The Girls

by Chloe Higgins

  A couple of afternoons a week, telling my mother I’m going to the library to study, I drive out to Tilda’s house. I have my own car, and so am free to move around as I wish. But what begins as an exciting adventure, a window into some fantasies I’ve been harbouring since high school, quickly turns cold, gross and mundane. The emptiness of the house begins to induce a mirrored hollowness inside me whenever I enter it. But Tilda has opened my eyes to a world I’ve not considered before, and I’m not ready to give it up.

  I spend the rest of the days each week at home, sleeping in, watching DVDs borrowed from local video stores, trying to study. On the weekends, I hang out in carparks and city clubs and raves with various people, hardly more than strangers, and we take pills and snort cocaine, and drive home from the city at four or five or six in the morning. Although my good intentions from the ward dissolve once I am back living with my parents, I don’t see Charlotte again after the time we injected heroin in the city. Thankfully, the mix of heroin and speed we took was too intense, even for me, and so I don’t take it again. But I am still hungry for escape, unable to imagine other ways of coping. I no longer see Anna, Kris or my other high school friends regularly; I want nothing to do with my old worlds.

  I have been working with Tilda for a few weeks when, as a client disappears into the shower, she tells me to check what’s in his wallet.

  ‘What? He’s already paid me,’ I say.

  ‘Just check what he’s got in there. He won’t notice.’

  I walk to the coffee table, pick up his wallet and look inside. ‘A few twenties, a couple of fifties,’ I tell her.

  ‘Take a fifty.’ She’s standing across the hallway, in the second lounge room.

  Looking back, I have no idea why I listened to her. I have been—and am—many things. But I am not a thief. Even when I was lying to my mother’s face, snorting cocaine, disappearing from my friends’ lives for months at a time, I never had a gut-level response saying: This is wrong, stop. But the day Tilda tells me to steal a man’s money, I feel the horror of it in my body.

  I play out the rest of the afternoon as if nothing has changed. I have made the decision to leave but am too afraid to tell Tilda to her face. I act like nothing is wrong until a couple of days later, when she texts to say she has a client lined up for me. I write back, apologising, thanking her for her help, and letting her know that I’ve decided I don’t want to continue working.

  She calls me straight away.

  I ignore the call, then grab my phone, cigarettes and lighter and call to Mum that I am going for a smoke. Outside, a little way down the street, cigarette in hand, I call Tilda.

  Her first response is calm: ‘I understand, it’s a tough gig, just come out for this last job so we don’t leave the guy hanging.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I say.

  She changes tactics: ‘I know where you live, Chloe. I saw your address on your licence. If you don’t come out here today, I am going to drive over right now and tell your parents what you’ve been doing.’

  I apologise and hang up. I am terrified. What if she really does drive out right now? My mother is inside cooking chicken schnitzel. It will break her heart.

  9

  When the easter long weekend comes around, my parents and I go camping. I drive to their place the night before and the next morning climb into the back of their borrowed four-wheel drive to head three hours north to Myall Lakes. It is March 2016. I am twenty-eight years old.

  I am still learning: a lack of sleep rarely leads to an even emotional keel, and this morning is no exception. I was up late, finalising things for my trip to New York, and so by the time I climb into the car at four in the morning, I have had only three hours’ sleep. The journey goes quickly: I shut my eyes before we leave Liverpool and only wake to drink watered-down hot chocolate at a road-safety van half an hour from our destination.

  We arrive before the two other couples who will be camping with us—friends of Mum and Dad—and drive into town to get coffee. Mum stays in the car, saying she’ll wait for us there. As Dad and I get out to go to the bakery, she calls, ‘Don’t eat anything, we have plenty of food in the back.’

  We both nod, shut the car doors, and walk across the street. This first day is lighthearted and quiet. At this point, we are all on the same side.

  Inside the bakery, Dad says, ‘I’m getting a pie. Do you want anything?’

