Bye Bye Baby by Fiona McIntosh

James had been born and had changed our lives forever.
    But really I was in therapy for the opportunity to talk about the effects of something that had happened three decades previous. I never referred to it openly, of course — it was my secret. But Dr March helped all the same, without knowing it, for her rooms were the only place I ever felt safe enough to allow my thoughts to go back to that horrific year during the 1970s.
    I had spent most of my adult life suppressing the memories, unable to face returning to a time I could recall in such vivid and excruciating detail. But nowthe time was right for me to recall every nuance of that experience. I needed to remember it, to live through it again, because the rage it invoked gave me the courage to finally seek the vengeance that was long overdue.
    The public at large had nothing to fear from me: my next victim was already chosen. There was nothing random about the killings that had the media in a frenzy. But I still had to find my target, and I had to move fast now that Detective Chief Inspector Jack Hawksworth would be closing the gap as quickly as his resources could fill it. Time was surely more on my side than Hawksworth’s, though. He had no idea why I had killed two seemingly unrelated blokes from different counties with very different lifestyles. But once he began digging into the past, he would put Sheriff and Farrow in the same place at the same time. I just had to make sure I got to Billy and Phil before Hawksworth joined all the dots and reached them first.
    It began for me one Wednesday after school. They were following me. This in itself wasn’t so unusual; it happened once or twice a week. I didn’t want to look around because that only encouraged them. Keep walking , I urged myself.
    All I wanted was to be left alone to survive the mire of misery my life had become, make something of myself and build a new life far away from Hangleton and the tragedy that surrounded my family.
    But they wouldn’t let me. Every group needs a target — someone to ridicule, someone whose life is worse than theirs.

    ‘Bletch’ they called me. Some kid from Manchester who’d moved down south said it meant ‘oil slick’ up north, and the name had stuck, spewing out of my tormentors’ mouths like the vomit they mimicked as they said it.
    Humiliation — it was my closest companion then. It went perfectly with my poor eyesight, the ugly glasses with their thick lenses, and the hated braces clinging to my teeth. Mother Nature hadn’t been terribly kind to me.
    But the real darkness had descended when a drunk driver crashed into my father and my baby brother one rainy night. My mother, incapable of coping with her own pain, had sunk into an oblivion aided by a mixture of sedatives and brandy. I needed a mother more than ever during those early teenage years of being goofy, moon-faced and solid all over, but my mother rarely bothered to get out of bed. She knew I’d figure out how to get myself ready for school, organise my own breakfast and pack my own lunchbox — if there was any food in the house.
    If school was a minefield, home was a war zone. I was constantly reminded of our loss there, through photos and the way my mother had given up on her own life, and on me. Each Monday after school, I’d force her to stand in the bath — usually in her stained nightie to appease my own modesty — and let the shower bring her back to some semblance of life. Then I’d help her to dress, always averting my gaze to avoid looking upon her bared flesh, and we’d walk slowly to the post office to withdraw our weekly living allowance from the funds my father, a doctor, had left us. Now my mother was so numb, thehousehold budgeting fell to me. Numbers were easy for me, so I took on the financial responsibility as Mum slid fully into the all-consuming abyss of grief. There was one blessing: the house was paid for.
    ‘Bletch!’
    That was Billy Fletcher, tall and strong for his age,