Page 139 of The Stranger in Room Six

My mouth goes dry.

‘I know this might sound silly, but my mother used to know a Gerald Wall who was married to a Belinda. Of course, it’s a common-enough name but …’

He stops. This is where I tell him that there is no connection. But he gets in first.

‘The thing is, Mum also told me what you’d said to her last night at the barbecue. I was meant to have been there but got delayed by work.’

I pretend to act dumb. ‘I’ve no idea what you mean.’

His eyes are unwavering. ‘I think you do.’

My mind goes back to those seconds just before we heard the shot inside the home, not knowing it was Mabel who was being attacked.

‘My husband Gerald,’ Karen had said.

‘No,’ I’d snapped. ‘I was Gerald’s wife. Not you.’

‘Your mother has dementia,’ I say now. ‘The other week, she told me she didn’t have any children, and yet here you are. So I’m afraid we can’t believe everything she says.’

‘Sometimes she doesn’t recognize me, but I assure you that I am her son. Your husband’s name is on my birth certificate too.’ Then he brings out a newspaper cutting from his pocket. ‘And this is you, isn’t it?’

I stare in shock at a much younger me, the newspaper article headed ‘Mother jailed for murdering husband’. The picture had been taken on that holiday in the Scilly Isles. Had Derek given it to the paper?

‘My mother used to read it out loud to me over and over again. “This is the woman who killed your father,” she would say. It’s how I know that you’re the same Belinda Wall. There’s still a similarity.’

On any other occasion I would be flattered. Instead, I know I’ve lost.

His voice hardens. ‘Did you track down my mother or is it a coincidence that you found a job here?’

‘I paid someone to find her,’ I stammer.

His voice sharpens even more. ‘Did you plan to hurt her?’

‘I was curious,’ I say, evading the question. ‘I wanted to find out more about their relationship and if she really had a child. Years ago, a friend of your mother’s came to visit me in prison and said that Karen had a child, but I never knew if it was true.’

‘That must have been a shock.’

I’m surprised by this sudden sympathy. Is it a ruse? Either way, I need to seize this moment.

‘Tell me,’ I say hungrily, ‘exactly what happened between your mother and my husband. I had no idea they were together, or that they’d had you, until just before he … he died.’

‘My mother just told me that she fell in love with an accountant who was doing some work for her. She said that he had a lonely marriage –’

‘Lonely?’ I burst in. ‘He had me. His girls. His responsibilities. His bloody crosswords.’

‘Mum also said that he wanted to wait until Gillian and Elspeth had gone to university. This upset her. She wanted him to move in and be a proper dad to me. It sounds as if he was trying to please everyone. It couldn’t have been easy for him.’

‘Then he shouldn’t have had an affair,’ I shoot back. ‘My eldest daughter won’t talk to me. Your mother divided our family. She even took our house from us.’

Stephen shakes his head. ‘Youdivided the family by murdering him.’

‘I lost my temper, but he deserved it.’

It’s not until I hear the words leave my mouth, that I allow the real truth – the one I’d been hiding from myself all these years – to finally come out.

At that moment when I’d pushed Gerald, I had indeed wanted to kill him. More than that. I’d wanted to smash his adulterous skull.

Wasn’t that why, deep down, I had gone along with the lawyer’s advice to plead guilty?