Upside Down Inside Out

by Monica McInerney

  And finding out once and for all exactly what happened between her and Martin eight years ago?

  No, no, there was no need to bring any of that up. It was a long time ago. She’d got over it. And she was sure Lainey wouldn’t want to talk about it anyway.

  Chicken.

  She wasn’t being chicken. She just didn’t want to spoil this holiday, for either of them.

  And besides, the issue wouldn’t arise anyway. There’d be no men to come between them this time, would there?

  Joseph shifted in his seat again, trying once more to find a comfortable position. Was Australia on the other side of the planet or the other side of the solar system? They’d been flying for more than ten hours already and were still nowhere near Singapore. It would have helped if he’d been able to unscrew his legs and put them in the overhead locker. Or if he’d been three foot tall rather than six foot tall. He felt like a battery hen.

  At least he’d finished his research into the comfort level of long-haul economy seats. It had been very simple. There was no comfort level. Perhaps he should have followed Doug and Shorts’ example and drunk himself into alcohol-induced unconsciousness. They were now snoring loudly beside him. He reached up and switched on the overhead light. If he couldn’t sleep, he’d read.

  Twenty minutes later he put the book down again. It was no good. He wasn’t concentrating. He’d read the same page five times. There wasn’t room in his head for a story. It was already filled with thoughts about his father.

  He leaned down, took out the photograph of Lewis from the bag at his feet and looked at it again. He wondered where it had been taken. Who had taken it. There was countryside in the background, the edge of a building, but it was difficult to make out any details.

  He could see a resemblance between them. The eyes, was it? Or the shape of the face. Something, in any case. What would Lewis’s voice be like? he wondered. He’d been living in Australia for many years now. Would he have an Australian accent?

  He should have asked Kate more about him. As a child he’d had plenty of questions about Lewis, about why they’d divorced. Sometimes Kate had answered, sometimes she’d seemed too upset. “It was very complicated, Joseph. But it wasn’t your fault, I promise you that.” It was all she’d say. If it wasn’t his fault, why hadn’t Lewis been in contact with him then? He’d asked that question more than once. “It was very complicated,” Kate would repeat. He’d finally stopped asking.

  But now here was his chance to get some answers. He looked at the address on the back of the photograph again. The Clare Valley, South Australia. He made his decision. He was going to go there.

  Eva looked at her watch. What a shame, only another two hours to go before they reached Singapore. Then she’d hit the ground with a bump, in more ways than one. How on earth would she cope with economy class from Singapore to Melbourne now that she’d had a taste of the high life?

  “Orange juice, madam?” the flight attendant said beside her.

  She smiled up at him. “Would a glass of champagne be completely out of the question?”

  As they started the descent into Singapore and Doug gave another shuddering snore beside him, Joseph made one more decision. As soon as they arrived in Singapore, he was going to the ticket desk and paying for an upgrade for his flight to Sydney.

  And he was never flying economy class again.

  CHAPTER 8

  Eva spotted Lainey just seconds after she came through the automatic doors into Melbourne airport. Lainey was hard to miss, waving wildly from the back of the crowd.

  Several people turned to watch as they hugged each other: the tall, tanned woman, her dark brown hair cut short to frame her face; the shorter, pale-skinned, dark-eyed woman with the long black plait.

  “Look at you, you gorgeous thing. I can’t believe you’re actually here.” Lainey was nearly in tears.

  “Get away out of that,” Eva laughed at her. “Didn’t I always threaten to do it? And look at you. Have you just come from the Businesswoman of the Year Awards, or do you always look like this?”

  Lainey had come straight to the airport from her office. She glanced down at her work clothes, a modern tailored suit and very high shoes. “These old things? Oh no, this is my jogging outfit. Now, come on, let’s get you home. I’m sure that flight was murder.”

  “Not all of it, actually.” Eva quickly filled Lainey in on her business-class experience. “It made the last leg bearable, I just kept reminiscing.”

