This Has Been Absolutely Lovely

by Jessica Dettmann

  ‘How?’ Annie asked simply.

  Simon didn’t speak.

  ‘Simon, how did this happen?’ Paul asked his son, coming over and putting his arm around his shoulder.

  ‘Simon is addicted to gambling.’ Diana spoke from the doorway, half in and half out of the room. She sounded tired. ‘He plays online poker. Very badly. It got out of control, he spent our savings, then he borrowed some money from his employers. Without their permission. Which is another word for stealing. They fired him. It all happened in a very short time.’

  The family sat, the silence heavy with shock.

  Naomi pushed back her chair and went to Diana. She put her arm around her shoulder and hugged her. Uncharacteristically, Diana reached up and squeezed her sister-in-law’s hand.

  Tears were rolling down Simon’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t want you to know.’

  Annie went to his side and kneeled down on the carpet. ‘Oh, Simo.’ Hearing her pet name for him made him sob. She stood and wrapped her arms around him and he buried his face in her chest. ‘You silly old duffer. It’s all right. It’ll be all right.’ She looked at Diana, who had tears coursing down her cheeks too. Paul let go of Simon and went to comfort Diana too, wrapping his long arms around his daughter-in-law, who hadn’t asked for any of this.

  Brian stood and hastily assembled a stack of dirty dishes. Jack followed his lead and they left, past Diana, who watched her husband over his dad’s shoulder.

  The one candle still alight guttered and flickered, sending dripping wax down the silver and onto the tablecloth. Simon reached out and pressed his finger into the hot wax, wincing, as he cried in his mother’s arms.

  Chapter 28

  That evening the sky was purple as the sun set on Christmas for another year. Naomi flattened the last of the wrapping paper into the recycling bin, and wheeled it down the right of way from the garage to the road. Tough blades of grass poked through the Besser bricks into the soles of her bare feet, but she liked the discomfort. As she wrestled the bin onto the nature strip, she looked over to see Patrick doing the same thing.

  She waved at him, tentatively.

  He waved back.

  ‘I’d better stop flirting with you now, hadn’t I?’ she said with a grin. ‘Now that I know you’re my uncle.’

  Patrick looked mortified. ‘Flirting? What? Were you . . . ?’

  ‘Oh totally! I thought you were hot. I was fully flirting with you. It’s actually a bit problematic that you didn’t realise. Only from the point of view of my flirting technique — otherwise it’s a good thing. Imagine if something had happened.’

  ‘I knew we were related all along,’ he reminded her. ‘Nothing could have happened.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she conceded. ‘I forgot you knew. We need a bloody spreadsheet of who knew what. I can’t keep it straight. Anyway, the fact we’re closely related sort of explains the sexual energy.’

  ‘What?’ Patrick was aghast.

  ‘Not in an incesty way, well, not intentionally. But it’s quite common for people to be attracted to people they’re related to, when they don’t know they’re related. It’s why if you use a sperm donor you should tell your kid, so they don’t accidentally hook up with another child from the same sperm donor. Statistically it happens quite often. They mistake the genetic energy connection for sexual energy. Like I did.’

  ‘Can you stop saying sexual energy?’

  ‘Yeah, I can. I just don’t want you to feel weird, or uncomfortable. There’s a lot of new energy flowing around us all right now — people being born, people dying. It’s natural that there will be sexual energy in that mix, and that’s okay.’

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Gotcha.’

  She smiled at him. ‘You’ve entered our family in a really amazing way. We’re very lucky. What you did for Molly? You literally welcomed your great-niece into the world. That’s sacred, you know?’ She took his forearm in her hand and squeezed it. ‘We’re all connected now.’

  ‘We’ve been connected since my mum slept with your grandfather,’ said Patrick, with more than a hint of bitterness. ‘None of this is good, Naomi.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s right,’ she said, staring up at the sky. ‘Good things come from less good things. Just like bad things come from good things. It’s an unpredictable cycle, but there’s always something positive. I used to think I fell for the wrong people, but now I think I fall for people who have something to teach me.’ They stood in silence for a moment. ‘You’ve taught me a person will get nowhere trying to crack onto their own uncle.’ She burst into laughter.

