Kiss Me, Kill Me Read online

  ‘Don’t bother sending me any hair-product information,’ I told Geneva. ‘I’m perfectly happy with my hair the way it is.’ I partook of the chocolate cake. A large bite. Mmmm, nice.

  Most likely due to the fact that I hadn’t uttered a statement in defence of my own hair or of my own self since the early days of living with Lydia, my comment came as a surprise to her. She took a moment to regroup and then bounced back with, ‘But all that excess bulk on the sides of your face adds weight. You have a round face. It’s already wide as it is, and you’re only making it look wider.’

  I perceived tension emanating from both Greg and Melanie. For their benefit, Lydia strove for a concerned air, rather than a bitchy one. She couldn’t quite pull it off.

  My dad was intently eating cake as if he wasn’t hearing this particular conversation. Nothing unusual there. If he didn’t hear Number Two and her little shits having their digs at me, he could pretend it wasn’t happening. Over the years, I’d employed that tactic myself. Since I was prohibited from reacting when people tried to humiliate me or bring me down, the only way I could survive it was to pretend I wasn’t even hearing it. That way, I didn’t need to outwardly respond or even acknowledge it was occurring.

  ‘I’m not interested in making my face look thin.’ I paused for a beat, then added, ‘And drawn. And haggard.’ Which was exactly how Lydia and Geneva appeared. Both having long, oval-shaped faces, they make them appear even more so with the use of contouring. A process that entails… You know what, I can’t actually be stuffed going into the process, except to say it’s highly involved, uses a truckload of makeup and takes for-everrr.

  I, meanwhile, brush a bit of blush over my cheekbones on my—not round, but heart-shaped—face, and I’m good to go.

  Now Lydia had fire in the windows to her dead, blackened soul. ‘On the blog, it also said large girls shouldn’t wear all white.’

  I’d bet my broad shoulders that the blog chick never said such a thing.

  ‘With your build,’ Stepfucker continued relentlessly, ‘you should wear black. It’s much more slimming.’

  My build is a tall, toned V-shape, like a swimmer’s. Except with a decent amount of curvature around the hip and boob areas. Perhaps I’m more like a goblet—one of those that are flared wide at the top with some curvy business happening on the stem. I’m certainly not pear-shaped like Lydia…or how this dinner was turning out. Definitely not the fattened-up prize-winning heifer Lydia was making me out to be.

  ‘I don’t believe I asked for your opinion on my outfit.’

  ‘Well,’ Lydia huffed. ‘I’m only trying to help. You don’t have to be so defensive.’

  You don’t have to be such a bitch, is what I wanted to say. It was my dad’s birthday, and not wanting to spoil it for him, I bit my tongue. I was so sick of Lydia’s digs under the guise of “help.” It’s what she did whenever my dad was around. When he wasn’t there, though, there was no pretence, just straight-out cruelty. Things like, ‘You’re stupid and ugly and useless.’ Or, ‘Get out of my sight,’ as though she couldn’t even bear to look at me.

  Lydia and the sprog (the one with the imaginary chicken bone sticking out of her sight socket, and a cherry, plus the can of cream lodged in her poo chute) slid a sideways glance at each other. They both smirked the way they’d always done.

  And suddenly, I felt as if the top of my head was going to fly off.

  I was about to stick another piece of cake in my gob so I could finish the thing a.s.a.p. and get the hell out of there, when Lydia asked, ‘Have you been spending a lot of time out in the sun? You look a lot darker than the last time I saw you.’ She got her fart-face on, as if it was simply heinous that I should let myself get so terribly bronzed.

  I have olive-toned skin, the type that, when I stay indoors for long periods, loses its colour considerably. But stick me out in the sun and you can watch me turning darker by the minute. I tan like a champ. Also, my dad is very dark brown. And this idiot woman who married him was sitting there making out that my ultra-tan was some big problem.

  Next thing, the top of my head actually went and flew off. Metaphorically speaking. My fork hit the plate with a clatter. Both Greg and Melanie started to say something, which was awesome, but I talked over the top of everybody, defending my own damn self.

