The airport, she replies, after a pause.Going to stay with a friend for a while. Will be in touch soon.
The airport? Which airport? What friend.Where?I try again to call her. Again, her phone goes to voicemail. And now I’m growing desperate. I don’t want her to ‘be in touch soon’.I need to be in touch with her now. I need her to be here. I have no one else.No one.
Throwing myself in my car, I drive frantically to my parents’ house. Something’s happened. Is this what Jason meant? Is he aware of something I’m not? Yet more worms crawling out of the woodwork regarding my father? Even with the press interest, the stories in the papers, my mum wouldn’t just go. After all this time staying with him, she wouldn’t go now unless something awful had happened to make her.
Turning into my parents’ road, I slow, glancing towards their house with deep apprehension. It’s beautiful, a grand three-storey Georgian house, with picturesque views overlooking the park from the back windows. When she was alive, Sarah and I had shared the attic bedroom on the third floor, the room with the best views. We used to sit outside on the wide window ledge on hot summer days, telling each other stories, dreaming and dangling our feet. It should have been paradise. It turned into a nightmare. For a second, I’m back there, waiting outside the house on the day of the funeral. But the people congregated here now are not here to mourn, to stand and watch the hearse arrive in respectful silence. Jostling each other, running towards me, this crowd is hungry, ready to close in for the kill.
My heart rate escalates. I am hot and clammy under my too-heavy parka coat, a bead of sweat snaking its way down my throat to trickle over the soft hollow of my neck. I should have approached the house from the back, snuck through the garden gate adjoining the park and gone in through the conservatory. It’s too late now.
Inhaling deeply, I clutch the steering wheel and ram my foot down on the accelerator, causing the bloodsuckers with press badges to scatter as I screech to a stop.
‘Mrs Connolly!’ One of the reporters follows me through the un-gated drive and pushes a microphone in my face as I spill from the car. ‘How do you feel about the allegations made against your father?’
‘Karla!’ a female reporter shouts, nudging him aside. ‘Can you give us a brief comment? It would be invaluable to the MeToo campaign.’
‘Piss off,’ I hiss. Key poised, I make my way to the front door. He’s my father. What do they want me to say? I’m not here to comment. I have no idea how I feel about him, the man who robbed me of my sister. The man who played a part in the failure of my marriage; who has almost been a third person in my marriage. I’m not sure what he did, what he said to Jason that finally drove home the last nail, but I felt my husband withdraw from me that day. I knew it was only a matter of time before he walked away.
My father categorically denied having said or done anything, according to my mother. I don’t believe it. I don’t trust him. All of my life, I have wondered about him. When I was younger, looking at him through a tiny child’s eyes, I couldn’t conceive of the possibility that this big businessman in his smart blue suits, the man I revered, might tell anything but the truth. As I grew up, I learned differently, and I simply stopped looking. Mum turned a blind eye to his ‘indiscretions’, indiscretions which I came to realise had gone on for longer than I could remember, and I did too. And then came the tragedy that rocked our world. I stopped listening to the voice in my head that whispered the word ‘liar’. I shut it down.
I’m not sure how much of what the press is accusing him of is true. I’m not sure of anything, other than that it’s not my father I’m here for. I’m here because my mother is not. Perhaps all of this, the clamouring reporters who will undoubtedly dig up the past, is the final straw that’s driven her to do what I never imagined she would. But for her not to have discussed it with me, with all I have happening in my life? For her not to have at least rung me? I don’t understand. She’s left so suddenly, and I need to know why. I need to know where she is.
Shit.I curse silently as my key jams in the lock. They’re still on me, right behind me, still shouting, making my head spin. ‘Think of the victims, Mrs Connolly,’ one of them bellows. ‘How would you feel?’
I don’t know how I feel!I want to turn around and scream.My husband is cheating on me. My father is accused of things I can’t bear to contemplate. My mother’s not here, and I need her. I need something tangible to hold on to, and there’s nothing! How would you feel?
Pulling my key from the lock, I stuff it back in and wiggle it, and finally the front door gives. Stumbling into the hall, I slam the door behind me and stand still for a moment, trying to take stock. It’s quiet. No clangs of baking trays and pans from the kitchen. No radio drifting from inside.
It’s as still as the grave, Sarah whispers.
‘Dad!’ I yell, panic twisting my stomach. ‘Dad!Where are you?’
Gathering my courage, I head down the long hall and through the kitchen towards the utility – and the pulse of tension in my throat tightens. The washing machine is on. Dad doesn’t use the washing machine. He’s never used the washing machine. I’m not sure he knows how to. But it’s not this incomprehensible oddity that causes my heart to palpitate like a trapped bird in my chest. It’s the next load, waiting on the floor in front of the machine. The dark crimson stain on the duvet cover. The spatters of blood on the floor.
‘Mum!’ Whirling around, I retrace my steps. My eyes glued to the floor, I notice a steady trail of rich red droplets –splat, splat, splat– along the hall carpet and continuing on up the stairs. I pause at the foot, my mouth dry, my thoughts a chaotic jumble.
Clutching hold of the banister, I heave myself up and charge to my parents’ room, where I hesitate, and then, terror climbing my chest, I shove the door open – and freeze.
My father is on the floor. On his hands and knees on the floor. A bowl to his side, a brush in his hand, he’s scrubbing at a stain on the cream carpet. Bewildered, I look from him to the candy-pink froth forming on top of it. ‘Dad?’ I murmur, my voice small and tremulous.
He pauses, brings the brush around again and then pulls himself up. Sitting back on his haunches, he wipes an arm across his forehead and then turns his gaze towards me.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask, my voice emerging a dry croak.
My father’s gaze lingers, searching my face as if he doesn’t know me. He looks older, smaller somehow, his eyes rheumy and uncertain.
‘Dad! What’shappened?’ I yell. The house, too silent, even with the low rumble of voices and car doors slamming outside, seems to close in on me.
Dad’s expression changes as I step towards him, hardening to the aggravated, impatient look I’ve so often seen him wear – when dealing with ‘imbeciles’.
When Sarah challenged him on that long-ago summer’s day, talking back to him, disrespecting him, he’d worn that look then. My stomach churns, as I hear it over again, Sarah’s shrill shrieking, the sharp slap. The soft thud. Silence.
Oh, dear God. Did my mother challenge him? He would undoubtedly have been trying to lie his way out of this latest soul-crushing debacle. ‘Dad,talkto me. Where’s Mum?’
‘Gone,’ he says, and goes back to his cleaning.
‘Gonewhere?’ I shout, louder, careless of who might hear. ‘How?They would have seen her. The reporters.’ If my mum was injured, they wouldn’t have failed to notice. They would have been baying like dogs over a bone, gleefully relaying that information to me, trying to extract information from me. Through my rising terror, I realise this fact.
Pausing again, he studies me curiously, clearly registers my incomprehension. ‘She called a taxi to pick her up at the park entrance,’ he says, his tone flat.
