Sadie seemed to be watching each of the others to gauge the best way to behave. Some days she was in tears from the moment she woke up. Other days she was as angry as Miranda, snapping at each of them, pinching Clementine so hard she cried, roughly wiping the dishes. Juliet saw her deliberately drop two glasses and barely react as they shattered on the floor.
Clementine was bewildered. She hadn’t been able to completely understand why their mother was in hospital, let alone what it meant when Leo took her on his knee and told her Mummy had gone away, that her heart had worn out and that she now lived in heaven. Clementine kept checking around the house as if she expected to find her, sitting in the living room or standing by the kitchen sink. When the time came for her to go back to school, Juliet found her standing in the kitchen with her lunchbox. Not crying. Waiting. It was Tessa who had always made Clementine’s lunch. Juliet managed not to cry in front of her that moment but once the sandwich was made – with extra butter and jam – and packed into the plastic box, she had to go outside and cry until her chest hurt.
Their father was no help. If he saw Juliet that morning from the kitchen window, her eyes red-rimmed, he didn’t comment. He just locked himself away from them, physically and mentally. He barely spoke in the mornings as they got ready for school and he got ready for work. He had decided to go back just a week after their mother’s funeral. Before she had gone into hospital, he had often worked back late, either in the laboratory or visiting the eucalypt plantations in the hills beyond Hobart. He used to take one or more of his daughters with him, showing them the rows of tiny seedlings and talking about the different species.
Juliet wondered who was looking after those seedlings and plantations now. Certainly it wasn’t their father. He was working only the minimum hours and spending all his spare time in his shed. The light was always on.
The day three bills arrived in red-bordered envelopes was the day Juliet realised something had to be done. She was trying to study for her exams. She couldn’t do everything for everyone. She didn’t have room, or time, to cope in her own way. It was all crowding in on her. She wanted to mourn and grieve and cry for her mother too.
She decided to wait until after dinner to talk to her father. The three overdue bills lay on his placemat. She was too tired and too angry to be subtle about it. As she picked up the old pottery casserole dish to carry it to the table, one of the clay handles snapped off. In slow motion it tipped out of her hands, spilling hot gravy, meat and vegetables onto the floor and their mother’s handwritten recipe book. She didn’t try to stop it. She stood and watched as it formed a pool at her feet and soaked into every page of the recipe book. Miranda appeared at the door.
‘Are you all right? I heard a noise —’
Juliet brushed past her, saying nothing. She opened the back door, walked across the verandah, onto the lawn, already damp with dew. She didn’t knock at the shed door. He was sitting at the bench. Not working at anything. Just sitting.
‘I can’t do it any more, Dad.’
‘Do what?’ He didn’t turn around.
‘Be Mum. You have to help.’
‘I can’t.’
She saw it in his shoulders, slumped. His hair scarcely combed.
‘We’re sad too, Dad. We miss her too.’
He turned. His eyes were red. He was angry. The most feeling she had seen from him in weeks. ‘Not as much as me. You can’t be as sad as me.’
She kept her temper. Just. ‘Different sad.’
Silence.
‘We need your help.’
He was about to speak, about to say something important, she could tell from the breath he took. There was a noise beside them. Clementine, in her pyjamas and dressing-gown, without slippers. Her feet were wet and she was already shivering.
‘Clemmie, what are you doing out here?’
‘I cleaned up the mess.’
‘What mess?’ Their father speaking.
‘Juliet threw our dinner on the floor.’
‘I dropped it. Not threw it.’
‘I could make toast for our dinner if you like,’ Clementine said. ‘If someone else will get the toaster out of the cupboard for me.’
Juliet wasn’t hungry. All she wanted was to go somewhere, curl into a tight ball, cry and then sleep. But her little sister was waiting. ‘Good idea, Clemmie.’ Juliet summoned as much brightness into her voice as she could. ‘Let’s have toast and cheese.’
She and Clementine were on their way back to the house when their father appeared in the doorway of his shed. ‘No,’ he called after them. ‘Not toast and cheese.’
Juliet stopped. ‘Pardon?’
