The Lost Summers of Driftwood

by Vanessa McCausland

  She finished her coffee and took a shower. Under the warm water she studied the almost empty bottle of cheap supermarket shower gel. Had Karin used this? Had it lived on past her sister? She squeezed some into her hand but felt sick at the strong apple scent. Had Karin used this the morning she died? Had she known that day would be her last? That she’d die smelling like fake apples? Phoebe washed it off her hands and turned off the water. She stood shivering under her towel. She didn’t know the part of her sister that had decided to walk into the river, did that mean she had never really known Karin?

  Phoebe had found a forum on the internet for people who were trying to come to grips with the suicide of a loved one. She never contributed but she read all the posts. Many people felt the same as her. They had questions that sat inside them, leaking unease into their bones.

  The forum had been important for Phoebe because the suicide had seemed to be so easy for everyone else to understand. Karin was a woman in her late thirties, living alone on a property in a bush setting. Phoebe remembered the words of one of the officers who had come to Camilla’s house in those early days. ‘It gets very dark in that part of the world at night. It’s a lonely place.’

  But Karin was always going to local business meetings for her florist shop. She might not have had a best friend, but that wasn’t the sort of person Karin was. She was self-sufficient and independent. She spent her weekends on treasure hunts at local markets and vintage stores, or keeping the property under control. And she’d had Phoebe. They spoke every week without fail, on a Sunday.

  Phoebe thought back to the last time the family had all been together. The restaurant overlooked the harbour, with white sails hovering above a polished deck area. Karin had driven up the coast to Sydney that morning with her own flowers and decorations for the long table.

  ‘Happy birthday, Dad,’ Karin said, squeezing their father into a tight hug. ‘You don’t look a day over sixty.’

  He laughed awkwardly, brushing his grey hair to one side and straightening his navy slacks. He never liked being the centre of attention.

  ‘No, it’s true,’ said Phoebe, pulling him into an embrace. ‘You look a decade younger than you are.’

  He shook his head, his face reddening. ‘What you’ve done with the table looks great,’ he said. They all turned to admire Karin’s wooden planter boxes filled with paper lanterns and fresh flowers and herbs.

  ‘You can plant the herbs in the garden afterwards. I know you don’t like waste. Oh, and I got you this.’ Karin passed him a gift wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. ‘You don’t have to open it now. It’s every Beatles record on vinyl. Well, every one I could find. You’ve got to be the only seventy-year-old to have recently discovered the Beatles and own a record player. That’s what twenty-year-olds are doing.’

  He was silent for a beat. ‘That must have taken you forever.’ His voice was soft with emotion.

  ‘There are a lot of vintage shops around the Bay.’ Karin shrugged. ‘It’s my hobby anyway, digging up old stuff and finding it a new home.’

  Camilla interrupted with a peck on their dad’s cheek. ‘Happy birthday, Dad. I’m so glad you ended up doing something. Turning seventy deserves to be celebrated. And Karin, those planter boxes are very quaint.’

  ‘Thanks, Cammie, they’re my bestselling item right now.’

  ‘And you’re looking very swish all in black.’

  Karin squeezed Camilla’s arm warmly but Phoebe thought about punching it. Camilla was so transparent but Karin never saw it, or chose not to. The truth was, Karin had always been the most effortlessly chic of them all. Her long limbs and perfect posture meant she could wear anything and look gorgeous. For their dad’s birthday lunch she wore a knitted dress with knee-high flat leather boots, which were so much more elegant than Camilla’s unseasonable heeled sandals and floral pantsuit.

  ‘I’ve actually got an idea to expand the business a little. I’m going to do some second-hand furniture.’

  ‘What’s this about your business?’ Their mother was wearing oversized black sunglasses and a silk scarf at her neck. ‘Darlings, we should probably sit down so we get the best seats, people are arriving.’

  Karin pulled out their dad’s seat at the head of the table. ‘I was just saying I’m expanding the shop a little bit to do tea and sell some second-hand furniture and maybe vintage books.’

  Phoebe saw Camilla and their mother exchange a look.

