Deep Wate - Sarah Epstein Page 0,83

dull thud against bone inside his head. The bottle bounced off his shoulder and clattered to the floor. It didn’t break, instead rolling across the kitchen tiles and coming to rest out in the hall.

Pain now. A throbbing ache and blistering sting. It brought tears to his eyes he couldn’t be certain weren’t already there.

‘How dare you,’ his mother said. ‘Turn eighteen and all of a sudden you think you rule the roost around here?’

He almost couldn’t hear her over the ringing in his left ear. Everything was muffled as white dots crept into his vision. It wasn’t the injury; it was rage. It was coming. He felt it rumbling up from deep inside his core.

He jerked around and strode across the kitchen, wrenching the broom out from beside the fridge. His limbs trembled with an intensity he couldn’t control, his mind floating somewhere outside his body. He proceeded towards his mother and she backed against the wall, the dining table between them.

‘You hit me with that,’ she said, ‘and it’s all over for you. I’ll have you arrested. I’ll tell them to lock you up and throw away the key!’

Mason swung at the table and struck the coffee mug like a baseball. It shattered in midair, shards of porcelain flying off in all directions, a splash of vodka flicking across the wall.

‘I’ll tell them what you did! They’ll think you’re one of those sociopaths. You tried to drown your baby brother and now you want to do me in as well!’

Mason raised the broom handle high over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

‘You’re just like him,’ she screeched, cowering.

‘I am nothing like him!’ Mason cried. ‘And I am nothing like you.’

He watched her flinch as he swung the broom forwards in a large sweeping arc. It connected with the plate cabinet, dead centre, destroying one of its doors in a sparkling shower of glass. He brought the broom up and around again, taking out the other door and shattering one of the side walls as well. Plates jumped and toppled from their stands, making satisfying cracking noises as they hit the tile floor.

He smashed again. And again. He kept swinging until his arms ached, and even then he kept going. He tossed the broom aside and pulled the plates out one by one, flicking his wrist to propel them at the ground. He smashed the remaining few underfoot, crushing them up like cookies, the crack of each one beneath his work boots like an exclamation mark punctuating what he’d done.

When he’d finished, Mason looked around with a mixture of euphoria and horror. His chest heaved with shuddering breaths and he sagged as his full weight returned to his body. He felt changed, somehow more free and yet more trapped all at once.

Behind him he heard Henry’s bedroom door click shut, then something heavy being dragged across the room. A bump against the back of the door told Mason he had braced it with the bed.

To keep Mason out.

That was when he knew Henry had told her where to find the money.

Henry said he would stop Mason from leaving. With one petty whisper to their mother, Henry had destroyed it all. Mason would never forgive him.

Outside, thunder rumbled across the sky. The windows shook and the walls trembled as Mason advanced on Henry’s bedroom door.

Now

‘Hey, hey,’ Sabeen says as we slip through the ribbon curtain into The Shallows Pizzeria just as it’s getting dark. The greeting is a bit more subdued than her usual enthusiasm. She manages to offer a smile, though. We’ve agreed not to bring up the whole Bernie-polaroids thing in front of Tom until we understand more about it. I made a similar pact with Raf regarding what we discovered at the bush hut.

‘Let’s get through dinner,’ Raf suggested, ‘and then we’ll figure out what to do next.’

I agreed, but now I’m feeling on edge, like I’m bursting at the seams.

Tom and Rina are here, sitting up at the counter and chatting to Sally while she’s rolling out pizza dough. I suspect Rina hasn’t mentioned anything to Tom about the catfishing because he hasn’t contacted me. Although there’s a slight stiffness in his demeanour that suggests I could be wrong.

Liv comes out from behind the counter to give Raf a hug and to flip the Closed sign around on the door.

‘Once Mason’s here we’ll lock it,’ she says. ‘After today’s effort we want an early night.’

Raf glances my way at the mention of Mason. Sabeen really did