by Van Badham
The girls were weird, and the tension in the house was extreme. I could tell that Nikki’s parents were convinced we’d been up to no good. More than once I thought Nikki’s mum was trying to smell my breath for alcohol, or was staring into Michelle’s red eyes for proof we’d all been smoking weed.
Nikki played the perfect daughter and as a group we spent some time with her parents in the kitchen, as if we could allay their suspicions just by being there.
Watching Nikki – and how perfectly she performed for her parents – gave me the idea that there was a bigger threat hanging over her from her parents than she was letting on. From glances exchanged I knew the other girls knew about it too.
We all kept our secrets, though, and the girls and I went down in silence to our cushion and blanket beds on the TV room floor.
71
The next morning we woke more or less together and surprisingly early. As a group, we clambered upstairs, poured ourselves some cereal and ate outside in the backyard, where my friend the lemon balm bush was waving a sprightly morning hello.
It was a beautiful day – bright and clear with hardly any wind. I had enjoyed a deep, dreamless sleep and now felt, sort of, filled up mentally. I caught myself humming to the lemon balm bush as the girls slurped their cornflakes in the yard. Weirdly, no one spoke. Nikki, Kylie and Michelle were unsettled; their red eyes and the bags under them revealed they’d all slept badly. I wondered if we’d given ourselves some noxious cake and corn chip poisoning yesterday – and if I’d been spared these after-effects by purging my stomach last night.
I wanted to break the silence and say something to Michelle about her date tonight with Dan – some warning, some statement of support – but the words wouldn’t form in my mouth. Earlier, I’d worried about Nikki bringing up the lovebite still hiding under my loose hair, but she didn’t. Right now, she was staring solemnly into space while metal spoons clanked against the crockery.
This quietness, in this group, was unnatural.
Something was definitely wrong.
The girls looked different, somehow. Like their hair was more dishevelled or their skin more crumpled. Michelle’s eyes were even redder than they were last night.
Despite the sun, the garden felt cold.
We stacked the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, took turns for showers and slowly stepped into our clothes. A button popped off Michelle’s blouse as she dressed. A shoelace snapped on one of Kylie’s sneakers. When Nikki emerged from the bathroom, tears of wet mascara ran down her cheeks.
As soon as I was dressed, I took my mobile phone out of my bag and turned it back on. I was about to start texting Dad to come and get me when the phone beeped an announcement of a missed call. Then another. Then another. Then another.
Thirty missed calls from Dad. Eleven more from my mother.
Seven missed calls signified worry. Seventeen was panic.
Thirty meant something terrible.
PART
THREE
1
Dad and I were in the car, sliding around the bends and the dairy farms under a sunny sky. Solemn grey clouds hovered between us.
‘How did it happen?’ I asked.
‘She was having some trouble last night,’ Dad said. ‘Your mother thought Nanna was having a nightmare, but when she came downstairs to wake her up, she saw Nanna was convulsing. They were already at the hospital by the time your mother called me.’
‘Is she awake now?’
‘No, they’ve got her hooked up to life support,’ said Dad. ‘Soph, we have to face facts. Your nan’s had a massive cardiac arrest. She’s an old lady and while we all think she’s very strong—’
‘Mum thinks she’s going to die,’ I said.
‘Look, maybe this is just what happens when you get old, or maybe Louhi could live forever. Point is,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘point is, whatever happens, your mother’s going to need support, and a minimum – an absolutely minimum – amount of worry.’
‘Will we have to move back to Sydney?’ I said.
The car hugged a curve around a green mountain slope. ‘I mean that when your mother or I call you, we expect the mobile phone we pay for to be on.’
Some seconds passed. ‘I was trying to show respect to the Cipris,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I missed your calls.’
‘The Cipris have a daughter, so I’m sure they’d understand,’ said Dad. ‘I know it was an unintentional breakdown in communication, Soph, but your mother may take some persuading. I’m sure you can judge the right tone for an apology.’
