She eased her trembling body back onto the bed hoping sleep would consume her and when she woke for real in a few hours’ time, she’d wake up in Berowra in the security of her own bed, in her own house, the bad dream over. There’d be the sound of her telephone ringing and Paige’s voice telling her, ‘Prepare for incoming’; the signal for Matilda’s approach across the backyard to spend time in the kitchen with her Nana Alice.
But unlike Paige, Alice rarely dreamed. Then again, Paige’s dreams weren’t the result of fantasy or hallucination either; they weren’t—as Robert would suggest—her overactive imagination; neither were the screams that accompanied them those of a mother desperate to keep holding her stillborn baby boy, which is how the counsellor had explained them. Alice knew that what Paige relived during those early morning nightmares was that awful night: of a distraught mother and her terrified twins being torn from each other’s grasp. Alice knew because Nancy had dreamed too, waking at the same time: crying, breathless, shaking. Without looking at a clock, Alice always knew the time. Always 2 am.
Alice shivered, even though the breeze buffeting the curtains tonight was warm. Sleep would not be forthcoming, not while her ears strained towards the hum of conversation in the paddocks below her bedroom window.
One question needed an answer: Was she obligated to protect the deceptions of the dead when the truth might somehow help the living? Opening this Pandora’s Box would most likely bring more harm than good. Nancy had closed the lid on that part of her life, and on her daughter’s, for good reason and she’d entrusted Alice—the secret keeper—with the key.
Alice’s thoughts shifted to The Keeper of Secrets, a novel that had made it onto her book club’s reading list last year. She’d upset a few members one night with her discussion point, subsequently bringing the meeting to an abrupt and rather depressing close.
Amid frenzied book club critiques, including: ‘Mesmerising!’, ‘Stellar read’, ‘Her best yet’, Alice simply asked the question . . .
‘Would the book have been so readily embraced by readers with a different title?’ The gushing stopped, curious faces fixed on Alice. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I loved the novel. The author is a brilliant storyteller. All I’m saying is that the words ‘the keeper of secrets’ have such romantic overtones. What if the book was simply called: Liar? Would our book club have chosen such a book? Would we be so casually revelling in the romance of keeping lifelong secrets that have the potential to impact so many lives? Lives that would otherwise be—’
Silence.
‘Well, are you just going to sit there?’ Alice said, looking at the eight faces aghast. ‘This is a book club isn’t it? We’re not discussing rocket science, for Pete’s sake. Do you agree or not?’
Alice expected not.
Unsurprisingly, the book club had not invited her back since, not that she’d mentioned that to Paige.
None of those women had been real friends anyway. They didn’t understand the underlying cause of Alice’s outburst that night, or that lying was what Alice had been doing all her life in one way or another. It also wasn’t those women she cared about now. Alice only cared that all these years she’d been lying to Paige. She’d chosen to keep the secret long past Nancy’s passing; revealing the truth at this point would only flag Alice as deceptive, even prompting Paige to wonder what other untruths waited in the wings for her and Matilda. Alice knew trust was everything to her daughter and always had been. Watching the impact of Robert’s betrayal had reinforced that.
So, while there might be no obligation, Alice would keep the secret she’d promised Nancy for as long as she could. She hoped—prayed—that should Paige’s curiosity about the photograph lead to more questions, that she’d find the answers to appease, and for one simple reason . . .
There would be too much to lose if she told the truth.
Alice tossed the sheet aside, exasperated by both the hot flush and her growing anxiety. Without sleep her overactive mind would take her to all the wrong memories. With sleep she would at least find some relief from the thoughts constantly pounding her brain.
She was up and staring out the window again, popping two paracetamol tablets from the blister pack into a sweaty palm. How could the two girls be standing so close and not see what Alice saw? What were they talking about? And how could they not know each other? Didn’t twins have special, extrasensory perception? Isn’t that what Alice had read in one of those tabloidy magazines in a doctor’s waiting room one day? A true-life story claimed the identical girls had no knowledge of each other, yet they’d given their children—born on the same day—the same names. The story went on to explain the twins shared the same food allergies, lived in identical houses decorated with identical furniture, had the same favourite colours and lucky numbers . . . The list went on. If Alice recalled correctly, the next story in the magazine had been about a man with three testicles. True or not, exaggerated or not, the twin article had stuck in her memory. So too, unfortunately, had the man with three testicles story.
