The Wall (9 page)

He’s still gentle with her now, still treats her as if the slightest upset might break her, except these days the thing he’s usually trying to protect her from is me. He thinks I’m selfish and inconsiderate, and he never stops trying to squeeze between us and police the way I talk to her. If he wasn’t around everything would be fine, but he just can’t resist stepping in and trying to make everything fit his stupid rules.

If I’d resisted him from the start, I might have been able to keep him at bay, but by the time I realised what he was up to – that he was working his way in for good, and he was going to change everything and never leave – it was too late. I still remember the moment when I realised what was going to happen, and that he had beaten me.

I was only nine when he first started visiting, and was always desperate for someone to play board games with me. There were weekends when we sat at the dining table for whole afternoons, rolling dice and moving counters, while Mum drifted around, keeping her distance and encouraging us to ‘bond’. It felt good to have someone else in the house other than just me and Mum. He was someone to hide behind, someone to handle her mood swings, someone to turn us round and make us look forwards rather than backwards.

He tried his best to be nice to me, and I tried to like him, but the day when he suggested a ‘family outing’, I realised for the first time what he was trying to do. He was all smiles when he asked me where I wanted to go, and Mum was right there, too, grinning down at me, and I saw, in a flash, that they were both in on it – they were working together – lining up a replacement father.

I stood there, speechless, overwhelmed by the horror of this idea – by the idea that
anyone
might think they could do that, let alone this old, bearded, dreary stranger – while they gazed at me, waiting to hear my choice of outing. I opted for the swimming pool, not because I like swimming, but because I thought it was the best choice to expose the ridiculous gulf between Liev and my dad. I thought the sight of him in a pair of trunks might wake my mother up and force her to see what she was doing.

When he walked out of his cubicle, tiptoeing on the wet tiles as if he didn’t want them to touch his feet, I thought for a moment my plan might work. I already knew he was no athlete, but the way he looked in his old-fashioned trunks (which were not much bigger than a pair of women’s knickers) was creepier than I had dared imagine. His body was fat-but-thin, skinny and also saggy, with flesh the colour and texture of dough, so soft it looked as if a firm poke would leave a lasting dent. And even his toes were hairy.

‘So, let’s swim!’ he said, rubbing his hands together, struggling to act as if the outing was anything other than a grim duty. He didn’t seem to have any idea of how awful he looked.

Mum didn’t react to the sight of him in the way I’d hoped. She somehow stifled her instinctive response, which must have been to run screaming from the building, and didn’t even flinch when we emerged from the changing rooms. Perhaps this was tact; perhaps she’d seen it all before. This wasn’t a thought I wanted to dwell on.

I made sure to splash him a lot, and to be as irritating as possible within the bounds of what I could pass off as playfulness, but nothing riled him. I could tell I was getting on his nerves, and that he didn’t find chlorinated water in the eyes even one-tenth as amusing as he pretended to, but he took it all with annoyingly good humour.

Eventually I resorted to asking him if he liked diving. We were at the pool with the high boards, and straight away he was suspicious.

‘Sometimes,’ he replied, smiling warily, his eyes flicking towards Mum to see if she was listening.

I drew closer to her. ‘Let’s do some. Will you teach me?’ I said.

He shrugged a reluctant yes, so I swam to the edge of the pool, checked that he was following, then went ahead to the diving tower and waited for him at the bottom step. I could see Mum at the far end of the pool, watching. I gave her a wave, and as soon as Liev was near, began to climb.

Up I went, past the low board, then past the medium board, hearing the metallic echo of Liev’s footsteps behind me, feeling his weight judder the frame of the ladder. I didn’t stop or look down until I’d made it all the way to the ten-metre platform. I’d never been up to this level before. A glance between my legs showed the swimmers looking miniature and foreshortened, their screams and yelps blending into a continuous shrill drone. The drop had always looked high from the pool, but it seemed enormous when viewed from above. The idea of walking to the end and throwing yourself off was sickening. I shuffled from the top of the ladder to the railing that ran along the edge of the platform, my knees feeling loose and unreliable as I lurched for the metal bar, which I gripped with all my strength while I waited for Liev.

I knew he was on a mission to prove himself to Mum, so he wouldn’t be able to dive from a lower board or turn back. It was a long time before he appeared at the top, and when he did his face was pale, his lips puckered into a hard white ring. The saggy muscles of his arms juddered as he hauled himself up.

Trying to hide my smirk, I turned back to Mum, picking her out far below and giving her an enthusiastic wave with my right hand while holding on tight with my left. I couldn’t make out her expression as she waved back.

Liev clambered on to the platform, clumsily heaving himself from his knees to his feet, then inching towards the railing, which he clutched with knuckle-whitening force. For a while, he stood with his head bowed, catching his breath.

When he looked up, every scrap of friendliness had vanished from his eyes. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ he said, his voice cold and flat.

‘Did I go too high?’ I replied, all innocence and smiles.

‘I know exactly what you’re doing.’

‘My dad was a really good diver,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t afraid of anything.’

He held my gaze, breathing slowly through his nostrils, as he lifted his index finger and gave me a sharp jab in the ribs, just below my heart. ‘Do you think you’re smarter than me?’ he asked.

I tightened my grip on the railing, feeling suddenly vulnerable, higher up than was safe, more naked than I wanted to be. It struck me that I’d never been alone with him before, out of earshot of my mother. His body was positioned to conceal me from her view.

‘Don’t play me,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever think you can play me. You won’t win.’

He reached out, and with one finger raised my chin, forcing me to look at him. His mouth was stretched into an affectionate a friendly smile that was somehow also the opposite.

‘So are we going to be friends?’ he said.

I shrugged, staring at a single droplet that was clinging to the tip of his beard.

‘Friends?’

