get a sniff of the fact that the infamous Conor Geary had a living son in Ireland. I could see his point. It would be impossible to keep a big story like this private.

I didn’t know anything about bitcoin, but Peter already had an account. All I had to do was go to my bank and direct them to make the transfer. The bank made a fuss and the bank manager was called to talk to me and tried to persuade me that my transaction was most unorthodox. I reminded her that it was not illegal and that it was my money.

The day after all of his money was transferred, Peter said he wanted to go travelling around Ireland for a while. I thought it was a good idea. We had spent nearly ten weeks cooped up together and, much as I enjoyed getting to know my brother, his resistance to any change or progress frustrated me. I’m sure I had been that bad too before therapy, but I made an effort with people when Angela asked me to. He made none.

Strangely, he didn’t say goodbye. He was gone when I woke up the next morning. The night before he left, I was playing the piano when he came in from one of his walks. He said, ‘Dad used to play the piano, you know? When we lived here, in Ireland. He was as good as you are. I’m sorry, but I can’t bear the sound of it.’

I slammed the lid shut.

He had left the place spotless, although I thought it was strange that he had taken all of his belongings with him. He had also taken Toby. I was annoyed about that.

Mark thought his sudden disappearance without a word was alarming. I hadn’t told him about the money.

As usual, I defended Peter. ‘He’s gone travelling. You could see how overwhelmed he was by everything. Maybe he’s looking around for a place to live. His holiday visa expires at the end of the month. He’ll go to the guards soon. I think he’s decided to stay in Ireland. I hope so.’

I saw so much of myself in him. I was full of warm feelings for him. Maybe I loved my big brother.

I called Peter a few times but he never answered his phone. Mark grew more concerned.

A week later, I got a text from Peter.

Mary, I’ve thought about it a lot. I don’t fit in here and I don’t feel like your brother or Mark’s nephew, no matter how hard I’ve tried. I’m in Dublin Airport. I’m going back to New Zealand. It’s best for everyone if we don’t keep in contact. I don’t want to hurt you and I’m grateful for the money. I will put it to good use. I wish you and Mark all good things. You did your best. I’m not right in the head and no therapy is going to fix me. I’m better on my own.

I wrenched clumps from my hair and screamed until Martha came running from across the road.

53 Peter, 2020

When Mark said ‘cottage’, I imagined a small thatched one-room place like you saw on Irish tourism posters in New Zealand, and although it had a slate roof and small enough frontage, everything was new and modern and clean inside. There was a stream running under glass bricks all the way through the house. I’d never seen anything like it. Mary was not what I expected at all. She stared into my face until I looked away. We didn’t know what to say to each other and then she shook my hand and went into another room and played the piano. It brought back memories of Dad when I was a small boy, locked in that bedroom, listening to the music he played. Mark told me that it was the shock, that she’d be okay in a few minutes. He seemed to be comfortable here. He’d pointed out his apartment on the way into the village, but Mark and Mary seemed close, I guess like family should be.

We had sandwiches and tea and, later, wine and a pasta meal. I wasn’t used to talking so much but they had endless questions, about Denise, about what Mary had been like as a girl. She kept correcting me: ‘My name is Sally.’ I couldn’t help getting it wrong, but I got the hang of it. I was relieved when they finally said that a taxi was on its way to take me to the hotel in the next town. I was exhausted from the talking and all the withholding of information. I had to be so careful about what I said and what I didn’t say.

Back at the hotel, I slept fitfully. In the hostel in Dublin, I hadn’t dreamed at all and thought it was a sign that I was finally in my rightful place, but having spent the evening with Mark and Sally, they all came back to haunt me, Lindy, Rangi and Dad.

Sally came to collect me the next day and we went to a cafe in her village. This time, I asked her the question that had bothered me. Why did she not remember me? Hadn’t our mother told her about me? She explained something about her psychiatrist father medicating her. She had no memory of our mother. I was relieved and jealous. Relieved she didn’t know what I’d done to our mother but jealous that she could forget it all. There were so many things I wanted to forget. She asked about our father, and I could see she was upset that he had treated us so differently. ‘He hated women,’ was the only explanation I could give. It seemed inadequate but the only thing I could say.

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.

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.

