Room for a Stranger

by Melanie Cheng

  ‘The door was open,’ Patrick said. ‘And then I bumped into Andy.’

  ‘Patrick speaks Cantonese!’ Andy exclaimed.

  ‘Not really,’ Patrick said, taking off his hat. ‘I can say, how are you, where’s the toilet and some other things I’d rather not repeat in front of Margaret.’

  Andy laughed in his boyish way, half snort, half chuckle.

  Meg was delighted to see the two of them getting along—she’d been feeling guilty about pressuring Andy into the role of chaperone. ‘Come in,’ she said and led them past the lounge towards the kitchen.

  Meg had considered setting up the dining room, but every meal she’d eaten there, enveloped by the floral wallpaper and heavy curtains, had felt suffocating. Looking at the kitchen table now, with its plastic tablecloth and droopy kangaroo paws, Meg wondered if she’d made the wrong decision. She uncorked the bottle of red wine Patrick had brought with him and filled three large wineglasses. She hoped the more they had to drink, the less the plastic tablecloth and limp flowers would bother them.

  While Meg finished preparing the pasta sauce, Patrick spoke of his time in Hong Kong. As it turned out, the hotel he’d stayed in all those years ago wasn’t far from the apartment where Andy’s parents lived now. Patrick impressed Meg with his new-found enthusiasm for the city. She assumed he was indulging Andy, and therefore her, and for this she was thankful. She topped up his glass of red wine before turning her attention back to the stove. Her guests chatted happily, only stopping when she emptied the kettle into the saucepan with a mighty hiss.

  ‘Hot potato, hot potato!’ Atticus screeched.

  Patrick turned to the cage behind him, which was partly hidden by the kitchen door. ‘You didn’t tell me you had an African grey!’ he said, clearly thrilled.

  Meg snapped a bundle of spaghetti in half and dropped it into the pot. She wiped her hands on her apron before walking around the kitchen table to open the cage.

  ‘Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, you’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me,’ Atticus sang, strutting towards Meg and clambering onto her outstretched hand.

  ‘Would you like to hold him?’ she asked, extending her arm to Patrick.

  ‘Yes please,’ Patrick said. Atticus shuffled from Meg’s hand onto the cuff of his sleeve and paused, lifting his feet up and down as if he’d stepped in something sticky.

  ‘My brother had an African grey parrot,’ Patrick said, slowly raising his arm to look Atticus in the face. The bird tilted his head, mirroring Patrick’s quizzical expression.

  Meg returned to the stove to stir the pasta, separating the strands of spaghetti with her fork. So, Patrick was a bird person, like her. There was still so much she didn’t know about this man, and she felt excited at the prospect of more surprises, other things they might have in common.

  Andy coughed. Lately he’d been coughing a lot. Meg wondered if she should prompt him to see a doctor. Was that part of her duty of care as his host? Maybe they could go to the clinic together—he for his cough and she for her bleeding. She would suggest it tomorrow. For now they would enjoy their dinner. She plated up her signature spaghetti bolognese and gave it a light sprinkle of parmesan cheese.

  ‘Fine and dandy!’ Atticus squawked before flapping up into the air and onto Patrick’s head. He pulled at a few strands of hair with his beak before hopping down onto Patrick’s shoulder.

  Meg wiped her hands on a tea towel. ‘C’mon, you,’ she said, scooping Atticus up. She could tell Andy found the presence of animals at mealtimes distasteful. When the bird was safely locked away, Meg dispensed the plates and topped up the wineglasses. She urged Patrick and Andy to sit down.

  Andy was the first to notice the stain on Patrick’s collar. He pointed at it, speechless, with a look of horror. Unfazed, Patrick dabbed the spot with his serviette. ‘My brother’s bird used to vomit on me all the time. Apparently it’s a sign of affection.’

  Meg watched, overjoyed, as Patrick used the bread to soak up the last of the pasta sauce. As usual, Andy had only played with his meal—flattening and spreading it across the plate to give the impression he had eaten it. But Meg would not be disheartened. They’d spoken of many things tonight—birds and travel and books and movies—and Andy had only looked bored once or twice.

