‘Good,’ my mother said. ‘And by the time she gets back, we’ll have moved anyway, won’t we?’
‘Well, at least they’re not pressing charges,’ she said, once the policeman had left. She sounded like she thought I should be relieved.
I’d known that my father had an evil streak, but I’d wanted to see my mother as his victim. Now, suddenly, I understood why they were together. They were cut from the same cloth. The realisation made me feel sick to the core.
Different questions went through my mind:
–Did you know?But I knew the answer to that one was, ‘Of course I knew.’
–How long have you known?‘Since Cardiff.’ At the very least.
–How could you stay with him?Why don’t you leave him?‘Because I don’t want to. Because I’m scared. Because I’m a monster. Because I never cared about the little sluts anyway.’
I found my mind knew all of her answers already. There was no need to even involve her in the conversation.
‘Are you really moving?’ was the only one I asked out loud.
‘Yes, we thought it was time to go back to Wales,’ Mum said. ‘We thought it would be nice if we stayed by the coast though. We’re thinking Anglesey, perhaps. What do you think?’ She seemed to really think things were going to carry on like normal.
But I was already standing, I was already leaving, and in my head I was already gone.
It wasn’t adecisionto get away from her, from him, from that house, it was aneed. It was impossible to stay a minute longer.
They left about a week later, probably in another hastily rented van. I sayaboutandprobablybecause I wasn’t there to witness any of it. I didn’t help them pack and I didn’t say goodbye.
I rented a room for six months from Alan, my electrician boss, paying him and his wife £25 a week, and then, once I’d saved a deposit, I moved into a grubby little bedsit opposite The Oxford pub.
Eventually I heard through the grapevine that Julie Sturgess had returned from wherever it was she’d been and then three months after that I saw afor salesign outside their old house and learned that her family had moved too.
I never once tried to contact her and that wasn’t only because it was forbidden. I felt so ashamed of what had happened that even thinking about Julie made me want to die. And I do mean that quite literally. It made me want todie.
But for the most part – incredible,shamefulas this will sound – I managed very efficiently to not think about her at all. Until, of course, Dad phoned me about that box.
SIXTEEN
AFTER THE STORM (BY DAWN)
By the time Rob had finished telling me about his parents we’d moved back to the kitchen. We were seated at the kitchen table holding hands.
We were both red-eyed and pretty much cried out by that point and when Rob released my hand it was simply to go upstairs for a snooze.
After he’d gone, I sat and stared out of the kitchen window at the fading light and tried to think about everything I’d just learned. But there was too much of it all, really, or at least that’s how it felt. It all seemed too massive to be logically thought about so all that was left was emotion – an almost overwhelming rush of compassion and sadness and love. My husband was upstairs and he was sleeping and I loved him. That was as far as logic would take me.
After half an hour or so, I moved to the lounge and turned on the TV. I was hoping it would provide some sort of relief from trying to think thoughts that refused to be thought, but the noise of it just irritated me. So with the realisation that what I needed was simply to sit and let myself be with this new reality, with these new feelings, I switched it back off and did just that.
Rob came back downstairs about nine. He stood in the doorway behind me and whispered, ‘Are you sleeping?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘Not at all.’
He entered the room hesitantly and perched opposite me on the edge of the armchair as if he perhaps hadn’t decided if he was staying. His eyes looked bloodshot and he had the imprint of the seam of the pillowcase right down the middle of one cheek.
‘You OK?’ he asked.
I nodded and blinked slowly. ‘Yes, I’m fine. But how areyou?’
Rob shrugged. ‘Tired,’ he said. ‘Exhausted, actually. The truth of my family is exhausting.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can imagine.’ Then, ‘Though, actually I can’t. I can’t even begin to imagine living with that.’
