Marshmallows for Breakfast

  If I hadn't been around they might have stayed like that, curled up beside their dead father for hours, if not days.

  My attention moved to Kyle.

  He was motionless, frozen in the last position he'd been in before the final gulp that ended his life took effect.

  His body was stretched out on the sofa, his back flat against the seat, his head almost tipped upright and to one side against the armrest. One of his arms lay at his side, the other trailed down off the sofa, hanging down amongst the detritus from the night before.

  His clothes were rumpled, his light blue shirt tugged out of his sand- colored trousers from, I presumed, where Summer and Jaxon had tried to shake him awake. His skin was the pale grey of clouds before a storm, but not blue. I'd expected him to be blue if he'd been gone for a while, but I couldn't know for sure. I stared hard at his chest, watching to see if it rose or not. I stared and stared, but nothing. He didn't seem to be breathing. And there was an unnerving stillness about him. A stillness that was like a smooth, silky sheet of lifelessness that lay over him and the room.

  The only way to tell for sure if he was … gone would be to touch him. To check for a pulse. I stepped forwards, and unbidden, my mouth flooded with saline. Even though my mind was elsewhere, my body was still reacting as it would in this situation if I was behaving consciously. The smell of alcohol was stirring up a nauseating brew with fear in the pit of my stomach. I had to force myself not to heave. Once I'd done this, once I'd checked, I could move on. Get on with things. Think what to say to the kids, call the police.

  Picking a path through the bottles, I went towards him, stopped within touching distance.

  Deep breath.

  Do it. Do it now. Do it and get it over with.

  My hand shook uncontrollably as I reached out for him, aiming for the grey area of exposed skin just above the neck of his blue shirt. I forced myself to look, to make sure I was touching the right place, and I held my breath even though breathing was the only thing that stopped bile spilling out of my mouth. My fingers made contact with his flesh. Surprisingly, it was warm. But I tried not to think too much about it. A body didn't just go cold, it must cool down slowly as the blood that was warming it up, the chemical reactions that kept its heat constant, stopped. I slid my fingers up, aiming for the point under his jaw.

  “Nuugh!” Kyle murmured suddenly, shrugging off my hand, as though swatting away a fly.

  “JESUS CHRIST!” I screamed inside and stumbled backwards, crashing into a few bottles, knocking over a couple of half-drunk cans and spilling their pale liquid onto the carpet. I kept stumbling until, clear of the debris, I lost my fight for balance and fell, landing hard on my backside.

  I sat, chest heaving, staring at him, waiting for him to react to the sound of clashing bottles, to open his eyes, to sit up, to acknowledge he'd just taken another ten years off my life. Nothing. Having scared me half to death, having scared his kids half to death, the bastard continued to peacefully float his way through his pissed up, passed out dreamland.

  I sat watching Kyle sleep. His body was like a long muscular thread stretched out on the burnt- butter leather sofa.

  In all the time that had elapsed since I found out he was alive—pissed, but alive—he hadn't moved. I'd been back to the flat to tell the children that he was OK. I'd explained to them at length their father was only sleeping. He was very, very tired, a grown-up type of tired that meant it took a lot to wake up. I'd also explained he'd wake up on his own soon, but until then we'd go back to their house and get on with our Monday. They'd watched me with impassive eyes, didn't ask questions, didn't—if truth be told—seem to need my long- winded explanation. They'd only seemed to need to know that he was OK and that they could go home. As they'd moved towards the stairs, I'd hung behind to turn off the television and a glint of green glass peeking out from behind a sofa cushion had caught my eye. Curious, I'd moved towards it, picked up the cushion and found an empty bottle of beer, lying on its side, nestled in the crease between the sofa back and the sofa seat. I'd snatched away the next cushion and found another one. And another one under the third cushion.

  From the corner of my eye I'd watched Summer and Jaxon, saw their eyes were round circles of alarm and their cheeks had been hollowed out with fear. No wonder my flat smelled of alcohol. No wonder they weren't surprised when I said their dad was a special kind of tired. They'd seen it all before. Had been through it all before.

