The Words That Fly Between Us

by Sarah Carroll

  She turns around to see but he’s gone. ‘No one,’ she says.

  I give her a look, so Mum says, ‘Just an old friend from when I went here. He lectures now. We were catching up. Shall we?’ and she starts to walk towards the arch.

  Megan grabs my arm. ‘Who is he?’ she whispers.

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is he why they were arguing?’

  ‘No!’ I say. That’s ridiculous.

  Isn’t it?

  CHAPTER 11

  Megan had to go home after shopping because she’s visiting her cousins until tomorrow night, and I’m dying to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Dad’s still at work, so as soon as we get back, I go straight up to the attic. But now that I’m here, I remember something. There’s a painting in Ms Cusack’s attic. It never occurred to me before, but maybe, if she really is an artist, she painted it?

  There’s an ancient wooden chest in her attic, pushed into the space where the sloping roof meets the floor. I pull it out a bit and open it. Inside is the purple suede jacket with white fur around the collar and a thick belt. Beneath is a pair of flared trousers. The jacket’s too big but I put it on anyway.

  I know what’s in every chest and box, I’ve searched through them all before. Flowing clothes with floral prints. Old newspapers. Books with titles I don’t recognize. But resting against the roof is the painting with a sheet draped over it. Pushing aside cobwebs as thick as fleece, I crawl over and slide the sheet off.

  It’s an oil painting of a man on his knee, proposing to a woman, with a look in his eyes that says he loves her. It’s good, the painting. So good that I almost feel like I know who the man is. It belongs in a museum.

  It’s hard to see in this light and I squint as I search the rough oil surface. But then I see it, there’s a signature in the corner. D. Cusack! She did paint this!

  The woman in the picture has long flowing hair to match a long flowing skirt. She’s turning away from the man and she has the strangest look on her face. Like she wants to be somewhere else. I trace her outline with my finger. Why did Ms Cusack put it in the attic if she painted it? She could sell it, get some money. Maybe she’s forgotten about it. After all, it looks like years and years since anyone came up here.

  Then I remember the words, She’s a spinster, through and through.

  Is this a self-portrait? Did Ms Cusack once turn down the man in the painting and later regret it? Is that why it’s up here, because she couldn’t bear to have it on her wall, the reminder of the mistake she’d made?

  I picture her handwriting, spidery and sprawling, on the little note inside the book she gave me. Food for the mind. I wonder what the book is about and if she’s trying to tell me something.

  Still wearing her jacket, I hurry back, and sitting down on my beanbag in my attic, I open the first page.

  Mum’s putting a lasagne in the oven when I come down later.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asks, pointing her chin at the book in my hands.

  ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ I say. ‘It’s good. It’s about a girl called Scout whose father is a lawyer defending a black man accused of hurting a white woman.’

  I grab a sketch pad and go into the conservatory.

  I think the accused man is innocent. Maybe Ms Cusack’s trying to show me that good people get accused of bad things because they are poor or because they are different. Or maybe she’s saying that people need to stand up for others, like Scout’s father stands up for the black man.

  I start to draw Ms Cusack, but this time, she’s younger. Her long hair falls over her face as she sits at a kitchen table, reading. The room is messy and a fly noses an empty milk carton beside the sink.

  Mum wanders through from the kitchen with two glasses of orange juice. Sitting down beside me, she slides over To Kill a Mockingbird. ‘Haven’t read this in years,’ she says and opens it, one hand lifting some juice while the other holds the page open.

  I watch the faraway look come over Mum’s face. It’s like the faraway look on the woman in the painting in Ms Cusack’s attic. It’s not happy. It’s not sad. It’s somewhere else.

  I draw the younger Ms Cusack, her hand following the words she’s reading. The other, however, holds the last page that she read. It’s torn out and scrunched up in a ball, held above a steaming mug of hot water like she’s about to dunk it in. I add another scrunched-up page to her mouth.

  Mum leans over. She looks at my drawing but doesn’t ask.

