by Anni Taylor
“Hi, wow, I never expected you’d be here.” I settled down beside her, an orange koi wriggling past the sudden intrusion of my feet in the stream.
Her blue eyes were cold as she turned to me. “I don’t want to talk. This is a competition, right? I don’t need friends.”
I flinched under the scorch of her words. Not only did she look different, but she sounded totally different. Her formerly sweet, Southern accent had given way to a harsher, almost metallic voice.
“Suit yourself.” Picking myself up again, I stepped away.
Maybe none of us were going to become friends here. Everyone had their eyes on the money. How was this whole program even going to change us? Brother Vito had told me to trust in the process. But I was already having a hard time doing that.
I wound through the olive trees until I found a shady spot.
Sitting, I pushed my back against the smooth bark of a tree, already wishing Kara wasn’t here. She was part of the before, and I just wanted to think about the after.
I wondered how she’d ended up on this program. I’d met Kara in the restroom of a casino. She’d been there with a wealthy man in his sixties—a sugar daddy. I’d just suffered a crushing loss after losing my last five thousand on the roulette wheel.
I’d walked away from the roulette table in stiff-legged defeat and into the ladies’ restroom. In front of the bathroom mirror, I’d stood staring at myself—numb, shocked to my bones and unable to accept the results of the stupid decisions I’d made. My carefully styled hair had been stuck to my sweating brow, my slinky, expensive city dress twisted at the seams.
Gray thought all these trips of mine into the city at night and all the money I’d been bringing home were due to a job in an upmarket restaurant. But here I was, forced to face myself and the lies I’d told.
The sudden squeal of the bathroom door opening had caused me to shrink back from the mirror and turn away. I didn’t want to have to acknowledge anyone.
A girl had burst in, running for a toilet and vomiting, clutching her kinky blonde hair back from her face.
“Are you okay?” My response was automatic. In truth, I didn’t care. She was a stranger who’d probably just had too much to drink. At least that kind of problem was easily solved. She’d feel better now that she’d vomited.
She grabbed some toilet paper without looking back at me and hastily dabbed her mouth. “Yeah.”
Rising awkwardly on stiletto heels, she blundered to the sink and noisily drank down some water and then spat it out. She wiped her mouth again, this time with the back of her arm. “Sorry. Not used to cocktails.” Turning to the mirror, she ran her hands through her hair, fluffing it out and studying me with heavily lidded eyes. “What’s your name? Mine’s Kara.” She offered a moist hand for a handshake.
“Evie.”
“You look bad, honey. You should come back out there and have a drink with me. You’ll get a bit happier, guaranteed.” Her accent was American—sweet and slightly Southern.
“I don’t feel like a drink, and I think you’ve had your limit.” I sounded uptight.
“Oh yeah? Bet I could drink lots more now. And you’d feel better if you did. I saw you at the roulette table. You lost pretty badly.”
I bristled. “Happens to everyone.” I made a show of looking through things in my handbag, as though I’d misplaced something, and that was the reason I’d been standing here in the bathroom looking lost. Surely she’d get the hint.
“If losing makes you sad, maybe you’d be better off not playing,” she persisted.
She sounded young. It was something a kid would say. I eyed her properly, letting my mind reverse-engineer her heavy makeup back to a bare face. I was right—she was extremely young. A teenager.
I snatched some paper towelling from a reel and dabbed the sweat from my brow. “I’m not sad. Just angry with myself.”
She shrugged a lazy shoulder. “There’s a way out, y’know.”
“Rob a bank?” My laugh sounded worse than hollow in my ears.
“No, you don’t have to rob a bank. You’re pretty. And smart. I mean, I’ve seen you here before, playing poker. You have to be smart to even play those tournaments.”
“So, what’s this magical way out?”
“You can make money just by talking with lonely people. Go on dates. Stuff like that.”
“Escort services, right?” I said dryly. “That’s what you’re talking about? Well, I’m married.”
“That doesn’t matter. You don’t have to sleep with them. And it’s not being an escort, exactly. We’re called companions. We set our own rules.”
“That’s what you’re doing? That man you were with tonight—you’re his companion?”
She lifted her pointed chin. “Yes.”
“Yeah, it’s not for me. Thanks anyway.”
“Just trying to help. It’s just a way of helping yourself when you have, y’know, an addiction.”
“I don’t have an—”
“If something’s bad for you, but you keep doing it, isn’t that a problem?”
“It just wasn’t my night,” I said stiffly.
Her pale eyes clouded, and she folded her arms in tight against her body. “I saw your face when you lost. And I can see you’ve been crying now. You’re in a bad place, honey. I’m an addict, too. Just a different kind. I’ve been addicted to cocaine for the past four months.”
“God. Cocaine?”
“I’m okay because I’m getting help. I’m staying with the man I came here with—Wilson. He gives me money, anything I need.”
“Don’t you have anyone else who can help you out? Friends? Family?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have anyone here. I came out here from America to study. My second year of college. I had an Aussie friend I was sharing a dorm room with. But she’s the one who got into drugs first. I don’t know where she is now. I couldn’t pay for the dorm room on my own. And besides, all the money was going toward drugs. I slept in homeless shelters for a few weeks. Before Wilson found me.”
