‘I never thought of you like that.’ I shut the magazine. That time, I made no effort to keep the hurt off my face. ‘I’ve always envied you, Bec. You know that. You know that. I’ve envied you the children. I envied you Stuart.’
God. I had finally said the unsayable. Because even though Stuart and I had always had the we-know-it’s-never-going-to-happen-so-we-can-flirt-a-bit thing going on, and even though, of course, it has never, and could never, and would never happen, and even though I’d meant it, when I’d said he was like a brother – that wasn’t all of it. Because it would also, somehow, be untrue to say that I had never thought that he and I might have been good together, too. It would be untrue to say that I had never lain awake, in the long years before Adam, and thought about what the two of them were doing when they were alone together, and about the way he would have been with her. And with me. ‘I’ve always thought you had a really great life with what you had.’
She nodded. I could tell she was genuinely surprised.
Then she gave a small, private smile. ‘I actually am pretty tired,’ she said. And she turned away and went upstairs.
*
Bec appeared her usual well-rested self at breakfast. She teased me about my life-long insistence on runny egg yolk, and said how much she was going to miss having multiple cups of coffee with me in the mornings. Then she said that after she’d dropped the kids at school she was going to go and see Ryan.
‘Have fun,’ I said. But I said it the way you’d say it to a co-worker who’s leaving early to go have her Pap smear. A co-worker you don’t like that much. Because I was already dreading that night’s dinner at the Festival. What would I talk about with a 27-year-old fire-eater, for God’s sake? What would Adam talk about with him?
I focused on my PhD proposal until my phone rang. It was Stuart.
‘They’re at school,’ I said. ‘Essie seemed fairly good today.’ I talked for less than a minute about Lachlan being excited about practising his assembly and Mathilda spilling an entire glass of orange juice down her school dress that morning.
‘Dilimical disaster,’ he said. ‘Dilimical disaster’ is a family phrase for things Mathilda thinks are disastrous but that actually aren’t. ‘And how are you?’
I said good thanks, a PhD, I must be crazy. ‘And how are you?’ I added, as if it was the answer to a trivia question. The penny had finally dropped that he wanted to chat.
‘Fine. Busy.’ Or maybe not. ‘I’ll see you and Adam for coffee Sunday morning, right?’
I’d actually forgotten we were supposed to be meeting him, and I really would have preferred to be alone with Adam on Sunday morning.
But I was not twenty anymore, so I said, ‘Yep. Great. See you at ten.’
*
‘Aunty Kate?’
‘Yes, Essie.’ It was after school, and we were making banana muffins. There were blobs of mixture on the shiny floorboards.
‘What is chocolate actually made of?’
I started to say something about cocoa beans, but before I got to the end, Bec snipped into the room.
‘Kate!’ she said. She was carrying secateurs and some dead roses. ‘The pool gate.’
‘Yes?’ It’s hard for me to open the pool gate from the outside, and once – once – when it was summer and everyone – including Mum and Dad – was in the pool anyway, I propped it ajar when I went inside to the loo. Later that day, Bec had asked me quietly not to do that again. She’d explained it might give the children ideas – they were younger then – which I’d thought was fair enough.
‘Look, can you just, please, can you just ask? I’m more than happy to open it for you as many times as you need. Or Lachlan. He can manage it.’ She was doing a patient-slash-compassionate voice that made me want to tip the muffin mix over her head. Poor smart boring sister, my arse, I thought.
‘I haven’t been in there,’ I said. I indicated my blameless dry hair. ‘Although, we sailed our origami boats the other day, didn’t we, Essie?’ I covered my mouth and raised my eyebrows at Essie in an uh-oh-we-are-in-mega-big-trouble-now gesture. ‘Do you think maybe we didn’t quite shut it behind us?’
‘Well, it was open.’ There was no laughter in Bec’s voice. ‘So, can we all please keep it shut?’
‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
‘And can you maybe go easy on the choc chips? It’d be good if those were even slightly nutritious.’
‘Certainly,’ I said again. She was looking at me, so I picked up the muffin spoon, licked it and then put it back into the mixture. Turns out I’m only understanding and supportive up to a certain point.