  They were used to their father doing this and were probably used to hiding the evidence. In the house only a couple of the cans of beer had been opened. Other than that, there were no other empties to be seen. They'd carefully secreted away evidence that their father had been drinking, had just left the full ones. Those poor kids. What they must have been through … My insides melted at the thought of it. My mumma isn't very nice to Dad, Summer's voice repeated in my head. Now I had a pretty good idea why.

  As I'd continued to watch them from the corner of my eye, the lines of horror on their young faces deepened. I knew their secret now and they were terrified. What was I going to do? Would I get their dad into trouble? Would I blame them?

  Still uncertain of what my reaction should be, I'd replaced the cushions over the bottles, pretended I hadn't seen what I had seen, didn't know what I knew. It probably wasn't healthy to pretend that this hadn't happened, that I hadn't been disturbed by what they'd done, but they'd been through enough already. They didn't need my questioning. If anyone should be shamed and exposed, it was their father.

  In silence we'd wandered back to their house, and they'd gone upstairs to get changed. I'd called work and told my boss there'd been an emergency so I probably wouldn't be coming in today. Then I'd made us all toast with butter and jam for breakfast. It was all I could find. He obviously hadn't been shopping since they returned from their holiday nor, it seemed, before their holiday, so the cupboards were bare, even of cereal. There'd been a half-full box of cornflakes on Saturday and at least eight Weetabix, so that was obviously all they'd eaten over the weekend. The fridge was even emptier—the butter, the strawberry jam, an onion in the vegetable crisper, a bottle of tomato sauce, a bottle of soy sauce, the dregs of a carton of orange juice, a canister of expensive real coffee and half a carton of curdled milk. The freezer had yielded a loaf of granary bread and I'd made as much toast as I could and we'd drunk water. Afterwards, they'd willingly gone out to play while I had cleared up the breakfast things.

  All through breakfast I'd been hoping Kyle would come round, would see what he'd done and would feel awful enough to come rushing in to apologize to his kids. My hoping had been in vain. He hadn't moved.

  And now, I was sitting on the arm of the armchair opposite the sofa upon which he lay, watching him.

  Chewing on the knuckle of my thumb, I listened to the occasional murmur of a drunken snore escaping his full lips. More minutes passed and Kyle didn't stir. He resided in his place of drunken oblivion, protected from the reality of life. And that was very nice for him. We all needed oblivion sometimes, but his was about to come to an end.

  I got up from the armchair, went to him and reached down to where his stomach, covered in dark hair, was exposed, took a piece of his flesh between my thumb and forefinger then twisted. As hard as I could. Then I grabbed a few of the dark hairs and yanked at them, pulling three or four free.

  “Ow!” Kyle yelped, coming straight out of his oblivion into a world of pain as he sat up. “What the—?” His hand went to his stomach, rubbed at the pain. He glared up at me. “What—?”

  I greeted him with a look of disdain and a fractionally hitched eyebrow. “I think we need to have a chat, don't you?” I said.

  CHAPTER 6

  My head feels—” Kyle began as he staggered into the kitchen about half an hour later.

  I held up my hand, a stop sign to his words. “I don't want to hear it.” This wasn't college or the best of our single years. I hadn't been out drinking with him and wanted to share his pain, or
laugh conspiratorially at how much we'd put away. “We've all got our problems. And I don't want to hear it.” I indicated to the seat in front of the part of the table where I'd made him a pot of real coffee and had put two painkillers and a glass of water. “Sit.”

  A frown creased Kyle's thirty- something face, furrowing the space between his eyebrows and hairline, cascading down over his smooth features. His frown pursed his mouth and for a moment he was going to argue, object to my tone of voice and attitude by reminding me it was his house. But his hangover won out and he pulled out the chair, sat down. While he took the painkillers, knocked them back with a couple of jerks of his head, I poured coffee into a mug, added sugar. I slid it across the table to him.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled. He dipped his head, took a couple of sips of coffee. He'd been in the shower and still smelled of warm water, sandalwood shower gel and clean clothes. He'd had a shave so his chin, cheeks and the skin around his mouth were soft and pink. His hair was a shiny black, the short hairs curled backwards and still wet.