  “Well, now, don’t you be getting any high and mighty ideas with me,” Lainey laughed as she grabbed Eva’s suitcase and went striding out to the carpark. She started climbing up the stairs to the third level. “Come on, Evie, the lifts here take years,” she said over her shoulder as she set a cracking pace, talking all the while.

  They walked past two rows of cars before Lainey stopped next to a very flash sports car and started fumbling in her bag for keys. “Hold on a second, I’ll just open up the boot.”

  She noticed Eva’s expression. “Go on, you’re impressed, aren’t you?”

  “Very.”

  “Then I’m sorry to disappoint you.” Lainey turned to the car parked beside it, a small red hatchback. “This one’s actually mine.”

  As they drove out of the carpark onto the freeway, Eva felt like a child on her first car trip. She waited for her first real glimpse of Australia, her nose practically pressed against the window. The sky was huge. The trees outside looked different. The light was brighter.

  Lainey smiled at her. “Well, Miss Newly-arrived-from-Ireland, your first impressions?”

  “That blue stuff, up in the air, what’s that called? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it at home.”

  “We call it the sky here in Australia. Pretty, isn’t it? You have a gray version of it in Ireland, I believe.”

  “Oh yes, so we do. Ours produces water, as well.”

  “Really? How clever.”

  It was how Eva had imagined America to look, not Australia. The big blue sky. Wide freeways. Beyond them groups of detached houses, each of a different design, all with their own good-sized garden, not like the rows and rows of identical houses that made up many of Dublin’s housing estates. But not a kangaroo or red sandy desert in sight. It was quite a disappointment.

  The half-hour drive was a jumble of quick conversations, half-sentences, rushes of questions. Speaking in headlines, Lainey called it. As they got closer to the forest of tall buildings in the city center, she finally put a stop to it. “I can’t drive and concentrate at the same time and I’ll just ask you all the same questions tonight anyway, I know. Shall I take you for a quick tour instead? You’re probably so jetlagged you won’t even remember it, but I’m trying to be the ideal hostess.”

  “That’d be brilliant. But just speak slowly, will you, till I get used to that Australian accent coming out of your mouth. I keep thinking you’ve been taken over by an alien being.”

  “Oh, sure now, love, is this better? I can speak in the tongue of the auld country at the drop of a hat, you’ve only to ask now, do you hear?” Lainey answered in a stage Irish accent.

  Eva laughed. She remembered the first time she’d heard Lainey’s new Australian accent, during a phone call years before. “I had to do it,” her friend had explained from Melbourne. “You try and survive in an Australian school with an Irish accent. All the teasing. Tirty-tree this and tirty-tree that. It was driving me bananas.”

  Lainey’s tour of Melbourne’s city center went past in a flash. She pointed out gracious old buildings with iron-lacework balconies, surrounded by gardens and parks. The long streets were lined with leafy oak trees, alluring shops side by side with elegant restaurants. The footpaths were crowded with people. It reminded her of London, Eva decided, all stylish and bright and bustling. London with bright green and yellow trams. And clean streets. And much better weather.

  Lainey was watching Eva’s reactions with great enjoyment. “It’s not as speccy as Sydney, I know, but I lo
ve it.”

  “Speccy? As in speccy four-eyes?”

  Lainey laughed. “Lesson one in how to speak like an Australian. Abbreviate everything. Speccy is short for spectacular. Now, whistlestop tour over, time to see your home for the next couple of weeks.”

  She expertly turned the car back in the other direction, whipping along to get past a tram and calling out more landmarks as she drove past them. “You won’t remember any of these but at least I’ll know I’ve done my job properly. That’s the Melbourne Cricket Ground there and the Tennis Centre to the right, that big white thing. This city is sports mad, you’ll discover. And that’s the river there. If you think the Liffey is bad, wait till you have a good look at the Yarra. It flows upside down, with the mud at the top.”

