My mind feels like a black crucifix. I feel the eyes of the entire room on me. Everyone expects the dutiful ‘son’ to smile and nod and go along with this charade. But for some reason, I won’t. I can’t let her go yet.
I'm not her fucking boyfriend.
I’m the unwanted child she took care of, as much as she could.
‘No, Diana,’ I say. ‘I'm Shepherd. The baby in the basket, remember?’
‘Peter,’ Diana says. The name comes out of her mouth like an incantation, a word of protection. She repeats it. ‘Peter.’
‘No, Diana. Shepherd. Peter died. Remember?’
The room falls into mint silence. I catch Amy’s eyes, swirls of green pity. It makes the walls close in on me. Pandora takes a step forward. The staff don’t like the disruption I’ve caused at Swan Lake. Don’t like me.
Diana keeps staring at me, certainty etched on her face. ‘You're Peter, I know. I know the love of my life.’
‘Well,’ Pandora says, ‘I'm sure you and Peter look a lot alike.’
‘We don't,’ I say. I take Diana’s hand. ‘Diana, I know you know who I am. I know you can remember —’
‘These matters are often best discussed in therapy,’ Pandora says. She reasserts her control by taking Diana’s painting down and moving on. ‘I see we have something by Annabeth, and it looks like a watercolour.’
I grip tight to Diana’s hand. I stare into her eyes, look for something, some life, some spark of recognition.
‘Diana, do you know what I'm saying to you?’ I say.
Diana tugs her hand back. And in the same motion slaps me across the face. ‘You're Peter. You liar. You're Peter. You're Peter. You wretched man!’
Diana screams the words over and over. A staff member grabs Diana, and it’s all I can do not to hand his arse to him for touching her. Pandora stares at me as if I’m the worst man who’s ever walked the earth.
I rub my cheek, feel the raw sting of Diana’s hand, and decide if that's what Pandora really thinks, if that’s what the world thinks, if that’s what Amy thinks, then there’s no argument I can offer in my own defence.
Because I am.
As a child, I saw ugly staring back in the mirror. I despised myself.
Nothing’s changed.
I barrel out of the dayroom. I need fresh fucking air. I hear Amy call out my name behind me. But I steam ahead. I barge out through the side door that leads to the rose garden, and into the harsh light of the sun. Amy follows me out.
‘Shepherd, are you okay?’
In this moment, I can’t face Amy.
Her and her pity.
‘Go away, Amy.’
With her watching, I’m scum.
I struggle to pull myself together, to close the raw place in me that’s open.
‘Unless, you want to fuck?’ Every inch of me is venom.
‘Don’t, Shepherd. Don’t do that.’ She looks up at me. ‘I know you love Diana. And I remember how much she meant to you.’
‘Why’re you telling me this?’
‘Diana, she still loves you.’ Her one hand is holding her pen. ‘I know what you’re going through can’t be easy . . . with your mother.’
To Amy, her ears and nervous hands, I say, ‘You had no fucking right to eavesdrop on private conversation.’
‘I didn’t mean to overhear, Shepherd. I’m sorry. But it’s great you know who your mother was. I hope you find your father, too. No matter what happens . . . I mean that.’
Amy looks at me. Again with those fucking sad eyes.
‘Stay out of my business.’
She flinches.
Again, those eyes.
I stop exploring those little green planets, reflecting my pain.
A sad smile from Amy. ‘It must’ve been hard growing up in the children’s home.’
I smile at that, but inside my head, a voice hisses, This girl has no fucking idea.
I cross my arms, remember the time Mr Finchley hurt me bad when I was eight years old. He smashed my dinner plate and made me pick up the pieces. Then he stood on my arm until the bones broke. It was a change from him correcting me with his belt.
‘What’d you think?’ I grit out.
She stops smiling. ‘Your mother — ’
I smash through like a bull, the red mist in my eyes blocks all else out. ‘Why’d you keep coming back to this? I don’t care about my mother or who the fuck my father is. I don’t fucking care about anyone or anything. Understand?’
Around seven years old, I used to beg my dad to resurrect himself from the dead. I started to think that maybe my real dad could save me. He could come back into my life and take me away to live with him. I wouldn’t have to lie awake at night shaking with absolute fear that I’d be punished for my sins. My real dad would take me away from all that. I imagined telling him all my worries and having him take their weight.
He would be my hero.
Amy looks hurt. ‘I guess I figure there’s more to you than you like to show. I guess there couldn’t be any less,’ she says softly.
As a kid, I wished the world was destroyed, because if I couldn’t enjoy it, if I couldn’t see something beautiful, I didn’t want anyone else to.
‘Right. I don’t know what I did in the first place to give you the notion I give a shit about anyone.’
It was worse in prison. Sometimes there were beautiful things, things that managed to be alive even when it seemed impossible. There was green moss, like velvet, and a red flower growing down in the hole just
