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‘What? I was only—’
‘Now!’
I stomped off, slammed my door. Sat with my back pressed up against it, arms hugged around my knees. I planned how to punish her when she knocked, knowing it wouldn’t take long before she was along to apologise. But she didn’t come.
No wonder Matty hasn’t phoned, I thought. Who’d want to phone her?
I opened the door a crack to see what was going on. The scene was exactly as I’d left it. Her and Linda still gassing on the couch, working their way through a packet of Maryland cookies now the shortbreads were finished.
‘He must be seeing someone else. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
My abdominals tightened. I felt a sudden burning behind my eyes.
Was she right? Had Matty left us? Disappeared like my dad?
Would I ever see him again?
Linda answered in a weary voice that suggested it wasn’t the first time she’d given this speech.
‘Chrissake, Am. The guy loves you. Just give him some space.’
I jumped on it, anything that meant Matty would be back.
My mother was always on my case. I hated it, felt suffocated. Maybe he felt the same way.
It would explain why he’d gone to Ireland, why he hadn’t phoned. He needed room to breathe. To put some distance between him and my mother second guessing him all the time. Banging on about marriage, questioning every little thing he said and did.
I resolved then and there that if only he’d come back I’d make things easier for him. Stick up for him, show I was on his side. Same as he always did for me.
You’re my best girl, he used to tell me. A chip off the old block, whatever that meant.
I asked him once, but he just laughed, told me to speak to my mother.
‘Please God, bring him home,’ I whispered now, eyes clenched in concentrated prayer. ‘If you do, I promise I’ll never let Mummy be mean to him again.’
Is that where it started? Me turning a blind eye. Refusing to believe he could ever be in the wrong. Or had I been doing it long before that? Had my mother too?
Janice has a saying; Your gut knows before your head.
Did my mother’s gut know what he was? That he wasn’t as perfect as he seemed? Is that why she was always doubting him? Always asking questions?
Or was it something worse? Did her constant nagging hem him in? Make him feel angry, frustrated?
Drive him to kill women who looked just like her?
