by B M Carroll
Katy’s first reaction is no. Mike – who has read all the messages with the exception of this latest one to Zach – is concerned that this person poses a real danger.
‘Either way, I’m going there,’ Zach declares without waiting for her answer. ‘I’m not sitting on this for any longer.’
The truth is, Katy is curious. She wants to see the man that Robbie has become and struggles to believe he would be capable of this: being so devious and vindictive, sabotaging the reunion and all her work to date, making Zach feel unsafe enough to talk to a detective. Her instincts tell her Zach’s wrong: it’s not Robbie. It doesn’t fit with the boy she remembers as being so gravely insecure. Katy herself was awkward and self-conscious, but she blossomed outside the constraints of high school. Maybe Robbie has too.
‘Let me think about it,’ she says, striding towards the girls’ toilets. What is she going to find? Cigarettes? Drugs? Some inappropriate content on someone’s phone? ‘As far as I know, Robbie’s staying with his sister. Maybe it would be better to speak to her instead.’
Mike leans forward and kisses her on the mouth as soon as she opens the door. Then he hands her an expensive-looking bottle of wine.
‘Come in,’ Katy says, indicating the way with a flourish of her hand. ‘It’s pretty small.’
It’s his first time coming around to her apartment, and soon – going by the intensity of that kiss – it will be their first time sleeping together. Things have been progressing quickly. Four dates in five days. That first time at the tapas bar. A couple of days later, a few drinks at her local pub. Then yesterday, a walk in the park and an ice cream with Toby, his son. Katy is nervous. Scared of being disappointed. Trying hard not to think of all the times she’s got to this stage only to be let down. Sex is such an intimate, revealing act. Someone’s skin on your skin. Their hands touching every inch of your body. There are so many ways to be turned off. Their breath, their smell, the noises they make.
Stop. Keep thinking like that and you’ll be celibate for the rest of your life.
Katy has made a light dinner. Cajun chicken, green salad and crusty bread. Dessert is a store-bought lemon meringue pie.
‘Who’s babysitting? Fiona?’
Fiona is the flaky sister. According to Mike, she allows Toby to eat unquantified amounts of lollies and biscuits, and blithely ignores his bedtime.
‘Toby’s at a sleepover with Mum and Dad.’
This means it’s happening: Mike is staying the night. Katy’s body responds positively to the certainty. A tensing between her legs. She wants this. She wants him.
Conversation over dinner is not as free-flowing as usual. The atmosphere is heavy with anticipation. She hasn’t finished her dessert when he lays his hand over hers on the table. She feels a jolt of attraction, of longing. She gravitates towards him, their lips meet, and suddenly they’re kissing fervently. He manoeuvres her on to his lap. His hands are inside her top. Cutlery goes rattling to the floor.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ she murmurs into his neck.
They slow down once they reach her room. Undress little by little. Kiss deeply. Explore each other. Everything is right. His smell. The weight of him on top of her. The fact that he barely makes any noise – she hates the grunters. He is good at this. Expertly brings her to the most exquisite orgasm.
She falls asleep afterwards. Wakes up feeling disoriented. The room is shadowy and smells of sex. She checks her watch: 9.36 p.m. Where has Mike gone?
She gets up, throws on a dressing gown and pads into the living room. There he is. Sitting at her desk. Tapping on her keyboard.
‘What are you doing?’
He turns his head. Seems taken aback at the sharpness of her tone. ‘Running some diagnostics on your laptop.’
She comes closer and peers over his shoulder. A scan of some sort is fifty per cent complete. Apparently, four threats have been found.
‘You mentioned that you were concerned about spyware,’ he says. ‘It looks like you were right to be worried.’
This is true. It was on their second date, at the pub. When she’d handed him copies of all the notes and emails and felt compelled to elaborate on Luke’s in particular. ‘I still can’t figure it out. Either it’s an educated guess that I’d like to have a child or they have some way of seeing my online activity.’
