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A thought occurred to her. ‘Did your mother know?’
‘Oh, she knew. She made excuses for him. Told us all that he was a clever, powerful man and that it was his entitlement—even though it killed her so much she used to self-medicate.’
‘Tak, that must have been awful for her. For all of you.’
She wasn’t prepared for the fury he directed at her.
‘Don’t make excuses for her! Everyone makes excuses for her. Including me. For years. But we were there—Hetti and Sasha, Rafi and I. We lived it. And what she did to us is inexcusable. I’ve finally started to accept that fact.’
For a moment she felt as if he’d shouted the words, hurling them at her with all the rawness and the pain he’d bottled inside for far too long. But one look around the oblivious diners at the restaurant told her that he had barely hissed them loudly enough for her to hear.
It didn’t lessen their impact one iota.
‘Tak, she must have felt so isolated...so alone—’
He cut her off before she could say any more.
‘You have empathy because you’re kind and you’re caring. That’s who you are, Effie. But in this case you’re wrong. She didn’t have to make excuses for him, or stay with him. She didn’t have to put us, her children, through years of suffering because of their twisted relationship. But she did—because she was selfish.’
‘Tak—’ She stopped abruptly as the waiter arrived to clear their plates and bring them coffee.
All she wanted to do was send him away, so that she could talk to the man sitting stiffly, wretchedly, opposite her. Not that anyone else could see it but her. And what did that say about their relationship—or lack of one?
‘No, Effie,’ he snarled as they were finally left alone agai
n. ‘You feel for her because you think you see a parallel, but the two of you are nothing like each other. You went through far, far worse than my mother and yet look what you did. You put your daughter first from the instant she was born. You put her needs ahead of yours. You struggled alone through university, with a baby, because you knew that was your responsibility.’
‘It isn’t that simple,’ Effie offered slowly. ‘Not everyone is the same.’
‘She could have left him. She had family—quite a lot of family—who would have supported her leaving with her children rather than staying with him. They knew he was cruel, and that he deliberately rubbed his affairs in her face. He even told me, his son, that he was more compatible in bed with any one of his whores than he was with my mother. Despite the fact they’d had four children together.’
Effie hesitated. With Saaj, that was five children, which meant it had been going on long before Saaj had been born.
‘Now you’re getting it.’ Tak laughed, but it was a hollow, grating sound. ‘Yes, he was throwing those insults about, sleeping with his tarts, and my mother was still weak enough to let him into her bed. Still stupid enough to believe that if she fell pregnant one more time he would finally come to his senses and realise that he wanted to be a family man, after all.’
‘She always hoped he would change,’ Effie whispered sadly. ‘But he was never going to.’
‘Of course he was never going to,’ Tak scorned. ‘Which was why she spent fifteen years medicating herself into oblivion and leaving me to raise her children when I was still a child myself. I was ten when I first took over responsibility for them. When really I needed her just as much.’
‘Is that why you’re so adamant about never marrying? Never letting anyone close? Because you’ve already practically raised a family and now you want to reclaim the childhood you lost?’
Somehow that didn’t fit the Tak she knew.
‘I don’t want a family because I don’t want to do to anyone what my father did to my mother.’
He bit the words out, stunning her into silence. For a moment Effie couldn’t move. And then she sucked a breath in. ‘Why would you even think you would do that? That isn’t you at all.’
‘I’m more like my father than you know,’ Tak countered darkly. ‘My mother said so often enough when I was growing up.’
And all of a sudden it was desperately, painfully clear to Effie. In her despair and devastation and depression, his mother had taken all her fears out on her oldest son. Perhaps it had been her way of venting, or perhaps it had been her way of ensuring her son wouldn’t turn on her, but Effie could imagine it in crystal-clear detail. A half-out-of-it mother screaming at her ten-year-old son that he was just like his father. She’d seen it often enough. Hell, she’d even lived it herself.
No doubt whenever Tak had voiced anything about doing something for himself—from playing a game of football with his friends, or going to a friend’s house—anything which had meant he might not be there to care for his younger siblings, his mother would have thrown that accusation at him. Saying the one thing she knew would get the reaction he needed, likening him to the one person who disgusted him the most.
In spite of all that Tak had told her, and the empathy she had for his mother’s situation, for that part of it Effie couldn’t forgive her. A mother was supposed to look out for her children, love them, protect them. Tak’s mother had made Tak responsible for his father’s shortcomings, and she’d used his father against him every time he’d looked as if he was going to step out of line. She had damaged him emotionally. It had been cruel and it had been entirely avoidable.
And now all Effie could think was that she wanted to be the one to help Tak see the truth. To heal him. She didn’t know if she could. She didn’t know if anyone could. But she’d be damned if she didn’t at least try.
‘You aren’t your father, Tak,’ she offered softly.
