A Reason to Exist

Chapter 45

It was like clearing out of a hotel room every time I left me dad's place. Packing my school bag, I checked in the bathroom and under the bed for anything I may have left behind, as my mother refused to collect anything I'd misplaced at my father's. It's was a harsh lesson I learnt early on when I left my prized new Ray-Ban sunglasses there and she wouldn't let me get them until I returned two weeks later.

'Got everything?' dad asked, when I came out for breakfast.

'I think so.'

Dad poured muesli into our bowls of yoghurt. 'Small or big spoon?' he asked, rummaging through the cutlery drawer.

'Small spoon,' I said.

'Me too.' Dad passed me a teaspoon and then sat down beside me at the breakfast bench.

'Are you going to say anything to Tate?'

'Not yet. I really need to think this all through. He's upset with me already. And this might make things worse. I'm at a loose end, to be honest. I really don't know how to deal with this. So, please, I don't want you saying anything just yet. It's not that we accept bad behaviour ... I mean ... what he did is atrocious, absolutely terrible ... It's so bad, I need to think it through carefully. Our relationship is strained, and your mother ... well, Jesus ... she'll flip out ... it's unpredictable ...'

'And Rex?'

'The damaged works will be covered by insurance. It's a long and drawn out process, but we should recover most of the money for them. In the meantime, I'll take out a personal loan to cover the value of the damaged works, so he gets the money sooner rather than later.'

'You're not telling the police it was Tate?' I asked, just to be sure.

'No.' Dad paused, and looked into his yoghurt bowl. 'And you can't tell anyone either. Not even your friends ... Look Macy, this is slightly dodgy. But we have to stick to our story that we don't recognise that person on the CCTV. It could have implications for the insurance claim and everything. Do you understand?'

I nodded my head. My thoughts felt like an archaeological dig. I was complicit in a plan to protect my brother at all costs, despite realising my brother is a first-class weirdo, a screw-up, a boy unable to express his emotions, a confused vigilante, a tap-dancing crook, a mummy's boy to the nth degree. He's the victim of his upbringing, the result of ten thousand conversations damming my father. It is not my brother who should be turned into the police. It is my mother.

'Tate needs help,' I said. 'If he keeps going on like this ... he could become really screwed up.'

'I know,' dad said. 'That's what worries me the most. And that's why the situation is so delicate. I might need professional advice. Believe me, my impulse is to launch in and go to town on him for what he's done. But I don't think that's going to help at all. It'll make things worse.'

'So he's going to think he's gotten away with it?'

'For now,' dad said. 'I don't condone what he's done, you have to know that. But you also have the emotional intelligence to understand that this is really tricky and has to be handled carefully.' Dad's smile was heartbreak at the same time. 'I'm so lucky to have a daughter like you,' he said. 'I'm so pleased her poison didn't work on you. You have a heart of gold and you know the difference between right and wrong. I'm blessed with you.'

I could see tears welling at the corners of his eyes.

'You've never done anything wrong, dad.' I took his hand. We'd never spoken like this before. I wanted him to know I forgave him for everything, that I understood. I was there in the kitchen that evening, I saw them washing the dishes. I saw him reach out to her. 'You are the best father ever,' I said. 'If I could choose any dad it is you.'

The tears in his eyes escaped like water dammed. The melody of his sobs was four beats of suffering; convulsions and spasms of pain. The soundtrack of his sadness weaved into my ears, leaving sediment of misery in my heart. My family felt doomed. There are far worse things than divorce. Bitterness is an acid. Resentment is corrosion. We are a family being sandblasted off a cliff.