A week later, I responded to Kate’s email. I had to throw her off the scent and buy time.

Once again, my freedom was on the line. All of the facts that I presented were vague on detail, hard if not impossible to verify as almost nobody would hold records from 1983, certainly not digitally. I made my ‘medical ordeal’ sound like a cancer battle so that she would be disinclined to harass me any further, particularly when I was so adamant that she had got her story wrong. I was alert enough to block my IP address so that nobody could know I was in Ireland.

Still, she was dogged. I didn’t know whether she would take my word for anything I’d said. She could ask to see my father’s birth certificate. But I knew from my job that you could obtain almost anything on the dark web, including a fake birth certificate. She did not seem to be in any way suspicious of me, but was it a lure? Was she feigning concern that I was also an abductee? Did she suspect that I was Irish and that I was Amanda’s father? If I did engage with her, she was sure to ask me to take a DNA test, and that would be harder to avoid. I thought about going to the dark web to look for a new passport for myself, under a different name, a different nationality. I downloaded the Tor search engine, and spent the rest of the day searching through sites, shocked by what was on sale. Some users warned that the FBI were all over the dark web, but their focus was on drugs, guns and people trafficking.

I assumed that I would get an apologetic response from Kate the next day after New Zealand had woken up. And I did get a response, but it wasn’t as apologetic as I had hoped, and it came almost five weeks later, weeks in which I barely slept and lost my appetite.

She didn’t address any of my assurances. She may still have thought that I was an abductee, but the curtness of the email convinced me otherwise. I didn’t reply.

I went to the dark web and looked into getting myself a new identity. It was way more expensive than I had guessed, NZ$170k or €100k. I could just about afford it, if I could get some kind of a loan from Sally, but I would have nothing left. I couldn’t sell up in Wellington from Ireland, not without attracting attention. And how would I explain to Sally why I needed money?

All this time, Sally was going about her business. Mark came for dinner twice a week. She desperately wanted me to get to know her friends, particularly her adoptive mother’s sister, Christine. I shut down every time she brought it up.

Mark continued to ask inconvenient questions. He was very keen that we all go to the guards and that I should come clean about everything, at least everything he knew. I knew it was only a matter of time before he alerted them himself.

The day after I got the email from Kate asking for my birth details, I asked Sally if she could lend me a sum of money. I didn’t even have to name the sum because she started talking about Dad’s house in Dublin, how she had inherited it and sold it. She said I was due half of the proceeds. It annoyed me that she’d been sitting on this money all along and hadn’t said anything. I was astounded to find that my share of the house was worth over a million euro. More than enough to start over somewhere else and to buy my new identity.

I made sure to get the money in cryptocurrency. As soon as it was transferred, I left Carricksheedy, telling her I was going travelling for a week or two. I left before she got up that morning in order to avoid what I knew was a final farewell. I stayed in a good hotel in Dublin. My new passport, along with my California driving licence and social security number, was delivered there by courier within four days. This time I was American and my name was Dane Truskowski. I flew to London without incident. In Heathrow, I looked at all the destinations on the flight board. I posted my parcel. I texted a farewell to Sally. Where could I go from here? Anywhere.

54 Sally

I couldn’t tell Martha what had happened. She pulled my hands from my hair and asked if I was injured and I said no. I admitted to having had a shock. She made me a cup of tea and tried to put her arm around me. I went to the piano and tried to play a little Einaudi but my fingers refused to cooperate.

‘I loved him,’ was all I could say.

‘Who?’

‘Peter.’

I gripped the mug with trembling hands.

‘The weird guy who’s been staying with you?’

‘He’s not weird. You don’t –’

‘Was he your boyfriend? I haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘No!’ I shouted at her. ‘He was not my boyfriend. And he’s not weird.’

‘Sally, calm down.’

‘Why do you think he’s weird? Why must you judge everyone according to your own smug, perfect life? You thought I was weird until you got to know me. You didn’t even know Peter. How dare you, Martha?’

‘Smug, perfect life? You have no idea. And this guy? Despite you introducing him to me and several others, he never acknowledges us on the street. Never even answers us when we say hello. Nobody believes he’s Mark’s cousin. Who is he, Sally?’

