This Has Been Absolutely Lovely

by Jessica Dettmann

  Molly froze, her fork halfway to her mouth.

  ‘His son?’ echoed Simon and Annie as one.

  ‘Yes. His son is staying. I met him. He’s really nice. I reckon they’d come. It could be a good thing to do. An olive branch.’

  Molly put down her fork and took a deep breath, overwhelmed with the panic all liars face. How interested should she sound? How interested would a person sound who didn’t know what she knew about Ray’s son? If she were to feign a complete lack of interest, that would surely arouse even more suspicion than a reasonable polite level of interest. Or would it?

  ‘What’s he like, the son?’ she asked in a voice she hoped would sound relaxed. It didn’t. She heard herself and it sounded like she was in a bad movie playing a character with Something To Hide.

  ‘Nice. His name’s Patrick. Remember last night with the Champagne cork, during dinner? That was him. He’s back.’ Naomi paused. ‘For Christmas.’ She reached out and served herself another Tofurky sausage. ‘He’s based in London but he works on nature docos so he travels heaps. He’s only a bit older than you, Simon. Maybe four years? I hadn’t quite realised how close in age you and Heather were, Mum. So, shall we invite them?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what Pa would have wanted,’ Simon said. ‘You know he didn’t like Ray.’

  ‘For no good reason, as far as anyone knows,’ said Naomi. ‘We could put that to rest now.’

  ‘But . . .’

  Molly watched Simon run out of ideas.

  ‘If Patrick’s come to stay, then Ray might just want Christmas to be the two of them,’ said Molly. ‘They’ve probably got plans.’

  ‘Yes, plans,’ added Simon, pathetically.

  ‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Paul. ‘Are you two on the same side? Does it sound to anyone else like Molly and Simon might be on the same side? Brian, hand me my phone, I’m going to call the media. This is worth a newsflash.’

  Molly shot him a withering glance. ‘There’s no such thing as a newsflash any more. Everything that happens gets tweeted or ’grammed and is basically a newsflash. You need to update your references.’

  ‘Fine. Brian, hand me my telephone so I can TikTok the Herald.’

  * * *

  As they carried plates back into the kitchen, Simon nudged Molly with his elbow.

  ‘Garden,’ he murmured out the side of his mouth. ‘Ten minutes. In the plumbago.’

  She rolled her eyes at his cloak and dagger act, but, nonetheless, once the dishwasher was loaded, the children had been taken upstairs by their mothers to have a bath — did Simon ever do any parenting? — and Jack had gone out to the front garden to return a missed call, Molly slipped out the back door and into the darkening garden.

  The plumbago was sticky, and the gap to enter was child-sized. Molly crawled through on her hands and knees, her stomach almost grazing the ground. Purple flowers clung to her hair and T-shirt when she emerged into the low clearing in the middle of the shrubbery.

  Simon was already there, crouching on the ground.

  ‘You look like you’re doing a poo,’ she greeted him.

  ‘How is it so muddy in here?’ he asked. ‘What have they been doing?’

  ‘Dunno,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Probably having a pissing contest, like we used to.’

  ‘Don’t be gross,’ he said, wrinkling his nose. ‘We never did that.’

  ‘You’ve repressed the memory because you always lost. We would see who could wee for the longest. Ask Naomi. She’ll remember.’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about piss. Didn’t you hear what Naomi said at dinner? The baby is back. Next door.’

  ‘He’s not a baby.’

  ‘Why is he back? What does he want?’

  ‘It’s Christmas. He probably wants to revert to his teenage behaviour, get shit presents, and eat seasonally inappropriate food like everyone else.’

  ‘A week after the man who was his real father dies? That doesn’t strike you as suspicious?’

  ‘Do we have any reason to suppose he knows Pa was his real father?’

  ‘We don’t know what he knows. Maybe he’s always known. Maybe he saw Pa’s death notice in the paper and came back to claim his rightful inheritance.’

  ‘It’s not Game of Thrones, Simon.’

