This Has Been Absolutely Lovely

by Jessica Dettmann

  After all, once the band broke up, her dad became a teacher, whereas for a while her mum had still written some songs. Well, advertising jingles. The first had been an adaptation of one of their original songs. A dairy company had paid a small fortune to change the lyrics and play it in the background of a television commercial in which three women with shoulder pads demonstrated for thirty seconds that being a working woman meant eating a tub of low-fat yoghurt with a plastic spoon at your desk.

  After that, Annie had written her first built-for-purpose jingle: a piano ditty that plinked merrily along on Australia’s televisions as another working mother — this time popping into the back room of her flower shop — added boiling water to a cup containing the contents of a sachet of what appeared to be dehydrated vomit, then closed her eyes in rapture at the steamy aroma of the packet soup. The ads could still be seen on YouTube in a montage of commercials now considered sexist and daggy.

  During the school year, her mum had worked in the office at a private school, so she only worked on her jingles in the Christmas holidays, when Granny was there to look after the kids, and Dad and Brian were there to act as co-writers — though how much they helped write the jingles and how much they were occupied with other pursuits, who could say.

  The baby kicked again. It had an uncanny ability to jolt Molly whenever her thoughts wandered somewhere she’d rather they didn’t.

  Molly heard Naomi approaching. She made a soft tinkling sound as she moved — her personal fanfare a combination of the tiny bells embroidered onto her skirt and her many anklets and bracelets. She put down the now-empty cheese triangle plate. Molly eyed it with disappointment.

  ‘It’s wild being back here, all together,’ Naomi said.

  Molly glanced into the living room. There was barely any movement. ‘Is wild the word?’

  Naomi laughed. ‘Not them, just us, you know? The three of us and Mum. Dad’s back tomorrow. And Brian.’

  ‘But not Pa or Granny.’

  Naomi looked around knowingly. ‘They’re here. They haven’t gone far.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘For sure. Spirits don’t go, not straight away. I can feel them both here today.’

  ‘Why? What do they do? Just lurk around? Watch us? Put coasters under drinks?’

  ‘Depends on the spirit, and whether they’re still here because they’re trapped, or because they’re free and choose to visit.’

  ‘Right. And which situation fits our grandparents?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Sometimes spirits can’t move on because there’s someone still here who needs their help.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be it. Granny probably wants to help me with the baby. Do you think I can get the childcare rebate if I leave my kid with a ghost when I go back to work?’

  Naomi ignored her. ‘Sometimes they stay because they have unfinished business. Something is holding them here. Or someone.’

  Molly regarded her sister. ‘You really are very weird. Do you know that? This might all be normal up in Byron. But objectively it’s very weird to believe in ghosts.’

  Naomi shrugged. ‘You asked.’ She took the plate of chicken sandwiches in to the old people.

  Molly turned back to the window. In the back garden the jacaranda was reaching the end of its bloom: the lawn was carpeted prettily with the mauve flowers, but they were turning brown and slimy very quickly on the bricks of the patio. Her granny wouldn’t have left them there to turn like that. If her spirit was really still around, Molly was sure it would have swept all those blossoms back onto the grass, like a spectral leaf-blower.

  Molly and Jack’s home had no garden. It was a one bedroom flat in a 1970s tower in Darlinghurst, with corridors that smelled like stewed chops. The building was named Maralinga, after the smaller 1930s red-brick block of flats it had replaced, and it had occurred to no one, apparently, that perhaps that name was no longer appropriate.

  The flat, which looked okay now she’d painted most of it and updated the bathroom a bit, was not somewhere she wanted to stay for a long time. One day they hoped to buy a mid-century house. That would be much more her style. One of those northern beaches ones with windows that go almost to the floor. She would fill it with Danish furniture so slender and smooth it looked like it rode a bike everywhere and only ate smoked salmon. At the moment Molly’s taste leaned towards things that were economic of form, delicate of line, and hefty of price tag.

