Page 61 of Sorry, Not Sorry
Delilah closed her eyes and took in a gulp of air to calm her speeding heart rate. ‘It was gone. The – the back of her head was gone. It was like someone had just chopped it off. There was blood everywhere.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I used to watch horror movies on TV, and I would always scream. But this time—’ She shook her head as she tried to remember the events she had blocked from her mind, and which returned only in her dreams. ‘This time, when it was real life, I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t get a single sound out of my mouth. I just stood there staring at Mum lying on the kitchen floor wearing her red skirt and her favourite white lace blouse. I knew she was dead, and I knew he had done it.’
She let go of the towel and watched it fall to the floor. Then she looked up at Arne, her expression a blend of anger and defiance. ‘I knew he had finally done it. After years and years of telling her, of telling us how much he loved her – no, how much he adored her – and couldn’t live without her, he’d actually killed her.’
Arne leaned forward, his arms resting on his thighs as he gazed intently at her. ‘Who’s “he”, Delilah?’
Her body was still, the only movement coming from her fingers twisting around each other as if playing a complicated game of cat’s cradle. She released a pent-up breath and closed her eyes, her throat closing in on itself as she tried to get the words out.
‘Her husband. My father,’ she muttered hoarsely.
She opened her eyes but if Arne was shocked, his expression didn’t show it. Sigmund had been stretched out in his favourite spot under Arne’s desk, and as if sensing her distress, he padded over to Delilah. For the first time since Delilah had started therapy, Sigmund leapt up onto her chair and settled himself on her lap. Feeling herself anchored by the warm weight of the cat, Delilah stroked his fur, and the rhythmic movements slowly eased the constriction in her throat and helped steady her breathing.
‘What happened next?’ Arne asked gently.
‘I stood there for ages and then it hit me that maybe he was still in the house. And then just the idea that he was still alive while Mum was dead was too much for me. I couldn’t bear it, and I – I grabbed a knife from the block on the counter and raced up the stairs. I honestly don’t know if I could have done it – killed him, I mean – and I suppose I should be grateful I didn’t get the chance to find out, but at the time I wasn’t thinking. I just felt angrier than I’d ever felt in my life. That’s when my voice came back. I started screaming, and then I ran into their bedroom holding the knife, but there was no one there. It was only when I was leaving the room that I noticed the bathroom door was partly open and his leg…’
Delilah’s hand stilled as her voice trailed away. The memories she had buried for so long were pushing up against the walls she had erected, knocking out each brick one by one and revealing flashes of images like disjointed pieces of a crossword puzzle. Slowly, slowly, as the pieces locked together, the big picture came into view.
Pushing open the bathroom door with one hand, the knife gripped in the other. The sight of the handgun on the floor by his body. The dark red blood splattered onto the white floor tiles that Mum always kept spotlessly clean…
Sigmund stirred in Delilah’s lap, bringing her back into the present. She resumed stroking the cat while she described to Arne the confused and chaotic aftermath of the gruesome discovery of her parents’ bodies. Calling the emergency services, and then calling Salome.
‘Sal was in her final year at uni and was planning to come home a couple of days before Christmas,’ Delilah said dully. ‘She stayed on the phone with me until the ambulance and the police arrived, and then she rushed out to catch the next train. Farhan picked her up from the station and brought her home.’
Arne stood up and went over to the fridge, coming back moments later with a small bottle of water and a glass. He filled the glass and placed it on the table next to her and went back to his seat, watching as Delilah picked it up and drained its contents.
‘I can only imagine how difficult it has been for you to trust me with the truth,’ Arne said heavily. ‘What happened to you is a terrible burden for anyone to carry, still less for a girl of seventeen.’
Delilah sighed in agreement. ‘It was beyond awful. To be honest, a lot of what happened after that is a blur. Apparently, it – the incident, as the police called it – was all over the news for days, which I suppose wasn’t surprising. His family were all in the Caribbean and not a single one of them came over. Mum was an only child, and her parents had died years before, but she had an auntie and a couple of cousins she was close to who used to come over regularly with their children for cookouts. After it happened, they would come round, bring food and sit with us, but after Mum’s funeral, they didn’t visit as much. I’m sure they felt uncomfortable around me and Sal, and we saw less and less of them. After a while, they just stopped coming.’