  It was nine o’clock. Ordinarily Meg would be in bed by now, but tonight she busied herself making an impromptu dessert of tinned peaches, vanilla ice-cream and fresh mint from the garden.

  ‘I suppose you’d be too young to remember life before the handover?’ Patrick asked Andy as Meg got the ice-cream from the freezer.

  ‘I was just a baby,’ Andy said, somewhat hesitantly.

  Meg recalled seeing something on the news years ago, with Helen, about Britain returning Hong Kong to China.

  ‘You have to give credit to the British,’ Patrick said. ‘They don’t just jump ship like the French. They always leave good government behind.’

  Meg watched Andy bury a mint leaf in his ice-cream.

  ‘Hong Kong, Singapore, India—they’ve all done pretty well for themselves,’ Patrick went on, wiping his mouth with his serviette. ‘And that’s in large part because of the British.’

  Andy took a bite of slippery peach as Patrick reeled off a list of failed French colonies.

  ‘Did I mention that Andy’s studying biomedicine?’ Meg interrupted.

  ‘Yes, I think you told me the other day.’ Patrick leant back in his chair, and Meg marvelled at how youthful his movements were—it was hard to believe he was in his seventies. ‘I did biology at university, you know,’ he added.

  Andy looked up and made eye contact with Patrick then, which Meg took to be a good sign.

  ‘Back then we studied for the love of it. To satisfy a genuine scientific curiosity.’ Patrick nudged Andy’s elbow. ‘When we weren’t chasing the ladies.’

  Andy forced a smile.

  ‘Now students see science as a stepping stone to medicine—they want to be neurosurgeons and make lots of money.’

  Meg didn’t know if Andy wanted to be a doctor—they’d never discussed such details—but she saw him bristle at Patrick’s words. ‘It’s getting late,’ she said, standing up. She felt all the pain of the night’s activities flood her knees.

  ‘Let me clean up,’ Patrick offered.

  ‘Yes, I’ll help you,’ Andy said, pushing back his chair.

  Meg shook her head. ‘I think it’s best if we call it a night. Andy can give me a hand with the dishes in the morning.’

  Andy agreed and dropped his plate in the sink. Meg said she’d walk Patrick to his car.

  Outside, the moon was just a sliver, and the smell of jasmine hung thick in the air. ‘I had fun tonight,’ Patrick said when they reached his car. He leant his head towards Meg and slid his hot fingers across the back of her neck. She gasped. Perhaps Patrick heard this, or perhaps he felt the tension in her muscles and the hammer of her pulse beneath her skin. Either way, he stopped what he was doing. Meg felt the tug of tiny strands of hair as he pulled his hand away.

  24

  Andy collapsed onto his bed. Springs groaned in protest. He looked at his phone on the bedside table, picked it up and typed a message to Kiko. He pressed send before he could change his mind.

  Hi.

  For all he knew, Kiko could be sleeping, or her phone could be turned off. He held his breath.

  Hi.

  His fingers trembled as he typed.

  How’s the study going?

  Crap.

  Me too.

  How come?

  I rent a room from an old lady. Tonight I had dinner with her and her boyfriend.

  The old lady has a boyfriend?

  Andy laughed. Yes.

  What’s he like?

  Old. A racist.

  A pause. Pulsing dots. Really?

  He spent most of dinner telling me I should be grateful to the British.

  For what?

  For making Hong Kong a success.

  OM
G. That’s awful.

  Andy imagined Kiko at home. For some reason he assumed she still lived with her parents. He pictured her sitting on her childhood bed, in her pyjamas, her black hair long and loose. He was about to type a reply when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was a quiet knock—so quiet he thought he’d imagined it—until he heard the whisper that followed.

  ‘Andy? Are you still awake?’

  For a moment he considered pretending to be asleep, but there was something in Mrs Hughes’ voice—an anxiety he couldn’t ignore. What if she and Patrick had argued? What if she was feeling unwell? Was there something in his contract about duty of care? Andy plugged his phone into its charger and opened the door.

  Mrs Hughes hesitated as she entered the room. She looked at his Ikea bedspread and the sketches of Kiko taped to the wall.

  ‘Please, sit down,’ Andy said.