‘And I just mopped that floor, Essie,’ said Bec. ‘You’ll have to help your Aunty Kate clean it up before I take you kids’ – her voice changed gear, she found her usual steady, gentle lilt – ‘to Grandma and BFG’s house.’
Dear Bec, I thought. She always tries so hard to be good.
‘Sorry about the floor,’ I said, sincerely. ‘We’ll take care of it before I go.’
I was going to meet Adam at our hotel and then go back out for the dinner with Bec and Ryan. I sighed.
Bec went off, and after a bit, Essie said, ‘I’m a good swimmer now, Aunty Kate. I don’t even need a life jacket anymore.’
‘Really?’ I said. I tipped a bit more milk in. We were doubling quantities and I was pretty sure I’d made a critical miscalculation. ‘Well, you know it’s very important to do whatever Mummy or Daddy say about water, right?’
‘I’m a pretty good little swimmer. And also, why do sharks like yellow?’
‘Do they?’
‘Yes! They love yellow!’
‘Did you also know that elephants do one tonne of poo per week?’ I research fun facts for the kids. It’s mainly Mathilda who’s into them. ‘Which is, like, nearly enough to fill this whole house.’ I was improvising, no doubt incorrectly. ‘Now, one more choc chip each, then let’s get these into the pan.’
As I mopped the floor, I wondered if I could get out of the dinner. I don’t like electronic music or biodegradable plates, and I’m not even that mad on gin or performance art, and most of all, I was very unimpressed by the fire-eater. I thought Bec must be mad. I thought I’d rather eat a fold-out map of Canada. I thought he was a beautiful idiot.
But I was distracted. I should have paid more attention. To him. To Essie. To everything.
*
‘I’m late,’ I said.
We’d checked in to our hotel, and I hadn’t meant to tell him. But he was shaving, and I was warm from my shower, and the words felt so wonderful in my head that they show-offily pranced right out into the informal luxury of our craftsperson-approved bathroom.
Adam wiped his jaw on a folded white towel. Didn’t even rinse his face first. Smiled.
‘Really?’ He laid his razor carefully on the edge of the sink and looked back at me.
‘Yep.’
He stood behind me. He undid my hotel dressing gown and put his warm hands on my tummy. We both looked down, at his middle fingers touching just above my belly button. ‘Be great, wouldn’t it?’ he said. His eyes met mine in the mirror, and he looked so pleased I wished I was twenty-six and could give him five babies. ‘Should we . . . do a test thing?’ His hands were still on my tummy. ‘I could go to the chemist?’
No. No no no no no. Hate tests. Hate false hope.
‘Nah.’ I put my hand on his. ‘It’s only since about yesterday. Let’s just wait till we get home, and then see. Probably it’s nothing – probably just the travel or something.’ I’d definitely been due the day before, though. And I was usually pretty regular. I was usually like clockwork, in fact.
He was watching my face in the mirror. ‘’Course.’ He moved his hands and did a tactful little shrug that would definitely have made me fall in love with him, had I not been already.
I busied myself with my make-up bag.
‘Maybe I won’t drink tonight, though,’ I said, to my blusher. ‘Just, you know. In case. I
’ll have lemonade or soda water or something. And pretend it’s vodka.’
‘Sure,’ he said. Very nonchalantly. Already shaving again.
We hadn’t really talked about it. And I hadn’t even let myself think about it. But weeks before – on the morning after I’d told him I didn’t want him to see other people and he’d said that he loved me – Adam had muttered something about having been tested recently. We were sitting up in a muddle of doona, drinking coffee and eating room-service toast.
‘Well, you’re safe as houses, with me,’ I’d said. Between bites, I somehow ended up telling him about Dave-the-Second and my prolonged period of celibacy. I tried to do it in a way that made me sound as little like a loser as possible, so I didn’t mention the escort, Tara’s brother and the osso bucco, or the golden-skinned lawyer who’d had to be elsewhere. I mean, I’m all for honesty, but there are limits.
‘He seriously took you to his marital home? In bloody Edithvale?’ Adam said, as if that was the main point of the Dave-the-Second story.
I nodded. ‘Maybe he wanted to impress me with the goldy tapware in his en suite?’
Adam quirked his mouth. ‘Sounds like he wasn’t over his wife.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I had never even considered that angle. I looked at my toast and thought about the sixteen dates, and then I thought: plenty of four-limbed people have bad experiences when they try to meet nice men.