  ‘Listen up, Lydia. I have no interest in your bitchy comments couched as “help and advice.” I have less than zero interest in fake fashion tips from a pasty-faced, dried-up, old sack of skin such as yourself.’

  ‘Kayana!’ my dad boomed, slapping his palms on the table. ‘Don’t you talk to Lydia that way!’

  He would have sat there, silently shovelling cake into his face while people took me apart and picked at my bones. The moment I said something, he was all over it like white on frickin’ rice.

  My family—what a bag of dicks.

  I turned and faced my father. The man who had left me with these fuckwits. The man who’d refused to listen to what had been happening to me while he was away and how it had affected me. The one who should have had my back but instead made excuses for everyone else’s behaviour. Who essentially forced me to accept people treating me like shit. Who made me suffer in silence. The person who gave me no choice other than to be a victim.

  I’d put up with his attitude because, at first, I’d had no choice. And in later years, it seemed important to maintain a bond between us because he was my only family.

  Having said that, the longer I was removed from the situation, the larger my bitterness became. Whoever said, ‘Time heals all wounds,’ was so full of crap.

  Because I’d never been allowed to express my feelings about my treatment as a child, I’d shoved them into a box inside of myself. The box was robust, had a heavy lid, was wrapped in chains and locked with padlocks. Despite that, I’d sensed for some time now that my box was vibrating with the pressure of everything built up in there. It was in danger of pulling a Houdini, breaking its bindings, flipping open and spilling all the Pandora-shit out.

  Apparently, that was happening right now.

  ‘You don’t get to tell me how I talk to anyone,’ I said to my father while staring him straight in the eye. ‘Those days are long gone. If someone is behaving like an asshole…I’ll tell them they’re behaving like an asshole.’

  I heard gasps from across the table. Yeah, Lydia, I just called you an asshole. I didn’t take my attention off my dad, who regarded me as if he’d never seen me before.

  ‘What on earth’s gotten into you, Kayana?’

  Nothing. But I’d been away from them long enough for my backbone to grow and strengthen into what it was supposed to be. The thing that would support me so I could finally stand up for myself. ‘I’ve had enough of their bullshit.’ I jerked my head towards the stepbitches. ‘Had enough of the put-downs, insults and bullying. I won’t stand for it any longer.’

  My dad frowned so hard, his brows almost touched the top of his nose. He shook his head. ‘Bullying’s a harsh word, Kayana.’

  ‘Yeah? So is abuse. And it’s what happened to me in this fucking house for years.’

  I chanced a glance at Lydia. She was attempting to project outrage, but her eyes were too large—too filled with fear.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ my dad exclaimed angrily. ‘You were never abused. That’s enough of this nonsense.’

  Oh, my hell. He did not just say that. Not only had my big box of emotions opened up. Dad had lit a fuse under it.

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me it’s ridiculous and nonsense!’ I yelled. For the first time in my life, I actually yelled at my father. And I wasn’t done. Not even close.

  I slapped my hands on the table the way he’d done earlier. ‘And how the hell would you know what happened to me all that time you spent away from home? You wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell you. You didn’t want to know. You’d come home on leave and just ignore the way she spoke to me. You’re not stupid, so you were aware things weren’t right.’ I
paused for breath. ‘However, having as little stress as possible and peace and quiet while you were home was more important to you. It was easier, wasn’t it—to ignore it? Because she would have made your life hell if you didn’t. The path of least resistance was to placate the three of them and make me shut the hell up. And I suppose pretending nothing bad was going on helped you sleep at night. Did you, Dad? Sleep well at night?’

  ‘Kayana, stop. I’ve never seen you like this.’ Naturally, he’d focus on that. The way I was reacting differently to what was expected. Not the content and meaning of the freaking words.

