‘Yes, that was Angela exaggerating. Our roofs are fine—I hope.’
Ruby made a detour for a nearby rubbish bin. Izzy remained behind on an open stretch of lawn, taking the opportunity to practise her cartwheels. She called out for her grandma to bear witness. ‘Watch me! Watch me!’ Then proceeded to impel her agile body into a series of euphoric rotations. When she came to a sudden standstill, teetering like a skittle, she spotted her grandma staring down into the bin.
‘What’s in there?’ she shouted, brushing the grass from her pants. When her grandmother didn’t respond, Izzy ran over to investigate, thinking it might be an animal of some kind.
A newspaper lay open atop the day’s accumulation of bottles and cans, already midway up the bin. The picture showed Carol’s face staring out a car window. Izzy’s smaller school photo was in the lower right-hand corner.
‘What’s it say?’ Izzy leant over the rubbish bin to study her mum’s expression, a smear of grease darkening her cheek.
‘Missing girl’s mother to be questioned.’ Ruby lowered the plastic bag, filled with the detritus from their happy lunch, over Carol’s truculent face. ‘You’ve really landed me in the deep end.’
‘Me or Mum?’
‘Both of you.’
Ruby was aiming to make it to Sorrento before evening set in. They were making good headway, managing to put the suburbs behind them just as businesses everywhere opened their doors at the end of the working day, releasing a dispiriting morass of peak-hour traffic like an overturned can of treacle on the city.
There were still enough cars on the highway to suggest they weren’t home free yet. Experience told Ruby there’d be a handful of satellite suburbs, shopping strips and industrial parks to trawl through before they could reasonably expect to go shooting along the open road. It perplexed her that the stream of vehicles in front had yet to abate. She enjoyed watching the lines of traffic thin the more distance she placed between the Winnebago and the city. With tensed brow, she crouched further over the steering wheel, trying to make out the impediment up ahead.
Izzy, registering the change in motion, ceased flipping through her newly acquired picture books and raised her chin to the windscreen. ‘Why are we stopping?’
‘We’re not, we’re slowing.’ Though the degree of deceleration and impending stretch of cars suggested being stationary was a forgone conclusion.
The appearance of flashing red and blue lights up ahead—miniature lighthouses portending disaster—signalled the wait would not be insignificant. Ruby hoped it was a minor crash, a thoughtless, preoccupied prang. She flicked a switch and the tick-tock metronome of her indicator set in, clicking reprovingly at each car that denied the Winnebago access into their lane. (For it was their lane now and the drivers hogged it possessively, refusing to so much as glance Ruby’s way, superior in their decision to have stuck to the right or moved over sooner.) Eventually, Ruby was able to merge in front of a churlish businesswoman, who appeared to have allowed distraction rather than any form of generosity produce the available opening, and swore mutely at Ruby in the rear-view mirror.
Izzy craned her neck to view the oncoming drama, as they made their gradual approach, like a string of carriages on a scenic fairground ride. She updated Ruby on the details as they came to her. ‘There’s one, two, no three, police cars. And an ambulance, or is that two ambulances? One of the police cars is blocking the road and a policeman in front is guiding the traffic. There’s a person standing with a blanket wrapped over their head. A policeman has an arm around them.’
‘I can see that, Izzy. You might want to look over the other side now.’
‘There’s a bed, like a hospital bed. It’s hard to see because the police are all blocking the way.’
‘What are the people in the car behind us doing, Izzy?’
Izzy couldn’t tell her because that would mean taking her eyes from the drama. She continued her running commentary, caught up in the seductive fascination of the accident, the desire for chaos one step removed. ‘There’s a blue car all banged up, over on the side. Can you see it? Did someone move it there?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ Ruby noticed the rescue team surrounding the second car. So too did Izzy.
‘There’s someone in the there!’ she cried.
‘For God’s sake, sit down and look away would you.’
‘Why?’
‘Common courtesy. How would you like a bunch of strangers gawping at you if you were hurt?’
‘Do you think they’re hurt?’ Izzy rotated her head as they slowly overtook the scene, trying to make sense of it all.
