The Pretender- Escaping the Past

by C R Martens

  It was a strange first night. There were a lot of new noises in the big house, and voices travelled down the corridor easily, giving them a hollow sound. Neither Eve nor Ruth slept very well that night, though Henry slept like a log, which annoyed Eve a little, mainly because he kept grunting. But it wasn’t really Henry’s fault that Eve couldn’t sleep. It was her own head’s fault. It was full of questions like, ‘What about school?’, ‘What about the rest of the summer holiday?’, ‘Are we going to live here forever?’ If not, ‘Where are we going to live?’ And at breakfast it all came flooding out in a tsunami of confusion.

  “Are we going to live here forever?” Eve asked.

  “No, we aren’t,” her mum replied.

  “Where are we going to live?” Eve then asked.

  “I don’t know, yet,” she replied. “Eat your breakfast.”

  “What about school?” Eve was feeling a bit hopeless not getting any real answers.

  “What about school?!” asked Ruth, raising her voice. Eve’s mum looked frustratingly at her.

  “Am I going back?” Eve said loudly and confused. “Or am I changing school?”

  “I don’t know, Eve,” Ruth said. “I don’t know, yet. There are a lot of things I need to figure out now, and I just need you to do what I tell you to, okay?”

  Eve sat back in her seat wondering when life was going to be easy, when she could just go back to being a child. Then there was a knock on the door. Ruth jumped to her feet and opened the door as if expecting the worst – it was a woman, not someone they had met before.

  “Hi, Ruth, I’m Henrietta. There is a situation downstairs. The police are here because your ex-partner has claimed you have kidnapped your son.”

  Ruth went pale and felt the blood rushing from her head, Eve went over to steady her mum.

  “Don’t worry, Ruth, the police are on your side. It’s just a formality that they have to see you and Henry. Okay?” Henrietta had kind and comforting eyes. Ruth picked up Henry from his chair and they all walked down together. In the front office stood two police officers, one woman and the other a man.

  “Hi, I’m Bill,” said the policeman. “We’re sorry to disturb you in the middle of breakfast, but when someone reports a kidnapping we have to act on it.”

  “I know and I understand,” Ruth said with a shaking voice. “But he is not getting Henry. My solicitor has already filed for full custody and there should be a restraining order in place against John.”

  “My partner will just check out the restraining order through dispatch.” The officer came back and confirmed what Ruth had said, but Eve was struggling to understand what was going on. A member of staff came into the room and over to the female officer. She said something inaudible.

  “Um, the father is outside,” the officer said. “He wants to see the child.”

  “That is not going to happen,” Ruth said, holding Henry even tighter. “He’ll use him to make me come back. How did he find us?”

  Eve went over to the window facing the street and looked out. There he was, pacing back and forth on the pavement, the man who was still making trouble for them. Why couldn’t he just leave them alone? He never showed any real interest in Henry anyway. He didn’t show love, he wasn’t affectionate, so why bother now? Eve watched him for a little while and then turned around to watch the police, her mum and the staff of the women’s shelter debate over the situation. Everyone was talking, but none of it was about Eve; she somehow didn’t matter, she wasn’t an important piece in all of this. The violence had happened to her mum, and the abuser was her brother’s father. Eve was just Eve, and she apparently had no place in the story or at least that’s what it felt like. She was nothing but a bystander. She had survived almost five years with that man, but none of what she had seen or experienced really mattered when it came down to it. She was just unfortunate to have been caught up in it. She felt herself getting sad, not that she cried, but her heart withered a little and her bright soul was dwindling. She felt herself disappear. Why didn’t it matter whether or not she had to go back? She watched as the women of the crisis centre protected her mum, she watched her mum protect her brother, and finally she watched the police confront John and send him on his way. But no one ever mentioned Eve. As everything seemed to calm down again after half an hour of talking with Henrietta, Eve’s mum took Henry and went upstairs to their room. She didn’t even look at Eve. Did she even know she was still there? Eve didn’t say anything; she wanted to see how long it would be before her mum would come looking for her. Henrietta left too and then Eve was alone. Alone in a vast room in a strange place full of strangers. Eve crawled up on the windowsill and did what she did best, observing people and taking notice of their behaviour, imagining who they were and what they did, where they might live. That’s when she saw him, standing across the street at the corner of a side street three mansions down, his hands in his jacket pockets, just looking and waiting. He hadn’t left.

  The day rolled on, lunch came and went, and her mum hadn’t come for Eve yet. She was hungry but she felt that she had a point to prove. John had circled the block twice without getting noticed by the staff, on the second walk by he had spotted Eve in the window. He had stopped and stared back, before hurrying away. Eve didn’t see him again after that. At 5 pm the daytime staff was leaving and the two night-staff employees came to work. There was such a bustle in the house and Eve felt quite invisible. Two people, one staff member and a resident, entered the room to look for something and left again without ever noticing Eve sitting in the window. She didn’t even try to hide. As the clock neared six, Eve’s stomach started to hurt and growl, she could no longer ignore her hunger and she had to go look for her mum. Defeated she went up to their room, dragging her steps, hoping that any minute her mum would come rushing to her in a panic having looked for her all day. But when Eve stood by the door to their room, she realised that her mum didn’t even know she had been gone, she could hear her playing with Henry on the other side of the thin door. Eve stood there fighting her tears before she had the courage to open the door and pretend nothing was wrong.

