My Husband's Son: A dark and gripping psychological thriller

by Deborah O'Connor

  Reading my silence for the admission it was, he shook his head.

  ‘You have got to be kidding.’

  ‘No stone unturned Jason. I had to be sure.’

  Hearing his own words quoted back at him, he grimaced.

  ‘Since you made your little report, how many man hours do you think the police have spent on this line of inquiry?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How many hours?’ He folded his arms. ‘Come on, hazard a guess.’

  ‘I’m not sure, I never thought –’

  ‘That’s right, you didn’t think.’ He shook his head. ‘The more time that passes, the fewer resources the police have to devote to Barney’s case. I want them to spend every second of that precious time on real leads. Not investigating a child I have already seen and discounted.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘On real leads,’ he said. ‘No more, Heidi. That’s it. They said this man has moved on and that you’re asking them to try and track down where he might have gone. You have to promise me you won’t bother them with this again.’

  ‘But Jason –’

  ‘If you can’t promise me, then I’m done.’ He looked to the floor. ‘We’re done.’

  ‘No.’ I pressed myself against him and tried to arrange his arms back around my waist. ‘Don’t say things like that.’ But he kept his arms limp and no sooner had I placed them on my hips than they fell away, landing heavy at his side.

  ‘Yes.’ He seemed surprised, as though it was the act of saying the words out loud that had made him realise his true intentions. ‘I can’t see any other way to make you understand.’

  Again, I pushed myself into him and tried to place his arms around me. It was like trying to scale a smooth, flat wall.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘No more police.’ I felt him relax a touch, a tiny almost imperceptible give. I pushed harder, scrabbling to fit his embrace.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I stood outside the park, trying to decide whether or not to go in. The fireworks display had yet to start, but the bonfire’s flames were already established, their orange tongues licking at the feet of the guy.

  I’d spent the day wandering around a shopping centre, raking over this morning’s row in my head. I knew I had to stand by my promise not to waste any more police time. Still, I couldn’t walk away from the boy just yet. Not when there was a chance I could pursue things alone, with Tommy.

  I strode through the gates and headed for the bandstand at the top of the hill. The temperature was close to freezing. Shivering, I buttoned my coat all the way to the top and bunched my scarf high around my neck. I thought back to our last encounter. How easily he’d pulled my dress away from my shoulders. My teeth began to chatter. The shivering was getting worse. I pulled the scarf a little higher.

  I reached the top of the hill and looked down at the scene below. The park was packed with people, the grass underfoot flattened and muddy. As well as the bonfire burning bright in the large field, there was a multicoloured Ferris wheel, waltzers and a smattering of food trucks offering milky tea and baked potatoes. I turned back towards the bandstand and scanned the milling crowds. It didn’t take long to clock Tommy. Wearing a black donkey jacket over a thick-ribbed polo neck jumper, he was smoking a cigarette, his shoulders hunched against the chill.

  I made my way over to where he stood.

  ‘All on your tod?’

  I’d caught him off guard. His face broke into a huge smile.

  ‘I was.’ He took a last drag of his cigarette. ‘But not anymore.’ He peered over my shoulder, towards someone or something.

  Confused, I turned to look. Lumbering over to where we stood, his slip-on trainers no match for the muddy grass, was an out-of-breath Keith. Sporting a large black-and-white-striped bobble hat, matching scarf and grey duffel coat, he looked like an overweight schoolboy.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he huffed. He had yet to notice my presence. ‘I was at the hospice.’

  ‘How’s she doing?’ asked Tommy.

  ‘They said it’s a matter of days.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  Keith shrugged.

  ‘You remember Heidi,’ said Tommy, guiding me forward.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind me tagging along?’

  ‘Not at all, darling,’ said Keith. He gave Tommy an approving wink. ‘The more the merrier.’ He looked back, towards the hill he’d just climbed. ‘Speaking of which.’

  I followed his gaze just in time to see a small blond head appear over the edge of the summit. Waving a sparkler, he was busy drawing yellow shapes in the air and hopping from foot to foot in a kind of excited jig.

