“Freya, come on, let’s go and find more frogs!” Harry suggested excitedly.
They both started running down the path together, holding hands. It was such a privilege watching them explore the world together. We all made an effort to come here at least once a week and walk the coastal trail near Filey. In some small way, I wanted Harry to be closer to his father, and I wanted to feel closer to him, too.
“Don’t go too far!” Poppy shouted from behind me.
“I don’t think they’re going to listen,” I remarked.
“They are going to be trouble when they are older,” Josephine laughed.
“They are trouble now,” I jested.
Freya was the perfect likeness to Harry, too. They both had his eyes and hair, and you could tell they were siblings. My son didn’t know about what happened to his father at the hands of her, and neither did his daughter. They were too young to understand that part. But we told them all the amazing things about Harry, and we spoke about him every single day.
After her confession at Filey Brigg, we took the recordings and all the evidence to the police. It was painful dredging it all back up again, but we finally got Harry the justice he deserved. She had pleaded guilty and was put in prison for a very long time. It was ruled that she was unfit to care for a child, and after a lengthy legal battle, Poppy and Josephine happily adopted Freya. They were natural parents, and we all instinctively banded together and walked the journey into parenthood as one big, unconventional family. The shared trauma and grief between us could have had a negative effect, but we refused to let that happen. She kicked up a stink, obviously, but there was little or nothing she could do behind bars.
I moved back to Filey to have Harry; I wanted him to grow up in the fields and on the beach like Harry and I did. Yvonne was incredibly supportive and even helped me put a deposit down for a house on the seafront. We had an amazing life, and I felt truly blessed to have everything that I had. But one thing was missing, and it was the love of my life. I hoped he was somehow looking down on us, watching young Harry grow up, and he was proud of his little family.
We approached Filey Brigg viewpoint, and it still brought back bad memories for me, although I’d decided I wouldn’t let her stop me from returning to such a beautiful place. It may have been the place where Harry lost his life, but it was also the place where he decided to start his life again with me. They had erected barriers since Harry’s death in an effort to make it safer. Harry and Freya were leaning against them and looking into the North Sea.
“Can frogs go in the sea, mummy?” Harry asked.
“No, love. They prefer a pond,” I answered.
“What if they use armbands like I do?” Freya asked.
“No, it’s too salty for them,” I explained.
We all leaned on the barrier and watched the waves crash against the rocks. I would have given anything for Harry to be here with us. It goes without saying, but I still hated what she had done to us, and not thinking about her required constant effort. Her jealousy and selfishness had done way more damage than she had realised. What she had done would affect us for the rest of our lives and the lives of Harry’s children. I knew she was paying for her crime, but I couldn’t help but think it wasn’t enough.
We made our way back to the car, and we said our goodbyes as we split up to return home. We lived in a three-floor townhouse overlooking the beach. We were just getting into the holiday season, and the number of people visiting was starting to increase. I parked the car where I usually did, and Harry and I walked inside our family home together, hand in hand. When I opened the door, there was a letter waiting for me on the doormat, and Harry picked it up and handed it to me.
“Can I go and play now?” he asked.
“Wash your hands first, please,” I instructed.
I opened the envelope, and there was a single piece of paper inside. It was a handwritten letter stamped by the prison in which she was currently residing.
There was once a whore from Filey,
Who was living the life of Riley.
But when his wife gets out of prison,
She’ll realise she isn’t,
And her survival was looking unlikely.
Her skills were slipping, and it didn’t even rhyme properly. I’d received a poem from her every month since she was in prison, in addition to the occasional crazed rant scratched into a piece of paper. They were menacing at first because I had no idea how she got my address. But after a while, the menace faded, and I actually started being amused by them. They were a desperate cry for attention from a broken and lonely woman. Those little limericks she sent me were just to exert her control, even from behind bars, but I was determined not to let them work.
“What’s that, mummy? One of those funny letters?” Harry asked.
“Yes, don’t worry about this,” I said, scrunching it up into a ball and throwing it in the bin, “I thought we were playing?”
I wished that Harry could have been here to see our son growing up. The older he got, the resemblance to his father grew. He always looked the most like his father when he smiled. That cheeky, signature smirk that Harry was famous for. I know he wasn’t planned, but I knew that Harry would have been absolutely delighted, like I was. We spent the rest of the day playing like we usually did, and in the early evening, I put our son to bed. I read him his usual bedtime story, a captivating tale about a rabbit that played football.
“Did Daddy like football?” Harry asked.
“He did! He used to watch it at the pub with his friends!” I smiled.
“Can I see some more photographs of Daddy, please? I miss him,” Harry asked with a smile.
Even though our son had never met Harry, I did my best to make sure he still knew who he was and what he stood for. As heartbreaking as it was, whenever my son said he missed his father, I knew I was giving Harry the respect he deserved. I had thousands of pictures of Harry through the years, mostly gifted to me by Yvonne from Harry’s old room. It became a little ritual of ours, and we would go through Harry’s childhood pictures and compare him to my son.
Even though it was a family of two, I loved my little family. I was hesitant to say it was incomplete because it never felt that way, but we both missed Harry immensely. I would keep him alive in his son’s eyes with the stories of Harry’s youth and the thousands of old photographs.
“Sure, but I’m not getting the albums out. Only on my phone, okay?” I bargained.
Harry clapped his hands together as I got my phone out. I hadn’t noticed because it was on silent mode, but I had a text from an unknown number, along with about twenty missed calls from Poppy and Yvonne.
I’m coming for what’s mine.
MORE FROM THE AUTHOR
Would you risk your family, your marriage, and your life to earn some extra money?
Sean and his family are already struggling financially when he loses out on a much needed promotion. He is recommended a dubious app to earn extra money on the side, and keeps it from his wife. But it has secrets of its own...
