Page 26 of The Family Across the Street
‘Your fault, Katherine. You’re the one who’s been pulling away.’
‘I have twins to take care of.’
‘And I have a job. We’re both busy!’
‘So you’re texting another woman?’
‘It’s not like that, it’s just a friendship. I don’t get anything from you anymore, not even that.’
‘Rubbish. Friends don’t end their texts with heart emojis.’
There is a shriek from upstairs followed by a scream and she leaps off the couch and runs to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sophie, George… Sophie, George!’ she yells, the words a strangled squeak, but then he appears, points the gun at her. ‘Stop right there.’ She freezes.
He turns around, snarls, ‘Get out here, you brats,’ and the children appear from Sophie’s room. They are holding hands and they are also each holding their iPads. George’s cheek is flaming, a bright, deep red.
‘What… what happened?’ she begs.
‘Get back in there,’ he hisses at her and she darts back into the room, her eyes falling on the wrapping paper again and the blue handle of the scissors underneath the rolls. She grabs at them, scraping her hand on the blade as she does so, and sits back down on the sofa, pushing the scissors down between the two seat cushions, feeling the blade catch and rip the fabric. Her heart pounds as she tries to breathe evenly, to give nothing away, when he comes back into the room with the twins. What have you done? What if he sees? What have I done?
They run to her and cling on to her, their arms around her waist, little bodies shaking, such fear she thinks it may break her.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ sobs Sophie.
‘What happened? What happened?’ she repeats, her voice high – terrified – and she’s panicking that he will somehow figure out that she has the scissors.
‘Just shut up,’ he commands and they do as they have been told, all three of them scrunching up together on the sofa that Katherine decides she will throw away, should she and her children make it out of today alive. She gulps down a moan of despair as she realises how impossible that idea is beginning to seem. What on earth could scissors do against a gun? The children are silent, disbelieving, as they watch him.
‘George tried to make a sign to alert the neighbours, didn’t you, Georgie boy?’ he says, and he sounds amused that a child should try something so stupid.
George nods his head slowly and Katherine knows without a doubt that he has taken the fall for his sister. Sophie is a child of invention and ideas: ‘What if we… why don’t we… let’s try.’
She remembers walking into the kitchen when they were three years old, after having left for just five minutes to put on a load of washing, and finding the whole floor covered in white flour.
‘I did it,’ George said immediately and she simply laughed at the mess. Then Sophie, knowing there would be no consequences, said, ‘I saided we should try to do baking.’
It is so like him to say it was his fault, so protective of him, and her heart melts for her child. As the redness on his cheek begins to fade, a clean handprint is left. He has been hit with a lot of force. He has never been hit before and she can see from his red-rimmed eyes just how shocked he is. Her children are lectured, given time out, their misdemeanours explained. They have never been hit. Not until today. They have never been hurt. Not until today.
‘I’m so sorry, baby,’ she says.
‘Just play on the stupid things,’ he says and both children obediently open their iPads to games they like. She can see little hands trembling, can feel their shock and horror. He has hurt George and she has not protected them. A mother needs to protect her children against everyone, even against their own father if that becomes necessary. She should have done a better job of that.
She wonders if they are both thinking about this now, about her failure to do the one thing all mothers are supposed to do.
She watches their hands move across the screens in lacklustre fashion. They are not interested in the games that they would so willingly play at any other time.
‘I want to tell you a story,’ he says.
Katherine looks up at him, noting the change in his voice. Is he regretting this now? Is he trying to find a way to reverse this situation? His tone is softer, his body more relaxed. Perhaps he has shocked himself with how terrified George and Sophie are.
‘It’s a story about this boy who found a girl that he thought he could love forever. She was pretty and funny and clever and all the things a woman is supposed to be, and the boy treated her with great kindness.’
Flowers for you and chocolates too because I love you – yes, I do. The words written on a card return to her now, and she feels her smile inside her, hears the joyous laugh that had bubbled up at the time. He did love her as she loved him.
There is a ping from George’s iPad, which is synced with her computer, and she turns to look. Her son panics and mistakenly touches the email to open it and she realises it’s a survey about a parcel, the attempted delivery of the computer from earlier this morning. She lifts her hand to close it but George taps on one of the numbers and then quickly gets rid of the email.
He gets up and grabs the iPad from George. ‘What are you doing?’ he roars, bending down to yell in her son’s face, furious at being interrupted. All softness gone, all possibility of her finding a way out of this disappearing.
‘He didn’t do anything, it was just an email!’ she yells, needing to be as loud as he is. Needing to keep his attention on her.
