I shook as his bald statement shocked through me; if Jamie had not been holding me I might have slid to the floor as my knees shook and nearly gave way: she’d taken her own life, dear God!
Bobby was relentless, his voice filled with self-loathing.
“She was dead, he said she’d killed herself, and do you know what I did? Can you guess what I did? Nothing: I did nothing, felt nothing, all I wanted was for them to take her away, and wonder why she had to do that in my home: surely there were other places, public toilets, someplace else, anywhere else but here. That was all I could think: that and walk around fucking annoyed, can you believe it? I was annoyed she’d done that here, what a fucking inconvenience! That’s who I was, that’s what I wanted, and that’s why I’m going to Hell!”
He stopped, staring into the distance, his face lined and haggard, a look of self-loathing on his face like I hope to never see again.
Shari took his hand, unlaced his fingers, and slipped her hand into his.
“The rest, baby, finish it, please. ” She murmured.
“A few weeks later they arrested Dad, but not over her death; that went away, one of his pals saw to that. Dad was arrested and sent for extradition hearings, of all things. The American government wanted him, they were charging him with “Crimes against America,” can you believe it?”
I was horrified, but fascinated, Jamie too; that set, “Angry Jamie” face was still there, but there was curiosity too: what had that man done? Bobby picked up on that, and his face twisted, again that look of self-loathing, but laced with contempt too. His voice was low, anger and deep, deep shame apparent in every word.
“Dad and his… friend in the US were selling stuff to a Middle-Eastern country, things the Americans really didn’t want them having: special batteries and microchips, the kind they use in cruise missiles, a huge no-no, so they took him to court under something called the PATRIOT Act. It went back and forth for a couple of years, and it was thrown out, then the Appeal Court kicked in, decided he was guilty as charged, and Dad was extradited. It was eight, nearly nine years ago now, they mostly kept it out of the news, the British Government didn’t want people knowing they’d let this stuff go on, I suppose, who knows, but the American news channels got hold of it; you might even have caught some of it. Dad was dragged off to America by the scruff of his neck, tried, and jailed. He’s doing 40 years for it in a federal super-max prison in Indiana now…”
“And Barbara?” prompted Jamie, “what about her, what happened?”
Bobby looked up and blinked, obviously still in his memories, and glanced at Rick, who patted his knee and took up the story.
“Dad had her buried in Stanwix, we had to bury her in the municipal cemetery because she was a suicide and her church, the Catholic Church wouldn’t bury her in consecrated ground; can you believe it in this day and age? Bobby and me, we acted like a pair of disrespectful little shits at her funeral, and dad put up a huge memorial pasted with lies about his ‘beloved wife, sorely missed blah-blah-blah’; lies on top of lies, and yet more lies.”
He rubbed his temples, obviously not relishing this story, but determined to get it out.
“We never went back until Yaz and Shari came into our lives, and they made us see what we’d done, who we were. We went back to the cemetery to apologise to Barbara and ask her forgiveness and that disgusting monument to my father’s ego and lies and delusions was gone; Nicky had come home without us even knowing it, he was only half a mile away and he never came here, never contacted us, never let us know he was back, he’d had that monstrosity taken down and crushed; he put that decent, honest memorial stone there in its place, not her children, not us, but we should have…”
He shook his head, regret and loathing on his face.
“After they carted dad away Bobby and me, we just lived here. The Crime Agency reckoned most everything in the house had been bought with what they called “the proceeds of criminal enterprise,” so they took it all away to be sold to compensate the Crown Prosecution Service for their expenses in investigating him and bringing him to trial. We lived pretty much hand to mouth. Bobby got a job with the Borough Council, driving a grass cutter and cleaning the streets, but me, nothing; nobody wanted to hire a mouthy teenager with no job skills in an employment black-spot like Cumbria. So we lived alone in this big, empty house, no real food, no money, and no prospects.”
He stopped to smile as Yaz stroked his cheek, kissing her hand before continuing.
“As I said, I couldn’t find work, and I really had nothing to do all day, I was here alone while Bobby worked his arse off for minimum wage, but to my mind now, it was kind of what we deserved; given the way we’d been, the way life turned out seems like the beginning of the punishment we were due. Of course, back then, that’s not what I thought. Oh no, I was convinced we’d been unfairly persecuted, it was all Nicky’s fault, we’d done nothing wrong, one day we’d find him and fix him, blah, blah, de-blah, the usual. ”
“I started going through all the paperwork the CPS had returned, mounds of the stuff, all the garbage my arse-wipe father collected over the years. It was the trivia only an obsessive psycho would keep, because most of it was garbage, till receipts for groceries, bloody nonsense, but piles and piles of it, collected over years. I started going through it all, looking for who knows what, mostly to keep myself occupied, and in the back of my mind I think I was looking for a clue as to who or where my mother was.”
