by Wendy James
Eventually the woman turned away from the now content baby, and smiled at Andi. ‘My God,’ she sighed, ‘he’s just so delicious. I think I’m totally over the whole baby thing – but, oh man, I get so clucky when they’re that age.’
‘Truly?’ Andi spoke without thinking. ‘I’ve never really been clucky. And definitely not over other people’s children.’ She regretted the words as soon as they were out, but more than that she regretted her tone – spiky, deliberately unimpressed and basically unfriendly. She had been on the defensive, keen to show that despite appearances she wasn’t just some plump, dowdy, nobody housewife, but she realised almost immediately that her defensiveness wasn’t required, had been taken as an attack. The woman took a startled breath, then sat perfectly still as a blush worked its way up her neck.
‘O-kay . . .’ She gave Andi an anxious smile, got to her feet.
‘Oh, God.’ Andi put her hand lightly on the woman’s arm, suddenly desperate to stop her going, to salvage the moment. ‘Look, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rude. I’m just . . . I’m just a bit over it, over the whole thing, at the moment. I fed him before I left, and the thought of having to feed him here was just kind of . . . mind-boggling. I’m more grateful than I can say for your amusing him. He was about to start whinging seriously.’ The woman still looked uncertain, as if she was about to move away. Andi patted the seat beside her, pleaded: ‘Please don’t go. He’s going to cry if you go. And, actually, I might too.’
The woman seemed surprised, and slightly bemused, and sat down beside her. She gazed steadily into the pram, making a series of silly faces at Gus, and spoke softly, not making eye contact with Andi. ‘Well, I think you’re brave to even consider breastfeeding in this schoolyard. I can imagine Dr Holding might come out and ask you to leave for making such an . . . unseemly exhibition of yourself.’
Andi laughed, a loud raucous burst that had several of the other mothers looking their way. ‘Oh, my God. You’re spot on. She’s terrifying. I have a feeling she thought I was pretty unseemly just being pregnant. I’m surprised they let me pick Sophie up. I don’t usually come,’ she added. ‘She usually catches the bus. Or walks. It’s just this excursion.’
The woman turned to her, all the stiffness gone, the smile relaxed and friendly again. ‘So you’re Sophie’s mum? Isn’t she the incredible little pianist who played at assembly on Monday?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘My God. She’s amazing. You must be so proud.’
Andi laughed the compliment away. ‘I am. Also surprised. And who’s your daughter?’
‘I’m Charlie’s mum.’
‘Charlie? I don’t think I know . . .’
‘Sorry, it’s Charlotte. Charlotte Mahony. She’s always been Charlie, but apparently she’s not keen on that anymore. And yes, she just started at the beginning of the term.’
‘Oh, Charlotte. The new girl. Sophie’s mentioned her. You’ve come from America?’
‘We have.’ The woman held out her hand, gave her sweet smile. ‘I’m Beth. Beth Mahony.’
Andi took her hand without a second thought, held it firmly, though it was an odd gesture in the playground, in this environment, between women. ‘And I’m Andi Pennington. Andrea, if you want to be formal, but nobody ever does. I’m very pleased to meet you.’
She rang Beth early in the day, while Gus was having his morning sleep, just after Sophie left for school. She hadn’t even checked with Sophie first, was looking forward to presenting it as a fait accompli, a surprise.
Beth wasn’t at all hesitant, immediately agreeing that it was a great idea to get the girls together.
‘Oh, that sounds lovely,’ she said, obviously pleased, ‘Wednesday’s are great. Charlotte’s got nothing on. It’s mad – we’ve only just arrived, and it’s already so full on. I can barely keep up. And we’re still in utter chaos. I’m lucky to find my own head some days.’
‘We’re still unpacking boxes, and it’s been almost three years, so I know what it’s like. And I was wondering,’ this was entirely spontaneous, ‘why don’t you come early to pick her up? We can have coffee, even a drink.’
