What Have I Done? (12 page)

‘Ooh, sounds grim. That’s a shame – I love nutmeg!’

‘All things in moderation.’

Kate laughed. ‘Is this a ruse to get me to wash up again?’

‘You got me!’

Kate watched the lights of the jeep disappear into the night. She hadn’t wanted the evening to end.

Lying awake and listening to the chirping crickets and croaking frogs, her tummy had a bubble of anticipation that wouldn’t allow her to sleep; she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this way. Maybe this was what it felt like to dive in, start over.

Kate was woken by the unfamiliar ringtone of the phone by her bed. It was a full three seconds before she registered where she was. Through the fog of deep sleep she grappled in the half light towards the noise.

‘Yes?’ She blinked hard and rubbed at her eyes, trying to quickly reach a state of alertness.

‘Good morning, Ms Gavier, I have a telephone call for you.’

‘Oh, right, thank you.’

Her heart beat a little too fast for comfort. Questions fired in her brain: what had happened, why the need to call at this hour, who was it? She glanced at the red digital clock display on the television. It was four in the morning. She listened to the change in tone, no longer the sharp, tinny sound of hotel reception, but a silence that was softer, further away. Kate could make out the faint sound of irregular breathing.

‘Hello?’ she ventured, sharper than was usual. The silence unnerved her.

‘Mummy?’

‘Oh!’ The breath caught in her throat. Kate sat upright and shook her head to clear the doubt. Had she heard correctly?

‘Mum, are you there?’

It was the unmistakable, beautiful voice of her daughter.

‘Yes! Yes, Lydi, I’m here. I’m right here.’

She clutched the phone between her palms, pushing it hard against her ear and mouth, trying to get closer.

‘Is everything all right, darling?’ It was an odd question, given that they hadn’t spoken for five years, but Kate’s immediate concern was that there was an emergency.

‘Yes. I wanted to talk to you.’

‘I wanted to talk to you too. I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long…’

She heard Lydia swallow.

‘Thank you for the tickets and everything, Mum.’

Mum… Mum… Mum… Was there any word sweeter?

‘I really didn’t feel like I could come. I’m just not ready, not yet. I hope you understand.’

‘It’s okay, Lyds, it’s all okay. It is wonderful to hear your voice, so wonderful. I can’t tell you how much I miss you, every second of every day. I just wanted us to have time to talk.’

Kate wasn’t sure how much to suggest, how much to push.

‘Thing is, I’m a bit scared about seeing you, Mum.’

‘What are you scared of, darling?’

Kate’s eyes pooled with tears; the idea of her little girl being afraid of her in any capacity horrified her.

‘I’m not scared of you exactly. But I’m worried about seeing you and I’m just as worried about not seeing you. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’

‘That’s understandable, Lyds; there is no rule book for this. We have to find a way through it together. I can only say that by seeing each other we can sort out all the things that are scaring you. One by one we can go through them and figure them out together.’

She was throwing her daughter a rope and when Lydia caught it, Kate would pull her in and never let her go.

‘It’s kind of hard to explain, Mum. I’m worried that you might have changed, you might be really different now—’

‘I’m still your boring old Mum. It’s still me, Lyds, I promise.’

‘I’m also worried in case how I feel about you has changed. I’m worried that I might not love you the same any more.’

Kate was silent as tears slid down onto lips that mouthed a silent prayer:
Please love me, please don’t stop loving me
.

Lydia’s voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. ‘If I don’t see you, Mum, I can pretend. I pretend that you and Dad are away somewhere, you know, like when you both went to Rome and we boarded for a week? I make out things are all just as they were. But if I see you, I’ll know that’s not really true because Dad won’t be with you and you will be different…’

Kate could only nod, unable to speak.

‘And sometimes, Mum, I pretend that you are both dead, and that makes it easier somehow. I pretend that you were both killed in an accident and then I don’t have to think about you doing something so horrible to Dad or about the horrible things that Dad did to you. I don’t like to think about it, Mummy.’

Her voice broke off in breathless sobs. Kate ached with the need to put her arms around her little girl and give her comfort.
I’m not dead. I’m here, Lydi, I’m right here waiting.

