8wirestories

This book is printed on Reprint 100% recycled paper from Oji Paper Group in Japan with Forest Stewardship Council Certification, ISO 14001 environmental standards and Ecomark.

Copyright Š Victoria Osborne 2007 The National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Author: Osborne, Victoria, 1959– Title: short stories / author, Victoria Osborne Edition: 1st ed.

Publisher: Kew, Vic. : V. Osborne, 2007 ISBN: 9780646482958 (pbk.)

Dewey Number: A823.4 All words, layout and illustrations by Victoria Osborne for Desktop Publishing Two at RMIT Nueva Standard and Handwriting Dakota The author has asserted moral rights.

Printed by on-demand 152 Sturt Street SOUTHBANK VIC 3006 03 8699 2200 print@on-demand.com.au

v i ck oz 8 4 @ y a h oo. com. a u

Contents Acknowledgements Your News 1 Father Christmas 7 Spiders 15 Only One 21 Suitcase 25 Newsagency 31 Roundworm 43 Prisons 47

Acknowledgements

Thank you, Arthur Clover of RMIT, Nadine Creswell-Myatt of Box Hill Institute Of TAFE and Carolyn Stewart of WIRE. Thank you to my RMIT editing and proofing support team; Lucy Cotter, Kerith Holmes, Jenny Green, Damean Posner, Fiona Harris, Imogen Stubbs, Margaret Mills, Olivia Mayer and Virginia Millen.

Any mistakes are mine!

Thank you, Philip and Felix Millar.

Your news

H

e came past me in the hallway and looked at me, such a look of helplessness and throwing the whole lot over to me, well, what could I do? I turned to you and yes of course I could see it was my business. How could it not be? I am your mother after all.

I could see the time had come for you to tell me and I could see you didn’t want your Dad there. I put my arm around you and this time you didn’t flinch away but you leaned into me and I hugged you like you were a little girl again. I have to tell you that feeling is wonderful, that hug between a mother and a child, even though I knew there must be something serious to make you lean on your mum again. What could make a young beautiful girl of nineteen with her whole life in front of her feel so desperate, so sad she has to come and hug her mother like a little girl?

We had been wondering, your dad and I. We’d thought things had been a bit strange since you stopped going out with that boy. Didn’t like to ask too many questions but we could see you’d been crying… There were signs; we’d been talking late at night about you, worried about you. Of course I had my suspicions; I’d guessed something was going on. I looked hard at you. You couldn’t meet my eyes.

Then I knew what it had to be — your news — and it made my heart thump and my stomach slide and I led you into the kitchen and sat you down and then I put the kettle on.

‘Cup of tea?’ I said and I saw you lift your face, your child closer to the surface than she had been for years and so sad and your eyes were filled with tears and I knew you knew you were safe and you said, ‘Thanks, Mum.’

The sun was streaming into the kitchen in yellow laser stripes, cutting you in two. The red laminex bench top was hot even though it was still quite early in the morning. You know how that lino smells when it’s getting warm in our kitchen?

I rattled around with mugs and getting the milk out. I could hear your Dad going out to the garden so I didn’t bother asking him but just made the two of us a cup and then I finally sat down and studied your face like I always do. The motherheart in me reaches through your grown up and sees the baby from nineteen years ago and remembers you tiny. Most of the time I do it secretly, sort of spying on the 1

child within you, seeing where you’ve been, how you’ve got here. This time I was allowed to without pretending, I just watched the skin around your eyes and the shape of your nose in straightforward mother admiration and waited.

You picked up the cup and blew softly over the rim, taking that first toohot sip even though you knew it would be too hot it was still good to get it started.

The steam curled up through the sun streams and swirled away into nothing. You put the cup down and when you looked back at me and I could see your pain and confusion right into your, soul it seemed, so I moved my chair closer to you, round the table. That’s not a graceful thing for a woman like me but it didn’t seem to matter and I put my arm around you and you rested your head on my shoulder.

Outside he had powered up the lawn mower and the growl of the machine as it defined our boundaries rolled through the kitchen just as familiar as anything on a Sunday morning. Suddenly the tears overflowed and you cried, not in a jagged way but a smooth letting go kind of way and we sat like that for a little while. Then I went and got a washer and ran it under the tap and I washed your face just like when you had fallen off your bike and were shamed in front of those kids when you were six.

I kept murmuring to you all the time like when you crashed out of the tree at kinder and we thought your arm was broken, do you remember that? Liz at the kinder said, ‘Can you take your skivvy off so we can see your arm?’ and you did?

So your arm wasn’t broken but your pride was and I think you just wanted to be hugged by your mum again because I was busy with your younger brother then.

You had another sip of tea and I could see the trouble was starting to get a name. I could almost see it shrinking so you could manage it and then the idea wasn’t so bad you couldn’t speak it and then you did and your eyes were huge like the time you fell in the river and you said,

‘Mum, I’m pregnant.’

And I said, ‘I know darling, I know’ and I said ‘It will be alright, you’ll see, it’ll all work out’ and other soothing things like that. Meantime you were having a little more cry because now you’d said it and it felt terrible but so much better to be out on the table with a cup of tea and your mum. I couldn’t help it I cried too and we both cried and then we laughed a bit because it seemed so mad.

‘What am I going to do, Mum?’

And all the while I’m thinking ‘what am I going to say?’ because I know more than you do about this. I was looking into the glistening heart of you and thinking ‘Oh, how am I going to tell her?’

2

Of course at the same time I’m also thinking you mad stupid bitch, you idiot girl. Stupid, stupid kid, you’d think with all these days of sex education and watching Home and Away and Neighbours and AIDS education and all that modern freedom in all those girls’ magazines you’d think something would have sunk in, wouldn’t you. Only I can’t say anything like that can I, because I’ve chosen to be a loving, supportive parent, just like mine were.

All the time I was sipping my tea and looking at you I was pondering the unformed shape of the child I never knew. I was wondering how much to tell you of the echo through the ages of the loss and the granite memory that I will carry everywhere of my little angel, my little lost one. It’s not that I regret what I did, I had to, you know, I was young. I had my whole life in front of me; I couldn’t have spent that time looking after a baby. I couldn’t.

It was before I met your Dad and I bet he’d never have had anything to do with me if I’d already been pushing a pram around town. I could never have gone off to Europe like that with Mary Simons and Jill Barnard. None of that would have happened.

I had my whole life in front of me, like you do now, and it was spring and the love motes were dancing in the sunshine and a handsome man of polish and grace took me and swayed me and overwhelmed me.

I was young and I didn’t know much, we didn’t in those days but then just being young is enough isn’t it, who cares, dancing, laughing, making love, it’s all the same, it’s all wonderful but he was married and then it all came crashing down. I had to sit at another kitchen table with my mum and my dad.

They were so supportive, they really were and I loved them and they made me feel anything I did was right. Anything I wanted they would do for me and that’s how I want you to feel, darling, for I mean it, whatever you want to do then I’ll help however I can.

Only I kept on sipping my tea and looking at you and those thoughts just swirled and fermented through me and I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell you this path that you feel is so dangerous and uncharted has already been stamped over thousands of times and once by me. You really don’t need to feel alone, you’re not alone here. What did my mother say to me? How should I act to let you know you’re safe here whatever you choose?

The lawn mower was growling close to the window now and we could smell the smoky two-stroke, the cut grass, sweet aromatherapy in the suburbs.

Lord, so many thoughts came electronically zipping through my mind.

3

Or is that chemically? However those thoughts zipped, they really did. My brain was teaming, rushing with thoughts. I’d imagined I was getting on, getting past any adrenalin, that’s for young people I thought and here I was, sitting with a cup of tea, with my brain acting like super Einstein or someone. All these ideas, thoughts, notions jostling, debating in my brain. I picked up that cup of tea and I was gripping the handle that hard I noticed my knuckles were white.

I don’t want to be a full time grandmother yet, I’ve just got over having you all out of the way, getting some independence, hoping to join the tennis club, maybe some studies, you know, that University of the Third Age, maybe some travel, get a life and you’re telling me you’re expecting.

I was thinking it must be my fault somehow that the same thing should happen to you at the same age. Did I somehow make it happen? Should I tell you?

Would that put too much pressure on you? Would you want to find the same solution as me or would you want to find your own way? Would you blame me if you did know? Would you blame me if you find out later?

‘What will I do, Mum?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’

What’ll I do? What’ll I say? You’re a young nineteen, not like some of those young women you call friends, wise women all. You won’t be able to cope late at night by yourself with a crying hungry baby. Not by yourself, darling. I want the best for you.

I want you to be in love and get married and have a family, a team supporting each other, oh who knows what is best for anyone? But I reckon these days you could get an abortion safe as anything and it would just go away…

Except late at night in those desperate times or when you remember how old that little promise would have been. Could have been.

I remembered holding your tiny little baby body in that blue knitted cardigan my mother made me and your sweet smile and your baby belonging and your hair and your smell and you making me mother.

I couldn’t help it; my brain was so full I couldn’t stop my thoughts teeming out into my cup of tea. The idea of my parallel pregnancy well over twenty years ago foamed across the table and sat there, real and tough like one of my mum’s Anzac biscuits.

You looked at me with your mouth open and that had stopped you crying but I 4

couldn’t help it, I just kept right on talking, welling up like a spring had been tapped in my heart. I had to blow my nose on my pinny and we both looked at each other and cried. Then we both looked at each other and grinned but still with watery tears, it was all so mad and you said,

‘You never told me.’

And I said, ‘No point, was there?’

And you shook your head, no that’s right. Why tell something like that to someone unless you had to?

‘But that’s not me, is it?’

‘No, darling. You came along later. Much wanted and loved by your mother and father.’

‘What did you do, Mum?’

‘What do you mean?”

‘With the baby? Did you have it adopted?’