A few sips from the water bottle by her bed downed the pills and Alice resumed her spying on the two women in the paddock, another question burning . . .
Nature or nurture?
Was this not the biggest test of the theory touted in texts and demystified in doctorates? By the paddocks right now was Alice’s very own research project, and in the next room something even more important.
Alice donned her dressing gown and padded down the hall to check on Matilda sleeping peacefully, taking a silent oath there and then that nothing would take her granddaughter away.
32
‘Did you sleep well?’ Alice enquired as Paige eased into a chair at the kitchen table.
‘Sort of. You?’
Alice didn’t answer one way or the other, saying instead, ‘I heard Matilda crying early hours of this morning. Bad dream?’
‘More likely too much Liam with his Battlestar Galactica and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Here, let me make the tea for a change. You sit.’ Paige lifted the newly acquired op shop ceramic pot from the table and refilled the kettle with water from the tap. ‘I hope this monster nightmare thing is a phase and not a genetic trait passed on from mother to daughter.’
‘Of course it’s a phase,’ Alice said with confidence.
Paige returned to the iPad on the table and Alice felt her shoulders droop. ‘I’ve been reading up on dreams and their meanings.’
‘Hmm?’ Alice hummed, tired from worry and lack of sleep. Even more tired of seeing the annoying iPad device make an appearance at all hours of the day and night. Could they not have breakfast without a mobile phone or an iPad taking a place at the table? Still, her daughter seemed keen to share whatever she’d found out about dreams and Alice would need to look and listen to everything Paige was doing and saying carefully until they got out of this town.
‘Dreams are the result of stimuli.’ Paige read directly from what she called the Wiki website—whatever that was. ‘And listen to this. The word “nightmare” evokes the modern word for a female horse, but the terms are wholly unrelated.’
‘Is that right?’
‘The word derives from the Old English “mare”, a mythological demon or goblin that torments human beings with frightening dreams. Subsequently, the prefix “night” was added to stress the dream aspect.’
‘Fascinating.’ Alice feigned interest, struggling to stay focused without her morning cuppa.
She knew about Paige’s nightmares. She’d identified with the utterances the first time the child had woken up shouting. So had Nancy, only she’d chosen ignorance, insisting they were night terrors and that they’d stop once Paige found other things to dream about.
‘She was too young to remember. Her dreams have nothing to do with what happened,’ Nancy had maintained every time Alice tried to discuss the matter. ‘She’ll grow out of them.’
Far from going away, puberty ramped the nightmares up a notch. Then, not long after Paige’s marriage to
Robert, they stopped. Alice remained hopeful a happy marriage was the cure-all and she could finally put to rest the nagging feeling that Nancy’s past and her secret would one day ruin everything. The day Paige told Alice the dreams were back, she guessed the return was a response to one or more stressful triggers at that stage in her daughter’s life; such as juggling a career and first time motherhood.
Then there was the day Mati’s preschool had emailed an alert to all parents after a student reported ‘a weird man in a Mr Whippy van’. Around the same time the ‘Sixty Minutes’ program had aired a report of interviews with previous victims of failed child abductions. With their voices and faces digitally distorted to protect their identity, the victims told of their terror at being dragged away, and how they’d fought back, clinging to anything they could, screams still haunting them years later. Paige’s nightmares about someone abducting Matilda increased around the same time and she whipped her daughter out of preschool. When the block of land at the back of Paige’s Berowra house came up for sale, Alice found herself with an offer too wonderful to refuse—a home and the job of before and after school Nana for Matilda.
‘That tea is not going to make itself, Paige,’ Alice quipped.
