‘Ask her if she can curl her tongue,’ Taylor says. ‘That’s vital.’
‘I’m not asking that. There’s more important stuff.’
‘Ask who your father is.’
‘Alright.’
‘Oh! And ask how she got pregnant.’
‘I can’t ask her that!’
‘Why not? It’s part of your story. It’s your origin story.’
‘What’s an origin story?’
‘Some superhero thing. I dunno – Adam likes them. Anyway, what’s the harm in putting everything you can think of down in a list?’
‘I don’t want to get it wrong, though. What if I ask her the wrong thing? What if I mess everything up before I even know her properly?’
Taylor’s silent for so long I think she’s not going to reply. ‘Just write the list,’ she says eventually. ‘You can’t control any of the other stuff, but you can write down everything about her that’s important to you.’
***
Mum and I are woken up by Matthew, wearing a threadbare t-shirt, boxers and shoes on the wrong feet. ‘It’s Taylor,’ he says. ‘I think she might be on something.’
‘Oh, she’s not,’ I say. ‘She’s just Taylor. She sleepwalks.’
‘Well, she’s hunting glittery snakes around the pool area – we’re worried she’s going to go in.’
‘Is someone with her?’ Mum asks, pulling on her dressing gown.
‘Ginny,’ Matthew says.
Mum and I hurry to the pool, my thongs sliding off my feet. Ginny has a hold of Taylor’s arm and Taylor, enraged, is hitting her over the head with a pool noodle.
‘Morning,’ says Ginny when she sees us. ‘Think your sister’s on something.’
‘She sleepwalks,’ Mum says. ‘She’s always done it. Taylor? Taylor! Come on, sweet girl. There are glitter snakes back at home.’
Taylor stops hitting Ginny with the pool noodle. ‘Purple ones?’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Come on. Let’s go find them. There aren’t any here. I already checked.’
‘We have to find the purple ones!’ Taylor explains, her voice low and urgent. ‘The purple ones are the dangerous ones.’
‘Alright. Let’s go find them. We have to be quick, though,’ I say. And Taylor lets us march her back to the cabin. Mum tucks her into bed and I kick off my shoes and half smile at Ginny and Matthew. ‘Sorry. Normally, she doesn’t get that far.’
‘It’s okay. I’m going to catch a bit more sleep,’ says Ginny.
‘Yeah, me too,’ says Matthew. ‘Are you sure she’s okay?’
‘Yeah. Definitely. She does it all the time.’
‘Okay. Well. Night.’
‘Night. Thanks for all that.’
Matthew smiles and plods off, and when I go back into the room Taylor and I share, it’s to find her cuddled up around her pillow, snoring like she won’t move until dawn.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mum, Kelly and I meet at the café. Taylor had wanted to come, and normally that would mean she came, but Mum had shaken her head. ‘No, not this time, Tay.’
‘I’m the one who called her! I organised it!’
‘Taylor.’
‘It’s my family, too!’
‘Just leave it,’ Mum said. Sometimes, not often, I see Taylor’s hardness in Mum. A strength that I don’t feel like I have. I envy it, though.
It’s raining again. The café is noisy and bustling and I’m grateful. Somehow, it all would have been worse if it were quiet. I reach for Mum’s hand and she squeezes my fingers, but what if that freaks Kelly out? I cross my arms and I feel Mum look at me and then away again, and I’m not sure that she understands.
Kelly sits very straight in her chair and I can’t tell if that’s how she usually sits in a chair or if she’s a sloucher in disguise. She looks as uncomfortable as I feel and I can’t work out whether this makes me feel better or worse. We recognise her because she’s wearing a big green flower in her hair. She takes it out when we sit down at the table and tucks it into her bag.
‘My sister’s,’ she says. Her voice is quite deep. Her skin is olive, the sort Lara would kill for, and her eyes are dark. Her wild hair is pulled back from her face, a few stray wisps escaping near her eyes. She’s wearing the sort of clothes I always thought I’d wear as an adult. Soothing, block colours. No jewellery. ‘You’re very tall,’ she says to me.
