The black didn’t seem to be working. She’d always be the one that rode the elevator three times a day to the coffee shop next door to juggle three espressos, two soy lattes and a ristretto back up to the office.
Even now that the sun was high and bright in the sky each day, she’d never leave the office before dark. When she finally emerged, she’d walk at a brisk pace with her head down to her one-bedroom apartment, which was only fifteen minutes out of the city center. It was tiny and soulless and on the ground floor, its windows glowing out into the alleyway behind.
She’d pick up takeaway from the greasy Thai restaurant around the corner. They’d greet her warmly, try to ask about her day, but she’d be stiff and formal every time. She didn’t want to be a regular. At home, she’d eat the takeout sitting at the small desk she had crammed into the already-tiny space of her apartment. When she was finished she’d often open Facebook, and go to the profile of someone called Matt Solloway. She’d always go to the same image. It was a picture of a young man, Matt presumably, standing and smiling into the camera. He was holding an architectural model in front of him, simple with sweeping curves against sharp edges that matched his haircut. She’d stare at the boy in this photo for a long time, as though she was looking for something in his face. Then she’d swap over to YouTube and watch video after video of pimples being popped and blackheads being extracted in close-up.
It was usually around then that the lights would go off. The first time this happened, she had gotten up from her chair, gone from light switch to light switch, flicking them up and down. Now she just waited. Sometimes tensing her body and closing her eyes. The lights would go on and off, on and off, on and off, for minutes at a time.
If she had looked up, looked out the window when it was darker inside than out, she might have even seen me there, watching, hand inside the fuse box.
20
“It’s show-and-tell time, Ava-babe!” Celia yelled down the stairs.
I was meant to be cooking for her but I knew there was no point asking if we could do it later. I turned the stove to simmer, put a lid over the ginger and pumpkin soup I was making, took my laptop off the table and climbed the stairs.
Initially, I was surprised by how nuts Nancy’s great-aunt turned out to be. I was even more surprised that, almost immediately, I liked her. She would do things I would never dream of doing, like sunbathe in her underwear in the front yard or spend the whole day making herself look fabulous only to do the dishes.
I’m not demented, she’d told me my first day in her strong English accent. I don’t know what that square has told you, but it’s not true.
That square. That’s what she always called Nancy, or sometimes that twat if she was really annoyed.
When I got to Celia’s room she was wearing her crimson silk dressing gown, and it fanned elegantly around her. The effect was slightly ruined by the dark stains down the front from where she’d missed her mouth with her breakfast this morning, but I didn’t point them out.
“There you are, duck. I’ve been waiting hours,” she said, and patted the mattress next to her.
I got up on the bed to sit next to her. Her room was actually the same as mine, but flipped. The windows on the left of my room were on the right of hers, the mirrored doors of the built-in wardrobes reflected the west instead of the east. Celia took the leather-bound album from her bedside table.
“Did you take your pills?” I asked her.
“Oh yes, yes,” she said, waving a hand dismissively, “don’t you worry about that, nursey.”
I’d been Celia’s nurse for two years by then. I’m fairly sure she knew I was bullshitting about being a nursing student, but I also think she liked that. Celia had an appreciation for the unexpected.
“I’ll go first,” she said, and opened the album.
I knew Celia’s story well, since she’d told me more times that I could count. She had come to Australia from England in the middle of the 1950s to follow the love of her life, a bushranger named Bullseye Bob. When she’d arrived, she’d discovered that he was actually a married accountant named Robert. Celia liked it here in Australia, so she’d stayed on anyway.
“Guess how old I am in this picture?” she asked me, pointing to a photograph of her smiling toothily in a jacket with broad shoulder pads next to a man in a well-cut suit.
“Maybe thirty?” I asked.
“Fifty!” she said. “I was beautiful, wasn’t I?”
“You’re still beautiful.”
“Pfft, don’t you even try,” she said, turning the page. On the next one was another picture of her and a man. This one with salt-and-pepper hair. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t pick from where. She turned the page again, to the image of her with an arm around a little girl with a big scowl. Nancy.
“This was just after she’d arrived and look at the face on her! Shipped off to Australia to live with crazy Great-aunt Celia. You’d think she would have rebelled, but no.”
She turned the next page. Nancy’s long navy formal dress and butterfly clips were outshone by Celia’s hot pink blazer.
“Look at that.” Celia’s voice was laden with disgust. “Who wears navy to their first big dance? Hideous.”
“I think she looks okay,” I said.
“Oh, don’t even start with that, Ava-babe. You’re not fooling anyone.” She snapped the album shut. “It’s your turn.”
I crossed my legs on the mattress and pulled the laptop closer, opening Facebook. I went to Mel’s page first, like I always did. There she was, sitting on her balcony, sunny Paris in the background, a smile on her face.
“Is this the girl that kidnapped poor kitty?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
I’d left the brass ornament on their doorstep after high school had finished. I didn’t like having it in my room anymore, staring at me with its shiny black eyes. Now it stood on Celia’s dressing table, next to all her makeup.
