Broken Silence (17 page)

I nodded slowly. “Yes, but it’s going to be okay now.”

“Okay?” he repeated.

“It has to be. I won’t be the victim any more, Cole. There are millions of people in worse situations than I was. I got out, and I survived it. I’m the one that has a future, even if they get out everyone will know what they did.”

He shook his head, staring at me with such intensity it made me self-conscious. “You’re amazing. I don’t know how you can be so calm. I want to kill them both.”

I shrugged. What other choice did I have? Falling apart wouldn’t solve anything but
make me a victim again. I never wanted to be there again. I was going to do everything I could to get them both locked up, and then I was going to carry on with my life and be happy. They were not going to control any part of me ever again.

“Can we go now?”

“Of course we can.” He kissed my damp lips and stroked the side of my face. “I have questions I don’t know if you’ll want to answer, or even know if I want the answers to them.”

“I’ll answer whatever you want to know, but right now I just want to get back to Ali’s and have a hot chocolate, or a vodka. Please don’t let them get inside your head. Fuck ’em.”

Cole almost smiled; his eyes flicked in shock. “‘Fuck ’em?’ Wow, that was so un-Oakley.”

I laughed. “I know, but it made you smile.”

“Oakley, Oakley!” My name was screamed by a number of different people I didn’t know. The press was running towards us, holding up cameras and microphones.

Before I could blink a car door was opened, and I was being shoved inside. Cole got in and slammed the door.

“Go,” Mum barked at Jasper, and he slammed his foot on the accelerator. I almost laughed at the theatrics; it felt like we were in an action movie.

“Easy, Jasper,” Mum said, after we’d sped out of there like a bat out of hell. “We want to get back in one piece.”

“I just want to get her away from that. And anyway, you were the one that ordered me to go!”

“Well I meant ‘go but go responsibly’.”

I laid my head on Cole’s shoulder and smiled at how normal and petty their argument was. Under Mum’s revised instructions, Jasper drove ‘responsibly’ and we arrived home twenty minutes later.

“I’m going to lie down for a bit,” I said as we walked into Ali’s house. No one argued.

I climbed straight into my futon bed and pulled the covers over me, needing to hide from everything for a while. My make-up and clothes were still on, but I just didn’t care. I rolled into a ball and allowed the tears to fall. Dragging up those memories made me feel dirty all over again. I hated it.

Why couldn’t I just have had a normal dad? That was all I wanted, even when it stopped, I still wanted my dad. I really believed it was over, and everything was going to be okay again. I wanted him to love me, as strange as that sounds.

I just wanted the man back that carried me on his shoulders and played hide and seek with me. I should have known that he hadn’t changed. I should have done so much differently, but I had been stupidly hopeful.

“Oakley?” Cole’s voice made me cry harder.
Go away!
I curled into a tighter ball and tensed. The bed dipped, and the covers shifted. His smell filled my lungs, and I needed him more than ever.

I rolled over and snuggled into him, clinging to his body as if it were my lifeline. He wrapped himself around me, protecting me.

“Don’t cry,” he pleaded.

“Do you want to ask me questions?” I whispered.

“Shh, not now. You’re not ready to talk about it.” I had a feeling he mentally added,
‘And I’m not ready to hear it.’
“I love you so much, Oakley.”

“I love you too.” I snuggled even closer and let the quiet thumping of his heart sing me to sleep.

Chapter Seventeen

Cole

“Are you ready for this?” I asked Jasper as we stood outside the courtroom waiting to be let inside.

“Not really,” he replied. “This is a bad idea.”

Yeah, probably.
Thinking about Max made me want to go postal, so fuck knows what I was going to be like hearing him lie.

“Cole, do you think she’s really okay with us being here?”

“I think so. She would’ve said if she wasn’t.”

She wouldn’t because she’d never tell anyone what to do, especially not Jasper when it came to
their
dad, but I didn’t want to tell him that. This seemed like something he had to do. I still wasn’t sure why I was here. To hear his side and see how he was going to try swinging it or to support Jasper since Oakley and Sarah were dead against going.

We’d only decided late last night that we were going to attend. A spur of the moment decision. Probably a stupid one too.

The door to the courtroom opened and people started filtering in.

“Well,” I said, “we should go in, I suppose.”

“Yeah.” He nodded but neither of us moved.

I slapped his back and took a step towards the door. “Come on.”

Jasper followed. Tension radiated from him. He was about to hear what lies his dad was going to spout out to make his sister look like a liar.

There were too many charges against him, some already proven, but his lawyer seemed determined to knock the ones relating to Oakley off the list so who knows what bullshit was about to come out of his mouth.

We sat side by side, and I wondered if I could leave. I didn’t want to be here but I wanted to be able to prepare Oakley if Max’s version of events changed anything. If the jury seemed like they were believing him.

Max looked like he’d aged more than just four years but he still appeared every bit the respectable man. He wore a smart black expensive looking suit, crisp white shirt and pale blue tie. His hair was nearly combed and he was clean-shaven.

He stood confidently, back straight and chin up. My hatred grew. How dare he stand there and pretend he’s not a monster after everything he’d done?

Jasper’s fists were clenched on his knees and he glared at his dad as if a look could murder him.

Max spoke fluently and calmly, the way he’d done when he was running the town committee to raise money for the new park and the church roof. I remembered watching him when I was young, hero-worshiping him because he was the reason our village was getting a skate ramp.

“Mr Farrell, how did you feel when you first heard the claims your daughter had made against you?” Linda asked. She carried herself as if she’d already won the case. I wasn’t sure if that confidence would bite us in the arse or if it was good and would show the jury she was certain Max was guilty.

