Book of Lost Threads

3
Amy, Linsey and Moss

FOR AMY AND LINSEY, THE disappointment that had followed Michael’s visit each month only compounded their delight when a pregnancy was finally confirmed. The two women looked at each other in awe at what they had achieved.
‘We’ve done it,’ Linsey breathed.
‘With a little help from Michael,’ Amy giggled.
The two women had first met when Amy went to work as a temp at the Melbourne University Faculty of Commerce, where Linsey was a lecturer in economics. On Amy’s first day, Linsey burst into the secretary’s office, her brusque instructions 24 arrested mid-speech by the sight of the unfamiliar young woman behind the desk.
‘When I saw you,’ an enchanted Linsey later told Amy, ‘I thought of summer—of peaches and honey and lazy blue skies.’
What she actually said at the time was: ‘I need these by—um . . .’
Amy looked up from her typing. ‘I’m just a temp,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to show me what you want.’ And she moved over with a gesture of invitation to come to her side of the desk, where Linsey bent over the manuscript with fierce concentration, trying to ignore the drifting perfume and faint female odour that arose from the seated woman.
For the two weeks that Amy spent at the university, Linsey was distracted. She of fierce efficiency became quiet and absentminded. She worked like a fury on her lecture notes just so she could take them to Amy to format and copy. She replaced her uniform T-shirt with business shirts of crisp white cotton or cream silk. She washed her cap of shining brown hair every night and even tried fluffing it out a bit around her face. She thought constantly of Amy—dreamily imagined intimate dinners, films, concerts—but spoke to her only about work.
On Amy’s last day, Linsey was miserable. Confident and outspoken in a professional milieu, she was painfully shy socially.
So it was Amy who made the first move. ‘Are you free for a drink after work?’ she asked when Linsey came to collect her photocopying. ‘Yes? I’ll see you at Gerry’s around five then.’
At work, Linsey had never made any secret of her sexuality, but she wasn’t sure about Amy’s. They hadn’t developed a friendship or even an acquaintance in the time they had worked together, so to be asked out for a drink seemed like a good sign. But maybe Amy just wanted a reference, or to sound Linsey out about any permanent positions that might be coming up? These questions ran through poor Linsey’s head as she shredded her paper napkin in the twilight of Gerry’s wine bar.
‘I’m sorry,’ Amy said breathlessly as she sat down in the chair opposite. ‘I was held up while they filled in the agency forms.’
Linsey smiled, hoping her relief wasn’t too evident.
‘Not a problem. What will you have to drink?’
And so this ordinary, even banal conversation set in train the relationship that, with the help of Michael Finbar Clancy, would produce Miranda Ophelia Sinclair.
But whole oceans would pass under the bridge before these two—now known as Finn and Moss—would finally meet.
Amy, Linsey learned that night, came from a Methodist working-class family. She had three brothers, one an insurance assessor and the other two public servants. Her father was a train driver and her mother worked part-time at the local doctor’s surgery.
‘They’re good people,’ Amy told Linsey over a second glass of wine, ‘but not the sort to approve of . . . unconventional lifestyles. That’s why I haven’t told them.’
‘My parents try to be open-minded, but I know they’re really disappointed in me.’ A shadow of pain passed over Linsey’s face. ‘I have a brother and a sister. They try to understand. They’re quite supportive, really, but you can’t help knowing that they have to make an effort.’
Both women were silent, each lost for a moment in her own private sorrow.
Later, over dinner, Amy told Linsey about her music. ‘I go to classes,’ she confided. ‘It gives me somewhere to practise. Our house is pretty small and there’s nowhere to go to escape the sound of the TV. I know it’s ridiculous still living at home at my age—I’ve moved out a couple of times, but it hasn’t worked out. I moved back a few months ago.’ She shrugged. ‘Just haven’t got around to finding another place yet.’
‘What made you decide on the harp?’ Linsey was enjoying a vision of Amy, in a deep-blue silk gown, playing her harp, looking for all the world like one of God’s own angels. She was already planning to offer her spare room as a practice studio.
‘Well, there was this old lady next door. I used to do bits and pieces for her, you know, shopping and such. Mum wouldn’t let me take any money from her, so she offered to teach me the harp instead. When she moved into a nursing home, she gave the harp to me. Mrs Hirschfield, her name was. A nice old lady. She always wore a black velvet band around her hair, like a little girl.’
Linsey lived in a fine old house left to her by her Aunt Shirley, the widow of ‘Flash Jack’ Mitchell, the extruded-plastic-pipe magnate. Of course Aunt Shirley never called him ‘Flash Jack’. She always referred to him as ‘dear-John-God-rest-his-soul’. And well she might. He left her over two million dollars and no children to share it with. After a short period of mourning, Aunt Shirley blonded her greying hair and dedicated herself to spending the lot. I’m sure it’s what dear-John-God-rest-his-soul would have wanted, she explained prettily as she watched the roulette wheel spin. Fortunately for Linsey, however, Aunt Shirley died of food poisoning after eating some dodgy oysters in Marrakech, leaving her niece with a very nice house, a red MGB and a comfortable number of blue-chip shares.
