Trying Not to Love You - Part Sixty Eight

Chapter Sixty Eight

 

The house was quiet, and Sonny was glad of that. After scrubbing himself raw, he dressed and made himself a late breakfast, porridge and coffee, just what he needed. Fortunately Martha’s car was outside and the keys were hanging on the hook inside the door. He knew she wouldn’t mind him borrowing her car, she knew how much today meant to him.

Pulling out his phone he sent her a quick message.

                “I’m going to do it. Wish me luck. Borrowed your car, hope you don’t mind.” He’d barely made it to said car when the phone alerted him to a reply.

                “Good luck. I’m nervous for you. Let me know how it goes, and no worries over Herman. Think of him as moral support.”

He was groaning as he got into the car, trust her to make light of things. Saying that it was the longest and most painful journey he’d ever made. He had to be honest with Michael and that worried him as it could work against him. But he knew this was an all or nothing situation.

Derek the butler come bodyguard was at the bottom of the front steps before he’d turned off the engine.

                “Mr Oldbury isn’t up to visitors.”

Sonny shook his head, “he has to see me. This is important.”

                “It’s ok Derek.”

Looking up Sonny saw Michael on the doorstep, watching them. Sonny walked up to him, “Oldbury, I need to talk to you.”

Michael nodded knowingly and Sonny couldn’t help but feel apprehensive, “about time. You’d better come in.”

Derek followed them; hovering waiting to see if anyone wanted coffee, or maybe whether he was needed as a referee. That would have made Sonny laugh if he hadn’t felt so nervous...he was worse than that, he was terrified.

The older man sighed, “it’s ok Derek you can leave us, if anything happens to me you’re my witness to this moment, ok? It was him!” He pointed at Sonny with a half smile.

That made Sonny laugh, but he was silent until the two of them were alone. After a rather lengthy pause, Michael spoke.

                “So are you going to tell me what happened to my son?”

Sonny sighed, where to start? He moved into the room and started to pace, he needed something to distract him from what he was about to deal with, there was no easy way of starting this conversation. Taking a deep breath, he looked at the older man, “my links to your son go back a long way. I don’t think that it was a coincidence...” He started at the beginning, that was the only place, “I haven’t always functioned on the right side of the law, you might know I went to prison for GBH. Despite everything I’ve done when I was arrested I hadn’t done anything wrong, if anything I was protecting myself. But the police turned up,” he groaned. “Basically I was set up, too many spoke out against me, so I went down. But when I was inside I was head hunted for want of a better term, and for various assurances, and help I was promised the name of whoever set me up.”

Michael gave his head a shake, “Scott? Why you?”

Sonny nodded, “I don’t know, I never found that out. But I had a job to do. Nothing much...Keep an eye on things, report back. Monitor what Scott was up to. Simple really.” He looked up at Michael, “I never want to go back to prison again, I’ve spent over half my life being dictated to, having authoritarians govern my every move what with being in care first. I wanted to leave the life I had behind. It wasn’t a nice life...but it was all I knew.”

He started to pace the room, “but your son, he was pushing in the wrong circles, upsetting some big players in London...he was becoming known in the wrong circles. My lifeline, the offer I had, my way out of crime was to tempt Scott to a rendezvous point, I swear it was just a set up. He was going to be framed for a robbery. There was never anything more. And I had so many reasons to do it, I mean if nothing else it freed Martha up to come home, I’d just found out about Ethan accidentally, I knew she’d never bring him here whilst Scott was around, and that boy needed his family, I of all people know how important that is. Of course there was also revenge, I’d done eighteen months inside for him...but there was also this huge carrot being dangled in front of me, one of the big guys had some information for me, they would pass it over,  and let me go, once I’d delivered. Revenge isn’t good, but I needed it.”

Michael was pale, angry, shocked, all in one. He was silent for a moment, then his eyes lifted to meet Sonny’s. “What changed?”

His words were controlled, clipped; Sonny was nowhere near calm himself.

                “Scott was greedy, he snubbed everyone else for the chance of some easy money, it wasn’t difficult to coax him to the rendezvous, but instead of the police arriving, arresting him, some heavies arrived, marched him away. It was the last anyone saw of him. That’s the truth.”

Michael ran a hand across his eyes, “You know who did it? Who turned up?”

Sonny would never grass anyone up, not that he could, he was away from that life, he had no intention of drawing attention back to himself, Marcus and his cronies would do more than shop him, he’d end up in the same place as Scott. “I have an idea, but I don’t know.”

                “You won’t say.”

He nodded the affirmative, “that’s right. I’d be next. Look Scott, he’d killed someone, a relative of one of the guys. You might not believe that but he had, a twenty year old boy...Martha had seen him beat someone else to a pulp a while ago, he was getting out of control, his enemies were growing in number. He was dabbling in a world that he wasn’t prepared for, here he was a big fish in a small pond, but in the criminal melting pot of London he was less than small fry, and he’d kicked up a huge wave.”

                “I see.” Michael paced for a moment, deep in thought. “You had the chance to help him, or at least help end this nightmare, help me get some closure...but you didn’t.”

He shook his head, “No I didn’t. You may take it as me being selfish, and in a lot of ways it was, but these guys would have got him somehow, like I say, he was on their radar. I did what I had to do to free myself, and also Martha. She deserved to be free.”

