Every Seven Years Read Online Free

than twenty-four hours and
I’m already drinking and driving and trying
to kill people. Being so wrong makes
me livid.
    I say, So, Tam, you didn’t come to see
me, you came to stop me? I call him a
sweary name. What kind of person are
you? You don’t give a shit about me or my
mum.
    But Tam’s face doesn’t even twitch.
Don’t even try, he says.
    Don’t even try what, Tam ?
    Don’t try to make me feel guilty, Else.
You haven’t been in touch, you never even
wrote to me. You didn’t call me and tell me
she was dead. What happened to her is the
reason I became a policeman so don’t
even try that crap with me.
    But I’m still angry because I’m so
wrong and I say things to him that are just
crude and mean. A drunken rant and I’m
cringing even as I’m shouting. I start crying
with shame and frustration because
I’m saying things so unkind and nasty. I’m
not homophobic. I don’t think policemen
even do that. I’m just really drunk and my
mum’s dead and they were so mean to her
and Karen had the book all along and it’s
not fair.
    I’m furious and drunk and ashamed
and wrong and it’s making me cry so
much that I’m blind. I can hear Tam
breathing gasps. Confusing. By the time
the tears clear I can see him doubled over,
holding his stomach. I think he’s being
sick but then I realize that he is laughing,
very much, at the things I said about policemen and what he might do with
them.
    If you saw them! he says, the other policemen!
You couldn’t, even for a dare!
    My mood swings as wildly as a change
in wind direction over the open sea. I
hope that coffee is for me.
    My eyes are trying to kill me. They’re stabbing
my brain. I wake up in bed this time,
in the morning. I’ve got all my clothes on.
I have to keep my eyes shut as I sit up. I get
hold of the bedstead to steady myself and
tiptoe carefully towards the bathroom. My
mouth floods with seawater and I have to
run, even with my assassin eyes.
    The smell of coffee lingers in the hallway.
I’m worried that I’ve broken something in
my olfactory system with all that vodka,
unaccustomed as I am, until I get into the
kitchen and find Tam making more coffee.
    I feel awful.
    Good heavens, says Tam, there’s a surprise.
    It’s a nice thing to say, the way he says
it. Kind. I slither into a seat and shade my
eyes.
    He’s making scrambled eggs. I won’t be
able to eat but I’m too comforted by his
presence to interrupt him.
    You can’t drive today, Else, he says.
You’ve still got high alcohol content in
your blood and your car lights are all
smashed.
    I don’t answer. I sit with my hand over
my eyes and listen to him putting toast on
the grill, scraping the eggs in the pan and
I think, if this was the fifties we could have
been happy in a sexless marriage of convenience,
Tam and I.
    Who were you going to see last night,
Else?
    The memory evokes a misery so powerful
it almost trumps my hangover. I tell
him: I want to kill Karen Little.
    He’s stopped cooking and is looking at
me. I can’t look back. Karen?
    He puts two plates of scrambled egg
down on the table. And takes the toast
from the grill and drops a slice on top of
each of the yellow mountains.
    I pull my plate over to me.
    Karen gave me the book back.
    Tam is very still. Which book?
    The Lichtenstein. She gave it to me at
the library yesterday. She said it was the
last book I ever took out of the library. No
one had taken it out since. The note was
still in it.
    Tam sits down. His hands rest either
side of his plate like a concert pianist gathering
his thoughts before a recital.
    Finally he speaks. I’ll kill the bitch myself,
he says.
    The hospital tells me that nothing can be
done about my mum today. They need a
pathologist to come over from the mainland
and do a post mortem, but the ferries
are cancelled because a storm is coming. I
can sit at home alone or I can