Page 81 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘I—’
He whips it from my hand and looks at it, and then back at me, and then back at his dinner.
Everything turns to slow-motion as he scrapes his chair back, picks up his plate and hurls it at the wall behind me, rivulets of gravy cascading down the Farrow and Ball eggshell paint that he picked out. He’s out from the table and round to me before I can take in what is happening.
My heart is beating too quickly and sweat prickles at my armpits. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
He doesn’t speak any more words to me. He sets his mouth in a grim line and his eyes are narrowed and pinched together as he gets right into my face, like he does when he kisses me except this is not like that. This time he yanks at me, pulling me out of my chair, and I stumble and trip against the wall behind me, falling to the ground. He stands over me, crunched up on the floor, and then his hand is flying to my face before I can move out of the way, and then all I can feel is an explosion of pain and all I can see is a burst of dizzy light.
Later on he says that he knows he shouldn’t have done that, but it is my fault because I shouldn’t have got pregnant. A part of me wants to say that it takes two to tango but I don’t dare. He doesn’t say sorry, exactly, but he goes out and he buys me some flowers and says that it’s because he loves me so very much, and because he has got me so far, and now pregnancy will undo all his good work and make me sick again. It’s only because he cares so much that he got so angry. So I turn to him and snuggle into his neck and say it’s okay, I understand why and I’m sorry I was careless. I say please don’t stop loving me. He shushes me and says it’s fine, it’s okay, we can get rid of it, and Penny please don’t tell anyone about this because you know I didn’t mean it.
???
‘He hit me because I got pregnant. With Jake. And other times, too. I always thought it was my fault.’
Kat gazes at me and her eyes are pools of pain.
‘I got away a few months later, but those few months I couldn’t see him for what he was. He wanted me to terminate thepregnancy, but I didn’t want to, and he hit me then, as well. And then he left.’
No one says anything for a few moments. We listen to the whisper of the wind in the trees, and I think it sounds like the cry of a girl who is lost.
‘Kane never hits me, though,’ Jodie says. ‘He’d never lay a finger on me.’
Kat shakes her head. ‘Stop minimising his behaviour. We’ve seen how he manhandles you, Jodie, how he grabs you that bit too tightly.’
Jodie’s shoulders tense under the blanket.
‘We’ve all seen it. He pushes you around, darling.’
‘No he doesn’t.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, he does.’
Jodie’s mouth quivers. ‘But he’s there for me.’
‘Not here for you now, is he?’ Kat says, and Jodie says nothing to that.
‘But we are,’ I say.
Jodie stares up at me through brimming eyes. ‘Aren’t you mad at me?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘A little,’ Kat says, and then laughs, and then Jodie smiles just a little bit.
‘Look at you now,’ I say. ‘You’re free and you’re magnificent without him. He dampens you down, Jodie. He makes you into a paler you, and none of us like that, do we ladies?’
‘It is true,’ Amina says. ‘He makes you into someone you are not. And you always are saying to me, I am controlled, I am forced to be with Bilal and I should set myself free, but you know that it is you who are controlled and me that is free. But it can be like that no longer. He has let you go free and you can take your wings up and fly away now.’
Jodie gazes at the sky.
‘You are glorious without him,’ I say.
‘And so are you, Penny,’ Kat says. ‘You are glorious and you don’t realise quite how glorious.’
‘We’re all glorious,’ Jodie says, smiling through her tears. ‘We’re the flowers who are blooming even on this gloomy day.’
‘We might be flowers, but we’ll be the dying flowers if we don’t get back to that hospital,’ Violet says. ‘There hasn’t been a car for ages. I hope one of you has a bright idea, because this just isn’t working, is it?’
