Point made, Drury doesn’t look at me.
“I’m splitting the task force. DS Casey will continue to run the investigation into the double murder at the farmhouse. I’ll be in charge of the Natasha McBain investigation, but overseeing both.”
He rattles off names, assigning detectives their new roles.
“Let’s do this,” he says, turning and leaving quickly, only letting his mask slip when he reaches the corridor. I see the glaze of uncertainty dulling his eyes like Vaseline smeared on a lens.
Sometimes I wonder why detectives do this work. What pleasure is there in it? Even the satisfaction of solving a case just means another one is waiting. There is never a cessation of hostilities or a negotiated truce, never ultimate victory.
Eventually, the eternal nature of the struggle wears them down—the circle of cause and effect, crime and punishment, guilt and innocence, victims and perpetrators. You don’t stop feeling—you just wish you could.
I was born on Mother’s Day and
Mum used to say I was the best Mother’s Day present in the world. She said things like that when other people could hear her, but never when it was just me listening.
We didn’t talk. We competed. We argued. We loved each other. But we hated each other too.
My mother was the world champion at making smiley comments about my hair or my weight or my bra size, slicing and dicing my self-confidence. And she was never happier than when dancing through the tulip fields of the bleeding obvious.
Dad would tell me not to get so bent out of shape, but I was born bent out of shape. I came into the world backwards in a breech birth. Whales breach and so do babies.
Mum is taller than my dad but really skinny. She has these amazing green eyes and eyelashes that look like they’re false but they’re not.
People say she’s beautiful and talk about Dad “punching above his weight” when he married her, but I think he could have done much better. He could have married someone who didn’t care so much about money and what other people thought.
My dad is the nicest person you’ll ever meet. Whenever he’s disappointed in me he has this way of sagging and letting out a long sigh, as if someone has pulled out his plug and he’s crumpling like a bouncy castle at the end of a party. He would die of disappointment rather than raise a finger against me.
Mum used to complain when he spoiled me and Dad always agreed with her before winking at me.
My last birthday at home was cancelled because Mum said I didn’t deserve a party or presents because of my ingratitude and my filthy language, particularly the word “fuck.” Everything was fucking this and fucking that; fucking unfair and fucking unbelievable and you have to be fucking kidding me.
That’s one of the reasons I wanted to run away, but it was just talk, you know. I wasn’t really serious. Kids always say things they don’t mean.
It’s morning. I stand on the bench and see if the sun is shining or if it has snowed overnight. No snow. No sunshine. Rain today. It’s colder than yesterday.
Standing here, I can almost feel the weight of Tash kneeling on my shoulders and then standing, as she squeezed through that narrow gap. I was afraid that she’d get stuck and I wouldn’t be able to pull her back inside. She’d be like Winnie the Pooh in that story where he eats too much honey and gets stuck in Rabbit’s front door.
I wet my finger and hold it against the gap, feeling the breeze on my skin. Then I draw a heart in the condensation on the inside of the window. Why do people always draw hearts?
It’s been four days since Tash left. That might not seem to be very long after three years, but some days are longer than others. Some days are longer than years.
Only one of us could escape because we couldn’t both climb that high. One of us had to lift the other. Tash was smaller. She’d lost so much weight.
Ever since George made her bleed, Tash had been acting differently. I don’t know if she tried to stab him with the screwdriver. She wouldn’t talk to me. Instead, she scratched at her wrists, biting her nails, sleeping all the time… I tried to talk to her… to make her eat, but she didn’t even have the energy to argue with me.
“You’re scaring me,” I said, rocking her in my arms. “Please come back.”
“We’re going to die,” she whispered.
I knew she was right. It was like a message from God. A pretty disappointing message, but I didn’t blame him. That’s what everything comes down to—dying. Well, not literally everything, but most things.
Tash didn’t seem scared any more. Perhaps knowing you want to die makes you less scared. Sometimes there’s no rock so heavy or dark or hopeless that people won’t crawl under it.