Small Spaces

by Sarah Epstein

We both glance up at Ally’s voice. She ambles barefoot down the verandah’s stone steps, tugging a knitted cardigan around her sundress. Benny squeezes past her and bounds down the driveway directly for Dad.

  “I’m touched by your concern,” Dad says dryly, bending to scratch Benny behind the ears.

  “That car’s such a prissy little thing,” Ally teases. “Guess it takes one to drive one, eh, big brother?” She makes a beeline for me, engulfing me in a brief, enthusiastic hug infused with a scent I’d forgotten about: gardenias and cigarettes. “I’d invite you in for a cuppa, Rich, except I know you’ll want to be on your way.”

  It’s true. Dad hasn’t stopped looking over his shoulder like he can’t wait to get back inside the car.

  “Come on, Tash,” Ally urges, holding her hand out for me like I might actually take it. I retrieve my backpack from the boot as Benny pants hot breaths around my ankles. Dad steps into my path as I move towards the house, his voice softening in a way that’s reminiscent of the time he dropped me off here as a child.

  “Listen,” he says, “just call me if this isn’t working out, and I’ll come and get you. Whenever you’re ready, okay?”

  He kisses the top of my head and makes a quick exit. I stand beside Gran’s old brown Ford as I watch him go. After the dust has settled, I run a hand along the curve of the truck’s bonnet, following the line of orange pin-striping down the door panels.

  “Barely use it any more,” Ally says. “Only for long-haul trips or bigger deliveries. I use Molly to get around town these days.” She thumbs at an old silver moped propped up beside the shed. “She costs a hell of a lot less to run.”

  A thought pops into my head. “You could give the truck to Dad? I know he’d really love to have it.”

  Ally’s eyes narrow, her gaze fixed on the horizon. “Richard got everything he wanted when our mother was alive. He doesn’t get to have this as well.”

  *

  “So, what are your plans for the weekend?” Ally asks as she retrieves the dented kettle from a burner on the stovetop. She’s given me a tour of the house and gardens, and everything looks to be exactly the same. It seems I’m unchanged too, the way I keep checking corners and standing with my back to the wall. I thought I would have outgrown my fears of this big house simply because I’m now bigger in it. But my nervy stomach tells me that’s not the case. When Ally offered me any room in the house to sleep in, I chose the one furthest from the downstairs guestroom I slept in all those years ago.

  “Plans? Umm … twenty-minute showers and sleeping in?” I answer, grinning. Ally nods as though her own mother got on her case about those things when she was the same age. “Other than that, I’m not entirely sure yet. I’m going to get together with a guy from school to work on our art project.”

  She looks at me with renewed interest as she pours two cups of tea, dolloping a spoonful of honey into each mug even though I asked for mine with milk and sugar. She arches an eyebrow. “Define ‘get together’.”

  “Oh! No, nothing like that,” I say. “We’re just working on a group art project for school. He’s staying at his holiday house in Greenwillow, so we thought it would be good to meet up and get some work done.”

  Ally smirks at my over-explanation. I swallow a large gulp of tea. It’s way too hot and burns all the way down.

  “You like him.”

  “Well … I mean …” I sigh. “Um, yes?”

  She brings her mug to her mouth and smiles around the rim. I can’t imagine ever having a conversation like this with my mother.

  “You know,” she says, “I met my soulmate in high school.” I feel myself blush even though the story is about Ally. “Patrick Jonas. He was wiry and athletic, fastest runner on our school athletics team. The Pocket Rocket, they called him. Meanwhile, I spent all my time smoking behind the cricket sheds with the mopey drama kids. God knows how PJ and I even clicked, but it was so easy we didn’t have to try.”

  I think about how Morgan and I have fallen back into our friendship after all these years. How right it felt when he kissed me, and how much I want him to do it again.

  “Did your mum like him?”