What do you think? Do I have to spell it out for you? I couldn’t say anything, just looked at my cup of tea.

‘What, Mum? What did you do?’

No, darling I can’t tell you. You’ll have to work this one out for yourself. I blew my nose loudly.

‘Just got on with the rest of my life, darling. That’s all any of us can do, you know. I was young then, had my whole life in front of me, just like you do. Just like you.’

And you are young, my baby and alive and should live to the fullest, full of love and smiles and laughter. I wish you well and I wish you hope and I wish I wish I wish…

5

Father Christmas

I

woke up when I heard the thunder coming. I must have been dreaming about thunder but really it was Lily running down the wood floor hallway. I thought that maybe something was wrong. My heart sank.

Was she sick? My maternal responsibility ground into gear. Consciousness without question. The way you wake up when you hear the baby cry.

Automatic.

The room was faintly grey, the curtains limp with morning heat already.

My nightie was uncomfortably rucked up my back. The sheet had fallen off the bed in the night. Lily climbed onto the bed with me, her small body soft and sticky with sleepiness.

‘Is he here?’

Oh, no. I remembered everything. Here we go. It was time to be merry and jolly. Ho ho ho. It wasn’t automatic.

‘It’s the middle of the night, sweetheart.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Do you think you could go back to sleep?’

‘I want to see him.’

I grappled for the sheet and dragged it over us. I billowed it like a tent and the cool air floated around us. I did it again. Lily stuck her legs straight up into the dome. The sheet sank slowly down around her legs. I turned on my side to look at her in our cave. I kissed her on her forehead and smoothed back her hair. It was still too dark to see her properly. She curled up on her side too. She had such soft skin.

‘Happy Christmas, darling.’

‘Happy Christmas, Mum.’

‘Sweetie, Mummy’s very very tired. Do you think you could go back to bed and see what’s there, very quietly? And not wake Miranda? Please?’

‘No, I want to see him.’

‘Let’s see if you can snuggle down here and go back to sleep.’

‘But Mummy, everything’s supposed to be perfect at Christmas.’

7

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘I just know.’

‘You’re very clever.’

‘I know.’

‘Seeing as you’re so smart…’

‘Yes?’

‘Can you lie very still and quiet and go back to sleep, just for a little while?’

‘Can you sing me a lullaby?’

‘If you sing too.’

So we did, we sang a lovely song, very very quietly and then we very very quietly went to sleep.

I think.

The next thing was Miranda ripping open the curtains. Suddenly the room was filled with yellow striped sunlight — why do we have to have Christmas when the day starts so early?

‘We’ve got presents! Loads and loads!’

‘Merry Christmas, darling.’

‘Merry Christmas, Mum. Look, I brought Lily’s pillowcase in too. I knew she’d be here.’

There was much fun in unwrapping things, little things, things that sparkled and shone like their Christmas eyes.

‘Have you been awake long?’

‘Not much. I’ve been reading my new Emily Rodda book. Thanks, Mum.’

‘It’s from Santa, darling.’

‘Yes, Mum. Of course. Thanks all the same. It must have cost a lot, all this.’

‘Darling, please don’t worry about money, not today. Do you think Justin next door is up?’

Miranda peered out of the window.

‘He might be. I’ll go and shout.’

She unlocked the back door and went outside and up to the fence. Justin was up and Lily went out too and they talked about their presents. I could hear them testing things and laughing. I thought I’d better have a shower. So I did. I got dressed. They were back. I made them French toast. We had a fruit salad.

They were pleased with their new hair things. They looked sparkly and young and gorgeous. I was so proud, like any parent would be. Then the doorbell went. They raced to the door. I didn’t.

‘It’s him! It’s him!’

8

I dried my hands on a towel. Nervously.

‘It’s him! It’s him!’

‘It’s her,’ said my mum as she bustled in with baskets and bags in her arms. ‘What are you talking about? Father Christmas is long gone, isn’t he? Happy Christmas, darlings. Go on then, what did Santa bring you both? Show me…’

The kids tried to hide their disappointment and told her all about their booty. They were fantastic. Acted like I’d given them the moon or something. We all knew they ‘d had a pretty poor time of it this year. It’s been a struggle. Mum looked at me over their heads.

‘Heard anything?’ she mouthed.

I shook my head. She shook her head too and twitched her lips in an exasperated, knowing kind of way. But then she’s always done that. She gave her presents to the kids. They went into the front room to open them, leaving a trail of wrapping paper. There were squeals, exclamations. They would love her for ever and ever. She’d brought them new clothes and given them both cash. For something special. She handed me an envelope too.

‘It’s not much, love.’

‘You’re too generous, Mum.’

‘I’m allowed. I’m the granny, remember?’

She heaved her basket up on the bench. ‘Let’s open this.’

Champagne.

‘Mum! It’s not even eleven o’clock in the morning!’

‘Go on, it’s Christmas.’

And so it was. We opened the champagne and poured it fizzing into dusty glasses.

What the hell. I drank the moth. It was only a little one. It was already thirty degrees. We planned an early tea. So we’d be past the heat of the day. We decided to go to the beach for a swim. We had a ham salad for lunch. We could take it as a picnic.

The kids insisted on leaving him a note. Just in case he turned up. Fine. Lily wanted to use her new notepaper. They both wrote on it. We stuck it to the front door.

We all had showers when we got home. The phone rang when I was in the shower. I could hear the girls.

9

‘It’s him! It’s him!’

It wasn’t. It was Aunty Helen wishing us a lovely day. Mum chatted to her but she had to let the girls talk so they’d believe it wasn’t him.

I wrapped myself in a towel and stuck my head round the door.

‘Why don’t you girls set the table? Make it nice, you know.’

Lily and Miranda thought of some ideas.

‘Can we pick some flowers, Mum? Can we make some name tags? Can we do whatever we like?’

Yes. Whatever.

They did.

I put some lipstick on. Special occasion. I went through to Mum. She was just getting the teaspoon out of the champagne bottle from before. Don’t know why she insists on sticking a teaspoon in the bottle. How can that keep it bubbly? Mystery.

We peeled the spuds. Put the pudding on. She’d already started podding the peas. We were only having a turkey buff. Don’t need all that cold meat from a whole bird. We’d share the leftovers. She didn’t live that far away. We were lucky.

‘Come and see, Mum.’

I went to look at the table. Lily and Miranda stood back admiring their work. There were geraniums and lavender and nasturtiums spilling all over the knives and forks.

‘It’s beautiful. But there’s only four of us.’

There was an extra place set.

‘He might come later. You never know.’

No. You never do. Anything’s possible I suppose.

Mum didn’t think so.

‘You’ve got to tell them the truth.’

‘What is the truth, Mum?’ We sat down to dinner. Hot it was. Very hot. Mum had a bit more than a couple of glasses of wine. I told her she couldn’t drive. She could have my room. I’d take the couch. I’d done it before. The girls turned on the telly. What’s that Raymond Briggs cartoon about the snowman all about? Stupid really. And that Robbie the Reindeer.

It’s all stupid. The doorbell rang.

‘It’s him! It’s him!’

It was Justin from next door. He came in to watch some TV too. I did the dishes. I 10

put some of the leftovers into a dish for mum. Justin went home. The girls went to bed. They must have been tired. There was hardly any argument. Mum took off her shoes and put her feet up. When she started snoring I covered her with a little rug.

Her head turned at a funny angle but she was asleep so I left her.

After they’d read to themselves for a while I went in to say goodnight.

‘Night night Miranda. Sweet dreams.’

‘Night Mum. Thanks for everything.’

‘Thank you, sweetheart. Night, Lily. Sleep well.’

‘Mum?’ ‘Yup.’

‘He didn’t come.’

‘I’m sorry, sweetie.’

‘You couldn’t help it. Maybe he’s forgotten where we live.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I love you, Mum.’

‘I love you Lily. Sweet dreams.’

The girls finally went to sleep.

They didn’t ask him for anything. Nothing. All they wanted was to see him.

It’s not that much to ask. He could have posted them something. He could have got one of his little friends to drop something over.

Now the others were asleep I didn’t have to pretend. I could simply snarl at things that reminded me. My spine turned to stone and I marched through each room holding a wine glass like a club. I sneered at photographs like baby seals. I ground my teeth at a painting he’d insisted on buying when we couldn’t afford it. I could sell that now. Some of his books he’d had before we were married. Why didn’t he take ‘Male Sexuality’ with him? There was too much of him in the house and I hadn’t looked at it through decided eyes before. We were the ones he left behind.

Hoping and waiting. Looking to see if he’d come. Was that his car? The kids thought they’d seen him. Where? Quick, let’s follow him. Sometimes I did. We’d trail through suburbs we’d never heard of after a car that might have been a bit like his. It would turn into a driveway and we’d behave like cheap detectives. Lily would watch out the window hungrily, I would look something up in the map directory and Miranda would just hope. It was never him.

Today I made up my mind. He made it for me. There could be no going back. He 11

was unforgivable. They didn’t ask for one single thing from him. Just to see him.

That was all. He couldn’t even manage a phone call.

I went into our room. I opened my jewellery box. There was my engagement ring. Lily could have it. It was sparkly. She’d like that. It didn’t matter if she lost it. There was a rose quartz necklace he’d given me once, when we’d first started going out. Rose quartz is supposed to be good for the heart. For love.

I wrapped them in glittery paper and tied on some ribbons. I wrote in my neatest writing, Lots of love, from Dad. Then I crept into their room and tucked them under their pillows. There. He’d done something for his children after all.

I went back into our room. My room. It was so hot I had sweat running down my back and between my breasts. Little droplets on my top lip. It was oppressive.

I looked in the wardrobe. I found a suit. Shirt. Underclothes. Shoes. Socks.

