“He doesn’t know where you are. He has no way of tracking you down. We knew this day would come and I understand how difficult this is for you, but I’m asking you to trust in the new identities. You have the full protection of the police force, there’s going to be a car parked outside for the next seven days as a precautionary measure. He’s gone now. You and ‘Louise’ are safe. I promise”
The policewoman’s words were kind, but empty. Her eyes were round and full and damp with feigned empathy. She used all the right words. Trust. Believe. Safe. But she didn’t understand them. She didn’t know what they meant. For her, trust was not going through her boyfriend’s phone. Safe was a hug and a locked door. Safe was inside. She didn’t know what it meant for a house to be a prison. She didn’t know what it meant for home to be the place you fear. She’d been trained. She’d been warned. She had the certificate of awareness on her personal record. But she didn’t know.
She meant well. Her useless, meaningless, failed platitudes were well-intentioned. I put on my face. The face I always put on when I knew he was about to make a point. The face I put on to make sure that I could lead him to the living room before he made his point. Self-protection Rule #1; Stay away from the kitchen during an episode. Too many easy weapons. But the face was never enough. Not in the long term. Not for him. But it would make this officer happy. Happy for long enough for her to stop showering me with false assurances and leave me alone.
The evening wound down. The officers outside kept watch, the sun set and the inky night drew in. I didn’t know where any supermarkets or takeaways were yet, but a quick search online showed that Dominos delivered here. I decided to ring the order in. I needed to hear a voice that wasn’t telling me empty rhetoric about safety.
“So, that’s an order of chicken wings, a bottle of Fanta, and a large meat feast. What kind of crust?” – The chirpy and ambiguously foreign voice asked.
I almost answered without thinking. Pure reflex. Deep pan. It was always deep pan. Had to be deep pan. If one turned up that wasn’t deep pan, it was time to put on the face.
“D- uh, what crusts are available?”
“Well, we have the normal deep pan and thin crust”
“What’s the thinnest crust you do?”
“That’s the thin and crispy, half the thickness of our regular thin crust”
“That one please. And extra dip. I’ll pay cash.”
“On its way, enjoy!”
And so it came to pass that me and my daughter Katie sat down to our first meal in our new house, under our new identities.
I put Katie, sorry, ‘Louise’ to bed and tried to sleep. Not a chance. You spend enough nights in empty beds, not daring to fall asleep, and you get an ear for the little things. Listening to keys rattling in locks, you can tell the difference between a sober fumble and a drunken struggle. The yank on the refridgerator door, was that pulled open in frustration or innocent hunger? Are the heavy, plodding footsteps on the stairs from beer, or from tiredness?
As I said, you get an ear for the little sounds. It’s not something that goes away. I rolled over to check the clock, feeling the now familiar twinge of pain run through my shoulder where it had never really healed properly. It was 1:30am. Exiting the danger zone. If he was home before 11, he was normally sober enough to handle. After 2am and wherever he was, he was too drunk to get home, and was probably crashed on a couch somewhere. But between 11 and 2. That was the danger zone.
But that was the past. I chastised myself for still being locked into this destructive paranoia. New names. New home. New City. All new. All new and fresh and clean and not broken. Still, I listened.
Down the hall, I heard Ka-Louise. She’d been snoring and content an hour ago but now she sounded awake. Was she… talking to someone? It sounded like gentle murmurs, but I could only hear her voice. Then I heard it, I was sure of it, a second voice. Not Katie’s. Not her. Separate. Different. Deeper.
Male.
I bolted out of bed, pain rippling through my shoulder. I bouldered down the short hallway to her bedroom, a mess of limbs and panic. Shit. Fuck. He’d found us. He’d found us. He’d got here. No. Can’t be. How. When. Katie wouldn’t know. Help. Police. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Katie. Safe. How. Fuck.
I practically shattered her door.
No one. Nothing.
Just, Katie. Sitting on her floor in her little Pikachu pyjamas, cross legged. Staring back over her shoulder as though I’d interrupted a very important conversation. My heart was still racing as I tried to make sense of the scene.
“Who…. Katie, were you talking to someone?!” I bellowed.
Katie flinched at my tone.
“Yea, Mr Face-eyes! He lives here too!”
“Who? What? Who’s Mr Face-eyes?”
“Friendbed Face-Eyes! But his friends call him Mr Face-Eyes. He lives under the bed and keeps Mr AngryFace away”
I paused for mere seconds before crushing relief broke my composure. I fell to my knees and threw my arms around her. It’s so easy to forget how much kids soak up. Rule 2; Don’t involve the kids. Don’t fight in front of them. Don’t let them defend you. But no matter how much you try to hide it, they know. They don’t understand, but they know. You clean the floor and wipe away the mess and the blood and you think you’ve covered the bruises but they know.
I didn’t know what Katie had seen or heard, over the years, and I don’t know if she really understood why Daddy can’t see us anymore. I just hope she’ll cope. Maybe that’s what Mr Friend Eyes is. An imaginary friend she can work all this out through. If she needs a friend under the bed to protect her from Mr Angryface then I’d let her have him, for now.
I couldn’t let her go. My eyes were wet and my shoulder ached with the hug but I just kept on. I couldn’t slip, I had to be strong. It was just me and her now. I couldn’t drive myself crazy like this. I couldn’t spend my nights imagining phantom male voices in my house. I’d done enough of that for a lifetime. Both our lifetimes.
I thought it was best to leave her be, she’d sleep when she needed it.
At the door, I turned back one last time. Katie had turned around again.
Now she was just staring back under the bed. Silently.
‘Goodnight Mr Face Eyes’ I whispered, just loud enough for Katie to hear.
Just for a second, I could have sworn I heard someone say ‘Goodnight’.
