Chapter 2: Tuesday Evening November 23rd

I sat in the back seat of the car and stared at the profile of Dad’s face. He had that look of relaxed concentration that he always has when he’s driving and not thinking about other things. I was thinking of other things – big things.

I wanted to ask Dad a big question. My problem was that I wasn’t sure how he was going to respond. That’s never good. Usually when I have a question for Dad I have some idea how he will react, so I can make sure I ask it in the right way. This time I had absolutely no clue. That made it hard to find the right words.

Also I wanted to see his face – his whole face. Important questions should be asked face-to-face. How else can you figure out the meaning behind what they say if you can’t see their face? Sometimes I wonder how blind people manage. How can they possibly figure out what someone means if all they can do is listen to the words?

Text messages and emails are worse of course because you can’t even hear the person saying the words – all you can do is read what they’ve typed. It’s really hard for me to understand people over the internet. A few times I’ve gotten all upset because I thought someone meant one thing but they really meant something completely different.

That can happen to me in real life of course, but it doesn’t happen as often. Except when my brain decides to go all weird on me – then it seems like all bets are off. What I mean is – during those freaky times when I can’t even tell what’s real, how can I possibly expect to understand what other people around me are thinking?

Before I’d fully decided what I wanted to say to Dad, we arrived back home and the opportunity was gone. Dad told me I should start getting ready for bed and I nodded. As I got out of the car, I looked around for Dan’s car but it was still missing – Dan must still be at work. I sighed and followed Dad inside the house.

Mum heard us come through the door and immediately called out that she was in the kitchen. Dad headed for the kitchen and I tailed after him. Mum told Dad that she’d just made a new pot of tea and then she turned to me and told me to start getting ready for bed. I dragged my feet, hoping to delay long enough that Dad would take his tea into the living room and I could talk to Mum. Annoyingly, she shooed me out of the room and towards my bedroom, completely wrecking that plan.

I changed into pyjamas, put on a robe and ducked back out of my bedroom. Mum had disappeared from the kitchen and I couldn’t find her anywhere, maybe she’d gone into The Parents’ room. Dad was sitting in his usual chair in the living room with his feet up as he sipped on his tea. I slipped into the room and sat on the low coffee table in front of Dad.

He looked at me with an eyebrow raised as he took another sip of tea. I bit my lip.

“I thought you were getting ready for bed.”

“I’m kind of ready.”

“Brushed your teeth?” I shook my head.

“Been to the bathroom?” I shook my head again.

“Well you’re not ready for bed, then, are you?”

I rolled my eyes at Dad.

“I didn’t say I was ready – I said I was kind of ready.”

That annoying eyebrow went up again. Okay – now that I’ve thought about what I said, maybe I wasn’t using very good logic.

“So what did you want?”

I hesitated. “Can I ask you a question?”

Dad looked at me. He never answers that. He thinks it’s stupid to ask if you can ask. I suppose he’s right.

Just then Mum arrived and perched herself on the arm of Dad’s chair.

“Ask your question, honey,” said Dad. Mum sat there with a patient sort of look on her face.

I hesitated again. I’d really wanted to ask each of them separately. I figured I had more chance of getting useful information that way. But that plan had been effectively wrecked. I licked my lips again. I figured I may as well go for it.

“Why did we really leave England?”

They both stared at me in complete silence. Dad blinked a couple of times but apart from that, they gave me nothing but stone faces.

Then Dad forced out a kind of breath-laugh. “We came here because of my job, honey. You know that.”

I glared at him. “If that were true, we wouldn’t have had to change our name.”

I looked at Dad, then at Mum, then back at Dad. They both kept looking at me. They were sort of leaning towards each other a little bit – not a lot, it was tiny bit of a lean. It was as if they were supporting each other – or maybe they were each waiting for the other one to say something.

“So what’s the real reason?”

Dad shook his head. “Why are you suddenly asking about this now?”

“I’m asking because about two weeks ago I found out that my parents have a habit of waiting until I ask about stuff – important stuff – before they tell me anything.”

They looked at me in silence.

“I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work. How am I supposed to know to ask questions about something if I don’t know that there’s something I don’t know about? Am I supposed to keep asking random questions until I ask one that you have an answer for?”