  ‘Of course you’ve never seen me like this. Because you never gave me the chance to speak up. To stand up for myself.’ My yelling had gone up a few decibels and I was shaking on the inside. Strangely, on the outside, I was still. ‘You told me I shouldn’t get angry. That I shouldn’t be sensitive or even cry over it. Essentially, you wanted me to accept people’s treatment of me, no matter how cruel, and not have any human emotions. Like some kind of robot. But you know what? Those feelings have to go somewhere. And they’re all here.’ I banged my chest. ‘All those years of pain, hurt and humiliation. It’s all here. Now it’s coming out. And it’s gonna be fucking ugly.’

  It felt as if something inside me had ruptured and, like blood, all the bad stuff was haemorrhaging. Everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked down and saw a pool of it around my feet.

  My dad was taken aback. It was conceivably hard to deal when the one who was cowed, quiet and always attempted to make herself small so as to go unnoticed, suddenly stood up and started swearing and yelling. And I was actually standing up. I’d gotten to my feet at some point during my tirade.

  A quick glance across the table showed Michael staring at his plate, looking extremely uncomfortable; Geneva gawking at me, looking shell-shocked; and Lydia was doing a rather good impersonation of a deer in the headlights. In that scenario, the headlights were mine, and I was the truck about to run her the fuck over.

  Greg and Melanie both wore expressions similar to each other: a complex mix of things like anger and sadness on my behalf, concern, and most importantly, support and encouragement. I could see that clearly in the way they looked at me. They both reached out and touched me. Melanie rubbed her hand over the back of mine and Greg stroked my arm.

  I noticed Greg’s opposite hand had a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table. He was bristling with the need to vault off his chair and leap to my defence. With either words or blunt-force trauma. My alpha male was forcibly restraining himself, though, and letting me speak for myself.

  At that moment, I had a crystalline thought, a cognizance of my life and those who shared it: the two people beside me, unrelated to me by blood—they were my people. Would be forever.

  The person at the head of the table with whom I happened to share genetic material, spoke up. ‘Kayana, children have vivid imaginations. And sometimes they believe what they’ve imagined is real.’

  Oh. My. God. I seethed inside. Like a pasta pot left on the stove, there was a whoosh and my anger bubbled right up and over. Hot, out of control, messy. You couldn’t put a lid on to stop it; only clean up the mess afterwards.

  ‘If a child was to make up an imaginary childhood, don’t you think they’d have come up with sunshine and flowers and fucking rainbows? There’d be unicorns and people skipping about with big fat grins on their faces. No kid would ever make up a shithouse childhood filled with torment and misery.’

  Big fat tears ran down my face. I hated them. I vividly remembered the distress and frustration of having to remain silent when I’d been wrongly accused of things. As I’d said, emotions need to go somewhere—you have to react in some way. Since venting had been out of the question, and sometimes my ostrich tactic of pretending it wasn’t happening failed, all I could do was cry. I used to cry while Lydia and the dickheads would smirk. The humiliation would make me blush.

  It had taken years to overcome that conditioning. In the meantime, out in the world, I’d always stayed silent, blushed, and my eyes had gotten suspiciously wet if I was ever accused of anything. Which would only make me appear guilty of that which I had been accused.

  A prime example being when I was doing work experience during my university days. The head of the lab had given me two samples and instructed me to do microbiological testing on them. There were no procedures supplied; it seemed to be a trial-by-fire setup. I’d had to rely on my memory. My memory provided me with a perfect copy of the testing flowchart I’d prepared to help me study for my exams. Upon the completion of the tests, I’d given the doctor my report. After perusing it, he’d said I must have found the patients’ paperwork in the files and copied it. Instead of saying, ‘Hell no. I did it myself!’ I’d stood there like a stunned mullet with wet eyes and a red face. ‘Guilty as charged,’ said my face.

  I dashed the tears away. More and more came. I was visibly shaking now.

  My father had never wanted me to rock the boat.

  I was about to not only rock the boat but shoot holes in it and capsize the bastard.

  Then, I finally voiced to my father some of the things Lydia had done to me.

