‘And anyway, Sunny,’ added Claud, helping Mum sort through the papers, ‘sometimes you’re not the easiest friend to have either! Sometimes I don’t want to do everything together. Sometimes I want to have other friends too. I mean, can’t you just share, Sunny? You know, like, just share?
’ Claud turned to Mum with a crossword from last week’s paper and said, ‘How about this one, Alex? It’s not done yet.’
But Mum just looked stressed and a bit mad, partly due to not smoking and partly due to the fact that she had probably already memorised the answers to today’s crosswords from calling Crossword Solutions, and was hoping to look impressive in front of Carl. Last week’s crossword just wasn’t going to cut it.
Just then Carl walked in with a ladder and some of those light globes that use less electricity. ‘We’ve all got to do our bit,’ he said. ‘By the way, Lyall, I hope you switched that computer off while you’re not using it.’
‘Sunny, I can’t believe you burned today’s paper,’ said Mum anxiously.
‘You’re looking a bit tense, love,’ said Carl, hugging the ladder with one arm and Mum with the other. ‘How ’bout I make us a vodka tonic?’
Mum looked as though she was about to burst. Her face was red, her brow was twisted up and her jaw jutted out. She’d dropped the girlie act completely. At that moment, I have to say I actually missed it, because even though the girlie act was fake, at least it wasn’t scary.
‘Carl, I told you,’ she said without moving her lips, ‘I can’t have any alcohol until after I finish my hypnosis. I’ve told you three times. No alcohol, okay?’
‘Sorry, love, totally forgot. I’ll get us a mineral water instead.’ He filled two glasses and cut some fresh lemon. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Did you ever hear the one about the three men on a train? There was an Irish man, an American and—’
‘Daaaaaad-duh!’ shrieked Lyall and Saskia.
‘Fine,’ said Carl. ‘Gee, it’s really joy to the world over here tonight, isn’t it?’
I was staring into the fire, trying not to cry about what Claud had said, or about Granny Carmelene, and glad for all the commotion to take the attention away. Maybe Claud was right and I am the sort of person who finds it hard to share. Maybe it’s all part of being an only child introvert?
Mum handed me the profit jar. ‘Sunny, you should really apologise to Claud. No one likes to be accused of something they didn’t do.’
‘Sorry, Claud,’ I said, putting the jar back in the fridge.
‘It helps if you look at someone when you apologise, Sunny,’ said Mum, ‘as though you really mean it.’
I gave Mum the eyebrow as if to say, You know, Mum, I think I preferred you as a smoker. You might die sooner, but at least you’d be a more chilled-out person.
‘Sorry, Claud,’ I said, throwing her a darting look, and feeling a little embarrassed for getting the stealing part so wrong.
‘Me too,’ said Claud. ‘Let’s just forget about it and get on with our orders.’
‘Sounds like a good idea,’ said Carl, handing Mum her mineral water.
‘So?’ asked Lyall, wiping down a chopping board. ‘Is Buster going to come next week or what? Or is this just going to be a life-long girl fest?’
‘Can we just get on with making pizzas?’ I asked.
‘I guess a vote would be fair,’ said Carl. ‘Hand’s up who’s in favour!’
I don’t need to tell you which way that one panned out!
18 .
I was sooo glad to be at Dad’s on Saturday. Steph and I went shopping at Chadstone for itsy-bitsy singlets and baby Flora suits for her to wear home from hospital. They were size 000 and didn’t even look big enough for Boris. We had to get ones that weren’t obviously girly, so as not to give away the secret about Flora to Dad.
‘I think all this pink and blue stuff is silly anyway,’ said Steph. ‘Not to mention those ridiculous baby hair bands! Why does a baby have to advertise its gender?’
‘Me too,’ I said, helping Steph with the shopping bags. She had a list from the hospital of all the things she needed to pack.
‘Nighties!’ said Steph as she crossed the baby suits off the list. ‘I can’t remember the last time I even owned a nightie.’