“What does it say?” Celia peered at the photograph on the screen. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. Celia never wore her glasses.
“It says, How did I ever deserve all this?”
“Little brat is asking for a slap,” she said. “And your architect friend?”
“She’s not much fun,” I told her. “Goes to bed early every night.”
“What’s wrong with young women these days? Where’s the sex? When I was a girl we were bonking left, right and center.”
I opened Cass’s Facebook, but there was nothing new there since the image of her sitting at a café with her boyfriend from a few months back.
“That one’s a bit of a bore,” Celia said. “I like the French one the best. I’d love to see you knock that smirk off her pretty little face right under the Eiffel Tower. Serve her right for stealing from me.”
“One day,” I said, shutting the laptop down and hopping off the bed to go and finish cooking our soup.
21
When I got home, Bea was waiting for me.
“Guess what?” she said.
“Oh God, you’re not pregnant, are you?”
The way she and Aiden had been going at it, it wouldn’t have surprised me.
“No!” she said. “No, listen. You know how I submitted my illustrations to that agent?”
“Yeah?”
“She agreed to take me on!”
“Really?” I asked. “That’s so great!”
“Come on,” she said, “I’ve been dying to tell the boys but I wanted to wait for you.”
She took my hand and pulled me out the door and across the road.
When she told Aiden, he pulled her into his arms and started kissing her. I stood by the screen door, waiting for their lips to part. It didn’t happen, so I squeezed past them and went up the stairs.
Evan was sitting at his computer, and I rapped one knuckl
e on the door.
“Auntie Ava,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “how are you?”
“Not good,” I said, and went to lie down on his bed. “I think I just saw the back of your dad’s tongue. That’s how far it was in Bea’s mouth.”
“Well, thanks for that image.”
“You’re welcome.”
He spun his chair around. “How’s the old bat? Still think Nancy’s poisoning her food?”
“I think she was just joking about that.”
He turned back to his computer. He was on one of his gambling sites. He was so good at it he didn’t even need to work. He told me he would show me how to do it; it was actually a lot more complicated than I thought. He had explained the basics to me once and I couldn’t keep up, but hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“You know there was this old lady in Sydney in the 1950s.” I was speaking to the back of his head. “She was the sweetest, nicest-looking woman. Perm and cardigans and all of that. All her neighbors started going blind and losing their hair, and then her nephew did as well, and he was only in his thirties. She kept bringing over tea to them and being lovely, but her nephew realized that he always got sicker after she visited. Turns out she was actually putting rat poison in their tea.”
“Isn’t it true that women poison more than men? They like it because it’s more passive or something,” Evan said, as the numbers in the corner of the screen suddenly went up by hundreds. He turned around, smiling, and stretched out his fingers. “I swear, this is getting too easy.”
“No, idiot. It’s because women aren’t as strong. It’s not like they can overpower a guy. If we want to kill someone, we have to be sneaky.”
“Do you reckon the old bat is doing that to you? Except instead of rat poison it’s LSD in your tea and that’s why you are so crazy?”
I looked around at him sharply. He’d never said he thought I was crazy before. He caught my change of expression and got up to sit next to me on the bed.
“I’m just kidding,” he said, and messed up my hair. “I’m just as nuts as you.”
I shifted away from him. He’d been doing this a lot lately. Touching me when he didn’t have to.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked. “I don’t really want to spend another evening listening to the soundtrack of rigorous copulation.”
“Fuck, Evan!”
He shrugged, grinned. “Should we do it?”
I looked to the carpet. “Not tonight.”
“You keep saying that. I’m a good teacher, promise. We have to do it sometime.”
“We don’t have to.”
“Come on, we’ll just go out for an hour. I bet it won’t take you long to pick up.”
I’d stupidly admitted to him that I couldn’t ride a bike. Now he was insisting on teaching me.
“I just don’t feel like it.”
“Fine, fine. We could watch a movie?”
Originally we’d watched movies based on the stories we swapped, but eventually it had just become part of our week that we’d hole up together on his couch or in his room, and watch whatever film he’d downloaded. Lately, we’d been going down the Ingrid Bergman rabbit hole. First it was Casablanca, then Anastasia. A few months back we’d watched Gaslight, a film about a woman whose husband makes her think she is going mad.
“I’m busy tonight. Later in the week maybe.”
“What are you up to?”
He was looking at me intensely now. We were too close to each other on the bed. I stood.
“Just seeing friends.”
“You know, you are being really evasive lately. What’s the big secret?”
He was smiling still, but there was an edge to his voice. I hovered in his door frame, one hand resting on the white painted wood.
“No secret, and why do you care?”
I was expecting him to bite back, but he didn’t. He put his head down, so I couldn’t see his face, and said quietly, “Are you seeing someone?”
“Huh?” I asked, the question taking me by surprise.
He looked up at me, pain flashing across his face. “I don’t care. I just don’t know why you don’t tell me.”
I felt a stab of my own.