  I laugh in such a sudden burst I almost snort. I enjoy his small acts of resistance. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I’ll have a breakfast pastry, and a half-hot-water cappuccino.’

  He hands me a fifty-dollar note. He won’t ask for a ‘half-hot-water’ anything unless he has to. ‘You get it,’ he says.

  I nod and take the money. ‘One beef pie and a weak latte, please. One breakfast pastry and a half-hot-water cappuccino,’ I tell the girl. She is young, maybe late teens, and I wonder what she does in this tiny town in northern New South Wales when she’s not working and the tourists aren’t crowding the place.

  ‘We don’t have any breakfast pastries. We only have the breakfast roll.’

  ‘What pastries do you have?’

  Dad nudges me. There are a couple of people in line behind us, but the place is not busy.

  ‘We just have salmon or chicken—’

  ‘Quick, just take the breakfast roll,’ Dad says.

  His voice is urgent, and it makes me feel that I am being difficult. I probably am. I notice this a lot—my father and I in situations where I think he is settling for less than he has to and he thinks I am being fussy and difficult. I watch him try to make life easier for those around him: their expanding to fill space, his shrinking into himself.

  ‘Uh, sure, I’ll take the breakfast roll,’ I say. I am frustrated at his pushing but it doesn’t last long. I never stay annoyed at my father, and I never, ever express it. Mostly, I see him as someone who needs to be protected. I am afraid his heart can’t bear any more hurt and so I bite my tongue.

  My mother, on the other hand, cops the brunt of my anger and frustration. It is unfair, I know, and I can’t work out why it happens, other than that my mother’s constant pushing and prodding and ordering make me feel seventeen again.

  Dad and I sit inside the bakery and push down the food and coffee. We don’t say much, just look up at each other and laugh under our breath.

  ‘I feel like a naughty schoolkid,’ I say and he laughs and nods. My parents have been dieting for the past month, Dad losing a kilo or two a week under Mum’s direction. It occurs to me that he doesn’t seem that uncomfortable, eating his forbidden pie in the bakery, and that this is perhaps something he does regularly.

  I think of the guy I’ve been dating and a future where he feels so ordered around he has to sneak food behind his wife’s back. I see myself becoming my mother, and I feel powerless to stop it. The day before, we’d been Facebooking about how he was unsure if he should go to a gig that night. I suggested he flip a coin and so he did and then wrote to say he had to run, he was heading out.

  You got ready quick! I wrote.

  Just donned a jacket and hat! he replied.

  I tried so hard to stop myself, but could not. No teeth-cleaning?! I asked.

  Am enjoying my lemon and ginger tea too much! he wrote back.

  I laugh to myself. These small acts of resistance.

  A week or so earlier, I wrote a status update: I want to be Helen Garner when I grow up, minus all the divorce stuff.

  My mother was the first to comment: Don’t you want to be me when you grow up?

  The other couples arrive and we head into the campground. There are people, cars, kids and tents everywhere. It is school holidays, and the lower half of the park, by the river, is flooded so everyone is cramped into half the usual space.

  I’ve met one of the couples before, but not the other. They are lovely and interesting and caring people, bu
t the woman in the new couple talks twice as much as my mother. I don’t think I’ve come across anyone who talks this much. I am sensitive to noise, and usually need several hours of quiet a day to feel grounded. The woman’s voice feels loud and constant and I can already feel myself flinching from so much chatter.

  Mum and I look at each other, a small smile turning up the corners of her mouth. It is an ongoing joke that I don’t speak enough to satisfy her and she talks too much for my taste. She knows that if there is one thing I struggle with, it is high-energy, constant talking.

  Especially while camping.

  I have explained introversion and extroversion to my mother many times. In the beginning she laughed and said I was talking nonsense. Lately she is trying to be more understanding.

