Kelly strides across the room to slide both the windows open.
***
I unpack my things slowly, thinking about Fairyland. When I emerge from the room a little after four, I sort of expect Kelly to be waiting for me. My stomach gurgles and I wish I’d thought to bring snacks with me.
She’s not in the house and it takes me a while to find her fiddling with an irrigation line at the back of the garden.
‘Third time this has busted since November,’ she says, not looking up at me. She’s wearing thick gloves and a droopy hat, and she leans in close to the little plastic tubing. ‘All unpacked?’
‘Yeah. I was thinking I might pop out and get something to eat,’ I say, half expecting her to offer to make me something. The idea of tramping back out in the heat makes me feel sick.
‘Alright.’ She stands up. ‘I haven’t had a key cut for you yet, so just press the buzzer when you get back.’
‘Okay.’
‘And could you maybe grab some milk?’
‘Sure.’
Kelly bends back down to the garden bed, and after a moment I reach into my pocket to make sure my wallet is in there and then I slowly leave the walled garden, blinking in the bright, hot light of the salty street.
***
I wake up curled up in a ball, the way I’ve been sleeping every night since we moved to Fairyland. Taylor has a habit of kicking me if I accidentally move onto her three-quarters of the bed.
I fan out my arms and legs. This is my bed. For as long as I’m here. Just mine. For me. I roll into the middle of the mattress and my back cracks. The sheets are new – they’ve got that smell.
Last night I’d had dinner by myself – the bag of chips and salad I’d picked up from the little grocery store two blocks away. Kelly had had an after-hours meeting. ‘It happens a lot,’ she says. ‘Many of my clients work long hours and need to make the appointments late.’ I stare up at the ceiling and it’s flawless. Down lights, sharp lines. Not a mark up there. It’s a little while before I can bring myself to get out of bed.
‘What are you doing today?’ Kelly asks me when I walk into the kitchen. She’s scrolling through emails on her laptop and doesn’t look up.
She’s already dressed and I wish I’d thought to get dressed, too. I feel shabby in my pyjamas, even though they’re my best ones. ‘Two of my friends are catching the train down this way – we’re heading to the beach.’
‘Good day for it,’ Kelly says. ‘Meant to be high thirties.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Keep the house locked up and the curtains drawn. It stays pretty cool that way.’
‘Alright.’
‘I haven’t got the key done yet for you, so come back after five, okay? I’ll be home for an hour before another meeting. I can let you in then.’
‘Okay.’
‘And I’ve shown you how to double-check that the front gate’s locked?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’ll triple-check it.’
‘Good. Good.’
I have a mouthful of muesli and gaze at the deck. ‘This must be the best party house.’
Kelly frowns and tilts her head. ‘Sorry?’
‘Your place – it must be good for having people visit.’
‘I don’t really have anyone over,’ Kelly says.
‘Really? What about your friends?’
‘My sister pops in a bit for cuppas and dinner. That’s about it.’
‘Oh.’
‘My job’s pretty full on. I have people around me all day and into the night, too, mostly, that’s all. I like my home being a sort of sanctuary. Somewhere . . . quiet.’
‘I get that,’ I say, but I’m not sure that I do. When I imagine the house I’ll live in as an adult, I imagine my friends and family dropping in all the time. I imagine people I haven’t met yet who I’ll one day love, sitting on my very pale couch and eating my very bright fruit platters. I imagine dancing and laughing and the house always being in motion. I mean, I’ll make them take their shoes off at the door and have a no-red-wine-on-the-white-rug rule. But I don’t mind things being a mess if it means people being close.
‘What about your parents?’ I ask. ‘Do they come over much?’
I’d been thinking about them a fair bit. Grandparents had always been something I didn’t have, end of story. The idea that I now have two is thrilling. I never let myself think about the grandparents that I may or may not have. It was pointless. Painful. I visualised them into the place where my other grandparents dwelled – a place of quiet imagining. Of non-existing.
