The Puppet Master Read online

  Wracking sobs left her, and she could barely hold herself together. It felt like she was crumbling under the weight of what had happened. She lay on the floor, crying all the emotion she had bottled up out of her body. Expunging herself of the feelings she had denied she had. She cried about how scared she had felt. She sobbed about Adam’s betrayal. She wept for the undeniable fact that Adam had saved her. He may have betrayed her, but he had also put his life at risk to protect her. She felt so desperately sad and alone. She should never have come back to this flat. But she had nowhere else to go. She had no one.

  Adam

  A quiet, repetitive beep roused Adam from his sleep. He was certain that his alarm didn’t make that noise. Maybe Billie had changed it. He smiled thinking of her face. She was so beautiful, more so because she didn’t realise it. She had told him she hated her fire-red hair but he loved it. She was so different to anyone he’d ever met and her hair matched that. In fact, he needed to get up and seek her out. If only he didn’t need to sleep, then he could be around her all the time. Man, he was lame. He tried to force his eyes to open, it took all his strength to do so. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this tired.

  He blinked twice when he saw the white walls around him, the unfamiliar white blanket and several monitors on either side of him. He tried to sit up to see more but a bursting pain rocketed from his side, forcing him to lie back again. He was in the hospital. Why was he in the hospital? As he asked himself that question, his brain unlocked the memories. His heart sank and he felt sick as he remembered that he had lost both his uncle and Billie.

  Billie

  Billie couldn’t settle. She knew that she had to go to court and once that was over she would finally be free. But until that happened she was living a nightmare. Every bump in the night was Eric. She wanted to move. She longed to escape from the flat. But her mental exhaustion and the constant fear that followed her around had her held prisoner. She couldn’t move away. She didn’t have the energy.

  The police had advised her to stay put for the moment. She was only just holding onto her job by the skin of her teeth. Her boss had coldly reminded her that unexplained absences were not acceptable and she was on her final warning, they had given her some compassionate leave but she didn’t know how long she would be allowed to have it. She had no friends or family to turn to, she just felt lost.

  It was more isolating than when she had self-imposed her seclusion from the world. Each day she worried and wondered about what the future held. Could she even have one? Every day she felt like Eric was watching. It was like now she knew that he had been watching her all this time, the feeling would never go away. She hadn’t known then, that she was being watched, so how was she to know now? Eventually, her desolation had led her to Adam’s hospital bed.

  When she arrived at the hospital, an over-friendly nurse had informed her that Adam was sleeping. The nurse must have seen the alarm on her face as she assured her that he was doing just fine, his body just needed time to heal from his wound. She insisted that Billie go through and see him, he’d had no visitors and the nurse said she felt sorry for him.

  So Billie found herself at Adam’s bedside, holding his hand as he slept peacefully. With the blanket over him, it looked like he was just having a good night’s sleep. She stared hungrily at his face. Relaxed in sleep, he looked even more handsome than she had gotten used to.

  When she had first discovered that Adam was related to Eric, she had thought the worst, that he had duped her into falling in love with him. But she knew now, without a doubt, that Adam had been as much a victim as she had. His passionate speech, as he held his uncle down, played before her. His face was glistening with tears when he told her how he had learnt what his uncle was really like. She realised what she had seen in his eyes was pain. She remembered on their first date that Adam had worshipped his uncle because without him, he would have been alone. But it was hard; every time she thought of Adam, she automatically pictured him with Eric, laughing and loving each other. The man that had made her suffer and the man she loved were related, she just couldn’t take it in.

  She was feeling so lonely, she desperately wanted to wake Adam up and tell him that if he would have her, she would be his, but could she really be with Adam knowing that he was close to and loved the man she despised. What if they reconnected? Could Adam really break that bond that had been nurtured over such a long time? Was it fair to ask him to give up the only family he had, monster or not? How could she live with him, knowing that he had a blood tie to the man who caused her insides to try and escape from her body in fear?

  She looked at Adam’s hand. It took both of her small pale hands to hold his large hand. She absently caressed her fingers across his palm. The movement and the feel of his hand centred her. For the first time since the chaos of Eric’s attack, she felt calm. Safe. She looked up at Adam and checked he was sleeping. She moved her hand and caressed his face. Even his face was strong.

  “I love you,” she whispered. When he didn’t answer back she felt emboldened, she wanted to unburden herself of the storm of thoughts that were thundering around in her mind.

  “I want so much for you to wake up and hold me.” She felt silly for talking to herself, but she couldn’t stop now. “Did you love me too? I know that you told the police about your uncle. You got them enough evidence that they think they are going to be able to put him away for the rest of his life. They got the camera from where I’d thrown it. So that will help if they can restore it. If only I’d known. I could have used it last time.”

  She stroked her fingers through the blond curls that brushed along to his ears.