I got some tee shirts and bundled them up. Stuffed shirt. Stuffed trousers. Stuffed head. Gloves. I pinned them all together with some baby nappy pins I still had in a drawer. I put on a tie I suspected one of his first girlfriends had given him.

Marianne? Melissa? It was burnt-orange paisley.

Oh, poor little man, he’d had a hard day at work so I loosened it for him, gave him that Friday night after drinks at work look. He fell over. I grabbed him by the tie. He wasn’t that heavy. I dragged him to the dining room and put him in his chair. In front of his name tag.

‘Dad.’ There were hearts all around the word. And flowers. Drawn with coloured pencils. I put an orange nasturtium into his jacket buttonhole. Over his heart.

I poured him a glass of wine. The champagne was long gone. This was a nice full-bodied red. Just his favourite. Special occasion. Him coming home. His clothes smelt of him. I sat opposite him and proposed a toast.

‘To the children.’

For a long time we just looked at each other.

He didn’t say anything.

‘Not even a card.’

He didn’t look at me.

‘How could you leave them like this? I just don’t believe you.’

He didn’t touch his wine.

‘If anyone told me this would happen fifteen years ago I would have laughed in their face. What were you thinking?’

He never said anything.

12

‘What are you thinking now?’

I threw my glass of wine in his face. It soaked in, red and wet, into his suit.

‘What about me?’

The bastard never said a word.

So I picked up the carving knife and I killed him. Red droplets sprayed across the floor.

Then I put all the clothes into a rubbish bag and I went through into our wardrobe (my wardrobe) and I put all his clothes into more rubbish bags. Then I went through all the drawers and the bathroom and I cleaned him out of my house. Put it all in the shed. Took all night. I finally shut the door on him and watched the dawn chill the edge of the world. I was still sweating though my skin was cold.

Father Christmas. That’s a laugh.

13

S

Spiders

he was folding the washing when she heard the car come up the driveway. She could smell the freshness of clean cloth. She considered the texture of the towel in her hands — it was stiff like cardboard — sundried. She folded it quickly.

The car ground the gravel driveway outside. She flapped one of Simon’s teeshirts fast through the air and wasn’t surprised when a spider fell onto to the bed.

She brushed it off and stood on it. It might have been a white tail. Don’t kill you but they can make you pretty bloody sick. Wound never heals. She’d have to sweep it up later. She folded the tee-shirt. It was too small and beginning to wear thin. He was growing so quickly.

The car door slammed.

She went through the hall and opened the front door. Her son barged in without a word, rushing no doubt to the toilet. She looked him over intensively.

Couldn’t see any marks or bruises. No external signs of damage. Maybe that was a chocolate stain on the shirt.

‘Hi, darling.’

‘Yo.’

He was one of those boys who liked their own toilet best; one of those who liked to read while sitting on the toilet. She could hear him. He’d already found a book in his room and was dashing into the toilet. He slammed the door.

He was always tense after the visits. Strange the car hadn’t moved off. Then she realised it wasn’t the usual car.

The man came up to the door, his feet grinding the crushed gravel like broken glass. He was carrying Simon’s backpack. He’d aged since she’d last seen him.

Gravity had dragged his grizzled features down. She smiled at him. He was nervous.

He managed a sort of crumpled smile in return.

‘Nice to see you again, Michelle.’

‘Yes.’

He moved forward and enveloped her in a corduroy coat hug.

‘Missed you, love.’

‘I’ve missed you too, Gordon.’

She was taken aback, en garde. What did he want?

‘Come in, for Pete’s sake. It’s great you could give Simon a lift home.

Thanks for that.’

Gordon came in and shut the door behind him. He put the backpack 15

down. He took off his heavy coat and hung it on the coat rack. He’d done it many times before. ‘Put the kettle on, love.’

‘For you, Gordon, I’ll even get out the emergency biscuits.’

‘Hope they’re not past their use-by date.’

‘So do I.’

They moved companionably down the corridor to the kitchen. Gordon had helped paint it a few years ago. He was looking around, seeking the familiar.

‘Nothing’s changed, then.’

‘Not so as you can see.’

She sent the water roaring into the kettle.

‘It’s grand to be back. Grand to see you and all.’

‘Thanks, Gordon. You can come any time. And Vida. You know that, don’t you.’

‘You know what it’s like. It’s difficult.’

‘Is it, Gordon?’

Gordon shifted uncomfortably on the kitchen stool. He was embarrassed.

Obviously it wasn’t that difficult. After all, here he was.

She finished preparing the tea and went into the hallway to knock on the toilet door. She stayed outside, with respect.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, Mum.’

‘Want a drink?’

‘Sure.’

‘Hot or cold?’

‘Cold, thanks.’

She came back into the kitchen and shook her head in mock exasperation.

‘He’s reading.’

She fixed her son a drink. Gordon chuckled.

‘Great little reader, isn’t he. Don’t know where he gets that from. Not one of ours.’

‘Oh, Gordon, he is so one of yours.’

‘Yeah, more like one of yours to have his nose in a book, though.’

‘How’s Vida?’

‘Good, good as gold, look, love, before—’

Just as if he’d cued him, Simon could be heard long before he arrived in the room. He then pounced on the unopened packet of shortbread biscuits and wrestled with the wrapping.

‘Ah ha! Emergency biscuits! Must be a special occasion!’

‘Not every day your grandfather makes an appearance, is it?’

Simon was making hard work of opening the packet. She put a pair of 16

scissors in front of him.

‘Just put them out on a plate, okay?’ Maybe a bit too sharp. She was confused, nervous. Why was Gordon here? There was something on his mind and it made her uneasy. She tried to lighten the mood.

‘You do know where the plates are, don’t you, Simon?’

‘You mean those flat round things in the cupboard?’

The biscuits were duly arranged, the tea was poured, milked and sugared and the afternoon tea began to be consumed. They made polite conversation, as families do. She asked about Vida and Gordon’s hobbies: his garden and his birdwatching.

Gordon asked Simon about his school, his orienteering and his saxophone. Simon wanted to know what was for dinner.

‘Not wait-and-see again?’

‘Got any homework, young Simon? Just that I’d like a word with your mum before I have to toddle off, you know?’

‘Sure, Gordon. Come and see my room before you go.’

She started picking up the cups and moving things around into the sink.

Gordon looked down.

‘Show me the garden, love. We won’t be interrupted there?’

They moved out into the garden. She was proud of it. She had a pleasing herb garden blending into a wilderness of cottage garden. Perennials burst through an abundance of roses. A couple of silvereyes splashed in the birdbath. One stood on the edge while the other flitted and bounced into the water sending water droplets sparkling into the sun like mini fireworks.

‘You’ve done wonders, love.’

‘Thanks, Gordon. You helped, you know, digging all that rubbish out when we first moved here.’

‘I blame that lot for my back now.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘Look love, there’s no way I can make this polite. I’m worried. I found porn on Jacob’s computer.’

Why wasn’t she surprised?

‘Porn?’

‘Not just porn, I mean…’

‘What were you doing on his computer?’

‘Been learning at the library. Got a couple of twitchers I email. He said he’d help me.’

‘So doesn’t everyone search for porn on the net?’

‘Jeez, Michelle. Don’t make me... this is more. This was children.

17

Unbelievable. I still can’t believe it. Made me sick.’

‘Oh for pete’s sake.’

‘I’m thinking of Simon.’

‘Are you?’

‘Of course.’

‘How did you…? I mean... Wasn’t there a password or firewall or something?’

‘I was just looking and I kept looking.’

‘You kept looking.’

‘I got suspicious. Some things. I guessed. Wasn’t too tricky.’

‘You invaded your son’s privacy because you were suspicious.’

‘Maybe Simon shouldn’t go round there so much?’

‘He has to, Gordon.’

‘Does he?’

‘Yes. It’s the law. We went to court. It’s been decided for us. It’s his father’s right.’

‘Michelle, the stuff on his computer… it’s too much. Okay? It’s… well… it’s wrong.’

‘What did you do about it?’

‘Well, I’m telling you, aren’t I?’

‘I meant the police.’

‘The cops?’

‘If it’s so bad…’

‘I can’t dob in my own son to the cops! What do you take me for?’

‘So it’s not that bad. The stuff. You can live with it.’

‘For pity’s sake, I can’t tell the police.’

‘So there’s no need to worry.’

‘I didn’t say that. I said I’m not doing anything about it. Not the cops anyhow.’

‘So if it’s that bad…’

‘It is, Michelle. It really is.’

‘You’re expecting me to do something?’

‘Yeah. You…’

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘You were always the strong one, Michelle.’

‘Who do you think is going to believe me? What evidence do I have? I’m the hysterical ex-wife, remember? The acrimonious divorce and all? Remember?

You and Vida haven’t been anywhere near me since the separation. You know I have to send him every fortnight. I could go to jail if I don’t. Who’s going to look after Simon then? Think about it. What the hell can I do?’

18

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s up to you, Gordon. You saw it. You have to do something. I’ll ring the lawyer.’

‘I don’t want him to know I told you.’

‘We don’t have to tell him.’

‘I mean it, Michelle. He’s my son.’

‘And what about Simon?’

‘He wouldn’t.’

‘Why are you here then?’

‘Bloody hell, Michelle. I had to do something. Those kids…’

‘You’ll have to be there on his contact days. That’s all there is to it.

You’ll have to protect Simon. It’s up to you, Gordon. It really is. You have to take responsibility.’

‘What if…?’

‘Oh, Jesus, Gordon. I don’t believe this.’

‘Well?’

She was terrified. ‘Do you think he has?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know.’

‘There’s got to be something you can do?’

‘What?’

‘I can’t dob him in, Michelle.’

‘Why did you bother coming here, Gordon? Telling me poison about your poisonous son? I already knew he was revolting, but I trusted him with Simon. I thought I knew him well but now you’re telling me you don’t trust him. You’re his own father for Christ’s sake and you don’t trust him but you won’t do a damn thing about it? What sort of man are you?’

