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Only it isn’t.
He leans down and strokes the dog where he’s dozing under the table. Basil’s head lifts and he gets sleepily to his feet and buries his head against Gary’s legs, his tail wagging slowly.
Gary sits there, hearing the front door bang, a blackbird in the next garden, Jean turning on the radio, but he’s not really listening.
He’s remembering.
A day almost as hot as this.
Daisy, in her parents’ bedroom, staring at herself in the dressing-table mirror. The mascara she was putting on, the lipstick, the blue eyeshadow. He remembers how odd it made him feel, looking at her made-up child face. Knowing it was all wrong, and not just because neither of them were allowed in that room alone.
He’s seen pictures of American pageants since then – little girls like JonBenét Ramsey looking just like Daisy did that day, and he’s proud that he knew even back then that it was wrong.
He’d tried to make Daisy stop – makeitstop. Told her she’d never get away with messing with Sharon’s stuff like that, but she said she didn’t care and she’d done it loads of times before and no one had even noticed. She’d slithered off the stool then and started cat-walking up and down in front of the mirror, rolling her hips in her little high-heeled shoes and the blue bikini she’d worn on holiday the year before that didn’t fit her properly any more. He’d gone over to the wardrobe just for something to do, just so he wouldn’t have to look at her. That was when he found that gym bag, with the towel that smelled and the sweaty kit, and the phone hidden underneath that Daisyobviously already knew about but no one else did and was supposed to be a secret and caused all that trouble later when the police found what was on it.
He’d left her there then, as she blew a kiss at herself in the mirror and winked and turned on her glittery heel, but just as he got to his room he’d caught that strange buzzing he’d heard once before when Sharon had told him he was just making things up again because she couldn’t hear anything. But this time and for no reason he could really explain, either then or afterwards, he went looking for that noise. It was in Daisy’s room, on the top of the wardrobe, which he could only reach by climbing on the bed, and Daisy must have chosen because it was the only place Sharon never bothered to clean.
A phone.
A small pink phone with Disney princess stickers on the back that were coming off, it had been used so much.
A phone he knew she wasn’t supposed to have. A phone he’d gone looking for again, after she’d disappeared and the police had been round and everything was even worse than it had been before. Only it wasn’t there. The phone and the stickers and all those dozens of messages he’d scrolled through that day, terrified that any minute Daisy would come in and see what he was doing.
Only she didn’t. He read them. All of them. Right up to that last one.
Not long now
***
MY SHADOW JOURNAL
Shadow Archetypes
The idea of Archetypes is central to Jungian thought. He identified twelve Archetypes, each of which has a Shadow incarnation. So, for example, the shadow of the Hero is the Bully, the shadow of the Caregiver is the Martyr, and the shadow of the Innocent is the Victim.
‘There can be no energy without opposites’
Carl Jung
Many of the evil characters in fairy tales are embodiments of these Shadow Archetypes – the cannibalistic witch inHansel & Gretel, the predatory wolf inLittle Red Riding Hood, the narcissistic anti-mother inSnow Whitewho insists the Mirror say that she is the fairest, and the alternate version of the anti-mother in the cold-heartedSnow Queen. Fairy tales symbolise our struggles with these archetypes, and the possibility of working through those struggles to escape and healing.
Shadow Archetypes are not evil, in themselves, but the energy they embody can be chaotic and damaging, both to your Self and to others. By identifying and acknowledging these Archetypes in your Self you can harness this energy and use it in a more positive way.
Today’s exercise
This exercise is called mirror gazing. It sounds easy, but it’s one of the toughest things you will do as part of this process.
Choose a room where you will not be disturbed. Sit in front of a mirror and look at your reflection. Try to stay there at least five minutes. You can talk to your reflectionif you wish. Try not to be self-critical. Be open to all the emotions you are feeling.
At the end of the process, write down the first three words that come to your mind below.
Why do you think those words came to you? How do they make you feel?
I used to think lying was my superpower. No one –no one– was better at it than me. Not even Barry. But I did learn a lot, watching him. Like how important it was to keep eye contact and how you had to have the balls to call people’s bluff. Though he was just an amateur compared to me. But then again, you didn’t exactly need to be sophisticated to deceive Sharon. I knew that better than anyone. She was so thick she’d have believed anything. Fish, barrel; candy, baby. Pick your own cliché. She really thought he was at the gym three nights a week, FFS? Or ‘seeing clients’? Yeah, right. The sort of ‘client’ that strangely always seemed to have big tits and a short skirt. But even though I knew what he was up to I didn’t say anything. I just stored it up in case it came in useful.
I must have got some of the lying gene from him though. And as I got a bit older and I had more practice the lies got bigger and more complicated but I still never got found out. Sometimes I’d get so bored I’d make something up just for the hell of it, just to see if people would believe me. It isstaggeringwhat people will swallow if a little angel with blonde hair and bunches insists that it’s true.
So by the time it got to Project Great Escape I’d done it so much it was as easy as breathing. Because, dearreader-who-doesn’t-exist, in case you haven’t worked it out already, everything I said back then was one huge enormous weapons-grade lie. All that stuff I said about Barry and what he did to me and how scared I was – none of it was true. He was an idiot and a cheat and suffocating and an arsehole but he was never a paedophile. Kids never did it for him. See above under ‘Tits’. I guess this is one of those moments when I’m supposed to ‘be kind to my Self’ and ‘not judgemental’. Though tbh I never really have been. Hard on myself, that is. Because even if the abuse thing wasn’t true, Iwasthat miserable, Iwasin that much pain. And fuck’s sake I was onlyeight. You don’t know jack shit about anything at that age. And the whole escape thing seemed like such a good idea. I mean, anyone who was willing to take that much of a risk to rescue you, surely you’d have a right to think they were telling the truth? To believe what they told you? OK, fair enough, coming from me maybe that is a bit rich. But fuck’s sake. All those hours in that crummy flat with the curtains drawn before we left, being told over and over about where we were going to live and how different it would be from Oxford – how there’d be horses and the countryside and books and galleries and trips to the beach. And everything would be about me and making me happy. Only it didn’t turn out like that, did it.