“Devastated. Shocked. Confused. One minute we’re setting up for a weekend camping and the next she’s taken off and I’m arrested. It still feels like a nightmare.”

“Why did you only take Oakley camping? You have two children, it seems rather strange that you’d only take your daughter.”

Max nodded and very swiftly replied, “I would have taken both but Jasper didn’t want to come in the end.”

“What do you mean ‘in the end’?”

“To begin with Oakley didn’t want him to come. She wanted me to herself, the way she only wanted Sarah – her mother – to take her to gymnastics. Camping became my time with Oakley and my son’s time was football on a Sunday morning.”

“Liar,” Jasper growled under his teeth.

The football part was true, the rest was Max’s fantasy.

“You allowed your five-year-old daughter to dictate who was going on these trips?”

Max smiled his award-winning smile. “She needed one-on-one time and so did Jasper, every child does. We had plenty times together as a family too but they both needed occasions where they had my undivided attention.”

I ground my teeth.

“Mr Farrell, why did you not tell your wife an old friend, Mr Frank Glosser, was joining you on your trip?”

“It was last-minute. Frank called me to say he’d just arrived in town and was about to check in to a hotel. Within an hour he was with us. Sarah knew Frank and knew he’d visited us at the camp site before, I knew she wouldn’t have an issue with it and Frank always stayed in a separate tent.”

“You took a spare tent?”

“He hired one from the campsite. They have a record of the booking.”

Linda smiled briefly. She knew that already. “Of course. And why did Mr Glosser continue to join you on these trips after Oakley stopped talking? Did it not seem odd to you that she stopped soon after you’d been camping?”

“Frank is an old friend and he’d been joining us for a while. My son and daughter liked him and had no issue spending time with him. Frank had been around them both long before Oakley stopped talking and she’d never expressed any unease in his presence.”

“So it never crossed your mind that someone could be forcing her to stay silent? You did say you spent many hours researching and visiting doctors.”

“It was a consideration, of course, but we trusted everyone we had around our children.”

“Still, the one person that saw more of your daughter than your son on a one-to-one basis was Mr Glosser.”

“Frank had spent time with just myself and my son over the years,” Max replied smoothly. He was a picture of calm, as if the questions being asked now were about the weather.

Linda smiled briefly. “How did Oakley’s silence affect you?”

“It was difficult to say the least. We were desperate to help her and put everything in to finding out what was wrong. As a result we suffered physical, emotionally, and financially. I lost work because I was so preoccupied in finding out what was wrong with my child. My ex wife and I fought, both lost as to what to do for the best. We didn’t know how to help. I’ve not had a full night
’s sleep since the day she stopped speaking.”

“Probably worrying she’d speak up,” Jasper muttered in disgust under his breath.

“You suffered financially?” Linda asked.

“Yes.”

“Mr Farrell, did you take money in exchange for allowing Mr Glosser to sexually abuse your daughter?”

“No,” Max replied, appalled. “Absolutely not.”

“How was your relationship with Oakley affected?”

His eyes teared and he blinked hard a few times. Jasper glared.

“It was never quite the same. I still loved her just as much but part of her had closed off to us all. She no longer squealed in delight when I threw her in the air or ran around the back garden with her on my shoulders. We couldn’t talk and I stopped hearing her say ‘I love you, Daddy’.” He paused and took a deep breath. “It broke my heart.”

I gripped the seat, fingertips digging into the wood. ‘Don’t believe it,’ I prayed in my head, willing the jury to see through his lies.

Linda rocked back on her heels. “Mr Farrell, why do you think Oakley stopped talking?”

“I believe she has Histrionic Personality Disorder.”

What?

Jasper’s head snapped to me and he frowned, his dumbfounded expression mirroring mine.

Linda didn’t look at all surprised by the disorder Max just threw out of his mouth. “People with Histrionic Personality Disorder – HPD – typically have extravagant and lively personalities, Mr Farrell.”

She was ready for it.

Max tilted his head to the side. “Sufferers tend to have dramatic behaviour,” he corrected. “Oakley was a very lively child but with a sibling she could never have the majority of our attention – until she stopped talking. People with Histrionic Personality Disorder also act out a role, that of a character or a victim.”

I looked to Jasper, panicked.
Shit, he’s found something that could explain her behaviour.
Jasper stared at the jury with wide eyes, willing them to see through Max’s crap.

This wasn’t good.

“Mr Farrell, you state that you’ve spent the best part of fifteen years trying to figure out what was wrong with your daughter. Is that correct?” Linda asked.

“Yes.”

“Hmm, then it seems rather odd that you only come across this disorder
after
your arrest.”

Max said nothing.

“I’ve been looking over your police statements and nothing was mentioned then.”

“My ex wife and I spent hours on the internet searching
muteness
. We’ve visited countless doctors and specialists in that field and not one of them mentioned Histrionic Personality Disorder. When she went to the police with her claim, I realised there was something more to it, that she had
chosen
not to speak. My searches changed and that’s when I found HPD.”

“Hmm. So why do you think she spoke out then? She was away with you, getting your full attention, surely she wouldn’t have needed to act out?”

“I told her Mr Glosser was coming for the weekend, she was unhappy to say the least. I hadn’t seen Frank in almost a year and he was in town. Oakley didn’t want him to come, she thought it was just going to be us. I assume that’s when she created her story. She was excited about the trip, put the tent up almost completely by herself and brought two backpacks full of marshmallows. When I told her Frank was coming she dumped the marshmallows in the bin and wouldn’t make eye contact. Rapid shift in emotion is very typical in HPD.”

I looked at Jasper again and he stared at his father with hatred. He also looked as terrified as I felt. Surely the jury wouldn’t fall for that?

I gulped.
This is bad.