Chapter Thirty-Six
JASPER
The au pair girls were not really human beings as far as I was concerned.
When I was young, I saw them as props, actors, people to practice my magic tricks on, my mimes, my persona.
And then, as I got older, I started to find their presence arousing.
I knew why they were here, I knew what Daddy was doing with them at night.
I would stare at their breasts, touch myself sometimes when I thought about them, sometimes even when I was in the room with them.
I was only a child, and I knew it was wrong, obviously, but I wasn’t me when I was doing that.
I wasn’t Patch either. I’d switch into another persona and then I could enjoy doing it without feeling guilty.
There was one au pair girl, I forget her name, but I remember her crying while I was doing it, staring at me with sad eyes and just crying.
One day, two police came asking about one of our au pair girls. I can’t remember which.
We all played dead in Daddy’s study until they’d gone, and after that Daddy took our au pair girl into town. When he came back, he said it was OK, that he and the girl had reached an understanding, that the police wouldn’t be coming back.
But I think it rattled him.
For a year after that we didn’t have an au pair girl.
For a year after that it was almost normal.
Mummy and Daddy seemed happier. We had a cleaner who came twice a week and tidied up our mess.
Daddy went out at night to meet girls in special places, and when I think about it, life could have gone on like that forever, until Daddy was too old to want to have sex anymore.
I think that would have been better all round than what actually happened.
What actually happened was that Claire Connolly walked into our garden one sunny June afternoon and destroyed all our lives forever.