by Aria Sparke
‘You can practice on Dummy One first up,’ Kate said. ‘His name’s Vince.’
‘Who are his relatives?’ I asked looking at the depiction of the man and woman on the other dummies.
She gave me an odd look. ‘His brother and sister. Don’t hold back.’
After a boy wheeled a box to the center of the gym, the others reached into it and withdrew knives. I followed their example and examined the dark wooden handle and shiny metal blade. ‘This is really sharp,’ I said in surprise.
‘Not much use if it’s blunt. Just don’t cut yourself,’ Kate said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Gripping the handle tightly, I held it away from my body while waiting for my turn.
‘Aim for the heart,’ Kate said as I stepped up. ‘It won’t hurt him.’
‘Is this legal, do you know, or is our professor inciting violence?’
She chuckled before reaching for her water bottle. ‘I guess it might be an issue if it weren’t self-defense class. Don’t worry about it.’ I liked her easy going, laid-back nature.
I sighted the green-eyed dummy called Vince before flinging my blade with all the force I could muster. Although it hit the dummy, the knife bounced and clattered across the gym floor, but the release felt good. On my second try, I missed the target altogether.
‘Nice try, Lily,’ Alexis said. ‘You’ll get better. We all have to start somewhere.’
I sat on the sideline to watch the others pair off for more advanced exercises. One by one each pair faced each other on square rubber mats like boxers’ rings without ropes. Each pair circled each other before launching into a flurry of spinning, somersaulting and twirling. When close enough, they kicked, slapped and punched each other in a furious dance until Alexis blew his whistle for them to stop. No one relented or surrendered. When they stopped each student bore bruises, grazes and cuts, but no one seemed bothered. What had I let myself in for? Their fighting style was far more aggressive than I’d experienced, so I hung back.
Kate rubbed at her bruised cheek bone as she glanced at me. ‘Have you had any self-defense training?’
‘Yes, but it’s been a year since I last practiced.’
She gestured toward a pair of students flying at each other and trading blows. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. I could help you get back into shape after hours if you’d like.’ There was something welcoming and down to earth about her that I instantly warmed to.
‘Thanks, I’d like that. So what brought you to Anubis?’
‘My family’s in Wicklow and I didn’t want to move too far away. We’re close. And you?’
I squirmed. ‘It was the only college that accepted me.’
‘I hear you had a rough time before finals.’
I nodded.
‘Anubis is great—you’ll love it. I’ve been here over a year now. I’m hoping to do a veterinary science degree after college.’ She grinned. ‘I’m crazy about animals.’
‘My goal’s medicine, but I’m going to have to work my butt off to get there.’
‘You and me both.’
Kate lowered herself to the ground to sit next to me and offered me a bottle of water. ‘So what did you think of the class today?’
‘It seems like a lot of fun.’ I smiled. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy it.’
* * *
I steered clear of Flynn, Martin and Anya for a few days to clear my head. Hiding their relationship to each other made me distrustful of them. I needed normality and space. It bothered me that they had befriended me so pointedly at Wicklow High and Flynn and Anya had worked on me to come to Anubis. Although I couldn’t come up with a dark motive—yet.
At self-defense class the next afternoon, I enjoyed the release of kicking and clobbering Vince, the dummy. My muscles felt weak and underused, so I knew I’d have to work hard to regain my strength and technique. Even so, it felt good to strain and exert myself for a change. Running was fine for exercising my lungs, but it didn’t stress my body like this.
‘Are you okay?’ Kate asked as we walked back together to the showers after the class.
‘I’m fine.’ I knew my tone and demeanor sounded brittle. I couldn’t explain to her why the college was making me feel claustrophobic lately. The thought of exams in a couple of weeks only added to my tension.
