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Chapter 12

Daniel

Stamford

2^nd January 2018, 1.58 a.m.

Mum was asleep, I could hear her heavy breathing as I moved around the house. I looked up the stairs as some light spilled over the top, coming from her room. Her TV was still on but whatever programme she had been watching on catch-up had finished. I knew this because she had always fallen asleep this way, ever since I could remember at least. Quietly, I moved into the kitchen and pulled the door to. I turned on the light and it blinded me temporarily. I knew I needed to wake her up and talk about the things we never spoke of, but I needed her not to get upset. She had to be able to think, remember something that would tell me what I had done. Seeing me in the state I was wouldn’t help. With the light on I could see myself clearly in the kitchen window. My lip was worse than I had thought and opening my mouth I could see I had also broken one of my front teeth. I ran a tea towel under the tap and pressed it on the cut. The cold water slapped against the exposed nerve sending white heat through my jaw. I wanted to cry out, but I took a deep breath. Then something from the depths of my brain told me what to do.

Super glue.

I had no idea where the thought came from, and at first didn’t know what it meant. But then I thought about it. Glue would stop the bleeding and cover the exposed nerve. I didn’t know why I knew that. Rummaging through Mum’s junk draw I found a small tube of it and going into the toilet under the stairs I pinched my bottom lip together and applied some. My hands shook as I did, the tube slipping in my fingers as my blood ran onto them. I continued to pinch for another minute and then let go. It seemed to work.

Opening my mouth I then applied some to my front tooth which hurt so much that my vision blurred. Using sticky, crimson fingers I rubbed it in, forming a layer over my broken tooth. I could feel my pulse throbbing through my whole face. Eventually it began to die down enough for me to look at myself in the mirror. I looked a mess, my skin covered in blood and dirt, but better than a few minutes before. I rinsed my face and looked again. It would have to do for the moment.

‘Hello?’

Mum’s voice called out from the top of the stairs, sleepy and on edge. A hint of fear bleeding through.

‘Mum, it’s me,’ I called up, my words slurring as the swelling in my face had begun to flare.

‘Daniel? Oh God, Daniel what are you doing? I thought someone was breaking in. Are you okay?’

I didn’t know how to respond, instead I pretended I hadn’t heard her and went into the kitchen and waited, knowing she would come downstairs. When she walked in, she stepped back, covering her hand with her mouth.

‘Daniel, what’s happened to your face?’

‘Something’s happened, Mum, something terrible.’

Mum came towards me to look at my cut, but I stepped away, I didn’t have the strength to keep my emotions in if she touched me.

‘Daniel, what’s happened?’

‘Mum, sit down.’

She did as I asked, looking at me with tenderness and fear mixed in equal measure. I could see her holding her breath, waiting.

‘Mum?’ I began slowly, frightened of what I was about to ask. ‘What’s my name?’

‘What?’

‘What’s my name?’

I saw a reaction in her. It was small but noticeable, my question had shocked her rather than confused.

‘Daniel, we need to get you to a doctor.’

‘I haven’t got time.’

‘What do you mean, “time”? Daniel, what’s going on?’

‘Mum, please, just tell me the truth, for once.’ I sounded exasperated, desperate, my voice on the verge of breaking.

‘I don’t understand what you’re asking.’ She looked away from me, not able to meet my gaze. I struggled to hide my shock at seeing that she knew I knew something.

‘Yes you do, Mum. You do, and I know it. I need you to tell me. What’s my real name?’

‘It’s the middle of the night, Daniel, you’re bleeding. Why does that matter?’ she asked, standing and taking a step away from me, busying herself by digging out a first-aid kit from under the sink and putting it on the table beside us.

I couldn’t look at her, I could barely get the words out at a whisper. I felt if I said what I said next any louder I would lose the fragile composure I was keeping.

‘Thomas has been taken.’

‘What?’ She stopped and looked up at me, her mouth agape. As I spoke I did so slowly in an attempt to make it clear and hold my composure. But as the words fell from my mouth they came out as a sob.

‘Mum, someone’s taken my little boy.’

‘What do you mean? Daniel, what do you mean someone’s taken him?’ Her voice became louder, started cracking.

‘And Rachael. Someone’s taken Thomas and Rachael.’

‘Taken? What do you mean “taken”?’ She turned frantic and fidgeted, her voice high-pitched and breathy.

‘And they’ve told me they will hurt them unless I return something to them.’

‘Who’s “them”, Daniel, who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Daniel, you need to go to the police. Why haven’t you rung the police?’

She stepped away to grab her phone, but I got up and stopped her, taking her firmly by the hand.

‘Mum, they killed Sean.’

