Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [117]
Peter had also been busy, this time once again on the council exchange programme. He’d managed to swap the Bathgate place for a three-bed in Margate, Kent, although I wondered why the council were still giving him all that space. I realized my name was probably still on all the forms, so he was claiming he was still a family. In reality, though, he finally accepted we weren’t and were never going to be once I told him about Steve. I’m sure that privately he was furious, but from that day he stopped nagging me to go back to him.
I would even go so far as to say that he had mellowed. To be fair, I hadn’t seen anything of his temper since we’d come down from Bathgate. The only recent blot on his copybook had been the fire episode, but, as the months went by, the more ludicrous my idea that he could have been responsible for it sounded. No one was that mad.
Margate was only a couple of hours from us, so at weekends Peter picked up where he’d left off before the abduction and began to spend whole days with Daniel and me. More often than not, he would arrive with some piece of junk he’d found and say, ‘I saw this and thought of you.’ I never had the heart to tell him I just threw everything away the second he left. For the sake of Daniel and my overriding desire for him to have two parents, I forced myself to search out the positive in as many of Peter’s actions as possible. If I’m honest, I was happy with the results. I certainly had no fear that Peter would try to harm his son or run away with him again. That chapter was behind us. So when Peter offered to have Daniel at his place for a sleepover, I agreed.
I don’t think I was much company for Steve that night. We were meant to be having a rare evening out and I just sat staring at my dinner, punishing myself with thoughts of Peter abducting Daniel again. It was only when it occurred to me that the all-ports alert was probably still in place that I began to relax. The next morning, though, I was in Margate to collect Daniel an hour early. Everything was fine. I’d worried for nothing.
Peter really seemed to be making an effort. Obviously he was a typical Saturday dad in the way he let Daniel do what he wanted and fed him too much junk food. I lost count of the times I told Peter not to let Daniel watch eighteen-certificate videos, but he never got the point. On the other hand, he really impressed me by building a sandpit in the garden for Daniel to play in. It was out of character, but a nice thing to do. Even so, it was a relief when Peter announced he’d found another exchange closer to ours, a two-bedroom flat in a block in Leigh Park, Havant. I didn’t particularly want Peter on my doorstep, but the closer I was to Daniel at weekends, the better.
It all seemed to be going so well. Then, one by one, the plates stopped spinning as they often do. I felt Steve was unfairly suspicious of me sometimes, and at one point even believed I was having a relationship with his mate Andy. So I packed our things and Daniel and I moved into a brand-new home in Campbell Road. I was too much of a pragmatist to be that upset by it. Living with Peter had taught me that life’s too short to spend it in the wrong relationship. My main priority was ensuring Daniel wasn’t too troubled by another change of scene.
If I’m honest, as an estate agent, I should have recognized that we weren’t just downsizing in terms of space – there was a quality drop as well. But I was in too much of a rush to care. Our new home, 32A, was a basement flat that was dark and oddly configured. It didn’t even have a proper front door. You had to walk around the side of the semi-detached number 32 to get in. At night it was pretty scary, I admit, although by day the garden was really pretty. I even adopted a lovely fluffy cat who’d been