‘Did you have far to come?’ Mum asks, which is her standard greeting when she’s not sure what else to say. I’d once overheard her asking this of the postal worker who’d sprung her in her worst pyjamas.
‘No, not that far. I’m near the beach.’
Her voice isn’t how I imagined, but I’m not sure I ever imagined it, at all. Until today, she had existed in a silent place of words and stories and everything I didn’t know about her.
‘I’m sorry I never replied,’ I say. ‘I didn’t get the letters . . .’
Kelly glances at Mum. It’s only fleeting, but it’s sharp and I feel Mum tense up. She picks up a packet of sugar and runs it through her fingers, over and over.
‘None of them?’
‘Only the last one,’ I say.
‘I saved them for her,’ Mum says, leaning forward in her chair. ‘She was too young. It would’ve been too much for her.’
Kelly draws in a shaking breath and says, almost to herself, ‘I thought . . . I thought you’d remind me of him.’
‘My . . . my father?’ My heart picks up. My fingers crinkle the page of questions in my lap. ‘Are you still in touch?’
Kelly winces. ‘I don’t know him, Stella.’
‘Not at all?’
‘No. Not at all.’
I glance sideways at Mum and her expression is so sad that for a moment my breath catches.
‘You don’t know him.’ I think about this. I think about what being taken advantage of means. The drinks arrive and Kelly has a deep gulp of her coffee.
‘How old are you?’ I ask. And it feels weird to ask an adult that.
Kelly still has a mouthful of coffee.
‘She’s thirty-three, Stella,’ Mum says, very quietly.
Sixteen. She was sixteen when I was born. Sixteen. The words ring in my head. Sixteen. Sixteen. Sixteen. ‘Sorry,’ I say and then I run out of the café and retch into the gutter, and I know what taken advantage of means; what her not knowing his name means. And every part of me tingles with the wrongness of it all. Sixteen. Sixteen. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.
‘Stella?’ At first I think it’s Kelly, but of course it’s Mum, with a crease between her eyebrows. ‘Oh, Stell. Come here.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, love.’
‘She was sixteen.’
‘I know.’
‘She was . . . she was . . .’
Mum hugs me and she smells of tomato soup and garlic and I breathe her in.
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ I whisper. ‘I shouldn’t be here. It’s wrong that I’m here.’
‘Of course you should, love.’ We sit in the gutter, in the rain, and Mum holds my hand and gives me a tissue. Her voice is brisk. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’
‘Is she still in there?’ I ask.
Mum looks back at the café. ‘Yeah, she is.’
‘Do I have to go back in? I do, don’t I?’
‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.’ Mum rubs my back the way she did when I was a little kid with a fever. It makes me feel drowsy, the way it did back then.
I take a deep breath.
‘You don’t have to do anything,’ Mum says. ‘You do what feels right. We can go back in there and say whatever you need to, or we can leave and never see her again.’
It’s the we. I love the we. The way Mum slips it in there.
‘How could I have been too young at sixteen to get her letters when she’d gone through all that at the same age?’
‘Stell.’
&
nbsp; ‘I want to go back in,’ I say.
‘You do?’
I wipe my eyes, wondering why Mum never told me about Kelly being sixteen before. Why she’d waited until I was sitting across from Kelly, but I squash the thought and stand up. I can’t be mad at Mum right now. ‘Yeah. Back in. I need to understand.’
***
Kelly hasn’t moved. I sink back into my seat and prop my head in my hands, unsure where to look. I’m aware of water dripping onto the table in front of me, and I blot at it with my sleeve.
‘It’s a bit much for her,’ Mum says, like I’m a kid. Like I’m still six and she’s hiding that first letter from me.
‘It’s not!’ I snap. I sit up in my chair and take a deep breath. ‘It’s not too much for me.’
‘Would you like something to eat?’ Kelly asks.
‘Chips. A bowl of chips with salt,’ Mum says, glancing at me. ‘Stella loves chips.’
‘I’ll have a salad,’ I mutter. ‘The garden salad.’
Kelly lifts a hand and a waiter appears. ‘For you?’ she asks Mum.
‘Oh, I’ll peck at the salad. It’s fine.’
