Watching Them

By Fiona McShane

Vivienne is thirty-one, pregnant, and terrified. In order to come to terms with her fears, she must finally acknowledge a childhood she has tried to forget.

Watching Them follows Vivienne on a journey through memory. She recalls childhood, school days and sleepovers. She recalls first loves and romantic experiences. She recalls college years, nights out, good friends and bad. She recalls the beauty of Carina, and the greatest moments of Carina’s life.

But in each of Vivienne’s memories, a shadow is lurking.

Why must she pretend that Carina is her cousin?

Why must she never go into the bungalow across the lake?

And why does she constantly lie to Carina, when Vivienne knows that with just one word of honesty, she could end Carina’s horror forever?

Watching Them is a story of growing up in a family with dark secrets. It’s a story of lives lived under the shadow of abuse. It’s a story told through the eyes of Vivienne, a narrator who may never be ready to tell us the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fiona McShane
• Release date: Jan 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386817314

Book preview

Part One

Prologue One

Through the open gates of Nally’s, the breaker’s yard, I saw row after row of worn-out cars.  I wanted to stop there.  I wanted to park next to those cars, close my eyes, and wait for the town to disappear.  It was just a blip, I kept telling myself, a nothing place a few miles from Cavan town.  But it was looming, regardless – larger than memory, larger than reality, as I approached the main street.

I needed to use the toilet so I parked messily, with the passenger side barely within the lines, and rushed into the Long House.  All four customers looked up as I ran into the ladies’ room.  I could smell lamb stew but, thinking about my dog waiting in the car, I bought a takeaway sandwich and tea instead.

I was about to open my car door, holding my sandwich in my mouth by the corner of the packet and trying not to spill my tea when someone said, ‘Hey Viv.’

I didn’t need to look up to know that it was Colm.  His voice was the same, even though more than thirteen years had passed.  I put my sandwich and tea on the roof of my car and tried to say hello, but what came out was an odd sort of mumble.

‘Didn’t think we’d see you back around these parts,’ he went on.

Major was jumping against the back window of the car, so I turned to let him out, hoping that by the time I turned back around I would have calmed my vocal cords enough to speak.

‘Well, y’know,’ I said, patting Major on the head to relax him.  ‘I was just passing through.  Heard about a sale in some furniture place nearby so I thought I’d take a look.’

As he nodded, his hair fell into his eyes.  I think I smiled then, and looked at him intently.  I didn’t want to, I just couldn’t help myself.  His hair was still wavy, auburn and not in any style.  He had the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, just as he used to, baring his forearms.  The skin there was lightly coloured and dotted with freckles, exactly as when I last saw him.  His face, too, was dotted with small freckles.  But it was his eyes, in the end, that drew me back and made me remember myself.  Do people’s eyes change, as they age?  Colm’s hadn’t.  They were warm brown, as they had been when he was eighteen, and they looked at me in the same direct way they had then.

‘Not up to visit anyone while you’re here?’

I shook my head, trying to hold Major back.  Colm didn’t seem to mind.  He patted the dog’s head and bent down to his level.  Major was medium-sized, a terrier cross, with lanky legs and wiry grey fur.  Though still young, he was used to people looking at him and saying: ‘I’d say he’s ancient, is he?  What the hell sort of dog is he?’  Colm asked none of these things, and his simple, unquestioning attention was welcomed by Major, whose tail went wild as he slobbered all over Colm’s face.

‘Thought you might be up to see Jennifer,’ Colm said.  ‘Ye’ve been keeping in touch, I thought.’

I shrugged, reaching out to pat Major.  My arm was barely out before I retracted it, worried about how Colm would react if I got too close.

‘For a while we were in touch,’ I told him.  ‘The odd phone call, but ... y’know how it is.  She told me about the farm, though.  I was really sad to hear about it finally going.  She said you bought the breaker’s a while back.  I saw it’s still called Nally’s, though, so maybe I took her up wrong.’

He scratched the back of his head and concentrated on the dog.  ‘It’s mine all right.  Don’t exactly have the most trustworthy surname in the town, do I?  Seemed better to just leave it.  Yeah, I’d only just bought it when the farm came back on the market so ... I guess the farm was never meant for me.  But Mam and Davey are running Nally’s with me, so ... how’s the saying go?  All’s well that ends well.  And you’re a teacher?  I was really happy to hear about that, Viv.  First and second class kids, Jennifer said.’

