Dumb, dumb, dumb. She’d been stupid not to realise that he would have visited and picked over Roxie’s belongings while she lay dying in the hospice. Malcolm was a coward, not a fool. Though what treasures he’d thought to find in this dump, she didn’t know.
Alice stalked back to the laundry, picked up the clothes basket and returned to the kitchen. It was astonishing how many pots could fit into a laundry basket. She went back and forward to the skip bin. No matter how high the pile of pots or how distracting the rattle of china, her feet found the step down from the front door with unthinking precision.
There was something therapeutic in raising the basket high to tip the contents into the skip bin. They thudded, clanged and shattered. The muscles of her arms and back started to ache and that felt good, too. The toaster and the grimy microwave went into the skip bin. She pulled out kitchen drawer after kitchen drawer and fed their contents into the metal grave.
“That’s some clean out you’re having.”
If she hadn’t given Mrs Trelawney her time, she owed this stranger with his careful hair and trendy clothes even less. Probably a neighbour.
“Yes,” she said and returned to the house.
Through the lounge window, she saw him peering into the skip bin. She rolled her eyes. What was it about junk? No matter how wealthy a person, they couldn’t resist its call.
Her reflection looked back at her from the mirror.
Picking through the trash of other people’s lives, looking for a treasure. Malcolm had done it. Was she hiding the same purpose from herself? What treasure did she hope to find here in Roxie’s home?
“Nothing. I don’t want anything.” In the mirror she saw her child-self. The same haunted, wary, distant eyes. “All I crave is peace.”
Chapter Three
Sleep fought Alice that night. Memories rattled around the empty house, coming to hover like spectres above her bed. A thousand careless, unkind comments. “Ugly Alice” with her higgledy-piggledy teeth and Roxie’s self-pitying sigh. “I just can’t afford braces for her.” The new skateboard Malcolm got. “I do what I can for the children.”
“No!” Alice turned over heavily in bed. There had been a world of difference in price between a cheap skateboard and braces. She would not go down this path. She’d left the old resentments behind when she went to university. She would not let them crawl back like maggots.
She got up and shrugged on a long cardigan over her pyjamas. Outside, the night wind was cool with the scent of the sea. She inhaled the freedom of it and walked down to the back fence. The old concrete bench still crouched there, crumbling at the edges. She climbed up. Standing on it, you could see the ocean. It was a shimmering darkness, but there were the lights of a ship out on the horizon.
How many nights had Malcolm stood here, staring at the lights of anonymous ships and thinking, what? Had he waited for his father? Had he felt some ancestral tug of the sea?
Claire had never said much about their fathers.
Be fair. She’d never said much about anything. She’d existed in her own world of addiction. Alice couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known how to prepare a meal, even if it were only opening a packet of chips. She’d looked out for herself and for Malcolm, although he was two years older than herself. He was like Claire—and Roxie. He lived in a world of his own dreaming, one where the awful stuff could be ignored till someone else dealt with it. And if it was never dealt with, he’d just endure.
“My dad is a sailor.” Malcolm used to say it to the other children. “He’s from England.” Or sometimes, from Norway, Russia, Greece. It was his story and Malcolm adapted it to his dreams. Sometimes his dad was a submariner, sometimes a captain.
At least Malcolm had had a story to tell of his father. Claire had never mentioned Alice’s dad.
“Was he a sailor, too, Mum?” Alice had asked in one of Claire’s better moments. They’d been making sandwiches in the kitchen of a terrible flat. Claire had remembered to buy not only bread and butter but ham and tuna. Prudently, Alice had tucked away the tuna for days when Claire forgot to buy anything.
“No, your dad wasn’t a sailor.”
“What was he?”
Claire stopped buttering the bread. She stared at it.
“Mum?”
The knife clattered into the sink. “He wasn’t anything, all right? He wasn’t anything. He was just like me. Just nothing.”
Alice hadn’t asked any more questions.
“And I don’t want to ask them now.”
