why he was showing me, that there wasn’t anything to see. The corridors were dark and there were heavy fire doors between sections of the building. We got to the far end, as far away from the party as you could get, and Mr Jenson told me that was where his office was. He opened the door. There was another man in there, one I hadn’t spoken to but I knew that it was the firm’s other partner, Mr Western. He got up from the desk, came to shake my hand, complimented my dress. Although he didn’t say anything wrong, I remember feeling that I shouldn’t have been there. It felt strange, two men in such a small room with me.’
Callanach could picture it more clearly than he wanted. His mother – young, incredibly beautiful, too scared to put a foot wrong, to insist that she return to the party. His father’s bosses – entitled, made braver by alcohol and the knowledge that no one could hear what they were about to do. It was a scene that had been replayed through history, across decades, social classes and genders. It was about the powerful and the powerless. It was just because they could.
‘I told them I needed the bathroom and that I had to go back downstairs. They had a bit of a laugh about something, I can’t recall what, then I saw Western nod at Jenson. I think I knew when I saw that tiny movement, just how much trouble I was in. That was all it took. The fact that they had communicated with one another, excluding me. They put a …’ She broke off, panting hard, shoulders hunched, head down.
‘Maman, don’t …’ Callanach said.
‘I have to,’ she replied. ‘They put a bag over my head, something rough, then one of them held me while the other … it was fast. I thanked God for that. And it was only one of them. Then the phone rang and it was as if, I don’t know, they woke up. Like they’d forgotten where they were, or who they were. I was pushed to the floor and Western pulled the bag off my head, threw it at me, told me to clean myself up. There was some bruising on my arms – I’d struggled and they’d been forceful holding me. My hair was a mess from the bag and there was makeup running down from my eyes. I was shaking and clumsy. I think it was Jenson who got annoyed, telling me to hurry up.’
Véronique stopped, studying the empty glass she was still clutching and forcing her fingers to relax so she could put it down.
‘What did Dad do?’ Callanach asked. He needed to move the story along. It was a selfish perspective, he realised that. His mother had had the courage to relive the worst moment of her life and all he wanted was to scrub the image from his mind. He wanted to turn back the clock never to have heard it.
‘I didn’t tell him,’ Véronique said. ‘I found my shoes. They’d been kicked across the room when I’d struggled … and I wiped the tears from my face and tried to leave. Western grabbed me just as I was opening the office door. “Tell anyone,” he said, “and your husband is out of a job. We’ll tell him it was you who came to us. And we’ll tell everyone else in this city that your husband stole from us. He’ll never work again. Not so fucking high and mighty now are you, miss pretty French piece of ass?” I heard those words in my head for years. His voice. The hatred in it. I don’t know if it was the picture on your father’s desk that set them off, or the way I spoke and the fact that I was French. But they chose me. They knew what they were doing. They gambled on the fact that I would never be able to tell your father, and they were right. So I went to the ladies’ room and I cleaned myself up. I waited outside for your father for an hour in the freezing cold. I told him I was unwell and he took me home. I vomited as soon as we got back and he must have thought it was the alcohol, so that’s what I let him believe.’
‘You couldn’t tell him?’
‘Losing his job would have been the best-case scenario, Luc. Your father adored me. He’d have killed them, both of them, for hurting me that way. The thought of losing our house didn’t matter to me, we could have lived on the streets and been happy, moved to France to find work, lived with my parents. But do you think your father would have walked away? Never. He would have ended up in a prison cell and all for the sake of me needing to share my pain. I loved him too much to tell him. Worse things happen to women, Luc. That’s what I told myself. It was easier to stay quiet. Easier to bear my shame quietly, alone. Better than risking it all.’
‘So no one ever knew?’ Callanach asked. ‘You’ve carried that alone all this time?’
‘I told my mother, after your father died when we moved back to France. Your father’s death devastated me but it released me from the need to stay in this country, near those animals. I was free to take you away and start again, and I was able to stop lying to the man I loved. I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear all this.’
‘There are counsellors, Maman. Even now it might do you good to get some help,’ Callanach said.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Véronique said, smiling gently at him. ‘I don’t want it to be part of my present. It’s the past. I’m sorry that I didn’t have the strength to tell you before. Instead, I ran. Not from you, though. From the memories.’
‘I understand the trauma,’ Callanach said. ‘But you know me. You know I could never be capable of causing the harm those men did you.’
‘I do know that. Really, I do. But there’s something more,’ Véronique said. ‘If I don’t tell you now, I never will. Eight weeks after that Christmas party I discovered that I was pregnant. Your father and I had continued having a normal relationship. I knew that if I stopped being with him, he would know immediately that something was wrong.’
‘Stop,’ Callanach said. ‘Please stop. Are you telling me …’
Véronique walked over, knelt before him and took his hands in hers.
‘Luc, nothing has changed. You were the only thing that mattered. The man you have always thought of as your father, was the only father who ever had any influence in your life. He loved you so much. When you were born it was as if I lost half of him to you and I never minded, not for one second. His smile was brightest when he looked at you. He would spend hours just holding you, watching you sleep.’
Callanach stood up. ‘You should have told him,’ he said.
‘To what end?’ Véronique asked. ‘If he had known the truth, he would have been blinded by my pain. But I know that he would have loved you no less, no differently, and I have always believed that you are his son.’
‘No. Not when Astrid came to you with her lies. For a while, then, you believed something else. Is that the guilty burden you came to shift? That you thought, for however fleeting a moment, like father like son. You thought that my biological father was the man who had raped you, and that I had turned out the same. That’s why you left me,’ Callanach said, picking up his coat and shrugging it on.
‘Luc, it wasn’t that black and white. I was devastated by the past all over again. Nothing made sense to me. I ran because I couldn’t hide the pain I was feeling and you had more than enough to deal with. This conversation we’re having now, that I always knew we would have to have one day, would have been too much for you back then.’
‘It’s too much for me now!’ Callanach shouted, reaching for the door.
Véronique threw herself in the way. ‘Please, please don’t go. I know how you’re feeling, I want to help you.’
‘I’ve just been told that my life may be the result of a rape, and that the man I’ve believed all my life was my father may not be. You have no idea how I’m feeling!’
‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ Véronique sobbed, collapsing into the chair, head