  ‘Thank you.’ She perched on the very edge of the chair beside the desk, as if not wanting to take up too much space. Andy sat on the bed, facing her.

  ‘I wanted to apologise,’ she began, massaging her knee, ‘for Patrick.’

  Andy had been primed for something serious—a medical emergency, a fight, a break-up. He regretted ending his conversation with Kiko to open the door.

  ‘I was worried he’d offended you,’ Mrs Hughes said. She stopped massaging her knee and wrung her hands. ‘With what he’d said. Not like the man on the tram the other day, not that bad, but all the same…’

  Andy shook his head. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Mrs Hughes stared at the frayed rug on the floor. Andy gazed out at the starry sky.

  ‘Was this your daughter’s room?’ he said, after several seconds had passed.

  Mrs Hughes looked up, her trance broken. ‘I don’t have a daughter. This was my sister’s bedroom. She died a few years ago.’

  Andy’s heart sank. He’d been hoping to guide the conversation to happier subjects. ‘I’m sorry.’

  To his surprise, the old lady laughed. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  They didn’t speak often, but it struck Andy that on the rare occasions they did, he and Mrs Hughes spent a lot of time apologising to each other.

  ‘She had an accident when she was young,’ Mrs Hughes said. ‘You may have noticed the ramp in the front and back yards, the rails in the bathroom.’

  Andy nodded. He had noticed, but he’d assumed they were recent additions, for Mrs Hughes.

  ‘We were in the backyard one afternoon. She was eleven and I was sixteen. I was ignoring her, reading a book, and she was doing tricks in the tree to get my attention. Helen never stood still, never stopped, always climbing and running and dancing. I was the opposite—too shy and fearful to do anything. Anyway, that day Helen was doing acrobatics in the tree. She kept taunting me, Bet you can’t do this, but I was ignoring her. I was deep in my book—a gothic novel called Rebecca. I remember the exact line I was reading when I heard her scream. We’re not meant for happiness, you and I. When I looked up, Helen was lying on the ground, howling, with her legs at unnatural angles.’

  ‘Spinal cord injury?’

  ‘Yes. I remember I put the book down on the grass, open at that page. As if, even as my sister cried, I didn’t want to lose my place in the story. The book lay there for weeks afterwards, getting ruined. It got soaked in the rain and then dry and crinkly in the sun, but I didn’t touch it. I guess someone, Mum probably, must have picked it up eventually. But I never finished it. I couldn’t bear to. I never found out what happened.’

  ‘How bad were your sister’s injuries?’

  ‘She fractured a couple of vertebrae in her back, which left her with no feeling in her legs at all. She never walked again after that.’

  For a minute Mrs Hughes stared into space, remembering something. Andy snatched a look at his phone. There were no new messages from Kiko. He guessed she was waiting for him to reply. When he looked up again, the old lady’s eyes were shiny with tears.

  ‘I’m boring you,’ she said.

  ‘No, not at all.’

  She pulled a tissue from a box on the desk and dabbed the corners of her eyes. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

  Andy placed his phone facedown on the bed. ‘My mother got sick after I was born. The doctor said she shouldn’t have any more children.’ It was the first time he had talked about his mother’s illness with anyone.

  ‘It’s common. My friend Jill had dreadful problems with her blood pressure when she was pregnant.’

  Andy shook his head. ‘It was psychological. Postnatal depression.’ Nobody had ever told Andy this, but he’d figured it out for himself.

  ‘So you’ve missed out on things too. Life can be lonely for an only child.’

  In Andy’s mind, it was his parents who’d made all the sacrifices. His mother had forfeited her health to give his father a son. His father had spent every waking hour making money to put Andy through private school and university. His parents reminded him of this on a regular, if not daily, basis. But Mrs Hughes’ words resonated with him. He’d grown up alone, no brothers or sisters for company. And his parents were often busy, too preoccupied to play with him. At worst he felt like a burden; at best, a nuisance. On arriving in Melbourne he was shocked to see how affectionate Australian families were in public. Sometimes on the tram he liked to watch parents with their children. He saw mothers press their lips to their toddlers’ heads and inhale, as if sitting beside them wasn’t enough—they needed to breathe them in.

