Untitled Part 5

“You… loved her. Hmm.” He doesn’t even attempt to hide his scepticism. “I don’t know how it is in your country, Mr. Lawrence, but here we don’t push the ones we love onto railway tracks before fast-travelling trains.”
“I. Didn’t.” My hands clench into fists under the table. I don’t want to have to give him an excuse to physically restrain me. If he touches me he will regret it.

**********************************************
Time passed. I began to feel old and weary. I didn’t want to have to tiptoe around my own apartment like there were landmines in the carpet. Lebensmüde is how Frau Schiller would have described my mood. But she had returned to her native Hamburg several months ago, having come to the end of her contract, and school seemed to hold few allies for me now. Still, I ploughed on, juggling my studies with work- a part-time job in a supermarket, a couple of hours each week in the library. In this way, slow and steady, I began to save for a flat of my own. Then one day a letter arrived, hidden amongst the usual assorted bills and advertising bumpf. Stopping dead in the hall, I opened it, curious.
It was addressed to me. From my mother.
I recognised her sloping handwriting at once. With clumsy fingers I opened the envelope, then turned it over. There was no return address.
The letter itself was short and brisk, with no explanation as to where she was now, no enquiries after how I was doing, how Dad was doing. My grandfather, Mum’s father, had passed away at the age of seventy-two after a brief illness. His huge house he had left to his three daughters. Various charities had received generous sums. Margaret Lacey, his carer, and several old friends had also been thought of. Then- me. I blinked. My grandfather had left me fifteen thousand pounds.
In disbelief my finger ran under the black print, checking for a misreading, for a disappointment. None came- this was real, this was for me, my freedom handed to me on a plate. This was my chance, my escape route! It was as if somewhere, somehow, the grandfather I had not seen for a decade had known what I was going through and preserved for me a lifeline. Happiness flowed through me like a warm tide. I felt stronger, somehow. True, I would not be able to collect this money until I was officially an adult at eighteen, but it was something to look forward to, something to hold on for. It was just what I needed.
That night I hid it under my pillow like a love letter, hardly daring to believe my luck. When I felt low, when I was bruised or bleeding or angry or afraid, I could take it out and hold it up to the light like a sacred talisman.

**********************************************
“A teacher says here that she suspected you to be a victim of abuse.” He flicks through the pile of papers in his hands. “Another teacher supplied texts you had written in class which suggested you were under some sort of mental anguish.” Leaning forward, he fans out the papers as if this is a card game. A sudden wave of embarrassment makes me feel hot and sick inside as I stare at my small black writing, my poems and stories from English class. They are reading too much into everything. These could have been written by any angsty teen. They mean nothing…
Then the obvious question comes. “Why did you stay with your father?”
The obvious question has an obvious answer.
“If I’d have given up on him sooner, what would have become of him?”

**********************************************
Something in the letter seemed to have fortified me. In school where my father could not touch me I began to take classes in self-defence. After several tellings-off I began to attend the counselling sessions, but I never told the counsellor anything of relevance and I certainly never told a soul about what awaited me at home. Even within my group of friends I never hinted at it, laughed off my bruises and attributed them to drunken brawls, which gained me a little street cred at least. I didn’t want them to think I couldn’t sort out my own problems. Besides, I genuinely thought I could. For the time being I was wholly content.
Frau Schiller had been the one who consulted the educational and pastoral authorities and suggested I be assigned a counsellor. She was concerned. I saw it as a betrayal and resolved never again to let my guard slip down.
In this way five years passed. There were low points, but the thought of my impending freedom gave me strength. Things had settled into this pattern and stayed pretty much the same. Eventually there really wasn’t long left to go. I turned eighteen in March and was able to access the money set aside for me. I only needed to wait for September and then I’d be at university, making my own new life. I returned to the apartment less and less frequently, staying with friends, working longer and longer hours, going to gigs, determined to forget him and just live for myself a little.
Needless to say, this did not please him. I looked at him; really looked at his crumpling face, the grooves alcohol and misery had carved into his skin, his stomach spilling out over the waistband of his jeans.
I was almost as tall as him now and I could stare him in the face like an equal.
“It’s none of your business how I choose to spend my time,” I said quietly. “I’m an adult and I have my own life to lead. I don’t want to mess it up like you messed up yours.”
Dad looked as though he was having difficulty processing what he had heard. There was a dangerous silence. I felt fleeting elation. For the first time, we had had a confrontation and I had won.
I went into my room and sat on the bed, suddenly exhausted as the tension flowed out of me. My gaze drifted downwards. I looked carefully at every one of the faint lines criss-crossing my arms, my self-inflicted method of release. I smiled.
That was over now. That was long gone. I was out of here, out of this apartment which was not a home and which held too many bad memories, and nothing could prevent my leaving.
I started packing in mid-August. As an afterthought I unearthed the little blue notebook. Then I took a Pritt stick and glued in my mother’s letter. Underneath it I wrote ‘Hoffnung’. Hope. But I didn’t feel relaxed.
If I was being honest with myself, this new sense of empowerment was stirring up more dangerous emotions. A shudder of pure vitriol ran through me like electricity. I couldn’t believe I had let him treat me this way for so long. I wanted him to pay for all he had put me through. I wanted, and knew I could get, revenge. But nothing could have prepared me for the form my revenge eventually took.