Veronica

Dominic knocked on Veronica’s door three times that week. On each occasion, shortly after she’d returned from school, she let him in and made him food, and allowed him to sit in silence. Delivering a sandwich to the table and sitting opposite him, she waited for him to speak, but he never did. It was difficult not to fill the air with mindless chatter, difficult to resist the compulsion to fix and patch; but she tried hard, sensitive to the boy’s need for quiet, for a place that didn’t dominate or demand. Only once, that Thursday, did she press him.

“Your step-dad was round here the other day,” she said, watching Dominic for reaction. “Hammering on my door. Is he ever aggressive like that with you?”

But Dominic had only given her a look then, as if to say ‘don’t patronise’. He knew that she knew. It was why he was there, without words screaming for rescue.

“How’s your sister?” she tried again, a different angle. “You two are close, aren’t you?”

“Not always. Today she was crying and I left her in her cot, came here.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Let them look after her.”

“Them? Your mum and Terry?”

Dominic reverted to a shrug.

“You know, it’s not your job to look after her.”

Dominic said nothing.

“And it’s not your fault.”

Still nothing.

“Any of what happens at home, I mean. It’s not your–”

“What do you know?” Dominic interrupted, pushing the sandwich away from him. “You’re a fucking teacher. You’re all the same. You don’t know anything. It is my fault.”

“What is?”

Dominic said nothing.

“Something to do with your sister?”

Still nothing.

“Or your mother?”

Dominic looked up. “Sometimes, I only have to think things, you know, and they happen.”

Now Veronica was the one silent. The boy’s beady eyes were as dark and impenetrable as ever. And locked on her.

“I wanted my dad to die. And he did. And I wanted my mum to get hurt, I mean not really, not properly, but I was angry and I thought it. And then…”

“Then what, Dominic?”

He stopped.

“What?” Veronica moved closer to him, tried to touch his hand, but he drew it away.

“What do you know?” he repeated.

Veronica still wasn’t sure what exactly she knew, but she reported each of Dominic’s visits to the council. It wasn’t enough, but it felt important, necessary, for her as much as him. Besides, what else could she do? She was unable to scoop him, or his sister, into her arms and run.

Like she’d scooped up Harry.

She shook her head, chasing away that vision. She wasn’t sure why she had done it, or how she could have allowed herself. It wasn’t from spite, it really wasn’t. Since things had escalated with the neighbours, Sarah had all but slipped from her mind. She hadn’t even formulated a way to roll back the demand for a parents’ meeting. She wasn’t pilfering. If anything, she was fixing, she was fixing Dominic, concentrating on him. But more than that, she was finally concentrating on herself. Retaking control. Yet, the little boy had found his way into her empty arms.