Strange Sally Diamond

‘I saw him throwing suitcases and boxes into his car. I asked him where he was off to and he mumbled that he was in a hurry and drove off.’

‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ said Aunt Christine.

Sue wanted to know what was going on. Angela explained calmly that we were a bit worried about him, that his behaviour had been erratic. ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation,’ said Sue. ‘He’s always nice to us, but he was definitely peculiar this morning.’ She went out to summon her children.

Angela suggested that we keep this quiet. No point in causing a fuss or maligning Mark if he was just a true crime fanatic. It wasn’t against the law.

They all left together. I felt strange in the house on my own. I couldn’t wait to move out of it. The unpleasantness with Caroline and then Mark made me feel unsafe.

What happened the next morning terrified me.

I didn’t sleep well. I put on my dressing gown over my pyjamas and went down to the kitchen to turn on the kettle for some tea. After breakfast, I went through the house making notes of whose Post-it was on what item so that I could arrange collection. I heard the flap at the front door go and went out to collect my post. There was an envelope addressed to Mary Norton, my birth name. It had a New Zealand postmark. I opened it with shaking hands.

It was a birthday card. Fluffy kittens on the front, something appropriate for a child.

It’s your real birthday, Mary. 45 today, 15th September. Not sure if this will arrive on the right day, but I think it’s important that you should know.

S

It was a day late. I rang Angela but it went straight to voicemail. This was an emergency. I rang Detective Inspector Howard. She said not to touch the card. She would send somebody over.

The doorbell rang five minutes later. I hid in the sitting room, but peeked out of the window to see if it was a guard. I saw that it was the men who had come to take the bouncy castle away. They made their way around to the back of the house and packed it up. I didn’t go out to them. They left in their truck. They didn’t need to see me. I’d already paid up front.

Half an hour later, the doorbell rang again. I heard Angela’s voice. ‘Sally, it’s me!’

I let her in and, before I could even show her the card, she said, ‘Sally, Mark Butler is not who he says he is.’

40 Peter, 1985

After my confrontation with Dad, I had driven around aimlessly for hours through the night before realizing there was nothing I could do about Lindy’s situation without risking my own life. I went home eventually, arriving at breakfast time. Dad said nothing on my return. He knew I had nobody and nowhere else, and that my disease would stop me reaching out, in any way.

The next evening when I visited Lindy, I told her about the confrontation.

‘So now you know, why haven’t you gone to the police?’ Her voice was high, hysterical. ‘You can let me go right now. What is stopping you?’

I tried to explain that there was nothing I could do, that the risk to me was too high. I told her that Dad had implied that I’d been having sex with her too, which made no sense because of the disease. She was silent for a while and then she said, ‘This disease you have, necrotic whatever, it’s very convenient, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean? It’s not convenient to me. I have no bloody life.’

‘He has lied to you about everything else, everything …’

A few months earlier I had asked my father to find any new research papers he could on my illness. He brought home printouts with photographs of deformed dead bodies and people in hospital beds, mummified in bandages in isolation rooms. There was mention of research in a German clinic, but that progress was slow and underfunded because of the rarity of the condition. There was no cure on the horizon.

‘I bet you don’t have any disease. He used it to keep you away from people. You’ve never been to school. You’ve never had a mother in your life, have you? What happened to her?’

I didn’t want to tell her about my mother. ‘I don’t know.’

‘So, for your whole life, it’s been you and your dad. Do you know how crazy that is? Take off those stupid gloves and come here and touch me, just my hand or my arm.’ She reached out as far as the chain would let her. I shrank back.

‘He wouldn’t lie to me about that.’

‘He hasn’t even told you where your mother is. You know now what he does to me. I’ve never heard of this disease. At the very least, it’s suspicious.’

‘Stop it!’ I shouted at her.

‘You have to let me go! We both need to escape,’ she screamed as I locked her in.

I thought of all the life I had missed out on, if what Lindy said was true. And then I thought of Rangi. If I didn’t have necrotic hominoid contagion, then I could have saved him easily. If I didn’t have necrotic hominoid contagion, I was responsible for his death.