For some reason he locked eyes with Yasmin, who gazed levelly at him, then slowly nodded, like she was giving him permission for something. Strangely, so did Shari. Bobby was still in his own private reverie, his face still and his eyes distant and unseeing, only the restless twining of his fingers in Shari’s giving a clue to his actual state.
Rick shook his shoulders like a man adjusting a heavy load, and carried on speaking.
“There are probably three tons of papers up in the attics, dozens of crates, filled with rubbish, mostly, but I kept looking through them, looking for something, anything that made sense. I’d been wondering where my mother was; if Nicky’s mother was here, and mine wasn’t, where could she be, who was she, why wasn’t she here, that kind of thing, so I went through all those papers, and I found something.”
Yasmin took his hands in hers and nodded.
“The rest, baby, it’s okay, tell them… ” she murmured. Rick nodded.
“I kept coming across references to an Ayesha Shahida, and a part of a letter from the health authority in Tower Hamlets talking about post-natal care, dated around the time Bobby was born. I assumed dad had that because this Ayesha person was Bobby and my mother, so I went down to London to find her and ask her.”
“Did you find her?” asked Jamie, and Rick nodded.
“Oh yes, she and her two daughters.”
The penny dropped and I realised he was talking about Yasmin and Shereen.
“My father had somehow found out about Ayesha Shahida years before, she was a successful property developer in East London, and he wanted her money, her business, her, and so he took everything, he took everything she owned, he destroyed her family, and he brutalised her for years…”
I’m sure Jamie’s shocked expression was echoed on my face at that terrible story, but Rick wasn’t finished.
“When I showed up at her home Ayesha was ready to kill me, she hated me, my family, everything about us, but she held it in. Instead, she told me the truth, the first time anyone had ever told me who and what I really was, what my father had done, what he’d left behind, and who he really was.
“Ayesha accepted that I knew nothing of all this, that I was as shocked and sickened as she was, and she told me the truth about Nicky; she sat me down and she told me what my father, his father, had done to him, what he’d boasted to her about the things he’d done to Nicky.”
“She made me see how wrong I’d been, she told me the truth about Barbara, who she was and what he’d done to her.”
He was sweating now; the strain of telling us all this, of unburdening himself of this dreadful story was telling on him; obviously this was not a story he wanted to tell, but he was just as obviously compelled to tell us the whole horrifying truth.
“Ayesha felt sorry for me; she saw how this had affected me, and she apologised, can you believe it? She actually asked my forgiveness for showing me her anger and rage, when so much wrong had been done to her…”
He shook his head wonderingly. Yasmin leaned up and kissed his cheek, smiling at him as she nodded for him to continue.
“Ayesha asked me to live with her and her two daughters; she was concerned for me, she was worried I’d be hurt; isn’t that something? After everything Dad had done to her she was worried for me. She asked me to stay, to be a part of her family, to live there with her… and my two sisters.”
He stared defiantly at us, daring us to say something, to blow up, be disgusted, yell, shout, say anything. Jamie and I just stared back wide-eyed and gobsmacked; we never saw that one coming.
“That’s right; Shereen and Yasmin are also the daughters of Robert Davies, or Brian Davis, if you prefer: my bastard father is their father too.”
Yasmin looked at Jamie and I, obviously gauging our reaction, then smiled.
“Jamie… Nia, I asked Rick to share who and what we are with you because, well, I think you’ll understand. I’m right aren’t I?”
Jamie glanced at me, saw my agreement, and slowly nodded.
“Yes, you’re right. It was the eyes, wasn’t it?”
Yasmin’s smile literally lit up the whole room.
“As soon as we saw you at Stanwix we knew. Nothing’s going to disguise those eyes. Both of you with eyes the exact same shade? There was no other explanation. Shari said it just a little while ago: no more secrets. Too much has happened with this family; too much wrong has been done to us, to Ricky, Bobby and especially Nicky, the… things he did to Nicky, frightening, disfiguring injuries, a lifetime of pain…”
She squeezed Ricky’s hand tightly.