‘I want to blend in this afternoon,’ Paige said.
‘Blend in? This afternoon?’
‘The SES thing at the hall. I told you. Sharni was going to help out with the catering, but with her ankle and her wrist the way they are she won’t be able to carry plates or do dishes. I said I’d help while she takes the kids for the night. She did mention planning a DVD marathon for Liam and Mati so you can come along to the event with me.’
‘No. I won’t. I’m not exactly the line dancing type.’
‘There’s no line dancing, Alice.’ The words trickled out on a laugh. ‘At least I hope not. It’s a bit of a do for the SES and the road crew who have been sandbagging and getting the roads open, which by the way will happen day after tomorrow, so we can go any time after that—unless the new sleeping arrangements are working for you,’ Paige said with clear optimism in her voice.
‘You sound more accepting about going home. Something changed your mind? Are you ready to go back to Robert?’
Paige shrugged. ‘Yes and no.’
Alice did her best to decipher the reply. She’d become quite good at reading her daughter’s thoughts over the years. Right now Paige would be thinking about her husband. Yes, Robert was an idiot, but the man was also Matilda’s father and, after all was said and done, family mattered the most to Paige. So much so she was prepared to tolerate her husband’s infidelity, even accepting some blame. Alice knew it took two to tango—or to not tango much at all which, according to the tearful session after Paige’s miscarriage, was the case with their marriage. Struggling with grief and guilt at the time, Paige had confessed to being inconsiderate of Robert’s needs, too obsessed by her own.
Even now she told Alice she felt unsettled—Paige’s word—but did that mean she wanted to be single in her forties and starting again?
Alice didn’t know much about the dating scene today, only the chatter she would hear between the single mothers at Mati’s school. Did Paige want to find herself in the same situation? On the hunt and attracted to a nice man, only to find out he was married, broke, on the rebound, gay, a conman, or any combination thereof? Robert’s only fault was selfish stupidity. As a young couple they’d been truly, madly, deeply in love, and while honeymoons didn’t last forever, the value of love upon which a family’s foundations were built was something precious. Paige had to realise that growing apart as a couple did not destroy those solid foundations. They might shake them a little, but Robert remained stable, familiar, ambitious, a good provider and . . . Had Alice already listed idiot? Was one bad decision on his part enough to toss a marriage away, not to mention her granddaughter’s emotional wellbeing and security? Luckily for them all, Alice was a dab hand at patching.
‘Do you want to expand on “Yes and no,” Paige?’
‘I think I could get used to country life. Bird chatter sure beats the screech of an alarm clock. As for Matilda,’ Paige sighed. ‘What better education?’
Alice had to concede. ‘She certainly is loving it. You know, last night she asked me about the man in the moon and if I thought he might like Mother Nature—who, by the way, is the new most admired woman for Mati’s project.’
‘Really?’ Paige chuckled. ‘That’s adorable.’
Alice had thought so last night, too, until the thought of Mati not knowing how wonderful her Grandma Nancy had been wiped her smile away.
She stepped back to take in her daughter’s outfit, a contemplative finger tapping her chin. ‘Spin,’ she instructed, her finger demonstrating a little whirl of its own. ‘I admit they seem to be sturdy riding boots, but I’ve seen chefs wear similar footwear in commercial catering environments, so I guess they’re practical for working in a kitchen tonight.’
Melancholy had nipped at Alice during Paige’s clumsy, boot-heavy pirouette, reminding her of the gawky young girl in a tutu who at one stage had wanted to be a ballerina when she grew up. Over two years of Saturday morning ballet lessons Alice had played single mother, driving Paige to and from class, videoing the lesson to share with Nancy, whose motivation for anything public had waned. Once vivacious and pretty, illness had greyed the once-glowing complexion, hollowed out Nancy’s plump cheeks and expressive eyes, and sucked away any self-confidence. Come concert time, Alice would have to talk Nancy into accompanying her. They’d wait in the car, then sneak in after the lights dimmed and stand at the back of the theatre, proud parents applauding louder than everyone. As proud as any other couple in the room. As loving as any mother and father. But only ever in the dark.
Alice shook the sad image away. ‘So, Annie Oakley, what time does this little shindig start?’
