chapter seven
‘Do you know who died?’ asked Tess.
‘What’s that?’ Her mother had her eyes closed, her face lifted to the sun.
They were in the St Angela’s primary school playground. Tess’s mother was in a wheelchair they’d hired from the local chemist, with her ankle propped up on the footrest. She had thought that her mother would hate being in a wheelchair but she seemed to quite enjoy it, sitting with perfect straight-backed posture, as if she were at a dinner party.
They’d stopped for a moment in the morning sunshine while Liam explored the schoolyard. There were a few minutes to spare before they saw the school secretary to arrange Liam’s enrolment.
Tess’s mother had arranged everything this morning. There would be no problem enrolling Liam in St Angela’s, Lucy had told Tess proudly. In fact they could do it that very day if they liked! ‘There’s no rush,’ Tess had said. ‘We don’t need to do anything until after Easter.’ She hadn’t asked her mother to ring the school. Wasn’t she entitled to do nothing but feel flabbergasted for at least twenty-four hours? Her mother was making everything seem far too real, and irrevocable, as if this nightmarish practical joke was actually happening.
‘I can cancel the appointment if you like,’ Lucy had said with a martyred air.
‘You made an appointment?’ asked Tess. ‘Without asking me?’
‘Well, I just thought we might as well bite the bullet.’
‘Fine,’ sighed Tess. ‘Let’s just do it.’
Naturally, Lucy had insisted on coming along too. She would probably answer questions on Tess’s behalf, like she used to do when Tess was little and overcome with shyness when a stranger approached. Her mother had never really lost the habit of speaking on her behalf. It was a little embarrassing, but also quite nice and relaxing, like five-star service at a hotel. Why not sit back and let someone else do all the hard work for you?
‘Do you know who died?’ said Tess again.
‘Died?’
‘The funeral,’ said Tess.
The school playground adjoined the grounds of St Angela’s Church, and Tess could see a coffin being carried out to a hearse by four young pallbearers.
Someone’s life was over. Someone would never feel the sunshine on their face again. Tess tried to let that thought put her own pain into perspective, but it didn’t help. She wondered if Will and Felicity were having sex right at this minute, in her bed. It was midmorning. They didn’t have anywhere else to go. The thought of it felt like incest to her. Dirty and wrong. She shuddered. There was a bitter taste at the back of her throat, as if she’d had a night out drinking cheap wine. Her eyes felt gritty.
The weather wasn’t helping. It was far too lovely, mocking her pain. Sydney was bathed in a haze of gold. The Japanese maples at the front of the school were aflame with colour; the camellia blossoms were a rich, lush crimson. There were pots of bright red, yellow, apricot and cream begonias outside the classrooms. The long sandstone lines of St Angela’s Church were sharply defined against the cobalt blue of the sky. The world is so beautiful, said Sydney to Tess. What’s your problem?
She tried to smooth away the jagged edge of her voice. ‘You don’t know whose funeral it is?’
She didn’t really care whose funeral it was. She just wanted to hear words; words about anything, to make those images of Will’s hands on Felicity’s newly slender white body go away. Porcelain skin. Tess’s skin was darker, a legacy from her father’s side of the family. There was a Lebanese great-grandmother who had died before Tess was born.
Will had called her mobile that morning. She should have ignored it, but when she’d seen his name she’d felt an involuntary spark of hope and snatched up the phone. He was calling to tell her that this was all a mistake. Of course he was.
But as soon as he spoke in that awful new, heavy, solemn voice, without a hint of laughter, the hope vanished. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Is Liam all right?’ He was speaking as if there had been a recent tragedy in their lives that had nothing to do with him.
She was desperate to tell the real Will what this new Will, this humourless intruder, had done; how he’d crushed her heart. The real Will would want to fix things for her. The real Will would be straight on the phone, making a complaint about the way his wife had been treated, demanding recompense. The real Will would make her a cup of tea, run her a bath and, finally, make her see the funny side of what had just happened to her.
Except, this time, there was no funny side.
Her mother opened her eyes and turned her head to squint up at Tess. ‘I think it must be for that dreadful little nun.’
Tess raised her eyebrows to indicate mild shock, and her mother grinned, pleased with herself. She was so determined to make Tess happy she was like a club entertainer, frantically trying out edgy new material to keep the crowd in their seats. This morning, when she was struggling with the lid on the Vegemite jar, she’d actually used the word ‘motherf*cker’, carefully sounding out the syllables, so that the word didn’t sound any more profane than ‘leprechaun’.