  The boy.

  Tossing aside his now extinguished sparkler, he came and stood next to Keith, who drew him in to his hip and ruffled his hair.

  Hit by the same gut-rush of recognition as before, I had to fight every instinct I had not to hoist him over my shoulder and make a run for it. Up close, his face was longer and slimmer than in any of the pictures I’d seen of Barney (but that was to be expected with the age he was now) and his hair (a fine, white blond when he was taken) had darkened and thickened into the exact sandy yellow that covered Jason’s scalp. A small crescent-shaped scar decorated his right cheek. I felt a pinch of doubt. Barney didn’t have any scars. But then he could easily have got the mark at some point in the last five years. It meant nothing.

  I was trying to order my thoughts when another two people appeared in the boy’s wake. One of them I recognised as the chubby girl from the café and the other was a tall, acne-ridden lad of eleven or twelve.

  ‘And this is our Kimberley and our Jake,’ said Keith, giving them a wave.

  Once again, I was struck by the feeling I’d had when I last saw Kimberley in the café. She reminded me of someone. But who?

  I nodded hello and then took myself to one side of the group. It was all as Tommy had said. Keith hadn’t, as I’d feared, fled the country. Instead, he and his sister had gone on the run, not for any of the reasons I’d thought, but because of her abusive ex-husband and the threat he posed. I looked at the silly hat Keith wore. The oversized bobble wobbled every time he moved his head.

  ‘I was just saying to Keith,’ said Tommy, trying to involve me in the conversation. ‘The caff’s not the same without him just down the road.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Keith, putting a conspiratorial arm around my shoulder. ‘He doesn’t miss me.’ He patted his belly. ‘He misses my need for a bacon and egg sarnie every morning.’ He turned back to Tommy. ‘Profits taken a bit of a dent?’

  Tommy was about to reply when there was a loud crack above our heads. The fireworks display had begun. We all jumped and turned to face the opposite hill. Purple, blue and silver fizzled down through the night sky.

  I watched as Kimberley retrieved her phone from her coat pocket and held it up in the air, ready to selfie against the background of sparkling fireworks. Adjusting her ponytail, she pouted and pressed the button. A small blue square appeared in the middle of the screen and the camera zeroed in on her small, porcine eyes and neat, snub nose. She looked to be sixteen, maybe seventeen. Her features were almost fully established; her chin, cheeks and forehead markers on the tipping point of what would be her final, adult face.

  And then it hit me. The reason I felt like I’d seen her somewhere before.

  The realisation was so intense I had to stop myself from shouting out.

  I stole another look at Kimberley, my brain struggling to recalibrate. She was busy uploading her selfie, her face illuminated by the screen’s blue glow.

  All this time I’d been focused on Keith, convinced there must be some connection between him and Barney’s disappearance. And there was a connection. I’d just been looking for it in the wrong place.

  A series of spectacular golden rockets started to rat-a-tat-tat their way into the heavens. The boy tugged on Keith’s hand.

  ‘Keith,’ he said, trying to get his attention, ‘I’m hungry.
’

  Keith placed his hand to his ear.

  ‘I can hear roaring. Was that a lion?’ He looked to his left and right, pretending not to see the boy. ‘Has a lion escaped from the zoo?’

  The boy giggled and wrapped his arms around Keith’s waist.

  ‘There it is again,’ said Keith, hoisting the boy up into a piggyback. He swung round, pretending to search the nearby area. The boy clung to his shoulders, laughing. ‘There must be a lion. Is he hungry?’ He scratched his head, thinking. ‘Does he want steak and chips? All lions love steak and chips.’ The boy squealed in delight.

  Finally, the boy let out a loud, ‘Roar!’ directly into Keith’s ear. Feigning shock, Keith jumped and in one quick movement returned the boy to the floor and drew him into his side.

  I remembered the second time I’d tried to go back to the off-licence. The day I met Tommy. In my possession I’d had the four photofits I’d taken from Jason’s file. Composites of the people who had been seen in or around Ashbrook House on the day Barney went missing, they contained drawings of three men and one woman.