  Outside the children were playing. Summer was on her pink bike, riding around the flagstones. Jaxon worked on building a giant fort out of the large, multicolored blocks in the middle of the green. There wasn't a sound from them. And Kyle didn't seem to notice. I hadn't heard him clearing up the living room and he wasn't wearing a single shred of shame. It wasn't important that I'd seen the state of his living room, that I'd seen him unconscious, nor that his children had seen him that way.

  I watched his bowed head. Kyle was a big man. He was lean, with long limbs and wiry muscle making up his frame, but he was large in the sense that there was a lot going on inside him. In his mind, in his heart, in his soul. It was too much for his body and spilled out. Like Saturday when he'd enlightened me about his life in three minutes. It was probably the reason he'd decided to drink so much last night. Trying to control the hugeness of what was stirring inside him.

  “I think you should let her have them,” I said to him. I'd been thinking it over, all through breakfast, all through watching him sleep, all through waiting for him to appear from the shower. It was the obvious solution to this. He wasn't coping; the enormity of what was going on inside him was making everyone in his immediate vicinity suffer, was making life hell for his children.

  “Excuse me?” Kyle said, stopping his mug's journey to his mouth.

  “You clearly can't cope with them, so let your wife have them.”

  “Excuse me?” He was incredulous, outraged, angry as any man would be.

  “I assume that's what you and your wife were fighting about on Saturday on the phone. She obviously wants them. It'd be easier all round to just give them up. Stop using them as a bargaining tool and give them to her.”

  Kyle slammed his cup onto the table with such force I was surprised it didn't crack then shatter. The thick black liquid sploshed out onto the wooden table top. He shook his hand dry, his angry eyes drilling into me. He was on the verge of shouting at me, but held back. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he snarled, his body seeming to double threateningly in size as he leant towards me.

  “No, who the hell do you think you are, Mr. Gadsborough?” I spat back.

  He paused, surprised at how quickly, decisively and venomously I'd reacted. His attack hadn't been met with a defense, but a stronger offense.

  “Your children thought you were dead,” I continued in a low, angry voice. “Dead. They were terrified. Finding you lying on the sofa, amongst an ocean of alcohol and then having to come to a virtual stranger for help. They had to get a chair to unlock your back door, come over to my place, unlock my door and then come upstairs to my room. And then tell me that you wouldn't wake up.

  “The trauma in their eyes, the look on their faces …” My voice faltered as I remembered their looks. “Do you have any idea how that feels? Because for me, an adult, who's lived a bit, I was terrified as I walked over here. I didn't know how I was going to go through with looking at a dead body, but for them? They lay down on the floor beside you and waited for you to wake up. And why? You were drunk. I don't know how long it's going to take those two to get over it. So don't give me all that outraged bullshit because you are so far in the wrong there's no way you can find your way back to being right at this moment.”

  The rage drained out of Kyle's eyes and before he lowered his head to stare down at the mess he'd made with his coffee on the table, I saw shame and regret enter his expression. Slowly he raised his forefinger, traced a pattern in the coffee.

  I curled my fingers into the palms of my hands, digging my fingernails into the soft fleshy pads to hide the trembling. No one would know, having listened to my outburst, that I didn't lose my temper very often. I couldn't remember the last time I'd done that.

  Like most young girls I was taught to be polite, that people didn't like you if you caused a fuss and drew attention to yourself. Speaking up for yourself made people not like you. I rarely did it, but when it came to speaking up for others, I could. I did. (My boss used to call me Soapbox Kennie.) Especially when the people I was speaking for were two children who thought their dad had died in the night. Now that I had voiced my anger and disgust, though, I was shaken and shaking.

