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THIRTY-SIX
My mother made out she didn’t believe the sketch was Matty but she had doubts, whatever she said to me.
Ironic to think now that it all started with her. A seed of mistrust that settled in my gut, grew into a tree. Cast my world in shade.
Matty was my hero, the father I’d never had. I loved him all the way to my bones, which has always been the problem of course. Why what I did was so terrible, why the guilt cuts so deep.
‘To dispel the shadows,’ Janice says, ‘you have to first turn on the light.’
It’s taken years of therapy to acknowledge my feelings, to face up to the secret truth I could scarcely admit to myself. My mother kissed me better when I got hurt, put food on the table, tucked me in every night. Yet the person I loved most was a monster, a man who butchered strangers. One of them a child, the same age as me when we met.
‘Did you really not suspect anything when you saw that sketch?’
My mother won’t let it drop, the nagging voice of my conscience.
As I tell Janice, I wouldn’t have been able to point out the similarities if I’d thought for a moment it could really be him. If I’d thought that, I’d have searched for discrepancies– Same way you did, Mum.
‘You could indulge in the fantasy that the sketch was Matty because you were so sure it wasn’t. And that’s what makes it hard to deal with. You felt tricked. Your notion of safety was compromised. It made you aware of your vulnerability, forced you to question everything you believed in.’
My mouth is dry. I can only nod.
My mother was different. After Matty was arrested, I came to realise she’d suspected him as soon as she read the article. It made me wonder whether a part of her had always felt something was amiss. Why else would she be so quick to think the worst?
I outlined the similarities between Matty and the witness accounts because I didn’t believe it was him. She dismissed them because she believed it was.
He was supposed to come over the night the clipping appeared on our doormat. Instead, he called just as my mother was preparing to serve up supper. She put the phone on speaker to free up her hands.
‘Let me guess, you’re running late.’
‘Actually, I’m not going to be able to make it over at all. They need me at the crisis centre, one of the other fellas is sick as a small hospital, so he reckons.’
‘That’s a shame. I made—’
‘Don’t be like that.’
‘I’m not being like anything. I just—’
‘These people have no one else to turn to. I’m their last hope, Ams.’
‘I don’t know why you’re so upset,’ I said when she’d hung up. ‘It’s not like he’s never cancelled before.’
‘I know,’ she said, grating Parmesan into a bowl with extra vigour. ‘I wouldn’t have minded showing him that sketch, is all.’
She didn’t just want to show him the sketch though. She wanted to see how he reacted to it too.
‘All this food,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if Linda wants to join us.’
Even I knew inviting Linda over had nothing to do with the amount she’d cooked.
It didn’t take long before they were talking about the article. My mother fixating on the similarities between Matty and the guy the witnesses had described.
I gave her a look. You’ve changed your tune.
She played with her food, worried at her lower lip.
‘It’s weird, that’s all. Same car, same nationality, same job even.’
‘He’ll be delighted to hear you say that, Am. Hey honey, you sound just like that psycho.’