  A left turn and a right turn and they were driving down another street, this one lined with Asian shops and restaurants. Piled outside the shops were brightly colored displays of fruit and vegetables—mangoes, bananas, pineapples and green leafy bunches. The windows were covered in handwritten signs in Asian lettering. Roast ducks and chickens were hanging in the spotlit front windows. There were family groups strolling along, dark-haired kids playing up, running in and out of shop doorways past elderly women sitting on low chairs in the shade.

  “This apparently used to be a real Greek area in the fifties,” Lainey explained, slowing the car so Eva could take it all in. “Then the Greek families moved on to other areas of the city and the Vietnamese people moved in here and took their place. This street’s like a haven for each new wave of immigrant groups.”

  “And where’s the Irish haven?”

  “Every pub, Evie, surely you know that yourself. No, we’ve infiltrated their very marrow by this stage. Scratch most Australians and you’ll find a bit of green blood.”

  Minutes later Lainey pulled into the curb in front of a row of three-story apartments. Eva guessed it had once been an industrial area, with old warehouses now beside newly built apartment complexes.

  Lainey climbed out, moving around quickly to open Eva’s door for her. “Welcome to the very fashionable suburb of Richmond. I usually park in the underground carpark, but three flights of stairs will be enough with your case as it is. What have you brought with you, for God’s sake—the Rock of Cashel?” All this was said as Lainey dragged the case out of the boot and started hauling it up the stairs to the third floor. She stopped at the final landing, unlocked the door and threw it back dramatically. “Here it is, Evie, home sweet home.”

  Eva leaped back as something small and black brushed past her legs and ran out through the door.

  “Oh, bloody hell, not again. Hang on, Evie.” Lainey turned and ran down the stairs, shouting something that sounded like “Hexie” to Eva’s ears. A few minutes later she was back, clutching a little black furry bundle against her chest. She grinned. “Well, that’s a more dramatic introduction than I’d planned, but here he is—my new pet. What do you think?”

  Eva took a very big step back.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Lainey groaned. “I completely forgot. You’re scared of cats, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not scared.” Eva was indignant at the idea.

  “Just…”

  “Nervous? Uneasy? Shall I get the thesaurus?”

  “Very funny. No, it’s none of those things. I’m just not used to them, that’s all.”

  “It’s your sister’s fault, if you ask me. Her and her asthma. Depriving you of pets as a child. A terrible state of affairs. Wasn’t it, Rexie?” She rubbed her cheek against the kitten’s fur.

  Eva pulled a face. How could Lainey do that? “Rexie, did you say? I thought you were calling him Hexie. That you’d joined a witches’ coven and just hadn’t broken it to me yet.”

  Lainey laughed. “Hexie? Oh no, it’s much more interesting than that. When I first got him, you see, sometimes he would try to mew but no sound would come out. You’d just see this wide-open mouth and spiky little teeth. And he reminded me of those old dinosaur movies—you know, the ones using time-lapse photography, with the plastic models opening their mouths and giving those long roars?”

  Eva slowly nodded, wondering if she could blame the jetlag for this conversation.

  “So that’s why I called him Tyrannosaurus Rex. Rex for short.” Lainey beamed at her.

  Eva had thought she knew Lainey well. Strong, authoritative Lainey. No-nonsense Lainey. The sort of woman who would have an alsatian for a pet. Or a forthright toucan. But a small black kitten? Called Tyrannosaurus Rex?

  “Well, Evie, what do you think of him? Isn’t he sweet?”

  Eva looked at Rex. Rex looked at Eva and gave a slow blink. “Oh yes, he’s gorgeous. Adorable. Straight off a chocolate box.”

  “And you could grow to love him, couldn’t you?”

  Rex was now looking right at Eva, his tongue sticking out, halted mid-lick. Eva was tempted to poke her own tongue back at him. “I’ll certainly do my best.”

  “And you wouldn’t mind looking after him while I’m away?”

  Lainey hadn’t mentioned this in any of the pre-flight phone calls. “You want me to grow to love him and look after him? What does look after mean, exactly? Feed him? Talk to him? Pat him?”

  “Could you? Would you? Please?”

