Page 53 of The Actor and His Secret

‘We don’t need to talk about anything that will only upset you more,’ Oli starts.

‘But I do,’ I reply, the flood gates wide open. ‘I - I need to say it and maybe the memories will stop being so overbearing.’

I wonder if Oli realised that we’d hardly spent time in the house. Most of our days had been on the beach, the evenings out in the small garden overlooking the wondrous views. I have done everything in my power to dance around the ghosts lurking here, but all I’d done was push down the inevitable until it broke me from the inside.

‘Then I’m here, no judgement. If there’s anything I can offer you, it’s a safe space. Somewhere for you to put your secrets.’ He leans his head on my shoulder, finding yet another part of himself to touch me with. We’re practically conjoined by the time the secrets spill free.

‘My mother she - she fell. Down the stairs.’ It was half a lie. ‘Seeing you on them just made me panic. It was a silly reaction. But the last time I saw someone I care about on those stairs, they didn’t get the chance to walk down them.’

‘Oh my god, Nikos. That’s awful.’

‘It was. I mean, it is.’

‘That must’ve been really hard for you and your father. Losing the pillar of your family like that.’

I drew back, the glare of the sun punishing me. With a shaking hand, I reach for the glass of chilled water Oli prepared for me. The contents slosh over the rim before the water reaches my mouth. I almost choke just trying to swallow it down.

I could tell Oli everything. What my father did. What he was still doing. But once the story was finished, Oli would go from pitying me to thinking I was the root cause of the evil. I caused it. Her death, although not by my hands, was my fault.

As I sit beside Oli, the rushing waves far below and the chirping of crickets surrounding us, my mind replays what happened in the moments before my mother’s death.

I slip into the memory with ease.

‘Mum, hurry up!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs, voice cracking from late puberty. I looked up the stairs, waiting for her to come for me. Our bags were packed and ready at the door. I’d borrowed a friend’s car to get us to the airport, where cheap tickets had been booked to get us out of Greece.

She’d gone back upstairs for something. A picture. I saw it in her grasp when she rounded the top of the stairs. ‘I’m ready, darling.’

Father arrived home at the worst moment. If only we’d left sooner, then maybe she would’ve still been alive. Hell, if I’d not made her leave, if I didn’t plan this all…

The bruise under her swollen eye was black and blue. Courtesy of father’s fist the previous night - the last straw. When he hit her, beat her, it was always in places no one could see. But the fit of madness he’d last night was the worst yet. It was a miracle she was still alive.

A door slammed open. I heard father’s booming voice as he returned home. He’d seen the car, the bags. Then he caught the two passports in my hand, mother at the top of the stairs - dressed for the first time in weeks. He knew what was happening. We were leaving him. Our abuser. Our monster. The man I’d watched beat my mother bloody for years. The man who terrorized me with threats of the same, which I was only spared from by my mother taking my place.

I was done letting him hurt her.

I placed myself before the stairs, trying to block him from reaching them. His fist was fast and sure. My head cracked back and stars blurred my vision. I was sprawled on the floor in moments. By the time I righted myself, father had climbed the staircase and stood at the top, grasping my mother by the shoulders, shaking her.

‘Get your hands off her!’ I’d shouted, mouth full of blood.

‘Stop this,’ mother pleaded, eyes pinched closed, clutching the picture in her grasp as though it was her lifeline. I’d see later what picture it was. One of me and my parents together, happy as we once had been.

‘Father,’ I begged, ‘please don’t do this. Just let us go.’

‘No,’ he shouted back at me, still shaking mother. ‘You’ll never leave me. Never.’

What happened next was so quick

‘Nikos,’ Oli pleads. ‘Breathe!’

I snap my eyes open, blinking away the memory for a moment of clarity. It’s still there, lurking in my mind, ready to sink its claws into me and drag me back into it.

‘It was all my fault, Oli,’ I pant. My breath is coming short and sharp.

I don’t see his reaction.

Instead, I watch as the phantom of my father pushed my mother from the top step, sending her helpless body tumbling down the stairs. Her scream cut short as her skull cracked against the two bottom steps. Blood pooled across the floor, spreading towards where I stood, helpless and afraid. All I could do was look down at the wide, terrified glint in her all-seeing eyes. Hair matted with blood, body bent, hand outstretched towards me, flashing me my first glance at the picture she’d gone back to collect.

She died because I made her run away.

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