It made me think about Mum, and whether she had been as excited about me being born as Steph was about Flora, and whether she bought me tiny baby suits too. And how it was for Granny Carmelene being big and pregnant with Mum. And about how it could happen that something makes that closeness end, and a gap gets in the way – like the gap I could feel growing between Mum and me. Maybe the gap gets wider because nobody does anything about stopping each other from drifting away, or about building a bridge.
When Steph and I got home, Dad was in his basketball-coaching gear.
‘How’re my two favourite girls?’ he beamed, giving Steph and me a kiss. ‘Ready for the match today, Sunny? It’ll be a tough one. I want to get down early so—’
‘—so we can have a good warm up session before the game,’ I finished for him. ‘Yes coach!’ and I saluted him like they do in the army. I wanted to tell Dad and Steph about Tasmania. I really did. Mostly because I could feel the Stash-O-Matic reaching maximum capacity. But instead I made up a fresh new lie: I told them I was hanging with Ruby Carter in the morning, then staying at Mum’s on Sunday night. Then I just had one more lie to tell Mum – that I’d be staying at Dad’s on Sunday night, instead of her place. Then my lying career would definitely be over. Promise! (If you can believe that.) I thought about inventing some sort of an electric shock device, just in case lying did become a habit. Something that would really hurt. Maybe the tangent police would be better at detecting lies than tangents.
Buster Conroy got two three-pointers in a row. Can you believe it? One of them was even a swish. It’s hard to be unhappy with someone who just helped your team win, even if he was a totally dodgy individual who took your friend away. Being so happy about the big win made me happier with Claud, too. Plus I wanted to prove to her that I could share. I even told Claud about having to lie my way to Tasmania, but not about You Know What. (Granny Carmelene’s illness, I mean.) Letting it slip was tempting, but I didn’t want to inflict such a heavy secret on Claud – even if a burden shared is a burden halved, as They say.
‘So, Tassie tomorrrow? What’s she like, this long lost grandmother, anyway? And when are you going to tell your mum? It’s like you’re having an affair, Sunny, with your granny!’ said Claud, banging the locker door shut in the changerooms.
‘Mum would kill me,’ I said. ‘Besides, all we ever talk about these days is who’s going to do the dishes. Need a lift home, Claud? Dad’s out in the car.’
‘It’s okay, I’m catching the tram. Gotta fly. Thanks anyway, though.’ Claud grabbed her bag and ran out of the change room, calling over her shoulder, ‘I’ll ring you tonight, Sunny, to say farewell!’
I looked at myself close-up in the mirror, and washed the sweat off my face. I stared deep into my own eyes and wondered if anyone else could see all the secrets behind them just from looking at me.
When I was in the car with Dad I saw Claud and Buster running across the footy oval to the tram stop. I think they were holding hands, but I couldn’t be totally sure. Either way, seeing them running off like that was like watching a silent movie, in slow motion. It was sort of lovely. And because it was in slow motion, it gave me time to see clearly the things that sometimes happen too fast to notice. Like how life had made a gap between Claud and me, and how I had blamed the gap on Buster. He was just someone who Claud had invited in, just like I was doing with Granny Carmelene.
At dinner I asked Dad and Steph if I could move in with them for a while as a back-up plan.
‘I could help with Fl— the baby too,’ I said to Steph, passing her the beans.
‘Sunny,’ said Dad, ‘it’s not that we don’t want you here. You know we do. I’m more concerned about you wanting to give up on your home life with Mum, just because a
few challenges have been thrown in. You can’t always run away.’
‘Well, it doesn’t feel like home any more. Even Willow’s being bossed about by a cat. It’s just not dignified. Is there any dessert?’
‘No,’ said Steph, ‘but only for a little while longer. As soon as this baby’s born, I’m having a carbohydrate party.’ And she rubbed her belly as she laughed.
‘Look, Sunny, you’re going through some big changes all round. Give yourself some time to adjust. It’ll all settle down, I promise you. Now you better get organised for tomorrow. If you’re going to be with Ruby all day and you want to stay the night at Mum’s you’ll need to pack all your things for school on Monday too.’
19 .
Granny Carmelene had a big old Mercedes. It was a buttery-cream colour with fins on either side at the back. She had the engine running and was cleaning the windows with scrunched up newspaper when I walked down the drive.