Two weeks after their dinner, it was to this house that Linsey welcomed Amy as they extracted the harp from Amy’s battered Corolla. If she winced a little at the drink bottles, fast-food cartons, magazines, tissues and indeterminate articles of clothing strewn carelessly around the small car, Linsey was hardly aware of it, so pleased was she to play benefactor.
‘You can use this,’ she said, opening the door to a small well-lit room, sparsely furnished with two ladder-backed chairs, a small table and a music stand. She was particularly pleased with the music stand, which she’d found at a local antiques market. She smiled at Amy and her wide-armed gesture seemed to take in the whole house. ‘I hope this is suitable. You’re welcome to come at any time.’
Amy was delighted, of course, and took Linsey at her word. Linsey often came into the small music room and stood quietly by the door as Amy played. She looked so graceful and serious as she stroked and plucked the strings, and Linsey gratefully drank in the serenity that seemed to enfold both music and musician. Often, though, she would find Amy just sitting, hands folded in her lap, looking dreamily out onto the garden.
‘Play some more,’ Linsey would say, and receive a smile of surpassing sweetness as Amy obediently returned to her music.
It wasn’t long before Amy began to stay the night, and gradually evidence of her claim on the house appeared in scattered items of clothing, sheet music, makeup, and long blonde hairs in the bathroom. Grumbling a little, Linsey would restore the house to its normal order, but each time Amy returned, chaos followed. It was only in comparison to Linsey’s pathological neatness that such a strong word as ‘chaos’ could be used to describe Amy’s cheerful mess. But one day, when a stressed Linsey flung this word (and a good many others) at the untidy Amy, it provided not only the cause of their first quarrel but, oddly enough, the catalyst for Amy to move in permanently. Following her impatient outburst, Linsey watched in horror as her lover’s blue eyes filled with tears and her sensuous mouth trembled.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Amy with an air of dignified grievance. ‘I’ll just get my harp and music. I won’t bother you again.’
Appalled at the thought of losing her, Linsey petted and cajoled, wept and apologised, until Amy allowed her to kiss away the tears and lead her to the bedroom.
Lying in the quiet embrace that follows passion, Linsey turned and looked at her lover. ‘Don’t go tomorrow,’ she said simply. ‘Stay with me. I love you.’
Amy kissed the tense mouth and delicately traced its perimeter with her finger. ‘I love you too, Linny. I have to go tomorrow, but if you really want me, I’ll be back. As soon as I can, I promise. I just need to organise my things.’
It took nearly two weeks, but Linsey finally found herself being introduced to the Sinclair family as Amy’s housemate.
‘Linsey’s a bit scared, living alone in such a big house,’ Amy explained. ‘The rent’s very cheap and I can practise my harp as often as I want.’ She hugged her doubtful father. Her mother, usually undemonstrative, squeezed Amy’s shoulder as she helped her load the last box into the car.
‘You can always come home if it doesn’t work out,’ she said. ‘Although she seems like a nice young woman. Here, I made you some almond biscuits. You always say they’re your favourite.’
Amy hugged her mother as she took the biscuit tin. She noticed it was the one with Edinburgh Castle on the lid. She and her brothers used to make up stories about that castle. Her mother had already given her some towels and sheets (single-bed), but the tin and the biscuits came laden with obligation and love. She ate all the biscuits herself; it would have felt like a betrayal to share them with Linsey.
Before meeting Linsey, Amy had drifted in and out of relationships without ever becoming emotionally engaged. Her tendency to prattle masked an essential inertness that allowed her life to ebb and flow at the will of others. Good-natured but mentally and emotionally lazy, she relied on beauty and charm to smooth the creases from her life, and when thwarted, her natural response was a passive aggression that drove its target to tears of frustration. Curiously, at this stage she often simply gave in, as though even witnessing such passion was more than she could be bothered with.
In Linsey, Amy found stability and a generous wholeheartedness lacking in her other relationships. She liked being admired not just for her beauty but for her talent. It wasn’t inertia that made her stay. In a world where sexual norms would brook no divergence, Amy was uncertain of who she was. And it was with Linsey she felt valued.
They settled into a life of pleasant domesticity until one deceptively bland evening when Linsey came home from visiting her sister, Felicity, who had recently given birth to her second child.
‘You should have seen her, Amy. She has this little round face with a funny pointy chin. I swear she smiled at me. Felicity says it’s just wind, but she was looking straight at me. And Toby calls her Pippa. He can’t say Phillipa.’ Linsey sat down and continued: ‘I really didn’t want to hand her back. Look, I stopped at Baby World on the way home and bought her this.’ She scrabbled in her bag and produced a tiny navy-blue voile dress.
At the sight of the dress, Amy became interested. ‘Gorgeous, Linny. I might get her a little hat to match. What do you think?’ And they spent a pleasant half-hour discussing baby clothes and their favourite childhood books and toys.