  After spending ages on her face, I draw a fridge behind her, the door left open with nothing inside. Then I make it night-time by putting a candle on the table and shading out everything but the woman and the words and the fridge and the mess.

  Beside me, Mum turns a page.

  Back on the woman’s face, I try to get the faraway look just right. After a while, I smell burning.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The lasagne?’

  Mum jumps up and runs to the oven. ‘It’s okay,’ she calls and I hear her curse quietly as she puts it down on the countertop.

  She comes back in, wiping her hands with a tea towel. ‘Just a little crispy on top,’ she says. Which means it’s probably cremated.

  Standing above me, she looks at my drawing as she drains her juice.

  ‘The title is, Food for thought,’ I say. ‘She’s a woman that devours books.’

  Mum coughs suddenly and sprays juice everywhere. Even on my drawing, which makes me laugh. Now she’s trying to apologize but she’s half-choking, half-laughing. She starts dabbing my drawing with the tea towel. ‘I’m so sorry! My juice went down the wrong way! I just wasn’t expecting you to say that,’ she finally manages. ‘But that’s funny, devours books.’

  ‘I thought so,’ I say.

  Mum keeps dabbing at my drawing.

  ‘It’s fine, it’ll dry,’ I say and move it across the table until it’s sitting in a patch of evening sun. ‘It’ll probably look good when it dries, it’ll have that old, crumpled look. Besides, covering the page in juice suits the theme.’

  Mum barks another laugh and dries her eyes with the tea towel. ‘Where did we get you from? You’re too smart for me.’ She shakes her head. ‘Right, dinner.’

  I follow Mum into the kitchen and grab plates to set the table in the conservatory. Mum is cutting the lasagne into squares when we hear the front door opening. She looks up. ‘Your father’s home,’ she says. A second later it slams. Mum holds the knife in the air.

  If he calls out, it means he’s in a good mood. We listen. There are footsteps on the stairs. Nothing else. And the silence from the hall swoops in and collects around us, like a mist turning to rain.

  Mum cuts more lasagne. I hide my drawing and bring the salad to the table. By the time he arrives, the food is ready. He grabs a beer from the fridge and sits down.

  ‘Idiots,’ he says.

  Mum doesn’t ask who he means but her shoulders get a bit stiffer. She keeps sneaking looks at him, like she can’t tell if it’s better to speak to him or stay quiet. She gives him two slices of lasagne and before she even sits, he’s shovelling it in like he’s been too busy to eat all day. I cut mine up into tiny pieces so it looks like I’m eating, but Mum doesn’t even do that.

  Dad points his fork at Mum’s plate.

  ‘It’s the heat,’ she says. ‘Never hungry when it’s hot.’ She eats a little anyway, though. Then he looks at me, so I start eating too.

  No one says anything for ages. We’re so quiet that a bird hops in through the open conservatory door. It pecks at the floor, then stops and cocks its head, looking straight at Dad as if waiting to hear what he’ll say, too. Then it flies back into the garden, and I think of the animals that can sense earthquakes before they hit.

  Dad shakes his head. ‘Everyone is tied up until September.’ He says, tied up, like you might say lying. He takes another mouthful and chews.

  And I know it means he hasn’t gotten any more investors for de
veloping The Old Mill, which really means that he hasn’t been able to find money to pay off Mr Reynolds.

  ‘Oh. That’s a shame,’ Mum says. I wish I could warn her, tell her to be careful. She doesn’t know about the twenty-two million.

  ‘Yeah,’ Dad says, ‘it is.’

  Mum eats some more. Dad takes a third slice. He’s almost finished when Mum says, ‘But there’s no rush.’ She says it in the voice she used to use when she was trying to coax our old cat out from under the bed. ‘September’s fine.’ She smiles. ‘Don’t let it get to you.’

  And even before he replies, I hear his words revving up inside him. I put my fork down.

  ‘Alice,’ Dad says and shakes his head. ‘I don’t think you understand how this works.’

  Mum takes the tiniest bit of food. She doesn’t meet Dad’s glare. He reaches over the table for a toothpick and then starts rummaging around in his mouth.

