‘I’d almost forgotten about it.’ Nathan looked at each of them in turn. ‘What about you guys? Did you ever do anything catastrophically stupid when you were teenagers?’
Layla hid her expression behind her wineglass. She’d never told Cam about what she’d done, and she certainly wasn’t going to let that secret out now, here, in front of their friends, with her daughter sleeping sweetly on her husband’s lap. She didn’t want anyone to know the kind of person she’d been back then.
‘I went through a shoplifting phase,’ Mei said with a self-conscious laugh. ‘I used to go to this lingerie shop and put on four bras underneath my T-shirt, then I’d pay for one on the way out. No one suspected a thing.’
‘My wife the criminal,’ Nathan said.
‘My parents found my stash one day though,’ Mei said. ‘They made me take all of them back to the shop and admit what I’d done. It was humiliating. But I never stole again after that.’
‘Don’t you love how parents always make you face up to your mistakes?’ Cam said.
Shame sprouted inside Layla. Her mother had done the very opposite.
‘I spent a night in the police lock-up,’ Cam went on. ‘Drunk and disorderly. They called my mum and she told them to leave me there for the night.’
Layla grinned. ‘I can’t imagine your mum doing that!’
‘She wanted to teach me a lesson, I guess,’ Cam said. ‘And it worked. I never let myself get in that state again.’
‘What about you, Layla?’ Mei said. ‘You’re always so calm and in control. You must have some teenage fuck-ups to make us feel better about our poor choices?’
Layla let out a nervous laugh. ‘Oh, you know, just the usual. Underage drinking at parties, that sort of thing.’
‘Come on,’ Nathan said. ‘You gotta give us more than that.’
‘No, really,’ Layla insisted. ‘I’ve got nothing interesting to tell.’
‘Really?’ Mei sounded disappointed. ‘No one’s that vanilla.’
Cam put his hand on Layla’s knee. ‘Everyone knows vanilla is the best flavour. I’ll take vanilla any day over a chocolate-fudge explosion with whipped cream and sprinkles and deep, dark secrets.’
‘I think you’re losing control of your metaphor, Cam,’ Mei said.
They all laughed, but heat was rising in Layla’s cheeks, expanding inside her, threatening to set her on fire. Cam liked her as he thought she was: pure, predictable. In control. Early in their relationship, he’d made it clear he didn’t want to know about her previous sexual partners. No judgement, of course: what was in the past was in the past; he just didn’t need to know the details. At the time, she’d been only too happy to comply, but now this streak of puritanism bothered her. If he knew what she was really like, the terrible mistakes she’d made as a teenager – mistakes far worse than stealing lingerie, or getting drunk and spending the night in jail – he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. She’d lose this fragile, beautiful life they’d built together. She stood up and set her wineglass down on the table. ‘I’m going to check on Louis.’
She blinked back the tears she refused to let fall as she entered the house. Just when she’d begun to feel on an even keel again, yet another reminder of her past rolled in, a dark storm cloud shadowing the perfect summer afternoon.
Louis was in the lounge room watching a Disney movie with the two older boys. He jumped up when he noticed her.
‘Mummy, I want to go home.’
She gathered him into her arms and held him tight to guard against the alarm that Cam’s words had triggered in her. ‘OK, sweetie, let’s go tell Daddy it’s time to go.’
Before Daddy works out that Mummy isn’t the person he thinks she is.
THEN
I was exhausted when I rocked up to the cafe for my shift the next day. I had tossed and turned all night, the bed sheet twisting around my body as I wrestled with the cacophony of feelings that were crashing around inside me after the incident with Matty and then the buzz I’d felt when Scott had touched my face.
Yumi wouldn’t be in until five, so it was just me waiting tables while Scott took orders and made coffees. Something had changed inside me after that moment on the street last night. Just looking at Scott brought back the same rush of excitement, desire and panic.
After a couple of hours of avoiding eye contact with him, he called me over to the counter during a quiet spell.
‘What’s up?’ I tried to sound nonchalant.
