The Villain’s Daughter

by Roberta Kray

‘I don’t know what you’re doing here,’ Iris said. ‘We’ve got nothing to say to each other. Or at least I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  Her mother looked up. Her face was pale, stricken. Iris could tell she’d been crying and had to fight the impulse to comfort her. Why the hell should she? This was the woman who’d lied to her for most of her life, who’d carried on a secret affair, who’d landed her with a murderous gangster for a father.

  ‘I had to see you,’ Kathleen said. ‘I couldn’t leave without . . . Please. Give me five minutes.’

  ‘Five minutes? You think that’s all it’s going to take to sort this out?’

  Kathleen put her hand over her mouth. She stared at Iris, the tears glistening in her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she mumbled.

  Iris, despite her determination to stay strong, to be unforgiving, felt a weakening of her will. She couldn’t bear to see her mother looking so distraught. Sliding into the seat opposite, she rummaged in her jeans pocket, pulled out a tissue and pushed it into her hand. ‘Here,’ she said brusquely. ‘Your mascara’s running. ’

  Kathleen smiled weakly and dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. ‘I never meant to hurt you. That’s why I didn’t . . . Should I have told you? You loved Sean so much. I didn’t want to take all that away from you.’

  Iris put her elbows on the table and glared at her. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Mum. You didn’t do it for me. You did it to hide your dirty little secret, to cover up your own shame and guilt. If nothing else, you can be honest about that.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Kathleen said, her mouth twisting at the corners. ‘You think I care about what people think?’ She snuffled into the tissue. ‘Well, I care about what you think, of course I do, but that’s not the same thing.’

  ‘But you must have realised that it was all going to come out one day. Secrets like these don’t stay buried ever.’

  ‘He swore he’d never tell. He promised me.’

  Iris snorted. ‘And you believed him?’

  Kathleen stared down into her cooling cup of coffee. ‘It’s been over twenty-six years. Why should he break his silence now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Iris said. ‘Why don’t you tell me? I should think it has something to do with his wife being conveniently murdered a short while ago.’

  ‘He had nothing to do with that.’ Kathleen suddenly leaned forward, grasping her daughter’s wrist. Iris jerked it away.

  As if she’d been stung, Kathleen quickly withdrew her own hand. ‘He wasn’t responsible for Lizzie’s death,’ she said firmly. ‘How could he be? He was in jail when she was killed.’

  Iris thought her mother at best naïve, at worst almost chronically deluded. Even now, after all this time, she didn’t seem able to see Terry Street for what he really was. ‘That wouldn’t stop him. You think he couldn’t organise a hit from a prison cell? He’s got contacts, he’s got money. He’s even got two grown sons who are probably more than happy to carry out his dirty work for him.’

  Kathleen picked up her coffee and sighed into the cup. ‘Who’s been putting all these ideas in your head? That son of hers - is that it? You really think you can trust anything that he tells you? He always hated Terry.’

  ‘And with good reason,’ Iris said.

  ‘Well, you’ve only his word for that. There are two sides to every story. Guy was never exactly—’

  ‘I’m not here to discuss Guy Wilder. If you came to say sorry, then fine, you’ve done it. Perhaps it would be best if you went back to Manchester now.’

  Kathleen twisted the tissue between her fingers. ‘I haven’t come to make excuses, Iris. I only want to try to explain. What I did - what we did, me and Terry - it was unforgivable. We got married when we were young, your dad and me. Too young. We didn’t really know each other, not properly. We should have waited, hung on a few years, but we thought we knew best.’

  ‘And then you met the charming Terry Street.’

  Kathleen winced at the sarcasm but nodded anyway. ‘Sean used to go out with his mates on a Friday night and I’d see my girlfriends. Sometimes we’d go to one of Terry’s clubs. He used to flirt with me, buy me drinks. I was flattered, but I didn’t take it seriously. It was just a bit of fun, you know.’

  ‘Until you decided to sleep with him.’

  ‘That wasn’t for ages,’ Kathleen said. ‘And it wasn’t just sex. It was more than a casual fling. We knew we shouldn’t be together, that it was wrong, but . . . we fell in love.’