In the days that followed, Linsey’s amorphous need for love took shape. A tiny phantom hand gripped her finger and drew her on to seek information, which she diligently garnered before making her approach. Was she insane to risk this relationship to further a dream that she wasn’t sure Amy would share? She wasn’t blind to her partner’s faults and knew that a child would encroach upon Amy’s fundamental lassitude. On the other hand, she hoped—no, knew—that a child would bring them closer together, would provide the key to the store of love Amy surely possessed.
One evening, Amy sat languidly on the verandah, sipping a glass of wine. She was in one of her pensive moods, staring out at the summer rain that plashed softly on the warm earth and spangled the velvety petals of Aunt Shirley’s roses. Linsey poured herself a glass of wine and hesitated before sitting down beside her.
‘I love summer storms,’ Amy said. ‘It’s worth putting up with the heat just to smell the ozone.’ She lifted her head and took in a theatrical breath, but Linsey was lost in her own thoughts. For once, Amy noticed. ‘You seem a bit preoccupied, Linny. Is something the matter?’
‘No—well, yes. In a way.’ Now the time had come, Linsey was not sure how to begin. ‘I’ve been, um, thinking.’ And she plunged once more into silence, twisting her glass and picking imaginary specks from her sleeve.
‘Come on, Linny. What’s up?’ Amy affected a childlike whine, tugging at Linsey’s sleeve. ‘Tell me. Tell me.’
Linsey put down her glass and grasped the other woman’s shoulders, turning her so that they were face to face. ‘Look at me, Amy. I need you to be serious. Serious—and completely honest.’
‘Of course. You’re not sick, are you, Linny?’ She sounded frightened.
Linsey took a moment to savour the thought that Amy cared. ‘No. I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I want to ask you something. Amy, what would you say to the idea of having a baby?’
‘Who? Who’s having a baby?’
‘Us, Amy. What would you say to the idea of us having a baby?’
‘Us? How?’
‘We could try to adopt,’ Linsey explained, ‘but they won’t accept applications from same-sex couples.’
Amy giggled as she took another sip of wine. ‘So it looks like we’ll have to steal one. I think that’s against the law too.’
Linsey had prepared for this moment. ‘There’s another way.’ Amy was shocked. ‘No, Amy. Not that. We can arrange for artificial insemination. It does work. That’s how Margaret and Kris conceived.’ She looked at the other woman, trying to gauge her reaction. ‘What do you say?’
Amy was dumbfounded. Surprised to discover that she wasn’t averse to the idea; she just needed time for the thought to grow.
‘This is a bit sudden, isn’t it, Linny?’ She held up her glass. ‘Another drink please, darling: I need to think.’
The women sat in silence, each following her own train of thought. It was several days before Linsey got her answer. All that time, Amy was preoccupied, spending much of her spare time on the verandah or in the music room, looking out onto the garden. Meanwhile, Linsey prowled and fretted, tidied and swept, dusted and polished, weeded and pruned, until she was quite exhausted. She knew better than to harass Amy, who, as always, moved at her own unhurried pace.
Amy had always liked children. Babies smiled and cooed at her and her nephews and nieces jostled for her attention. She absently stroked her stomach. Imagined it stretched, rounded. Imagined her breasts dripping milk. She sat on the verandah and tasted the late summer, the teeming life of the sunlit garden: lush green lawns, full-blown roses, fragrant lavender and slow, fat, murmurous honey bees. Slightly intoxicated by sensory excess, she felt her body soften in welcome to her imaginary child. Cupping her breasts in her hands, she resolved to speak to Linsey that night.
A moment later she stiffened in dismay, jolted from her reverie by a sudden thought. What if Linsey wanted to carry the child? She had as much right. Would she, Amy, feel the same way if she were not to be the birth mother? She wasn’t sure that she would. If they were to have a child, it had to be a child of her body, the body she knew was ripe and waiting.
That night, over dinner, she asked the question. ‘Linny, if we have this child, who’d be the birth mother?’ A small knot of panic formed in Amy’s throat, and her words had to push their way out through constricted airways.
On this matter, Linsey had never had any doubt. ‘You, of course, darling. We want our baby to be as beautiful and talented as we can make her.’ She looked at the other woman. ‘Is that what you want? I mean, if you decide you don’t . . .’
Amy felt the tension drain from her body. ‘A baby would be wonderful,’ she replied. ‘Really, I want to carry the baby, Linny. The answer is yes . . .’
Linsey left her place and knelt beside Amy’s chair, hugging her tearfully. ‘Just leave the details to me. Darling, darling Amy. I’m so happy.’ And she even giggled a little. ‘Listen, I have a plan.’
Amy settled back to listen. Linsey was a very good planner.
‘We’ll advertise in Vox Discipuli,’ Linsey told her. ‘Offer money. That should find the target market.’
Target market. Odd language, Amy thought briefly.
