Magic Sometimes Happens Part 33

'I can't talk about it now.'

'Then we'll just sit quiet awhile. If you do decide you want to talk, that's fine by me. If you decide you don't, that's also fine.'

If I didn't tell him now, when would I tell him?

When would I tell anyone?

I began to talk.

'I had a job in Paris,' I began. 'I was working for a PR company and having a great time. Charlie had come back to the UK after spending six or seven weeks in Africa. She had been all over, to places like the Congo and Angola and Namibia, hitching rides, staying in people's houses, sleeping rough and doing stuff which gave my parents nightmares.

'But they couldn't stop her going any more than they could stop the world from turning or the sun from rising. Well, unless they'd locked her up in a tall tower or something and thrown away the key. You see, she had to travel. She was born that way, was an explorer as soon as she could walk. She went to London on her own when she was six or seven. She walked into our little local station, caught a train. She ended up in Regent's Park. Mum was mortified because, when two policemen brought her home again, they called in Social Services and Child Protection, put my parents through the third degree. When she was eighteen, Dad started up a Ransom Charlie fund for when he had to go and get her back from somewhere like Somalia, Iraq or Kazakhstan.

'After a week or two in Dorset with my parents, she was bored. So she came to Paris to spend some time with me. We stayed in my apartment. It was in the Marais. We went shopping, clubbing, drinking, partying did the whole Paris thing.

'One lunch time, we were in a cafe where I often went with friends or by myself. I loved it, I was comfortable there, I knew the staff and they knew me. It was my local, if you like. On the day I went with Charlie, there was a cool guy I sort of knew at the next table, having lunch alone.

'He started flirting with my sister in that ironic way some Frenchmen do. Soon she was flirting back at him, making out she didn't know much French while he pretended he didn't know much English. So I was interpreting or rather misinterpreting and all of us were laughing.

'I asked him if he'd take a video of the two of us. He said yes, I handed him my phone and he began to film us. Charlie did ridiculous impressions of actresses and singers. We were laughing fit to wet ourselves. Then Jean-Paul said he fancied having ice cream for dessert and did we fancy ice cream, too?

'Charlie said she definitely did. A chocolate glace with an almond and spun sugar topping, that would hit the spot. She called the waiter over and ordered three ice creams in silly Franglais which made us fall about. She made the waiter laugh as well.

'I didn't think about the milk in the ice cream. I just a.s.sumed it would be ordinary cow's milk. But it turned out to be goat's milk. Charlie was allergic to it. She had had a bad reaction to some goat's cheese while we were on holiday in France when we were children and she was sensitised. Pat, it said so on the menu lait de chevre. Why did I not read the flipping menu before I let her order?'

'n.o.body reads everything on menus, Rosie.'

'But I'd promised Mum and Dad that when I was with Charlie I would always check ingredients, would always, always, always read all menus! We knew she wouldn't bother! She never, ever bothered! I was her big sister and so I was responsible! I-'

'Rosie, take your time, okay?' soothed Pat. 'What happened next?'

'The waiter brought our ice cream. Charlie ate a little, but then she started wheezing, coughing trying to get her breath. It took me twenty, thirty seconds to realise what must be happening, that this was a reaction, most likely caused by milk. The waiter came and thumped her on the back. He must have thought she'd choked on nuts or something.

'As I was begging him to stop and shouting to the guy I knew to call an ambulance, telling him that Charlie wasn't play-acting, that this was all for real, I was searching through her rucksack for her EpiPen.

'The wretched rucksack had a trillion pockets. I couldn't find the pen. I thought, perhaps she doesn't have one? She was very bad at carrying stuff like that around. I suppose she thought she hoped she'd never need the thing. Or she was in denial. She hated being different. While she was at school, she-'

I found I couldn't go on.

'It's okay,' soothed Pat. 'When you're ready, when you want to tell me, if you want to tell me-'

'I grabbed my phone back from the guy at the next table. He'd stopped filming when they brought the ice cream, before Charlie started choking, but now he just sat there looking stunned and doing nothing. So I called the ambulance and I must admit it came at once. I explained about the allergy and what had caused it. The paramedics gave her something at the cafe.

