by Trish Morey
This was not normal, Hannah thought, as she sipped a glass of chardonnay from Declan’s first-ever vintage in bed, while the naked man beside her fed a joey milk from a tiny bottle. She watched the pair of them gazing adoringly at each other, while he whispered soft words of encouragement to the animal, and outside the day slipped into night.
‘How’s the wine?’ he asked.
‘Good,’ she said, and it was, the golden liquid dry but laden with fruit.
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Pleasantly surprised. If this is your first vintage, I think you might be onto something.’
‘It’s been my dream,’ he said, as he eased the joey’s mouth from the empty bottle. ‘I’m going to have a little cellar door, get people up here to appreciate the beauty of the area and sell direct to customers.’
An expensive dream, Hannah couldn’t help but think, and asked, ‘What did you do before?’
Declan confidently and gently toileted the infant kangaroo, and Hannah watched on, impressed with how quickly he’d come to terms with being an adoptive mother to an orphaned joey. ‘I bought and sold shares. Seems I’ve got a knack for it. I worked in Dublin with one of the big banks there before I was offered a job down here. ’Twas too good to miss, I thought, so we moved down and I threw myself into that.’
‘But your wife didn’t like it.’
He shook his head. ‘To give her credit, she tried to make a fist of it. I think she imagined we were heading out on a holiday, and that things would slow down, but I was working stupid hours just like I’d been doing at home, and the writing was well and truly on the wall. And one day she decided she’d had enough and wanted out, and it took me a good couple of years to work out that maybe she had a point.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that she would have enjoyed it up here. The bush gave her the willies.’ He rolled the joey into its pouch and slung it from the doorknob before washing up in the en suite. ‘What about you?’ he asked from the bathroom. ‘Ever been married?’
‘No.’
‘Any significant others left in your wake?’
‘Nope,’ she said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable, hoping he wouldn’t press further and wishing for a change of subject.
‘Their loss,’ he said, climbing back into bed and wrapping his arm around her shoulders. ‘You won’t be passing her on, will you?’
‘Who?’
‘Eile. Now that you know she’s all right, there’s no need to pass her on, right?’
She pretended to be shocked. ‘Is that what this is about? Did you sleep with me as a bribe?’
‘No, but that’s not a bad idea. You reckon it might work?’
‘No,’ she said with a grin, ‘but maybe we should give it another shot, just in case.’
‘I like the way you think,’ he said, as he pulled her into his arms, his lips descending on hers.
‘It’s been grand having you here,’ he said, after they’d made love again and she was getting dressed. He watched her from the big bed, his arms crossed behind his head.
And Hannah smiled and decided that her new favourite word was ‘grand’.
16
Sophie
Sophie was halfway across the city scanning the shelves of the seven-day pharmacy when someone asked if she needed help. She jumped, her heart in her throat, not expecting to hear a familiar voice so far from home. She looked up and sure enough, it was the mother of one of last year’s final-year students looking right at her.
‘Oh, it’s you, Sophie,’ the woman said, ‘I didn’t realise. What are you doing all the way down here on the flat?’
Sophie blinked, a kangaroo caught in the headlights of a much too brightly lit pharmacy. ‘Oh, hi, Jenny, I was just—hey, I didn’t know you worked here.’
‘New job,’ she said proudly, taking the bait. ‘It’s a bit of a drive from home in the hills, but it’s great hours, and during the week I can drop Kristen off at high school on my way to work and she catches the school bus home. A Sunday shift like today is the bonus. Neat, huh?’
‘Congratulations,’ Sophie managed, wondering how far she’d have to go before she could find a pharmacy where she’d be anonymous. ‘How’s Kristen coping with high school?’
‘She’s settled in really well. Made some great friends.’ Jenny looked over Sophie’s shoulder and scanned the shelves stacked with feminine products behind her, frowning a little as she turned her attention back on Sophie. ‘So, what can I help you with today?’
‘I was just looking for some—nail-polish remover.’
‘Oh. Then you’re in the wrong aisle for a start.’
‘I know,’ Sophie said, shifting down the aisle a way and picking the first packet of tampons she could find. ‘I just wanted to grab some of these while I was here.’
Jenny laughed. ‘God, don’t you wish you didn’t need those for once?’
Sophie did her best to laugh along with her. Actually, no …
By the time she got back to the unit she rented from her mum, she’d visited three different pharmacies across town before she’d finally had the courage to purchase what she’d gone looking for. She upended the bags on her bed and out spilled the nail-polish remover, multiple boxes of tampons, soft soap, ibuprofen, nail clippers, cotton buds, and three different shades of nail polish.
All useful stuff when it came down to it, not that she needed most of it right this minute. She dived for one of the boxes—because she’d bought two in case the first was faulty and she needed to do it again—and heart pumping, her fingers fumbled with the packaging, struggling to unfold the instructions, anticipation sending her thoughts into a hundred frenzied directions.
Fibroids, she’d talked herself into while consulting Dr Google. Or ovarian cysts even. Something innocent and out of the blue that explained why, despite cramping up a storm for the best part of a week, her period still hadn’t put in an appearance. Something that might be annoying, without being life-shattering. Something that might mean she hadn’t just wasted money on three boxes of tampons today.
