Erika took the picture. She burst out laughing. Her mother danced around, hugging herself with delight. ‘I told you, I told you!’
It was a grainy black and white picture of herself, her mother and Clementine sitting together on a rollercoaster. It had been taken by one of those automatic cameras timed to capture passengers’ reactions at the most terrifying moment of the rollercoaster ride. All three of them had oval-shaped mouths frozen forever mid-scream. Erika was leaning forward, both hands clutching the safety bar, as if she were pushing it to go faster even as she threw her head back. Clementine had her eyes squeezed shut and her ponytail flew in a vertical line above her head like the pope’s hat. Sylvia had her eyes wide open and both arms flung up in the air like a drunk girl dancing. Terrified, hilarious joy. That’s what you saw in that photo. It didn’t matter if it was accurate, you couldn’t look at it without laughing. She and Clementine were wearing their school uniforms.
‘See! Aren’t you glad I kept it!’ said Sylvia. ‘Show it to Clementine. See if she remembers that day! I must admit I don’t actually remember that day specifically, but you can see how happy we were! Don’t you pretend you had a terrible childhood, you had a wonderful childhood! All those rollercoasters, remember? My goodness, I loved rollercoasters. You did too.’
Her eye was caught by something. ‘Oliver, what have you got there? Let me just check that!’ Oliver, who had both arms wrapped around a disintegrating cardboard box, hurried off to the skip bin, with Sylvia running behind him calling out, ‘Oliver! Oh, Oliver!’
This was life with Sylvia: absurd, grotesque, infuriating and sometimes, every now and then, wonderful. They were meant to be at school that day. It was late November, summer in the air. It was Erika’s twelfth birthday – no, it was a week after Erika’s twelfth birthday; her mother had forgotten the actual birthday, Sylvia had difficulties with dates, but this time she’d decided to redeem herself with a spontaneous, crazy gesture. She’d turned up at school and taken both girls out of class for a trip to Luna Park, without, by the way, Clementine’s parents’ permission or knowledge; it would never happen today and Erika was horrified now on the school’s behalf. The legal ramifications were mind-boggling.
Clementine wasn’t allowed to go on a rollercoaster because her mother had a phobia about them. She had been deeply affected by the story of a fairground ride accident in which eight people had died at a country fair, years before Clementine and Erika were born. ‘They don’t maintain those machines,’ Pam always said. ‘They are death traps. They are accidents waiting to happen.’
But Erika and Sylvia loved rollercoasters, the scarier the better. No decisions, no control, no discussion: just the rush of air into your lungs and the piercing sound of your own screams before they’re snatched away by the wind. It was one of the very few, strange, random things they had in common: an enjoyment of scary rollercoaster rides. Not that they went on them all that often. Erika could remember only a handful of occasions, and this was one of them.
Erika knew Clementine had loved that day too. She had been in one of her hectically happy moods. It was a day where Erika didn’t second-guess herself or their friendship. There had been days like those, days where her mother was her mother and her friend was her friend.
She slid the photo into the back pocket of her jeans and watched as Sylvia leaned so far into the skip bin to rescue something that she nearly toppled in. She got herself back upright, adjusted her checked headscarf and faced Oliver, hands on her hips.
‘Oliver! There’s nothing wrong with that fan!’ she cried. ‘You retrieve that for me, please!’
‘No can do, Sylvia,’ said Oliver.
Erika turned away to hide her smile. She studied the sunlight shining on the rain-speckled tree. It actually did look pretty. Like a Christmas tree.
She tipped her head back, enjoying the sun on her face, and saw the lady who lived across the road, the one who loved Jesus, but sure didn’t love Sylvia. She was standing at her upstairs window, one hand on the glass as if she were cleaning it. The lady seemed to be looking straight back at Erika.
And just like that, it happened: Erika remembered everything.
chapter seventy-eight
The day of the barbeque
Erika stood at the entrance to the backyard clutching the stack of blue china plates Vid had handed her in the kitchen. They were beautiful solid plates with intricate, patterned designs. Willow pattern, thought Erika. She remembered that her grandmother had once had plates exactly like these. Her grandmother used to have a lot of beautiful things and Erika had no idea what had happened to any of them. They were probably lost somewhere, or broken, buried beneath the sedimentary layers of crap in her mother’s house.