by J. P. Pomare
I dropped the knife, slamming my palm down on the bench. Eyes clamped shut, chest trembling. Eventually I grabbed my phone and texted Willow’s dad once more.
I don’t know if I will get through this. I just want to end it. I just want him to feel the pain I feel. Please help me.
I pictured all sorts of tortures befalling Thom. The rage was swelling and swelling. I imagined all the pain in the world, but in the end it just made me weaker in the limbs. It began crowding my brain, overpowering my thoughts.
I put the bottle to my lips and drank as long and hard as I could. The blood had smeared a little on my wrist and between drinks I put my tongue to it, the metallic taste mixing with the whisky. I couldn’t just sit there while Thom went unpunished. I couldn’t just be alone.
I was still drinking when Dad got home. His eyes went first to the bottle, then to my face.
‘What are you doing, Kate?’
I looked down at the trail of red at my wrist. Dad’s face went slack. He took my wrist in his hand and stared at it. He looked like he was going to cry.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Please, Kate, no. This can’t happen, not again.’
Not again.
‘This is Thom’s fault,’ he was saying, more to himself than me. ‘That fucking boy’s ruined your life.’
He picked up the bottle and took it away. I could hear him opening cupboards in the bathroom – searching for disinfectant and a bandage no doubt.
I opened Thom’s message.
Let’s talk. Can you meet me at the spot? I’ll head down now.
I’ll head down now. The message had been sent half an hour ago. He would already be there.
I picked up the keys Dad had left on the kitchen bench and went to the garage, my stride unsteady. I clambered into the driver’s seat and lifted the lever to drag it forwards. It wasn’t far; I’d be there in no time. This was my chance to make him pay for what he had done.
The car seemed less responsive than when I had driven before. As I backed out I heard a scraping sound and saw too late that the side of the car was sliding against the brick wall. On the street, I shifted the gears into drive and saw Dad rush out from the house and sprint towards me. I swerved to avoid him and accelerated up the street. In the rear-view mirror I saw Dad running. He would never catch me. When I looked up again he wasn’t there. I swerved to avoid a car parked by the side of the road. It was becoming harder and harder to concentrate. Thom had ruined my life. All my visions of the future, all my ambition and dreams, he took it all. My anger was growing. I sped up.
> after
THIRTY-EIGHT
THE SCENE IS so clear, I can see it all. The blow to Thom’s skull, him collapsing. Jim standing there with a brick in his hand. I’m lying on my bed with it all playing in my mind when his broad frame fills the doorway.
‘What exactly were you planning, anyway?’
Does he know about the flight I booked? The passport?
‘I wasn’t planning –’
‘Don’t lie to me. I’m sick of the lies.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’
‘I wanted to go back to how it was. That’s all. I thought if I got back to Melbourne, Thom would be alive. It’s impossible, I know. But I thought I could clear my name and my life would go back to being normal.’ Even as I say the words, I know it doesn’t make sense.
‘This all ends tomorrow, Kate. Okay? I’m sorry, but I can’t do this anymore.’
What ends? My captivity? My life?
‘You’ve put on seven kilos in a month. I thought if we healed your body your mind would catch up, but it didn’t.’ He looks grim. ‘So tomorrow you’re going somewhere new and we will just hope that it’ll all work out.’
‘Where am I going?’
‘Let’s not think about it now; we’ll cross that bridge tomorrow.’
I swallow and try to smile. ‘Did you want me to light the fire?’
‘That’s not a good idea,’ he says. ‘You stay in here and try to get some sleep.’ He fishes in his pocket and produces another of those blue diamond pills. ‘Take this for now.’ He watches closely as my hand comes close to my mouth, but I drop the pill, feel it catch in the front of my pyjama top. I mime swallowing. ‘Open up.’
I do.
‘Good girl, rest up.’ He closes my door and slides the bolt in place. ‘Just knock if you need to use the bathroom,’ he says from outside, his voice muffled.
I hear him pad up the hall to the bathroom and then, a few minutes later, the thrumming of the shower. I glance at the book on my bedside table. Don’t trust him. There’s something I’m missing. He is telling me one thing, but what if he is telling the police another? What if he’s framed me for his crime and now he wants to hand me over to the police? And it has become suddenly urgent for him. Is it because of new CCTV evidence, or is it because he knows how close I am to the truth?
I reach for the book again, taking out the photo of me as a baby, staring at it. I read the words once more. Don’t trust him. The axe would do the trick. One firm blow and it would all be over. Or maybe I could use the rifle? Whatever I decide, it has to happen tonight. I lie in bed, waiting, plotting how I will do it. Down the ladder once more and into the night.
I think of Mum. Where would I be if she had survived? I could never live with that sort of torture, with her sickness.
I hear the back door slide open and stand to look out the window. He’s crossing the lawn, holding his mobile phone to his ear, but there’s a tea towel folded between his mouth and the microphone.
He stops at the open door of the shed. He can see what I have done. He lowers the phone and turns to look up at my window.
I brace myself and wait for the pain to begin.
THIRTY-NINE
THE DOOR EXPLODES inwards. He crosses the room in two strides and is on me. His hands grip me vice-like.
