The Serial Killer's Daughter
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"I loved this book… I was hooked and couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next… to say I devoured this book is a little bit of an understatement… What a great book!"Dark Twisty Books
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Synopsis
Suzanne Tyler barely knew her father. But when she’s given a series of secret diaries and eight mysterious photographs of women from his possessions, she knows she won’t be able to rest until she knows the truth about him.
To Suzanne’s shock, one of the photos is of her friend Sophie, who died ten years ago in an unexplained and devastating fire.
But Don only met Sophie once, on an unsettling visit he paid Suzanne just days before Sophie’s death... So why did he have a picture of her?
Unable to let Sophie’s memory alone, Suzanne begins to dig into her father’s life. What horrors is she about to unearth in his diaries? And who is it that’s out there, watching her every move?
Chilling and utterly page-turning, The Serial Killer’s Daughter is a compelling thriller, perfect for fans of C.L. Taylor, Rachel Abbott, and Tom Bale.
Read what everyone is saying about The Serial Killer’s Daughter :
" Amazing, page turning, tense and twisted… From the first page to the last, the pace doesn't stop at all." Stylish Brunette
" Oh my goodness what a dark and twisted read… Gripping from the first page, this book will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way to its shocking conclusion… A roller coaster of a thriller… A gripping story of the psychology of evil and the lengths people will go to meet their own needs." The Book Review Café
" An explosive climax. ’ Novel Gossip ‘ This thriller will have you speeding to the end. " Books, Books and More Books
" Had me gripped… I couldn’t tear my eyes away." The Writing Garnet
" Twists and turns galore which kept me gripped from start to finish. The story flows perfectly with numerous shocking truths uncovered along the way. Brilliantly written… I highly recommend. " Chat About Books
" A riveting, haunting and twisted family tale. " Chocolate ‘n’ Waffles
" The Serial Killer's Daughter is one gripping and absorbing psychological thriller… Lesley Welsh did an excellent job of getting into a serial killer's head. A truly absorbing read for anyone who likes the psychological thriller genre! " Novel Deelights
" A fun, twisty-turning read. " When the Books Hit the Fans
"Really enjoyed this book, the story line was fascinating. I loved the style of writing… A real page turner that I had a hard job putting down. A solid 6 stars." Bonnie’s Book Tal
" I absolutely ADORED this amazing, page turning, tense and twisted thriller. From the first page to the last, the pace doesn't flag, the writing is tight and spare and yet beautiful, the characters real and flawed. Loved every word. Highly recommend this brilliant read. " Renita D’Silva
"It is a seriously dark and disturbing read… As evil as Don is, he still fascinated me and even though I was horrified by his actions, I had to keep reading. Fans of serial killer reads are without a doubt going to love it as it definitely has the shock factor." By The Letter Book Reviews
" The character development in this psychological thriller is sublime… Without doubt one of the most twisted serial killers I’ve encountered… Very twisty. " It’s All About Books
Release date: June 14, 2017
Publisher: Bookouture
Print pages: 336
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The Serial Killer's Daughter
Lesley Welsh
Blues-and-twos, speeding through the dutifully dividing traffic as each driver yields to the ambulance with one hive mind. That poor sod inside could be one of them some day, hooked up to life-support equipment, fighting for survival. So they get out of the way and breathe a sigh of relief because right now it is someone else.
Tonight it is my turn.
I suck in the oxygen and turn my head to the rain-splattered window. The streetlights swirl and glitter like lurid fairground illuminations, transporting me to another place, another time. I can almost hear the music of the carousel, the grinding huff and puff of the steam-run calliope, the screams of laughter from the girls being spun on the waltzers by randy faux gypos, all knotted bandanas and muscular bronzed arms. Lords of the travelling fair, unwashed vagabonds to a man: a shag with a slag in every town.
Woozy on cheap cider and mesmerised by perceived exoticism, at least one of those shrieking girls would stand and deliver behind the caravans, skirt pulled up around her waist, hoisted upon my thrusting petard, the back of her head banging rhythmically against the side of the grimy tin can I called home.
I despised those slappers but they never realised until too late. The fair moved on and the tawdry dance began again in another muddy field.