  ‘Well, what did you do today?’ he says to me.

  I stop myself from glancing at my sketch pad on the shelf and I try to think of something practical. But there’s nothing. Instead, I remember the girl who was asking for money for the train. ‘We went into town this morning. There was this girl asking for money for the train. I gave her some and she gave me a piece of paper that had a wish on it.’

  I’m about to explain what I mean when I see Mum’s face and I remember what she said when she left us at the café. About staying put. I think of a quick lie. ‘She came over to us when you were in that building catching up with—’

  ‘Anne,’ Mum interrupts. I look at her because, well, it’s not true, but she’s too busy giving Dad a fake smile. ‘I met Anne for a coffee. She rang this morning.’ Mum blows out air and her lips flap like a deflating balloon. ‘I immediately regretted picking up the phone. She was having a meltdown over Kevin. He won’t commit, blah, blah, blah.’ She makes this rolling motion with her hand to show how Anne goes on and on. She takes a sip of water. Then she starts nodding like mad, as if Dad said something that she’s agreeing with. ‘But she’s not giving him a chance either.’

  Dad scratches his cheek and watches Mum.

  She doesn’t look at me.

  ‘I don’t understand why you keep running around after that woman,’ Dad finally says. ‘She sabotages every relationship she has, including her friendships.’ He gives Mum some time to think about this. ‘And every time she rings, you just drop everything and run.’

  Mum sighs. ‘I don’t drop everything and run.’

  She’s getting into an argument over something she didn’t even do!

  ‘She’s using you,’ Dad says. ‘It’s always the same. As soon as she has a problem, she’s all over you.’

  ‘She’s always there for me when I have a problem.’

  ‘Really? Give me one example?’ Dad says.

  Mum sucks in air like she’s about to reply, but she doesn’t.

  ‘Right,’ Dad says, ‘that’s what I thought.’

  Mum takes a deep breath. ‘Look, I just popped into town for half an hour for a chat. It was better than letting her come here, she would have stayed all day.’

  ‘I don’t want that woman in our home.’

  Mum shakes her head like she has no idea what to say any more.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, I know you’re serious,’ Mum says. She clatters the empty plates together and lifts them but she doesn’t walk away.

  ‘Which means?’ he says.

  She drops the plates back down on the table. ‘Which means, you don’t get to pick my friends for me.’

  ‘I do,’ Dad says, ‘if you’re not capable of picking suitable friends.’

  Mum slaps the table. Everything rattles. ‘No, Declan, you do not have the right to decide who I can be friends with.’

  ‘So you get to decide who comes into this house?’ Dad laughs like it’s ridiculous. ‘I don’t have the right to protect my daughter? You just make all the rules,’ he says.

  Their words are curdling the air. I stand up. Gently, I push my chair back. Step towards the kitchen. He doesn’t notice me. He only sees her.

  And creeping away, I know I’m leaving her alone to battle it out on the bottom of the ocean. But I can’t stay.

  I can’t stand it.

  Up in my attic, I lie on the floor in the dark, breathing out their words and breathing in the stillness.

  It’ll stop soon. It has to. I mean, Mum doesn’t know about the twenty-two million. Once he gets the money and flips the mill, he won’t owe anything and he won’t be stressed and it’ll go back to what it used to be like, before Dad turned my playroom into his wine cellar and spent all that money on bottles he never drinks, and joined all those clubs with private membership, and bought more properties than he can count, and started spending money like life is a game of Monopoly.

  It’ll be fine.

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER 12

  I’m tired. Last night I read Ms Cusack’s book for hours before I finally fell asleep. Now it’s morning but Mum doesn’t come in and wonder about things with me today.

  When I go downstairs, I catch a glimpse of her slipping out of the front door. She’s all dressed up in the suit she bought yesterday. She closes the door. I have no idea where she’s going. Or who she’s going to see. But I bet it’s not Anne.

  There’s granola in a bowl. Again. I sit at the marble countertop and pick at it.