Linsey would always look back on the period of Amy’s pregnancy as the happiest of their lives together. After a passing nod to morning sickness, Amy bloomed. Her skin glowed, her dimple deepened and her hair shone. As her belly rounded, she lay on the sun-lounge, sleepy-eyed and full of promise, with a kind of tawny, feline grace that reminded Linsey of the great cats of Africa.
‘But without the claws.’ She laughed as she stroked the burgeoning belly. And Amy laughed with her. At the time, neither of them understood the ferocity at the heart of a mother’s love.
Linsey fussed, of course. And Amy cooperated amiably with the exercise and diet regime that Linsey devised from the many books she’d acquired on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth.
As the pregnancy unfolded, their families, knowingly or unknowingly, participated in the fiction of the two women as housemates. Amy’s mother, Kathy, was very impressed with Linsey’s devotion to her pregnant daughter. ‘Linsey’s so good to her,’ she said to Linsey’s mother. ‘I don’t know what she would have done without her.’
‘I don’t believe it’s such a great burden,’ the other woman replied drily, watching her daughter pour the coffee.
‘Still, I wish she’d tell us who the father is.’ Kathy was mortified at the thought of her daughter as an unmarried mother, let alone the issue of a one-night 35 stand. She still had faint hopes of a wedding.
‘I doubt that will happen,’ Meredith Brookes replied. ‘I doubt that very much indeed.’
Amy gave birth to an eight-pound baby girl with huge, fathomless eyes and a thatch of dark hair that stood straight up, giving her a look of mild shock.
‘Funny little thing. She looks surprised by the world,’ Linsey said as she held her daughter close. ‘Amy, I love you both so much.’
‘Me too,’ murmured a sleepy Amy.
If the pregnancy had been a time of happiness for Linsey, the birth was a time of such fierce and overwhelming joy that she could scarcely breathe for the wonder of it. She vowed that this child would be loved and cared for, that she would have the best education, the best start in life of any child who had ever lived. She plunged into motherhood with an intense, controlling passion. Her emotional extravagance was all the more tragic in that she had no natural facility with children and didn’t understand how to translate her love into language that a child could understand. By contrast, while Linsey devoured books on childcare, Amy’s love flowed with her milk and she sang little nonsense songs and played with her baby’s toes.
Linsey was godmother when Miranda Ophelia was christened in the cream brick Uniting church where her birth mother had gone to Sunday school. Amy’s single status was met with some disapproval by the congregation. She always was a bit flighty, they sniffed as they sipped their tea. She’s lucky to have found such a fine person to be godmother. Kathy had broadcast Linsey’s merit throughout the parish, innocently placing her where a father might more usually be found.
Linsey’s family were puzzled by the thought of a christening. Her brother, Robert, was happy to go along without question, but Felicity couldn’t resist. ‘You’re not even a Christian, Lins,’ she said. ‘What’s this all about?’
But Linsey knew exactly what she was about. Amy, as birth mother, had a legitimate title, a legitimate claim for recognition as the baby’s mother. ‘Being godmother gives me some small public connection with Miranda,’ Linsey said simply.
Felicity put an arm around her sister’s thin shoulders. ‘You know best, Lins.’


When Moss awoke, the kitchen was still dark, but, try as she might, she couldn’t go back to sleep. The air mattress had deflated and her hipbone was uncomfortably sharp against the floor. She turned onto her back. She plumped the pillow. She listened to the rain drumming on the roof. Finally, she sat up and clasped her knees, wondering what Linsey would say if she knew where she was.
Her earliest memory was of a day at the beach. She must have been three or four. Her mothers were each holding a hand and swinging her over the waves. She was giggling and squealing until her hand slipped from Amy’s grasp and suddenly she was choking on a mouthful of water. Linsey was scooping her up and Moss felt the fear that rippled along the encircling arms. Coughing up the last of the water, she squirmed to escape.
‘Mummy Amy,’ she called. ‘Mummy Amy.’
Linsey released her abruptly. ‘Here. You take her,’ she said, pushing the child into Amy’s arms. ‘And for God’s sake, try to be a bit more careful in future.’
Had her own actions helped push Linsey away? This thought had always made her uneasy. The night she was rushed to hospital with asthma, for instance. It was Linsey who bundled her up so decisively and confronted the triage nurse, ensuring that not a moment was wasted.
Moss remembered waking up in the narrow cot, the nebuliser over her face, to find a dark figure watching over her. It was Linsey, her hand threaded through the bars of the cot and resting lightly on her own.
‘Where’s Mummy? Where’s Mummy?’ Moss clawed at the 37 mask, dislodging it.
Linsey’s voice was soothing. ‘It’s okay, Miranda. I’m here.’
‘I want Mummy Amy.’ As Moss’s wail filled the sleeping ward, Linsey tried frantically to calm her.