I watched the colour drain from her face, mirroring my own. As I spoke I did so at barely a whisper, as if by saying it quietly it might not be true.

‘They said if I go to the police they’ll kill them too.’

She tried to say something but just the sound of her breath escaping came. ‘They said I have something that belongs to them. Something from the time I can’t remember.’

Stumbling sideways, she sat down in her chair, her eyes unblinking and a million miles away from where we were.

‘Oh God!’

‘Mum, who was I?’

‘I thought we had left all that behind,’ she said to herself as she opened, then shut the first-aid box.

‘Mum?’

She moved to put it away but stopped and then turned and placed it back on the table, her thoughts moving so fast it powered her body.

‘I was assured your injury would give you a clean break.’

Grabbing a tea towel, she held it like she was about to dry up, but there were no plates on the draining board. With her back to me, she raised the towel up and buried her face into it.

‘Mum! A clean break? A clean break from what?’

‘Oh God, Daniel. I’m so sorry,’ she said through muffled fabric.

‘Mum, what’s my name?’

‘I thought, after all this time it was all behind us.’

‘Mum, what is my real name?’ I placed my hand on her shoulder, harder than I intended.

She turned and looked at me, resignation in her face.

‘Your real name is Michael.’

The quiet hope that this was all just some sick joke or a bad dream had been destroyed. My name is Michael. The man on the phone wasn’t lying. He wasn’t confusing me with someone else. It meant I really did have something of his.

‘Mum, why did you change my name?’

‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘Try, Mum, try.’ My voice rose as anger replaced my fear. ‘You’ve been lying to me for as long as I can remember and now my little boy is missing. Rachael is gone and a good man is dead. You need to stop this shit and tell me what I was involved in.’

‘Daniel, I don’t know how to …’

I grabbed the chair beside me and threw it against the wall. One of the legs snapped off.

‘Daniel, please, you need to calm down,’ she begged.

‘Calm down? They said I have until Friday to give back what I took from them. Friday. I don’t even know what the fuck I took, Mum. Up until a few hours ago I was just Daniel, and now I know I’m someone else entirely, someone who took something from people who are prepared to kill to get it back. Don’t you tell me to calm down! What was I involved in, Mum?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must know. I don’t have that part of my life, only you do. You have to know.’

I grabbed my mum by the shoulders and shook her. I could see fear rush into her whole body. A fear of me.

‘What did I take?’

‘I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. Please, Daniel, you’re scaring me.’ Tears were running down her cheeks, her eyes wide, her head tilting away from me.

I let go and stepped away, afraid my anger towards her would result in me doing something I would instantly regret. Pacing beside the table I reiterated what had happened; Sean was dead, Rachael and Thomas were missing.

‘Mum, I need you to give me something. I don’t know where my boy is, I don’t know where they’ve taken my little boy. Mum, help me, please help me. Tell me something, please. I don’t care that you lied to me. I just want them back.’

She got up to give me a hug, but I stepped away from her. She looked shocked but lowered her arms. I was angry. I was angry because I didn’t know that my family would be put at risk.

‘Mum, I don’t have time, just tell me.’

She nodded and swallowed hard before talking, her voice delicate and lost. ‘When we learnt you might not remember who you were, your dad insisted we kept it that way. He said it would keep you safe and the less I knew the better.’

‘Safe from what?’

‘I don’t know, honestly, Daniel, I don’t know.’

‘But he does?’

‘Yes.’ She looked down at her feet, her shoulders rolling in, tired and defeated. I stepped towards her gently, placing my hands back on her shoulders again. Slowly she looked up at me.

‘Is he likely to be involved in this?’

‘I don’t know, Daniel.’

‘Yes or no, Mum?’ I said quietly but through clenched teeth.

‘He was mixed up in the same things you were,’ she said, again looking away as if she was drifting back to the past. The past that was destroying my present. I shook her again, releasing her from the shock she was slipping into, snapping her attention back to me.

‘Yes or no?!’

‘Yes. But I don’t think he took them.’

‘But he would know who did?’

‘Yes, yes he would.’

For the first time since the call, I felt like I had a sense of direction. I needed to find my father. He was either involved in, or knew who had taken them. In the back of my mind something fired. It made me feel defensive, cornered, like I knew my father was someone capable of committing a crime. I could feel my hand clench into a fist. I could feel myself wanting to hurt him.

‘Where is he?’

She paused.

‘Where is he, Mum?’

I could feel myself getting more exasperated. I knew she was trying to protect me, but I didn’t matter. My needs of protecting my family were far more important.

‘Mum!’

‘Chalfont. He has a house in Chalfont.’

‘Where?’

