Читать книгу The Styx - Patricia Holland - Страница 13

“What a good man looking after that poor little creature,” they all say. “He is so unselfish, doesn’t put her in a home. He’s devoted to her.”

My father loved this idea of himself. He’d cultivated it for so long that I think he actually believed it. It had grown onto his skin, only flaking off in the privacy of his own home. Just for me.

My mother became a burden. At first it was okay, more than okay. It was only shortly before the cachet of mixed-marriage days. He was the centre of everyone’s gossip, and he glowed. In those early days, she was who he thought she should be. Grateful, he thought she should be, and I think he believed she was. At the start.

It was good then, up until she left, up until I was five and a half. She made pancakes for breakfast every Sunday. And I had a birthday party every year; so did he. Even though I didn’t have any friends, she’d find some. She made it such an occasion to dress up—she always made me a new dress—and bring presents and have fun, around me, in the name of me. She’d make a special cake and he’d help me blow out the candles. And she’d take photos—some of him and me, mostly just of me. This happened every year she was here. But then, when she strayed from his agenda and developed ideas and wants and loves, he really had no option but to lose her. And she would have to suffer because of it. Never to benefit from her life with him, he told her. And showed her.