Liarholic Page 9

  In the end, Rebecca leaves, only one tiny corner of the cupcake gone. I hear her sigh as she closes my door.

  I go over the things I said to Daisy in the bathroom, how it mirrored the very same things Shepherd repeats to me. I’ve been stalling. I know that. For three years, I’ve refused to talk about Elizabeth, or even think about her. I’ve never allowed Dad’s face to appear in my mind’s eye, as if I can shut away all that happened.

  Since I was told she’d died, though, I can’t shut away Mum. She’s with me, in my deep-set eyes, my pale skin. The echoes of her are in the pathetic beat of my heart, the faint pain as it struggles to keep me ticking away when my soul is dead.

  When Shepherd comes for me, I need to be ready.

  Remember to forget, Elizabeth said.

  I always did.

  But my memories are unravelling like a thread being pulled, everything coming apart since Shepherd came back. It’s all his fault. He’s unlocked something.

  And now, I can’t remember to forget.

  I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. My beautiful, broken sister.

  14

  ME

  KNOCK AT THE DOOR. I open it.

  What the hell?

  It’s the skinny kid who lives in Swan Lake. I think his mum is the mouse-like girl with the funny red hat.

  I look down at the boy, his mum nowhere in sight.

  ‘What’d you want, kid?’

  ‘Er, hi. I’m Max Nicholas Reece and I live with my mummy here. She wants me to ask you if you can help us fill out this form . . . Please.’

  He hands me the forms. I scan my eyes briefly over them. It’s something to do with childcare, I think.

  I glance back at the kid. ‘Why can’t your mum do it?’

  ‘She can’t read and write much.’

  ‘I don’t know, kid, maybe one of the other staff members. Anyone but me.’

  ‘They make me eat Brussels sprouts soup.’

  I lift my brow. ‘Amy Earhart. Girl who lives in room 4.’

  ‘I know who Amy is. But she isn’t in there.’

  The kid's soft blue eyes meet my hard ones, and I think maybe I can put enough glare in to intimidate the kid into leaving now. I should tell him to do one and leave me the hell alone. But when I look at him, look at his big blue eyes and his floppy brown hair, he reminds me of me when I was a kid.

  Fucking desperate for love.

  ‘Come in, kid.’

  I get him a glass of apple juice and some chocolate biscuits from the cupboard. We sit at the table.

  He sniffs. ‘You’ve been smoking?’

  ‘Don’t smoke, kid.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  I stare at him. ‘I meant you.’

  He grins. ‘I knew that.’

  I get a pen from the drawer and start helping him fill in the forms.

  ‘Name?’ I say.

  ‘My name’s Max.’

  ‘How old are you, Max?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘And is Max Nicholas Reece your full name?’

  ‘Uh-ah. I’m Maximus Nicholas Reece.’

  I half smile. ‘And you’re a boy, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  We exchange a smile.

  Even though I’ve attempted to create some distance between us, the kid wanders after me like the lost lamb he is and plunks down in the chair next to me.

  ‘Can I sit with you while we do the forms?’

  I nod at him. ‘Nationality?’ I say. Max looks confused. ‘Like where were you born? England?’

  I show him the list to choose from.

  ‘Um . . . I’m white British,’ Max says pointing, ‘even though British isn’t a race but the human race is. Mummy and me are not religious or anything. Oh, my first language is English so I don’t need an interpreter.’

  The kid is nuts. Loves going on a tangent.

  ‘Slow down, kid,’ I chuckle.

  He’s reading from the form, I guess, checking off the categories, proud to show how grown-up he is — thinks he is.

  ‘For my orientation you can put straight.’

  The kid’s too much.

  ‘That’s for older children, mate.’

  ‘But can’t you just put straight, mate?’

  ‘Alright, Max. Straight. Right, name of your father.’

  That question crushes him into silence.

  ‘What’s wrong, mate?’

  He’s gone pale.

  I tell him, ‘Hey. Kid. I don’t know who my father is.’

  He looks up at me. ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No. Could be anyone. Could be Postman Pat for all I know.’