‘Lydi, Lydi. It’s okay. It will all be okay. I promise. We can work through anything. We can take our time and talk things through.’ She adopted the tone that she had once used to lull her little girl back to sleep after bad dreams.

‘I don’t know if it will be okay, Mum. The longer I don’t see you, the harder it is for me to imagine seeing you and so it feels easier not to, if that makes sense. I sometimes wonder if it’s better just to say goodbye and only think about how we used to be, when we were happy – well, not you, but the rest of us. I thought we were a happy family, but we weren’t, were we?’

‘No, Lyds, I guess we weren’t. But I thought I could hide things, thought I could make it all okay…’ It was the first time Kate had voiced this admission.

‘And that’s part of it, Mum. All I have is my memory of my family, but now I know that it was all rubbish. You and Dad were making it up; it was all fake, all of it.’

Her voice faltered.

‘And that’s tough, knowing that my whole life and the people I trusted, it was all pretend. It’s like I’ve got someone else’s memories and not my own.’

She paused.

Kate waited for Lydia to gather her thoughts before interjecting with words of solution and solace.

‘I’ve got to go, Mum, I’m sorry.’

Immediately and without preamble the phone clicked. It came too quickly and without warning, leaving Kate shouting at the whirring drone.

‘No, Lydia! Please don’t go! Please, darling girl!’ she shouted into the disconnected mouthpiece, refusing to hang up, not yet.

‘When you change your mind, when you are ready, I’ll be waiting. I will always be waiting. You just give me the word and I’ll come and find you.’

Kate continued to hold the phone to her face as she sobbed into the dawn.

She watched the sun rise through swollen eyelids raw from crying. She replayed Lydia’s words over and over until they were there for perfect recall and would be until her dying day. ‘
My whole life and the people I trusted, it was all pretend.
’ Kate tried to imagine being robbed of her childhood recollections, the very foundation of the life created by her parents, everything that made her feel safe and secure. Whatever the situation, however bad things got, Kate could mentally escape to a time of laughter and joy. The thought of that being taken away was too horrible to contemplate.

The midday sun was fierce and Kate wasn’t sure that going to Carnival was such a good idea. She felt cloaked in desolation and wasn’t keen to be around people. But the idea of spending the day pacing her room, no matter how luxurious, was more than she could bear.

Kate shunned the taxi service into town and set out on foot with a determined bounce to her step. The main road to the island’s capital, Castries, was closed to traffic. She heard the thrum of music and the tinny echo of steel drums long before she could see anything. As she rounded the last bend in the road, she was greeted by a sight that would stay with her forever. It
was as if every colour of the rainbow was dancing before her eyes. The whole island had turned out, and nearly everyone was sporting elaborate costumes adorned with feathers, sequins, ribbons or braiding.

Beautiful girls in sparkling bikinis with matching arm bands swayed in time to the music, taking great care not to dislodge the ornate headdresses that balanced on their heads. Children bounded like kangaroos among the floats, fuelled by excitement and the liberal consumption of sugar; some were dressed in miniature versions of the adult costumes and everyone looked wonderful.

Kate found Simon and the kids on a grass verge. They had spread blankets and were organising their picnic. Each child had made a headband; some were more intricate than others, but each had been handmade. They were clearly proud of their efforts.

‘Hey! Here’s Kate! Where is your costume?’ Simon was pleased to see her.

‘I didn’t know I needed one! I’ve never felt more overdressed!’ She clutched at her linen shirt and glass beads.

‘Matilda and I thought that might be the case, so we made you this.’

He presented Kate with a headdress. It was a stunning plume of pale green feathers, with gold sequins stuck in a row along the base. Kate dug deep, found her fake smile and placed the gift on her head.

‘I love it!’

‘You look like a green chicken!’

‘Good! Green chicken was what I was going for!’

The two shouted alternately to make themselves heard above the deafening music. Simon studied her face.

‘Is everything all right, Kate?’

