‘Let me go home and talk to Henry,’ she said to Rachel.
‘About the tearooms?’ Rachel asked excitedly.
‘Among other things,’ said Clara as she got up and she felt Rachel hug her awkwardly.
‘You are amazing, Clara, thank you.’
Clara hugged Rachel back. ‘So are you. We are going to turn the tearooms into something everyone will want to come to and it’s going to be amazing, I promise.’
And Clara felt truly excited for the future, if she could just bring herself to talk to Henry about her past.
46
Clara – aged 15
Clara walked up the path and silence greeted her. She stopped and listened closely and then ran to the chicken coop.
Screaming, she ran inside and then she saw him. Gran was on the floor. Blood was everywhere and his hands were around Mum’s neck and she was turning blue, so Clara grabbed the knife Gran had been using to cut up the potatoes.
She stabbed him until he fell and then he cried her name.
It was a plaintive sound that rang through her bones and ended in her matching his cry. She used a tea towel on him to try and stop the bleeding from his back but the tea towel was soaked through.
Mum had gasped for breath and Clara wasn’t sure who to help but Dad grabbed her hand and held on, looking at her, trying to speak but he couldn’t get the words out.
‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry,’ she had said and he had whispered something to her but when she leaned down to try and hear him, he had died.
Mum had looked at her and at Gran and started to cry and then she picked up the knife and stabbed him again in the front, four times in the heart.
‘Call the police, Clara,’ she had said. ‘Tell them I’ve killed your dad.’
So Clara did.
And later, when the police told her that Mum had been arrested and Gran was dead, Clara realised she was all alone in the world and that she had murdered her own father.
47
Henry was holding Naomi’s ashes when Clara walked through the door. He saw her look at him and then the ashes, and then she turned and ran upstairs, where the bedroom door slammed.
He put down the container and went and knocked on her door.
‘What?’ came the reply.
‘Can we talk?’ he asked.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘Because you’re in a bad mood and I want to help.’
‘Go and be with Naomi,’ he heard her say.
‘That’s unfair.’ He opened the door and saw her lying on the bed, facing away from him.
‘Clara, what is going on? Why are you so angry with me?’
‘I’m not angry with you, I’m angry with myself.’
She still didn’t look at him.
‘Why are you angry with yourself?’
She said nothing. Henry had forgotten how to be in an argument with an adult, so he stood helplessly at her side.
‘Clara, you’re being…’
She rolled over and sat up. ‘I’m being what? I come home to tell you exciting news. I want to talk about us and what is happening and you’re sitting at the kitchen table hugging your dead wife’s ashes. I mean, it’s not exactly reassuring that you want to be here with me. You sleep in this bed every night. We make love, you kiss me, but are you imagining it’s her? Am I merely the substitute for Naomi?’
Henry felt his body tighten with anger and he walked to the window.
‘That’s incredibly unfair, and you are making assumptions that are so wrong it’s insulting.’
‘Am I?’ Clara had raised her voice now. ‘You don’t talk about us, the future, what happens after the cottage is finished. You haven’t even got Pansy’s things for school.’
Henry went to speak but Clara was roaring now.
‘And the fact she is going to school, well that’s something else. I mean if it weren’t for me, she would be stuck in the van with you, colouring in for the rest of her life.’
That was too far for Henry.
‘How dare you say that. You’re insinuating I’m a bad parent because I held her back a year.’
Clara laughed and it sounded mean.
‘A year, two years, who knows? You are stopping her from having friends and sleepovers and parties and everything else that little children deserve and need but most of all, if it wasn’t for me and Tassie, you were stopping her from learning to read, the most important skill of all.’
‘You are out of line,’ he said.
‘And you’re deluded.’
Henry walked out, went downstairs and drank some water to calm down.
How could he have been so wrong about Clara? Why was she being so angry and nasty?
He heard her walk down the stairs and storm into the kitchen.
‘You don’t want to be here with me, you want to be with her, but she’s dead.’ Clara tapped the container on the table.
‘Stop it,’ he warned.
‘Stop what? Being honest with you?’ she said.
Henry heard himself scoff at her words. ‘Honest? That’s rich coming from you.’
‘What do you mean? I’ve told you everything.’
‘No, you haven’t. You said there was something you needed to tell me when we met and since then it’s hung like a bloody guillotine over us and every day I wonder if you will tell me what it is. Every day I see it in your face when you are lost in thought. When you’re so passionate about helping Rachel. What happened, Clara? What happened?’
She shook her head at him.
’Nothing happened.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t have to believe me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
She crossed her arms and stared at him. He sat down at the table.
‘I’ll wait for you to tell me.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
Henry could hear Pansy talking to Gumboot in the garden. Everything Clara had said, he had worried about himself. He felt like a bad father who had held Pansy back
