Chapter 36
Violet
Luke and Henry remained where they were for some time, the two of them, not moving from where they’d sunk slowly to the floor. Luke wept, but silently, almost meekly, his eyes tightly shut against the carnage he’d caused. I met Henry’s gaze for the first time since our awful row of a few nights ago and felt an understanding of sorts pass between us. We were back at an impasse, bonded once again by our child.
I found Eliza in the kitchen, and while she readied mugs for tea, I swept the floor. Beyond the boundaries of the house, all was still, quiet save for the tempered drone of crickets, and the distant purr of a passing plane.
As well as destroying several items of crockery, Luke had smashed out the glass panels in the door and pulverised a jar of shells that he and I had been adding to since his first summer on the island. Having cut up a cardboard box, I unearthed a roll of parcel tape and covered the gaping holes. Mercifully, the wooden frame was intact, which would make adding new panes of glass far easier. I knew that within a few days the job would be done, Henry having quietly and efficiently seen to it without fuss or performance. It had long been the routine back in England – our son would break things and Henry would fix them. The material things, at any rate.
The door into the kitchen opened and Luke walked into the room, his face blotchy and eyes bloodshot. My instinct was to pull him into my arms, but I knew better than to attempt it.
‘Eliza made tea,’ I said, and he offered her a sheepish smile.
‘Cool. Dad had to make a phone call.’
‘Shall we go outside?’ Eliza suggested, two steaming cups in her hands.
Luke glanced uncertainly towards me, and I nodded in encouragement.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘All right.’
Stepping carefully over the full dustpan, he made his way out on to the patio, followed closely by Eliza. I heard the drawn-out exhalation of a deep sigh, and the scrape as one of them pulled out a chair. It was wrong to eavesdrop, but I felt rooted to the spot, the cardboard I’d stuck over the door providing too good a barrier to resist hiding behind.
It was Eliza who spoke first. ‘I’ve never seen you like that.’
Luke’s response was a tired sounding ‘hmm’.
‘I mean, you told me that you used to lose your temper, lose control, but I didn’t realise how bad— Never mind.’
‘It’s all right,’ he muttered. ‘When I get like this, it is bad. Bad is the right word to use.’
‘Is it?’ she began, only for her words to stall. ‘I mean, do you have any control at all, or is it...?’
‘Intentional?’ he replied. ‘No. It feels as if someone else has taken over my motor functions, my mood, my reactions. It’s pretty horrible, you know?’
‘I can’t bear the thought of that,’ she said quietly. ‘How frightening it must be for you.’
Her compassion was touching, but I couldn’t help but feel chafed by it. Eliza had seen her way straight through to forgiveness before the – quite literal – dust had settled. My sympathy for Luke was front and centre, but there were other, more unsavoury emotions at play. I was scared for him, but I was also scared of him; angry that he suffered in this way, but angry that I suffered as a result of it and worn out from all the years I’d spent as a hostage on the unstable helter-skelter of his mental health.
‘It’s been ages since I, you know, lost it this badly,’ Luke went on. ‘I thought I was on top of it, and I am, most of the time. I could feel myself slipping down these past few days, since Antonio –’ he paused to take a steadying breath – ‘since the news, since my dad had a go at me.’
I closed my eyes against the memory of those words. That screwed-up head of yours.
‘I should’ve known what to do,’ said Eliza, sounding upset. ‘I just stood there.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ I wanted to call through the door. I’d known Luke for nineteen years and I still didn’t know what to do when he got like this.
‘There’s nothing anyone can do,’ Luke told her, more solemn than sullen. ‘It’s on me to sort myself out, not you – not anyone else.’
‘But that’s so... I don’t know... lonely,’ Eliza pointed out. ‘There must be help out there.’
‘There is,’ he conceded. ‘My parents, they tried everything. I saw doctors, counsellors, this nice Indian psychiatrist dude, even a hypnotherapist. I was prescribed medication, first when I was around nine or ten, then again, a few years later, but I never took it. I didn’t want to. I’d been online by then and read a load of stuff about how they make you feel numb and lazy, and that I’d be at risk of gaining a ton of weight. It was all there on forums and blogs, and I guess I wanted to think the worst, because I was scared, and I wasn’t ready to accept that there was anything wrong with me. I went to one CBT session and thought it was a load of rubbish, but I probably should’ve tried harder, you know? I thought I knew better than all of them.’
