My father is an unusual man; he lives in other people’s dreams rather than his own, I think this is because his own dreams scare him. Late at night I’ll often find him staring outside the windows of our house in Primrose Hill. He always has a distant surprised look on his face when he stares looks through the glass, as if someone has transported him to this place, this room and this world, and he can’t quite comprehend how he got here. Is this it? His expression seems to be asking when I watch him. He has disappointments hanging from each intake of breath, and I feel them like a cold breeze that is blowing beneath his skin and chilling the air around us
He has a photographic studio on Baker Street and a second small studio at home downstairs on the first floor of our house; we live in a Georgian terraced house on Kelly Street that once belonged to my Grandfather. My mother Claire died when I was four years old, she was born with a weak heart and it eventually gave up three days before my fourth birthday. I don’t remember her at all although I’ve seen photographs. My father takes portraits of families, couples, children and even pets. He tells me to keep away from the studio if he has a customer but I never do as I’m told.
It’s a Saturday morning and I’m at the kitchen dining table, my father rushes through the door and slips into his seat.
“I’ll be in the Studio on Baker Street for half the day and back here this afternoon. There’s only one appointment downstairs, a quick passport photograph for a Miss Hayley. If she knocks before I get back tell her to wait.” He says. His thick brown curls are unruly and uncombed; his face bears two days stubble.
I stand up and butter two slices of toast and pass them to him; he eats them hungrily, swallowing his black coffee in big gulps. He’s always in a rush and never seems to rest until evening time when his work is over.
“There will be too many easy customers today Odette.”
I stare at his thick surly lips that make him appear permanently brooding. But it’s the fierceness in his eyes that makes me wary; you’re never quite sure what mood my father is going to be in from one moment to the next and this is the way it has always been.
“What’s an easy customer?” I ask, eating my cereal and watching his face curiously.
“Someone who is perfectly photogenic Odette, a person that knows their beauty and has no problem posing in front of the camera, it’s all too effortless, no real work is involved. I’m sure some of them have tinsel hearts.” He says staring into space. “I get tired of the monotony and the dull conversations.”
“What’s a tinsel heart?”
He stares at me with an exasperated expression.
“Questions questions Odette, I’m not sure I want to explain that one.” He answers, and slipping on his jacket he hurries to the door. “Don’t go wandering far.” He shouts as the door slams shut.
But I understand what he means. He means people who seem empty, people who talk and talk but don’t really say anything. There is a girl in my English class just like that, she chatters on and on but it’s like all her thoughts are made from blank paper and sometimes I imagine this paper stuffed inside her head. It’s Saturday and I’ll be twelve years old in three months, although I feel much older than the girls I go to school with. I do the dishes and tidy the living room, before collapsing into the rickety rocking chair that used to belong to my Grandmother. I wrap myself in a hand knitted blanket and I read from a new book, it’s a sad story about a girl who falls in love with a German officer hiding in a forest at the back of her family’s cottage. I gaze through the window and watch the thick fog gathering outside, the fog has been here for three days and everyone is talking about it. It’s as if people think it’s some kind of fateful thing that is smothering the city and could harm them. The grey veil clings like sticky ivy to all the trees and houses and walls, when I stepped into it yesterday I thought I would find myself in another time on the other side of it. It makes me think the sky is sad and it is drenching us in its heartache.
I run to the bathroom and stand on the wooden stool in bare feet gazing at my reflection in the mirror. I have an impish heart shaped face with a sixties style cut bob and I’m awfully skinny, sometimes I feel my waist bones and it’s like they are jutting out. The doctor says I need to eat more because I’m underweight but I never feel very hungry. I like to wear black; in fact it’s the only colour I do wear most days, black sweaters, black skirts and black dresses but I’m not a Goth. I like to put a flower in my hair when I’m home; usually I cut one from the garden. It makes me feel exotic even though it’s usually a drab flower; exotic is word my friend Hanna taught me, she said it means something really pleasurable.