Her mother had pulled out the most shocking swear word in her vocabulary because she was ablaze with anger on her behalf. Lucy saying ‘motherf*cker’ was like a meek and mild law-abiding citizen suddenly transformed into a gun-wielding vigilante. That’s why she’d got on the phone to the school so fast. Tess understood. She wanted to take action, to do something, anything, on Tess’s behalf.
‘Which particular dreadful little nun?’
‘Where’s Liam?’ Her mother twisted around awkwardly in her wheelchair.
‘Right there,’ said Tess. Liam was wandering about, checking out the playground equipment with the jaded eye of a six-year-old expert. He hunkered down on his knees at the bottom of a big yellow funnel-shaped slide and poked his head up inside as if he was doing a safety audit.
‘I lost sight of him for a moment.’
‘You don’t have to keep him in sight all the time,’ said Tess mildly. ‘That’s sort of my job.’
‘Of course it is.’
At breakfast this morning they’d both wanted to take care of each other. Tess had had the advantage because she had two working ankles and had therefore been able to get the kettle boiled and the tea made in the time it had taken her mother to reach for her crutches.
Tess watched Liam wander over to the corner of the playground under the fig tree where she and Felicity used to sit and eat their lunch with Eloise Bungonia. Eloise had introduced them to cannelloni. (A mistake for someone with Felicity’s metabolism.) Mrs Bungonia used to send enough for the three of them. It was before childhood obesity was an issue. Tess could still taste it. Divine.
She watched Liam become still, staring off into space as if he could see his mother eating cannelloni for the first time.
It was disconcerting, being here at her old school, as if time was a blanket that had been folded up, so that different times were overlapping, pressed against each other.
She would have to remind Felicity about Mrs Bungonia’s cannelloni.
No. No she wouldn’t.
Liam suddenly pivoted and karate-kicked the rubbish bin so that it clanged.
‘Liam,’ remonstrated Tess, but not really loud enough for him to hear.
‘Liam! Shhh!’ called her mother, louder, putting a finger to her lips and pointing towards the church. A small group of mourners had come out and were standing about talking to each other in that restrained, relieved way of funeral attendees.
Liam didn’t kick the bin again. He was an obedient child. Instead he picked up a stick and held it in two hands like a machine-gun, aiming it silently around the schoolyard, while the sound of sweet little voices singing ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ floated out of one of the kindergarten classrooms. Oh, God, thought Tess, where he had learned to do that? She had to be more vigilant about those computer games, although she couldn’t help admiring the authentic way he narrowed his eyes like a soldier. She would tell Will about it later. He’d laugh.
No, she wouldn’t tell Will about it later.
Her brain couldn’t seem to catch up with the news. It was like the way she’d kept rolling towards Will last night in her sleep, only to find empty space where he should have been, and then waking up with a jolt. She and Will slept well together. No twitching or snoring or battling for blankets. ‘I can’t sleep properly without you now,’ Will had complained after they’d only been dating a few months. ‘You’re like a favourite pillow. I have to pack you wherever I go.’
‘Which particular dreadful nun died?’ Tess asked her mother again, her eyes on the mourners. Now was not the time to be pulling out old memories like that.
‘They weren’t all dreadful,’ reflected her mother. ‘Most of them were lovely. What about Sister Margaret Ann who came to your tenth birthday party? She was beautiful. I think your father quite fancied her.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Well, probably not.’ Her mother shrugged as if not being attracted to beautiful nuns was yet another example of her ex-husband’s failings. ‘Anyway, this must be the funeral for Sister Ursula. I read in the parish newsletter last week that she’d died. I don’t think she ever taught you, did she? Apparently she was a great one for smacking with the handle of the feather duster. Nobody uses feather dusters much these days, do they? Is the world a dustier place for it, I wonder?’
‘I think I remember Sister Ursula,’ said Tess. ‘Red face and caterpillar eyebrows. We used to hide from her when she was on playground duty.’
‘I’m not sure if there are any nuns teaching at the school any more,’ said her mother. ‘They’re a dying breed.’
‘Literally,’ said Tess.
Her mother chortled. ‘Oh dear, I didn’t mean –’ She stopped, distracted by something at the church entrance. ‘Okay, darling, steel yourself. We’ve just been spotted by one of the parish ladies.’