                “So I lose a son but gain a grandson, is that how this works?” the old man wasn’t giving an inch, but then Sonny wasn’t expecting him to.

But his words did make Sonny pause for thought, “you weren’t part of my motivations, not back then.”

That caused the older man to look at him, “what does that mean? I became part of this? Is that what you’re saying? Why?”

This was it, this was Sonny’s moment, the moment he told him that he was his father. He’d taken the news of Scott’s demise well, better than he expected, but he had no idea how he’d deal with the next stage.

Sonny started to march again, pacing the length of the room, “I told you I was promised information, vital and pertinent to me. I have no idea how these people gather their intel, but they’re good, very good.”

Eventually he stopped, perched on the arm of one of the Chesterfield armchairs, “my mother died when I was eight. She wasn’t the best mother, and things were no better in care. But I never knew anything else about myself.  The night that Scott was taken, I was given this...”

He held the letter out to him, the letter that named Michael Oldbury as his father.

Sonny watched as Michael read the letter the shake of his hands the only sign that he was affected by the words. Sonny had almost memorised that letter. His mother’s love for the man was so obvious, as was the devastation as he unceremoniously abandoned her. How her life had changed at that point. She’d been unable to cope with a child, she’d lost her job, her prospects and her future, coupled with her broken heart it had condemned them both to the life of hell that was his childhood.

Finally folding the letter in half, Michael looked up at Sonny and shook his head, “is this some sort of joke? I lose my son and you step into his place. Is that what this is?”

Sonny took a defensive step back, he wasn’t sure what reaction he’d expected from Oldbury, but it hadn’t been this, disbelief. He was telling the truth, and the man who should have known about him all along, who should have realised what was going on was doubting him.

                “What a coincidence that you are ‘given’ this letter the night you watched my son murdered. You are a liar and an imposter.”

The emotion of actually coming to the house was too much, but this venom, animosity was enough to tip him over the edge. He snatched the letter from Michael’s hand, then tossed down a copy of the photos that had accompanied it, he’d kept the originals safe, he wasn’t a fool. And he wasn’t about to let Michael see how hurt he was feeling, how much his anger upset him.

                “Much as you want to hate me, I didn’t orchestrate this, I wish anyone BUT the man who is trying to ruin my life was my long lost father...but isn’t fate a bitch? Don’t worry; I want nothing from you, nothing at all.”

With that he stormed out.

Abandoning Herman haphazardly near the centre of their town, he stormed into the snooker club and ordered vodka. It wasn’t one o’clock yet, and already he was knocking back alcohol, but that was deservedly so in his mind. He’d had to avoid the pub; he wasn’t up to smug James, and even less Jade. Instead he sought the relative anonymity of the pool hall.

Several guzzled drinks later he still wasn’t feeling any brighter, he wished the ground would open up and swallow him as he was struggling to function. But movement from his right made him look up, and stood there was Martha. She understood everything, she knew him inside and out, and as he dropped his head, he knew that he was close to tears. Instantly her arms were around him, talking to him, reassuring him, telling him that it would work out, and he rested into her, wishing he could vocalise the words that he wanted to say, but instead burying his face into her neck.

After a few moments he felt he could lift his head, look at her, and he saw the shock in her eyes as she stared at his emotion ravaged face. He must look shocking, he felt it. Everything he’d ever feared had come true, the man he’d fantasised about, longed to meet, the hero of his childhood had turned him over, and he was devastated. 

                “Lucy had gone to the shop and saw Herman abandoned, I feared the worst. What happened?” Martha smiled warmly at him.

Sonny sighed, “I told him the truth, about Scott - setting me up, me setting him up, and then I gave him the letter. He accused me of preying on his vulnerability, calling myself his son when he’s just lost his son. He thinks I’m making it up and that I’ve got an agenda. Doesn’t he realise that I want nothing from him?”

Martha rubbed her hands along his upper arms trying to offer him some warmth, “he will do. He’ll see that you’re telling the truth, you’ll see.”

                “And then what? He realises that I’m no better than Scott? A useless drop out part time criminal.”

She shook her head, “NO Carter, you are not that, you are SO much more than him, you’re generous, caring, helpful...funny...” She paused she could go on and list another dozen or more positive traits, but now was neither the time nor the place. “You are nothing like him, ok?”

                “How do you know that?” His voice cracked with emotion.

                “Because I know you, you’re a good man. Ok?”

He gave his head a shake to tell her he disagreed. “Come home Carter, take your mind off this, I guarantee he’ll be looking for you soon. OK?”

He shrugged then followed her out to the car.

Ethan was the tonic that Sonny needed, the youngster wanted to play football, and Eamonn and Carl had made him a goal post from thick branches and a net, a real homemade gift, and it was set up in the yard...both older men were pleading exhaustion and sloping off to the pub. After half an hour Sonny had managed to forget the earlier trauma, it hadn’t gone away, but from the kitchen Martha could tell that he looked a little calmer. But when the big black four wheel drive pulled in to the yard, she moved outside, calling to Ethan as the expression on Sonny’s face changed dramatically at the same time his face paled to an almost deathly colour. The irony, Martha thought as she bundled Ethan into the kitchen was that the passenger in that car had the ability to ruin Sonny in one hit, and he had no idea. Poor Sonny, he was so desperate to be accepted, she only hoped that Michael did the right thing.