Her story got the second highest mark, behind Tran Hien, the Vietnamese student whose parents had come to Australia in a terrifying trip in a flimsy boat, escaping from torture and imprisonment. Harriet was even more amazed when ‘Lara’s Rescue’ appeared alongside ‘The Boat Trip’ in the annual school magazine. The teacher told her afterwards she’d wanted it to be a surprise for them both. The first she knew about it was when Lara came up to her at the end of year school assembly, looking shocked and angry. Harriet had never seen that expression on her face. It made her feel sick inside.
‘Harriet, how could you do this? Why did you write it?’
She looked at the magazine in Lara’s hand and blinked, in shock. Part of her was thrilled to see her name in print like that. She thought Lara would be happy for her. ‘We had to write a story about something true that happened to our family.’
‘But it isn’t true. I wasn’t in the car.’
Harriet was embarrassed. ‘I know. But I didn’t know how else to write it, because if I wrote it only from the point of view of your mother and father then they …’ She stopped before she dug herself any deeper. She couldn’t say because she wouldn’t have been able to write about it if it was only them, because they weren’t her family, only Lara was now, so Lara had to be in the car if she was to use them in the story. She’d started to explain, tried her best, but Lara interrupted her. Harriet got that frightening feeling again, that Lara was there, but a long way away, all at the same time.
‘Don’t ever do that again. It’s my story, not your story.’
‘But you’re my family, aren’t you. Aren’t I allowed to write about you?’ She was genuinely confused.
‘Am I your family?’
‘Aren’t you?’
Lara didn’t answer.
‘I thought you were,’ Harriet said in a small voice.
The rest of the family all read it. Mum, Dad, Austin, James. It was very dramatic, they all said. ‘But Lara wasn’t in the car, was she?’ she heard James say. ‘And she wasn’t a baby at the time either, was she?’
It was talked about in the travel agency. Many of their customers had children at Harriet and Lara’s school. The school magazine was read by everyone. Folding brochures one afternoon, Harriet overheard a conversation between Gloria and one of the clients.
‘I didn’t realise it had been so traumatic for Lara. I knew her parents had died, but I didn’t realise she’d been in the crash with them.’
Gloria lowered her voice. ‘No, actually, she wasn’t.’
‘But Harriet’s story in the school magazine …’
‘A little artistic licence.’
‘But her parents did die in a car crash?’
‘Yes, but Lara wasn’t with them.’
Others were even blunter, and talked about it to Lara herself. ‘I hadn’t realised you were adopted, Lara. And under such tragic circumstances.’
Harriet felt sick. Her parents told her off, for not thinking about Lara, not thinking through the consequences of her actions. Even Gloria told her she should have thought more before she wrote it.
She’d gone to Gloria, the way she always did when her own family didn’t make sense.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt her.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Why would I?’
Gloria was serious. ‘Look, I know it isn’t easy sometimes for you, Harriet.’
‘I’ve been really kind to her. I’ve always been kind to her.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t always want your kindness. Maybe sometimes she just wants to feel normal.’
It changed things between her and Lara for a while. Until Harriet went into their bedroom one night, with a carrot cake she had made herself. She knew Lara loved her cake. She had written Sorry Lara in icing on the top.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘I didn’t think.’
‘It’s okay, Harriet.’
Not long after that, Harriet kept coming across Lara and her parents, especially her mother, having the secret conversations again. Sometimes they were out in the garden, sitting together on the bench near the plum tree, talking quietly together. They stopped talking when Harriet came out with a basket of washing. Another time she came into the travel agency after hours to get some paper from the stationery cupboard. She surprised them, sitting close together in the waiting area. Her mother was holding Lara’s hands. One afternoon she came home from a swim at the beach and walked into the living room, to see Lara sitting on the couch, crying, with her mother on one side and her father on the other.
‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’
Her mother’s expression was obvious. ‘Harriet, please, Lara needs to talk about a few things.’
In other words, Harriet, go away. It made her feel she was eight, all over again.
