The Lost Summers of Driftwood

by Vanessa McCausland

  But life could not be appeased by a bubbly drink. The pain could not be eased with the smoothness of hair cuticles or the satisfaction of owning three charcoal cashmere tops. Phoebe thought about what Flick had said about nature, about how it was healing her. Is that what was happening to Phoebe, too? Was the river, with its endless ebb—muscular and frightening one minute, sparkling and mischievous the next—teaching her something? Her life had never felt smaller, less important, but she had never felt more free.

  Her coffee arrived and she took a sip, enjoying its rich creaminess. Her fingers stumbled over the opening words of the email but she pressed on.

  Hi Kate,

  Thank you for being so understanding of my taking extra time off on account of the bushfires.

  I’m afraid that I’m making contact to resign from my position. I’ve been through a bit of a difficult time lately. The engagement to Nathaniel fell through and it has forced me to reassess my priorities.

  This was where she paused. She was about to write something banal about taking time out from office work but instead her fingers started moving more swiftly over her phone.

  To be honest, I was never entirely happy in my role. I’m not sure how I ended up spending all my days peddling a glamorous life that had become so far from my reality. Part of me loved the beautiful pictures, the parties, the veneer. But it’s not me. It never made me happy and now I think I finally understand why.

  Thank you, Kate, I always respected and looked up to you.

  Best wishes,

  Phoebe

  She pressed send before she lost her courage. Her hands were shaking as she wrapped her fingers around her coffee cup, but her insides were singing so loudly she felt dizzy. She would never drink a short black again.

  She thought about how she would have acted if she’d gone back there. She knew she would have framed the breakup with Nathaniel differently, as a mutual decision that they were both happy about. She would have delivered the news with a strong, fake smile and then opened her computer and felt herself getting smaller and smaller, like Alice in Wonderland, tricked into thinking that if you imagined something, it became real.

  Phoebe knew her resignation and breakup would now become the gossip of the mostly female office. She cringed, imagining the mixture of pity and false sympathy flashing from screen to screen, eye to eye. But she had nothing to lose. She wasn’t going back. She would wake tomorrow with the sun to the sound of kookaburras echoing across the river.

  The gentle bustle of people moving past her at the market brought her back to the present. She picked up a lychee and rolled its rough skin between her palms, inhaled its sweet scent. Maybe she’d make lychee and mint martinis at Driftwood tonight. She stood still and watched the Saturday morning crowd. Mothers pushing children in prams, older people wearing sensible sun hats, families and a few young people out enjoying the sun. She saw things, absorbed things into her body now in a way she couldn’t ever remember doing before. To take her mind off her resignation, Wendy had helped her plant tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and potato in the back garden, and for the past week she had spent the cool of the morning working there. She enjoyed the soft grit of the soil, its new-rain smell. The work was simple, mindless, nothing like the exhaustive detail of the menial tasks she’d performed in her job. Her skin had browned and her hair had honeyed from the hours spent outside. She laughed when she told Flick and Asha how much she usually spent on self-tan and hairdresser appointments to get the same effect. She thought about all the handbags she’d lusted after and saved for, the designer dresses she’d felt special and powerful in, the make-up, the shoes. They had been important. They’d made her happy, in some fleeting, heady way, but it had never lasted. And then she’d needed something new.

  Here she had been rotating the same few items of clothing, handwashing to conserve tank water and hanging clothes out to line-dry in the fierce midday sun. It reminded her of backpacking through Europe. It was astonishing how little you really needed when your sense of satisfaction was coming from somewhere else. She knew it was coming from Driftwood.

  Phoebe spotted Asha’s stall at the far end of the market, overlooking the sparkling bend in the river below. Asha saw her and waved. It felt like something had shifted between them since their chat about their mothers in the studio, despite the awkwardness of Jez turning up. Asha had already sold her painting—Wendy had adored it and begged Asha for it until she’d relented.