  ‘Oh my god, Naomi,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Night, Uncle Patrick.’ She headed back towards the house, still chortling, then stopped and turned back to him, suddenly serious. ‘And hey, Patrick? If Ray’s worse in the night, if you need any help at all, please text me. I mean it.’

  ‘I know you do,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  * * *

  When she finally finished the dishes from lunch and the meal that followed because Sunny and Felix were too young to understand that one meal counts for two on Christmas Day, Annie went out to the garden.

  She needed to place all the startling revelations of the day out on the flagstones and examine them, turning them over and getting to know them like she had seen her grandchildren do with their gifts that morning. She hadn’t been particularly pleased with the Daisy Jones present, but that shone like a beacon of thoughtfulness now, compared to what she’d been given at Christmas lunch.

  Should she look at the new information in the order she’d received it, or in order of importance? Was her son’s gambling addiction, corporate theft and bankruptcy more important than her father’s infidelity and lifetime of deception? It was hard to say.

  Both of those were too hard to look at yet, so she turned to the one fact that didn’t turn her stomach. She had a brother. Patrick. Twenty years her junior, but still a brother.

  Naomi had befriended him. That was nice. Unless she fancied him. That would be bad. But Annie was pretty sure they’d only met once or twice, for tea. They couldn’t have swerved quite that fast into Jerry Springer territory. She hoped.

  Patrick seemed interesting and funny and most of all kind. The way he looked after Ray warmed Annie’s heart. She hoped she’d cared for her mum and dad with the same grace and love. She thought she had. She had certainly tried not to resent it. Ray was dying, Naomi had told her after everyone left. He didn’t have long. Annie could see that. Would Patrick keep Ray’s house?

  For a moment, Annie indulged in a daydream of living out her life there, with her brother next door. Maybe he would have a family too, and all their children and grandchildren could play and laugh together. They could take down the back fence to make one massive wonderful garden, the wildflowers elbowing their way in among the roses.

  She could picture it so clearly, but even as she conjured it up in her imagination she felt the cold pull of dissatisfaction in her stomach. It wasn’t what she wanted. She knew that for sure now.

  There was no escaping the fact that she was always going to be a mother, eternally needed by three people in one way or another, but she knew now that if she stayed there, tending to their every need, she would not survive. They would eat her alive. The thought, as it sometimes did, sent guilt shooting through her like she’d touched an electric fence. But she held onto the thought this time. Guilt couldn’t kill her. Neither would a desperate lack of creative fulfilment, which was the other alternative, but she knew which of the two she could more comfortably live with on a long-term basis.

  This house had to be sold. Patrick was probably entitled to half, though she had no idea whether he would go so far as to sue her if she didn’t offer it. That meant her children would each get significantly less. The thought didn’t bother her. Much as she disliked the phrase, it was a very first-world problem to have. The money would still be enough to cover Molly and Jack’s concrete cancer bill, with some over
for their mortgage, and it would give Naomi a real start if she wanted to buy some land or a little cottage up north. Simon’s share would be enough to pay back what he owed to his former employer, who had, according to Diana, extended some serious largesse to her light-fingered son in the form of not having him charged with theft if he paid them back and sought treatment. They weren’t going to give him his job back, of course, and he wouldn’t be hired in that industry in Germany again.

  Annie thought they’d probably stay in Australia. Poor Diana would be devastated. Ikea might offer transfers, so she would have that to investigate. And maybe Justin could help Simon get a job. She laughed to herself. That would be the icing on the cake of utter weirdness.

  How would she tell Jane all that had happened at Christmas lunch? A phone call or text wouldn’t do: her friend’s face would be priceless. It would have to wait, though, because Jane and her husband, Alan, were off on a yacht with a couple she only ever referred to as ‘Alan’s horrible friends’. Jane had been dreading it: she didn’t trust the sea and she claimed her only entertainment would be pissing off the horrible friends by wilfully failing to call any part of their vessel by its correct name.