‘I don’t know, Michelle.’

‘What does Vida say?’

‘I didn’t tell her. What’s that going to do to her heart?’

‘What’s it going to do to her grandchild?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then who bloody well will?’

A breeze floated the garden into the late afternoon sun. The roses gleamed with sunset glow. A blackbird flitted through the clematis. It had something in its beak. It looked like a spider.

19

S

Only One

o all we’ve got are our feelings. At least that’s what I think and I can really only trust what my gut instinct tells me. Is your instinct distinct from your feelings? Don’t you think that means there’s a right and a wrong path — like when you choose the wrong path well obviously you don’t know it’s wrong until you’ve chosen, do you, then you just know it’s wrong because it feels like it’s wrong and you have to get back on the right path again? So maybe that’s what fate is.

And then I could be walking down the street, going shopping maybe, and I go into the shop, the fruit and vegie shop, just thinking about a salad for that night and he’s just coming out and he looks into my eyes and I haven’t got time to back away or anything and he just looks at me and we both know that he really does love me and of course we’re meant to be together and my dream is true and he reaches out and hugs me and then we laugh because we’re blocking the old lady from getting out with her bag of carrots and her bit of broccoli and we move aside and then we walk down the road for ages and finally we go into a café. We’re confused at first, breathless but then we just sit down and hardly know what to order.

What am I going to do? I can’t stop thinking about him. He is with me everywhere. I can’t look out the window without wondering what he’s doing. Is he happy? Is he fulfilled? What’s he thinking about? Does he ever think about me?

What am I going to do? It’s absurd. He’s just stuck in my heart. He’s in my guts. How can I go on when he’s dragging me back like a magnet?

We talk and talk and look into each others eyes intoxicated for hours about our plans and we agree and we go back to my house. No, we can’t. We can’t go back to his house either so we have to go to a motel. He signs the register as though we’re married but he puts my address I notice and we go into a room.

I paint pictures. I sell them at the market. They are firebirds of colour in deepest oil.

I pay rent for two rooms in my house. One for painting and one for living. I share the house. I don’t really talk to my flatmate. Not much.

So it depends on how you think fate got sorted out, doesn’t it? Whether you think there’s a God somewhere somehow that makes it all right. Don’t you know some things are meant to be?

It’s just one of those motel rooms with a big bed and maybe a single as well 21

and a little table and chairs and a tv and a bathroom and then he looks into my eyes and takes me in his arms and enfolds me and we burn together and then, maybe it’s when we’re on the beach, I mean, I go to the beach.

He must have sent that dream to haunt me. How could I have dreamed it by my own mind? He was speaking to me so clearly. He said, ‘The trouble is, I’m still a bit in love with you.’ It was him, no question. How could I have made up a dream that was so clearly a message from him? How could he not be involved?

So, on the beach, I’m walking the dog, it’s cold and blustery and I’m walking along and I see him and he’s walking right towards me and he gets closer and the wind is whipping his hair across his face, some sticks in his lips and he smiles at me knowingly and we kiss passionately and the dog runs through the waves and we know this is a turning point for us or maybe I’m going to visit my friends Penny and Al and I go in there and he’s there.

I mean, so of course you can choose what you’re going to do next, like that’s free will, isn’t it. It’s not like you just go along in your life and don’t think about anything, is it, of course not, you get to pick and choose but you know when you’ve made a mistake of course, like when you play a bum note in a scale of course it’s wrong and next time you play the scale you might play it a bit slower and get it right but you know which way it should sound so that’s like fate.

When he sees me he stands up and looks at me and Al is trying to introduce me but he says ‘It’s okay, we’ve met.’ And Penny is offering cakes and tea or something and neither of us can concentrate because we can only stare at each other and wonder how life has led us to be together again and I just want to say, ‘I’m so sorry I really shouldn’t have’ and I know he’s feeling just the same way and how did it happen that we aren’t together any more? I can’t stay and I run out of the house and he runs after me and he chases me and he calls my name and finally he catches me and it’s so pure and right and in love. Like it ought to be.

He told me once that we should have a baby and he knows we’ll be together again one day. Maybe when I’m in the library he’ll see me and come up to me and we’ll be in the stacks surrounded by books and we’ll just hug each other for hours filled with peace that we’ve overcome our past and we’ll live happily ever after.

I saw one of his photographs in the paper and I knew it was his even before I saw his name. It was something about the lighting or something. Just the way I knew made my spine groan. There’s something there, something tying us together, there really is. I made a mistake but how can it feel so wrong now? Why did he have to go off and live with her? He should realise he’s supposed to be with me. He probably does. She’s probably got him trapped. She’s probably playing all sorts of games keeping him there. She won’t be able to hold him forever.

22

I’ve done all I can. I lay on my back with my knees spread and I sacrificed my baby life to God because then we could be together again. I was dressed in a robe with flowers all over it and the doctor had little hoses and vacuumed my centre completely out and it felt like some of my soul disappeared into the vacuum and I didn’t want to but it was the only way. How could we be together when I was having a baby?

The wrong baby. The only thing was I knew I’d played the wrong note. All the messages were wrong. I didn’t get a burning bush or like a note from God or anything, I just knew if I wanted to be with my soulmate then I had to follow the right path.

I moved back into my old house to be near him. To wait for him. I have to be there. It’s right over the road from him. I don’t know if he knows I’m back yet. I know he knows I went away with that guy. I was kissing him in front of him to make him jealous I suppose in hindsight. What was I supposed to do? He didn’t even see I don’t think. He was so wrapped up in her. And I was so filled with fury when I found those photos of her. What could he have been thinking? Such caressing with light. Her face carved out of darkness. Her body touched with skin lightglow. Such temptation away from the true path. How does that make sense?

The other guy, the father of what could have been a baby, he didn’t understand.

He couldn’t believe me. He hates me now. He said he loved me and he wanted our baby but I am certain I’m supposed to be with my one true love. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the only way. He thinks I’m wrong but it’s not his path is it? He thinks he’s my soulmate but that’s just absurd. There’s no such thing as unrequited love.

She’s just left. I’ll just pop over and see him now. He won’t call the police this time.

Not when she’s gone out. That order doesn’t mean anything to him.

Maybe I’m getting on the train and he’s on the platform and he sees me and we look into each others souls…

23

Suitcase

I

take my suitcase in my hand. It is not heavy. My hand is sweating.

I didn’t think I sweat much before now. Only when I was doing the cleaning, the vacuuming sometimes, it became hard work shifting the furniture to get underneath. Sometimes then I remember sweating, a dribble down my front, in my underarms maybe. Maybe sometimes when I am cooking on a hot day, baking, making jam or a sauce or something. Then I might sweat. It’s interesting to me my hands are sweating now. Now, I am just going for a walk, not heaving furniture.

I put my suitcase down.

I wipe my hands on a tissue. I screw up the tissue and drop it into the bin. Who will empty the bin? Would he know that rubbish day was Wednesday? Should I tell him?

Leave a note?

I am standing in the bedroom. I look around, at the wardrobe, at the window, at the bed. My eyes feel heavy like they are made of hard rubber.

Most of the day I have been in here. Sitting on the bed. Crying. Screwing up tissues and putting them into the bin. Ringing up my sister and talking to her.

Staring out of the window at the roses.

Choices are like little buds on the rose bush. Sometimes they get entirely eaten by aphids. Sometimes they get spoilt by the rain. Sometimes a worm gets inside and eats right through. Sometimes they smell sweet when they open and then the wind blows them away. Sometimes they blossom and bees walk on them in the sunshine. I pick up my suitcase and come out of the bedroom. It feels like coming out of a nest.

So now I am in the hallway. The corridor. The space that is for comings and goings. I am going to the front door. I am going to leave this house by this hallway probably for the very last time. You’re not supposed to stay here for long. There’s nowhere to sit. I could go back to the kitchen and cook the dinner. Or I could carry my suitcase out of the front door, past the roses, past the parked car, out of the front gate and down to the bus stop. This is the first time in years I have stood in here and 25

looked about. I am on my way. Finally, I am about to choose. Imagine.

For eight years I have waited for this moment. I have thought about it so much. Perhaps I can do it. Oh perhaps I should not. I have made an oath.

I promised. I know I should do my duty. For my life and my death. For my God. I can see some dust on the picture rails in the hallway. I should go and get the duster.

I look at the wedding photograph of my parents. They are hanging just across from the linen cupboard. I can’t take them. My father was so stern. He is sitting down and his eyes glower out. His eyes burn into mine. I was his little princess, his little angel. He was never never angry with me. I always did what I should, like a good daughter.

I came to Australia and married him like my father wanted. It never crossed my mind not to do it though I knew I would never see my parents again.

There was no choice in those days. You did what you were told. It was the way.

I got on the boat and the roar of that horn going, that sound from the chimney stack, telling the world we were leaving the port, it nearly tore my heart from my body.

I will never forget the smell of the diesel and the roar of the people and the engines churning up the water and making the ship shake. My family were walking along with the streamers in their hands waving waving and I crying crying and the different coloured streamers stretching stretching across the water and breaking and falling down like multi-coloured hairs beside the ship and…

I was young…

Coming to the new country with hope and nice houses and roses.

I never imagined I would live like this. I knew I would obey my husband for ever.

Some people you meet, they like each other in their marriages. My husband cannot stand my face. He thinks all sorts of dark thoughts and he shouts them at me. He accuses me of things that I would never ever do. He is darkness all through. There is even darkness on the top of his face.

I feel like a piece of thread. I stare at my father. He stares back. Oh dear oh dear what on earth is going to happen? Eight years this has been going on, I have no glue to stick it back together.

He is sitting in the front room. He is bent over. He is not young any more.

