Lucy in the Sky

about Mum and me, though, and it’s a relief to be able to break away and go up to my bedroom without worrying about offending him.
    Mum knocks on my door a little later. I’m lying on my bed staring up at the ceiling.
    ‘Lucy, please talk to me.’ She perches on the bed with a cup of tea for me. ‘Tell me about the funeral. Did James go with you?’
    I force myself to sit up. ‘No, Nathan did,’ I say, daring her to give me a look. She doesn’t. ‘I found your letter,’ I tell her. She looks confused. ‘You know, with a photo of me when I was five…’ Recognition registers and pain flickers across her face. ‘Tell me what it was like, Mum. Please. I need to know.’
    My father was an alcoholic, abusive bully who cheated on my mother time and time again. Once she came home to find him with two hookers in his bed. When she tried to leave, he grabbed her by the hair and smashed her against the wardrobe, knocking her out. She was pregnant with me at the time.
    The abuse continued. When he wasn’t screwing other women, he would screw my mum, with, but mostly without, her consent. One time his mother–my grandmother–found her sobbing uncontrollably and bleeding because he had bitten her neck in a violent rage. She still has the scar. But my grandmother did nothing.
    When I was born my mother decided we had to escape, but one of the neighbours, who saw her packing a suitcase, ran to get my dad from down the pub. He threatened to throw me at the wall and told Mum he would kill us both if she ever left.
    But she did leave eventually. Because she knew he would kill us if we stayed. She escaped with me to a women’s shelter in London and with their help, managed to find us a tiny studio flat. She got a job as a secretary and over the next couple of years, life settled down.
    One day my grandmother turned up on her doorstep. She’d hired a private investigator to track us both down and was desperate for a reconciliation. She tried to persuade Mum to go back to Dublin to meet with my dad, swearing that he had changed, but my mum never wanted to set eyes on the bastard again. Over the next year my grandmother continued to write and send money. Eventually Mum had enough cash for a one-way ticket to Australia. It wasn’t the outcome my grandmother had ever anticipated.
    Mum tells me now that my dad did write many times, asking her to come back. He wanted to meet me. But she wrote to him only three times. Once to send him a photo of me because she was feeling generous, another to get him to tell his mother to stop writing, and finally to request a divorce.
    ‘Where are their letters now?’ I ask.
    ‘I burnt them. I’m sorry,’ she tells me.
    Nathan calls me that night, as I’m climbing into bed. I’ve had eighteen missed calls since Tuesday night, so this time I answer the phone.
    ‘Lucy! You’re there!’ He was obviously expecting voicemail again. ‘Where are you?’
    ‘Dunster.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Somerset. It’s where I live. Where my mum lives,’ I correct myself.
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    I say nothing, waiting for him to speak.
    ‘Lucy…’
    ‘What?’ I snap.
    Silence.
    ‘Nathan, if you’ve got something to say to me, just say it! Why can’t you say it?’
    ‘What do you expect me to say?’ he asks.
    My heart is pounding so hard, I don’t answer him.
    ‘Lucy…Luce. About the other day…’
    I wait.
    ‘God, do you have to make this so hard for me?’ he asks. ‘When are you coming back? When can we talk?’
    ‘Now is a good time.’ I don’t know why I’m being so mean. I can’t help it.
    ‘I…don’t know what you expected me to do? In the car…’
    ‘Please don’t. Don’t mention it again.’
    He sighs. ‘I’m leaving in three weeks.’
    ‘Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore, then.’
    ‘I don’t want that!’ he exclaims, frustrated now.
    ‘Well, what do you want?’
    ‘I think it’s you who has to decide what she wants, don’t you?’ he responds, angrily. ‘Look, please, let’s talk when you come back, okay? Lucy? I do know something about what you’re going through, you know,’ he adds, and my heart breaks at the sound of his sad voice.
    ‘I know you do.’ I’m more gentle now. ‘But, Nathan, really, what’s the point? Next week I’ll have only a few days in London and then James and I are going to his parents for Christmas. Bythe time I get back, I might see you only once or twice before you go home.’
    ‘We can’t leave it like