Who Are You?: With one click she found her perfect man. And he found his perfect victim. A true story of the ultimate deception.. Megan Henley
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carrying out his father’s orders. I was nothing to them or to the gypsy king, my daughter wasn’t seen as his blood – we were scum, and he wanted us eradicated.
Vic had been away from the house for some time. He’d thought his absence would distract his dad, that if he was away we would be safer, but I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t sleep, even though I’d been assured that protection was in place. I knew that I was being followed everywhere I went and that the house was being watched the whole time, but the lines were blurred.
I wasn’t sure who the good guys were any more.
In fact, I knew that the good guys did their share of killing anyway, so who could I trust?
Valerie.
I could trust her. She had been there for me from the start, she only had my best interests and the interests of my two little girls at heart. She was an honest, strong woman who knew Vic’s story and knew that this time, more than ever before, he simply had to win.
I started to pack, throwing a few things into bags, concentrating on what the kids would need, wondering where I could go with the dogs and cats in tow as well. Vic had been warning me for so long now that the girls were in danger, that they would be used to send a message. The rest of my family wasn’t safe either. I was aware that if I went to my mum’s I could be leading the killers to her. Where could I go?
There was nowhere.
I stopped. I was shaking but I also knew that I couldn’t really leave, despite Valerie’s words. Vic had told me to stay – and there was a good reason behind him wanting me to do that. We couldn’t go on like this. There had been so many threats, so many warnings.
It was us or them.
I could hardly believe that my life had come to this. I was an intelligent, successful woman when I met him, the mother of a beautiful daughter. I had a good education behind me and a thriving business ahead. How had I become part of this world? A world that spoke of murder as if it was nothing, of revenge killings and contracts and mutilation and torture? I’d do anything to protect my girls, but I felt powerless. Everything was out of my control and Vic was the only one who could save us.
My mind was going at a million miles an hour, my heart was pounding. I just wanted to make sure we were all safe, I had to believe that we could be. I couldn’t waste time wondering how I’d got to this point, how awful it was, and how many threats were out there.
We just had to survive.
I couldn’t bear to think of the alternative.
Chapter 1
Childhood – October 2008
I hadn’t felt settled for a long time. Life hadn’t been easy for a while, but I wasn’t silly enough to ignore the fact that a lot of that was down to silly teenage decisions and the pigheadedness that sometimes took over. Taking responsibility for your actions is awfully grown-up, but I was starting to realise that it was something I needed to do. I wasn’t a bad kid, but, in retrospect, I think I was a pretty frustrating one. I’m sure my parents would have said it had all started with my period of teenage rebellion; a period in my life which had resulted in Ruby. While she was, without doubt, the best thing that had ever happened to me, falling pregnant to a man who would never settle down hadn’t exactly been what I expected, or what was expected of me.
I was the second oldest of four children, and the only girl. We were lucky enough to grow up on a 500-acre farm near the village of Cowfold in Sussex, which had been in my father’s family for over a hundred years. It was an idyllic setting for a lovely childhood. The farm felt as if it was in my DNA; I knew every inch of the impressive six-bedroom farmhouse, and the land surrounding it. My childhood memories were gorgeous ones of times spent building dens out of hay bales and corrugated iron, playing Pooh sticks on the bridge over the river, and galloping at breakneck speeds across stubble fields on one of the many ponies that came and went. I loved animals and I loved being outdoors. Summers felt as if they would never end, and I remember those days as being full of laughter and freedom. My dad was a busy farmer, and not exactly ‘hands on’ with us kids. Maybe things were more like that back then – there were traditional ways to be for some men. His hardworking lifestyle meant that he rarely had time to sit around and play, and he wasn’t an emotional sort of man, always checking up on how we felt. Mum was a local politician, a short, round, feisty woman of Irish descent, who suffered no fools. She was warmer to us, and the one we went to for support and cuddles, but she was also the sort of person who instilled hard rules and values in me and my brothers from an early age. She very much believed that you made your bed and that was where you lay. They had done well for themselves through hard work and strong beliefs – we wanted for nothing really, and I don’t think I knew how lucky I was.
Despite my fortunate surroundings, it was a lonely upbringing. I didn’t get on that well with my older brother – our only interaction seemed to be when he’d come up with a new way to torment me – and there was a large age gap between me and the younger ones. When I played on the farm and in the fields, it tended to be on my own. I had a vivid imagination and the time passed quickly, but I suppose I did yearn for someone to share it with. From the outside, we probably looked like a big, noisy, happy family, but there were definitely cracks there.
Going to school several miles away meant that I had no friends locally, and the farm was in the middle of nowhere, so I spent a lot of time with my own thoughts. Even when I was a little girl, I made a promise to myself that I would be a different sort of parent and give any children I had a different sort of life. I would play with them and be a really hands-on mum; they would always come first and I would never say I was too busy when they wanted to play or tell me something. Everything around me was beautiful but I was undoubtedly lonely. I had siblings and I had parents who gave me all the material things I could wish for, but there was something missing. I wanted a mum and dad who would play with me and draw and sing and dance and look for fairies and chase butterflies. I would be that sort of mum, I truly would.
In some ways, I wished my childhood away because of this. I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to drive and had the freedom to escape. I would find the life I wanted, make it for myself and leave the loneliness behind. When I was old enough, I told myself, I would rush head first towards that life and never look back. I left school at sixteen, with good grades in my exams, and convinced my parents that I would be far happier at the local state-run college.
‘School’s not for me,’ I remember telling them. ‘They don’t understand me – they don’t see what I could do if they would just let me be myself. I can’t breathe in that sort of environment. I need to be me.’ It’s been said by countless teenagers before, and will be heard by countless weary parents for the rest of time, but I genuinely believed it. ‘I can’t wait for ever,’ I went on. ‘I want to have a life, and I can’t do it with all of those rules and people not being able to see what I’m really capable of.’ I’m sure they must have rolled their eyes as I claimed I’d change the world. They were good people, they just had their own way of seeing things and, as a teenager, I naturally believed my way was far superior. What did they know? I could have the world at my feet if they would let me. I believed my own words. At that point, I really was telling them what I thought was the truth, and I felt no sadness whatsoever at leaving behind the world of school uniforms and weekend classes. I can’t waste time thinking what my life would have been like if I had followed the path they wanted to set me; that way madness lies.
I was young and wanted to have a good time. It was the mid-1990s and the rave culture was in full swing. While most of the girls in the year I had left behind at school were into the Spice Girls, I was obsessed with the various sets of mix tapes from raves I’d been to. It was music I could relate to and I was obsessed with it. I would lie on my bed listening to the mixes for hours on end, with colourful flyers for clubs and raves covering every inch of my bedroom walls. So, when I left school, I needed to find people who felt the same. They must be out there, and I knew that if only I could track them down they could be part of