  The sound of Petula crying broke the silence, and drifted through the still evening air. Annie heard Jack soothing her in low, calming tones. There was no sound of Molly.

  Molly had gone to bed after the unfortunate double bladder incident, which in hindsight was about the least upsetting part of Christmas lunch. Annie had looked in on her before coming outside, but she had the light off.

  It occurred to Annie that her plans involved, essentially, trying to buy her freedom from her children. Molly was the only one she wasn’t sure would be so easily paid off. Something was different in her now, and it worried Annie. Neither of them had mentioned the text message about childcare. Annie had been waiting to see if Molly would say something, but so far she hadn’t. And the way she was constantly holding the baby made it seem like maybe having Annie look after Petula while Molly rushed back to work wasn’t what she wanted any more.

  * * *

  On Boxing Day Annie woke to a gentle tapping on her door. The clouds of Christmas had cleared and sunlight streamed through the window.

  ‘Come in.’

  Paul pushed the door open and came in, carrying a tray with three steaming mugs. Behind him Brian had a plate of Vegemite on toast and sliced Christmas cake.

  ‘Morning,’ said Brian. ‘Can we have brekkie in your bed?’

  Annie smiled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. ‘Yes, of course. We haven’t done that for a while.’ She yanked on her new fringe, which had an annoying habit of starting each day standing to attention, like it had woken suddenly from a nightmare. Still, for an impulse haircut executed by an unqualified hairdresser in a pub toilet, she wasn’t regretting it half as much as she deserved to.

  She tossed two pillows to the foot of the bed and Paul and Brian climbed in, propped the pillows against the footboard, and leaned back against them. Their legs lay alongside hers under the quilt, and they sat quietly, sipping their tea.

  ‘So,’ began Paul, in the manner of someone calling a meeting to order. ‘Yesterday. Heather. Patrick. Simon. That was . . . a lot.’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly,’ said Annie.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She thought. ‘No, I don’t think I am. I know this sounds a bit dramatic, but I sort of feel like my whole life has been based on a lie. I thought my dad was a wonderful man. He and I were a team. You remember how much. I feel very stupid not to have seen what was going on. He must have been carrying on with Heather right under our noses.’

  ‘We don’t know that. Patrick wasn’t born until a fair while after we moved to London,’ Brian pointed out. ‘Maybe Heather can tell you more.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever want to see or speak to Heather again. I don’t care what she has to say, and, besides, I’m not sure I’d believe her.’

  ‘What about those letters Simon found? They might shed some light on how it all went down.’

  ‘I thought of that last night, but Simon threw them away. He says he was worried I’d find them.’

  ‘Then why did he blab about it, if he didn’t want you to know?’

  Annie sighed heavily. ‘Why does Simon do anything? Because he lacks self-control. You know that.’

  Paul nodded. ‘You’re right. And about Simon, what are we going to do with him? Is there anything we can do?’

  All night Annie had wondered how to help Simon, but now she thought about her son’s behaviour since his return to Australia and anger surged through her. All he had done was hide and lie. He hadn’t been helping his wife deal with the situation he had landed her in, and he hadn’t even been helping around the house or spending any time with Felix.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, ‘but I’m not going to do anything. He’s an adult. He got himself into this mess and he can get himself out.’

  Paul frowned at her. ‘Annie, gambling is an addiction. You wouldn’t say that if he were addicted to drugs. You’d want to help him figure out how to get clean.’

  ‘It’s not the same. Gambling is a choice. Stealing from your employer is a choice.’

  ‘It isn’t a choice. It’s the same. It’s all addiction. The same chemicals in the brain work the same way whether you’re addicted to heroin or porn or hearing people clap for you or playing cards online.’

  She sighed. ‘I know.’ Then more angrily, ‘I know. It’s just so bloody stupid. How could he be so stupid? He’s not a stupid person.’