  “Pfft. My mother didn’t like anything when it came to me,” Ally says, waving a dismissive hand. “She always resented how close Dad and I were before he died. Imagine being jealous of your thirteen-year-old daughter.” A bitter look washes over her face. “So of course she hated PJ because he filled the cold, loveless void she’d created at home. He became my family.” She places her chin in her hand and stares wistfully out the window. “We fought and broke up so many times, and always found our way back to each other. He’s the only one who’s ever really understood me.”

  Glancing around the drab kitchen with its yellowed curtains and washed-out floor tiles, I’m very aware Ally’s currently flying solo. There’s no PJ in her life now. She’s still here alone in the cold, loveless void of her mother’s home.

  “Things get messed up sometimes,” Ally says. Catchlights twinkle in her eyes. “I won’t lie – I’ve made mistakes and I have regrets. But I truly believe that if things are meant to be, they have a way of working out.” She draws her gaze away from the window and refocuses on my face. “People come back into our lives for a reason.”

  Like Morgan and Mallory, I think, though I’m still figuring out what that reason is.

  Ally surprises me by leaning over and squeezing my hand. I flinch slightly, then feel guilty for doing so. “I’ll leave you to settle in,” she says. “Get reacquainted with the house. I’m going to pack a few things and put petrol in the truck for tomorrow’s road trip. Might grab us some takeaway while I’m out.”

  My aunt slides her chair back and pushes herself up from the table. For a brief moment, she looks much older than her forty-five years. Weary and uncertain, almost vulnerable. The image disappears as quickly as it came, erased by a flick of her wavy hair as she strides purposefully from the kitchen.

  *

  When I come into my bedroom after my shower I find two new texts from Sadie. First:

  Yo, kanga. How’s things going at your aunt’s place?

  Then:

  Btw, what did you say to Christopher Tan? He thinks you hate him.

  I feel pretty bad about biting Christopher’s head off at the Fishers’ house last week; he didn’t deserve it. The adrenaline was pumping and I was rattled. I need to message him this weekend to clear the air.

  Hey, kiwi, I type to Sadie. All good here so far. How’s it going at the party?

  She sends me a response straightaway and we text back and forth for several minutes until it’s time for her to go and wash up some cocktail glasses.

  Ally’s in the living room pouring red wine when I come downstairs. She’s lit a small fire in the hearth as the last remnants of sunset drain from the sky. Silhouettes of scribbly gums stretch across the horizon, their disjointed arms flailing like an army of the undead advancing on the house. I shiver at the chill leaching through the window panes and quickly draw the curtains against the darkness. I don’t like the feeling of being a window display. Anybody could be out there watching us.

  On the coffee table are takeaway boxes of Indian food. Ally’s already started on the samosas and found some trippy sitar music to accompany our meal.

  “Had to drive over to Ellenbrook for this,” she says. “So dig in while it’s still hot.” She tosses me a large embroidered floor cushion to sit on while she plonks herself on a Moroccan pouf by the fire. Benny trots in from the kitchen to join us, pausing in the hallway long enough to growl at the cellar door.

  “Stop that, Benny. C’mere.” Ally tosses him a piece of roti, which he catches in midair. He settles on the rug at her feet in the hopes more food scraps might come his way.

  “He still does that?” I say, nodding towards the wooden door tucked underneath the stairs. I shudder without meaning to. I can still feel the clutch of Sparrow’s bony fingers digging into my arm, and I find myself frantically trying to rub
the sensation away.

  Behind the door comes the rumble of the water heater filling up after my shower. The hiss and squeal of the pipes from below still hits a nerve.

  This house won’t let me forget.

  “Not for a long time,” Ally says, stroking her foot along Benny’s rump. “I suppose old habits die hard.” She frowns into her food for a second like she might say something else, then seems to change her mind.

  She nudges a tumbler of wine across the table towards me.

  “Um,” I say, “are you sure this is okay? I mean, I’m underage and everything …”

  She snorts. “God, you’re your father’s daughter, aren’t you? You don’t wanna know what I got up to when I was seventeen.” She takes a generous slug from her own wineglass. “Don’t worry. Promise I won’t report it to your prison guards.”