  Phoebe had promised to come and see Asha’s market stall. What she hadn’t realised until this moment was that Asha made baby clothing from the screen-printed fabrics drying in the studio. Her heart ached as she walked towards the trestle table, strung with brightly coloured fabric flags and piled with tiny bibs, singlets and a few cushions. Asha was putting a singlet into a paper bag for a woman carrying a baby in a sling. Phoebe brushed her hand over the soft cotton with a pink and purple elephant pattern.

  ‘Do you like them?’

  ‘They’re very cute,’ Phoebe said.

  Another woman with an older baby, chubby legs kicking in a front pack, approached and cooed over the bibs. Asha smiled, but Phoebe could see vulnerability in her eyes. The woman paid for a pack of three and left.

  ‘So, mums are a big customer base?’

  Asha rolled her eyes.

  ‘That must be hard,’ Phoebe said, hoping for honest Asha, not brutal Asha, to respond.

  Asha straightened, as though bracing herself against the question, but then her shoulders collapsed in defeat. ‘Out of anything I’ve ever made, the bibs sell the best. I manage to get rid of the soft toys, but without the bibs and singlets I wouldn’t have a livelihood. It’s just life’s way of being ironic, I guess.’

  Phoebe shot her a reassuring look. ‘You know, my best friend has just had a baby. I’ll take a three-pack as well,’ she said, reaching for the elephant print. ‘As long as you don’t mind.’

  Asha laughed and waved a hand. ‘It’s okay. I’ve accepted that I’m going to be the crazy old lady who makes beautiful bibs for other people’s children.’

  Phoebe pressed her mouth into a sympathetic line.

  An older woman approached the stall and bought a pack of the bibs for her granddaughter’s baby.

  ‘Like hotcakes around here,’ said Phoebe.

  Asha raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m not even joking. Jez doesn’t know. He tells everyone I sell cushions.’

  ‘When was the last cushion you sold?’

  Asha laughed dryly. ‘Oh, probably a few months ago.’

  The moment was broken with the approach of a heavy-set man with a serious expression, wiping a handkerchief across his forehead.

  ‘Hankies. What about hankies with purple elephants on them?’ suggested Asha, pressing her hand to her mouth as she tried to suppress a laugh. ‘Bibs and hankies, something for the very young or very old. Pretty much sums up the people round here.’

  That set off a wave of giggles in Phoebe but the man stopped next to her and she straightened.

  ‘Sorry, you don’t know me.’ He cleared his throat. ‘My mother lives next door to you. Phoebe, isn’t it? I’ve seen you in your yard.’ He stuck out a sweaty hand. ‘Chester Hill.’ He had a friendly demeanour and the same sun-worn face that so many men had here.

  ‘I just wanted to introduce myself. Ginny is quite fond of you already. I know she’s happy to have a new neighbour after . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘After what happened.’

  Phoebe shook his hand awkwardly and shielded her eyes from the glare to get a better look at him. ‘Your mother is quite remarkable. I can’t believe she’s blind and lives on the river by herself. Well, with Steffi.’

  Chester shook his head. ‘She’s as stubborn as a person with 20/20 vision. I’ve been trying to get her into a nice retirement village for years but she insists on staying on the river. She’s never listened to anyone. From what I’ve heard, your sister was just as headstrong and independent. They were a match, those two.’ He smiled. ‘Sorry, I h
ope you don’t mind me talking about it. It was just such a shock when . . . Mum took it very badly.’

  Phoebe’s eyes pricked with tears. ‘No, it’s okay.’

  Chester rubbed his chin. ‘Sorry, I just wanted to come and say hello, and if you ever need anything, I’m sure anyone in the street would do anything for you. I’ve got a full tool box if you ever need any handyman help.’

  Phoebe smiled weakly, overcome by the emotion this man had just expressed. ‘Thanks, Chester, that’s really kind of you.’

  ‘Mum’s just over by the church in the sun. She asked me if she could have a word with you when I said you were here.’

  ‘Oh, she’s here? Sure, I’ll come over.’ Phoebe looked at Asha who was quietly sorting singlets, but she could tell she’d been listening.

  ‘See you later?’

  Asha nodded and flashed a small smile, and for a second Phoebe thought she saw sympathy on her face.

