Strange Sally Diamond

‘Should we tell him about Mark Butler?’ I asked her. Garda Reilly looked at us quizzically.

‘I don’t think it’s anything to do with the guard’s enquiry,’ said Angela. ‘Let’s let the man go on about his business.’

‘If there’s anything funny going on, you should tell me,’ he said.

‘It’s private family business,’ said Angela. He looked miffed not to be let in on the secret.

I was annoyed too. As I closed the door on Garda Reilly, I turned to her and said, ‘Tell me!’

She steered me back to the kitchen, pushed me down into the chair and went back to filling the teapot.

‘For God’s sake, Angela, I’m not a child. What do you know?’

She placed the two mugs on the table and sat down opposite me.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to scare you. If I thought he was a danger, I’d have told that guard, but it’s probably completely unrelated.’

‘What is?’ I had never known Angela to be this irritating before. Her eyes were almost dancing in her head.

‘Okay, where will I start?’

‘Just start!’ I tried not to shout.

‘I found Elaine Beatty on Facebook.’

I had deliberately not joined any social media sites. Tina had suggested they would not be good for my mental health. I wanted real-life friends and my name was well-enough known by now that it would attract voyeurs and, possibly, my birth father.

‘Mark’s ex-wife?’

‘Yes, I sent her a private message asking to speak with her about Mark. I expected her not to reply or to ignore me, but she answered within the hour. We exchanged phone numbers so I called her. She’s been worried about him.’ She took a dramatic pause.

‘Mark Butler is a troubled man. He changed his surname by deed poll before they got married, for a good reason.’

‘What was his original name?’

‘Mark Norton.’

‘But that’s my name, or rather, it was my birth mother’s name.’

‘Sally, he’s your uncle.’

I was glad I was sitting down but I still held on to the table.

‘He was four years old when Denise was kidnapped. He worshipped her. It destroyed his family,’ Angela said.

‘Wait, what? I didn’t see his name in any notes anywhere. In the recordings, Denise never mentions him – at least, I don’t think so?’

‘Maybe she couldn’t connect with her childhood, pre-Conor Geary? She was kidnapped aged eleven, released aged twenty-five. She spent longer in captivity than free. It’s possible that she didn’t even remember him. And then she died in hospital a year later.’

‘She committed suicide.’

‘Yes. His parents both had breakdowns, according to Elaine. His father hit the bottle. His mother barely kept things together. His whole childhood and adolescence after that was spent chasing leads. Denise’s disappearance dominated their lives. By the time he was sixteen, his parents had given up looking for her, and he couldn’t forgive them for it. Then, when he was eighteen, Denise was found, with you. And he wasn’t allowed to see her. You must remember, she didn’t want to be around any adult male at the time, including her own father. Your dad – Tom, I mean – was the only man she saw.’

‘And his wife told you all this?’

‘Yes, they met in college in Dublin. As soon as people heard his surname, they wanted to know if he had a connection to the now infamous Denise and Mary Norton. His parents had moved to France, his sister was dead. He was a pitiful figure who drank too much, but Elaine thought she could rescue him. It was her idea to change his name, so that he could escape the constant questions. They married young, at twenty-two, and she thought that once they settled down and had a family, she could fix him, they could live a normal life. But he was still obsessed with finding his sister’s kidnapper and furious with his parents for allowing you to be adopted. He was told, like everyone else, that you had been adopted in England.’

‘I’m going to ring him. Why didn’t he tell me any of this?’ I said.

‘No, wait, we have to think this through. Elaine said he refused to have children because he was terrified that history could repeat itself, that his child could be abducted and treated like Denise. That’s what eventually ended their marriage after fourteen years. His obsession. There was no affair that she knew of.’

‘He lied to me.’

‘He and Elaine are still on good terms. She forced him to go into counselling and try to find new interests. And, for a while, he was stable. She has remarried and is happy with her new husband and son, but after your father’s death, when you hit the headlines and were exposed as the baby born in captivity –’

‘You make me sound like an animal in a zoo.’