  Iris raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Oh, spare me the violins! You were hardly Romeo and Juliet. You were both married to other people. He had a wife and three kids. Didn’t you think about what it would mean, about how much damage you could cause?’

  ‘You think I didn’t feel guilty?’ Kathleen said. ‘Of course I did. I still do. If I could go back and change things I would. But it’s too late for that now.’

  Iris couldn’t argue with that. ‘So why not make a complete break? When you knew it was serious, why didn’t you get a divorce? You were with Terry for ten years. Ten years of lying and cheating, of creeping around behind Dad’s back.’ Iris paused. ‘Am I even allowed to call him that now? I don’t know what to call him.’

  ‘Sean was your dad,’ Kathleen said. ‘He adored you. He did everything he could for you. And he tried his best to make me happy too. It wasn’t his fault that—’

  ‘That you fell out of love with him? That you found someone more exciting?’ Iris was reminded of Luke’s betrayal and felt her stomach tighten. Poor Sean. Had he had his niggling suspicions too, vague shadowy notions that he constantly pushed to the back of his mind?

  ‘If you want the truth,’ Kathleen said. ‘I was too scared to leave. I loved Terry, but I was never sure if I could trust him. I knew what he was involved in . . . Well, not all the details, but enough to make me worried. I wanted him, but I didn’t want that kind of life. And then when I found out I was pregnant, I had you to think about too.’

  ‘So you thought you’d just lie to your gullible husband about the baby being his.’

  ‘Sean was overjoyed when he heard the news. I didn’t know then whether you were his or not.’ Kathleen’s cheeks burned red as she made the admission. She dropped her eyes and picked up the spoon again, stirring the coffee that she still hadn’t begun to drink. ‘It was Terry who arranged the blood test. You were a few weeks old at the time. I should have told Sean when I found out - Terry wanted me too, he wanted us to be together - but I couldn’t do it. And the longer it went on, the more impossible it became. The years passed by. Sean loved you so much. You loved him. How could I destroy all that?’

  Iris hissed through her teeth. ‘You were the one who allowed it to happen in the first place.’

  Kathleen gave a short abrupt nod of her head. ‘You’re right. But I tried to make it work with your dad. I swear I did. I stopped seeing Terry for a while, stayed away from him. I wanted us to be a family, a proper family.’

  ‘You obviously didn’t try hard enough.’

  ‘No,’ Kathleen said softly, dropping the spoon and lifting the ragged piece of tissue to her eyes again. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Noah walked by the table, stopped and looked at Kathleen. ‘Is everything all right?’ He glanced at Iris, his gaze dark and hostile. It was at that moment that she realised his animosity was personal. It was nothing to do with the business, with her connection to the Streets. He disliked her, pure and simple.

  Iris stared at him. ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Mrs O’Donnell?’ he said, as if Iris’s word could not be trusted.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Kathleen murmured. ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘Let me get you a fresh coffee,’ Noah said to her solicitously, as if she was the victim in all this, and Iris the feckless daughter causing her unnecessary grief. ‘That one must be cold by now.’ Before she could answer he waved at a waitress who brought a couple of fresh cups and a pot of coffee over to the table.

  Iris wanted to scream at him to g
o away, to leave them alone. He didn’t know anything about what was really going on. She felt confused by his attitude. What had she ever done to provoke such antagonism? It had been the same from the very beginning.

  The waitress looked over at Iris, the pot poised in her hand.

  She shook her head. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kathleen said to Noah. ‘That was very kind.’

  He gave her a friendly smile before he withdrew. It wasn’t a smile that he extended to Iris.

  Iris watched as he walked away. She took a few seconds to ponder on the source of his contempt, but then wiped it from her mind. Turning her attention back to her mother, she took a quick breath. ‘So how did my father . . . how did Sean . . . find out about the affair?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kathleen finally took a sip of coffee. ‘Michael told him. He found out from Lizzie.’

  ‘Michael?’ Iris frowned. Somehow it wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting.

  ‘She told him how long it had been going on for. Apparently she’d known for years. If it hadn’t been for that - and for the fact that she told him you were Terry’s daughter - he might have come to me first, talked to me about it. He knew how much it was going to hurt Sean, but what could he do? He couldn’t keep it from him. He was his brother.’