  ‘That sounds beautiful, being surrounded by flowers and books and sipping tea,’ said Phoebe, accepting a glass of white wine from a passing waiter.

  ‘You don’t want it to become too knick-knacky though,’ said their mother. ‘I thought you’d just got the fit-out of the shop polished. And as I’ve always said, it’s better to err on the side of simplicity.’

  ‘I don’t think that applies to the Bay, Mum,’ Camilla said over the rim of her wineglass.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be thinking about finding eligible men down there rather than tea and old books?’ Their mother made a dismissive gesture with her hand.

  ‘I’m too busy with the shop and the house to think about that,’ said Karin.

  ‘I think late thirties is a bit too late down there anyway. Don’t they all have four kids by twenty-three?’ added Camilla, a look of false innocence on her face.

  Phoebe opened her mouth then shut it, momentarily stunned by Camilla’s comment.

  ‘We’re not all superwomen like you, Cammie, who can have kids and a business,’ said Karin, completely without sarcasm or reproach.

  The truth was that Karin was just as much of a high achiever as Camilla but she did it with the same humility and grace as their father. Camilla and her mother’s interior design business might have been the family focus, but their father was the one who quietly and diligently paid the mortgage through his work as an actuary.

  Phoebe wasn’t sure how Karin’s dignity had been lost. How somewhere along the way it was assumed, in whispered tones at family gatherings, that Karin’s suicide was linked to her lack of a husband and child, her loneliness. Never mind that she was passionate about her business, and looked after a house and property all by herself. Phoebe knew as much as anyone the pressure of social mores, but Karin wasn’t held to account by such things, not in the same way Camilla was. Not, she realised, in the same way she herself was. Being back here among Karin’s things confirmed what Phoebe already knew deep down. Her sister had not been someone deeply unhappy and isolated in her life. She had been someone who watched the quiet slipstream of the river from the deck and absorbed its peace.

  Phoebe dressed in the same clothes she’d worn the day before and threw on Karin’s khaki cotton jacket from the coat rack at the front door. It was stiff with lack of wear. That was the feeling: abandonment. Phoebe felt like leaving now was in some way letting her sister down, though she couldn’t explain exactly why. She smoothed the rough cotton against her skin, remembering Karin wearing this jacket. The colour had suited her cool colouring and made her grey eyes look green. Phoebe closed the door behind her and stood in the grass. The lawn needed mowing. She checked her phone was in her pocket. She would walk to the top of the street to get her messages and stretch her legs.

  She was only a few metres up the road before she needed to shrug the jacket off. The sun fell in long lines through the tall trees and she enjoyed its warmth on her bare arms and legs. The houses were as she remembered them, many small and weathered with faded awnings and the whiff of fibro decay, but with prime river frontage. A few were two-level brick monstrosities, complete with jet ski and motorbike in the yard—most likely the holiday homes of politicians from Canberra. But other than those, the street was the same, unpaved and hopelessly encroached upon by nature. She thought of all the changes, all the technology that now ruled her life, and yet this place had remained nearly untouched.

  She reached the top of the hill, overlooking the abandoned motel whose pool was still mysteriously appealing despite the crumbling
1960s architecture. Her phone began to buzz as messages and missed calls filled the screen: Camilla, her mother.

  Every time Phoebe saw or spoke to Camilla it was as though all the imperfect aspects of her life were magnified. She knew it wasn’t her sister’s fault, but that didn’t make it any easier. Camilla was just one of those people who was completely at ease in the world. It wasn’t just that she always wore the perfect outfit or that her life was a merry-go-round of weekends away, parties for her children or dinner parties with friends, she had something about her that made others want to be around her. It was as though people could sense her ease and confidence and were drawn to that. Camilla posted paintings she’d done with her children on social media, while simultaneously popping up a gorgeous house interior she’d styled. Phoebe had understood from an early age that their mother was made of exactly the same shiny, effortless fabric. It wasn’t surprising to anyone when Camilla joined their mother’s successful interior styling business at age nineteen. Everyone said she had a natural ‘eye’, and that wasn’t something that could be learned or taught. It was assumed that neither Karin nor Phoebe were blessed with it.

