Bleed for Me (49 page)

The amount of blood must have surprised Natasha - how fast it flowed, how far it sprayed, covering her hands and her clothes. Minutes later Sienna came home and saw her father’s bag. She crept quietly up the stairs, wanting to avoid him, but heard a tap running in the bathroom and a toilet flushing.

Running the final steps, desperate to get into her room, Sienna tripped over her father’s body and screamed, scrambling up, leaving her handprint on his shirt. Natasha didn’t react quickly enough to stop Sienna fleeing. However, she quickly saw another away to get rid of her rival. She dropped the Stanley knife into the river close to where Sienna was discovered that night.

Did Gordon know what she’d done? Perhaps. Surely, he suspected, but in a perverse twist the crime reinforced his bond with Natasha because each had to provide an alibi for the other.

Annie Robinson proved to be another hidden danger. She was blackmailing Gordon over his affair with Sienna, extorting money and threatening to destroy his career. Natasha had kil ed to protect her marriage and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Spiking a bottle of wine with antifreeze, she delivered it to Annie’s flat with a gift card from a grateful cast.

Annie phoned me on the day I got out of hospital. She said that I sounded different.

‘How do I sound?’

‘Like maybe you could forgive me one day.’

She laughed nervously and kept talking.

‘I wanted to come and see you, but I didn’t know how you’d react or what your wife would say. I did a very bad thing, asking Gordon for money. I should have protected Sienna. I should have stopped it.’

There was a long pause. Maybe Annie expected me to disagree or wanted me to make her feel better. I couldn’t do it.

Then she told me about her plans to take long service leave and travel to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. She might even get to Australia.

‘I think I might like Australian men. They’re not so buttoned up.’

‘You think I’m buttoned up?’

‘No, you’re just in love with your ex.’

Novak Brennan and his co-accused go on trial next week at the Old Bailey. The hearing has been transferred to London for security reasons and the Attorney General has promised greater protection for jurors and witnesses.

Marco Kostin wil be the star witness again. Julianne visited him twice in hospital before he was taken to a safe house. I don’t know if they’re going to offer him a new identity after the trial, but I wouldn’t blame him for going back to Kiev or trying to start a new life somewhere else.

I have my own court date to contend with. Not as a defendant, thank goodness, the charges against me were dropped. Instead I’m to give evidence against Carl Guilfoyle, who faces two counts of attempted murder, as wel as perverting the course of justice and jury tampering. Rita Brennan wil be tried alongside him as an accomplice.

The murder of Gordon El is is stil an ongoing investigation, but Ronnie Cray has Guilfoyle in her sights. She has recommended Safari Roy for a Police Bravery Award, but refused to accept a nomination for herself. The scar on her shoulder wil serve as a trophy.

Meanwhile, Judge David Spencer stepped down from the bench very quietly during the summer. There was a paragraph in
The Times
Law Reports and a smal article in the
Guardian
, but no judicial inquiry or police investigation. He retired with his reputation and pension intact, although a separate diary entry mentioned that he’d separated from his wife of forty years. That can be punishment enough.

The col apse of the so-cal ed race-hate trial was a big news story for a week as the experts and commentators debated again whether trial by jury is an outdated system, akin to asking the ignorant to understand the incomprehensible and decide the unknowable.

I don’t know the answer, but if I were on trial for my life, I would rather put my fate in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get out of jury duty than one judge who may have an agenda. Jurors can be colossal y ignorant and easily bewildered by the sophistry of lawyers, but I’l take my chances with the ordinary man and woman because they can tel the difference between justice and the law.

I see Helen Hegarty occasional y in the vil age, but she stil keeps to herself, rarely smiling. She no longer works nights and Zoe has moved home, deferring her university course for a year. Sienna has started at a new school in Bath, but she and Charlie stil see each other, one of them struggling to reclaim her childhood while the other is desperate to grow out of hers.

I used to want to stop Charlie growing up. I sought to hold on to the girl who watched
Lord of the Rings
with me and liked her pizza with extra pepperoni and made fun of the fact that Julianne couldn’t catch a bal . Now I have a more realistic vision of the future, one that isn’t based on a pathological desire to protect my children from people like Gideon Tyler and Gordon El is and Liam Baker; as wel as bad boyfriends, ignorant bosses, cruel comments, drunk maniacs and intolerant bigots.

Parenthood is a lot like being a trapeze artist, knowing when to let go and watch your child tumble away in mid-air, reaching out for the next rung, testing herself. My job is to be here when she swings back, ready to catch her and to launch her into the world again.

Lately, I’ve become more optimistic that Charlie wil be OK. She’l weather adolescence and a divorce (if it comes to that), and I’l be around to see her graduate from university, col ect the Nobel Prize, fal in love, marry and be blissful y happy.

When I lie awake in the morning, inventorying my tics and twitches, waiting for my medication to click in, I sometimes think of al the things I haven’t done yet. I haven’t slept with a movie star or climbed Kilimanjaro or learned a language other than schoolboy French. I haven’t written a book or run a marathon or swum with dolphins.

Mr Parkinson wil not kil me, but I wil die with him unless the race for a cure beats his unrelenting progress. Some people think news like this would change their attitude towards life.

They have fantasies of self-transformation, of climbing mountains or jumping out of planes.

Not me. You won’t catch me running with the bul s in Pamplona or searching for the source of the Amazon. I’d rather a mundane end than a gloriously brave or stupid one.

In the meantime, I am going to tremble and twitch and spasm into middle age. It’s not that I don’t feel the aching pain of loss. When I see footage of myself from six years ago, standing tal , fighting fit - images of a younger, healthier me - I do feel angry. My strength, balance and dexterity have been compromised. I am half the man I was, searching for the rest.

Maybe I’l move back to London. Maybe I’l learn to dance. Maybe I’l be the guy I dream of being, holding the line on the life that I promised myself.

Some nights I stil sit outside the cottage, watching over my family, seeing their shadows behind the curtains - it’s the best show in town and I stil have a pretty good seat.

Raising children, I’ve decided, is a lot sadder than I expected. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story.

If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tel them to make the most of the first times - their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child . . .

There can be only one.