‘Mummy Amy’s just gone to get a coffee. She won’t be long, now. Shh, Miranda. You’ll wake the other children. Look, you’ve started to wheeze again.’ Linsey struggled to replace the nebuliser but Moss continued to wheeze and wail until Amy came hurrying back. Her mothers changed places at her bedside while a nurse dealt with the nebuliser.
‘Thank God you’re back, Amy.’ Linsey sounded really frightened. ‘That awful wheeze . . .’
Why had she acted in that way? Moss now wondered. Small children are said to sometimes favour one parent, then the other, but Moss had always favoured Amy. She had loved Linsey, but always felt she had to measure up, whereas with Amy, she felt she had nothing to prove.
One way and another, Moss had had a singular upbringing. Until she started school, she hadn’t realised that there was something odd about her family. She knew of at least two other children who didn’t seem to have fathers and it had never occurred to her that there was anything remarkable about having two mothers.
She was still in first grade when, walking home from school one day, she was confronted by three older boys who shattered her simple view of the world. She was with Zoe and Michelle, her two best friends. They were nice friends, she remembered. It was a nice day and they were talking about—she couldn’t remember what, but it was funny. They were giggling, smothering their giggles behind grubby fingers, doubled over with secret laughter. She did remember that—that and a little cloud, shaped like her granny’s Staffie, Geordie. The three friends crossed the road at the lights and began to skip across the park. They were nearly at the other side when three fourth-grade boys leaped out from the bushes in front of them.
‘M’randa’s mother’s a lezzo!’ they chanted. ‘M’randa’s mother’s a lezzo!’
The little girls moved closer together. Puzzled, Zoe and Michelle looked at each other and then at Moss, who was equally puzzled but on the defensive. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure whether it was Amy or Linsey she had to defend.
‘Which mother?’ she challenged.
The boys feigned paroxysms of laughter, snorting and guffawing, punching each other with delight. ‘Which mother! Did you hear what she said? Which mother!’
The little girls took the opportunity to flee.
‘Lezzos,’ her tormentors called out after her. ‘Lezzos.’
Moss burst through the door and flung herself at Amy. ‘David Hynes and the other boys said you and Mummy Linsey are lizards,’ she sobbed.
Twenty-three-year-old Moss slid down into her sleeping bag and remembered Linsey’s distressed indignation and the embrace of Amy’s soft arms as her mothers attempted to explain their relationship to a little girl struggling with matters beyond her comprehension. She had finally found comfort in one certainty. ‘I knew you weren’t lizards,’ she told them firmly. ‘David’s a stupid idiot.’
Kids like me have it so much easier today, Moss thought. It was so unfair. They were good parents, both of them.
Yes, she loved them both, but there was a stillness, a placidity, in Amy that made her seem somehow safer. As she matured, Moss became aware that Linsey was all angles and energy, and she saw how Amy’s slow, slovenly beauty drove her partner to a distraction of love and fury. In many ways Moss was like Linsey, but despite that, or because of it, the child gravitated to Amy. As a consequence, she too experienced Linsey’s sharpness and often felt she had fallen short. In her childish way, Moss tried to please, tidying her bedroom, for instance, only for Linsey to cluck over the books she’d pushed under the bed, or flick at the dust she’d failed to see on the dressing-table.
‘Miranda, is it too much to ask that you put a little effort into your room? Go back and do it properly.’
And if Amy didn’t come to her rescue, Moss would sulkily comply.
She tried hard at school, but soon discovered that she wasn’t the prodigy Linsey believed she ought to be. Despite her best efforts, the As were elusive and Cs more common than Bs. With the exception of music, at which she excelled, Miranda tries hard was the best she could hope for on her school reports.
Linsey was neither cruel nor ignorant. She knew that a child who is trying and only achieving Bs and Cs is worthy of praise, possibly even more so than the gifted A student. But Moss always ran first to Amy with her report and sheltered there from the frown of disappointment she sensed rather than saw as Linsey scanned her meagre achievements. It mattered little that this was always followed by: Good girl. Maybe better next time. Moss didn’t want to be a good girl. She wanted to be a smart girl. A clever girl. A girl of whom Mummy Linsey could be proud.
‘To think your father was a mathematician,’ Linsey once said, shaking her head over the results of a maths test. Moss was instantly alert.
‘Linsey . . .’ Amy’s voice was laden with warning.
Moss had filed that snippet away. It was all she knew of her father, and she never dared to ask for more until much later.
The last of the rain spattered like gravel on her father’s tin roof, and Moss became aware of the stirring of a new day. A cock crowed in the distance and the window shape emerged, a faint luminosity on the opposite wall. She thought of the morning when Linsey (she was just Linsey, by then; the ‘mother’ tag had stuck only to Amy) had come into her room to say goodbye. The noises then were city noises, but the dawn window glow was the same.
She had heard the door open and saw Linsey’s dark shape materialise beside her bed. Amy, a much larger woman, always moved on cat-feet, but Linsey, who barely cast a shadow, was inclined to stomp and crash about in her nervous haste. That morning, though, she was like a wraith. Moss felt a hand linger on her cheek and smelled the familiar musky hand cream. A kiss like a breath, a whispered I love you, and she was gone.