  I tentatively sip my wine between mouthfuls of lentil curry, and it’s not long before I’m feeling loose and relaxed, maybe even a little woozy. I’ve tried wine before and not enjoyed it very much. It goes down much easier with food.

  “So, what other stuff did you get up to when you were younger?” I ask her, the wine making me bold.

  She pours herself another glass and side-eyes me. “I don’t want to talk about all of that. I don’t need any more grief from my self-righteous brother about how I’ve lived my life.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say anything to Dad. And he’s really not–”

  “Let me tell you a little something about Richard ‘Golden Boy’ Carmody,” Ally says, throwing up air quotes. “He wouldn’t know the first thing about actually living. He thinks he’s so worldly when all he’s done with his life is marry his first-and-only girlfriend and move an hour-and-a-half away from where he grew up. He’s jealous he doesn’t have the freedom I do, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let him sell this place to fund his pathetic mid-life crisis. I won’t lose my home so a sad little man can buy himself a sad little Volvo to park in his sad little garage.”

  Ally looks at me like she’s just remembered she’s talking about my father, and that his sad little life thus far has resulted in producing sad little me. She mumbles something I don’t catch and reaches for her cigarette packet. I concentrate on shovelling food into my mouth as I try to process her outburst.

  It occurs to me my aunt is a walking contradiction. She rabbits on about the benefits of her organic diet, yet she smokes like a chimney. She extols the virtues of cleansing yoga and meditation, but carries around a shit-tonne of resentment about my dad. When I was a little girl, Ally said she and I were alike, and she assured me it was okay to be different. Yet she didn’t want a relationship with me after I left here, changed.

  She glances at me now, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “He’ll find some other way to pay for your university fees.”

  I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond.

  “He’ll never get his grubby little hands on my half of the house,” she continues. “I’m leaving it to somebody else.”

  It’s hard to know if she’s serious. “Why?”

  Ally swallows another mouthful of wine, her lips glistening. “Why not? It’s not like I’m the beneficiary of his estate, am I? So why should I leave my half to him just because I don’t have kids?” She chuckles conspiratorially, as though we’re two girlfriends in a wine bar. “Had a legal will drawn up years ago. Can you imagine the look on Rich’s face when he finds out?” She snorts into her glass and takes another swig.

  There’s something really jarring about Ally’s nature, inconsistencies between what she says and what she does. Maybe it’s the wine, or the way she’s insulting my dad, or some long-held suspicion about what really happened in this house that stirs up a challenge brewing in my belly.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She blows a thin stream of smoke towards the fireplace and settles into an armchair. “Of course, honey.”

  “That day at Greenwillow Carnival, when I was eight. You know, when Mallory Fisher disappeared?”

  She narrows her eyes. “Yeah …?”

  “Why did you think it must’ve been me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you came to pick me up, you’d heard in the car park that a little girl had gone missing. When we met up you grabbed me by the shoulders and said, ‘I thought it must’ve been you’.”

  Ally frowns, shrugging her shoulders. “Why would I say that?”

  “Exactly. Why would you say that?”

  She sits back and assesses me like she’s seeing me for the first time. She waits a few beats before speaking and I have to resist the urge to babble on to dilute the growing tension.

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Tash,” she says, folding one arm across her body. She takes a long drag from her cigarette.

  “You seemed certain that it must have been me who disappeared.”

  “I don’t know how you could possibly remember a conversation from when you were eight.”

  “I remember everything about that day.”

  Her eyes flash. “Even the fictional parts?”

  There’s a hardness in her voice that makes me want to back down. This isn’t the empathetic aunt murmuring assurances about her niece’s healthy imagination. This feels like her throwing it back in my face.

  “Did you feel guilty?” I fire back.

  “Of course not. Why would–”

  “Because you left an eight year old alone at a carnival for five hours.”