‘Well, maybe,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I very much have a clean bill of health. But I’m not – you know, I’m not on the Pill or anything. So . . .’ I chanced a quick look into his eyes.
We both had toast and peanut butter in our mouths. We stared at each other, with our lips closed, chewing and chewing and chewing, and not looking away, not looking away, not looking away and neither of us saying anything. Finally, I had absolutely no alternative but to swallow.
Adam swallowed too.
‘Well,’ he said, when his mouth was empty. ‘I’m game if you are.’
And after that we’d stopped using condoms.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bec
So this is Dark Festival, Bec thought. She liked it even better, this year. In fact, it was really rather wonderful.
Ryan was sitting next to her, in a dim and crowded marquee. When she leaned forward to speak to him, or angled her ear towards his mouth to hear him, her hair grazed his forearm. Outside, red lights glowed in bare plane trees; people in beanies clustered around food stalls and pop-up bars. A candle on their table shone in a little glass; its light bounced off Ryan’s eyes, the jug of warm cider in front of them, her silver bangle.
‘It’s well past eight,’ Ryan said, easily. He poured the last of the cider into her glass.
‘Not like Kate,’ said Bec. ‘To be late.’ She was pleasantly tipsy. ‘Maybe I should text . . .’
But just then they arrived. She gave Kate a hug and Adam a big smile. Kate had said he’d redeemed himself. And who was she to judge, really?
‘G’day mate.’ Adam offered Ryan his hand. Ryan took a second to realise he was supposed to stand up and shake it, and then shot Bec a sorry-I’m-a-juvenile-dufus grin. Bec giggled, and the men were despatched to get drinks.
The sisters sat quietly. In one corner, a woman with a red crew cut started playing a violin. Several silent teenagers made their carefully dressed way past the table. Two children in thermal leggings danced near a fire-pit.
Bec thought of Stuart, alone in his little flat. She had to work quite hard to put the image out of her mind.
*
‘I’m loving that violin,’ said Ryan, twenty minutes later. He was pouring mulled gin out of a jug. Star anise and dried berries floated in it. ‘I queued for ages to get this,’ he told Bec. ‘Next time you can have vodka like your big sister; the place Adam went to served him in about three seconds.’ But the way he said it, Bec knew there was nothing on earth he’d rather do than bring her things she liked. Things like dream-catchers and mint-and-ginger tea and silver bangles and lovely, warm, intoxicating drinks. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ Adam sipped his beer. ‘So, ah, where in New South Wales did you live? Before you came to Hobart?’ he asked Ryan.
‘Nowhere with forest like Tassie,’ Ryan said. He talked about their weekend plans. They were going to Mount Dobson, to take the kids bushwalking. Ryan was keen to walk to Lake Themis on Saturday, and they were planning a technology break.
‘When you heading down?’ Kate said. ‘I thought the weather was meant to be terrible?’
‘We’ll go tonight,’ said Ryan.
‘What about the kids?’ Kate spoke to Bec, apparently confused. ‘Aren’t they asleep?’
‘Oh, we’ll carry them to the car. They’re at Mum’s now. They’ll sleep on the way.’ She tried to sound authoritative. She was a tiny bit drunk, actually. ‘Although maybe,’ she added, to Ryan, ‘we could leave them at Mum’s overnight and drive in the morning?’ She really only felt like going to bed. With him. They could go to his place; she liked it better there. She put her hand on his leg. He held it. He looked at her as he spoke.
‘Long way,’ he said. ‘Boring for them, if they’re awake.’
‘And we’re having all these drinks . . .’ she thought to say. Best to be responsible. Responsible service of alcohol. ‘Better not drive.’
‘I’ve only had two.’ Ryan grinned at her.
Bec put her own drink, very carefully, down on the table. Difficult. The table was on a tiny slant. ‘It’s really raining, isn’t it?’ It really was. ‘Wowey wow.’
Ryan looked at Adam in a what-do-you-suggest-I-do-with-this-delightful-woman? way. She was actually sort of delightful. And no one seemed to need her to do anything right now. Maybe it didn’t matter when they went, actually. Maybe she’d just sleep in the car on the way, and so would the kids, and when they got there Ryan could carry everyone into bed, even her, he always said he could carry her as easy as a seashell, and then she could just sleep and sleep.
