Peter May - Coffin Road

Suddenly, as if impelled by some outside force, she ripped open the envelope and pulled out the folded sheet from inside. Her fingers trembled as she opened it up and saw, in virgin ink, what may very well have been some of the final words her father ever wrote. Between his writing of them and now, no one else had ever read them.

My darling Karen,

I have no idea how to apologise for the pain I must have caused you. I know I never lived up to the father you wanted me to be, and I won’t make excuses for that now. One can always find excuses for one’s own failings, but when you reach the place that I have reached there is no room left for self-delusion. I know that suicide will have invalidated my life insurance, but I also know that your mother’s relationship with Derek will have ensured financial security. One of the great regrets of my life is that I failed your mum. I hope you didn’t blame her. I don’t. And, who knows, maybe Derek has been the father to you that I couldn’t. But however much you might hate me for what I have done to you, I want you to know that I love you, and that I always have, even if I couldn’t be the dad you deserved. Maybe one day, when the dust has finally settled on all of this, we can find again the happiness we knew when we were both so much younger.

Karen sat with the skin tingling all across her scalp. Every fine hair rose on the back of her neck and on both arms... find again the happiness we knew... How could they find happiness again when he was dead? She read the letter once more, quickly, hungrily, and every nuance of tense, every choice of word screamed only one thing. He wasn’t dead. Her dad was alive. He had written this letter thinking that she would not read it for another year, by which time he was assuming she would know things she didn’t know now. Primary among these being that he wasn’t dead. That he hadn’t committed suicide. It was a post-revelation apology, an appeal, however tentative, for some kind of rapprochement. Asking for her forgiveness and a second chance.

Karen’s mother was less than pleased with her. ‘Derek lives here now, too,’ she’d said when Karen demanded to speak to her alone.

‘Well, come upstairs, then.’

But her mother had dug in her heels. ‘Anything you’ve got to say to me, you can say here and now. Derek and I have no secrets between us, and nor should you.’

‘Oh, well, forget it, then!’ And Karen had started for the hall.

‘No, it’s okay.’ Derek had been the one to pour oil on troubled waters. He stood up. ‘I’m for an early night, anyway.’

He half-smiled at Karen’s mum as he left the room, but Karen refused to meet his eye. And now that he’d gone, she wasn’t quite sure where to start.

Her mother stood, arms crossed defensively, a face like thunder. ‘Well?’

‘Why didn’t you ever tell me that dad had been sacked two months before he went missing?’

Whatever her mother might have been expecting, it wasn’t this. She unfolded her arms and blinked, surprised, at her daughter. ‘Well, that’s nonsense.’

‘It isn’t. He was kicked out of the Geddes Institute weeks before his boat was found out on the firth.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Chris Connor.’

A name that came out of the blue and struck her mother like a slap across the face. She shook her head, green eyes filled with confusion. ‘Chris...? When were you talking to him?’

‘I went to the Geddes a couple of days ago.’

‘Why?’

Karen pulled a face. ‘Why do you think?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Karen, why can’t you just let it go? Your dad’s dead. Get over it.’

Karen almost bit her tongue in trying to hold back the truth. Instead, she said, ‘Are you telling me you didn’t know he’d been sacked?’

‘No, I didn’t. Why wouldn’t he tell me something like that?’

‘You didn’t know what he was working on, then?’

Her mother sighed in exasperation. ‘I don’t know. Something to do with bees. He’d been coming home with stings all over his hands. What kind of nonsense has Chris been putting in your head?’

‘It’s not nonsense! Dad was doing experiments on the effects of insecticides on bees. When he came up with something the industry didn’t like, they got rid of him. Forced him out of the institute by threatening to withhold its funding.’

Her mother shook her head. ‘I don’t know what Chris’s game is, but this is pure fantasy.’

‘No, it’s not!’ Karen shouted so violently at her that her mother took a half-step back, almost as if she had been physically assaulted. In the silence that followed, Karen glared at her, breathing hard. ‘He gave me a letter that my dad wrote and asked him to give me when I was eighteen.’

‘Well, he was a bit premature then, wasn’t he?’

‘After I went to the institute, he decided to give it to me, anyway. I opened it tonight.’

Her mother crossed her arms again. ‘And?’

Karen steeled herself. ‘He’s not dead.’

Her mother gasped her disbelief, turning her head away, shaking it and raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘He’s not!’

‘Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid!’ She drew a deep, tremulous breath. ‘Karen... I’ve been talking this over with Derek... and we both think it’s about time you saw a psychiatrist.’ She blurted it out before she could stop herself. What might have been discussed as one of many possible approaches to dealing with her troublesome daughter was suddenly right out there, top of the agenda.

Karen felt the skin on her face redden, stinging as if she had been slapped on both cheeks. ‘Go to hell!’

She turned and stalked out of the room. Her mother’s voice came after her, laden with regret at words spoken in haste and anger. ‘If there’s a letter, show it to me.’

Karen swivelled on her heel in the doorway. ‘Oh, yeah. So you can accuse me of making it all up. Writing it myself. Cos, of course, I’m off my fucking head!’

She took the stairs two at a time, and saw a startled-looking Derek standing at the far end of the hall as she stormed into her bedroom and slammed the door shut, locking it behind her. Two strides took her to the laptop, and she selected a Marilyn Manson album to blast out at full volume. Then she threw herself face-down on the bed, wrapping her pillow around her head to shut out the music and the banging on her bedroom door, her mother’s voice shrill and hysterical somewhere far beyond it.

She supposed she must have cried herself to sleep, for she had no recollection of the album coming to an end, or the silence that followed it. Her mother must have given up trying to reason with her through the door long ago.

She rolled over on the bed and lay staring up at the ceiling. Her dad was alive, whether her mother wanted to believe it or not, and she had no idea which of the two conflicting emotions of joy and fury had gained ascendancy over the other. Initial euphoria had given way to a searing anger. How could he have done this to her? Faked his suicide and put her through two years of hell believing that he was dead, and that she was somehow responsible for it. Which, in turn, had subsided with the realisation that, as usual, she was only seeing things from her own selfish perspective. For her dad to do what he had done, he must have had powerful cause. And that it was linked in some way to the research which had got him fired and physically ejected from the institute seemed beyond doubt.

The fog of mixed emotions was starting to dissipate, and she began to think more clearly, in spite of the throbbing headache that had come with the spilling of her tears. If her dad was alive, where was he, what was he doing? She needed to know. She needed to find him. And she knew that she was entirely on her own. Who was going to believe her? Certainly not Derek and her mother. Clearly they thought she was disturbed , in need of psychiatric treatment. And psychiatrists, she knew, liked to give you drugs to dull the senses and mute the emotions. Well, nobody was going to make her take any pills. She wanted all her senses about her. But where to begin?