‘It needs a bit of time to warm up,’ Granny said. ‘Just like its owner.’ She gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘I’m so excited, Sunny, and so happy you could come.’
‘Me too,’ I said, putting my overnight bag in the open boot.
‘Could you run inside for me?’ She pointed towards the house. ‘I’ve made a fresh hummingbird cake and a thermos of tea. God knows if there’ll be any decent tea on board the boat. Best to bring your own, I say. I’ve nearly finished these windows.’
I passed the drawing room, and the ancestor’s eyes made me feel instantly guilty again, so I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Granny Carmelene couldn’t see me and then gave them the finger on my way to the kitchen. I really wanted to have a stickybeak upstairs, but it’s bad manners to ask to look around someone’s house. You should wait until they offer, or maybe just drop hints.
‘Thank you, Sunday,’ said Granny Carmelene as I carried the basket outside. ‘You can put it in the trunk.’ She was wearing another totally colour-coordinated outfit: a pleated, cream linen skirt, a silky blouse with a peacock-feather design, which did up at the neck, and a matching jacket. There was a dark-chocolate handbag on the front seat, which totally matched her shoes.
‘Is there anything else, Granny, that I can do?’ I was hoping she’d ask me to get something from her bedroom so that I could have a peek in her wardrobe. It must have been like a department store up there.
‘Let me see, I think we’re almost done. I’ll just do a quick security check and lock the doors. You get in and choose some music. There’re a whole lot of tapes in the glove box.’
I looked through Granny Carmelene’s tapes. I hadn’t heard of most of them, but I could tell they must have been old style because there were names like Billy Holiday and Nina Simone. And there were some French tapes by someone called Édith Piaf and also Serge Gainsbourg, who had a very big nose and smoked a cigar. I put the Édith Piaf one in the tape deck as Granny got in the driver’s seat beside me. We both looked at our watches. It was nearly six o’clock.
‘Do you know what this song means, Sunny?’
I was looking at the tape cover. ‘No, but I am going to be learning French when I get to Year Seven. I can’t wait.’
‘She says Non, je ne regrette rien, I regret nothing. They called her the waif sparrow. She had a very difficult life, apparently, but no regrets.’
I didn’t really know what Granny Carmelene was talking about, or what Édith Piaf was singing about, for that matter. But I listened carefully to the song anyway, and how the music built up and up and made my body tingle, which meant absolutely and undeniably that it must have been about something important.
‘You should never have regrets, Sunday, there is only learning.’
‘Okay, I won’t.’ I wished I’d chosen a different tape because the whole topic was making my secret adventure feel heavy and serious when I wanted to feel naughty and free – even if my travelling companion did have a life-threatening condition and was about a hundred.
Granny Carmelene had reserved a twin cabin on the Spirit of Tasmania’s Deck Eight. We parked the car down below and made our way up the stairs and narrow walkways to our room. The cabin had two single beds on either side of a porthole window, and a very small bathroom. Granny unpacked the thermos of tea and the cake onto the bedside table, and hung her jacket up on the back of the door.
‘Don’t let me forget that, Sunny, will you?’
‘I know, let’s put the car keys in the pocket,’ I said. ‘That way if you forget your jacket we won’t be able to start the car, which will make you remember to go and get your jacket.’
‘What a clever idea,’ said Granny Carmelene, putting her car keys in the pocket of her jacket and hurrying back to sit on the little bed, as if she might have fallen over if it wasn’t there.
‘You don’t mind if I take a little rest, do you, Sunny? Did you bring something to read? Afterwards, we’ll go for cocktails.’
‘I’ll be fine, Granny. I’d like to explore, anyway. Maybe look in the gift shop. Do you feel sick, with CLL, I mean? Does it hurt or anything?’
‘Oh, I have my good days and my bad days, Sunny. It comes and goes. Sometimes for months and months I’m as right as rain, and then suddenly I can’t get out of bed for days, which is why I have to seize the moment when I’ve got energy for adventures. I’m slowing down now, though. I can feel it, but it’s a peaceful time, too, and right. I plan to slip away quietly, when my time comes. I can already sense how gentle it will be.’
