Dear Vincent Read Free

its best to undermine Mum’s expert care. I hate when something flares up on my watch. She always puts it down to my inadequacies, not the fact his body’s stuffed.
    The rest of the trip home takes place in silence, Mum’s face tensing further as the clock ticks on. If she’s late for her shift they’ll dock her pay.
    When we pull up outside the house she rouses. ‘Don’t put the mince into the freezer. I’ll make spag bol tomorrow night.’
    That’s it, the sum total of her loving. She’s speeding off again before I’ve even turned the lock.

    BY THE TIME I’VE unpacked the bags and downed a bowl of muesli it’s nine thirty, and the hauling of old bodies on and off toilets, chairs and beds has left me stuffed. I stare at the open book I’m supposed to read for English but my brain just won’t make sense of it. Instead, I hear Van’s voice inside my head:
You’re such a girlie-swot, Miss T. You think all that study’s going to set you free? Forget it, kid. If you want freedom, fly away.
    The first time Van high-tailed it she was thirteen. Dad found her hanging round the skateboard park with the local boys, which earned her six good ones and grounding for a month. She tried again the following year, pulling an overnighter with some skanky friend she’d met in after-school detention. But her real flight for freedom came the day after she turned fifteen.
    I heard her climbing out her bedroom window andlay in bed debating what to do. I’d had enough of living in a combat zone — my drawing-obsessed childhood fractured by shouting matches and threats that escalated into hand-to-hand combat with Dad. She smoked, she drank, she slept around. She came home pocked with love bites and with a feral, fishy smell that lit my parents’ dangerously short wicks. The aftershocks lasted days.
    If I’d known she’d organised a ride up north and wouldn’t get in contact for over three weeks, I might’ve told. But I loved her with fierce loyalty — she was the only one who made me feel like I counted, even if the clothes and treats she slipped me were mostly stolen goods. In the end I kept her escape to myself. Dad’s belt was meant for holding up his trousers, not leaving blisters on my big sister’s skin.
    Oh, Van
. When they named you, did they know Vanessa meant butterfly? Maybe you were always destined to fly away.
    Unable to concentrate, I give up on the homework, go tuck in Dad and give him a big drink of water before I switch off his TV and settle him for the night. He looks so shrunken in his bed, his face relaxed and vulnerable in these moments before sleep.
    ‘Night, Dad.’ I bend down to kiss his dry forehead. ‘Love you.’
    He grunts, the best he can do. I kid myself it means
I love you too.
    I leave his door ajar so I can keep an ear out for him. In the hall, my feet stop of their own accord at Van’s old bedroom door. I remember the day Mum stripped this room, a week after she finally told me Van was dead. If Mum couldn’t bear the memories that slapped us inthe face each time we passed, it turned out an empty room was worse. It denied Van’s whole existence — especially when every other photo or reminder of her in the house also disappeared. Seventeen short years wiped from sight.
    I slip inside the room. If I ever needed further proof that Van is gone, this freezing crypt is it. Spores bloom on the skirting boards and lichen creeps across the carpet. Where her posters have been taken down, little fatty stains linger. Where her head pressed back against the wall, there’s still a grimy mark. Of all the mess that cluttered every centimetre, only one box of photographs and papers remains, stashed at the back of the wardrobe as though worthless, thanks to Mum.
    I slide open the doors and extract the box. Sit cross-legged on the icy floor and take a jagged breath before I lift the lid.
Funny
. I’d swear this sad little collection has grown. Yes, here, shoved down beside the photos, old school