At the time Mike suggested she run some diagnostics. Now he has taken matters into his own hands. The night has lost its sheen of perfection. He did everything right over dinner and in the bedroom. But now this, a blatant invasion of her privacy. The assumption that she can’t sort it out herself.
‘Don’t go on my laptop again without asking, okay?’
His face fills with remorse and embarrassment. He stands up, moves away from the laptop, which seems to have identified another threat. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. I didn’t want to wake you up ... but that’s no excuse.’
They stand facing each other. Katy unconsciously squares her shoulders.
‘I don’t like men thinking they can waltz in here and take over. I’m perfectly capable of sorting out my own shit.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ He risks a smile. ‘Does this mean I’m in your bad books, Ms Buckley?’
‘Consider yourself on a warning,’ she says, not even joking.
She flicks on the television and offers him a drink. They watch a travel show and finish a bottle of wine. Mike nuzzles her neck, plays with her hair, drops kisses on random parts of her face. They go back to bed, where he proceeds to do everything exactly right, as before. When she wakes the next morning, she’s relieved that he’s beside her, not off doing something on her laptop.
‘I need to get going,’ he sighs. ‘Toby wakes early. Mum and Dad will have had enough by now.’
She needs to get going too; it’s a school day. She stays in bed, watching him get dressed: last night’s jeans and shirt, slightly wrinkled. She doesn’t offer him breakfast.
He kisses her before he leaves. ‘Do you want to come over to my place on Wednesday night?’
She shakes her head. Has an excuse ready. ‘Sorry, I’m meeting some friends.’
Luke sent a text when he touched down Saturday, suggesting they meet up for drinks. Katy is slightly apprehensive about seeing him but is confident any awkwardness will quickly dissipate. She’s still surprised that he chose to stay with his father. Luke and his father have never seen eye to eye.
Mike lets himself out. Katy stays in bed for another few minutes, dissecting the night. She should be happy. It went well, very well in some respects.
She finally gets up, showers. Her body feels good after the sex: alive, womanly. She washes her hair, exfoliates, moisturises, gets dressed. Emerging into the living room, the first thing she glances at is the laptop. There’s a Post-it stuck to its screen.
Dear Katy. I don’t want to upset you again, but you really do need to put a password on your network. X Mike
She immediately bristles. He means well, that’s obvious, but still. He’s having the last word. Asserting himself in her business, her life, her right to do whatever the hell she wants with her internet security.
She sighs. This is what happens. They always, always do something to disappoint.
36
ROBBIE
The kids fight over him. Sienna is particularly possessive.
‘I asked him first.’
‘Uncle Robbie said he’d help me.’
‘Go away, Charlie. Leave us alone.’
She is forever grabbing Robbie’s hand, dragging him places. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
Sienna will not take no for an answer. She will not be deterred by a grumpy face or a harsh tone of voice. It’s obvious that she regards him as someone special, someone worthy of her possessiveness. She is so very wrong.
Robbie’s last seizure was two months ago. It was a bad one, the full shebang. Some people have warning signs, an aura that gives them the chance to get to a safe place. All Robbie feels is his body going rigid,
and nothing after that.
He came around on the floor of the local Centrelink office.
‘There’s an ambulance on its way,’ someone said. ‘You’ve had some kind of fit.’
Apparently, it’s very confronting. Onlookers are terrified they’re about to witness a death. Some of them mistake the seizure for a heart attack or a drug-related reaction. Pissing or shitting himself, which happened that day in Centrelink, takes it to a whole new level. He was there to fill in some forms for his disability pension. If they needed any proof, here it was in all its humiliating glory.
Even though he was fuzzy and weak, he got to his feet and stumbled out of there as quickly as he could. His trousers were wet and sticky. The stench was reaching his nostrils. The embarrassment sat heavily in his gut.
‘Wait,’ someone called. ‘The ambulance will be here any minute.’
He was waiting for no fucking ambulance. Outside on the road, he paused for a moment and regarded the traffic. Three lanes, dense with cars and trucks. A bus came into view. That would do the job. He wasn’t brave enough, though. Didn’t have the balls to step out and put an end to his shame. Instead he went home, cleaned himself up, packed his bag, and caught the next Greyhound bus out of there. Next city, please.
