The game of Minecraft had finished and Helena had wandered off into Sky’s room, and was asleep on his bed. I sat down in the armchair opposite Sky, who was watching ‘Top Gear’, although I had no interest in fast cars. I closed my eyes. ‘Wow, look at that!’ Sky kept saying, and I had to keep opening them again.
I pulled out my phone and checked my emails. There was one from Juliana and it was flagged as important. In spite of my resolve to have a break from work, I opened it.
“Hi Lizzie, You’re in London this week, is that right?” it read. “We’ve been approached by a new client, a British publisher. They’ve a French author, a doctor who works at a top British hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. It’s near Euston. He’s writing a book, ‘A History of Neuroradiology’ and his publisher has already secured the rights to translate it into English. They’re keen for you to talk to him and hopefully to get it underway as soon as possible. It’s a big project, and there may well be more to come in the way of articles and journals. Are you interested? He’s quite prolific, by all accounts. He could keep you busy for a while.”
I clicked on the reply button and responded immediately. “I’m very interested. What’s the address?”
Sky burst out laughing and I glanced over at him, then at the telly, where Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond were busy catapulting a caravan into a quarry.
“Why are they doing that?” I asked.
Sky laughed again. “Because they’re slow. Caravans. These guys hate anything that slows them down on the roads. They just buy these old caravans and then blow them up or bash them together. They got them hanging from a crane, once, like a giant executive toy.”
“That’s crazy. I like caravans.”
Sky turned and laughed at the look on my face. “It’s just for fun,” he said.
Boys, I thought.
Sky turned back to the telly and I took a sneaky peek at him as he lay draped along the full length of the sofa. His feet were bare and hung over the edge, near to where I was sitting. I could see that his t-shirt had ridden up a little and his tanned stomach was showing above the waistline of his jeans. I averted my eyes again as he looked over.
“You okay?” he asked. “Want a beer or something?”
I nodded. “Yeah. That would be nice.”
He jumped up from the sofa and went into the kitchen, returning a minute later with two cold bottles of Budweiser.
My phone email alert pinged and I quickly opened it. “Great Ormond Street,” Juliana’s email read. ”It’s a couple of minutes away from Russell Square. Okay if I set something up for Monday?”
”Yes,” I replied. “That’s perfect.” Things had been fairly quiet on the work front recently, and I relished the idea of a big project to get stuck into. It was exciting to know, too, that there may be more to come. I was still in negotiations with Helena over the exact amount that I’d contribute to the LSBU fund, but one way or another, she’d be tapping me for money, and I needed to earn more than I was getting right now.
I took a swig of my beer and looked over at Sky, who was draped back over the sofa, his long legs hanging over the arm again. I wondered whether I should talk to him about his dad.
In spite of the good news on the work front, I was feeling very churned up inside after the conversation with Catherine. Whilst she accepted that I had been right all along about Martin’s bullying and violent behaviour, she still believed that I’d betrayed her by sleeping with Martin. I couldn’t understand why. Was it really to do with the physical side of their relationship? That she’d been sleeping for years with ‘a sex offender’ as she put it? Was she embarrassed about that? Would accepting my version of what happened put some kind of negative spin on the intimate moments they’d shared, or would it maybe make her complicit in his crime against me? Maybe she just didn’t want to admit quite how wrong she’d been about him, and how badly she’d let me down when I’d begged her to believe me, and asked her not to end our friendship without hearing my side of things. Or maybe he’d just done such a good job of convincing her that I was the one to blame in what had happened, that his story had stuck, and it was hard for her to believe anything else after all this time.
Whatever the reason, I was hurt and angry that we were both still stuck in his web of lies. But I was worried, too, that Sky might not talk to Catherine about everything, the way that she assumed.
I looked up at Sky again. I couldn’t help myself. When might I get an opportunity like this again, to talk to him on his own?
“Sky?”
He looked up from the telly.
“Do you ever hear from him? Your dad?”
There. I’d said it. It was a little intrusive, I imagined. I maybe ought to have got to know him a little better first. But Sky, surprisingly, sat up and switched off the telly. I remembered Helena saying that he liked to talk.
“Not very often. Christmas. Birthdays. I get an email. That’s if he remembers,” he said. “I email him back from time to time.”
I froze. This wasn’t what I’d expected or wanted to hear. I looked up at him. “So, you are in touch, then?”
Sky shrugged. “Barely. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years.”
“A couple of years? So, not that long ago?”
