How did shoe prints get on her fabric? Why are they there? Who would have …
The answer clicks into place and she stands up, her fists clenched. She feels … angry. Is that what this is? She’s never felt like this before: hot and rigid. Like she could hurt someone.
Stomping back down the stairs to the ground floor, she finds her mother in the kitchen.
‘Mum!’ she almost shouts.
‘Sweetie?’ Her mother turns with a frown, which deepens when she sees Lucy’s clenched fists.
‘He –’ Lucy gulps in a breath, her throat feeling like it’s closing over.
‘Lucy?’ Her mother clutches onto Lucy’s arm, looking really worried now.
‘He RUINED IT!’ she shrieks, and stomps a foot, hoping the beat of her fury can be heard all through the house.
Now her mother takes both of her arms but Lucy’s hands don’t relax. ‘You’re not making sense,’ Connie says, as if she’s talking to a toddler, and that makes Lucy even angrier.
‘Russell has ruined my fabric!’
There’s a noise from the living room and Lucy’s father appears. She has no idea if Russell is still in the house, or what she’ll do to him if he is.
‘What’s going on?’ her father says.
‘I’m not sure,’ her mother replies – but how can she not be sure? Lucy just told her!
‘I had fabric,’ Lucy says, almost hiccupping with rage. ‘I was making a dress. It’s on the floor!’
‘It must have fallen,’ her mother says quickly.
‘It hasshoe printson it!’ Lucy stomps her foot again. She knows it’s childish, but what she really wants to do is hit something and she wouldn’t be allowed to do that.
‘Shoe prints?’ her father says, puzzled.
‘Where’s Russell?’ Lucy says.
‘Somewhere,’ her father says vaguely.
‘He did this!’
‘Darling, I don’t –’
‘Sweetie, that’s a big –’
Lucy doesn’t hear the ends of her parents’ sentences because the weight of reality – her reality – suddenly feels like it’s crushing her chest.
They will always defend him.
No matter what he does to her, they will defend him because they feel guilty.
Guilty that Lucy exists.
She’s the living proof of their relationship, which Russell hates. So he hates her too. And her parents know it, but they keep defending him. Which means they will never be on her side. Not when it counts. Like now.
The Christmas fabric may not matter to them but it means the world to her. Because itisher world. Her means of creating something. Of being something. Of beingherself.
She feels something rising in her oesophagus. Food, dismay, sadness – it could be anything.
Without another word she pushes past her mother and goes into the back garden, where she retches over the garden bed that is furthest from the house.