‘Not toast and cheese. We’ll go out for dinner.’
Their father was talking, even smiling. Juliet recognised that same fake optimism she heard in herself. ‘Come on, get the others.’
Miranda didn’t want to come. Eliza said she wasn’t hungry. Sadie was napping and was upset about being woken. Clementine was the only one who seemed excited.
Juliet cornered Miranda, Sadie and Eliza in her bedroom. ‘You have to come out. This is important.’
Miranda rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, yes, very important. A life-changing moment for our family. I can see the magazine articles now. “We were all so unhappy after our mother died until the night we had a counter tea in one of Hobart’s finest pubs. We haven’t looked back since. Who needs a mother? It’s so much better without her, cheaper too, one less mouth to fee—” Oww!’
Juliet was as shocked as Miranda at the feel of her hand slapping her sister’s face. ‘Shut up, Miranda, do you hear me? Just shut up for once, can you?’
‘Don’t you ever hit me again.’ Her voice was icy.
‘Don’t you ever talk about Mum like that again.’
Miranda’s eyes were like slits. She held her hand to her cheek.
Sadie and Eliza were shocked, staring back and forth at the two of them.
The despair swept over Juliet again. ‘One hour. That’s all I’m asking. One hour of pretending to be a family out in public.’
‘I’m not going.’ It was Eliza talking now. ‘Everyone whispering about us. “Those poor Faraday girls”.’
‘They won’t even notice us. Come on. It’s the first time Dad —’ she stopped. ‘It’s important for Dad.’
‘Dad?’ Miranda, recovered again. ‘Who’s that? Oh, that man who lives in the shed?’
‘I’m ready.’
It was Clementine, dressed in the same clothes she had worn at their mother’s funeral. Her Sunday best. A blue woollen coat. Dark-blue boots. She looked like a child from an English Christmas card. All that was missing was the robin sitting on her shoulder.
‘Are we still going?’
Juliet dared her sisters to defy her. ‘Yes, Clementine, we are.’
The dinner was a disaster. The dining room fell silent when they walked in. Three women came over during the meal to give their sympathies. Leo kept speaking in a fake bright voice, asking Clementine for too much detail about her schoolwork.
The food was terrible. Overcooked fish and chips. Burnt steak. Lumpy sauce. Tinned vegetables.
‘Dessert, anyone? This is a special night out,’ Leo said, so upbeat he sounded like a southern American preacher.
‘You don’t have to lay it on so thick, Dad.’ It was Miranda.
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘You don’t have to pretend to be our caring father. We’re used to life without you. I mean, it’s nice of you to give us an hour of your time, but please don’t feel you have to bother again. Not for a year or so. Mum’s anniversary perhaps. Or at Christmas, if we are still together as a family. Or shall we give that July Christmas a go? You all saw it in her scrapbook, didn’t you?’ Her eyes were too bright, her smile too forced. She looked like an actress on the brink of a breakdown.
‘That’s enough, Miranda.’ Leo’s voice was quiet.
‘Oh, what fun we’ll have. I can hardly wait. You don’t look too
pleased, Dad. Have I spoilt a surprise? Come now. We can do it. What have we got, six weeks to organise it?’
Sadie, Eliza, Juliet and Clementine were still and quiet. This was between Miranda and their father.
She continued, in the same conversational tone. ‘Sorry you got left behind when Mum died, Dad. And that you got stuck with us. I’d like to spend all my time in the shed too, and not talk to anyone. Let’s get five more sheds, will we? One for each of us? That way we don’t have to talk to anybody; we can all just lock ourselves away. Clementine, you can visit me whenever you like —’ she had noticed her youngest sister’s shocked expression ‘— but I really think this is the best way forward.’
‘I don’t know how else to be.’
‘Oh no, of course not, you’re only our —’ Miranda’s tone had turned sharp. Then a glance from Sadie and a sudden touch on her arm from Eliza halted her.
They could barely hear their father’s voice. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen to us. She was supposed to come home. You saw her, Juliet. You too, Clementine. That last… that night we visited her. She was happy, wasn’t she? Talking about the future? About that Christmas idea?’