Moss saw her young self lying still, hands clenched, averting her eyes from the void she now sensed in the house. Linsey had always been there for her. There was a strength in her mother Linsey that made Moss feel safe. Linsey had always discussed things seriously with her, showing her the kind of respect one would show to an equal. Moss didn’t appreciate this approach as a child, but with adolescence she began to value it more. Now Linsey was gone. Bereft, Moss continued to lie stiffly in her bed until she heard Amy pad down the hall. Jumping out of bed and flinging herself at the pyjama-clad figure, she cried out in real fear: ‘Mum! Mum! Don’t you go too!’
Amy gathered her in. ‘Of course I won’t go. You know that. Linsey will come back to see you. You can visit her like we said. She’s your mum too, remember. Don’t cry, sweetheart. I’m here.’ She smoothed the tangled brown hair. ‘We talked about it, Miranda—you said you understood.’
They had talked about it, but Moss hadn’t wanted to listen. For a long time she had tried to ignore the obvious fact that her two mothers were growing apart. Now she couldn’t ignore it any more. On the contrary, she clung to it as the best explanation for Linsey’s departure and never allowed herself to explore the other, more disturbing possibility that she, Moss, might be the real reason that Linsey left them.
By that time, Amy was a plump, untidy woman in her early forties, with sleepy blue eyes and a slow, tantalising smile. The dimple gave her a girlish air and her skin remained remarkably fine. She had never fulfilled her early promise as a musician— but perhaps she never was very good, her grown daughter thought suddenly. Linsey was always so careful to speak well of Amy.
These thoughts were only contributing to her wakefulness. Moss returned her head to the pillow, trying to make her mind blank. She was beginning to drift off to sleep when she became aware of a soft footfall and saw Finn’s unfamiliar shape as he crept into the kitchen. She didn’t stir, but watched as he paused at the table for a moment before opening the door and disappearing into the half-light outside. She heard the gate squeak and then silence. The birds had momentarily ceased their morning song. She wriggled deeper into her sleeping bag. She was so tired.
The next thing she heard was the sound of the back door opening again. It was now full daylight, and a watery sun lit the figure of Finn as he stooped to pass beneath the low lintel.
She sat up, running her fingers through her tangled hair. ‘Hello, Finn. What time is it?’
Finn looked startled, as though he had not expected to find her still there. He pointed to the alarm clock on the mantelpiece, put a plastic shopping bag on the table and continued on down the hall. It was seven fifty. Moss climbed out of her sleeping bag and went into the bathroom. There was a striped towel on the handbasin with the name MOSS written on card with a magic marker. She turned on the shower and waited. Tepid water flowed sluggishly from the old-fashioned showerhead, and she found that she needed to duck and weave to get wet, washing herself in sections. Her shower was understandably short, and she was grateful for the roughness of the towel that warmed her a little with its friction.
When she arrived back in the kitchen Finn had lit the fire and was once more engaged in stuffing bread into the toaster. ‘I got Vegemite,’ he said with a shy smile, indicating the jar. ‘And some cheese. For lunch.’ He returned his attention to the toaster and lapsed into silence.
‘I’ll make the tea if you like,’ Moss offered. Finn took down a canister from the mismatched assortment lined up beside the clock, then nodded towards the teapot with its colourful knitted cosy. Moss was puzzled. Puzzled and hurt—he wasn’t making any effort to speak to her, and she began to feel like the intruder she undoubtedly was. The kettle boiled, and soon two steaming mugs of tea joined the wedges of toast which Finn had liberally coated with Vegemite.
‘You found the towel, then?’ Finn, unused to visitors, had been inordinately proud that he’d thought of the towel. ‘It just came to me,’ he said. ‘The idea of the towel.’ He looked at her hopefully.
‘Just the thing,’ Moss said. ‘Thank you.’ She couldn’t work him out. Was he a bit—well, simple? Hadn’t he been a mathematician? A brilliant one, from what she’d learnt. Perhaps he was just absentminded. Genius tended to be that way— at least in popular folklore. She bit thoughtfully on her toast and suppressed a grimace. For some reason Finn thought she liked Vegemite. Still, she ate her toast without complaint: she needed time and didn’t want to offend him.
The salty taste of the Vegemite was sharp on her tongue, and as she and Finn carefully chewed their toast, the sound of crunching mingled with the ticking of the clock. Neither of them spoke until Moss poured them both a second mug of tea. She could wait no longer. Her plan had been to let Finn broach the subject, but his silence was resolute.
‘You do know who I am, don’t you?’
‘What year were you born?’
‘Nineteen eighty-three.’
‘Your mother was Amy Sinclair? Partner of Linsey Brookes?’
Moss felt a sudden wave of nausea. Dear God, don’t let me vomit. Not now. She forced herself to breathe slowly, deeply, before replying. ‘Yes. Amy and Linsey—my mothers.’