‘You seem kind of spaced out today,’ he said. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ I flashed him a quick smile.
‘You’re not still thinking about last night, are you?’
‘What?’ I glanced up at him, alarmed at the idea that he could see right through me to my silly infatuation.
‘With Matty,’ he prompted.
‘Oh. Nah, ’course not!’ I studied my fingernails. ‘I just didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘Me either.’
I felt his gaze on me and I raised my eyes reluctantly to his. We stared at one another and a strange, fizzing kind of anticipation began inside me, delicious but scarily intense. Then the bell tinkled over the cafe door and I broke his gaze with a rush of relief as Renee and Shona came in.
‘’Sup, Lay?’ Renee said.
‘Hey!’ I moved over to the counter. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Daniel and Vince are going surfing at Tor Beach, so we’re going down to watch,’ Shona said. ‘Thought we’d grab some coffees on the way.’
‘Two flat whites?’
‘I’ll make them,’ Scott said, moving over to the coffee machine.
‘What time do you finish?’ Renee said. ‘Wanna come with us?’
‘Not until five. Sorry.’ I only half meant it. The only things the boys in Glasswater Bay were interested in were surfing and football, and both bored the crap out of me. Sport wasn’t my thing, and I looked like a prepubescent greyhound in a bikini, so the beach wasn’t exactly my natural habitat either. But I really wanted to talk to my friends. I’d never told them about my silly crush on Scott, sure that the vibe I’d sometimes suspected was between us was all in my head, but after last night it’d taken on a more significant sheen. I needed someone more experienced to help me dissect all these weird feelings. ‘Do you guys want to come around to mine tonight? We could listen to music, order pizza?’
Shona scratched the back of her neck. ‘Daniel reckons there’s gonna be a party on the beach later. Come down when your shift’s finished and get crazy with us, biatch.’
‘Yeah, come!’ Renee said eagerly. ‘There’ll be a bonfire, and the guys are bringing drinks.’
I looked from one of them to the other. ‘But you guys will be off pashing your boyfriends all night and I’ll be left by myself looking like a loser.’
‘No, you won’t!’ Renee said indignantly. ‘We wouldn’t abandon you.’
I raised my eyebrows at her.
‘There’ll be heaps of guys there,’ Shona said. ‘Not just from school either. I’m gonna make it my mission to get you laid tonight.’
Normally I’d laugh off Shona’s ludicrous overstatements, but Scott was standing a few metres away, and after last night I hated that he might think she was serious. ‘That’s OK,’ I said quickly. ‘Reckon I’ll have a quiet night in.’
Scott set their coffees down on the counter. ‘There you go, ladies.’
‘Are you sure?’ Renee said. ‘Feels like we haven’t caught up outside school in ages, other than the social.’
I rang up their order and took their coins. ‘We’ve got Spiderbait next Friday night. That’ll be fun.’
‘Yeah, I can’t wait!’ Shona said. ‘Do you mind if Daniel comes with us? He loves Spiderbait too.’
That stung a little. I’d rearranged my shifts so I could have a rare Friday night off to spend with my friends, sharing our love of music. But if Daniel came, then Vince would probably come as well, and once again I’d be a fifth whe
el.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Have fun tonight.’
They said goodbye and left the cafe, and I turned away and busied myself wiping down the already clean counter.
‘I forgot how harsh teenagers can be,’ came Scott’s voice from beside me.
I threw the cloth down on the counter. ‘You don’t have to keep reminding me that I’m just a kid!’
He raised his hands in defence. ‘Hey, I don’t think that at all.’
My hot burst of anger shrivelled into embarrassment. Way to show my maturity by spitting the dummy at my boss. ‘Sorry,’ I said to the counter.
‘All I meant was, that wasn’t cool, inviting their boyfriends along to your thing. I’d be pissed off too.’
‘I’m not pissed off,’ I said. ‘It’s only normal that they want to spend time with their boyfriends. Not that I’d know, given I’ve never had one myself.’ I threw him what I hoped was a jokey, self-deprecating kind of smile, but the pity in his eyes made my insides shrink. ‘Might take my break now if that’s OK?’