He stopped rubbing Major and looked up at me for a second and I think ... I don’t know.  I think he was about to say something more, but then a little girl came out from the closest shop, and Colm stood up, straight and suddenly.

She ran out at first, and she opened her mouth as if she had something to tell him but, seeing me, she became shy.  She stood behind him, hugging his leg the way little girls do, using his leg as a barrier, peeping around at me and my dog and the bump on my belly.

And then Colm looked too, at my stomach, and I felt a sharp, absolute sadness.  It came and went in the space of a second, but I saw it in his eyes too as he looked at me.  He opened his mouth but said nothing, and after a moment I spoke.

‘I’d better be going, I suppose.’

‘Me an’ all.  Have to get this one home for her lunch or the Mrs’ll be sending out a search party.’

He rubbed the girl’s hair and she giggled up at him.  If I’d wondered whether she was his daughter or just a niece or the child of a friend, I wasn’t wondering any more.  She gave him a look of such total adoration, that look that all little girls reserve for their daddy, back when they still think he’s the most perfect man in the world.

‘You should take a look above at the old place,’ he said as they walked away.  ‘It’s all change up there, these days.’

My goodbye, just as my hello, came out as an odd mumble.  I don’t know if he looked back at me, or waved, because I had to turn away.  I got Major settled back in the car, and worked my way behind the steering wheel.

If I got any bigger I’d have to stop driving, because it was becoming uncomfortable.  I felt so huge, sitting there, looking in my rearview mirror as their figures grew smaller.  They got to a row of terraced cottages I’d passed on my way into town.  I knew it would be Susan’s house that he turned into.  I knew that I should drive away and stop looking.

Jennifer had told me all about it – how Colm and Susan had started seeing each other, how Susan’s parents moved to Spain and Colm and Susan bought the house.  Our phone calls petered out around that time, almost five years ago, and I never heard about the little girl.  She looked around four, I guessed.

I wasn’t able to keep up the conversations with Jennifer.  I’d see her number flash up and ignore the call.  I couldn’t listen to her tell me more about Colm – what he was up to, how well he and Susan were getting along.  It was Jennifer’s way, to keep in touch with everybody, to want to find out what was going on in everyone’s life.  She wasn’t doing it to make me feel bad, or at least I don’t think so.  I shouldn’t have let it bother me so much.  Me and Colm, we weren’t any great love.  Even back then, eighteen and dumb, we could not have called it love.

≈

Why I’d lied to Colm about furniture shopping, I have no idea.  Of all people, he would have understood why I needed to make this journey.  I think he would have understood it better than I do.  I should have done it long before, but I don’t think I could have endured the lake in winter.  I let the months pass and my belly grow, until late spring came and I was on maternity leave.

I drove slowly out of the town and parked at the top of the lane that led to our house and the Barry farm.  Major jumped up against the window, panting excitedly as he saw the fields full of cattle.  When I let him out he sped ahead, sniffing everything in his path.

There was gorse all around.  It shocked me at first, because I’d forgotten how strong the scent was on warm days like this, and I almost thought it was something new, something I’d never smelled before, until I looked and saw the spiky green and gold.  I remembered how it used to remind Carina of Malibu sun lotion.  She would close her eyes, inhale deeply and pretend she was lying on a beach thousands of miles away, smeared in coconut oil.

The fields we passed were full of bullocks, but I suppose because I had Major with me they didn’t frighten me as much as they used to when I was a girl.  The fences were rickety, crookedly positioned posts with barbed wire ran across.  It looked like they hadn’t been replaced since the last time I saw them.  There were all these little parts where, because the ground was so uneven, there would suddenly be a lot of space between the barbed wire and the ground.  When the bullocks were young and skittish I used to be afraid that they’d squeeze through one of those gaps and come after me.

Carina had never been afraid of the bullocks.  Even when they’d follow us for the whole length of their field, even when they’d push against their gate, even when they grew bigger and bigger as the season passed, she was never afraid.

The lane sloped upwards so that, until you got to the top, you couldn’t see our property or even Little Lake.  I walked the hill slowly.  I wasn’t finding the climb difficult, but I wanted to delay the sight until the very last second.

When I got to the top I stood for a moment and looked down at the lake.  Despite the heat of the day I shivered.  I tried not to close my eyes, tried not to even squint, in case the darkness and the chill of that night had imprinted itself upon the place.  I focused on it with my eyes wide, trying to see it as it was now, and not how I held it in memory.

