‘That could be anyone she’s gone out with before,’ Mam says.
I snort.
‘He calls her Catalina. And he talks over her all the time.’
‘What a prick,’ she says.
‘I know. He’s terrible, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She wants to tell him that she loves him, like.’ I gesture helplessly.
‘Urgh,’ says Mam. ‘If only that were all. What can we do?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘She’s properly smitten.’
‘And this peacock’s the one doing the smiting.’ Mam is angry. She fixes her dress like she is angry with it, eroding creases out with both her hands.
‘Peacock’s a good word for him,’ I say. ‘He loves himself.’
‘It is OK to love yourself, Madeline,’ Mam tells me.
‘Not the way he does it.’
There is a pause. So many things unsaid. I close my eyes. I open them again.
And I betray her.
‘I think,’ I say, ‘he put his hands on her. She has these bruises.’
I feel the weight of worry and of guilt press down, press down.
She will never forgive me if I ruin this love for her. But can you even ruin a dangerous thing?
Mam sighs. She puts her two hands over her face for a second. Like she’s playing peekaboo. I see her struggle to relax her shoulders. To calm herself.
‘Brian guessed as much,’ she said, ‘when you approached him. And I just think, How dare he! The cheek of him. I can’t …’ Her voice is hoarse with fear, or rage, or maybe both. ‘We’ll handle it, love. He won’t hurt her any more,’ she says, grasping my hand a little too tightly. I see cogs turning in her tidy-woman brain. Colour-coding strategies to take. Prioritising. She wants to make a list she can check off. To turn the threat into a series of small tasks. Tickable goals. But I’m not sure that Lon is even fixable. I think of his big, perfect shark smile. His shiny, even teeth. His superior chin. I’d love to slap him. Hard.
‘We’ll take her phone away,’ Mam tells me. ‘Brian can get Liam Donoghue to change his rota for a week or two, keep him away from her, he says. He knows the family.’
‘Wow,’ I say. Maybe this is why they all respect Brian, with his hidden talents and deep pockets.
‘My husband is very protective,’ Mam says, like it’s a point of pride.
‘It’s a shame that Catlin needs protecting though,’ I tell her.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m scared. And I’m honestly not sure what the best course of action is, to keep her safe.’
I nod, picturing a photograph of her and Dad together, in the back garden. They aren’t smiling, but they are both kind of shining with each other. I wonder what our lives would have been like. There wouldn’t have been Lon in them, for one thing. I wonder how Mam stops those kinds of thoughts from coming all the time, whenever something happens.
‘Madeline?’ she says, and her voice is kind and serious and low.
‘Mmmm?’
‘Don’t do that stuff with salt and things any more. Please.’ She looks at me. ‘I know we’ve had this conversation before, but I don’t want to have it again. Not with all of this Catlin stuff about to boil over. When I see that kind of thing in your room, it makes me worry. You know?’
A bubble pops. I don’t say anything.
‘I know the move hasn’t been easy on ye. But it hasn’t been easy on me either. I’m lonely here, and I need a bit of support right now. You have to try.’
There is so much that I could say to her. I feel the anger welling up inside me, the urge to yell that maybe I can’t help it, and maybe if she had left the salt under Catlin’s bed, maybe she would have been a little less obsessed. That I’ve been trying my best to be as normal as I can. I’ve turned down ACTUAL magic. Which exists. I can’t put any more on Mam today though. I nod.
‘I’ll do my best,’ I say. To hide it, I mean. You cannot stop the tide. This lives in me. All that I can do is work around it. But I will try my best to keep it quiet. I get a horrid feeling in my stomach. A sort of swell. I am the broken twin. The one that’s not as good. The other daughter. My face is wet before the door clicks shut.
The foxes screaming, screaming outside.
Mourning for their friend.
The Ask.
Me and Catlin walking in the forest.
A fox is very small, somewhere between cat and dog.
So much blood in such a little case.
And on my boots.
And on the passage walls.
There is something that I cannot read. I need to see it.
I don’t want this.
I don’t want any of it.
None at all.
32
Foxglove
We are staging an intervention for Catlin. In the library. Because Brian apparently learned his parenting skills from reality television, and Mam is going along with it for some reason. I sit on a pinstriped cream-and-white chair. It’s gilded at the edges. Catlin is on the chaise longue, having a meltdown.
‘I can’t believe this,’ she shouts. ‘I can’t believe you. And you. And you.’
She points at me, deciding I’m the one she hates the most.
‘Be that as it may, Catlin …’ says Brian in a neutral voice, holding his hands open in front of him, like a hip teacher who tries to get you to talk about your feelings because this is a safe space and, like, no judgement. ‘… we love you and we need you to trust the three of us on this. He is not a good person. You need to stop seeing him.’
‘He IS a good person. He’s the best person I’ve ever met.’ The pitch of Catlin’s voice is beginning to rise. I look up at the stacks and stacks of books that line the shelves. If they could talk, I think they’d probably say, Shut up, Catlin.
‘I know it feels that way now, love –’ Mam starts, and Catlin whips around to stare her down.
‘You don’t know HOW it feels,’ she screeches like a righteous romance-harpy. ‘Because if you DID know how it felt, if you even had an INKLING how it felt, how much I LOVE that boy, you would be THRILLED for me.’
‘Catlin –’
‘COULD YOU SHUT UP? I haven’t finished speaking.’
Why are they trying to interrupt her? It’s like saying excuse me to the sea.
‘What I was GOING to say –’ she continues, waving her extended pointer finger over us as though it were a sort of magic wand – ‘before you rudely interrupted my train of thought, is that Lon and I are in LOVE. Proper LOVE. The kind you obviously know nothing about, seeing as you’re not supporting me. And that makes you all PRICKS.’
She glares around the room, like twelve Mamós on speed. Her face is flushed and sweaty, like her anger is also a workout.
‘Catlin,’ says Mam, ‘your BOYFRIEND, who you claim to LOVE, was a suspect in a murder. He hurt that girl while they were together, Brian says. That is not OK. Would you like Madeline to be with someone who is physically abusive?’
‘Catlin, he tells you how to dress,’ I say. I feel like Judas Iscariot.
‘They’re only rumours, Mam. They aren’t true.’ She turns to me. I know that I’m a prick. She doesn’t have to say it. But she does.
‘And, as for YOU, Madeline, YOU are SUPPOSED to be my SISTER. Not some gossipy sneak, going behind my BACK because you’re jealous that I found love and you’re a LONELY DRIED-UP LITTLE BITCH.’
I gasp. ‘That isn’t fair.’
‘What isn’t fair is that you’re betraying me. That’s what isn’t fair. I am the fairest person in this room.’
‘Love …’ Brian’s voice is calm.