Without waiting for an answer, I turned and went through the doors into the kitchen. Dave, the chef, was wiping down the stainless-steel bench, his work finished for the next few hours until he came back later for the dinner service. He looked up at me with his friendly smile. ‘I’m out of here. See you at five.’
I gave him a wave and continued through the kitchen, the lunch room and into the bathroom. I stared at my reflection, at the pimple on the side of my too-broad nose, the extra button I’d left open on my black shirt, hoping that – what? That Scott would notice and think I was hot? That the attraction I’d felt last night had somehow dissolved his wife and kids into nothingness? That there was any part of me worthy of desire?
I did the button back up and splashed water on my face.
Scott was in the kitchen when I walked in, leaning against the bench, his arms crossed in front of him. My eyes slid away from his. ‘Back in ten.’
Just before I reached the door, Scott reached out and his hand caught my waist. I turned to look at him, and without a word he pulled me back to him. I flowed like liquid into his arms. He lowered his face to mine, and as our lips came together, it was the most natural thing in the world to hook my arms around his neck and open my mouth to his. Our tongues met, but it wasn’t gross like it had been with Rasheed: it was like silk, like being drunk, like being suspended in a sizzling bubble of perfection. His breath was hot; his hands clutched my waist, fingers pressing into the soft spots in the small of my back.
Then the bell over the cafe door filtered through the spell and we parted with a breathless smile. Scott went out into the cafe, the kitchen door swinging closed behind him and muffling his voice as he greeted the customers. His tone sounded normal, as if nothing at all had happened.
But something had happened … I was lightheaded, my heart racing a hundred miles an hour, my body still humming from his touch, my face tingling from his stubble. I pressed my fingers to my lips. It was without a doubt the most romantic, dramatic, exciting thing that had ever happened to me. Nothing would be the same after this.
*
I should’ve felt guilty. I knew it was wrong. But when I relived the kiss in my head that afternoon, over and over again, there was only exhilaration.
Scott made no mention of it for the rest of my shift, and by the time Yumi and the other casual, Jacinta, showed up for the evening shift, the cafe was buzzing and he was busy. He waved goodbye to me from across the cafe floor as I left.
It felt as if the whole thing had been in my head.
But my body knew what’d happened. Every time I looked at him, I felt that same rush of longing that’d started up last night when he’d touched my face outside the cafe, the same exquisite ache in my lower belly. I could still feel his hands on me, and I kept touching the tender spots where his fingers had pressed in; proof that it had been real. It was as if he’d branded me. I could never go back to the nervous schoolgirl who’d swapped saliva with Rasheed. And I sure as hell didn’t want to.
Instead of going home to face my normal life again, I got in my car and drove up to The Knob. Situated on the clifftops just out of town and overlooking Glasswater Bay’s most popular surfing beach, Tor Lookout was colloquially referred to as The Knob for its giant, phallic granite outcropping that reared over the cliff’s edge. Some of the more adventurous boys (and plenty of drunk men) had climbed to the very top, and by some miracle none had yet tumbled to their deaths on the rocks below. The ebbs and flows of life in Glasswater Bay were marked by the number of times the more conservative residents had petitioned the council to fence off The Knob for public safety, only to be thwarted by the larger group, which was made up of the apathetic, the anti-nanny-state and the anti-more-expenses-driving-up-our-rates cohorts. And so, The Knob remained accessible to all but accessed only by teenagers either getting wasted or getting it on. The council had installed a couple of picnic tables in a halfhearted attempt to make the area more family friendly, but the danger combined with the relentless wind kept most people away.