So perhaps that was it. Maybe that was the moment when all of their fates were decided: Sophie’s and Charlotte’s and, intimately, inextricably, her own and Beth’s. And then the others, too: Dan and Stephen, Lucy and even little Gus. At this meeting – a juncture, surely – it was as if the directions and patterns of their various lives were changed and reset. From then on they were all moving along the one particular path. And after this moment, this meeting, perhaps it was too late to take another.
SOPHIE
SHE TRIES NOT TO EXPECT TOO MUCH – AFTER ALL, IT’S JUST a few hours – but it’s hard to contain her enthusiasm, her feeling that this first visit might be the start of something special.
She mentions the visit to Charlotte, in English, the day before. A big mistake, she realises, even as she’s making it.
She has to twist around to talk to Charlotte, who is at the desk behind her, which she shares with Amelia Carrington. Sophie ignores the scowl that Amelia is very obviously directing at her, and takes a breath. ‘My mum says you’re coming over tomorrow after school, and your mum and your sister. For afternoon tea.’
‘Yeah, Mum said.’ Charlotte gives a tight smile and looks back down at her work. Amelia snorts. The conversation is clearly over.
Sophie swallows her disappointment and turns to the front again, gets back to work.
Later, in the locker room, Charlotte seeks her out. ‘Hey, Sophie,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry about before, it’s just I could see Miss Foley was about to turn around and I didn’t want to get into trouble. I’m really looking forward to it.’ Her smile is big and warm and friendly, a smile that reaches her eyes.
Sophie returns it eagerly. ‘I’m really glad. It’s going to be fun.’
It doesn’t begin well. The two girls are in different afternoon classes, so they have arranged to meet just inside the Honeysuckle Gate. Sophie leans against the cool brick wall, watching the passing stream of girls and parents, barely able to suppress her excitement. But Charlotte takes her time, first standing in a huddle with Harriet and Amelia, the three girls laughing, just metres away from where she’s waiting. Sophie is standing in plain view, but Charlotte doesn’t wave or smile or make any indication that she’s seen her. The other girls eventually leave, rushing past Sophie and through the gate, heading to the bus stop – and then Charlotte begins a conversation with a girl in the year above them. A few more girls join them and Charlotte is one of the last to leave, only wandering over to Sophie when almost all the others have gone.
Charlotte gives a brief smile when Sophie greets her and barely responds to her enthusiastic recital of plans for the afternoon: ‘So, I thought we could call in at the Cupcake Cafe on the way home. Mum’s given me enough money for two each. We can eat one on the way and take one back home with us. There’s enough money to get one for your sister, too, but we don’t have to worry about Gus, my little brother, because he isn’t eating solids yet, and I’m pretty sure Mum won’t let him eat cake until he’s eighteen anyway. I know it means going the long way, and we have to get to the top of that mountain,’ Sophie indicates the incline they are about to tackle, ‘but I think it’s worth it for the sake of cake, don’t you?’ She giggles at her inadvertent rhyme and chants it again: Sake of cake, sake of cake, but Charlotte only sighs and slings her violin case over her shoulder. ‘A mountain climb. Awesome.’ Her voice is flat, expressionless, without any of the airy American lilt that Sophie so admires. The two girls trudge up the hill in silence, Sophie subdued, suddenly suspicious that Charlotte isn’t as pleased about the afternoon as she is, is perhaps only accompanying her under duress.
After they get the cakes – Crème Brûlée and Triple Choc Ripple for Sophie, Vanilla Crunch and Strawberry Sundae for Charlotte – and the walk is easier, all downhill, Charlotte relaxes. First there are the cakes to be exclaimed over, be
tween greedy mouthfuls – how much better they are than they’d anticipated, if that was even possible – which segues into a conversation about the hideous and completely inedible savoury muffins they were forced to make in cooking, which leads to a discussion of the bizarre habits of the cooking teacher herself, which leads to a general critique of the other teachers and, inevitably, their classmates.