  It had always been Camilla and their mother, and Phoebe and Karin, with their dad playing the role of Switzerland, hovering good-naturedly on the outskirts. In fact, the only concession their mother had ever paid their father was allowing him to keep the cottage after his parents died and take them all on holidays there at Easter and Christmas. Her voice always took on an exasperated tone wherever the cottage was concerned, but Phoebe’s memories of her down here were of her stretched out on a plastic sunbed on the deck, a book in hand and a glass of wine beside her. Phoebe suspected for all the complaining, her mother needed the time away from her glamorous, frenetic life. She had never seen her wear a pair of thongs but there was a pair of leather slides that she used to occasionally slip on to visit the jetty when the sunset was particularly stunning.

  Their mother had always been like that, a distant but authoritative figure to whom beauty was paramount. It was a brilliant irony that she had married a man who couldn’t care less about the way things looked. Her father was the kind of man who, had he been born in a different time, may have defeated the wall of male stoicism that surrounded him, but it was ingrained in his upbringing. Phoebe knew he was a softie at heart but he had no way of translating feeling into action. The result was a kind of emotional stagnation that had only intensified since Karin’s death.

  That awful day was etched into her being. She’d been in a café with Hellie deliberating over the menu when Camilla had called. Phoebe had probably looked at the caller ID and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Phoebe, Karin’s dead,’ Camilla had said. Just like that. The words had been so simple—no preamble. There was none with death. No, Everything’s okay, but . . . or Don’t panic, but . . . It was done, and all that was left was to survive the crushing of her heart, and the dark, dark nights as the knowing began: that the person was gone and never coming back.

  Phoebe had wanted to go to her mother and sister and put her arms around them and cry. But that wasn’t their way. There were no lingering hugs or raw emotion over cups of tea. Only her dad had cried with her in a way she didn’t know men could—bent over and silent except for the shaking of his body. When she saw this terrible trembling, she sensed, through the white haze of shock, that it was all real.

  Her dad and Camilla drove down to view the body the next day. They kept talking about ‘the body’ as if it was a news report about another person, a stranger, not her sister. That was why Phoebe couldn’t go. She couldn’t cope with the thought of seeing Karin stretched out and lifeless, that same blue-grey on her lips that she had witnessed when her sister was drowning, all those years ago. This time she hadn’t been there to save her.

  Phoebe’s phone kept buzzing in her hand as texts filled her screen.

  Hellie had texted, asking for a photo of the ring, her message peppered with happy smiles and love emoticons. Phoebe’s heart dipped. There had been a time when she would have called her closest friend from the oceanfront balcony where her world had come crashing down. But that time had passed. Hellie had a newborn child, and every molecule of her body was trained on her baby. The gulf that had opened between them was completely understandable, but that didn’t stop it from being painful.

  Hellie—with her doting husband, new baby, and lovely settled life—was part of the pain now. It was an awful thing to be jealous of a friend’s good fortune, but right now Phoebe couldn’t face her.

  A message from Nathaniel came in. Seeing his name sent a sharp pang through her and she placed a hand on her stomach, hesitating. He probably just wanted to know when he could pick up his stuff from the flat. But there was a small sliver inside of her that glinted with the light of possibility that maybe, just maybe, he’d changed his mind. She opened the message, holding her breath.

  Hi Phoebe, I’m really sorry about how it all happened and how disappointed you must be. I hope that with time you’ll see it was the right decision. Let me know when it’s okay for me to come and start cleaning out the flat. I guess we’ll have to talk about what to do with it. N

  His mixture of apology and perfunctory details made the still fresh wound in her heart hurt. She still didn’t fully understand why he’d ended it. He kept saying he needed something ‘more’ and there was a lot of talk of ‘finding himself’. At what point did a relationship die? Was it a slow death over weeks and months? How had she missed the signs?