‘Do you want to talk to me, Lara?’
‘No thanks.’
‘It’s not because of the story, is it? I promise I won’t tell anyone ever again.’
‘It’s okay, Harriet.’
She went back to Gloria again. ‘They won’t tell me what’s going on. They’re shutting me out.’ She was going through a dramatic phase.
‘There are things she wants to know about her own parents.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she can’t remember them very well. And she wants to.’
‘But she’s got my parents now.’
‘She still misses her own parents.’
‘I suppose.’ She thought about it. ‘And it’s not like she’s adopted, is it? She can’t go and find her parents. Get to know them at all, can she?’
Gloria looked at her for a long moment. ‘No, Harriet, she can’t.’
James started going out with Melissa the year Lara and Harriet turned sixteen. Melissa and her family had moved to Merryn Bay at the end of summer and she and James were an item within a month. As Melissa said at the first family barbecue she attended, ‘I took one look at James in the main street and knew he was the one for me.’
‘He didn’t stand a chance,’ Harriet heard Gloria say to her mother one night. She didn’t think she was supposed to have heard it. But she knew what Gloria meant. Melissa frightened Harriet a bit. She was small but bossy and James seemed to almost hide behind her. He also made a big deal to Austin about the fact he had a girlfriend and Austin didn’t. Harriet heard them have a horrible fight about it.
‘Melissa’s your girlfriend? Yes, James, that’s one word for her, I suppose.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Well, it’s a funny thing. I often wondered what a female Rottweiler would look like in human form, and now I know. Blonde hair, tanned skin, remarkably like someone you know well, actually.’
‘Fuck off, Austin,’ James had said. Harriet had put her hands over her ears. She still hated it when they fought.
Austin was right in a way, but it wasn’t a nice thing to say about James’s girlfriend. Lara, however, didn’t seem scared of Melissa at all. She talked to her, quite nicely, answered her questions and somehow didn’t let her boss her around, the way Melissa was able to do to Harriet. Harriet was always surprised to find herself in the shop down the road, having been sent – ordered – by Melissa to go and buy some drinks, or a newspaper, or some chocolate. Gloria had said to her quietly one day that she should remember she was James’s younger sister, not Melissa’s slave.
‘But she’s his girlfriend. I’m being polite.’
‘You don’t have to let her walk all over you, Harriet. Some people like to do that to others.’
‘I’ll try not to let her do it any more. Anyway, they might split up soon, mightn’t they?’ she asked hopefully.
She’d been wrong. James and Melissa got engaged six months later, on Melissa’s twenty-fifth birthday. Melissa asked Lara to be her third bridesmaid and Harriet to be one of the ushers. She’d explained to Harriet that she thought Lara’s blonde hair, almost the same
shade as hers, would look a bit better in the photographs. Harriet didn’t think she minded, though she felt a bit strange on the day of the wedding. She’d overheard her parents saying how kind it had been of Melissa and James to ask Lara to be in the wedding party. ‘It must have really made her feel one of the family.’ It felt wrong to feel a bit jealous, so she did her best to hide it.
Harriet was eighteen and in her bedroom studying for her final year exams when her mum and dad came in. They both sat on the bed and formally invited her to come and work for Turner Travel.
‘We’d love it if you would.’ Her mother was all smiles.
‘But only if you want to,’ her father added. ‘We want you here, but not under pressure.’
She had accepted straightaway, and not just because she wanted to make her parents happy. She’d never thought about working anywhere else. She’d always hoped that’s what would happen, but she was very touched they’d asked her like that. After Austin’s decision to go to music college rather than follow James and work in the agency, Harriet knew it was important to them.
It was a special moment for Harriet. Sitting in her room with her parents, hearing them say so casually that they loved the way she already helped in the travel agency, all the after-school hours she did, the way she made people feel so looked after when they called in or phoned about any of the tours.
‘That’s a real gift, Harriet,’ her mother said. ‘You make me very proud when I see you with our customers. We’d have loved you to work for us even if you weren’t our daughter.’