I only realised that I was crying when the tears dripped on to my hands. At some stage during their conversation, I had lowered myself down on to the terracotta tiled floor, and I stared now at the slanting pattern of sunlight streaming in through the one intact window.
‘It’s not too late,’ said Eliza cautiously. ‘You can try again, go back to the doctor.’
It was as though I heard the shake of Luke’s head when he replied. ‘I want to do this my way.’
‘I get that,’ she allowed, ‘but you know you can’t let something like this happen again, don’t you? And I know, I know,’ she went on, as Luke started to argue, ‘I know you say you can’t control it, that it controls you, but you also say you can feel it coming. And if that’s true, then you can learn to control it. Tell me, I’ll help you – we can work on it together.’
I wiped my cheeks, pressing my lips together hard to muffle my sobs.
‘My mum used to say that to me,’ he said, so faintly that I had to inch closer to the door in order to hear. ‘But being around her, it makes me... I dunno, it’s like a trigger or something. Like, I’ve already disappointed her before I’ve even said a word. She’s always so fake with me, pretending that everything is OK and that whatever I do, it’s fine, when I know it’s not, I know it’s bloody awful, I know that.’
He was becoming worked up, and I felt myself tense, my body so finely tuned to his moods, the threat of volatility. I understood what Luke meant by ‘trigger’, because for a long time, I had been triggered by him, too. The two of us falling into a rut of mutually destructive behaviour. All this time, I’d thought I was the best person for him, when in truth, I could well be the worst. At the wedding, it had been Ynes, not me, who’d managed to calm him. That awful day on the boat, Juan had been the one to console him as he spluttered, coughed, and convulsed with shock. Today, it had been Henry he’d needed, not me. I had only made him worse.
‘Your mum loves you,’ Eliza was saying, managing to soothe where I would only agitate. ‘She’d do anything for you.’
Again, I marvelled at her maturity. She may have mocked her parents for being older than most, but their positive influence on her was clear. Henry and I hadn’t had any choice but to make it up as we went along.
‘I know,’ Luke said listlessly. ‘But at some point, she started doing nothing at all for herself. I mean, look at her and my dad. They keep telling me it was a mutual decision to split up, but I know it was me who broke them, me who came between them.’
I stared at the cardboard, stunned by what I was hearing.
‘You can’t blame yourself for what’s going on with those two,’ said Eliza, sounding almost wily. ‘There’s the whole Juan situation to consider.’
Shame hit me afresh, dousing me like an acid bath.
‘That’s probably my fault, too,’ grumbled Luke. ‘I kind of hero-worshipped him for years, used to hang out at his place a lot, which meant Mum did, too. Dad was always off working, keeping busy,’ he added bullishly. ‘It’s what he does when he’s stressed about something, and because of me, he was always stressed about something.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Eliza assured him, and I sent up a silent prayer of thanks to her for being so fair, so unequivocally in Luke’s corner, for being his person. He needed her more than I’d allowed myself to acknowledge. It was time to stop being envious of their connection and start applauding it, and in the meantime, work on resetting my own relationship with Luke. The dynamic had to change, but it wasn’t going to be easy to implement. I would require help, and there was only one person I wanted to ask.
As the thought came to me, so the man came into the room, his expression creasing into one of concern as he spotted me crumpled on the floor.
‘Shh,’ I whispered, crawling on my hands and knees towards him. ‘They’re outside.’
‘Right,’ said Henry, making no attempt to speak quietly. I winced as the back door creaked open and Eliza and Luke reappeared.
‘Hey,’ I said brightly as I shot up from the floor, taking the empty mugs from them and dropping them in the sink. ‘I can do these, you two feel free to go, erm, do whatever it was you were going to do.’
Luke glanced at his girlfriend. ‘We thought we’d go and lie down for a bit,’ he said. ‘Been a long day.’