  Phoebe had believed Nate when he said there was no one else, but now she wondered. Wasn’t it a cliché to fall in love with your gym instructor? Maybe he’d found someone who he had something ‘more’ with, whatever that meant. Her cheeks prickled with heat and anger sparked inside her. Had he been feeling doubts while they planned the holiday, picked out the ring together, and never mentioned them? They’d owned the flat together for more than a year, been together for nearly five years. It wasn’t like this was the first step down the road of commitment. But a large chunk of the deposit for their tiny sunlit apartment had come from her parents, and Phoebe’s income essentially paid the mortgage. Nathaniel had worked in computer sales, freelance marketing, and had just started personal training. They’d never been able to rely on his income. Had her being the main breadwinner taken a toll on his ego? And yet the security of her parents’ money had been something he’d openly acknowledged and been grateful for. Maybe it had made him stay when he wasn’t happy. She shook her head and rammed the phone hard against her thigh, swearing under her breath.

  She stood there, immobilised by indecision. There was too much information to process. She should reply to everyone, walk down the hill, shut up the house and drive home. But instead Phoebe ignored the messages, slipped the phone into her pocket and took the road that led down to the river. She just needed to walk for a while. It was mid-morning now, and the low drone of motor boats was punctuated by the high note of an occasional jet ski. Some men were fishing from a small wharf. Phoebe could think of nothing better than buying some bait and throwing out a line at the end of the jetty, watching the sun move across the sky and feeling its languid heat on her skin.

  She reached the bridge over the river and crossed it, hoping she might see Jez or the Texan as she glanced inside the little coffee and bait shop. She wandered slowly back to the cottage, trying to ignore the thick churn of her feelings. It was so quiet, save for the whips of bellbirds in the trees above. A few doors away from the cottage she saw Wendy’s bobbed head leaning over her letterbox.

  ‘Hi,’ she called out, feeling a rush of warmth as Wendy lifted her head and waved.

  ‘I’m mending my letterbox. Tex has been promising to do it for weeks and today I just thought, bugger it, why am I waiting for a man to do this job?’

  Phoebe smiled. ‘Good on you.’

  ‘So, we’re almost neighbours. How lovely. You look like you’ve had a nice walk over to the village. Have you tried Ross’s burnt coffee?’

/>   ‘I didn’t take money with me.’

  ‘Come in for some morning tea. I’ve made pumpkin scones. I’m nearly done here.’

  Phoebe pressed her lips together and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Oh, I really shouldn’t. I should probably head back to Sydney today.’

  Wendy’s kind eyes searched her own. ‘So soon? You just got here.’

  ‘I know. I don’t want to. It’s just . . .’ Phoebe felt her voice breaking and cleared her throat.

  Wendy touched her shoulder lightly. ‘Hey, just come in and have a quick drink and I’ll give you one of my newly made jams to take home.’

  Phoebe nodded and followed her through a garden spilling with native plants. It looked wild but well loved. They walked down the side of the fibro house and onto a covered veranda overlooking the river. A breeze had picked up and the leaves rustled overhead.

  ‘They’re predicting rain and I think it’s going to storm,’ said Wendy. ‘Are you sure you should be driving in bad weather? Sit, sit, I’ll bring us some tea.’ The screen door banged as Wendy went inside.

  Phoebe took a seat at a little wooden table covered in faded floral plastic. It reminded her of being a child in the 1980s when her family had similar table coverings.

  ‘Are you okay down here by yourself?’ Wendy called through the open kitchen window. ‘I’ve got Tex just down the road, but even so, sometimes I get the heebie-jeebies. It’s so quiet at night. I heard a young girl committed suicide not long back. Just walked into the river, apparently.’

  Phoebe felt a chill run down the back of her neck, as though someone had thrown a bucket of iced water over her. Karin had become an urban legend to be gossiped about over morning tea.

  Wendy came out carrying a plate of scones. ‘It was just so sad. A few of the people in the street knew her. Such a happy, lovely person, by all accounts. Everyone was so shocked. I moved in just after it all but everyone was still talking about it. You would have missed all that being up in Sydney.’