The new houses weren’t really unexpected, given that so much of the county had changed.  Ours was still the biggest house on the lake, but someone was doing a lot of work on it: banging and drilling noises came towards me, and a skip sat in the driveway.

Carina’s house was gone.  Just gone, like it had never existed.  A bigger, newly built house sat a little bit away from where her bungalow had been situated.

Each of the new houses had its own slipway or jetty, and half of them had boats moored, or else on trailers in their driveways.  Our lake was so small, though, that I thought they probably took their boats to Lough Sheelin or Lough Ramor, the way we had sometimes done.

There was willow, gorse, hawthorn, fir and elder when we were growing up.  It made our houses private.  It made little overgrown areas for Carina and me where, for a long time, we could play hidden from view.  Back then the trees used to shroud the old wooden gazebo so that you couldn’t see it from either of our houses, or even from the road.  Now, everything had been cut back to make room for the new properties, and the gazebo was in plain view.  It sat there rotting into the water for all to see.  It shocked me.  It seemed vulgar that everyone could see it in that condition, that no one had thought to repair it or have it taken down.  They’d just left it there, wasting before their eyes.

I remember once seeing a painting of our house, commissioned when it was built almost a hundred years ago.  The view in the painting was from the top of the hill, and you could see the gazebo, bright and new, joined to the shore by a wooden bridge.  By the time we lived in the house most of the bridge was gone, so that we had to swim or take a boat to get out there.  It looked, from the painting, as if the trees were low enough that you could even have seen it from our houses back then, as if it had been a feature instead of the hideaway it later became.

I walked further on, to the Barry farm, thinking that it would be the same as our property – that it would be knocked down, or there would be dozens of new houses on the land.  I stalled for a second, actually stalled with one foot not quite on the ground, when I saw that it was still there.  There was a big board nailed to the front fence, saying that the land was for sale, and advertising it as a ‘development opportunity.’  But it was as if they were just a hundred metres the wrong side of progress.  Work had stopped at our property, and on the Barry farm little had changed.

The buildings looked as neglected as they always had, and the same old sadness settled in my stomach as I walked into the yard and took in the condition of the farm.

Even in my childhood the sheets of roofing metal on the cattle sheds were coming away from the frame, and when the wind got strong they made such a noise.  It used to wake me in the night sometimes, and no matter how I covered my ears I couldn’t get back to sleep.  The wind would whistle through the holes in the roof, and bang the sheets of metal, making me think of the banshee.  I imagined her crying out and whipping her horses as she drove them through the sky.

If it was winter, and the cows were in their sheds, their lowing would be heard every time the wind died down.  For years I didn’t believe that it was the cows.  They were monsters, I thought, calling up to the banshee, begging her to come down and claim them.

Now, almost the entire roof of the biggest shed was gone.  Most of the gates were gone from their hinges, and even the rusting old caravan that sat unmoving for years had been removed.

The yard was mostly nettles, but there were tall dandelions and daisies that made it somewhat less desolate.  When I looked up at the house, I saw that most of the windows had been smashed.

Major ran right through the nettles.  It’s probably something to do with how thick his fur is, the way he never seems to get stung.  I had to step more carefully.  I had cushioned sandals on my feet, and I was wearing a skirt, so it took me some time to get to the front door without being stung.  It made me very aware of what I was wearing – the hippy skirt and the sandals – and I blushed, even though I was alone, because I felt so unlike myself.  My hair was curling, my forehead was sweating, and I was dressed like I was trying to do the Earth Mother thing, when all I wanted was to be skinny again, in jeans and decent shoes.

The front door was locked.  Once, there had been a key left under a purple flowerpot filled with weeds.  There was no flowerpot any more.  I pushed at the door but there was no give.

I banged at the wood, almost crying.  I thought of the journey back across the yard.  Every part of me began to ache, to feel weary, until I saw Major running around to the back of the house.  I followed, feeling a surge of energy, catching up with my dog as he ran in through the wide-open French doors at the back.

The doors led into what the Barrys had called their ‘good sitting room.’  Now, cans and bottles and other rubbish lay all over the floor.  The carpet was still there, but I couldn’t make out the pattern; I heard a squelching noise as I walked over it, as if it was soaked through with something I didn’t want to think about.

Graffiti was scribbled all over the walls.  Mickey and Lisa did it here on Wednesday, apparently (well, they had written Wensday, but I took their meaning).  I don’t know what came over me, but I took a pen from my bag and scrawled Congratulations underneath.