  Ally scoffs, sitting up straight in her armchair. “You were perfectly fine!”

  “If I’d disappeared instead of Mallory Fisher, I wouldn’t have been fine.”

  She gives me a bitter look. “I had so many errands to run that afternoon, Tash. I knew you’d have more fun at the carnival. I was doing something nice for you.”

  “By leaving me alone to fend for myself?”

  “You were eight years old, not a bloody toddler. When I was eight my mother made me walk all over town delivering pamphlets for her antiques business. Everyone knows everyone here. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “Except for when it’s not.”

  Ally leans forwards and stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray on the table. I find myself shrinking away from her.

  “Why are you picking a fight with me, Tash?”

  “I’m not. I’m just trying to understand why you looked so terrified that day, why you were so convinced it was me who’d gone missing.”

  She sighs, pushing herself up out of the armchair. She wanders over to the stone fireplace and stares at the flames through the grate.

  “You’d been saying and doing some weird shit that summer,” she says, resting a hand against the mantel. “It’s like you were living in your own little world. Seeing things, inventing people. I was worried you’d run off from the carnival in one of your made-up fantasies.”

  Wrapping her cardigan around herself, Ally wanders back to the coffee table to retrieve her wineglass.

  “I wasn’t going to tell your parents about any of it, you know,” she says, standing over me. I feel like a small child again sitting here on my cushion, looking up at her. “I knew how they’d overreact and make a big drama out of nothing. It was going to be our little secret, remember?” I open my mouth to speak and she talks over me. “I knew you were doing it for attention. I also knew the less attention I gave it the sooner you’d grow bored of it. Then you made up that story about seeing that Fisher girl getting snatched. You left me no choice – after that I had to tell them about everything else you’d made up.”

  Her last sentence makes me bristle. She says it like I told those stories on purpose, like there was intent or malice on my part. Yet, as riled as I feel, I can’t find the words to speak up for myself. I drop my gaze to the table, shamed. Whichever way you slice it, I still told those stories. In everyone’s eyes I was a liar.

  “I’m not hungry any more,” Ally says in a way that’s reminiscent of Tim when he’s sulking. She won’t
look at me as she tops off her wineglass and carries it with her towards the hallway. “I’m going upstairs to finish packing.”

  Her battered brown suitcase is already sitting by the front door.

  “See you at breakfast,” she mutters, creaking her way up the staircase. Benny lopes along behind her, throwing one more longing glance at the takeaway containers.

  I pick at the remainder of my food before clearing off the coffee table and cleaning up the kitchen. I return to curl up on Gran’s old patchwork couch as the dwindling flames lick around the charred wood in the fireplace.

  Trying to empty my mind and let go of old frustrations, there’s one question I can’t seem to silence, one I wish I’d asked Ally while I had the chance.

  If I was acting so weird and spacey in that week leading up to the carnival, why on earth would she leave me there alone?

  18

  THE CARNIVAL

  Two balloons.

  One pink and one yellow, tethered to each other like sisters holding hands. Fighting and pulling, kissing and twisting, the updraft yanking them to and fro in a wrestling waltz.

  Away they go, drawn to the ocean sky dusted with fairy floss, away from the clatter and whirr of the carnival rides, the discordant clang of the sideshow. Away from the stink of muddy grass and deep fryers, high above the fairgoers slick with sunscreen and sweat.

  Away they go, their ribbon strings flickering a fond farewell.

  To the girl on the ground.

  As he lures her away.

  19

  NOW

  I wake up with a start, the carousel’s melody still pealing in my ears, the metallic tang of panic coated on the back of my tongue. My heart thumps as I blink into the darkness of the bedroom where moments ago there was blazing blue sky. I grab for the sheets and blanket I’ve kicked off in my sleep, then hug them to me as I curl into a ball against my pillow. It’s the third time I’ve woken since going to bed, each restless dream a variation of that dreadful moment at the carnival.

  It’s this house. It won’t give me peace. It won’t leave me alone.