‘Soon. You’ll come?’ Paige said excitedly. ‘I can wait for you to change.’
‘Into what? A pair of boots? We can’t all pull off cute country. Rather than blend in I’ll look like what I am. You said it yourself.’ Alice waved her hand dismissively. ‘Only more cowboy.’
‘You’ve never looked anything other than sweet, Alice.’
‘To you maybe.’
‘Come on. Wear that shirt I gave you last birthday. The soft pink one with the lovely low neckline. Shows a little cleavage.’
Alice scoffed. ‘Who on earth am I showing a little cleavage for, Paige? I’ll end up spending the entire night fending off one of Banjo’s mates. No, thank you.’
‘Men can’t help it. You’re a gorgeous looking woman. Stands to reason. You could go along and pretend. You might enjoy the attention.’
‘Pretend? You want me to lead men on?’
‘I didn’t mean . . . I was only suggesting . . . Alice, don’t you miss being admired? You never dated anyone after . . . after Mum died. And it’s been years. You need to get out. You need to socialise. You need a friend.’
Alice whooped. ‘I have friendz-ah’, she said, emphasising the plural. ‘Lots.’
‘No, you don’t, and you know that’s not what I meant.’
‘I do know and I think this conversation is over.’
‘But Mum would’ve wanted you to be with someone and be happy.’
‘Paige, my dear, I am happy. I have everyone and everything I need. Your mother was my one great love and I’d rather keep that memory.’ Alice stood. ‘I’m going to make you a snack. I know you well enough. You’ll work rather than eat. You need to eat.’
‘Only because I love you so much am I going to shut up.’ Paige walked over to peck her on the cheek and Alice wanted to catch the moment and pop it in her memory jar, screw the lid down tight and keep it forever, because if anyone discovered the secret she was keeping, how much would Paige love her then? ‘If you’re certain you won’t change your mind. Small town doesn’t necessarily mean small minds.’
‘That’s all well and good but I’m happier reading storybooks and watching DVDs with the children. Speak of the little munchkin . . .’
Mati propped in the kitchen’s archway. ‘You look funny, Mummy.’
Paige groaned and looked pleadingly at Alice.
‘Matilda, I was thinking your mum looks a bit Country Kelly-ish. Remember that doll you loved?’ Two Christmas stockings ago.
‘Where’s Liam?’ Paige asked her daughter.
‘He’s outside playing marbles. He doesn’t read. Look what I found.’
When Mati did a little jig and waved the small book, Paige gave Alice a look that said I-told-you-she-was-excited.
‘Hold on, sweetie, I’m getting your mum something to eat.’
‘Thanks, Alice, but I’m sure there’ll be no shortage of food and I’d rather be early than late. I promise I’ll eat. Looks like you’ve got one of those storybooks to read. Bye, sweetie.’ Paige cuddled her daughter, passing the book to Alice before kissing her hurriedly. ‘Make sure Nana Alice reads to the end.’ It was a family joke. Alice always fell asleep when she read to Mati.
Paige grabbed the car keys from the table.
‘You make sure he feeds you,’ Alice called out, ‘It’s the least he can . . .’ The screen door banged
shut, ‘. . . do.’
With a sigh, Alice dropped into the kitchen chair to examine the little book with the wind-up key on the cover. The early childhood kind, with only half a dozen pages made from layers of thick card glued together, had a cut-out shape in the middle repeated on every page, like a window through to the inside back cover. Each page she turned introduced a tactile reading experience: fake patches of fuzzy horsehair, green grass, pretend hay and what used to be a plastic bubble of blue liquid in a watering trough, now a shrivelled-up mass. The last page had two rubber patches that when depressed under Mati’s tiny finger played different sounds: one a whinnying horse, the other a bizarre bagpipe sound. Matilda happily activated the noise over and over, laughing and laughing, pressing and pressing, while Alice stared at the die-cut at the book’s centre in the unmistakable shape of a horse, then ran a trembling index finger over the clump of dried glue.
‘And see, Nana?’ her granddaughter tugged at the little book.
‘What is it, Matilda?’
‘See, Nana? Bean fits in that little hole.’ Matilda waved her little stuffed horse over the book’s cover before slipping the horse snuggly into the die-cut shape.