‘What?’ Tess was immediately filled with a sense of dread, as if her mother had said they’d just been spotted by a passing sniper.
A petite blonde woman had detached herself from the mourners and was briskly walking towards the schoolyard.
‘Cecilia Fitzpatrick,’ said her mother. ‘The eldest Bell girl. Married John-Paul, the eldest Fitzpatrick boy. The best looking one if you want my opinion, although they’re all much of a muchness. Cecilia had a younger sister, I think, who might have been in your year. Let’s see now. Bridget Bell?’
Tess was about to say she’d never heard of them, but a memory of the Bell girls was gradually emerging in her mind like a reflection on water. She couldn’t visualise their faces, just their long blonde stringy plaits flying behind them as they ran through the school, doing whatever those kids did who were at the centre of things.
‘Cecilia sells Tupperware,’ said Tess’s mother. ‘Makes an absolute fortune from it.’
‘But she doesn’t know us, does she?’ Tess looked hopefully over her shoulder to see if there might be someone else waving back at Cecilia. There was no one. Was she on her way over to spruik Tupperware?
‘Cecilia knows everyone,’ said her mother.
‘Can’t we make a run for it?’
‘Too late now.’ Her mother spoke through the side of her mouth as she smiled her toothy social smile.
‘Lucy!’ said Cecilia as she arrived in front of them, faster than Tess had thought possible. It was like she’d teleported herself. She bent to kiss Tess’s mother. ‘What have you done to yourself?’
Don’t you call my mother Lucy, thought Tess, taking an instant, childish dislike. Mrs O’Leary, thank you! Now that she was right in front of them, Tess remembered Cecilia’s face perfectly well. She had a small, neat head – the plaits had been replaced with one of those crisp, artful bobs – an eager, open face, a noticeable overbite, and two ridiculously huge dimples. She was like a pretty little ferret.
(And yet she’d landed a Fitzpatrick boy.)
‘I saw you when I came out of the church – Sister Ursula’s funeral, did you hear she’d passed? Anyway, I caught sight of you, and I thought, That’s Lucy O’Leary in a wheelchair! What’s going on? So being the nosey parker that I am, I came over to say hello! Looks like a good-quality wheelchair, did you hire it from the chemist? But what happened, Lucy? Your ankle, is it?’
Oh Lord. Tess could feel her entire personality being drained from her body. Those talkative, energetic people always left her feeling that way.
‘It’s nothing too serious, thanks Cecilia,’ said Tess’s mother. ‘Just a broken ankle.’
‘Oh no, but that is serious, you poor thing! How are you coping? How are you getting about? I’ll bring over a lasagne for you. No, I will. I insist. You’re not vegetarian, are you? But that’s why you’re here, I guess, is it?’ Without warning, Cecilia turned to look at Tess, who took an involuntary step backwards. What did she mean? Something to do with vegetarianism. ‘To look after your mum? I’m Cecilia by the way, if you don’t remember me!’
‘Cecilia, this is my daughter –’ began Tess’s mother, only to be cut off by Cecilia.
‘Of course. Tess, isn’t it?’ Cecilia turned and to Tess’s surprise held out her hand to shake in a businesslike way. Tess had been thinking of Cecilia as someone from her mother’s era, an old-fashioned Catholic lady who used Catholic words like ‘passed’ and would therefore stand back smiling sweetly while the men did the manly business of shaking hands. Her hand was small and dry, her grip strong.
‘And this must be your son?’ Cecilia smiled brightly in Liam’s direction. ‘Liam?’
Jesus. She even knew Liam’s name. How was that possible? Tess didn’t even know if Cecilia had children. She’d forgotten her very existence until thirty seconds ago.
Liam looked over, aimed his stick straight at Cecilia and pulled the imaginary trigger.
‘Liam!’ said Tess, at the same time as Cecilia groaned, clutched her chest and buckled at the knees. She did it so well, for an awful moment Tess worried that she really was collapsing.
Liam held the stick up to his mouth, blew on it and grinned, delighted.
‘How long do you think you’ll be in Sydney for?’ Cecilia locked eyes with Tess. She was one of those people who held eye contact for too long. The polar opposite of Tess. ‘Just until you’ve got Lucy back on her feet? You run a business in Melbourne, don’t you? I guess you can’t be away for too long! And Liam must be in school?’
