Finally Heaven (Room 103 Book 4) (29 page)

She nodded softly and smiled. “And I just want you to be happy. Oh and maybe a few kids, and a puppy would be good.”

“Always so easy to please.” I whispered as I pulled her face to mine and brushed her lips with my own.

I pulled in a breath. “But first I need to go see my parents.”

She flinched but sighed and gave me a nod of agreement. “Together, Daniel. We go together.”

I nodded, giving in but knowing I’d need her every minute I was there. “Okay.”

“Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s get this done and then we can finally finish this shit.”

“I’ll… I’ll meet you in the car.”

Her expression saddened but she nodded, reaching up and placing a soft kiss on my cheek. “Okay, I’ll be right outside.”

I watched her through the window as she looked back at the house, closed her eyes and whispered her goodbye before slipping into the car.

I stood, my eyes roaming the room, taking in his own personal things. I didn’t have anything to say to him but I sensed he knew. The pain that tore through me finally found an exit, the grief at long last escaping with my tears.

I touched my fingers to a photo of him with his parents that was sat on a pale wood mantle, his happy smiling face grinning at the camera as his mum and dad smiled up at him. The picture made me smile. He’d had love, from a family that adored him. And from a man that would have given him his soul. “I love you.” It was all I could give him now but it said everything.

I gave him a final nod and walked away. Away from a man that had given me a part of him I would never forget nor ignore but to a woman that I knew would give me her own heartbeat.

It was time to be selfish. To take what I needed to breathe. To do what was right for me and ultimately for Zoe and Jakob. To give her the piece of me that I had kept from her for fear of rejection and hurt.

And it had taken Nick to show me that it was okay to be who I was. That it was okay to love another man, and to be proud for doing that. Because I
had
loved him and it was about time the world knew that. It was about time the world let me rest, let me take what Nick had taught me and to embrace it.

It was time for Romeo to play his last riff and let Daniel Wolfe be a man, just a simple family man.

AS SOON AS I met them I didn’t like them. They were obnoxious and rude to me but even worse, they were aloof and offensive to Daniel.

We weren’t offered a drink but to be honest I wasn’t sure I wanted one. Daniel sat beside me on a plush sofa. It was easy to see they didn’t struggle for money. And that made me wonder just how they had supported themselves when Daniel’s father worked for the local housing authority as a plumber and his mother refused to work.

My gut told me why but for Daniel’s sake, and to hold on to that final bit of humanity, I just imagined them being careful with money.

His mother, Jillian, was a snooty woman with a bouffant Audrey Hepburn would have been proud of. Her clothes were spotless, and apparently made from pure silk by the way she kept brushing the tiniest particle of dust from them. Her face was made up to perfection, the thin lines around her lips not even daring to allow a smidgen of lipstick escape its orderly line.

His father, Brian, had a twitchy moustache, his tongue coming out occasionally to slide over the ball of fluff across his top lip. He reminded me of a military sergeant, the way he sat super straight and held his hands on his knees, his buttoned up shirt and tie pressed and completely crease free.

“And to what do we owe the pleasure now, Daniel?” His mother spoke tightly, her lips hardly moving as she grated the words through her clenched teeth. “I thought we made it clear that you are not welcome here.” I frowned at the way she flinched as she spoke the words, as if they hurt her as much as they were intended to hurt Daniel.

Daniel squeezed my hand, urging me to remain silent. I squeezed back, telling him I was there but I wouldn’t jump in, although I wanted nothing more than to pick up the exquisite Chinese urn sat beside the fire and smash the fucking thing over her perfect hair.

Daniel didn’t hold back and waste time, he just shot it out there. “Is Alan Francis my father?”

My throat constricted as the air suddenly disappeared from the room. His mother’s eyes grew wild and wide, her lips sucked sternly behind her teeth. I’m sure that wasn’t good for her lippy. She wrung her hands in her lap, her eyes snapping to her husband and then back to Daniel.

Brian shot upright, spluttering something incomprehensible, spit flying and his moustache gaining a life of its own as it danced across his lip.

“What the…?”

“Fuck?” Daniel finished for him. “Yeah, that’s what I said too.”

His mother fell back into the sofa, the air in the cushion hissing with the press of her body. I wondered if they had ever actually snuggled into it with cocoa and a movie. The thought saddened me when I knew damn well they had never once enjoyed the comfort of the expensive things they bought to erase the pain.

“Daniel.” I whispered to him. It suddenly felt wrong. I knew what had happened to his parents. Their once perfect life had been torn apart by one simple act of cruelty by a man that I knew thought he could buy his way out of anything.

His father was still spluttering. Daniel was still staring at his dad goading him into saying something.

“Mrs Wolfe.”

Her eyes found mine. The fear in them broke my heart and brought tears to my own.

“Get out!” Brian raged as Daniel stood and took a step towards him.

“IS HE?” he screamed. “Just tell me. No wonder you always hated me. You’re not even my father?”

I moved across the room and sat next to Jillian. Her eyes were still wide on me, but I could see her terror. She remained frozen as Daniel and his father continued to scream at each other. I took her hand in my own and smiled at her. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Her face screwed up and she shook her head furiously. “I…”

“It’s okay to be angry. You are very much entitled to be. That man took something from you that you never found again. I get that because I too, was raped, a long time ago.”

Her eyes widened further and the whole room stilled.

“Ink?”