‘Where the fuck is it, Kate?’
I don’t resist. He twists my arms behind my back, up my spine. I feel a crack in my shoulder. Something binds my wrists, then he shoves me up against the headboard. Tears are rolling down my cheeks but I can’t move my hands to wipe them away.
‘No more games, Kate. This is fucking serious.’ He grabs my head in both hands, shouts into my face: ‘Tell me where it is!’
I avoid his gaze. He shakes my skull. ‘Look at me.’ He shakes again until I look into his eyes. He’s not wearing his glasses now.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I sob. ‘Are you going to kill me?’
‘What are you planning on doing with the gun, Kate?’
‘With what?’
A spark of anger in his eyes; his nostrils flare. ‘Don’t play dumb.’ When he swallows his entire neck seems to expand and contract. He springs a single tear in each eye. ‘What the hell am I going to do? I just wanted you to be different from her.’ From who?
Crocodile tears. He will do anything to fool me.
‘I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Please just leave me alone,’ I beg.
‘No. I’m not leaving you. I’m staying right here until you tell me where the gun is.’
I can feel the muscles in my face betray me. A tightening of the jaw. ‘What gun?’
‘I know you were out there in the shed. I know you’ve taken it. I’m not letting you leave this room until you tell me where you’ve put it.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘We both know I can’t let you have that gun.’
‘You bought it for me – to kill me.’
He laughs, sounding almost delirious. ‘I’m just so exhausted. I can’t do it anymore. Sitting up all night, waiting for the day I discover you’re gone.’
The restraints around my wrists are too tight; my fingers are growing numb. ‘It’s hurting me.’
‘I’m not letting you go. I can’t risk it.’
‘Please, I can’t feel my hands.’
He leaves the room; I can hear him out in the yard,
climbing the ladder. The drill screams into the wood outside my window.
When he comes back he’s carrying a pair of pliers. Jerking me by my elbow, he flips me onto my stomach. There’s a snap and the tension around my wrists eases.
‘Put your hands in front of you.’
I do.
He binds them once more with cable ties, this time a little looser.
‘Last chance, Kate: where is the gun?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No.’
His hand comes across my face. My jaw snaps to the side and suddenly I am dizzy. ‘Where the fuck is it?’ He has a trickle of my blood on the palm of his hand.
‘Go on, kill me. Kill me like you killed Thom.’
He lifts me by the collar of my pyjama top, and pins me against the wall. A button pops. ‘Where is the gun?’
I spit in his face. Blood and saliva drip from his nose. He releases me and I slide down the wall.
He begins with the dresser. Ripping the drawers out one at a time, tipping them upside down. Then he flips the mattress, the bed base, and I tumble hard to the floor. He strides to the wardrobe and kicks at the door, his foot passing through it. A crack like thunder and flying splinters. He kicks again. The door folds forwards. My clothes, my escape bag, my shoes all fly across the room. He tears the curtains from the rail. One end of the rail comes away from the wall and hangs down.
‘Where the fuck did you put it?’
‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t take it.’
He storms from the room and I notice then that his limp is back; his knee is bad again. The door slams and I am left sitting amid the wreckage. My head is still singing from the blow. The lock closes.
The man who was once my father . . . once a husband . . . always a killer.
PART SIX
BOTH SIDES
Is there a history of mental health issues in your family?
__ Yes __ No __ Unsure
before <
FORTY
MY COACH HAS given me personal time away from rugby. It was that or quit altogether because someone has to look after Kate and God knows it’s not going to be Bella. So while my career should be peaking, and all of my plans and goals slip through my fingers, Bella is nestled up in bed reading that book of hers and using Kate’s photo as her bookmark.
She seems to have it pretty good to me. Other than her trips to the psychologist, she hasn’t left the house in a week. I have lost my parents; I have felt the weight of sadness. Hopelessness shares a fence line with fatigue but the problem is Bella isn’t even trying. Would it kill her to show the child a little attention? How the hell can she expect us to keep raising Kate properly when she can’t even get out of bed?
I remind myself of what she was like five years ago in the weeks after Kate was born. The way she squeezed the baby against her body and gently stroked her cheek with the back of her finger. Bella often cried when she touched Kate. They weren’t tears of joy or gratitude, they were caused by something else entirely.
Immediately after the birth, I asked her to resume taking her medication but she didn’t want to breastfeed with the chemicals in her system. Formula wasn’t an option because she had read somewhere how important breast milk was for an infant. Bella’s sister, Lizzie, was visiting from London at the time and she liked to throw the word postpartum around as though it was worse than usual, as though the sadness hadn’t been with Bella since she and I had met in our teen years. Lizzie also pushed her view of what she called ‘Big Pharma’. As far as Lizzie was concerned, organic food and ‘natural living’ were far more restorative than Western medicine. When Lizzie disappeared back to London she left behind her half-baked ideas. The fair-weather sister hasn’t been back to Melbourne since.
That first year was tough for both of us. When I finally convinced her to start taking her medication again – Kate was on solids and we had found an organic milk formula – she only lasted one month before stopping again. She said it was like living under dense fog.