‘Next week is study break, and I was wondering if you’d like to spend the weekend with me at my mom’s place in Wicklow? We could come back on Monday afternoon.’ She gave me a friendly smile and I had to hold my breath and count to three, so my response didn’t sound desperate. Her dark skin and amber colored eyes contrasted with the other pale Wicklow natives. She was different to them, yet it wasn’t only her appearance. Her temperament was lively and warm unlike many of the cool and aloof inhabitants of Anubis.
‘That sounds great. I’d love to.’ Anything to get away.
Kate was beautifully average. Middle height, not overly pretty or ugly, not excessively smart, but nor was she dull. Anyone who cared deeply about cats, dogs and goldfish had to be okay in my books. She was potentially a perfect friend.
When Flynn called on me a few days later, I was busily throwing a few pieces of clothing and books in my overnight bag.
‘Going somewhere?’
‘Kate has asked me to her mother’s place in Wicklow for a couple of nights.’
‘Sounds like fun. You’ll be careful?’
I laughed. ‘Of?’
‘You don’t know Wicklow very well.’ Flynn seemed pensive. ‘Will you leave your cell phone on?’
‘For what reason?’
‘Please?’
I really needed to get away. ‘Sure.’ Part of me felt guilty. ‘I’ll be fine, Flynn. Just relax. It’s only three nights.’ I hoped he wasn’t turning into a possessive type.
Three days later, Kate and I pulled into the drive of her single story, white bungalow in the outer suburbs of the upper side of Wicklow. She searched for a key under a pot of violets near the door as I admired the front porch with its clay pots brimming with yellow flowers and a sleek gray cat curled asleep in the rocking chair. The house was comfortably cluttered with bright paintings and pot plants while multi-colored rugs lay scattered over the polished timber floor. Inside, it smelled natural and cozy—of roasts and roses.
‘Mom’s away for the week, so we have the place to ourselves.’ After stoking the fire, Kate showed me to a small bedroom, and I threw my bag on the bed covered with a homely patchwork comforter.
‘Thanks, this is perfect.’
She rummaged through the freezer and pulled out a Greek style pizza before sticking it in the oven and finding a bottle of wine in the cupboard. ‘Do you drink?’
‘Sure, thanks.’ I really didn’t, but in the circumstances I was happy to venture out of the ordinary.
After we had settled on the sofa and Kate had found an old sci-fi movie to watch, we relaxed. I drained my glass too quickly, but Kate refilled it, so I kept drinking.
‘Where’s your mom?’
Kate leaned back on the sofa. ‘She’s a pharmaceutical rep. and had to go interstate for work.’
‘My dad used to travel a lot with work.’
‘Does he still do it?’
I felt light-headed. ‘No, he died in a car accident.’ It felt like someone else had uttered my words. ‘Life shouldn’t be like that. He and my mom fell in love when they were teenagers. They were each other’s first love.’ The words hung sadly in the air and my loosened tongue kept going like it had a mind of its own.
‘Wow that sounds like a fairy tale.’
‘They even lived in the same suburb, traveled on the same bus and went to the same schools.’ Waving my arm dramatically, I splashed wine on the floorboards. ‘Sorry.’ I hurried to the kitchen to get a sponge to clean the spill.
‘No, I’m sorry—for you,’ Kate said and took a swig of her wine. ‘I sort of know what it’s like because my dad went to Africa three years ago and never came back.’
‘I’m sor
ry. What happened to him?’
‘Who knows?’ Kate raised her glass dramatically spilling some of it too and laughed. ‘To absent dads.’
‘To dads,’ I echoed.
‘What happened to your father?’
I sighed. ‘It was over a year ago. Dad was alone about 1000 miles away from home. The police said he ran off the road—probably fell asleep.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘I still have nightmares.’ I keep seeing the police on the doormat like a blowtorch has burned the image on my brain. ‘It was about two in the morning.’ Swallowing, I steeled myself to keep talking. ‘First I saw the older man’s mustache and then his partner’s red hair. The softly spoken older guy told Mom. It wasn’t his fault—the poor man—he just brought the news. How people can do that sort of work is beyond me. I remembered him saying Dad was still alive when they found him a few hours after the crash yet died on the way to hospital.’