Neither of us is young. I used my youth on him. He took it and twisted it and 26

chewed it and now there is nothing left of my young heart. My wedding photo is on the mantlepiece over his head. That was forty-seven years ago. We have been married most of my life. Most of his life. I look at me. So soft and young. My skin is round and smooth. My smile is. Maybe a man and a woman can never know each other. They say to me there is another way. I don’t have to put up with him. But I have for forty-seven years. Mostly it wasn’t this bad. Only the last eight have been like this.

My face is wet. I go back to my bedroom to get the box of tissues. I will just have to carry them with me. I didn’t know how difficult this would be. Why isn’t he shouting at me? Why is he sitting there so still in that cardigan, that dark one I bought him for his birthday? It is only a light cardigan, very nice quality wool. It should keep him warm on mild days, like spring or autumn. He should eat more.

He’s too thin. I thought maybe he has an illness that makes him thin, that makes him too angry and makes him push me around, that’s what I thought for a long time. I worried about him and I asked the doctor but he says he’s okay, physically.

There’s nothing wrong with him so it must be my fault.

Oh, if he turns around maybe he’ll be that young man from our wedding photo. When he was young maybe there was more hope. Maybe it was his, maybe it was mine. There’s no hope any more.

I will go out of the front door. The lace curtains over the door need a wash.

He won’t wash them. I can tell. Nothing will get washed or dusted now. What am I to do? I have to clean the kitchen floor and get the rubbish ready.

I can’t do that any more. I have to keep thinking about myself. I have to get out and go. I have some money.

He pushed me and shouted at me this morning, which seems so long ago and it was far too much. He hurt me and I was scared and I hate being scared. It is too much for me. I have done nothing to deserve this, nothing. It is not fair. For eight years my sister has said to me I have to go, I have to leave him and now I have rung her up and she has said come to her, come now on the bus and the train and then on the bus again and I will because he keeps the keys to the car.

He is the only one who can drive the car. I used to drive it but now he will not let me. I have to catch the train late at night and walk home when there are no buses any more and I am so scared when I walk home in the dark by myself. He just 27

makes the car sit there in the driveway doing nothing while I am walking for hours in the dark, an old woman alone and scared and he does not care. I am nothing to him now.

We don’t have children. He says our marriage is empty. We made an agreement, a contract it was, for our whole lives. What does any contract mean?

Like the one when you buy a car or sell a house? What do those contracts mean? I can see his hair now on his head in the chair. Grey whitish streaks against charcoal streaks. I’m so tired. Will he turn around? What will he say when he sees my suitcase?

My sister said to ask someone for help. How can I do that? Can you imagine me going into the neighbours? Mr Allenby. He’s a very nice man. He has a nice garden, nice roses.

I say, “Good morning, Mr Allenby.”

He says, “Good morning, Mrs Angelopoulous.”

That’s all we ever say. Imagine me going there with my suitcase and my sweaty hands saying, “Good afternoon, Mr Allenby. I am leaving my husband and I was wondering if you could give me a lift to my sister’s house.” Imagine.

There’s Mrs Tran on the other side, tending to her bok choy in the front garden. Imagine me saying “Good afternoon, Mrs Tran, good afternoon. Can I ask you to do me a big favour?” Imagine. I’m shaking my head now. Look at me.

Shaking my head, standing in the corridor with my sweaty hands, waiting to leave.

I’m waiting for the strength to break apart everything I was brought up to believe a woman did. All I know is looking after my husband. Cleaning, cooking, putting out the rubbish. What in heaven’s name am I supposed to do next?

My sister said take everything I need, like my passport, any money, any papers about money. She said take everything, like photos, like clothes, like anything I might want to keep because he may not let me back into my own home again. After forty-seven years he may shut me out, change the locks, pretend I never happened.

I have a photo of my mother I have put into my suitcase. She is looking so young and beautiful, with those young girlish eyes wishing out of the photograph at me. Wishing all her love to me. Smiling her love. It’s only little so I could fit it in my bag easily. I have all my memories I can fit into my heart and carry with me.

28

I don’t have too many other things in the suitcase. I have been a dutiful wife but he hates me now. I am unwanted. I stare at the dust forming on the picture rail in the corridor. How did I get to be unwanted after forty-seven years? Should I dust the hallway before I go? Should I mention it to him? Will he think this house is empty, meaningless, when I have gone?

Should I say something? Imagine. “Well, dear, I’m off now after forty-seven years. Look after yourself.” Imagine. I take another tissue and blow my nose. I screw up the tissue into my hand and then I tuck it into my pocket. I am travelling down the hallway. I reach out for the front door handle. Maybe I should say, “Goodbye” to him. I don’t know. I can’t decide. Imagine.

29

I

Newsagency

sipped my cafe latte. The milkfoam coffee was sweet and nutty. I licked my lips, tasting coffee and lipstick. I had left a coral pink lip print on the side of my glass. I looked through the café windows into the courtyard and across the lawn to the trees beyond. The autumn air was framed by wood and glass and clattering crockery. Inside was a tang of laughter and a crusting of brittle knives and forks conversation. A pile of black pods twisted across the top of a cupboard and a mobile of seeds turned softly above the babble.

A child with white skin wore a yellow cotton dress. Her face was shiny with tears. Her mother, wearing a knitted orange top, held the child by the top of one arm, pulling her toward her, bending her up, hissing down at her.

‘You know you’re not allowed to do that. What made you do it? Sit down and behave.’

The child sat and blew her nose on a tissue, closely supervised by her mother. What, I wondered, did she do?

A man in a dark suit walked past. He looked at me, caught my eye briefly and then he looked away. Walked away.

I was here to meet three women for the first time. I was nervous. My skin was creeping, my stomach was shrinking and I couldn’t face eating anything. Hadn’t even had any breakfast and I’m usually a breakfast kind of person.

I recognised the first one straight away as she approached the building across the wide forecourt. Well, I didn’t recognise her exactly but I assumed she was one of them. She was looking around, probably for me, not that she knew who I was, but she was looking for me all right. Other women were in jogging clothes or with their babies in prams and she was much more traditional. Her hair was like a helmet on her head. It was a strange kind of brown, all smooth even colour. She was older than I’d imagined, maybe sixty-five or more. She had that post-menopausal softness in the face. Her pale pink skin had become loose and fluffy. She was tall with a bit of a tummy.

She was wearing a shirt-dress with a floral kind of pattern on it. Purple and green swirl. She had a Celtic pendant around her neck; the sort that means something like constancy or loyalty or strength through adversity.

She was carrying a copy of The Age newspaper as we’d agreed. Her nails were carefully shaped and clean.

I moved my paper up on to the table so she could see it and I smiled 31

nervously at her. I wanted it to be a welcoming smile but I expect it was more like a grimace.

I’d chosen the Botanic Gardens Café for our meeting. It’s large and anonymous with big wooden tables and it’s also very comforting. It’s not cheap but it’s central and it’s possible to get a car park. Or it’s easy to get a tram to the Shrine and walk if you want. I’d chosen morning-tea time. I didn’t think there’d be too many bus tours clogging up the queue. I’m starting to sound like a travel brochure and that’s not what it’s about, it’s just so complicated. Things never are straightforward, are they?

Shirt-dress caught my eye. I nodded slightly and indicated my copy of the paper on the table next to my cafe latte. She came over and said, ‘Hello. Are you Anna?’

I said, ‘Yes. Are you as nervous as I am?’

She smiled, which was a relief I can tell you, and I smiled back.

She said, ‘Yes,’ and sat down and rested her handbag on her lap. That meant her arms were protecting the front of her body. She must have been nervous. Well, of course she was. That made me feel better anyway and I thought, maybe this could be useful after all.

I really did want to have friends to talk to about all this. I mean, who wants to talk about pornography? Apart from the people who enjoy it of course and then I suspect they don’t talk about it much. Maybe the people who work in it do. I mean they’d have to, wouldn’t they? After they’d sorted out their tax file numbers and bank account numbers they’d have to have a chat about how they felt about going to work that day. Wouldn’t they?

Swirly dress said her name was Susan and she lived in Glen Iris. Strange name for a place, Glen Iris. I wondered if there was some kind of indigenous iris growing there but I didn’t ask her. Perhaps it was just named after a person called Iris.

I pointed at the bar area behind her, I didn’t think she’d noticed, and asked if she wanted to get herself a drink, a latte perhaps? There wasn’t a queue so she just went right up and asked for a cup of tea and a biscuit. She brought it all back on a tray.

As she was sitting down I saw another woman arrive in the café. She was a tanned woman with that fairy floss blonde hair that women think men like. She appeared brittle though she was probably incredibly strong having spent considerable time in the gym. She was more my age than Susan, though far more groomed than me. She had The Age tucked under her arm and was looking for someone.

I said to Susan, ‘What do you think?’ and she looked over to where I pointed. Surreptitiously, of course, not a great point with my whole arm or anything, 32

just a little indicator in the direction of the blonde woman.

Susan sat down after arranging her cup and everything and we both obviously picked up our copies of The Age. It was a little like being spies or undercover cops in a film and we grinned, acknowledged the absurdity of it all.

When the gym woman saw us looking at her she too smiled and I thought, I haven’t got anything to lose here.

She came over and sat down. She put her smart leather handbag close to her side, nestling in. Her name was Maria. After we’d exchanged names, just first names of course, and more expressions of relief that we all looked normal (which doesn’t mean much does it?) she got up again. She hooked her handbag strap over her shoulder, flapping her wingarm over her bag as she went to get herself some water.

She returned bearing the whole jug with three glasses. You’re not allowed to do that normally but considering there wasn’t a huge crowd we thought it would be okay.

The man in the suit was seated at the table right next to us. He seemed to be engrossed in The Age.