  It turned out I’d had blinkers on. Self-inflicted blinkers.

  The boy was still hassling Keith and Tommy for food. I stepped into their eyeline.

  ‘I’m hungry, too.’ I knelt down to address the boy directly. ‘Do you want to come with me and get a hot dog?’

  Tommy gave me an odd look. I couldn’t get a read on it. It was as though he was trying to communicate something he thought I’d understand. Maybe he’d been hoping the two of us would go out for dinner together once the display was over and didn’t want me to ruin my appetite?

  I grabbed the boy’s gloved hand.

  ‘You lot want anything?’ I asked, already moving away.

  Keith looked to Tommy for the answer.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Tommy, sending us off with a wave. ‘We’ll wait here. Don’t be long.’

  We set off down the hill at pace. Unable to distinguish between the bangs and cracks searing the air above our heads and the hammering in my chest, I tried to process the fact I was alone with the boy. Keith seemed unconcerned that we’d gone off together. Was that because he thought I didn’t know his secret or because he genuinely had nothing to hide?

  ‘It was nice of your uncle to bring you tonight,’ I said as we reached the row of food vans. ‘Could your mum not come?’

  The boy looked at me blankly, that way kids do when they’re a bit shy, and turned his attention back to the explosions in the sky.

  I tried another tack.

  ‘Does he look after you often?’

  ‘Look after me?’ he asked, like I was stupid.

  He spoke with a mild Geordie twang, but apart from that, his accent was fairly neutral. Unplaceable almost.

  ‘What would you like?’ I asked once we were in the queue.

  ‘Are you Tommy’s girlfriend?’

  ‘Am I what? No, no. We’re friends.’

  He cocked his head.

  ‘You talk funny.’

  ‘That’s because I’m not from round here. What about you? Where are you from?’

  But his attention was elsewhere. We’d reached the front of the queue. I bought two hot dogs and handed one to the boy. He lifted it to his mouth and before he took a bite, we shared a smile. I was the first to look away.

  I’d been so close to giving up, so close to accepting defeat. What if I had? What would have happened to the child then?

  I looked back up the hill to where Keith, Tommy, Kimberley and Jake stood laughing and taking pictures of each other on their phones. They looked like any other happy family, here to celebrate Guy Fawkes. It was no wonder Kimberley seemed familiar. I had, after all, spent hours studying her features. Or, rather, those of her mother.

  The fourth photofit. The woman with frizzy hair, snub nose and small, round eyes. Despite multiple witnesses remembering seeing her around and about the flats that day, this woman had never come forward to rule herself out of police enquiries. The likeness to Kimberley was unmistakable. Mother and daughter.

  Now I had all the pieces, it was easy to put them together.

  Tommy had told me that Keith’s sister, Jenny, had been in an abusive relationship. He’d said that, when she refused to leave her husband, Kimberley and Jake had been taken into care for a period of time. That it had, understandably, left Jenny messed up. Then that night in the alley, her ex-husband had mentioned only two children to Keith: a son and a daughter. Jake and Kimberley.

  I could only guess at the detail of what happened that day at the flats, but it seemed most likely that Jenny had been there. Taking Barney had been opportunistic. Presumably, to replace the children she missed so terribly.

  It was circumstantial. I’d need to see Jenny to be certain. But my theory made sense, I was sure of it. All I needed was proof.

  The boy finished the last of his hot dog and wiped at the smears of ketchup around his mouth. I looked at the top of his head, his thick blond hair. The same sandy yellow I woke up next to every morning.

  I waited until the next squeal of fireworks and then, just as the rocket exploded into the heavens, I reached forward and tugged out a few strands.

  He yelped and spun round.

