The door slams shut with a loud bang. Once the stomping of his father's boots on the front steps fades, there's only silence.
Alec's heart is racing, as always when his parents argue, which has been almost every day for the past few years. He stays put behind the partly open door of his room. It allowed him to keep tabs on their shouting without being noticed so he wouldn't be pulled into the argument. Now that the storm itself is over, Alec tries to calm himself down by taking deep, measured breaths. His mother is shuffling about downstairs. He's relieved that he doesn't hear any sobbing from her, because it allows him to cry the pain out of his own heart. The lovelessness they are both exposed to day after day has created a tender spot in his chest that hurts more every time they have to endure another one of his father's fits of rage.
He retreats from the door and sits with his back against the wall. Violent sobs rack his body, and staying quiet takes so much effort that his throat starts to hurt. The need to be held and comforted is overwhelming, so he hugs his legs to his chest because it helps him to pretend that there's someone he can cling to.
When the tears stop falling, he makes sure that his mum is still downstairs and shuffles down the hall to the loo. There, he makes a production of flushing the toilet that allows him to blow his nose without being overheard. He splashes cold water onto his face in the hope that it will relieve the puffiness around his eyes. He knows it doesn't work, but does it anyway, because it makes him feel as if he can do something about the whole situation.
When he hasn't been called down for dinner by half past six, thirty minutes after their very regular dinner time, he knows his mother has been affected more than she has let on earlier. Alec suspects that she didn't want him to know because he always tries and fails to console her.
Thankfully, his father hasn't come back yet. As far as Alec can tell from his room, where he has been trying to concentrate on reading a book he has already read several times, his mum has been puttering around the house and the garden pretending that everything is fine until about a quarter of an hour ago. The eerie quietness that is permeating the house now frightens him, and he decides to go look for her.
He finds her in her armchair in the living room, a glass of his father's whiskey beside her on the coffee table. His mother only drinks when there's something to celebrate or when they're invited somewhere, never alone at home and never anything stronger than wine, so he knows it's bad.
He also notices that she tries to hide something under her chair when he comes in, but one of the balled up tissues rolls out from under it and he knows she's been crying as well. When he looks at her while trying to maintain a neutral expression that mirrors her own, he sees the corresponding tear tracks on her face and the redness of her eyes.
He might be able to fool his father, but his mother takes one look at him and says:
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"It's alright," he responds, and it's telling that she doesn't even have the strength anymore to do something about the fact that they both know that it isn't.
Before his father retired and brought even more of his outbursts home, Alec's mum used to come to his room to hug him and tell him that everything would be alright every time his parents had had an argument. He felt betrayed when she stopped looking for him so she could comfort him, but he knows that she doesn't have it in her anymore because she is being broken by this herself. Whenever her husband isn't yelling at her, he keeps up a constant stream of condescending remarks that makes it difficult to preserve what's left of her battered self esteem. She has hardened in response, and now she gives as good as she gets. The bickering never ends, and the gentle words she used to have for her son are lost, maybe forever.
Alec always hopes that one day, the hugs will return, and every time they don't, it leaves him more heartbroken. When his mum doesn't even say anything else to him after apologising, but goes back to drinking instead, this hope is shattered with finality. It's as if a brick hits a wall of frosted glass and once the shards have tumbled to the ground, he's confronted with the harsh truth that he can't rely on anyone to be there for him, not even the person he used to trust the most, the one person in his family he loves.
Alec sometimes wonders why she's still here, why she hasn't just left them. This isn't the right place for her — she ought to be with someone who treats her well. He promises himself two things: that if he ever has a family of his own, he won't yell at any of them, and that if he ever has children, they will get as many hugs as they need or want.
When he's at school and the teachers are droning on and he feels safe, Alec wonders what it would feel like to grow up in one of the loving families his friends seem to take for granted. He makes up stories of a dad who tells him about the books he used to read when he was his age instead of barking commands at him. He imagines spending time with his mum as she used to be, loving and aware of what was going on in his life. Now she barely asks if he has done his homework, and he has decided to make sure of that himself from now on. It seems to be safest to just rely on himself and no one else, be it for guidance or comfort.
He dreams about coming home from school without having to worry about the mood that will greet him there. Today it's the kind of atmosphere he despises the most: there's an invitation to a birthday party of one of his parent's friends, and the tension between them is palpable while they are trying to make sure that they are all dressed impeccably. He knows that his parents will pretend that their family life is just as perfect, and once they get there, they do. He hates it, hates the false intimacy between them and their smiling lying faces.
Once he is a father himself, he despises even more that his own father plays the part of the sweet grandpa so well that his daughter can't quite understand why Alec is so reluctant about visiting him.
"We're not going again until it's his birthday, Daisy," he says, although it's hard to withstand her as she's clinging to his shirt and looking up at him from her brown eyes.
"Oh don't be such a grump," she grumbles into his chest, but relents nevertheless.
When he opens his arms, she throws her own much shorter ones around his waist and hugs him back as she always does.
Daisy loves her dad's hugs. She loves that it makes her feel as if she were being spun into a warm cocoon when he wraps his arms around her. She feels safe when he hugs her tightly to him, as if he doesn't ever want to let go of her, and kisses her head. When she's upset, she never stops crying as quickly as when she's able to burrow her face into her dad's chest while hiding in his embrace.
She wouldn't admit any of this to her friends, of course. Not ever.
Her dad can be a bit soppy at times, but it's very little to endure for the knowledge that there are always open arms waiting for her, whether she's happy, sad or just feeling like being hugged.
Alec never breaks either of the two promises he made to himself as a child. He doesn't until the day he yells at his wife when she loses a piece of evidence that an entire investigation hinges on.