ABOUT THE BOOK
By the winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2018.
Since her sister died, Meg has been on her own. She doesn’t mind, not really–not with Atticus, her African grey parrot, to keep her company–but after her house is broken into by a knife-wielding intruder, she decides it might be good to have some company after all.
Andy’s father has lost his job, and his parents’ savings are barely enough to cover his tuition. If he wants to graduate, he’ll have to give up his student flat and find a homeshare. Living with an elderly Australian woman is harder than he’d expected, though, and soon he’s struggling with more than his studies.
For Rani, Alyssa and Toby
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
SEPTEMBER
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
OCTOBER
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
NOVEMBER
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
DECEMBER
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EXTRACT FROM AUSTRALIA DAY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
1
She couldn’t forget his eyes. Cold blue with a hint of crazy, or drugs—probably that nasty stuff they called ice, which made people pick their skin. God knows what he saw when he looked back at her that night. Something other than an old woman in a dressing-gown and sheepskin slippers. Why else would he have fled? When the police finally apprehended him, they found a switchblade in his sneakers. Meg wasn’t sure why the officer—a small woman with a severe bun—had told her that. The whole confrontation must have lasted less than a minute, and yet here she was, months later, with the boy’s pockmarked face still etched behind her lids.
The comfort she had once gleaned from the faded sticker in the window—Warning! This house is protected by a 24-hour monitored alarm system—now seemed delusional. At night every black pane of glass concealed a lurking predator. Every growl of a car engine announced a fresh criminal. A few times a month Meg had to take a sleeping tablet just to get a few hours’ rest.
Judith, her next-door neighbour, had suggested she get a dog, but a dog would need walking and there was the issue of her knees. Not to mention that Meg hated dogs—she couldn’t bear their wet noses and long, undulating tongues. Meg was a bird person. Atticus, her African grey parrot, was smarter than most people she knew but, alas, no use against knife-wielding burglars.
Meg pulled herself up from her recliner. She’d been sitting there, with the lights off, since six o’clock. She opened the curtains, flooding the lounge room with sun. Dust motes whirled like tiny galaxies before her eyes. If she had time later, maybe she would wipe down the mantelpiece, but right now she needed a cup of tea. She walked to the kitchen, flicked the switch on the kettle. There was a rustle from Atticus’s cage, which sat on a table behind the door to the kitchen. Meg removed the cover. The parrot drew his head out of the toilet roll she’d given him yesterday to play with. Startled, he stared at her with his pale yellow eyes. ‘Top of the morning to you!’ he squawked. Meg laughed. She stuck her finger through the bars of the cage and scratched the scalloped grey feathers around his neck.
On the fridge door, beside a letter from Rakesh—the boy she sponsored in Bangladesh—was a photo of an older boy, a young man really, Chinese, with a stern, unsmiling face. She freed the photo from the magnet as she retrieved the milk from the fridge. The milk was long-life, which she hated, but she couldn’t get to the shops often enough to buy fresh milk. Perhaps the Chinese boy could help with that.
Meg groaned as she sat down at the kitchen table. While she sipped her tea she studied the photo. He was twenty-one, she knew that much, though he looked much younger. If she’d been asked to describe him, she would say his eyes were dark brown, almost black—but it was hard to tell through his glasses. She could just make out a couple of acne scars marring his chin. He wasn’t handsome, but he was pleasant-looking. Meg covered his serious lips with her hand, imagined a smile.
The clock on the wall read ten. Andy wasn’t due to arrive until twelve-thirty. She would need that much time to shower and dress and make herself presentable. Soon enough—if they both agreed to sign up to the homeshare arrangement—he would see her on the couch in her pyjamas, but Meg had always maintained that first impressions were important. She finished her tea, washed and dried her cup. Perhaps he could do the dishes, she thought, when he had settled in. Ten hours of help a week was the agency agreement. She wouldn’t ask him to help with the washing—she didn’t fancy a stranger handling her undies—and she couldn’t assume a man knew his way around the kitchen, so cooking was a question mark. She felt overcome by the decisions suddenly confronting her. There were so many details to be considered.
She made her way down the dimly lit corridor to her bedroom. On her way she looked into the room she’d set up for her visitor. It had been her sister’s bedroom, and even now, emptied of its adjustable hospital bed and various paraphernalia—the Western Bulldogs scarves, the bowls of potpourri, the dreamy Marc Chagall prints—it was still her sister’s. There were clues, like the lines marking Helen’s height on the back of the bedroom door, and the yellow tape on the wall where there had once been a Rolling Stones poster. It had been Meg’s room too, a long time ago. Before her sister was born. Before the accident.
Meg took off her dressing-gown and flannelette pyjamas. Thanks to Helen, the bathroom had been fitted with rails long before Meg had needed them. They came in handy now, with the arthritis in her knees. Meg sat down on the shower stool and turned on the tap. She closed her eyes and felt the needles of hot water across her back. These days she limited her showers to three a week. Water was expensive, and besides, a daily wash was excessive. It’d been years since she’d done anything strenuous enough to work up a sweat—except gardening, and even then, until recently a handyman had done the heavy pruning every couple of months.