Sophie answers Charlotte’s many questions about the other girls in their year – how long they’ve been at the college, where they live, where they belong in the class hierarchy – and somehow finds herself discussing her own pariah status, and actually laughing about it. ‘They’ve always thought I was weird, because of the piano, and because I’m hopeless at sport. That’s why I got that stupid nickname – Slowphie. But I think they’re kinda annoyed that I’m really smart too. And now because all my friends have left, I’m like some kinda freak. Mum says it’ll change eventually, but I don’t know that it ever will.’
‘So why don’t you change schools, too?’ Charlotte sounds genuinely interested and sympathetic.
‘I’m only here because I got a music scholarship, and the school has the best music program in Newcastle, so Mum and Dad really want me to stay. And I do really like the music here. There’s nowhere else that’s as good; I’d have to go to Sydney. But I s’pose if things get really bad . . . The thing is I kinda like everything else about the school. I like all the teachers. The way they do things. I just need to find some more girls who are as freaky as me.’ She carefully avoids looking at Charlotte as she says this, not wanting her to think she’s fishing, but Charlotte has gone off on her own tangent anyway.
‘You know, it is kinda strange. Back at my old school no one thought it was weird to have some amazing talent. I mean it was actually a good thing. Like there was this musical genius in my class, and she actually went off to the big music school in New York. I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s like the best in the world. And that was when she was only in the fourth grade, which is totally awesome. And pretty much everyone wanted to be her friend.’
By the time they reach Sophie’s house they are giggling so hard about the week’s most hysterical moments – the sports mistress farting; Miss Foley’s broken bra strap – that even her mother’s cross enquiry, ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling you. It shouldn’t have taken you this long,’ can’t dampen Sophie’s enthusiasm. However mad her mum is about her late arrival home, her failure to text or to answer her phone, none of it matters: Charlotte is here.
WWW.GOLDENCHILD.COM
THE GOLDEN CHILD’S TEN LESSONS FOR SUCCESS
LESSON FOUR: WHO COUNTS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
If you want to get somewhere, be someone, one of the most important things to do is to keep the people who don’t count out of your life and keep the ones who do count in.
So who counts?
Most parents, teachers, coaches and other adults who have some power over you – they count. But not always. Mostly, the popular kids at school count, and the unpopular kids don’t.
Every now and then you discover that a member of your own family – like a sibling or a grandparent or even a parent – doesn’t count.
Sometimes it can be tricky to work out who’s what. But once it’s clear – you must be ruthless.
Because just like your parents are always saying: the company you keep reflects on who you are. Or who you want to be. And if you surround yourself with people who don’t count, in the end you won’t count either.
And remember: even those who don’t count can be used.
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Contact [email protected] and solve your numeracy problems today!
CHARLOTTE
IT DOESN’T REALLY HAPPEN VERY OFTEN ANYMORE, THE TWO of them together, just chilling. When they were little they’d shared a room, and most of their activities were shared, too. But now, as teenagers, they’re too busy and their interests have diverged. There’s some activity almost every afternoon – for Charlotte, anyway: music, drama, hockey, dance. On weekends she is usually flat out doing assessments, and if not, she and Lucy hole up in their separate bedrooms to watch endless reruns of whatever TV series they’re currently hooked on. At least, that’s what Charlotte does, and she assumes that Lucy occupies herself the same way. Really, though, she has no idea. Even before they moved here, maybe since Lucy became a teenager, her sister’s life had become oddly mysterious, distant from her own.
