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To be honest, I was afraid to say no. I'm not sure if I even considered saying no. I don't think it was an option. If only I had thought of it at the time - things might have been so different. You see, my stepmother had a really powerful presence. She had a lot of charisma. So when she asked me whether I wanted to live with her or my father Gary, I don't think there was an option. She even phrased it in a way that made it easy for me, I remember:
"Alice, when Gary goes away you'll want to live with me, won't you?"
Things might have been so different.
"Yes," I nodded quietly, looking at my feet.
If I had stood up to her just that once, and told her the truth... No. Things might have been so different. Gary might still be alive. You know, I don't know why I've always called him by his first name. He was never 'Dad' to me. He was more like my best friend. I suppose it was also an insidious effort from my ruthless stepmother to estrange him. But since his tragic death, I've often longed for someone I could call my Dad. I've so often missed my beloved Gary.
My stepmother was nothing short of evil. And what's worse, she always got everyone on her side. She was very flamboyant and smiley; she made shallow friends everywhere she went. They were always 'chat about the garden over a cup of tea' relationships. None of her friends really knew her. None of her friends would suspect, or indeed believe that she terrorised her own daughter with grisly threats and the occasional beating.
Gary was poles apart. He was the gentlest man, very quiet and introverted. He would always sound like he was confiding in you whenever he spoke. He laughed sparingly and timidly, though he was intrinsically good-natured - if only he had been allowed to bloom. The only way you could tell that he was angry would be the futile fire in his eyes. Or the fear in his eyes?
I often felt sorry for him when he took the brunt of my stepmother's unstable rage. And he knew that I was the only person he could come to. I was the only person on his side. I remember how he used to come home early from his work every Friday just to see me. We would talk in whispers even though my stepmother wasn't even in the house. And then, half an hour before she was due to return he would leave just so he could be seen to be returning at the expected time an hour later.
I remember the last time he came home early on a Friday night. I remember the look in his eyes when he heard my stepmother's car pull up in the driveway, an hour early. He opened his mouth to say something to me, but his thoughts were racing too far ahead. I swear I saw a tear forming in his eye as he turned away and silently left my room. I hid under my bedsheets, pretending not to hear the yelling when it started. Most arguments between my parents came to my ears as a cycle of loud accusations followed by some seconds of silence as my father quietly defended himself.
Then that dreaded moment would come, when the shouting ceased. And my imagination ran wild with the things she might have done to him. I remember knowing that he had been really hurt that time. I don't know how I knew, but I could feel his pain. I looked out of my bedroom window just in time to see her escorting him to the car, holding the bleeding wound on his arm. She told the neighbours that he had received the injury while bravely scaring off a violent robber who had been stalking around in their house, even as she served them bread sliced with the same knife she used to cut him. And I swear there are still bloodstains on the sunny side of the kitchen table, if you look close enough.
Most of the time I feared her, but after Gary lost his job, I hated her. And I hated myself even more. I never found out who started the rumour, although I don't know who else it could have been but my stepmother. Who else would have a motive for discrediting Gary and splitting us apart, and who else would have the capacity to do it so pitilessly?
I remember the lump in my throat when I saw my stepmother's car pull up at the bus stop where I was waiting to catch the bus to school. I don't think she even said anything at first, she just opened the car door for me and I slipped in. She kept repeating to me on the way to the police station where Gary had been taken that I should just agree with the nice policemen or he would go to jail. I stifled a sob that came from my core as I tried to imagine what on earth Gary had been arrested for. I dared not ask my stepmother, and when we arrived it seemed that the 'nice policemen' were also making a point of not telling me why Gary was there.
I didn't see Gary. We waited in an office for about half an hour, accepting cups of tea and sympathy from a kind policewoman that kept rushing in and out. Then they took me out of the room to interview me while my stepmother helped write a 'statement'. I suppose my stepmother expected the interviewer to ask me specific, charged questions so that when I agreed with the nice policemen I would be incriminating Gary. But they asked me very open questions, so I had no idea that I was supposed to be giving evidence that Gary had sexually abused me. It wasn't true of course, and after speaking to me they knew it.