‘Then you must be my daughter.’
And he just sat there, sipping his tea.
Moss had pictured this moment quite differently. This was when her father was supposed to open his arms wide and hold her for the first time. She had even imagined the roughness of his whiskers against her cheek. They would both cry a little and then laugh, and he would look at her with wonder and regret. Instead, he went on relentlessly sipping his tea. She tried to read his face but it was blank. Even the kindness she had recognised last night had been erased. Say something, she begged silently. Please.
But Finn was struggling. He had lived alone for so long that he found even small talk a challenge. Last night, before sleep claimed him, he had tried to cobble together some thoughts, some words that might at least be adequate. I’m so happy to meet you at last. That was patently untrue and Finn was a bad liar. I’ve often thought about you. Also untrue. And dangerous. It might make her think she was welcome. The last thing he wanted was another person in his life. Why was she here, anyway? Keep the conversation as neutral as possible, he advised himself.
‘How did you find me?’ he asked.
Moss swallowed her disappointment. ‘Maths,’ she said. ‘I followed the maths trail.’
A few months ago, while looking through some of Amy’s sheet music, she’d come upon the contract that had brought her into being. It was typical of Amy to be careless with such an important document. Her mother snatched it away, but not before Moss had seen the name: Michael Finbar Clancy. So, as she explained to Finn, at that point she had both his name and his profession. Fortunately, Michael was a prolific writer in his years as an academic, and had been making quite a name for himself in probability theory. Her search was temporarily frustrated when, after a few years of regular publication, his name suddenly disappeared from the learned journals. It seemed he had vanished without a trace, but by then Moss’s initial curiosity had hardened into resolve. She saw that he’d written quite a few of the articles with a Philip Cousins who was now Associate Professor of Mathematics at Monash University. It was Phil who told her where to find Michael Clancy.
‘He’s changed a lot,’ he warned her.
‘I never knew him, so it won’t matter to me,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘As I said, I’m only looking him up because my family used to know his family, and Granny would like to get in touch.’ She was surprised at her own glibness.
Finn was appalled to learn how easy it was to find him and angry with Phil for revealing his whereabouts. ‘So old Phil keeps track of me, does he? Never could mind his own business.’ Seeing the hurt on Moss’s face, he continued more gently. ‘So what started you looking?’
‘The contract. I found the contract.’ Moss was being evasive. In fact, she couldn’t really articulate her motives because she didn’t fully understand them, preferring to sidle up and consider them obliquely. Initially, there was the simple fact that she was different. None of the children she knew had two mothers. The teasing at school had ebbed and flowed as the bullies and their satellites were diverted by newer victims. In primary school it was masculine, sporadic and almost ritualistic. ‘Lezzos!’ the boys would shout, and Moss would run to the shelter of the girls’ toilets. Her friends would then cluck and cluster around, enjoying the drama. The little girls were not sure what ‘lezzos’ were, but knew they had to band together against the boys.
At high school, though, the girls were the predators, in particular the pretty queen bee, Jessica, who tormented her with such refined subtlety that Moss longed for the predictable cruelty of the boy gangs. The other girls milled around behind Jessica and her three cronies. It was better than being out front in the firing line. Moss met the taunts stoically but wept secretly in her room at home. By this stage she had no friends and spent lunchtimes in the library.
In childish desperation, Moss decided to buy Jessica a present, hoping to win a reprieve from the bullying. She saved up her pocket money until there was enough to buy what all the girls in her class coveted—a Magnetique Supa Gloss lipstick. She agonised over the colour and told the salesgirl it was for her big sister who was blonde and blue-eyed. She had it giftwrapped, and the next day she waited until home time, edging up to Jessica as they rounded the corner from the school.
‘I’ve got something for you. A present.’
Jessica raised her eyebrows as she took the parcel. ‘A present? Let’s see. Come over here, everyone. Miranda’s given me a present.’
When her audience was large enough, she struck. ‘Yeech! A lipstick! She’s a lezzo like her mothers. Yeech! She wants a big red kiss.’ And amid screams of laughter and exclamations of revulsion from the other girls she grabbed Moss’s tiny breasts and kissed her full on the lips. ‘Where else do you want to be kissed, Lezzo?’ she asked with a sly smile at her audience. ‘Come on, girls, who’s next?’
Moss turned to run, but her arms were pinioned. The crowd began to slink away, but not before two more girls had kissed her and another squeezed her breasts painfully. Then Jessica opened the lipstick and wrote something on her victim’s forehead, before stepping back to admire her handiwork.
‘Quick! Miss Webb’s coming.’ The remaining girls melted away as the teacher turned the corner. She stopped and put her arm around the weeping girl who was rubbing a red smear on her forehead.
‘Miranda, what on earth’s the matter?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Was it Jessica?’
‘It’s nothing, Miss Webb,’ Moss gasped between sobs. ‘I just don’t feel well.’
