Sara's Child by Susan Elle Page B

mum” So selfish. So completely self-absorbed . Catherine shakes her head in wonder at her mother’s patience. “So…you can see, how buying books that gave me all the information I seemed to crave became the easier option; and working evenings gave her a break from me anyway.” She needed it .
    “Yet Arthur Kingsley told me that you had never been to university,” Logan interjects. “Was he wrong…?”
    “No he wasn’t wrong.” Then she tells him about being called a freak at school. And about the bloody noses the other kids’ parents had regularly complained that their children were coming home with. “I was happiest on my own,” he hears her continue. “I didn’t need any of them. But my mum couldn’t understand it when the school complained about my behaviour and my inability to interact during lessons. I’d become the model child at home, you see. As for exams,” she flicks them off with a sharp wave of her hand, “I just refused to do them.” Refused to tow their bloody line. Fuckers!
    “But, why?” he asks, suddenly confused. “You could have done anything, gone to university and been anything you wanted to be.”
    “Yeah,” she scoffs, “if I’d just played the game the way they wanted it played. ‘We’re reading The Lord of the Rings just now, dear,”’ she mimics, doing her best impression of the redoubtable Miss Parish, her English teacher. “Then she confiscated the book I was reading and forced me to read the book she wanted me to read out loud in front of the whole class.” She actually crosses her arms over her chest in a move that brings a smile to Logan’s face. One that, the now angry, Catherine has noticed. “Oh I suppose you were Mr Popular,” she scoffs acidly. “Always the little gentleman; yes sir, no sir, three bags bloody full sir.” Jesus-H-Christ! A right Little Lord fucking Fauntleroy!
    Logan actually laughs out loud at that, and Catherine’s scowl deepens.   “I was no saint, I assure you,” he tells her, still chuckling at her description of him. “But learning never did come easy to me, so I had to discipline myself to study hard and pay attention in class. Not all of us have blotting paper for brains,” he counters.
    “Were you always set on going to university then?” she asks. “Or did you get pushed along the way by your parents?”
    “You’ve met my father – does he seem like the pushy parent type to you?”
    Catherine thinks that over. No, Henry had not seemed like that at all. But then what did she know about fathers, she’d never had one. “I don’t have any experience in the father department,” she states matter of fact. “But I wouldn’t have said that Henry is pushy, not in an overbearing way anyway,” she clarifies.
    “But you think he could be in other ways…?” He is genuinely interested in her opinions, and is enjoying their frank exchange; though he knows he is facilitating her stalling tactics at the same time.
    “I think he’d have kicked your arse black and blue if you’d cheeked him the way I used to cheek my mum.” She turns to smile at him, but it falters and dies, leaving her looking sad. My mum ought to have given me the back of her hand. I never deserved her. So loving. So patient. So…
    “Is that what your mum did?” he probes gently. “Did your mother hurt you, Catherine? Is that what you’re remembering?”
    She tells him everything then. “My mum was the kindest person you could ever wish to meet, and she rarely laid a hand on me; though I deserved it sometimes.” Her lips tremble on the pitiful smile they try to form. “I was the child from hell,” she tells him frankly. “No matter what she tried to do with me – be it puzzles, or reading stories, or taking me out to the park – it was never enough to satisfy me. Although physical activities, like swimming and track running, did help as long as I drove myself hard enough to reach near exhaustion.” Even that had been a short-term