Tess found herself unable to speak.
‘Tess is actually enrolling Liam in St Angela’s for a . . . short time,’ spoke up Lucy.
‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ said Cecilia. Her eyes were still fixed on Tess. Good Lord, did the woman ever blink? ‘So let’s see now, how old is Liam?’
‘Six,’ said Tess. She dropped her eyes, unable to bear it any longer.
‘Well then, he’ll be in Polly’s class. We had a little girl leave earlier in the year, so you’ll be in with us. 1J. Mrs Jeffers. Mary Jeffers. She’s wonderful by the way. Very social too, which is nice!’
‘Great,’ said Tess weakly. Fabulous.
‘Liam! Now you’ve shot me, come and say hello! I hear you’re coming to St Angela’s!’ Cecilia beckoned to Liam and he wandered over, dragging his stick behind him.
Cecilia bent at the knees so she was at Liam’s eye level. ‘I have a little girl who will be in your class. Her name is Polly. She’s having her seventh birthday party the weekend after Easter. Would you like to come?’ Liam’s face instantly got the blank look that always made Tess worry people would think he had some kind of disability.
‘It’s going to be a pirate party.’ Cecilia straightened and turned to Tess. ‘I hope you can come. It will be a good way for you to meet all the mums. We’ll have a private little oasis for the grown-ups. Guzzle champagne while the little pirates rampage about.’
Tess felt her own face fold up. Liam had probably inherited his catatonic look from her. She could not meet another brand-new group of mothers. She’d found socialising with the school mums difficult enough when her life was in perfect order. The chat, chat, chat, the swirls of laughter, the warmth, the friendliness (most mums were so very nice) and the gentle hint of bitchiness than ran beneath it all. She’d done it in Melbourne. She’d made a few friends on the outskirts of the inner social circle, but she couldn’t do it again. Not now. She didn’t have the strength. It was like someone had cheerfully suggested she run a marathon when she’d just dragged herself out of bed after suffering from the flu.
‘Great,’ she said. She would make up an excuse later.
‘I’ll make Liam a pirate costume,’ said Tess’s mother. ‘An eye patch, a red and white striped top, ooh and a sword! You’d love a sword, wouldn’t you, Liam?’
She looked around for Liam, but he’d run off and was using his gun like a drill against the back fence.
‘Of course, we’d love to have you at the party too, Lucy,’ said Cecilia. She was highly irritating, but her social skills were impeccable. For Tess, it was like watching someone play the violin beautifully. You couldn’t conceive how they did it.
‘Oh, well, thank you, Cecilia!’ Tess’s mother was delighted. She loved parties. Especially the food. ‘Let’s see now, a red and white striped top for a pirate costume. Has he already got one, Tess?’
If Cecilia was a violinist, Tess’s mother was a folksy, well-meaning guitarist trying her best to play the same tune.
‘I mustn’t keep you. I guess you’re off to see Rachel now in the office?’ asked Cecilia.
‘We’ve got an appointment with the school secretary,’ said Tess. She had no idea of the woman’s name.
‘Yes, Rachel Crowley,’ said Cecilia. ‘So efficient. Runs the place like a Swiss watch. She actually shares the job with my mother-in-law, although between you and me and the gatepost, I think Rachel does all the work. Virginia just chats on her days. Not that I can talk. Well, actually, that’s my point, I can talk.’ She laughed merrily at herself.
‘How is Rachel these days?’ asked Tess’s mother significantly.
Cecilia’s ferrety face got all sombre. ‘I don’t know her that well, but I do know she has a beautiful little grandson. Jacob. He just turned two.’
‘Ah,’ breathed Lucy, as if that solved everything. ‘That’s good to hear. Jacob.’
‘Well, it was so nice to meet you, Tess,’ said Cecilia, fixing her again with her unblinking stare. ‘I must skedaddle. I’ve got to get to my Zumba class, I go to the gym down the road, it’s great, you should try it sometime, just hilarious, and then I’m going straight to this party-supply place in Strathfield, it’s a bit of a drive but it’s worth it because the prices are amazing, seriously, you can get a helium balloon kit for under fifty dollars, and that gives you over a hundred balloons, and I’m doing so many parties over the next few months – Polly’s pirate party, and the Year 1 parents party – which of course you’ll be invited to as well! – and then I’m dropping off a few Tupperware orders, I do Tupperware by the way, Tess, if you need anything, anyway, all that before school pick-up! You know how it is.’