I check the time and see that it’s four o’clock. My father and his afternoon customer will be here soon. Bored and listless I dash downstairs and push open the studio door. I step carefully around the camera, modelling lights and reflectors. The plush carpet feels soft under my feet and for a moment I squeeze my toes into it. I creep inside the wall cupboard, the cupboard is deep and tall but my feet stumble on the jumble of boxes that contain chemicals and paper for the dark room. I press the cold white walls with my hands to hold myself steady. The front door slams shut and I hear the murmur of voices. The squeaking studio door opens and closes. I breathe as lightly as possible for fear father will hear me, but the most important thing is standing still; I peer through the gap in the door.
“I really hate my photograph being taken.” Miss Hayley speaks in a hushed voice.
My face presses into the cool cupboard door.
“Just a few shots and it will be over, you need to look up and hold your chin just so.” My father demonstrates how she should hold her head.
She follows his instructions but you can see she is nervous in front of the camera. Her cheeks are faintly flushed and the small hands clasped in her lap are squeezed tight, my father is patient and moves towards her gently motioning her to move her head. I stare at her thick auburn hair that falls lightly around her shoulders in big bouncy curls. She looks like an old movie actress I saw on television called Natalie wood. She has the same sweet smile and elegance although her hair is fuller and longer. She’s wearing an old fashioned white lace skirt with white lace up boots that look Victorian. But her deep brown eyes are both dreamy and pained like the doomed heroine in a pre-Raphaelite painting.
“Please wait here for a moment Miss Hayley; I’ll fetch a receipt for you.” My father tells her, and disappears from the room.
My feet stumble on one of the boxes; I can feel it slipping under me. I reach out to stop the fall, but it’s too late. I hear the box crash under my feet. Closing my eyes tightly I hope no one has heard. A minute passes and I think I may be safe, but suddenly the door flings open and there stands Miss Hayley staring at me with wide anxious eyes. We look at each other for a moment in silence, each of us catching our breath. As if she is relieved to only find a girl in a cupboard, she releases a soft sigh of relief and steps away. She lowers herself back into the chair and I step from my hiding place hurry after her. Leaning against the wall I study her face.
“My father will be angry if you tell him I was in there.” I tell her.
“Do you always watch your father taking photographs?”
“No. I just come down here sometimes when I’m bored. Yesterday he took photographs of Mrs Cooper’s poodle; it was funny because the poodle went crazy running around in circles and darting this way and that. Mrs Cooper looked like she was going to faint and that would have been something to see.” I say.
She smiles a little and dimples appear on her cheeks. “I don’t like my photograph being taken. I suppose I’m not as good as the other sitters that come here. ”
“Oh I think you are much nicer than the other girls who like their photograph being taken.” I tell her and I mean it.
“Why?”
“Well you don’t have a tinsel heart for one thing.” I say, copying my father’s words from the morning. “And they have stupid laughs and talk about the most boring things. Just listening to them sends me to sleep.” I smile at her.
She looks at me oddly for a moment and then she laughs, and it’s a nice light musical sound. I stare at the thin white ribbon in her hair pushing her fringe back, it seems out of time, and in fact her whole outfit seems to be a mixture of charity shop vintage, as if she has picked up pieces from different periods. She reminds me of the china doll I have in my bedroom, and I notice a thin lined scar that runs like some forgotten landmark on the side of her cheek.
The door swings open and my father stands there holding a paper receipt. He raises his eyebrows quizzically on seeing me.
“Odette haven’t I told you not to come down here.”
“She just came in the room to find you.” Miss Hayley says, not looking at me.
It’s from that moment on that I don’t want Miss Hayley to leave our house and I’m not even exactly sure why I want her to stay. It’s not just the fact she lied for me, as I stand there in the middle of the small studio I realise that for some reason the thought of her walking out of the door makes me feel strange inside, like I’m losing something special. And I don’t want it to happen. I want to prevent it.
“Can Miss Hayley stay for dinner?” I ask my father, without thinking.
My father stares at Miss Hayley with a surprised expression, probably because I’ve never asked any of his other customers for dinner before.
“Are you hungry Miss Hayley?” He asks.
Miss Hayley stands up with embarrassment. She gathers up her bag hurries to the door. “No. I’m fine really I’ll let myself out.”
I run to the door and push my back against it. “We’re having steak tonight; it’s our Friday evening treat. You’re supposed to eat red meat at least once a week that’s what my teacher Mr Evan says. You’re not a vegetarian are you?”
