Chapter 55 Kier

55

Kier

Devon, July 2018

I shift left, to get a better look, but a couple walk past the window, blocking the view out to the street. By the time they've moved on, whoever it was is gone.

Maybe I was imagining it. Perhaps they were just trying to get a shot of the café.

Penn's still scrutinising my face. He looks dissatisfied, as if he's seen something he hasn't really wanted to. ‘Maybe you should see a doctor if your stomach thing goes on much longer.'

‘I'm fine.'

‘Sure?'

The way he's looking at me makes me feel uneasy. ‘Well.' I pause. For a moment, I'm tempted to tell him, already sensing the relief it would bring. Unburdening myself.

I could tell him not just about Zeph and Romy, but Halloween boy too. What really happened that day.

But if I had any doubts at all about confiding in him, they're gone when I see the worry settle into the very bones of his face. It reminds me of the weight that would settle on Mum when Dad walked through the door in the evenings. A gravitational force dragging her downwards.

I think about Penn's words at the van the other day. You know how stressful all the wedding planning's been. I don't get why you'd want to add to that by causing conflict.

What I'm about to tell him isn't conflict, but it's still drama of a kind. Something else for him to stress about.

No, I can't do this to him. Not this close to the wedding. He's stressed enough as it is.

Penn opens his mouth, as if to ask another question, but stops, distracted by the boy at the next table. He's tearing open sachets of brown sugar, emptying the contents onto the table. The mother whispers warnings through gritted teeth: Stop it. Not while we're having a lovely hot chocolate.

The boy isn't listening. Two more sachets get emptied. He lowers a chubby hand, smearing the sugar across the grain of the wood.

‘A good boy wouldn't do something like that.' The mother's voice is louder now, clipped. Nothing behind it other than frustration, the pained formal language of a parent trying to discipline their child in public, but it takes me back to what our father used to say to our mother. His favourite rebuke.

A good parent wouldn't do that.

A good parent wouldn't leave things until the last minute.

A good parent would know when to pick their child up on time.

I glance at Penn. His face has paled. I can tell that he's gone there too.

All at once, I'm transported back. Sat at our old dining table while Dad grilled her.

His questioning followed the same pattern, a rhythm, and after a while, the questions, the familiar beat of the syllables would find themselves inside me too.

Why was she so lazy? Why couldn't she just do the stuff he asked?

‘Do you ever think about it?' I ask.

‘About what?' Penn is still looking at the little boy .

‘About how Mum could be … she could be scatty, couldn't she? Dad would get home after working hard all day and stuff wasn't done. If she'd just done what he asked, life might have been easier.' Contempt laces my voice. Disgust. His voice, taking over, becoming mine.

This happens sometimes still, just like it did back then, his voice crawling into my headspace when my guard is down. Consuming me. Convincing me.

Penn's head snaps back. He looks at me, uncomprehending, heat crawling up his cheeks. ‘Kier. You know why he said all that shit about her, don't you? He was trying to make us hate her, turn us against her. That's all that was. He was using us.'

His words bounce off me. ‘But sometimes, Penn, he was good. Nice. You saw what he was like when we used to go out on the water.' Out at sea, he was the dad who helped me study tide charts and analyse swells. The dad who spoke in a calm, quiet voice. The dad who other people saw.

At those moments, in the boat, the sun laying a warm hand on the back of my neck, it felt golden, like the first time you lay out in the heat in spring after a long and rainy winter. On those days, good days, he'd start sentences using my full name.

He'd say, ‘Kier Templer, you have blown all the cobwebs off me today.'

And it was like I had. We'd fly across the water, his face all warm and wide and open, and he looked like someone new.

I'd start thinking that perhaps it was Mum. Perhaps it was all her fault.

When we got home it felt like it was. Salty and happy, we'd come through the door and her face would crumple when my father asked: How bloody hard could it be to have the fucking dinner waiting on the table?

At moments like that, I got what he was saying, I really understood.

How hard was it for her to just get herself sorted? He was the one who worked hard, and she was at home. All she had to do was get things right.

I can hear him now.

A good parent wouldn't do that. A good parent would be efficient. Organised.

I put my fingers to my temples, press, but I can still hear it. He was right, wasn't he?

A good parent wouldn't kill their husband.

A good parent wouldn't take their own life, leave their children behind to fend for themselves.

‘Kier?' Penn's voice drags me back to the here and now. ‘The fact that he could be nice, and that we loved him, doesn't take away what he did. When you'd come back in so happy, after being out on the water, he wanted her to see that. Wanted to make her feel insecure, question the bond we had with her.'

I nod, but it's confusing. Nothing about this is a straight line in my head. It's all squiggles and tangles. A mess.

Another silence falls before Penn picks up the newspaper on the next table.

‘They still haven't caught who's done it.' He scans the text, brow furrowed. ‘Sure you don't want to stay at ours, until the wedding? I don't like the idea of you being in the van on your own with this going on.'

‘It's fine, really. I know it's crazy for you guys right now.' But as I finish speaking, I can't help glancing outside, to the street.

Someone was out there, I'm sure of it. Watching.