But this particular Sunday it’s raining, and for once Mum’s made no plans – there’s no walk they really must do, or market they need to go to, or boring historic site they really have to visit. There’s been some sort of phone issue all week and now the internet’s gone completely. At first Charlotte is furious, she’s been waiting all week to catch up on a particular episode of Supernatural, but the slow pleasures of a device-free rainy day gradually reveal themselves. She and Lucy watch the network cartoons in the morning – for the first time in years – then sit around the lounge room reading actual paper books for a few hours, and now they’ve left both parents happily engrossed in the Sunday papers and have come up to Lucy’s bedroom to go through the pile of old board games that they haven’t so much as looked at since they moved here. They play their old favourite, Junior Monopoly, try Mastermind, which has somehow become amazingly easily, and Yahtzee, which seems ridiculously boring, try two-handed UNO, which is hopeless and then have a hilarious round or two of Trouble.
Games exhausted, they listen to music and fossick through the still unopened boxes for something else to do. This particular bedroom has become Lucy’s by default – Charlotte declared it too scary; it is even bigger and darker than her own, with densely patterned wallpaper, mahogany-stained dados and skirting boards. The furniture, an enormous oak wardrobe and a rickety cast-iron double bed, is even dingier than the furniture in Charlotte’s room.
Charlotte finds a pile of musty old children’s books hidden right at the back of the wardrobe, educational Ladybird books from the sixties, which must have been left by the previous owner. They flick through them for a while, laughing at the old-fashioned illustrations and instructions, the odd wording and bad outfits and awkward expressions. They undertake a few of the very simple (and less obviously dangerous) electrical experiments from the Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries book, and then try to lever some of the heavier objects in the room, including the ridiculously immovable wardrobe, according to the instructions provided in Levers, Pulleys and Engines. They find some old clothesline and attempt a makeshift pulley, which is a little too successfully attached to the bed frame, and leads to complaints from irritated parents.
Eventually the girls collapse onto the bed, dusty, exhausted and slightly hysterical. They sprawl, one at each end, feet tangled in the middle, and chat in a way that Charlotte can’t remember doing for a long time, if ever.
Most of the conversation involves school stuff: the differences between HLC and their school in New Jersey, the weirdness of the house system, the uniforms, the tradition and, OMG, all the religion! It then moves easily into gossip about the teachers and, of course, other students. Charlotte, suddenly curious about her older sister’s perspective, asks Lucy whether she’s found a group of girls she likes here.
‘I guess. There’s really only one or two girls I can be bothered with, though. Or maybe it’s just that there’s only one or two girls who can be bothered with me.’ Lucy gives a short laugh, looks over at Charlotte. ‘But you’re already Miss Popular, aren’t you? Didn’t take you long.’
‘It’s not really something that I can control, Lucy.’ When it comes to discussing this sort of stuff with her sister, Charlotte always feels simultaneously guilty and defensive. And awkward. ‘It just . . . it just happens.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s true. It’s not like I actually do anything.’ She is aware of Lucy’s relatively lowly position in the social hierarchy, but has never really considered whether it is something her sister worries ab
out. Somehow she’s always imagined that Lucy is above such concerns.
‘I’m not trying to be mean, Charlie. It’s only an . . . observation.’ Her sister’s smile is reassuring. ‘I just don’t care about all that stuff. Being popular. Or hanging with the coolest girls.’
‘Anyway, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with Harriet and Grace and Amelia? Just ’cause they’re pretty and popular doesn’t mean that they’re bad, does it? Or stupid? I mean, they’re nice, and they’re practically the smartest girls in the class.’ She draws herself up, adds haughtily, ‘We all are.’
Lucy shrugs, clearly unmoved. ‘No. Nothing’s wrong with them, exactly . . . I guess they’re just not my type.’
‘So, if you were in my year, who would you want to be friends with?’
Lucy’s answer comes quickly. ‘You know, I actually think Sophie’s really nice. She’s smart and interesting. I know she’s not someone the cool girls want to be friends with, but if I was in your year, I wouldn’t care, she’d be my—’
Charlotte interrupts, suddenly enraged. ‘Actually, Miss Perfect, there’s a reason no one wants to be Sophie’s friend – she’s a complete retard.’
Lucy’s eyes widen with surprise or hurt, Charlotte can’t tell which, and doesn’t much care.