Kelly shrugs. ‘My mum’s dead. I don’t really have much to do with my dad, anymore.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’ I swallow. ‘What . . . what happened to your mum?’
‘I don’t really like to talk about it.’
‘I’m so sorry, Kelly.’
‘No, it’s okay. It’s just . . . there’s a lot of stuff from when I was younger that I guess I’m not okay with. It’s better this way.’
‘Stuff around me, you mean?’
Kelly drops her apple. ‘You know, I forget sometimes . . . that you’re . . .’ She shakes her head. ‘I know that sounds stupid. I mean, why else would you be staying here? But you’re that baby. The one I gave up.’
I glance down at my hands.
‘Anyway,’ she says, standing up. ‘Don’t . . . don’t cook or anything, okay? Nothing big. I like my kitchen a certain way.’
‘No cooking. Got it.’
‘I’ve left money on the table – there’re a lot of cafés and restaurants around.’
‘That’s alright, I’ve got my own money.’
‘Well, it’s there anyway.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’ve got everything you need?’
‘Yeah, I do.’ I hesitate. ‘Kelly?’
‘Hmm?’ She’s tucking her laptop into its case.
‘Will I meet your sister?’
‘Of course. Whether you want to or not. She’s dying to meet you. It took everything I had to stop her coming over last night.’
‘And . . . your dad?’
‘I don’t know about that, Stella. I really haven’t seen him for a while.’
‘Oh. Well, that’s okay. I don’t mind. I was just wondering.’
She nods and picks up her keys. ‘I’ll see you later, okay?’
‘Okay.’
She walks across the wooden floor and stops at the door. She pauses and then turns around to face me. Her face softens and I wonder what she’s going to say. And then she’s gone out the front door closing it crisply behind her.
***
I spend some time going through the cabinets in the bathroom. They’re full of perfumes, organic makeup and cleansers that I’ve seen in the shining windows of beautifully decorated boutiques in the city.
I go into Kelly’s room but don’t open any drawers or cupboards. Her bed is perfectly made, the curtains pulled shut against the glass of the windows.
She still feels like a stranger. She terrifies me and at the same time I feel sorry for her without quite knowing why. I go out into the garden. It’s beautiful – all straight angles and clean lines. There’s a huge glasshouse nestled in the sunniest place and I think of Richard’s plastic lean-to and the kinds of things he could grow if he had a place like this. It has air vents and temperature control and irrigation systems.
Kelly doesn’t grow many edible things. She likes roses and hedges and neat little trees. She likes plants with unusual leaves and rows of herbs. Her place should be more beautiful than the gardens at Fairyland, but somehow it’s not. I think about Mum and Taylor. I don’t think about Dad. For a moment, my yearning for the little cabin, for my family, is enough to take my breath away. Then I hear the tinkle of water and discover a fishpond, tucked away by the living-room window. Filled with fat, busy fish. Just then, the wonder of it is enough. I push the thoughts of Fairyland away and press my hand to the silken surface of the water.
CHAPTER S
EVENTEEN
Lara and Zin meet me at the beach and we eat gelato out of paper cups and then rush into the water.
‘So, where’s Clem?’ I ask, after an appropriate amount of chatting about people from school and Monica and the cute guy at Zin’s work that Lara’s gruffly interested in.
‘Oh. Off with his folks somewhere. I don’t know.’ Lara shrugs.
‘Right.’
‘He says you’ve been a bit off the radar.’
‘I’ve got a lot on my plate.’
‘You sure do. Do we get to check out the new place today?’ Zin asks, floating on her back with her eyes closed.
‘It’s not a new place,’ I say.
Lara’s playing catch with herself, but pauses at this. ‘Sure it is.’
‘It’s not – it’s Kelly’s place. I’m just staying for a bit, that’s all. It’s temporary.’
Lara snorts. ‘Like you’re ever going to go back to the caravan park.’
I give her a look and she holds her hands up and dunks herself under the water.
‘I think it’s great,’ says Zin, paddling over, her cheeks red from the sun.