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

The atmosphere was electric and Kate did not want to be anywhere else in the world. Carnival was the distraction she needed. Her heart jumped with every drum beat and her body moved to meet the rhythm of the music that ignited her spirit. Floats crawled past with bands and musicians standing on steady platforms. The procession of floats was punctuated with troops of dancers. Men, women and children in identical costumes sparkled like fireworks and moved in time to the thrum of the steel drums.

When the heavens opened, Kate raised her arms high over her head and allowed the warm tropical rain to wash over her head. She laughed, feeling a surge of optimism about her very uncertain future. At that moment in time, everything felt possible. She focussed more on the fact that Lydia had called and less on the actual words spoken, and it lifted her. ‘
Mum
…
Mummy
…’ The words twinkled like diamonds in her mind.

With Matilda’s hand in hers, the insistence of Simon and the upturned faces of the kids, it hadn’t taken much to persuade her to accompany them back home. So towards the end of the afternoon, the weary troupe piled into minibuses and made its way back to the mission. On the road to Dennery, the smaller kids slept on the laps of the larger ones and the eldest recalled the day’s highlights in hushed tones, careful not to wake their younger charges.

Simon helped all the children alight, counting them as they went and suggesting that it might be a good idea to change into dry clothes. The kids dutifully dispersed to find pyjamas or clean shorts. Fabian headed straight for the kitchen; Kate was sure he would be happy never to leave that large stove and his cramped workspace, such was his dedication to feeding the children in his care.

‘You’ve got yourself quite a family there, Fabian. You should be very p… p… proud.’ Kate shivered and stammered through her words.

‘I am very proud of them all, but look at
you
– you’re freezing, drenched through! And as amusing as it is to see, you have green dye all over your face. I think someone got their feathers wet!’ Fabian shook his head, with his hands on his hips, as though he was addressing one of the children.

‘I did!’ Kate laughed, wiping at her forehead and cheeks.

‘Why don’t you have a hot shower and lay your clothes in the sun; it shouldn’t take too long to dry them out. I can fetch you something to put on, how does that sound?’

Kate grinned though chattering teeth and nodded. A hot shower sounded like bliss. The bathroom was larger than she had expected, but contained nothing more than a pipe sticking out of the wall, a small grate in the concrete floor and a plastic shower curtain suspended across the room. Having hung her towel on the hook and lowered the latch on the door, she watched the brown water spurt sporadically from the pipe. Whilst it didn’t look too appealing, it was hot and that was all that mattered.

Kate observed her skin turn from goosebumpy to mottled and felt warm once again. She soaped her face and watched the green dye dribble down the grate. It had been a brilliant day.

She pulled back the curtain and turned the handle to stop the water. Standing with her back to the door, she ran her fingers through her hair, attempting to dry and style it with the tips of her fingers. What with the guttering sound from the pipe as the last of the water hit the concrete floor and her tuneless rendition of ‘One Love’, Kate didn’t hear Simon’s knock.

The door creaked as the latch was raised. It was as if time froze for the briefest moment. Neither moved, each uncertain of how to react.

Simon had assumed he could hang clean, dry towels on the hooks and retreat as he often did, ensuring there were enough towels for the kids in the endless cycle of laundry. Kate had forgotten to lock the door.

It wasn’t her naked form that drew Simon’s stare, but the latticework of scars that crisscrossed her bottom and the back of her thighs. They had the look of deliberate, patterned tracks that could not have occurred by accident.

Simon narrowed his gaze, as though by changing his focus he might alter the sight that greeted him. Kate quickly placed her hands over her breasts, even though they were the only bit of her that was hidden from view. A blush crept along her neck and chest, and the breath stopped in her throat. She was beyond embarrassed; she was mortified.

No one ever saw Kate’s scars. Keeping them invisible, she could pretend that she had not suffered all that she had, and avoided having to deal with the judgement and sympathy of others. Her mind flew to the last and only person other than the perpetrator who had seen her body. The police doctor had stuffed his fist into his mouth to stem the urge to vomit. She would never forget it.

Kate did not want to elicit a similar response from Simon. She couldn’t decide whether to reach for the towel and hide the evidence of her shameful existence, or to stand still and hope that he would simply disappear. Her indecision rendered her useless; she looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming train and felt just as scared. It was horrible for them both.