She felt the tears forming and took a deep breath to try and keep them at bay.
‘Anyway, I digress. So the chickens, which symbolised new beginnings and everything wonderful in my life, were also the signal that Dad was back.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
Clara looked at his handsome face, his beautiful smile. No man would keep a woman like her around his child.
She spoke slowly.
‘I came home from school and went to see the chickens and they were all dead.’
Henry gasped. ‘What?’
‘Dad had cut their heads off, one by one, and lined them all up. I started to scream and ran inside. I remember the radio was on. There was newspaper on the bench with potato peelings on it. Gran had been preparing dinner.’
She closed her eyes. She was back there now. ‘He had Mum in a headlock from behind, and there was Granny on the floor. She was bleeding. The blood was everywhere.’
She could hear her mother’s gasps for breath and see her face turning blue, and she felt hot tears falling down her cheeks.
‘I picked up the knife that Gran had been using and I plunged it into my dad’s back. It went in easily and came out easily. I did it five times, until he fell down and Mum grabbed me and the knife from my hand.’
She opened her eyes and Henry was sitting very still.
‘Mum took the knife and stabbed him four more times in the heart and then told me to ring 999.’
Clara was looking over his head as she spoke.
‘Gran was dead. He had choked her. And Mum had come home from work and saw him. Then he started on her when I walked in. I think he would have killed me too.’
She felt like she was in court again.
‘The police said it was manslaughter but her lawyers said it was self-defence. She served three years.’
‘Oh, Clara,’ said Henry. ‘Who looked after you?’
‘No one. Myself. I lived with a cousin of Mum’s who worked at a meat works. She was never home and when she was she was getting ready to go to bingo or the pub. She left me alone and I visited Mum at prison and went to school and became an adult. Worked hard at school. When Mum came out of prison, I started at university. We never spoke about it, not even when she was dying. It was the big secret in our tiny two-person family and yet it was so big.’
Clara saw tears in his eyes.
They both sipped their drinks, steadying themselves, she thought.
‘So I understand why you won’t want me around Pansy – I do. But I needed to tell you.’
They were silent again then she spoke. ‘But you know? What was the saddest part?’
Henry shook his head. ‘No?’
‘I didn’t stab him because of what he had done to Gran or what he was going to do to Mum, God knows what that would have been, but I stabbed him because he killed the chickens. All I wanted were the chickens and he killed them, and I guess, in some way, he killed my dream.’
Henry nodded. ‘The chickens were a symbol though. And they were like you. Defenceless.’
She nodded and looked him in the eye. ‘So yes, that is the first time I have told my whole story to anyone.’
Henry stood up and she lowered her head. He would go now, she was as sure of it as she was that the sun would come up tomorrow.
But he walked to her side of the table and lifted her head to him and leaned down and kissed her gently on the mouth.
‘I love you, Clara Maxwell, and if you think for a minute that I wouldn’t want you in my life when you are one the bravest, smartest women I know, then you are wrong, so very wrong.’
Clara smiled at him and he searched her eyes.
‘I want you to stay with me. I want to marry you and care for Pansy together and have a baby and have this be our dream.’
She’d said it. She’d finally said everything that had happened and everything she had wanted and he was still standing before her.
He pulled her to her feet.
‘All I have done since I arrived is make this a home for us, even if I didn’t realise it. I want it all as much as you do. I think I have from the moment you burst into tears at the hole in the roof.’
‘I am so, so sorry for everything I said,’ she cried, holding his face. ‘I was wrong and rude and awful, and all I can say is, I was afraid. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.’
But Henry shook his head and kissed her forehead. ‘You said some truthful things to me and I needed to hear some of them. Some of them were a bit harsh but I don’t hang on to grudges.’
Clara hugged him. She loved the way her face buried into his shoulder and she kissed his neck.
‘You’re lovely,’ she said.
‘You’re lovelier,’ he replied and then he kissed her so well her knees buckled and she thought she might have died and gone to heaven.
50
Secrets can be so heavy that they can drown a person, Tassie used to say to children who wouldn’t tell her what was on their mind. Sometimes she knew when there was trouble at home, or things happening that shouldn’t to small children. She could tell when she looked in their eyes, by the way they fought for others instead of fighting for themselves. They raged against everything in the world except what troubled them, fighting the fight for everyone else. Tassie had