'We got her to the hospital. But by now her system was in shock, she was unconscious and she died ten minutes later, hooked up to a dozen drips, machines. Nowadays, I can't walk past a hospital without feeling sick with terror, panicking and thinking I'll throw up, pa.s.s out or both. As for going into one-'

'But you still took Joseph to the hospital. You still stayed with him while he was getting better. You sent me home so I could get some rest.'

'What else could I have done?'

'I already knew you were a heroine. But up to now I didn't know how much it must have cost you to do what you did for Joe. Listen to me, darling, you mustn't blame yourself about your sister.'

'It was my fault.'

'Rosie, it was not your fault.'

'It was, because the pen was in the pocket of her jeans. She'd had it with her all the time.'

Silence.

I could hear it.

Or rather I could hear the thudding of my heart, the drumming in my head. Pat said nothing for a moment. But then, slowly, carefully, he turned me round to face him. 'So how should you have known?'

'It was the most obvious place to look! Pat, I never told my mother, father or anybody else I didn't find the pen. But I should have told them. I should have confessed, not let everyone believe that Charlie didn't have a pen and that was why she died.'

'Do you still have that video?'

'No, I told you it was on my phone.'

'I mean, you didn't send it to a friend, to Gmail?'

'Of course I didn't send it to friend. I never thought of sending it to Gmail. Yes, I know I should have done it, but I didn't, and it's too late now. Pat, I played and played it, half a dozen times a day. But I never told my mum and dad about it.'

'So they never saw it?'

'No.'

'I can understand why you're upset, to lose something so precious. Perhaps your parents should have seen it?'

'I didn't know if I should show them or not show them, if seeing it would help them or destroy them, and I still don't know.'

PATRICK.

I held her while she cried.

'You're not to blame,' I said, once, twice, a dozen times. 'Your sister, she was an adult. She should have checked out what she was eating. You didn't have to be your sister's keeper.'

'But if I had only-'

'Rosie, honey, life's full of if-onlys.'

'I suppose.' She grabbed a box of Kleenex. 'If Tess had gone to New York City or Los Angeles for her American adventure, I'd never have met you.'

'You would not have known a genuine knuckle-dragging, Neolithic throwback.' She managed a small, tearful smile at that. But still her eyes were sad and, as I gazed into those wide, grey eyes, I found I wanted more than anything to heal the hurt I saw there. 'Most everybody has regrets,' I added. 'Most everybody's done bad things. Or they believe they've done bad things. You did nothing wrong. You and your sister it was just bad luck, a cruel stroke of fate.'

'I killed Charlie, Pat.'

'You did not kill Charlie. You know you tried to save a life, not take it.'

'But I'm still no better than my sister's murderer, her executioner.'

'You don't know what you're saying.'

'I know only too well.'

'You only think you do.'

I never shared the truth with anyone not with Alexis, not with Ben.

Of course, Ben's wormed a few details out of me and no doubt guessed the rest. He loves to needle people, poke, prod, pry loves getting a reaction. It's why he mentioned gasoline when we were having dinner that first time. He wanted me to ask him what he meant to challenge him. Of course, I didn't. I would not have given him the satisfaction, not in company, not any time.

If I told Rosie, would she hate me? But if she did hate me, would it matter, if it helped her to forgive herself and if it helped her mend? I owed her, didn't I? Okay, I thought, here goes confession time.

'One time, I tried to kill a man,' I said.

'You did what?' She stared then shook her head. 'I don't believe you.'

'It's the truth.'

'Who was this man?'

'My father.'

'Why, whatever happened?'

'Where to start?' I shrugged. 'As you might have heard from Tess or Ben, I was raised in Recovery, Missouri a dirt-poor town which by some quirk of fate had one good public high school. I had teachers who inspired me, worked with me, encouraged me. So I got an excellent education, in spite of coming from a home which didn't have a single book in it and where the television was always tuned to trash.

'While I was growing up, my mother had a bunch of jobs. She cleaned and did the laundry in other people's houses and apartments, did menial stuff for those few people who were better off than most, the doctor and the lawyer and the judge, their wives and widows. She waited tables in the local diner, worked the register in grocery stores. But it hadn't always been like that for Mom. When she graduated high school, she became a college student in St Louis.'

'So what happened?'

