The Wild Heart by David Menon Page B

Richard was chief executive of the Belfast-based engineering firm that was not only one of the province’s biggest employers but was owned by his wife, Natalie’s mother Angela. It had been founded by Angela’s grandfather, passed through her father and inherited by Angela when her father died. Kerr Engineering had a solid reputation across the whole of Britain and Angela became the sole heir after her brother committed suicide a few years after Natalie had made sexual abuse allegations against him.
         When it started to happen she hadn’t known what to do. She ended up wanting to scream from the deepest place within her and when she couldn’t keep it in any longer she made her first mistake. She told her mother. Her mother had slapped her. She told her she was a liar. She told her she didn’t deserve anything good to happen to her ever again after what she’d said. Natalie had begged and pleaded for her mother to believe her but she wouldn’t. She appealed to her father but as with everything he took his wife’s side.
         She hadn’t seen either of her parents for a few years and was surprised to see her father standing there when she opened the door.
         ‘ What are you doing here?’
       ‘ I’ve come to talk, Natalie’ said Richard Patterson. ‘ I haven’t come to row’.
         The conciliatory tone of her father’s voice made Natalie stop for a moment and imagine that she could perhaps sit down and talk to him.
         ‘ Come in and say what you’ve got to say, Daddy’.
         She walked back into the flat and left the door open for him to come through. As soon as he was in the living room he waved the smoke from Natalie’s cigarette away with his arm and screwed up his face.
         ‘ Why do you poison yourself with those things?’
         ‘ Because I can and because you can’t stop me’ said Natalie, confidently. She took another drag and blew the smoke into the centre of the room where her father leaned back to avoid it as if it were a missile. It made Natalie laugh.
         ‘ What’s funny?’ asked Richard, sternly.
         ‘ You. I’d forgotten what a bloody joke you are’.
         ‘ Natalie’ said her father ‘ That’s no way to talk to me now, is it’.
         ‘ When you’re in my home I’ll talk to you how the hell I like and you’ll just have to deal with it’.  
         Richard looked round and gave the flat the once over. He had to admit that his daughter kept the place clean and neat. She should do considering what it must’ve cost. The flat was in a new block on the quayside near Belfast harbour and was high enough up to give a view over to the hills of Antrim. But Richard wasn’t interested in the view. 
         ‘ This place looks clean enough’ he said ‘ Smart even. It must’ve cost a bit’.
         ‘ Yeah, well’ said Natalie, looking down at her hands ‘ Shaun makes a lot. He’s independent of his father, making it on his own’.
         ‘ He’s not the only one making himself a stack of cash, is he Natalie?’ her father probed.
         ‘ Explain what you mean, Daddy’.
         ‘ You were seen dealing drugs outside the pub in the village, Natalie’ said Richard.
         ‘ Oh so that’s why you’re here. You don’t give a damn about me, you never have. You only get worried when things get a bit close to home. Did I spoil Mummy’s coffee morning? Has she lost her place in the parasite housewives club?’
         ‘ There’s no need for insolence against your mother, Natalie’.
         ‘ There’s no need for her to treat me like shit but she did’ said Natalie. She could feel herself getting emotional but was determined not to let her father see it. ‘You haven’t even asked me how I am since you got in here’.
         ‘ I don’t want it to be like this, Natalie’.
         ‘ Really? Well I didn’t want to suck my Uncle’s cock but I had to! But