When I refused to tell her or explain why I’d been screaming, she said she couldn’t help me.

‘If he’s your boyfriend and he’s left you, well good riddance. He’s not good for you. You didn’t keep secrets before he arrived. I hope he never comes back.’

‘Get out, Martha, I never asked you to come!’ I yelled at her.

She stopped on her way to the door. ‘You know, I went out of my way to make allowances for you, Sally. I welcomed you into my home and I let you into my children’s lives. But your tragic childhood and weird upbringing does not give you any excuse to be a bitch!’ She slammed the door on her way out.

I didn’t want to see Mark. I knew he would be angry. I decided to go and see Aunt Christine in Dublin and tell her everything. There was still no way I could face city driving and motorways. I got the evening train to Dublin by myself and Aunt Christine met me at the station. The journey was just about bearable. Strangers sat beside me and in front of me, but I looked out of the window at the rolling green fields and pretended to be deaf.

I began to tell Aunt Christine the story of Peter when we were in her car, but she seemed stricken by the news and asked me to wait until we got to her house. When we settled down with a pot of tea, I began to tell her who Peter was.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘I think Jean knew.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She suspected that there was another child. She always said that it didn’t make sense that Denise would not let go of you if you’d had separate bedrooms in the Killiney house. She said Denise insisted that she had always slept by your side, but we knew there was that bedroom next door.’

‘What? But why wasn’t that information anywhere in Dad’s records?’

‘He didn’t believe it. Denise refused to answer any questions about having another child. Tom said if she’d had a son, she would have been screaming about him too.’

‘Screaming?’

‘Look, Sally, I’ve kept my mouth shut for so many years, but your dad could be a tyrant. He could also be misogynistic. Jean’s opinions were never as valid as his. There is something I need to tell you. I have tried to be honest with you as far as I can, but there is no need for me to hide information from you any more. I’m not telling you any of this to hurt you, but you should know the truth.’

‘What truth?’

‘The truth about Jean and Tom, your mum and dad.’

‘Go on.’

‘Jean was a lot more intelligent than your dad. She strongly objected to the way he treated you. She said that he never saw you as a daughter, but as a patient. He experimented on you, trying out different treatments and medications, evaluating everything. When you left school, Jean was adamant that you should go to college. You had brains to burn and you could have studied anything, music obviously, but she thought you’d be a good engineer too. You have a very mathematical mind. You didn’t want to do anything.’

‘I remember.’

‘But it was so bad for you, Tom insisting on the move to an even more remote village, becoming more and more isolated. Jean was desperate for you to meet other people. No matter how you resisted, you must understand now that it would have been best for you.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Tom disagreed. He wanted you to do exactly what you wanted so that he could study you. Jean was on the point of leaving him when she had a stroke.’

‘What?’

‘She suffered from high blood pressure, and the stress of fighting with Tom and you over your future was too much for her. He wasn’t … kind to her, Sally. Thank God you never saw that side of him. She had planned to leave him, but she didn’t know if you would come with her. You were over eighteen then, technically an adult. I don’t suppose she ever discussed it with you?’

‘No, I would remember that. But the weekend before she died, she wanted me to come and visit you with her. Does that mean –’

‘She knew you didn’t like change, and she’d planned to make the move gradually –’

‘But then she had a stroke?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Aunt Christine?’

‘Because I don’t want to go to my grave harbouring secrets that are more your business than mine. How he treated your birth mother, well …’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If Denise’s behaviour didn’t match his own interpretation, he dismissed it and called her hysterical. There were those toy soldiers …’

‘What toy soldiers?’

‘Everything that belonged to Denise and you was brought to the unit in St Mary’s Hospital, to your living quarters. There wasn’t much. You didn’t have any toys except for these toy soldiers. Denise said they weren’t yours. Jean quizzed her about who they belonged to, but she stayed silent. When Jean queried the guards, they said the soldiers had been found under the bed in the small white bedroom.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘What was the point in telling you something that didn’t make sense? I never even thought about it when that teddy bear arrived. Did your brother send it to you? Did he sleep in the small white bedroom, Sally?’

‘Yes.’ Peter had taken Toby with him when he left. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted with the bear.

