Page 70 of Teacakes & Tangos
I went back inside and Dad was still sitting at the table, his head in his hands.
‘So what’s all this about confessing to the police?’ I asked gently, pulling a chair closer and slipping my arm around his shoulders. ‘What’s going on, Dad? You’re scaring me.’
He gave a great sigh. Then he looked up at me, misery in his eyes. ‘It was such a stupid thing to do, Anika. I realised that almost as soon as I agreed to do it. But I’d had a few pints in the pub that night – well, a lot more than a few – and Shane’s friend Josh seemed to be offering a solution to all my financial problems.’
My heart lurched with fear. I recalled all too well him coming back drunk from the pub that night.
He didn’t sound delusional. He sounded like a man who’d been hiding a secret.
‘What did you agree to do, Dad?’ I asked softly.
‘Drive the van.’
‘Which van?’ My heart was beating fast now. ‘You mean the guys who robbed the jeweller’s?’
He nodded. ‘The jeweller’s shop is right on the corner so I was to wait in the side street for them to come out and then drive them away.’
I stared at him, speechless. My law-abiding dad had actuallytaken part in the robbery?
Dad was looking at me, waiting for my reaction – dreading it, probably – but I was finding it really hard to get my head around his confession. I felt like I was in the middle of a dream. Or rather, a nightmare.
And then I realised something. ‘You weren’t meeting a woman that day, were you?’
He shook his head wearily. ‘It was you who put the idea of a date in my mind and I just went along with it.’
‘Because you couldn’t tell me the truth... that you were actually going out to... to drive the getaway van.’ I shook my head in bewilderment. It sounded so farcical when I said it.
The getaway van.
This was something that happened in movies – and definitely not in real life on Sunnybrook High Street, with your formerly very responsible dad behind the wheel!
Except that obviously it did.
‘So you were actually still parked round the corner in the side street when the robbers came out.’ I frowned, trying to picture what had happened with Minnie. ‘But one of them crashed into Minnie and knocked her into the road. So did you see the speeding van coming towards her?’
He nodded. ‘I could see it racing down the high street really fast. And Minnie was getting up and wandering into the middle of the road. I had to do something.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Of course you did. So you jumped out of the van and managed to run over and drag her back from the road just in time,’ I murmured.
He nodded. ‘Apparently. At least, that’s what people have told me. I remember the guys diving into the van and yelling at me to just drive. But I obviously couldn’t, not with Minnie in the road and the other van bearing down on her.’ He shrugged. ‘I had to save her, whatever the consequences. That’s my last memory. The guys in my ear, turning the air blue with their threats if I didn’t drive the bloody van.’
‘Oh, God.’ I stared at him, barely able to believe the things he was telling me.
‘I actually don’t remember a thing after that. Everything else is a complete blank until I woke up in hospital.’
‘In one sense you were a hero, Dad,’ I said in a small voice.
‘No. No, I wasn’t, love. I was engaged in criminal activity that could have turned out a hell of a lot worse than it did. When I ran over to pull Minnie back, I wasn’t acting heroically. It was purely instinctive. It didn’t even cross my mind that I wouldn’t be keeping my end of the bargain and I’d be messing up the robbery. It was just something I had to do.’
‘Yes. Because at heart, you’re a decent man. Not like those jewellery robber thugs.’
‘I don’t know about that, love. I hate myself now.’
‘What? No! You saved a woman’s life!’
He shook his head. ‘Ever since I got home from hospital, I’ve been going over and over it all in my head, wishing I could go back in time and do things differently... put the house on the market instead of being so crazily desperate to save it that I thought I had no choice but totake part in a robberyso that you would be spared losing the home you’d grown up in! You’d already lost your mum. I didn’t want to let you down.’ He shook his head. ‘But as long as I live, I’ll never understand how I could possibly have agreed to it.’
‘You were drunk and desperate.’
