Why had Dad thrown out Mum’s files? Aunt Christine sighed. ‘Your dad wasn’t perfect, Sally.’ I was beginning to understand this. I was always stubborn as a teenager, but Mum often forced me to do things I didn’t want to do. Now, after nearly two years of therapy, I could appreciate that Mum had been trying to integrate me, encouraging me to join clubs and go to school discos and parties. Dad overruled her and allowed me to do what I wanted, taking notes all the time. I recalled overhearing a row once and my mother shouting at my father, ‘She’s not your case study, she’s our daughter.’
In the meantime, Tina and I worked specifically on anger management. When I told her about the overwhelming rage I’d felt towards Caroline, she helped me to see that I was taking on anger that I had learned from my birth mother. Through her files, especially from those tapes, and possibly from repressed memories.
‘You have often said to me, Sally, that you can’t relate to her as your mother, but you must have witnessed things or at least seen some of the aftermath of the most extreme emotional and physical abuse. When you or someone or something you love is threatened’ – she was referring to the time I attacked Angela when she took Toby from me – ‘you want to lash out, like Denise probably did. Anger is a secondary emotion. Rage can be sparked by fear or any emotion where we feel vulnerable or helpless. But now you’re an adult, you’re not locked in a room. You can use different powers. You can use your voice and you can walk away. Two of the most important tools you have. Remember, you are not a child locked in a room. Violence is almost never an appropriate response.’
I had a lot to think about.
Mark never replied to my text, and when Angela put me in touch with Elaine, she hadn’t heard from him either.
‘I am worried,’ she told me, ‘but he has done this before, disappeared for weeks when he got stressed and then surfaced again, full of apologies and promises never to do it again. It’s a pattern with him. I guess you’re my ex-niece-in-law?’
She was friendly and offered to meet me.
‘I don’t think so. We’re not properly related, you and I.’
‘Okay, if that’s the way you feel.’
‘It would be strange, though, wouldn’t it? All we need to do is exchange information. We can do that over the phone. You’re not my family.’
‘I guess not.’
‘Mark is my uncle and he should have told me.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
Sue asked me if anything had happened after the party. Kenneth had told her Mark was the talk of Mervyn Park. Apparently, he was on stress leave, and wasn’t in his apartment. They were full of speculation about what had happened. I told her, because she was my best friend. Sue was as shocked as Angela, Aunt Christine and me.
‘Anubha thought he was mad about you. He talked about you a lot, always asking questions. She eventually told him to shut up one day at work when he was speculating about what you must have gone through as a child. She said it was creepy, but the rest of them thought he had the hots for you, like as if he was fascinated by your “little orphan Annie” story. God, that’s so weird, Sally, and nobody knows where he is now?’
‘No.’ I paused. ‘I hate that film. The sun rarely comes out tomorrow, not in Carricksheedy. Not in winter anyway.’ Sue laughed. ‘What are you laughing at?’
‘I don’t think musical lyrics should be taken so seriously.’
Before the builders left the cottage, I had a locksmith put bolts on all the doors and windows. And then they left, the first week of October, and I had my own beautiful space and my dream bathroom. The lines were sleek and straight. I could hardly believe that this gorgeous home was my own. The stream ran through the house under glass panels and emerged in a rockery in the back yard. Everyone who came admired it as if it had been my work. I gave them Nadine’s business cards. When the piano moved into the cottage, I finally felt at home. I felt secure, I suppose, but sad and a little scared.
While I was concerned about Mark, I was far more worried about ‘S’。 The guards couldn’t find out anything about where the card had been sent from except that it was processed through the main post office in Auckland, like every other piece of overseas mail from New Zealand. It frightened me. Conor Geary was still out there.
44
Peter, 1989
It took me a while to get over Dad’s death. I felt the weight of the phantom disease lift off me. I missed him and I hated him and I loved him, but I could not forgive him. There was nobody with whom to be angry over all the lost years, the years where I could have gone to school, the years where I needn’t have been so physically uncomfortable in hats and gloves, years of friendships, connections, sports and parties, and most particularly the decades of Rangi’s life that were lost because I was gullible enough to believe what my father told me.
I missed the companionship, though, the care and consideration.
Jill from the Daily Post encouraged me to write an open letter to thank the local people for their generosity and wanted another photo of me at home. I agreed to the letter but refused another photograph. Years of hiding didn’t disappear overnight; the feeling of escaping and hiding never left me. I wanted my anonymity back and so I went from being a minor local celebrity to being a recluse. I had a telephone, finally, but nobody to call.
The logistics of sorting out Dad’s estate were overwhelming, and I was appointed a social worker and a lawyer who handled everything for me. I wasn’t alone, but everybody thought I was. Money was transferred into a bank account for me. I was not rich and I would have to work hard to pay the bills, but I owned the house outright. Questions were asked about why I hadn’t gone to school, but I told the truth, that my father had believed I suffered from a disease and that socializing could put me at risk. I had to take some equivalent of their National Certificate of Educational Achievement exams. The authorities were dismayed, I think, that I scored so highly and was duly awarded the certificate. My social worker also made sure that I was registered with the Inland Revenue and explained that my income was taxable. She managed to persuade the authorities not to pursue me for revenue I had already earned. The weeks on crutches were difficult. I was dependent on social workers and district nurses to take me to and from physiotherapy and grocery shopping. In the superette, as I filled the shopping cart, they commented that I had a big appetite. They didn’t realize that I was shopping for two.
Lindy had been half crazy with hunger when I unlocked the door for the first time ten days after the accident. She ate cheese out of the packet and stuffed potato chips into her mouth between screaming at me for leaving her alone for so long. I waited for her to notice my short haircut, the stitches on my head and the crutches I leaned on, and when she did, she sat back on the bed and looked at me. ‘What happened? Where is he?’
I told her about the car accident, the argument that led to it, how I had let my father die. My eyes filled with tears and her eyes glistened too. When I finished explaining, she tipped her head back and her hair hung over her shoulders, her beautiful face pointed at the ceiling. Even with a missing tooth, she was still lovely. ‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘I can go home.’ And then she looked at me suspiciously. ‘Where are the police? Why aren’t they here?’