'She met with a rodeo rider at a county fair. She fell in love. So she dropped out of college, married Dad. But he was from the wrong side of the tracks. She found her parents didn't want to know her anymore.

'She didn't care. She was in love. She had a little money of her own and put down a deposit on a house. But while my mother worked her fingers to the bone, Dad stayed home and drank.'

'He didn't work at all?'

'Sometimes he did casual labour on construction projects, pouring concrete, hauling rocks or lumber. But he was usually too drunk to work. The only reason he got out of bed most mornings was to raid my mother's purse and head out to the liquor store. When he had the energy, he beat and kicked my mother and took a strap to me.'

'Oh like in Ben's book?'

'Yeah, just like that. One time, after he'd beat up on my mother bad, so bad she couldn't go to work, so bad that she was in the county hospital for weeks, I thought, I'm going to kill him.

'I was eight or nine years old. So although I was a kid, I knew what I was doing. While he was asleep one afternoon and Mom had started back at work, cleaning some old lady's house downtown, I found the can of gasoline he kept in the garage and poured a slug of it into his bourbon.'

'But, Pat you only meant to make him ill? You didn't really want to kill him, did you?'

'Yes, of course I did.'

'Why did you think he'd die?'

'My cla.s.s had done a project on combustion engines. We all wrote reports on how they worked. Miss Ellie warned us gasoline was very flammable and not to mess with it. I'd watched big kids spilling lighter fuel in puddles, setting it on fire so that the water seemed to burn.

'One day as I was heading home from school I thought, if Daddy drank some gasoline then lit a cigarette, it would be like kaboom! He would be lit on fire and he would die and how great that would be.'

'So when you poured the petrol in his whiskey-'

'He realised straight away. He took a mouthful but he didn't swallow. He spit it out and then accused my mother, who'd just walked in the door, of trying to poison him. He got her by the throat. She was choking, crying, pleading, didn't know what he meant, her eyes were bulging in her head, she looked like she would die. So I fessed up.'

'What did he do?'

'He beat up on me so bad that I pa.s.sed out. So then he had to take me to the hospital. He told them I was climbing out a window on the second floor and fallen on the concrete in the yard.

'While I was in the hospital the nurses made a pet of me. They gave me treats and candy. They told me I'd been hurt real bad but I was going to mend. I had to be a little soldier for my daddy's sake because he was so worried about me.

'I was afraid he'd punish Mom for giving birth to me, and I was right he did. Today, she has almost no hearing and she can't see out of her left eye. The tears I've cried for Mama, Rosie! All the grief I've felt for my poor mother more than any kid should have to do.

'So there you have it. If you want to see a real-life murderer, a real-life executioner, or would-be executioner, all you need to do is look at me.'

So Rosie looked.

'All I can see is somebody who got a life and made himself a big success in spite of everything. Anyway,' she added, 'what you did as a child would surely not be murder or attempted murder, even if your father had drunk the poisoned bourbon, even if he'd died?'

'What's your definition of attempted murder, Rosie?'

'I've never thought about it.'

'So think about it now?'

'There has to be intention. There needs to be a plan?'

'You got it, more or less. I looked it up a year or two ago. I'm not sorry, Rosie. If I'd killed the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I would have run round singing. When I hear he's dead one day he has to be I'll make a point of dancing on his grave.'

'Where is your father these days?'

'I'm not exactly sure because he left when I was twelve and headed off down south. Last time I heard, he was in jail someplace in Alabama got ten years without parole.'

'What did he do?'

'He robbed a store. He sprayed the clerk with Mace and blinded him. But he'll have suffered worse than blindness while he's been in jail. Trash like him, they have it hard in prisons in the USA, and that makes me glad. You think I'm wicked?'

'No! You were a child who was afraid a cruel man would kill your mother and I'm not surprised you hate him. But one day you might decide you've hated long enough? Maybe you could let the wounds inside you heal, like the ones you got from beatings did? Maybe you could make your peace with him?'

'It's never been about what Daddy did to me. But while my mother lives and while I watch her startle when a drunk walks down the street and while she still gets blackouts because he hit her far too many times, I never shall make peace with him.'

'What if he contacted you and asked for your forgiveness?'

'I would not enter into dialogue.'