Tess blinked. It was like being buried in an avalanche of detail. The myriad of tiny logistical manoeuvres that made up someone else’s life. It wasn’t that it was dull. Although it was a little dull. It was mainly the sheer quantity of words that flowed so effortlessly from Cecilia’s mouth.
Oh God, she’s stopped talking. Tess registered with a start that it was her turn to speak.
‘Busy,’ she said finally. ‘You sure are busy.’ She forced her lips into something she hoped resembled a smile.
‘See you at the pirate party!’ Cecilia called out to Liam, who turned from drilling his tree to look at her with that funny, inscrutable, masculine expression he sometimes got, an expression that painfully reminded Tess of Will.
Cecilia lifted her hand like a claw. ‘Aha, me hearties!’
Liam grinned, as if he couldn’t help himself, and Tess knew she’d be taking him to the pirate party whatever it cost her.
‘Oh my,’ said Tess’s mother when Cecilia was out of earshot. ‘Her mother is exactly the same. Very nice, but exhausting. I always feel like I need a cup of tea and a lie-down after talking with her.’
‘What’s the story with this Rachel Crowley?’ asked Tess as they headed towards the school office, she and Liam pushing one handle each of the wheelchair.
Her mother grimaced. ‘Do you remember the name Janie Crowley?’
‘Not the girl they found with the rosary beads –’
‘That’s the one. She was Rachel’s daughter.’
Rachel could tell that Lucy O’Leary and her daughter were both thinking about Janie while they enrolled Tess’s little boy in St Angela’s. They were both being just a little chattier than was obviously natural for them. Tess couldn’t quite meet Rachel’s eyes, while Lucy was doing that tender-eyed, tilted head thing that so many women of a certain age did when they talked to Rachel, as if they were visiting her in a nursing home.
When Lucy asked if the photo on Rachel’s desk was her grandson, both she and Tess went quite over the top with compliments, not that it wasn’t a beautiful photo of Jacob of course, but you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that what they really meant was: We know your daughter was murdered all those years ago, but does this little boy make up for it? Please let him make up for it so we can stop feeling so strange and uncomfortable!
‘I look after him two days a week,’ Rachel told them, her eyes on the computer screen while she printed off some paperwork for Tess. ‘But not for much longer. I found out last night that his parents are taking him off to New York for two years.’ Her voice cracked without her permission and she cleared her throat irritably.
She waited for the reaction she’d been getting from everyone that morning: ‘How exciting for them!’ ‘What an opportunity!’ ‘Will you go for a visit?’
‘Well that just takes the cake!’ exploded Lucy and she banged her elbows on the arms of her wheelchair, like a cranky toddler. Her daughter, who had been busy filling in a form, looked up and frowned. Tess was one of those plain-looking women with a short boyish haircut and strong austere features who sometimes stun you with a flash of raw beauty. Her little boy, who looked a lot like Tess, except for his strange gold-coloured eyes, also turned to stare at his grandmother.
Lucy rubbed her elbows. ‘Of course I’m sure it’s exciting for your son and daughter-in-law. It’s just that after all you’ve been through, losing Janie like – the way you did, and then your husband, I’m so sorry, I can’t actually remember his name, but I know you lost him too – well, this just doesn’t seem fair.’
By the time she finished talking her cheeks were crimson. Rachel could tell she was horrified at herself. People were always worrying that they’d inadvertently reminded her of her daughter’s death, as if it were something that slipped her mind.
‘I’m so sorry, Rachel, I shouldn’t have –’ Poor Lucy looked distraught.
Rachel waved a hand to swat away her apologies. ‘Don’t be sorry. Thank you. It does take the cake, actually. I’ll miss him terribly.’
‘Well, now, who have we here?’
Rachel’s boss, Trudy Applebee, the school principal, floated into the room, one of her trademark crocheted shawls slipping off her bony shoulders, strands of grey frizzy hair floating around her face, a smudge of red paint on her left cheekbone. She’d probably been on the floor painting with the kindergarten children. True to form, Trudy looked straight past Lucy and Tess O’Leary to the little boy, Liam. She had no interest in grown-ups, and this would one day be her downfall. Rachel had seen three school principals come and go since she’d been secretary, and in her experience it wasn’t possible to run a school while ignoring the grown-ups. It was a political role.
