The Good Sister

by Sally Hepworth

  ‘I wish you’d had a chance to meet Janet,’ I say to Carmel.

  Carmel smiles. ‘I heard you and Janet were close.’

  ‘I learned so much from her,’ I say. ‘Not just about books. She taught me about people. How to help them, respect them, and how to enrich their lives through books.’

  Carmel looks at me. Her eyes, I notice, are a marbled blue with yellow edges. ‘Perhaps you can share some of Janet’s wisdom with me sometime? And your own, for that matter. It’s clear that you are very good at what you do. Not to mention beloved in this library.’

  Beloved. I’ve never thought of myself as beloved before.

  ‘Maybe I could even shadow you as you work, to see what I can learn?’

  I frown. ‘Shadow me?’

  ‘Follow you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘With your cart?’

  She smiles. ‘No. No cart.’

  I think about this for a moment. And then, it might be because of the kindly way Carmel is looking at me, I nod.

  Carmel looks pleased. ‘Wonderful. And then, maybe you could shadow me? I could even show you how to use the printers and the photocopiers?’

  I sigh. ‘I understand that you are making an effort, Carmel. And you have shown interest in Janet, which I appreciate. But I cannot and will not learn the printers and the photocopiers.’

  Carmel laughs. ‘All right, I accept that,’ she says. ‘For now.’

  After work, I stand at my living room window waving at Wally. He is sitting in the driver’s seat of the van, reading a novel and it takes him a moment to notice me. When he does, he waves back. He doesn’t come up and I’m glad. I’m already overwhelmed by the day and I know further interaction would push me over the proverbial edge. But I enjoy him being within sight, where I can wave to him whenever I want. It makes me feel content, this little interaction.

  My phone rings and I look away from the window. Rose’s name is on the screen.

  ‘I knew the name Rocco Ryan sounded familiar.’ Her voice is high-pitched and excited. ‘I googled him. He is the Rocco Ryan who founded Shout!’

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  ‘Fern, it is a HUGE app. HUGE!’

  ‘I know,’ I repeat.

  ‘You know?’ Rose sounds disbelieving. This irritates me. To think she would know more about my friend than I do.

  ‘Of course I know. Wally told me.’

  A pause. ‘Fern, do you know what Shout! is?’

  I roll my eyes. ‘An app,’ I say. ‘Something to do with ordering drinks.’

  ‘According to the article I read, Rocco and his partner sold it in 2016 for a hundred million dollars. A hundred million dollars, Fern! The article also said that Rocco is one of the most promising computer programmers the world has ever seen. He was in Silicon Valley before he came to Australia. He’s been compared to Linus Torvalds and Steve Wozniak! Apparently, people were lining up to work with him when they sold Shout!, but then he just went off the grid. It was quite mysterious. People assumed he was living it up on a private island or something . . .’

  I glance around the room, noticing a spiderweb in the corner that I really must take care of.

  ‘Fern, your friend is a gazillionaire. Does that interest you even a little bit?’

  I sigh, considering her question. Does that interest me? I suppose it does. At the same time, of all the things I know about Wally, the fact that he is a gazillionaire (not technically an actual word) is the very least interesting.

  ‘Not especially,’ I say, waving again at Wally through the window. As Rose starts to reiterate all the reasons I should be interested, Wally waves back.

  On Monday morning, Wally comes to my door to ask if I’d like to have dinner with him.

  ‘It’s Monday,’ I explain. ‘I have dinner with Rose on Mondays.’

  Wally leans against the doorframe, his gaze resting lazily over my shoulder. ‘Tomorrow, then?’

  ‘I have dinner with Rose Tuesday nights too.’

  Wally narrows his gaze. ‘Do you dine with Rose on any other evenings?’

  ‘Thursdays, after karate training.’

  He laughs. Then he stops. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Every week?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  ‘Wow.’

  I frown. ‘Why wow?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s just a lot of dinners with one person.’

