Angel of Darkness

Her mother stood several feet away, her face a mask of distress. ‘You’ve seen it?’ She hesitated, her hands tightly clasped together. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ Kelda echoed in disbelief. ‘What have you got to be sorry about? We’ll sue! They’re the ones who’ll be sorry!’

‘But it’s true,’ Daisy practically whispered. ‘Every word of it is true.’

Kelda stared back at her mother, willing her to take that unbelievable statement back. ‘Dad worked abroad on an oil-field,’ she said drily.

Daisy flinched and tearfully shook her head. ‘Tomaso was right. I should have told you the truth years ago. I should never have lied. Steve was in and out of prison practically from when you were born. He stole cars. He burgled houses. Of c-course,’ she stammered painfully, ‘he wasn’t very good at it. He always got caught.’

Kelda couldn’t stay upright any longer. It was like a nightmare. Her whole childhood was suddenly caving in beneath her feet. She collapsed down in a chair, trembling like a leaf and sick to her stomach.

‘When you were a baby, I used to take you to visit him,’ her mother told her. ‘That was when I still thought he would go straight and I tried to be loyal and supportive. I was crazy about him at the beginning. He was so much fun, so handsome, so exciting. But every time he let us down again, a little bit of the love died—’

‘Oh, God, no...’ Kelda mumbled, totally devastated.

‘You see, he didn’t really mind prison with his mates. The sentences were always short. I used to plead with him. He used to make all these promises...but he always broke them. We moved all around the country. One new start after another. I was so ashamed. And then, when you were seven, Steve took part in a bank robbery,’ Daisy told her shakily. ‘A security guard was hurt. That was serious crime. He was put away for years...’

‘But the letters!’ Kelda suddenly shouted at her mother in a tempest of anger and humiliation. She refused to believe that what she was hearing could possibly be true.

‘I didn’t want you to know. You loved him so much.’ Her mother shot her a pleading look. ‘He loved telling you those stories. He had a terrific imagination. Don’t you understand, Kelda?’ Daisy sobbed. ‘Steve was only nineteen when you were born and he never really grew up. He wanted so badly to keep on being your hero and that was the only way he could...’

Kelda covered her contorted face with both hands.

‘I might as well tell you all of it,’ her mother muttered grudgingly. ‘I met Tomaso three years before your father died!’

Kelda bent her head and looked away in an agony of pain and rejection.

‘For both of us, it was love at first sight. Tomaso wanted me to divorce Steve but I couldn’t do that, not when he was locked away with nothing but us on the outside to live for. So I kept on visiting, kept on pretending that everything was all right,’ Daisy shared wretchedly. ‘But I couldn’t stop seeing Tomaso. I tried to several times—’

‘You were his mistress,’ Kelda framed sickly, thinking of the time she had been told about the blonde Tomaso had been taking away to discreet country pubs for years. That blonde had been Daisy.

‘No! I never ever took a penny of financial help from Tomaso!’ Daisy protested vehemently. ‘I loved him, Kelda, the way I think you love Angelo. And he was prepared to wait for me to be free, no matter how long it took, and he would have waited. Your father’s heart attack was a total shock. He was a very young man when he died—’

‘Conveniently,’ Kelda could not resist saying, and then covered her face again, suddenly ashamed. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. You must have had so much unhappiness with Dad—’

‘My marriage to Tomaso broke up the first time because of guilt,’ Daisy whispered unsteadily. ‘I couldn’t live with my conscience. I couldn’t allow myself to be happy because I had been disloyal to your father and in the end I simply couldn’t cope. It was only when I was away from Tomaso that I was able to sort my feelings out. Your father made his choices, Kelda. I wasn’t responsible for them. He put himself in prison. He didn’t much care what that did to us as a family. He was too irresponsible to think of anybody but himself...’

Silence greeted that final speech. Kelda was rocking soundlessly back and forth on her chair, fathoms deep in shock as her mind skipped agilely over her childhood and saw all the inconsistencies she had innocently accepted. She was shattered.

‘Tim has known for a couple of years.’

Kelda choked back angry words of desperate hurt. She should have been told the truth a long, long time ago.

‘I wish Angelo had known!’ Her mother suddenly burst into tears.

Kelda was dragged from her stupor with a vengeance.

‘How do you think Angelo will react to this?’ Daisy sobbed. ‘Worse, finding out about it in a newspaper!’

Tomaso came in, looking grim and strained. He comforted her mother while Kelda simply stood there in the grip of a horror that put everything she had previously experienced into the nursery stakes. Yes, how would Angelo react to the humiliation of the discovery that he was married to the daughter of a criminal? A criminal who had robbed a bank, of all things!

‘I don’t blame you, Mum.’ Abruptly unfreezing, Kelda rushed to put her arms round her sobbing parent. ‘You did the best you could.’

‘But if this damages your marriage, I’ll never forgive myself!’

‘Angelo is on his way back from Geneva,’ Tomaso sighed. ‘We’ll stay, deal with this as a family should.’

‘No...’ Kelda was appalled by the suggestion. She didn’t want an inhibiting audience when Angelo came home. That wouldn’t be fair to him.