Читать книгу The Secret: The brand new thriller from the bestselling author of The Teacher - Katerina Diamond, Katerina Diamond - Страница 12

I’m trying really hard to concentrate on the face in the wallpaper. When I stare at it long enough I see the face of a grumpy old man. He is staring at me, frowning. The pattern is really girly but it’s always the old man I see. Sometimes I pretend the old man is God and I pray to him. I say pray, but really I just give him a list of questions and wait for his expression to change. Naturally his expression never changes and my questions remain unanswered, loitering in my head.

This is my sister’s room but she’s not here any more. My mum keeps it the same in case she comes back, but she’s not coming back. You don’t come back from there. I don’t know if I believe in heaven, really, or hell for that matter. I like to pretend heaven is real though, and that she is there, stuffing her face with ice creams and chocolates. Pistachio ice cream was her favourite, sometimes Baba would buy a whole big tub of it, just for her.

Since my sister died, my mum cries a lot. Understandable, I suppose, but when I walk into the room she dries her eyes and smiles at me, as if her smile could disguise the despair. I may be young but I’m not stupid. She doesn’t talk about my sister and we aren’t meant to either, but I do. I come here and talk to God about her.

My mum’s cooking lamb for dinner; she must have upset Dad in some way because lamb is usually reserved for Sundays. Today is Tuesday. In four days I’m going to be eleven years old, so maybe this is an early birthday dinner. My stomach is rumbling. I can feel the hollow pit; I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday. I should go back to my room before I get caught in here. I’m not supposed to be here, if my father catches me I will likely have to do without dinner. On an ordinary day I might risk it, because I like being in this room more than the food my mum usually prepares. The smell of that lamb though – it’s made my mouth water.

Back in my own room, I feel more alone and the smell of the food isn’t nearly as strong as it was in my sister’s room, which is just a few steps down from the kitchen. I can’t feel my sister in here. I pick up the book that sits by my bed. It’s my father’s favourite book so I’ve been instructed to read it. Apparently it will prepare me for when I am older. It’s important to him that I am not weak. Every day he gives me a passage to learn and I must recite it for him before dinner, before I’m allowed to eat. Yesterday I wasn’t in the mood but the smell of the lamb has made me not want to take another stand. My father likes it when I stand up to him, to a point. I see his lips curl upwards when he thinks I am not looking, so sometimes even if I’m starving I make the sacrifice in order to make him like me. I like it when he likes me.

At dinner, I recite the passage he has asked me to remember. He seems disappointed that I couldn’t hold out even longer, he’s disappointed that I learned the words. It seems that no matter what I do I am the disappointment. Some days I think it is all about the words I’m asked to remember, some days I think he wants me to defy him and other days I think he wants me to starve to death. I gave up trying to figure my father out a long time ago. Soon he will think of an alternative punishment for learning the words, as I seem to have got better at memorising them. I guess that comes with getting older. He can’t trick me any more. I wonder what I will have to do next.

My mother is silent throughout dinner; she is often silent. Her face has changed since my sister died, I don’t know whether it’s just because she has cried so much that she has changed her face forever. She is thin, too; sometimes she’s not allowed to eat either.

The lamb is delicious and I want more as soon as I’m finished. When I am older I want to be a chef so that I can cook for myself. My father doesn’t think there is any money in that profession, though; he wants me to be a businessman. I never really understood the term ‘businessman’ – surely any work is business and so anyone with a job is also a businessman. I don’t really understand a lot of things like that. My father is a businessman, he wears a suit and he makes money. Sometimes I will open a drawer at home and there will be a big bundle of notes held together with an elastic band. I once found twenty thousand pounds in the bottom of my parents’ wardrobe. My father doesn’t talk about his business much in front of my mother; occasionally he might say he has a good or a bad day but never any more detail than that. He has promised me that when I am older he will take me to work with him and I can see how to earn good money, because nobody wants to be poor.

My dad usually goes out again after dinner. Sometimes when he comes home he smells funny. I don’t know what the smell is exactly but it’s a mixture of smoke and whisky. I don’t know how people can drink whisky; I think it tastes horrible. One time my father left the drinks cupboard open, he has a lot of whisky from all over the world. He is a collector of whiskies, he told me that one of his bottles of whisky cost as much as our house. He wouldn’t tell me which one though. I look through the collection and try to figure out which one it might be, but they all look the same, and when I unscrew the cap and sniff, none of them smell very nice. I took a few swigs though and it was like that horrible washing-up-liquid taste, like your mouth just wants it gone. It burned my throat, too.

