‘Hello?’ Beth pushed on the door, and it gave.
She looked up and down the street again. She could see a few men talking further down it, fishing rods at their shoulders. She couldn’t see Sabre, or anyone else. Beth had hoped she and Sabre could get dressed together. Mia and Caitlin too, if they turned up. Beth and Erin used to do that before school socials or the end-of-year awards nights. They would put on music, do each other’s hair, muck around with whatever makeup they could scrounge. Often, getting ready with Erin was more fun than whatever event they were going to. Beth had missed being around other girls, she realised. She felt a twinge, thinking of Erin and how she had treated her the last time they saw each other. Erin wouldn’t come with her to a place like this.
Sabre probably wouldn’t mind if she just waited here, Beth thought. She didn’t seem like the sort of person who’d be touchy about that kind of thing. The old Beth would never have presumed it was okay, but the new Beth just shrugged and pushed open the door. Inside the caravan it was as neat as a pin. There was a bed taking up one whole end, with a small table that swung down from the wall, two folding chairs and a kitchenette with a sink and microwave down the other end. It was a bit like being in a dollhouse, Beth thought, compacted versions of things, as though a regular house had just been shrunk down. It was cute though, and Sabre obviously looked after it as well as she could. The lino covering the floor was worn but scrubbed clean and carefully patched with tape where it had split. Beth didn’t know if Sabre shared the caravan with anyone else, or who lived in the one next door – Sabre hadn’t mentioned her family and Beth hadn’t asked. Anyway, what did it matter who her mother or brother or father were? Sabre was just Sabre.
Beth slipped out of her cardigan and put some makeup on. When she’d done that, she sat down at the table and busied herself by going through her bag. Her fingers brushed her Just-In Case. Beth ignored it. She found a payslip from the restaurant and ignored that too. She understood now why some people travelled the world with a backpack and a guitar and nothing else. What else did you need? Things anchored you to a place in the world, or a time. Beth imagined cutting the strings of a kite, flying away in a hot air balloon. She would feel nothing but relief.
She had left the door to the caravan slightly ajar and cigarette smoke came drifting in. Someone must be standing just outside the door. Beth thought of smoke signals, warnings. Her stomach tightened and her hand went to her throat, the donkey’s hooves between her fingertips. She waited for a knock or someone to call out to her, but neither came. Instead the man slipped in the door, tossed his cigarette out and closed it behind him. Beth screamed, and he came towards her, grabbing her in his arms and clamping his hand over her mouth. He flung one arm back and fumbled for the light switch next to the door. The caravan went dark. The man pulled Beth down to the floor with him in a crouch, his hand still firmly over her mouth.
‘Don’t scream,’ he whispered to her. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. If I take my hand off your mouth, will you scream?’
chapter thirty-one
That afternoon, Theo rang Mary, who sounded tired and evasive.
Theo wished she could see her friend. She needed to see her face to know what was wrong. She wished she could just put down the phone and walk to her house right now, open her kitchen door, sit at her table and talk.
‘Mary, is something else wrong? Besides the usual parental fatigue, I mean?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
‘It is. I’m sorry.’
Mary was quiet, but still there. Theo waited.
‘Beth keeps sneaking out. I keep trying to talk to her but she won’t hear it, and now she’s gone again. I’m doing a terrible job of looking after her.’
‘Oh, Mary.’
Theo leant against the wall where she stood.
‘I know you’re trying,’ she said into the phone.
‘I really am,’ Mary said. ‘But I can’t seem to get through to her. It’s like she’s too angry to even hear me, to hear anyone. I know it’s not fair to tell you this, Theo, but I feel like this isn’t going to end well. She’s spinning too fast to stop.’
When Theo saw Alice’s pregnant belly, everything went still.