  There was a pause, and then Paul said, ‘He is a bit stupid. And he’s very greedy.’

  Annie laughed so hard she snorted.

  Brian looked disapprovingly at them. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that.’

  ‘Why? It’s true.’ She was still laughing.

  ‘You’re far too nice to my children, darling,’ added Paul, brushing off the crumbs that had scattered onto the bed from their toast as they’d laughed. ‘But Annie and I can speak the truth. Simon is greedy and sometimes a bit stupid. Molly is as flighty as hell. They’re both unbelievably self-involved, though who am I to talk.’ He had the grace to look a bit shamefaced, then brightened. ‘Naomi’s all right, for a mad hippie. One out of three ain’t bad, eh, Annie?’

  ‘Not bad at all. If you wrote three songs and one was great, you’d be happy with that. Same goes for kids.’

  ‘And for grandchildren?’ asked Brian. ‘All three of your kids now have one child each. Do you want them to have two more apiece, so you can guarantee a good one?’

  ‘Simon can’t afford more kids, Naomi’s on her own, and I can’t see her having another, and Molly’s only just figuring out how to operate the one she has. I wonder if this’ll be another generation of only children, like you, Annie.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m not an only child, am I?’ she pointed out. ‘I have a little brother.’

  ‘God, of course. And didn’t he say that he already knew your dad was actually his dad too?’ added Paul.

  ‘Heather seemed to think he didn’t know,’ Annie said. ‘I wonder how he found out.’

  ‘Maybe the same way you did. Maybe he recognised the similarity between him and Robert, physically.’

  ‘But he didn’t grow up here. When would he even have seen my father?’

  ‘That’s a point. Are you going to talk to him today?’

  Annie wasn’t sure. What would she say?

  ‘Probably,’ she said. ‘I guess there are some things we need to sort out.’

  Paul patted her comfortingly on the leg, and began to gather up the plates and mugs. He and Brian both disentangled themselves from the bedclothes, stood up and made for the door.

  ‘You’ll be fine, Annie. He’s lucky to have you as a sister.’

  As they walked down the hall Brian began to whistle ‘Home Is Where Your Heart Is’. Annie wanted to throw something at him.

  Chapter 29


  Annie was desperate to talk to Jane about everything that had unfolded on Christmas Day, but Jane was still off on the yacht and her phone kept going straight to voicemail. She wouldn’t be back until New Year’s Eve. That didn’t matter, Annie told herself. She knew her friend well enough to figure out her advice in her absence. What would Jane do in this situation? Jane, she was pretty certain, would simply cross the right of way and knock on Ray’s front door. Jane would get to the bottom of everything. Even so, it was almost lunchtime before Annie gathered the courage to go next door.

  She wondered if it would be appropriate to take something with her. A gift of some sort. Her mother had never gone anywhere empty-handed. She would have taken a jar of homemade jam or some biscuits, especially if she’d had to go chat to a neighbour about something awkward. But Annie couldn’t think of anything to offset the scale of the awkwardness of the conversation she was about to have. Maybe she should take over the entire spare kitchen from the garage.

  Her knock on Ray’s front door was answered almost immediately — by Naomi.

  ‘Oh,’ said Annie. ‘Hello, love. I thought you were at home.’

  ‘Ray’s had a turn,’ said Naomi. ‘He’s not going to be here in this realm for much longer. I told Patrick I would help him when they reached this point.’

  ‘I’ll go then,’ said Annie, relieved to have the excuse.

  ‘Don’t go. I think Patrick would like to talk to you. He’s waited a long time. Ray’s asleep now, anyway, and I was just going to make some tea.’

  ‘If you’re sure?’ Annie was reluctant.

  ‘Please, Mum. Patrick’s about to lose — in a corporeal sense, at least — the only real family he’s ever known. You’re his sister. Come be with him.’

  Annie followed her daughter down the hall. Paul was right. There was nothing wrong with Naomi. Annie felt quietly proud of her compassionate, loving daughter. Her siblings could learn a lot from her.