Хилари Боннер - A Moment Of Madness

He avoided Moira’s gaze. At that moment he didn’t dare look her in the eye.

‘We’ve got a lot to talk about,’ she said, and he hoped she hadn’t been reading his mind.

‘Yes,’ said Kelly quietly. And a lot we won’t ever talk about, he thought.

‘But not now, not tonight.’

As if on cue the doorbell rang. Moira reached past Kelly and opened it. Nick stood on the doorstep, his smile more uncertain than Moira’s — but at least he was still smiling, thought Kelly.

‘Hi, Dad,’ he said.

‘It’s very good to see you,’ replied Kelly, feeling the tears well up.

‘I called Nick on his mobile as soon as I knew you were being released,’ said Moira. ‘He said he’d come straight away. But I didn’t think he’d be this quick.’

She shot Nick an affectionate glance.

‘I wasn’t so far away. I was on a business trip to Bristol. Lucky coincidence. Just wanted to welcome you home, that’s all, Dad.’

‘Luckiest thing around here is that I’ve still got you two,’ said Kelly. And he found that, at least for a while, he was able to stop thinking about the turmoil of his recent past.

‘Just hold it together this time, Dad. Keep off the hooch and any other crap that’s around, will you?’

‘Yes. I promise.’

‘And stay way from loose women too.’ Nick grinned.

Kelly was not very amused, although he managed a weak grin back. ‘I promise that as well,’ he said automatically.

But all he could think of was that neither Nick nor Moira really had a clue about his feelings for Angel and the strange power she had had over him.

He supposed it really was over now. Angel was dead, after all, and he couldn’t say he was sorry about that any more. Actually, he wasn’t sorry. In fact, in spite of the fact that he probably still loved her, he was almost glad. It was, as he had known from the moment he had first heard of her death on the TV news, the only way any of it could ever be over for him. He was also glad that he hadn’t killed her. That would have been too much to cope with.

He could rebuild his life now. He would rebuild his relationship with Moira too, if she’d let him, and every indication, somewhat miraculously, was that she would. Eventually. He would stay off the drink. And the drugs. If he’d ever harboured the notion that enough time had passed since he’d hit the bottom of the pile and that he could cope with either of them, then he’d learned that lesson the hard way.

In the morning he’d phone Joe Robertson and see if his job was still there for him. He had no idea whether it would be or not, but if there was anyone in the world who would stand by him in spite of everything, after Moira and Nick, of course, it was Joe.

Kelly was being handed another chance again. He knew it, was grateful for it, and he genuinely intended to make the most of it.

He also knew, however, that if Angel were still alive, none of that rebuilding would be possible. Because as long as she were there, somewhere, almost anywhere, Kelly would not be able to stay away. His obsession was something he still couldn’t explain, even to himself. It was not something he liked. It was not something he had ever liked much really, not something he had enjoyed most of the time. It had been completely beyond his control. Angel’s power over him had been frightening and total. He didn’t suppose he would ever have been able to overcome it. Not if she had lived.

Her death had freed him.

He put an arm round both Nick and Moira and the three of them moved together into the dining room. They were his future now. And at least Kelly realised how extraordinarily lucky he was to have any kind of future at all.

Moira had roasted a chicken, the traditional way with sage and onion stuffing.

Nick liked roast chicken. He liked Moira too, and thought, as he had so many times before, how good she was to and for his father.

He would, of course, have preferred his father to have stayed with his mother and to have been the dad he had always wanted, both in his childhood and throughout his life. But even Nick had sometimes to accept that you couldn’t have everything. He certainly didn’t resent Moira. She had arrived on the scene far too long after his father had messed up the first time round, and abandoned him and his mother, to be resented in any way. In fact, one of the reasons he liked Moira so much was that she had been instrumental in giving him back his father. Moira had kept Kelly on the straight and narrow, Moira had provided the kind of family environment that Nick had never thought his father would attain again. Nick liked that. He’d liked it a lot until Angel Silver had come along and spoiled it all.

Nick hadn’t liked it being spoiled. And he hadn’t wanted to lose the father he had so recently regained. Indeed, he had ultimately decided to make sure that he wouldn’t lose him.

People didn’t realise, thought Nick as he leaned back in his chair and watched Kelly and Moira mend bridges, just how much it meant to have a father. To be honest, he thought, he himself had been surprised by the strength of his feelings for a man he had barely known until a few years ago. A man he could have felt just the opposite about, except that John Kelly was the only father Nick had, and that mattered to Nick more than he would have thought possible.

The kind of father-son relationship that, it seemed to Nick, almost everybody else in the world had, came to him late. But he had eventually found it. And it had genuinely destroyed him to see Kelly lying in a hospital bed, bashed and battered and damn near down and out. Nick had quite a lot in common with the James clan, really. He was fiercely loyal to his family, even though, unlike the Jameses, Nick had never really had a family. However, that seemed only to make his feelings for his father more intense once he had been reunited with him.

Although it was Nick’s nature to take action when he or anything that he wanted or revered in life was threatened, he had never intended to do anything about his father’s situation except offer his support. He really hadn’t...

‘Nick, Nick.’

His father’s voice, somewhere in the distance, interrupted Nick’s thoughts.

‘Sorry, Dad. I was miles away.’

‘Could see that. Look, there’s an AA meeting in town tonight. I don’t want to go. But everyone tells me how important it is, and I reckon I ought to start how I mean to go on.’

‘Sure, Dad.’ Nick liked the sound of that, saw it as an indication of just how serious his father was this time.

‘It’s down in Union Street and I was wondering if you might drive me there. I shan’t be driving myself for a bit, as you know,’ Kelly finished wryly.

It was when they swung into Union Street, just by the magistrates’ court, that Kelly was suddenly overwhelmed with unwelcome memories.

It was there that he had watched Angel first plead not guilty to manslaughter. There that he had sat in the press bench and been overwhelmed by her beauty and her composure.

Kelly found himself staring at the old courtroom building, turning his head round for a further look at it over his shoulder.

He was aware of Nick shooting him a quick glance. They were close, father and son, surprisingly so considering how long they had been separated. Kelly was fairly sure that Nick knew what he was thinking. And he seemed to be right.

‘You are going to be able to put all this behind you, Dad, aren’t you?’ Nick asked, a note of tension evident in his voice.

‘I promise you, Nick,’ Kelly said.

Nick made no reply as he drew the Porsche to a halt a hundred yards or so further on down the street, outside the venue for the AA meeting.

Then, just as his father was getting out of the car, he asked testily, ‘For Christ’s sake, Dad, how did you come under that woman’s spell the way you did? What the hell was it?’