She stares at me with big doe brown eyes. “No. I eat meat. I suppose I could eat something, if your father is okay with it.”
“Can she?” I plead with my eyes.
“Yes that’s fine, take Miss Hayley upstairs Odette I’ll join you both soon.”
Upstairs in the kitchen she helps lay out the plates and we make the salad together. “My name is Annette.” She tells me smiling.
“You can have my steak, I already ate earlier.” I lie, but it’s a little fib.
So you could say I was the one that brought Annette into our world, and it isn’t long before she is eating in our home every evening. She laughs all the time and she brings back little gifts from her outings, books and chocolate from the shops for me, but I notice she never spends money on herself and her shoes are worn down at the heel. After a week or two my father arrives home with a small battered red suitcase, he is holding Annette’s hand. She takes the spare room next to mine. She doesn’t have many belongings. I watch her unlatch the small case and remove two dresses, one skirt and two blouses and a little lingerie. She has no jewellery. In the bottom of the case I see a book that looks very old. She lifts the book in one quick movement and slips it under her pillow, and I wonder what is in the book and why she treasures it so much and make a note to find out.
She likes my origami animals as soon as she sees them; I am good at making them and I hang some from the ceiling of her bedroom on coloured string, I pick all the bright colours, purples, oranges and yellows. She loves origami swans. She stares at them delighted pushing them gently with her hands. She asks me to make more and more. I tie them from the window and the lampshades and it’s not long before her entire bedroom is like some crazy origami art piece. She covers the bedside lamp with a bright red chiffon scarf and we lie on the bed watching the paper swans move with the breeze from the open window, and everything is covered in a radiant crimson hue that makes the room seem magical.
“When I look at them I imagine them flying high in the air right out of the window.” Annette says. “I love origami, make me another animal.” She watches me fold the paper.
“What animal shall I do next? I ask her.
“A tiger.” She says, smiling.
I laugh. “That will take some time.”
I feel happy to be with Annette. It’s a warm soft feeling that spreads through me, like there is a ray of sunshine moving under my skin and slipping into every bit of me, I feel different inside, light, as light as a feather not heavy the way I was in the past. But I’m afraid she’ll leave and all the happiness I feel is tainted by this feeling that she might go, or someone will take her away from me. I know what my life was like when Annette wasn’t here and it wasn’t good. Life without Annette would be like a dam without water, it would be like the most wonderful room in the world slamming shut and being locked forever and I cannot bear thinking about it. Sometimes I dream about the origami swans at night, I dream they are floating all around the house in the kitchen, living room and studio, and each time I reach for one to hold in my hands, a feeling of bliss pours inside me. Annette has brought something into the house with her and it is something I am desperate to keep, something I have always wanted.
Although I know she and my father are lovers, I don’t mind. She isn’t like the other women my father has dated on occasion and I like her. But when they make love I notice something strange, Annette never makes a sound. There are no gasps of passion coming from my father’s room, ones that I used to tire of listening to when my father brought a girlfriend back home. Annette is as silent as a statue and I don’t think she enjoys it at all. My father cannot really talk to her and I can see her frustration. Even when she tries and he makes an effort, the conversations seem to stick badly like a piece of out of tune music playing through a stereo that you want to close your ears too. I can feel her pain although she thinks she is keeping it inside. I think she knows that she made a mistake with my father, but it’s as if she accepts the pain blindly, as if it were her fate to sit there and tolerate it.
I know Annette has something dark swallowing her up inside, it is like a bird pecking to get out from under her skin. She is drowning in the past in her sleep; a little piece of her seems to be crushed, like the petal from a flower being ripped one by one, until there is nothing left but the bare stem. But she never talks about her fears to anyone even though I wish she’d speak to me.
