Page 79 of Her Last Breath

There it was. The admission, one that Jane had waited her whole life to hear.

‘I blamed you because I thought if I pleaded enough, if I said it enough times, then it would become true. That Ed wouldn’t be cursed to hell. Because it wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t your fault either. The day he died, I died with him. I didn’t want to be near you, or your father. I didn’t want to damage you the way I had your brother.’

And yet she had done just that, Jane thought. The truth would have been horrendous, would have no doubt torn Jane apart in other ways. There would have been a purity though, sense and closure, in that truth.

‘Every day for thirty years I pictured what would happen to him if he went to hell. And you suffered for that.’ She reached for Jane’s hands again. ‘There is nothing I can do to take back what happened to you, to him. To us. But know this, Jane, I suffered every day after he died. I was alone, humiliated, full of grief and sorrow. I stopped living that day too. I know this will never be enough, me saying this to you and me saying how sorry I am for what I did to you. My beautiful girl, I hurt you for the child I had lost. I don’t deserve it, Jane, but will you forgive me? Please?’

Jane sat stonily, numbed by the words that had poured from her mother. The mess her life had become, because of the lies this woman had forced on them as a family. Jane would do her duty, she would even forgive.

But what she couldn’t do was forget the decades of hurt that she had been made to endure.

Day Six

Chapter 53

Racing down the M60, Jane did what she had done twenty years earlier: put distance between herself and the mess that she was leaving behind.

Parking up on Cobourg Street, behind Piccadilly Station, Jane found the building she was looking for. She checked the company logos printed on glass next to a buzzer system and pressed the one for Saving Lives.

She was led to the private office of the CEO, Luke Pratt, within minutes. He was an affable middle-aged man, probably late forties, but with a boyish face. His accent was clipped, as though he came from money.

‘I wasn’t comfortable discussing details of the case over the phone, especially while travelling.’

‘I don’t blame you for being wary, but it would have saved us both a lot of time and effort if you had discussed this with me over the phone.’

‘Wary is the right word. You have to understand that we are an international charity and sometimes we get nefarious players trying to fish for stories.’

‘You mean journalists?’

‘We are an easy target for the unscrupulous ones. We deliver aid to the most difficult places. Areas of the world it’s very difficult to get access to.’

‘I wonder, to deliver that aid to those sorts of places, do your workers sometimes have to break the law?’

Luke Pratt coloured, not meeting her focused gaze.

‘No, but they get very close to that line often. It’s the nature of the game.’

‘How close did Colin Wilson get to that line?’ Jane asked.

Luke handed her a file, which Jane flicked through, stopping on pages of interest.

‘The details are all in there,’ he explained. ‘We carried out an internal investigation after allegations were made against a number of individuals. I’m sure you remember the scandal that hit Oxfam and some of the others?’

Jane knew the headlines in the papers, the dismissal of staff, years of blind eyes and sexual abuse being covered up.

‘In the UK we get scrutinised by very rigid frameworks and processes, governed by policies and law. But when your staff are thousands of miles away, working like I said in very grey areas morally, it can be difficult to apply the same scrutiny.’

‘That doesn’t excuse some of the behaviour that went on.’

‘Absolutely. What I will say is that you rely on the moral compass of your staff. If that gets damaged, then you’ve got somebody behaving in a way that you’re not OK with.’

‘And Colin Wilson was behaving like that?’

‘Yes, unfortunately. He operated in the eastern DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo. Probably the most dangerous place on earth. Also the place that needs the most help, which is nigh on impossible to deliver. A mess of our western imperialist making that is still a festering wound to this day.’

‘And Colin took advantage of being out there to do what, exactly?’

Jane could imagine how remote the area would be. No creature comforts, power weighed by the click of a rifle and the size of an aid truck. She wondered at Bill Hargreaves’ bravery too, driving trucks full of lootable aid voluntarily into hell on earth.