Page 55 of Out of the Blue
Teacake is the one to break the silence.
‘Coming up on the show today, we’ll be hearing from Russell Tovey about his latest film and sharing a ratatouille recipe that’s to die for,’ she says. ‘But, first, the weather!’
The colour drains from Dad’s face. He collapses into an armchair, staring at Teacake with unblinking eyes. His head turns from her to me and back again. I can’t tell which of us he’s more surprised by.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
His voice is so fragile. I can’t stand it. He’s my dad. He’s not supposed to sound like this. Like my words have chipped and chiselled at his bones. Like the next sentence I speak could cause him to crumble.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he says again. His fingers clench; for a split second I think he’s about to throttle me, but instead he grabs at his hair. ‘This is all I’ve thought about . . . everything I wanted to . . . why thehellwould you keep this from me?’
I don’t know how to answer. Like so many things, it seems ridiculous in hindsight.
‘She thought you’d sell her,’ Rani says. ‘She thought you were going to give her up for research, or to a cult.’
Dad looks at her, his mouth open. ‘Youknew about this too?’
Rani’s eyes fill with tears. ‘She wouldn’t let me tell you! I wanted to, but she made me promise!’
‘I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you’d . . .’
He pushes himself out of his chair and begins to pace. Every few steps he stops and stares at Teacake with a crazed look in his eyes. She presses herself against the wall, her wings twitching nervously. For a moment, he’s quiet – then he spins around to stare at me.
‘You let me go ahead with it.’ There’s a pink flush spreading over his cheeks. ‘Yesterday. You let me make a fool of myself in front of all those people, when you knew there was no chance of it happening.’
The guilt is aching. Tears blur my vision, but I brush them away. ‘Dad, I’m sorry! I never wanted to lie to you. I had to do what was best for Teacake.’
‘Forher?’ The pink has turned to red now; the veins at his temples begin to bulge. ‘What about your family, Jaya? Did you think about what was best for us?’
The last few words come as a shout. Teacake starts and falls backwards off the sofa. Rani grabs her hand and drags her out of the living room and upstairs. The lump in my throat has blocked out my voice. I didn’t expect it to be like this. I’ve been angry at Dad for so long that I thought I’d be able to argue back, to stand my ground – the way Allie and Calum stood up to the manager outside Celeste’s the time I first saw them. Instead, all I feel is a deep, crushing sadness.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I should have told you. I should have . . .’ My head is starting to spin. The living-room walls swirl around me. ‘I saw it happen; I saw her fall. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.’
The floor tilts beneath my feet. I sink to the carpet, my palms over my eyes. After a moment, I feel hands on my shoulders. Dad slides his arms around my back and pulls me into his chest. I don’t know how he knows, but he knows . . . he knows I’m not talking about Teacake any more.
‘Come here, pet,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’
And suddenly, like lightning cracking on ice, something inside me splits and I’m sobbing. Because there’s part of the story that I haven’t told anyone: not Dad, not Rani, not the police. It’s the part of the story that I can only barely admit to myself. And though the words stab at my throat, I force myself to say them now.
‘I ran.’
I saw her fall, and I ran.
All these months later, I still can’t explain it. Logic, rationality, even common decency, they were all swept away by the avalanche thundering through my mind. All I thought was,I’ll go back to the house. I’ll run back, to before this happened, to half past seven that morning, when she walked into my bedroom, when she still had lunch and the weekend and years and years of life ahead of her.
I ran.
It was only a couple of minutes, just a few hundred metres – but I ran.
Somewhere in the glen, I came to my senses: I had to help; I had to get help. I sprinted back to the waterfall, but even then I couldn’t look at her properly. All I remember was the blood blossoming into the water, the jarring yellow streak of her scarf against the bracken. I didn’t have my phone on me to call an ambulance, so I ran towards the nearest village and flagged down a couple of hikers. One of them said something about first aid – I followed her back into the glen, but when she got to the pool the woman turned around and grabbed both of my arms.
‘Don’t look.’ That’s the last thing I remember hearing, until the ambulance came and the police turned up. ‘Don’t look.’
If I’d checked her pulse. If I hadn’t run. If I’d taken my phone with me.
More conditionals.
Now the words come spilling out of me. I hardly notice I’m talking until I reach the point where the memories grow murky; where the hiker told me not to look, and I knew that Mum was gone.