Also, Trudy didn’t seem to be quite Catholic enough for the job. Not that she went around breaking the commandments, but she had an unpious, sparkly-eyed expression on her face during mass. Before she died, Sister Ursula (whose funeral Rachel had just boycotted, because she’d never forgiven her for hitting Janie with a feather duster) had probably written to the Vatican to complain about her.
‘This is the boy I mentioned earlier,’ said Rachel. ‘Liam Curtis. He’s enrolling in Year 1.’
‘Of course, of course. Welcome to St Angela’s, Liam! I was just thinking as I walked up the stairs that today I was meeting someone whose name begins with the letter L, which happens to be one of my favourite letters. Tell me, Liam, out of these three things, which do you like best?’ She folded back her fingers with each item. ‘Dinosaurs? Aliens? Superheroes?’
Liam considered the question gravely.
‘He quite likes dino’’ began Lucy O’Leary. Tess put her hand on her mother’s arm.
‘Aliens,’ said Liam finally.
‘Aliens!’ Trudy nodded. ‘Well, I will be keeping that in mind, Liam Curtis, and this is your mum, and your grandmother, I’m guessing?’
‘Yes, indeed, I’m –’ began Lucy O’Leary.
‘Lovely to meet you both,’ Trudy smiled vaguely in their general direction. She turned back to Liam. ‘When are you starting with us, Liam? Tomorrow?’
‘No!’ Tess looked alarmed. ‘Not until after Easter.’
‘Oh, live a little, I say! Jump right in while the iron is hot!’ said Trudy. ‘Do you like Easter eggs, Liam?’
‘Yes,’ said Liam adamantly.
‘Because we’re planning a gigantic Easter egg hunt tomorrow.’
‘I’m supergood at Easter egg hunts,’ said Liam.
‘Are you? Excellent! Well then, I’d better make it a superchallenging hunt.’ Trudy glanced at Rachel. ‘Everything under control here, Rachel, with all the –’
She gestured sorrowfully at the paperwork, of which she knew nothing.
‘All under control,’ said Rachel. She was doing her best to help keep Trudy in a job because she didn’t see why the children of St Angela’s shouldn’t have a school principal from fairyland.
‘Lovely, lovely! I’ll leave you to it!’ said Trudy, and she wandered off into her office, pulling the door shut behind her, presumably so she could scatter fairy dust over her keyboard, as she certainly didn’t do too much else on her computer.
‘My goodness, she’s a different kettle of fish from Sister Veronica-Mary!’ said Lucy quietly.
Rachel snorted in appreciation. She remembered Sister Veronica-Mary, who had been principal from 1965 through to 1980, very well.
There was a knock, and Rachel looked up to see the tall imposing shadow of a man through the frosted glass panel of her office, before his head appeared enquiringly around the door.
Him. She flinched, as if at the sight of a furry black spider, not a perfectly plain-looking man. (Actually, Rachel had heard other women call him ‘gorgeous’ which she found preposterous.)
‘Excuse me, ah, Mrs Crowley.’
He could never get far enough away from his schoolboy self to call her Rachel like the rest of the staff. Their eyes met and as usual his slid away first to rest somewhere above her head.
Lies in his eyes, thought Rachel, as she did virtually every time she saw him, as if it were an incantation or prayer. Lies in his eyes.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Connor Whitby. ‘I just wondered if I could pick up those tennis camp forms.’
‘There’s something that Whitby boy isn’t telling us,’ Sergeant Rodney Bellach had said all those years ago when he still had a head full of startlingly curly black hair. ‘That kid has got lies in his eyes.’
Rodney Bellach was retired now. As bald as a bandicoot. He called every year on Janie’s birthday and he liked to tell Rachel about his latest ailments. Someone else who got old while Janie stayed seventeen.
Rachel handed over the tennis camp forms and Connor’s eyes fell on Tess.
‘Tess O’Leary!’ His face was transformed so that he looked for a moment like the boy in Janie’s photo album.
Tess looked up, her face wary. She didn’t seem to recognise Connor at all.
‘Connor!’ He tapped his broad chest. ‘Connor Whitby!’
‘Oh, Connor, of course. It’s so nice to . . .’ Tess half-rose and then found herself trapped by her mother’s wheelchair.
