Chapters (49)
‘You have to tell her,’ I say. ‘You can’t let Dad carry the blame for this.’
‘Why not?’ she says, standing up straighter, folding her arms. The breeze blows her dark hair back from her face. ‘He ruined our lives. His drinking. His adultery. His absence. Why shouldn’t he? I think of Ruby-May every day. Every fucking day. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t give to bring her back. But she’s gone. She’s dead, and we can’t ever change that. We have to think of the future, of each other, of our family.’
‘But what you did to him – giving him a sleeping pill, putting the wine out for him, pretending you’d taken him to a Memory Clinic – that was…’ I struggle to think of the right word. In the end I simply say, ‘Wrong.’
‘Do you want to know why? The real reason I did that?’
I swallow. Do I? No, I don’t want to hear whatever bullshit excuse Bethany is going to come up with.
But Bethany has never cared what I think. She tells me. She tells me the real reason why she hates our father enough to do what she did to him. When she’s finished, she’s crying so hard tears drip from her chin. If I were the kind of man who was in touch with his feelings, I’d be fucking sobbing too.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘That’s awful.’ That sounds trite. I try again. ‘I don’t know how you lived with it, all these years.’ Nope. No better. I take a breath. This is going to sound callous and I really don’t mean to. I lean towards her, but this time I refrain from gripping her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t change anything. You need to tell Amy – your sister – what really happened. Two days. You’ve got the rest of today and until tomorrow night to tell Amy.’
Bethany’s sadness shifts gear, switches to anger. ‘Or what?’ she says, coming closer. She’s almost the same height as me. My sister stands in a beam of sunlight, her tawny eyes illuminated, pupils shrunk to pin pricks. ‘Are you threatening me? You won’t tell her. It would be the end of our family, and you know it. You haven’t got the balls.’
I can’t stay here. I might let her push me into something I’ll regret.
Or else I’ll kill her.
I leave my sister standing by the river, and I walk as fast as I can away from the water.