I trailed off as I figured something out.

“You’re trying to distract me. I have a question right now that I know you can answer. Why did we leave England?”

They didn’t say anything.

I could feel emotion bubbling up inside me as I got more and more frustrated with their stalling tactics. I should have known they wouldn’t simply start talking. That would have been too easy.

“Has it occurred to you that there are some things that you don’t need to know?” asked Dad.

I glared at him. He gave me back his stone face. I turned to Mum.

“Are we in witness protection or something?”

Mum smiled. “That’s right, sweetie. We’re in witness protection or something.”

She said it with a light, careless tone of voice. She didn’t even try to hide that she was lying. I felt my face go cold and blank. I was filled with a mixture of fury and frustration. I sat looking at the space between my parents as I tried to control the feelings racing through me.

Eventually I stood and turned my back on The Parents. Without saying a word, I walked away from them and out of the room. I walked into my room and closed the door – carefully and slowly so that it wouldn’t make any noise. Then I walked over to the bed and lay down on top of it, staring up into the darkness at the place where my ceiling should be.

It wasn’t there of course – my ceiling I mean. All I could see was a gaping black hole full of nothingness. I lay there cursing myself for not following my plan. I shouldn’t have asked my questions when they were both in the room. It was stupid. It meant they could back each other up. I should have made up some other question about something else. I should have asked some sex question, they usually answer those. I cursed and cursed. Sometimes I can be so stupid.

Some time passed. I’m not sure how long. Then I started to hear muffled voices – raised voices. The Parents weren’t actually shouting, but they were definitely exchanging strong words. I can’t say that The Parents never fight, but it’s rare enough that we notice when it does happen.

I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I rolled off the bed and pulled my robe tight. My socks whispered across the carpet as I crept through the darkness of my room. Carefully I opened the door and slid out into the hallway. The muffled voices were coming from The Parents’ room. I still couldn’t make out what they were arguing about. I was making all sorts of guesses though and a lot of them started with me.

It was like I was being pulled along – dragged sideways down the hallway by the sound of those muffled voices. I was entranced. Maybe I was hypnotized. I found myself standing in front of their closed door. Behind the door, the argument still raged.

I heard Mum’s voice say something about England.

Dad’s voice replied. I still couldn’t make out most of what was being said, but I distinctly heard my name in the middle of it. Even without hearing the words, I could hear the anger. They were clearly trying to keep their voices down. They were also clearly arguing furiously. Most clearly of all, they were arguing about me. Obviously they were arguing about what, if anything, they should tell me. I hated myself for making them argue. I knew too many people who only had one parent. I didn’t want my parents arguing. Arguments lead to divorce. Divorce means only having one parent. Having one parent sucks. I was starting to wish I was living in some giant video game and that I could press reset and start today over.

Tara appeared at my shoulder, also wrapped in a gown.

“What’s going on?”

“Shhh!”

There was silence in the room and then the door burst open. Mum stood in the doorway with Dad looming over her shoulder. They both looked pissed.

“What are you two up to? Are you spying on us now?” Mum was almost hissing she was so mad.

“This is none of your business,” echoed Dad. “Nosey-parkers aren’t welcome.”

“Go to your rooms, both of you,” thundered Mum.

Tara turned and fled. The bit of my brain that had spent thirteen years doing exactly what Mum told me – especially when she used that voice – wanted to do exactly the same thing but my feet weren’t listening to that bit of my brain. Instead they planted themselves into the carpet. Angry Bec was suddenly fully in control. My hips must have little magnets in them because my hands snapped onto my hips and stuck fast. I glared back at Mum and Dad.

“Go to your room!” Dad yelled at me. He actually yelled at me. It was so unusual that a bit of my brain went “Huh?” Sadly the rest of me wasn’t listening.

“Why? So you can go back to arguing about me?” I yelled back at them.

“This is none of your business.” hissed Mum.

“You said that before! It is my business. I know you were fighting about me. I’m not stupid. When are you going to stop treating me like a little kid?”

“Just go to your room,” said Dad in something closer to his normal voice – except it had a cold steel sound to it that I wasn’t used to hearing.

