Page 60 of Cuts Like an Angel: Part 2

Chapter Twenty-Nine

William

William had two choices with the house. If he was going to do this … and he was going to do this, he’d eradicate Maria from this house until even she would have a hard time finding herself. That meant the front bedroom—Maria’s room—and the dining room were the first on the hit list. They had to be. Both of those rooms were sacred to Maria and both of those rooms were laden with more bad memories than William could bear to handle.

“I think I want to start in the dining room,” William said suddenly to Rosie, who was sitting at the small table in the kitchen browsing colour swatches on the laptop. “What do you think?” He clasped his mug in his hand, using his foot to open the door. Damn cuts hurt today, like the booze had worn off and the gashes decided to give him a good old fuck you with the pain.

He tried to hide that he was attempting to make his arm immobile. She was already worried and asking him to go to the hospital. Carly had done a great job, but the wounds needed real stitches. That would be a disaster. It would lead to questions and admissions and psychiatrists, and more fucked up shit in the mental history of William and Josh. He was damned if he was ever going back in there. Those places were meant to help people like him, but they only made him feel like a freak who got supervised using the bathroom and given plastic cutlery to eat with. Oh, and no shoelaces. William was pretty clever when it came to art of attempting suicide but try as he might, he could not fathom how one might succeed ending their life with shoelaces. You couldn’t really strangle yourself with them, he didn’t think. You could try to eat them and choke to death.

“What were you thinking?” Rosie asked, carefully sliding herself under his arm so that he could rest the uninjured part on her shoulder.

“I don’t know,” he said, momentarily lost. He spotted the colour chart on the computer screen and remembered “Just something different, brighter. Not pink, though.” He raised a brow before she dared to suggest it, again. It was her favourite tease. He’d show her, maybe. Bloody paint the place bright pink and fall about laughing when she saw it. God knows, he’d already heard some of her weird and wonderful shade suggestions.

“Fuchsia?”

“More pink? Not a chance. I already have enough Rose in my life.” He winked at her before ambling into the room, surveying it all and trying to picture what it would look like different. Maria would have a fit; if she ever came here again. Not that she would. They were meeting next week to discuss which care home she would go to when she was discharged. It gave William such a sense of relief.

“Are you going to put a new door on there?” Rosie asked, pointing to the cubby under the stairs where he had torn the door from its hinges.

“I was thinking I could remove the door frame, shape the plaster, so it has neat edges and we could use it as a display. Maybe some shelves?”

“Wouldn’t a door be easier?”

He ran his hand along the top of the wood and stopped in the middle of it. His stomach knotted with the surge of memories just as he remembered their agreement to be open about their past. She couldn’t handle his past. But … maybe one memory at a time. “Give me your hand,” he said holding his out to her when she did, he guided her fingers and slid them along one of his darker secrets. “Do you feel that dent?”

He let go of her hand as she explored the wood herself.

She leaned in closer, visually inspecting it as well as feeling it. “It’s rotten?”

Rotten with memories.

Looking away from Rosie, he cast his eyes down. “I did that,” he admitted, quickly. “With my hands. Well my nails. Nearly pulled the thing off the wall.”

Rosie straightened up. “Why?”

He couldn’t look Rosie in the eye as his mind produced images of him as a child, screaming and crying and pleading for his mother. He walked away, putting his back to her. He’d not spoken these words. Not even to Carly, not about this. “I was having a tantrum. My mum was going out, and I didn’t want her to. She …” It was so hard to say the damn words. So, hard to get it out. He had tried with Carly and could barely get his thoughts from his lips. But it should be different with Rosie. Maybe …

“She?” Rosie urged gently. He could sense that she hadn’t moved yet. Maybe she realised he needed space.

“This was where I was sent when I was bad.” He spat the words out before his fears and shame could clamp his mouth.

“She put you under the stairs?”

He nodded. “She did that night too. But I grabbed the wood and yelled at her. I didn’t want her to go.”

Silence hung in the air for a moment and William felt Rosie come up behind him. She pressed her mouth to his shoulder. “How old were you?” she asked gently, slipping her hand into his and squeezing it.

“Five.”

“Five,” she whispered, sounding like it agonised her. “What about a sitter?”

“There was no sitter.” He turned, his eyes meeting hers, letting the weight of what he was saying sink in to Rosie’s brain.

“She was going to leave you alone?”

“I could look after myself,” he said, realising he’d done what he always had. Defended her. He’d always been so embarrassed about it. He didn’t just want people to see what kind of mother she was or wasn’t, but what if they saw the flaws in him that his mother did? The ones that caused her to hate him? “I spent my time reading in my room. I was an educated child.”

“You were five, William. I couldn’t even tie my shoe laces at five.”

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