‘What is?’
‘It’s the Christmas dance this Friday, it was Phoebe’s favourite. She loved all the fancy dresses and wearing Saskia’s fur.’
I say it’s sad too, because it is.
Walking home, I look on my phone at the BBC news page. Nothing about you for weeks but this evening, a headline. Our house is to be demolished, a community garden planted. Nine trees. You don’t come to me in my bed any more, you shed your skin. ‘It’s time,’ you said. I understand now what you meant, that I didn’t need you any more. A mixture of happy and sad. Mostly I’m coming to terms with the things I’ve done. I did them to be good, I promise, even though they were bad.
I’ve been practising what to say, in case you ever come back.
This is what I’d say.
I never asked for a mother who wolf-whistled at me, who laughed in my face when I tried to say no. I’d tell you, you were wrong when you used to stand behind me at the mirror in your bedroom and say nobody will ever love me but you, because I think Mike and Saskia might grow to. I’d tell you, you were right, my insides do look different to everybody else’s.
A curious, twisted shape.
The shape you made me. The shape I’m learning to live with.
The night of your arrest, I nodded at you. You knew what I meant. I was telling you I was leaving you. I was ready. But you weren’t, were you? You never liked it when a game ended, you always wanted to keep playing. The game you made me play, going to court, more public than we’d ever done before. A last fire of the gun, a parade of how well you’d taught me. It wasn’t a walk in the park, no, nor was it checkmate. It was like turning my face to the sun. Blinding. No shade.
Your voice, to me, was a morphine drip. Sullied, not able to provide relief and comfort, but fear and temptation instead. I’m glad I no longer hear you or see you in places I know you can’t be, like standing at the bus stop by school.
The things you did, the things you made me do, broke my heart.
You broke my heart.
You broke my.
You broke.
You.
And me.
Because of that, I have secrets, so many secrets.
I am not who I say I am.
Folie à deux – a madness shared by two.
Deny.
Manipulate.
Lie.
Mummy, I thought I could choose.
It turns out, I’m just like you.
Only better.
Being good doesn’t interest me any more.
Not
??Getting Caught Does
40
I know something’s wrong as soon as I open the front door. It’s where Mike’s standing, in the middle of the tiles where she landed. Why is he standing there when for the past week or so he hasn’t been able to look at them, never mind stand on them.
‘I need you to come to the study. Right now,’ he says.
He doesn’t ask me to sit down when we get there, he stands closer to me than normal, looks into my eyes. I don’t think he likes what he sees because he walks away, sits down at his desk, mutters to himself. There’s a bottle of whisky, over a third empty, a glass on his desk. He drains the measure already poured, pours another one right away. I sit down in silence on the armchair that has become mine over the past few months. And wait.
His words, when they come, hurt me.
‘I was warned about you. People said I was stupid. Reckless even. Having you here would only cause trouble, but I didn’t listen, I thought I could handle it.’
The piranhas are back. The fortune fish too, a new trial beginning.
‘I thought I knew everything about you – maybe not everything, but most things. I thought you trusted me. I trusted you, I took you in for god’s sake.’
‘I do trust you, Mike.’
His fist crashes down on his desk, I jump. It’s nothing compared to what you used to do but from Mike, gentle, understanding Mike, it feels savage. Brutal. He’s angry with me. His head’s starting to clear, grief is a fog, a mist. Hangs low, obscures the landscape. Obscures what’s really there.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ he says. ‘If you trusted me, you would have told me.’
‘Told you what?’
He pauses, downs a mouthful of whisky, arches his fingers on the desk. Twin tarantulas, ready to pounce.
‘In our sessions, the things you said. Jumbled. Inconsistent. You were so hard to guide. You hated me asking you about it, tried hard not to say his name, but I knew something about the night Daniel died troubled you more than I thought it should. But when I asked you, kept asking you, the story was the same and I believed you. I wanted to at some level, you’d been through so much, but now I’m not sure any more. I’m not sure of anything.’
His fingers relax on the desk, more pianist than spider. Whisky is also a mist, one that confuses the mind until you’re not sure what to believe any more. Drink some more, please, Mike.
‘What you told the court, about what happened that night, was it true, Milly? Did your mother kill Daniel? Did she?’
‘Why do you think I’m lying?’
‘Because you do, don’t you? You lie. You lied to me, didn’t you? You lied to me about Phoebe when you said you were getting on fine.’
‘We were.’
He swipes a glass paperweight off his desk, it collides with the wall, doesn’t break, leaves a dent in the paintwork, lands on the ground with a thud.
‘You’re scaring me, Mike.’
‘Well you scare me, do you know that?’
There it is. The truth. His. He feels the same about me as everyone else does. As I do about myself. I lower my gaze.
‘I’m sorry, that was unnecessary, Milly.’
He drinks another whisky, adjusts the photo frame that sits on the right-hand side of his desk. I felt jealous and lonely when I first saw the pictures in the frame. A collage of Phoebe, all different ages. Blonde and perfect and beautiful, not contaminated like me. He shakes his head, smiles at his daughter. Not fondly, but with regret perhaps. Regret about what? She’s gone but she’s everywhere still, in the spaces and gaps that are supposed to be mine now.
The phone on his desk rings, he looks over at it but doesn’t pick it up.
‘It’ll be June,’ he says. ‘I called her while I was waiting for you to come back but she didn’t answer. She’ll know something’s up though, I wouldn’t normally call this late.’
‘Why did you?’
‘I’m writing a book about you, did you know that? No. Well, I am. It was all I was able to think about. How stupid and arrogant of me.’
He doesn’t tell me why he called June but I can feel the place in this family I’ve been carving, manipulating, since Phoebe’s death, start to dissolve in front of me. Quicksand. Sinking. Me.
‘You can stop pretending now, Milly. I know.’
And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.
‘It had been going on for months, hadn’t it? Facebook, the school forum. Text messages. The police returned Phoebe’s phone yesterday. She’d been bullying you for months, hadn’t she?’
I know what he’s thinking, that all roads lead to me.