  “You have no idea what it was like; he was so good at controlling me. I thought that he loved me. I loved him more than anyone. I thought he was going to replace my dad. But by the end, he’d replaced all my dreams and became my inescapable nightmare. It is so hard to keep control of my thoughts; any little thing can set off flashbacks. The memories of his breath on my body and his fingers touching me, they lurk in the dark parts of my brain. If I give them the slightest chance, they crush through my defences and force me to relive it. Until I met you, I thought I’d never be normal again. Within a few weeks of having you in my life, you forced those memories further and further back into the recesses of my mind. I was so lonely before I met you.

  “He cost me my family. But then I had you. Yes, I still have panic attacks and have struggled but it was getting so much easier. I could feel myself stepping away from the remnants of his control. I wasn’t even around him and he still controlled me until I met you. But you were the antidote. I want that again. But how?”

  She looked at his face. She would be mortified if he had heard her deepest thoughts, but part of her wanted him to wake up, look at her with those loving pale green eyes and tell her the solution. Tell her that he could see the way.

  “How could I ever trust you? I want to. Every fibre of me wants to trust you. I know that you are disgusted by what your uncle did. But one day, in the future, what’s to say you won’t regret having no family. I know how hard that is. He reaches out to you… and you start to see him again. I can’t be around that. My own mother…”

  Her voice broke; she hadn’t said that word in five years. Her mum’s face floated into her mind’s eye. “My own mother knew what he had done, but didn’t help me, she let me suffer. Then she forgave my grandmother and was happy to be in the same house as him. Even after she knew everything that he had done. If my own mother could betray me then why wouldn’t you? My whole life has been defined by him. But I don’t want that any more. If we stayed together, we would always been bound by it, wouldn’t we?”

  It was helping to sort through her thoughts. She loved Adam. The sight of him tackling his uncle to the ground to protect her flashed through her mind and she felt tingling fill up her chest. Her heart expanded as she realised that Adam was everything she could ever want. She had always dreamed of finding someone who could protect her. Not onl
y had Adam done that, twice, but he had also protected her from the very man that was the reason that she desired a protector.

  But she needed to shield herself, she couldn’t get hurt again. When Eric had called himself Adam’s uncle it was the worst pain that she had felt. Even worse than when she stopped talking to her mother and realised she was alone in the world. When she let her guard down with Adam, she thought that she was going to get her ‘happy ever after’. When it was taken away, she felt she was being destroyed from the inside. It was almost worse than anything than Eric had done to her. She couldn’t go through that pain again. Adam would break her trust, he may not have been in league with his uncle but he had lied to her. The fact that he started their relationship with the intention of making her confess to lying was something she couldn’t forget. When her heart tried to convince her to give in and be with Adam, her brain would remind her of that. She told this to his sleeping form.

  She lovingly stroked his face, mentally trying to convince her heart that this was goodbye and the right thing to do. But her heart reminded her that she realised that without her, Adam would have nobody, he had his friends but he had no family and no one as close as they had been. Could she really abandon him? He had put his life at risk to save her from his uncle, was this how she could repay him?

  She sighed, the brief relief she felt at voicing her feelings was short-lived. The familiar sickness in her stomach returned along with a headache, caused by the conflicting feelings that were tearing her apart inside. What had she done to have to go through this agony? First Eric and now this; would she ever get a break, a chance to be happy?

  Adam

  Adam smelled her scent before he even opened eyes. He was about to open them, ready to drink in the sight of her when he felt her fingers on his face. He didn’t want to spoil the moment, so he concentrated everything he had on staying still. He wanted to enjoy her caress before reality tore them apart forever. He knew that his relationship with his uncle had destroyed any chance he had with her. To his surprise, she began to talk. He thought for a moment she knew he was awake but he quickly realised she was talking to herself. He felt bad deceiving her but she had never opened up to him like this when he was conscious. He sensed she was going to say things she would struggle to say to him when he was awake. When she started talking to him about her mum, pretending to sleep became so hard. He wanted to ball his fists to express his anger. Billie was so strong and brave; to suffer the way she had and still be able to function and not give into misery or lose herself. He wanted to find Billie’s mum and shake her until she regained her senses.

  Poor Billie, little did she know that he knew exactly how it felt to feel the gap in your life where your mum should be. He had a sudden urge to take Billie in his arms and heal the emotional wounds she had suffered. He wanted to right all the wrongs she had experienced. He knew that if she would give him the chance he would do whatever it took to make her happy. He didn’t have anyone in the world that cared for him and neither did Billie. He could hear the echo of isolation and depression behind her words. When she said that she could never trust him again, it hurt more than the knife wound in his side. He’d rather be stabbed all over than never have Billie in his life. They hadn’t been together long but the feelings he had for her were powerful. They had been through so much together and they were connected in ways he hadn’t even known. He had to come up with a way to regain her trust and make her see that he would never ever want anything to do with the man that used to be his uncle. He would find a way. He had nothing else to do with his life.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Twelve Months Later

  Worcester Times, May 2016

  My Confession by Adam Hawkins

  Twelve months ago, I was writing a column about the interesting things to do around the West Midlands. I was just an average guy, working and trying to find my way in this crazy, crazy world. Now, my life has been shattered in more ways than one and I am left picking up the pieces. Pieces that won’t go back to how they were, so I’m creating a new picture.