How could something as everyday as a toy book and a patch of dried glue make Alice grip her chest with one trembling hand? The other gripped the book.
‘Read to me, Nana. Read to me.’
‘Let me have Bean, Matilda.’ Alice wrangled the stuffed horse from her granddaughter’s grip with enough force to render the child silent, immediately turning the one-sided toy over in her hand.
The third-generation heirloom had undergone various procedures, mostly in an attempt to replicate the missing features of a toy meant to stay glued to a book. The animal’s off-side had remained void of features for years: no left ear, no left eye, half-painted hooves and a one-sided saddle over a tartan saddle blanket. After Paige’s stroke left her with sensory deficiencies and partial numbness down her left side, Bean had become a kind of quasi recovery omen. Only last week, in preparation for the trip, Alice had been instructed to sew two new eyes—‘with eyelashes this time, Nana’—to replace the moving black and white stick-on type from a previous procedure. The only thing Alice hadn’t been able to replicate to her satisfaction on the blank side was the saddle, settling for a fabric marker pen to camouflage the patch of cracked glue just above the horse’s girth.
‘Gimme, Nana, gimme.’ Matilda tugged as cramps threatened Alice’s shaking hands, her unintentional grip on the book heightening her granddaughter’s frustration.
‘No snatching, Matilda! How many times have I told you?’
Her granddaughter flinched at Alice’s uncharacteristic anger, the quivering-lipped child running from the kitchen. Alice should have chased after her, but she didn’t have the physical or mental capacity to deal with a crying child at that moment, even if that crying child was her beloved Matilda.
She needed to think.
She needed to tell herself to relax.
She needed . . .
Tea!
Tea would calm the barrage of possibilities pummelling Alice’s imagination. Then she’d heat some scones to woo Mati back. Alice’s reaction had been confusing for the child, not to mention unwarranted. It was, after all, only a book; no doubt one of thousands in circulation across the country. Finding such a book here did not mean this was Bean’s book or Nancy’s house, or that somewhere in Coolabah Tree Gully—right now and all grown up—was the reason Nancy had cried herself to sleep at night, woken screaming in the early hours of the morning, and faked happiness every time Paige celebrated another birthday. This book, with its silly sounds and tactile elements, did not mean Alice was close to finding the twin Nancy had left behind, the one whose name she’d uttered with her last breath, the secret Alice had promised to never tell.
What happened that night had been Nancy’s secret, Nancy’s lie, one Alice held just as tightly after all these years.
Why?
Because she loved Nancy, that’s why. Even more, if it was possible, Alice loved the family Nancy had gifted her. Having to face questions that had no acceptable answers, losing Paige and Matilda’s trust—their loyalty, their love—did not bear thinking about. Without them, Alice’s sole purpose in life would cease. She’d be alone, with only her memories. But memories did not comfort you in your old age or provide a reason to get out of bed every morning. Sometimes Alice missed Nancy so much, still, that she needed reasons to face another day. Paige and Matilda were those reasons.
Alice Foster would never survive loneliness. She was a woman born to care, in her element when protecting the sick, the weak and the vulnerable. That quality had drawn her to nursing in the first place, and those protective instincts were why she’d been drawn to Nancy that first day. What had started out as friendship—Nancy fulfilling a need in Alice’s life and vice-versa—soon turned to lust, then, finally, blithe, crazy love. Nancy’s unpredictable sleeping patterns and other evidence of a traumatic past only came to light after Alice had been well and truly hooked. And while the carer in Alice had been tempted to press Nancy for details about the nightmares, she let herself be satisfied with the general account of how Nancy had left a vengeful husband and a quiet life in a small country town to run away to the city with her Italian lover, Teresa. At the time, Nancy had needed safety and reassurance from Alice, not an inquisition. Protecting Nancy was what Alice did. The rest could wait. They’d have a lifetime of sharing ahead of them.
