Shadow of the Mountain

by Mackenzie, Anna

  ‘I wish I’d been wrong.’

  She nodded. ‘Me too.’

  There was a pause, and Geneva sipped her coffee. As the first mouthful hit her stomach she realised she was hungry.

  ‘I’m sorry about Mum,’ Angus said. ‘She can come on pretty strong.’

  Geneva shrugged. On the scale of mad mothers she could scarcely claim the moral high ground — though she would have once, before depression and pills drew her mother into a foreign inner world, forbidden, it seemed, even to her husband and daughter.

  ‘She’s a life coach,’ Angus continued. ‘Hence the “believe-me-I-know-how-to-deal-with-this” manner.’ Geneva smiled. ‘I tried to get her to wait in the car but she couldn’t resist.’

  ‘What? Taking charge?’

  ‘No, idiot.’ He frowned. ‘Meeting you.’

  16.

  ‘Hey, Leonie!’

  Geneva ran to catch up with Leonie’s crowd, the pedal of her bike catching her painfully in the shin as she dodged a gaggle of Year Nines. Leonie turned impatiently, one fist propped ostentatiously on her hip.

  ‘I just wondered whether you knew about Kitty,’ Geneva said, ignoring the ache in her leg. ‘I know you two are friends, so I figure —’

  ‘More than you are, that’s for sure,’ Leonie interrupted. ‘You are such a bitch. Kitty told me what —’

  ‘She’s in hospital.’

  The scornful mouth dropped open. ‘What? Since when?’

  ‘Friday night. Her mum rang me.’

  Leonie face closed like a trap. ‘Now I know you’re bullshitting. I saw her on Friday night. We went to a party at Jason’s. You weren’t invited.’ She finished on a smug note, but Geneva was already shaking her head.

  ‘After that, after midnight. Was Jax with her at the party?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘They had a car accident. Jax was driving — if you’ve ever driven with him you’ll know it’s not hard to imagine.’

  Shock registered on Leonie’s face. ‘We went with them to the party — Yorkie and me. We were going to catch a ride home with them too, but they left before us.’ Her mouth dropped open. ‘If we had gone with them, we’d have been in the accident! God, that’s so awful!’

  Geneva stared at the girl in disbelief.

  ‘So is Kitty all right?’ Leonie asked belatedly.

  ‘Her leg was crushed. They operated on Saturday. And she looks a bit of a mess.’

  ‘Ohmigod!’ Leonie reached forward and wrapped purple-nailed fingers around Geneva’s wrist. ‘You mean she’s a cripple?’

  Geneva pulled her arm away. ‘No, I don’t mean that! She’s injured and a bit concussed, and she’d probably appreciate a few visitors! God, Leonie.’ She slung her bag over her shoulder. ‘I told her mum I’d let Kitty’s friends know. Visiting is from two till eight, so you could go up after school.’

  Leonie was shaking her head. ‘Not me. I hate hospitals. And I don’t even know her mum. No way.’

  Geneva gaped. ‘Some friend,’ she spat, turning on her heel.

  Geneva stood beside the swimming pool, memories pouring thick and cloying as treacle as she stared into the scummy water. It was the colour and density of trough water, or of the dam that supplied the farm’s irrigation system, opaque green and home to an impressive population of pond life.

  When they were seven or eight, Kitty and Geneva had collected jars of tadpoles from the dam, carrying them home and keeping them in a glass bowl in the laundry so they could watch them develop legs and lose their tails. By the time the frogs reached their adult form the girls had lost interest and Geneva’s mother had quietly released them into the nearest trough. Kitty’s horse had snuffled one up a few days later causing the mare to shy and dump its rider.

  Geneva smiled remembering it. She didn’t know who’d been more startled, Kitty or the pony. Geneva’s mum had laughed when they’d straggled inside and told her. ‘It was either let them go or start serving their legs for dinner,’ she’d said. ‘I can’t cope with a colony of frogs taking over my laundry.’

