With his other hand, he raised the axe head up. He hovered the blade over his knuckles. I still held the handle, but not with any fight. My wrist twisted, limp, yielding, with the turn. My father leaned in close to me and whispered.
“There’s only one monster in this house, Tammy. And it’s you.”
This house.
The thought wriggled clear over everything he was saying, no matter how true it sounded and felt.
He dropped the axe blade.
We’re still inside the house.
I caught the axe by the handle just before it hit him. His eyes flicked to me.
I moved the axe out of his reach and set it down beside me.
“I’m not spiteful, I’m angry,” I said between sniffs. “I’m so angry. All the time. The moment I see anyone do better than me, I’m the crab pulling them back down into the bucket. I’m angry and I’m envious and I’m bitter. I thought for a long while my constant anger would keep me safe, give me power, help me fight back against the horrible bullshit I think about myself.” I wiped the vomit off my mouth. “But all I am is tired. So, yeah.” I sat back and let the wind pull through my hair. “I guess I am kind of fucked up. But if there’s anything I’ve been learning recently”—I looked at him—“it’s not all about me.”
My father-not-father leaned back as well, mirroring my seated posture, sun setting behind him with that world-ending light.
“I used to look at those girls as if they were the archetypal little girl, the perfect child I was not. But they weren’t. Lucy bit the music teacher at school once. And Laura-Ann made an art out of lying. Impressive really. But I don’t think that mattered. They could have been boys. They could have been rescue dogs. It would have ended up the same. Because I think that perfect little girl line is bullshit.”
I sat in my father-not-father’s attention. There was something nice about it. How his gaze never left me. For once that open-eyed stare wasn’t too bad. I continued.
“For a long time, I thought if I was just successful enough, I’d somehow prove my worth to you, then maybe you’d pay as much attention to me as you did to them. But the more successful I got, the bigger clients I took on, the higher profile stuff I got to work on, the less you cared. I didn’t understand. I thought I was becoming what you wanted me to be. But I’d gotten it wrong. Because I wasn’t competing with them on some ideal. It wasn’t anything to do with that. It was about you.” I nodded at the rightness of it, letting the realisation wash the past in a new kind of pain, but one that put out the fires of anger, one that brought a cool-headed understanding. “All the compliments down the years, all the people telling you how kind, how good you were. It was never about them being sweet or cute, it was about them being in need. They make you feel needed, like some kind of hero. And I don’t.”
The waves crashed below us, a low rhythm in time with my breath. Seagulls glided in the air above, alongside the kite that still hovered there somehow, its red line bright against the grey sky. I picked up my own spool from where I’d dropped it in the grass.
“That’s why you always rushed in to help. That’s why you keep rushing to them with every new disaster. You want to feel like the hero. You still do.” I looped the thread around my fingers. “You crave it above everything else. I can see it now. You always choose the people and things that are falling apart, that would fall apart without you. Those girls make you feel needed. They continue to make you feel needed. I don’t know if you ever consciously thought about this, or whether you just assume I’m tough, I’m fine, I don’t need you. But the effect was the same.”
I looked at this approximation of my father, now in silhouette against the sunset, wishing for a moment he was really here, really listening to what I was saying.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to figure it out.”
I sighed. Time to get it over with. I looped the thread around my fingers.
“It was never about me. Even if I sort of wish it was.”
I pulled the knot tight.
My father’s silhouette sat frozen, the dusk seeping into the sky behind him, the sound of the sea and the wind all around. It was almost a nice day out. Almost.
“Bye, Dad,” I said.
He dropped away. As did the cliffs and the seagulls and the sea and the beach and the wind and the sunset and the light at the end of everything and the past and the yellow kite. It all dropped away into nothingness, until it was just me and the darkness and the basement.
CHAPTER 52
I wiped my eyes and looked around. Her basement had the same whitewashed walls as mine. The same bare floor. The same barely concealed door in the wall, only flipped, of course. It even smelled the same. Fresh paint. Cold stone. Old earth. There were none of the illusions of the other rooms above. But none of the dilapidation either.
I felt for the thread in my pocket.
Three knots. Three challenges.
I frowned. After my chat with Callie-Ann, I’d expected a lot more… rage-inducing moments. But none of the interactions so far had made me that angry. Sad, yes. Terrified, definitely. Horrified, most certainly. But angry to the point of snapping? To the point of wanting to split someone’s skull open, to push a needle through their eye? No.
Maybe my neighbour was losing her touch.
I looked at the outline of the door in the wall. Through there was 1b Sgàthan Sìth. One last challenge and I would be home. Done. My side ached and I was finding new bruises upon bruises. I’d seen enough horror to last me a lifetime. I was ready to be done.