Not long after she moves in I notice she suffers from nightmares and insomnia. I find her curled up in different parts of the house sleeping on chairs, the couch and on the landing; she does everything to avoid sleeping in a bed. For some reason the bed is a place she avoids late at night. Often I’ll take a wool blanket and place it on top of her to keep her warm. I notice her face never looks peaceful in sleep. Her left cheek twitches constantly and it seems as if she is fighting something in her dreams. I hear her talking in her sleep, words that come fast and hurried like a car speeding down the road, a jumble of heated words that I struggle to make out. I ............don’t...............want...........to.............go. Often she’ll say she doesn’t want to go, repeating the words over and over again like a mantra, her voice sounds pleading. I think about what these words mean, they sound like words one would cry out before being dragged to some awful place, a dank prison with no way of escape. She wakes up shivering and trembling. I’ll sit by her sometimes and we don’t speak, we just listen to the silence of the early morning, the chirping of the birds outside as the darkness creeps slowly into stark clear light. My father doesn’t say anything about it, but my father rarely notices anything that is going on around him. Even I cannot capture his attention for long. In fact he seems pleased that Annette is keeping me occupied.
Within a short time my father and Annette marry hurriedly, it is a short ceremony and afterwards Annette is very quiet. The weeks pass speedily and then the months seem to fly by, and before I know it school is over and we are back in summer. I feel Annette hasn’t got what she dreamed of and that is hard for me to see. Sometimes she stares into space with a blank expression, as if she is waiting for something to happen or change, but nothing ever does.
My father tells me that he can feel everything inside his head cascading and falling into an abyss that he finds it difficult to crawl out of, like some unknown force is spinning him and he cannot stop. I don’t always understand my father’s words, but while I sit there holding his hand I realise something is very wrong. I can feel a dark thing heavy inside me weighing me down, like my clothes are filled with heavy stones, it’s as if someone is drawing something black and ugly inside my stomach and I cannot rub it away. I worry that one day my father will do something dreadful.
One day in summer Annette announces that we were going to go to the park for a picnic, I help her take down the old picnic wicker basket and she makes sandwiches that we take to Regent Park. We step through the big iron gates hand in hand and I stare at the shadows that the plants and shrubs cast on the granite path. When I move to stand in the shadows the air is chilled. The day is muggy and bright and I can feel the humidity sticking to my skin, and it’s as if time has slowed down and all my steps feel heavy. After we’ve eaten we step into the bird sanctuary; we are the only ones there. We lie on the warm grass flat on our backs and point to the birds in the tall trees naming each one. Blackbirds, thrushes, sparrows, we listen to their different calls, soft and sharp, high pitched and melodic and the sun warms my skin and makes me feel like I am sinking into a warm bath and the lull of that warm water is so relaxing. I can smell the fresh grass and my fingers dig into the moist earth, I rub the soil between my fingers and smell that familiar earthy smell that seems to speak of past times rather than the present. Annette has her arm over her face protectively. I spot an unusual tree in the distance and standing up I run towards it. Annette follows me and we stare at the big oak tree that someone has carved animals into. We run our hands over it; there is an owl, a bear, a bird and some star shapes cut out. The carving feels sharp and smooth under my fingers and Annette picks up a pine cone and holds it in her hands stares at the shape of it.
“It’s a lovely intricate pattern.” She says putting it back on the ground. She stares at the carved out symbols of stars in the tree.
“When I was a little girl I wished I could travel to a star and never come back.”
“Wouldn’t that be scary?” I ask.
“No there are more things to be afraid of on solid ground, here in this world.”
I lie back on the grass and turn over on my stomach; my dress feels sticky on my skin. I tug at a tuft of grass and watch the green smear my hands.
“What are you afraid of Annette? What makes you afraid?”
She is silent for a long time and then she speaks so softly that I have to lean in to hear the words.
“Love. Love frightens me.”
“Do you love my father?”
I watch her expression as she closes her eyes firmly. She is thinking about lying to me and I can tell, she thinks I’m just a child. All adults do this; they lie a lot, not only to each other but mostly to themselves because often they don’t want to face the truth, or face the fact that they have made a mistake.
“Tell me the truth.” I push. “No one else is here.” I tell her.
“No. I don’t love him not the way you are talking about..................we are opposite people.” She says.
“I don’t think he loves me either.” I tell her, and even though it hurts to say it I know it’s true.
She turns over on her side and grips my arms firmly looking steadily into my eyes, and her face is pained. “Of course he loves you. Don’t ever think that. You are treasured and always remember that. You’re father and I just live on different planets. We speak a different language.”
