“I never laid a finger on that girl. Not in that way, anyway. The newspapers, they twist things. They make them dirty. You know what I mean? I was congratulating her, that’s all.”
“Jake,” I said, with a warning in my voice. “I don’t think the whiskey is going to help anything, is it? Sit down and I’ll make you a coffee.”
“Not a chance. You’re the pregnant one. You sit down and I’ll do it.” He banged the cupboard door shut. “I’m the man of the house. I’m the one who helps his wife. Need to look after my pregnant wife, carryingmychild.”
“You don’t sound well. You sound stressed out and drunk. Sit down, just for a minute. Then you can give me a foot rub. How does that sound?” I tried to coax him into a chair, but just as I thought it had worked, he stood up again and began pacing the length of the kitchen.
“I provide for you, don’t I? I had this kitchen built especially. I bought the house for you, you know, because I imagined what it would be like to live here and raise our kids. It was always for you.”
“I know, I know.” I put my head in my hands. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not now. My rock had cracked. He’d been busted open like an egg.
“We were so close. So fucking close. And then…”
“Don’t say it,” I begged. “Don’t tell me you resent my child. If you say it now, you can never unsay it.”
I raised my head and our eyes locked. He didn’t need to say the words because they were written all over his face. He was ashen, with clammy skin and a red flush working its way up from his shirt collar. His hands were clenched by his side. His eyes were wide and wild. When he breathed, spittle flew from his clenched teeth.
“You hate him. You’ve hated him since we first brought him home,” I said miserably, feeling a chill work its way up my arms and legs.
“Just shut up, I can’t think. I need to think.” He took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and commenced pacing again. “I need to think.”
“What do you need to think about?” I was on my feet, anger and frustration bubbling to the surface. He was supposed to be the man who had saved me. But here he was, with these secrets and badly hidden animosity towards my own son. Here he was, and I couldn’t stand the sight of him.
He spun to face me. “Don’t you remember that day?”
I lifted a hand to cut him off. “Of course I do. I don’t want to talk about it though.”
“There were two knives. One you had stuck through the painting, and the other was slitting your wrist. Remember that? Remember how I found you in your mother’s house? That was what you were before I saved you. Isavedyou. If it wasn’t for me you’d be dead. You wouldn’t even be with Aiden right now.”
ChapterTwenty
My most shameful day had started with a glass of Pinot Grigio. Back then, I’d thought that if I drank wine, it wasn’t like being an alcoholic. Vodka or whiskey was the drink of choice for alcoholics, not wine. Not white wine. That was civilised. You don’t put a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in a brown paper bag and sit in the park.
I was at home on my own. My parents had been dead six months. I sat on the floor in the living room of Mum and Dad’s cottage with a smorgasbord of disgusting items littering the floor. Leftover cartons of Chinese food that had barely been touched, crusted over with congealed grease along the rim. Bowls of cereal strewn across the carpet heavy with clotted milk. Half-eaten sandwiches attracting flies. I sat in the middle of the mess and I drank my wine. Who was I kidding? I knew what I was. I saw the mess and I knew that I was at rock bottom; despite the Pinot I’d bought from the Bishoptown newsagent with a pair of sunglasses over my smudged, shadowed eyes, I was an alcoholic. A depressed mess.
After draining the last of the wine, I wandered into Aiden’s room. It was untouched. Every now and then I’d come in and dust away the cobwebs. I’d sit on his bed, lift up Walnut and still smell the faintest scent of my son. But I hadn’t cleaned his room for a long time and there was a thick layer of dust along the windowsill. Worse still, a large, fat spider sat on top of his pillow. The sight of it was so wrong, so jarring, that I lunged forward, punching the pillow. The spider scuttled away before my fist connected, probably running under the bed. But I kept going. I punched the stuffing out of Aiden’s pillow, and then I threw back the duvet cover and threw the mattress to the side. A roar built up from my chest as I ran my arm along the window sill, knocking away his trophy from sports day—third in the egg-and-spoon race—and a framed photograph of when he’d met his favourite footballer.
I ripped down his poster of Iron Man. I threw his clothes out from the wardrobe. I tore the covers from his books. And then I stopped. I wiped my eyes. A sense of calm washed over me and I knew what I needed to do.
There was a second bottle of wine in the fridge, so I opened that and took a long swig. There was no need for glasses anymore. Who did I need to impress? Who would care? There wasn’t anyone left. On my way through the house, I picked up a picture of us all together. Aiden was at the front wearing his Superman cape. I was behind him with my hands on his shoulders. And on either side of me were my parents. Dad on my left, Mum on my right. I didn’t cry, I just smiled and cradled the photograph to my chest.
I’d already turned my bedroom into something of a studio. There were a dozen or more paintings stacked up along the walls. I picked one up. It was a self-portrait. I hated this portrait. It was angry and torn-up. I’d used reds and blacks. My teeth were bared. I was ugly and ill in this painting, with booze-soaked eyes because I’d painted it while wasted, barely able to see the canvas with my blurred vision. I hated it. Setting down the wine bottle, I picked up the box-cutter knife I used to trim my canvasses and stabbed the knife into the canvas. Slowly, I dragged the knife down.
A great fire burned inside of me and I knew it was time to extinguish it. What was the point of life if it was just pain? I felt like I was standing inside a burning building and my only choices were to jump or let the fire consume me.
I was sick to death of the fire.
I collapsed onto the ground, dropping the torn-up canvas next to me, before taking out a second knife and placing it on my lap. Then I swigged from the bottle of wine. I was so numb from the alcohol, I figured it wouldn’t hurt at all. I thought of the fire roaring within me. I thought of all the shit I’d been through. I thought of Aiden’s coat pulled from the river and how the river continued on, rushing and gushing through the country while my son was rotting somewhere. I didn’t even get toburyhim. I didn’t even get that much.
I cried out before I plunged the knife into my wrist. I screamed before it even hurt. The pain wasn’t from the gushing wound, it was from the fire.
Burning. Burning. My skin on fire. I screamed and I screamed until the flames finally died down. When I looked down, the blood poured out of the wound and I began to feel deliciously woozy. This was it. This was how I stopped the fire. If only I’d known sooner that it would be so simple. I started to fall back onto my bed, smiling. Finally, I had stopped the pain, and finally I had found the inner strength to jump from the burning building.
But in my woozy state I didn’t hear the banging at the door, or the frantic voice calling my name. The door must have been open because Jake managed to get in within seconds. There were clattering footsteps and then my door was open. A face blurred before my eyes as he hooked his arms underneath my body, calling my name over and over again. There was pressure on my wrist and I was vaguely aware of the blood oozing between his fingers. I was vaguely aware of him saying ‘no, no, no, this wasn’t supposed to happen’ and then I woke up in a hospital bed.
It took me a long time to find gratitude for what Jake did for me that day. When I first woke up in that hospital room, I hated him more than I’ve ever hated anyone. Hate was an emotion I’d never discovered before Aiden was taken from me in the flood. If you get to live your life without ever experiencing hatred, then count yourself lucky. Count your blessings. Hate isn’t something to crave or wish for. Never say you hate someone or something unless you really mean it, because hate is not finding a presenter on the telly annoying, or losing your temper with a sibling—it’s an all-consuming living thing that starts in your bowels and infects your blood until it blackens your heart.
And I hated myself. That’s the worst kind of hate.