If I could go back into that interview room now, I would tell them everything about my stepmother. How she sliced Gary's arm. How she forced me to drink her beer until I threw up, to show how bad it was for me. How she battered down my bedroom door and hit me when she saw that I had wet myself in terror. But I didn't think of it at the time. I was too shocked when I discovered why I had been brought to the police station.
Gary was let free the same day. Everything would have been fine after that, in fact it might have been a blow for my stepmother on reflection because she made a fool of herself trying to accuse Gary, but the story leaked to one of the local papers. Gary's boss, at the hospital that he had worked in for half his life, fired him the next day. The reason given was that they couldn't afford to keep someone whom the public may perceive as a potential child abuser on the payroll of a hospital full of children.
My stepmother took intense delight from blaming it on me. And so I came to believe that it was entirely my fault that Gary had lost his job. It made me hate myself almost as much as I hated my stepmother. I had hurt the person that meant most to me, and who most trusted me. I was convinced that it was my fault. I didn't speak to Gary as much after that, even though he was around more. I spent ages locked in my bedroom. I suppose I was afraid that he would blame me too. I could never live with that.
It was soon after that that they decided to split. I like to think that it was an assertion on Gary's part. I like to think that he told my stepmother that this couldn't go on any longer, that it had to end here and now. But it's far more likely that it was my stepmother's decision and Gary just played along.
And when she asked me if I wanted to live with her, to be honest, I was afraid to say no.
"Alice, when Gary goes away you'll want to live with me, won't you?"
Things might have been so different.
"Yes," I nodded quietly, looking at my feet.
I swear I saw a tear forming in Gary's eye as he turned away and silently left the house. It didn't immediately occur to me how much I could have hurt him just by submitting to my stepmother, when submitting to her was usually the accepted thing to do.
When we received his suicide letter in the post, the nice policemen starting searching for his body. They found his car in the middle of a field about twenty miles away. It had been completely gutted, burned down to its metal skeleton. They never confirmed that his remains were inside it, but we all assumed that he died that day. He certainly died in me.
I felt the weight of the world crushing the life out of me. It was as if nothing mattered anymore. I didn't just miss him; I felt infinitely alone. The thought that he died feeling betrayed by me, who loved him absolutely, filled my eyes with tears and shook my body with sobs for days at a time. I never thought of trying to kill myself, though. That would be like killing all that was left of Gary.
My stepmother mellowed a little after that. Anyway, I didn't have to suffer her company for long before I was independent enough to start living my own life. She died mysteriously a few years later after being brought into hospital (the one that fired Gary) with a chest infection, probably stress induced.
The thought of attending her funeral made me feel a little sick to my stomach, but I went anyway. I was strangely curious to see what emotions in me would see her to the grave. Unexpectedly, I felt deeply touched. I paid little attention to the funeral proceedings, but revelled in an overwhelming sense of my father's presence.
I closed my eyes and imagined that he was sitting next to me, silently bowing his head to say goodbye to whatever it was in my stepmother that he loved in the first place, then turning to me and gently taking hold of my hand. Somehow, it didn't surprise when I felt his hand in mine - actually felt it. For some seconds I dared not open my eyes. When I did, it was as if my soul had found me again. He was there. I could feel old wounds healing, old scars fading, as my beloved father and I silently watched my stepmother's evil influence descend back underneath the earth. I cried for hours in his arms.
I live happily with Dad now. The fettered soul of the old Gary died in that burning car, and my Dad was reborn when he faked his own suicide. I'm not sure he didn't have a hand in my stepmother's death himself. He'll tell me someday. I love him even more now that he has been allowed to bloom. Now that he has regained some of that old fire in his eyes.
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