Page 47 of Killing Mind

He nodded his understanding. ‘It’s true that Sammy was heartbroken after her split with Callum. If I’m honest I didn’t pay too much attention. Par for the course of growing up and, truth be known, I was relieved. Didn’t like the guy one bit.’

And after meeting him that was certainly something she could understand.

‘So, I didn’t get too involved in the upset. I left the tea and sympathy to my wife and waited for it to pass. But it didn’t. It all seemed to get worse. She withdrew from her friends, stopped going out. Stopped showering and taking care of herself.’

‘College?’ Kim asked.

‘Occasionally but she’d see Callum there so that didn’t help, but we had to do something.’

‘Like what?’

He looked uncomfortable with what he was about to say.

‘We tried to shock her out of it. We showered her, we dressed her and I walked her into her first college class of the day. I felt sure that once she was back amongst her friends and her studies everything would snap back into place. It was a break-up, for God’s sake.’

Kim felt her stomach react unfavourably to how he had treated his daughter, but she wasn’t here to judge his parenting style. He had wanted to bring her back to herself. Yet a part of her felt there had to have been another way.

‘Worst mistake I ever made,’ he said, staring down into his drink. ‘Although I didn’t know it at the time.’

‘What happened?’

‘She came home with a smile on her face. Still retreated to her room and stayed there but there was a smile. It was a triumph. Next morning, she went to college of her own accord. I didn’t question it. I was just relieved that she seemed more herself.’

‘So, why the regret?’ Kim asked, wondering how they’d got from that stage to where they were now.

‘Because what I didn’t know then that I know now was that was the day everything changed.’ He paused. ‘That was the day she met Britney.’

‘Who the hell is Britney?’ Kim asked.

‘A recruiter for Unity Farm.’

‘Are you joking me?’

He shook his head. ‘They have them all over the place: colleges, homeless shelters, even AA meetings; anywhere they might find people open and vulnerable to the process.’

‘Go on,’ Kim said. Tyler Short had attended Dudley College too.

‘A cult has two objectives: to recruit and to make money.’

‘Did Samantha have money?’ Kim asked, wondering if there was a trust fund she didn’t know about.

Myles shook his head. ‘No, we had some savings but I’m getting ahead here. You have to understand how it works. Sammy wasn’t taken to a dark room and indoctrinated with the group’s ideology. There was no instant injection. It was much more gradual than that. She mentioned this girl’s name a few times. We were sad she hadn’t reconnected with Cassie or any more of her old friends but pleased that she was spending time with someone.

‘Eventually, she started staying over at Britney’s and that’s when we noticed the subtle changes. It started with small criticisms of our lifestyle: the waste, the greed, our lack of concern for the bigger picture. She began meditating and spent hours in her room in silence. Then my wife started to notice money going missing from her purse. She didn’t take it too seriously at first but she started keeping track and the amounts were getting higher. At first five pounds, ten pounds, twenty until it was everything that was in there.’ He paused. ‘And then we got the statement.’

‘What statement?’

‘Credit card. She’d opened a new card in my name and accrued a bill of almost ten thousand pounds, in one month.’

Kim couldn’t help her surprise at the way the girl appeared to have changed.

‘We confronted her about it and there was a huge row. There was no remorse. She’d found a deserving cause to which she could distribute our obscene wealth as she called it.’

The view seemed extreme to Kim. They had a nice house and nice cars and it looked like they’d worked for it, but they certainly weren’t ostentatious or obscene.

‘And that was the last night Sammy spent under our roof. She moved to Unity Farm and came back to the house one more time.’

‘For what?’ Kim asked.