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‘I’m sorry.’
Shay felt her whole body empty of air. That apology – tantamount to a confession. She had waited so long for it, her brain could barely process it, repelling it in case it were a Trojan Horse. She needed to hear it again.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I’m sorry.’ The words begrudged this time.
‘Why did you lie, Ella? Why did you tell people, the police, that we’d argued, that I’d sworn at Denny, taunted him, told him I never wanted to see him again when you know I didn’t do any of that and I never would have because I loved your son.’
‘And I loved him as well,’ Ella screamed at her and stabbed her finger upwards. ‘And I love her. And what I did, I did for them. To keep my girl with me and to protect my boy’s memory.’
Ella reached for the bible in the middle of the table and slid it across to Shay through the dust.
‘If you swore on that holy book would you break your word?’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘Huh, you would say that.’
‘I would say that, because it’s true. I’m not a liar, Ella.’ Shay picked it up. ‘What do you want me to swear to?’
Ella’s beady eyes fixed her.
‘I want you to swear that you won’t do anything untilI’m gone. It won’t be long, I can assure you; I’m officially on the way out now. Then you can do what you like.’ She sighed heavily, as if the sound was scraped from the bottom of her soul. ‘I can’t carry it any more. I’m not a bad person. So you swear on that book that you’ll wait until I’m gone or I’ll say no more.’
Shay picked up the bible, because they’d get no further until she swore.
‘I swear on this bible that I will take no action…’ she kept looking at Ella for agreement that she was saying all the right words ‘… until you are passed.’
‘Swear it on your children’s lives,’ said Ella.
‘I swear it on the lives of everyone I hold dear,’ said Shay. ‘I promise you, and I give you my word.’ She squeezed the bible as if pressing her vow into the pages. Ella nodded, satisfied, continued to stare at Shay before she eventually spoke again.
‘You’ll have heard the stories about us, don’t lie and say you haven’t.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’
‘People always say, why don’t they leave if things are so bad. It’s not so easy when you’ve nowhere to go. And when you’ve been so twisted to see things as normal that aren’t. It has to take a lot for you to snap.’
Shay felt a knot forming in her stomach.
Ella chewed on the insides of her mouth, building up to letting out the words which had sat stagnating inside her. She had been both the guardian of them and their prisoner.
‘My son did what he did to protect us. And I did what I did because it was the only way I could pay him back, to keep his memory from being ripped apart by people sitting in judgement.’
Shay felt a draught from the window, it seemed to sink all the way to her bones.
‘What did Denny do, Ella?’ asked Shay.
‘My boy killed my father,’ said Ella. ‘That’s what he did.’
The shock was seismic, Shay felt the rumble within her; whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. Dear, gentle Denny, there was nothing she could imagine that would have made him do such a thing. It was too big a revelation for her to comprehend and it made no sense. Her mind birthed a hundred questions, they burst in her head like snakes from eggs. Her mouth opened to ask the first of them but Ella pushed herself to her feet and shuffled over to a dresser, messy with detritus on its many shelves. She opened one of the cupboards in the base and pulled out a carrier bag.
‘They’re all in there,’ she said, swinging it onto the table. ‘They’ll tell you everything you need to know. I could have burnt them. I would have, if I’d been a bad person. But I kept them… for you.’
‘What are they?’ asked Shay.
‘Denny’s diaries,’ said Ella.
