Page 57 of Vengeance is Mine

‘You’ve read the diaries?’ Anthony asked, clocking the shoe box.

‘I’m working my way through them. Have you?’ I asked.

‘Not for a very long time.’

‘But you know what’s in them?’

‘I do.’

‘Is that why you wanted me to read them?’

‘What you have to remember about Carole is that she wanted to be a mother so badly, and it just wasn’t happening for her. We assumed that we couldn’t have children, and it devastated her. By the time she found out she was pregnant with Dominic, she’d given up hope. She’d resigned herself to never becoming a mum.’

‘But surely, news of a miracle baby should have made her happy.’

‘It did. For a little while. But… I knew Carole had been ill for a long time. Depression set in long before Dominic was born. I thought a baby would have been the cure, but it wasn’t. It made everything worse, and I didn’t help by not being at home very much.’

‘You were a lorry driver, weren’t you?’ Mum asked.

‘Yes. Long-distance. Money was tight, and I was getting well paid. I thought I could make up for my absence by providing my family with material things, so I started accepting more hours. Longer hauls for more money, so I could buy nice things for them both.’

I removed the lid of the shoe box and picked up one of the hardback diaries. ‘The behaviour Carole talks about – Dominic being disruptive, touching girls, hitting boys, terrorising the neighbourhood – it wasn’t true, was it?’

Grandad seemed to deflate in his chair. It was a while before he answered. ‘No.’

‘But when I was looking for you and spoke to your ex-neighbour, she said Dominic was a problem child.’

‘If you’re told something often enough you start to believe it. It wasn’t long before visitors stopped coming to the house, people stopped chatting to us in the street. Carole isolated herself even more through her lies.’

‘And children stopped wanting to play with Dominic,’ I added.

‘That’s right.’

‘Which is why he withdrew and became sad and lonely. He thought there was something wrong with him, because that’s what he had been led to believe.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, when the doctor offered medication to improve his low mood, he took it.’

‘Yes,’ he said, not making eye contact.

‘And that medication – Fenadine – caused him to lash out at Joby Turnbull and kill Stephanie White.’

‘Who’s Joby Turnbull?’ Mum asked.

‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘Yes, it did. And that’s why Carole killed herself,’ he said, turning towards his wedding photo on the table by his chair.

‘When did you find out it was all a lie?’ I asked.

‘After Carole died, and I read those diaries.’

‘She never told you?’

‘No. It must have been eating away at her, what she’d done. She couldn’t live with the guilt, I suppose,’ he said, looking at his wife’s photograph again. Despite what she’d done, I could tell he still loved her.

‘It was Carole who needed help? Not Dominic?’ Mum asked. I nodded. ‘So, when she came to my house ranting and raving, it wasn’t because she wanted me to stay away from her son?—’