Free Honest by Ava Bloomfield Page B

where
Peter died and this is my fucking home and that little bitch isn’t going to
shove me out of here! She isn’t! He loves me, I know he does, he always has—’
    ‘Wait, wait,
wait, calm down. Who are we talking about here?’
    ‘Peter!’ I
cried, my nose dribbling. I wiped it with my arm and smacked the tires of my
chair, breathing heavily.
    ‘Then who’s
‘she’? Who’s trying to push you out?’
    I thought
rapidly, my eyes searching around the room for clues and finding nothing. ‘I
don’t know,’ I said. I really didn’t.
    ‘We were
talking about Lauren before. Is that what you think is going to happen? Maybe
you feel like David has moved on—’
    I held my hand
up to stop her. A thought was coming to me. A memory of when Peter was alive.
    His mum,
Diane, golden tanned skin with her Moroccan hair and English face — English
rose, they called it in Cosmo— hugging Peter, folding his underwear, making his
bed, changing his sheets. Smiling, all the time, smiling. She looks at Peter
like she really loves him, more than me, more than I could ever love him. It’s
a love I can’t understand —
    ‘Peter,’ I
said, weeping, staring at the threadbare carpet.
    ‘What does Lauren
have to do with Peter, Ellen? Try and think. Let’s try and get to the bottom of
this.’
    ‘No.’ I
covered my face and cried, my shoulders hunching up, my whole body shaking.
Suddenly I felt so small. I could see Dennis’ face in my mind, and Diane’s, and
I could remember how good it felt to see her face crumbling up into something
way beyond terror. Even after everything, I’d still relished that moment. It
had felt good .
     ‘I want to be
left alone. Go away.’
    She patted my
knee. I could sense her pausing, as if to say one final thing. Deciding against
it, she silently left the house.
    I thought of
Peter again. I thought of his dark shape at the end of the boat. I thought of
him sinking down into the depths. I thought of the ocean swallowing me, then a
huge weight on my leg, unbelievable pain, before a great dark cloud billowed
out around me and blinded me to Peter forever.

Chapter Nine
     
    Once, when I
was ten and mum had been gone for six months without so much as a phone call, I
found my dad crying in their bedroom. The blinds were drawn, and it was about
two o’clock on a Saturday — one of our “family” days. We never did many family
things, except watch re–runs of Frasier and Roseanne and a whole
bunch of other shows that my parents used to watch before I was born. Other
than that, the Saturday supermarket run and the Sunday walk to the park and
back was about all the family things we did.
    There was
school, but my parents weren’t much help with that either. Mum went out every
evening and dad wasn’t good with numbers, so I usually did my homework alone.
That, or I stuffed it down the toilet and read one of mum’s magazines instead,
or one of her trashy romance novels. We were a pretty quiet family.
    It got even
quieter when mum ran away with her new guy. When I found dad crying, I wasn’t
sure how I could cheer him up. We never really played any games together, and
seeing as I’d never really liked mum much I never cried like he did. I’d be
lying if I said I missed her, but I did miss watching Frasier and Rosanne ,
and I did miss snatching her magazines.
    I stood in
front of him in my nightdress, the silver strands in his hair shining in the
half–light. ‘Dads can cry too Ellen,’ he said, breaking the silence. He wiped
his tired eyes and looked at me. ‘Don’t be scared.’
    ‘I’m not,’ I
said. I took a strand of my tangled hair — I wasn’t good at brushing it myself
— and toyed with it while I thought of something to say. I couldn’t think of
anything to say about mum to make dad feel better, so I tried to think of
things that I liked about mum. I could only think of one thing. ‘Can we get one
of mum’s magazines at the shop?’
    His eyes
widened, his unshaven mouth