  ‘Is it?’ Given the fact that married couples presumably have dinner together seven nights a week, it doesn’t seem like such a lot. Then again, Rose and I aren’t married.

  ‘I guess I could cancel,’ I say on a whim. But even as I say it, I get a funny feeling. I don’t think Rose would like to be cancelled on. ‘It’s just one night. She’s probably jet-lagged after her long flight, anyway.’

  I expect Wally to smile at this, but instead he gives me a funny look. ‘Who are you trying to convince, Fern?’

  Wally leaves and I text Rose. Bizarrely, I feel nervous as I thumb the words onto the screen.

  Do you mind if I cancel dinner tonight?

  In a matter of seconds, my phone begins to ring.

  ‘Why are you cancelling?’ Rose demands the instant I answer.

  ‘Well . . . it’s just . . . Wally asked if I wanted to have dinner with him.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rose is silent for a few seconds. ‘It’s just that I’d already defrosted the chicken.’

  ‘Couldn’t we have it tomorrow?’

  A sigh. ‘But I’ve been looking forward to it all day.’

  Rose’s voice has a different sound to it, slightly juvenile and whiny. A gnawing sense of unease tugs at me. At the same time, the idea of cancelling on Wally, and having to explain this to him, is enough to make me dig my heels in. ‘I’m sorry, Rose. I need to cancel.’

  This time the silence on the other end lasts so long, I wonder if Rose has hung up.

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘Have dinner with Wally,’ she says abruptly. Her voice sounds funny. I open my mouth to ask if everything is all right, but before I can, she has ended the call.

  I forget about the Rose situation the moment Wally walks into my flat (fifteen minutes early) that night. I’m anxious about the fact that all I have in the fridge is sausages, yoghurt and puff pastry, but Wally quickly puts me at ease by ordering pizza, which we eat at my round table. It is most strange, seeing my second chair hosting a guest. Normally, it is simply a storage space for my unread books.

  ‘Rose googled you,’ I say, as we settle into the couch afterward. ‘She read an article that said you sold your app for a hundred million dollars.’

  Wally cocks his head thoughtfully. ‘The article was accurate. That isn’t always the case.’

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘You live economically for someone with a hundred million dollars.’

  He laughs. ‘I don’t have a hundred million dollars. I got my share of it. But I had a business partner and we had a number of investors who all got their cut. And a good chunk went to tax and our charitable organisation for underprivileged children . . . But you’re right, I do live frugally, considering my means.’

  ‘Why do you work at all?’

  He appears to consider this. After a moment, he shrugs. ‘What else would I do? Sit around counting my gold? Besides, working is important to a person’s mental health.’

  I agree wholeheartedly with this. I can’t think of anything more important to my mental health than my work at the library. ‘How is your mental health?’ I ask. ‘I mean . . . the last time you were working on an app, things didn’t go so well for you–’

  ‘This time it’s better,’ he says, smiling. His gaze is still over my shoulder, but closer these days, almost touching my face.

  We remain like that for a moment, Wally smiling at me, then, Wally sits up straight. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve been meaning to ask you . . .’ He reaches into his pocket and retrieves a folded-up piece of paper, which he unfolds onto his lap. It appears to be for a private health fund.


  ‘What’s this?’ I ask.

  ‘Changing health insurance,’ he says, rolling his eyes. ‘I’ve had to do a mountain of paperwork. And it appears I need an emergency contact person in the country.’

  He holds out the page to me, and I know what he’s going to say before he says it. It’s rare that this happens to me. Under the circumstances, I should feel pleased.

  ‘Would you consider . . . being my person?’ Wally asks, holding out a pen.

  I clear my throat. ‘I would be delighted to be your person, Wally. Truly delighted. But I feel there’s something you should know first. Something important.’

  Wally looks surprised. But he nods and sits back in his chair. ‘All right. What is it?’

  I close my eyes, take a breath.

  ‘When I was a kid,’ I say, ‘I did something terrible.’