  She’d been more enthusiastic when their attention turned to growing peas and sweetcorn, and had gifted a section of garden into their care. Their interest had waned after a single season, but they’d enjoyed the brief bounty of their crops. For a few weekends freshly shelled peas had taken on the mystique of pomegranates or peeled grapes, and later in the summer they’d sold the Macphees enough corn to warrant a weekend in town to spend their booty.

  Geneva dipped her toe in the pool and kicked up an arc of droplets, the ripples breaking the sky’s slate reflection into dozens of wobbling shards.

  They’d never paid any attention to the girls who moved with them from primary to intermediate to high school. She and Kitty had always been enough for each other. Throughout their childhood, Kitty had come to stay for a week or more every school holidays — but not last summer. There’d been no regular holiday exchange, no camping trip to the river or reciprocal excursions into town.

  Staring into the dull water, Geneva thought back to the intense conversations she and Kitty had once shared as they lounged around the poolside pretending to years they didn’t have, their attempts at sophistication spoiled when they grew bored with words, or hot, and leapt shrieking into the water.

  When Sonya had rung to report on Kitty’s progress, Geneva hadn’t known what to feel. A few years ago her reaction would have been straightforward and predictable, but now … Her emotions felt like the tired residue of a jumble sale; a tangled mix of memories and anger and concern, all dwarfed by an emptiness where her affection for Kitty had once been.

  She shook her head impatiently. They’d have grown apart anyway. She couldn’t imagine liking Jax under any circumstances, and maybe Kitty had always been destined to admire guys like him.

  He’d been charged with dangerous driving causing injury, and driving with excess blood alcohol. Sonya had snapped out the phrases as if she couldn’t bear to keep them in her mouth, adding that Jax still hadn’t bothered to visit. Neither of them said the obvious — that Kitty was better off without him — because they both knew that Kitty wouldn’t see it that way. It rankled that Jax seemed to care so little about what he’d done.

  Geneva kicked at a pile of leaves that had gathered against the raised lip of the pool. It was barely a month since she’d cleared them away but there was no longer any sign of her efforts.

  ‘We can start getting it ready for the summer, if you like.’

  Startled, Geneva turned to see her father standing by the pool shed. He looked apologetic, as he always seemed to these days. She shrugged. They hadn’t bothered with the pool last summer.

  ‘How’s Kitty?’ he asked.

  He’d offered to drive her to the hospital on Monday evening but she’d shaken her head. She’d felt a phoney, visiting Kitty. She’d even felt it talking to Sonya.

  ‘She’ll be going home in a few days,’ she said.

  Her father’s arm rose as if he planned to embrace her, but something — some invisible barrier — made him hesitate, his arm dropping limply to his side. We’ve come too far apart, Geneva thought. He looked so helpless that she found herself wanting to offer something to counterbalance the hug that he couldn’t bring himself to give her.

  ‘We had an argument, when I stayed with her a few weekends ago. We haven’t spoken since.’ Her father held her eyes. ‘We both said dumb stuff. You know,’ she added, not sure that he would. She couldn’t imagine her father losing his temper in public.

  ‘She’ll probably appreciate an olive branch, stuck in hospital,’ he volunteered. ‘You know, what gets said in the heat of the moment isn’t usually what’s meant.’

  Geneva made a non-committal sound and they stood for a moment in an awkward silence.

  ‘That young man,’ her father said finally. ‘Angus, was it? The one who helped your mother.’ He hesitated. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

  Geneva could feel the heat rise into her cheeks. She s
cuffed with her foot against the lip of the pool, her face hidden by the fall of her hair. ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘Sort of. We haven’t talked about it.’ Her eyes darted to her father’s familiar face: his dark grey eyes, the troubled lines around his mouth. He seemed smaller than he had when she was younger, diminished. She wasn’t sure what he wanted.

  Her father nodded. ‘I liked him.’

  She felt like a puppet whose strings had been dropped. ‘Me too,’ she said.

  He cleared his throat. ‘You should have a boyfriend,’ he added, his eyes looking past her to where the mountain stood sharp-edged and stark in the last of the evening light. ‘You can’t stay still at your age.’

  Geneva swallowed. A month ago the conversation would have been unimaginable, but with their daily trips to and from school something seemed to have relaxed in her father — or perhaps in both of them. Between them. ‘Not at any age, maybe,’ she suggested.