A nod from Juliet. Clementine stayed quiet, but she slipped her hand into Juliet’s.
‘We didn’t get time to talk about what I was supposed to do next, if… if something like this ever happened. Whether we should go back to England. It just happened.’ He looked directly at Miranda. ‘You’re right. I don’t know what to do. I think about all the years stretching ahead without her, and all the advice she would have given you, and the shopping you would have done together, and your weddings and your babies, our grandchildren. The whole picture that we had in our heads of what our lives would be, and she is in every single picture. I didn’t see this gap, this space that I am supposed to fill. I can’t be her. I don’t know how to be without her.’
He cried again then, in the dining room, tears streaming down his cheeks, oblivious to open stares from the other people around them, from his daughters.
None of the girls spoke. He cried, soundlessly, for what felt like many minutes.
Clementine got down from her seat and went over to her father. ‘Do you want a tissue, Dad?’ He took them from her outstretched hand. He wiped his eyes. Juliet, Miranda, Sadie and Eliza watched in silence. After a minute or two, Clementine held out her hand again. Leo handed back the tissues and she returned to her seat.
Miranda picked up the menu. ‘I would like dessert after all, thanks, Dad.’ Her voice sounded normal. Only the high flush in her cheeks gave anything away. She beckoned the waiter. ‘Five large chocolate sundaes, please. Dad, one for you?’
He nodded.
‘Make that six,’ she said.
That night their father didn’t go back out to the shed. He called a family meeting.
‘Miranda hit the nail on the head tonight. We need to get this show back on the road. We owe it to your mother.’ It would be a phrase they would hear many times over the next years. ‘Now, let’s get those rosters out and let me take a look at how your mother used to do these things. And no shirking on my part. I’m adding my name to it this time.’
There was a muffled exclamation from Miranda. Juliet sent her a warning glance. Miranda rolled her eyes in answer but didn’t say what she was obviously thinking.
‘Each of you has been given a special gift,’ he was saying. Then he stopped. Gift was a word their mother had often used.
‘Are they like Christmas presents, Dad?’ Clementine said. ‘Those sort of gifts? Are we going to do Mum’s July Christmas?’
He seemed relieved to change the subject. The hearty voice emerged again. ‘What do you think, girls? Juliet? Are you up for it especially? I mean, I’m happy to give the turkey a go myself, but your mother always said you were a born cook.’
Juliet felt like an actress too, stepping in and picking up her lines just in time. ‘I’d like to do it. It could be fun.’ She didn’t know if she had the energy for anything to ever be fun again.
‘Mum said she wanted me to do the tree.’ Clementine ran out of the room and came back with the final scrapbook. ‘I’m going to make a fairy like that one, see.’
Their mother had clipped pictures of eight different fairies from the English magazine and stuck them all neatly on a page. The sight of the neat work, the thought of her mother carefully sticking down the pieces of paper, was too much. It hit Juliet like a punch, a great roaring rush of feeling that seemed to come from her feet upwards. She barely made it outside before she was violently ill.
Sadie, or perhaps it was Eliza, came up behind her. She didn’t turn around, just felt a soothing hand on her back. She shook her head, shook their hand away. ‘I’m all right. Just leave me alone.’
A pause, another brief touch, and whoever it was went away.
When she came into the kitchen ten minutes later, it was all organised. Clementine was jumping up and down on the spot in excitement. The first Faraday July Christmas was going to take place in six weeks’ time. A turkey and all the trimmings. A tree. A pudding. All of it. They’d promised Clementine.
That night, Miranda came into Juliet’s room. She sat on the edge of the bed.
‘I hate all this, Juliet. I hate it so much it hurts. I want her back. I want our old life back.’
‘Me too.’
The door opened. Clementine was there, with her favourite rug.
‘Juliet, can I come in?’
‘Of course, Clemmie.’
She gave a deep sob. ‘I miss my Mum.’
