Читать книгу How to Make a Heart Sick - Heather Mac - Страница 2

I was just drifting off to sleep when Uncle John’s voice boomed out, post-hearing-aid loud.

‘There’s something wrong with that girl. I don’t trust her.’

‘Shh, don’t shout!’

‘What?’

‘I said don’t shout, she’ll hear you.’

‘I don’t trust her. A dark horse, shifty, up to something. Useless. What do you think she wants from us?’

‘I don’t know.’

Nineteen years old, and I may as well have been eleven again. All the feelings I’d had for them ‘back then’ come flooding over me like a too-hot shower. That visit, that year.

‘IF YOU”RE GOING TO COME THEN COME!’ I raged at the wolf-like memories, not because I was tougher then them, but because I’d already survived them for years, sort of. In shredding me to pieces they were undeniably real. Undeniable. Real.

They’d collected me from the bus station in Inverness earlier that day, behaving like polite strangers. They told me they’d buffed the car and set the formal dining table in my honor. By the looks they gave my jeans and baggy jumper, my ginger curls disheveled from the overnight train trip up from London and the backpack slung over my shoulder, I was obviously a bit of a disappointment, their efforts perhaps judged to have been wasted.

Aunt Annabelle chattered all the way from Inverness to Dingwall, going into detail about this and that, as if she was terrified to give anyone else space to speak for fear of what might be said.

In their cramped but perfectly organised house I tried to smile confidently over a dinner of steak pie and potatoes, yogurt pudding with blackberries, and a pot of tea. ‘Yes, it’s delicious… No, no butter on the potatoes, thank you; but milk in my tea, yes, I do take milk.’

Uncle John, who was mostly silent except for a low-pitched humming between bites, was obviously chewing over more than just his food, because out of the blue he tossed a nail-bomb of words at me: ‘So, the old man finally gave up the ghost then, aye—left you quite a bit of dosh, I don’t mind guessing?’

I’d always been told that speaking about money was a no-no, especially other people’s money. I blushed. ‘Yes, some, a little; well, more than a little, but I’ll only get it later, when I’m older.’

‘What are you doing with yourself, then? Got any kind of education?’

His tone sounded so accusing that I immediately felt hot with guilt. ‘No; I quit Uni. it was the wrong course for me.’

‘Have you a job, then?’

‘Not really—a bit of au-pair work. The family don’t need me over Christmas, so I thought it might be nice to spend time with family of my own—you know, my first Christmas alone and all.’

He wiped his mouth with a large napkin, squeezed the life out of it and tossed it onto his plate. ‘So, you plan to freewheel around till the money’s available, then live like lady muck, without a thought about how hard he had to work to get that money in the first place, aye?’

I couldn’t lift my eyes from my plate, much less think of an answer, so I made sure my mouth was busy chewing while he went on about responsibility and hard work being the keys to a decent life, but it had become impossible to swallow my food without my old friend the gagging reflex kicking in. There was no grace to be found in either of them, no place for me to be anything other than what they had already decided I was. It didn’t take more than a seconds worth of glance for their eyes to tell me that. ‘I need to stretch my legs. Please excuse me.’

The look on my aunt’s face warned me that I was breaking the ‘rules’ and exhibiting very bad manners by abandoning their dinner and not helping to clear up after. But I wasn’t in the mood for either remorse or reconciliation as I stole a few moments outside, stamping snow off my boots and slapping it off my jumper and jeans, attempting to quash the overwhelming sense of shame and smallness being in their presence made me feel, and anger and rage for making myself so vulnerable. Eventually I simply had to escape from the cold, back into the fettering air I’d temporarily managed to flee.

Slinking past the lounge where they now both sat bolt upright watching the late news I hid myself in the dusky pink and unnaturally tidy guestroom that smelled of mothballs and electric-blanket-baked bed. I’ve made a terrible first impression, no, they never liked me anyway…Why did I come, humiliate myself like this? The same words rolled through my mind on constant replay until the aching tightness in my forehead warned me to turn my thoughts outward, to focus on the warmth, the smells, on assuring myself I’d be OK.

That’s when Uncle Johns voice, the wolves charging in its wake, had boomed through the walls, the shut door and torn into my heart. I’m shifty. I’m useless. They still think I’m a liar. Ice-cold, razor-sharp gnawing and gnashing. Come on then, come on, why don’t you just finish me off for once?!