The nee-naa song of the siren jolts me back to the present. The streetlights swoosh by, each beam merging with the next to become one continuous stream. The paramedic is speaking but her words are indistinct and I don’t care to hear them. The ambulance stops, doors open and the bitter November night air hits my face. The gurney glides down the hospital corridor, with staff and medical kit in attendance.
‘Stay with us,’ I hear a soft female voice say.
I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t like it. I want to get up, to run away, but there is a weight pressing on my chest and I can’t move: it has me paralysed. I try to open my eyes to see what is holding me down, but I already know its nature, with its long teeth and its demon claws tearing into my body, then ripping out my beating heart, triumphantly holding aloft the pulsing flesh in gnarled hands. I recognise its contorted face, I hear its twisted words; it comes to me in the night and spills forth its filthy bile. In daylight hours, it lurks in gloomy corners, just out of sight, laughing at me, calling me a fool. I’m safe from it until I weaken and it waits for those moments to strike.
I struggle to surface but my eyelids are too heavy and there is a sharp sensation in my arm. ‘Relax,’ the voice says. ‘This will help.’
I’m going under. It’s cold and I have lost my sense of self. I hear someone ask, ‘Can you tell me your name?’
‘I don’t know who the fuck I am, love,’ I slur.
It’s on my chest again, pressing all its weight on me, pushing its ugly snout so close that I can smell its stinking breath. It grins, saliva dripping off its fangs as it runs razor-sharp claws down my face.
‘We’re losing him.’ The voices retreat into a hollow, echoing distance.
A surge of current engulfs my body, almost shattering my bones and I am falling, being flushed down the drain, around and around.
The world is swirling, flickering and dying. The universe being switched off like so many skyscraper lights in the midnight hour. But the pressure is off my chest and I’ve escaped from it for the first time in my life.
This is the end, my friend, my demon sneers as it tumbles down ahead of me into the void. This is death.
Ask most people about the day their life changed forever and they might tell you it was the time they met their partner, the moment their child was born, or the like. But for Suzanne, it was the day she encountered Rose Anderson.
The light from the overhead window was fading fast, the dark clouds bunching up menacingly, plotting to let loose a deluge. Suzanne heard the kitchen door slam and presumed that Mark’s team had lost a game and he was taking his frustration out on the innocent wood. She was no longer a bored spectator at his cricket matches and had stopped feigning interest in his tennis triumphs and woes a while back. She had her art and he had his sport. That was fine by Suzanne. Marriage is compromise, she’d told him but Mark remained peeved. His obvious dismay when she informed him that she was painting once more had maddened her. ‛Oh, back to the art again,’ he’d said as though she had revived a penchant for shoplifting. ‛Don’t you get enough art teaching those kids?’ The fact that her own father’s cruel dismissal of her paintings earlier in her life had cut her so deeply only strengthened her resolve. Nothing was going to stop her now, not even the husband who had once declared his undying love for her. Okay, she thought, that starry-eyed honeymoon period is long gone, lost somewhere in the mire of mortgage payments and the daily grind, but wasn’t marriage also about showing support for the other person’s needs and ambitions?
So she had called Mark a philistine. Whenever he mentioned ‘art’ there were invisible air bunnies around the word. It crossed her mind that her husband was the type who’d have looked up at the bare ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, handed Michelangelo a tin of Dulux and said, ‘We just want it painted, mate. How’s about a nice beige?’
Despite Mark’s protests, Suzanne had chucked out all of his rubbish from the attic and converted it into a studio that he was forbidden to set foot in. That had been twelve months ago and he was gradually adapting to the idea.
Eight years back, teaching the subject that she had once been so passionate about had been a compromise with herself. Though these days, unlike her neighbour, Mrs Jones, who always adored the job and was sad when she was forced to retire, for the past year Suzanne had found herself yearning for the school holidays. When the bell rang signalling this Easter break, she had imagined hearing prison doors being thrown open, allowing her the freedom to return to her one true love.
‘You’ll be banged up in your studio again, I suppose,’ Mark had sniped.
Well, he was just going to have to lump it. She had the fire back in her belly and nothing was going to stop her this time. When her star pupil, Jason, had burst into her classroom to breathlessly announce that he’d got a place at Goldsmiths, she had heard echoes of her long-abandoned hopes in his voice and seen her own youthful ambition reflected in his intelligent young face. He had so much ahead of him – and what had she achieved? The once promising artist was now a full-time teacher and a part-time painter. Slave to the mortgage. She mouthed the words to the tune of Grace Jones extolling the siren song of the rhythm.