  Iris had a flashback to sitting in Michael’s kitchen, drinking the watered down whisky while he told her a story that was full of lies. ‘That’s how he knew Sean was never coming back.’

  ‘Michael was only trying to protect you. He gave you a version that was credible. I suppose he hoped it would be enough to stop you digging any further.’

  Iris tugged at a strand of hair, wrapping it around her fingers. No wonder her mother had made that call to Michael. She remembered seeing the number lying on the notepad by the phone. Kathleen must have been desperate to talk to him, to make sure the truth remained hidden.

  They didn’t need to go over what had happened next. Iris already knew about Sean’s response to the revelations - the acquisition of a gun, the robbery, the terrible shooting of Liam Street. But there were still other questions that needed to be answered. She started with the most obvious one. ‘When did Terry get out of jail?’

  Kathleen gave a light shrug of her shoulders. ‘I’m not sure.’

  Iris didn’t believe her. ‘A week, two weeks? You must have some idea.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, but he didn’t kill Michael. I’ve already told you. He wouldn’t—’

  ‘How can you be so sure? He had good reason to want him dead. And to want his wife dead too, come to that. If Sean hadn’t found out about the affair, if Michael hadn’t told him, then Liam would still be alive today.’

  Kathleen leaned forward again, her eyes full of denial. ‘No, you’re wrong. He promised me. I went to see him in the hospital after . . . after . . .’ A shaky hand rose up to cover her mouth. It was a few seconds before she removed it again. ‘I told him it was over. And it wasn’t Michael or Sean or Lizzie who were to blame. It was only us, the two of us, who were responsible. And me most of all. If it hadn’t been for my cowardice, my mistakes, that poor boy would still be alive. I should have finished the affair before you were born. It was wrong. It was always wrong. I should never have . . . Sean was devastated when he found out. He went out of his mind; he didn’t know what he was doing.’

  Iris could see the pain flowering on her mother’s face. She suddenly understood the extent of her feelings of guilt. But that didn’t mean she could forgive her. She was still angry over all the lies, all the deceit. Trying hard to cut herself off from any feelings of sympathy, she quickly said: ‘And what about Lizzie? How did Terry persuade her to keep her mouth shut? Her step-son had just been killed. She knew who’d done it. Michael had told her, hadn’t he? So why didn’t she tell the police?’

  Kathleen’s expression instantly changed, her face taking on a harder look. ‘I’ve no idea what Michael told you, but Lizzie wasn’t what you’d call the sentimental sort. Or the motherly sort. She had her own agenda. She saw an opportunity and grasped it with both hands. If there was one thing she dreaded, it was Terry leaving her. She could put up with his infidelity, his lies, but not a divorce. She’d sacrificed too much to let him just walk away.’

  ‘Yeah, well she had every reason to be resentful. You’d been sleeping with her husband for the past ten years.’

  Kathleen blushed again. ‘I’m not trying to excuse my own behaviour, but hers wasn’t exactly praiseworthy either. She knew how it would look if it all came out - how his kids would react, how much they’d hate him. And she realised that she’d finally got the hold on him that she’d always wanted. She said she’d tell the boys that what he’d done - what we’d done - had been the cause of Liam’s death. They’d never forgive him for it. She said she’d shout it from the rooftops unless he agreed to stay with her.’

  ‘And so he dumped you,’ Iris said.

  Her mother shook her head. ‘No, he was prepared to risk all that, to take the chance on his boys possibly hating him forever if we could still be together. But it was impossible, wasn’t it? After what had happened, we could never go back there. It was too late.’

  ‘And so you just took off, ran away.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything else I could do. He found us of course - eventually. But I wouldn’t change my mind. I begged him to leave us alone, to let us get on with our lives. We’d caused too much damage. It was over between us.’

  ‘Except you still had his daughter.’

  ‘You might not believe this,’ Kathleen said softly, ‘but he did love you. He loved you enough to let you go.’

  But Iris wasn’t having any of this romantic claptrap. ‘Well, at least it saved him the cost of maintenance.’