“Don’t you mind?” I ask her.
“Yes. Of course I do but I’ve never been the kind of person that could have a fairytale ending.”
“I want you to have one in the future.”
“What?”
“A fairytale ending.”
She smiles and stares up at the sky as if she can see something written in those big white fluffy clouds that move gently inch by inch.
“Some people just don’t get a fairytale ending Odette, they have to live on the outside of dreams always looking in at them.”
“We could run away together.” I say, watching her reaction.
She looks surprised by my words and frowns searching my eyes with a troubled expression. She reaches for my hand and holds it tightly in her own, her curls fall across her face and she looks so fragile that I worry I’ve pressed her too hard with my questions.
“I’m not going to leave you.” She says to me. But I don’t believe her.
“If you leave me I’ll be miserable every day.” I tell her.
We lie in the grass and count the birds, but eventually we lose count.
A few weeks into August we both notice the change in my father; it begins at the dining room table late on a Saturday evening. Annette has served up dinner and is dishing out the potato salad when father leans forwards, his face seems feverish and his eyes are somewhat bulged. I notice his hands are trembling and my eyes are fixed on those shaking hands, willing them to stop moving, because I know he is about to have one of his attacks. My throat catches and I bite my bottom lip. Something is in the air of the room, I’m not sure how to describe it, but it’s like every bit of hope is being squeezed out, like the juice of a ripe lemon that has been pressed in strong hands and all that is left is the empty rind, the waste.
“I can feel something inside my head, it’s ticking away inside and it’s in a place I cannot reach.” He says, his voice rises with fervour. Peering at us intently he reminds me of a preacher I saw once on an evangelist programme giving a sermon. The words rise and fall with an exaggerated passion. “I think you both have the same problem. It’s in both of you and soon you will feel the same ticking that feeling that something is buried inside and you want to get it out. “
“Odette, why don’t you go to your room and play for a while.” Annette speaks softly and doesn’t look up.
“It’s important she knows the truth.” My father says. His entire body begins to shake in anger. “She’s my daughter.”
“Of course she is. “Annette nods calmly in agreement but her voice is quivering and her face has visibly paled. “Odette looks so tired, perhaps you can tell her more about it tomorrow.” She stands up and gathers up the plates from the table carrying them into the kitchen. She calls to me from the door.
“Come on Odette I’ll take you to your room.” She ushers me onto the landing and hastily into my bedroom.
“We need to erase that part of the brain.” I can hear my father shouting the words as we leave. He is in one of his black moods and I begin to feel ill, like someone is pressing hot hands on my belly.
“Odette stay in your room tonight.”
“What about you?” I ask. Not wanting to leave her alone.
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry; promise me you will stay here. Promise me.” I stare into her eyes and realise that she is much braver than I’d ever thought.
“I can’t let you go in there.”
She reaches for my arm and holds it gently. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
That night I can hear him ranting, he storms around the house like a military solider patrolling an occupied area. Annette’s soft voice breaks through now and again like sunshine pushing through leaden heavy clouds. Her voice reminds me of a harp and my father the violent crash of cymbals, both of these sounds fill the air in the worst way, dishes clatter to the floor, glasses smash creating a distorted symphony of rage. I can hear him pounding his fists against the wall, something I have witnessed many times, and each on each occasion I have watched my father fill the holes with new plaster the next day. I hear Annette cry out more than once and I begin to sob feeling suddenly helpless. I bury my head under the pillow and press my hands hard over my ears, willing him to stop but knowing from experience that it can take hours for him to calm down. After a couple of hours the banging fades out and the house moves into silence, a silence that is welcoming, like the moment after a storm when you feel a sense of relief that it is over. I tiptoe to the door and gently push it open. In the living room I find Annette curled up on the couch on her side and I sit down beside her.
“Is he asleep?”
She presses her fingers to her lips. “Hush Odette, whisper, we don’t want to wake him.”
“What’s wrong with him? Should we call a doctor?”
I stare at the bruises around her neck, red ugly welts and my heart constricts. “He hurt you.”