They spoke about the sorts of things she would be doing, and asked her whether she wanted to work as a guide down the track, or stay in the office. She felt the ideas bubbling up inside her. She made suggestions there and then. What about guided tour groups to sporting events? Themed tours based around different sorts of restaurants? Historical tours, visiting towns connected with the colonial history of Australia? Her teacher at school had been brilliant the way he’d made it all come alive. Maybe he could come as a special guest speaker? Or geological tours? She’d seen a documentary and it was incredible when the history of a mountain or a bay was explained, all the things you looked at every day without ever really seeing them. Lots of people might be interested in that, mightn’t they? She’d felt as though someone had thrown open a window, showing her all sorts of possibilities.
Her father had sat back and given her a beautiful smile. ‘I don’t think coming up with ideas is going to be a problem for you, Harriet.’
Her mother had been as happy. ‘We’ll have to take on extra staff to cope with all the business you’re going to bring in, by the sound of things.’
‘You have asked Lara to come and work with us as well, haven’t you? I don’t want her to feel left out.’ Even as she asked, even as she genuinely hoped they had, she’d felt a stirring of her eight-year-old self. Please don’t let them have asked her first.
‘Not yet. We’re asking her next. And we hope she’ll say yes too.’
They’d asked her that same night. Harriet had been in the next room and had overheard. She’d made sure she could overhear, in fact. Lara hadn’t said much. She had just gone to Mrs Turner and then to Mr Turner and held them in a very tight hug. ‘I’d love to. Thank you.’
After James and Austin moved out of home, their bedroom became the Turner Travel storeroom. Harriet and Lara continued to share a bedroom, until Lara moved out of home the year they both turned twenty. She’d saved enough for a deposit on her own flat, on the first floor of one of the oldest stone buildings in the town, beyond the main street shops. They all knew, but didn’t say, that there had also been a legacy from her parents.
Lara announced her plans quietly over breakfast one morning. It had come up for sale, she had been to see it, fallen in love with it.
Penny had been alarmed. ‘Are you unhappy here, Lara? Oh, darling, you should have said something. We could have talked about it.’
‘No, I’m not unhappy at all. It just felt like the right time.’
‘You’re not thinking of leaving the business, are you? Because we think the world of you, you know that, don’t you?’
‘No, I love working here. I’d just like to live on my own.’
They were all invited to a house-warming drinks party. It was the first time any of them had seen the flat since she’d moved in. She had kept them away, gently but firmly. ‘No, not until it’s perfect.’
Harriet hadn’t been pleased. ‘Come on, Lara. We want to see the before and after.’
‘No, I’d rather you only saw the after.’
Even Mr and Mrs Turner hadn’t seen it. Harriet had a feeling they were hurt by it. She’d heard her mum talking about it with Gloria one night.
‘It’s her first place, her first real independence,’ Gloria tried to explain to Penny. Harriet had been in the staffroom, able to clearly hear their conversation, even though she wasn’t sure if she should be listening. ‘The first time since she came to live with you. She must have always felt like she was taking part of Harriet’s bedroom. This is the first time she’s really had something of her own. I think you need to respect that. Give her time.’
Whatever the flat had looked like when Lara first moved in, they didn’t know. But she’d made it lovely. It was three large rooms at the front of the big stone building, which had previously been a bank. On top was a roof garden. It was one of the few two-storey buildings in the town, with a view over the pine trees lining the caravan park at the seafront. It was almost total sea view, if you ignored the car park and the kiosk, and the children’s playground.
The rooms were simply but beautifully decorated. There wasn’t a lot of furniture: a low sofa and two matching armchairs in soft white leather; a rectangular dining table in pale wood, with six wooden chairs, their padded seats matching the leather of the sofa. One wall was bookshelves, the books arranged neatly, art books and non-fiction on one row of shelves, hardbacks on another, paperbacks on another.