  He laughs at that but then his face crumples into a frown. ‘My daddy is dead . . . ’

  Shit.

  ‘Sorry, kid.’

  ‘Mummy said he died because the drugs didn’t work.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Yeah . . . I found him. He was naked and his willy looked all weird. It was pointing up . . . Tarek said that’s what adults call a boner. Is that right?’

  The hell am I supposed to say to all of that?

  I feel sorry for the kid. Sounds like his dad died from a drug overdose.

  ‘Kid, that can’t have been easy for you.’

  Then Max gets serious again. He makes himself taller and stiffer. He’s years above his age. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

  ‘Mummy says you’re a doctor who fixes people’s heads.’

  ‘Yeah . . . ’

  ‘What’s wrong with their heads? Are they shaped funny?’

  I laugh. ‘Dark stuff, kid.’

  ‘What dark stuff?’

  ‘Not all parents love their children the way your mum loves you, Max. Never forget that, kid.’

  15

  ME

  An intense vision slams into my head while I ride my sports bike on the road in The Valley.

  Four walls.

  Closing in . . .

  Rain thunders down, blurring my sight. I manage to navigate the bike to the side of the road. I coast to a stop and narrowly miss a parked car. I lift off my helmet, I need fresh air. My breaths feel razor-sharp. A man exits the car I nearly crashed into.

  ‘You okay?’ he says. ‘I’m a paramedic. You need help?’

  I know what happened. After years of suffering, I know the signs. A pain at the base of my skull. A rapid heart rate. And a fatigue, a deep fatigue that creeps into my bones and makes me feel like sleep’s been the enemy for too many goddamn years.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine, mate. Just leave me be,’ I hiss. I don’t mean to bite. It’s second nature now. It’s how I deal.

  He holds his hands up in supplication, says he’s only trying to help. Yeah, I think, people have tried to help for years. But a damned soul is damned for eternity, and there is no saving me.

  I look beyond the off-duty paramedic. Moving cars, falling rain. Shivers strike my spine as the rain pelts against my face.

  I live in a world of hailstorms and flying crickets. Not sunshine and butterflies.

  ‘Listen, just come and take a seat in my car,’ he says.

  ‘I’m fine. Just leave it,’ I warn. I shove him away.

  ‘If it’s seizures, you need to see a doctor. You might not want to drive.’

  I don’t have time to discuss my shit and get therapy on the side of the road. When I reach hold of the handlebars, I notice how much my hands are trembling. Pulling my bike back into traffic, I mutter to myself, ‘I’m fine. I’m always fine.’

  But I don’t believe a word of it. Time’s a healer and all, is bullshit. I still haven’t been able to convince myself I’m okay. That I’ve moved on and slipped free of the past.

  I ride all the way back to Swan Lake. There isn’t any razor wire surrounding it, but it still looks like a prison. Reminds me of Nazareth.

  I give myself a mental shakedown. I need to collect my thoughts whole and get ready to face Diana. I can’t go inside rattled to the bone.

  I park up and c
urse when I glance at my watch. I’m running late. I go down the long corridor that leads into the back of Magpie Ward. The thick odour of disinfectant barely covers the rot and decay underneath. I find the dayroom where the art show is scheduled to take place.

  First thing I see is sunshine and gemstones.

  Amy is sitting near the front of the room. I spot Diana sitting close by in a plastic chair. I slip in quietly. When I settle in the seat next to Diana, I don’t receive so much as a glance.

  Today, Shepherd Lawson doesn’t exist.

  The art therapist, Pandora, smiles and points to the paintings.

  ‘And now,’ Pandora says, ‘we have a painting by our very own Diana Dunn.’ She nods toward Diana who smiles uncertainly, like somebody made a joke in another language. ‘Isn't this wonderful work?’

  The painting is crude, black paint in thick strokes on white paper. It shows a house, child-like. A square with a pointed roof and two windows, a squiggle of smoke curling from its chimney. There’re trees around the house, straight lines for trunks and swirling, ragged-looking leaves.

