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My mother opens my hand and places a comb in my palm.
‘For your hair,’ she says.
I drag the prongs through my straight hair, untangling some stubborn, matted parts at the back.
My mother takes the cloth she has draped over her shoulder and bends down to polish my shoes. She tuts and shakes her head as she drags the cloth over the jagged holes.
‘Is something wrong?’ I finally ask, dragging my feet over the edge of the bed.
I wince as my bare soles come in contact with the cold ground that makes me want to clamber back into bed and get more sleep.
My mother stands up and stuffs the cloth into the large pocket on her pleated skirt.
‘Don’t forget your coat,’ Ma warns. ‘Bring your coat. You might need it.’
I look out the window again. The sky is cloudless, and the sun is shining enthusiastically, especially considering it’s so early. It’s going to be a beautiful day. I’m not sure where we’re going or why I need a coat, but I’m almost too nervous to ask.
‘Where’s Pa?’ I ask. My mother’s increasing haste makes me nervous, and my mind races to the worst.
What if he woke during the night and attacked her? Maybe she struck him with the fire poker. Is that why we’re running?Has something terrible happened?
I shake my head and fetch my coat from the end of the bed. I prepare myself to run.
‘I’m ready.’ I shake.
‘Let me look at you?’ Ma says, teary-eyed, and I really begin to fear the worst.
I hear distance in her voice. Something I’m not used to. I worry she’s preparing to leave me.
Ma cranes her neck, and her eyes flick towards the wonky bookshelf over my bed.
‘Do you want to bring your books, Annie?’ she says. ‘I know how much you love them.’
I glance at the pair of old leather-bound hardbacks on the shelf. One is completely dog-eared, and the other is missing its back cover. But it doesn’t matter; I adore the stories inside nonetheless.
‘I don’t need to bring them,’ I say. ‘I know them word for word by heart.’
‘You’ve read them so often.’ And Ma smiles. ‘I suppose you must.’
‘We aren’t coming back, are we?’ I say with a sense of poignancy that defies all the terrible beatings I have taken in this house.
‘No, Annie. We’re not coming back.’
I press my lips firmly together and hide my fear of the unknown as best I can, but my hands tremble and I know my mother notices.
‘It will be okay, Annie,’ Ma encourages. ‘Now quickly. Please.’
Ma and I hurry out my bedroom door. We glide down the corridor both taking the same care not to disturb the floorboards. Loud, satisfied snores blast from the fireside chair where Pa sleeps as if he hasn’t a care in the world. He’s still curled up in the same position he was in last night, and I know he hasn’t stirred. He hasn’t laid a finger on Ma, and better still, she hasn’t retaliated and given him any reason to be angry. But I understand even less why we are running away.Why now, after all these years?
Ma and I open the front door, and without saying a word to each other, we both take one last look around the house I grew up in. I remember the good as well as the bad. A growing sense of melancholy knocks in my stomach, and I slowly realise that in spite of all things, I will miss this place on some level. We close the door and hurry down the front steps, picking up speed as we race down the driveway. Neither of us look back. When I see Sketch’s car waiting just outside the gate, everything suddenly makes sense.
FORTY
HOLLY
‘Traffic is bananas,’ my father says, his hands gripping the steering wheel of his car so tightly his knuckles are a pinkish purple. ‘We’re not going to get to this damn garden for at least another twenty minutes.’
I glance out the window as I sit in the back seat of my father’s Mercedes. Traffic is bumper-to-bumper as far as my eyes can see. ‘It’s an orchard,’ I mumble under my breath.
