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By the time she had popped back into the bathroom and pulled on the shirt Rico had left the lounge, and she stood for an uncertain moment before heading to the open door of his room; he was already stretched out on his bed, his hands behind his head, staring fixedly at the ceiling. Catherine knew his averted gaze had nothing to do with the heated words they had shared, or the problems they faced. Knew that his pensive shift in tempo had grief written all over it.
‘Goodnight, then.’ She hovered by his door, awaiting a response that never came, before gently closing the door and heading for her own room.
As the light flicked off and darkness descended the oblivion she so desperately craved didn’t come, but the horrors of the day did recede slightly as she drifted to the gentle past…
Suddenly she was away from the sullied world Janey had created, back to two little girls, one dark, one blonde. The Janey she chose to remember danced in her mind—Janey before their parents’ death, Janey before money and greed had taken over. The little sister she had grown up with was ready to be mourned now, and Catherine drifted back to the beauty of a past when the world had seemed good and safe. Suddenly she was scared to go there, scared of the depth of her pain, scared to take the lid off her grief, terrified of what she might find. The past a mocking reminder of the void left today.
An involuntary sob escaped her lips and she bit it back hard, gulping into the darkness, her breath coming in short, ragged bursts as she struggled to hold it in—hold in eight years of agony, eight years of pain, eight years of being alone and having to be the strong one.
She had learnt long ago the folly of tears, the loneliness of weeping into the night with no one to wipe them away.
And she would not cry now.
‘Catherine?’
She heard the concern in his voice but she didn’t answer, just lay frozen in the darkness, her ears on elastic as he crossed the room, feeling the indentation of the mattress as he lowered himself onto the bed.
‘Catherine, are you okay?’
She nodded, her hand shielding her eyes as he flicked on the light.
‘You are allowed to cry, you know,’ Rico offered gently, but she shook her head.
‘Crying won’t bring them all back.’
‘All?’ When she didn’t answer he carried on gently. ‘You’re not just talking about Janey and Marco, are you, Catherine?’
She didn’t respond, but he pushed on gently. ‘What happened to your parents?’
‘They died,’ she said simply.
‘Tell me about it.’
She was about to say no, to shake her head and turn away, but something stopped her. A need to share, to delve a little into her past—a past she simply couldn’t face alone tonight. And even if Rico despised her, even if this conversation would be forgotten, or even held against her in the cold light of day, tonight the simple fact that it was another human being, reaching out in the lonely abyss of grief, was enough to make her open up.
‘My mother was beautiful.’ Catherine’s voice quivered, and she cleared her throat before going on. ‘Her name was Lily as well, and my father would have done anything for her.’
‘Like Janey and Marco?’
‘In some ways,’ Catherine admitted. ‘Although my father was always very sensible where the children were concerned. Just not with my mother.’ She gave a wry laugh, but it held no malice. ‘My mother decided she wanted to go skiing, just like that. She saw an advert on the television and demanded my father take her to the snow. It didn’t matter to her that it was a five-hour drive, didn’t matter to her that my father had never even seen snow, let alone driven in it, or that they didn’t have chains for the car; she wanted to go and that was all there was to it.’
Rico’s hand moved across the bed, capturing hers as she screwed her eyes tightly closed, and somehow his touch gave her the strength to continue, to tell her sorry tale.
‘Needless to say they never made it. The police turned up at my home just as they did today, said just what the nurse did this afternoon—“They wouldn’t have suffered.”’
‘But you did.’ His free hand moved to her face, brushing away a heavy dark curl then lingering there, tracing the apple of her cheek, the high arch of eyebrow, before capturing her face in his hand. She ached to turn to him, h
is touch a comfort she craved, but still she lay there frozen. ‘What happened then?’
‘Their affairs were a mess.’ Catherine closed her eyes for a second, the tension and the agony of those times still painful even now. ‘I took a couple of jobs to support Janey and I…’
‘You still went to college, though?’
Catherine nodded. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should have been there more for Janey. I just thought if I could get my training over, forge a decent career, then eventually we’d both be okay. Clearly I was wrong.’
‘Janey chose how to live her life,’ Rico suggested gently, but Catherine refused to be comforted.
‘Eventually I sold the house.’ Her lip quivered slightly. ‘I just couldn’t handle the mortgage repayments. I put a deposit on a flat with my half; I hoped Janey would do the same with hers. She didn’t,’ Catherine added needlessly. ‘Instead she blew the money on fancy clothes and restaurants, renting apartments she could never afford. No matter how I tried to reel her in, no matter how I tried to slow her spending down, she spun out of control.’