Alice gazed impassively back at her, then went back to what she was doing. Unhurried, she placed the cutlery. Knives, forks, spoons in a row. Theo backed away, leaving the napkins on the bar. Then she grabbed her bag and fled through the staff entrance into the alleyway behind the restaurant. When she got outside she bent double and threw up next to the dumpsters and upturned crates where the staff took their breaks. She heaved until her stomach was empty, her hands and knees blackening with dirt on the cobbled ground where she crouched, down with the cigarette butts and rubbish and food scraps and rats.
A young man in an apron standing in the doorway of another restaurant asked her something, but Theo waved him off. She couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t make it compute. Alice was pregnant with Oliver’s child. It could have been someone else’s, Theo supposed, but she knew, from something in the way Alice had looked at her just now, that it was his. She couldn’t believe Oliver hadn’t told her. She couldn’t believe Alice was still at the restaurant. She couldn’t believe that she had thought anything different, now she knew. Of course Alice was pregnant with Oliver’s baby, of course she was. And Alice had seemed so unfazed by Theo. Perhaps she thought her pregnancy wouldn’t be a surprise, that Oliver had already told her about it. Or perhaps Alice just didn’t care what Theo thought, didn’t even think that Theo warranted a reaction at all.
Alice was pregnant, when she was barely more than a child herself.
Alice was pregnant, and it was Theo’s Oliver who had made her so.
Alice was pregnant, more than a few months in, so there would be a baby, that much had already been decided, it seemed.
Alice was pregnant and Theo was not.
Theo got herself home in a taxi and crawled into bed. She felt like she’d been hit by a bus. She didn’t know when Oliver would be home and she didn’t know what she would say to him when he got here. She didn’t know what to do about anything.
Leave, was the obvious answer, she supposed. It was what Greta would tell her to do, again. The affair was bad enough, but now a baby, too? Unforgivable, Greta would say. Time to cut your losses and get out of there. But where would she go? Back home to England, with her tail between her legs? Greta would take her in, and she would be kind, but the rest of them, her parents and other brothers and sisters, would be insufferable. Theo could picture it already, how they would try to help, her sisters getting her menial jobs in their office buildings, mailroom clerk or receptionist, for which they would expect her to be exceedingly grateful to them. Her brothers would set her up on dates with people they didn’t even know very well, some wealthy associate. They would all talk about her ‘getting her life back on track’ by which they would mean returning to her teaching studies, finding someone to marry who was as devastatingly average as she was, and throwing herself wholeheartedly into precisely the sort of future she had tried to avoid by becoming a barmaid at the Egg and Spoon.
Theo thought of Tania.
Tania, whatever the circumstances, would have had far less than Theo did now when she arrived in England. But Tania put her face on, teased her hair and went to work. She made herself a life. Couldn’t Theo do the same?
And hadn’t she already made her choice?
She had stayed with Oliver when she’d first found out he was sleeping with Alice, and she had worked so hard to try to salvage their relationship afterwards. It would be such a waste to throw that away, now. And wouldn’t that be letting Alice and Oliver’s sordid little dalliance dictate Theo’s future? The whole point of Theo staying with Oliver was that she knew him best. She loved him more than anyone. He needed her, Theo believed, whether he realised it or not. This situation was no different.
Alice was pregnant. There was going to be a baby. Oliver was the father of that baby. But Theo w
ould have nothing to do with it. Nothing should have to change for her when it was born, she decided. If Oliver was going to leave her for Alice, he would have done it by now. But he did have a responsibility to that child, and Theo would make sure he did the honourable thing. He would pay child support and could visit, if that’s what Alice wanted. But that’s where it would end. The baby wouldn’t be welcome in the home that Oliver and Theo shared. Theo wouldn’t have to think about the child ever again, once he or she was born. When earthquakes came, you stood in the doorway. These rules would be her doorway.
Beyond that, Theo knew she was going to have to change. She clearly hadn’t put enough effort into making a life of her own in Australia, carving out a Theo-shaped place for herself here. All she had done was tag along on Oliver’s ride, his pinion passenger. She needed to lay down roots, perhaps earn some money of her own. Find something to immerse herself in.
