Chapter 48
Billy came out of his coma on a Tuesday, just under a month after his accident. He didn’t remember what happened to him on Bonfire Day. In fact, there were whole chunks of time that he didn’t remember. The doctors said these memories might come back, or they might not.
He returned to school six weeks after his injury.
On the whole, it looked like nothing had changed.
He looked the same, he sounded the same.
But he was also different. Stupider, certainly.
And on occasion he’d be hit by a sudden blankness that rendered him silent for ten, maybe fifteen seconds.
Afterward, we could see he was unaware of what had happened, and no one ever told him.
They were afraid. Because that was the other thing about Billy after the accident.
He was meaner.
Sundays had become my favorite day of the week.
Cess and Ness joked about how pious I’d become, such was my desperation to get to Mass each week, and they commented on how much more care I was taking with my presentation, styling my hair carefully and trying out new outfits.
It was clear they suspected a boy, but they didn’t pry, nor did they seem to notice when I slipped out the side door shortly after Mr. Loukas during the service.
Afterward, I always waited outside the back double doors, re-tucking my skirt and fixing my hair, ready to hand out flyers to unsuspecting parishioners as they poured out the doors.
It felt like the perfect crime, and yet I couldn’t shake a feeling that if anyone saw me, they would know.
I’d read books where women and girls had described feeling “dirty” after interactions such as this, and in a sense that was how I felt.
As though something physical covered my skin, something that could be seen and felt and touched, something that should be washed off.
At the same time, “dirty” didn’t quite describe the part of it that felt wonderful, the part I never wanted to wash off in case it never happened again.
Each week, Daphne joined me outside the church as the people spilled out to help me distribute whatever flyers needed handing out—about the parish car boot sale, or the youth dance, or the choir auditions.
“Talk about dull,” she said one Sunday, reaching into the box of flyers.
I grinned. “Not for me.”
I waited for Daphne to ask why, but instead she went pale.
“What?” I said. “What is it?”
She pointed to the top of the stairs where a woman in a twinset and pencil skirt was exiting the church.
She had platinum-blond hair tucked under a burgundy felt cloche hat and her stilettos were of a height that my mother would have called “highly inappropriate” for church.
Still, it was clear the woman was unconcerned about what was deemed appropriate, given she had linked her arm with my father’s.
My father: a widower of a couple of months. And Susan.
I stared at them as they came down the stairs, chatting to other parishioners, their arms linked in a way I’d never seen my father’s arms linked with my mother’s.
Her hand was in the inner crook of his elbow, and he covered her hand with his own.
A girl of about six, with blond hair and blue eyes like a baby doll, walked to one side of my father. I thought I might be sick.
My father looked at me. I wanted to look away, but I found myself staring back. Susan, seemingly unaware of any of this, extended her gloved hand for a flyer.
“Whoa, Mabel,” Daph said to me once they had passed. “Talk about a death stare.”
“My father’s?”
“No. Yours.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, looks can’t kill.”
“I don’t know,” Daphne said.
“They can’t,” I say. “Or he’d already be dead.”