Page 78 of Dead Fall

‘A lie, of course. The first time I ever saw him was in the children’s home. I remember him arriving and the female carers all fussing over him, this big handsome man, tanned from years working on the cruise boats. He was a captain by then and charming from dealing with so many foreigners. Cosmopolitan.’ The way she said the word didn’t make it sound like a good thing.

‘And what did they tell you?’

Chrysanthi raised her gaze from the bedcover ‘That I was one of the lucky ones, because my daddy had come to take me home.’ Decades of loathing packed into the word.

There it was. The thing that Cassie had taken so stupidly long to work out: George was Chrysanthi’s father, their ‘marriage’ a sham, and their two children the product of incest. When Cassie had picked the brains of Xav, her buddy at the DNA lab, he had confirmed that beta thalassemia, which had killed Bronte’s brother, was a rare autosomal recessive disease or ARD.

A child from two unrelated parents who both happened to have the faulty gene that caused it could inherit them in the roulette-wheel spin of genetic blending. But between first-degree relatives like father and child the chances of their offspring having an ARD rocketed.

Consanguinity, he had called it. From the Latin for shared blood.

Bronte hadn’t inherited an ARD but she had inherited Crohn’s – another condition with a strong genetic component, which meant it had a high incidence among cultures where marrying relatives like cousins was still common practice.

The chances of Bronte and Alexander both suffering from different genetically determined diseases was almost unthinkable – unless their parents were closely related.

From that realisation, everything else slipped into place: the fact that Chrysanthi and George were both tall while Bronte had been tiny – a common feature of consanguinity .?.?. the wedding photo in which they looked so strikingly alike .?.?. even those winged eyebrows they shared. And of course it explained the vitriolic level of hatred that Chrysanthi directed towards George. It wasn’t a result of his philandering but because her ‘husband’ was also her father and abuser. And both father and grandfather to Bronte and Alexander.

‘You don’t have to tell me any more, unless you want to,’ Cassie told her, seeking those dark eyes – George’s eyes.

But with a lift of the shoulder Chrysanthi went on, ‘My mama was only sixteen when she died of complications after giving birth to me and by the time I was a teenager I’d given up hope of my father ever coming back. To begin with there was the occasional birthday card from some foreign port but that didn’t last. But when he finally turned up, I was caught up in the excitement, of course. The other girls were so envious of me. The day I left they lined up to wave as I got whisked away in a fancy car by this man who looked like a film star. It was like a wedding.’

She fell silent, looking up at the ceiling, remembering.

‘He had saved most of his wages all those years away at sea. He took me all over Cyprus, swimming on beautiful beaches, drives into the mountains, always staying at the most luxurious hotels. He bought me silk dresses from expensive shops in Larnaca, and told me I looked just like my mama.’ She shook her head, a look of shame on her face. ‘And I went along with it.’

‘Of course you did!’ said Cassie fiercely. ‘He was grooming you. He was the adult, he had all the power.’

‘You don’t understand.’ She turned to Cassie. ‘I fell in love with him. At the start.’

‘Listen, Chrysanthi, nowadays people would completely understand. A child without parents, in care all your life. This glamorous man you’ve never seen before turns up to save you, to lavish you with love and affection – of course you thought you were in love with him!’ Remembering George comparing the young Chrysanthi to a flower, she got an image of a beautiful peony, but wilting for lack of water.

There was a long pause before Chrysanthi went on, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘We always had separate bedrooms. Then on my sixteenth birthday he booked us into a five-star hotel in Paphos where the rooms had a connecting door. We had champagne at dinner – my first ever alcohol – and it made me tipsy. That night he opened the door.’ The hospital bed opposite Chrysanthi’s was empty and she stared at it as though replaying what had happened that night in that other bed – her stare fierce, as if she could erase the images. ‘I hated it. There was so much blood. I knew it was wrong.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘He told me that he loved me, that we were meant to be together, to be married. After that night there were no more separate bedrooms.’

‘Who married you?’ Thinking even in rural Cyprus in the nineties they would surely require ID, birth certificates and so on.

‘Someone he told me was a state official.’ She made a scoffing sound. ‘Some friend of his in Larnaca he paid to put on a suit and say some fancy words. And I was stupid enough to think it meant something! As if it could ever have been legal in any case.’

‘How long was it before you fell pregnant?’

‘Four months. And then everything changed.’ Her lips curled in a half-smile, for the first time. ‘Those children saved me,’ she said softly. ‘The day I gave birth to the twins, and saw their beautiful innocence, I told him. I said that if he ever laid a finger on me again I would report him.’ Sounding matter-of-fact. Then her lips pulled back to show her teeth, an animalistic gesture. ‘And if he ever laid a finger on my daughter in that way I would kill him.’

Cassie left a pause. ‘And you don’t think he ever did? Touch Sophia?’

‘Never. I was always watching him. I would have known.’

‘But you do think he .?.?. killed her.’

‘I know he did. I admit, at first I thought it was that boyfriend of hers. Despite what he had done to me I couldn’t imagine him killing his own daughter. But then the police said he was with Sophia the first time she had a serious allergic reaction to something. He had never said a word about it to me – and he knew how carefully I watched her diet. The pathologist’s report said she had it again the night she died. Anaphylaxia.’

She pronounced the word the Greek way, making it sound beautiful. Of course, its roots lay in ancient Greek: translating as something like extreme guarding. The armed guards of the body’s immune system going rogue, attacking the very thing it ought to be protecting. A bit like George’s crime against Chrysanthi – his own daughter.

‘It was him who gave Sophia something to make her sick.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Cassie gently.

‘I was there when the police put it to him, and he looked at me.’ She widened her eyes for a split second in imitation. ‘And in that moment I knew.’

‘You could see he felt guilty?’

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