‘Wow. Isn’t it just like so, so rainy?’ Had she already said that?
‘Aren’t you just like so, so drunk?’ Kate said, smiling.
Ryan said, ‘Reckon it’s better we go tonight. Then we can walk in the morning.’
‘All right.’ Whatever. Ryan smiled at her. She smiled back at him.
Then she smiled at Kate, who was smiling at Adam.
It was lovely. They were lovely. She was lovely.
She remembered the day Stuart left. His crisp cardboard box. His neatly flipped cuffs. He’d said she’d be sorry, but she was having a lovely time. She was definitely not sorry. Not at all. Certainly not.
Poor Stuart, she thought. He was wrong. Very unusual.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kate
The Festival dinner was over and we were back in our excellent hotel room. Someone had been in and lit lamps and turned down covers and left chocolate fudge on our pillows. (Wrapped, of course. No actual confectionary on the Egyptian cotton.) I was sitting on a chair in my dressing gown, eating my chocolate, wriggling my bare toes and thinking maybe I should stop wearing high heels, even though it would be a wrench.
‘Hey, Kate.’ Adam was casting the numerous bed cushions onto the floor. He had his fudge in his mouth. ‘Something’s niggling.’
‘Have you got a “hunch”, Detective Senior Sergeant?’
He didn’t properly smile. He came and sat down next to me. We swallowed our chocolates.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I reckon that guy is scamming her. The fire-eater. Scamming Bec, I mean.’
‘What? Really? Why?’
‘I’m not sure she’s his type. No offence to your sister.’ He looked extremely apologetic.
‘Too old, you mean?’ (Is being older really an offensive thing? I asked myself, severely.)
‘Too old. Not pretty enough. A mother.’
‘Bec’s very pretty!’ I said. Apparently that was the offensive thing. (Bec is actually very pretty. In fact, at risk of sou
nding unbelievably up myself, in just about any other family, she would have been the Pretty And Also Smart One.)
‘Yes. She is,’ said Adam. ‘Very pretty. And lovely. And, you know, a 38-year-old mother of three.’ He frowned. ‘It’s just unusual, is all I’m saying.’
‘Right.’ Of course now he’d said it, it seemed obvious.
Adam told me that earlier, in the very long queue for their mulled gin, he’d sipped his own beer and nursed my ‘vodka’ and asked the fire-eater a few chatty questions about what he’d done before coming to Hobart, and exactly where his Airbnb property was, and the fire-eater had been ‘evasive’.
‘And later, too. But pretty clever about it,’ Adam said.
‘Wow. You really think?’ I didn’t feel particularly concerned. It felt more like we were in a Nancy Drew-style adventure. (A modern one, with an inclusive feel.) ‘But why would anyone want to scam Bec?’
‘Money. It’s money, sex or drugs that get people into trouble. Almost always.’
‘Or revenge,’ I said, dramatically. I was in Nancy Drew-mode.
‘Revenge is rare as a cause of crime,’ he said. ‘In the general community. Pretty rare, anyway.’ He likes me to know he’s good at his job, I’ve noticed. It’s very sweet.
‘Well, she’s not that well off,’ I told him. ‘They have practically no equity in that house.’
‘He mightn’t know that, though,’ said Adam, reasonably. ‘And there’s another thing. He says his full name’s Ryan John Abbott. What hippy parents gave their kid a middle name like John twenty-odd years ago?’
I wondered briefly how on earth Adam had managed to ask Ryan his middle name while in a queue for drinks at an arts festival. Presumably he’d sounded extremely socially challenged.
‘Maybe it’s sex.’ I felt I was being very sensible. And providing an emotionally intelligent, feminine-type perspective. ‘But not in a bad way. You know, maybe they just have, like, intense physical attraction.’
‘Hmm.’ Still frowning. He rubbed the back of his head.
‘The sex thing’s possible, Adam,’ I said. ‘Sometimes there is just chemistry.’ I looked at him (eloquent, sultry, even insouciant) and we both chortled in a self-satisfied way that I would have found intensely annoying if anyone else had done it. (We were being so unbearable because we had very recently finished enjoying Chemistry.) (For ages.)
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