  Her father’s eyes swung back to hers, the lines of his face losing their certainty in the growing shadow of evening. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

  A moment later he patted her shoulder and turned to walk away.

  ‘Dad.’ Her voice stopped him, more forceful than she’d intended. ‘We’re all right, aren’t we?’

  Half turning, her father nodded.

  ‘I mean,’ she hesitated, ‘all of us.’

  His head swivelled towards the house and he seemed to shrink a fraction. ‘I don’t know, Genna. I wish there was something I could do but …’ He sighed and made a bleak attempt at a smile. ‘She loves you, you know. We both do.’

  Swallowing against the lump that seemed to fill not just her throat but her chest, her arms, her legs, Geneva wondered if it made any difference any longer. Maybe they’d already been through too much. She didn’t know whether there was any way back to the family they’d once been — or any way forward, for the family they’d become.

  Her father turned, his feet crunching across the gravel. Pushing her hair from her face, Geneva raised her chin and looked to where the mountain was slowly being absorbed by the encroaching dark.

  17.

  ‘Geneva? Have you got a minute?’

  Geneva looked around to find Dayna standing alongside her, arms wrapped tight around a stack of books. The library was usually empty this period but Dayna was one of the school librarians. She was short and slightly chubby but her straight nose and high cheekbones gave her face a classical grace that Geneva’s mother might once have described as ‘likely to wear well’. Geneva waited.

  ‘I just wanted to say, well, to let you know, really, that I think it sucks, the way Leonie reacted when you told her about Kitty’s accident. It was round school in an hour.’ Dayna wrinkled her freckled nose. ‘Who needs friends like that?’

  Geneva nodded.

  ‘I think it’s great, that you’re visiting her. And I know how hard it must be, after …’ A blush darkened Dayna’s face. Geneva looked at her hands where they lay on the desk.

  ‘I’m sorry, that was a dumb thing to say. I —’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Geneva said. ‘It was true. It is hard.’

  Dayna looked relieved. ‘Well, if you ever want — oh, I don’t know. Just to talk, or not to talk. Go to a movie or something…’ She blushed again, the colour rising and falling in her cheeks like a hot tide.

  Geneva nodded. ‘Thanks. That’d be … that’d be nice.’

  They’d been in the same maths class for years but she scarcely knew Dayna; she was one of those people who always seemed to be at the fringe of things.

  ‘There’s a film festival starting in a couple of weeks,’ Dayna added hurriedly. ‘I don’t know if it’s your sort of thing, but there are a couple of movies that should be worth seeing. You can pick up a brochure at the library in town…’

  Her voice petered out, leaving Geneva feeling something was expected of her. She nodded. ‘I’ll do that. Thanks, Dayna.’ She wasn’t sure whether she was interested in a film festival, or in taking up a new friendship, but it must have cost the other girl an effort to set aside her shyness. Geneva smiled her gratitude and turned back to the book lying open but unread on the desk.

  The hospital felt cool after the warmth of the afternoon. Geneva lingered in the main corridor. Even without uniforms and name badges, it would have been easy to tell staff from patients and visitors: the sense of strain, or relief, marked visitors out. She wondered what her own face would tell people.

  She wasn’t sure whether she was doing the right thing, but Dayna had been right: Kitty’s friends weren’t exactly queuing up to visit. And it would have felt frivolous going to climbing practice. With an image of her father’s olive branch in her head, Geneva approached the reception desk.

  Kitty had been moved to a room with four beds, one empty, the others hidden by curtains that couldn’t contain the low babble of voices. The bleeping machine had gone but the small space looked no less clinical. Geneva approached the bed warily. The bruising on Kitty’s face had spread and darkened into a rainbow of ugly shades.

  ‘Hi.’

  Kitty’s eyes flickered towards her then away.

  ‘How’s the knee?’ There was no answer. ‘Everyone at school’s thinking about you,’ Geneva offered. ‘And Mum and Dad send their love.’

