Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [0]
CATHY WILSON
with JEFF HUDSON
PAN BOOKS
Dedicated to the memory of my beautiful, talented but troubled mother Jennifer, for giving me life, to my grandparents for the stability they gave me, and my gorgeous son Daniel for breaking the cycle.
Also to my patient, caring and fabulous friends Gaynor and Maeve and partner Stuart who have endured my emotional roller coaster since the truth came out.
When I was a child I spake like a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. XIII 11–13
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE This is Where it Ends
1 The Choices Mum Made
2 Toast with Margarine
3 The Eye of the Storm
4 Mother Knows Best
5 When Can I Go Home?
6 Don’t Touch Me
7 Did You Miss Me?
8 This is Normal
9 Trying to be Brave
10 I Was a Handful
11 A Charming Man
12 The Signs were There
13 I’ll Try Harder
14 Think of Daniel
15 And Then I’ll Kill the Kid
16 His Home is Here with Me
17 Another Thirty Seconds . . .
18 Help Me, Mum
19 All About Him
20 Turn Round! Turn Round!
21 The Terrible Truth
EPILOGUE This is Where it Begins
PROLOGUE
This is Where it Ends
‘Cathy, turn on the news – now!’
It was September 2006, a Saturday morning, and my aunt sounded anxious. I hung up the phone and flicked the flatscreen remote. A second later I screamed. Shock turned quickly to confusion.
It can’t be him. It’s not possible.
I don’t know why my teenage son, Daniel, was up at nine o’clock on a weekend, but as he ran into the room, I was glad he was.
‘Mum, what is it? What’s wrong?’
But I couldn’t speak – I just stared at the screen, shaking and pointing at the picture of the man they said was wanted for the murder of a young girl.
‘You’re scaring me, Mum,’ Daniel said. ‘Who’s that man? Do you know him?’
Until then I’d been able to protect my son from the poison of his past. Now it was time for the truth. I took a deep breath.
‘Daniel – that’s your father.’
Part of me wishes I’d never set eyes on Peter Britton Tobin. Part of me wishes he had never taken a single breath. I’m sure I wouldn’t have any trouble finding people who’d agree. Just ask the grieving families of Angelika Kluk, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol. If I were them I would definitely consider death too good for the man who took my daughter’s life.
Just ask the two young girls he tortured, raped and left to die, the prostitutes who were hurt because of his excessive, brutal tastes or the countless others rumoured to have been his victims over a possible forty-year campaign of terror. Ask any of them and I’m sure they’d have nothing good to say.
But mine is a hideous, unique position. It’s why I can only ever partly wish he’d never been born. Because, like it or not, the serial killer Peter Tobin is the father of my only child, my beautiful son. And as any parent will know, there is nothing you wouldn’t do to protect your child. Unfortunately for me, Peter Tobin knew that.
With knowledge comes power and Peter knew without a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing stronger than the bond between mother and child. He played on that. That was how he controlled me during our marriage. One word out of place, one step out of line and he didn’t have to threaten me. He just threatened Daniel.
Our poor, innocent baby boy, from the moment he was born, was just a tool with which I could be manipulated. I see that now. He was a bargaining chip. A means to an end.
I was a wild child when Peter Tobin, twice my age, fell for me. A free spirit, confident, loud and independent. I was the sixteen-year-old with the world at my stilettoed feet. That’s how I felt and that’s how everyone saw me. Everyone except Peter.
He alone saw the confused, scarred girl beneath the veneer. The hurting, abandoned