The Witch Hunt (Jonny Roberts Series Book 3) Page 2

  I pondered her words. “Not if we don’t let him. Why is it fair that he gets to choose when he is and isn’t a part of our lives? Screw him, that’s what I say.”

  And then, to reaffirm my point and act as if I’d forgotten about the man completely, I picked up the TV remote and started to flick through the channels, looking for something to replace the quiz show, ruined by him.

  “Maybe you should go.”

  I stopped scrolling. Looked to her.

  “What do you mean?” I rested the remote against my knee, a new television show yet to be found.

  “I mean ‒ I know he’s not spoken to you for a long time, and I know he walked out of our lives like we didn’t exist. Like he never cared about either of us. I know he’s an insensitive arsehole, and I absolutely despise the woman who stole his heart. But, despite everything, he’s your father. And, believe it or not, I know that he loves you, even if he has a terrible way of showing it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Part of me wanted to ask Mum how she could be so ridiculous. The other part of me was reminded of the old Dad.

  She continued, “It’s up to you. If you took him back into your life, then it’d be your decision.”

  But that was an idea that was sharp on both sides. What if I took Dad back into my life, only for him to palm me off again?

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, giving the same response that I had to Dad.

  “Okay. Well, whatever you decide. Up to you.” And, as if it were a conversation that had taken up enough of our attention, Mum said, “Now, what shall we get for dinner? Chinese, or fish and chips?”

  3

  The next day was the first in weeks where I awoke at a decent time. Mum hadn’t even left for work when I wandered downstairs.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Is this you turning a new leaf?”

  “Maybe.” I poured cornflakes into a bowl. “To be honest, I didn’t really sleep much last night. Not after Dad.”

  She smiled a little. “Have you given it any more thought?”

  I’d spent the majority of the night giving it more thought, staring through the darkness. When my mood had started to change, it had been with the constant thoughts of what had been. Okay, there would never be any way that we could go back to that. But what if things could at least be okay again, between Dad and me?

  “Yes. I think I’m going to go down this weekend.”

  “Wow. Okay. Fair enough. Do you want me to book you some train tickets?”

  I shook my head. “No. I think Dad can pay for that.”

  She laughed, gave an evil grin. “Good point.”

  I called after I’d eaten my cornflakes. As the phone dialled, I considered once again whether I was making the right decision. But as Dad said “Hello,” above the background sounds of heavy traffic, I knew there was no turning back.

  “Dad, it’s Jonny. I’ve thought about what you said, and ‒ I’m going to visit you this weekend.”

  He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. “Oh, Jonny. That’s brilliant. I really can’t wait to see you, mate. I’m so glad. So, so happy.”

  “It’s alright.”

  “I need to have a think for some good stuff to do this weekend! There’s so much to see around here. Lots to do. Look, Jonny, I can’t talk much, I’m on my way to work. But I’ll transfer you some money in a bit for some train tickets. If you look to arrive for around five o’clock on Friday, then I can pick you up from the station. How does that sound?”

  “Which station is it?”

  “Well, we actually live in a little village called Peene, but if you book your train to St Albans, then I could pick you up from there?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Okay. Oh, Jonny, I can’t wait to see you again. And I can’t wait for you to meet Isabella.”

  I could have admitted that I was beginning to feel a little excitement about seeing Dad again, too. But as soon as he dropped her name into the conversation, my brain froze. My skin crawled.

  So that was her name. Isabella. The woman who had wrecked my family.

  “Yep, can’t wait to meet her, too,” I lied.

  “See you Friday, Jonny. Can’t wait.”

  “See you, Dad.”

  He hung up.

  Isabella. Isabella.

  As I rested my phone on the kitchen table, I knew that her name would burn itself onto the inside of my skull.

  Rolling my suitcase onto the train on Friday afternoon, my stomach was eaten by a cocktail of nervousness and anger. I tried to play down the anger as much as I could. Mum had spoken to me that morning, had told me that I mustn’t shout, whatever I did. I had to be calm. I had to speak to him like I was the ‘better man’, as she’d put it.

  But, as I took my seat on the crowded train, and I pictured all the different ways that my first meeting with Dad in a year-and-a-half could go, all of them resulted in me losing my temper.

  And it didn’t help when pictures of her kept creeping into my mind. Even though I didn’t know what she looked like, and had only known her name for three days, my mind kept formulating different images. At one point, I pictured her to be some cruel, gnarly witch, with fang-like teeth and scraggy hair. Then, a more honest image. Perhaps she was some supermodel, who had stolen Dad’s heart with her beauty. After all, Mum had said that she was half his age.

  The train rattling along, I tried to distract myself by plugging my ears with my headphones. Tried to focus on the greenery passing by, as Grantford slipped away, for the first time in months.

  I’d considered that, on a subconscious level, maybe I was visiting Dad just to get away from Grantford, to leave behind all the problems that had been festering for the past two months. In fact, why not go further than that? The problems that had been festering for the past year, ever since I’d learned that I could speak to the dead.