Maria sat down and we proceeded with our conversation. Susan hadn’t been to the café before. Maria said she was glad I’d mentioned it was the one across from the Shrine. She was used to going to the old kiosk down by the eels and the swans. You’re not supposed to feed the birds now, or touch the water because of the algae.

I thought we’d better focus on the reason for our meeting so I confessed I was feeling deeply embarrassed. I added that I didn’t think the embarrassment should be mine. It was something my husband had given me, like a STD, I said.

Maria disagreed immediately. ‘Of course it’s your embarrassment.

You should accept your feelings are yours and yours alone. If your husband is embarrassed that’s his lookout.’ She was very direct, looking right into my eyes.

Stern.

I looked at her wonderingly. I noticed the mascara coating her eyelashes.

She had a different colour on the tips. She was wearing a lot of make up. There was a sort of brown shadowing her eyes — different tones of beige. Her cheeks were dusted with pink powder. Her lips were glossy and definite. My husband thought lipstick was a sign that women wanted sex.

Is this what people did in support groups? I thought this forward gearshifting of my perceptions was going to be difficult to cope with. Here she was telling me what to do about my feelings and telling me they are mine to do with as I please. Well, they are mine after all. I should know, shouldn’t I? I started to feel even more vulnerable. Exactly how honest were we going to get with each other? I felt like a fish, gaping.

33

Purple-and-green Susan leaned forward, finally putting her bag beside her.

It was still close but she wasn’t hugging it any more. She said, ‘I think perhaps we should listen more to each other rather than telling what we should or shouldn’t do, don’t you? Don’t we share our experiences?’

She ended on a slight American twang — sharing has almost become a joke because of that, hasn’t it? Such jargon. ‘Let’s share.’ It seemed strange from Susan, like the vicar making a joke at a funeral or something. How has it come to be that being good and sharing is somehow pathetic?

I was grateful for her assistance. I said, ‘That’s what I was hoping. That we’d get support, I suppose, without being…’

‘Judged?’ said Susan.

‘Yes. I understand what you are saying, Maria, it is my embarrassment, that’s true, but it’s really not because of anything I’ve done or chosen or expected.

It’s like a car crash in my life. I don’t need it and I don’t want it and it is entirely because of my husband.’

I don’t think Maria was upset by that idea. She looked sophisticated, with her blonde crown, like she’d been to many cocktail parties with people who mattered in philanthropy. She said, ‘Of course. My husband is always on the internet. He’s like a kid with a new toy.’

Susan shook her head. ‘I don’t know why men need magazines or pictures on a computer, I really don’t. That’s why I thought I’d answer your ad. Did you get many replies, by the way?’

‘Yes,’ said Maria, ‘is anyone else coming?’

I had had five straightforward replies from women, apparently like us. I also had a letter from a woman informing me that sexually explicit materials had saved her marriage and what I had to do was talk about it with my husband. That’d be tricky after his cyber-sex partner had just turned up the day before and I was so stunned I couldn’t speak to him at all. Plus I had two utterly disgusting replies that I tossed straight into the bin and one other, from a Christian Temperance group.

I’d kept that one as a curiosity. Strange how judgemental Christ made his followers when he was so liberal. Maybe one day I’d show my husband. It’d make him laugh.

Once he got over why I had it at all, of course.

Susan’s letter was handwritten on notepaper framed with a design of eucalypt flowers, perhaps ficifolia. They were lush and red. It was brief and expressed sincere interest in meeting.

Maria’s letter was on The Simpsons notepaper. Perhaps she had children.

Perhaps her husband was the zany type to whom people give zany gifts. Bart was saying, ‘Eat my shorts’ in the right hand corner of the paper. I wasn’t entirely sure it was appropriate but who is to say?

Diane’s letter looked printed on a laser printer, composed on a word34

processor, I assume. It was longer than the others. More vulnerable and sensitive.

I’d rung the five, and one woman said she couldn’t come so that made four.

Another woman lived too far away. Susan and Maria were able to come today. I left a message for Diane and she’d popped a note in the post to say she’d be here too. None of us had ever been in a support group before.

So we were still waiting for Diane and then there would be four of us. I couldn’t see any other loose women (loose women indeed!) with a copy of The Age wandering through the café. We sat and talked, sipped our drinks and watched the people coming and going.

I said, ‘Do you feel it’s normal to see provocative pictures of young women everywhere you look?’

‘What’s normal?’ said Susan.

‘Like those billboards with stunning women in their underwear?’ said Maria. ‘I suppose it sells underwear.’

‘Stunning,’ said Susan. ‘There’s a word, like bombshell or devastating.

That’s what those beautiful women do to men.’

‘Of course, poor ravished things,’ said Maria.

‘I saw one for cameras,’ I said.

‘Cameras?’

‘Yes, a sexy woman with a camera, an advertisement.’

‘Cameras, of all things, must have suggestive women to sell them, what else?’ I agreed.

‘Do you think men feel so bad they have to buy pictures of girls they could never hope to get for themselves?’ Maria said. ‘Do you think that the whole reason for all this sexist selling is because men are so inept?’

Susan said, ‘I couldn’t imagine working in a newsagency, could you?

I mean, all those magazines, with young women with no clothes on, hanging out all they’ve got, so proud? Do they know what they’re doing?’

I agreed. ‘It’s so in your face, you just want to get a note pad or a ribbon for a present or a ball of string and there’s all these naked girls everywhere.’

‘Some of the girls on the covers are wearing bikinis. Of course, they’re not actually nude. It’s just like going to the beach,’ Maria pointed out.

‘Sometimes they’re very small bikinis,’ I said, ‘and it isn’t the beach. That’s the whole point. It’s the newsagency. Where you go to buy string.’

Susan agreed, ‘It’s hard to know where to look, bikinis or no bikinis. It’s all perfect bodies, skin and boobs, in some of these newsagencies. You wonder where they hide the news.’

‘Maybe those girls just simply love it?’ I asked.

Maria shook her floss hair. ‘Do they realise their pages are going to be glued together with dried semen? Do they realise that?’

35

‘The girls are in it for the money,’ said Susan.

I agreed. ‘If they’re proud of their bodies there’s no problem in exploiting men’s weaknesses to make a decent living. At least that’s one way of looking at it.’

‘Decent!’Susan snorted. ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it.

‘Is it?’

She went on, ‘What do decency and wholesomeness count for when a man wants sex? He wants to feel dirty, licentious and I can understand that. So do I for that matter. I mean, I like sex but I don’t like to think that my husband has already had sex with someone else, several someone elses and that’s what he’s doing every night on the internet.’

‘That’s just it!’ I say, ‘that’s certainly what mine is doing.’

‘So,’ says Susan, ‘when he does ask for sex, I wonder, I can’t help myself, what has turned him on? Is he just imagining screwing one of those airbrushed photographs? Does he see someone else’s genitals all shiny and ready?’

Susan may have been dressed in a swirly frock with a Celtic symbol all ready for afternoon tea with the vicar but I was not sure I could take much more of this frank discussion.

‘When my husband does come to bed all lovey dovey snuggling I wonder what image he’s seen on television, on a pop clip or a late night film that’s made him randy?’

‘Is it a necessary part of our lives?’ I asked. ‘Should women just accept it?

Or make our own porn?’

‘Some women do,’ said Susan. ‘I can’t imagine it.’

Suddenly I noticed Maria was crying. She fumbled in her bag for a tissue.

She looked up and said, ‘I had an abortion.’

Her mascara was running.

I looked at Susan. Both of us were horrified. An abortion? What had that got to do with pornography? Did we need a trained counsellor in our group?

Maria mopped at her face with her tissue. None of us said anything. Susan sipped her drink again.

Maria went on after a while. ‘I was jealous. I thought that he wasn’t paying attention to me. He’s not interested in me as a woman and my reproductive powers.

He’s only interested in different positions and funny places to perform. Excitement.

It’s like sex is sport and he’s a keen sports spectator. Of course I was jealous of all those other pictures he performs for. And so I finished it. I didn’t want to have a child whose father liked wanking over pictures of strangers.’

I didn’t know what to say to her. It seemed to me all children have fathers who like masturbating over pictures of strangers. Maria was Medea, offering her husband punishment but before the birth.

Susan had a loving face like a nun should. She smiled in a loving kind of 36

way and asked, ‘Did you tell him?’

‘No.’

‘Then you have only punished yourself.’

‘I am punished, of course.’

‘Then you must forgive yourself ’

‘First I have to forgive him.’

‘I don’t think he has much choice in this day and age — he’s just a tiny cog in a huge sexual industry.’

‘What did men do before the printing press?’

‘They used to have etchings. Come up and see them some time.’

‘Stone age men?’

‘Cave paintings?’

We looked at each other. Maria’s mascara was smeared all over her face.

‘Can you imagine a hairy great cave man ejaculating over a rock painting?

Can you see him rutting into the wall?’ Susan snorted. I tried to stop giggling but the image of thrusting hairy buttocks was too ridiculous, too unsanitary. All of us were shaking, gasping, snorting. I told Maria where the ladies were. She had to wash her face.

While Maria was still in the bathroom, Susan and I sat at our table in silence.

I was staring at the jug of water, thinking perhaps I should take it back when I noticed that man from the next table. He was the man who had caught my eye when I’d first arrived. He was staring at us.

He stood up and came over close to us. He seemed more nervous now.

More ruffled.

‘Which one of you is Anna?’

‘I am.’ I didn’t know what to do. What was a man in a suit doing asking for me?

‘I’m afraid I’m Diane.’

‘Diane?’

Susan and I looked at each other.

‘Afraid?’

He said, ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

He was dressed in a dark suit with a thin tie, nothing ostentatious. He looked normal — nervous but normal. (Who can say?) He had intense blue eyes.

He had straight floppy hair that was starting to go grey at the edges. I’d never met a man who had been a woman before. Or perhaps she was trapped in a man’s body?