  “Well, hello there,” Ruth said smiling. “Did you have fun today? You have played the day away.”

  “Yeah, it’s been fun,” Eve said, feeling the knot in her stomach. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Pasta, bacon and cheese,” Ruth said, throwing the ball to Eve. “Why don’t you play with Henry, then I’ll make us some dinner.” She got up from the floor, kissed Eve on the forehead and walked over to the fridge. She took out the things needed for dinner and went down to the communal kitchen. Eve looked at Henry who was patiently waiting for the ball to be thrown back; he wasn’t to blame she decided and then the two played, as only siblings can. With a lot of love and just a hint of jealousy.

  ***

  “This is a double session,” he said, waving his pen in the air. “So just keep going.”

  “Oh, all right.” Eve had missed that detail but she supposed that’s what you got for messing with their schedule, so she continued the story. “John came by the mansion every day for the next two weeks, some days he would just stand out on the street watching in. Other days he would be angry and shout at the staff. ‘You fucking bitch, let me in.’ One time the police came and ushered him away. And then there was the day when Henry and I were playing out in the garden.

  “‘Henry, it’s Dad.’ We both stood dead still mid-action, not daring to turn around. ‘Come over to the fence,’ John said.

  “‘He’s not going anywhere,’ I said, grabbing Henry’s hand and standing in front of him.

  “‘I am not talking to you,’ John said, sneering. ‘I don’t have to mind you at all.’

  “‘I don’t care.’ But I did care that someone would speak to me that way. ‘He still isn’t coming over.’

  “‘How are you, son?’ John asked, continuing to ignore me. ‘Come over here so I can see you properly.’ John was exaggerating his niceness, which made it more obvi
ous that it was fake.

  “‘Come, Henry, let’s go,’ I told him and started to walk off, realising too late that we had to go close by where John stood to get to the door.

  “I started to walk towards where he was standing, only to hear him laughing. ‘You are ridiculous,’ he said, laughing. ‘Just like your mother.’

  “I started crying and ran past John. I held Henry close to me as we hurried up the stairs to the house. I could hear John laughing still. ‘Go run to Mummy,’ he said. We flew through the door, where another mum was sitting inside the common area. She instantly knew something was wrong so she ran to get Mum and a staff member. Both of us were crying. Mum came flying into the room.

  “‘John was outside by the fence,’ I said, sobbing. ‘He wanted Henry to come over, but I didn’t let him.’ Mum hugged us, and the staff ran outside to make sure he wasn’t still there. That night I kept waking up to the sound of John’s voice and his laughter haunted me for several nights. We spent two and a half months at the women’s crisis centre before moving out. School had started and Mum drove me every day to my old school, which was two streets away from John’s house. It felt like we were playing with fire every day we went to that school. I don’t know why I chose to go back to that school, but I did. I think with all the other changes in our lives, I was desperately hanging on to something familiar, anything, even if it meant facing all my bullies. Mum had a little talk with the school, where she referred to the whole debacle as a tough divorce. She didn’t let them know what really had happened or that we were on the run and staying at a shelter for abused women.

  “‘It’s our secret and no one would really understand it,’ my mum would explain to me when seeing the question mark on my face. ‘It’s our story and nobody’s business.’ She did that often. Made sure we wouldn’t say too much.” Eve stopped her story when she realised the psychologist was looking at her and not writing. “We had many secrets in our family. I guess that’s one of the reasons I am so good at my job. I learnt young.”

  “Hmm,” he said. Nothing else, just that sound.

  She didn’t think he knew how much his ‘hmm’ really said about him. Her guess was that it was his first year as an agent with FIA, he hadn’t quite learnt to be expression-free, yet. He was probably a transfer from a police department somewhere and he had most likely done a course in psychology at some point in college and that’s how he landed this assignment. She likewise didn’t think he knew she was reading him and she thought he was too self-confident in his own skills of perception to notice. He could try and read her all he wanted to, he didn’t get anything she didn’t give to him willingly.

  6.

  A child should never be silenced. A child should never be made to feel inferior. I kept things hidden all through my childhood, I didn’t want to worry my mum; she had enough to deal with. So, I stayed quiet and I helped as much as I could. Keeping our secrets to myself.

  When Eve had first started school, she had every confidence that it would be a sanctuary, just as nursery had been. She had been excited about school, but there were too many distractions. At first it had been the sleepless nights, spurred on by John’s loud music, drinking and violence, which had made it difficult for her to concentrate during the day. It was hard to focus in school with everything going on at home and she was often distant in her mind. There was always a looming deadline hanging heavy over her, a near-future she knew she couldn’t escape. Going home was never fun and it certainly wasn’t a break from school. Moving to the women’s shelter was an escape from John but not a clean break. He still haunted them and living in a house full of damaged and broken souls wasn’t easy.

