In Denial Read Online Free

to seat a maximum of four people.
    ‘ We use this for breakfast at the moment when we have guests,’ Doris told him as she put the plate on the table. ‘The restaurant and then the main bar are being refurbished. Not much call for evening meals this time o’ year.’ She put salt, pepper, vinegar and tomato sauce on the table and left him in peace. The pint of lager he’d ordered was poured in the main bar.
    The curtain covering the small window in the corner looked as though it could do with dry-cleaning, and the carpet was stained, but the room was warm, the food good, and he was on his own.
    All of which suited him.
    When he set off that morning he had planned to reach Loch Lomond and Luss by six in the evening. After joining the M6 at Holmes Chapel and driving north for a while, he had begun to give his destination some more thought. Loch Lomond had always had a mutual attraction.
    As they had sat round the meal table discussing holidays he could hear Charlotte say: ‘Don’t forget we’re going to Loch Lomond, Daddy.’
    ‘ We’ll go.’
    ‘ But when?’
    ‘ What’s this fascination with Loch Lomond anyway?’
    ‘ It’s somewhere we all want to go but we’ve never been.’
    ‘ We will.’
    ‘ When though?’
    ‘ One day.’
    That one day never happened.
    As he pulled back the bedroom curtain before going down to the snug to eat, and looked into the darkness, he still didn’t understand the fascination they’d had with the loch because his question was not answered. Now his question would never be answered. Was that why he was here? Had he been drawn to Loch Lomond because they had always said that one day they would go?
    Was it where he would try to join them?
    Wherever they were.
     
    *  *  *
     
    He understood why the police suspected him.
    He understood why they had to question him, query his every move, check meticulously on the details he provided.
    He understood why it took three days.
    Why they would not let him back into his own house.
    Even why he had to give them a list so that they could collect what he needed from the house.
    And he understood why the list and then each item on it was deeply scrutinised before anything was released to him.
    He understood all of that.
    What he did not understand was why it had all been necessary in the first place. He did not hold any malice towards the police because they were only doing their job. After all, they were investigating the murder of three people: his wife, son and daughter. How often had he read in the paper about entire families being wiped out by a disturbed parent, usually the father? Wives stabbed or shot, children smothered; it happened all too frequently.
    He understood, but being a suspect had only added to the delay. He didn’t really want to know who had taken his family from him. Knowing wouldn’t bring them back. He didn’t want to see the man who had slit his wife’s, his son’s and his daughter’s throats.
    At one stage he hoped the man - he always thought the murderer had to have been a man - would never be caught.
    He had lost faith in the justice system many years earlier. He had seen too many people he would have had put down, giving two fingers to society.
    When the police eventually told him he could go home, he didn’t know how he felt. He didn’t want to go home because they would not be there. Even when he’d found them they had been there but now they were not. He asked about the funerals and was told maybe in a week’s time. How could he arrange their funerals on a maybe? There was so much to do, so much to organise, so many people to tell, to invite, to …
     
    *  *  *
     
    It was awful.
    He didn’t have to say he never wanted to go through that again because he could never and would never go through it again. Everybody was so understanding, sympathetic, caring; everybody was shocked by the horror which had caused three young people to be cremated, their bodies never to grace this earth again. In turn,