They peeked into the bedroom. It was decorated in the same pale colours, off-white walls, a cream quilt cover on the bed, a pile of soft pillows and cushions in shades of pink, light blue and pale yellow adding gentle colour. It was a very peaceful room. Even the kitchen was uncluttered, white cupboards and a stainless steel oven, with the cheery addition of a row of bright green cups and a thriving spider plant on the deep windowsill.
There were no heavy curtains over any of the large windows, just light gauze material in a soft turquoise that framed the view perfectly. A large painting hung on the main wall in the living room, an abstract seascape in different soft shades of blue and greens. It was very beautiful, the renovations thoughtfully done, the decoration stylish and feminine.
In a corner, pouring drinks, was Lara’s boyfriend of six months, Tom. They had heard about Tom, but this was the first time they had seen him. Lara had met him at a travel agents’ dinner in Melbourne. A pilot with one of the new airlines, he’d been one of the guest speakers.
‘He’s gorgeous,’ Gloria said to Lara in a whisper. Not only physically, though the combination of fine Asian features inherited from his mother and height from his Australian father was striking. Later, emboldened and made giddy by too many champagnes, Harriet said to him that if she was ever destined to be in a plane crash, she hoped he was at the helm.
She realised too late what she had said. Her hand went to her mouth. Everyone looked at her, then Lara. ‘Oh Lara, I’m so sorry.’ No one needed to say it aloud, but they’d all been thinking of Lara’s parents dying in a crash.
Lara fixed it, smoothly, gracefully. She went to Tom’s side, kissed his cheek and said, ‘It’s fine, Harriet. Tom wouldn’t crash. He’s too good a pilot, aren’t you?’ She somehow stitched the tear in the conversation without fuss. The music was turned up, the conversation continued, the evening went on.
They’d all liked him very much, they told her at work the next week. She seemed pleased but didn’t say much. Several months later she casual
ly remarked that she wasn’t seeing Tom any more. Harriet had wanted all the reasons why not, but Lara wouldn’t be drawn. ‘It wasn’t working out between us,’ she said. It was the explanation she used from then on, whenever she ended it with one of her boyfriends.
Harriet met Simon when she was twenty-six. It hadn’t been an instant attraction, but she grew to like lots of things about him. How sure he was of everything. How definite he was about what he wanted to do with his life. He was nice-looking, solid, with sandy hair and an open, smiling face. Sometimes they ran out of conversation, and didn’t always laugh at the same things, and she often wished he wasn’t quite so quick with his lovemaking, but she reasoned with herself that she couldn’t have everything. His good points easily outweighed the bad.
Austin was appalled at the news. ‘A policeman? You’re going out with a policeman? Oh bloody hell, Harriet. Talk about put a halt to all our gallops.’
‘He’s not square, if that’s what you’re getting at,’ she said, stung. ‘Anyway, you shouldn’t be smoking drugs, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘I don’t smoke drugs. I inject them. Or freebase them. Sometimes I even take a bath in them.’
Lara was laughing. ‘Don’t mind him, Harriet, he’s teasing you.’
‘I know he is.’ Of course she knew that. ‘Don’t worry, Austin, I’ve asked him to let you off lightly if he ever picks you up.’
‘I don’t know if I want to meet him. What if he starts lecturing me? Wants to teach me the right way to cross the road? “Look left, then right, no, no, Austin, not three rights and then a left. Look, if you kill yourself it’s not my responsibility.” ’
Harriet wasn’t enjoying this any more. She’d been dying to tell Austin about Simon, had saved it up for his visit home, and now he and Lara were making a joke of it. Austin had changed since he’d started touring with the orchestra, she decided. He only visited now and again, breezing in for a night here or there, sometimes midweek, sometimes on a Saturday. This visit – home for three nights – was a rarity. Harriet had pictured how it would be, Simon arriving for a barbecue, he and Austin hitting it off immediately – with a bit of teasing about Simon being a policeman of course, but then they’d find all sorts of things in common.
Family Baggage Page 23