I feel sick and ashamed that my own father has done this, and I stand there silent not knowing what to say or do my fingers are digging into the palms.
“It’s nothing, don’t worry.” Annette answers.
“We should call a doctor and find out what is wrong with him.”
“He won’t see a doctor I’ve tried to talk to him about going. His doctor has prescribed pills for his mood swings that’s right isn’t it?”
“Yes. But they don’t work he’s been taking them for years.”
“It’s going to be okay Odette; we need to rest now I’m so tired.”
I curl up next to Annette and she strokes my forehead. “Why do you never talk about your past?” I ask.
“I like to pretend it never happened.”
“Why?”
“Because it was very bad and it’s already with me in my dreams every night, I don’t want it to pour into the daytime.”
She stands up slowly and takes my hand, in her room we lay down and stare at the swans above hanging from the ceiling. She pushes them with her hands.
“Just imagine then flying Odette, flying free from the window. Close your eyes and just see the swans, forget everything else.”
I look at the swans and push one idly with my hand, it’s a blue one and I pretend it comes alive and takes to the air, the paper wings become fluffy and soft, it flies around the room and moves to the window where I imagine it disappearing into the night sky. At some point I fall asleep.
The next morning we hear my father slamming doors as he leaves to go to the studio. We don’t try to speak to him.
But the idea that something is stuck inside my father’s head soon becomes an obsession; he buys books on the human brain and studies them late into the night. He begins to talk about headaches he is having, pain that he describes as sharp and throbbing but he refuses to see a doctor. One day when passing the studio downstairs he grabs my hand and pulls me inside the room. He turns my face harshly to the light, holding firmly onto my chin with his hand; he gazes into my eyes and presses his hands around my neck.
“Don’t you feel it Odette? Can’t you feel it inside your head, trapped inside? That thing is in you too and there is no way to escape it.” He states, his eyes enflamed.
“Let me go.” I twist in his arms and run through the doors back up the stairs.
But that night I lay in bed and worry, what if there is something inside my head that is wrong? I think. Is there something that is ticking away as he describes it, like a bomb ready to explode now or in the future? I run my fingers over my head and think about his words. I lay in the cold bedroom and stare into the blackness wondering what is it is like inside my head, what would I see if I could look inside it? A desert I think. It would be a desert, and there would only be a few shrubs, it would be a wasteland where lizards roamed and scorpions scurried along the ground and snakes slithered from trees and I want to cry, but the tears are held inside me, tightly strung like the strings on a piano.
The next week passes uneventfully and I try to carry on as if nothing is wrong in the house. But one day coming home from my friend Hanna’s house I step into the living room and know immediately that something is wrong. It is far too quiet and the stillness feels unnatural. I shout for Annette but there isn’t a sound or reply. I bound up the stairs two at a time and fling my shoulder bag to the floor; my breath comes fast and hard. I see that the photographs on the landing have been smashed and the carpet is full of glass, I step over the glass listening to it crunch under my shoes. In Annette’s bedroom I stare at the mess; all the Origami swans have been ripped down. Someone has crushed them and torn them with bare hands. I stand in the middle of the room looking at all the swans I’d made for her. They look so delicate and crushed on the floor, and I remember how happy she’d been in this room looking at them. Anger builds up inside me, and floods my heart and right at this moment I hate my father and the thought makes me feel sick, as it has many other times. It is then I remember the book she treasured, I lift up the pillow and see it is undamaged. I take it out and flick it open, the cover of the hardback book is green. It is a children’s story book, the story of a girl who is lost in the woods and can never go home because she is under a magic spell, but she never wants to go home because at home things are very bad. I stare at the little girl in the pictures; she has a white dress and long blonde hair and is wearing a white lace dress. She makes friends with all the animals and eats with them and plays with them, the illustrations are beautiful and I stare at them in wonder. I turn the pages over one by one, reading them and watching the story unfold, the little girl lies on the ground and stares into a blue sky, she climbs tress and wades into lakes, she catches fish and makes fires and at the end she sits staring at the stars with a smile surrounded by animals. It makes me feel happy. I place the book back under the pillow.