  She’d hoped they could buy a bigger place before they had a baby, but the pregnancy had happened sooner than planned. Stupidly, she’d listened to Naomi the previous Christmas, when she’d told her getting pregnant wasn’t as easy as the grownups had liked to make them think when they were teenagers. Apparently, it was quite common for it to take years, since there were actually only about four days a month when you could conceive. This was especially the case for someone who has been on The Pill, she stressed, which Molly had been since the age of sixteen. It could take ages for the body to regulate and the cycle to figure out what it was meant to be doing.

  A couple of months later Molly had thrown her contraceptive pills in the bin, and Jack promised to buy condoms to use until they were ready for a baby. But before he remembered to do that, all it took was one night — well, one early morning, if she had her dates correct — and that was that. Up. The. Duff. At twenty-seven, which nowadays, in the circles she moved in, was basically equivalent to a teen pregnancy.

  Jack was delighted. And what was done was done. It was just a few years earlier than she would have preferred. It probably wouldn’t make much difference to her life in the long run.

  Molly took a square of bad cake to nibble on and looked for somewhere to sit. Her grandfather’s furniture, like the man himself, looked like it had never exercised, intentionally or incidentally. Pa must have moved — he’d been a golfer after retirement — but Molly couldn’t picture him in motion. She mostly remembered him sitting: behind his mahogany desk with the red leather top, or in the wrought-iron patio chair in his sunny spot at the side of the house, or in the upright wingback chair in the sitting room, as he called it. That was where he read, with a lamp angled down, like he was interrogating his book rather than reading it, and where he watched the seven o’clock news every evening. He must have moved in a way that fit with every other aspect of his personality — calmly, without fuss, not so as you’d notice. He liked to stand in a doorway too, leaning against one side, one foot crossed over the other. He had a particular wry smile she had loved, like he was about to say something extremely clever and funny. He didn’t often do that, but he frequently looked like he might.

  Her grandmother had been different. Granny had never been still. She’d flitted. She’d moved after her husband like the wash after a ferry, never able to just sit. Her hands were always brushing things — crumbs off the table, her hair away from her face, imaginary lint off other people’s shoulders.

  Her mum, too, moved almost ceaselessly, but she wasn’t as fidgety. She was more like a sapling in the breeze. Slim and constantly shifting. Though right now she was sitting still, in a garden chair on the grass, staring out at the garden. Molly wondered if she was all right.

  She glanced back in to the living room, where all the lumpen chairs were still full of senior citizens. This lot were evidently of the stationary variety of oldies. It felt like a nursing home. There was too much dark woodwork, in her opinion — doorframes, windows, skirting boards. If Molly had her way it would all be covered over with a calming coat of white paint. Not absolutely white, of course, not like an asylum. An expensive white, with enough warmth not to look clinical but no discernible other hues in it. Whites like that weren’t easy to find, she had discovered during her interior design phase, but they made such a difference and now she recommended them to most of her home-organisation clients.

  Thinking about work the next day made Molly’s heart sink. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, least of all Jack, but to be honest she was getting bored by her job. She’d b
een a home organiser for the better part of a year now, and it wasn’t holding her attention any more. Jack would be so disappointed if she quit. Maybe after the baby came she could just quietly not return to work.

  Unfortunately the stupid huge mortgage on the ugly flat wouldn’t pay itself. That would be a problem. She had to go back to work, once the baby was a few months old, at least part-time.

  But the countdown to maternity leave was on: she was working till the Saturday before Christmas and then she’d have three weeks to herself before the baby was due. Not even a fortnight to go, thank fuck. Pre-Christmas was busy in her line of work. Her boss, Tien, had explained that people could sense the onslaught of gifts just over the horizon and the smart ones were getting in now and hiring Molly or Tien to come and clear out their accumulated guff before the tsunami of new shit hit.