Sky shrugged. “It depends on your definition of ‘not long ago’. A couple of years seems quite a long time ago to me.” He looked upset for a moment, but then he smiled. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t know about Helena.” He tapped his nose. “Mum’s the word.”
I put my fingers together as if I was praying, and put them over my nose. I realised that I was hyperventilating slightly and took a few deep breaths into my closed palms.
“Okay,” Sky continued. “So that wasn’t funny. Seriously, though. I haven’t told him. Helena asked me not to.”
“She did?”
Sky nodded and swung his legs up over the arm of the sofa again. “I’m not sure why, though.” He took a swig of his beer. “He’s a rubbish dad, but he’s harmless enough.”
“Harmless?” I repeated. My phone email alert pinged again, but I ignored it.
“So, what was the deal with you and him, then?” Sky asked.
I thought about that for a moment. “There wasn’t any deal. He was with your mother.”
“And? How did you end up getting it on with him, then?”
I looked at him. “I’m sure Helena’s told you.”
Sky shrugged. “She said he took advantage of you. When you’d had a bit to drink.”
“It was a bit more than that.” I looked at him carefully. I couldn’t help but see Martin in front of me. Was Sky the enemy? Did he resent me, deep down, behind those smiling eyes? “He raped me,” I said. Catherine wouldn’t like that, me telling her son that, but it was the truth.
“Oh,” said Sky. “That. Yeah. Only my mum said that you were, you know...”
“No? What?”
“A bit flirty with him. A bit of a tease.”
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Right.”
“I’m just saying. Weren’t you?”
“No,” I said, anger rising inside me. “I wasn’t. He was the flirt. He was the one chasing me. I didn’t want anything to do with him. I was only nice to him for your mother’s sake.”
Sky was silent a moment. This was his dad. He still had feelings for him. He was going to defend him now, just as Catherine had done. I watched him closely as he shook his long hair back and tied it up in a man scrunchy.
“Well, maybe he read it differently. Maybe he got signals from you when you were ‘nice’ to him.” Sky made air quotes around the word ‘nice’ and it was more than I could take.
“You want to know why I left the country and didn’t tell him about Helena?” I asked him, angrily. “Because he’s crazy. That’s why. If he thinks that it’s okay to force himself on every woman that’s nice to him, then...”
“But he didn’t force himself, did he? You let him into your flat...”
“My friend Shelley let him in,” I interrupted.
“...and then you told everyone to go home.”
“That’s not true!” I yelled. “This has obviously come from your father, one way or another, but Shelley will tell you – it’s not true.” Would she? I hadn’t seen Shelley for eighteen years, although she was still in touch with Zara, as far as I knew. I looked him in the eye. “Is this what you’ve been telling Helena? Is this what you’ve been filling her head with? You weren’t there! You weren’t even born!”
Helena appeared in the doorway, rubbing her eyes. “What’s going on?”
Catherine appeared behind her, wrapped in a bathrobe.
“Helena...” I began.
“Mum, why are you shouting at Sky?”
I looked at Sky. “It’s nothing.”
Sky shrugged. “It’s nothing,” he agreed.
I got up and walked out of the room. Helena followed me.
“Can you get my suitcase?” I asked her.
“Why? Where are you going?”
“There’s not enough room here for us all,” I said. “I’m going to stay at Zara’s. It’s time I was going, if I’m going.”
“Mum! We said we would share Sky’s room. What’s happened between you? What’s going on?”
I sighed and shook my head. My stomach was churning and I felt as though I was going to be sick. The intimate details of my personal life, of the horrible, twisted thing that Martin had done to me, appeared to be public knowledge and public property, and yet nobody would hear my side. I was overwhelmed with shame, anger, humiliation. I needed to get out of this house.
I needed to be with Zara.
“I’m sorry, love. But I’ve got to go.” I bent to pick up my suitcase, my hand visibly shaking as I grabbed it. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
Helena followed me back through the living room, past Catherine and Sky, who were sitting, silently, on the sofa.
I looked at Catherine. “Thank you,” I said. “For the tea. It was good to see you again.”
Catherine nodded and said, “You too. Do you want me to call you a...?”
“No.” I shook my head. I couldn’t stay in the flat any longer. I needed fresh air. It felt as though I’d been suffocating.
I stepped down on to the pavement and looked up at Helena, who was standing in the open doorway, looking hurt and confused.
“I’ll speak to you tomorrow,” I repeated to her, my voice sounding thin and reedy in the empty street.
I turned and walked down the road, my suitcase trundling along behind me.