‘Sorry,’ she responded, flicking the iPad cover in place and attending to the promised tea-making. ‘I was thinking about Mum and the bad dreams she suffered when I was a kid. At first I thought she cried because she was so sick and in pain. I could hear her from my bedroom and hear you shush her and tell her she was safe.’ Paige loaded the teacups and the Tupperware container of cookies onto a tray and looked at Alice. ‘Do you suppose her dreams and mine are—?’
‘Paige, dear.’ Alice had learned a long time ago how to divert focus away from that particular conversation. With enough opportunities, one could become a deft hand at such things and Nancy’s secret had provided Alice with ample practice. ‘I don’t think dreams are hereditary,’ she said, leading Paige, tray in hand, out of the kitchen and onto the veranda. Fresh air would do them both good and help clear away the cobweb of past memories. Only why did the image of a moth struggling to escape a spider’s wicked web flash across her mind?
Oh, what a wicked web we weave . . .
‘Every kid has monsters under the bed that scare them,’ Alice said. ‘In Matilda’s case I think the monster might be more possum on the roof—or rat. But I’m going with possum so I sleep easy, and that’s what I tell Matilda.’
Alice Foster did her best work when hugging away monsters in the middle of the night, protecting those she loved. How Nancy had changed Alice’s life for the better by leaving Paige, then later Matilda, in her care. If she and Nancy had never met, Alice might have missed her greatest achievement—being a mother and grandmother.
‘Alice?’ Paige slipped the steaming teacup over the table. ‘Can we talk about last night?’
Alice’s happy memory bubble burst. ‘Which part exactly? The part where I was woken up at some ungodly hour by voices in the dark?’ she asked, thinking glib might keep the conversation light. But when Paige flipped the cover off that blessed iPad, Alice was struck by the same long ago queasiness she’d felt any time a doctor flipped open the vinyl foolscap folder that had held Nancy’s medical chart, studying the detail in a stony silence.
‘Whoops, sorry if our voices kept you awake,’ Paige said. ‘There was something I had to check out. Then Rory turned up and we got talking and . . .’
‘And what?’ Alice imagined dread draining the colour from her face. ‘What did you talk about?’
‘Actually, Rory is not what I wanted to discuss.’
‘No?’ Alice sounded a little too enthusiastic. Paige must have noticed. She smirked.
‘No. I want to talk horses.’
‘Horses?’
Paige dunked her biscuit in her tea, a practice that had irked Alice since childhood when she’d had to fish the biscuit out of the cup on a teaspoon. ‘Did you know the average age of a horse can be thirty or more years? Some horses live into their forties.’
‘You want to talk about old horses?’ Alice might have been smiling, but she wouldn’t let herself relax—not a bit.
‘And I’m not referring to Bean, who I know is probably that old—if not older—and doing fine, thanks to your superb surgery skills and multiple eye transplants.’
‘This new fascination with horses, Paige . . . Is that what drew you to the yards last night?’
‘I know, it was stupid to go down there in the dark, but something was bothering me and I thought a torch and the moonlight might’ve been enough. Early this morning I went back out with food. I managed to get a bit closer.’
‘Closer to what, Paige? Is this really important?’ Alice sipped the hot drink, even though her desire for tea had waned. And while she wanted to concentrate, Paige’s voice became background noise to her own thoughts.
‘Don’t you see? The markings . . . They match. If the horse in the paddock is the same as this one in the photo and the one over the mantel in the living room, and this is Mum in this picture, then . . .’
Alice held her breath. There it was, the moment she’d been dreading since Saddleton first made its way into their conversation.
‘Do you reckon the man might be my father?’
‘What?’
‘Turkey baster guy.’ Paige continued to talk to the iPad, not noticing Alice’s teacup shaking so much in her hand that tea splashed over the rim. ‘I admit I didn’t want or need to know about turkey baster guy in the past. He was never important to me. You and Mum were my parents. But you did describe him as a distant and obliging friend, and looking at this photo now, seeing a man with Mum—not to mention that Mum is on a horse, of all things! I never knew Mum rode. Plus, I was thinking, only someone sure in the saddle would risk sitting on a giant horse while cradling a tiny baby. That made me wonder about the baby and the man. See the way he’s looking over at Mum? Is that why this photo was special? Did she keep it somewhere—in a frame maybe—and that’s how it survived when water ruined the other albums? Is this turkey baster guy, and my real father? Did he live in Saddleton maybe? Is that the connection?’