  I feel my heart stab in my chest. Diana, an adult human being, reduced to being praised for producing something a six-year-old child could do. They said it could help her brain, so I gave the go ahead.

  ‘Diana?’ Pandora says. ‘Do you have anything to say about this?’

  Diana doesn’t speak. She’s tuned us all out, gone to that faraway place. But then she clears her throat, sits up a little straighter.

  ‘That's my boyfriend’s house,’ Diana says, and looks over as if seeing me for the first time. ‘Peter,’ she says. ‘That's my boyfriend. That's Peter. He lives in the house.’

  Diana was sweet sixteen and Peter was the love of her life. A year later, he was killed in a road accident.

  ‘We're so glad Peter could come and join us,’ Pandora says.

  She knows full well I’m not Diana’s boyfriend. The only mother figure I had as a kid was her — hell, parent. Now I’m losing her. Now it feels like I’m slowly becoming nothing to her. The pain of it could kill me.

  My mind feels like a black crucifix. I feel the eyes of the entire room on me. Everyone expects the dutiful ‘son’ to smile and nod and go along with this charade. But for some reason, I won’t. I can’t let her go yet.

  I'm not her fucking boyfriend.

  I’m the unwanted child she took care of, as much as she could.

  ‘No, Diana,’ I say. ‘I'm Shepherd. The baby in the basket, remember?’

  ‘Peter,’ Diana says. The name comes out of her mouth like an incantation, a word of protection. She repeats it. ‘Peter.’

  ‘No, Diana. Shepherd. Peter died. Remember?’

  The room falls into mint silence. I catch Amy’s eyes, swirls of green pity. It makes the walls close in on me. Pandora takes a step forward. The staff don’t like the disruption I’ve caused at Swan Lake. Don’t like me.

  Diana keeps staring at me, certainty etched on her face. ‘You're Peter, I know. I know the love of my life.’

  ‘Well,’ Pandora says, ‘I'm sure you and Peter look a lot alike.’

  ‘We don't,’ I say. I take Diana’s hand. ‘Diana, I know you know who I am. I know you can remember —’

  ‘These matters are often best discussed in therapy,’ Pandora says. She reasserts her control by taking Diana’s painting down and moving on. ‘I see we have something by Annabeth, and it looks like a watercolour.’

  I grip tight to Diana’s hand. I stare into her eyes, look for something, some life, some spark of recognition.

  ‘Diana, do you know what I'm saying to you?’ I say.

  Diana tugs her hand back. And in the same motion slaps me across the face. ‘You're Peter. You liar. You're Peter. You're Peter. You wretched man!’

  Diana screams the words over and over. A staff member grabs Diana, and it’s all I can do not to hand his arse to him for touching her. Pandora stares at me as if I’m the worst man who’s ever walked the earth.

  I rub my cheek, feel the raw sting of Diana’s hand, and decide if that's what Pandora really thinks, if that’s what the world thinks, if that’s what Amy thinks, then there’s no argument I can offer in my own defence.

  Because I am.

  As a child, I saw ugly staring back in the mirror. I despised myself.

  Nothing’s changed.

  I barrel out of the dayroom. I need fresh fucking air. I hear Amy call out my name behind me. But I steam ahead. I barge out through the side door that leads to the rose garden, and into the harsh light of the sun. Amy follows me out.

  ‘Shepherd, are you okay?’

  In this moment, I can’t face Amy.

  Her and her pity.

  ‘Go away, Amy.’

  With her watching, I’m scum.

  I struggle to pull myself together, to close the raw place in me that’s open.

  ‘Unless, you want to fuck?’ Every inch of me is venom.

  ‘Don’t, Shepherd. Don’t do that.’ She looks up at me. ‘I know you love Diana. And I remember how much she meant to you.’

  ‘Why’re you telling me this?’

  ‘Diana, she still loves you.’ Her one hand is holding her pen. ‘I know what you’re going through can’t be easy . . . with your mother.’

  To Amy, her ears and nervous hands, I say, ‘You had no fucking right to eavesdrop on private conversation.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to overhear, Shepherd. I’m sorry. But it’s great you know who your mother was. I hope you find your father, too. No matter what happens . . . I mean that.’