I said nothing. Air hummed around us in the car.
‘Did you have a good time last night?’ Dad tried.
I nodded, staring out the window, barely seeing the green hills, the pale sky. My mind was in a clearing in a strange grey wood, where my grandmother was a young, beautiful woman with flowing red-gold hair.
‘The heart attack happened around nine-thirty at night, didn’t it?’ I asked. Nine-thirty – as I sat in a Tell-All Circle in Nikki’s TV room and had a waking dream.
‘Yes,’ said Dad. ‘How did you know?’
‘Intuition,’ I said, almost hearing Ashley Ventwood’s voice, not mine.
2
We drove straight to the hospital. Nanna was in a cardiac unit in the intensive care ward. We weren’t allowed to see her when we arrived.
Seeing Mum was like seeing an extremely sick person anyway. She had no makeup on and her skin was dull with anxiety. The first thing she did was throw her arms around me. The second was to berate me for turning off my phone last night.
I’d never seen her look so drawn. ‘You made us a promise,’ she thundered, thrusting her finger at my pendant. ‘This is hard enough without being worried about you.’
We were in a visiting area adjunct to the ICU. I could understand why the walls in places like this were painted a beige colour – it was because visitors here brought their own intense colours. Mum actually seemed to radiate green light from her skin.
‘How’s she doing?’ Dad asked.
‘I learned last night that “coma” is not an official medical term,’ said Mum. ‘So I guess we can say that she’s unconscious, or unresponsive – and they won’t let me in yet.’
‘Tik, she’s hooked up to a life support machine,’ said Dad, as calmly as he could.
‘I could help her,’ said Mum, nodding her head towards a cardboard box on a plastic waiting-room seat. ‘She’s my mother, I know what she needs.’
The red roses and ribbons I saw poking over the rim of the box didn’t look to be as useful as a heart monitor, but I wisely didn’t say this out loud.
‘What do you smell of?’ said my mother to me. She sniffed hard, and then grabbed a handful of my hair. ‘Why do you smell like peaches? Peach oil?’ Her face was fearful. ‘Who’s been coating you in peach oil?’ she demanded.
‘I was at a sleepover, not a sex orgy,’ I said, instantly regretting not washing my hair this morning.
‘This is not the time for smart comments, Sophie,’ barked my mother. ‘Who were these people, with the peach oil?’
‘Just the girls from school, Mum,’ I said, hearing Dad silently remind me: Your mother’s going to need an absolute minimum amount of worry. ‘Relax,’ I said, trying to calm my own voice, ‘it’s just from an oil burner.’
‘Telling secrets?’ said Mum.
My eyes widened.
She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Asking anything, anything at all about me or your father?’
‘We just talked about boys,’ I said.
My mother looked me up and down. ‘Why was your phone off?’
‘Taika, let it go,’ said Dad.
‘I just forgot to turn it back on. I won’t make the same mistake again. I’m sorry.’
A couple of seconds passed. I heard the faint blips of machines beyond the swinging doors to the ICU. The faces of a ragged-looking young couple in the corner of the visiting area showed we weren’t the only family
feeling tension.
‘Okay,’ Mum said.
Okay? My jaw hung open. It wasn’t like her to be convinced so easily.
‘Great,’ said Dad. ‘On that note, let’s get out of this nasty room and have some lunch.’
I was still in shock as we walked towards the cafeteria.
Turning a corner, Mum said: ‘Just stay very far away from that peach stuff in future, please.’ She was talking to me – but looking at Dad. ‘It can have unexpected effects.’
‘Obviously,’ said Dad wryly.
My mother shot him an angry frown.
3
I had a felafel roll in the cafeteria that was about as tasty as mulched cardboard. Mum relaxed a little when the girl behind the counter discovered a chamomile tea bag somewhere and brewed her some tea.
Mum explained what was wrong with Nanna and all I could understand was that last night, at the same time as I was having my strange, lucid dream, Nanna’s heart had beat wildly and irregularly for some seconds and then stopped. Mum had been able to – somehow, this bit wasn’t explained very clearly – get Nanna’s heart started again. There’d been an ambulance and Mum had been at the hospital all night.