It was still too early in the evening for parkers or dope smokers, so when I pulled up in the car park overlooking the sea, there was no one else there. I killed the engine and took off my seatbelt, scanning the beach below for signs of my friends and their boyfriends. But the beachgoers were nothing more than stick figures against the white sand, the surfers disembodied heads bobbing on the water until they rose onto their boards to ride the waves into shore. I was torn between the desire to talk to my friends about what had happened that afternoon and the tingling satisfaction of hugging the secret close to my chest. I couldn’t tell anyone about it anyway. At least not until I’d talked it over with Scott. And no doubt he considered the whole thing a giant mistake. But the way he’d looked at me …
I opened the car door and stepped out into the wind. The sun sat atop the horizon, fat and orange and drunk with sleep. I crossed my arms over my chest. The day had held the languid warmth of lingering autumn, but the cold had crashed in as soon as the sun started to go down. The wind tore at my ponytail, pulling tendrils of hair loose that whipped wildly around my head.
Laughter from the group on the beach below wafted up through the roar of the wind. Earlier in the day, the sounds would’ve stabbed at me, made me simultaneously jealous and angry with myself at all the things I wasn’t. But now I was full to the brim with a serenity I’d never known before. My school friends seemed like the immature ones now, sucking face with boys when I knew what it was to be in the arms of a man. I smiled and hugged myself tighter. Now it felt like I was leaving them behind.
I stood on the clifftop, bracing myself against the wind, until the sun had disappeared and the bonfire on the beach was just a soft glow against the twilight gloom.
NOW
It was always with a strange mixture of euphoria and loss that Layla and Cam walked out of the house and left the kids in the capable hands of Layla’s mother.
Once a month, Angela came over to their house to babysit so Layla and Cam could go out for dinner and reconnect. At first, their conversation had felt forced, and they’d spoken of little else than the children, but now Layla looked forward to their monthly date nights in the same way she used to look forward to holidays and birthdays.
When she’d been pregnant with Louis, Layla had foolishly proclaimed to anyone who would listen that she wouldn’t let the baby get in the way of their social life. Her friends with children had laughed at her, but Layla had seen plenty of parents eating out with their babies, so she knew it could be done. Of course, she hadn’t counted on not having the kind of baby who sat happily in a pram staring at his hands for two hours.
‘We never went out when you kids were little,’ Layla’s mother had told her after yet another disastrous attempt at going out had resulted in taking it in turns to walk a crying Louis around the restaurant in between wolfing down their meals.
‘That’s because there was nowhere to go in Glasswater
other than the dodgy Rusty Anchor,’ Layla had retorted, trying to hold back the tears of powerless frustration that had always seemed to be there back then.
‘Well, it may not seem like it now, but this chapter in your life will pass in the blink of an eye. Believe me.’ Angela abruptly turned away from her, and Layla knew she was angry at this reminder of their home town, how happy their family had been before Layla had ruined everything.
But her mum had been right, of course. Now Ella was two and a half, things were becoming easier. And Layla was beginning to feel like herself again.
‘I thought we were never going to get away,’ she said as they got in the car. ‘My mum loves you.’
Cam laughed. ‘All the mums love me.’
Layla raised her eyebrows. ‘All of them?’
‘Well, mine anyway.’ He threw her a grin.
Layla nudged him teasingly. ‘I think it’s cute.’
He glanced away from the road at her for a second. ‘I know you’re not really close to Angela, but I get the feeling she wants to spend more time with you.’
Layla shrugged, looking out of the window. How could she possibly explain that her mother had once done something no mother should ever have to do for her daughter? How the secret they had to share had stretched their relationship so far apart over the years that they could barely make eye contact anymore?
‘Maybe you should, I don’t know, go out for lunch with her sometime,’ Cam went on. ‘Without the kids. I think she’d appreciate it.’
Layla fiddled with the air vents, turning them away from her face. The idea of being alone with her mum without Cam or the kids as a buffer, especially after that message, set her teeth on edge. ‘We don’t have that kind of relationship.’
‘But she must be lonely,’ he persisted. ‘I know my mum never got over being on her own after Dad left.’ His jaw tightened, as it did whenever he spoke about his father, and Layla once again shrank under the secret she’d kept from him.
*
The second message came the following morning.
The Girl She Was Page 4