Page 90 of I Would Die for You

“My father passed away…” I start.

His eyes narrow. “I wish I could say I’m sorry,” he says bitterly as he swirls the amber-colored liquid around his glass.

I reach into my handbag. “I didn’t have any contact with him after the trial. I hadn’t spoken to him for twenty-five years before receiving this letter from him this morning.”

There’s a noise outside the room and I look up expectantly, first to the door and then to Ben, but if he hears it, he doesn’t react. It suddenly occurs to me that we may not be alone in the house; he could have a wife at home, children…

“Are you OK to have this conversation here?” I ask, hating myself for not having checked before now. How hard has he had to work to build a new world for himself? He’d traveled thousands of miles to leave the past behind, hopefully met a loving wife, surrounded himself with a family of his own… Dotheyknow who he is? What he’s supposed to have done? I go to stand up, in case they don’t. I had a huge hand in destroying his life once; I won’t be responsible for doing it all over again.

“It’s fine” is all he says. “Tell me what’s in the letter.”

I cough awkwardly to clear my throat, as if biding my time, but then I wonder why. He must already know what’s coming.

“He asks for forgiveness,” I start.

“Yours or mine?”

“Both,” I say. “But it’s only yours to grant.”

“Only a coward waits until they’re dead to tell the truth,” he says bitterly.

“I think you’d be surprised at the strength and resilience it would have taken to lie for all these years.”

“Strength and resilience?” he cries, his nostrils flaring as he displays his hurt and anger for the first time. “Do you haveanyidea how much strength and resilience I needed when they stripped me of my belongings, my clothes? When they threw me in a six-by-ten windowless cell for five years? When I remembered the life I had before…That’s resilience—not some lame confession, twenty-five years too late!”

He paces the room like a caged lion, his resentment palpable.

“And now I’m supposed to be grateful that your father has finally admitted that he lied.”

I bite down on my lip as I picture my dad giving evidence in court: his hollowed cheeks, his empty eyes, his mumbled words as he tried to explain what happened that day…

“I-I went to the hotel looking for my daughter—Cassie…” he’d said. “She was… She’d gone missing… and Nicole… she’d already gone to the hotel… and I thought I should… you know…”

“Mr. Alderton, I appreciate how difficult this trial is for you and your family,” said the prosecution lawyer as she approached the witness stand. “It must have taken its toll.”

My father had nodded his assent.

“So, just take your time,” she said. “Keep your answers clear and concise.”

“O-K…” he said, forcing himself to take a deep breath in and out.

“So, after your younger daughter, Cassandra, had gone missing the day before, following a disagreement—which we’ll come to later—your elder daughter, Nicole, received a telephone call from Ben Edwards to say that Cassandra was at the Savoy hotel.”

“Y-yes, that’s correct.”

“But once Nicole left to find her, you felt that you should go too…”

“Yes, about an hour or so later, when I hadn’t heard anything, I thought I’d feel more useful if… if I were there too…”

“So, when you got to the hotel, what did you find?”

“Well, there were girls everywhere and I didn’t know where to start, so I looked in all the common areas—you know, like the restaurants and the ballroom, where somebody said the press conference had been… I even looked in the toilets, but I couldn’t find her or Nicole and I was getting worried. Cassie was in a fragile state, and I didn’t know what she might be capable of.”

“So, after searching the common areas of the hotel to no avail, what did you do next?”

My father had looked down at the fidgeting hands in his lap. “I took the lift up and walked along the corridors. I don’t know what I was expecting to find…”

“And whatdidyou find, Mr. Alderton?” asked the lawyer.

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