‘How do you know his name?’ Arthur demanded, keeping a deliberate distance from me.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I replied, unwilling to tell him it was likely Simon was still alive.
‘Has Kenneth been in touch?’
‘Not unless it was through a clairvoyant. He’s dead.’
Arthur looked relieved.
‘Well? Was he Simon’s father?’
‘No, I am,’ he snapped, then paused. ‘But Kenneth is, biologically.’
Arthur may have been a browbeaten, pathetic little man, but he wasn’t a liar. He reluctantly told me the story of meeting Doreen while she was pregnant, and how during her many absences, she’d often gone back to Kenneth.
‘And Simon knew all about this?’ I asked, amazed I’d not known.
‘Yes, but not until he went to visit her in London when he was thirteen. Kenneth was there and Simon found out who he was. It devastated him. Simon never saw him again.’
But I had proof he was wrong.
‘Now, what’s all this about?’ he added.
I hesitated. I could tell him everything I knew: Simon had upped and left of his own free will, and four days later went to visit that Jagger man in prison. But what would be the point? If he’d planned to come back, he’d have done it long ago. So I’d only be giving Arthur false hope. And once he told his wife Shirley, she’d inform Roger and old wounds that were still healing would be reopened, all to find a man who didn’t want to be found.
What on earth would I tell the kids? For four years I’d led them to believe their dad was dead – how was I supposed to explain I was wrong and that he’d left them? God only knows how much damage that could do. So all I told Arthur was that a prison warden had been trying to trace Kenneth’s next of kin after his death.
‘Catherine,’ he asked as I began to walk away, ‘how are the children?’
‘You lost the right to ask about them the moment you accused me of murder,’ I replied, and left him to wallow in guilt alone.
I was beyond angry and I needed to hurt Simon. I hurried home with my fists balled, furious at Simon’s gut-wrenching betrayal. Once inside, I grabbed a pair of scissors and tore into his clothes. Ribbons of material from every jumper, pair of trousers, T-shirt and jacket flew through the air and scattered around the room. I didn’t want anybody else to wear clothes stained by his lies.
Framed photographs of him I’d kept on the sideboard were hurled into bins. Any visible trace of my bastard husband was erased from the house there and then. Suddenly I remembered the pink rosebushes he’d planted for me by the kitchen window.
I ran to the garage, took the shears from a hook and hacked them to the ground. He’d planted them for me when I was at my lowest, and they’d become a place I’d visit when I needed comforting. He’d even ruined that.
When I finished, I sat on the lawn, too numb to blink, cry or be sick despite wanting to do all three. By the time everyone arrived home late in the afternoon, Simon was dead to me. Again.
‘Where have Dad’s pictures gone?’ frowned James, the first to notice.
‘They’re in the loft,’ I lied.
‘Why?’
‘Because I put them there,’ I replied sharply.
The kids looked at each other, puzzled, but rightly sensed not to push me any further. Tom followed me upstairs to the bedroom.
‘What’s going on, Catherine?’ he asked. When I didn’t reply, he put his hand on my shoulder and tried to pull me towards him. I couldn’t even look him in the eye.
‘I’ve cleaned out the wardrobe. You can use it for your clothes if you like.’
‘What happened today?’
‘I woke up.’
Then I locked myself in the bathroom to try and put the roof back on my rage. It was only the second time I’d kept something from Tom – the first was something I’d never told a soul, not even Simon.
But Simon’s secret was far worse than mine.
Christmas Day
Tom and the children were fast asleep while I spent the early hours of Christmas morning in the attic, tearing up my wedding photographs.
I’d been struggling to get to sleep when I suddenly remembered where they were, and I couldn’t let Simon’s face remain in my house for even one more night. I didn’t look at any of them as I took them out of the albums and ripped them into pieces. By the time I finished, they surrounded my cold bare feet like confetti. I was too angry to go back to bed. I sat on the floorboards listening to the central heating gurgle, thinking about him again.
I was livid with myself for the time I’d wasted crying over him; worrying about him; making ‘missing’ posters; phoning hospitals; mourning him . . . It had all been for nothing. He’d simply run away.
While we’d left no stone unturned in our frantic search, he’d been on his way to London to visit a man he barely knew to give him his most treasured possession. His body wasn’t rotting in a ditch somewhere – it was very much alive and out there, away from us.
I wished he were dead.
I clenched my fists every time I thought what an idiot and a liar he’d made of me. I was embarrassed and humiliated. The only person who I might’ve possibly confided in was Paula, but I’d lost her too. And even then I don’t think she could’ve taken on that burden without telling Roger.
It was like someone had attached a valve to my heart, and any love I’d ever felt for Simon was leaking into the air like a foul-smelling gas. And, all the time, I kept returning to the same three-letter word: Why?
I knew one place on earth he’d gone after leaving us, to see his biological father in prison, but it threw up so many new questions, each more impossible to answer than the last. Where did he go after he saw Kenneth? Who else knew he wasn’t dead? How long had he dreamed of running away? Was it a spur-of-the-moment decision or part of a twisted plan to marry me, play the doting dad and then move on? Why had I never felt him slipping away?
Was he more like his mother than he’d let on? Like her, did he have other lovers scattered around the country? Where does someone go when they have no friends and no money? Did he regret it, but didn’t know how to come home?
Why, Simon? Why?
My frustration rang louder than the church bells would later that day. But the only thing I prayed for was that he was roaming the earth in an eternal state of wretched misery.
Because that’s exactly how he’d left me.
Northampton, twenty years earlier
11 April
There was nothing wrong with Tom: he was what most women would describe as Mr Right. But Simon had taught me even the right people can wrong you when you least expect it.