Starting from Scratch

by Penelope Janu

  Matts pushes back his chair. ‘We have an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mr Chambers says. ‘I’ll send Sapphie a note.’

  When Matts’s phone vibrates on the table, he glances at the screen and so do I. Robert Beresford-Brown.

  As he answers, I walk away.

  I close the door to my room and pull the ribbon out of my hair. I glance at the painting but can barely see the horse because of the tears in my eyes. I tip my face to the pressed metal ceiling, blinking furiously until I can make out the stains on the paint. I’d told myself I wouldn’t cry any more—at least until I was back at home in Horseshoe—so hold back more tears as I take shorty pyjamas out of my bag. I pull them on and put a faded pink sweater over the top.

  I’m cleaning my teeth when there’s a knock on the door. ‘Sapphie.’

  I spit out and rinse.

  Another knock, much louder this time. ‘Sapphie. Let me in.’

  I pluck tissues from the box and blow my nose. When I open the door, Matts scans my face.

  ‘Fuck.’ He lifts his arm and drops it. He focuses on the bed before his gaze comes back to me. He blows out a breath. ‘Can we go to my room?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s bigger.’

  ‘So?’ I sniff and shuffle my feet. ‘You didn’t know what he’d done, did you?’

  ‘No,’ he says, kicking the door closed before standing stiffly in front of it. ‘He leaves tonight for Vietnam. I want to see him face to face. We meet on Friday week.’

  ‘He uses everyone. Including you.’

  His lips clamp together like he’s biting back words. But then: ‘You were fifteen years old. That was different.’

  ‘He insisted he acted to protect me against Mum. And later, to protect me against Gran.’ I turn and face the bed, pick up my dress and fold it precisely. ‘In his warped view, this is the same.’

  ‘Will you challenge him?’

  ‘He threatened to say more about Mum if I did.’ I wrap my ribbon around my hand and lay it on the dress. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to hurt Jacqueline and her boys. I don’t want to be like him.’

  Matts walks to the bathroom and plucks more tissues from the box. He hands them to me over my shoulder, careful not to touch.

  ‘I didn’t trust him, not properly, but I hoped …’ I wipe my eyes and blow my nose, then bunch the tissues in my hand. ‘If he does say anything else, or pretends I’m part of his family, I’ll stick up for myself.’

  ‘Turn around, Sapphie.’

  I shake my head. ‘Gus always says tomorrow’s a brand new day.’ My voice breaks. ‘I want to go to bed and—’

  ‘What about the farmhouse?’

  ‘I’ll have to find somewhere else to live.’ I sniff again. ‘I won’t allow him to hold it over me. I won’t let him manipulate me.’

  He steps closer. Touches my shoulder. ‘Sapphie.’

  As soon as I feel the warmth of his body against my back, I close my eyes. Push and pull. Matts and me. He rests an arm across the tops of my breasts, his fingertips brushing my neck. His other arm lies across my hips. When I breathe out in a shuddery rush, he tightens his hold. He rests his chin on the top of my head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kissa.’

  The strength of his body, the steadiness of his breath, the scent of his skin. He lowers his head and his jaw, rough with bristles, rests against the side of my face. His cheek will get wet.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you alone.’ He speaks softly.

  ‘I’ll be okay.’

  He exhales. And then he grasps my hand, snatches the key from my bedside table and walks to the door—so quickly that I don’t have time to object. When he slams the door behind us, I’m barefoot in my pyjamas, my hand still tightly held.

  ‘Matts! Give me my key.’

  He tugs my hand and strides down the corridor, only letting me go to open the door to his room. It isn’t much larger than mine but instead of a window, it has doors that lead onto the verandah. The curtains blow inwards like silken white butterflies.

  He points to two deckchairs outside. Once upon a time, one would have been navy and the other bottle green. Now they’ve faded to sky blue and sage.

  ‘Sit, Sapphie.’

  I sit upright in my chair, but he leans forward in his. The floorboards slope towards the railing. There are ten streetlights, five on each side of the road. Besides an old cattle dog lying on the footpath, probably waiting for its owner to finish his drink downstairs, the street is deserted. The moon, a shining silver ball, hangs in the sky with the stars.