  Things like always sending me to my room because she couldn’t stand the sight of me. About the isolation I’d felt in there while her kids watched cartoons and played on the other side of the door.

  How she’d sometimes push me into my wardrobe and make me sit there in the dark until she told me to get out. About the day she’d forgotten she’d put me in there. The shock on her face when she’d discovered me hours and hours later. The screaming about how I could be so fucking stupid to stay in there so long, despite knowing full well I would never have stepped out of that wardrobe without her permission.

  The way she would storm into a room when either of her kids started crying and promptly hit me over the head and scream at me for making them cry. How her kids picked up on that pretty quickly and used it against me. The way that, if either of them started crying, I’d break into a cold sweat hearing Lydia rushing down the corridor towards me.

  I told him how she would throw things at me (one time, it was a large kitchen knife) or hit me with whatever she had in her hand at the time. About the black eye from when she smacked me straight in the face with a dustpan brush. About how she used to kick me.

  I could barely get the words out because I was crying, hard. My whole body trembled violently. I could scarcely breathe.

  And my father? He shook his head, wordlessly telling me no, those things hadn’t happened.

  ‘Why the hell do you think I ran away?’ I cried. He hadn’t talked about it. Never asked why. I recalled the incredible breathless relief and joy of being free for those few hours before I’d been found and dragged back home. The crushing disappointment afterwards that had threatened to obliterate me.

  ‘How can you not believe that she was violent towards me? You saw her that one time.’ The time Lydia had forgotten herself and let her temper get the better of her when my dad was there. ‘Remember when we went camping? Geneva accused me of swearing at her, when it had actually been the other way around. And as per usual, instead of asking for my version of the events, Lydia kicked me.’ I had just gained the top step of the campervan and was in the doorway. I went flying backwards out the door and landed on my tailbone. On concrete. My dad was standing right there. I practically landed at his feet.

  The next day, he took me to the store across the road and bought me a bunch of books and treats. His way of saying sorry without actually voicing it. My dad was a strong believer in not uttering that word.

  ‘See those steps there?’ I pointed at the two steps to the sunken rumpus room. ‘She kicked me down those two damn steps more times than I can count. What you witnessed wasn’t an unusual occurrence. It was my goddamned life!’

  My dad had a look on his face that I hadn’t seen before. I wondered if, because he’d never let me talk about it, he didn’t comprehend how terribly badly all of it
had hurt me.

  ‘I wanted to kill myself,’ I blurted.

  The room seemed to still. I’d been the only one speaking; even so, at that pronouncement the room became quieter, somehow. Perhaps everyone held their breath.

  ‘Now you’re going too far,’ my father said angrily. ‘You—’

  I didn’t listen, speaking over whatever it was he was going to say because it was my fucking time to talk.

  I had never uttered these words to another soul. ‘I wanted to shoot myself with your rifle.’

  My father’s eyes went wider than I’d ever seen.

  ‘I understood that it killed things, but I didn’t know how to use it. And guess what stopped me?’ I let out a flat-sounding laugh, realising I’d stopped sobbing somewhere along the line. ‘I was scared that if I fucked it up and shot a hole in the wall, I’d get into so much trouble. I imagined the kind of beating I’d have to take for that kind of infraction. That’s what stopped me. I used to lie there, though, and stare at that rifle under your bed. It had a soft case. Black with white handles.’

  My father’s skin tone is so dark that he can’t go white, but he abruptly looked ill. Kind of grey.

  I continued. ‘I eventually came to the conclusion that I didn’t need to do it myself. Because Lydia would do it for me. I was convinced that one day she’d hit me just a little too hard. Or throw something at me that was a little too heavy or a little too sharp. And you know what I wished, Dad? That maybe then you’d tell her off. I hoped that if she killed me, you’d finally get mad and yell at her. That was my ten-year-old fantasy. Not sunshine. And flowers. And fucking rainbows.’

  There was dead silence. In that silence, I appraised my dad. At long last, I saw him for what he truly was: spineless. A pathetic excuse for a father. And someone not deserving of my love or one additional moment of my time.