Page 76 of Vengeance is Mine

‘I shouldn’t really. I’ve been on a big diet for months, but I eat when I’m nervous. Actually, I eat when I’m excited, scared, sad and angry. Food is my comfort blanket.’

‘Do you need a comfort blanket?’ he asked, while rifling through the tub.

‘My father has just been murdered, of course I do.’

‘Sorry. That was insensitive of me.’ He opted for a Crunchie. He unwrapped it, picked up his coffee and sat back, crossing his legs at the knee. ‘What can you tell me about your father?’

‘What do you want to know that you don’t already?’

‘What has he been doing with his life since he was released last year?’

‘Adapting,’ she said, dunking the Mars into her coffee and swirling it around. ‘Well, trying to adapt. It’s not easy getting used to life on the outside when you’ve been locked away for twenty years. It took him a while to get used to the changes. I didn’t realise how difficult it would be for him.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, he did a few courses while in prison on computers, so he was able to use them, understand the basics, but things like social media, iPhones, flat-screen TVs, self-service tills in supermarkets – that was all another world to him. I had to show him how to do everything, and he hated not being fully independent. He had to keep reminding himself that he was still only forty-one, because he felt like an old man with dementia at times.’

Terry looked away. That’s what it was like dealing with his father.

‘But he managed to adapt?’

‘Oh yes. He had a job.’

‘Where?’

‘The supermarket in Blaydon shopping centre. I used to go to school with a girl who works there. I asked her if she could have a word with the manager, and he got him a job in the warehouse and stacking shelves after the store closed. It wasn’t what my dad wanted to do, but we were treating it like a confidence booster, a stepping stone to something better. It gave him a wage, independence and the chance to meet new people.’

‘Did it work?’

‘He’d only been there for four months.’

‘Plenty of time to make friends.’

‘I’m not sure he did make friends. He never talked about anyone.’

‘What did they think of him working there, given his past?’

Dawn adjusted her position on the pine dining chair at the table. Her eyes danced around the room.

‘What are you not telling me?’ Terry asked.

‘We thought it would be best if people didn’t know who Dominic was.’

‘We?’

‘Me and Dominic.’

‘His name was splashed all over the papers in the run-up to him being released.’

‘Yes, but there was no new photograph of him – just the ones of him taken twenty years ago. Prison is hardly a health centre. He’d aged a great deal in those two decades locked away. He was unrecognisable.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Well, we just got him the job using his middle name rather than his first name.’

‘What was his middle name?’

‘Rupert. After his grandfather.’