Some things Mum said – for Dad’s benefit, not mine – were interesting. She kept saying, ‘I couldn’t reach her,’ as if Nanna had been on the phone all night, not having a heart attack. She also said, ‘If the doctors can’t bring her back, if she doesn’t respond to treatment … It may just be that your Mummi has picked her time to go.’ Mum looked incredibly sad when she said this, which was understandable, but she also looked vaguely hurt, as if she thought Nanna’s mortality was some kind of rejection of her.
On instinct, I reached across the table and gave my mother’s hand a squeeze. Her skin was cold with stress. ‘She’s known us both since before we were born,’ I said, quoting the young Nanna of my imagination. ‘She’s not going to leave us if she dies.’
I didn’t know where the words came from, but I certainly believed them.
Mum said nothing. She just squeezed my hand back and looked away.
4
On our return to the visitors’ room, my phone beeped. Lauren. Can you be here by six? I’ve got a surprise for YOU.
‘You should have that turned off,’ Dad said, pointing to a sign on the wall. ‘They can interfere with the heart monitors.’
‘I wish you people would make up your minds,’ I joked as I pressed the ‘off’ button, glad to see Dad cracking half a smile. ‘I’ll have to go somewhere to use it soon, though,’ I said. ‘Lauren’s expecting me at her sister’s tonight and I’ll have to tell her that I can’t make it.’ My shoulders slumped as I said the words.
‘Taika, are you attached to Sophie being here all night?’ asked Dad.
‘I don’t see what any of us can do until they let us in,’ said Mum, distracted. ‘I’m not moving until I get some news, but if the two of you want to go home and wait …’
‘I can stay with you, but Sophie’s got these plans with Lauren …’
Mum looked at me. ‘Did I know about this?’
I nodded. ‘We’re meeting at her sister’s flat in the city.’
‘To do what?’
‘Go to a magazine launch, and then back to Lucy’s to stay the night,’ I said. ‘Lauren will understand if I cancel, though.’
‘A magazine launch is pretty innocuous,’ Dad said. I didn’t contradict him. ‘And Lauren’s a known quantity. Soph’ll be bored out of her brain here all night, and she hasn’t seen Lauren since the move.’
‘Do you need a lift there?’ Mum asked. She looked weary.
I shook my head. ‘I can get the train.’
My mother raised an eyebrow. ‘Your father will give you some cab money, just in case. You will give him Lucy’s address, you will have your phone on all the time. You will call us at the faintest hint of trouble, and there will certainly be no boys, drugs or alcohol. Not even if Prince Charming himself offers you a free vineyard.’
‘I have no interest in boys, drugs or alcohol,’ I said. ‘I just want to see Lauren.’
‘Then,’ Mum said, almost smiling, ‘you may go.’
5
What I knew about Kings Cross was that it was full of junkies and prostitutes on the main street, and nice apartments in the side streets, where people like Lucy chose to live. Walking out of the station proved the first part to be true. My instructions were to turn left out of the Darlinghurst Road exit, and as I did I saw dirty-looking men in mismatched clothes talking to one another in sentences that consisted mostly of swearwords.
As I followed the directions to Lucy’s that Lauren had supplied in a text, the people on the street changed from dirt-covered crazies to ruddy backpackers with coral necklaces checking their emails on laptops at the McDonald’s wireless hotspot. As directed, I turned the corner at a pub and noticed that its suited clientele were drinking champagne. In a week where I’d seen fires, plagues of crows, Ashley Ventwood’s ancient face, a boneless apparition of a living person and a water pitcher that swallowed my head, the Cross also offered a competing spectacle, though of a less fantastical nature.
Lucy’s apartment was in an Art Deco building with marble front steps and a buzzer, which I pressed for Flat 38.
