“But it wasn’t?”
I shake my head. “She knew everything, she’d just rather keep quiet and stay in the fancy house with the glitz and glamour of being Mrs Henley Snr. than do something about all the lies.”
She doesn’t say anything, just waits for me to continue.
“I wondered where he went at night. I was a teenager living in a house full of lies and hushed whispers. I was at a school I hated, preparing to take over a family business that made my father bitterly fucking twisted, at least that’s what I thought. I thought that’s why he was always so fucking angry.” I take a breath. “You have to understand. My father is a legal icon, he’s one of the best lawyers this country’s ever seen. Walking in his footsteps was… hard. But I did it. I wanted to make him proud when I was too young to know better.”
“I get it,” she says. “I wanted to make mine proud, too.”
Wanted.
I make a note of the tense for future reference.
“I knew my father paid for sex. I’d see him at social events schmoozing with all the high class hookers on the scene. I’d see him take a feel whenever he thought nobody was watching. But I was always watching. I saw everything. I’d watch him with those beautiful women and I’d want them for myself. I wanted to be like him one day, taking whatever he wanted, doing whatever he wanted.”
“With prostitutes?”
I nod. “With women I could pay to do whatever pleased me. It was the power. I saw how my father used it, and I wanted to be the same.”
She takes a breath against my chest. “That’s normal, right? Wanting to be like your dad?”
I laugh. “Not quite. Not when I fully realised how far his depravity fucking went.”
“What happened?”
I fight the urge to grab another whisky. “I started following him. Spying.” I breathe. “It’s a dangerous hobby that, spying on someone. The tiny victories are… addictive. A little snippet of insight here, uncovering some seedy little secret there. I felt so fucking clever. I felt like I was so fucking in control.”
She tenses in my arms, as though she knows what’s coming.
“I thought I knew everything about my father. I’d been snooping on him for well over a year, rooting through the paperwork in his study, going through his phone records, his emails, trying to fit together the shadowy pieces of his life.” I sigh. “I know it’s hard to understand, why someone would… do that. I know it’s hard to believe that someone would be so… desperate to please someone else that they’d take it so fucking far as to follow them across the fucking city to a public toilet in the East End, but I was all in by then. I wanted to know him. I wanted to please him. I wanted to be just fucking like him, even though he at least partly repulsed me.”
Her breath is ragged but I keep on going.
“I peered in through the door to the urinals, feeling so fucking pleased with myself for my stealth.” I smile. “But the cards always come tumbling down eventually. My luck ran out. It wasn’t my father who caught me, it was some big fucking ape of a guy who was piling on in for the fucking show. He grabbed me by the throat and dragged me inside, and slammed me up against the wall as a couple of others laughed.”
“Oh God…” she breathes, and I kiss her head.
“He said he’d got a young one. He thought it was hilarious. He told me I should have piped up if I wanted some dick in my ass, not skulked around the outside like a wimpy little queer.”
“What did you…”
“Nothing. My face was pressed against the wall and the guy’s weight pinned me tight.”
I feel her shaking, and I realise I’ve got to tell her the fucking truth. The whole fucking truth.
“I could’ve screamed. I could’ve fucking yelled the place down and kicked out or elbowed him and told him to get the fuck off me.”
“You were scared…” she whispers.
I shake my head. “It wasn’t fear. I was scared, of course I was fucking scared, but it wasn’t that that rooted me to the fucking spot. It was the fucking hard on in my pants. It was the stench of the wall, the stench of him, the way I wanted a part of whatever fucking seediness was going down there.”
“You wanted it?”
“Wanted it, didn’t want it… it’s a fine fucking line. My dick wanted it, my brain not so fucking much.”
Her voice is a choked little squeak. “What did he do to you?”
I smile. “You’ve seen what he did to me, I just did it to your poor little virgin friend back there. He pulled my fucking pants down and put me in a chokehold then rammed his fucking cock in my ass. Only he went in dry. I at least allowed your friend a little grace.”