She was passing most of this too-brief respite in her studio, although right now the picture she was working on was simply not happening for her. Every brushstroke seemed to make matters worse; something about it was just not right. What had started out as an imagined and hopefully commercial landscape had gradually transformed into a brooding dreamscape with the blue sky murkier than she originally intended. Today Suzanne had added two tiny figures to the tableau, a woman guiding a small child by the hand across sands that appeared to be shifting beneath them. She stood back and surveyed the image she had created and realised that it disturbed her in ways she could not quite fathom.
She looked across the room at the portrait drying in the corner. It was of her mother and Suzanne intended it as a gift for her sixtieth birthday. Although portraiture was not Suzanne’s forte, she thought it a fair yet flattering depiction, with the buttery sun cascading through the window behind her subject, emphasising the pale skin and strawberry-blonde hair, the green eyes alive with merriment and intelligence. That would be sure to please her mother. A glance back at the new painting confirmed Suzanne’s suspicions that the figures in the dreamscape, a mother and child, represented the only family she had ever known.
When Suzanne was a child her father was rarely mentioned, apart from the few times he had visited her with his arms laden with expensive presents. It was as though he hadn’t really existed; a spectre to be ignored until he reappeared from out of the mists of her memory like a one-man Marie Celeste, full of smiles and jokes, laughter, games and teasing. Only to be gone again within a couple of hours after hugs and kisses and promises to come back soon. But his meaning of ‛soon’ never tallied with Suzanne’s childish understanding. She could recall crying after one visit as her mother held her gently in her arms and reassured her that her father would be back one day but she didn’t know quite when. He was busy; he worked abroad, she told her. Suzanne could still remember the hurt, but had learned neither to ask questions about the past nor to expect to see photographs as her mother had told her emphatically that they were ‛all gone’. Her mother, Joan, always clammed up when questioned and although she had tried not to show any signs of personal distress, even as a small child Suzanne could sense these things. So Suzanne’s father had remained an almost mythical creature in her mind. Until that time ten years ago when he had turned up out of the blue. Though how he presented to her adult self was very different from the person of her childhood recollection…
She crammed the memory of that last visit back inside the ‘don’t think about it’ compartment in her mind and surveyed her painting once more. Those two small figures had a poignancy that took her by surprise, expressing as they did a feeling of loneliness and regret.
Suzanne’s grandparents had died long before she was born and as the only child of an only child there had been no aunts or cousins in her life either. She gazed at the two figures she had instinctively added to her painting. Her young life had been exactly like this image with always just the two of them. Until her mother met Harry. Suzanne recalled the initial resentment of this stranger sharing her mother’s affection: an older man who had never been married, so she hadn’t even had the consolation of step-brothers or sisters. Was this picture an expression of an inner longing for the distant past? Enough, she decided, if this is the way my work is to proceed then I’ll have to give it some more consideration. So she put down her brushes and was running her hands under the cold tap when Mark called up from the hallway.
‛Suze!’ Mark’s deep baritone carried up the stairs. ‛There’s a woman on the line for you. Says her name’s Rose. She says you don’t know her but it is quite urgent.’
‛I’ll take it in the bedroom.’ Suzanne dried her hands, walked down the stairs and sat at the desk by the window as the rain began bucketing down outside. A typical English Easter.
The telephone pinged and she picked up the receiver.
‛Am I speaking to Suzanne Tyler?’ The voice at the other end was softly spoken and tentatively refined, though with just a hint of an estuary accent.
‛My name used to be Tyler.’
‛Your father’s name is Donald Tyler?’
‛Yes.’ Suzanne hoped this wasn’t one of those genealogy freaks trying to trace their roots. The internet was choc-a-bloc with those websites – trace the Tyler family back to the Stone Age and bollocks like that.
‛Yes, my father’s name is Donald Tyler. What is this about?’ The last thing she needed was for him to come elbowing his way back into her life. It had been ten years since she’d last seen him and the very thought of him still made her feel sick with disgust.
‛I’m sorry to disturb you,’ the woman said, ‛but I found some things among his papers; photographs, diaries and other strange bits and pieces. And I really think you should see them as soon as possible.’
‛Found them?’
