Sometimes, he even did it when Mum was there. We might be in the kitchen or sitting around, watching television, and he’d suggest we start a massage train. He’d be at the back, of course. I was always next, then Fern and then Mum. Since Fern and Mum were in front, they couldn’t see when he fondled my breasts and groped me. I think he enjoyed the danger of it. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted Mum to turn around . . . or if I didn’t.
But even that was nothing compared to what Gary did when no-one was around. The first time it happened was on a weeknight. We’d been watching television and I’d decided to take a shower. I locked the door and put a chair in front of it to be safe.
When I emerged twenty minutes later, the house was quiet. As I tried to walk quietly to my room, I passed Gary, sitting on the couch.
‘Your mum and Fern have gone to the supermarket,’ he said.
My blood ran cold.
Mum often had to do a late-night dash, she wasn’t organised when it came to food. Fern often went along to make sure Mum didn’t just come home with wine and cigarettes.
And so, there were Gary and I, alone in the house for god knew how long. I was wearing just a towel.
‘How about I give you a proper massage?’ he said. ‘Not just the shoulders?’
That time, I did try to protest. I said I was tired and wanted to go to bed. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it in the bedroom. It will be more comfortable’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I really think–’
‘You need to stop thinking,’ he said. ‘This will help you relax.’
He laid me down on my bed for the ‘massage’ and did things to me that I didn’t completely understand until I was much older. But I knew what he was doing to me was bad. And I figured, for him to do those things to me, I must have been bad too.
FERN
‘It happened when I was twelve.’
Wally is still smiling, but it’s fading. His eyes are showing the first hints of confusion. ‘What happened?’
‘We were camping. Billy and I were playing a game–’
‘Wait.’ Wally holds up a hand. ‘Who is Billy?’
‘Mum had a couple of boyfriends while we were growing up. She had one named Gary, but he didn’t last long, which was good because I didn’t like him. Then she had one named Daniel. Billy was Daniel’s son. We all went on a camping trip together. It was supposed to be a time for us to get to know each other better and bond.’
Wally sits forward, his elbows resting on his knees.
‘We did bond, on that trip. It was fun having another person to play with. Billy was really competitive. He spent most of that camping trip trying to hold his breath under water longer than me. I’d read a book about free diving, so I knew how to fill up my lungs completely, how not to panic under water. Billy couldn’t get close to holding his breath for as long as I could.’
‘What happened, Fern?’
I wrap my arms around myself and start to rock. ‘On the night he died, he was so frustrated. He wanted to stay under the longest, but he just couldn’t do it. Every attempt was worse than the last.’ I looked up at Wally. ‘And so . . . I helped him.’
‘Helped him . . . what?’
My voice is the barest whisper. ‘Helped him stay under the longest. I held him down.’
Wally’s face remains still. Too still. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, you didn’t.’
I feel the first tears hit my cheeks. ‘I thought . . . I thought he would pop up and grin at me and say how happy he was that he’d beaten my time! But he didn’t. When I let him go, it was too late.’
Wally is staring at me in horror. ‘But . . . you must have known that if you held someone under the water for long enough, they would drown?’
‘I did know that!’ I wring my hands and then press my eyes into them. ‘I did know that. An adult can drown in sixty seconds, that’s what all the literature says. I held him under for forty. It was timed! I don’t know how it happened. I would never, never . . .’
‘What happened when you realised what you’d done?’ he asks.
‘Rose . . . told me I couldn’t . . . tell anyone. She was worried I’d go to jail. She said we had to say that Billy got tangled in the reeds and drowned, or I’d get into big trouble.’
‘This is why you’re always worried about what you might do?’ Wally takes a deep breath, then drops his head into his hands. ‘It’s . . . awful,’ he says. ‘Unimaginably awful.’
I nod. My face is wet with tears. ‘I told you I can’t be trusted, Wally. I’m dangerous.’
He looks up, shakes his head. ‘It was a terrible accident. But . . . it was clearly an accident, Fern. You would never intentionally hurt anyone.’ Wally slides closer to me and pulls me against his chest. ‘You’d never hurt anyone,’ he repeats, and for some reason, maybe because it comes from Wally, I almost believe it.
To my great surprise, Wally doesn’t cut me out of his life. I wait for it to happen, either immediately or perhaps in a phasing out-type arrangement, but day after day, week after week, he shows up
