My head lifted slowly. ‘You knew?’ How could she have known when I didn’t? I wasn’t ready to say the word yet. That dreaded four-letter word that churned over and over in my head.
Her lips stretched in a grim smile. ‘Darling, from the first moment that boy stepped into this house, I knew he was in love with you.’ She held up a hand to stop me from interrupting. ‘And I could also see that you were falling for him, too.’
The whiskey in my glass stared back at me, not giving me the answers I desperately wanted. ‘I don’t want this.’ I tried toimbibe my voice with conviction. Even to my own ears, it rang hollow. ‘I’veneverwanted this.’
‘Is he not someone worth loving?’ Mum tilted her head, features pinched like she was waiting for me to get it. Waiting for that penny to drop. But I wasn’t the one who didn’t understand. It’s the rest of the fucking world who didn’t get that falling in love wasn’t meant for me. Not when I’d seen what it did to people. What it did to the person sitting opposite me.
‘He’s—’
How could I explain George in a single sentence? In one conversation, even. Everything he was couldn’t possibly be summed up in a single word or phrase. He was all-consuming—all-encompassing. He shone a bright light into the dark corners of my heart. Even when confronted with all the monsters lurking inside of me, from trauma and baggage I couldn’t undo, he hadn’t turned away in disgust.
‘Your past doesn't threaten me, sweetheart. It doesn't make me jealous. It makes me want to sit on the floor and ask you every detail so I can know all the pieces that created this incredible person standing in front of me.’
My eyelids stung as I recalled the love pouring out of his eyes as he’d said that.
‘I’m in love with a man who is covered in fucking green flags,’ I rasped.
‘Okay,’ Mum drew out the word like she was failing to see an issue. ‘And the problem is?’
I floundered again. ‘He’s… perfect.’
‘Again, not really seeing the problem, sweetie.’
Tears finally broke free, cascading down my cheeks. ‘I’mnot.’
Two words dropped like a bomb into the small kitchen. Soft evening sunlight filtered in through the windows, casting an orange glow on the floor. Roxy had found a spotin the direct path of the sun and was stretched out on the tiled floor. Basking in it. I watched her for a moment, too afraid to meet Mum’s gaze. But I felt it burn the side of my cheek.
‘Rosie.’ The sadness that coated her voice stabbed me right through the chest. ‘What are you so afraid of?’
When my head lifted and our eyes connected. Her face crumpled when she read the answer etched on my face. The truth I’d always been too scared to voice.
Her head bobbed a few times, understanding dawning. She took another drink, gently setting the glass down and clasping her hands tightly. Throat bobbing as she swallowed.
‘Are you so afraid of becoming me, that you are willing to chase away something real?’ she said in a voice so soft it was barely audible.
There it was. The fear that I’d never spoken out loud but felt gnawing in my gut since I was a child. People say there's an inevitability to becoming like your parents you never escape. Mannerisms, you pick up without noticing where they originate. A tone of voice or taste of food. Innocuous things that don’t matter.
Some people cope with trauma by burrowing so far into themselves they can no longer see the good. So they lean on crutches to help them assuage the guilt of existing. Drinking. Drugs. Sex. Gambling. The obvious vices you expect people who have suffered to cling to—not my mother. Her life had been a series of events that had scarred her for a lifetime. From an absent father, to an abusive mother who would break the skin on her back with a belt every time she did something my grandmother perceived aswrong.She’d suffered and survived her childhood. A feat that would have broken most, but she bore it, using dark humour and sarcasm as her defence against the world.
At eighteen, she’d made the biggest mistake of her life,one I’d promised myself at eight years old, I would never, ever make.
She’d fallen in love.
Not a soft, delicate kind of love, either. This was passion in its most brutal form. The kind that smothers you in a haze so you can’t see two feet in front of you, save for the silhouette of the person before you. Your entire universe becomes about them. Your very existence depends on them. Happy or sad, you are merely an extension of them.
That kind of love destroys.
That kind of man devastates you.
And he did.
Slowly and surely, my father wormed his way into mum’s soul, and dismantled everything she loved about herself, and the world around her. Convincing her he was the only way she could possibly survive.
He did it so effectively that when our lives were finally devoid of any traces of him; she didn’t know who she was.
‘You never talked about it,’ I breathed, choking on the ball of emotion rising in my throat. Tears sparkled in Mum’s eyes; she lifted a hand to her mouth. ‘You never said anything. For years after you left, you never said his name, never mentioned the abuse. You swept everything under the carpet. I didn’t know how to cope, so I did the same.’
Her throat bobbed, swallowing thickly. ‘That’s because I was a coward. I couldn’t face up to my mistakes. At this point in my life, there are so many I feel like if I open that box, I’ll drown in them. Selfishly, it’s easier to keep it firmly nailed shut.’ She reached over, placing her warm hands on mine.