  “I had another row with Ashlyn,” Kyle said eventually, his face still cast downwards.

  “Don't care” was my instant reply.

  His head snapped up, his expression surprised, his eyes saying he thought I was hard-faced.

  I inhaled deeply and silently, breathing calm onto my raging sensibilities. I fashioned a rudimentary look of sympathy for my face. “I didn't mean that,” I said quietly. “I do care. I care very much.” I paused, calmed myself some more, enough to raise my eyes to meet his. Kyle held my gaze. A moment of intimacy passed between us—we understood each other. It normally took years to develop that sort of understanding, but my little rant had fast-forwarded our relationship: he'd done something wrong and I was capable of being a complete bitch about it. “You just pissed me off.”

  “I'm getting that idea,” Kyle said ruefully, then sipped his coffee again.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said softly, trying to understand where he was coming from. It wasn't fair for me to jump to conclusions, to make judgments when I wasn't living his life; I hadn't been floored by a divorce.

  “Same old nonsense,” he said with a shake of his head. “She wants the kids with her, but as far as I'm concerned, if she wants them back, she's got to come home.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  His eyes flew up to look at me, as though I'd asked the most stupid question on earth. “Because this is their home.”

  “But, Kyle …” I stopped. It seemed wrong somehow to be having this conversation with him. My landlord. I sighed deeply, stirred my cold, undrunk cup of coffee, wondered how I got here. Why I was involved in this.

  “ ‘But, Kyle’ what?” he asked.

  I sighed again. “You're not coping. Why not give Ashlyn the children?”

  “Give up my children, just like that? They're not items. I can't simply hand them over and find new ones to replace them.” He shook his head, hardened his voice. “You've obviously never had kids.”

  That stung, and from the expression on his face, the angry gleam in his eye, it was meant to. “You're wrong, actually,” I snapped. “I do have kids. I have two kids called Summer and Jaxon. They became my kids the day I had to make up some breakfast ritual because their father was so wrapped up in shouting at their mother that he didn't even acknowledge their existence. I knew that day I had a responsibility to them. Once you bond yourself to a child, you can't just walk away.”

  Kyle stared at me but didn't argue.

  “I do have kids because when they hid three empty beer bottles in my flat, I didn't ask them about it.”

  “They did what?” Kyle asked, visibly shaken.

  “They hid the bottles that you'd drunk because they were scared of you being found out. They sorted through that embarrassment of alcohol
to hide your secret.”

  Distraught, Kyle ran his hand over his hair, then scratched absently at a point on top of his head as a million tiny, unnameable thoughts danced across his face while he struggled with his conscience. His eyes darted outside to the children, watching them as more emotions bloomed on his face.

  “What were you doing with all that alcohol?” I asked. I had to know. There was so much of it, had he really set out to drink it all, to kill himself, but passed out before it worked? “Were you seriously going to drink it all?”

  From distraught, his expression segued smoothly into contempt. “That's none of your business,” he stated and went back to glaring into the black depths of his cup. We sat in silence, all good feeling had been quashed. He didn't like me, and I wasn't exactly wild about him.

  “Be honest, Kyle,” I said eventually to break the silence. “You don't want the kids, do you?”

  His face went to protest, to argue.

  “Be honest, it won't go any further,” I prodded.

  He said nothing, sat back in his chair, stared down at his coffee cup with his lips slightly twisted together.

  “You don't do you? You're just keeping them because you think it'll make her come back.”

  Kyle glanced away, back out of the window, watching his children play. I spun a little in my chair to watch them, too. They should be at school, but I'd had to ring and say they were ill. Jaxon's fort was pretty high, the colored bricks vivid in the February sunshine. Summer had abandoned her bike at the part of the path nearest my flat and was on the grass beside Jaxon, making her rabbit jump around his fort. They were both still subdued. How often was what happened earlier replaying itself in their minds? How deeply had it scarred them? How many times had it happened before? How scared were they that it'd happen again?