I softened my tone. “Can’t you go home?”
“No. I don’t want Mom seeing me like this.”
“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She hesitated before saying, “Seventeen.”
“You’re seventeen? You shouldn’t even be here.”
She shrugged. “Wilson likes the roulette. So I come here with him. Better than hanging out in his apartment all alone.”
She was still a child. A child that could be in danger, and she was all alone. I couldn’t imagine Willow and Lilly ever being alone and at risk at this tender age, but if they were, I’d want someone to help them. “You don’t know anything about this man. You could be getting yourself into all kinds of trouble. Might be the hardest thing you ever have to do, but you should just call your mother. Tell her everything.”
“You don’t know what that would do to her. I can’t do it. Anyway, I know enough about Wilson. He’s really sweet. He gives me all the dough I need.”
“Look”—I pulled a pen and notebook from my handbag and scribbled down my phone number and address—“if you get into trouble, give me a call. Or if you need somewhere to stay in a hurry . . .”
“Thanks. But I’m okay. Like I said. These guys, money is nothing to them. I know another girl who got all her credit card debt paid off. Twenty thousand. They’re nice guys.”
Twenty thousand. Paid off. Those words seemed like some kind of fairy tale told in fairyland.
Taking my pen, she tore off a strip at the bottom of my note and jotted down the address of the companions website that she’d told me about. “You should think about doing what I do. It’s easy. They just want your company, like I said.” She handed it to me.
“Hey . . . thanks for trying to help. Really.” I gave her arm a light squeeze. “See you. And . . . be careful.”
In my mind, I was already walking towards the restroom door, beginning to make my way out of th
e casino and through the cold night to the train station. Thoughts of having to admit to Gray what I’d done seeped in like a caustic substance. But my body hadn’t moved. I was still standing there in the exact same position.
Twenty thousand dollars. That was how much Kara had said the guy had given a girl. Twenty thousand.
God, why was that thought sticking in my head? I’d never do what Kara was doing. Not in a million years.
She looked at me slightly askance, and I guessed that she knew what I was thinking. A deep crease appeared on her forehead then, and she shook her head. “No, forget it. You’re not cut out for this. Forget I ever spoke to you.” There was a clatter of high heels as she ran from the rest room.
It was midnight when I returned home to my house in the outer Sydney suburbs.
Something was wrong. All the lights were on. It was way too late for all the lights to be on. I rushed inside, forgetting for a moment the terrible thing that I had to tell Gray.
Muffled noises and voices came from behind the closed bathroom door. Thick steam wet my face as I opened the door. All three of them were in there—Gray, Willow and Lilly—all in damp pyjamas. Gray had the shower running hot. He was sitting on the side of the bath, Lilly lying across his lap while he patted her firmly on the back. Willow was kneeling beside him on the bathroom mat, brushing back her sister’s hair. Lilly was coughing—in that deep, croupy cough that she got too often.
The three of them stared at me through the mist.
Gray had work tomorrow. It should be me here with Lilly, or at least caring for her alongside Gray. I had nothing to show for my six hours away from home. I wasn’t marching in there with a home deposit in my fist and the promise of a better life. All I’d done was to make things a thousand times harder for all of us.
Gray only said one thing to me as I took Lilly from him: You didn’t answer your phone.
“Things were hectic at work,” I muttered, holding Lilly close, feeling her clammy arms and legs against me, her damp clothing and hair. I turned my head away from Gray, kissing Lilly’s cheek.
Uncried tears burned in my eyes. I didn’t deserve to cry. Tears were for the suffering. Not for the one who was about to make her own family suffer.
I told Gray to go back to bed.
Willow watched her father leave the bathroom and then silently turned back to me, her dark eyes round and questioning. What was she thinking? Did I look guilty? Even at age four, she would come out with the most astute observations. I couldn’t even imagine what she’d be like as a teenager.
“Go pick out a book to read, sweetie,” I said. “I’ll read it to you and your sister. We’ll get you two into dry pyjamas, and then we’ll all get some sleep.”
That night, I got the girls off to sleep, but I didn’t sleep at all.
The entire house seemed to smell of steam and mould. Lilly was sick yet again. My dream of a new house that didn’t let in the rain and mould stretched further and further away.
Sometime between three and four a.m., I moved my last possible thing on my list of job descriptions to the top.
1. Cooking
2. Warcraft
3. Talking
4. Poker
5. Self-loathing
I was a good listener, and I found small talk easy.
Kara had told me that sugar babying didn’t have to involve sex. It could just be dinner and conversation. At the back of my mind, I knew that it was a slippery slide, but I was beyond the point where I could think rationally.
I’d dug through my handbag for the website address Kara had given me and looked it up.
Somehow, the terror of chatting to men for money had started to dull in comparison to telling Gray or my mother about my gambling.
12. I, INSIDE THE WALLS
IT ALWAYS STARTS LIKE THIS, HAPPY in the garden.
They come here in temptation.
They don’t know that they will fall, one by one, into a hell of their worst imagining.
