Chapter 51 Kier

51

Kier

Devon, July 2018

Over two hours pass before I return to the van. I hover outside for a moment, wary, but as I look around, it's immediately obvious that Zeph's left. Markers of his absence are everywhere – flip-flops gone from outside the door, wet suit removed from the roof where he always slings it to dry.

When I finally push open the door of the van, my hand's trembling. I'm still half expecting Zeph to be in there, ready to talk it out one more time, but everything is quiet. Still.

I stand for a moment in the doorway, thrown by the palpable difference from a few hours ago. Not only the absence of Zeph's physical presence and possessions, but his energy and consciousness, the sheer force it usually exerts inside our tiny space.

I remember the same feeling when Penn and I went to our house after Mum went to prison. Everything looked the same, but there was already something missing: the indefinable energy a particular person brings to a place. An odd permanency to it, as if the house itself sensed it was final, had already set about rearranging itself, becoming something new .

I glance around. So many things are gone: his recipes tacked to the wall above the stove. The stack of notes for the cookbook. Photographs. Clothes. Only shared things remain, kitchen stuff that wouldn't make sense to transport. Cooking oils and spices. Pots and jars.

While the van feels oddly empty, my shoulders drop, relax. Relief.

It feels like not only can I breathe again, but my thoughts are mine and mine alone. These past few weeks, it's as if there's been interference inside my head, his voice, thoughts, stopping my own from getting through.

But a little voice inside me tells me that the relief is in part due to something else.

That if Zeph's gone, I can get rid of what he's just confronted me with too.

I know that the only way that I'll make it through the next few days, to Penn's wedding, is if the painting's gone from here.

All trace of it removed.

I should have destroyed it at the time, but I could never quite bring myself. Perhaps keeping it was a way of reminding myself who I could be in the wrong circumstances. What happens if what I keep locked inside of me finds its way free.

My hands start to shake again as I tug open the compartment in the floor of the van. Pulling back the lid, I can already see the corner of the canvas, sandwiched between some blank canvases still in their wrap.

Shame – ugly, heavy – overwhelms me like something physical as I withdraw it.

The painting is shattering in its intensity.

It's Halloween boy, bruises melting off the contours of his face and jaw, swelling to become more than him, consuming the rest of the canvas.

He is bleeding into the canvas, no delineation between the lines of his face and the background, and in that background, there are echoes of him.

Echoes of expressions and words. The colours of decay and disease. Swampy browns and yellows and greens.

I stop, jerked back to the here and now, the memory overwhelming .

Composing myself, I walk outside, making my way around to the back of the van. I open the storage locker and haul the fire pit out, carrying it over to the side of the van facing the woods.

It takes a few minutes of careful nursing to get a fire properly burning, but once it is, I get the canvas from the van, begin slicing it into strips with my Stanley knife. It's humid outside, the heat from the flames making it even hotter, and within minutes, beads of sweat are forming on my face, neck, but I keep going.

Piece by piece, I watch it burn. Watch the paint crack and blister. Turn black.

With every section that's burnt, I feel a weight coming off me.

It's a while before most of it is burnt, the flames gradually dying to nothing. When it's done, I sit and watch the ashes cool.

I slowly exhale, shoulders dropping. I'm aware that it's only temporary, this feeling of erasure, but the only way I can get through the next few days is by knowing that I've quashed every reminder.

Excised it all. Every dirty, rotten part of it, up in smoke.