‘Good plan,’ said Henry, stepping aside to let them pass.
I waited until the floorboards above us creaked with the sound of their footsteps before turning to face him.
‘Thank you,’ I said, as he opened the fridge to retrieve a beer, then changed his mind and picked up one of the cups of tea still on the side, ferrying it to the microwave.
‘What for?’
I fidgeted on the spot, tucking one foot behind the other, folding and unfolding my arms. ‘For coming back when the alarm was raised, for stepping in when I was unable to, for calming Luke down.’
Henry frowned. ‘You don’t have to thank me for being his dad.’
‘I know. But I’m grateful. I couldn’t reach him, and I lost my cool entirely. I’m useless.’ I groaned and proceeded to reel off my failures. Henry said nothing, then moved to the back door and examined the botch job I’d done with the cardboard.
‘Not bad,’ he mused. ‘Clean break, too – that’ll make things easier.’
‘What’s the verdict on the dresser?’ I asked, and he grimaced.
‘Firewood.’
‘Eeek.’
‘I think it might be teak actually, but you were close enough.’
‘Funny. Did Luke say anything?’
Henry opened the microwave and retrieved his tea. ‘Not much,’ he said, and then, ‘Bloody hell! How many sugars are in this tea? It tastes like candyfloss.’
‘Just the one, and really nothing at all?’
‘If you’re asking me if I know what the catalyst was, then I can’t tell you, although I’m guessing the funeral had a lot to do with it. The reality of seeing a coffin and knowing what’s inside it – that’s enough to upset anyone.’
‘And how are you feeling?’
‘Me? Oh, you know, peachy.’
‘I’m sorry, I just—’
‘Just what?’
‘Forget it,’ I said, stepping around him so I could access the drawer where we kept the bin liners. Pulling out the roll, I tore a couple off and shook them out.
‘I’m going to clear up what’s left of the dresser.’
Without giving him time to reply, I went through to the lounge, where I dropped to my knees and began extracting splintered chunks of wood.
‘Could have been worse.’ Henry had followed me from the kitchen, and as I turned, he knelt down beside me.
‘I don’t see how,’ I said.
‘Could have been the dining table.’
‘He did break the small one in the hallway,’ I told him. ‘Wasn’t that one of the first pieces you made?’
Henry mulled this over. ‘I think so. Probably why it fell apart so easily. Don’t chuck that!’ he said, as I went to bag what was left of one of the doors. ‘There’s still a hinge on there – I can use that.’
‘Waste not want not,’ I intoned, earning myself a smile of approval.
‘One of many things your father and I agreed on.’
My father. His father. Our fathers.
‘God, Henry, I’m so sorry about Antonio.’
He reached for a rubbish sack. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know you are.’
We fell into a silence that for once felt welcome. There had been so much noise, and I wanted a chance to digest everything I’d heard Luke and Eliza discussing. The two of us cleared the mess from the lounge and then the hallway, Henry carefully wrapping every shard of broken vase up in newspaper, while I mopped up the water with an old beach towel. After a while, Eliza came down to let us know that Luke had fallen asleep and that she, too, was going to get an early night. I understood. We were all wrung out from the events of the day.
Nobody wanted to eat, but I made a plate of sandwiches anyway, thick slices of cheese topped with a generous helping of Ynes’s home-made salsa; a bowl of tortilla crisps and cut-up segments of orange.
‘I was hungrier than I thought,’ Henry said afterwards, as he carried his empty plate to the sink. ‘Do you fancy a proper drink?’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘Can’t face alcohol, but thanks anyway.’
‘I might,’ he said, pointing towards the back garden with the neck of his beer bottle. It felt like an invitation of sorts, but the last thing I wanted was another conversation that sparked into an argument. Instead, I said goodnight and made my way upstairs.
Having peeled off my dress, I left it on the floor and went through to the en suite in just my underwear, turning on the tap before splashing cold water across my face. It got into my eyes, and blinking furiously, I bent over the basin, rubbing until I could see once more. When I raised my head again to the mirror, I jumped in fright.
Henry was there, standing in the open doorway, watching me.