  ‘You’ve never seen Game of Thrones, have you? All I’m saying is we should be careful and maybe not hang around too long deciding what to do.’

  ‘Why do you keep acting like there is anything for us to do? It’s not our house.’

  ‘We should at least destroy the letters from Heather. The less evidence that there’s even a chance Pa was his dad, the better.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Molly didn’t share Simon’s love of intrigue. ‘Maybe we should just tell Mum.’

  Simon huffed in exasperation. ‘Of course you want to tell Mum. You’re the Town Crier.’

  ‘If not Mum, then let’s tell Naomi. Bring her in as a tiebreaker. Whatever she reckons, we will do.’

  ‘No way. We know exactly what she’ll say. And she’s met the baby next door, so she’ll —’

  ‘Do what’s right? Simon, you know what we should do here. We need to tell Mum and Patrick the truth. Then what happens is up to them.’

  ‘At least let me do some research first — about what the legal situation might be with the house. Two days. Let’s sit on this for two more days.’

  Molly thought about it. Two days wouldn’t make any difference one way or another. And she didn’t exactly relish having to reveal to her mum that her beloved father was an adulterer and might have abandoned a child. Was it inevitable, letting down your children? Probably, she thought. She’d idolised her father until he’d left her mum and taken up with Brian.

  What it comes down to, she thought, is that in an ideal world, children would never have to turn their minds to their parents as sexual beings. That’s basically the situation you want to aim for.

  Her mum had avoided such a situation, as far as Molly knew, but this discovery was going to change that. Would it be worse for her mother to experience at nearly sixty what had overwhelmed Molly at eight? There was no way of knowing. And a bit more time without that particular domestic grenade going off would be a nice thing. She had another week of work till Tien closed for Christmas and her own maternity leave began. She was starting to wish she and Jack had stayed at the flat.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Two days. Then we tell at least Naomi and probably Mum.’

  Chapter 13

  That evening Annie’s children and grandchildren scattered to the furthest corners of the house, as was becoming their habit. For a family reunited for the first time in years, they were spending a remarkable amount of time trying to be away from each other.

  Annie sat down at the piano, now in the cool living room. This room had been the centre of her childhood home, as far as there was one. She and her parents had sat on the sofa each evening, watching whatever was on the television. This was where she and Brian and Paul had watched Countdown on Sunday nights. Her kids had done the same, except it had been Survivor and Buffy — but now when people wanted to watch something they mostly did it in their rooms, on their private screens, with headphones. It meant everyone was happy, but she mourned the loss of the community that came with several people sitting around hating one person’s choice of show.

  Her hands moved across the keyboard, quietly playing chords. Something about one progression she played sparked something — a tiny pilot light — and she repeated it. That was quite good. She played a little more, feeding into it the little melody that had been teasing her. That could grow into a song, given the right conditions.

  As she went to play it through again, the door from the hall opened and Simon came in.

  ‘Mind if I put the telly on?’ he asked. ‘I’ve missed proper Aussie free-to-air. I even miss the ads.’

  She closed her eyes in frustration for just a second. ‘No, go ahead.’

  He sat on the couch and pointed t
he remote at the TV, flicking through the channels. That there wasn’t something in particular he wanted to watch irked her even more.

  Escape to the Country filled the screen: a British couple in their seventies were being shown a converted barn in the Devon countryside. Their eyes lit up when they saw the exposed original beams and the woman clapped her hands with joy at the natural light in the kitchen. For god’s sake, thought Annie. He wasn’t even going to watch an Australian program.

  Simon nodded in approval. ‘Yes,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Yes, good. Dad! Brian!’ he shouted. ‘Escape to the Country.’

  Bearing glasses of wine and a plate of pfeffernusse, Brian and Paul came to watch. The three men sat lined up on the sofa, engrossed in the real estate journey of a couple they would never know.