  She often missed her name being called, which led to her being scowled at by the teachers. She would always go to school thinking, “Today I’ll do better.” The more the teachers picked on her, the more her classmates did too. In the younger classes, they started by excluding her from the games at recess, later on they bullied her because of her hand-me-down clothes, then came the pushing and hair-pulling. But it wasn’t until one winter morning in third grade when the bullying really escalated, but this time it was a teacher who did the bullying and she did it very openly. Instead of their regular teacher, the office had sent a substitute teacher. Eve sat quietly in the front row, thinking she needed to pay attention. Some of the other pupils were making fun of the teacher. And, looking closely at her, Eve did recognise her from around the school halls. The teacher seemed annoyed and the general rumour going around the school about this teacher was that she was angry and aggressive. Five minutes into the lecture, in a frenzy, the substitute shouted at Eve in a horrifying away, “SHUT YOUR EYES, I CAN’T STAND YOU LOOKING AT ME!” She pointed at Eve – there was no doubt that she meant it. Even Eve’s classmates sat back and upright in their chairs with a frightened look on their faces. Clearly the teacher had had enough of the laughter and jokes directed at her and she took it out on the weakest pupil in the class. Eve looked around to see what her peers looked like. “Did you not hear me?” The teacher came so close to Eve’s face, she could feel her breath. “Shut them!”

  “But don’t I have to write?” Eve asked, her voice trembling. But the teacher ignored Eve and simply started the class.

  Fearing the consequences, Eve closed her eyes and they remained closed for almost an hour. She didn’t cry – she was too scared and shocked to – she just sat paralysed. It wasn’t until the door slammed shut to the classroom that she dared to open her eyes again. She looked around at her classmates, they didn’t say anything, they just stared at her and whispered. Eve got up from her seat and walked quietly through the classroom, all eyes on her. She walked out into the hallway and into the girls’ lavatory, locked herself in a stall and cried until the school bell rang for the next lesson. Unknown to Eve at the time, another pupil in Eve’s class had told their primary teacher, and a week later the heartless teacher had opted for early retirement due to personal issues. The school did as expected when they covered up their mistakes; they didn’t acknowledge what had happened, they swept it under the rug. What did happen in the days that followed that teacher leaving was a surprise though – other pupils started telling their own stories of angry outbursts they had been at the receiving end of from this particular teacher. For once, Eve didn’t feel alone with her struggles. There were others to share her experience with, and it felt good to not be alone.

  ***

  “For how long are these sessions going to continue?” It had been over two months; they usually didn’t run for this long at the firm, not even for a death.

  “For as long as I think it’s needed,” he said confidently. “Whenever you are ready.”

  “I didn’t think you were calling the shots here?” Eve said. His eyes went straight to her’s. “I recall you saying you were just doing as you were ordered to.”

  His expression was priceless. She could see his brain working behind his empty eyes, trying to come up with an answer. So she spared him the embarrassment of answering and continued with her story.

  “That’s okay, have a think,” she said to the psychologist. They were obviously not going to let her go any time soon. “Growing up, I was never the girl who got invited to birthday parties or play dates. In fact, all the way through primary and secondary school the other children in my class, particularly the girls, would make sure not to give me an invitation, and they made sure I knew I wasn’t invited, they would say so to my face. I never fitted in, school was never fun, and I never had any real friends. I got bullied every day by both my classmates and the teachers. I don’t have a single good memory of my time at that school. My mum was a single mum, that in itself made me an easy target for bullying. It was the 1990s and divorce wasn’t exactly the norm yet. Second to that was my hand-me-down clothes and the last topic of bullying was my alcoholic father who gave them plenty of ammunition on the occasions where he’d show up drunk at the school to pick me up. I’d, of course, refuse to go with him, which would usuall
y lead to an even bigger commotion. I knew why I was absent-minded at school but I couldn’t tell my teachers because I wanted to spare my mum explaining what really went on at home; I didn’t want her to be embarrassed. School is where I learnt to be alone, to eat alone at my classroom desk, to be alone with my schoolwork and to play alone.

  “My mum would occasionally ask me, ‘Why don’t you invite someone from school over to play?’

  “‘I don’t want to,’ I would answer. End of conversation. I would lie to my mother about what the reality was. She had enough to deal with, without also having to worry about me at school. So, unknowingly, she sent me to hell every day. You’d think the school would have taken an active part in making sure it was a safe and comfortable environment for all children. But they wanted to be on the good side of the popular children, so rather than dealing with the bullies and their parents, they dealt with me. This was a time before anti-bullying campaigns.

  “One day Mum and I were at the school for the usual parent/teacher meeting with my class’ two primary teachers. They sat behind the desk, feeling very important with all their charts and reports on how the perfect pupil should behave and be like. There was a good chance I wasn’t it.

  “‘As you know, there have been some difficulties around Eve, socially,’ started my English teacher.

  “‘I know there have been incidents of Eve being bullied,’ Mum said with a frown. ‘Has that been dealt with?’

  “‘Well, we have talked with some of the pupils Eve mentioned last time, but they say it isn’t true and that Eve has made it up.’