deliberately challenging stare. ‘Then why don’t you ask me a direct question and I’ll endeavour to answer it?’
‘All right, then.’ She nervously licked her lips and curled her hair round her ear again. ‘I’d like you to tell me a bit about your childhood.’
‘What would you like to know, exactly?’
‘Was it hard for you, being an only child?’
‘Compared to what? Being one of a large brood? How would I know, since that wasn’t my experience?’
‘Okay, then, perhaps you’ll tell me instead what it was like for you growing up in the area?’
It was the question Drake had feared the most, but he resolved himself to answer it because he didn’t want Layla to believe even for a second that he lacked the courage to tell her.
‘What was it like? In two words … miserable and lonely.’ Moving his head from side to side, he clasped and unclasped his hands. ‘I had a mother whose mind was always on leaving, and a father who was a bully and a drunk. After she left his bullying moved up to a whole new level. You can’t imagine how creative he could be when it came to devising punishments for me. Consequently I was always dreaming of ways to escape. When my art teacher at school took a serious interest in my ability for drawing and design, and suggested I might try to become an architect, I latched onto the possibility as though it was a lifeline—which indeed it was. From that moment on I didn’t care what my father did to me, because I knew that one day I’d get away … I’d carve a whole new life for myself and escape from both him and our drab little town for good.’
‘So how did you do that? Did you get the grades to go to university?’
‘Yes. I worked damned hard and fortunately I did.’ ‘Did you see your father at all after you went?’ As she took a sip of her coffee, then carefully set the blue and white cup back in its elegant saucer, Layla’s dark-eyed glance was thoughtful.
‘No.’ In return, Drake’s smile was helplessly bitter. ‘I only returned once after I left, and that was to go to his funeral. Needless to say I was the only mourner. Let’s put it this way: he wasn’t the most popular guy in the world.’
‘So how did he die? What happened to him?’
‘The silly fool smashed into a central reservation on the motorway whilst driving under the influence of alcohol. He was killed outright.’ Drake agitatedly tunnelled his fingers back and forth through his hair. ‘It wasn’t even his car. He’d borrowed it from some drinking crony who stupidly believed he’d return it in one piece. When I talked to the man he told me that my father was planning on driving up to the university to visit me. That’s why he’d borrowed the car. Unless he’d had some profound religious conversion and wanted to atone for his past ill-treatment of me, I very much doubt that it was true.’
‘My God, Drake!’
Layla’s expression was almost distraught, he saw. Knowing her kind heart, it wouldn’t have surprised him to learn that she was feeling compassion for his loser of a father.
‘I’m so sorry you had to face such a horrendous and sad ordeal on your own,’ she murmured, twisting her hands together in her lap. ‘It must have been hard enough for you not to have someone back at home, sending you love and support while you were away studying, but then to hear that your father had died … and possibly on his way to visit you as well …?’
‘You think it was hard for me, do you?’ he challenged, his temper rising. The old, painful wounds that he privately nursed, encrusted with bitterness and resentment, were still apt to make him feel murderous. ‘The only thing I felt when I heard the bastard had died was relief like you can’t possibly imagine!’
‘You said he was cruel. Was his cruelty the reason you don’t like sleeping without the light on?’
Sensing all the colour drain from his face, Drake shivered hard at the haunting reminder of his appalling home-life when he was a boy. ‘Every night he’d remove the lightbulbs in my bedroom and lock me in for the night in the dark. More often than not he’d go out and leave me on my own until the early hours of the morning, and even when he returned he wouldn’t knock on my door to check and see if I was all right.’
‘Why? Why did he do that?’
Drake’s lips twisted in disgust. ‘He told me it would make me a man. Personally, I think he did it simply because he could.’
‘You should have reported him … told someone at your school what he was doing. That kind of inhuman behaviour is child abuse, Drake.’
‘You make it sound so simple—but how does a frightened child tell someone his private horror story when he feels the most sickening shame about it? When he secretly believes he must have done something bad to deserve it?’
‘You did nothing wrong. You were only a little boy, for goodness’ sake! Your father was the adult in the family. He should have taken proper care of you. You aren’t supposed to “deserve” love and care. It’s the fundamental right of human children everywhere. I wish someone could have told you that so you wouldn’t have carried such shame and fear around with you all these years.’
‘Well, they didn’t, and I managed. End of story.’
‘You may have managed to get by despite your circumstances, but that’s not the end of the story, Drake … not if you’re still afraid to sleep in the dark and are plagued with nightmares.’
‘That’s not your concern. I deal with it. Shall we change the subject?’
‘I’ve one more question. Do you mind?’
Before Layla got the chance to ask it, he interjected quickly, feeling bleak. ‘I do mind, as I’m sure you know, but ask anyway. Then it’s my turn.’
‘What about your mother, Drake?’
Her luminous dark eyes were tender and her tone was infinitely gentle, respectful of the now tense atmosphere between them … like an intrepid novice explorer negotiating the walk across a frozen river for the very first time. One false move could make the ice splinter and send her plunging into the freezing waters below.
‘Did you ever see her again after she left?’
‘No, I didn’t. She obviously just wanted to put her seven years with my father behind her—start a new life somewhere else and forget about us both.’
‘Why would she want to forget about her little son? I’m sure that can’t be true, Drake. Her heart must have been breaking in two to leave you behind with a man like your father. She must have been absolutely desperate for her to carry out such an act.’
He gulped down some of his coffee, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Desperate or not, she presumably made a better life for herself somewhere else and decided not to risk ruining it by coming back for me.’
Restlessly he pushed to his feet, absolutely hating the misery and pain that made him feel unbearably exposed and vulnerable in front of a woman he already cared too much about. A woman whose rejection of him, if it ever came, he would probably never recover from. For a few desperate moments he despised Layla for the power she unknowingly held over him. He was also furious with her for goading him
