What You Wish For by Mark Edwards Read Free Book Online Page B

tear-tracks on her cheeks. She didn’t push me away.
    ‘We don’t want to hurt Sally,’ she said. ‘Or anyone. I know she’s had a traumatic experience. Andrew’s going to help find her a counsellor to get her help, to help her to deal with what’s happened to her.’
    ‘By which you mean that aliens took her baby, not that she had a miscarriage.’
    She glared at me defiantly.
    ‘I know it’s difficult for you to understand, Richard.’ She paused. ‘I’m going to tell you something now. Maybe it will help you understand better.’
    I waited.
    She breathed in. ‘When I was fourteen my dad left home. He disappeared. He didn’t leave a note. He didn’t tell anyone he was going, not his friends, his boss, no one. He just vanished. Like that.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘My mum went out of her mind. For months she searched for him, tried everything she could think of, but she never found him. And do you know what? I was glad. It was what I’d prayed for. Night after night I’d lie in bed, eyes squeezed shut, hands clenched, praying. Please take him away. Please. Please. Let him die. Anything. Just get him out of our lives .’
    I held her hand. I felt sick.
    ‘My dad was scum. Sick, violent scum. He used to beat us. Mum at first. She always had bruises and marks, burns where he’d lean across while they were watching TV and casually stub a cigarette out on her arm. He threw boiling water at her. He punched her in the face, knocked her teeth out, cracked her cheekbone. He broke her arm once. And she took it. She told everyone she’d had a fall – that old fucking chestnut. She cut herself off from all her friends, out of shame. She lived in terror, frightened to say the wrong thing or cook the wrong thing or make a noise when he wanted silence. And she insisted that she loved him, even when he started beating me.’
    She spoke softly, evenly, like she was telling somebody else’s story. But I had no doubt that she was telling the truth. I could see it in her eyes.
    ‘I was only five or six when he started hitting me. I think I’d drawn on one of his books. He collected books on old motorbikes. He loved them more than he loved me. Anyway, he picked this book up and looked at where I’d scrawled across it in red crayon. I grinned up at him. I didn’t know I’d done anything wrong. He took the book – it was a heavy hardback book – and hit me in the face with it. I remember screaming, blood spurting from my nose, and him shouting, and my mum shouting at him, and then he dragged her into their room and I heard her crying. I thought it was my fault.’
    ‘Oh, sweetheart . . .’
    ‘It went on for years. And the worst thing was that between the beatings he could be so nice. He was so unpredictable. It was like you could never relax. Even when he wasn’t there, we were afraid of our own actions. You never knew how he would react. Like when we got Calico. A kid at school had kittens they were trying to find homes for. I wanted one so badly I said I’d have one, without asking my parents, and I took the kitten home, feeling elated but utterly sick and scared, part of me convinced that he would throw it out, or kill it. I tried to hide the kitten but it was too noisy. My dad heard it immediately. I braced myself, but he bent and picked up the kitten and stroked it and said, “What are you going to call him?” I was so relieved.’
    I stroked her hair. I tried to imagine how she had felt. There had never been any violence in my home. Quite the opposite. Ours was a placid, repressed home, hidden emotions and feelings. Still, that was infinitely preferable to brutality.
    Marie looked up at me. She reached into her shirt pocket and took out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. She lit one and exhaled slowly.
    ‘When I was twelve my mum announced that I was going to have a baby brother or sister. I was delighted. I was past that age where I’d be jealous of another child in the house and I really started