  Annie hated that show. It was called ‘Escape’ but the participants were just trapping themselves somewhere new. She wished the producers would make follow-up episodes about all the people who took on falling-apart country houses and hated it, and went mad from the loneliness of rural life, and divorced from the stress.

  She watched for a while, sitting on the piano stool, until she could stand it no longer. ‘I’ll say good night. See you all tomorrow.’

  Paul grabbed her hand as she rose. ‘But it’s so early. Stay and hang out. Don’t go up to bed yet.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was going to bed.’ She slid her feet into her sandals and bent to buckle them up. ‘I said I was saying good night.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To see a friend.’

  Simon looked away from the television. ‘What friend?’ he demanded. ‘Jane?’

  ‘Not Jane,’ said Annie, smiling to herself.

  ‘Ah,’ said Brian. ‘A different sort of friend.’

  ‘What’s a “different sort of friend”?’ Simon looked suspiciously from his mother to Brian. ‘What’s going on?’

  Paul rolled his eyes. ‘For heaven’s sake, Simon, your mother has a right to privacy. Stop it with the third degree.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Annie said mildly. ‘I have a friend I see in the evenings sometimes. For sex,’ she added, because it seemed any amount of subtlety was too much for her firstborn.

  Simon recoiled, blinking. ‘For . . . s— . . . for what?’

  Annie had had enough. She stood up. ‘Sex, Simon. Sex. It’s a thing people do before they have children, and then again once their children all leave home.’

  ‘Who is this person? Is it someone I know? Is it serious?’

  ‘The sex? Sometimes it’s serious. Sometimes it’s very funny.’

  ‘No. Mum. Gross. God. I mean the relationship.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d call it a relationship, as such.’

  ‘Can we meet him? Or . . . her?’

  ‘It’s a him. And no. He has no interest in you.’

  ‘Why not? That’s a bit weird.’

  ‘Is it? You’re a grown adult with a wife and child; you have two perfectly decent parents and a stepfather. My friend is not looking for a grown man to parent.’

  ‘I just mean it’s weird he doesn’t want to be part of your life,’ Simon made giant circling gestures with both arms, ‘as a whole.’

  Brian pursed his lips together, clearly trying to stop himself saying something. He failed. ‘I’d say he’s very interested in Annie, as a hole.’

  Annie burst out laughing and Simon leaped off the sofa as if he’d been tasered. ‘Brian, that’s absolutely disgusting and a very wrong thing to say.’

  ‘Calm down, sweetheart.’ Annie looked at him, amused.

  Paul patted Simon on the arm. ‘Come on now. Your mother is a woman. She has —’

  ‘If you say “needs” I swear to god I am going to throw up.’

  ‘Right. Good night everyone,’ announced Annie. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  * * *

  Annie spent two hours in her lover’s bed. They had a very satisfactory arrangement. He was a bit younger — well, a lot younger — and that worked for her. She’d met him through an app, and they’d been sleeping together for six months now. That was all it was, and it was glorious.

  Every time they met he fucked her like he couldn’t believe his luck. When she told him that he’d laughed. Each time she left him she braced herself for a text breaking things off, but it hadn’t come. She was pretty sure he would tire of her eventually, seek out someone closer to his own age. And that would be fine too, but for the moment she revelled in the joy of no-strings-attached sex, with the added post-menopausal benefit that she definitely couldn’t get pregnant.

  She never stayed the night, and he never asked her to. But they liked each other — there was affection as well as passion, the three evenings a week they saw each other. And there were no demands, which Annie found to be a massive turn-on. He asked for nothing she didn’t offer, and he accepted with gratitude whatever she did. They didn’t talk about her family, or his life: it had become part of their arrangement. When they talked, Annie loved the freedom of conversing with someone with no preconceived notions about her.

  It was midnight when Annie put her clothes back on. He saw her to the door and kissed her.

  ‘Good night, Annie,’ he said.

  ‘Good night, Justin.’

  * * *

  The chords that had been creeping round the periphery of Annie’s consciousness solidified in the night, and in the morning she woke and went straight down to the piano, closing the living room door behind her. The house was quiet.