For several days, Moss was granted a reprieve. With Miss Webb hovering protectively in the background, Jessica lay low. Pale and peaky, Moss crept into class and scurried to the library in her breaks. The other girls kept their distance, and Moss felt sick and hollow and somehow dirty. She was ashamed of her mothers and ashamed of herself for feeling that way.
These thoughts were too painful to leave lying around unattended. She might come upon them at just the wrong moment and they would trip her up, sending her sprawling helplessly as the contents of her head poured out into the unforgiving sunshine. Her face became watchful and grim, the effort to control her feelings begetting a stubborn will for survival. Moss was only thirteen and felt an aching need to protect her mothers. Nevertheless, action was required.
‘I have to change schools,’ she announced abruptly one night at dinner. ‘The teachers are picking on me.’
Her mothers looked at her with concern. ‘Picking on you? The teachers? Which teachers?’
‘All of them. They hate me.’ And she burst into tears. The two women looked at each other as she jumped to her feet, knocking over her water glass.
‘I’ll go,’ said Amy, and went off to her daughter’s room, where she tapped on the door. Ignoring Moss’s ‘Go away,’ she entered and sat on the bed beside the sobbing girl, who finally blurted out the whole story. Amy sat stroking her daughter’s hair until her sobs subsided and her breathing became deep and even. She pulled up the covers and went back down to the dining room, unaware that Moss, who had been feigning sleep, had padded down after her and was listening at the door.
‘She’s being picked on because of us,’ Amy told Linsey.
‘Those little bitches. I could kill them! With my bare hands.’
‘She wants to start afresh at Bradfield and . . .’
Linsey’s voice was dry. ‘I think I can see where this is going.’
‘I’m sorry, Linny. She doesn’t want the new school to know she has two mothers.’
‘Well then. I’ll have to become her aunty,’ Linsey said bleakly.
‘We can discuss that later.’ Moss heard the pity in Amy’s voice. ‘It could be me—the aunt, I mean.’
Linsey’s words were brisk but her voice was husky. ‘Don’t be absurd, Amy. Of course it will be me.’
At thirteen, Moss had little notion of what this offer might have cost Linsey. At the time, her predominant emotion was relief. Only in later years had she come to realise that, in all her relationships, Linsey had always been the lover. For Linsey, the beloved always came first.
Six years after Linsey’s departure, when Moss turned twenty-one, Amy had finally told her about the odd circumstances of her conception. She was startled by the truth; while understanding her mothers’ relationship, she had assumed that Amy had conceived in the usual way. She had had no inkling that they’d taken so much trouble to find the right father.
‘All you need to know is that he was a good man, but the agreement was that he play no further part in our lives. We must respect that, Miranda.’ Amy still called her Miranda when she needed to impress her with the seriousness of the matter at hand.
‘I didn’t make any agreement,’ Moss retorted. ‘What if I want to meet him?’ She had a sudden moment of comprehension. ‘I suppose this was all Linsey’s bright idea.’
‘Well, it was Linsey’s . . .’ Amy began.
‘I knew it. I knew she never thought I was good enough. She tried to make me something I’m not, and I wasn’t and somehow I’m to blame. She experimented with me.’ She stopped and glared at Amy, who was processing this convoluted speech. ‘You know what I mean.’
Amy opened her mouth to protest, but gave up and shrugged inwardly instead. She didn’t want to get involved in a dispute between these two passionate souls. It was true Linsey expected a very different child from the one Moss had been. Besides, while their separation was reasonably amicable, old wounds still festered in Amy’s breast. No-one could ever measure up to Linsey’s absurd standards, she thought petulantly. And that’s a fact.
But Moss brooded. If Linsey had a particular child in mind—a child who was beautiful like Amy and clever like her father—she, Moss, was obviously a disappointment. She glared at her reflection in the mirror. She was clearly not the tall, clever, blue-eyed blonde of Linsey’s imagining. Small of stature, she had the wiry brown hair and gamine features of her Grandmother Sinclair. Her saving grace was her blue eyes, darker than Amy’s but with the same long lashes. Aside from this, she saw herself as a failed experiment. Not to Amy, of course. Moss had always been sure of Amy’s love and approval but perversely valued her praise less than the exacting Linsey’s. Now, mortified to discover that she was a designer baby gone wrong, she realised she could never live up to Linsey’s standards so there was no point in continuing to try. She felt a terrible hollow in her sense of herself. She needed to lash out. Place the blame squarely where it belonged. She would confront Linsey and then cut herself off from her entirely. After that, she’d find another parent—her father—to take her place.
That’ll put paid to all her schemes, she reflected with spiteful satisfaction.
Privy to only some of her daughter’s thoughts, Amy, while not encouraging her, did nothing to intervene. She did point out wryly that Moss was sounding just like Linsey, but her daughter failed to see the irony. She had carried out her plan and now, two years later, here she was, drinking tea with the man Linsey had chosen to be her father.
And he seemed totally unaware of the magnitude, the abiding significance, of this moment.