‘Don’t get up, don’t get up,’ said Connor. He went to kiss Tess on the cheek just as she was starting to sit down again, so that his lips met her earlobe.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Tess. She didn’t seem especially pleased to see Connor.
‘I work here,’ he said.
‘As an accountant?’
‘No, no, I had a career change a few years back. I’m the PE teacher.’
‘You are?’ she said. ‘Well, that’s . . .’ Her voice drifted, and she finally said, ‘. . . nice.’
Connor cleared his throat. ‘Well, anyway, it’s very good to see you.’ He glanced at Liam, went to speak and then changed his mind and held up the sheaf of tennis forms. ‘Thanks for this, Mrs Crowley.’
‘My pleasure, Connor,’ said Rachel coldly.
Lucy turned to her daughter as soon as Connor left. ‘Who was that?’
‘Just someone I used to know. Years ago.’
‘I don’t think I remember him. Was he a boyfriend?’
‘Mum,’ Tess gestured at Rachel and the paperwork in front of her.
‘Sorry!’ Lucy smiled guiltily, while Liam looked up at the ceiling, stretched out his legs and yawned.
Rachel saw that the grandmother, mother and grandson all had identical full upper lips. It was like a trick. Those bee-stung lips made them more beautiful than they actually were.
She was suddenly inexplicably furious with all three of them.
‘Well, if you could just sign the “allergies and medications” sections here,’ she said to Tess, jabbing at the form with her fingertip. ‘No, not there. Here. Then we’ll be done and dusted.’
Tess had her keys in the ignition to drive them home from the school when her mobile rang. She lifted it from the console to check who was calling.
When she saw the name on the screen, she held up the phone for her mother to see.
Her mother squinted at the phone and sat back with a shrug. ‘Well I had to tell him. I promised him I’d always keep him up to date with what was going on in your life.’
‘You promised him that when I was ten!’ said Tess. She held the phone up, trying to decide whether to answer it or let it go to voicemail.
‘Is it Dad?’ asked Liam from the back seat.
‘It’s my Dad,’ said Tess. She’d have to talk to him sometime. It might as well be now. She took a breath and pressed the answer button. ‘Hi Dad.’
There was a pause. There was always a pause.
‘Hello love,’ said her father.
‘How are you?’ asked Tess in the hearty tone of voice she reserved for her father. When had they last spoken? It must have been Christmas Day.
‘I’m great,’ said her father dolefully.
Another pause.
‘I’m actually in the car with –’ began Tess, at the same time as her father said, ‘Your mother told me –’
They both stopped. It was always excruciating. No matter how hard she tried she could never seem to synchronise her conversations with her father. Even when they were face to face they never achieved a natural rhythm. Would their relationship have been less awkward if he and her mother had stayed together? She’d always wondered.
Her father cleared his throat. ‘Your mother mentioned you were having a spot of . . . trouble.’
Pause.
‘Thanks Dad,’ said Tess at the same time as her father said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Tess could see her mother rolling her eyes and she turned away slightly towards the car window, as if to protect her poor hopeless father from her mother’s scorn.
‘If there’s anything I can do,’ said her father. ‘Just . . . you know, call.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Tess.
Pause.
‘Well, I should go,’ said Tess at the same time as her father said, ‘I liked the fellow.’
‘Tell him I emailed him a link for that wine-appreciation course I was telling him about,’ said her mother.
‘Shhh,’ Tess waved her hand irritably at Lucy. ‘What’s that, Dad?’
‘Will,’ said her father. ‘I thought he was a good bloke. That’s no bloody help to you, though, is it, love?’
‘He’ll never do it, of course,’ murmured her mother, examining her cuticles. ‘Don’t know why I bother. The man doesn’t want to be happy.’
‘Thanks for calling, Dad,’ said Tess, at the same time as her father said, ‘How’s the little man doing?’
‘Liam is great,’ said Tess. ‘He’s right here. Do you want –’
‘I’ll let you go, love. You take care now.’
He was gone. He always finished the call in a sudden, frantic rush, as if the phone was bugged by the police and he had to get off before they tracked down his location. His location was a small, flat, treeless town on the opposite side of the country in Western Australia, where he had mysteriously chosen to live five years ago.
‘Had a whole heap of helpful advice then, did he?’ said Lucy.
‘He did his best, Mum,’ said Tess.
‘Oh, I’m sure he did,’ said her mother with satisfaction.