  My pyjama shorts are very short. I pull them down over my thighs. ‘I don’t want to think about my father.’

  He looks at my face before his eyes slip to my body. He looks away. His jaw is tight. ‘I care about you, Sapphie.’

  ‘I care about you too.’

  He mutters something in Finnish before putting his hands on the arms of the deckchair, standing abruptly and walking to the railing. He leans his forearms on the timber and links his hands. He bends a knee and slips it between two of the posts. From a distance he’d appear to be relaxed but he’s as tense as a tightly coiled spring.

  ‘You don’t trust me.’

  ‘I don’t know how I feel.’

  ‘You say you can’t go back. That’s the problem.’

  When he doesn’t say anything else, I get to my feet and stand next to him. ‘After I left home … I’m sorry I hurt you, Matts.’

  ‘You were young.’

  ‘You visited Gran in the nursing home. You wrote to me. You came to Mum’s funeral. I was seventeen, eighteen, nineteen by then. I should have done better.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I like his mouth—even when it’s tight. I like his cheekbones. I like his scar and the colour of his eyes. I like his honesty. I even like how he’s blunt.

  ‘I should trust you, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Not tonight.’ He closes his eyes for a moment. ‘First the roads, now this …’ He shakes his head. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you in here. You should go back to your room.’

  Across the road from the pub is an antiques shop, a narrow-fronted terrace sandwiched between a hardware store and a bank. In the front window are two tall bookcases crammed with books—a lot of books for a tiny town with trickles of tourists.

  I swallow. ‘Can I stay here?’

  Silence.

  ‘Not—’ I shake my head. ‘Nothing intimate or anything.’ I pull my sweater further down so it covers my hips. I look over my shoulder to the bed, a double like the one in my room with a candlewick bedspread that’s probably older than me. ‘I can sleep on the floor.’

  He walks to the lattice and turns. ‘Why do you want to stay?’

  I open my fingers and squeeze them shut. ‘It’s hard to explain.’ I pull hair from under my collar. ‘We’re not friends like we used to be, but …’

  ‘What?’

  You mean more to me than anyone. You’ve always meant more to me than anyone.

  When tears spring up again, I walk quickly to the door and push aside the curtains. ‘I’ll be downstairs for breakfast at seven. I’ll see you—’

  ‘Wait.’

  I pick up my key from where he threw it on the bed and fumble with the latch on the door. But the moment I get it open, he reaches over my shoulder and clicks it shut it again. He walks to the other side of the room.

  ‘Sleep here while I work. I have a report due early evening Geneva time.’

  ‘Is that where you live?’

  ‘Mostly.’

  ‘What time is it there now?’

  ‘Mid afternoon.’

  The door is old like the pub. Its surface is uneven and patchy with layers of stain and paint. It needs to be carefully sanded back and—

  ‘Take the bed, Sapphie. Go to sleep.’

  CHAPTER

  31

  When I went to sleep, I was lying on my side on the edge of the bed and facing the door. There was plenty of room,
two-thirds of the space, for Matts. I’m no longer clinging to the edge of the bed. I think I’m slap-bang in the middle. It makes sense for the verandah to be on a slope—when it rains, the water has somewhere to go. Under the roofline is different. So why does the floor slope in here? I can’t hear the tapping of keys on Matts’s laptop any more. One of the last things I remember was when he switched off the overhead light. He sat down at the desk again, and worked from the light above the sink in the bathroom. Now that light is turned off too.

  Where is he?

  I slowly roll onto my back. He’s sitting in an upright chair with his feet on the end of the bed. His shoulders are broad. His T-shirt is white. He’s looking straight at me.

  He sighs. ‘Did I wake you?’

  I roll again, grasping the edge of the bed and wriggling towards it. ‘Sorry.’ My voice is muffled. ‘The bed is on a slope.’

  The mattress shifts when he lies down. ‘Stop it,’ he says.