‘I’ll have another coffee and can we also get the garden salad and a bowl of chips,’ says Kelly.
The waiter repeats the order back and Kelly nods, and then it’s just the three of us again, in the hum of the café.
‘You can ask me whatever you want,’ says Kelly, not quite looking at me. She glances at Mum and quickly away. ‘Whatever you need to.’
I pull out my list. My fingers shake a little, but I’m not sure that Kelly notices because she’s staring out into the street. I have filled the page with questions, questions and questions and questions. But there’s only one that I can think of. The words blur in front of me.
‘Were you raped?’
She goes very still, and I’m certain she’s not going to respond. ‘I think you know the answer to that already, or you wouldn’t be asking it.’
‘Was he caught?’
‘No.’
‘Did you report it?’
She shifts in her seat. Have I gone too far, I wonder? Then she says, ‘No. I was going to. But . . . my father . . . no. I didn’t report it.’
‘Stella,’ Mum says, her voice sharp. ‘Now’s not really the time.’
‘Then when is? When is the time?’
Kelly’s gazing out the window. I wonder how much it’s costing her. Even just sitting here with me mustn’t be easy. I look down at my list and swallow.
‘You wrote about a garden and a house near the sea. Do you still live there?’ I ask.
She looks at me. ‘You read that letter?’
‘I’ve read them all,’ I say. ‘All the ones that Mum saved.’
Kelly relaxes a little. ‘Yeah. I’m still in that house. It was a ruin when I bought it and I’ve been doing it up. I’ve built a big brick wall around it. It’s very peaceful. My sister calls it the secret garden.’
My salad and Mum’s chips arrive, and we eat in silence for a while.
‘What do you do with yourself, Kelly?’ Mum asks, because silences make her go mad.
‘I have my own business. I’m a landscape consultant.’
‘Oh, so you work in people’s gardens? You’re a gardener?’
‘No. I design the area and oversee the project. I don’t do any of the hands-on stuff.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, good for you!’ Mum smiles at her, the way I imagine she smiles at the residents at the nursing home. ‘Making so much of yourself after having Stell so young. Do you enjoy it?’
‘I love it.’
Mum gives a small nod. ‘I’m in hospitality myself. Work in the health services sector.’ Mum nudges me. ‘Stella wants to be a therapist.’
Kelly startles. ‘A therapist?’
‘Well, I haven’t decided yet.’ I try to think of someone scarier than Kelly, but I can’t. She’s the most terrifying person I’ve ever met.
I’m still peering down at my list. ‘Can you roll your tongue?’
‘What?’
Flushing, I roll mine. I show her.
Kelly blinks and finishes her coffee. She looks away from me. ‘No.’
***
Mum and I don’t drive straight home. Instead, Mum drives us to the beach near Lockwood and buys me a lemon, orange and lime gelato. It’s what I always have when we go to the beach. I eat it out of a cup now, though, when I go to the beach with Clem, Zin and Lara. I don’t say a word as Mum hands me a cone.
We sit on the concrete steps and stare out at the water. I can smell salt and rotting seaweed and it makes my stomach churn. I eat the gelato slowly.
‘That really upset you,’ Mum says.
‘I guess.’
‘You don’t have to see her again, you know? It was so brave to do it once, but it’s too much for you.’
I lick the gelato so I get all three flavours, still looking out at the water.
‘You already have a family, Stell.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you want to see her again?’
A bit of gelato dribbles over my fingers.
‘No, Mum.’ I close my eyes, my fingers sticky. I feel suddenly so tired that I think longingly of our double bed at Fairyland. ‘No, I don’t want to see her again.’
Mum puts her arm around me and I feel her relief. I wonder if Kelly scared her, too. ‘Whatever you want. It’s all going to be okay,’ she says.
***
I go down to the river. It’s a good place to practise mindfulness and reflect on my life journey. I don’t notice the sound of the highway anymore. Someone’s been planting more flowers in amongst the grass, or maybe they’re weeds. I don’t know. They’re just pretty.
