Page 115 of Killing Mind

‘Josie, please,’ she insisted.

‘You know more about me than most of your work colleagues. See, the problem is, any news you have for me is going to require an emotional response of some kind and I’m not sure what I’ve got left to give, and if you want the truth in all its brutal glory I don’t know what news I’m hoping for more.’

Penn suspected that was the anger talking; resentment towards her mother for having left in the first place and rage at not being able to let it out. To be able to throw all the hurt at her mother. It was still bubbling away inside her. But she deserved the truth.

‘Your mum’s alive, Josie.’

She stared at him but he saw her body deflate before him as though she was letting out a breath she’d been holding for a year and a half.

‘She’s at a place called Unity Farm.’

‘Is she okay. I mean, has she?…’

‘She’s fine, as far as we know, but we also know she’s not being held by force.’

Penn watched as her eyes reddened around unshed tears. She deserved the whole truth.

‘I understand,’ she said, thickly. ‘She’s alive but she still doesn’t want to see me.’

That wasn’t a fact he could argue with.

‘Josie, if it helps, the more we learn about this place the more we understand how persuasive they are. They don’t use threats or violence. They use seduction and promises. They prey on people’s weaknesses, their vulnerabilities. They find a small chink and then massage it until it is much more. They preyed on your mum’s grief after your father died. They found some vulnerability in her and exploited—’

‘She had no one to take care of,’ Josie said, suddenly. ‘You know I brushed it aside at the time, but every day after Dad died she’d mention that she was lost without him to take care of. She kept offering to come round here to clean and cook and…’

‘Cook?’ he asked.

Josie nodded. ‘My dad never had a takeaway in his life. Mum wouldn’t hear of it. She loved cooking from scratch. She was… is a brilliant cook. Her food…’

‘It’s what she does at the Farm, Josie.’

She smiled sadly. ‘I’m not surprised. Mum would always do anything to help other people. She has a very big heart.’

‘All is not lost, Josie. Maybe one day…’

‘I can’t think about that. If I do, I’ll start to hope and then it’ll just be disappointment all over again. A part of me has to stay angry with her. It’s self-preservation.’

He understood. ‘I just want you to know that she didn’t just up and leave you. She would have been courted, flattered, complimented and manipulated.’

Right then Josie did shed a tear. ‘Okay, I’ll try and forgive her and then maybe I can forgive myself.’

‘For what?’ Penn asked.

‘I’m afraid I wasn’t totally honest with you,’ she said, lowering her head. ‘It’s all my fault, you see. I told you about the last time we spoke, but what I didn’t tell you was that we had a huge argument. I was being selfish and was wrapped up in my own grief. I wanted my mum to be as she’d always been – there for me – but my father’s death hit her so hard she couldn’t offer comfort to me or anyone else. Our grief didn’t bring us closer together. I allowed it to tear us apart.’

Penn could hear the shame in her voice. ‘That doesn’t make you responsible.’

She looked up as tears rolled over her cheeks. ‘I told her I never wanted to see her again. I’d just found out I was pregnant and my marriage was in trouble. I wasn’t coping and I took it out on her. She tried to ring me the following day and I ignored her calls. I’m still not sure what I was punishing her for; I only know that it was the most painful time in both our lives.’

Penn felt for the torment this woman had put herself through. She wasn’t the cause of her mother joining a manipulative cult, but their estrangement had certainly made Unity Farm’s job easier. Sheila had been grieving for the love of her life and her only child wanted nothing to do with her.

‘By the time the neighbour told me about the man she saw hanging around, my emotions were all over the…’

‘Who?’ Penn asked, confused. For some reason he’d assumed she’d been recruited by a woman.

‘The big man. The man in black. The one with the massive Range Rover.’

Ninety-Three