I walked upstairs then, and went into Colm’s bedroom.  Some of his posters were still on the walls, but they had little spots of mould all over, and had curled and faded with time and damp.  There was no longer a bed, but there were cushions on the ground and a plastic chair by the window.  I decided against the cushions and, after giving the chair a quick wipe with some tissues I had in my bag, I moved it against the wall where the headboard used to rest.  I sat down and tilted my head backwards.

Some days when he was at work, I would lie on his bed and wait for him, with the window open, listening.  Even if it was night I would open the window.  Somehow, when I was on his bed, the fear of childhood left me.  The cows could low, the wind could howl, the roof could crash and rattle.  None of it would frighten me.  I could lie, and listen, because there I was safe.  There the world, and the wind, would slow and grow quiet.  As long as I was on his bed, as long as he was coming home to me, nothing bad could happen.

I didn’t have to open the window that day, because it had been thoughtfully smashed.  The wind was picking up outside, and I tried to do as I used to – I closed my eyes so that I could believe I was lying down, believe that I was lying on his bed and waiting for him.  I tried to let the safeness of his room surround me, to feel the world begin to slow.  But the same feeling came over me, as sharp as on the street, quick and hard to take, and I stood, called Major, and left the house.

I ran around to the front yard, ignoring the nettle stings on my ankles and calves.  I couldn’t slow down.  I couldn’t stop.  I kept my eyes half-closed as I ran back along the lane and to my car.  Major didn’t want to get in and I almost screamed out loud, annoyed with him.  I picked him up and put him in the back seat while he looked at me in that baleful way that dogs do, a way that made me sure I was in the wrong.

All the way home to Bray he kept his head in his paws, not looking at me once, not even looking out of the window while I drove quickly and played the radio too loud.

Prologue Two

I’d been looking at the directions for half an hour when he knocked at the door.  They were really simple instructions, and yet I couldn’t make myself lift a screw.

I opened the door, went back to the room I had been in, and let him follow.  I didn’t say a word to him, just sat down on the floor of the spare bedroom and picked up the directions again.

‘The cot?’ Gary asked.

I nodded.

‘Where’s Major?’

I sighed.  ‘He’s in the garden.  He kept sending the screws all over the kip and getting paw-prints on the instructions.’

‘Is some of it missing?’

‘No.’  I laughed.  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought flat-packed furniture that’s got something missing.  I think it’s a modern myth, to be honest.’

‘You could’ve asked me to help.  I told you when it came the other day that I’d put it together whenever you wanted.’

I looked at him.  There was a pen stuck behind his right ear, and his hands had reminders scribbled all over.  ‘So do it,’ I said.

‘Really?’  He grinned, but then bit his lip and looked unsure.  ‘You don’t mind me being here?’

‘Do it,’ I said.  ‘Put it together.  Please.  I can’t concentrate on anything.’

He had already picked up the first piece of wood, so I left the flat and went downstairs.  For a few minutes I stood at the doorway that linked the storeroom to the shop.  I felt naughty, which was stupid.  I was the one who had insisted on using the back entrance, avoiding the book shop for the past few weeks.

I went in and headed straight to the secondhand children’s books, having an overwhelming urge to read to my belly.  It was something I’d been doing lately, sitting by myself and reading out loud, feeling sure that the words were seeping through.

When it came to children’s books, I preferred the secondhand section of our shop.  Some of the books people brought in to sell were copies of books I knew Carina had owned.  Sometimes, because of the condition of a book – maybe it had a mark similar to one I remembered – I would fool my brain into thinking that it was actually one of hers.

I’d go to lengths in my inventions, imagining that maybe this one didn’t get destroyed – maybe this one was lost, somehow, before that day.  Maybe this one had been left behind on a bus, or in a shop, or on a bench, and somehow made its way here, all these years later.

I picked up Thumbelina, and the Snow Queen, and a little collection of Irish Fairy Stories.  I couldn’t decide which one to read, until I spied a copy of Sleeping Beauty on the lowest shelf.  Gary must have bought it recently, because I would have noticed it straight away.  It was worn and old, a Ladybird version of the story, but I wanted it more than anything.