‘Oh, darling. Come here.’ She held back the blankets and Clementine clambered in beside her. Juliet opened her arms and held her little sister tight as Clementine wept even harder. ‘Don’t worry, Clemmie. I’m here. I’ll look after you.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘Can I sleep here with you tonight?’
‘Of course you can.’ Juliet stroked her hair back from her face, as Clementine’s sobs lessened. Her breathing changed until she slowly fell asleep. Juliet continued to stroke her hair.
‘Juliet?’ Miranda’s voice was soft in the darkness.
‘Mmm?’
‘Will you look after me too?’
‘Of course.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise,’ Juliet said.
CHAPTER SIX
It took Juliet three days to get the five of them together. In the end, she’d had to slip notes under Miranda, Sadie and Eliza’s pillows: Need to talk about something important, out of Dad’s hearing. Meet you at the park at 2 p.m. Saturday?
‘I feel like I’m one of the Famous Five,’ Miranda said when she arrived. She was the last to get there, straight from work, still dressed in her pharmacy uniform. ‘What next? Chasing robbers and searching for counterfeit money? You be Julian, Juliet, seeing as you almost have the same name. I’ll be Dick. He was the best one. Sadie, you be George because you look like a boy with that new haircut. Eliza, you’re Anne, just because. Clementine, you have to be Timmy the dog.’
Juliet ignored her and waited a few more minutes for Clementine to give Maggie a feed and put her back in her pram. When she finally had everyone’s attention, she explained what the meeting was about. She didn’t go into detail about her conversation with Clementine the previous week.
‘I can see Clementine’s point, but isn’t it Dad’s business if he has kept Mum’s belongings all this time?’ Eliza said.
‘It’s not just his business. She’s our mother. Was our mother.’ Miranda looked like she was ready to confront their father there and then.
Sadie wasn’t happy. ‘But what if he only lets Clementine have a look at her diaries and choose some of her clothes, because she’s got Maggie?’
‘For God’s sake, Sadie,’ Miranda snapped. ‘You sound like a six-year-old sometimes.’
‘Leave her alone, Miranda,’ Juliet said. ‘We have to decide whether we all want to do this. Because it has to be all or none of
us. I’ll take a vote. Miranda, do you want to ask Dad about this?’
‘Of course.’
‘Sadie? Eliza?’
Two nods.
Juliet already knew Clementine’s feelings.
They were walking back to the house, taking turns pushing Maggie’s pram, when Miranda stopped. ‘If he does say yes, do any of you actually want to read Mum’s diaries?’
‘Yes,’ Clementine said immediately.
‘Of course,’ Sadie said. ‘Why wouldn’t we?’
‘What if we don’t like what we read?’ Miranda asked.
‘Isn’t it better we know her as she was?’ Eliza said. ‘I’d rather know more than less, wouldn’t you?’
‘Could we get someone to read them for us first, and edit out the unsavoury parts?’ Juliet suggested.
‘How do you know there’d be any unsavoury parts?’ Eliza said.
Juliet shrugged. ‘That’s what diaries are for, aren’t they? To put down all the secret fantasies and evil thoughts that you can’t share with anybody else?’
‘Do you keep a diary, Miranda?’ Sadie asked.
‘You think I’d tell you if I did?’
Eliza spoke. ‘I can tell you all one thing about the diaries.’
‘What?’
‘Wherever they are, they’re not in Dad’s wardrobe.’
Juliet, Miranda, Sadie and Clementine stopped and stared at Eliza.
She glared back at them. ‘I’m not the only one who goes in there, so don’t look at me like that.’
‘She’s right,’ Miranda said. ‘I used to go in there all the time. I liked looking at her dresses. That blue evening gown especially. I loved her in it. I tried it on once.’
‘Miranda!’
‘What was wrong with that? What girl wouldn’t want to try on her mother’s best clothes?’
‘What did it look like on you?’
‘Terrible. Two inches too short and two sizes too small.’
They walked on a little further before Juliet spoke. ‘I wore one of her rings the day I was sitting my final exams.’
‘Juliet, you didn’t!’ Clementine was shocked.
Those Faraday Girls Page 8