But the questions were still there, stronger and more urgent. Ethan wanted to marry her.
He wasn’t the first man to want a committed relationship with her, but he was the first to engage her as an equal.
She’d been so naïve when she first left Roxie’s house. She hadn’t learned to unpeel the layers of a posh accent, good clothes, loud plans and intense interest to see what lay beneath: men who wanted to be coddled, their egos fed, their needs met, and their comfort made a god.
Women were like that, too. Alice had been trained by Claire and Roxie to survive for them. The cost of doing so was too high to make that mistake again.
But Ethan was different. Yes, he needed her, but he offered her fair exchange. He didn’t expect her to live for him, but with him.
And then there were his two daughters, Emma and Olivia. They were seven and five. God, the way they looked at her. She felt their hope and need, fear, resentment, the confusion of wanting to believe an adult cared, the hot, soft touch of their hands in hers. They were luckier than her. Ethan’s love for his daughters would withstand anything. It had withstood his ex-wife’s affairs, her desertion of their family, the knowledge…“I know Olivia isn’t my daughter, not by blood. Stella told me. But my name’s on her birth certificate. I changed her nappies and sung her to sleep. I’m the one she calls Daddy.”
Daddy.
Mummy.
She shivered. Could a woman born of two “nothings”—thank you, Claire—risk becoming a mother?
There was always Roxie’s example of child rearing: children as walk-on characters in the drama of self; appendages to be put on or off, reshaped to the audience of the moment.
Her final illness had been an ordeal. Well, cancer always was. But the flailing around and agonised denials, the sobs and desperate, clawing hands, had been an additional nightmare. “Not me. I can’t have cancer.” Roxie’s protests had gained extra force from the inescapability: this was one responsibility that couldn’t be shuffled off onto someone else.
Though Roxie had given it a good try.
Alice folded her arms over whole breasts, hugging her healthy body. She’d had to be there with Roxie through every bit of treatment, rescheduling her own life around medical appointments. She’d worked more late nights than even in her university years, determined to maintain her workload, and not let down her clients and partners.
The lights of the ship out at sea blurred a moment. She blinked. Clear-eyed honesty had always been her rope out of the emotional quicksand of Roxie’s needs. She couldn’t abandon it now.
“I needed to work.” That was the truth. The work had reasserted her own identity.
The treatments—with Roxie a trembling martyr to them—hadn’t killed the cancer. Hadn’t halted it. The relentless march of the body consuming itself had gone on and on. Admission to the hospice had marked the doctor’s surrender.
Could I have fought longer? harder?
“You’re not responsible for the whole damn world, Alice.” Ethan, frustrated and concerned, had exploded one night. He’d been talking about a self-destructive client, one she’d spent years trying to rescue, only to have the boy suicide. “People are responsible for their own choices.”
No, she could have said. No, people aren’t responsible. They shed their responsibilities like candy wrappers and while they chew the toffee that rots their lives, some of us have to pick up the candy wrappers, smooth them out and try to make something of them.
Roxie, in the hospice, had gained a new power, one the staff had happily colluded in: she’s dying, keep her happy.
Hospice visits, little gifts—cards, flowers, magazines. All Roxie had wanted was to parade, “my granddaughter visits every day” and then, the demands to prove her power, to assert that she was still alive. Phone this person—who Roxie hadn’t spoken to in ten years—tell her I’m dying. Write this person. And criticisms. “I don’t like your hair, your clothes. Don’t make that face at me, missy. You should be married, have children. Why are you so difficult?”
The tiredness dragged at Alice. In between Roxie’s death and funeral, Alice had slept and slept. She didn’t need sleep now. She needed forgetting, but that wasn’t possible.
She turned and looked at the house. Nausea rose up. The thought of going back in there…but that was why she was here: to bury the past.
And to choose a future.
The moon shone over the sea, glinting and mysterious. Could she trust Ethan and this mythical thing called love?
