by Ruth Mancini
“You went back to your mum’s?”
“Yes. Most of my stuff was already there by then. I’d been staying there most weekends – when Martin was away with the team – and not going back home for a week at a time. My mum’s house just became home. She helped with Sky, loved having him around and I don’t think Sky really noticed that we were suddenly there all the time, that we’d stopped going home. To Martin’s.”
“Did he see his dad at all?”
“Initially. For a few years, in fact. We went through the motions of contact. But I’d never let him have Sky on his own. I always insisted that Lindsay or his mum had to be there. Martin didn’t bother arguing with me, because he didn’t care that much. Anyway, he was living with Lindsay by then. He continued to see Sky on and off until he was around twelve or thirteen. Martin was okay with him, and Sky wanted to see him. Sky adored him, in fact. Martin taught Sky to swim and I do remember they spent a lot of time in the pool together for a while. But it was a fad. When Sky got to around level seven or eight and said he didn’t want to take it further, to compete, Martin lost interest. He was always breaking his promises to him, about picking him up and taking him to things. He’d say that he’d take him to a football match, or a hockey game or the cinema, and Sky would get all excited. But then he just wouldn’t show up. Sky would get so upset.”
“I’m surprised Sky wanted to see him anyway,” I said. “What about all the bad stuff? The way Martin treated him? And you?”
“He didn’t remember any of it.” Catherine shrugged. “Still doesn’t, as a matter of fact. He still thinks his dad is an okay kind of guy, and I suppose, in a way, that’s a blessing that he doesn’t remember all that stuff, the violence and everything. The sad thing is that, underneath the front he puts up, Sky thinks it’s him that’s the problem, that he’s just not good enough as a person to keep Martin’s interest. He’s tried to get Martin to love him. He’s tried very hard over the years, but Martin just doesn’t want to know.”
I sat up slightly. “But I thought you said Sky had no time for him – or any interest in him? Because of what happened?”
“Did I?”
“Yes.” I started to feel anxious. “I thought Sky hated him. You said, when we were on the phone, that he didn’t want to know him?”
“No. I was talking about Martin. I meant that Martin’s got no time for Sky. He was like a robot around him. There were never any genuine feelings there.”
“But what if Martin suddenly decided he wanted to meet up? Sky would see him?”
Catherine looked thoughtful for a moment. “Probably,” she said. “But it’s not likely to happen.” She stroked my arm. “Don’t worry, Lizzie. Sky’s over him, I’m sure of it. I think deep down he maybe still wishes that Martin would be the kind of dad that he deserves, but it was his decision to stop going there. He said there was no point, that Martin would only be interested in him if he became an Olympic swimmer or something. And to be honest, Sky wasn’t that good.”
But Helena is, I thought.
Catherine turned to me. “I can see how worried you are, Lizzie. But I really don’t think you need to be. Martin wasn’t interested in Sky and – don’t take this the wrong way – I don’t think he’ll be interested in Helena either. He doesn’t like kids.”
“Yes, but they’re not kids anymore,” I said. “They’re young adults. Interesting people, who are achieving things that he can be proud of, that he may want to take credit for.”
Catherine looked thoughtful again for a moment. “Well, Sky’s eighteen, and Martin’s made no attempt to get involved with his life,” she said. “If he was going to do so, he’d have done it by now.”
“Are you quite sure he hasn’t?” I asked, thinking about the text messages I’d read on Helena’s phone, in which Sky was asking about my relationship with Martin, as if he were some normal man that I’d been dating.
“Yes.” Catherine smiled. “Me and Sky tell each other everything.” She gave me a quick sideways glance. I knew she was thinking ‘unlike Helena and you’, and I couldn’t argue with that, not anymore. Catherine continued, “There’d be no reason for him to keep something like that from me. I’ve never stopped him seeing Martin. And I don’t think you have anything to worry about either, really Lizzie. Martin’s a psycho when you’re living with him. I pity Lindsay. I don’t know how she puts up with his moods and his crazy behaviour. But it was me Martin had the problem with, not Sky. He’s a control freak where women are concerned. But he’s got no reason to hurt Sky – or Helena for that matter.”