‘How strange that evil man was, to separate mother and son, brother and sister, and yet have them living a room apart. Did you like him, your brother?’

‘Peter? Yes, I really did. I understood him. He was moody and silent a lot of the time, but it must have taken so much courage to get on a plane and cross the world to come and tell me the truth. I think he was very brave. I’m so upset that he’s gone.’

I felt a shuddering in my chest, as if all the air was being squeezed out. I began to sob real tears for the very first time I could remember. Aunt Christine held me and I put my head on her thin shoulder, and it seemed like every sorrow I should have felt for decades came pouring out on to Aunt Christine’s kitchen table. She stroked my head and made soothing noises, the way mothers do to small babies.

She wanted to know why he had never gone to the police and I explained about his anxiety, his social isolation, his fear of strangers, the brainwashing over years with my birth father. She wanted to know if he had succeeded in life, at least professionally.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He was head of cyber security at a bank headquarters. I think he’ll probably go back to that job.’

‘So, he’s okay financially, then?’

‘Oh, he certainly is.’ I told Aunt Christine about Margaret’s death and the inheritance and how I’d shared it with Peter before he left.

‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘how long after you gave him the money did he leave?’

‘Straight away. There was a lot of fuss about the money and I had to transfer it to him in cryptocurrency –’

‘So, wait, he came, stayed for two months, you gave him a million euro, and then he disappeared?’

‘He didn’t disappear, he went home. He said he didn’t feel like he could fit in.’

She was quiet then for a few moments.

‘Sally, did you ask anyone’s advice before you gave him this money?’

‘No, I didn’t. I’m an adult and it was my money.’

‘You don’t think that might be why he came?’

‘Absolutely not. Nobody knew I had that money. I didn’t tell anyone.’

‘But he knew you didn’t work for a living; he knew you lived in a beautiful new home.’

I was annoyed now. Why did she think I was a fool?

‘He was entitled to the money, Aunt Christine. Ever since I started going to therapy, I’ve been told to work on my trust issues and to give people the benefit of the doubt. Now you’re telling me that Dad was terrible, you’re implying that my brother only wanted money from me. Dad loved me.’

‘Didn’t you just tell me that Peter said the same thing about your birth father?’

‘Are you comparing Tom Diamond with Conor Geary?’ I could feel the anger within me. I jumped up and stood over her.

‘Of course not, I –’

‘Don’t you dare speak to me about them in the same breath. They were nothing like each other …’ I stopped myself, appalled at my own temper taking over again. Aunt Christine had stumbled backwards out of her chair and was now standing behind it, as if she needed to protect herself from me.

I took a deep breath. ‘I … I’m going to bed.’

Aunt Christine was silent. I should have apologized but I was still incensed by her words. Was my mum, Jean, also a victim of domestic abuse, physical and emotional? It was all too much.

It was not yet 10 p.m. Next day was Saturday. I was due to play in Farnley Manor.

Aunt Christine stayed in her room while I had breakfast alone on Saturday morning. I was distressed and sat at her piano, but I couldn’t bring myself to lift up the lid. Eventually, I left the house without saying goodbye and hailed a taxi to take me to the station.

On the train, my phone rang. It was Angela. ‘Sally, you have terrified Christine, she just rang me in floods of tears.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And that guy who was staying with you is your brother? I can scarcely believe what she told me. Why didn’t you come to me? And why didn’t you go to the guards with him?’

‘It was none of your business and it wasn’t Aunt Christine’s business to tell you.’

‘Who else knew about this? Mark?’

‘Yes, he’s family. It’s our own private business.’

‘You are supposed to tell me when … You gave this guy a million euro?’

‘What about you, Angela? What about the truth you never told me?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Is it true that Mum was going to leave Dad? Was he violent towards her?’

I heard her deep sigh at the end of the phone. I desperately wanted her to deny it. But she said nothing. I hung up. Everyone in the train carriage was staring at me.

In the taxi from the train station to Farnley Manor, the radio was on and the taxi driver tried to engage me in conversation about the headlines: ‘First case of coronavirus confirmed in the Republic of Ireland. The man, from the eastern part of the country, recently travelled from Italy. A statement from the Minister for Health is imminent.’