‘When we first married, before you were born, we bought a little two bed in a place called Chalfont. He still has it.’

‘And you know he’s there?’

‘Yes.’

‘How? How can you be sure?’

I watched as she began to speak but stopped herself.

‘Mum, how do you know?’

‘Because … because we still speak from time to time.’

‘What? You told me he was gone.’

‘And he is. I promise, I’ve not seen him in years. Just, sometimes he calls.’ I had to move away from her, I was worried if I stayed so close I would really lose my temper. When I spoke I did so quietly, fighting to keep control at my anger at being lied to so often.

‘When was the last time he rang?’

‘It’s been about a year. He usually rings around Christmas.’

‘You speak to him … every year?’

‘Yes.’

‘And didn’t think to tell me?’

‘He insisted you two didn’t speak. He insisted it was for your own good that you didn’t know about him at all.’

‘Don’t you think that’s suspicious?’

‘I didn’t. I don’t. I mean, I don’t know.’

‘And he always rings around Christmas?’

‘Yes.’

‘But not this Christmas?’

‘I just assumed he’d been busy.’

‘And now my family has been taken.’ I felt my muscles start moving, wanting to head for the door and leave. ‘Where in Chalfont is he?’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going down. He needs to tell me what he knows.’

On shaking legs she left the room, assumedly to get a pen and paper from the telephone table. I turned my back to the room and looked at the window above the sink, catching my hazy reflection. My lip was swollen badly, as was the corner of my eye. I didn’t recognize myself. Who was the man staring back? I was involved in something that meant it was safer to change my identity and hide the past. It explained the question I always had and never asked, for fear of the answer. Why none of my friends before the accident got in touch. Now I knew. My name had been changed, they wouldn’t know how to find me. But still I didn’t know why my mum and dad would go to such extremes. What has the man in my reflection been involved in?

Mum came back into the room, the address written shakily on a piece of paper in her hand. She gave it to me. She told me it was close to where I grew up, a place just outside Slough called Wexham. Until then, I thought I had grown up in Cambridge with Mum moving this way after my accident to help with my recovery. That was what I had always been told. I had never heard of Wexham. The place that owned all of my childhood. Strangely, I felt myself mourn the childhood I didn’t remember. None of the stories that I had used to manufacture memories were real. None of them.

But now wasn’t the time for self-pity. I needed to think of what I would do next. I had to go home, grab some cash from the bottom of my wardrobe. Mainly change, but some notes too. Then I remembered. Mum’s holiday scrapbooks. There might be something in them that would help.

‘Your books, Mum, did you get them out?’

‘My holiday scrapbooks?’

‘Yes, give them to me. I need to see them.’

‘There are so many.’

‘Give me the ones you have before I got hurt. When I was in trouble. And your car keys. Get them, and in the morning ring the police and say your car has been stolen.’ Suddenly, I had a plan. My thoughts frantic, coming thick and fast as I fired information at Mum.

‘What, why?’

‘Because I cannot drag you into this.’

She looked at me blankly as shock began to wash over her. I shouted to snap her out of it.

‘Mum, go! The holiday scrapbooks and keys.’

‘Yes of course, yes.’

She got her car keys and handed them to me but held on to one, connecting us.

‘Daniel, I’m so sorry.’

‘Mum, the holiday scrapbooks!’

She was in shock. And I knew my tone was harsh. But I didn’t have time to waste. She left, retrieved three hardback yellow books and handed them to me. I wouldn’t look now, despite wanting to. I needed to get to Chalfont first and speak to my father.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Get my family back.’

She leant in to hug me, but I waved her away. I was still too angry at her. Fifteen years of lies. Fifteen years, and although she was only trying to protect me, she put my little boy at risk by doing so. I walked to the front door, opened it and then turned back. She hadn’t moved, she looked ten years older than when she came downstairs.

‘Remember, Mum, ring the police in the morning. It removes your involvement.’

‘But then they will be looking for it.’

‘I’ll dump it somewhere, I just don’t want them thinking you’ve helped me. And don’t say anything if you’re asked about where I am.’

‘But we should speak to someone.’

‘Mum, if we do and they find out, it will put Thomas and Rachael in danger.’

‘But who are they?’

‘I don’t know Mum. But I’m going to go to Dad’s and find out. Just don’t talk to anyone about this. Especially the police. Don’t tell them I was here, don’t tell them about Dad’s place in Chalfont. Just tell them your car has been stolen, okay?’

‘Okay, but why are the police going to be looking for you?’

‘Because Sean is dead. Because Rachael and Thomas are missing and I’ve taken off in the middle of the night. Because I’m going to be their prime suspect.’