Maybe she would take her bowls to the markets and try her luck at selling them. She would try different glazes, she would assess the feedback of her customers and develop new products in accordance with it. Maybe she would do more than just bowls. Maybe eventually she would do plates, both dinner and side plates, maybe full dinner services in custom designs. Oliver had done it, why shouldn’t she?
By the time Oliver came home that night, Theo was prepared. He crept in as if there were landmines in their hallway and watched Theo with the air of someone approaching a savage dog.
‘I didn’t know how to tell you –’ he began, but Theo held up her hand to stop him.
‘Oliver, how old is Alice?’ she asked. Theo knew how old Alice was, she was the one who had hired her.
Oliver pressed his teeth together behind his closed lips before he spoke. ‘Nineteen.’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Yes.’
‘And when the baby arrives, what are her plans?’
Oliver’s eyes flickered around the room before they returned to Theo. ‘I don’t think she has any specific plans yet.’
‘She does realise that her life is going to change in every way, doesn’t she?’
Oliver looked down at his hands. ‘I’m not sure she does.’
‘Well, what about her parents?’
‘Her parents are . . . disappointed with some of the choices Alice has made.’
‘I see.’
‘She’s headstrong. She doesn’t care.’
‘And you liked her anyway? How the two of you must have clashed.’
‘Theo, what is it you wanted to say?’ Oliver was irritable by then, he knew he was at a disadvantage, and nothing made him more cross than that. Humiliation burned him up. Though she knew that about him, knew that not having a leg to stand on made him lash out, Theo still bristled at his tone. How fucking dare you be cross with me, she thought.
She laid out her terms, and Oliver said little in response, but nodded, and answered the questions that Theo asked. The baby was due in just under five months’ time. Alice had said she would name her Elizabeth, for her grandmother.
‘And what about the Sydney restaurant?’ Theo asked. ‘The money’s already in our account.’
Oliver rubbed his eyes and banged the heels of his palms on his temples, as if to shake the right answer loose. Theo waited, silent. She wanted to see him fight himself over it, grapple with all the different things that were asked of him and the things he was asking for.
‘I would still like to do it,’ he said eventually. ‘With your blessing.’
‘My blessing? That’s not something that worried you before.’
Oliver grimaced. ‘Please, Theo.’
She waited a beat or two. ‘Fine.’ What did it matter now?
Theo looked up ‘Elizabeth’ in her baby name book. ‘Pledged to God’, it meant. She didn’t like the sound of that. The baby wasn’t even born yet and she was already being given away. Theo signed up for a market stall for a Sunday in four weeks’ time. She would force her own hand, she decided. If she just stuck to her plan, filled her hours and her head with other things, everything would turn out fine.
Oliver threw himself into the preparations for the Sydney restaurant. He and Ethan flew back and forth, and Theo even went with them, once. The space was beautiful, a big light room overlooking the sea, high ceilings and cathedral windows. Ethan had found a restaurant designer to oversee the fit-out and interiors; everything, in fact, that Theo had done the first time around. Theo looked at the samples the designer had prepared, at the menus and signage and tableware and door handles and taps. It was not what she would have chosen.
She did begin selling her bowls, and she did far better with them than she had ever expected. It was satisfying, seeing people enjoy what she made. Theo had more and more ideas all the time, and filled her sketchbook when she didn’t have customers. She made friends with some of the other stallholders and they all had an early dinner together on Sunday nights once the markets were closed. But there was no way that Theo could have been occupied enough to be oblivious, to not feel it like a right hook into her echoing womb.
On the day Elizabeth was born, Theo was at home, reading on the lounge. She’d had a long swim that morning and was tired now, drifting into sleep and out again. Oliver rang and Theo let it go to the answering machine. She was too comfortable to get up. She listened as his voice poured out into the room.
‘Theo, Alice has had the baby,’ he said. ‘I just thought I should let you know. Um, they’re both fine.’