I turned up for work just in time. I had never needed the piano more. Lucas asked me if I was all right. I guess my eyes were puffy and I was not communicative. He sent me a pot of hot coffee and some cake and insisted that I eat something before I started, but I carried the tray to the piano and forced myself to play. I started with the last movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14, a fast and fiery piece, my fingers flying up and down the keyboard in a frenzy, trying to work the anger out through my hands. It was the first time I’d played since I learned that Conor Geary had been an accomplished pianist.

Lucas interrupted and asked me to play my usual repertoire, soft, soothing music. The rage within me took over. I swept the tray on to the deep, pale carpet, coffee splattering the sofa and the guests nearest to us. Everyone stopped to stare. Lucas went immediately to the guests. I went to the staff cloakroom and retrieved my bag and coat. I called another taxi to take me home. It arrived mercifully fast because if Lucas had attempted to reprimand me, I know I would have hit him.

I cried again on the journey home. I tried the breathing exercises, I tried putting myself in Aunt Christine’s shoes, in Angela’s shoes, but my rational self asked why they couldn’t put themselves in my shoes. Was anger never justified?

I took a hammer from my toolbox and was in the act of smashing my piano when the doorbell rang. I ignored it and swung the hammer harder, but then I heard loud knocking at the window right behind me. I turned in irritation to see who it was. Mark.

‘What’s going on with you? I must have left ten messages and voicemails. Did something happen? Martha said –’

‘Mark, please go away, I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. Please?’

I tried to keep my voice calm. While Mark stood in the open doorway, a garda squad car pulled up behind him. Detective Inspector Howard approached with a uniformed guard. She was smiling.

‘Sally, I think we finally have news for you regarding Conor Geary. May we come in?’

She looked at Mark, expecting him to go away.

‘I’m Mark Butler, Mark Norton, I’m Denise Norton’s brother, Sally’s uncle. I’d like to hear what you have to say.’

Detective Inspector Howard looked at me. ‘I … is it okay with you, Sally?’

I felt drained of all emotion and utterly exhausted. I had not renewed my prescription for Valium as it was so addictive, but I needed something. To hell with what Tina said. Alcohol.

I let them all in and fixed myself a glass of Jameson. Mark was shocked that the piano was in pieces but I told him I was not prepared to talk about it. The guards exchanged looks.

I didn’t offer anyone anything, but Mark did, as if my house were his own, and set about making coffee.

Detective Inspector Howard began to tell me so much I already knew. Only I knew more. They had good reason to believe Conor Geary died in 1985. He’d lived in New Zealand under an assumed name. He had a son, named Steve Armstrong. Mark stepped in and corrected her. I said nothing as Mark told her everything about Peter and how he had been staying in this house. That stopped Howard in her tracks.

‘Here? When?’

‘Since, I think, mid-December, up until just over a week ago, right, Sally?’

‘What? How did he make contact?’

I let Mark do all the talking. Howard and her associate took copious notes. She asked the inevitable questions about why we hadn’t alerted the guards. Mark told them I had insisted on Peter’s privacy.

‘And where is he now?’

‘He’s gone travelling around Ireland. Sally is in touch with him, aren’t you, Sally?’

They all looked at me, and here came the tears again, rolling down my face. Mark moved over and put his arm around my shoulders.

‘What is it? What did he do?’

With shaking fingers, I found the text I’d received just two days previously.

I passed the phone first to Mark and then to DI Howard.

Mark said nothing but breathed what I think was a sigh of relief.

Detective Inspector Howard asked us to come to the station on Monday morning.

‘He’s not a criminal. He’s a victim, as much as Denise or I am,’ I wailed.

They stood up to leave.

‘Did he ever mention Linda Weston or Rangi Parata?’

‘No, not to me. Sally?’

I shook my head.

They were at the door when Detective Inspector Howard turned and said, ‘Did he ever mention Amanda Heron?’

‘Yes, that’s his daughter. We did DNA tests before we met him. He said he’d never met her. She was the result of a one-night stand,’ said Mark.

55 Peter, 2020

Like father, like son. Peter Geary and Steve Armstrong vanished. I guess that podcaster was taken seriously by the police after all.