‛They were left in my house.’ The woman paused as though she had forgotten her words and had got so caught up with the detail that she had skipped the main event. ‛I’m sorry to tell you,’ she finally added, ‛but Don died five months ago. It’s taken me all this time to track you down.’
The news of her father’s death, though a jolt, didn’t cause Suzanne too much anguish. After all, she hardly knew him. Since her mother had divorced Donald Tyler when Suzanne was only four, she barely remembered him being around during her early childhood. Over the following eight years, Don had made the occasional fleeting visit with arms full of toys, but the two were never left alone together; her mother, Joan, was always present. Suzanne recalled that her father had made her laugh a lot, told tall stories, and sent her birthday cards with a fifty-pound note taped inside. She had been thirteen when her mother remarried and Don’s visits ceased abruptly, as did the birthday cards. And that had been that, until that one distasteful meeting after which he disappeared once more. So, although Don Tyler was no longer a part of Suzanne’s life, she agreed to meet Rose Anderson out of politeness and, if she was being candid, more than just a little curiosity.
He had shadowed Rose Anderson to the Piazza Café in Covent Garden. As usual she carried her grey shopper. Even though the April sun was shining, there was a chill in the air and he watched as she pulled her black coat around her thin body, sat down at one of the tables under the tented umbrellas outside and placed the shopper at her feet. She looked at her watch. He sensed that she was waiting for someone. And, as this was the first time she had ventured this far into central London since he’d been tailing her, he assumed this to be an important meeting. If it turned out to be his prime target then he could put the next part of the plan into action.
It was well before lunchtime and there were only two couples braving the cool breeze and drinking coffee. One couple, speaking Spanish loudly and at breakneck speed, were arguing but he couldn’t make out what it was about. The other two were poring over a map they’d set out on their table. Tourists. How he envied them. It was his first trip to London and he wouldn’t have minded seeing the sights.
He had chosen a table that gave him a clear view of Rose but was far enough away for her not to notice him as he pretended to read the free newspaper handed to him at the tube station. The Eastern European waitress took his order of black coffee and a croissant, though the waffles with maple syrup had tempted him. Rose spoke to the waitress, who nodded and went off to another customer. Rose was definitely expecting company.
His order arrived and Rose was still alone. She seemed anxious, constantly checking the time and looking around. He took a bite of the croissant. When he looked up again, another woman was approaching Rose. Damn it all, he thought, she’s just meeting with a friend. Though there was something about the formal way they greeted each other, shaking hands as though they had never met before, that caught his attention. But mainly it was Rose’s facial expression on sighting the slim woman with the shoulder-length dark-brown hair that lit up his radar. So he took out his phone. To anyone idly watching it would look as though he’d just received a text message. He stared at the screen intently, and then photographed the two women.
The woman waiting for Suzanne at the Piazza Café was in her fifties with short brown hair. Rose Anderson had a kindly face with just a hint of make-up. She could easily be mistaken for a social worker.
‛Don lived with me for two years,’ Rose began after they had ordered coffee. ‛Though, looking back, I don’t think I ever really knew him. He was very secretive in his way.’
‘I wasn’t aware that he knew my address,’ Suzanne said. ‘So I’m curious as to how you found me.’
‘It was while I was spring cleaning,’ Rose said. ‘There was a piece of paper with three phone numbers tucked down the side of the cushion on the chair he used to sit on.’ She paused as though recalling a painful memory and swallowed hard before returning to her story. ‘One was unavailable, the other was his doctor’s office and the third one was yours. Perhaps he intended to call you to say he was ill but…’ Her voice trailed away as she visibly suppressed rising emotion. Once Rose regained her composure she glanced at Suzanne shyly and gave a wan smile. ‛You look like him, you know. You’ve got his eyes.’
Suzanne felt uncomfortable about so personal an observation. ‛I didn’t really know him, either. Maybe it’s my mother you should be speaking to.’
The smile flickered and died. ‛Oh, Joanie?’
‛She doesn’t allow anyone to call her that.’
Rose looked surprised. ‛That’s how he refers to her in his diaries. Joanie this and Joanie that.’ She sighed. ‛I think he really loved her.’
Now it was Suzanne who was taken aback. Was Rose jealous? How could she be envious of the woman who divorced my father over thirty years ago, she wondered.
‛Did he talk about my mother?’