For a long time all Alice knew was that there’d been two babies. Twins. Not identical—spurring on Alice’s quest to understand more about the birth anomaly—just same-day siblings torn apart in shocking circumstances. What had intrigued Alice from a medical perspective was Nancy’s description of the babies as being as different as day and night. ‘Like summer and winter, as distinct as shadow is to light,’ she’d say in a melancholy way, before silent tears tipped over and onto her cheeks. Eventually she stopped reminiscing—to Alice anyway. Around the same time, Nancy stopped going to public places, including shopping centres, ballet classes, sports fields, school concerts. Alice guessed it was to stop herself looking for familiar facial features in anyone remotely around the same age as Paige.
From the occasional snippet over time, combined with restless utterances and mutterings and cries each time the nightmare replayed in Nancy’s sleep, Alice eventually pieced together the events of that night. When Nancy finally decided to purge her memory, telling Alice every heart-wrenching detail, making her promise to never tell a soul, the scene had actually played out in Alice’s mind like an old midday movie she’d watched numerous times. That probably explained why Coolabah Tree Gully’s countryside seemed so familiar.
Alice thought about Nancy’s constant anxiety in crowds. All the wondering . . .
Was that . . . ?
Could it be . . . ?
Looking down at the little novelty book on her lap, that uncertainty and edginess was now Alice’s.
Could it be . . . indeed!
On their first night in Coolabah Tree Gully, in her hotel room, Alice had vowed to start protecting Paige a little more fiercely. What happened to that vow? Where was her daughter now? With a stranger, a man Alice had seen from a distance, someone whose appearance at the time had resulted in an uneasy feeling in her chest. Paige had giggled like a schoolgirl, explaining how she and Aiden had rescued the cow by working without words, a well-oiled machine . . . And tonight, going to so much trouble with her appearance . . .
That uneasy feeling inside Alice tripped, a sudden gasp forcing a hand to her chest, both her palpitating heart and the lie banging away to be set free.
And such a good lie it was, too.
One best forgotten.
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
Michel de Montaigne
15
Alice
Was the phrase ‘a good lie’ not the ultimate oxymoron?
Alice should kno
w. She’d been successfully telling good lies her whole life, which meant she was very good at them. She also knew the closer to the truth, the easier the lie was to keep, although easy was probably not the word Alice would apply in this case. No lie is easily kept from the people we love. In the case of Nancy’s lie—the secret entrusted to Alice—the facts were one degree away from the truth. Maintaining the deception all these years had been too easy.
Paige had been so young they could simply avoid the truth, pre-empting questions and concocting reasonable explanations to cover things like her conception, and how the twin on Paige’s birth certificate had died from an illness, aged eighteen months. As Alice grew to understand what really happened to the twins, Nancy’s nightmares—and Paige’s—had begun to make sense. But by far the most poignant thing about that awful night had been how the uncaring decision of one person—Nancy’s neighbour and lover, Teresa—had selfishly sliced a wedge from the hearts of everyone else involved, including Teresa’s own family. She had run off that night, planning to leave her child behind and expecting Nancy to do the same.
She didn’t.
What Teresa hadn’t factored in was the effect their escape from their marriages that one traumatic night would have on Nancy. Once in Sydney, clinging to her grief as tightly as she now held her only baby, Nancy had refused to leave Paige alone with strangers for even a night, her actions robbing Teresa of the big city life she’d set her heart on. Within a matter of months, when everything got too hard, the self-seeking woman walked away from Nancy.
Alice had always wondered, was the affair so intense and their desires so selfish that Nancy had actually considered leaving her children behind with their father that night? Had Nancy led Teresa to think she would, only changing her mind at the last minute, losing precious time to gather what she’d need before bundling the pair into the car? The latter seemed more in keeping with the loving mother Alice knew Nancy to be. About her Italian lover she never knew very much at all; only that Teresa had moved from the city into an adjacent Coolabah Tree Gully farmhouse with her husband and the two women had quickly found common ground. The new mothers met regularly throughout summer that year for tea and scones while their hard-working husbands tended their properties. The women discussed the highs and lows of first-time parenthood, discovered a shared love of books and music, baked cakes together for CWA functions, swapped recipes, nattered over drinks at the pub, even getting both families together to celebrate birthdays and special occasions. Teresa found something with Nancy—a camaraderie to make up for the family she was missing and the long and lonely days of country life. Over one sizzling summer, their relationship burned—slow at first, unfolding right under their husbands’ noses.
Season of Shadow and Light Page 19