Chapter 37
Closure
Rafe
“Your older brother’s asked to see you,” I told her, watching her face carefully to gauge her reaction. The blankness was gradually receding, but the fear in her eyes was always evident.
It was the day after the sixth form open evening, which had gone surprisingly well.
To be honest, I was glad of the open evening as an excuse to get Clara out of the house for once.
She had retreated too much into herself over the last two weeks since her discharge from hospital, and I was starting to worry.
It helped that her brother, Poppy and Ozzie were all here to coax her out of herself, but I could tell that she really wasn’t with it.
Her clothes were often on the wrong way round.
She only wore leggings and huge jumpers, all in her standard black or grey and she hid under her fringe, which was long overdue a cut.
I became almost desperate to see her pretty eyes.
Sometimes I even gave in to the urge to gently push her hair back from her face, just to look into them.
Other times, I even risked a light kiss.
And when I did, often I’d see a flash of Clara through the blankness.
A spark of recognition. Then she’d settle back into the nothingness.
I gave her space, but didn’t let her retreat completely. If we all watched a film together in the evening, I’d make sure she sat next to me on the sofa and would pull her into my side.
The first time I did it, she stiffened for a moment, but I muttered, “Settle,” into her hair and kept my arms tight around her and eventually she melted into me.
Within a few minutes she’d fallen asleep, and I gently took off her glasses.
I didn’t think she got much sleep otherwise, so at the end of the film I made everyone, including Ozzie, be very quiet so they wouldn’t wake her, and I arranged us so that I was lying on the sofa and Clara was sleeping alongside me.
I didn’t sleep much myself that night. Instead, I watched the peaceful expression on Clara’s face, so at odds with the troubled one she wore in the daytime.
When we’d arrived at the open evening yesterday, it was clear Zach’s teachers all knew Clara well.
Even though Zach had mentioned that Clara was the one who went to his parent-teacher conferences, it still took me by surprise.
But then I’d come to understand that Marie Mason had tapped out of parenting in any real way when Zach was small.
How Clara and Zach weren’t totally fucked up was a minor miracle.
Zach had started counselling already, but whilst Clara would agree to me organising and paying for her brother, she was still resistant to me doing the same for her, which was frustrating me no end.
With her level of PTSD, there was no other choice but to seek professional help.
I’d already found the perfect psychologist on Harley Street, but so far Clara had completely refused.
She was still talking about paying me back for that bloody hospital room, for God’s sake.
“Which brother?” she whispered, and I cursed myself for being such a complete dickhead.
“Ruben,” I reassured her. “If Freddie wanted to talk to you, I wouldn’t have even brought it up.”
She’d confided in me about her brothers, her father, and her childhood.
If I could beat the shit out of Frank Mason again, I would have.
As for the brothers, Freddie was clearly cut from the same cloth as Frank, but Ruben, although violent and enmeshed in the Mason criminal activities, seemed to be surprisingly protective when it came to Clara and Zach.
“What does he want?” she asked. She was sitting huddled in a small ball on the sofa.
Her troubled eyes blinked up at me from behind her glasses.
I glanced at the pot of Branston Pickle that was on the coffee table and I almost smiled.
This was a good sign. Eating Branston Pickle straight out of the jar in my living room while she watched mindless telly was a damn good sign.
There were a few days when I checked on Clara in her room, and she was just staring out of the window at nothing.
I’d had to remind her to eat and I wasn’t sure how much she was sleeping.
She flinched at every loud noise and still always seemed like she was trying to hide in plain sight, although today there was something different about her.
I tilted my head to the side as I realised that she was wearing a pink T-shirt.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen Clara in anything but dark colours.
But I knew that Poppy had brought a load of clothes over the other day for Clara.
She claimed her wardrobe “needed a clear out” and that she just “couldn’t be bothered to lug these old things to the charity shop”.
I knew my sister, and a lot of that stuff still had labels on.
She picked out all that stuff for Clara specifically.
If there’s one thing Poppy was competent at, it was shopping.
And Clara did need more clothes here. She was still refusing to move anything out of her flat, other than George the goldfish, who’d stayed here throughout all the drama, diligently cared for by Ozzie.
Clara pulled both her lips in between her teeth and bit them. I waited until she was ready to speak. It was getting better, but Clara’s responses were still sometimes slow, as if she was weighed down too heavily with her fears to process the world around her.
“I don’t want Zach to see him,” she said, as always thinking of anyone but herself. “It might upset him.”
I held back a sigh. Zach was engaging with counselling, he was eating like a horse, he got on well with Ozzie and the rest of my family, and he was chuffed to bits to live somewhere he could revise in peace. She was worried about Zach, but in my mind the real concern was Clara.
“No, he only asked to see you.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay, you want to go?”
“I’m the reason he’s in there. I owe him a visit if it’s what he wants.”
“You don’t owe anyone anything,” I said through gritted teeth. When the request from Ruben had come through, I’d debated even telling Clara. But the PTSD counsellor I consulted told me that as long as Clara felt safe, seeing him might actually offer her some closure.
“Will you…” she broke off, looking down at her lap and fiddling with the sleeves of her cardigan. When she spoke again, it was just above a whisper. “Will you come with me?”
I sighed and moved to sit next to her on the sofa carefully, keeping my movements steady and slow as she tracked me with her brown eyes.
Before, I would simply have jumped over the coffee table, snatched her into my arms and held her against me, but now that was not a good idea.
A wave of frustration and self-loathing swept over me again.
If I’d just been a touch less of an arrogant, self-righteous dickhead, Clara would not have been hurt again by her father, and she would likely not now be flinching at sudden movements.
She wouldn’t startle at the loud sounds of the bin men in the morning.
“Clara,” I said to her softly once I was sitting next to her, my leg just brushing against hers.
She reluctantly looked up from her lap to meet my gaze, that fucking wariness that I hated still lingering in her eyes.
“There’s no way in hell I would let you go to HMP Wandsworth on your own. Understand me?”
“Let me?” she said, a little of the fire back as her eyes flashed. I almost smiled.
Come on, Clara, I begged in my head. That’s it, baby. Tell me I’m a bossy know-it-all prick.
I must have been the only man in history mentally begging a woman to snap at him. But then the fire died and the blankness returned as she shrank back into herself again, and I suppressed a sigh. Then Clara surprised the fuck out of me.
“I want to see my father as well,” she said, her quiet voice now edged with steel.
I frowned. “Clara, I don’t think that––”
“I’m going to see him, Rafe,” she told me, using my name for the first time since before the courtroom.
The colour in her cheeks was heightened now.
I looked down to see that her hands were clenched into small fists so tight that her knuckles were white.
This was costing her. Speaking up like this was terrifying Clara.
Great, the very first thing she asks of me is something I desperately don’t want to give her.
“Clara, you’re traumatised. Seeing that fucking…
” I broke off and rubbed a hand down my face.
My voice was rising, and the last thing I wanted was to shout at Clara.
But the thought of her breathing the same air as that sadistic bastard was untenable.
I took a deep breath in before I spoke again, trying to keep the rage out of my tone. “It’s not a good idea, darling.”
She met my eyes again, that fire back in hers. I would have been thrilled if she wasn’t fighting me on seeing her fucking father.
“This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen my father after he’s hurt me,” she said, and my chest felt so tight it was almost too hard to take a breath in. “But this time, you’ll be there. And you won’t let anything hurt me.”
I let out a long breath as I rubbed my hand down my face.
But then a plan formed in my mind and something clicked into place.
Closure, the therapist told me, was good.
That I could deliver.