But of course she hadn’t because it wouldn’t be positive. It couldn’t. She’d been on the pill—she’d only missed one because being dumped had thrown her and she’d forgotten, but she’d only missed one—and Nick had used condoms.
No way could it be positive.
All today’s little exercise was about was ruling out the option.
That was all.
‘Fuck!’
Sophie stared down at the stick in horror. Two bright-pink lines screamed up at her. One line to be sure the test worked. The second to confirm pregnancy.
No. No. No. Not possible.
‘Stupid, pathetic, useless test!’
She slammed the stick down on the bathroom cabinet and snatched up the instructions. She’d done something wrong. After all, she’d resorted to this test to rule out the pregnancy scenario, not to lock it in. There was no way she could be pregnant.
She re-read the instructions and was none the wiser. It was only a store-bought test, after all. It wasn’t like it was a laboratory confirmation. And it was early—only three weeks since that night—maybe it was too early for the test to be conclusive. She reached for the second box.
Shaking now, her throat desert dry while her palms were damp, she crouched over the loo. Although she’d only just gone, she was going to squeeze enough out of her bladder if it killed her. Anything to prove that damned test wrong.
But when she pulled the test away and waited the required period, those two pink lines were screaming at her again. Screaming that she was pregnant.
The bottom fell out of Sophie’s world in the same moment that hope died. Shock and fear bubbled up inside her into a tidal wave of panic that roiled and seethed and churned, until with hot tears coursing down her cheeks, she dropped to her knees beside the toilet bowl and let her gut speak for her.
17
Nick
‘Are you going to say sorry today?’
‘Hmm?’ Nick was dropping Min at
school on Monday morning, and had just handed over her backpack. While she liked being met outside her classroom after school, before school was all about playing with her friends, and he was turning his mind to what he had planned for the day. The neglected cherry orchard he’d bought less than a year ago from one of Dan’s neighbours had taken more time than he’d had to nurse it into some kind of shape. Most of the trees had put on an encouraging show of blossom, which proved the quality of the root stock, but he still needed to keep an eye out for evidence of disease. Now that he was back to juggling apples, pears and cherries, he needed to head off any potential problems before they turned serious.
‘Are you going to say sorry to Ms Faraday?’
Nick sighed. He’d had a week of his daughter banging on about apologising for ‘being mean’ to her teacher before she’d gone off and spent the next week with Penelope, leaving him in peace, and he was hoping that by the time she came back, she would have forgotten all about it. Apparently not.
‘Well? Are you?’
He looked up at the school, where he guessed Sophie would already be inside preparing for the coming day’s lessons. ‘You really think I need to?’
‘Yes.’
He cocked an eyebrow at his daughter. That was decisive.
‘Penelope thinks you should apologise too.’
‘Oh, is that right?’ he said, thinking he’d never get used to his daughter calling her mother by her name.
Min shrugged her Frozen backpack over her shoulders. ‘She says if you have a problem with her telling the school something, you should talk to her, not take it out on the teacher.’
The growl started low down in his throat. For as much as he didn’t like his ex-wife, he liked her a whole lot less when she was right. He had taken his aggravation with his ex’s high-handed behaviour out on Sophie, he knew it. What he’d been hoping was that the incident would slip silently into the past and be forgotten, just like the night he’d spent with her at the hotel. Forever consigned to history, never to be spoken of again.
But then he hadn’t counted on Min. She was like a terrier when she wanted to be. No question where she’d got that from.
He heaved another sigh. Might as well get it over with. ‘Yeah, Penelope’s right. Come on, then, let’s go.’ Nick felt Min’s hand slide into his before she practically dragged him up the small hill to the school.
‘She’s not there,’ said Min, poking her head into the classroom. ‘She must be in the office.’ She looked up at him gravely. ‘You will go and see her, won’t you. You will say you’re sorry.’
He nodded just as gravely and put one hand over his heart. ‘On my honour.’
She left him then, after placing her backpack in the lockers and giving him a quick kiss before running off with her friends to play outside. Nick watched her go, wishing things could be different, that Min had a mum and a dad who loved each other so she didn’t have to do this week-around shuffle, and marvelling at how resilient she was under the circumstances. It didn’t seem normal to him, because he’d grown up in your typical family unit with a mum, a dad and a couple of siblings. But then, this was what Min had grown up with and he knew for a fact there was another half-dozen kids in school living with the same kind of switcheroo arrangements. It was all Min knew. It was her normal.
He waved hello to a couple of the mums and his neighbour, Amy Jennings, who was dropping off a grandee, but without making enough eye contact to invite conversation, and made for the office. There was nobody behind the counter and he could hear the principal, Mrs Innstairs, talking on the phone in her office. That’s when he happened upon Sophie emerging from the staff bathroom, holding a bunch of tissues to her nose, her eyes glossy, her dark eyelashes clumped together. Hayfever, he figured, guessing she’d been sneezing. It could be a killer this time of year. She stopped when she saw him, blinked and made a sharp left, marching towards her classroom.