Theo sat upright and pulled a cushion across her stomach, folding her arms around it. Outside, she heard a motorbike going past, the engine spluttering like a nasal laugh. The wind picked up and prodded the branches of the gum out the front. It dripped gumnuts onto the roof. A scene came into Theo’s head and she couldn’t get it out. In it, Alice was smiling and tranquil. Oliver leant over her shoulder, and together they looked down at their infant child. Oliver reached down to take her tiny hand in his, the pad of his thumb filling her whole palm. He stroked Alice’s hair off her face. The baby sighed in her sleep. The room was filled with flowers and cards and all the hampers and bouquets that Oliver’s business associates had sent him. As Alice and Oliver looked down at the baby, they tried to see which parts of themselves were replicated in her. They discussed the space between her nose and upper lip, how it seemed long like Oliver’s, and the sweetness of her eyes, large and wide-set like Alice’s. They marvelled at the coils of her ears. Nurses came and went, and each of them looked at the trio and thought, what a beautiful family – the three of them, cocooned in each other, wrapped up in reverence.
It didn’t matter, she told herself. What was done was done.
In the days that followed, Oliver was very quiet. Theo knew that she had asked him to not speak of the baby, but she was angry anyway that he didn’t. She was curious, despite herself. She expected, had braced herself for, seeing glimpses of Oliver so weak at the knees with love for his tiny girl that he forgot to be his usual contained self. She expected to overhear him on the phone, soft-voiced and disbelieving. She expected to see him tamping all that down, for her. But she didn’t see any of those things.
What Theo did see was Oliver’s frustration and irritation when the phone rang and he had to go to Alice again. Alice called him hourly at times, when he was not already there. Oliver apologised to Theo. Sometimes he offered explanations. Alice needed formula, or painkillers. Alice hadn’t eaten all day and her fridge was bare. Mostly he just said Alice needed help with the baby. He said it with an edge, as though he thought either Alice should not need help, or Alice should not be asking for it from him. But he put on his shoes and went. Theo thought of herself at nineteen, how she would have felt, alone, with a baby. She shut her mouth. She had also thought she would enjoy seeing Oliver annoyed with Alice, but she didn’t.
One night, when the baby was almost six weeks old and Theo had gone to bed early with a headache and sore arms from packing crates of bowls for the markets the next day, Oliver came home and sat on the edge o
f the bed. He didn’t speak, just sat and stared out the window.
‘What is it?’ Theo said.
Oliver’s shoulders stiffened. ‘I’ve just been at Alice’s,’ he said. He sounded tired. Not just ordinary tired. Exhausted in every way, in every cell in his body. He hadn’t stopped working, between his visits to Alice and baby Elizabeth. Oliver Watts Sydney would be opening in mere weeks. ‘She wants me to look after Elizabeth for a while,’ Oliver said.
Theo opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
‘She’s been offered a residency,’ Oliver said. ‘In America. Los Angeles. It’s a wonderful opportunity for her. Career-wise, it’s a real boost.’
‘A wonderful opportunity?’ Theo could only parrot Oliver’s own words back to him. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘That baby isn’t even two months old.’
‘I know that, Theo. Alice knows that.’ Oliver wouldn’t look at her, he stared down at the bed, his hands loose in his lap.
‘And what? She doesn’t care? Can’t she take it with her? How are you supposed to look after a baby? What about work?’ Theo, incredulous, spilled over with questions. Did she know what she was asking? Theo threw the covers off her legs, suddenly hot.
‘She says that painting is her work,’ Oliver said. ‘And it’s just as important as mine. She says that I wouldn’t be expected to have my baby at work and neither should she.’
Theo didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t quite grasp that they were actually having this conversation.
‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked.
Oliver lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were full. In any other circumstance Theo would have felt awful for him. She would have taken him in her arms, she would have held him and cried while he cried at how impossible it all was, how unbelievably impossible. What a mess he had found himself in.
‘Theo, I have to do it. I don’t have a choice. I’m Elizabeth’s father.’
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