I can’t see Matthew, but Taylor follows me out from the cabin, and when I sit down, she sits next to me and watches me closely. She’s added pink to her hair now and it’s fluffy and silky and I want to brush it, like I did when we were little.
The water’s much closer to the bench than it used to be. I glance up at the flood line and can’t decide if it makes me feel better or worse.
‘So?’ she says.
‘She had me when she was sixteen.’
Taylor’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Sixteen?’
I nod, dragging a twig across the grass. ‘She doesn’t even know the guy’s name. She was taken advantage of. That’s how Mum put it.’
Taylor spits in the grass and swears, and somehow her anger makes me feel better.
‘She doesn’t look like me, at all.’ I bite my lip. ‘I reckon I look more like Mum than Kelly.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘Dark hair. Not much makeup. Those really plain clothes that you just know cost heaps. I can’t remember, exactly. It’s all a bit of a blur.’
‘Tall like you?’
‘No. I don’t know.’
‘Was she what you expected?’
‘No. I thought we’d feel like we knew each other.’
‘Are you going to see her again?’
‘Maybe. She said we could if I want. But she doesn’t seem very . . . I don’t know. I think if I’d never contacted her, she would have been happy.’
‘She wrote to you for over ten years.’
‘If I don’t look like her . . .’
Taylor pushes her hair behind her ears. ‘Don’t.’
I close my eyes. ‘I must look like him.’
***
I find my dad doodling in a notebook. I wonder if it’s the same one I’d flipped through in the pavilion, but I can’t see the cover and there’s no way to know. He’s lying on his stomach on the top bunk with his feet kicked up and he looks so young that at first I don’t recognise him. Then he glances up at me. He suddenly looks so tired and worn out. Jube is back at Fairyland and sticking close to Dad. He’s curled on the floor near the base of the bunk and wags his tail when he sees me.
I think about how he saved Jube.
‘I found out about Kelly’s letters,’ I say
.
‘What letters?’
‘The ones Kelly’d been writing to me.’
‘She’d been writing to you?’
‘Mum hid them.’ I bite my lip. ‘No. That’s not right. Mum was keeping them safe, that’s all.’
‘She always told me that Kelly never wrote,’ he mutters. He sits up on the bunk, hunching so his head fits beneath the ceiling. ‘How many?’
‘Fourteen. Fourteen letters. I . . . I met her today.’
I wait for Dad to ask me why I hadn’t told him, but he doesn’t.
‘You met her, eh? That must’ve been . . . weird.’
‘Yeah, it was. I guess.’ I back slowly out of the room. ‘I’ve got to get to work. Just thought you’d want to know.’
There’s more I want to say, but I don’t know how to say any of it. I’ve been so fixated on all the ways he’d stopped being my father. I sort of realise, shutting the bunkroom door, that I’ve forgotten things, too. I don’t know how to be his daughter anymore, either.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dad’s new job is in sales, doing the sort of stuff he was doing at his last job. His last job had been selling plumbing equipment and this new one is working in a camping store. It doesn’t seem real. We stare at him across the camping table and everyone stops eating their pasta.
‘A job job?’ Taylor says.
‘Yeah, of course! A job job.’
Taylor raises her eyebrows at me and I raise mine back at her.
‘That’s cool,’ Taylor says, and Dad smiles so widely that I can see a filling in his tooth that I’d completely forgotten about.
Mum prods at her pasta with her fork. ‘If you see Kelly again, we can tell her that.’
I startle. ‘What?’
‘Tell her your father is a sales consultant.’
‘I didn’t think I was seeing her again.’ There’s a bit of an edge in my voice and I sense Taylor glancing at me.
Mum just smiles. ‘Just if you do. You can tell her that about your father.’
I poke at my pasta.
Later, I hear him and Mum getting insect spray from inside, quietly agreeing that his wage will go entirely into her account. It’s a small thing, really. But given all the lies and excuses and arguments over the last couple of years, it seems almost magical. For the rest of the night, Mum smiles at Dad a lot and looks tearful, and I wonder if she’s happy because everything can start moving back towards normal, or if she’s trying not to cry because she knows that, very soon, it’s all going to fall apart again.
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