He had a hundred memories like that locked away in some dark, deep pit of his mind. In many of them he’d copped a lot more of the blame, verbally and physically.
‘Didn’t anybody know?’
‘There was a woman who lived down the road. Her husband was some high-flying guy in the city. She’d been the stay-at-home wife, and also his punch-bag. Her kids had grown up and moved out and she took me in often enough, gave me milk and a cookie. Somewhere to lick my wounds. She made me feel cared for. Like I wasn’t alone.’ He shrugged again, not able to put into words how much she had helped him, in her own way.
‘That’s appalling,’ Archie uttered in disbelief. ‘I never really understood.’
‘Why would you? Your childhood was so different. And that can only be a good thing.’
She shook her head at him.
‘How can you be so blasé?’
Kaspar wasn’t sure how to answer that. ‘I don’t know. It was just...how things were. It was normal to me. It could have been worse, I guess. A lot of the time they didn’t really take much notice of me at all. If I stayed out of their way I could pretend the shouting and screaming and fighting was some bad movie on a TV in another room. I used to pretend I was somewhere else. Someone else.’
‘Is that why you used to love school so much? Because it made it easier to pretend?’
‘I guess. I never really thought about it.’ Actually, that wasn’t true. He’d thought about it from time to time. ‘I don’t think it was personal, Archie, as odd as you might think that sounds. I don’t think it was ever about me. It was always about them. That was the point.’
‘Is that what you think?’ She shook her head.
‘I guess. It’s what your father once said to me.’
‘I remember Dad used to take us into his workshop and help
us make a wooden toy, or later a metal one on his lathe, and weave long stories that you couldn’t help but find yourself caught up in.’ Archie laughed softly. ‘The next thing you’d be pouring your heart out to him about whatever was wrong. At least, I would be.’
He smiled, bowing his head so that she couldn’t read his expression. He suspected it was suddenly a fraction too wistful. Of all the people he’d felt he’d let down when he’d lost his cool that night in the bar, it was Archie’s father. To this day, he had no idea whether the man ever knew about the monumental mistake he’d made that night.
Suddenly Kaspar felt too full of sorrow for all he had lost over the years but never previously allowed himself to mourn. He swallowed, breathed, waiting until he felt less emotional.
Him. Emotional?
‘Your father helped me to realise that it wasn’t my fault. Whatever they said there was nothing that I did or didn’t do that influenced them. I was an easy target, but they would have followed the same path with each other whether I’d been around or not.’
‘You sound so...rational about it all.’ A hint of wonderment coloured her tone. ‘So logical. I can’t imagine how I could handle it the way you do.’
A laugh escaped him. A hollow, empty sound that seemed to bounce off every hard, flat surface.
‘You have no idea. I don’t handle it, Archie. I never have. I ignore it, hiding it away somewhere and pretending it doesn’t exist. I did it successfully for years, but in the end it all bubbled over. I physically hurt someone, Archie. Why do you think I’ve let the press portray me as this ridiculous “Surgeon Prince of Persia”? Because it’s what I deserve.’
‘You don’t deserve anything of the sort.’
‘Yes. I do. Why do you think I avoid relationships? Why do you think I avoid emotional connections of any kind? Why do you think that until you came along I didn’t want to settle down and have a family of my own? I couldn’t bear the idea that I might do to them even a fraction of what was done to me.’
‘You could never do that,’ Archie asserted fiercely, the certainty in her voice surprising him as much as it warmed him. ‘You aren’t them. You’re nothing like them.’
‘I was never sure of that before. Not until you turned up, carrying my child. Not until that moment when I knew I would be a part of my baby’s life. A full, complete part, not some part-time dad. I won’t accept that, Archie. And I won’t let you relegate me to that. That’s why we had to marry.’
He couldn’t tell her that he was becoming more and more suspicious that it was only part of it.
She watched him intently, her eyes never leaving his face.
‘And what about love?’ she challenged, so quietly he had to strain to hear her.
There was no reason for his heart to suddenly hang a beat. He didn’t like what it might mean. What it might be trying to tell him. Kaspar forced himself to regain control.
‘I can’t tell you about love,’ he informed her steadily. ‘But I can tell you about chemistry.’