‘I’m sure they’ll be fine.’
The traffic merged like blood cells flowing in to seal a wound. Soon the current had returned to normal. Izzy sighed. She pulled on her seatbelt to provide enough flex to bend down and collect her spilled picture books from off the floor. She resumed flicking through the books, turning each page with a razor-sharp tearing sound, so that Ruby kept glancing over to ensure no damage had been done. The aftershock from the accident had sucked the air out of the cab.
‘Maybe you’d like to try reading one of your stories out aloud.’
‘Okay,’ Izzy said, but refrained from opening her mouth. ‘Remember, spell out the letters if you’re having trouble.’
‘The …’
Ruby allowed a minute to pass. ‘Go on.’
‘What happens when we die?’
Ruby gave a start. She took her eyes of the road for longer than was altogether safe to stare down at the page, trying to discern what was written there. She never would have bought a book with such a grim theme. ‘Is that what it says?’ she asked.
‘No. I just wanted to know.’
Ruby exhaled briskly, tapping her forefinger on the steering wheel, buying herself some time. She decided to be straight with the child. ‘I have no idea.’
Izzy scowled, propping her sandalled feet upon the dash. ‘I want to know,’ she said, as though Ruby was holding out on her.
Ruby pushed her feet back down. ‘I honestly don’t have the answer, Izzy. No one does.’
‘Please …’
‘What does Carol say?’
‘She says it’s a secret.’
‘Well, I suppose … It’s more of a mystery than a secret.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Well, a secret implies that somebody knows the answer. A mystery is unknowable.’
‘Detectives solve mysteries.’
‘Not ones as big as this they don’t.’
‘You could solve it by dying.’
‘A bit extreme—better just to enjoy the suspense.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Go along for the ride.’
Izzy gave a shrug as if she could no longer be bothered with Ruby’s nonsense. The Winnebago shuddered from the jet stream of a passing semi. Ruby applied her foot to the accelerator and they surged forward.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Angela adjusted the hem of her sarong. Though she and Lucas had become firm friends over the last three days, she didn’t think it was appropriate to have quite so much flesh on show. A shard of shadow from the above balcony severed her at the thigh, casting her upper half in protective shade—anyone glancing through the glass doors opposite would have been startled to see a pair of slender legs missing a torso. Lucas’s voice carried through the open door in fits and starts. She found his phone demeanour unnerving for its lack of levity—no peppering of conversational chuckles or self-deprecatory snickers, just toneless, monochromatic speech, like a cleric intoning the mass of a religion he’d long since lost faith in. She angled her calves against the sun. The racy contours of her legs, the tennis ball muscle midway below the knee, bunched into shape by a lifetime spent holding herself aloft on various unfeasible lengths of heel. Sadly, the skin’s patina, despite the veil of colour produced by days of balcony basking in December sunshine, had the burnished, windblown appearance of dried cuttlefish
, as if decades of waxing had buffed the epidermis back to bone. She needed moisturiser—debated whether to bother rising out of her deckchair to fetch it. She tuned an ear for the sound of Lucas’s voice—might he be inveigled upon to fetch her lotion from the bathroom?
Angela’s attention was drawn to the facing apartment block. Someone was at home, moving around in one of the rooms (surveillance sessions had come to be a favourite pastime). Angela wondered if she should call out to Lucas—it was rare to see anyone in the middle of the day. She leant into the sun, feeling its laser beam intensity dissecting her crown along the centre part, and peered into the adjacent apartment. A young Asian woman was sashaying around her living room. Angela remained poised in breathless wonderment, watching the lithe creature bob and gyrate in reckless, supposedly unobserved, abandonment.
‘Sorry about that …’
Without taking her eyes from the window, Angela reached out and yanked on Lucas’s shorts. ‘Shhh. Get down, get down!’ As though it were a sniper across the way, lining up his shot.