I felt like a cliff face being bashed by wave after wave during a storm. All those waves were bouncing off me but each one took away little bits of me as it did so. I knew that eventually I would collapse into the ocean and be swept away if I kept this up.

I think I said something more but I don’t remember what. My feet turned me around and started walking me down the hallway. I stopped and turned back. They were still watching me.

“I’m sorry I asked the stupid question, okay?” I flung it back at them as I retreated. They didn’t say anything. Mum pulled the door closed with a thud. I didn’t hear another sound from them.

I stopped outside of my bedroom door and rested my head against the solidness of the wood. Having been sent to my room, the pig-headed part of me was refusing to let me go inside.

I was still seething with anger. I’m honestly not sure what in particular I was so angry about. Maybe I was angry about all of it – them lying to me, them arguing about me, them shouting at me, me mucking up how I asked about it, me causing my parents to fight. Most of all, I think, I was angry about them forcing the six-year-old version of me away from a home where I felt comfortable and safe and dragging me to a strange, new country where I knew nothing and nobody and where everyone laughed at me because of my weird accent and my weird ideas and my weird ways of saying things – without ever once giving me the real reason why it all had to happen.

I love my parents, I really do, but sometimes I hate them as well.

My feet carried me into the living room, seeking that other safe place. The painting that usually gives me so much comfort didn’t want to help me this time. I was mad at Mum and there she was – her face glaring down at me like a stern and angry headmistress, glaring down at her misbehaving students. Trapped in that glare, I stood and shivered.

Breaking free, I scooted through the kitchen, down the hallway and into Dan’s room. He wasn’t there, of course, he was still out for the evening. I threw my robe over his computer chair and crawled under the blankets – curling up into the smallest ball I could manage and burying my face in the faint scent of Dan that clung to his pillow.

I lay there, squeezing my knees up to my chest and shivered as my mind raced around and around and around and around.

My brain blacked out on me and held me suspended in nothingness until Dan crawled into bed beside me.

“Hey there, princess,” Dan whispered as he wrapped an arm around me. “What’re you doing in my bed?”

I didn’t answer. I snuggled into his arms and sighed happily.

“And why is there a huge wet patch on my pillow?”

I guess I must have been crying.

I tried to whisper to Dan – tell him about my fight with The Parents – but my voice had gone away. I gave up and lay there and tried to absorb Dan’s strength. After a bit, I felt Dan’s hand start to stroke down my hair, then down my arm. I sighed and snuggled even tighter into the warm embrace of his arms.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Dan’s body heat warmed and comforted me. The shivering slowly stopped and I drifted away on a soft and fuzzy cloud.

“Wakey-wakey, rise and shine!”

The voice speared into that soft warm cocoon and shattered it, leaving me blinking in the sudden light. Mum smacked me lightly on the bum through the blankets. “Come on you three, get out of bed. It’s time to get ready for school.”

Three?

I propped myself up on my elbow and looked across the large lump of Dan. I could just see the top of Tara’s tousled head peeking out from under the blankets. She hadn’t stirred despite Mum turning the light on and making all that noise. That was typical. I was surprised to see Tara there. I couldn’t remember her coming into Dan’s room during the night.

I rolled my legs sideways away from Dan and allowed myself to slide out of the bed. My sock-covered feet landed lightly on the rug. Mum cheerfully whacked Tara on the bum as well, which produced a protesting bleat from under the blankets. Mum was amazingly happy this morning. I wondered why.

I padded around the bottom of the bed and stood beside Mum. I watched as she grabbed the blankets and dragged everything down to the bottom of the bed. Tara’s nightie was all tangled up around her hips and her knickers were showing. Dan’s shorts had a big bulge in the front where his thingie was trying to stick out. I giggled when I saw it but then I remembered Mum was standing right next to me so I covered my mouth with my hand and tried to swallow the giggle. Dan yelled at Mum and covered the front of his shorts with both his hands. Then he rolled over until he was face down and groaned into the pillow.

Mum looked down at me and I blushed a bit, my hand still over my mouth.

“I should’ve guessed I’d find the two of you in here this morning. Things got a bit wild last night, didn’t they? But everything’s calmed down now.”

I nodded up at her dutifully because she seemed to expect me to.