  Paula comes in with a basket of ironing. She stops and looks at me. Then she puts the basket on the floor, fills the kettle, and sits opposite me.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They had a fight, last night.’

  By the way she’s nodding, I think she knows anyway. I swear Paula can taste the air in this house. ‘I’m sorry, Lucy,’ she says. ‘I know it’s hard when people fight. And when it’s your parents, it’s even harder.’

  ‘Did you fight with your husband?’

  Paula blows out air.

  ‘I mean, when you were still married,’ I add.

  She nods. ‘After a while we couldn’t remember why we were arguing any more.’ She stands and gets a glass of juice. She places it in front of me but keeps holding it until I look up. ‘You know, they say failed marriage, but plenty of good things come to an end. And plenty of bad things go on far too long. To me, a failed marriage is one that continues after it’s gone bad.’

  The kettle boils. She fills the teapot and sits down again, and as she’s pouring tea for herself, the front door opens. Feet stomp down the hall and Dad appears in the doorway. He leans against the frame. ‘Well, hello! How are we all this morning?’

  He’s never here during the day. Why is he home? And where’s Mum? I hope he doesn’t ask.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  I look at Paula.

  ‘She went out before you got up,’ she says to me, like I was the one who asked. And something about the way she lifts her teacup and blows on her tea says she doesn’t know where Mum is because it’s none of her business.

  In the doorway, Dad shifts his weight a little and coughs. ‘Right, well, I just forgot something, so I’ll grab that . . .’

  Paula keeps sipping her tea so Dad looks at me instead. “You, young lady, should get out and enjoy the sunshine. Beautiful day!’

  Then he spins round and goes to the stairs. I can tell he’s taking them two at a time.

  ‘I think he’s in a better mood,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, goodie,’ Paula says. But then she winks at me, which makes me laugh. I think Paula is the only person in the world who doesn’t care what mood Dad’s in.

  ‘I’m just going to . . .’ I nod towards the door. I want to know why he’s in a good mood, did something happen with The Old Mill?

  Paula nods as if to say, off you go.

  I climb the stairs quietly. He’s whistling. His footsteps are already coming towards the landing. He appears at the top, holding a folder. His phone rings. ‘Oly!’ Dad says. ‘Good news! We’re on! T
en solid ones off Seanie. The money should be in my account by this evening . . .’

  I stand still as millions of little questionables crawl like ants out of every hole and crevice. But this is good news, right? He got the money, so it’s all going to be fine.

  ‘. . . well, what can I say, when I’m good, I’m good.’

  He grins as he passes and pretends to rugby tackle me. I step aside.

  He pauses by the front door, hand on the knob, listening to whatever Oly is saying. ‘Well, as soon as that money is in my account, I’ll transfer it to Reynolds. Then I’ll personally head down to Planning, see if we can’t get this mill flipped ASAP. Right, talk later.’

  Dad waves over his shoulder at me, then steps outside and slams the door shut on all the little questionables trying to slip out with him.

  He said the money should be in his account by this evening. He’s going to pay back his loan to Mr Reynolds. That’s good, right?

  CHAPTER 13

  I’m still standing on the stairs when my phone beeps.

  Megan

  I’m outside.

  That’s weird. She didn’t say she was coming over. And why didn’t she just ring the bell?

  I go down and open the door. For a second, she’s silhouetted by the brightness of the day outside. But as soon as she steps inside, I can see that she’s about as happy as a cornered mouse. She holds out her phone.

  It’s the comments section of her blog.

  That wasn’t water from a balloon. It’s because Penny peed herself laughing at some pathetic joke she’d just made. Eek! Embarrassing because NO ONE else was laughing. And the smell matched the whiff of desperation that poured out of her as she practically begged the boys to like her.

  Some friendly advice, Penny. You’re not funny. Those boys were laughing at you, not with you.

  Wow. No wonder she’s so upset.

  ‘Should I delete it?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes, of course!’

  ‘I mean the blog,’ she says, and wilts against the wall. ‘There’s no point in deleting the comment. I tried. It goes straight back up again under another name.’