  Amy looks at me. Again with those fucking sad eyes.

  ‘Stay out of my business.’

  She flinches.

  Again, those eyes.

  I stop exploring those little green planets, reflecting my pain.

  A sad smile from Amy. ‘It must’ve been hard growing up in the children’s home.’

  I smile at that, but inside my head, a voice hisses, This girl has no fucking idea.

  I cross my arms, remember the time Mr Finchley hurt me bad when I was eight years old. He smashed my dinner plate and made me pick up the pieces. Then he stood on my arm until the bones broke. It was a change from him correcting me with his belt.

  ‘What’d you think?’ I grit out.

  She stops smiling. ‘Your mother — ’

  I smash through like a bull, the red mist in my eyes blocks all else out. ‘Why’d you keep coming back to this? I don’t care about my mother or who the fuck my father is. I don’t fucking care about anyone or anything. Understand?’

  Around seven years old, I used to beg my dad to resurrect himself from the dead. I started to think that maybe my real dad could save me. He could come back into my life and take me away to live with him. I wouldn’t have to lie awake at night shaking with absolute fear that I’d be punished for my sins. My real dad would take me away from all that. I imagined telling him all my worries and having him take their weight.

  He would be my hero.

  Amy looks hurt. ‘I guess I figure there’s more to you than you like to show. I guess there couldn’t be any less,’ she says softly.

  As a kid, I wished the world was destroyed, because if I couldn’t enjoy it, if I couldn’t see something beautiful, I didn’t want anyone else to.

  ‘Right. I don’t know what I did in the first place to give you the notion I give a shit about anyone.’

  It was worse in prison. Sometimes there were beautiful things, things that managed to be alive even when it seemed impossible. There was green moss, like velvet, and a red flower growing down in the hole just outside the bars of my window. Nazareth was like a tomb where the living came to die, but right there, right there was sign of life.

  And I hated it.

  Where there is colour, there is hope or something. Remember something like that. A stupid fucking flower that sure as shit didn’t belong in a shitty prison striving through dead soil, trying to live and those words.

  And here’s Amy. Al
l the colours of the rainbow, shining right there in front of me.

  Where there is colour, there is hope.

  Can’t have fucking hope.

  Hope kills the darkness.

  I was a stupid kid. Lonely. Needy for love. Lost. The idea that if enough people looked at me, I’d never need anybody’s attention ever again. That if someday I was caught and exposed, then I’d never be able to lie again. That if I could have all the money in the world, all the power, I’d never want to own or do another thing.

  That if somebody loved me, I’d stop praying for love.

  Now Amy’s looking at me like I’m a good man.

  This world gave me shit.

  We stand there, waiting for each other to give an inch.

  ‘I saw you with Diana. You were so sweet to her. It was like you peeled off your bitter skin and sweet-boy Shepherd was underneath . . . That’s what you did to show me you’ve got heart.’

  Amy puts her trust in my hands because she can’t see the blood on them.

  I don’t have soft hands, Amy. I have tentacles that rip things open.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, I must’ve missed something here. Lying to old people gives me heart? Because what you think you saw was all a lie. I was sweet-talking to get information out of her. You ever think that?’

  While I cling to the past, the edge of a knife presses against my throat. Amy sighs, and me, I’m decaying under years and years of lies.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she says.

  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, trying to ignore the way she stares at me. It isn’t a stare I find comfortable, even though I know it isn’t unkind. It’s the look a person has when faced with a crazy, wild thing. Something untamed, something unpredictable. Something that fucking terrifies them.

  And my heart swells because it’s been all too long since I’ve seen that look. And Amy gets it. Even with just this tiny display of my prowess, she totally gets it.

  She could tear this motherfucker down.

  The girl I fucking love, the butterfly who makes hurricanes in my world.

  ‘Remember when Diana used to call you her little hero? In a way, you are. You’re helping her in her last days. I can see it.’

  What I hear when she says that, is, ‘I believe in you.’