“He bullied Sky when he was a kid,” I pointed out. “He hit him. You said you wouldn’t let him see Sky alone.”
“When he was little,” Catherine insisted. “When he needed protecting.”
“So you don’t think he needs protecting any longer?”
Catherine shrugged. “No. You’ve got to let them go. Live their own lives. Right?”
I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. Why was I starting to feel like the one who was a control freak? An overprotective and irrational mother – is that what I was? If Catherine thought Martin was no threat after what she’d been through, then had I got him pegged wrong too? After all, she was right that being abusive within a relationship was one thing; it didn’t necessarily mean that he’d harm his daughter. I was aware that my experience of Martin was all based on what had happened a long time ago, and that to a large degree I was reliant on Catherine for the updated version of him.
Then I thought about the way that he’d smiled at me the last time I had seen him, as he’d driven off with Catherine safely strapped into the car seat next to him, secure in the knowledge that he’d given her every good reason to hate me. He’d thrown a hand-grenade at our friendship and had then got us to dance like puppets, while he’d sat back, laughing, and pulling the strings.
“What about his mind games?” I asked. “The way that he likes to win?”
“What d’you mean?”
I hesitated. Whatever Catherine chose to reveal to me, my gut feeling was that she didn’t want me to talk about Martin in any other context than that of her relationship with him. ‘Martin and I’ had barely existed. Clearly, we’d existed long enough to create Helena. But that was all. I chose my words carefully. “Well. I think he was jealous of our friendship. It was as if he wanted you all to himself. He saw me as a threat.”
Catherine nodded. “I think you’re right. He didn’t like me seeing my mum either. He didn’t like me having any other friends, come to think of it, or anyone else in my life that might one day mean more to me than him.”
“Right.” I leaned forward and took both her hands in mine. “So what did he do? He caused an irreparable rift between us. Deliberately. You said on the phone that you couldn’t believe that you’d let me go, because of him. But I don’t think you had free will. I think he made sure of it, that you would choose him and that you would wind up hating me.”
“How?”
“By raping me,” I said.
Catherine slid her hands out of mine and stood up.
I carried on, regardless. “And, then, by telling you that it had been my fault, that I’d seduced him. That it was all down to me.”
Catherine turned away from me and walked over to the window. “That’s not what happened,” she said quietly.
“It’s not what he told you happened,” I said. “But I was there.”
Catherine picked up the cat and held her to her shoulder. “She needs feeding,” she said from behind the cat. The cat looked surprised, but licked her ear.
“No she doesn’t. She was sleeping. Catherine, put the cat down, and let’s talk about this properly.”
The cat jumped out of her arms and headed for the kitchen. Catherine followed and I got up too, but she turned in the doorway, as if warning me back.
“Do we have to discuss this?” she asked. “The damage is done. I chose to forget it, not to get upset about it. I thought you weren’t going to bri
ng it up.”
I sighed and sat back down on the sofa, leaning my head against the back of it, so that I was looking at the ceiling. I loved these high ceilings. Cornices. I missed cornices, I thought. There were no cornices in my house. Was this Victorian or Georgian? I couldn’t remember the difference. Either way these houses were really stylish and totally defined London for me.
Catherine appeared in the doorway. She said, “He may be violent and a bully, but he’s not a sex offender.”
I sat up straight, like a kid in front of a teacher. “Why are you defending him?”
“He was my partner,” she said. “He’s not a pervert. Don’t you think I’d know?”
“Don’t you?” I asked. “Did he never do anything...”
“No. If I said no, that was it. He never forced himself on me.”
“He didn’t force himself on me, either.” I shook my head. “He was cleverer than that. He waited until I was virtually unconscious and then tried to pretend what he’d done was okay.”