  Business had been booming lately, probably helped along by Tien’s extreme Instagram proficiency and increasing physical resemblance to Marie Kondo. It wasn’t something Molly would bring up, but it couldn’t be a coincidence that since the Netflix show about throwing out anything that didn’t spark joy had become such a hit, Tien had undergone a dramatic style makeover and eschewed her bright Gorman wardrobe in favour of pale cardigans and little cropped jackets, and had cut her formerly wild curls into a long bob with a fringe, which required ironing into place every morning and sometimes again in the afternoon if it was humid. A bit cynical, Molly thought — Tien wasn’t even Japanese: she was Thai and Israeli — but fair play to her. Tien knew how to work a trend.

  Molly was getting tired of getting rid of things rich people shouldn’t have bought in the first place. She thought she might like to start her own business after the baby was born. Maybe making something to sell online. Or perhaps she’d have a nice little shop. A little shop would be cool. What she’d sell, she hadn’t decided. Something irresistible: a must-have. She’d figure it out. She’d start up a start-up of some description, although it was hard to think of something that people really needed, and which wouldn’t just end up being thrown away by someone like Tien a few months later.

  Annie would help with the baby. Obviously Molly wouldn’t have any income for a bit, so paying for daycare would be hard on just Jack’s earnings, but she was sure her mum would love to be involved. She was always saying how sad it was that Sunny and Felix lived so far away and she’d missed their babyhoods. This would be her chance. It would be brilliant. The baby could have the same close relationship with Mum that Molly’d had with her granny and pa. There was honestly nothing better for kids than their grandparents.

  Through the window, Molly saw her mother’s shoulders begin to shake. Shit, was she crying? But then she tipped her head back, and Molly could see she was laughing. So weird. There was no one with her. Her mum was smiling more this week, laughing at silly things — you honestly wouldn’t guess her father had just died. Simon said he’d caught her dancing, on her own, in the laundry, to no music. Maybe it was having all the kids there for the funeral. Ever since Simon and Diana landed from Berlin on Monday with Felix, and Naomi’s van crawled to a spluttering stop out the front on Tuesday morning, Annie had seemed to be floating. Molly hadn’t seen her like that for years. She hoped she wasn’t having some sort of breakdown. That would not be convenient at all.

  Chapter 3

  ‘What’s so funny, you lunatic?’ Annie’s friend Jane appeared from around the side of the house, carrying a large glass of wine and bearing shards of filo pastry on the front of her blouse — evidence that the cheese triangles had been taken out of the oven and served.

  ‘I honestly couldn’t tell you,’ said Annie, struggling to regain composure. ‘Maybe I’m in shock. I just feel completely excellent.’

  Jane sat down on the edge of the patio, her feet on the grass. ‘You’re not in shock,’ she said. ‘It’s sheer fucking relief. I’ve seen it a million times before. No one likes to admit it, but sometimes it feels really bloody good when your parents are gone.’

  ‘But I loved them.’

  ‘Not saying you didn’t, but to everything a season and all that.’ Jane’s bluntness still shocked Annie slightly, but it was one of the reasons she had felt so drawn to her. They’d met at the gym, and although they’d only been friends for less than a year, Annie felt like they understood each other. She hadn’t had a friend like Jane in a long time.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Annie. Then she thought of something. ‘I’m an orphan.’

  ‘So you are. Orphan Annie.’

  Annie sang the opening lines of ‘Tomorrow’, and Jane thumped her on the arm.

  ‘Why don’t you sing more? You have such a gorgeous voice.’

  Annie thought about it. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ve sung all the songs that were mine to sing.’

  ‘What’s that from?’

  ‘What’s what from?’

  ‘That line — what you just said. It sounds like something from a song. “Maybe I’ve sung all the songs that were mine to sing.” A fucking depressing song, but still.’

  ‘It’s not from anything.’ Annie smiled. ‘It was just something I was thinking.’

  ‘Well, I think it should be in a song,’ said Jane, as if that was that. ‘Write it down or you’ll forget it.’ Neither of them moved. ‘When’s your ex back?’

  ‘First thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Tell me again why? Why are you having them for Christmas? Why are you not hopping on a plane tonight to Bali and then lying very still in a bath of pina coladas until you run out of money?’