  Ignoring her, Kitty reached for the cup of water that sat on the bedside table. Geneva took a deep breath. ‘I’m really sorry this happened, Kitty.’

  Her one-time friend turned narrowed eyes on her. ‘I bet. Like, you’re not thinking “got what she deserved”!’

  ‘Of course I’m not!’

  ‘Ghoul!’

  Geneva stepped back, catching the leg of a chair with her foot so that it screeched across the polished floor. ‘I’ll come back another time,’ she said.

  Anger radiated from Kitty like a physical force. ‘Don’t bother! Not for my sake. Or is it Mum you’re trying to impress?’

  Geneva felt as if she’d been slapped.

  ‘You and Mum, you’re two of a kind: oh-so-nice, and all the time you’ve got “I told you so” written across your faces.’

  The low murmur of sound from the other cubicles had stilled so that the room had a held-breath feeling. Geneva couldn’t find any words to counter the attack.

  ‘Just piss off.’

  With colour flaring in her face, Geneva spun towards the door. A nurse sitting at the central desk looked up in surprise as she sped past, her hand slamming hard against the swing door at the end of the ward. Shock and anger clotted in her belly. There was no excuse for Kitty’s spite. Geneva scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand, hoping she wouldn’t meet Sonya. At the end of the corridor she turned right, then aimlessly right again. She understood Kitty’s anger, but it was Jax it should be directed at.

  Scarcely aware of where she was going, Geneva swung around a corner and through a further set of fire doors, the glass panel cool beneath her palm. She needed to find a toilet where she could wash her face and calm down. As she passed a nurses’ station a voice reached towards her. ‘Can I help you?’

  Geneva shook her head, pretending to hunt for something in her backpack. ‘I need a loo,’ she said, without looking up.

  ‘Just along there, on your right.’

  She found the door. Shoving it open, she stepped inside and leaned against it, breathing hard. She was overreacting. The toilet in the cubicle flushed and a middle-aged woman came out. She glanced at Geneva as she turned to wash her hands. Geneva pushed herself away from the door.

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ the woman asked, her eyes in the mirror registering concern.

  Nodding, Geneva sidled into the cubicle. Flipping down the lid, she sat, doubled forward with her head in her hands, palms pressing against her eyeballs as she waited for the woman to leave. When she stood up she felt dizzy. She held onto the basin while she splashed water on her face.

  There was something tugging at her brain that she didn’t want to think abou
t.

  She had to get out of here. Avoiding her reflection in the mirror, Geneva swung open the door and stepped out into the corridor. The exit sign was back past the nurses’ station. She walked towards it, keeping her eyes averted. That was why she saw it. If she’d been looking at the nurses, or her feet — looking at anything except the doors — she wouldn’t have.

  183. Simple figures, blue on a white strip, set into the wood of the door.

  A nurse was holding her gently by the arm. ‘Are you looking for someone?’

  Geneva shook her head, shaking herself out of her memories. ‘The way out.’ She felt feeble and cold.

  ‘Just along here, then left. Follow the signs to the main reception.’

  Geneva nodded and stumbled away, her hand leaving a damp imprint on the glass of the heavy swing door.

  18.

  Angus leaned back, elbows propped on the wooden bench behind them. ‘Mum wants you to come for dinner,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the game. ‘She says she’d like to get to know you properly.’

  Geneva took a sip from her polystyrene cup. The coffee was sludgy and barely lukewarm. A ragged cheer turned her eyes towards the hockey pitch: the Wakefield team had scored a goal. She didn’t know much about hockey, but it had felt like a lifeline in fog when Angus texted to say he was coming to Waimana to watch the district semi.

  Putting the cup between her feet she folded her arms on her knees, hunching against the breeze that gusted sporadically around the end of the stand. The wooden seat creaked as Angus shifted and Geneva turned her head to look at him.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s up to you. She can be fairly intense, but personally I’d be more worried about the cretin.’

  Despite some bizarre phone conversations, Geneva doubted Blair could be as bad as Angus made out. It was the big picture that worried her: she wasn’t sure she was emotionally resilient enough for a full-on family dinner. And aside from that, it felt as if they were leap-frogging something.