If. If. If. A sweetly deceptive word, as light as a snowflake on the tongue. A word that seems too small to contain such a universe of regret. In French, if is the yew tree, symbol of mourning and the grave. If a yew tree falls in the woods —
I suppose Mr White meant well. He still loved Catherine, you see. He knew what she meant to Emily. And even though they were living apart, he’d always hoped to move back in, that Feather’s influence would fade and that Emily, once the scandal had died, could go back to being a real child instead of a phenomenon.
I’d been watching the house since lunchtime from the coffee shop across the road. I caught it all on camera; the shop had closed at five o’clock, and I was hiding in the garden, where an overgrown clump of leylandii right up by the living-room window offered suitable cover. The trees had a sour and vegetable smell, and where the branches touched my skin they left red marks that itched like nettlerash. But I was nicely shielded from view — on one side by trees — whilst at the window the curtains were drawn, leaving just a tiny gap through which I was able to watch the scene.
That was how it happened. I swear. I never meant to hurt anyone. But standing outside, I heard it alclass="underline" the recriminations; Mr White’s attempt to calm Mrs White down; Feather’s interjections; Mrs White’s hysterical tears; Emily’s hesitant protests. Or maybe I just thought I did — in retrospect, Mrs White’s voice in my memory now sounds a lot like Ma’s voice, and the other voices resonate like something heard from inside a fish tank; creating booming bubbles of sound that burst in nonsense syllables against the whitened glass.
Clickclick. That was the camera. A long lens resting on the sill; the fastest exposure the shot can take. Even so, the pictures, I knew, would be blurry, nebulous, unclear; the colours blooming around the scene like phosphorescence around a shoal of tropical fish.
Clickclick. ‘I want her back! You can’t keep her away — not now!’
That was Mrs White, pacing the room, cigarette in one hand, hair like a dirty flag down her back. The bandages on her cut wrists stood out a ghostly, unnatural white.
Clickclick. And the sound tastes like Christmas, with the sappy blue scent of the leylandii, and the numbing cold of the falling snow. Snow Queen weather, I thought to myself, and remembered Mrs Electric Blue and the cabbagey reek of the market that day, and the sound her heels had made on the path — click-click-click, like my mother’s.
‘Cathy, please,’ said Mr White. ‘I had to think of Emily. None of this is good for her. Besides, you needed to rest, and—’
‘Don’t you fucking dare patronize me!’ Her voice was rising steadily. ‘I know what you’re trying to do. You want to get some distance from me. You want to ride the scandal. And when you’ve pinned the blame on me, then you’ll cash in, like all the rest—’
‘No one’s trying to blame you.’ He tried to touch her; she flinched away. Underneath the window, I too flinched; and Emily, her hand at her mouth, stood helplessly to one side, flying her distress like a red flag that only I could see.
Clickclick. I felt the touch on my mouth. I could feel her fingers there. They felt like little butterflies. The intimacy of the gesture made me shiver with tenderness.
Emily. Em-il-y. The scent of roses everywhere. Flecks of light shone through the curtains and scattered the fallen snow with stars.
Em-il-y.A million lei.
Clickclick — and now I could almost feel my soul rising out of my body. A million tiny points of light, racing towards oblivion —
And now Feather was joining in, her strident voice drilling through the glass. Somehow, once more, it reminds me of Ma, and the scent that always accompanies her. Cigarette smoke and the lurking scent of L’Heure Bleue and the vitamin drink.
Clickclick, and Feather was in the can.
I imagined her trapped and drowning inside.
‘No one asked you to come here,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough?’
For a moment I thought she was talking to me. You little shit, I expected her to say. Don’t you know it’s all your fault? And maybe this time it is, I thought. Maybe this time she knows it, too.
‘Don’t you think you’ve humiliated Cathy enough, with your bastard living right next door?’
A pause, as cold as snow on snow.
‘What?’ said Mr White at last.
‘That’s right,’ said Feather triumphantly. ‘She knows — we know — everything. Did you think you could get away with it?’
‘I didn’t get away with it,’ said Mr White to Catherine. ‘I told you all about it. I told you straight away, a mistake I’ve been paying for these past twelve years—’
‘You told me it was over!’ she cried. ‘You told me it was a woman at work, a supply teacher who moved away—’
For a moment he looked at her, and I was struck by his air of calm. ‘Yes, that was a lie,’ he said. ‘But all the rest of it was true.’
I took a step back. My heart gave a lurch. My breath bloomed huge and monstrous. I knew that I shouldn’t be there, that by now Ma would be wondering where I was. But the scene was too much for Yours Truly. Your bastard. What a fool I’d been.
‘How many other people knew?’ That was Mrs White again. ‘How many people were laughing at me, while that Irish bitch and her fucking brat—’
Once more I approached the glass, feeling Emily’s hand on my cheek. It was cold, but I could feel her heart beating like a landed fish.
Mum, please. Daddy, please —
No one but I could hear her. No one but I could know how she felt. I stretched out my hand like a starfish, pressing the fingers against the glass.
‘Who told you, Cathy?’ said Mr White.
Catherine blew smoke into the air. ‘You really want to know, Pat?’ Her hands were fluttering like birds. ‘You want to know who gave you away?’
Behind the window, I shook my head. I already knew who had told her. I knew why I’d seen Mr White giving money to Ma that day; I understood his pity when I’d asked him if he were my father —
‘You hypocrite,’ she hissed at him. ‘Pretending you cared about Emily. You never really wanted her. You never really understood how special, how gifted Emily was—’
‘Oh yes, I did,’ said Mr White. His voice was as calm as ever. ‘But because of what happened twelve years ago, I’ve allowed you far too much control. You’ve made our daughter into a freak. Well, after today’s performance, I’m going to stop all that once and for all. No more interviews. No more TV. It’s time she had a normal life, and time you learnt to face the facts. She’s just a little blind girl who wants to please her mother—’
‘She isn’t normal,’ said Mrs White, her voice beginning to tremble. ‘She’s special! She’s gifted! I know she is! I’d rather see her dead than be just another handicapped child—’