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“You blame the lawyer for what happened?” I ask.
She stabs her spoon into the ice cream, then sighs. “It wasn’t her fault. She thought it would be best for me. She couldn’t have known it would be the worst decision of her career.”
“I’m guessing your dad had to tell Greta about you then?”
“Yeah. Apparently at first she refused to have me in the house, but he put his foot down and said if she didn’t like it, she could leave. So I moved up to Auckland to live with them.”
I’ve had enough ice cream, and I push the tub away. “I’m guessing she made your life a misery?”
“It was harder for her, obviously, while Dad was alive. I know I look like my mum, and I reminded him of her, of his infidelity, and his mistake. He wasn’t loving, exactly. But he insisted she treat me like his other daughters. We ate together, and he made sure I had my own clothes, that kind of thing. Of course he couldn’t make her like me. She was curt and spiteful, and so were her girls. They made fun of me and bullied me behind his back. They went to the same school as me, and made sure nobody made friends with me there either.”
Oh, this is hard. She tells the story as if she’s reading from the newspaper, with no emotion at all. I can’t imagine what she’s been through.
“And then he had a heart attack?”
“Yeah. Again, I was at school. Although he was my father, I didn’t like him very much. After I came to his house, Greta made his life a misery, and he sometimes took it out on me. I think he might have had at least one other affair. But anyway, he died, and on the day of his funeral she told me ‘Things are going to be very different now.’ And they were.”
She also pushes the tubs away. I put the lids back on, take them back to the freezer, pour us both another glass of the alcohol-free wine, and say, “Come into the living room.”
We go through and over to one of the sofas, and sit next to each other, not touching, but close, slightly turned toward one another.
“Ooh,” she says, spotting the box of peppermint creams on the table. “You’re determined to fatten me up.”
“Yep.” I put Ella Fitzgerald on my phone, and she sings about Manhattan as the dying sun floods the room with a warm tangerine light that hints at summer to come.
Catie sighs, eating a peppermint cream, leaning her head on a hand, and resting her glass on her bump. “It’s quite a useful table,” she says.
I smile briefly. “So what happened after your dad died?”
“Greta and the girls made my life a misery. She stopped buying me clothes, and I only got hand-me-downs from the two girls. I know that happens in most families, but the girls would stain the clothes on purpose, or tear them. I was constantly stitching them up and putting patches on to cover any marks. Basically, she refused to spend any money on me at all. I had no pocket money or allowance. She wouldn’t cut my hair or take me to the hairdresser, so I had to do it myself. I wasn’t allowed to use their bathroom products. To earn my own, it was my job to clean the bathroom.”
“Ah, jeez.”
“Oh, it gets a lot worse than that. But I don’t want to bore you. She would punish me all the time for imaginary things—because I’d damaged the table, or broken a glass—things that usually Nancy or Petra had done to get me in trouble.”
“Did she hit you?”
“Yes. Usually with a ruler or a wooden spoon, sometimes with a metal serving spoon. Once with a tennis racket.”
“Shit.”
“She’d send me to my room without dinner most nights of the week. And bearing in mind that she refused to make me lunch for school, it often meant the only food I could get was what I could steal. I’d sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and take food out of the cupboard when I got so hungry that I didn’t care, but she’d punish me for it the next day.”
“Jesus Christ.” It wouldn’t surprise me if she cried at this point, but she doesn’t.
Instead, she frowns. “I know it sounds odd, but even worse is that she’d be mean. Tell me I was ugly and worthless. That no boy would ever go out with me because of my horrible hair. Call me fat—even though I was so skinny I’d disappear if I turned sideways.”
I think I might cry if she reveals any more. “Did you ever tell anyone? A teacher? A counselor?”
“Yes. They called Greta into school, and we had to have a meeting. She put her arm around me and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. She said I’d been hard work since Dad died, and that I misbehaved, and she’d done her absolute best with me. And they believed her. When we got home, she beat me. I didn’t tell anyone again.”
“Ah, Catie…”
“School was hard,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Kids always mock those who aren’t the same. I’d only have Nancy and Petra’s castoff uniforms, which were always too small, because I was really tall even when I was young. They wouldn’t give me any money for school trips or events. The school had a charity fund, but everyone would know when I was gifted something, and then I’d be mocked or teased.”
I listen silently, my heart aching for the girl she’d been, as well as the woman she is now. Everyone has school stories of being teased or occasionally bullied—children can be cruel, and it’s rare that anyone sails through untouched. But I always had Kip by my side, and Damon was never far away. I had a large group of friends, and a wonderful home life, so it was never that hard for me. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her, to feel so alone at school, and even worse when she went home. There was nowhere she could escape to. And nobody who made her feel loved.
“Dad did leave me some money, I think,” she says, “that should have come to me when I was eighteen, but obviously I was never going to see it. I had a bank account, but Greta had my debit card and I never used it, and she took the money out as soon as it appeared. I was powerless to stop her doing it.”
