‘You little cow!’ Dad is shouting. ‘You vile, evil child!’ I snap out of slow motion and get myself positioned between Caro and the spade. ‘No, Dad!’ I say. ‘You can’t hit her!’ I never told my dad much about Caro’s past. About the father who used to hit and abuse her up in her bedroom when she was just a tiny child. About how her self-harming is all because of the fear she used to feel as a little girl. My dad is ashen with shock when he hears my voice. He drops the spade and stands there, a broken man with tears pouring down his face. Caro’s also crying. It’s a quiet whimper of fear, like an animal that’s just been kicked. When Dad drops the spade she dodges his bulk and darts out of the greenhouse and back towards the house. The garden looks like a wilderness. All Dad’s orderly lines of vegetables have gone. The neat grass is strewn with lumps of soil and the leaves of ripped-up plants. The wooden bean-frames lie drunkenly on their sides or sticking up towards the sky like the crushed limbs of giant stick insects.