‘Sophie,’ he said, and her footsteps halted. He saw the rise and fall of her shoulders as she took a deep breath, before she turned slowly around to face him. ‘We need to talk.’
A flash of panic filled her eyes—and he did a rethink on the hayfever diagnosis because they were eyes that looked more like she’d been crying—before she looked to the ceiling, almost like she was praying for divine intervention. Around them kids milled through the main doors, boisterous and full of early-morning energy, at complete odds to the woman standing before him. Gone was the retro fifties princess he’d fronted up to a couple of weeks ago. Today she was dressed simply in jeans with a long-sleeved t-shirt and canvas shoes, and looked so brittle she’d snap if she caught so much as a puff of wind.
‘Is this a bad time?’
She glanced at her wristwatch, took a moment to deliberate before she shook her head, her lips glued tightly together. ‘This way,’ she said, steering him into the staffroom with its empty chairs and table. She closed the door and stood with her back to it, blocking out the sounds of a school morning so the hum of the refrigerator took centrestage. ‘What do you want?’
There was a quaver in her voice that didn’t belong, but that slid seamlessly together with her puffy eyes and washed-out face and the way she looked ready to bolt out that door the first moment she could. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Only you don’t look so good.’
She sniffed. ‘Thanks for that. That makes me feel a whole lot better.’
‘Something is wrong.’
‘Nothing is wrong, okay? And I’ve got a class to take in less than five minutes. What did you want to see me about?’
Okay, so it was going to be like that. It was no more than he deserved, he figured, after the way he’d treated her the last time they’d met. ‘I came to apologise.’
‘Oh?’ She looked like it was the last thing she’d expected. Maybe she had forgotten, or maybe she’d just assumed it was never going to happen and moved on. Whatever, he was here, and he was going to go through with it.
‘Yes, I need to apologise for the way I treated you that afternoon in the corridor. I’m afraid I took the frustrations I have with Penelope’s fixation on moulding Min into some kind of mini-Penelope out on you. I was rude and it was unfair of me to dump that on you. I’m sorry.’
She blinked, confusion replacing the fear he’d witnessed before in her eyes. ‘That’s all?’
He rewound the words he’d spoken in his mind, searching for what he’d missed and coming up blank. ‘Isn’t that enough? I mean, of course I’ll do my best not to let it happen again.’
She put her hands to her cheeks and nodded. ‘Yes, of course it’s enough. Thank you. Apology accepted. And now, if you’ll excuse me—’
‘Sophie …’ She paused, her hand primed on the doorhandle. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’
‘Nothing is wrong. Okay?’ She was out the door and swallowed up by the sound of the siren and one hundred kids yabbering at once on their way into class.
18
Sophie
Everything was wrong, that was the problem, but Sophie told herself that if she thought about it long enough, she’d find an answer eventually. Or better still, if she fretted about it long enough, nature would take care of the problem. She’d read that an astonishing percentage of early pregnancies were lost in the first few weeks. Maybe that might happen in her case. She really wanted it to happen in her case, and then she felt guilty and horrible that she could even think such a thing.
She loved children, after all. That’s why she’d become a teacher. She’d always imagined herself with a clutch of her own kids one day—she’d just imagined she’d find the right man and do the marriage thing first. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It wasn’t supposed to happen now.
She got to her class and clapped her hands, the signal for all her students to sit down in a circle at the front of the room, and waited for them and the late arrivals to settle down so she could begin the day’s lessons.
&nb
sp; Boldly coloured artwork hung from the ceilings, shaded in silhouettes of the class members’ heads. Paintings of rainbows and bushland and the koalas that sat in the forks of the surrounding trees and delighted the children at recess and lunch. Everything bright and happy and completely at odds with the storm of turmoil going on in Sophie’s head.
Because everything was wrong. God, she was all kinds of a mess. After last night’s discovery, she should have taken a sickie to get used to the idea, but she hadn’t wanted to stay at home and fret. But fretting was apparently all she was good for. And she’d been in such a state when she’d come out of the bathroom and seen Nick standing there, and never once suspected he’d come to apologise. She’d walked out that door, taken one look at Nick and felt a thunderbolt of panic that somehow he knew.
Madness.
She made it through the school newsletter without her voice breaking, listened while four children delivered their show-and-tell, and worked her way through her pile of flash cards, before it was time for silent reading while she listened to today’s lot of readers one by one. Cameron Jones closed his reader and went back to his seat, her praise for his improvement in his reading puffing him up like the winner he was. Usually, she took delight in seeing her students learn and become more confident with their reading. Today, however, nothing could permeate the dark shroud of numbness blanketing her.
Min Pasquale was the last reader before recess. The child sat next to her and opened her folder, turning to page one. She read a page haltingly, stopping at words to sound them out, and turned the page, then she looked up wide-eyed at her teacher. So much like her mother—Penelope—Sophie thought, with her heart-shaped face and fair skin, but the dark hair must have come from Nick.
‘Ms Faraday,’ Min said, her little face creased with concern. ‘Was my daddy mean to you again? Did he make you cry?’