  JOURNAL OF ROSE INGRID CASTLE

  After that first time at the swimming pool, Gary touched me all the time. He said if I told Mum, she’d blame me, which I’d already figured out. Mum was mad enough with me already, I wasn’t going to provide her with new reasons to hate me. It was frightening how many opportunities Gary found. Officially, Gary didn’t live with us, but you’d never know it with the amount of time he spent at our house. He was often there even when Mum wasn’t.

  And so, I stuck to Fern like glue. Safety in numbers, I figured. It worked to some extent. But if Fern took a shower, if she went to the bathroom, if she just wasn’t paying attention, Gary would come and sit next to me. He was discreet. His hand could slide into my shorts or up my skirt without making a sound. I didn’t make a sound either. No matter how much I wanted to, every time I clammed up, became mute.

  Sometimes, he even did it when Mum was there. We might be in the kitchen or sitting around, watching television, and he’d suggest we start a massage train. He’d be at the back, of course. I was always next, then Fern and then Mum. Since Fern and Mum were in front, they couldn’t see when he fondled my breasts and groped me. I think he enjoyed the danger of it. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted Mum to turn around . . . or if I didn’t.

  But even that was nothing compared to what Gary did when no-one was around. The first time it happened was on a weeknight. We’d been watching television and I’d decided to take a shower. I locked the door and put a chair in front of it to be safe.

  When I emerged twenty minutes later, the house was quiet. As I tried to walk quietly to my room, I passed Gary, sitting on the couch.

  ‘Your mum and Fern have gone to the supermarket,’ he said.

  My blood ran cold.

  Mum often had to do a late-night dash, she wasn’t organised when it came to food. Fern often went along to make sure Mum didn’t just come home with wine and cigarettes.

  And so, there were Gary and I, alone in the house for god knew how long. I was wearing just a towel.

  ‘How about I give you a proper massage?’ he said. ‘Not just the shoulders?’

  That time, I did try to protest. I said I was tired and wanted to go to bed. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it in the bedroom. It will be more comfortable’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I really think–’

  ‘You need to stop thinking,’ he said. ‘This will help you relax.’

  He laid me down on my bed for the ‘massage’ and did things to me that I didn’t completely understand until I was much older. But I knew what he was doing to me was bad. And I figured, for him to do those things to me, I must have been bad too.

  FERN

  ‘It happened when I was twelve.’

  Wally is still smiling, but it’s fading. His eyes are showing the first hints of confusion. ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were camping. Billy and I were playing a game–’

  ‘Wait.’ Wally holds up a hand. ‘Who is Billy?’

  ‘Mum had a couple of boyfriends while we were growing up. She had one named Gary, but he didn’t last long, which was good because I didn’t like him. Then she had one named Daniel. Billy was Daniel’s son. We all went on a camping trip together. It was supposed to be a time for us to get to know each other better and bond.’

  Wally sits forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

  ‘We did bond, on that trip. It was fun having another person to play with. Billy was really competitive. He spent most of that camping trip trying to hold his breath under water longer than me. I’d read a book about free diving, so I knew how to fill up my lungs completely, how not to panic under water. Billy couldn’t get close to holding his breath for as long as I could.’

  ‘What happened, Fern?’

  I wrap my arms around myself and start to rock. ‘On the night he died, he was so frustrated. He wanted to stay under the longest, but he just couldn’t do it. Every attempt was worse than the last.’ I looked up at Wally. ‘And so . . . I helped him.’

  ‘Helped him . . . what?’

  My voice is the barest whisper. ‘Helped him stay under the longest. I held him down.’

  Wally’s face remains still. Too still. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, you didn’t.’

  I feel the first tears hit my cheeks. ‘I thought . . . I thought he would pop up and grin at me and say how happy he was that he’d beaten my time! But he didn’t. When I let him go, it was too late.’