‘How did other people react to you?’ Arne asked.
‘Because I was a minor at the time, the papers didn’t report my name, so it never comes up when people do a search on me. That’s why I was able to carry on with my life without anyone knowing. Salome changed her name as soon as she married Farhan. After Mum and he were buried, I went back to college, but I never told anyone – I mean, let’s face it, who would want to be friends with a girl whose psycho father murdered their mum?’ she said bitterly.
‘Delilah, what happened was horrific, but it wasn’t your fault.’
She brushed off Arne’s assurance. ‘Maybe, but that doesn’t stop people from thinking it might be something that’s in your blood. That’s what Farhan’s parents thought, but he wouldn’t abandon Salome. They got married as soon as she graduated, and for ages his parents refused to have anything to do with him. It wasn’t until Maya was born that they all finally made up, and now you’d never know there’d been a problem.’
‘How did you cope?’
Delilah shrugged. ‘I had Salome and Farhan, and that was all that mattered. When Sal graduated and found a job, we sold the house. I wonder if Mum always knew how it would end, because it turned out she’d bought a hefty life insurance policy years earlier. Between the payout from that and the money from the house sale, we were financially secure. Salome and Farhan got a place together and I moved in with them. After a while, when I felt ready to live alone, I bought my flat.’
She drew in a deep breath and looked at Arne, her eyes moistening when she saw no judgement in his face. ‘I’m sorry I’ve kept it from you all this time, but I was so ashamed. And I was terrified that if I told you the truth, you wouldn’t think I was fit to be a counsellor. Who needs someone with my background advising troubled clients?’
Arne shook his head emphatically. ‘It takes great strength and resilience to come through everything you have described to me, Delilah. Your experience has helped you understand the depth of our human frailties in a way few people are exposed to. This understanding brings empathy, which is an invaluable attribute for any counsellor.’
‘But doesn’t that make me a hypocrite? I’m asking people to forgive their partners when I can’t forgive—’ She broke off with a groan and squeezed her hands into fists. ‘God, I can’t even say his name! I swore that day that I’d never call him Dad again. He doesn’t deserve it! What kind of father deprives his kids of their mother?’
The silence stretched out for several minutes, and then Arne cleared his throat and looked at her quizzically. ‘You said he would often profess love for your mother. What he did must have come as a great shock and yet, you said earlier that you knew immediately he was the one who had taken her life. Why was that?’
‘He was completely unpredictable. He’d go through bouts of depression and stop speaking to us for days at a time. It was like he didn’t even notice we existed. If we got upset about it, Mum would beg us not to bother him and just give him space. At other times, he turned into this cheeky-chappy, happy-go-lucky man who didn’t have a care in the world, hugging and kissing Mum every chance he got, and constantly telling me and Sal how lucky we were to have her in our lives. Even when she was cooking, he’d come into the kitchen and turn on the radio and start dancing with her until they’d both collapse laughing. “Your mum is so beautiful. I adore her!” He said it so often, it was like a mantra…’
She shook her head in wonder. ‘It’s funny how you don’t question things when you’re a kid. Your dad goes through mood swings and can ignore you for a week, but you tell yourself that’s just the way he is. Because Mum was a lawyer and earned well, he’d stop working whenever he couldn’t deal with being around people. I don’t know if it was his illness that made him so possessive and obsessive, but mostly Mum acted like she was okay with it. She never seemed resentful that he refused to get help. If anything, it seemed like knowing he needed her made her love him even more. For years she would tell me and Sal that you can love a person back to wellness. But, in the end, even for her, it got too much. A few weeks before it happened, Mum told me and Sal that she felt trapped and was thinking of leaving him… but then she never did. Who knows? Maybe she told him that day and that’s why he did it. Anyway, that’s how I knew straight away that it wasn’t some random burglar. That it was him.’
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