Since then everything in this family has been about Bella. Whenever it seems like she might be feeling better, I find another mark on her body, or more of those horrible words she writes in her journal: Physical pain is a footnote in the ledger of my suffering and How long can I last with this ache? Despite what Bella wanted, I made a plan then that I would fill her prescription myself, I would take it into my own hands to get her medication into her body.
Maybe I left it in the wrong place, or open at the wrong page, but somehow Bella knew that I had been reading her journal. Her anger flared like a struck match, then very quickly fizzled out.
‘How dare you? Those are my private thoughts. How could you breach my trust like that?’ When the tears began I closed my arms around her and stroked her back. While I held her, she spoke. ‘You know, James,’ she began, ‘Bill at the pharmacy called today. He just wanted to let me know my repeat was almost up, they said I would need a new prescription. But I haven’t been filling my prescription for a while.’ I drew a breath. I knew what was coming. ‘You’ve been feeding me them, haven’t you?’
‘Bella, you have to take them. Think about Kate.’
‘How can you say that? I think about her every second of every day. Kate’s the only thing keeping me here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean we’ve tried your way and it doesn’t work. We’ve tried everything.’
•
The burns on Kate’s legs are just as much Bella’s fault as they are mine. Eloise, the nanny, was supposed to come down to the Portsea house but she had called in sick and Bella was staying up at the hospital in the throes of a particularly dark period. The hot-water cylinder was scheduled for repair later in the week and Kate was sitting in tepid water, yelling my name. It was too cold, she said.
I thought I’d take a look myself. Kneeling in the garage, staring at the thermometer, I tried hopelessly to divine what could be wrong. When I rose to my feet again, I noticed a plastic bag I hadn’t seen before tucked in behind my golf clubs. I reached and pulled it out. Kate was shrieking again but I couldn’t look away from what I’d found. Within the bag there were a few metres of hose and a new roll of masking tape. You add a car to that equation and you have everything you need to drive somewhere with a view and comfortably put yourself to sleep.
There could only be one reason why it was in the garage: Bella had left it there. She must have had it all prepared and faltered at the last minute. Or possibly an even worse scenario: she had it all set up and was planning on doing it soon. My stomach clenched. A sudden rage swept over me. She didn’t trust me, she would never talk to me about it. How could she even think about abandoning our daughter? She wanted to leave me to raise Kate alone, to explain to Kate that her mother didn’t care enough to stick it out.
‘Dad,’ Kate called in one long drawn-out syllable; I could hear the angry tears in her voice. I tried to calm myself but I couldn’t. Rushing back into the house, I dumped the bag and its contents in the bin. I put a large soup pot of water on the stovetop. I ran my hands through my hair. Will Bella deny what she was planning? My mind still wheeled and my hands were shaking. Kate called again.
‘Just wait one damn minute, I’m fixing it!’
The water seemed to be hot enough; it was steaming in the pot. I took it from the burner, marched to the bath and tipped the pot up so the water splashed in. Kate screamed. What is it? What is it, Kate, use your words. When I saw the skin, flayed from her thighs in long strips of blisters, I realised what I had done. I reached for the drain, but the water was too hot for me to grab it. I ripped her out of the bath, running to the shower downstairs with her in my arms. Cold water sprayed over us both while she howled.
‘It’s okay, darling. It’s going to be fine.’
Her screams didn’t stop, not even at the hospital. They went on and on.
•
That was two weeks ago. I can see Bella is better after her time in hospital because she is making attempts to interact with Kate,
who now shows her burns off with pride. Children don’t mind being different at that age, but it’s only a matter of time before that pride she feels morphs into shame.
That evening, for the first time in months, Bella and I have sex. She drags me down onto her, pressing her lips hard against mine, pulling my shirt up over my head. I feel like a teenager. It almost seems like she really is happy but when I look down into her face, I can see the detachment, I can see her wince with each thrust. Afterwards as we lie there holding each other and when she thinks I’m asleep, I hear her sniffles, I feel warm tears running from her cheek to burn my chest like battery acid.
The following afternoon I drop Bella at her psychologist. There is no kiss or farewell; she simply wanders, dead-eyed, into the building. I wait a moment, watching the door to ensure she’s inside before heading back home. Soon I head to pick Kate up from day care.
With her dark pigtails bouncing she runs from the gate into my arms.
‘Kiss for Daddy.’ She lays one on my cheek. ‘Ready to go pick up Mama?’
We drive to the clinic, parking at the rear. Bella’s appointment started forty-five minutes ago at one fifteen, which means any second now she will walk out the door. I turn to Kate in the backseat. She’s staring out the window. Five minutes pass. Then ten and there is still no sign of her.
Something is wrong. I can feel it in the base of my neck, in my bones and chest.
‘Can you wait here for one minute while I go get Mama?’
I lock the car and briskly walk to the entrance. The receptionist is on the phone. She glances up.
‘Where’s Doctor Lewis’ office?’
‘Hold for one second please,’ the receptionist says into the phone. She presses her palm over the microphone and looks up.
‘Where’s Doctor Lewis’ office?’ I repeat.
‘Doctor Lewis is with a patient.’