  ‘You’ll never know what it cost him,’ Kathleen said sharply.

  Iris stared at her mother across the table. ‘God, you still love him, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  But Iris had seen the way the two of them had been talking when she’d come out of the Dog that afternoon. She had seen the way they’d been standing too close to each other. It had all been in the body language. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘If you want to know if I still have feelings for him, then yes, of course I do. He’s your biological father. If it hadn’t been for him, you wouldn’t even be here.’

  There was a short silence.

  Iris became aware of the bar again, of the people in it, of the music that was playing. All the other lives that were going on around her. A girl in a very short skirt slid by the table and went into the Ladies.

  ‘Are you in love with Guy?’ Kathleen asked.

  Iris frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Sometimes love makes us do stupid things, things we can spend the rest of our lives regretting.’

  Iris had heard enough. She got to her feet and looked down on her mother. ‘Actually, if you want to help there is something you can do.’

  ‘Anything,’ Kathleen said eagerly.

  ‘Tell Terry Street to stay away from me. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to talk to him.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I mean it,’ Iris said. ‘He’s nothing to me. I won’t ever acknowledge him as my father.’

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  On Monday morning Iris was back at her desk at Tobias Grand & Sons.The shock of discovering who her real father was had still not worn off - she wasn’t sure if it ever would - but she couldn’t put her life on hold. The busier she kept, the less time she’d have to think about it. She was hoping her mother had made that phone call and that Terry Street was clear on where he stood: she had no intention of ever seeing him again. She might be his daughter, but there weren’t going be any happy reunions. The knowledge that she was related to him still made her shudder. What would she have done if it hadn’t been for Guy? Fallen apart, she thought. It was only his love and support
that was keeping her going.

  Gerald Grand walked past her and nodded. ‘How are you today, Iris?’

  ‘Bearing up,’ she replied politely. She had to prove that she was capable of doing this job if she wanted to hold on to it. Gerald’s sympathy for her recent loss wasn’t likely to last very long.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘erm . . . good, very good.’

  Iris returned to her work. Although she was trying to concentrate, her mind kept wandering. She returned over and over again to what Michael’s motives had really been in telling Sean about the affair. Was it possible that they’d been less to do with brotherly love and more with self-interest? Michael had always had a strong attachment to Lizzie Street; by spilling the beans, he may simply have been hoping to split the two marriages up. If Terry left Lizzie for Kathleen, then Lizzie would be free to be with someone else. But then again, could she really believe that he’d be so selfish? And would Lizzie have been interested anyway? Iris didn’t want to think badly of him, but when Michael had revealed the truth all those years ago he had set in motion a chain of terrible events, the repercussions of which were still being felt.

  Iris gave herself a mental kick. No matter what Michael had done, no matter what his motives, there were only two people who were ultimately responsible for the mess that had ensued - her mother and Terry Street. It was their selfishness, and theirs alone, that had ruined the lives of so many other people.

  At ten to eleven, William came out of his office and placed some papers on her desk. ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘It appears that our longstanding resident Mr Hills is finally leaving us.’

  Iris looked up at him, surprised. The last time she’d typed up any correspondence on the matter, mother and son had still been at loggerheads. ‘How on earth did that come about?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said, ‘although I did have a conversation with the son on Friday. It seems he’s reconsidered and has now agreed to his mother’s wishes that the body be returned to Ireland.’

  Iris smiled. ‘And that had nothing to do with your powers of persuasion?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he replied modestly. ‘Actually, there’s quite an interesting story behind it all.’ William, clearly in no hurry to get back to work, leaned against the corner of the desk and folded his arms. ‘It seems that Connor Hills was born in Kellston, lived here for the first thirty-odd years of his life, but then moved to Dublin. He set up an import and export business, got married, had a family and then twelve months ago came over on a visit with his wife to see their oldest son. The boy’s at university in London. There was nothing unusual about the visit - they’d been here a few times before - but on this occasion Connor stayed on, claiming that he wanted to look up some old friends. There wasn’t a problem at first but, as the weeks went by, the phone calls gradually became less frequent and then he just disappeared. The family alerted the police, but of course a man who chooses not to return to his home isn’t exactly top priority.’