Sleeping Beauty was always more difficult than the others, when it came to my game of pretend, because I still had the tainted copy.  I could never look at one on a shelf and say, ‘Maybe,’ with Sleeping Beauty.  But there was something about this copy.  It wasn’t simply that it was a Ladybird version, like the one I kept.  There was something about the creases in the spine, and the fingerprints that dirtied the pages.  This was a used copy, in the best sense of the word.  Maybe with this one I could trick my mind, and visit the memory, even smell the air of that mild spring afternoon when we sat by the bank of the lake and she read the book out loud.

In our book shop we sold hot chocolate, tea, coffee, juices and snacks, and held book clubs two nights a week.  There were old armchairs and a big, comfy sofa by a gas-fire that we lit in the winter.

I chose the sofa, and I think I must have fallen asleep after a few pages, because when Gary touched my head and put his hand on mine to lead me upstairs, the book had fallen to the floor.  I bent, awkwardly, and seeing me struggle he bent to pick it up for me, while I fought the urge to lunge for it, to snap it away from him.

‘My book,’ I wanted to say, like a child.

He handed it to me without a word, and we walked up to the flat.

He looked so proud, so happy, as we stood in the doorway of the spare room.  Behold my manly skills, he may as well have said, as he watched for my reaction.

‘It’s great,’ I told him.  ‘Since you’ve put it together though, I think I ought to be the one to paint it.’

His face fell, but he tried his best to keep his voice upbeat.  ‘I can do that.  You need to keep away from anything toxic at the moment.’

‘I’m supposed to be keeping away from everything at the moment,’ I said.  I sounded ratty; even I could hear it in my voice.  I could see that my tone had upset him, so I smiled and said, ‘Have you eaten yet?’

He nodded.  ‘I actually came around earlier to see if you fancied lunch.  You must’ve been out.’

‘I went for a drive.  Needed to clear my head.’

‘Did it work?’

I shrugged.  The bedroom was at the front of the flat, facing the waterfront, and as I looked out I noticed the colours that the sunset lent to the sea.  I think it must have made me smile, or give off some signal that I was in a good mood, because I could feel him moving closer to me, and I stood there, waiting.  He drew beside me, and I knew he’d been out for a swim that morning, because his hair smelled like the shampoo I’d bought him to help with salt damage.

Even before he reached out I felt my body move, felt it arc and fall back into his.  He stroked my face, with a hand so soft and warm that it made me sigh out loud.  I don’t know if it was due to familiarity – that my body was simply responding as it had done for years – or if it was because I missed his touch, but I let him go on, kissing my shoulder and my neck, with his hands on my stomach, travelling to my breasts.  I laid Sleeping Beauty on the side of the cot, and turned and kissed him on the lips.

It was me who led him to our bedroom, at first with a little bit of fear.  If he questioned what this meant, or where this was going, the moment would be broken.  But he stayed quiet, perhaps sensing the delicacy of the situation, or perhaps simply caught in the feeling as we undressed each other and lay on our bed.

He let out a long exhalation as he entered me and began to move.  The sensation was stronger, somehow.  It was probably because my body had changed, but it felt as if we were back in our early days, as if it was one of our first times.

I had wondered, in my early stages, if it would become awkward as I grew bigger – just the positioning, I mean.  I had imagined my bump made me an unapproachable fortress.  And maybe it would have caused difficulty, or at least called for some imagination, on any other day, but at that moment everything was easy.

When we finished we stayed there for a long time.  We hadn’t pulled the curtains, so the room was still bright, and I closed my eyes.  I could have slept then, I think.  I could have slept for hours although it was barely evening, but I felt him stir next to me, and I felt his hands begin to move again.

He trailed his fingertips along my collarbone and my swollen breasts.  He let his lips follow, along the line of my neck, over my nipples, and onto my belly.

‘Beautiful,’ he said, kissing the taut skin.  He looked at me with a wide smile, placing his hand on my stomach.  ‘I can’t believe our little girl is in there.  All those years I thought I couldn’t give you kids, and now she’s actually in there.  Our miracle.  I can’t believe how much I love you both.’

Nausea came, fear came, with a constriction of my throat.  My mind was cloudy, almost asleep, and for a moment I couldn’t speak.  All I could do was shake my head and push his hand off my stomach.

His eyes were wide.  ‘What’s wrong, Viv?  Did I hurt you?’

I grabbed the covers and pulled them over me, still shaking my head.  ‘We haven’t even talked about anything.  We can’t just sleep together and then that’s it.  Everything back to normal.’

