Page 60 of Never Tear Us Apart
‘Even Christina,’ I interrupt him as I pace up and down, tugging on my thread of logic and unravelling it at pace. ‘Even she is like the ideal best friend that I never really had. I was always a bit too weird, a bit too different and shy to have one of those. The way Christina accepted me and took me in – that’s just what I’ve always secretly wanted. Andthenmy dad as a kid, my dad who, according to this fantasy, started out as this sweet, funny, brave little boy and grew up to be this cold remote man who doesn’t even take an interest in his own daughter. He’s here, because in my fantasy world, I can save him,changehim, help him grow up to be the kind of dad I’ve always wanted. Don’t you see, Sal? This is all just my stupid, pathetically needy subconscious. I can’t have a life in the real world, so I made one up in my head.’
Sal guides me out of the heat of the day, under one of the great stone archways built into the fortified city walls, left over from the rule of the Knights of St John. Seeing the tears that track down my face, he reaches into his jacket and produces a handkerchief, which he gently dabs at my cheeks.
‘Come now,’ he says, gently catching my hands. ‘Breathe. In and out. Deep and slow. You are having a panic attack, I think.’
‘But if this isn’t . . .’
‘Whatever this is, you are feeling overwhelmed. So: breathe. With me. In, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Hold it. And out – this time count to eleven. Really empty your lungs.’
I keep my gaze fixed on him as I follow his instructions.
‘Good, and again.’
Slowly but surely, I feel the muscles that have contracted around my ribcage release. I see the blue sky, cut into a wedge by the arch we are under, feel the pebbles jutting through the thin rubber on the soles of my feet, and Sal’s hands holding mine. My shoulders fall in increments until I can think again.
‘To meet your father here as a little boy, knowing what he has endured and has yet to face – that has frightened you, Maia. It frightens me, too, if I’m honest. And perhaps it does make sense, especially to a modern mind that has grown up in a world where the unexplained is so often sidelined as nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Believe me, I went there myself. But I know something you don’t yet, Maia.’
‘What?’ I ask. ‘What do you know that I don’t.’
‘That Iwassent here for a purpose. I was sent here to atone.’
In the shade, his glasses reflect the blue of the sky so I can’t see his eyes.
‘What do you mean, atone?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t come back to Malta to see my family,’ Sal says. ‘I came back to escape a terrible thing I did – something I tried to run away from.’
‘What terrible thing?’ I ask, anxious.
‘Before I came here, I drank. A lot. And when I found out that my dear Elena was pregnant, I got very drunk. I was so happy, you see, and that’s what I did when I was happy – I drank. I never thought myself an alcoholic. I was never angry or cruel. I never drank at work, or during the day, only whenI had a reason to. And I always had a reason to. Elena was quite rightly angry with me. On this most important day of our lives, I went out to get wine, met a friend at a bar on the way and didn’t come home until the early hours. I told her I was wetting our child’s head. She said it had to be born first. We fought – I left the house and got in my car and . . . I woke up with my head on the steering wheel, the horn blaring into the night. When I got out, there was another car, run into a ditch. The driver wasn’t moving. There were children crying in the back, shouting for help. I reassured them, walked until I found a payphone and called for help. And then I thought of my job, my baby, my Elena, and I hung up when they asked for my name. I went back to my car, and I left those children crying behind. I ran away. I left those crying children there all alone.’
My mouth falls open. ‘Sal!’ I gasp. I can barely believe that this sweet man would do such a thing. But panic in the worst of situations does that to people, I would know.
‘The shame has followed me all my life,’ Sal tells me, tears in his eyes. ‘That doesn’t fit in with your perfect vision, does it?’
‘So, you think this is some kind of . . . cosmic punishment?’ I ask him, turning away from him.
‘No, I think it’s a chance to atone,’ Sal says. ‘To make amends and restore balance, to all that is, and to my soul.’
‘But you’ve been here for thirty years, and you haven’t atoned yet?’
‘Because the time has not yet come,’ Sal says. ‘But I believe it will. And when it does, I will be ready to pay the price for what I did. Whatever it is.’
Sal takes a step towards me. ‘I was a different man then, selfish and scared. I’ve had more than thirty years to learn how to be the kind of man who deserved all the things I lostand will never regain.’ He bows his head. ‘It was nice to be seen the way you saw me, if only for a little while. The man you saw – that is who I have tried to be. For my sake, for my wife’s, for my child who I will never know.’
This is impossible. I want something to believe in. Ineedsomething that I can know is absolutely true, and there isnothing– nothing but the beat of my heart in my chest, hard and fast. Wherever I really am, that at least proves I’m alive.
‘But why here? Why, in this one corner of the world, would there be this unique system of punishment? Or chance for redemption? Why only on the few square miles that are this island?’
‘The ancients lived another life, by another set of rules,’ Sal says. ‘They understood a reality that we can’t even imagine. And they ingrained their interpretation of the universe so deeply into the rock that it became part of it. They carved and painted it into the fabric of the island with such conviction that it lives on still. Even after everything that has come since, it lives on underneath it all, waiting. And sometimes, somehow, people fall through the gaps that remain – for a purpose.’
‘Not those thirty children,’ I mutter. ‘You can’t tell me thirty eleven-year-olds all had something to atone for.’
‘What children?’ Sal asks.
‘Have you never heard of the children who were lost in the hypogeum? My cousin told me about them when I was last back in the present.Mypresent, I mean.’
‘Whispers and rumours, I suppose,’ Sal says. ‘A ghost story, of sorts. You think it really happened, and that it’s connected to this?’