‛No.’ Rose shook her head. ‛He never mentioned anyone. This is all new to me. And there are all these pictures.’ She reached under the table for her grey leather shopping bag and pulled out a manila envelope, which she opened. Then she took out eight photographs and placed them on the table.
Rose laid them face down as each had a name written on the back. On one it read ‛Joanie’ in the ragged scrawl Suzanne recognised from the birthday card greetings from her father. She picked up the picture, turned it over to see her mother, so young, so very much the hippie, her head thrown back in a joyous laugh, her red hair wild and flowing. She was standing in the middle of a field, her long skirt fluttering in the summer breeze while a shadow cast by whoever was taking the photo crept along the ground close to her feet. Suzanne smiled at the image. She had never seen a photo of her mother from those times.
‛Yes, that’s my mother.’
‛How about Betty?’ Rose turned over another photo.
This one was black and white. Thin-faced and very pregnant, the dark-eyed young woman with the ponytail looked equally as happy as Suzanne’s mother did in her photograph. But there was no idyllic field here, just a drab terraced house behind her.
Suzanne shook her head. ‛Never seen her before.’
So it continued with different names: Sheila, Naomi, Annabelle, Gloria and Moira, each photographed in a radically different setting. Sheila had been snapped in a fairground, in front of the waltzers, with her hair backcombed and dressed in an early sixties flared skirt, a frilly blouse and a cardigan, one of her stiletto heels firmly embedded in the muddy ground. Despite the high-heel mishap, she looked very pleased with herself. She could not have been more than sixteen.
Naomi, on the other hand, looked considerably older and more sophisticated, with immaculately styled dark hair that framed her face. She posed half-naked on a chaise longue, her elegant silver mules emphasising her long tanned legs. She was smiling and smoking what appeared to be a joint. Suzanne shook her head again. She didn’t recognise this woman either.
The photo of Annabelle had been taken at dusk with an evidently tropical sun sinking below the horizon. She was a striking blonde with sky-blue eyes, like a typical California surfer babe or a model in an upmarket shampoo advert. Suzanne didn’t know her at all.
Shot in close-up, Gloria was black with natural Afro hair, wearing a silver ankh on a chain around her neck. She was in the driver’s seat of a car. By contrast Moira was a fair-haired, freckle-faced country girl in a heavy jacket and green wellies, standing on a heather-covered hillside.
‛I think there is something decidedly odd about these photographs, don’t you?’ Suzanne said to Rose. ‛It’s almost as though they have been plucked from several different lives. There is no continuity, no common factor.’
‛I agree. Perhaps you should have his diaries,’ Rose remarked enigmatically. ‛I started to read one but it was too painful for me to continue. So I can’t bring myself to look at the rest. I’d rather remember him as I knew him.’
With the eighth and last photo of the batch, the sense of recognition shook Suzanne to the core. Sophie was the name on the back and Suzanne had expected she would react in the way she had to the others, to not know the woman pictured at all. But with Sophie it was different. The face burned itself onto Suzanne’s retina, her hand began to tremble and she started to shiver. It was all there, the hair dyed to the brightest of electric reds, the elfin face and the almond-shaped soulful eyes. The girl was photographed standing in front of a sculpture Suzanne had watched her create. This one she certainly did know: it was Sophie Chen.
The last time Suzanne had seen her father was the first year of the new millennium, back when she was a full-time artist. She had been working in the studio in Dalston, northeast London, which she shared with her close friend, Sophie Chen. They were both twenty, just a few months out of art school, though it was Suzanne who was already making a name for herself. To date she had sold four paintings to private collectors and was about to have her first gallery exhibition. She could recall being full of herself at that point in her life, convinced that the future promised nothing but success. Twenty paintings of abstract landscapes, the final one almost completed. She had stepped back from this last one, satisfied, convinced it was the best so far.
The bell buzzed and there he was on the doorstep, in black leather jacket, jeans and white shirt. He was all smiles, with one hand behind his back.
‛Ta-dah!’ He laughed as he presented the bunch of freesias to her with a flourish, like a magician hauling a rabbit out of a hat.
‛Dad!’ He was chunkier than she remembered, though that was to be expected of a man in his fifties. Apart from a few laughter lines, the face didn’t seem to have aged, though she suspected that he dyed his hair. ‛How did you know where my studio is?’