Chapter Four
The bakery opened early, which was useful. Even better, the baker had a coffee machine and was willing to use it. Alice collected potato bread rolls scattered with poppy seeds for lunch and pastries for breakfast and comfort. She juggled the cup of hot coffee as she bought a paper from the newsagency next door. The normality of the transactions soothed her.
She walked home, back to Roxie’s house, and left the newspapers and bread in the kitchen, taking a pastry and the coffee with her, through the gate in the back fence and out onto the dunes. Once there had been a path through them, worn by her and Malcolm’s feet, and those of their friends. Now the path started a few metres down, exiting from the neighbouring units’ gate.
The dunes were as cold as she remembered. Till the sun heated the sand, they were an uncomfortable seat. She slipped off her flip-flops and burrowed her toes into the chill. Before her, the sea danced with the colours of early morning light. A couple of people walked dogs and a man plodded up the beach, dripping water from a swim and rubbing cursorily at himself with a towel.
“No, I don’t share.” Alice laughed at a young beagle that ran up and sat beguilingly in front of her, eyes on her pastry. Delighted at being spoken to, it balanced itself to beg.
“Scout, getaway,” a woman Alice’s age shouted. The dog ran back towards the waves and made a game of being chased by those terrifying watery monsters. “Sorry ’bout that.”
Alice waved her pastry in acknowledgement and dismissal of trouble.
She recalled how much she’d wanted a dog as a child. How could she have forgotten? She’d dreamed of a German shepherd, smart and fearless, completely loyal. She’d planned to call him…no, not “Lassie”. She grinned. “King.”
Her grin faded as she realised what the dream had meant: security, love. She’d never even hinted at a pet to Roxie, and had known there was no point asking Claire.
Malcolm had smuggled home a guinea pig one day. A “furry rat” Roxie had called it, and “there’ll be no rats in my house, that’s what the rat poison’s for”. Even Malcolm, her favourite, had understood the threat—and believed it.
Roxie had given them a home, but on her terms.
No wonder I dreamed of a dog and unconditional love.
Further down the beach, the beagle barked at the waves.
The sand shifted under her feet, falling away as Alice climbed the dunes back to the house. Footsteps always looked huge in the dunes, like a giant had passed among them.
The back gate latched behind her. She dumped her empty coffee cup in the bin near the garage. Less thinking, more doing. She skirted the lemon tree, inhaling the scent of its blossom. She’d tackle Roxie’s room this morning. It had aired all night.
“Morning, Alice.” Malcolm opened the back door. He held a half-eaten pastry in one hand.
Alice stopped dead.
“You said I should come,” he reminded her. Your fault I’m here, my dear.
“So I did.” She got her legs moving again and he gave ground, letting her into the house. “Actually, it’s good timing. I thought to clear Roxie’s room, today.”
“I noticed you’d cleared the kitchen.”
“Unless there’s anything you want, I thought the contents of the lounge room could go to charity.”
“Sure.” A one shouldered shrug. He reached for a mug of tea on the table.
It was the one mug in the house, the only one she’d spared from the skip bin—for her use. She sighed. “How long are you staying?”
Again, that unhelpful shrug.
“I’ll get some extra boxes from the supermarket at lunchtime. Then you can clear out your room.” And another mug, more food. The thought reminded her and she switched on the refrigerator. It started with a growl as the motor whirred into action.
“I’ll clear out Roxie’s room with you first,” Malcolm said.
Haven’t you already checked it out on earlier visits, picked over the treasures, taken what you wanted? but she bit back the question and fetched her cleaning supplies instead. What was done was done. Of course Malcolm had a key to the house. She didn’t begrudge him Roxie’s trust. Her anger was self-directed. She should have known he’d already have gleaned the house.
Although, that raised the question: why was he here now?
Roxie’s room.
Alice hesitated internally. Muscles tightened across her stomach. This had been forbidden territory.
Had Roxie felt invaded when her grandchildren arrived? They’d been strangers; limp, faded survivors of Claire’s self-destruction.
