one the truth, not even Jim. To do so would have destroyed the ragged remains of the family she had risked everything to save. My God, to have held that secret, to have borne that guilt. And yet she did it, silently. My mother.
Opposite the living-room window, beyond the driveway, is a bank of grass, the grey kerb that borders the road. Graham used to stand on the far side when we played kerby. He made me stand on the pavement nearest the house so that I didn’t have to cross the street. The fact that it might be dangerous to throw the ball into the road and run after it didn’t occur to us. We were just kids. I was a little girl, caught in the specific wonder that came whenever my big brother chose to spend time with me.
I lost him, that big brother. From the moment we left my father, he receded, became every day a paler ghost. I was only eleven when he came into my room late one night and lay spooned against me in the dark. That’s the only reason, the only justification I can give for what I told him, what has lain at the dark heart of me all these years. What I did is my bogeyman, my guilt, my regret.
My big brother had come back to me that night. And I had to find a way to keep him. In that exquisite darkness, the bedroom floor rumbling with the dull notes of my mother talking with Jim MacKay, this man we didn’t know, had never heard of, and who had appeared from nowhere, Graham and I spoke of my father. I told him I knew about the violence. It made me feel grown up to tell him that. It made me feel included. And he held my hand and asked if my father had ever hurt me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘But he shouted. He was scary.’
‘He was.’ Graham squeezed me tight. He was mine again. I could chat to him and feel safe and loved and protected. I was happy. I could not let go of that happiness, could not let go of him. I had missed him; I missed the old him who would sleep on the floor and play Name That Tune until we fell asleep because I was afraid of the dark. I’m justifying it, I know, but I was only a child. So when my brother asked, ‘And Dad never … he never touched you or anything, did he?’ I nodded and said, ‘Yes.’
I said yes.
I remember Graham sitting bolt upright in the dark, the loss of his warmth, the air cold at my back.
‘What?’ he said. ‘Where?’
‘In my private place,’ I whispered into the delicious darkness. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’
I was so young, too young to understand the potency of words. I understood it years later, but by then, admitting to it was impossible. I will never know what part I played in helping Graham in his descent. By the time disaster struck, it was too late to tell the truth. How do you admit to someone, someone you love, that you told a lie that may well have contributed to their wretched fate? It’s possible that it made no difference, that he was already on that path, but it’s possible that it made all the difference, and that’s what haunts me still.
Looking back, and with a vast experience of dealing with troubled families, I realise that this was a terrible time, the worst – those months after we left. I can see that the trauma of it was not apparent to me as a child. On the surface, I was happy. I worked hard at school, I washed my face and braided my hair and folded my school uniform at night. I took pride in all of that. It was my role as I understood it, my place in the family. If you’d asked me how I was back then, I would have said, ‘Fine, thank you for asking’ like my mother told me to. I have held this darker memory at the edge of my consciousness whilst all the while being fuelled by the force of it. My lurking shadow.
I have no clue where I got the idea from. Maybe from a kid at the shelter, maybe from television, I don’t know. My father had never done anything of the kind. He was scary, yes. He shouted, he beat my mother. He was sick on the