black-lipsticked mouth and lets out a scream of rage.
I’ve heard that scream a few times before but it never fails to make all the hairs on my body stand to attention. It’s the sort of scream I would make if somebody sliced open my soft white abdomen with a carving knife that hadn’t been disinfected.
Dad looks taken aback for a moment but continues to stand over Caro with athreatening expression.
‘Go and pack,’ he says. ‘I’m ringing your foster parents. They can come and get you or you can hitch back the way you came. I’m past caring.’
Caro’s gone purple with rage now. She looks around the kitchen with a wild expression on her face.
Her gaze settles on the back garden and I know in a split second what she’s going do and I shout out ‘NO, CARO!’ but it’s too late and like a black flash of spite she’s off out of the kitchen door and down the end of the garden and heading straight for the spade that Dad leaves stuck in the flower bed at the end of a long day’s gardening.
Dad and I follow but it’s too late.
With shrieks of rage and grunts of effort Caro attacks all the lines of neat vegetables with the spade, sending a flurry of green leavesflying up into the air. Then with her hands she rips down the beautiful cane pyramids which prop up the red bean flowers until they are bent and snapped and all tangled up with the earthy roots lying on the grass.
‘STOP IT!’ I scream as I rush towards her. ‘CARO! STOP!’
Yes. It’s way too late now.
Caro raises the handle of the heavy spade in the direction of Dad’s beloved greenhouse with its neat rows of grapes and new tomatoes hanging in little jewel-like clusters and with one scream of effort she’s smashed all the glass into tiny crystals and swiped all the plastic seed trays and their contents on to the floor.
I run into the greenhouse and try to wrestle the spade out of her surprisingly strong grip. For a small thin person Caro seems to possess supernatural powers. Earth and bits of dried wood and weed fall all over me but I’m toostressed to register the
Dirt Alert
.
I pull and tug at the spade but Caro’s stronger than I am.
Then another pair of hands reaches in and grabs it.
Dad.
I think he’s going to put the spade out of Caro’s reach but what he does next catches all of us unawares.
He looms over Caro with the spade still in his grasp.
And lets out an enormous roar.
Chapter Twenty-One
T here’s a horrid sickening moment of slow motion where I see Caro cowering in fright and my father looming over her like a whale of wrath and now I’m moving towards Dad to try and stop him.
‘You little cow!’ Dad is shouting. ‘You vile, evil child!’ I snap out of slow motion and get myself positioned between Caro and the spade.
‘No, Dad!’ I say. ‘You can’t hit her!’
I never told my dad much about Caro’s past. About the father who used to hit and abuse her up in her bedroom when she wasjust a tiny child. About how her self-harming is all because of the fear she used to feel as a little girl.
My dad is ashen with shock when he hears my voice.
He drops the spade and stands there, a broken man with tears pouring down his face.
Caro’s also crying. It’s a quiet whimper of fear, like an animal that’s just been kicked.
When Dad drops the spade she dodges his bulk and darts out of the greenhouse and back towards the house.
The garden looks like a wilderness.
All Dad’s orderly lines of vegetables have gone.
The neat grass is strewn with lumps of soil and the leaves of ripped-up plants.
The wooden bean-frames lie drunkenly on their sides or sticking up towards the sky like the crushed limbs of giant stick insects.
Dad drops to his knees and buries his face in his hands.
Great big sobs come from his shaking body.
It’s at that moment that I stop seeing Dad as a weak, unemployed, lovesick drinking man.
He’s a human being. In pain. Lots of.
I crouch down next to him and I’m kneeling in piles of
I’ve heard that scream a few times before but it never fails to make all the hairs on my body stand to attention. It’s the sort of scream I would make if somebody sliced open my soft white abdomen with a carving knife that hadn’t been disinfected.
Dad looks taken aback for a moment but continues to stand over Caro with athreatening expression.
‘Go and pack,’ he says. ‘I’m ringing your foster parents. They can come and get you or you can hitch back the way you came. I’m past caring.’
Caro’s gone purple with rage now. She looks around the kitchen with a wild expression on her face.
Her gaze settles on the back garden and I know in a split second what she’s going do and I shout out ‘NO, CARO!’ but it’s too late and like a black flash of spite she’s off out of the kitchen door and down the end of the garden and heading straight for the spade that Dad leaves stuck in the flower bed at the end of a long day’s gardening.
Dad and I follow but it’s too late.
With shrieks of rage and grunts of effort Caro attacks all the lines of neat vegetables with the spade, sending a flurry of green leavesflying up into the air. Then with her hands she rips down the beautiful cane pyramids which prop up the red bean flowers until they are bent and snapped and all tangled up with the earthy roots lying on the grass.
‘STOP IT!’ I scream as I rush towards her. ‘CARO! STOP!’
Yes. It’s way too late now.
Caro raises the handle of the heavy spade in the direction of Dad’s beloved greenhouse with its neat rows of grapes and new tomatoes hanging in little jewel-like clusters and with one scream of effort she’s smashed all the glass into tiny crystals and swiped all the plastic seed trays and their contents on to the floor.
I run into the greenhouse and try to wrestle the spade out of her surprisingly strong grip. For a small thin person Caro seems to possess supernatural powers. Earth and bits of dried wood and weed fall all over me but I’m toostressed to register the
Dirt Alert
.
I pull and tug at the spade but Caro’s stronger than I am.
Then another pair of hands reaches in and grabs it.
Dad.
I think he’s going to put the spade out of Caro’s reach but what he does next catches all of us unawares.
He looms over Caro with the spade still in his grasp.
And lets out an enormous roar.
Chapter Twenty-One
T here’s a horrid sickening moment of slow motion where I see Caro cowering in fright and my father looming over her like a whale of wrath and now I’m moving towards Dad to try and stop him.
‘You little cow!’ Dad is shouting. ‘You vile, evil child!’ I snap out of slow motion and get myself positioned between Caro and the spade.
‘No, Dad!’ I say. ‘You can’t hit her!’
I never told my dad much about Caro’s past. About the father who used to hit and abuse her up in her bedroom when she wasjust a tiny child. About how her self-harming is all because of the fear she used to feel as a little girl.
My dad is ashen with shock when he hears my voice.
He drops the spade and stands there, a broken man with tears pouring down his face.
Caro’s also crying. It’s a quiet whimper of fear, like an animal that’s just been kicked.
When Dad drops the spade she dodges his bulk and darts out of the greenhouse and back towards the house.
The garden looks like a wilderness.
All Dad’s orderly lines of vegetables have gone.
The neat grass is strewn with lumps of soil and the leaves of ripped-up plants.
The wooden bean-frames lie drunkenly on their sides or sticking up towards the sky like the crushed limbs of giant stick insects.
Dad drops to his knees and buries his face in his hands.
Great big sobs come from his shaking body.
It’s at that moment that I stop seeing Dad as a weak, unemployed, lovesick drinking man.
He’s a human being. In pain. Lots of.
I crouch down next to him and I’m kneeling in piles of
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