Sienna has her hands on her hips. ‘Okay, Uncle Robbie. You’re the teacher, I’m the kid. I’m being naughty today.’
Robbie finds it amusing that Sienna wants to play school after spending all day in the classroom. But he goes along with it. Gives a good impression of being stern – the teachers in Sienna’s imaginary school are the old-fashioned cranky kind. He gives her detention. Makes her write lines: I am very naughty and annoying.
His niece has got under his skin. Forged a fondness, a tenderness he didn’t know he was capable of. Robbie can’t bear her to see one of his seizures. Can’t bear her to see the truth of him: as far from special as one can get. It could happen any day now. He can go for long stretches of time – his record is three months – and then have two in quick succession. The frequency means he’s categorised as having ‘uncontrolled seizures’, the result being he can’t drive, or effectively work, or even play contact sports. The medication has come a long way since he was first diagnosed as an adolescent, having a couple of seizures a month. Some were minor: strange lapses in time, speaking weirdly, blinking a lot. It was the serious ones that petrified him, and that fear – of losing control and dignity in public – led to his anxiety problems and depression. To make matters worse, anti-epileptic medications are known to affect mood. Robbie’s struggle with depression has often been as intense as his struggle with epilepsy.
Robbie’s watching television when there’s a knock on the door. Sienna flies to answer it. Charlie is upstairs on his Xbox, and Celia is getting dinner ready.
Robbie hears the door open, then his niece’s voice, ‘Hello?’
He can tell by her tone that she doesn’t know who it is. He stands up, comes out to the hallway and stops dead. Fucking hell, it’s her. She’s with a man. Longish light brown hair, shirt and tie. A new boyfriend?
‘Robbie?’ She sees him and smiles. ‘It’s Katy Buckley and Zach Latham ... from school.’
She offers him her hand. He takes it. Then Zach holds his out. Fuck, that’s a hand he doesn’t particularly want to shake, but he does it anyway. Are they a couple? No. Katy’s not wearing a wedding band and Zach is. Besides, they seem quite separate from each other.
‘Can we come in?’ she asks.
Robbie pauses. He doesn’t want them inside, doesn’t want to hear whatever they’re here to say. Because it can’t be good. Katy must have seen him following her and she’s here to ask him to stop. Fair enough. She has every right. But why Zach? Is he some sort of reinforcement?
Celia appears and issues the invitation he doesn’t want to impart. ‘Come in, come in.’ She opens the door to the sitting room, flicks on the lights. ‘You can sit in here. Can I get you a drink? Tea, coffee, something stronger?’
Katy is smiling again. It’s a genuine smile, reaching all the way to her eyes. A smile that warms you on the inside. ‘Tea would be lovely, thank you.’
‘Come on, Sienna,’ Celia says, steering her daughter out of the room.
‘Why can’t I stay?’ Sienna objects.
‘Because you can’t.’
They sit down. Katy and Zach on the sofa, and Robbie in one of the armchairs. The room has a bare, disused feel to it: it doesn’t have a television and so doesn’t attract the children. Katy is looking at him closely and Robbie feels exposed and terribly ashamed of himself. Has she recognised him from the bus? Or the times he pretended to be working in the school gardens? Why did he do that? He’s never done anything like it before.
‘Why are you here?’ he asks, resting his hands on his knees.
Katy and Zach exchange a glance and seem to agree that Katy will be the spokesperson.
‘Because of the school reunion,’ she says, ‘and some ... upsetting ... emails and notes that were sent.’
Robbie is taken aback. The answer is nothing remotely like what he was expecting.
‘What do you mean? What emails?’
Katy opens her bag and takes out a sheaf of papers. ‘These.’
Robbie begins to read. Annabel, Luke, Grace ... he knows these names. Daniel, Lauren, Carson ... those are foreign to him. When he gets to the last note – the one that talks about knives and guns and choking – he finally understands.