As Meg sat on her stool—the water flattening what little hair still clung to her head—she stared through the window at the branches of the jacaranda. They were bare now, but every November for as long as she could remember, the tree had been marking the years with a canopy of purple petals. She recalled sitting with her mother beneath the violet flowers the morning her sister had been discharged from hospital. Meg was sixteen at the time, but she’d rested her head in her mother’s lap like a baby.
As she dried herself with the towel, she took stock of the bathroom. She’d never been fussy about her appearance—she’d only painted her nails once, at Helen’s insistence, before a friend’s wedding—and yet somehow the bath and the sink were still lined with pastel-coloured bottles. Shampoo, conditioner, perfume, a tube of expired pa
wpaw cream her doctor had recommended for a rash. She worried that all the citrus and floral aromas would overwhelm the boy. The last man to have lived here was Meg’s father, thirty years ago. Aside from a couple of photos and his golf clubs—buried behind rolls of wrapping paper in the linen cupboard—there was not a trace of him left inside the house.
Meg sprayed some perfume on her wrists and walked, naked, to her bedroom. Ordinarily she would cover herself with a towel but—knowing nudity would soon be out of the question—today she took one last liberty. In the bedroom she put on her bra, fastening the clasp at the front before rotating it around to the back. It’d been years since she’d had anyone around to help her dress. For the most part she managed. Only once had she had to cut herself out of a skirt when a bit of fabric got caught in the zip.
She stood back and appraised her wardrobe. It was a drab collection of blouses and skirts and high-waisted pants. Helen had been the loud dresser in their little family. Meg’s sister loved nothing more than drawing attention to herself. Her wheelchair had been adorned with so many stickers and tassels, it had acquired the nickname Dame Edna Everage. Now, contemplating her boring clothes, Meg remembered how people used to mistake her for Helen’s nurse. Unwittingly, she had adopted the uniform—dark, inoffensive colours with prim collars and soft pleats. Clothes that helped her disappear into the background, like a stagehand, or a puppeteer. Only it had always been Helen tugging away at the strings.
Amid all the black Meg saw a flash of red. She pulled out a scarlet blouse she’d worn years ago to a New Year’s Eve party. She slipped it on and considered herself in the mirror. The bright colour brought some much-needed life to her cheeks. She coupled it with a dark skirt to disguise her belly—a bulge she recognised on every woman over fifty, and just one of many clues to her advancing age. There were also her jowly cheeks, the crepe-paper skin on her hands and the spider veins around her ankles. It would be good to share her house with someone young—someone who didn’t groan as they got out of bed in the morning, who didn’t fall asleep at eight pm with their mouth open in front of the television. As hard as it was going to be, Meg felt certain she’d made the right decision.
2
An Uber driver picked Andy up from Spencer Street. He was moving out of his studio apartment, the only home he’d known in Melbourne. His aunt had driven all the way from Geelong the night before to pick up what little furniture he owned—a small couch, a futon and an LCD TV—and pack it into her trailer. All that remained was a duffel bag full of clothes and two large cardboard boxes. Andy loaded the boxes into the boot.
As they drove, Andy leant back and surveyed the view through his window. Office blocks and 7-Elevens gave way to weatherboard houses. The suburbs still surprised him—the cartoonish bungalows, the easily scaled waist-high timber fences. He’d grown up in an apartment with bars on every window—a barrier to keep the children in and the burglars out. There’d also been a security guard manning the lobby day and night. Never mind that the guard was elderly, unarmed and partly deaf—in the event of an emergency, he could alert the closest police station with the push of a button. This helped the residents all sleep a little more soundly.
It was Andy’s aunt who’d suggested the homeshare program. Andy wasn’t keen on the idea, but he wasn’t entirely opposed to it, either. His father had been forced to sell his cleaning business in Hong Kong, and his parents’ savings were barely enough to pay for the remaining two years of his course. If Andy wanted to complete his studies there was no other option. Besides, he knew what it was like to live with an old person—when he was ten he’d had to share a room with his grandfather. He remembered the way his yeh yeh had snored, saliva hanging in shiny tendrils from his mouth, but he also recalled how his grandfather had helped him with his model aeroplanes—the calm and patient way he’d overcome his tremor to paint a miniature B-25 propeller.
The Uber driver pulled over in the middle of a quiet street. Andy could hardly see the house, which was shrouded in trees and bushes. He could just make out a stone birdbath through the heavy curtain of leaves.
‘This is the place,’ the driver said.
Andy got out and retrieved his cardboard boxes from the boot. He stacked the boxes on the footpath before unlatching the wrought-iron gate, which announced his arrival with a squeak. The mailbox was choked with old catalogues, hanging wet and limp from its metal mouth. For a moment he considered bringing them in. Was that the type of thing he’d be expected to do now? Ten hours of work a week suddenly seemed like a lot. Andy hitched the duffel bag onto his shoulder and picked up the boxes. He followed the concrete path to the peeling front door. On hearing the Uber speed away, he felt a profound sense of regret. He was only ten kilometres from the city, but it may as well have been a hundred. When he inhaled, his nostrils filled with the smell of damp leaves, burnt toast and decomposing vegetables. He considered calling another Uber to take him back to the city, but then he remembered he only had fifty dollars until his mother transferred more money on Thursday.
