lady in the urn you stashed here without asking.”
I said I was sorry. Bob looked at me and said, “So was it really her in there?”
“Yes,” I said, and then I had to ask. “Was she dead or alive when you had this fight about her?”
“She’d been dead for three days,” Bob said. “Your dad found her.”
The hairs on my arms prickled. My stomach lifted and then dropped again. My dad found her. That kind of put him at the scene of the crime.
“Found her? How?”
Bob shrugged. “At home. Dead at home.”
“Jesus!” I said. “How did Violet die? Was it old age?”
Bob looked as if he was standing on the edge of a canyon about to jump in.
“Overdose,” he said, staring at the floor.
I’m not sure exactly what happens when you get a surge of adrenaline in your body. Your heart bangs inside you, I know that, and it feels like all the blood in your body drains away from other places like your brain and your eyes and your fingers.
“So she killed herself?” I said.
Bob shrugged. Then he shook his head. He wouldn’t look at me.
“The thing is,” he said, his voice thick with tears, “your dad lied to me.”
“Lied how?” I said. “What about?”
“He said he was home looking after you. You had chickenpox. But Nicky was raging because he hadn’t been back, she hadn’t seen him and …”
“I remember having chickenpox,” I said.
I remember Mum putting baking powder on them to stop the itching and I remember still having scabs when I found out I didn’t have a dad any more.
“How do you know?” I said. “How do you know Dad was there? How do you know he wasn’t looking after me?”
“Oh come on, Lucas,” Bob said, and I knew what he meant. My dad never spent more than five minutes watching over me when I was sick. Anyone who knew him would know it was a crap alibi.
There were several things I could have said. But I didn’t.
Bob said, “Violet Park changed her will and left your dad everything.”
“Did he know that?” I said. “Maybe he didn’t.”
“He knew it,” Bob said. “We talked about it. He told me.”
“And what did he say?” I asked.
“When the old girl goes I’ll be rich as sin,” Bob said, and stared at me hard.
I shut my eyes and tried to think.
“Did you accuse him of killing her?” I said, kind of amazed at Bob’s nerve.
“Lucas, I saw Violet the day she died and she was happy.”
“So?” I said. “Maybe she was happy because she’d decided to die that day.”
Bob stared at me. “That’s exactly what your dad said.”
I stared at the reflection of the room in the window. I traced the pattern of the carpet. I didn’t want to look at Bob at all. What if he hadn’t done that, if he’d kept his mouth shut? Would my dad still be here?
“I knew Violet,” he said. “She wouldn’t kill herself. She loved life.”
“I knew Dad,” I said back. “He wouldn’t run away. He loved us.”
Bob didn’t say anything to that.
And when I finally looked at him he was passed out, dead drunk.
I didn’t go anywhere while he was sleeping. I didn’t do much.
I sat in the filth and I thought about stuff.
Of course, I knew from the tape that Violet wanted to die. Bob was working on less than half the picture and I had to tell him. But I wondered at first whether to bother. I was so angry at him for being wrong, for maybe making Dad leave. Not telling him felt like a fitting punishment, but only for a minute.
I knew it wasn’t Bob’s fault really.
I knew my dad wasn’t a good man.
The idea had been hanging around me for a while but I’d been ignoring it.
And I felt evil for thinking it.
But really I had no choice.
It’s what you do when you grow up, apparently, face up to things you’d rather not and accept the fact that nobody is who you thought they were, maybe not even close.
My dad was definitely not who I’d been thinking he was all these years.
It wasn’t because of what Bob or Jed or Norman or Mum had said about him. It wasn’t even about Violet.
It was all coming from me, doubts and bad thoughts.
The voice in my head was my voice, so I couldn’t get away from it.
And the voice was saying I’d known it all along. It was telling me I had all the evidence I needed.
Maybe he killed Violet and maybe he didn’t. I didn’t know anything.
And that’s the point.
The proof I had was the exact same reason I couldn’t be certain of anything I said about him, the reason he escaped all the blame and all the judgement I put my mum through the last few years, the reason I had him up on some stage for the blessed and the untouchable.
He wasn’t here.
And while I hadn’t given up all hope that he was dead in a freak accident or kidnapped by aliens or mistakenly locked in a nuthouse or lying in hospital piecing together what remained of his memory, I was beginning to realise it was far more likely that my dad just ran off because he felt like it. Violet or no Violet, he couldn’t be arsed with us any more. He’d had enough. And he got away with it, too.
So yes, my dad was cool and clever and funny and handsome, and his taste was impeccable and he looks good in photos, but that doesn’t add up to anything.
And I was angry that it took me so long to notice. I thought about how hard it must have been for Mum and Bob to keep quiet while I turned him into a hero, how many times they must have banged their heads against a wall while I went around in his suits and listened to his music and painted him whiter than white.
I only did it because I loved him.
And I thought, Did Violet come back for this, to show me this?
Did