Lucas squatted on his haunches, bringing his face next to Angela’s to see what she was seeing; his whiskered chin was so close she inhaled the scent of tuna on his breath, and a trace of coriander from last night’s take-out. The scene was entrancing. In a world filled with televised dancing, from gormless competitions for the talented and untalented to boot-scooting beer ads and bikini-clad models grinding on video clips, it was a wonder that the power of the lone, uninhibited dancer still held so much attraction.
Suddenly the dancing stopped.
‘What’s happening?’ Angela asked, following the girl with her eyes as she crossed to the stereo to turn down the volume.
‘Maybe she’s tired,’ Lucas suggested.
They watched the girl slump onto her couch and bring her phone to her ear to speak.
‘She should have let it ring out,’ Angela said.
Lucas arched his back as he stood. He was wiry, with solid thighs like his father. Angela had witnessed firsthand how, in the all too near future, Lucas’s body would lose its vigour, weakening and softening like an old carrot.
‘We could have a little boogie later on,’ she proposed.
‘Never in a million years,’ he assured her.
‘Meaning you wouldn’t dance with me in that timeframe or simply not dance at all?’
‘I’ve been told I dance like a gimp.’
‘Ah.’ She nudged his rocky knee with the tip of her espadrille. ‘Go knock on Miss Saigon’s door—ask her to teach you.’
‘Was that a racial slur?’
‘No. It’s a musical. Don’t be so touchy.’
‘Sorry. That was Mum on the phone—she has that effect on me.’
Angela received the information with a yank of compunction. She was aware of Nina’s feeling toward her: a brand of deep-seated, irrational antipathy favoured mostly by religious zealots. She effected a little convulsion to lighten the mood. ‘I don’t know how you put up with her. I’ve worked with plenty of actresses in my time, but none of them came close to Nina for behaving like a drama queen. I used to feel for you, poor kid, stuck in that house with her day and night. Isn’t it unfair that we can’t choose our parents? I always fancied Barbara Stanwyck for a mother—what about you?’
Lucas kept his gaze locked upon the facing apartment tower. Angela arched her neck, eager to see if he’d spotted anyone else moving around inside the glass ant colony.
‘Why did you hate me?’ he said.
‘When?’ Angela asked, as though he might have been referring to a particular moment in time.
‘When?’ A cynical smile. ‘Always. You never wanted me around. You resented my being there.’
‘That’s not true. You were the one who hated coming to us. You always seemed so mopey.’
‘You wanted Dad all to yourself.’
Angela gasped. ‘Not true.’
‘You were so phoney. You had to force yourself to be nice to me. You’d put on this voice—kind of perky, kind of whiny. It was blatantly obvious you couldn’t stand the sight of me.’
‘I was nervous. I wanted you to like me. I was probably trying too hard.’
‘I lived for those visits.’
Their eyes met and quickly slipped away,
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Angela asked. ‘I assumed you must have hated me.’
‘I was a teenager. I thought you were pretty great.’
Angela turned to appraise him, her face a smooth mask of scepticism.
‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘I thought you were a real character. I only wished you could have behaved toward me like you did to everyone else.’
Angela stared forlornly across the balcony. A rusty watermark trickled down the opposite wall from a leaking pipe, as though the building were crying for its own implacable ugliness.
Why were they only addressing this now? Why hadn’t she brought it up at the dinner table one evening? She had been so damn terrified of pushing the boy further into his shell, that’s why; too busy playing peacekeeper, afraid to broach such matters with a thirteen-year-old boy. Affairs of the heart can be complicated. When you grow up you’ll find that out for yourself. It was too personal, not to mention how maudlin and sentimental it sounded. True love and all that claptrap. The child would have laughed her out of the room, either that or spat in her face. Then there was the guilt. She’d broken up Lucas’s home (not that Nina wasn’t doing a fine job of demolishing it from the inside) and usurped his dad’s affections. The guilt had compounded her discomfort, creating an impossible situation whereby all she had to fall back on were strained platitudes and civilities.
She took hold of his hand, feeling its strange weight and contours. Had she ever troubled to take it as a youth? Did she even know how Lucas’s boyhood palm felt clasped within her own? She was ashamed to concede that she didn’t.
