As Alice pointed out, pretty well everyone has a bad sheep or two among their relations somewhere, and even those like her who don’t know any details can’t bank on them not being there simply because of that. I’d seen enough on telly and in the newspapers to know that Harris wasn’t by any means the foulest person around. He was a bully and a drunk. He was a horrible man. He didn’t care about a single soul except himself. And he was violent. But there are worse about. It’s just I didn’t want to be anything to do with him – not simply in my day-to-day life, but in any way at all. He was the man who’d kicked my mother about, and beaten her simple, and I was desperate for there to be no link between us at all. Why should I want this monster muscling in and spoiling things in my mind when, from the start it seems, I had already chosen kind, gentle Mr Perkins as my real father? And Eleanor Holdenbach must have realized that. Once, on my way back sooner than expected from the lavatory along from her office, I’d overheard her saying to Rob: ‘That Mr Perkins has been a life-saver.’ The memory stuck because I’d been surprised that she knew anything about Mr Perkins, apart from what I’d told her.