  ‘Sometimes I fantasise about being a mother,’ Mrs Hughes said. ‘But I know it can take quite a toll.’

  Thinking of his mother made Andy’s throat feel tight and dry. He was glad when Mrs Hughes kept talking.

  ‘I never got married, because I was too busy caring for others—firstly, for my sick mother, and later, for Helen.’ She studied her slippers on the floor.

  Andy thought of his parents. ‘I don’t think I’ll get married.’

  ‘It would be nice to have some company,’ Mrs Hughes said. Her eyes flicked up to the sketches of Kiko on the wall. Andy looked away, embarrassed. He picked up his phone. Before he could check his messages again he heard what sounded like the crack of a twig outside the window. Mrs Hughes had gone pale. She pointed to the light switch. Andy remembered that the woman at the agency had said something about a break-in. He turned off the light and peered through the curtains. Mrs Hughes hovered behind him. When his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he made out the crouched figure of a man near the fence, just a few metres from the window. Mrs Hughes gasped—she’d seen the man too. Together they watched him scale the fence into the next-door neighbour’s backyard. They heard another snap of twigs as his body hit the ground on the other side.

  ‘We have to call the police,’ Andy whispered, letting go of the curtain.

  Mrs Hughes’ breathing was fast and shallow. ‘That’s Judith’s place. She’s deaf. She won’t hear a thing, until it’s too late.’

  Andy picked up his phone. There was a message from Kiko, but he didn’t read it. Instead, he called 000 and asked for the police. The operator transferred him to another woman who asked a slew of questions—many of them relevant but many of them not. Mrs Hughes sat down again in the chair by the desk. She closed her eyes, but her frown remained. Andy was on the phone for nearly ten minutes. When he hung up, he touched her gently on the shoulder.

  ‘You should go to bed,’ he said.

  ‘The police will want to talk to us when they get here.’

  As if on cue, they heard a knock at the front door.

  ‘I’ll speak to them,’ Andy said. He’d never been interviewed by a police officer before. His heart was doing somersaults in his chest, but his voice was steady.

  ‘That’s good of you, Andy, but I should probably speak to them too—they might want to know about the other break-in.’

  They walked down the hallway together. Before opening the door, Mrs Hughes stopped and turned to face him. ‘I’ve been mea
ning to ask you—have you been cleaning the windows?’ It wasn’t clear from the look on her face whether she was happy about this or not.

  ‘Yes—I hope that’s okay.’

  She didn’t respond straight away. It was only after another impatient rap at the door that she placed her hand on Andy’s arm.

  ‘Thank you.’

  25

  When Jillian called to suggest coffee the next day, Meg was bursting to talk. Ever since Anne’s funeral, her friend had seemed a little flat. Meg was excited to have some news to share with her. At Café Bonjour she told Jillian about Patrick and the boathouse and how he’d leant in to kiss her when she’d walked him to his car. She told her about eating Chinese food in the city with Andy, and the man on the tram who’d shouted at the students. She told her about calling the police on the trespasser, and how Andy had taken control of the situation. As she spoke, she suppressed her delight at the stunned look on Jillian’s face.

  ‘Two intruders in six months?’ Jillian said, licking the froth from her skinny decaf latte. ‘You’ve got to move out of that place.’

  ‘You didn’t let me finish,’ Meg said. ‘The intruder was actually Bev’s grandson.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He was drunk. The police said he wet himself when they shone their torch at him.’

  Bev was the grumpy widow who lived three doors down from Meg. Everybody had a tale about Bev and her good-for-nothing grandson. But Jillian wasn’t interested in Bev and her problems. She put her cup down and clasped her hands together on the table.

  ‘Forget those two. What I want to know is what you’re going to do about Patrick.’

  Meg sighed. She should have known this was the part of the story that would most intrigue Jillian. ‘I’m going to call it off.’

  Jillian raised her eyebrows. ‘Why?’

  Meg thought of Patrick’s boorish behaviour the night before. ‘We don’t have that much in common.’

  ‘You’re both alive, aren’t you?’

  ‘I just don’t see the point of it all,’ Meg said.