‘I’m sorry. Really, I am. I had this ridiculous idea that not rocking the boat was the best way to be supportive.’
‘You were wrong.’
Later, Angela transplanted herself from deckchair to couch, She tilted her neck, one arm draped across the crest of the couch like an actress theatrically reclining in a Noel Coward play. She listened to her dining options.
‘Vietnamese, Italian bistro, contemporary Australian, Asian fusion, southern Pakistani, Spanish …’ Lucas recited, reading off his phone—this was how her stepson fed.
On her first night, Angela had offered to cook. Lucas gave a cynical laugh. When Angela opened the fridge she’d been taken aback. Lucas had warned her of the deficiency but she’d never imagined famine such as this: the half-used condiment jars with their rash of woolly spores; the tub of margarine and wizened lemon half, puckered by age and acidity; the lump of whitened cheese that no one had bothered to rewrap. It was the fridge of a crank or a serial killer. And to think that the appliance itself must have cost close to five thousand dollars.
‘Why even have a kitchen?’ Angela had asked, reeling from the shocking austerity just exposed.
Lucas had replied laconically, ‘It came with the apartment.’ Angela lamented never having taught him how to cook. To think of the bonding that might have taken place. They could have held regional theme nights. She pictured mother and stepson in splattered aprons, laughing in a cloud of flour, holding out spoonfuls of red sauce for the other to sample. It was a crying shame, almost criminal to think of the opportunity she’d squandered.
Lucas handed her the wad of menus. ‘You choose, I need to take a shower.’
She reached out to clutch his wrist. ‘Why did you let me stay here? After all I put you through. Why didn’t you just slam the door on me?’
Lucas ran his hand across his face, an audible rasp as it chafed his whiskered jaw. ‘Put it down to timing. I needed company more than I needed to bear a grudge.’ He nodded at the fingers encircling his wrist. ‘Would you mind releasing me? I really need to take that shower.’
After phoning the Vietnamese restaura
nt because it was the cheapest and Lucas would insist on paying, Angela reached for the remote control. She took a moment to decipher its secret code of buttons before switching on the giant screen. Lucas returned, bringing the thick scent of sandalwood, and strapping his Omega back onto his wrist. On television the footage cut to an image of a media pack camped outside a caravan park, then a pretty reporter standing before the fray, a lock of platinum hair dancing on the breeze.
Angela spoke over the journalist’s artificial gravitas, ‘They’re still going on about this.’
‘The little girl taken by her grandmother?’ Lucas settled his T-shirt more comfortably across his shoulders. ‘They haven’t found them yet. I reckon the kid’s probably better off.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? The mum’s a joke.’
Angela clicked her tongue. She had yet to tell him about her role in the scandal. Lucas gnawed at his thumbnail. ‘I wish I’d had someone who wanted me enough to rescue me.’
She had helped abduct a virtual stranger, yet never lifted a finger to liberate her stepson. She watched with distaste as Lucas removed a sliver of thumbnail from his tongue like a flake of tobacco. ‘Was it as bad as that—growing up with Nina?’
‘There were good days and bad. Plus, she slept a lot. It gave me plenty of time to do my drawing. I think that’s all any male wants—to be left to his own devices.’
Later that night, Angela and Lucas watched Ingrid Bronson have her moment in the spotlight: a grey-haired spinster in a sensible skivvy and slacks aiming a gushing garden hose at the reporters. The shaky footage captured by cameras attempting to evacuate was punctuated by the shrill sound of her scolding: ‘Have a little human decency. Get off my property and leave us in peace!’
Angela brought her wrist up to the region of her nose to scrutinise her timepiece, its tiny dial embedded in a band of thick, gold-plated links. It was after two; she was starving. The farewell lunch had been a last-minute idea on her part—stupid. She strode on in search of a suitable venue. The hike from the car had left her in a lather and she was longing for a bit of air-conditioning. She needed to evaporate some of this sweat or her face would become something akin to Monet’s waterlilies.
The Grand Tour Page 26