After dinner I make a start on my next passage in my room. I tend to go up as soon as possible in case my parents argue, because they like to bounce insults off me: your mother wraps you up in cotton wool, how will you ever become a man? If I’m not there the arguments are usually over much faster. If they’re not arguing about each other’s shortcomings then they’re arguing about my sister and whose fault it was that she died. The general consensus in my family is that it was my fault.

Before I have read through the passage even once, my bedroom door opens and my father’s head appears. He tells me to get my shoes on and go with him. I am excited and nervous. Sometimes when my father comes home from his night-time expeditions his knuckles are bloodied. I’ve seen him hit my mother with some force before, but never enough to make his own hands bleed. So it must be from something else.

In the car we don’t talk. He puts loud music on. We pull up to a restaurant of some kind but when we get out of the car we don’t go inside, we go through an alley down the side of it instead, and into a house that’s nestled behind it. My father has the keys. The house is smoky and smells strange. There are two women whose faces instantly change when my father enters the room; they look scared and they sit up straight. I feel somewhat better now that I know it’s not just at home that my father makes people uncomfortable. There are lots of weird things on the coffee table. Strange-shaped jars and containers, white powder, bags of pills and green leafy stuff and razor blades strewn about.

Mindy is the blonde girl’s name. She has black smudges under her eyes, she doesn’t look very clean and her hair is dark in places where it’s greasy. She has bruises on her legs although she doesn’t seem to notice them. I see her eyes travel to my dad’s hands and she relaxes when she sees they are empty. The other girl is called Margot. Margot seems like a posh girl’s name, or I always thought it was, it reminds me of that old TV show with the lady who wears the long wafty dresses. Margot doesn’t look anything like that though, she has blue hair and so much eye make-up I can barely tell what colour her eyes are. Margot’s head is shaved up one side and she has a tattoo on her neck. It’s a word, but I can’t read it.

The girls refer to my dad as ‘Daddy’, which is confusing to me because they obviously aren’t related to us in any way. Margot jumps up and comes over to my dad, she kisses him on the lips but he pulls away and pushes her hard, so that she knocks into the table and some of the beer falls to the ground. Mindy rushes to pick it up. It occurs to me that Mindy is also a name from an old TV show my dad likes to watch sometimes. I wonder what the girls’ real names are.

Dad tells me to sit on the sofa while he does some work and he tells Mindy to look after me. He takes Margot by the wrist. I can see he’s grabbing her hard but she doesn’t pull away or cry or anything, she just follows as he leads her out of the room. Mindy puts the television on a music channel; it’s all rap music which I don’t really like. She takes the bag of green leafy stuff and rolls it into a cigarette. I watch as she lights it and draws in, sucking hard, so that almost half burns away before she pulls it from between her lips. She exhales straight into my face. The smoke smells strong and musky, not like my dad’s cigarettes. Her lips are cracked and sore looking but she gives me a nervous smile. She looks so much prettier with it. Her hand is on my leg and I act as though it were not my leg at all, even as she circles her fingers around my knee. I watch the TV instead.

By the time my dad comes back, my head hurts a bit, not like a headache, like a foggy soup inside my mind. Margot is nowhere to be seen and Mindy looks somewhat panicked for a moment until music starts upstairs, obviously reassuring her that Margot is OK. I know that feeling; sometimes my dad goes into a room with someone and they don’t come back out. I’ve waited outside my mother’s room for hours before, waiting to see if she reappears. She always does.

My dad speaks to Mindy in whispers and I can see her biting her lip, trying to look pretty but she looks so tired and scared. I didn’t notice it before but now I can see that she’s shaking, a barely noticeable shudder every time my father reaches for her. She’s afraid to flinch but her body desperately wants to. She obviously knows the penalty well. I can hear her making quiet excuses as her breathing grows shallow. She’s telling my dad that I’m only a kid and she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do what? Apparently I have to grow up some time and she should do what she’s told. I still feel woozy and guilty for not helping Mindy. My dad is going to hit her, we all know it and so there is nothing more to say. I just sit and watch the spectacle.

As expected, Dad grabs a fistful of Mindy’s hair and smashes her face into the wall. Blood spurts from her nose but she barely whimpers. To my surprise, my father calls me over and pushes Mindy’s face towards mine. She kisses me gently on the lips and I can taste the metal in her blood as it drips from her nose. She also tastes a bit like liquorice, which I don’t really like. My father lets go of Mindy and she takes my hand. My father tells me he will be back for me in a little while and then Mindy leads me upstairs to her bedroom.

Later, as we drive home, I go over in my mind the passage I am to recite for my father tomorrow. The words take on a new significance.

Just as I have come from afar, creating pain for many

men and women across the good green earth,

so let his name be Odysseus …

the Son of Pain, a name he’ll earn in full.