The mattress of Roxie’s bed lay naked. Alice had stripped the bedding when Roxie entered the hospice. A cobweb linked the top right corner of the bed to the shadowed corner of the wall. There was too much furniture in the room: two wardrobes, a dressing table and chair, an armchair, bedside table and bed, a blanket box. Despite the window being open all night, the air smelled of stale lavender and dust.
Alice pulled on gloves.
“Gloves?” Malcolm asked.
“If you want to pet the spiders, go ahead.”
“I forgot you were scared of them, Allie. They’re just daddy-long-legs. Harmless.” He scooped one up on a finger. Its skinny legs waved in awkward terror.
“Who knows what else is in Roxie’s room.” She opened the nearest wardrobe door, avoiding Malcolm and his spider, and shook out a new garbage bag. “The clothes can go to charity.”
“Well, I don’t want them.” He set the spider back on its damaged web and ambled further into the room. “I used to think Roxie kept treasure in here.” He kicked the blanket box.
“I can’t believe you didn’t sneak a look as a kid.” Alice was grateful for the gloves as the old lady clothes sagged over her hands and collapsed into the garbage bag. It felt like an unclean task with a chorus of rattling coat hangers mourning their loss.
“I looked, but then, I thought the box might have a false bottom.”
Alice snorted.
“It doesn’t.”
She didn’t ask how he knew. She tied the first bag of clothes and shook out a second.
Tinkling music stilled her hands. Roxie’s jewellery box.
She remembered standing in the doorway to the room. Roxie had sat on the dressing table chair. A vanity chair, she called it. She’d been dressing for Claire’s funeral. Malcolm had been in the kitchen eating chocolate biscuits. It was how he coped.
Years later Alice had recognised the wavering tune in a television show’s opening and finally learned its name, “English Country Garden”.
The music tinkled on relentlessly.
Roxie had taken a pearl necklace from the jewellery box and a matching pair of earrings. She’d put the necklace on first, patting it as it rested against her throat. Then she’d fastened the earrings in place, turning her head. Her eyes had met Alice’s in the mirror.
“Claire was my daughter. I’m the one who mourns her.”
&n
bsp; The words had puzzled Alice, but not the emotion behind them. She knew the viciousness of addicts and how they protected with teeth, knives and violence their next fix. She heard the possessiveness in Roxie’s voice and took a step back.
Whatever her grief, Roxie had craved her moment in the heart of drama. No child would steal it from her with competing needs and claims.
And Alice had accepted the confirmation of her suspicions: stories lied. There was no kindly grandma waiting to rescue good children. So Alice had set out to rescue herself—from spiders, nightmares and emotional need.
“Do you know how to tell good pearls from fake?” Malcolm pulled the necklace from the box. “They should feel rough if you bite them. If they’re smooth, they’re made of fish scales.” He demonstrated. “Roxie was had. If Granddad bought these for her, he didn’t waste his money. They’re not even cultured pearls. Just fakes.” He dropped them back in the box and closed the lid.
The horrible music stopped.
Alice resumed her methodical stripping of the clothes hangers.
Malcolm opened the drawers of the dressing table. “Nothing but crap. Dried up old make-up. Newspaper clippings.” Paper rustled. “Where’s a rubbish bag? I might as well empty these.”
“Here.” Alice took another bag for herself. The empty coat hangers were just so much junk. She added them to a bag, then looked at the shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe and threw them in too. Spiders scuttled. She snapped the wardrobe door shut, sealed the bag of rubbish and carted it out to the skip bin.
Outside, the morning was beautiful. The coat hangers jangled as they landed on the junk already discarded. China clinked, hinting at breakages. She realised she was gripping the edge of the rusting bin rather than return to the house. Her muscles knotted further, but she forced her gloved hands to release, her legs to turn. She listened to the heavy slap of her feet on the old red cement path.
“Allie, these are letters.” Malcolm sat on Roxie’s bed. The mattress sagged and the drawer he’d tugged out of the dressing table slid an inch and rested against his thigh. He had his hands full of papers.
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