I went out an exit door to the back deck. We were already a long way from shore. I could just see the hazy outline of the city across the water. It reminded me of New York, even though I’ve never been there. I edged down to the back of the boat, holding the handrail all the way. The sea was calm, but I felt as if the wind might blow me off. It hurt my ears. There was a man in a bluey jacket sitting at a table having a Big M and trying to read a paper that was flapping in the wind.
‘Getting a bit nippy,’ he said, folding his newspaper under his arm. ‘Might head back inside.’
I held onto the cold white railing at the very back of the boat and leant over to where I could hear the engines roaring and see the water churning like a washing machine. It reminded me of the part in Titanic where Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet first kiss, but then I got off that topic entirely because it made me think about Claud and Buster and how sickening it would be if they actually were kissing. So instead I thought about the Stash-O-Matic and in particular throwing it overboard. I could hear the crunching of metal as it got all munched up by the propellers. And then I had scary imaginings about leaning over too far and falling into the deep dark water and waving like crazy but nobody noticing that I’d gone, and having to watch the Spirit of Tasmania head off without me.
When I got back to our cabin there was a note from Granny Carmelene saying she would meet me at the lounge bar on Deck Seven for a cocktail before dinner.
When I found the bar, she was sitting at a table in a blue curvy chair that wrapped around her like a clamshell.
‘There you are, Sunny. Isn’t this lovely?’ she said as a waiter delivered two drinks to our table. ‘The perfect remedy after a cat nap! How was your exploring?’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘I bought a postcard, even though I’ll be home before I get to send it.’
‘I ordered a couple of martinis, although yours, I’m afraid, is a mock-martini.’
I didn’t tell Granny Carmelene how I’d had a champagne once – at Claud’s for her mum’s fortieth – or how it made me wobble. I was feeling suddenly uneasy. What if Mum and Dad had spoken to each other and I’d been busted doing my disappearing act? What if they’d called Claud and cross-examined her?
I sat down on the other blue clamshell chair.
Granny Carmelene held up her glass. ‘Cheers, Sunday,’ she said as we clinked our martini glasses together. ‘Here’s to building bridges and a lifetime of adventures.’
‘Cheers, Granny,’ I said, and then I just blurted out, ‘Whatever happened t
o Grandpa Henry?’
‘Good lord, girl, you certainly know how to spoil a moment!’ she said, clunking her glass back down on the table.
‘Sorry, Granny, it’s just that—’
‘I know, Sunday, I know. You’re just trying to piece things together. It must be very confusing.’
‘I just don’t think all these wonderings are good for my imagination. It makes me think too much about all the possibilities. I’m scared my imagination is going to run out of ideas because I’ve wasted them all on trying to work out everybody else’s secrets.’
‘You’re absolutely right, dear.’ Granny Carmelene took another sip of her drink, and a deep breath. ‘Here goes then. Your grandfather, although a charming character in many ways, was somewhat of a ladies’ man, if you know what I mean. Quite unfaithful. Although, it turns out, I never knew the half of it.’
I wasn’t really sure what a ladies’ man was. I thought maybe it meant dressing up – like the men in the Sydney Mardi Gras.
‘Does that mean Grandpa Henry wore lipsti—’
‘It means, in short, my girl, that one day Henry took off to live abroad with my very own sister – and I never saw either of them ever again. They’d been carrying on with one another for years, as it turned out, behind my back.’
I felt a flash of cold down one side of my body, even though there was nowhere that the cold could have been getting in.
‘Was Mum very old?’
‘Old enough! Yes, Sunday, she knew all along and said absolutely nothing. It was quite clear where your mother’s loyalty was. Not with me, that’s for sure. Not with her own mother. And it’s the same today, I can assure you.’
‘But maybe she—’
‘My dear Sunday,’ Granny said, holding up her glass to toast again. ‘May you discover many things, but may you never know betrayal.’ Granny Carmelene’s lips grew tight and thin, and for the first time I could see a resemblance to Mum.
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