Читать книгу The Styx - Patricia Holland - Страница 23

Sometimes the sea reminds me that I have no life. It tells me how perfect the world is. Perfectly calm turquoise sea. Perfectly blue cloudless sky. Perfectly perfect weekend. Inhabited by perfectly perfect peaceful lives living perfectly perfect existences. All perfect except mine. The windless air whips me in the face, slaps me until I’m senseless with loneliness; a lonely, wasted existence. Sometimes the sea is just too perfect to bear.

Two weeks after Martha’s art exhibition, on handover, my mother asked to see me on Mothers’ Day, the following Sunday. The court order said that this was allowed, but he’d forgotten, hadn’t factored in that he had to bring me into town the next weekend as well. My mother was never allowed to pick me up from Styx River homestead, my father had insisted in the custody hearing. “Too disruptive to the cattle station operation,” he’d said to the judge. The judge had nodded, knowingly nodded.

“Never to set foot on the place again,” my father had said to my mother.

My father said to my mother, “Get out of my face. No more playing this game. You’re only doing it to spite me. You know you’re making it harder on her. You’re pathetic. Insisting on carting her around from pillar to post. Insisting on ringing her, talking to a silent phone. How do you know she’s even there listening? You’re just so pathetic,” my father said to my mother.

“You are dead to me,” he said to my mother. “You are not going to benefit in any way from your life with me,” he said. Again.

“She’s a pain in the arse every time she comes back from you,” he said when my mother rang to confirm the Mothers’ Day access.

“She screams for hours every time. I’m so sick of it,” he said. “I’m so sick of the sight of you. What about my needs? You’re so selfish. You haven’t changed. It’s all about you. She doesn’t care who looks after her. I give her everything she needs.”

“I’m sick of all this messing around. It’s too disturbing, distressing,” my father said to my mother. “You’re not seeing her anymore. At all. Full stop. I will put a stop to this access nonsense,” he said.

My mother had thought she was on track for access to be reviewed. She was right.