I turned to Daniel. His face was pale. He was holding onto an expensive table with so much pressure I wondered if I had enough money in the bank to replace it if he broke it.

“I’m okay Daniel. It was a long, long time ago.” I turned back to Jillian. “I can’t begin to imagine what you went through. A man that you had no hope of fighting against even though you tried.”

If I hadn’t discovered the police statement with the email I would never have realised what had happened. But it was the fact that she had tried, and so obviously failed, that made me determined to fight her corner for her.

A single tear rolled from her eye. Its solitude was more heart-breaking than a torrent of tears. She lowered her eyes to her lap when Brian stumbled into a chair and shut up.

I glanced around the room and sighed. “I take it he paid you off?”

Her hand shot to her mouth as a sob escaped but she nodded then looked up at Daniel. “I didn’t want to hate you. I wanted to love you. I so wanted to love you Daniel.”

She flicked her eyes to Brian and then back to Daniel as he slowly lowered himself onto the other sofa. “We had been trying for a baby for so long. But it wasn’t to be. We had tests and found out Brian couldn’t have children.”

She stood up and walked across the room and filled an expensive crystal tumbler with equally expensive whisky. Her back was to us as she carried on but we could hear her clearly.

“He… Alan had asked me to work late one night. He had a function to go to and there was a proposal that needed to be finished up for the next day. I stayed behind and he went off to the party.” She tipped back the drink, downed it and refilled it. “A few hours later he stumbled back into the office drunk. He said he had forgotten something.”

She turned round, her eyes blazing with both tears and terror. “He tied me up so he didn’t have to hold me down. No hand marks, no evidence.” She shook her head with a bitter laugh. “He knew, knew I would report it.”

She swiped at the tears that were now fluid. “After he finished, he zipped up and walked away and just said ‘see you tomorrow Jillian, bright and early, we have an election to win’.”

She turned around, her pale face making her appear ghostly. “Oh I reported it. But I didn’t stand a chance. There was no bruising, no evidence of a physical assault. And Alan was ‘in’ with the high up circle.” She scoffed and shook her head. “He laughed at me, and winked when I was escorted out of the building the day after.”

She stumbled across the room and fell back down next to me, the whisky in her glass sloshing over the side and splashing her silk blouse.

“And then finally, I had evidence.” Her eyes slowly moved towards Daniel. He sighed and shifted uneasily.

“Me?”

Nodding her head, she closed her eyes and drank the remainder of the alcohol. Taking the glass from her, I walked across the room and refilled it for her, placing it in her hand as I sat back down beside her.

“By this time we were behind with the mortgage and the loans we’d taken out to furnish our home as newlyweds. Brian had lost his job on the trains and I couldn’t find another. Anyway I went to Alan and told him I was pregnant and that it was proof, that Brian had had tests and wasn’t able to father children.”

She stopped and silence descended. “And he made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.” I finished for her.

She nodded and stood up again, her pacing becoming uncontrollable. She flung her arms out and laughed. “All this wealth. Look at it. All the fancy goods, the designer clothes, the holiday homes, all of them just to keep a secret. All of it given to make me ‘feel’ better about it all. Except it never did, it never has.” She turned to Daniel. “And you, after wanting children for so, so long, you felt like another payoff, another part of the ‘compensation’.”

Daniel went and helped himself to a whisky, downing it in one then threw the glass into the fire raging in the hearth, making us all jump. “Why didn’t you just terminate, just kill me if you didn’t want me?”

His bitterness tore my heart out. He was so angry but he was so hurt and tender from the truth.

Jillian shook her head sadly. “You’ll never understand Daniel. I wanted you so much but it felt wrong to enjoy you, to love you. You were created out of secrets and pain and to love you would have felt like I accepted what Alan, and me and your father, had done. Received something good out of something that was so wrong.” She smiled up at him. “You were such a good baby. You were happy and quiet, so easily consoled. It broke my heart more each day to see you grow into something so beautiful and full of life. You were a reminder of the pain, of the money, of my failures… of him.”

“Jillian,” I spoke quietly, aware of the threads that were fraying around me so very quickly. “That’s just it. Daniel wasn’t created out of pain or money or anyone’s failures. He was given to you, by some miracle, I don’t know, but he was the only good thing to be granted from all the bad. Someone, somewhere was aware of your pain and your grief and they gave you something that could lessen all that. They gave you a gift in the time that you so very much needed it. Daniel is a gift. He is the most caring, funny, generous, loving man. He is nothing,
nothing
like his father. If he were made from hate then he would be a completely different person to who he is, but he isn’t. He is capable of so much love, there isn’t an ounce of malice in him. And despite all your pushing away, he still held on, for thirty years for the one time that you would give him that little bit of love. Daniel isn’t at fault, nor are you or Brian. This is Alan Francis and I can tell you now that he will get his own form of compensation.” I took her hand as she stared at me. “He will pay, Jillian, I promise.”

“He came back,” she whispered as though she was frightened of someone hearing. “Three weeks ago.”

I tipped my head and narrowed my eyes. “Here?”

She nodded. “He was angry. He said someone had found out, had been snooping. He thought we’d spoken to someone. He didn’t even know who you were, about anything in your life.” She looked at Daniel, her eyes softening and a soft smile gracing her usual stern features. “Brian grew angry, and told him how well you had made your life. That whatever all three of us had done to destroy him he had battled life and made something of himself. He didn’t even know you were in a famous band.”