Binding 13

19

Late Night Reality Checks

Sha

"Good day?" were the words I was greeted with when I stepped through the front door after my disastrous car ride with Joh

Now, if anyone else in the whole wide world had asked me that question, I would have had a response, but this was my father we were talking about.

He was standing in the small hallway, with a rolled-up newspaper clutched in his hand, asking me about my day, and that was a terrifying concept.

"Are you fucking deaf?" he demanded as he glared down at me, the white around his brown eyes completely bloodshot. "I asked you a question, girl."

The stench of whiskey from his breath impaled my senses and my anxiety sky-rocketed as I mentally tried to figure this out.

He was paid his social welfare benefits on Thursdays.

That was the bad day.

Not Tuesdays.

Then I thought about what day it was and mentally slapped myself for being unprepared.

Today was March 1^st

And it was the first Tuesday of the month.

Children's allowance day.

The day the Irish government made their monthly cash payment to parents for every child they had.

Which meant hundreds of euros wasted in the bookies and the pubs.

Which meant weeks of struggling and scraping by would be incurred by our family because of my father's inability to control himself.

My heart sank.

Muttering a quick response, I retrieved my house key from the lock, slipped it into my coat and sidestepped his huge frame with the intention of swiping a packet of biscuits from the kitchen cupboard and then hightailing it to the sanctuary of my room.

With my wits about me and my brain on full alert, I managed to make it to the kitchen, but like a bad smell, both figuratively and literally, my father trailed after me.

Dad leaned against the doorframe, clenching the newspaper in his hand, and blocking my exit. "How was school?"

I kept my back to him, busying myself with browsing through soup packets and tins of beans when I answered, "Okay."

"Okay?" he sneered. "We're paying four thousand euros a year for okay?"

There it was.

There he was.

"It was good, Dad," I quickly injected. "I had a productive day."

"Productive day?" he mimicked, tone derisive and cruel. "Don’t get fucking smart with me, girl."

"I wasn’t."

"And you're late," he barked, his words a drunken slur. "Why the fuck are you late again?"

"I missed my bus," I squeezed out, panicked.

"Fucking buses," he snarled. "Fucking private school. You're a pain in the hole, girl!"

There was nothing to say to that, so I kept quiet.

The way he always called me girl, like it was some sort of insult to be a female, didn’t even irk me tonight.

I was in full self-preservation mode, knowing what I had to do to get out of this room unscathed: take his shit, keep my mouth shut, and pray he left me alone.

"Do you know where your mother is, girl?" he snarled.

Again, I didn’t respond.

It wasn’t a real question.

He was pumping me with information before the onslaught.

"Breaking her back over you!" Dad roared. "Working herself to the bone because you're a spoiled, little cunt who thinks she's better than everyone."

"I don’t think I'm better than anyone," I mumbled, and then immediately regretted throwing verbal petrol on his already burning temper.

"Look at you," Dad sneered, waving a hand at me. "In your fancy fucking private school uniform. Coming home late. Thinking you are god's fucking gift. Were you whoring yourself around?" He demanded, taking a few staggering steps towards me. "Is that why you're late again? Got yourself a little boyfriend?"

I immediately recoiled but didn’t dare open my mouth to defend myself.

He wouldn’t believe me either way.

Nine times out of ten, it made it worse.

And ten times out of ten, answering him back resulted in a stinging cheek.

"That's it, isn’t it? You've been messing around with one of those posh, rugby pricks with daddies' money at your precious Tommen," he sneered. "Spreading your legs like the dirty, little tramp you are!"

"I don’t have a boyfriend, Dad," I strangled out.

Swinging his arm back, he wacked me across the face with the rolled-up paper. "Don’t fucking lie to me, girl!"

"I'm not lying," I sobbed, clutching my burning cheek.

Being slapped across the face with a rolled-up newspaper might not sound like a painful thing, but when the man yielding the weapon weighed three times what you did, it hurt.

"Explain this, then," my father demanded. Tearing open the newspaper, he roughly flicked through the pages until stopping on the sports section. "Explain him!"

Blinking away tears, I looked down at the page Dad was pointing at and immediately felt my blood run cold.

There I was, in full technicolor, smiling for the stupid photographer, with Joh

I couldn’t think about the picture or question why it was printed on the biggest newspaper in Ireland because I was terrified.

I was so frightened that I could taste it.

You're going to die, Sha