‘You rang?’ I heard, amidst a flurry of giggles and the muffled sound of something like a man’s voice.
‘It’s Soph,’ I said.
More giggles. ‘Take the lift to the fourth floor, turn right.’
Something above my head buzzed, and I pushed open the door.
6
Grappling with the double doors of an old-fashioned elevator, I rattled upwards to the fourth floor and finally found the door of number 38.
I was taken aback when a man with short hair and a beard answered through a screen door. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked – in what I realised was a silly voice when I heard cackling in the background. Over his shoulder, I saw a flash of red hair.
‘Lauren?’ I called.
‘We have no one of that name here,’ said the guy at the door. ‘If you’re after someone called Loose Loz, Queen of the Fanta Pants, maybe we can help you.’
There were cackles again. The guy’s face broke from serious to friendly and he popped open the screen door. ‘Hi, Sophie.’ He extended his hand. ‘I’m Darren. I’m a friend of Lucy’s, come on in.’
There wasn’t a second to comprehend Lucy’s place, or to ask what Darren was doing there, because the moment I walked into some kind of lounge area, Lauren flung herself at me and was enveloping me in a most uncharacteristic bear hug. ‘We’ve missed you!’ she squealed, lifting me off my feet, my face full of her hair.
She put me down. I smiled at her smiling at me.
‘How’s your nan?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘She’s unconscious and I can’t tell if Mum and Dad are overreacting or hiding something from me.’
Lauren frowned. ‘Until they level with you, it’s probably best not to worry too much. Just take your mind off it – or let me and Darren take your mind off it with mystery and japes!’ she cried. ‘You like Lu’s pad?’
I did. It was just one big room with high ceilings, but a stand-alone screen built into the floor separated a lounge area from a loft bed. A bright kitchen basked in the light from a huge wall of sliding windows.
‘Hot, isn’t it?’ said Lauren. ‘Rather like you, in your little pink mini. You fast woman.’
‘Better to be fast than loose, darling,’ said Darren.
‘He reckons my clothes don’t fit,’ she said to me. He was right. Despite the glamorous change in environment, Lauren was exactly the same. She wore badly fitting jeans and a grey T-shirt that was two sizes too big for her.
‘So what’s this surprise?’ I asked her.
‘There are two,’ said Lauren excitedly. ‘The first is Darren—’
‘Hi, I’m Darren.’ He waved theatrically.
‘—who is, and you will love this, a hairdresser—�
��
‘Actually,’ he interrupted again, ‘I am a magazine fashion director, who dabbles in hair and makeup.’
‘—a fully qualified brush monkey,’ said Lauren, with Darren rolling his eyes, ‘who Lucy has employed to make us look like grownups so the club won’t lose its licence.’
‘I actually owed Lucy a favour,’ said Darren.
‘The second surprise – and Darren, may we have a trumpet fanfare to salute your achievement – is a fantastic, 3-D example of Darren’s total makeover magic. Hit it!’
She pointed me towards the bathroom in a corner next to the kitchen. Darren made fanfare noises and from the opened crack of the bathroom door a foot in a pointy silver shoe emerged, turned and retracted.
‘That would be our model’s foot,’ Lauren said in a nature-documentary voice, ‘and this would be her hand.’ A hand with black-polished fingernails emerged, and also retracted. ‘This,’ Lauren continued, ‘is a preview of the dress …’ A scrap of red material was waved through the slit in the bathroom door. ‘And this is our model …’
The door opened, and for two seconds no one came out. Then an incredibly pretty Asian girl in a red halter-neck dress stepped out into the room.
‘Oh my God!’ I hollered as a massive smile broke across the girl’s face. ‘Sue!’
7
She didn’t have her glasses on. ‘I got contacts,’ she said.
‘You look totally amazing,’ I gushed.
‘Thank you,’ said Darren from the far corner of the room. ‘I do this for a living. I am in great demand.’
‘You’re a genius,’ said Sue.
‘And Sue is a genius,’ Lauren said, ‘so she would know.’