  Wally is staring at me in horror. ‘But . . . you must have known that if you held someone under the water for long enough, they would drown?’

  ‘I did know that!’ I wring my hands and then press my eyes into them. ‘I did know that. An adult can drown in sixty seconds, that’s what all the literature says. I held him under for forty. It was timed! I don’t know how it happened. I would never, never . . .’

  ‘What happened when you realised what you’d done?’ he asks.

  ‘Rose . . . told me I couldn’t . . . tell anyone. She was worried I’d go to jail. She said we had to say that Billy got tangled in the reeds and drowned, or I’d get into big trouble.’

  ‘This is why you’re always worried about what you might do?’ Wally takes a deep breath, then drops his head into his hands. ‘It’s . . . awful,’ he says. ‘Unimaginably awful.’

  I nod. My face is wet with tears. ‘I told you I can’t be trusted, Wally. I’m dangerous.’

  He looks up, shakes his head. ‘It was a terrible accident. But . . . it was clearly an accident, Fern. You would never intentionally hurt anyone.’ Wally slides closer to me and pulls me against his chest. ‘You’d never hurt anyone,’ he repeats, and for some reason, maybe because it comes from Wally, I almost believe it.

  To my great surprise, Wally doesn’t cut me out of his life. I wait for it to happen, either immediately or perhaps in a phasing out-type arrangement, but day after day, week after week, he shows up – at the library or my doorstep, with suggestions of dinner or an evening walk. It is unfathomable. It’s the kind of loyalty you might expect of a lifelong friend or family member. It doesn’t make sense that Wally has elevated me to such a rank when we’ve only known each other a few weeks. And yet, he has.

  And so, over the next month or so, I amend my routine to create space for Wally. Early evenings are spent together, apart from the evenings I spend at Rose’s place. At the end of the night, Wally returns to his van and I go to sleep alone. We both prefer it this way, as it keeps our morning routines intact. And I make up for the late nights by taking naps in the secret cupboard at work every time I get the chance.

  For a few weeks, I am lucky enough to sometimes get to see Wally during the day, too, when he pops into the library here and there. Unfortunately, it’s not long before he moves into a coworking space in the city and can no longer visit me at work. I miss him when he’s gone. It’s a curious feeling, missing someone in this way. I feel it in my chest – a curious sensation that feels like a blend of butterflies and indigestion.

  I start to loathe dinners with Rose. And it’s not just my recent preference for Wally’s company. Since returning from London, she’s become unbearably interested in every
mundane facet of my life – from what I had for lunch, to who I sat with, to what I dreamed about. So when Rose phones and cancels dinner one night – terrible food poisoning, apparently – I feel only minimal guilt at my elation.

  Wally is in my doorway when Rose calls, and he appears equally delighted. ‘That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. And I’ve had a pretty good day.’

  ‘Why have you had a good day?’

  ‘The video I made for FollowUp has gone viral.’

  He leans against the doorjamb. Wally and I spend a lot of time in my doorway. There’s something about the no-man’s-land of it that I like; if he doesn’t cross the threshold, it doesn’t count as a ‘visit’ and as such isn’t a disruption to my routine.

  ‘Gone viral . . .’ I repeat.

  ‘“Viral” means lots of people have seen it,’ Wally explains. ‘The connotation is that it has spread, like a virus would.’

  ‘Clever.’ It’s so rare that new-fangled slang makes sense to me, but this is the kind of slang I could easily get on board with. Having decoded this part of the conversation, I take another moment to process it in reference to his previous comment. ‘And . . . the fact that Rose has cancelled is better than that?’

  He smiles, but it is almost as though there is a frown behind it. I have recently learned that this face means I have failed to understand something that he finds perfectly obvious (I know this because I asked him what the face meant, and he confirmed my interpretation). ‘Seeing you is always the best part of my day, Fern.’

  I smile.

  ‘Let’s skip dinner,’ Wally says, crossing the threshold. And, like always, we are entirely on the same wavelength.