Because someone has lied to me. They can’t both be telling the truth. Some large part of my life, its conviction, is false. A parallel universe where a person I love is a monster. Where a mirror’s reflection lies. I remember El’s She thinks if she pretends something hasn’t happened then it hasn’t happened. I don’t want that to be true any more. I’m confused, uncertain. Most of all, I’m scared. Because when I was twelve, I ran away from Mum and Grandpa and this house. And when I was nineteen, I ran away from El and Ross and my heartbreak. But I’m not running away this time. I’m not going anywhere until I find out the truth.
I close my eyes, and instantly the room is colder, brighter. I smell overcooked eggs and burnt toast. Hear the frenzied panic of flapping wings. Don’t slitter, Catriona. Mum’s hunched back, arm trapped against her torso inside a tea-towel sling, a fist-sized bald spot close to her crown, the raw pink nakedness of it. The horror in Grandpa’s loud and familiar laugh. Ye’re bein’ a stander, lassie. Sit the shit doon. Silvery, shivery dread. Something coming closer. Something nearly here.
I open my eyes. Ross is looking at me with a mixture of concern and impatience.
‘Where did you go?’
I shake my head, pick up the wine. Swallow, and then shudder. ‘I’ve been thinking about the past. About this house. About Grandpa.’
Ross sits up straighter.
‘About what he used to do. The drinking, the violence.’
‘There’s no point dwelling on the past. It’s not important any more.’ His fingers trace my cheekbones, and his smile is tentative. ‘That’s why we need to sell up, leave. It’s why we—’
‘But I’d boxed it all away, Ross! So much of it. What happened here. What happened to us. Don’t you think that’s important?’
‘Your fucking grandpa was decades ago, Cat! This is important.’ He takes hold of my hands again. ‘We are important. I don’t see why—’
I pull away and stand up. My chair screeches against the tiled floor, its back legs wobbling, sliding, until Ross lunges towards me to catch it. I cringe, and far too obviously – the incredulous hurt that flashes across his face makes me look away.
‘Because what if I’m wrong? What if there’s something else – something worse – and I can’t remember it? What if I’ve pretended it didn’t happen?’ I’m shaking, still standing, but little of the fog in my head has lifted. Ross looks confused, angry. But of course, he can’t understand, because I’m talking about fantasy versus the truth. The answers to the terrible questions that I still can’t bring myself to ask him.
But it has to be tonight.
El’s bloodshot eyes. Her terrible smile behind the Berlin Wall. It has to be tonight.
Ross is shaking me, his fingers squeezed tight around my upper arms.
‘Cat! Can you hear me? Are you okay?’
‘Stop! I’m okay. I’m okay.’
He doesn’t let me go. ‘Jesus, are you sure? I thought you were having a fit or something.’
Maybe I should stop. Cram everything I’ve kept packed away for so long back inside that box. Except that there’s just too much of it. I can see now that choosing not to face anything that scares you – including the worst of your past – is not normal, and it strikes me as even stranger that I haven’t thought so until now.
Mum pulling out the black rucksack from under my bed, tossing out-of-date tins of food onto the floor. For God’s sake, Catriona, why are you so useless? This is important! Rapping her knuckles on the flat of our desk, stoking that ever-present hum of dread, of doom. Look, listen. Learn. The pantry walls of orange and yellow daffodils, and the high steady sound of her reading voice. A Tale of Two Cities, Papillon, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Count of Monte Cristo, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
Don’t be like me. Never be too afraid to fly.
‘Oh my God.’ I sit down with a thump. I press my hand against my mouth. When I pick up the wine, my fingers tremble so much I can’t drink. My stomach clenches.
‘Cat, what the hell’s going on? Should I call someone?’
Not Survival Packs. Not English lessons. Not fairy stories or make-believe. Paranoia, cruelty, or delusion. Not even just trying to survive living in the same house as a monster.
Ross stares at me. ‘What?’
All of it the same thing. The same PLAN. It has to be tonight. That last night of our first life. That last stripe of gold light across the hallway carpet, that last clunk and turn of the deadlock on Friday. Silence, darkness, and then running down the stairs, rucksacks rattling, dragging at our shoulders. Mum buttoning up our coats over our jumpers, face pinched and raw and alive, her left cheek dark and swollen, eye little more than a black-purple slit. Holding us too tight with her only working arm. Are you ready?
‘God.’ My voice is flat. Something halfway between hope and horror is trying to claw its way up my throat towards it. We never ran away from this house. We never ran away from what had happened in this house. We were always supposed to be going. That had been THE PLAN. ‘It was about escape. It was always about escape.’
‘Cat—’
I look at Ross. The hairs along both of his forearms are standing up straight, like his spine; it’s as if his whole body is at attention. ‘That was it, wasn’t it? The night they died? September the fourth? We were escaping. El and I. And you and Mum knew. You and Mum were helping. That was THE PLAN. Wasn’t it? For us to escape him. Here. For us