That gentle guy put his hand on Mom’s shoulder and said Dad was unconscious and wouldn’t have felt anything. But I can’t help wondering. How would he know that? Was Dad conscious between the crash and death? Did he suffer? Did he think of Mom and me, or just slip away into oblivion?
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on. It’s just ... that’s the first time I’ve spoken about it to anyone.’
‘That’s okay.’ Kate stared into her glass. ‘I heard about your mother too.’
I sighed. ‘If only I had brothers and sisters.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘To be completely alone? As bad as it sounds.’ The wine had gone completely to my head now.
Kate climbed from the sofa and pulled the pizza from the oven. ‘We need to eat.’
‘Before we implode?’
Kate half smiled.
After eating a few slices of pizza, I felt better.
‘What happened to your mom?’
‘She may have overdosed because she was depressed about my dad. Couldn’t work or eat or sleep.’
Kate nodded sympathetically.
I swilled more wine hoping it might drown the pain, but it bobbed up as ugly and brutal as ever. ‘She thought someone was trying to murder her.’
‘What? No.’ Kate looked at me incredulously. ‘What do you think?’
‘She might have been right, but more likely it was her illness.’ Tears spilled from my eyes. That damn tap to my head had been turned on by the wine and talk.
‘Where did it happen?’
‘Piermont House.’
Kate folded her arms. ‘It’s wrong for you to be suffering like this. Tomorrow we’ll drive there, so you can talk to the staff and find out exactly what happened. I’ll come with you for support.’
Too inebriated to disagree, I nodded.
‘I hear you and Flynn are pretty close?’
How could I answer that one?
Kate raised her eyebrows.
I shrugged. ‘We’re going through a rough patch.’
‘Pfft, men.’
I laughed. ‘You’ve had experience?’
Kate groaned. ‘I’ve been cheated on, dumped, lied to ... don’t get me started.’
‘No, it’s not like that ... more of a misunderstanding, I suppose.’
‘He’s certainly easy on the eye, gorgeous actually. I hear there hasn’t been anyone special for a while since Emma.’
Jolted out of my alcohol-induced haze, I said, ‘Pardon?’
‘He hasn’t told you?’
‘No.’
‘It was a long time ago, but I’ve heard it was serious.’
* * *
CHAPTER 14
Flynn: Emma
Lily was staying with Kate in Wicklow for the weekend, so it was the perfect opportunity to visit Emma. I wouldn’t have to explain where I was going or answer any awkward questions. When I slipped down the stairs to the Anubis foyer, I almost ran into Martin. He was standing in the doorway of Alexis’ office with his back to me and I overheard something about needing cockroach fumigation in the men’s bathroom.
‘Of course they’re there. They come up the pipes at night, you can hear them rustling and chattering. They keep me awake. When I investigated they were all over the floors and up the walls.’
‘Right, okay,’ Alexis said in a laid-back tone.
Martin was always trying to wind Alexis up with random complaints.
Alexis tolerated his jokes and jibes as though his extra maturity gave him a superior vantage.
I’d also managed to avoid Anya. She and her latest, Michael had taken off to the coast for a weekend together much to our mother’s disapproval. Why Anya bothered to tell her, I’ll never understand.
Tiptoeing out the door with a bunch of flowers behind my back, I raced to the parking lot. I knew Martin would badger me until I told him where I was going and then he’d harp on about me needing to tell Lily. The thought made me sick. How was I ever going to explain my past?
I stopped for coffee and muffins at a bakery on the west side of Wicklow and when I arrived at Rosedale, I juggled them and the bouquet of roses.
Emma was waiting as always, bright and blue-eyed, eager to see me and jumping with excitement. Sometimes she reminded me of an angel with her halo of pale hair and exquisite face. I loved her, pure and simple.
‘You came,’ she exclaimed.