  I knew that I needed space from everything. I wondered if Mum thought so too, and whether she wanted me to see Dad, or had wanted to give me a little purpose in life again. Maybe she thought that if I could get one thing in my life in order, then other things might start to follow suit.

  The rest of the journey dragged, and getting through London on a Friday afternoon was a nightmare. Carting my suitcase up and down escalators. Weaving through the never-ending tunnels of the London Underground. Barging through huge groups of tourists. It was a pain in the arse, to say the least.

  Though it was once I was on my connecting train, the city-scape turning to greenery once again, that my mouth became dry.

  The rest of the journey seemed to pass in a nano-second. As the train pulled up at the station, I panicked, wondering if a year-and-a-half was long enough to forget what your own father looked like. I doubted it. But with how much I’d grown up in two years, I guessed that there was a chance Dad might not recognise me.

  Truth was, though, I’d barely stepped off the train when I heard him calling across the platform.

  “Jonny! Son!”

  I’d been heading in the opposite direction, so I had to turn to face him. Like an oil tanker turning, I was that apprehensive.

  I needn’t have worried about recognising Dad. He looked no different from when I’d last set eyes on him. He had the same closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair, the same goatee wrapping around his chin, across his upper lip. Perhaps the only difference was that he’d put on a little weight, his cheeks rounder, his neck fuller.

  As I walked towards him, and he towards me, our eyes met. He was smiling. He looked genuinely happy to see me.

  He took me in a huge embrace, engulfing me in his massive frame. Crushing the air out of me.

  “It’s so good to see you, son.” His rough voice rasped into the cool summer air. I didn’t say anything. Not until he let go.

  “You too, Dad. Where did you park?”

  “There’s a big car park next door. Just a minute’s walk. How was your journey?”

  “Yeah, good. I listened to music most of t
he way.”

  “Ah, right. Here, let me take your suitcase.”

  He grasped the handle, and we walked along the platform, towards the exit.

  “What sort of music you listening to these days? Still all that chart rubbish?”

  I shook my head. I could notice the wobble to his voice now, the underpinning nervousness. I wondered when he was going to cut the crap. The silly small talk.

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh, right. What else then?”

  “Well, there’s a few decent bands that I like at the moment.”

  “Yeah? What are their names? I might have heard of them.”

  As we approached the car, all my questions burned the tip of my tongue. I couldn’t ask them here though, not out in the open.

  But as soon as the car door was shut, and Dad was looking at me with his worried eyes, knowing that I hadn’t answered his next question for a reason, I finally let them spill.

  “How could you?” I said, my voice loud in the narrow space. “How could you do what you did to us? That’s what I want to know. I don’t want to tell you what stupid bands I’m listening to, or how my journey was. I don’t want to know where you’ve parked, or how your life is. So let’s not act like everything is okay when it isn’t.”

  I surprised myself a little, the way I spoke. The last time I’d spoken to Dad had been when I was fourteen. I’d been scared of him then. Especially when he used to tower over me, like he still did.

  But now, I wasn’t scared of him at all. I saw him for the weak man that he was. And he only looked weaker as he looked down at the steering wheel, staying silent.

  It was when he still hadn’t replied that I said, “Do you know what, maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should head back to Mum right now.”

  I was even grabbing the door handle before he said, “Wait, Jonny, no.” It was as if part of him had wanted me to go, hadn’t wanted to face the disaster that he’d created.

  “What do you have to say, then?” I said, moving back into my parapet.

  He sighed, then finally turned to look at me. Outside, I could hear the gentle hum of passing traffic. But the world might as well have been silent. It might as well have just been Dad and I.

  “I’m sorry. I guess that’s a starting point, hey?”

  He smiled at me. I didn’t return it. His smile quickly transformed to a frown. Then, he continued.

  “I never meant for things to work out the way they did. I know the way that I left you and your mother was awful. Don’t think that I didn’t love her, though. I did. I really did. But our relationship had become toxic. Although we loved each other, we weren’t showing it. Didn’t you see that around the house?”

  “A little.” I remembered never seeing them touch. They’d never hug, or kiss, or so much as brush the other’s fingertips. They didn’t even say goodbye to each other when they left the house. “But why, though? I don’t understand.”

  He shook his head. “It’s so difficult to say what it was. But you know when you’re with someone, and you feel that spark? That special connection?”

  I thought of the only person whom I’d ever felt like that about. I quickly thought away again. “Yes. I know what you mean.”

  “Well, when your mum and I met, the first time I laid eyes on her at that party, I felt that spark in me straight away. She was so beautiful. When I spoke to her, she was so funny and easy to get along with. I knew she was the person I was meant to be with. Love at first sight, you might say. And then when we had you a few years later, and I held you in my arms for the first time, I thought that things could never change. That I would always be happy. That I was where I was meant to be, and that I would be there for the rest of my life.”

  “But, with time, things did change. Where before your mother and I would laugh every day, where we would love each other and be kind to each other, instead, we would shout at each other. Pick fights. We weren’t the family that we’d been when you were born, when we used to go on camping trips and fun days out. And, as you started to grow up, as you became a man yourself, I realised that you were the glue that was holding us together. But you didn’t need us as much as you used to, and so that glue was wearing away . . .”

