The Blame Game. C.J. Cooke

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СКАЧАТЬ about your ballet recital?’ I ask. She has no answer to that and I know she’s excited for it. I set her plate of waffles on the coffee table and squat down to face as her as she begins to do a couple of ballet moves.

      ‘To tell you the truth, my love, I don’t want to go home either.’

      She widens her eyes. ‘You don’t?’

      I press my lips together, shake my head. ‘But don’t tell Mummy.’

      ‘Is it because you don’t like flying?’

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘Is it because you love this house and the sea and you’d like to live here?’

      ‘Exactly. I like spending my days on the beach instead of having to go to work. I’d like to do it for ever. Wouldn’t you?’

      She nods eagerly, her face all lit up with hope. I wish I could give her everything. I wish I could make the world as perfect as she deserves it to be.

      ‘Here, come and help me put all this food away.’

      She does a little ballet twirl across the floor, arms crooked like she’s holding an invisible beach ball between them, and looks into the box of food that I’m unloading.

      ‘Bacon?’ she says, holding up the packet like it’s a dead rat.

      ‘Not for you, love. Reuben and I will enjoy that.’

      ‘Bacon isn’t even nice, Daddy,’ Saskia says. She’s decided to become vegetarian, like Helen, so all I’ve heard about for the last three months is how meat is Satan. ‘I tried some once and it tasted not very nice. Plus, it’s from pigs and they’re more smarter than dogs and you wouldn’t eat our dog, would you?’

      ‘Hmmm. You know, if he tasted like bacon, I’d consider it.’

      ‘Daddy!’

      I lean over and give her a kiss. She still kisses me on the lips, a quick peck with a big ‘mwah’ at the end, just as she did as a baby. When the day comes that she tells me she’s too old to kiss me anymore I think my heart will break.

      ‘Do the thing,’ she says when I plop one of the blueberry pancakes into a pan on the stove. ‘Do the flip, Dad. Do it!’

      I wait until the pan is nice and hot before planting my feet wide, gripping the pan handle tightly and tossing the pancake as high as I can. It flips into the air, smacks the ceiling, then lands splat in the pan.

      ‘You did it, Dad!’ she squeals, high-fiving me. ‘Five points for Gryffindor!’

      Reuben comes in through the front door, his dark hair and shorts dripping wet. I’m careful to be calm around him. No eye contact. I’m still in his bad books. He dumps a plastic bucket on the floor.

      ‘We can’t go home,’ he announces flatly.

      ‘Daddy pancaked the ceiling,’ Saskia says.

      ‘Five points for Gryffindor,’ Reuben says, deadpan. ‘Look what I found.’

      Saskia peers into his bucket and squeals. I tell her to shush, she’ll upset Reuben, but his focus is on the baby turtle, its head no bigger than the tip of my thumb, its shell covered in zigzag patterns. It sweeps its flippers back and forth as though it wants to swim.

      ‘We should take it back to the water,’ I say as Saskia plucks it out of the bucket and cuddles it to her chest. ‘His mum must be looking for him.’

      ‘Like Finding Nemo?’ Saskia says.

      ‘That was a clown fish,’ Reuben replies.

      ‘Dude,’ I say, imitating the turtles in Finding Nemo. ‘What up, squirt?’

      Reuben falls silent, and I freeze, expecting one of two reactions: he’ll either storm out of the room or he’ll slug me across the face. Reuben isn’t often violent but when he is it’s ugly, given that he has the strength and height of an adult. He looks like he’s thinking really hard about something. Maybe he’s trying to control his anger.

      ‘Righteous!’ he says suddenly, a big grin lighting up his face.

      ‘Curl away, my son,’ I say, suddenly glad that I watched Finding Nemo ten million times.

      I raise my eyebrows at Helen who is standing there with her eyes like saucers and her jaw on the ground, stunned that Reuben has actually spoken to me. He’s deeply forgiving, full of love, but I could hardly expect him to react any other way after what happened at Josh’s birthday party.

      I was only trying to protect him. That’s my job. My whole reason for existing.

      I wake to find Helen sitting at the end of the bed wrapped in a yellow towel. She’s on the other side of the mosquito curtain but I can make out her gold hair, braided down her back, the web of the Celtic tattoo on her shoulder just visible in the dim light. I sit up quickly, amazed that I actually slept, and she tells me to relax, it’s OK, but I’m covered in sweat and my heart is racing. I was dreaming. Bright images pitch and mulch in my head like a soup. When Helen comes into focus I see her face is filled with worry.

      ‘Are you alright?’ she says. ‘Bad dreams again?’

      I push my fingertips into my eyes, trying to blot out the disturbing images in my head. For years, the same dream. A door made of fire. I’m standing in front of it with the knowledge that I have to open it, because on the other side is paradise, a land of pure, endless happiness. Sometimes I’m alone. Sometimes I’m with Helen and the kids, and I have to take them through the door, but I worry about them getting hurt. I always wake in a sweat. Sleeping pills washed it away and now it’s back, as vivid as ever.

      ‘I went for a swim,’ she whispers. I take her hand, wondering what’s wrong. She looks shaken.

      ‘You OK?’

      ‘I saw something weird. It was probably nothing. I don’t know.’

      ‘You saw something weird where? Out in the water?’

      She nods and holds a finger to her lips, urging me to keep my voice down. ‘In the beach hut next to ours. They had a telescope just like the one we have in the living room.’

      A telescope? Ah yes, I remember. The scope on the tripod we moved into a corner so the kids wouldn’t knock it over. We presumed it was for spotting sharks and rays in the water outside.

      ‘And?’

      ‘It was pointed at our hut.’

      ‘What was?’

      ‘The telescope.’ She gives a shudder. ‘It was creepy …’

      ‘But … didn’t the butler say all the other huts were empty as of yesterday?’

      She bites her lip. ‘That’s the other thing. When I looked in the window of one of the rooms the bed was unmade. There were clothes on the floor. It looked like someone was staying there.’

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