He sat straight up and stared at me.  ‘I thought I’d hurt you, Viv.  I thought I’d hurt the baby or something.’

‘I’m sorry.  All right?  I know I’m sending you mixed signals here, and I’m sorry.  But you can’t expect to just plaster over things.  I can’t do that any more.  I can’t just bury my head.  Not now.  I need this to be right.  This has to be right.’

He shook his head and started to put on his shirt.  ‘I have no clue what’s wrong with you, Viv.  I have no idea why we’re having this separation, but you said a few weeks.  It’s been a few weeks.’

‘I know.  I know.  I thought I’d have it sorted by now.’

‘Have what sorted?’  He grabbed my hands and tried to look me in the eye, but I kept looking down at the blankets.

‘You won’t even tell me what the problem is.  I keep asking you can we talk about this, Viv.  Can we just ... I’ll go and stick the kettle on and we ... we need to sit down and talk.’

‘It’s time for Major’s walk.  I need to get dressed and take him out.  Please, go back to Mark and Niamh’s for the night.  I promise you I’ll sit down and talk to you, but not now.  Just ... Please just not now.  I need to get things right in my head first.  A couple more days.’

He started to bite his lips, and his nostrils went really wide, but he didn’t say any more.  He grabbed the rest of his clothes and got dressed as quickly as he could.  He wouldn’t look at me, and when he left he slammed the door behind him.  I heard him rush down the stairs, through the shop, and slam that door as well.  The little bell that hung over the door was still ringing, long after he’d locked the door and left.

Gary had every right to be angry with me.  He had every right to be confused.  Since I told him I needed a break, eight weeks ago, I hadn’t yet sat down with him and told him what was wrong.  At first he took it so well.  He was sleeping in his old bedroom, in his brother’s house, and he hadn’t rushed me in the slightest.  Maybe he thought that it was hormonal.  Maybe he hoped that, after years together, this would be the catalyst that would make me finally open up to him.

Eight weeks ago we were told the sex of the baby.  I can still see it, the look of absolute joy on his face when we were told we were having a girl.  I cried, but they weren’t just tears of happiness.  I had spent years thinking that we would never have children, thinking Gary was incapable, but there I was, with an undeniable child in my womb.  Real now.  Not a foetus.  Not an it.  Gary’s child, a baby girl, growing within me.

I want her more than anything in the world.  You have to understand that.  But these days I have so many nightmares.  It feels like all I do is think about the past, and fear the future.  I think that’s why I went to Cavan today.  Because since the day I found out I was expecting this baby, the first eighteen years of my life are all that I can think about.

Memories don’t come into your mind in any way that can be called linear.  They sort of clump on top of one another and, for some reason, as soon as you try to focus on what you remember as happy, the bad ones crowd the good ones down.  Like, if I say I’m going to try and go back to the beginning, I think about where I stood this morning looking out at the gazebo, and I try to remember the games we used to play, where I was rescuing Princess Carina from pirates.  I try to remember the things she told me about being there with Oisín.  But when a place holds so many memories, good and bad, somehow the bad are the ones you can’t get out of your head.  But I’ll try to go against the way of memory.  I think it will be easier that way.

Carina

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Her imagination used to frighten me.  Tree stumps became goblins.  A rock jutting out of the water was a pirate boat rising up from the bottom – or worse, a sea monster that had lain dormant since the Ice Age had been awoken by our singing.  The reflections of the willow branches were snakes, wriggling through the water towards us.

The weather could change so quickly there, and the concurrent changes in the light went some way, I think, to making her stories seem real.  Mists would curl through the trees and hang low over the water, and even if I couldn’t see the monster Carina swore was just a few feet away, I believed that it was there, cloaked and waiting, creeping towards me unseen.  I preferred to stay inside on the really misty days.  Sometimes her house would disappear from my view, and I could sit in my bedroom and pretend she didn’t exist.

Carina was my only playmate at the age I’m thinking of – five or six or so.  I couldn’t count on Sarah to keep me company in those days.  I think I resented it a little bit, the way it was always Carina and me, the way we were stuck with only each other as friends.  There were three days between us, in age, and she and her family spent most of their time at our house.

There is no definite moment I can pinpoint and say: that’s when I started questioning.  There were probably times, when I was very young, when I tried to challenge things, but most of the time I kept my thoughts to myself and didn’t say a word.  I didn’t feel I could speak to anyone.  Maybe it was the same for the other siblings.  I