‛Anyone can be found,’ he said as he sauntered past her. ‛Even if they don’t want to be.’
‛I haven’t been hiding from anyone,’ she said, puzzled by the insinuation and a little indignant.
‛Yeah, I know that.’ He prowled around the studio, peered at each painting in turn and frowned. ‛But your mother has,’ he said. ‛She really should know better than that.’
‛You haven’t come to see me for years.’ She ignored his remark, not sure how to respond. ‛So this is a surprise, to say the least.’
‛I’ve been away,’ was his flat response. He glanced about the airy studio with its hanging ceiling lamps and white walls adorned with wooden shelves that Suzanne had constructed to hold all of her brushes, paints and arty bits and pieces she had picked up for inspiration. ‘You don’t live here, then?’
‘I have a house share not far from here.’ She tidied away her brushes as she watched him fiddle with the joints of the articulated wooden hand she used for character study. He bent the pale fingers until only the middle digit remained erect.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘couldn’t resist.’ He smiled, cheerily. ‘So tell me about your friends.’
‘I share the house with a couple and another guy.’
‘Boyfriend? I do hope you’re not living in sin, my girl.’ He stood with his arms folded, his face set with disapproval.
Suzanne stared at her father in disbelief. Great, she thought, he barges back in from wherever the hell he’s been and thinks he can tell me how I should live my bloody life.
He glared back at her for a moment before a slow grin emerged. ‘You should see your face.’ He chuckled. ‘I’m joking. Lighten up.’
He pulled up a paint-spattered plastic chair while she made him a cup of instant black coffee. That was the one trait she did remember about him, revulsion for milk – probably the only thing they had in common.
‘Anyway, I bet the other bloke is gay,’ he said. ‘A right screamer, I reckon, mincing along.’ He placed one hand on his hip, flopped the other hand at the wrist and wiggled his shoulders.
‘There’s no need for that,’ Suzanne scolded as she handed him the cup. Don’s guess had been so accurate that she felt the need to leap to her housemate’s defence.
‘Fuck me, aren’t you the serious one?’ he chuckled. ‘Joke!’ He sipped his coffee. ‘That hits the spot,’ he said, his dark eyes full of merriment. ‘Bet the couple are dead straight, though. Not in your line of work. Accountants, solicitors, or something like that, I suppose.’
Spot on again, and it dawned on Suzanne that Don’s observations were not mere stabs in the dark. He had actually seen her friends. ‘You’ve been to my house?’
‘Just happened to wander by,’ he said as though it was of no consequence.
‘How did you know where I live?’
Don shrugged. ‘I told you. I know everything.’
A feeling of unease crept over Suzanne. ‘Well, I don’t appreciate being spied on.’
Don put the coffee cup on the floor between his feet and leaned forward, his facial expression denoting concern writ large. ‘You’ve got nothing to hide, have you Suzy-Q?’ He waited a beat until he raised his eyebrows as the cheesy grin returned. ‘Oh, you are just too easy to wind up, girl.’ He sat back in the chair and snorted a laugh. ‘Calm down, it’s nothing sinister. I just thought it would be better for us to be able to talk alone, rather than in front of a house full of strangers, that’s all.’ He retrieved his coffee and glugged it all in one go. ‘How long has it been since we last saw each other? What, seven or eight years?’
‛About that.’ Despite his breezy explanation, she felt a knot in her stomach, but tried to retain a casual tone. ‘Where have you been?’
‛All over the States, the Caribbean, Thailand…’ He laughed. ‛You know what I’m like.’
‛Do I?’ You’re a bloody stranger is what she wanted to say.
‛Don’t you remember all those toys I used to bring you from all around the world?’ He looked puzzled, if not a little wounded.
‛Sorry, but I don’t recall.’ She straddled the chair opposite him. ‛In fact, I don’t even know what you do for a living these days.’
He winked and chuckled once more. ‛If I told you, I would have to kill you.’
‛Groan. Old joke.’
‛But,’ he said, straight-faced, ‛in my case only too true.’
He looked around the room, appearing to take in all of the paintings at a glance, though he made no comment. Suzanne held back a childlike urge for approval that echoed from their previous fleeting shared moments. Look at my paintings, Daddy. Do you like them? But both time and her father’s mercurial behaviour had erected a barrier too daunting to tackle. They fell into an . . .
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