  I try to be smaller. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll fall.’ His touch on my arm is light. It’s simply a warning. So why do I jump like he’s poked me with a cattle prod?

  ‘It’s four am.’ I’m sure he’s speaking through his teeth. ‘I have two hours to get some sleep.’

  ‘Were you working all that time?’

  ‘I finished thirty minutes ago.’ He holds my arm more firmly. ‘Can we fix this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Let go of the mattress.’

  He’s lying on his side. As soon as I do as he says, his hand slides down my arm to my waist. He pulls me towards him and holds my body in place. His chest is on my shoulder blades. Our waists are lined up. My bottom is pressed to his thighs. One of his legs finds a gap between mine and pushes through. It shouldn’t feel right. But somehow it does.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We share the middle.’

  I loop my arm over his and feel the soft fine hairs on his forearm. I try to span his wrist, but my fingers aren’t long enough. They stop short at his pulse and I count the beats.

  ‘Two hours isn’t long.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’d better go to sleep. I didn’t think I would, but I did.’

  He sighs deeply against my back. ‘I’ll talk to Robert.’

  ‘I’ve thought more about it. I think he wanted to teach me a lesson.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  I didn’t plan to be here, lying in bed with his body wrapped around me, but here I am. ‘I was much closer to my mother than my father. He was distant. You knew that, didn’t you? Your father was different. Even though he was just as busy with work.’

  He strokes my arm. ‘He always put my mother and me first.’ He holds my hand.

  ‘I was picking up drugs on the streets. Anything could have happened, so it was natural for my father to put a stop to it. But he used it to punish Mum, to get rid of her. He didn’t know me well enough to see how much that hurt me too.’

  Matts’s grip tightens. He breathes deeply into my hair.

  ‘I grew up a lot when I went to live with Gran. I started to see Mum more objectively; I knew I could help her in safer ways. But then Gran’s kitchen caught fire. It was the same thing all over again.’

  ‘Sapphie—’ He cuts himself off, swallows down words. ‘She couldn’t cope on her own.’

  ‘Gran didn’t wander, and even after the fall she was well in a physical sense. The social worker at the hospital set everything up—food deliveries, cleaning, a carer to visit when I was at school, and to take her shopping—but Robert refused to agree to it. Even though she’d made such sacrifices for him, and he knew how much she loved her garden. I told him she wouldn’t adjust to life without her home, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘He wanted you in London.’

  ‘Which is why he sent Gran away.’

  ‘You told him the fire was your fault. He didn’t believe you.’

  ‘He used my lie against us. He said Gran had made me cover for her. It was … it was the opposite of the person he knew her to be.’ A kookaburra calls out and others join in. It reminds me of home. ‘Gran always thought she’d married well—even though there was no Beresford-Brown money left, and the name meant little in the end. Grandfather was so angry when the university retrenched him, he refused to work again.

  ‘She worked, didn’t she?’

  ‘Full time at David Jones for thirty-one years. She paid her boys’ school fees because Grandfather insisted they go to the same school as their forebears. She supported Robert when he did postgrad at Harvard, and helped Uncle James buy his property. But whenever they visited, they criticised her TV shows and magazines. They said she should stop wasting her pension on craft supplies.’

  ‘Your father believed she’d undermined him.’ Matts draws a circle with his finger on the inside of my hand. ‘I got leave from military service every six weeks. I wanted you in London too.’

  I close my fingers tightly around his hand. His arm between my breasts heats my body through. ‘If I tell you something,’ I say quietly, ‘you won’t tell my father, will you? He could use it against me, especially now. Do you promise?’

  He whispers into my ear: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gran had already fallen when I got home from school.’ His breath is warm on my neck. He turns his hand and links his fingers through mine. ‘She didn’t need so much oil to fry the rissoles; she’d forgotten what to do.’

  ‘She was cooking?’

  ‘For my birthday.’ My voice wobbles. ‘It was my fault. I’d prepared the food and was going to cook when I got home.’

  He pulls his fingers free and gets up on an elbow. ‘Sapphie?’

  ‘I’m getting to it.’

  He rests his cheek on my shoulder.

