to control the feelings inside; choked sobs fall from my lips as Nessa slides over to me, arm around my shoulders. ‘Hey, shush, what’s wrong? What is it?’
I don’t know how to answer her, though, because I don’t know how to describe how I’m feeling. Am I happy that she’s back or not? Should I be? How can I make this decision? Kill my sister, or lose my family? I rest my head on Nessa’s shoulder as my naked dead sister slides down the slide. She misquotes from Top Gun, asking Goose to talk to her as she smiles, climbing into the pool to join us.
‘I don’t want to lose you again,’ I say.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Nessa replies.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Ed
I’m multitasking. It’s not my favourite thing to do. The kids’ dinner is cooking, the front door is wide open so I can hear them, and I’m simultaneously contorting my body into a shape that it shouldn’t be contorted into while I search for Oscar’s snake – Sammy – in the footwell of my car.
‘Fuck!’ My knuckles have just grazed against something sharp beneath the seat.
‘Daaaadddyyyy!!’ Hailey is shouting from the doorway and I pull my body back out of the arch it’s contorted into, registering as I do that the smoke alarm is going off.
Fishfingers. Burnt fishfingers.
I send Hailey up the stairs with a tea towel and instruct her to flap it beneath the alarm, while Oscar is covering his tear-stained face with his hands as I push past him, pulling open the oven door where smoke pours out. I go to retrieve the oven tray with another tea towel but there are none in the drawer.
‘Why are there no tea towels?!’ I shout, as I start pulling dusters and dishcloths out of the drawer. ‘I mean, is it too much to ask? That when you open the drawer that is supposed to have tea towels in, that there are actual tea towels in there?!’ The alarm continues to shriek as I take out the tray with a dishcloth, burning my hand as I do. The tray skitters across the draining board as I curse under my breath. ‘Hailey! Shut that damn thing up!’ I turn the cold tap on full and wince as it hits the angry red welt that is emerging across my palm. I sigh loudly, my shoulders hunching over the sink as I close my eyes and try to control the confusion inside.
I’m not a man prone to mood swings. I’m the man at work that they send to deal with a difficult client: I don’t get rattled; I don’t lose my cool. But right now? My cool is well and truly lost.
The alarm stops and Hailey’s feet pound down the stairs. A hiccupping sound comes from behind me. I turn my head to where Oscar is crying: he turns to Hailey as she comes into the room, wafting the smoke away with her hand; his face seeks reassurance from her, my daughter’s arm wraps around his tiny frame, her eyes meet mine with a look of distrust. It’s a look normally saved for Jen.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, turning off the tap and kneeling down in front of them, pulling their bodies towards me. ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper.’ I kiss the tops of their heads, Oscar’s body hiccupping from inside his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, kissing harder this time. ‘We must have left Sammy at Aunty Nessa’s. Let’s go and get a McDonald’s and then fetch him, OK?’
Oscar sniffs and wipes away his snot with the back of his hand as Hailey watches my face cautiously.
Oscar’s head is lying heavily to the right as we pull up outside Nessa’s, gentle snores escaping his tomato-sauce-stained face.
‘Wait here,’ I say to Hailey. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’ I release the belt buckle and jog up to the front door, checking the car over my shoulder as I do. Hailey waves at me. My hand waves back.
There is no answer.
I walk to the side gate where I can hear the radio playing. Pushing open the gate, I step into the garden, where I see two naked women embracing.
This is going to sound odd, but for a moment, I wonder who the women are. It’s a moment that stretches and snaps into reality in the time it has taken me to take a breath. By the time that breath has exhaled, I have worked out that the naked woman being held by another naked woman is