I landed in Chicago as Dane Truskowski. Everything was so much easier for me than it was for Dad, thanks to the dark web and my inheritance. These masks are a blessing. I flew from city to city within the United States, but I think I’m going to stay here in Nutt, New Mexico. I grew a beard. I’ve bought a house. It’s way up a dirt track off a road that you wouldn’t know existed. It hasn’t been lived in for a while, but I’m fixing it up nicely.

When I’ve finished with the house, I’m going to build a barn behind it. Sound-proofing materials are available on Amazon, like most things, even shackles. I realize now that the only way to make that connection I seek is to take a woman and keep her until she submits. I’m prepared to wait. I won’t force her to love me. I haven’t found her yet. She won’t be a child. I’m not my father.

56 Sally

The country is in lockdown. Despite the two-kilometre limit on movement, Mark and I were called to the garda headquarters in Dublin twice.

The coronavirus has knocked most other stories off the news agenda so little has been said about the discovery of another child of Denise Norton and Conor Geary, or of my birth father’s death in New Zealand in 1985 and his links to the drowning of a boy called Rangi Parata and the abduction of Linda Weston. It is not yet public knowledge that Peter is the father of Linda Weston’s child, Amanda Heron, though there is an international search for him. New Zealand’s borders are closed. Peter never allowed us to take photographs of him but we spent hours at Dublin Airport going through CCTV footage from 22nd to 28th February. We found him in Terminal 2, in the departure lounge, but we couldn’t tell which gate he was going to. He disappeared into the throng. Nobody by the name of Steve, Stephen, Steven Armstrong or Peter Geary went through the airport that day. He must have had a different passport.

Some podcaster called Kate Ngata has contacted me via email. She and my niece, Amanda, are making a podcast series and are badgering me to contribute. Sue, my ex-best friend, has talked to her via Zoom apparently, and has told her how suspiciously Peter behaved when he was in the village. I don’t want to know Amanda Heron. My uncle and my brother have been so disappointing. I’m better off without family.

Aunt Christine doesn’t call at all since I ‘turned aggressive’ in her home. Stella is annoyed that I didn’t tell her anything about Peter.

‘Why didn’t you tell me who he was?’ she complained.

What’s the answer? I finally had someone who was mine. I loved him, I wanted to protect him and keep him to myself.

I couldn’t have known what he was capable of. The idea that a man could inherit a sickness like that from his father, from my father, and that I could welcome him into my home makes me want to scream all night long.

Linda Weston was twenty-seven years old when Amanda was born. I keep telling them that there’s no proof she was raped, no proof that she and Peter didn’t have a consensual relationship. She wasn’t murdered, she died of appendicitis. Mark told me to get a grip. Why had Peter disappeared? Why did he want us to keep everything quiet when he was here? Why did he travel on a false passport? I cling to the belief that he was innocent, in some way. I cling to my sanity.

Angela phones and texts me regularly but I rarely answer the phone, except when I need a new Valium prescription. I take quite a lot to stop me screaming. I also drink a lot.

I had to tell the guards about the money I gave to Peter. Mark was furious about it. He said I should have discussed with him what to do with the money. He thinks he was entitled to some of it, as it was he who had suffered the most. We argued over it. Margaret left that money to me. I haven’t spoken to him in weeks. Angela left a voicemail to say he had the virus and was in hospital. He’s very sick. No visitors allowed. I don’t care. I don’t want to see him.

Tina was wrong about everything. I was right to trust nobody. They all let me down in the end. Keeping secrets or telling secrets behind my back. I’m deaf again. I don’t speak to anyone and I pretend I don’t hear their whispering. This lockdown suits me very well. The village pub and the cafe are closed. So is Martha’s yoga studio. I’ve given up going to the Gala supermarket because every time I went in, Laura tried to chat to me. I’ve gone back to shopping in the Texaco. Everyone keeps two metres apart and there is no handshaking, never mind hugging. We all wear masks and I avoid eye contact where possible. The piano is still in pieces in the sitting room, a reminder of my heritage. I can’t get anyone to take it away.

I saw Abebi on the street yesterday. She is growing tall. She must be eleven years old now. I waved at her, and she saw me, but she put her head down and walked faster down the street, away from me. She is the same age as my mother was when my father kidnapped her. I pull at my hair again, taking a fistful from my head.