Chapter 8: Saturday 12 January

Of course Rebecca’s mum Sheila Durham recognised Pete immediately she saw him and put her arms around him, even if she couldn’t quite get her arms all the way around the giant.

“Even though I was expecting you, Pete, sweetheart, I’d still know you anywhere. As soon as Ann was moved to Great Ormand Street, we moved here from Sandmouth Bay to be close to her. It never occurred to me that such a mess leading to what happened to you was left behind us. I knew Gerald went back to Devon to give evidence at Bob Porter’s trial, but I was too tied up in the vigil waiting for Ann to wake up from her coma that I never really gave a thought to what the trial was about. And Becky here was only six years old then and needed looking after.”

“And then your husband moved abroad, Mrs Jay? Sorry, that’s what I always called you. I feel disrespectful calling you by your first name.”

“Why not call me Mrs D, Pete?” Sheila suggested with a smile, then continued after Pete smiled his slow smile and nodded, “Yes, Gerald must’ve known he was living on borrowed time, or else stuck it out hoping that Ann would never wake up. So, as soon as Ann did wake up, some six months after the coma drugs were stopped, she ... well, I think some part of her didn’t want to wake up and some part of her mind never really did.” She paused for a moment, “Of course, as soon as she started talking it was, ‘Daddy did this to me’ and ‘Daddy did that to me’ and then ‘when I told Daddy I was going to set Pete on him, Daddy lost it and punched and kicked me until I couldn’t feel anything anymore’.”

“I bet that was a shock all around,” Peter said, “I presume no one had any idea it was him that attacked her?”

“No, of course not. I assumed when Gerald spoke about Bob Porter’s trial, that it was him. He was always a truculent fellow who liked his drink, it was your mother at front of house that ensured the success of the restaurant. Gerald was there with us and even before Ann’s vocal chords had been moistened with iced water, she was pointing accusingly at him and he ran out of the room. He must’ve had a bag packed ready as he had his passport with him, he cleared out as much ready cash from the nearest bank as he could and caught the first plane out, to Amsterdam. The police found him, eventually, several years later, working in a Yangon hospital. He refuses to come home and Myanmar refuses to extradite him.”

“Ann was very seriously damaged and had to have an emergency hysterectomy,” Rebecca explained. “Imagine that at the age of 12! She had to have a lot of treatment over the years and in her mind I suppose she will always be a little girl instead of a mature woman nearly 40.’

“Your father ... he was —”

“We know, a beast, a monster,” Rebecca interjected, “we have all but expunged him from our lives.”

During the weekend Pete did a couple of handyman jobs around Sheila’s house and she accepted his recommendation of putting thermostatic valves on all the radiators to bring them up to modern energy efficient expectations, to help in selling the house when she came to put it on the market and would get a plumber in to do that.

On Sunday Rebecca and Sheila took him to Southend to a mental institution, where Ann Jackson, the girl who 26 years earlier was traumatised by the original attack by her own father, was confronted by the first sight of Pete since then.

“Pete?” Ann asked hesitatingly as she snapped out of her listless, near-catatonic state almost as soon as she saw Pete and told her mother that it was Pete who she confided in about being continually interfered with by her own father the doctor. Ann couldn’t live with the guilt of her treatment by her father without sharing it with someone and who better than her best friend?

As they reacquainted themselves, Pete talked to her and held her hand, before she put her arms around the neck of her childhood friend and cried into his broad chest.

“Ann only told me that she had been sexually assaulted by a relative and that it still affected her with bouts of chronic depression that she thought it might lead to suicide,” Pete explained to Sheila and Rebecca. “Even though she always appeared outwardly cheerful, there was always those dark thought there in the background like a bad dream and she told me that she needed to tell someone about it, explaining that she couldn’t tell her parents about her depression and death wishes. She never admitted to me who the relative was, but I understood this was the reason why the family moved to Sandmouth Bay.”

“No,” Sheila interjected, “we moved to Sandmouth Bay because I had a great aunt who live in Westward House which she left me in her Will and the town needed another doctors’ practice. We had no idea that Gerald was grooming his own daughter.”

“Well, I assumed the assaults were historical only,” Pete added, “not that they were continuing and actually instigated by her father.”

“I had sworn Pete to secrecy to protect me and the rest of my family,” Ann said to Rebecca and her Mum once the tears stopped, “and I especially feared for my young sister Becky. Daddy started paying his attentions to me when I was about 8 and Becky was approaching that age and I knew she was going to be his next target.”

“And as I had promised not to say anything about her being assaulted, nor knowing who it was, I couldn’t say anything, even after I was arrested.” Pete said, tears in his eye, as they all group hugged.

“And look what it personally cost you, Pete,” Sheila said.

“But look what at I got back, my best friend again and her sister turns out to be a great friend too and she has got me back on my feet.”