He had been sitting at a table right next to us. He had been listening to everything we said. Diane? So that’s why she had only written to me. Susan looked horrified. I imagine I did too.

37

‘Is your name really Diane?’ I saw images of him dressed in a swirly shirtdress wearing lipstick and checking his pantihose for runs in front of the mirror.

Why would a cross dressing businessman want to pretend his wife was a porn addict?

‘No, I’m Dave. Can I sit down?’

‘Why?’

‘Um, I thought maybe you might be able to help my wife.’

Susan looked doubtful. Maria came back. She slowed down as she approached the table.

I smiled at her. ‘Maria, this is Dave. He’s here instead of Diane.’ I turned to Dave.

‘I’m Anna and this is Susan. Um, I don’t really want you to sit down with us. Why don’t we go for a walk instead?’

Maria and Susan looked relieved at this idea. We wouldn’t have to look at him as we walked along the paths. I wasn’t really wearing suitable shoes for walking but we all needed a breath of fresh air. So we picked up our handbags and moved out from the table. Out from the comfort of the café into the ordered paths of the Botanic Gardens. We passed the buildings and the acorn sculpture and turned left, passing the bamboo forest.

Dave began to speak. His wife had left him. They had two children — a boy and a girl. She left him when he couldn’t stop using porn. He couldn’t understand. He hated feeling ashamed. Why couldn’t people just have sex in the streets? In the public parks? Right then and there in the Botanic Gardens? What the hell was so wrong with sex?

We were all walking along, looking at the plants, in the weak autumn sunshine when Susan asked, ‘Dave, why is sex better in a magazine?’

‘Better?’

‘You chose porn over your wife.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘You did, though.’

Dave walked on silently, his head bent, looking at the ground.

Susan went on. ‘What separates this kind of sex from real sex? Is wanking over a picture of a girl the same thing as having sex with that woman?’

Dave said, ‘Um…’

‘Is it the same thing as being with any woman?’

Dave said, ‘Well…’

‘Is it committing adultery?’

Dave said, ‘I…’

Susan said, ‘Is it having sex with yourself? Or…’ Susan turned round to Maria and me, ‘Is it having sex with the men who produced and directed the 38

videos?’

I laughed.

We stopped.

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘that makes sense.’

‘Of course.’ Maria said, ‘that’s a good point, isn’t it.’

Susan thought so. ‘Has pornography got more to do with other men than women?’

Dave was looking even more ruffled. His tie was askew.

‘Yeah,’ said Maria. ‘Are all men homosexual? Those stories in the magazines, written by men for men to get their rocks off, ‘I never thought it would happen to me, wow… I always thought you made these stories up but now…’

Susan said, ‘That reminds me, you know why gay men think they are despised by straight men?

‘No,’ said Maria.

‘Because they are treated like women in sex. The bible says it is an abomination to lie with a man as with a woman.’

‘They’re still men, though, aren’t they,’ said Maria.

We started off walking again. Dave tagged along behind us.

‘Does the Madonna/whore dichotomy still exist for you, Dave? Is there one woman to bear the babies and others who will take it up anywhere anytime?’

‘That could be it. Your wife was the Madonna and the porn girls were just your glossy slut bitch ‘hoes? What do you think, Dave?’

Dave just kept on walking.

‘I know. Is it just easier to masturbate rather than invest time and energy in foreplay with a woman?’

‘Is that it, it’s just easy?’

‘Dave?’

‘Dave?’

‘What do you think, Dave?’

Dave struggled for words.

‘Come on, Dave. You’re here, aren’t you. You must have thought about this, surely.’

‘Maybe,’ said Dave. ‘Maybe that’s it. It’s just easy.’

‘Oh,’ said Maria.

‘Easy,’ said Susan.

‘Yeah,’ said Dave. ‘Easy.’

We all wandered into the herb garden and I casually rubbed my fingers over a lavender plant. I breathed in the sap from my fingers. I rubbed my fingers hard over my temples. Easy.

Dave was going on about the need for parents to wander nude in front of 39

their children, for the ordinariness of sex to be accepted and I looked at the other women. We all caught each other’s eye. We were all white and middle class and here we were in the bricked-in formality of the herb garden thinking about the same thing.

‘Dave, do you think any woman should have sex with you whenever you want?’ I asked.

‘As if,’ he said.

‘When you were young, did you ever get rejected by girls you wanted to ask out?’ I said.

‘Of course.’

‘What did you think about that?’

‘What do you think? Frustrated.’

‘Powerless?’

‘Yes, I suppose. Pissed off.’

‘But you’re in control of the girls you see in porn stuff, aren’t you?’

Susan interrupted. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that men control the economy and they control the church and they control the government…’

‘And the army and the police…’ I added.

‘Still?’ said Maria.

‘Of course,’ said Susan.

‘But men like Dave still feel stupid when they’re attracted to a beautiful woman they can’t have. So they get angry.’ I said.

‘We could probably help poor little Dave, don’t you think? Anger management therapy? Is that what you’d like, Dave?’

Susan spoke for all of us. The three of us moved closer to Dave, ordinary Dave, with his hair just starting to go grey and we slunk in like cats and started to slide ourselves close to him. He backed into the sundial sculpture. We got even closer and started rubbing ourselves on him.

‘We never thought this could happen to us, Dave, did you?’

I started undoing his tie. Just gently, rubbing it slowly backwards and forwards around his neck. He smelled faintly of some aftershave.

‘You’re so attractive, Dave, can’t you make us feel special?’

I removed his tie and slid it round his waist.

‘Oh, Dave, you’re so virile, so manly…’

Dave didn’t know what to do. Did he believe us? Did he want to?

‘What are you thinking about now, Dave?’

‘I bet you’re wondering if you left the iron on, aren’t you?’

‘Perhaps you’re thinking about what’s going on back in your office?’

‘Who’s looking after your children, Dave?’

40

And now Susan started to undo the buttons on the front of her shirtdress.

Slowly, hypnotically.

‘What do you think of the situation in the Middle East, Dave?’

Dave’s look of terror was almost enough to make me sympathetic but Maria had opened her handbag and found a crimson lipstick. She started drawing on his face and then undoing his shirt.

Dave shook his head, recovering from his nightmare. ‘This is ridiculous. I only wanted you…’

‘Your wife can look after herself, Dave,’ I said.

Maria ran her lipstick down his chest. ‘It’s you who needs looking after, Dave.’

Susan pushed her fingers into his mouth.

‘We just want you to be happy, Dave.’

She continued undoing her dress, slowly revealing her bra.

I don’t know if anyone else saw us in the herb garden, I know school groups regularly have excursions there but Dave thought sex was a normal thing that should happen here and now, didn’t he? He wanted to remove the mystery from sex, didn’t he? He had an opportunity of a Penthouse fantasy come to life right there in the Botanical Gardens and what did he do?

Dave burst into tears.

It might have been the sight of Susan’s mastectomy scar or it might have been grief at losing his wife. Still the three of us pressed him into the sundial.

Snot ran down into his mouth. He leaned back, away from us, looking up to his allotted sky, gasping like a turtle.

Maria leaned in very close to Dave.

‘Were you abused as a child, Dave? Who was it? Your uncle?’

I expect you read about it in the newspapers.

41

T

Roundworm

he sky was metal hard above the yards. She kept her hat down on her head. Her hair was getting wet with the heat of the hat. She could feel her face screwing up against the force of the sun. She wiped the sweat from her eyes with one of his hankies. It had holes around the edges.

Everyone used his hankies in this household. She felt grimy.

The air was filled with grit. The slow wind pushed the gum trees into sinuous dance movements. Eucalyptus oil had leached out of the leaves and stained the air and the dust, together with the grind of sheep dung.

All the sheep were up and they’d got the first twenty or so into the race.

There was a constant barrage of noise rising from the sheep — a babble cloud of maaing and baaing. She thought it a sort of orchestra of sandpaper rasping, lawn mower engines revving and some kind of stew bubbling on the stove. Yeah, probably lamb stew.

The sheep were packed in with their heads up. Foxy was on about twenty metres of rope — she was barking fit to bust at the mob like they were all out to get her. Her bark was high and hysterical but the sheep were sorted now so they’d got her tied up and left her to her panic run, up and down beside the fence, still barking of course. She was next to useless but the sheep tended to steer away from her and he liked her company.

He stepped into the race and straddled the first one. The beasts pressed away from him but there was still room in the race, their weight pressing against his legs. The pack of Ivomec started half full on his back. Four litres was plenty for this small mob. The black straps cut into his shoulders a bit, not too much to worry about.

The woman shut the gate behind him. She was thinking how she could ask him. She was thinking, what was to stop her asking him? She could ask him. Even now, as he grabs the next sheep and twists its head to receive the dose, she could say it.

It had started out a nice sunny morning when he didn’t have to get out driving on the road for once. Take their time to sort out the sheep, feel the pride of this land and all this hard work paying off. As they’d got the sheep into the yard the air had grown heavier and heavier. The sky had covered itself with clouds and turned metal. It was humid. Close, like old pyjamas. There was no sense of a cooling 43

breeze. The wind was just stirring the air like stew. Lamb stew. Dung stew.

She could tell him what she’s been thinking for weeks now, as she worked, breathing in the heavy air. If they had a marriage like you see on the TV soaps, you know, those people that communicate, she could talk to him and he’d smile and they’d laugh about it.

There’s no room to ask him anything on a dusty heavy day like today. Nor on a sunny day. Nor on a rainy day. There’s never anything on a rainy day. She could try. She could say something like; it’s not like we can’t afford it. You’re paying off more than we need on the mortgage. It’s only a small mortgage and you could afford to keep an eye on the family and give us something a bit more, now and then, don’t you reckon? How’s she even going to open her mouth to start to ask him?