  She pressed the keys, gently, cautiously, keeping her foot on the soft pedal. She was nervous: this could stop at any moment. In a second she might realise she was playing a song that already existed. Each choice of note might lead her down a path someone had already trodden, and she almost held her breath.

  But she was right — the song was new. And the tiny old thrill she recognised from so long ago sparked inside her: the song was good. She played it through three times, from start to finish, tweaking notes and the timing. She rose briefly to search through the piano stool’s storage area for a scrap of paper, and quickly jotted down the chords with a nearly blunt pencil she found in there. But were there words?

  They’ll be there, she told herself. They’d come after the melody — they always did. Fear crept up on her: she hadn’t done this alone. She’d always had Paul and Brian when she wrote actual songs, sitting beside her, throwing around ideas, tossing in rhymes and thoughts. What if she couldn’t do it on her own? Maybe she should get the other sides of the triangle involved again. There was nothing to stop her doing that. They’d probably love it.

  But in her gut, somewhere deep, something told Annie it was her turn. It wasn’t that the guys hadn’t pulled their weight when they were all in the band, but . . . You’ve always done most of it, Annie told herself. You pretended it was a team but it was always you. And suddenly she was off: her brain shooting from one thought to the next, making leaps, associations, grabbing unrelated ideas by the hand and pulling them up on the stage, not sure why they were useful until she saw how they danced with what was already there. Her brain was crackling with electricity. Nothing had ever made her feel quite like this. It was an intoxicating power, building something from emotions and sounds.

  Scribbling and striking through lines and words on the page, linking and disconnecting, she moved ideas around the way her mother used to fiddle with table settings. She glanced up from the page and looked at the dining room table. The memory of her mother at that table was strong. It had baffled her, watching Mum fuss with plates and glasses, cruets of salt and pepper, vases of flowers, candles, napkins and glassware, but maybe that had been to Jean what this process of songwriting was to Annie: she was assembling things into an arrangement that pleased her.

  She kept writing, kept pushing out the ideas, pulling at them like tangled wool. When she met a snarl, she picked at it until it came loose and the yarn ran easily again, singing and humming her way past the snags. It
was a song of heartbreak and betrayal — about all the lies in her life and none in particular.

  Lie with me, lie under me, lie over me like rain,

  lie to me, lie through me, lie till I never rise again.

  * * *

  The sound of the front door opening snapped Annie out of her reverie. She checked her watch. Three hours had passed. From what she could hear, the children had been on an expedition to get a Christmas tree. They must have had an even earlier start than her. She didn’t want to stop, though. If she stopped she might never be able to get going again. She remembered that feeling. It was why she had given up writing when the children were small. The interruptions were too painful, and the inevitable stop-start hobbled the process so much it didn’t feel worth trying.

  ‘Hold the door right back. No, all the way back, as far as it will go.’ Simon had obviously put himself in charge of the Christmas tree transportation.

  ‘It is back as far as it will go,’ came Naomi’s response.

  ‘It’s not flush with the wall: give it a good pull.’

  ‘Simon, there are hats and bags and stuff hanging behind it. I promise this is as far back as I can get it. There’s heaps of room to bring it through.’

  ‘Right,’ ordered Simon. ‘I want everyone under it, here, line up at the back of the car. We’re going to carry it like it’s a coffin.’

  Clearly there was a worse enemy of art than a pram in the hall, Annie thought, remembering an old quote, and that was an entire extended family trying to carry a ten-foot-tall Christmas tree in from the car while you tried to write a song.

  With considerable bashing into the walls and swearing, the procession bearing the Douglas fir made it down the hall and, after much back and forth and pivoting, and the loss of several low branches, they entered the living room and Sunny and Felix, who were carrying the light tapered end, leaned it on the arm of the sofa. The adults, ranged along the tree trunk, dropped it to the floor with a thud.

  Sunny and Felix quietly sloped off before they were asked to participate in any more helpful Christmas activities.