  Ginny sat at a table in the make-shift café next to the old stone church. Steffi was by her side.

  The dog greeted Phoebe with a small bark and several licks and Ginny smiled up at her. ‘Oh Phoebe, is that you?’

  ‘Hi Ginny, you look like you’ve got a lovely place in the sun here.’

  ‘I’m so pleased you’re here, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something for days.’

  ‘And I’ve been meaning to bring you some limes and one of my lemon and yoghurt cakes and tell you about my vegie patch.’

  ‘Come, sit,’ Ginny patted the chair beside her.

  ‘How have you been?’ Phoebe asked, moving the chair closer.

  ‘It’s just that I remembered something. My memory is terrible. Not what it used to be. But anyway, I was napping the other afternoon and I woke up from a dream about Karin. And for some reason the dream made me remember a conversation I had with her.’ Ginny’s hand fluttered at her throat. ‘She’d gone away one weekend but I was quite poorly and Chester was in Sydney, so Karin had said she’d have her mobile phone on the whole time in case I needed to ring someone.’

  Phoebe helped Ginny take a sip of water, feeling her pulse quicken at Ginny’s mood. ‘Sorry Phoebe, I’m just feeling a little emotional today.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Phoebe said, reaching out and patting her hand.

  ‘Anyway, I did need to call Karin and I called her very late at night. Silly, really, I should have just called an ambulance but I just wanted to hear a friendly voice, I suppose and to know I wasn’t overreacting. And . . .’

  ‘What happened?’ Phoebe’s throat constricted.

  ‘Karin answered . . . I woke her up. And I was very feverish at the time and she helped me because she rang the ambulance for me, sweet girl. And I’m not sure I even properly registered it at the time because I was so unwell, but there was a man’s voice in the background.’

  ‘In the background as in he was beside her? And you said you woke her? She was sleeping?’ Phoebe’s mind was spinning.

  ‘I think so, yes. As you know I’m more attuned to sound than most and it was definitely a man close to the phone and not background noise like a TV.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I can’t really remember, it’s all a bit of a blur, just that he was talking to Karin.’

  Phoebe’s hand trembled as she squeezed Ginny’s hand. ‘And that’s why you subconsciously thought she was seeing someone on those weekend trips.’

  Ginny squeezed back. ‘Yes, I know I’m a doddery old lady but that’s why I thought she was involved with a man.’

  Back at the house, Phoebe found herself standing in front of Karin’s open wardrobe. She still avoided this room, still slept on the sofa, even though there were two other bedrooms. She took down the shoeboxes stacked on the high shelf above the clothes. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to find. Old letters? A diary? Some evidence of this man Ginny had heard her with? No, it was all too introspective for Karin. Theirs wasn’t the kind of family to go combing through private things. As far as she knew, no one had gone through Karin’s phone or email. Had the police even looked? She had no idea. If only she had been stronger, she could have, should have, but she just hadn’t had the strength to face it.

  A phone conversation with her dad came back to her, shrouded in a haze of emotion so thick her throat made a strangled sound. It had been a day after they’d been told Karin had died.

  ‘Honey, the police are asking some questions.’ Her dad’s voice sounded different, and yet so familiar. He was talking to her as though she were a child again, as though he were trying to protect her from the world. ‘We’re not really sure how to answer them, but you were closest to her.’

  ‘What? What have they found?’ She was keenly aware of the desperation in her voice, and then she realised it didn’t matter what they’d found because Karin was gone.

  ‘They’re asking about a Jack. There was a piece of paper with the name “Jack” written on it next to her landline, and a time—2 pm. Do you know who that could have been?’

  She hadn’t known. Her mind had been unable to focus on anything but the pain. Thoughts were scattered, awful things. All she could do was surrender to her feelings.

  ‘No,’ she had said. ‘No, she didn’t know anyone called “Jack”.’