  ‘It’s almost Christmas. The kids are all here. And Brian and Paul are my oldest friends. They were my band. I can’t wait to see them.’

  ‘But — and forgive me if I have this story confused — but didn’t the one you were married to —?’

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘Yes, Paul. Didn’t he run off with the one you weren’t married to?’

  ‘Brian. They didn’t actually run off. That’s not what happened.’

  ‘But they’re a couple now, and you and Paul aren’t.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘God. Imagine.’

  ‘It wasn’t as dramatic as all that. Paul and I had come to the end of our road, I suppose, and he walked on with Brian.’

  ‘So you’d already split up.’

  ‘Well, no,’ Annie admitted. ‘We were together until the day Paul told me he was in love with Brian. It was here, actually, after Christmas. We went to the corner shop to buy milk and he told me they were going to be together, and he was leaving me. I remember I had the door of the fridge open and I just stood there for ages, trying to take in what he’d said. The lady who ran the shop, Vicki, shouted at me to shut the fridge while I was deciding. And I remember feeling confused, because I wasn’t deciding anything. It was all decided for me.’

  ‘The absolute fucking nerve of the man,’ said Jane, shaking her head. ‘Leaving you to raise three kids. Did they pay child support?’ Jane never shied away from asking questions other people might have considered indelicate.

  ‘They were good. There wasn’t much of a mortgage on our terrace, and they gave me money for the kids. I had my job at the school. We had enough. The boys stayed very involved. It was more like my kids gained an extra dad than lost one. Even though they moved back to London. Anyway, my big two were teenagers, and only Molly was still a kid, really.’

  ‘And you never remarried? Ever get close?’

  ‘No.’ Annie shook her head. ‘Never found anyone else I could stand for long enough. I’m pretty good on my own. The upside of being an only child, I suppose.’

  * * *

  Molly looked out again to see that her mother had been joined by that friend of hers, Jane. Molly wasn’t sure about Jane: she didn’t get the impression Jane liked her very much. When Molly saw Annie stand up and turn back towards the house, leaving Jane sitting on the patio, she steered her protruding belly between the wrinkled faces and into the kitchen. She felt like a ferry in an archipelago of liver-sp
otted islands.

  Her grandparents’ kitchen was truly something to behold. Molly couldn’t think what the opposite of timeless was, but this kitchen embodied the concept. After inheriting the house from his father at the age of twenty-one, Pa had waited until 1970 to renovate. The cabinetry was all dark wood veneer, with metallic filigree handles that hooked themselves into passing beltloops like the fingers of a pre-#MeToo boss, and the lino floor tiles and Formica countertops were custard yellow. A brass rangehood loomed over the electric stove, and the matching brass splashback, which was easily marked by every droplet of water or splatter of fat it encountered, shone with the thousands of hours of resentful polishing her granny and, more recently, her mother had lavished on it. Her grandfather’s long-running joke had been to come in after it was polished and say, ‘You missed a spot.’

  The kitchen was, by modern standards, a monstrosity, and the worst part was that an exact replica of it sat waiting in the garage for the day this one wore out. Her grandfather had bought two, for a fifteen per cent discount, back in 1970, having declared its design would never date.

  Now that he was gone, surely this kitchen could be torn out, and its Dorian Gray counterpart sold to a television production company for the set of an ABC screen adaptation of some long-forgotten Australian novel.

  Annie came back in from the garden, took another tray of bad sandwiches from the fridge, and began peeling off the layers of plastic wrap. She scrunched them quickly into the bin: so Naomi wouldn’t spot them and fold them up for reuse, Molly assumed. Simon’s wife, Diana, had appeared and was rinsing wine glasses at the sink.

  Molly heaved herself up onto the counter and clasped her hands under her taut belly. ‘When are they all going to leave?’ she asked.

  Annie looked up. ‘In the next hour or so, I imagine.’

  ‘But it’s four thirty. Won’t they miss their dinners?’

  Diana looked around with a sympathetic smile. ‘I think it’s lovely that so many of your grandfather’s friends have been able to make it today. It’s a real tribute to him.’