‘So, are we going there after?’ Lara asks. ‘Your baby-mama’s house?’
‘Don’t ever call her that again.’
‘But we are, right?’
‘She doesn’t like people over that much. She has a big job.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘She’s . . .’ I bite my lip. ‘I want you to see the place and meet her, but not just yet. I’m still finding my feet. And I’m not going to push it with her. I’m a guest.’
Lara frowns. ‘You’re not a guest. You’re her daughter.’
‘I don’t know what I am, but I’m not her kid.’
‘But you are.’
‘It’s complicated. It’s really complicated. And I’m just trying to work it all out, okay?’
Lara thinks about this for a moment and then nods. ‘Fair enough.’
I don’t tell them that I haven’t been given a key, yet. I feel weird about it, to be honest. Particularly when I’d noticed a locksmith only a block away from Kelly’s house on my walk to meet Lara and Zin today.
‘This is an intervention, by the way,’ Zin says.
‘What?’
‘You and Clem. You need to sort out whatever’s going on.’
‘Nothing’s going on! He’s just avoiding me!’
‘Have you been talking to him? Have you asked him what’s wrong?’
‘I’m respecting his space.’
Lara rolls her eyes. ‘That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard. What a cop-out. Particularly from Miss Paving-the-way-to-my-best-inner-goddess-life.’
Zin snorts. ‘Miss Use-a-lot-of-I-statements-and-eat-a-lot-of-greens!’
I duck under the water and hold my breath for as long as I can. I focus on the pull of the tide, the blurred play of sunlight through water and sand. Truth is, I’m starting to wonder how useful all those books are. How there’s really no cheat sheet to navigating through this sort of stuff.
I pop back up out of the water and Zin loops her arm around my neck. ‘I’m dying for another gelato,’ she says, but we still stay out in the water for ages, floating together under the big, blue sky.
***
At five, I wander back to Kelly’s, where she’s watering some seedlings in the glasshouse. She grows rare things in there for her clients’ gardens.
‘Good day?’ she asks.
‘Yeah.’ I watch her. ‘Do you need a hand?’
‘Not really. Thanks, though.’
‘Kelly? Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘I just . . . I’ve been thinking a lot. About how you ended up pregnant. And . . .’
‘I don’t really like to talk about it.’
‘Kelly?’
‘Yes?’
I can’t look at her, but I need to say it. I have to say it. ‘Sometimes I get this feeling that you think it was your fault. Whatever it was that happened to you. And it wasn’t.’
‘I don’t think that.’ She sounds tired. ‘I don’t think it was my fault. Anyway, you don’t even know what happened, Stella.’
‘I don’t need to know.’ My voice is fierce. ‘There’s no situation that would make it your fault. The details of it don’t change anything, you know? Even if you were out late or somewhere dodgy or drunk or wearing something short – none of it matters. Even if you did everything that parents tell their kids not to do, none of that stuff makes it your fault.’
She looks at me and I can’t read her expression.
‘It was his fault. Not yours.’
Kelly stares at me for a long time and then exhales. She turns off the tap. ‘I think I’ll go lie down for a bit before I have to head out. Keep things quiet, won’t you?’
‘Alright.’
Kelly goes inside and I sit by the fishpond. I set my jaw, close my eyes and reach for my phone. I want to call Clem. I want him to tug my shirt and call me Price. Instead, I lie down next to the fishpond and watch the sky until my eyes start to water.
***
A couple of days later Kelly comes home from work, loaded with takeaway food containers and champagne. Sometimes I notice her staring at me, as though trying to puzzle out what she’s supposed to do with me; what I’m doing here, in her house. Whenever I try to talk with her, she brushes me off. I think of the letters she’s written – over so many years. I get the feeling I’m a disappointment. That she’d long imagined me into somebody else, the same way I’d imagined her.
‘We’re going over to Mary’s,’ she says, as though she hadn’t told me twice last night and three times over breakfast.