  “Tell you what, Lainey, how about I pay to put him in a cat holiday home while you’re in Brisbane? I could go and visit him every week. Bring him photos of you to look at.” Eva was only half-joking.

  “No way. I’ve only had him a few weeks. He’s only just learned this is his home. If he went to a cat home I’d have to start from scratch all over again when I came back. He’d be psychologically disturbed.”

  “Lainey, Rex is a kitten. Not your five-year-old son.”

  “I can’t even joke about it. That’s why I was especially delighted that you decided to come here.” Lainey groaned. “I’m sorry, that sounded terrible. The main thing was seeing you, of course. But it also meant Rex could stay here, in his new house. It really would have set us both back if he’d had to leave home so soon.”

  “What would you have done if I hadn’t come over? You weren’t seriously going to take him to Brisbane with you?”

  “Well, actually I did consider it. Then I did a deal with my neighbor Adam downstairs. He’d take Rex down to his flat while I was away and look after him there. The layout’s the same, and the view from the window is almost the same, so I hoped it wouldn’t be too disorienting for Rex. And in return I’d invite Adam up for dinner when I got back. He says he feels like he’s at my dinner parties anyway, we’re always so noisy, so he may as well come up and enjoy the food. And he’s always telling me he loves cats.”

  “That cat-sitting just sounds like a ruse for him to get to know you better. It sounds to me like he fancies you.”

  “Yes, I think he does.”

  Eva noticed Lainey wasn’t even surprised at the idea. It was as if she expected it. But of course she did, because men always fell in love with Lainey, didn’t they? In Ireland as well as Australia. Eva pushed down a memory that was trying to force itself to the surface.

  “But now poor Adam has missed his chance because you’re here, you gorgeous thing,” Lainey said as she put Rex on the floor. “And you don’t mind looking after him, do you? Not really?”

  Eva knew full well she didn’t really have a choice. She looked at her friend, all beaming good humor and enthusiasm. “Of course I don’t mind,” she said, giving in. It was usually simpler in the long run.

  “You’re a star, Evie.” Lainey hugged her again. “And look at you. You look great, really great. That skin of yours is like fresh cream. I’m all leathery like a crocodile now, too much sun.”

  Eva shook her head. Lainey was not in the least bit leathery. “You look fantastic. Like you should be a model in an ad for a new deodorant or track shoe or something.”

  “Enough of that flattery. Come on, let me show you around.”

  Eva’s house in Stoneybatter could have fitted t
wice into Lainey’s apartment, which took up the entire floor of the building. Lainey proudly showed it off—a large kitchen and dining area, her bedroom, with an ensuite bathroom complete with spa bath.

  “And this is your bedroom.” Lainey took her by the hand and opened the door with a flourish. It was a large room, with a big window overlooking a park opposite, with factories and storage buildings beyond. The double bed was piled with pillows and cushions, the wardrobe open, showing plenty of empty coat hangers and hanging space, ready for Eva’s things. There were three vases of flowers.

  “This is just fantastic, Lainey. Thanks a million. For all of this.”

  “It’s my pleasure. My house is your house. Now, come out here again, I want to show you the best bit.”

  As they walked back through the kitchen, Lainey pointed at one of the shelves, covered in framed photos. “I’m dying to show you all those as well. They’re all of you and me, through the years. I had a ball going through all the photos, choosing the best ones of us.”

  Eva picked up the closest one, a black and white shot of the pair of them, aged about six, dressed in their school uniforms and staring solemnly into the camera. Beside it was a Hallowe’en night photo, Eva dressed as a witch, Lainey as an angel, both aged ten. Another of them as teenagers, dressed in sunglasses and lipstick. They’d probably been pretending to be famous pop stars or actresses.

  Lainey was practically skipping with impatience. “Evie, later, there’s plenty of time for photos, come and see this first.”

  Eva had just turned in Lainey’s direction when a large frame at the back caught her eye. She picked it up. She hadn’t seen this photo in years. Not since she’d ripped her own copy up.