‘Oh Paige, please, all these questions!’ It required all Alice’s strength not to crumple into a heap.
‘But this is not insignificant, Alice. Maybe it explains my fascination with the photo and why being in the country has given me a sense of coming home.’
‘You’re being ridiculous. This is not your home.’
‘Well then, if you can maybe shed a little light on Mum’s childhood. Anything would be—’
‘I’ve told you before, Paige. Your mother and I—’
‘I know, I know, you and Mum didn’t keep resumes on each other. Look, I know you didn’t want me showing this picture around town, but now I can’t help but wonder—’
‘For goodness’ sake, Paige.’ Fear presented itself as anger, something Alice rarely displayed, and she could tell from Paige’s worried expression she’d need to control her reactions better if she was to avoid further enquiries from a curious daughter. She needed to breathe, to think, to control. She needed to sit. ‘Do you think Nancy would appreciate you making a fuss over something this personal?’ Alice presented the palm of her hand to silence Paige. ‘Of course she wouldn’t. Your mother was a private person and we lived very private lives.’
‘This isn’t just about you and Mum. This is my life too. I honestly don’t see the problem if I mention something in passing to Banjo. If I hadn’t stuffed up my relationship with Aiden last night I would’ve trusted him to ask around and—’
‘Relationship?’ Alice interjected, both palms slapping the table. ‘You don’t have a relationship, Paige. You have a husband and a home back in Sydney. Not only that, you have a small daughter in a room upstairs who right now, let me add, seems a lot more grown up than her mother.’
‘Alice—?’
‘Don’t Alice me. I’m putting my foot down well and truly this time, Paige. We’re leaving
. The roads are all open. There’s no reason to stay any longer.’
‘Except that this was supposed to be a two-week vacation.’
‘In my day vacations were meant to be relaxing and fun. This trip has been nothing but one worry after another. You talk about having nightmares. I’m having more than enough for the both of us. It’s time to say thank you very much to these people and get back to our own homes and lives.’
‘Alice, please, calm down. I’m sorry.’ Paige’s phone interrupted them, the ringtone echoing in the ceramic fruit bowl where it lay until she retrieved it, inspecting the caller ID. ‘It’s Robert.’
‘Then I suggest you take that call and tell your husband you’re coming home.’
Paige huffed, raised a hang-on-a-sec finger at Alice, before greeting her husband with a curt, ‘Hello Robert.’
Alice pretended she wasn’t listening, busying herself at the refrigerator. It seemed Robert was doing most of the talking, with occasional input from Paige about Matilda.
‘Okay, well, I’ll be in touch.’ Paige was winding up the conversation. ‘Yes, Robert, I’ll have Mati call you today, as usual. No, Robert,’ Paige rolled her eyes at Alice. ‘No, you don’t need to apologise again. What was that? Did you just say . . .’ The confused expression and sudden curtness in Paige’s tone demanded Alice’s attention. ‘Did you just say New Year’s Eve, Robert?’
More silence.
‘New Year’s Eve!’
This time it wasn’t a question and Alice hoped that was a good thing; Robert had proposed to Paige on New Year’s Eve.
‘Robert! Robert! Robert, shut up and listen to me. No. I’m hanging up, Robert. Robert, I’m hanging up and I’m not . . .’ Paige stood, put a hand to her face and turned her back to Alice. ‘No, Robert, no. I’m not discussing anything with you now. I don’t know. When I come home. If I come home. For now, Coolabah Tree Gully is looking pretty bloody good.’
The mobile phone ended up in a pocket and Alice waited for Paige to look away from the floor and speak, while those parting words churned in her stomach.
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