Clara looked up and Tassie saw her eyes widen.
‘That song. Where did Pansy learn that? Pansy?’ she called out.
Pansy and Gumboots ran inside. ‘Yeah?’ she asked.
‘That song you’re singing, where did you learn that?’ Clara asked her.
‘This song?’ Pansy sang it and Clara put her hands to her ears. Tassie saw her turn white.
‘Daddy was singing it and now I’m singing it. I can teach you if you like.’
Clara shook her head.
‘Thanks, pet,’ said Tassie to Pansy who ran outside again.
‘What is the song, Clara?’ she asked gently.
‘It was on the radio in the kitchen the night he died,’ she said. ‘My gran loved it. It was an old Elvis song called “Don’t Cry Daddy”, fitting really.’
The sound of Clara’s car made Clara wipe her eyes quickly and move to the sink to have a drink of water as Henry walked in the door, humming the song ‘Don’t Cry Daddy’.
Clara looked at Tassie who stood up.
‘I am going to talk to the trees with Pansy. Come and see me when you’re done,’ she said to them both.
‘I bought you gin and tonics,’ Henry said looking confused.
‘Pour one for each of you and sit and listen for a bit, pet,’ she said before patting his arm and walking into the garden to listen to the old oak tree.
49
Clara waited for Henry to make them the drinks and then he sat opposite her.
‘You’ve been crying,’ he said but not unkindly.
She ignored his comment because she knew there were more tears to come and deep down, she knew Tassie was right. Ghosts, spirits, God knows what it was but yes, she held her father with her closely and every day he was with her, every day that final moment was with her.
If telling the truth to someone helped lift that weight, then she would do it. She couldn’t live with all of it anymore.
She’d never told Giles, God knew he wouldn’t have understood, nor had she told her friends through high school or university or work. She never even divulged it to the therapist she saw briefly when she found out her mum was sick.
She took a sip of her drink and then another. ‘You asked if I murdered someone.’
Henry nodded and frowned.
Clara sipped more of her drink. A large gulp – the gin burned but it was bracing.
‘I did. I murdered someone.’
Henry started to laugh and then he saw her face. He was silent and she didn’t speak so he could process what she told him.
‘Who?’ he asked. His drink was leaving sweat marks and they ran down onto the table. Clara paused then spoke slowly as though reaching for every word to ensure it was the right one.
‘My mum and dad had a difficult relationship. They were both disappointed in how their lives unfurled and they drank. They were disappointed in choosing the other, and not wanting more in life. They were nearly going to divorce and then Mum got pregnant with me.’
She sipped her gin and then kept speaking.
‘Mum left three times that I can remember. Each time the beatings were worse than the ones before that had made her leave. He had taken everything from her by then. She didn’t have a job, or friends, and she hadn’t seen her own mum since I was a baby.’
She breathed out again and she noticed it sounded a little jagged, as though she had been running. She twisted the glass around on the table and dabbed at the ring marks.
Henry seemed to sit very still, as though he didn’t want to scare her into not speaking but she couldn’t stop now. It was as though Tassie had undone her.
‘Then I told my teacher about what Dad used to do to her, which was both good and bad, because you know, teachers have to tell the police and then it’s out of your hands.’
She paused, thinking about the next part.
‘It set off a chain of events that I don’t think I could have stopped, even if I tried.’
Henry nodded. ‘That was very brave of you,’ he said but she didn’t respond. She didn’t need platitudes. She needed to be free.
‘The social workers and the police visited Mum at home and Dad wasn’t there, thank God. And she told them she had nowhere to go. But they found her mum and they spoke on the phone then and the next day, which was good.’
She took a deep breath and kept speaking. ‘I was taken out of school at lunchtime by a policewoman and someone from social services and Mum met us at the library, and they drove us to my gran’s house in Luton. It was like a holiday. My gran was a truly wonderful granny, you know? She would draw faces on boiled eggs before she cooked them for me, to have with toast soldiers.’
Henry smiled at her but she didn’t let him speak. Her voice was an out-of-control train now and it would keep going until it crashed at the inevitable ending.
‘And she would make me cocoa and serve it in a cup and saucer in bed, and Mum stopped crying. And we were happy, the three of us all together for the first time. My granny had chickens. I used to love to go and collect the eggs every morning. It became my job. I had names for them all and I would pat them and sing them songs. That’s why the chicken you bought me meant so much to me.’
Henry nodded as Clara went on.
‘Mum got a job at the grocer’s and she told me she would save enough money to buy us a cottage with chickens. It was all we talked about and Granny said she would come and visit us and we would have vegetables and I would preserve things. I read Little House on the Prairie more than three times. I wanted to be a pioneer.’
Henry smiled at her.
‘So this was the dream, where I am now, except it was supposed to
