Under Tina’s guidance, I tried out conversation with them before and after classes. It amazed me how much they wanted to talk, about their drug-addicted grandchildren, their in-grown toenails, that week’s bargains in Lidl. I didn’t have that much to say but they didn’t seem to notice and I didn’t mind listening. They laughed a lot. I rarely knew what they were laughing at, but I don’t think it was me.

I now had an email address and could google whatever I wanted. I watched the news every night and I registered to vote. I got rid of the house phone and learned to use a smartphone.

I found several articles written about Conor Geary over the years in newspaper archives through the library services. He was compared to Lord Lucan, an aristocrat who had murdered a nanny and then vanished off the face of the earth. There were true crime websites that speculated as to where he went and what had happened to me, all now updated with the news of my incineration of my father and photographs of me at his funeral.

There were old black-and-white photographs of the small extension we had lived in. The bolts on the outside of the doors, the boarded-up window. The grim-looking toilet and washbasin. The mattress with its thin blankets. My small, empty bedroom. None of it looked familiar. Former dental patients of Conor Geary described him as quiet and antisocial. ‘He kept himself to himself,’ they said.

24

Peter, 1980

Years passed. I regularly asked Dad if there was a cure for my disease but, each time, he shook his head sadly. As I was twelve now, he explained more about it. I wouldn’t turn to stone, but human touch from somebody unrelated would rot the skin all the way through to my bone and the necrotic tissue would spread quickly throughout my body until it reached my inner organs. I would simply decay from the outside and the pain would be fierce. Dad guessed that it would be quick, but when I asked if he meant five minutes or ten hours, he said that I shouldn’t think about it.

I did have other Special Days Out but I was terrified when we went to the circus, not of the lions but because of the children and parents who sat either side of me. I crawled into Dad’s lap, even though I was far too old for that, and he wrapped me in his coat. Other children laughed at me.

Knowing of my disease gave me nightmares. I begged Dad to have our Special Days on our own, and he hired a projector and we watched cowboy films on a big screen. Another time, he bought me a catalogue of books and I could choose whatever I wanted. I picked books about Neil Armstrong, and World War Two, and an illustrated encyclopaedia of dinosaurs. Dad thought they were great choices. The best time ever, we left the house on foot and walked down a long winding avenue to a train track. Underneath the train track was a tunnel that led to a beach and the sea. Dad had bought me swimming togs. We sat on a rug on the gravelly sand until Dad suggested that he could teach me to swim. I noticed strange marks on his stomach and shoulders, but when I asked Dad about them, he just shook his head and I knew that meant they were not to be discussed.

I squealed when my toes hit the cold water and Dad carried me in on his shoulders and then gently immersed me, while I screamed with fright and excitement.

‘Peter! Don’t scream like a girl.’

That was always the worst insult Dad could throw at me and, for a moment, I cried, but the salt water disguised my tears and soon we were splashing around and I was in the water up to my neck, laughing with my dad. I learned to swim that day. I could float on my back and look at the whispering clouds in the blue, blue sky. Afterwards, we went back and dried off with towels and sat on the rug. Nobody came near us, and it felt normal. I asked if we could do this every year, and he said ‘we surely can’ and I felt like the luckiest boy alive.

Shortly after my eighth birthday, Dad stopped locking me into my bedroom when he went to work. I began to help with preparing meals. Dad rotated my books often, so that I only ever had two or three at a time. He said I had grown out of toys and when they disappeared along with the clothing I had outgrown, I wondered if my sister had them next door. Dad was strict about me keeping all of my belongings in my room. I didn’t have many, just books and clothing and copybooks, and a few toy soldiers I kept hidden because I was afraid Dad would say I was too old for them.