Unfortunately, this is the last snippet I’ll be sharing on Substack before my book gets published. I am working hard to get my edits back to the editor by the end of this week so I can go back to publishing my usual content. Also, this is a section of Part 3 / Chapter 4, as I am no longer allowed to post full chapters. Enjoy!
Some facts:
Genre: Coming of age
Word Count: ~120,000
Release date: Summer 2022
Publisher: UK based publishing house - further information upon release.
Part 3 - Chapter 4
Whether she’d admit it or not, she saw the same in Richard as she had in Nicholas and Francesco: a way of restoring sense and security into her life. All three were continual constants without sudden change. But while Nicholas, once the mask of compassion and protectiveness dissipated, Francesco, once the mask of kindness and cordiality faded, had transformed into regret and suffering, Richard, to her, was incapable of malevolence. From her deductions she concluded that he knew darkness and had traversed through it successfully. He was intelligent, kind, a good father-figure to her daughter. He provided for us without making demands, he did not put his hands on her. Simply to be in her presence seemed to be enough, the act of tangible affection was secondary to him, it hardly mattered.
In the garden outside the house stood a shed hidden between three pine trees. For all I knew, it had originally been a small farmhouse, built towards the end of the seventeenth century, in idyllic Dutch fashion. It’s front was made of wood and plaster, the door worn and crooked, with two small windows. The structure had made no notable impression on me until my mother pointed it out.
The inside was furnished in pale pink and blue hues, with moulded green edges. A glass-front bookcase scraped the low ceiling, and several pots with withered flowers decorated the windowsills and floor. A doll house with several dolls, damp because of the small cracks lining every wall. The walls were crammed with posters, girl bands I did not recognise, an owl holding a newspaper called Fabeltjeskrant, far away beaches, a world map. Comic books and magazines stacked upon chairs, configured into one damp brick of paper. A sandalwood statue of a Hindu god stood on top of a cabinet full of shallow drawers. Near the window on the left stood a white desk, with what looked like children’s drawings scattering the surface.
Richard refused to enter. Or rather, always had one excuse or another not to go near. Perhaps that’s why neither me nor my mother ever asked him about it, not until much later when the answers came flooding in at their own accord.
My mother wanted to renovate the place. She longed to write again and though the library was beautiful, she liked the thought of having a place to herself. He agreed immediately and she started the very next morning. She scraped at the paint on the walls and floors and replaced them. The dirt, which she claimed secreted from everywhere, was moped, dusted, and vacuumed. From his studio window Richard watched her as one watches a rabbit hop in the glass, without daring to move a finger. Though the demolishing, constructing and tinkering did her well, he hoped that the labour would not wear her out. Hardlopers zijn doodlopers, he thought. But she looked healthier than when she first arrived. Muscles contoured her frail arms, her behind clung to the jeans she always wore, as if static electricity bounded the material to her skin. Her complexion shone red with glistening youth.
At times I would sit with her and listen to the sound of paint licking the walls, the broom combing back the dirt and dust on the floor.
“Good as I am with my hands,” she said, “I must be the parthenogenous son of Hera: Hephaestus. It would explain why I don’t have a father, why I am deformed, perhaps not physically, in the way of Hephaestus, but mentally.”
“No, if anything, you are Hestia,” I retorted, “goddess of the hearth, domesticity, family… and anyway you aren’t very good with your hands.”
A slight giggle scratched her throat, “but I am deformed.”
“No.”
She worked on for several moments, a subtle smile drew the edges of her mouth towards her cheeks, then said: “I’m surprised you still remember the stories I used to tell. When you think of specific moments in time they always feel so long ago.”
During the day, and sometimes at night, though rarely for my sake, she and Richard went out to see a movie, an opera at the Concertgebouw, or they simply took a long walk along the canals. She came home entranced, and walked about with a shuffling step, as if she wanted to reassure herself of the materiality of the floor. With the wearing of each day her alterations accumulated, she could be a thousand things, one thing, or nothing at all.
I also changed, but not in the same, positive light as her. My reflection irked me, I shunned the mirror whenever I could, afraid as I was of looking as outlandish to others as I did to myself.
A knot had formed in my throat that would not subside, no matter how hard I swallowed. What more, an angry flame blistered my stomach, I screamed into my pillow, into my mattress. I clenched my jaws and my hands until my palms hurt. My arms and legs were tied together, I felt claustrophobic even in the emptiest of spaces. There was no place for me, I had nowhere to go, no future to look forward to, no past to which I could return. I lived in a glass bowl steadily filled with water, all I heard was the continuous sound of water droplets and a ticking clock.
At times I thought back to the years I spent intertwined with my mother, an unbreakable bond as tight as a sailor’s knot. Now we had become something reminiscent of a Borromean knot. The addition of another had distanced us.
As I laid in bed, studying from my history textbook, the past gathered out of the boundaries of their pages and obscured my mind. When I turned the lights off a residue of light clouded the inside of my eyes.
Suspense. I like it.
Love this!!!! It is hard to wait for the book. I want to know what happens next!❤️