The drive to her sister’s is quiet. Kelly listens to an obscure radio station with people discussing things in very moderate, calm voices. She nods a lot. Her hands tighten on the steering wheel as we get closer.
‘You okay?’ I ask.
‘Fine, fine. Just – Mary ended up buying a street away from where we grew up. I don’t come back here very much. Normally she comes to Lockwood, but she wants me to see her kitchen renovation.’
Mary’s house is nestled next to the oval of a high school. It has a white paling fence and a little wooden seat next to the front door. Kelly takes a deep breath. ‘I went to that school,’ she says, her voice very flat.
‘Really?’ I crane my neck.
‘Let’s go in. The food’s going to get soggy.’
Mary’s waiting for us on the verandah. She kisses both my cheeks and my forehead and then holds me for a very long time. ‘Oh, you beautiful, beautiful girl,’ she says, until Kelly prises her off me, steers her into the kitchen and gives her a cold glass of champagne. ‘You’re so tall!’ Mary says.
I study Mary over dinner. She’s a real estate agent. She has long brown hair, very long eyelashes and startlingly red lipstick. She’s taller than Kelly but still much shorter than me. She has a wiriness about her that makes me think she must always be moving.
I can see myself in her much more than I see myself in Kelly. I pick over the sushi, thinking about how much Clem hates it. Mary talks about vinyl countertops and undermounted sinks, and I’m relieved when she finishes. It seems strange to me, that you’d spend so much time and money on something that doesn’t need fixing.
‘Oh, I just can’t believe it!’ Mary says for the tenth time.
‘Mary, you’re being ridiculous,’ Kelly mutters.
‘I’m not! This is a big deal. Do you know how much I’ve thought about you over the years?’ Mary leans across the table. ‘I knew you were a girl. Didn’t I tell you she was a girl, Kell?’
‘Yeah, you always said she was a girl,’ Kelly says, rolling her eyes. ‘Before you were born, Stell, she wouldn’t shut up about you being a girl.’
‘How’d you know?’ I ask.
‘Oh, I dreamed about you,’ Mary says. ‘I still remember the dreams. There were fairies everywhere.’
‘Stop talking
, Mary.’
‘Sorry.’ Mary drums the table with her fingers. ‘I’ve always wondered about you, hoped you were well, that sort of thing. I used to imagine meeting you. I always figured we’d be best friends.’
I smile. It’s strange to think that there’s been this stranger wondering about me and imagining me for my whole life while I had no idea she even existed. It makes me feel weirdly guilty.
‘Did your mum tell you? About being adopted?’ Mary asks. I see Kelly tense up. We don’t mention the A-word. It’s just been easier to pretend we’re distant relatives or something. Thinking of Kelly as my mother just feels weird.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘From when I was really young. I always knew I was adopted, but I didn’t know about the letters.’
Mary glances at Kelly. ‘Letters?’
Kelly studies the wall. ‘Just some letters I wrote to her.’
‘You wrote Stella letters? Oh, that makes me so happy! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I never got a reply!’
Mary glances at me, looking almost embarrassed.
‘I was little, that’s all. My mum thought I couldn’t handle it. She didn’t tell me about them. I only worked it out late last year.’
‘It was a long time to wait,’ Kelly says so quietly that I’m not sure I’ve heard her right.
‘How?’ Mary asks. ‘How’d you work it out?’
‘Well, I was getting all my emergency documents out of my mum’s desk . . . I wanted to make copies and keep them a safe distance from the originals.’
Mary snorts. ‘My God – she really is yours, Kell.’
‘And then I saw my birth certificate, so I had Kelly’s name sort of on my brain. And then I got the letters out of the letterbox and I never get letters, so I wouldn’t have bothered checking them, but I saw Kelly’s name on the back of one of the envelopes. And it was fresh in my mind, so it caught my attention. Otherwise, I would’ve just dumped them all on the table for my parents without checking and I guess Mum would’ve put the letter with all the others.’
How to Grow a Family Tree Page 21