I still didn’t answer, but he carried on as if I had.

‘Then let’s shake on it,’ he said, as if we were now, at this moment, meeting for the first time, on a high diving board. In a way, we were. This, I realised, was the real Liev.

There was nothing to do but raise my limp, soggy hand and shake. His fingers were puffy, soft and warm. He pumped my forearm up and down, as if I was a lever-operated machine. This gesture seemed to satisfy him, and he took a single contented breath.

‘Good boy,’ he said, ‘good boy,’ repeating it twice with a sing-song intonation, like a trainer rewarding an obedient dog.

With that, he tilted his head back and rolled his neck through one slow circle, then turned and walked towards the end of the diving board. He tried to appear confident, but his walk was hunched and uncertain, his knees never quite straightening, his hand hovering, ready to grab the railing. No one had been up here for a while: other than his footsteps, the surface was dry. Soon, there was no concrete ahead of him, only air.

He curled his toes over the lip of the platform, spread his arms, and stood there, swaying slightly. The gusset of his trunks had sagged away from his body, releasing droplets of water which splashed between his ankles.

With his chin raised, he slowly bent his knees and leapt forwards, flying through the air with his back arched, a perfect, graceful swallow dive. For half a second, it was beautiful. Then, as his head speared towards the water, the flaw in his technique became apparent. With several more metres to fall, he was still rotating. His legs and arms began to flail in a futile attempt to correct his trajectory, before the skin of his back hit the water with the sound of a whipcrack. A circular wave spread out from his point of impact, causing concentric rings of swimmers to bob in the water. A ripple of laughter echoed upwards as the sound of the splash faded.

He resurfaced and swam towards my mother. I couldn’t make out the expression on either of their faces, but I could see that before he said a word, he kissed her on the lips. It was the first time I ever saw him touch her. The sight of that kiss stabbed into my chest like another poke. That was the moment when I knew he’d beaten me.

I climbed down the ladder, struggling on the slippery rungs, my body heavy with foreboding. Liev had taken charge. I didn’t know where he’d lead us, but I sensed that everything was going to change, and I was powerless to stop it.

‘Too high for you?’ he said, as I swam into earshot.

‘Is your back OK?’ I asked.

‘Fine.’

‘Must be sore.’

‘Not really.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘Nothing to see,’ he said, splashing me playfully-but-not-playfully in the face.

Not until we were in the changing rooms did I get a look at his injured skin. A livid rash spread across his back as if someone had strapped him to a table and sandpapered him, the redness interrupted only by a thin white line, like a streak of lightning, that divided the wound. You could see the whole area would be hot to the touch. It seemed amazing that he hadn’t wept, hadn’t given away even a hint of discomfort. A slight flinch as he put on his shirt was the only sign he was in any pain.

On the way home, he clutched the steering wheel with both hands, holding his body upright so his back didn’t touch the seat. He told me my swimming needed work and offered to take me back to the pool, just the two of us, ‘for a few lessons’.

Mum swivelled in her seat and smiled at me. ‘Isn’t that kind?’ she said.

I didn’t answer.

Within two months they were married, and Liev had moved us out here, to the Occupied Zone, into a brand new house at the edge of Amarias.

‘Are you OK?’ says Mum, leaning towards me and stroking my cheek.

I lean back, out of reach, and stare down at the untouched chicken on my plate. Liev is already halfway through his portion. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Just tired.’

‘You had a big fright.’

‘I’m just tired,’ I snap.

‘OK,’ she says, raising her hands in a fake mini-surrender. ‘You’re just tired.’

‘Of course he is,’ says Liev, squeezing out his sarcasm through a mouthful of rice. ‘Falling asleep over his schoolwork. You think that’s how to get good grades?’

‘He’s doing fine,’ says Mum.

‘I know he is. Fine is fine, but fine isn’t good. Fine isn’t excellent.’

‘Let him eat,’ says Mum.

‘Am I stopping him? Am I?’

Mum shrugs.

‘He’s thirteen years old. You can’t tiptoe round him all the time.’

I put my head down and try to make a start on my meal, wondering how long the two of them will be capable of carrying on this conversation without any input from me. Except that I can’t eat. The chicken on my fork looks succulent, dripping with a thick, glistening sauce, but in my mouth it tastes stringy and dry. I chew and chew, wishing there was some way to spit it out, but those four eyes are on me more attentively than ever, so I keep going and make myself swallow.

I can feel my hungry stomach crying out for sustenance, but the idea of actual food entering my body feels nauseating and strange.

Silence fills the room as I force down five or six mouthfuls, before cutting and mixing the rest into a careful array designed to conceal how much food I’m leaving.

‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Mum asks.

I nod.

‘You want some dessert?’

I shake my head.

‘Ice cream? We’ve got some lemon sorbet.’

‘No thanks.’

She reaches out to put a hand on my forehead. I let her slender fingers rest, warm and gentle, against my brow.

‘You don’t feel hot,’ she says.

‘I’m just tired. I said already.’

‘Of course you are.’

‘Can I go to bed?’

Mum and Liev exchange anxious looks. She tries to help me up from my chair, but I shrug her off and walk away, muttering that I’ll be fine in the morning.

I stand in the middle of my room for a while, not getting undressed, not even really thinking anything, just standing there. I only notice I’m doing it when Mum walks in, closing the door in her special, quiet way, not lifting the handle until the door is fully shut.

She sits me down on the bed and squeezes herself next to me, up close so our thighs are pressed together.

‘Has something happened?’ she says. ‘Something else.’

Her face is so close, I have to blink to focus. It’s the face I know best in the world. Every wrinkle and freckle, every blemish, every expression is familiar to me. Even when she seems far away, lost in her mysterious, private struggle to make sense of what has happened to her, she also feels like part of me, like the only person in the world I actually know.