“You can’t have been that drunk.”
“Why are you defending him?” I asked again, and stood up.
“Someone’s got to. He’s not here to do it himself.”
“So you’d rather believe his story? You’d rather believe that I betrayed you and jumped into bed with him. You’d rather believe that about our friendship, than that... that he date raped me?”
“Date raped?”
“That’s what it was. Okay, so we weren’t on a date. But it’s the same thing. He came round to my flat after Giles had got me hopelessly drunk, he kicked Giles and the others out, and then he had sex with me. That’s what happened, Catherine. I didn’t know anything about it. I still don’t! I just woke up in the morning and there he was. I didn’t seduce him; I didn’t do anything to him. He saw an opportunity and he took it. I didn’t have any say!”
There was a loud noise in the hallway. The front door opened and Helena and Sky burst into the room.
“God, I’m stuffed,” said Helena, falling onto the sofa.
Sky switched on the TV. “Helena. Minecraft. Come on.”
Helena jumped up again. “You’ve got an X Box? Cool.”
Catherine and I remained exactly where we were standing and said nothing while Helena and Sky seated themselves on the sofa side by side, headphones on and remotes in their hands, like two pilots flying a plane.
“I need a bath,” said Catherine, politely. “Will you excuse me, Lizzie?”
“Of course,” I said, equally politely, as she nodded and disappeared from the room.
7
The game of Minecraft had finished and Helena had wandered off into Sky’s room, and was asleep on his bed. I sat down in the armchair opposite Sky, who was watching ‘Top Gear’, although I had no interest in fast cars. I closed my eyes. ‘Wow, look at that!’ Sky kept saying, and I had to keep opening them again.
I pulled out my phone and checked my emails. There was one from Juliana and it was flagged as important. In spite of my resolve to have a break from work, I opened it.
“Hi Lizzie, You’re in London this week, is that right?” it read. “We’ve been approached by a new client, a British publisher. They’ve a French author, a doctor who works at a top British hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. It’s near Euston. He’s writing a book, ‘A History of Neuroradiology’ and his publisher has already secured the rights to translate it into English. They’re keen for you to talk to him and hopefully to get it underway as soon as possible. It’s a big project, and there may well be more to come in the way of articles and journals. Are you interested? He’s quite prolific, by all accounts. He could keep you busy for a while.”
I clicked on the reply button and responded immediately. “I’m very interested. What’s the address?”
Sky burst out laughing and I glanced over at him, then at the telly, where Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond were busy catapulting a caravan into a quarry.
“Why are they doing that?” I asked.
Sky laughed again. “Because they’re slow. Caravans. These guys hate anything that slows them down on the roads. They just buy these old caravans and then blow them up or bash them together. They got them hanging from a crane, once, like a giant executive toy.”
“That’s crazy. I like caravans.”
Sky turned and laughed at the look on my face. “It’s just for fun,” he said.
Boys, I thought.
Sky turned back to the telly and I took a sneaky peek at him as he lay draped along the full length of the sofa. His feet were bare and hung over the edge, near to where I was sitting. I could see that his t-shirt had ridden up a little and his tanned stomach was showing above the waistline of his jeans. I averted my eyes again as he looked over.
“You okay?” he asked. “Want a beer or something?”
I nodded. “Yeah. That would be nice.”
He jumped up from the sofa and went into the kitchen, returning a minute later with two cold bottles of Budweiser.
My phone email alert pinged and I quickly opened it. “Great Ormond Street,” Juliana’s email read. ”It’s a couple of minutes away from Russell Square. Okay if I set something up for Monday?”
”Yes,” I replied. “That’s perfect.” Things had been fairly quiet on the work front recently, and I relished the idea of a big project to get stuck into. It was exciting to know, too, that there may be more to come. I was still in negotiations with Helena over the exact amount that I’d contribute to the LSBU fund, but one way or another, she’d be tapping me for money, and I needed to earn more than I was getting right now.
