How to Kill Your Family(16)

Obviously I was going to look inside. I didn’t even hesitate. I still pay no heed to the supposed privacy of others – if you leave something around me, I will look at it, soak it in, commit it to memory. I expect growing up relying on just one person means that I need more information than a normal person when it comes to trust. Or maybe I just want to get inside your head and gain an advantage over you. It doesn’t always work, I’ve been looking through Kelly’s diary since I landed in this prison, but it’s hard to gain an insight into someone’s innermost thoughts when they’re so completely devoid of any original ones.

I slid myself down Helene’s door and wedged myself there, just in case she came home. My mother’s friend witnessed the whole of my parent’s brief relationship, but she’d never given me any information on it, even when Marie died. I know she felt it wouldn’t help, that she was protecting me, so I didn’t push it. But this box might tell me more than she could anyway. Helene was kind, but she was hardly a great intellect, and had a fairly basic level of insight. Her favourite shows were all on ITV, if that makes it at all clearer.

Inside was a bundle of papers in no discernible order. I saw various newspaper clippings, letters, and photographs all jumbled up, and began sifting them into corresponding piles. Once done, I started looking at the photos properly. A few were of my mother and her girlfriends on nights out at dark clubs around London. Marie and Helene in minidresses, both smoking, mid-dance. Girls I didn’t know holding bottles of champagne and spraying it around. As I flicked through them, the girls slowly vanished, moving blurrily to the edges of the pictures, as Simon stepped onto the stage. There were photos of Simon with other men, all in white shirts and expensively distressed jeans, big gold buckles on their belts. They had their arms round each other’s shoulders, just like the boys at school, but chomping on cigars, holding shot glasses, leering at the camera. Then there were photos of just my mum and Simon, him twirling her around, her polka-dot skirt blurring but her expression perfectly clear. She was rapt, twisting her head around to maintain a direct look at my father. He wasn’t looking at her though – he was smirking at the camera. He wasn’t looking at her in any of the pictures, instead he was grinning at his mates, who all seemed to desperately gaze up at him like Marie had, or mugging for the camera, slamming shots, dancing on a table while people cheered, and putting a harassed-looking waiter in a jokey headlock as the crowd around him creased their faces and applauded.

It’s strange to realise that you loathe your father before you ever have a chance to meet him. Of course I knew that he had treated my mother badly, but there was more to it. Just from a few photos, he made my skin crawl. His tanned, shiny face spoke to a vanity I’d not encountered before. His obvious need to grab all attention available was pathetic. He took up other people’s space – women were pushed out to the margins, only featured as beautiful props for Simon Artemis. His gang of friends looked about as shifty as you can imagine – certainly the kind who would be wise to keep their heads down in a post #MeToo era. Everything I saw made me feel slightly ill. This man, with his horrible flashy clothes and his clear need to advertise his testosterone levels with every pose, this man shared and contributed to my DNA, my character, my existence. Again, I wondered whether Marie had successfully hidden some major personality defect from me – how else to explain this man, this choice. How could she have made such a huge mistake?

I was 13 when I first saw these photos. I didn’t know much about the relationships between men and women, the concept of patriarchy, the idea of emotional manipulation or even just the facts about basic sexual attraction. I just saw this disgusting man openly displaying all his worst qualities for the camera, as my beloved mother stared at him. And I hated her in that moment too.

As I shoved the pictures back in the box, I noticed that my fist was curled into a ball, and that the muscles in my neck were beginning to burn slightly, always the precursor to a headache, but I knew that if I didn’t plough on, I might not have the chance again for a while. Who knows what Helene planned to do with the files?

Next up were the newspaper clippings, musty and fading. The headlines were a mixture of business and personal news. ‘Simon Artemis buys teen fashion chain Sassy Girl’, ‘Artemis criticised for “sweatshop” conditions’, ‘Simon and Janine show off their perfect new daughter’, ‘Simon Artemis, OBE? Rumours of an honour for the CEO of Artemis Holdings’. The last one was from a glossy magazine and had photos of Simon and his wife (who I now knew to be Janine), surrounded by fluffy dogs, fluffy carpet, and flanked by an enormous Christmas tree, the height of the room. In his arms, he held their daughter, who I noted was called Bryony. She looked to be about three. I checked the date on the article. The neck muscles were getting hotter. I was 13 months younger than her. My sister was a baby when Simon was in those clubs, wooing my mother, promising her who knows what. The photos showed the same house my mother had walked me past that wet day in Hampstead. It looked, even to my young eyes, fucking hideous. Janine (I assume it was Janine, given that men so often still assume it’s the job of women to keep the house nice), clearly had an overwhelming passion for grey and silver. Have you ever seen a silver mantelpiece? I’m not talking metal, or paint, I mean real silver. Imported from Vienna, I learnt many years later, when I was very briefly allowed into their house for a staff party. Janine was a gracious hostess, speaking to everyone for a few moments as though she were the queen, and I asked many questions about her, let’s say, unique take on interior design. She probably wouldn’t have been so nice had she known my plans for her and her nearest and dearest, but she was so proud of that appalling fireplace it’s actually hard to be sure.