13. GRAY
I WOKE WITH MORNING SUN SLANTING across my face and a mouth drier than cardboard.
Evie wasn’t beside me in the bed.
That wasn’t unusual for a Sunday. I’d sleep in on Sundays, and she’d get up with the kids, except when she worked late at the city restaurant on Saturday night. But today was different, and with a sinking feeling I remembered why. Evie had left me. Was this something I was going to have to get used to—waking up without her?
The house was quiet and empty. In the kitchen, the notepad where I’d written down a list of Evie’s friends was still lying on the bench top. Late last night, in a marijuana haze, I’d called every one of those names. None of them knew anything. Every one of them expressed their heartfelt shock that Evie had left me, but their concern of course was all for her. They immediately closed ranks. They were her friends—I got it—but this breakup was fresh and painful, and they’d always been friendly with me before. Not now. I was on the outside.
Finally, at midnight, I’d called Evie’s mother, demanding to know if Evie was there. I’d gotten an earful from Verity and given an earful back. She said she hadn’t spoken to Evie since the last time she hadn’t spoken to Evie. When I’d told her that made no sense, she told me I was a drunken idiot. Which I’d also argued with. I hadn’t been drunk.
I stared at the list of names on the notepad.
One name stood out.
Marla.
When I’d spoken to Marla last night, she’d been too nice. Marla was rarely nice to me. She’d married one of my good mates four years ago, and ever since the marriage went bust (six months into it) she’d hated both him and me.
Was Marla just being extra nice because finally she’d gotten what she wanted—Evie and me breaking up—or because of something else?
No, Marla, you don’t have me fooled. You know something.
Running out to my car, I jumped in and drove to her street. I parked across the road from Marla’s house, next to the 7/11. Close enough that I could see who was coming in and out. Marla couldn’t easily spot me here, and if she did, I could just say I was buying a snack. She couldn’t claim that I was stalking her, even though I was. I knew better than to just knock on the front door. She didn’t open up for anyone except friends and family. I was neither. She’d insisted her landlord install a peephole in the front door. Somehow, that summed up Marla. She viewed life through a pin-narrow lens. I couldn’t figure how she and Evie were even friends.
Heading into the 7/11, I bought myself a milkshake. I took it back to the car and settled in, switching the radio on.
The nine o’clock morning news started.
C’mon, Marla. You normally take Princess Pout to ballet lessons at this time, the daughter that looks and acts like a mini you. I know this is when you take her, because Willow was doing the lessons, too, before we stopped being able to afford them.
The door opened.
Damn. Just Marla and Princess Pout. She didn’t have Willow and Lilly.
I’d been wrong about Evie and the girls being at Marla’s.
I turned the key in my car’s ignition and drove the car down to the exit of the 7/11.
Checking along down the street for oncoming cars, I caught sight of the shutters in one of Marla’s windows flipping open. Two little faces poked out.
The faces of my daughters.
They were here. Which meant Evie was here with them.
I swung the car around into the street and parked. I waited for Marla to leave and then sprinted across the busy road.
I knocked harder than I meant to on Marla’s front door, the frustration inside me boiling up.
What was I even going to say to Evie? The hell if I knew.
No one answered.
I took back my concern about knocking hard, and I hammered at the door. A second later, I stopped and sat myself down on the front step, my head in my hands.
People are allowed to leave people, Gray. You can’t make Evie come home. You just have to ride
this out.
“Dad!” came a soft, high voice to the side of me. Willow’s voice.
She was peeking between the shutters, tapping on the glass.
“Honey, get your mother. Tell her to open the door.”
A frown crossed her small face, and she shook her head. “She’s not here.”
“You and Lilly are in there alone?”
Lilly wriggled in beneath her sister’s chin, jostling for position. Lilly shook her head too, copying her sister’s gestures in that silent way she often did. She just stared at me, round eyed, as though she hadn’t seen me for years.
I jerked my head around at the sound of a car engine.
Marla’s car appeared in the driveway again.
Someone must have called her and told her to come straight back. If not Evie, then who?
Princess Pout jumped from the car first, her expression set in its all-too-familiar sulk. Marla stepped out behind her. “Gray, what are you doing here?”
“My kids are here. That’s what I’m doing here. Where’s Evie?”
“Look, I don’t know. I’m just minding your girls.”
“How could you not know?”
The front door cracked open. A woman with short, faded brunette hair and harsh eyes looked out. Marla’s mother. She looked straight past me to Marla. “I told you not to get involved.”
“Mum, let me handle this,” Marla said.
“Handle what, exactly?” I demanded.
Three generations of women—Marla, her mother and Princess Pout—stared at me with the same slitted eyes.
Willow and Lilly burst from the house, running to me and hugging my legs and side.
“We’re going now, girls,” I told them.
“Maribelle,” Marla said to her daughter, “I need to talk with Gray. Take Willow and Lilly with you.”
Princess Pout tightened her lips. “But we were going to get my new ballet shoes.”
“We will, maybe a bit later,” Marla crooned.
“The girls are coming with me,” I insisted.
“I can’t stop you from doing that, Gray.” She looked me directly in the eye for maybe the first time ever in her life. “But can we have a short talk first?”