7

Emmett seems to work to a different rhythm from anyone else. There are times when he’s at home and times when he’s not. When he’s at Wolf Street you can’t escape. When he’s gone, peace settles slowly. You never know when he’ll show up because he tells no one what he’s doing.

Food is often behind Emmett’s rages. He simply demands better. One Saturday around tea-time they are sitting down to fish and chips when the back door is flung open. Perhaps it’s their completeness without him that arouses his anger but whatever it is he waits there in the doorway, the eternal outsider. With the light behind the open door outlining him, he examines them like insects. Then he leans over to the table and points. The kids flinch. The fumes of the pub ebb out of him. He takes his time.

‘This food is fucking rubbish,’ he spits venomously, starting low and getting louder. ‘Why don’t you give them proper food?’ he roars at Anne. Now he’s an immense frothing man whose mouth swallows all the air in the small kitchen. Their heads sink above their laps. Nan and Anne are very still.

Then in another moment Anne says quietly, even gently, ‘This is proper food, Emmett. They are just potato cakes from the local shop, made of spuds and flour. They’re nice, have some.’ She stands to move a plate towards him. There’s a plate of them in the middle of the table and a plate of bread and butter and because it’s Saturday there is Fanta for the kids, something a bit special on the weekend.

It’s as if she’s poured petrol onto a fire and he explodes. ‘You want them, you fucking eat them bitch,’ he screams and grabbing a potato cake, he smashes it into her face then rubs it in, and says, ‘You want this shit, you eat it.’

The tide of dread fills the children’s hearts as they watch their father take their mother. It is happening. Terror stills them. And then in the humming of the smallest amount of time the trance moment is over and they leap back from the table as if it’s electrified. Now time is faster than they would have believed possible.

Emmett holds their mother by the back of her head and with the other hand he rams the food into her face. He might be smothering her or maybe will cut her throat. Each of them thinks different things.

Louisa thinks he is trying to push it up Anne’s nose and that she won’t be able to breathe. Rob wants to do something to him, maybe stab him, but he hates himself for not being brave enough. Peter and Daniel hold each other, weeping.

Anne can’t breathe and bits are breaking off and going back through her nose into her throat. She can’t breathe or speak. Louisa grabs the broom in the corner and wielding it like an axe chops at her father’s legs. Rob leaps up onto his back. Peter and Daniel hold onto Nan as though she can save them. Rob tries to gouge his eyes from behind. When Emmett shakes the kids off and turns towards them lying there against the wall, both of them think today is the day they will die.

Emmett still has Anne under his arm and when Louisa swings the broom again, it hits her mother. The girl is stricken but her mother doesn’t seem to notice. She seems scarcely alive. Time has slowed or maybe, Louisa thinks, something has slowed him. Still, she knows she must act.

She pulls Rob up from off the floor by the fridge where he’s landed and turns and grabs the twins by the hand. They run down the passageway to the front door and flee to the hedge, to the corner hedge down the street. Through their special parting they dive and enter the darkness of the dusty greenness and wait for quiet, hardly believing they can really be safe.

Their breathing comes and goes and they hear the pounding in their ears as if in that quiet space they are under water. Even as he unlaces his fear, Rob is aware of the way their breathing makes them one solid planet. He and Louisa don’t look at each other. Their faces remind them too much of what has just happened. Crying isn’t an option.

They hide under the hedge within the world of the dry dusty stems, within their sanctuary, for longer than they know. Truth is, Emmett is beyond looking for them once they’re across the boundary of the property. He’s never going to go tearing up the street, pursuing them. He likes to keep his terrorising private. And besides, once he’s finished he’ll be pretty well buggered.

Much later in the dark, the children creep back into the quiet house, one of them acting as lookout to see where he is. But he’s always gone by the time the kids come back. They put themselves to bed, the older kids helping the younger ones. They’re as quiet as they need to be. They have suspended any idea of a normal life. They have survived again and that’s enough for one night. In a while, Louisa will go and stand at the bedroom door to watch her mother sleep. Count the breaths.