His finger shook as he pressed the doorbell, which, instead of ringing, played an instrumental version of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. He heard the shriek of a bird, followed by the shuffle of slippered feet. Andy took a deep breath. On the other side of the door lay his new home and the stranger he’d be sharing it with. Feeling exposed, he picked up one of the boxes and held it before him like a shield.
3
The boy who greeted her on the doorstep was holding a large cardboard box. There was a duffel bag slung across his shoulder and another cardboard box at his feet. The homeshare coordinator had told Meg that today was just an introduction—a chance to get to know each other before making a final decision—and yet the young man standing before her looked ready to move in.
‘You must be Andy,’ she said. Even in slippers, Meg was a few inches taller than him.
He stared at her across the lid of the box, nodded. There were Chinese characters scrawled on one side of the carton. Meg wondered if the boy spoke any English.
‘I’m Margaret Hughes, but you can call me Meg.’
Andy nodded again.
Helpless, Meg ushered him inside. While she held the door open she watched him set the box down on the floor and take off his sneakers. He entered wearing only his socks. As she led him down the hall, she saw the house through fresh eyes. For the first time she noticed the cracks in the plaster around the doors and the balding carpet in front of the hatstand. She swiped at a cobweb clinging to a photo frame in the hallway and led him to Helen’s old bedroom.
‘This will be your room,’ Meg said, pausing at the door, ‘if everything works out.’ If he was taken aback by her hesitancy, Andy didn’t show it. He dumped the first box on the floor and hurried back down the hallway to fetch the other one. Meg retreated to the kitchen. She filled the kettle with water. Helen had always said there was nothing a cup of tea couldn’t fix.
‘Would you like a hot drink?’ she called down the corridor, but there was no answer. When the kettle finished boiling, Meg tried again, a little louder: ‘Do you drink tea?’ But there was still no response. Only when she began walking towards the bedroom did he reply.
‘No thank you.’
His voice surprised her—it was lower and more masculine than she’d expected.
Meg returned to the kitchen to prepare tea in her precise way, brewing the bag for two minutes before adding one level teaspoon of raw sugar. When she was done she sat at the kitchen table, holding the warm cup to her lips. Atticus, bored of the toilet roll, was attacking a shiny button with his beak. Sensing Meg’s eyes on him, he looked up and fluffed his ash-coloured feathers.
‘Fine and dandy! Sugar candy!’ he screeched.
Since Helen had died, three years ago, Atticus had been Meg’s only companion. She’d shared a house with him for almost twenty-five years—longer than many marriages. But there had been a time when they were strangers. For a couple of years, Atticus had been the beloved pet of the Bishop fam
ily, who lived next door in a bright Californian bungalow. Meg and Helen would hear the parrot sometimes, in the backyard, singing with the children. When Mr Bishop’s job had taken him overseas, the family had offered Atticus to Helen. Meg was hesitant at first—they’d just lost their mother to cancer, and everything was in a mess—but Helen had begged her, and Meg was no match for Helen’s pleas. Besides, Meg believed the parrot was just the distraction they needed. Atticus fell head over heels in love with Helen, but he remained standoffish with Meg for months, biting her at every opportunity. Their relationship was more of a slow burn—a growing together, an affection born of necessity.
Now, as Atticus busied himself with a rolled-up ball of tinfoil, Meg listened to the noises coming from Helen’s old room—the thud of textbooks, the creak of floorboards, the squeal of the mattress springs. It was a strange but comforting thing to hear another person moving about the house. Meg found her mobile phone on the counter and dialled the number for the homeshare coordinator. The woman, whose name was Pam, didn’t pick up—it went straight through to her message bank.
‘Hi, Pam. Margaret here, from number four Rose Street.’ As she spoke she watched Atticus in his cage, scratching his back with his beak. ‘I’ve met Andy and I think we’ll get on well. I’ll send you the paperwork tomorrow morning.’
Andy didn’t come out of his room for two hours. In the meantime Meg finished her tea, read the newspaper and peeled the potatoes for dinner. Around three, she heard the flush of the toilet and the slap of Andy’s feet across the floorboards. Before she knew it he was slouched in the doorway of the kitchen, looking at his plastic thongs.
‘What kind of things do you like to eat?’ Meg asked, turning from the sink to face him. She wiped her dirty hands with a tea towel.
‘Anything, really. Rice. Noodles. Chips.’ Andy flicked his eyes up towards her face before returning his gaze to the tiled floor.
Meg turned back to the potatoes soaking in the sink. ‘I’m afraid I’m a meat-and-three-veg kind of girl.’
Room for a Stranger Page 1