I hear something crash downstairs. Hurrying, I push open the door to the photograph studio. My father has pushed Annette on the floor, he is pressing the lens of his camera right up against her eye and his hand is across her mouth stopping her screaming.
“I need to do this; I need to get to where the pain is, I need to find the one inside your head.” He’s screaming at her now.
I stand there frozen to the spot. She shakes her head when our eyes meet trying to tell me to get out and to go, but I can’t leave her. I step forwards and push him from her; he slaps me hard across the face and grips me by my shoulders.
“Don’t you get it? We all have this thing in our heads and we need to remove it.” He drops me.
We both stare at him and say nothing. His face is full of loathing for us and I wonder if this is what my mother saw when she was married to him. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it but I realise it’s getting worse.
Annette stumbles to her feet and stands beside me and reaching for my hand. My father storms out of the room.
“Little bitches.” He shouts at the top of his voice. I’m shaking, my whole body is shaking.
“I think it’s time we called a doctor.” Annette says.
“He won’t see one.”
“It’s getting worse. I can’t put you at risk I’ll have to find a way to make him see a doctor.”
“He’s crazy. Does that mean I’m crazy?”
“No. You’re not crazy.”
“How do you know? I mean how can you tell?” I start to shout. “How you can tell just by looking at me, perhaps it’s not happened to me yet, maybe it’s something inside me waiting to come out.”
She leans down and looks at me straight in the eyes. “I know you’re not crazy, you trust me don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She reaches inside her pocket and pulls out one of the paper swans. “I saved one.”
I stare at it. “It’s the gold one.” I say.
“The shiniest one, the prettiest one, I took it before he could destroy it.”
I take it from her hands and hold it lightly as if it is sacred and if I lose it all will be lost.
Eventually Annette persuades him to go the doctors. They keep him in a psychiatric ward for a week but he is soon released. We do not understand how they could have made that decision but we cannot argue it. The first four weeks he is fine, his behaviour seems to have returned to normal. But we are always on edge; as if at any moment we know it is going to return like a huge tornado knocking us from our feet. His madness is always there in the room with us, if it has become an entity of its own. And sure enough after a month the insane talking begins in earnest. One night we find him punching his head with his hands in the corner of the room.
“It’s inside me I have to get it out.” He screams.
Not long after he stops working and we have to close the shop in London.
My father fits a lock on the studio door and hides inside this room for hours refusing to talk to us. He takes photographs of himself on a self- timer, photographs of his face that he pins all over the wall of the studio. Sometimes I’ll go down there when he has left the door open and stare at his face. His eyes seem feral like an animal that has been starved for days and no longer trusts anything or anyone around him, he has a bushy beard that was never there before, and he looks like a stranger now, someone I don’t recognize. He has become a separate person, a father I cannot reach even though I try and it’s as if he’s already somewhere else, in a distant land or Island that no one can reach. He is lost in a place of bloody fists and screaming headaches, a place where something has invaded his head and is eating his sanity away. I imagine this thing inside as an insect moving around his head, in the jelly of his brain and I try to think how I’d feel if I had an insect inside my head, burrowing deep inside and I couldn’t reach it.
I want to stop the thing that is destroying him, but it began years earlier perhaps even before I was born. All I can do is watch him slowly decline in front of my eyes, like a drowning man who is being swallowed up by the sea, you see his head bobbing for a moment, an arm sticks up as he tries to lift himself but eventually you see nothing at all, nothing except the sea. I remember how he’d always look through windows with that disappointed stare, and I wonder if when I grow older I’ll also find myself staring through windows with the exact same expression and the thought scares me. Day to day we step around him and try to find some sense of normality but it’s impossible. I feel like I am inside my father’s head, there I am stepping into it and it’s like a cave and I am walking around in this cave and I have to use a torch to see into that pitiful darkness and finally I see it in a corner of his mind, that thing that is inside his head and I try to kill it, I stab it over and over again but it won’t die. It’s too strong, and it will never ever die.
“Can you feel the world falling around us? He says one night. “Can you taste it, the hopelessness; it has a strange bitter taste like biting into metal. My mouth always tastes of metal these days, that thing is poisoning me.”
I stare at him unmoving, watching the shadows move across his face.