  ‘Ow!’ He rubbed the spot I’d just scalped. ‘What did you do?’ he asked, and then, less certain and searching behind me for another culprit to blame, ‘What did you do?’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Later that night I lay in bed, unable to sleep. Plagued by the stomach cramps that tend to precede my period, I cuddled a hot-water bottle to my abdomen and tried to process the evening’s events. The exhilaration I’d felt at figuring it all out had gradually given way to calm determination. I had a theory; now all I needed to do was prove it.

  At the end of the fireworks display I’d given Tommy a chaste kiss on the cheek and, at his behest, promised to meet him for dinner a few days later (a promise, now I had a sample of the boy’s DNA, I had no intention of keeping).

  Soon I would know for certain whether I was right or wrong. Soon I might be able to give Jason back his son.

  I pretended to leave for work at the usual time. In my bag was the boy’s hair. After yanking it from his head last night I’d stored it in the only vaguely sterile place I had to hand: Lauren’s compass. This morning I planned to drive to the local shopping mall and buy one of those over-the-counter paternity kits.

  Inside the car, I got out the silver disc and held it in my palm. A few minutes later, I watched as Jason left the house and locked the door. Oblivious to my presence on the other side of the street, he threw his work bag in the back of his car and drove away.

  I watched him go, trying to imagine what life would be like if Barney were to be returned to Jason and Vicky. After last night’s revelation, that reunion now felt within touching distance. Vicky had kept his room in such pristine condition – the freshly made bed, the recently hoovered carpet – an act of defiance as much as hope. Now it seemed that hope was going to be rewarded.

  Lauren’s room had always been such a mess. It didn’t matter how much I tidied it. Within hours it would be maelstrom of abandoned plastic ponies, scattered felt-tips and Lego. I’d pick her dirty clothes up off the floor and find myself showered with Moshi Monsters, their tiny plastic bodies hail-stoning off my hips and onto the carpet. I’d go in to wake her up for school and find myself waylaid by an assault course of loom bands, Mr Men books and tennis racquets. After one particularly nasty ankle-twist involving a forgotten game of Hungry Hungry Hippos left by her bedroom door, I’d tried to have a serious chat with her about the importance of putting things away once she’d finished with them. She’d been eating breakfast at the time, her face screwed up in concentration as she used her spoon to hunt down the bowl’s three remaining Cheerios. It was early summer and she was wearing her school uniform, a blue-and-white-checked gingham dress. I’d yet to braid her hair and it hung in loose curls around her shoulders, the brown lightening to downy blonde around h
er temples.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ she’d said after dispensing with the Cheerios. She put down her spoon and used both hands to lift the bowl to her mouth. She drained the milk in two gulps and set the bowl back on the table. ‘I’ll try to remember.’ A white moustache now decorated her top lip. ‘It’s just so boring.’

  At this I’d tried to remain stern, to expound on how some things in life were boring but necessary, but her honesty had disarmed me. She was right: tidying up was boring. I’d held it together for all of two seconds before I burst out laughing. And then she was laughing, too. Our giggles continuing all the way through the school run, right up until she kissed me and dashed in through the gates for registration.

  I thought of Vicky going up to Barney’s room every week with her dusters and polish. The way Jason spent his time scouring the internet forums for potential sightings. I envied their defiance, their right to keep everything ready, just in case. I envied their right to hope.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I parked in the shopping mall’s multi-storey and made my way over to the lift. Three floors later the doors pinged open, and I headed right, towards the ground level concourse and the large Boots.

  I crossed the shop’s brightly lit threshold and felt another menstrual cramp slice at the side of my belly. Trying not to wince, I asked a member of staff to point me in the right direction and made my way over to the aisle nearest the pharmacy counter. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. Nestled between the blood-glucose meters and allergy-testing kits was a row of large white boxes, each one decorated with a green double helix and the words Cellmark Labs. I picked up the box nearest the front and was surprised to discover something so important could weigh so little. I remembered the furore when they’d first announced they were going to start selling such things. The newspapers had claimed this new, easy access to paternity testing could tear certain families apart. It was strange, when you thought about it. This slavish obsession we had with DNA. Memories and experience seemed to me to shape our identity so much more than a series of cells and chromosomes.