  In May, I spend a couple of weeks between trips and houses living at my parents’ place. Mum is excited to have me home. Each morning, as I rise, make instant coffee, grab a banana and go to my desk to write, she is cheery, eager to talk about how we both slept, about what she’s seen on Facebook that morning, about how her fanny is coming loose now that she is getting older. I try to humour her, but I probably don’t do a good job. As I sit down to work, she begins her chores. Her feet in slippers, she shuffles loudly back and forth through my workspace: my desk is set up in the spare lounge room, which doesn’t have a door and sits between her bedroom and the kitchen. Every few minutes, she throws me a line:

  ‘Did you hear Belinda Barry is pregnant?’

  ‘Have I shown you my new dress?’

  A few shuffles later: ‘Do you want to come into Liverpool with me?’

  I look at the time. I’ve done barely an hour of work.

  I try to explain that when I’m writing, talking to me is like talking to someone while they’re watching a movie. They’re underwater, in a bubble, and each time you speak to them you’re asking them to resurface and go back under, resurface, and go back under. ‘And thinking,’ I say, ‘is also writing. And making-tea time is thinking time.’ This, she finds comical. ‘I’ll be done by 2 pm,’ I tell her. ‘And then we can talk.’

  ‘But I always talk during movies,’ she says.

  This is amusing to me, mostly. We don’t often watch films together anymore and when we do, we are usually both in a good mood (her because we’re hanging out, me because I’ve done enough work that I can give myself the afternoon off), and so my jibes for her to shut up usually work after the third or fourth time.

  Later, we go into town and stop by Kmart. While there, she finds a double-sided decorative chalkboard the size of her palm, mounted on a stick. She buys it, saying we can write ‘Yes’ on one side and ‘No’ on the other so she will know when she can talk to me and when I am writing. This is kind of her.

  As I am selecting her flights that evening, a lover suggests I have her stay a day or two longer, so she can experience Independence Day in New York City.

  ‘Sure,’ I say, trying to be a good daughter.

  And later, once our flights are booked, when she says, ‘We can share the bed, right? We don’t need to use the sofa,’ I say, ‘Sure,’ again.

  We are a family that loves camping. While we kids were young, we went annually, and even now, Mum, Dad and I occasionally organise trips with groups of friends and family on long weekends and holiday breaks.

  On this trip, as the first twenty-four hours roll over, I begin to withdraw from the group, trying to find a little silence to recharge. I try to participate at first, though, and go with the group on a morning expedition to a trash and treasure market. When we return to the campsite for lunch I am undone by the lack of silence: normally I at least manage to carve out some reading time with my morning coffee.

  These are the things that allow me to anchor myself: writing or doing a little work first thing each morning with a cup of instant coffee. A couple hours of reading, two or three hours of silence per day. Walking, running or swimming in nature. Without these routines, I am untethered, frazzled, desperate to push people away in order to recharge.

  When we go away with family, or I am staying with friends, it is always a small but cherished pleasure to wake in the morning and find the rest of the house still asleep, to have those precious low-light hours to myself. There are very few things that bring me as much joy. But camping is hard on sleeping habits and even usually late sleepers tend to rise early, the sun streaming through their tents.

  After lunch, when the group heads to the beach, I stay put. A small fire burns at the campsite; I have tea and two books and feel happy. Since it is the first time I have withdrawn, my mother asks gently, ‘You’re not coming?’

  ‘No,’ I reply.

  She seems to accept it, with only a brief flash of disappointment on her face.

  As the next twenty-four hours roll on, I withdraw further. I begin to take walks alone, preferring to head to the furthest portaloo, a twenty-minute walk away. I wander the riverbank, listening to podcasts. I continue to stay by the fire with my book when the others go to the beach.

  My mother’s question becomes more insistent, a little heavier in tone each time: ‘You’re not coming?’

  ‘No, I’m not coming.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon, Chlo’ becomes:

  ‘Really?’ becomes:

  ‘Fine’ becomes:

  silence.