I took a swig of my beer and looked over at Sky, who was draped back over the sofa, his long legs hanging over the arm again. I wondered whether I should talk to him about his dad.
In spite of the good news on the work front, I was feeling very churned up inside after the conversation with Catherine. Whilst she accepted that I had been right all along about Martin’s bullying and violent behaviour, she still believed that I’d betrayed her by sleeping with Martin. I couldn’t understand why. Was it really to do with the physical side of their relationship? That she’d been sleeping for years with ‘a sex offender’ as she put it? Was she embarrassed about that? Would accepting my version of what happened put some kind of negative spin on the intimate moments they’d shared, or would it maybe make her complicit in his crime against me? Maybe she just didn’t want to admit quite how wrong she’d been about him, and how badly she’d let me down when I’d begged her to believe me, and asked her not to end our friendship without hearing my side of things. Or maybe he’d just done such a good job of convincing her that I was the one to blame in what had happened, that his story had stuck, and it was hard for her to believe anything else after all this time.
Whatever the reason, I was hurt and angry that we were both still stuck in his web of lies. But I was worried, too, that Sky might not talk to Catherine about everything, the way that she assumed.
I looked up at Sky again. I couldn’t help myself. When might I get an opportunity like this again, to talk to him on his own?
“Sky?”
He looked up from the telly.
“Do you ever hear from him? Your dad?”
There. I’d said it. It was a little intrusive, I imagined. I maybe ought to have got to know him a little better first. But Sky, surprisingly, sat up and switched off the telly. I remembered Helena saying that he liked to talk.
“Not very often. Christmas. Birthdays. I get an email. That’s if he remembers,” he said. “I email him back from time to time.”
I froze. This wasn’t what I’d expected or wanted to hear. I looked up at him. “So, you are in touch, then?”
Sky shrugged. “Barely. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years.”
“A couple of years? So, not that long ago?”
Sky shrugged. “It depends on your definition of ‘not long ago’. A couple of years seems quite a long time ago to me.” He looked upset for a m
oment, but then he smiled. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t know about Helena.” He tapped his nose. “Mum’s the word.”
I put my fingers together as if I was praying, and put them over my nose. I realised that I was hyperventilating slightly and took a few deep breaths into my closed palms.
“Okay,” Sky continued. “So that wasn’t funny. Seriously, though. I haven’t told him. Helena asked me not to.”
“She did?”
Sky nodded and swung his legs up over the arm of the sofa again. “I’m not sure why, though.” He took a swig of his beer. “He’s a rubbish dad, but he’s harmless enough.”
“Harmless?” I repeated. My phone email alert pinged again, but I ignored it.
“So, what was the deal with you and him, then?” Sky asked.
I thought about that for a moment. “There wasn’t any deal. He was with your mother.”
“And? How did you end up getting it on with him, then?”
I looked at him. “I’m sure Helena’s told you.”
Sky shrugged. “She said he took advantage of you. When you’d had a bit to drink.”
“It was a bit more than that.” I looked at him carefully. I couldn’t help but see Martin in front of me. Was Sky the enemy? Did he resent me, deep down, behind those smiling eyes? “He raped me,” I said. Catherine wouldn’t like that, me telling her son that, but it was the truth.
“Oh,” said Sky. “That. Yeah. Only my mum said that you were, you know...”
“No? What?”
“A bit flirty with him. A bit of a tease.”
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Right.”
“I’m just saying. Weren’t you?”
“No,” I said, anger rising inside me. “I wasn’t. He was the flirt. He was the one chasing me. I didn’t want anything to do with him. I was only nice to him for your mother’s sake.”
Sky was silent a moment. This was his dad. He still had feelings for him. He was going to defend him now, just as Catherine had done. I watched him closely as he shook his long hair back and tied it up in a man scrunchy.
“Well, maybe he read it differently. Maybe he got signals from you when you were ‘nice’ to him.” Sky made air quotes around the word ‘nice’ and it was more than I could take.