  ‘I turned off the gas. I picked up the pan. I didn’t notice there was water in the sink. It—’ My voice breaks.

  He presses down on my shoulder and rolls me onto my back. He lays a hand on the side of my face. ‘You were hurt?’

  ‘Robert was already suspicious that the fire was Gran’s fault. If he’d known about the burns it would have been more ammunition, not only against Gran, but Mum, because he held her responsible for me refusing to live with him. That’s why I didn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The nerves were damaged. That’s why there wasn’t much pain at first.’

  He opens his mouth and closes it again. ‘Your breast?’

  I lift my arm and run a hand down my side. ‘Mostly down here, and across. It’s not too bad really, just a lot of scarring. But I was sixteen and I’d developed late. I was self-conscious. And later … My skin is numb there. It feels weird when it’s touched.’

  His frown is clear, even in the shadows. ‘Kate, your grandmother, the burn. You said what had happened with your mother was messed up with other things. Is that what you meant?’

  ‘I couldn’t rely on Mum. Gran was in the nursing home. I wanted nothing to do with my father. And you …’ I clear my throat. ‘It was all tangled up.’

  ‘So you ran.’

  His hair is dark in the shadows, but glimpses of light catch the traces of gold. I push back his fringe.

  ‘When I came to Horseshoe, I didn’t know who I was.’ I run the tip of my finger along his eyebrows, the curved dark lines. It’s tempting to kiss him. But he didn’t want to be alone with me yesterday. ‘The Hargreaves trusted me to work it out for myself.’

  He looks troubled. ‘That’s what you did.’

  I lie on my side again, facing the door. ‘Do you remember my geography assignment? The one about the eagle?’

  He lies down behind me like before, but not as close. When he puts his arm around my waist, I pull it higher so it rests between my breasts again.

  ‘Wedge-tailed,’ he says gruffly. ‘The males and females pair permanently and both look after the eggs. After they hatch, the male feeds the female and the chicks.’
/>   I thread my fingers through his. ‘You never forget anything.’

  He breathes into my hair. ‘I missed you, Kissa.’

  I squeeze his hand. ‘I missed you too.’

  Matts said he’d only get two hours sleep. That means he planned to wake at six.

  No alarm goes off. His breath is soft on my neck. The movements of his chest against my back are steady and even. His arm crosses my front and I hold his hand. I dip my head and run my lips across his knuckles. What would he do if I turned around and woke him? Would he let me kiss his sleepy mouth?

  A television is on next door. The national news jingle filters through the wall. Will my father be on the screen? Will I be there too, playing happy families with Atticus and Alex on their broomsticks?

  Whenever I think about my father and the farmhouse, my chest aches. There’s a deep well of sadness in my heart. I’ll have to move out. Gus’s shed is bigger than his house; he’ll let me store things there. I’ll ask Edward Kincaid if I can keep my horses on the land at Kincaid House until I find somewhere more permanent. My flowers? I take a shaky breath.

  ‘I’ll work something out,’ I whisper.

  Matts’s arm tightens and he nuzzles my neck. One of his legs is wedged between mine. I squeeze my thighs tightly around it.

  He stills. ‘Sapphie.’ A warning.

  I put his finger in my mouth and gently bite. ‘Matts.’

  He makes a sound between a growl and a groan. He presses even closer, his erection long and thick against my lower back. He pulls his fingers free. His hand slides slowly down my arm to my waist and then to my hip. He cups my bottom. His hand slips beneath my shorts. He traces the lacy edge of my underpants with his fingertips.

  I bite a little harder. ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Fuck.’ He sits bolt upright. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’

  I sit too, my legs curled to the side. ‘What’s the matter?’

  His gaze rakes over me. He runs a hand down my leg and takes hold of my foot, trails his thumb along my instep. He’s looking down so I can’t see his face.

  ‘I want you, Sapphie.’

  I stroke his hair. ‘Yes?’

  When he looks up, our eyes lock. But then his gaze swings to the door and he swallows. He rolls off the bed. There’s only a metre of space either side of it. Something hits the wall. An elbow? A knee? He curses again.