  I thought for a moment. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m trying to say that your mum and I still loved each other, but not in the way that we had before. Your mum might not admit it, but she loved me in the way you might love a friend, or a relative.”

  I laughed, short and sharp. “Dad, you never saw how Mum was after you left. She was distraught. She stopped talking to everyone, even her best friends. All she did was sit around the house all day and mope. Work became a struggle. I was fairly sure she even contemplated suicide a couple of times. I caught her once with four packets of pills on the kitchen worktop. She hadn’t taken any of them, but she might have done if I hadn’t caught her.”

  Where before Dad had been making eye contact with me, he now looked away again.

  “So I don’t think Mum loved you like you might a relative, Dad. She loved you like you would a husband, who was meant to be there for you, and care about you and your family.”

  He didn’t answer me at first. He merely stared through the windscreen, at the evening commuters, leaving another train that had just arrived from London.

  When he did talk, it was a muddle. “I didn’t realise ‒ I couldn’t—” He stopped. Breathed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that she still felt that way. I thought—”

  “Yes. Well, clearly, you thought wrong.”

  He nodded. “I hurt her. I can see that I did that. But what I said before, that was how I felt. I wasn’t happy either. Okay, I never contemplated suicide, but I wasn’t happy in our relationship. I needed love. Love that your mum wasn’t giving to me. And when I met Isabella—”

  I clenched my teeth at the mention of her name.

  “—I went back to that party again. How I felt when I first met your mum. And it was like all the darkness inside of me, all the misery that I’d been living in for all that time, shifted.”

  “But why? Why did Mum make you so miserable?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, it just wasn’t the same anymore. But Isabella was younger, and so beautiful. And when she spoke to me, it made me feel wanted again. Like your mum used to want me.”

  “She still did want you.”

  “I don’t know,” said Dad. “Maybe she did. But it didn’t feel like she did, and that’s what matters.”

  I nodded. “But the way that you left us, it still doesn’t make any sense. Why did you leave so abruptly, and keep everything such a secret? Why didn’t you speak to either of us for a year-and-a-half?”

  He rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “I’m sorry. That’s the part I felt, still feel, most awful about. I never meant for it to go on for so long, I just . . . didn’t know how to resurrect things again. I only meant for it to be a few weeks, and then I was going to call you. But all I could remember was the look in your eyes when I walked out that door. I knew you felt betrayed, and I felt like you wouldn’t want to speak to me again, even if I tried.”

  I scoffed. “So you didn’t bother?”

  “Don’t say that. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be bothered, of course not. You’re my son, and I love you.”

  It jarred me to hear him say those three words.

  “But the more I pictured that look you gave me, the worse I felt. And then I was in a dark place. If it wasn’t for Isabella, I don’t think I’d have got through it.”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Dad, but you’re the only person who’s to blame for all this. Any misery for you was self-inflicted.”

  He looked at me. I could tell from his watery eyes that he’d said all he’d wanted to say, and that he wanted me to forgive him.

  “Look, Dad. I think it’s pretty clear to both of us that I can’t forgive you yet, not after everything that you’ve done. Maybe, with time, we can move on from it. But not now. It’s
too soon.”

  He nodded. “I understand. But son, I just want to say: thank you for hearing me out. Thank you for coming up. You didn’t have to let me back into your life, and it means the world to me.”

  I grunted.

  “Shall I drive us to my house? Do you think we’ve talked enough about this for one day?”

  “I think so.”

  Dad breathed out, and turned the keys in the ignition. “At least we cleared the air a little bit, hey?”

  “Yeah. I guess we did.”

  “Anyway, we’ve got to smile now. I want Isabella to see what a fantastic son you are. I’m looking forward to you meeting her.”

  I grimaced. “Me too.”

  4

  Driving to Dad’s, big town houses quickly turned into trees and fields.

  “We really do live out in the sticks,” Dad said. “I think you’ll love our new home.”

  I’d been staring across the expanse of green fields, stretching for miles. Now, I turned back to Dad. “How long have you been living there for?”

  “A little over a year now. I don’t want to blow our own trumpet, but I think we’ve done well to get it.”

  Of course, when he said we’d done well to get it, what he meant was Isabella had done well to get it, seeing as when he’d left Mum, Dad had pennies to his name.

  Driving into Peene, I saw what Dad meant. The village was dotted with cute, little cottages. They didn’t have thatched rooves or anything, but they did look old, many built with grey stone and slate, and windows that looked like they might fall out at any minute.

  Intermingled with these cottages, however, were modern cottages, with bright red brickwork and gleaming glass features. Dad and Bella’s house was in this style. As we pulled up, a little sign welcoming us to ‘Greenacres’, I saw Dad’s grin grow.

  “So, what do you think?” he said, as the car idled on the driveway.

  I looked at it through the windscreen. This place was far removed from Grantford. And, in truth, the cottage was gorgeous. It looked like it should exist in a fairy tale.

  “Looks really lovely,” I said. “Is Isabella inside?”