Chapter 11: Spotlight. I found you. I know who you are. Spotlight.
When I was a child, I loved as a child.
When you were a child, you loved your father. He wasn't always the person he became.
You're not sure who the person he turned you into is, though.
You haven't sang in weeks. At first your throat was too sore, and then you lost sight of anything there could be to sing about. Certainly not gospel. Certainly not soul.
Because your soul is too grubby to expose. Back when you sang, and you did sing, you sang from your heart. A heart that now sits behind the jailing bars of a ribcage for crime that you committed. There's not much left of you now; not that you'd recognize. You catch glimpses of yourself in mirrors but you're not really there. You're just kind of floating in empty space between alcohol and work. Betty's broken up with Ivan and you feel bad about how good that feels. Things don't change, though. She spends nights out with Gladys and not you, and shuts the door behind her when she comes home instead of leaving it open like she used to. She's shut you out.
And then Lorna's son turns up and a switch throws in your brain. He's in uniform and he's Lorna's son so you know he's vouchsafed.
So you invite him around to the boardinghouse. Things don't go as you planned and he takes an interest in Gladys. Of course. But at least you haven't seen Ivan in a while.
Gladys… understands, and she didn't intend to be enticing, she's just, well, enticing. In general.
Then there's yelling in the yard and when you go down Betty is conversing with a man on the ground, and you know, with a sinking feeling, that it's the escaped Nazi, and nothing he could have to say to her is good. You pull her back upstairs with you and wipe the blood from her hands and run your antiseptic over it. She tells you again that you're safe here, despite the evidence to the contrary; your father, Nazi's. But you want to believe her; you need to believe her because you can't keep living like this.
When you're wrapping her hand in a bandage from the first aid kit downstairs she looks at you intently. You avoid her gaze, keep your eyes on your suddenly shaking hands absorbed in the over-under of covering a hand.
"You're safe here," she says again. "You don't have to worry. I'd sooner face a cellar of Nazi's than let one in the boarding house. You don't have to worry."
"I'm worried because I don't know who I am." You tell her quietly, still avoiding her eyes. She raises her good hand, gets halfway to your chin, then puts it back in her lap. You lift your face a little anyway, focus on her collarbone.
"You're Kate Andrews, you're beautiful and I love you," she says. She doesn't stumble over any of her words and her assurance reassures you.
"I'm not Kate Andrews and I'm not beautiful," you tell her earnestly. You don't know how to deal with her third point.
"Eye of the beholder. Two out of three isn't bad," she says casually, like it doesn't mean anything.
It means everything. You meet her eyes and she sees, really sees you. Cuts through the fear and anger and confusion and sees you. You drag your eyes back to your hands, now cradling hers and reluctantly let hers go.
You find yourself humming as you get ready for bed.
Author's note: Sorry this is going so slow. There's a lot going on and I thought I was going mad but I don't think I am now; this court thing is got me acting all dingo. Pre-trial hearing means being in the same room. Not ideal.
Speaking of dingoes, my best mate's dingo actually did go dingo and had to be put down. And my PTSD buddy stabbed his sister so everything is just... disconcerting. Like normal, but tilted 0.45 degrees.
Title from The Waif's song "Spotlight".