Free Like Father by Nick Gifford Page B

I don’t understand.”
    She moved towards him, and leaned with her head on his chest and his chin resting on the top of her head.
    “I read some of the stuff about the site,” said Danny. “The Frequently Asked Questions. It did warn about going in with a negative attitude. It said bad things could happen. Maybe they deliberately let it get weird sometimes, just to rattle people.”
    “But they knew stuff, didn’t they, Danny? That wasn’t pre-programmed trickery. It was for real.”
    He said nothing.
    “I told you every family has to have a dark secret, didn’t I?” said Cassie.
    Silence, again. Danny had his eyes jammed tightly shut. When he opened them everything was blurred, slowly sharpening.
    “One of them said your mum has a new boyfriend. Has she?”
    “Maybe,” said Danny. “I asked the guy the other day, but he didn’t seem too certain. He calls round a lot. He’d like to be, I reckon. It’s Little Rick – Mr Sullivan.”
    “No! You’re kidding me. But... well, teachers do it, too, I suppose. I mean... Mr Sullivan .”
    He rubbed his chin against the top of her head. He could smell the shampoo on her hair.
    “And your dad?”
    “How did they know? Nobody knows that stuff.”
    “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I’m freaked. I don’t think I want to know.”
    “Will you promise me something?” Danny said. He had his hands on her arms now, and he gently eased her away, so that he was looking down into her face.
    “Promise you what?”
    “Don’t talk about any of this – to anyone.” He realised now that he had to say more if he was going to persuade her. “Mum had a really hard time with all this a few years ago. The trouble. She had to cope. That’s why we came here: a fresh start in a place where nobody knows what we had to go through. Nobody judging us. We left all that behind. If it gets out here she’ll be devastated.”
    “You’re not making sense, Danny. If what gets out?”
    “The past.”
    She was still looking up at him and he felt exposed. He pulled her towards him again, so that she was against his chest and he was looking over her. It was easier to talk like that.
    “My father’s in prison,” he said. They were words he had never spoken aloud before. “He killed people.”
    He felt her tense as soon as the words escaped his lips. This was all wrong, he realised. He was just going to turn her away from him. Quite rightly, too. Anybody in their right mind would run a mile from him.
    “‘People’?” she whispered. She had her hands up before her, against his chest, and she pulled them tighter in, and then relaxed a little.
    “He went mad one night,” said Danny. Not really one night . It had built up steadily: his father had watched Chris and Val, following them. Eva, too – he had hated her for some reason. Feared her. From what Danny had been able to make himself read of his father’s journal, the madness seemed to have built over a period of a few weeks, until finally, one night, he had cracked.
    “There was a big row. Dad was out somewhere. Mum wanted to go out to see a friend. She had an argument with Dad’s Aunt Eva, and Eva went out instead.”
    Danny had hidden upstairs in Oma Schmidt’s room, while his grandmother slept, which seemed to be all she did at that time. Eva was yelling at his mother: “I come all this way because my family is calling to me. I come together with my family and what is it that I am finding? You! Schlampe , pulling the family apart. You cannot do it. I will not let you do it. Do you hear my words? You make Anthony like a fool. You see what you are doing to him? You drive a nail through his heart. You tell me where it is that you are meeting this man. You tell me now.”
    Eva had gone. She went to tell his mother’s friend that they were to stop meeting.
    And so it was Eva who found his father at Chris Waller’s house, kneeling over his best friend’s body so that he could be in the best position to cut out his