He looks out of the window and stares into the night. “We are all contaminated inside, we are filth inside. Just filth and the truth is we all know it. It’s like excrement, the stench of who we are.”
Annette starts to cry and I watch her face and realise for the first time what I never understood before, that Annette has nowhere else to go. All of these months living with her and not understanding the obvious. We are both trapped, me as a child and her as an adult. Annette doesn’t see a way out because she has never had an escape earlier in her life; I can see it in her face. We are both trapped in this house, we were ensnared by our beginnings, she has no family or money and I have no one else now my mother is dead. All we have is each other. And it is not long after this that I dream about my mother. She is in the garden with me, and I feel very small and my dress is the colour of green apples. And my mother Claire is kneeling on the ground and weeding in the garden and I stand in the soil where she has made a hole. She takes some soil in both her hands and she throws the soil over my feet and it tickles, and I laugh and my mother smiles and she has a kind smile like Annette. For a brief moment I feel happy. But when I wake up my father is standing over me staring at me with those wild eyes of his, and when I look into his eyes it is as though the light has been turned off, that someone has flicked the switch and the humanity has disappeared. I pull my sheets up and stare back at him.
“Come Odette, I want to show you something.” He says pulling the covers away.
“Where is Annette?”
“She’s asleep.”
“I want Annette.” I say.
“Let’s get her then.” He says.
We wake Annette and he leads us both downstairs. He sits at the head of the table and stares in silence at us for a few minutes; there is a wooden box in front of him. We both stare at the box wondering what is in it.
“You have to understand that something is inside my head. My brain is being invaded by something. Remember this because it will happen to both of you.”
We both nod silently in agreement not knowing what to say, and feeling sleepy I rub my eyes.
It happens fast within seconds, one minute he is sat staring at the box, in the next his hand pulls the lid from it and he takes out a handgun. Before we have time to think or move he’s pulled it out and put it to his head. Annette pushes my chair over and I fall to the floor, it is only later that I realise she did it to prevent me seeing him do it. All I hear is a loud sound like a huge pile of dishes crashing to the floor. That is the sound of the shot going off.
Annette covers my face with her hands, so I don’t have to see his face and she leads me out of the door.
After his body is taken away and the police have interviewed us, we sit in the living room in silence for the longest time. For days we do very little, we barely eat, we move around the house like people who are slowly vanishing and our words are short and small with no depth. It’s as if we are afraid of saying anything real because it will break the spell of our self-inflicted prisons. The post piles up on the mat close to the door but we do not make an effort to open it. The dishes lay all over the kitchen unwashed, a mouse appears in the house and I watch it scurrying across the kitchen floor. It seems an effort to do anything. The slightest exertion makes me feel ill, and I climb wearily back under the sheets and hide under them, burrowing like an animal. Only here do I feel okay. Whenever Annette leaves the house I worry that she is not coming back. I realise she has so many other choices now, places she could go, other people she could choose to be with. She could even sell this house. The thought of it makes me feel desperate and lost.
“You’re going to leave me aren’t you?” I say to her, in the bedroom one day.
She carries on folding sweaters and shirts and doesn’t answer me.
“You’re going to go just like everyone else. You don’t love me.”
She smiles softly and reaches into her pocket. “I made one for you; it was supposed to be a surprise.”
I stare at the bright orange origami swan she passes to me. “You made it yourself?”
“It’s not as good as yours but I tried very hard.” She says. “I thought we could hang them up in your room. What do you think; do you think you could make some?”
“Are you staying?”
“Well, we are happy aren’t we Odette?”
I nod. “Yes. I’m happy here with you.”
She sits on the edge of the bed, and stares at me with those big brown eyes that seem so dreamy and pained. “Then what else is there to say Odette? We can live here in this house if you want, or we can move.”
I feel relieved and bite my lip hard as I move to the door; I’m embarrassed to let her see how happy I am.
“And you are wrong.” She says sternly.
I turn and stare at her waiting for an explanation. “I do love you. Can’t you even tell.”
I tie the orange origami swan above my bed. At night if I cannot sleep I stare at it and I imagine it flying through the window, and wouldn’t that be a sight? A paper origami swan flying I think. And I smile inside.