Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes

Author:Marian Keyes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780141024479
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2005-08-30T07:00:00+00:00

261

Everyone sat up. Even Mike had taken a break from trying to make eye contact with my panties.

“I suppose you hated Anna for taking attention away from you?” she suggested.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

I was hot and sweaty. Squirmy with embarrassment and anger. Raging at being pitched back into that frightening world where my actions had had catastrophic results. I’d nearly have preferred the questionnaire to this.

I did not want to remember.

Even though it was always kind of there, half-remembered.

“Rachel, you were three years old, an age that child psy-chologists recognize as a very difficult one to cope with a new addition to the household. Your jealousy was natural. ”

Josephine had gone all gentle on me.

“What are you feeling?” she asked.

And instead of telling her to get lost, my mouth opened and the words “I’m ashamed” tearfully sidled out.

“And why didn’t you tell your mother how you felt?”

“I couldn’t,” I said in surprise. New sisters were things I was supposed to get excited about, not resent.

“Anyway,” I added. “Mummy was funny then.”

I could feel everyone’s interest move up a notch.

“She stayed in bed crying a lot.”

“Why was that?”

“Because I was mean to Anna,” I said slowly. My spirit shriveled as I forced myself to say it. I’d made my mother go to bed and cry for six months because I’d been bad.

“So what did you do to Anna that was so terrible?”

I paused. How could I tell her and all the other people there how I’d pinched a tiny, defenseless baby, how I’d prayed for her to die, how I’d fantasized about throwing her in the garbage.

“OK,” Josephine said when it became clear I wasn’t going to answer. “Did you try to kill her?”

“Noooo!” I nearly laughed. “Of course I didn’t.”

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