  But now, kneeling before her sister’s closet, smelling the faint note of flowers mingled with dust, she remembered. Maybe it had been talking to Ginny. Maybe it was walking into Karin’s room and staring at her things. Jack had been the name of the special-needs dog Karin had fallen in love with at the kennel. The one Phoebe had forbidden her to get. She laughed out loud. Karin had made a time to go and see him, despite Phoebe’s discouragement over the phone. That was so completely Karin.

  You were about to pick up a dog with special needs. You did not kill yourself. Who were you with that night Ginny called and how did you end up in that river?

  She sat on Karin’s bed, running her hand over the quilted cover as though her fingertips could find the answers she needed, here where Karin had slept. Phoebe didn’t know where to put this new information. She felt like screaming it out loud. Making it real. Was it real? Or was being back here just sending her slowly mad? She looked at the old analogue clock, still steadfastly keeping the time on Karin’s bedside table. There was still an hour until gin and tonic time at Driftwood but she needed to be around other people.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Phoebe asked, finding Jez making a sandwich in the kitchen.

  He looked up and smiled. ‘Want some? I can make runny honey bread for you.’

  She laughed. It had been so long since she’d heard someone call it that. She’d hated sandwiches as a kid and the only thing she’d ever had on bread was honey. She hadn’t even wanted it to be called a sandwich. Nostalgia swept through her, sweet and aching. Jez knew her.

  ‘You okay?’ Jez put down the knife and studied her. ‘You look a bit . . . I don’t want to say “off” but . . .’

  ‘Um . . .’ She squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced. ‘I don’t know. I just needed some company, I think.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  He knew her better than she knew herself. He always had. Nathaniel had never had a particular interest in seeing into her, and gradually Phoebe had stopped expecting him to notice how she was feeling. Somehow, she’d convinced herself along the way that it was a man thing—that men couldn’t read emotions. And yet here was Jez, opening her stuck-together pages. She sat down at the kitchen bench and took two limes out of her pocket. She rolled one and sniffed it. ‘You’re not usually around for gin and tonic time.’

  ‘Would it go with a ham and cheese sandwich?’

  ‘Gin and tonic goes with everything.’

  Phoebe fixed the drinks as he ate with the same big, hungry bites as when he was a kid, leaving the crusts and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. They sat at the table, and he told her about his morning visiting a mate and his wife’s newborn at the hospital, awe and sadness in his voice.


  He brushed crumbs from his fingers. ‘Asha can never come to these things. Too painful for her. Then there’ll be the christening and the first birthday and it will just keep going.’

  ‘It might still happen for you guys.’ Phoebe said with false cheer. She felt torn. She wanted to reassure him, make him feel okay but doing so held its own awkwardness.

  Jez pushed his plate away and took a gulp of his drink as though it were soft drink rather than hard spirits. ‘I can tell something’s up with you. I’ve told you about my crap day. You were never good at hiding your feelings.’

  She ran her hands down her face and took a large sip of her drink. ‘Just before the fires, I met my neighbour, Ginny. The one whose house you checked on. She’s blind and . . .’ Phoebe paused, slightly unsure of whether to open this whole thing up to Jez. ‘She knew Karin, but she said a few odd things. Anyway, I haven’t been able to let them go. And today we had another chat at the markets. But it just . . . I don’t know. Apparently Karin used to make bunches of flowers for Ginny based on their meanings, because she’s blind and can’t see them. She’d given Ginny a book about it and . . . you know Karin’s suicide note was written in flowers? And Ginny mentioned Karin went away every few weekends. I wasn’t aware . . .’

  It was possibly the effect of the alcohol, but tears crept into her eyes. ‘And the worst thing is that maybe Karin was closer to her blind neighbour than to me. Maybe I didn’t know my sister at all. I thought she told me everything but she didn’t.’ Phoebe sniffed and wiped under her eyes with her fingers. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why this has suddenly affected me so much.’

  Jez stood and moved behind her. He gently folded his arms around her shoulders. She was seventeen again and caught in the intensely personal smell of him. With this smell came the feeling of the first time he kissed her, water from the dam cool on his lips, lily pads at her shoulders. She remembered the watery buzz of a dragonfly hovering, his lips on the back of her neck. The longing made her unable to stop crying.