Head Shot

11

Stil, sleep failed them. They made love again, but again, the usual drowsiness did not fol ow. There was something there stil, something unsaid, a question begging to be asked. And so, eventually, Mario did.

'When was the last time you saw him?'

'I told you. When I grabbed Eilidh's hand and hauled her out of that kitchen. The last time I saw my father was twenty-three years ago, and he was battering blood and snot out of my mother.'

'Never since then?'

'Never.'

'Have you ever felt the need to find him?'

'Never. Why in God's name would I want to do that? The man was a beast.'

'How does Eilidh feel?'

'I don't know, because I've never talked to her about what happened.

She was very young; to this very day, she might not have realised what happened to her.'

'What if he does turn up, out of the blue?'

'Then you deal with him. Okay? I real y mean it; if I confronted him I don't know what would happen.'

'Okay'

She jumped out of bed and went into the en-suite bathroom. Returning, she slid in beside him once more, face down, propped on her elbows, looking at him in the dim crystal light of their beside alarm. 'There's guilt there, Mario; so much of it. I feel guilt over what happened to my mother. If I'd kept quiet it would have saved her al that pain. On the other hand, I feel guilt about not waking up sooner to what was happening, to the fact that there was something terribly wrong about our

"wee secret", my dad's and mine. If I had, maybe I could have prevented it from happening to Eilidh.

'And even now, when you ask me whether I want to trace him, I feel guilt because I don't. What if he found another woman? What if he had more daughters? What if he stil has? By doing nothing, I'm shutting my eyes to that possibility. The truth behind it al is that I don't think I've got the guts to face him.

'I just hoped he was dead, Mario. And now I find out that he isn't.'

'What's his first name?' he asked, quietly.

'Jorge,' she answered, pronouncing the name in the Iberian fashion.

'Jorge Xavier Rose: my grandmother was Portuguese, and he lived in Lisbon for the first few years of his life. His father decided to see out the war there. That's where the Christian names came from.' She guessed the reason for his question. 'Listen, if you're planning to do anything about this, I don't want to know,' she whispered.

'Okay'

She leaned across and kissed him. 'Now can we get some sleep?'

'Unlikely, I'd have thought,' he murmured, cupping her right breast in his big hand. 'Not without tiring ourselves out a bit more.'

They did, until final y, the drowsiness overtook them.