Mum wouldn’t look her in the face any more, Dolly knew that much. And more and more they carted Edie off to the hospital to get ‘zapped’, as Nigel mockingly called it. Nigel thought Dad could do no wrong, but Mum? He’d grown critical of her, aping his father’s attitude. When Edie got home, it was Dolly who had to put her to bed, clean up the sick, deal with her vague, mad statements. It always took a day or two for Edie to come back to herself, and in between she was lost to them. Not a mother at all, really, just a thing in a bed, babbling nonsense, poor cow. Dolly saw how Edie cringed away from her husband whenever he came near, and she didn’t wonder at it. She felt rage and bitterness toward her mother, no love at all now, but in the cold logical core of herself she could see Edie’s viewpoint. She could see that Edie had chosen to sacrifice her eldest daughter and save herself.
So it went on, months and months of endless torment. Dolly ate chocolates, the guilt-gifts she got from her dad, and she grew fatter, comfort-eating. Home was a war zone and she was just spoils, to be enjoyed as the man of the house thought fit.
It went on, and on – until she was ill.
Everyone was ill that winter; the flu bug was doing the rounds and sure enough the whole bloody family went down like ninepins. First it hit Edie, who’d been in the hospital again getting her brain fried, and her usual sickness and nausea when she came home just went on and on, until they had to call the doctor out.
‘Influenza,’ he pronounced, and left. ‘Bed rest, liquids, warmth.’
Then little Sandy, the weakest and youngest of the kids, fell victim, then Dick and Nigel, and finally Sarah, who’d been helping Dolly care for the whole damned lot of them. Inevitably, Dolly herself got up one morning and fell back on to the bed, too hot and dizzy to stand. For two weeks it was Dad who had to do the honours, stopping off work to heat up soup to feed them all and carrying buckets and bowls to and fro to all their sickbeds. Dolly was viciously glad to see him having to empty the shit and vomit in the khazi out in the back yard.
Served him right.
And there was a bonus to being ill; Dad didn’t come near. Didn’t want to catch a dose of the dreaded lurgy like she and the others had.
The Devil looks after his own, thought Dolly as she watched her father faffing around the house, moaning like a drain about having to fetch and carry for them all. He didn’t get ill, the bastard.