  I am hoping this confession will help me with that. For you to understand my confession, I need to give you some background information, so forgive me for that.

  I lost my mother at a very young age. I was left with a drunken father, desperately wondering how I was supposed to survive without the woman who was the axis that my world spun around. Enter Uncle Eric.

  From the first day he walked into my life, he took the spot in my life where my mother had been. We had never had a big family, no grandparents, no one except Uncle Eric. From the day my mother got ill, it was Adam and Eric against the world. He was kind, gentle and honest and I worshipped him. He taught me everything I needed to know to exist in this big wide world. His visits healed the ache of loneliness that I suffered when he wasn’t around. He was my world. He was my surrogate mother and father rolled into one.

  What I didn’t realise was that the day my uncle came into my life, was when he planted a seed that he would nurture my entire life. Yes, he took care of me and helped me. But these good deeds were the water to make his seed of manipulation grow. He made sure that he was the sun. That I would gravitate and grow only to him. I was his creation. My world centred around him. I would and did do anything that he asked.

  Now you might be thinking, so what, he used you. What are you crying about? Well, I’ll tell you. My uncle is a paedophile. His manipulation of me enabled him to have inappropriate relationships with over fifteen underage girls. Those visits to see me, they gave him an excuse to get close to girls. He used me as his bait to gain people’s trust. I didn’t realise the extent to which I was a pawn in his hunting games until I saw a girl at a homeless shelter we volunteered in, at his trial.

  She had come forward to give evidence. At the time, I thought my uncle was amazing, taking the time to get to know the girls that had no place to go. It sickens me now to know I was actually witnessing my uncle preying on a vulnerable girl. How could I not know? This is a question that will plague me for the rest of my life. This is my first confession.

  The other half of my confession concerns my soulmate, my one true love. The woman that I betrayed because I fell for my uncle’s lies. I swallowed them and because of it, I made the woman I came to love, suffer unimaginable pain. I won’t name her, but I hope to God that she reads this; she will know it is her I am writing about.

  I met this wonderful beauty when I was still my uncle’s puppet. Little did I know that so was she. I saw her and I believed that she had spread lies about my uncle. He almost went to prison because of this woman. She had the guts to press charges against him, but he was too smart to leave evidence.

  The most sickening part of this story is that I gave him an alibi for his crimes against her. After reading that, I know you will be judge me. How could you, Adam? Believe me, no one will judge me and be as disgusted with me as I am. All I can say is that I was a young man, with no one in his life apart from his uncle. An uncle who had ensured I worshipped him and would do anything for him. I will never forget what I did, but I’ve had to forgive myself (or so my therapist tells me).

  I struck up a relationship with one of my uncle’s ‘victims’ intending to charm a confession out of her. Hoping to clear my uncle’s name and make my career. Who’d have thought that it would be my uncle that would give me a boost up the career ladder?

  Reader, I’m sure you see where this is going; I fulfilled every cliché and fell in love with the woman I was supposed to hate for ruining my uncle’s life. I thought her evil and conniving but soon I discovered she was brave, beautiful, kind and selfless. The pain behind every smile and the sadness in her movements made me realise that something wasn’t ringing true with my uncle’s accounts of her. I went to visit him and discovered he was pretending to live in poverty and by doing that I kicked off a chain of events that I both regret and am grateful for. Yes, I’m a walking contradiction.

  My uncle took off his mask and showed me the
magnificence of his role as a puppet master, the master manipulator, the devil in a kindly old man’s skin. He tried to take the woman I love from me, I was injured protecting her, but I was able to apprehend him until the police arrived and now he is in prison serving time for the crimes he committed.

  I am pleased that I was able to cut the puppet strings he bound me with and play a role in sending him to prison. But in doing so I lost the woman that I love. She could no longer trust me. I hadn’t told her about my uncle. She came to visit me in the hospital and told me that she couldn’t stand knowing that I was related to the man who had tormented her for years, that there would always be a chance that I may reconnect with him and shatter her life all over again. After all, I’d already done that to her once.

  So, here I am confessing to the world that yes, I am related to the most calculating and evil person I’ve ever known but his reign of power is over.

  I was scared to be alone in the world so I relied on him and that gave him power. But I am not afraid any more. I have learnt what real love is. I know men are supposed to be macho and emotionless but we aren’t immune to the might of true love when it hits us.

  Before I lost her, I was happy. The colours were brighter, the world was beautiful. I didn’t feel alone. The woman I love didn’t tell me how to live my life. She didn’t use me. She made me laugh. She made me ache inside when I wasn’t with her. She made me a better person. I was content and safe because I had her love. I could appreciate life and not feel like I was paddling to tread water. I could swim out into the ocean of life, her love would be the lifeline tied around my waist.