‘I told you I would. I’ve been busy ... away.’ It was easier to tell her this.
‘That’s okay. You’re here now and that’s all that matters. You grow more beautiful with every day. Is it okay to call a boy beautiful?’ She smiled showing me her incandescent essence I’d always treasured.
‘I don’t mind.’
I gave her the bouquet of yellow roses and she buried her face in them to inhale their sweet scent.
‘You’re so good to me, Flynn.’ After she laid them on the table, she gave me a hug. Her embrace, light and ethereal, brought a flood of memories back to me. My guilt niggled.
‘I picked up coffee and muffins from the bakery for breakfast. I thought we’d have them in the garden.’
‘I’ve been looking at dresses for the big day.’
‘Okay. That’s great.’
‘White, long ... sorry, I don’t want to bore you. I know how men are. I’ll ask mother, she’ll know if it’s the right choice. She has such amazing taste and style.’
‘I know she does.’
‘I’m so excited.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be perfect.’
‘Father has bought a brand new suit to give me away. It’s a little old-fashioned, but I don’t care, so long as he likes it.’
The charade was tearing me apart piece by ghastly piece, but I owed it to her—a penance for my imperfect past—pure and simple. I was a horrible person. If there was a hell, I’d burn for sure.
Pink and gold roses spilled over the white picket fence and butterflies flitted over the lavender bushes. Wearing a floral silk dress, Emma looked radiant sitting at the table under the green canopy of an old elm.
‘I watched our favorite film last night.’
‘Wuthering Heights?’
She grinned.
Again?
‘Are you happy, Emma?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said as she reached for my hand.
‘That’s great.’
A frown crossed her pale features. ‘You’re not planning on going away again?’
‘Of course not.’
She giggled. ‘It won’t be long. Soon we’ll be together forever.’
I smiled weakly but knew I was a gutless wonder treading water and soon I’d have to face the same decisions I’d avoided years earlier that had made me feel so inadequate and immature.
* * *
CHAPTER 15
Wicklow Weekend
When I woke the next morning my head throbbed and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as I remembered fragments of our conversation from last night. I could hear Kate rattling pans and brewing coffee in the kitchen outside my room. En
joying the soft warmth of the bed, I lay still until she ducked her head through the doorway of my room.
‘Good, you’re awake.’
I struggled to sit up. ‘Thanks. My head’s splitting.’
‘Here’s some coffee for the pain, but I’m guessing you won’t want the greasy bacon.’
Feeling better after finishing a cup of coffee, I ate scrambled eggs and toast. Kate seemed on a mission to help me, so we were soon on our way to Piermont House.
When I’d visited my mother at Piermont in those awful final weeks, the bus would drop me on the street outside and I’d walk the half mile to the entrance under a canopy of oak trees. Today Kate and I glided through the entrance gates like royalty, but I felt anxiety and dread as keenly as I had when my mother was a patient here.
It was a psychiatric hospital, and the inhabitants chilled me. Some patients wandered the front lawn like lost souls searching for who knew what? It made me intensely sad to think of Mom spending her last days here.
Once inside the front doors, I remembered how the blast of warmth offered comfort and false hope because soon enough you caught sight of someone talking to a wall or patients being guided, fed, calmed or pursued by staff in cobalt scrubs and white tennis shoes. My memories were raw.
The short brown-haired lady behind the front reception desk peered at me from behind a massive vase of roses. One of her green eyes warped and enlarged through the water-filled vase. I stepped to the right to avoid the optical illusion and was relieved her eyes were a standard pair. She was wearing a floral top instead of the cobalt issue, which along with the roses made her desk feel like a garden.
‘Can I help you, please?’ I think she’d said it a few times, so she probably assumed I was a new patient.
Kate bustled to the counter. ‘Hello, my friend here is looking to speak to someone about her mother.’
I wished she hadn’t spoken for me because I preferred to do things in my own time and my own way. Instead I felt like a kid being dragged to the counter.