One of the sheep had its head down. He heaved it up and slipped the hook over its tongue. He squeezed the trigger and the clear drench rushed down the tube into the sheep’s gullet. He pushed the beast behind him and kept going. It’s different for him, he just needs one good pair of jeans, a shirt and a good pair of shoes and that does him. He’s all right. It’s different for women. Look at her now, all done up in Stephen’s hand-me down jeans — she’s had to replace the zip and she was never one for sewing — and that’s one of Janine’s shirts. She never thought she’d have to wear hand-me downs from her own kids.

She’d get a job, but she can’t not be here for Michael when he comes home from school — he’s only six — it’s not fair on him when the other two have had her there for them. And who’s going to cook for him and wash for him when he’s out on the road driving trucks for a living if she’s out sorting out some job or something?

He pushed another sheep behind him and got the next one. He put the tube into its mouth and squeezed the trigger. The long flexible tube was attached to the backpack in such a way the drench was both gravity fed and sucked through by the syringe action of the plunger trigger. He concentrated on getting the tube as far down past each sheep’s tongue as he could.

When’s it going to be her turn? When does she get something? She looks after him, keeps the kids away when he’s been driving all night and keeps them all clean. She feeds them, gets them to school, if the car goes that is, then she’s got to feed all the animals, collect the eggs, do the washing, check the vegies, maybe do some digging, then it’s time to get the kids again. And what about them? What extras do they get, eh?

He grabbed another sheep’s head and shoved the hook down its neck.

Foxy was still dancing around on the end of her tether, barking barking barking.

He glinted up to the dog but didn’t say anything. Some men might shout at the dog.

44

Gedinbehind they’d yell. Not him. Just an iron glint in the eye.

He’d nearly finished. He stood up and straightened his back. He stood with his legs apart over the sheep like some sort of cowboy. He held the drenching gun loosely in his hand, like the sheriff. He looked over at her and frowned. What does he want? she thought. What’s he thinking now? He looked like he was worried. He looked like he was about to speak to her. Maybe he’d guessed she wanted to talk to him. He was much taller than her.

He looked down at the wool mass and then she could see that he was worried about one of the sheep — it’d got some sort of lump growing above its eye.

He wouldn’t want to get the vet in to it — unless there’s more than one thing for him it’s just not worth it.

She’s only thirty-two. She deserved a new dress. That’s all she wanted. Just a new dress. It’s not too much to ask. She’s put up with him for years. She’s fed up. It’s just not fair. If she left him, he’d have to give her more money. He’d probably have to give her half the farm. Christ, she felt a cold bolt of fear ice race up her spine. What the hell could he do if she ever tried to leave him?

What the hell would he do, this sheriff? This drenching gun toting sheriff man she married because he was fun. He was fun then. Oh Christ, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

He’d make sure he finished the sheep in the race first. He’d get out of the race. He’d walk up to her. He’d grab her and push her over into the sheep shit. She’d start screaming. He’d straddle her like a sheep and shove the tube into her mouth, over her tongue. He’d squeeze the trigger. She’d stop screaming.

He’d leave her on the ground, in Stephen’s old jeans and Janine’s old shirt, with a trickle of clear drench, maybe it’s got a yellow tinge now you look at it, coming out her mouth. She would spit it out, on all fours like a sheep. She’d cough and spit and hiss and cry.

At least she wouldn’t get roundworm. Where ever she went. But she’d never never get any of his farm. She knew what he’d say.

‘Bloody parasites.’

45

T

Prisons

he boy watches out of the window. He holds a knitted toy so that the toy can see out as well. The toy’s nose is starting to unravel.

‘Can I go out?’ The boy asks.

‘Do you need to go to the toilet?’

‘No.’

‘So, we’re not going anywhere then.’

‘This is like prison, isn’t it?’

‘Life’s like a prison.’

‘It’s not so.’

‘It is, what would you know? You go to school; it’s a prison. You go to work; it’s a prison. You get married. That’s a prison. You go to the refuge. That’s a prison.

You got to obey the rules everywhere in your life. You remember that.’

The boy sits back, holding the toy. Even though he’s so young he’s thinking about what his mother has said. His forehead furrows slightly. His eyes focus here and there as he tries to connect his thoughts.

‘Mum?’ ‘What?’

‘Can you ever get out of prison?’

‘Don’t know. Maybe.’

‘You can.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yup.’

‘Good luck, mate.’

The woman stares in front of herself. She is bent, looking like a weight is on top of her. Her eyebrows are permanently tilted upwards and her forehead is crumpled in a pleading kind of frown.

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah?’

‘I’m cold.’

‘Come here. Lie down, come on, here in my lap. If you stay still, the blanket won’t fall off. Hang on, I’ll tuck it in better for you. Okay?’

She has pale skin and dark shadows under her eyes. She has light brown hair that sticks up in all directions. She must have cut it herself with nail scissors.

47

Her blue eyes are faded as though tears have washed out the colour. In stark contrast, her nose is red.

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah?’

‘Can I have a cuddle?’

‘Yeah. Okay, now lie still. I’ll be here.’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure.’

The boy has long eyelashes that curve out over his smooth young skin. His hair is dark and curly and his eyes are brown. His cheeks are round and healthy and he has full red lips. He is wearing a blue quilted jacket and track pants. Under his jacket is a Star Wars sweatshirt. Fighter planes zoom across his chest.

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah.’

‘Is Granny still going to be our granny?’

‘Yup. Can’t cut blood ties. Worse luck.’

‘What about Danny? And Mick?’

‘They’re still them. We’re still us. We just don’t belong there any more.

Okay?’

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah?’

‘Where do we belong?’

‘We’re going to find out.’

The boy snuggles up to his mother like a little animal and they breathe together comfortably. There is a warmth that emanates from hope.

‘Mum?’ ‘What?’

‘Can we stay at Susie and Janine’s?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not.’

‘Janine’s a fucking bitch.’

‘Watch your language.’

‘You said it first.’

‘You’re a kid. You’re not supposed to even know those words. Go to sleep.’

‘I’m cold.’

‘Try and snuggle up. If you lie still, I can go to sleep too.’

‘Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. What are bedbugs?’

48

‘ ‘Don’t worry. They’re only in beds.’

The mother is much younger than she looks. She has many holes in her ear lobes but only a couple of earrings; one red dangly bead and one small gold ring.

She is wearing an old tartan coat with the collar turned up. She blows her nose into a crumpled up tissue and then shoves the tissue into her pocket.

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah.’

‘What about that shelter place?’

‘What about it?’

‘Did they have beds?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did we belong there?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Probably had bedbugs.’

‘Right. So. No-one else had a place for us tonight. This is better, don’t you reckon? Like camping, eh?’

‘Not in a tent.’

‘Any of your kinder friends been camping?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Have you got Mooshie? Give Mooshie a cuddle. I heard him say he was cold. You make Mooshie warm.’

‘Mooshie, Mooshie.’

‘When you wake up, it’ll be better. It really will. There’s people who can help. We’ll get a place of our own. You’ll see. It’s going to be great.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘What?’

‘Our new place.’

‘You tell me. What do you think it’ll be like?’

‘It’ll be yellow.’

‘Yellow? You reckon?’

‘Yeah. Yellow’s nice. And it’ll have a front door. Steps. Windows. But up high so no one can climb in. Maybe it’s in one of those big buildings, what are they called again?’

‘Like a block of flats?’

‘Yeah and l want a dirt pit. For digging in.’

‘Sure.’

‘And a climbing tree.’

‘Of course.’

49

‘It’ll be near a park?’

‘Yeah. Near a park with a playground with lots of kids. It’ll be near kinder and it’ll be clean and you’ll have a room of your own and I’ll have a room of my own and we’ll be able to do whatever we want and no one will shout at us or...’

‘Call you names.’

‘Right.’

‘Hit you.’

‘We don’t deserve that, do we?’

The little boy looks at his mother. He sees how serious she is. He puts his arms deliberately around her neck and kisses her on the cheek. She puts her arm around him and tries to smile. She covers him with the blanket. She is trying to be soft for him, like a bed, but inside she only feels stiff and cold and dread.

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah?’

‘Can we have TV?’

‘Anything, darl. We’ll have anything you want.’

‘I can’t wait for tomorrow.’

‘Sooner you go to sleep, sooner we’ll get started.’

Their breathing fills the air. The mother’s eyes are wet. She rubs her tissue over her face and sucks in air quiet as she can so he can’t tell she’s crying.

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah?’

‘That light’s keeping me awake.’

‘Shut your eyes.’

‘Can we go somewhere darker?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘See that building? That building is a hospital. There’s people coming and going all night long. We can see people coming. No-one will bother us here.’

‘I’m bothered.’

‘That’s because you’re still awake. Go to sleep.’

‘Mum?’ ‘What?’

‘Can we have McDonalds for breakfast?’

‘If you go to sleep.’

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah?’

‘Can we go home?’

50

‘We are home.’

‘We’re not so. This is in the car!’

‘Home is where the heart is. Do you know what that means?’

‘No.’

‘Well, where someone loves you, that’s your home.’

‘Oh.’

‘I love you.’

‘Love you too.’

‘That means we’re home. Good night, Mooshie.’

‘Mooshie, Mooshie.’

The boy, the woman and the toy cuddle even closer in the back seat of the car. They become still. They are dark lumps in a dark parked car. No one will notice them.

A woman clack clack clacks past in her high heel shoes. The clacking fades away into the distant dark.

A man walks a large dog past. The dog smells the life in the car but the man grips the dog’s lead tightly and walks firmly on before the dog even has time to react.

A runner jogs past. Lights flicker on the heels of his thudding shoes.

The car is parked next to another car and next to that is another car. There is a row of cars parked quietly in front of the brightly lit building. There are rows of silent cars parked everywhere, all along the streets, all along the parks and avenues of the city. Tonight. Tomorrow. The next day.

51