“I’m not,” I said, not able to look at him. “Not that it would be any of your business.”
I walked back down the stairs, trying my hardest to remain composed.
“Hang on,” Bea said as I passed. “I thought we were going to celebrate?”
Her hand was still resting lightly against Aiden’s neck, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“I’ve got to go. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” Aiden pulled Bea into him, his arms wrapping softly around her stomach. “Let’s do it properly. Maybe we could all go out for dinner or something?”
They looked at each other, and the moment felt meaningful.
“Sounds good,” I said, and went out to the car.
* * *
I’d learned to drive by then. It made everything a lot easier. No more early-morning bus rides. No more lifts with Nancy. As I drove to Saanvi’s that night, I pushed my foot on the accelerator hard. I took the turns too quickly. People like me can’t feel emotional pain. They can’t get their feelings hurt. I knew that. I also knew that me and Evan could never be together. I could never be like Bea and just open myself up. Inside, she was as soft and loving as she seemed from the outside. There was no shadow following her. Not like me. If Evan knew who I was, what I really was, he’d run. I knew he’d be able to feel it eventually, the coldness, the evil I carried around inside me, just by touching my skin.
When I got to Saanvi’s she hadn’t even turned the light on. She was just sitting there, in the dark, staring at that picture of the boy. I stared at him too, through the window. I wondered if they used to date, if that’s what it was. If she had thought she was in love with him, but it had ended, and now all that was left was that picture.
I felt my stomach unclench as I stood there, nose inches from the glass. The tension left my neck, my shoulder blades dropped loose, my muscles melted. I could breathe.
Saanvi snapped her laptop closed and picked up her handbag from where she’d dumped it near the door. She pulled a string shopping bag from the coatrack and left the apartment.
I walked on the other side of the road to her. I’d learned that. People only think they are being followed if you are walking behind them. The echo of footsteps in the dark. The sound stopping when you stop, quickening when you quicken. No. That wasn’t how it worked. Or at least, it wasn’t how it worked for me. It was easiest in crowds, on transport, in the light. People don’t look around them anymore. They don’t notice the same face pop up again and again; they don’t feel the prickle on the backs of their necks. They only see the screens in their hands, hear the music in their ears, feel the stress in their shoulders.
I reached the small supermarket before she arrived, and took my own basket from next to the security gates. It was quiet in there, despite around twenty people being inside. Most were alone—this wasn’t really a family area. There were a few young couples who spoke quietly as they traipsed from aisle to aisle, their skin looking pallid and tired in the fluorescents. The same Lorde song that seemed to be everywhere that year sounded tinny through the speakers.
I began filling my basket. My mother had gotten irritated with me only a few days before for not making enough of an effort. Now that I was working, if I still wanted to live at home, she expected me to contribute. The fridge wouldn’t fill itself, she said. I knew that, of course I did, but since I’d started following Saanvi I’d let things slip.
* * *
It wasn’t something I’d wanted to happen—you will need to know that. It wasn’t like I sat down and planned it. I just had to know, I needed to know, what she was doing. It’s a hard thing to descr
ibe; it was like a pull, a magnetic force. It was something I couldn’t control. Like having that second drink. Once you’ve had a taste, you want more.
It felt like I’d righted a wrong with Theodore. It had been the first time in years that I’d felt empowered, that the world had seemed to make sense. After Theodore, I knew what I was going to do. I knew it was only a matter of time.
I filled my basket. Milk, cheese, bread, pasta, tomatoes, basil, coffee, cereal and a ten-pack of batteries.
Saanvi. Always so sure of herself. Always convinced she was right, and everyone else was crazy. She was twenty-three now, but she was just the same. That’s something else I have learned: people don’t change. Her life had been on track. Like Theodore, there had been no cosmic karma, no punishment from the universe. Like Theodore, the only karma would be of my making.
Saanvi was staring down into a freezer full of microwave dinners, her eyes unfocused. I slid past her, close enough that my body made contact with hers just slightly, so she’d mistake the twitch of her handbag as my hand entered it for the brush of my shoulder against her.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No worries,” she muttered, not turning.
I paid for my groceries and went to the liquor section that adjoined the supermarket. Saanvi took a long time to get to the checkout with her two microwave meals.
Rubbing her eyes, she placed them on the counter and put her string bag down next to them.
“Card or cash?” the checkout girl said, on autopilot.
“Card.”
“Do you want a bag?”
Saanvi looked from her to the counter, and pointed to the string bag. “Clearly not,” she said.
“Oh yeah. Sorry,” the girl said, putting the frozen meals inside and coloring.
Saanvi dug into her handbag for her wallet. I stood behind the wine, and held my breath. She took her wallet out, face not changing, and offered the girl her credit card. I began to smile.
She swung the string bag onto her shoulder and headed toward the door. When she went through the security gates, the effect was instant. The alarm was piercing, shrieking through the quiet. The lights flashed; every head turned. Saanvi glared around, shaken but angry.
The Spite Game Page 11