The Sadness of Trudy's Dad: Part 2

 She could put on a really good show though, could Trudy's mum. Her handsome, gentle husband would never have approved of such petulance and she couldn't face his disappointment. So, she would let her big, bad wolf out whilst he was at work and stuff it quickly under a cushion the minute that she heard his key in the lock.
Trudy looked forward to the end of the day because it not only meant that she could see her dad, but that they’d all start a game of pretend; pretend to be safe. She discovered that she could actually be happy, just by pretending – as long as she never let her guard down.

 Before her dad even knew who he was, he was ill for the very first time though no one knew why - even when the doctors looked and shook and took his temperature. His mother ignored it at first, thinking that he was attention in a house that couldn't spare it. Then when he got none and still nothing had changed, she would stay up all night at his bedside fretting. She was to become an expert at fretting since his younger brothers would be ill in a year or two, each with their own illnesses to baffle the doctors with.

Her husband was not much help. He came back from the war an angry man made angrier. In those dark days when fathers and husbands were strength without weakness, he buried those terrible foreign memories alongside his cold and harsh childhood and they festered there unnoticed till they seized a belt by the soft end and lashed his sons with the buckle for no particular reason.
Trudy’s father was the second of 4 brothers The eldest, who was not ill and not always in a hospital bed being poked and prodded and examined, was lashed enough for both of them. In time, he was lashed for 4 as spines grew longer and limbs grew twisted and doctors would have seen the welts.