AllFreeNovel
Share Us
FIFTY-ONE
I sat at the kitchen table with my mother, cradling a cup of overly sweet tea.
‘For the shock,’ she said. She’d made one for herself as well, but so far hadn’t touched it.
Over the top of her head, I could see a photo magnet stuck up on the fridge. A day to remember,printed at the bottomin bright colourful letters, the three of us saying, ‘Cheese!’ at the camera. Me leaning into Matty, my mother shielding her eyes from the sun.
I got up and plucked it off the fridge, brought it back to the table.
‘What are you doing with that?’
I shrugged, stared at Matty’s face.
‘Murder,’ my mother said, more to herself than to me. ‘I can’t get my head around it. All the stuff I was saying before, it just. . .’ She shook her head, stared into her tea. ‘God, what if he thinks. . . I mean who. . .’
I was only half listening, looking instead into Matty’s eyes, thinking back to that day at Brighton Beach. It had been his idea to get the magnet. A souvenir, he’d said. To remind us. . .
A gaggle of girls giggling past had severed his train of thought. He never said what the magnet was supposed to remind us of.
That we loved each other? I wondered now. That life was good once?
Had he planned the whole thing? Was our life together just a cover, an elaborate ruse to make him look normal, to hide who he really was? Were we simply pawns protecting the King? Or was it real? Did he love us? Was this all a terrible mistake?
I’d been so certain that day in the café, but now, searching his eyes so like mine, for some hidden truth, I wasn’t sure of anything any more.
How could that man with his arm around me, who sat up with me after a nightmare and went out of his way to buy my favourite ice cream, be the same monster who choked those women to death, tied bows round their necks with their own underwear? How could that smile I knew so well have lured women to their deaths? How could the fingers that played ‘This Little Piggy’ with my toes be the same fingers that had strangled a child?
I ground my knuckles into my forehead, clenched my eyes. Tried to shut out the horror of it all, the gnawing guilt.
My mother reached over, touched my arm, squeezed it gently.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I know it’s hard to believe now, but—’
I shrugged her off, curled back my lips.
‘How can you possibly say that?’
‘I just mean—’
‘What do you mean, Mum? The other day you were telling Linda you were going to the police. Now you’re telling me you can’t believe he’s a killer. Do you have any idea what it’s been like to live with you? This constant see-sawing. If it weren’t for you—’
She put her hand to her mouth.
‘You think it was me, don’t you? My God, Jesus.’
‘Think what was you?’
‘That I called the cops. That I’d do such a thing.’
I felt my insides drain away, my bones become liquid. My mother’s head was lowered. She was stroking her fingertips up and down her tea mug, worrying at her lower lip.
She was thirty-two and beautiful, but in that moment she looked like an old woman. The pink had gone from her cheeks, her shoulders were stooped. Her eyes pale and watery.
There’s no use trying to hide it.I can always tell when you’ve been doing something you shouldn’t, Nanna G used to warn me, stabbing at the air with her forefinger. It shows in your face.
I’d scan the mirror searching for the clues that had given me away, but although I could never find any, it was true, she could always tell.
I can read you, just like I can read your mother. The pair of you are books. Isn’t that right, Amelia-Rose? Books. . .
I’d never had the knack, but now I read my mother, the emotion painted on her face. Pain. Fear.
Guilt.
‘Did you?’ I asked, voice trembling. ‘Call the police?’
‘How can you even ask that?’ she replied, whip quick.
But she didn’t say ‘no’.
And I didn’t answer her question.