‘You think I sent these?’
Zach clears his throat. ‘Well, you came to mind ... because we – me in particular – were such shits to you back then.’
Robbie stares at him. Zach has the same clean-cut good looks he had at school. The kind of looks that attracted people. Didn’t matter what damage he was causing, who he was hurting or belittling or sneering at. He was the kid who got warned a thousand times but never got expelled. He was the kid who never tried hard, yet had opportunities handed to him on a plate.
‘I’m an epileptic who suffers from depression, not a psychopath.’ Robbie enunciates his words clearly. ‘You need to find someone else who you treated like shit. There would be a long list to choose from, wouldn’t there?’
Zach’s face darkens. Is he blushing? ‘I’m sorry ... I’m deeply sorry for the distress I caused you.’
Celia chooses this moment to arrive with tea and biscuits. Can she feel the tension? The vestiges of twenty-year-old hatred? Sienna tries to sidle in unnoticed but fails. Her mother grabs her hand, hauls her away.
‘Fuck off,’ Robbie says, as soon as the door closes. ‘You can take your apology and fuck yourself.’
Zach shrugs. ‘I deserve that. I deserve for you to be angry with me ... But what I can’t understand is Jarrod, why you’d be angry with him.’
‘Jarrod?’ Robbie is blindsided. ‘Jarrod Harris? Where does he come into all this?’
Zach’s eyes are locked with his. ‘Someone attacked him. Was that you, Robbie?’
‘What the fuck are you taking about?’
Zach raises his hands. ‘I know what I did to you. I just want to know what Jarrod did ... Whether he needs to say sorry too.’
Robbie gasps. How can Zach be so wrong and so right at the same time?
‘Shut up, Zach,’ Katy says, standing up. ‘It’s obvious Robbie has no idea what we’re talking about.’ She crouches in front of him. Now she has one of his hands held in her own. ‘Sorry, Robbie. Sorry for coming here and upsetting you. Of course it isn’t you sending these messages.’
Robbie remembers her kindness, her compassion. He remembers it as vividly as he remembers Zach’s cruelty and Jarrod’s thoughtless sabotage. Katy will never know how much her kindness meant to him. Her smiles when they passed each other in the corridor. A few words here and there, sometimes the only conversation he’d had all day. He’d been more than a little in love with her. Maybe that’s what he was trying to recreate by stalking her: an emotional connection.
But look at her now
. Glossy hair. Trendy clothes. Still kind and caring, but normal, something he’s not and never will be. Katy can drive; Robbie has seen her behind the wheel, her car disappearing down the ramp into the car park of her apartment block. Katy has a career, work colleagues and future prospects. She enjoys a glass of wine and a varied social life.
Robbie can do none of these things. His illness and depression have rendered any kind of long-term employment or social life too difficult to pursue.
He is defective. Not good enough. Never has been.
He pulls his hand away from her grasp. ‘You should go ... I’ll see you out.’
37
GRACE
The reunion has been called off. Grace is both relieved and disappointed on receiving Katy’s email.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Reunion cancelled
Sorry, everyone. People are still being sent threatening notes and so the reunion is off. Maybe another year. Let’s stay in touch. Use the Facebook group to post old photos and news. Xxx Katy
There will be no night out in Manly, no overnight stay in a hotel, no complicated babysitting arrangements. Their budget will be the better for it. She was so looking forward to it, though. Seeing how everyone has changed, if they’ve transformed themselves – like Katy – or are essentially the same – like Annabel. Grace likes to think that she falls into the former category. She has changed, grown, become a better, stronger person. Not as easily influenced as she once was.
Tom sticks his head around the study door. ‘Are you coming to bed?’
‘Just finishing off a few things,’ she says vaguely. ‘I’ll be a few minutes.’
Most nights she waits until he’s asleep before slipping carefully between the sheets, keeping a safe distance when before she would have cocooned her body in his. She can tell he’s puzzled by her behaviour this past week, which has been see-sawing between avoidance and sudden interrogations.
