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‘What happened, Kaspar?’ she murmured. ‘I know your mother was volatile, selfish. I know both your parents were. But what is it that I don’t know?’
She was asking him to trust her enough to open up with the one thing he’d never told anyone. Not ever. His entire life.
He drew in one deep, steadying breath. Then another. And all the while she stood there, her eyes locked with his and her fingers resting on his cheek, so lightly that he wasn’t sure if he could feel them or merely sense them.
Everything in him railed at the mere thought of revisiting those hateful memories, let alone voicing them aloud, reliving them. But he’d offered. He couldn’t renege now.
Wordlessly, he led her into the living room. It took an eternity for them both to settle. And then she sat, staring at him. Half expectant, half just waiting for him to shut her out instead.
He wasn’t sure where to even start. As if she could read his mind, Archie tried to prompt him.
‘Robbie met your parents once. Or at least saw them dropping you off once at boarding school. He...said they wasn’t exactly...loving.’
He swallowed a bark of bitter laughter. Let it burn the back of his throat. Used it to propel him forward the way he always had done.
‘They wouldn’t have been remotely loving.’ His voice was more clipped than he might have liked, but that couldn’t be helped. ‘Love didn’t exist in our home. At least not towards me. Which I think was a step up from my parents’ twisted version of love.’
‘But you were their son.’ She looked dazed.
‘I wasn’t wanted. Not like you and Robbie. I was a mistake.’
‘That’s how you felt?’
‘That’s what they called me.’ He let out a humourless laugh. ‘It was one of their more restrained names for me. The only time they really referred to me was to call me names or to fight about whose turn it was to take responsibility for me. I was rarely a he, I was most often an it.’
Cold realisation flowed through her.
‘Which is why you got so mad when I called our baby it.’
‘I couldn’t stand it,’ he admitted. ‘The memories were so strong when you did that, that a sense of worthlessness that ran through me, even all these years later.’
‘Were they...as volatile as the press makes out?’ she pressed cautiously.
How could she already have grown to hate that expression that clouded his face? To detest his parents for putting it there? It occurred to her that she’d seen it once before. The first summer Robbie had invited him to stay at their house. Too late, she remembered the introverted, awkward seven-year-old he’d been back then.
‘You don’t have to answer that,’ she blurted out suddenly.
Her entire body felt like it was combusting as he cupped her chin gently as if to reassure her.
‘You know when Hollywood make films and they’re horrific and poignant and the world says how it makes them think, and yet the truth is that it doesn’t even come close to how appalling the real truth actually was? Well, that’s what the media have reported my life and parents’ marriage to be versus the reality.’
‘They’ve always called it explosive.’ She frowned.
‘And then they’ve dressed it up to be something sensationalist and implied that such uncontrolled passion was somehow romantic and dramatic,’ he ground out. ‘But the truth was that there was nothing romantic or sensational about it. It was ugly and twisted and destructive. What’s your first memory, Archie?’
It was a fight to keep his voice even, not to let the bitterness creep in. Nonetheless, Archie bit her lip as she slowly bobbed her head.
‘It’s probably not a real memory, just a memory I’ve cobbled together from photos and the stories my father told me. But it’s of my mother helping me to paint a wooden race cart my father had made for me. It was just before she died so I was probably about six. Then we went out onto the dirt track behind our house and Robbie and I raced each other while my mother refereed and my father pushed me to help me keep up with Robbie.’
His chest cracked even as he knew that such special memories were exactly what he wanted for his child. For the baby Archie was now carrying.
‘Mine is of my parents screaming at each other as my mother accused my father of not wanting her to succeed in Hollywood because he wouldn’t give her another tummy tuck. I was standing in the kitchen doorway as they went at it the way they always did. She was throwing pots and pans and he was grabbing her and pushing her. I think I shouted out because my parents turned to the door and my mother roared at me to get out because her sagging figure was all my fault anyway. Only her words weren’t that restrained. Neither was their fight.’
But he didn’t want to scare Archie away. To make her fear that he was too damaged.
‘Kaspar!’ Her cry tugged at something he couldn’t identify. ‘How old were you?’
‘Who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t have been a unique occurrence. I ran for the phone, I don’t know who I was going to call. Anybody, I guess. Then I recall his footsteps thundering behind me, cuffing me across the back of the head and telling me to mind my own business. Then he picked me up, opened the front door and threw me outside, telling me to go and play in the garden or the sandpit or something. Only no one was as polite as that.’