  Eventually the other couples leave and it is just Mum, Dad and me for the last night. In the afternoon Dad and I read Helen Garner by the fire; he prefers her true crime stories, I’m halfway through Monkey Grip. Mum is bored: she rarely reads and there is no one left for her to speak to. Dad and I are quiet, as we often are in each other’s company. Mum begins inserting questions and comments into the air. Dad answers her with polite, one-word responses or grunts, never one to ask her to stop.

  ‘Mum!’ I eventually say.

  Dad looks up at me. I laugh, and he lets out a small giggle.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘You know what,’ I say, smiling.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says, as if she is surprised at our desire for silence.

  I feel pent-up and irritated with her after the weekend. The whole time, her eyes hovered on me. I felt suffocated and guilty about our competing needs: me for my solitude, her for my company.

  ‘Leave some for Chloe,’ she said when someone reached for a second helping of bacon before I’d had my first.

  Or, when I said I’d eat dinner later: ‘Okay, we’ll wait and eat then too.’

  Now, it is early evening. I’m on my second glass of pinot noir, and Mum leaves to use the bathroom.

  ‘Mum is driving me nuts,’ I say, a note of hysteria underlying my voice. We have been sharing a tent, the three of us, for four nights now, our bodies side by side as we sleep.

  ‘She’s not that bad,’ Dad says.

  I am surprised. He rarely disagrees with me these days. ‘I can’t breathe! She can’t cope with even five minutes of silence and she’s mothering me as if I’m a child.’ I am starting to cry.

  ‘Chloe, you exaggerate.’

  All I can think about is New York and not being able to breathe. ‘When does it stop, this talking, mothering, talking, more talking, always more talking?’ My voice is raised. I am a child again, having a tantrum.

  ‘Bullshit, Chloe.’ Then he stops, pulls his face back from its angry expression and stares at me. ‘I’m going to walk away before I say something I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Say it. What do you want to say, Dad?’

  ‘No. It will come back to haunt me.’ He turns, walks away from the campsite. It is the first time he’s expressed anger towards me since the accident.

  I think of my last session with our psychologist. ‘I know my father loves me, I just don’t think he likes me very much,’ I’d said.

  10

  Graeme lives in the Hills area of Sydney, down a long drive coming off a resid
ential street. Known for its right-wing, conservative Christian population, the area is often referred to as the city’s Bible Belt. Most of my clients travel in from various suburbs across Sydney. ‘On a site-scout’ or ‘inner-city client meeting’, they say when they turn up in suits and ties and fancy black shoes and I ask them where their boss thinks they are. We are somewhere in the first half of 2008. I am twenty years old.

  Less than three years after learning my sisters did not survive, the thought of having a regular job terrifies me. I can’t predict how I will feel each day, and I worry that I will wake up sad and hurting and unable to cope with anything. I am struggling with my study, unable to concentrate or manage my energy levels. The flexibility and distraction of my new-found, centuries-old industry seem the perfect solution.

  I met Graeme after putting out an ad. He lives alone but, over the years, has had various girls working out of one of his spare bedrooms. For some of them, Graeme has organised the bookings, but others have done it themselves and just rented the room. His driveway runs along several semi-detached houses. Although at first this appears to be a liability, it turns out to be an asset. My clients park in the street and walk up the driveway. Growing up, my mother spoke of her ability to sniff out the ‘drug-runners and government money cheaters’ in our neighbourhood. She didn’t work outside the home while we kids were growing up, and so went about her daily jobs with one eye on the washing machine and one looking out the front windows. The rest of her information she gleaned from footpath conversations with other mothers on the school run each afternoon. We lived one hundred metres from the local primary school: she was always well informed.

  The idea of this daytime neighbourhood watch has never left me. Because the driveway runs the length of all the houses, Graeme’s front door faces a fence, meaning no one can see who is coming and going from the front door unless they happen to walk past when a client arrives. I don’t want to open the door to a council officer and have to explain the number of visitors.