She liked to gently bite on her niece’s chubby little fingers. She liked the smell of her, fresh from the bath. She liked how sweet she looked in her different outfits. She liked the dark lashes against her skin, the silky smoothness of that skin. There was something so perfect about every part of her.
Sadie settled herself into her favourite corner. This was her first visit to the library in two weeks and a great selection of new magazines had come in, filled with fascinating articles. Once she’d had a good read of those, she’d have a browse around the children’s section upstairs too. She thought it was time Maggie moved beyond the board books she had been borrowing for her so far.
As she reached into her carry bag to take out her library card, her fingers brushed against something. It was a small bottle. A purple bottle.
Her snort of laughter earned her a stern look from the librarian.
Juliet had discovered many years earlier that routine was essential if she was to keep her family fed. Let them complain about her planned menus, she’d decided. If they found it too boring, they could take over. Especially now she was so busy at the café. The Stottingtons kept introducing new ideas and new menus. For a near-retired couple, they had great business brains – Juliet was learning a lot from them. She also had the feeling they were grooming her for something. Her family better watch out, she thought, or the day would come when she wouldn’t have time to cook for them at all.
Thursday night was always pasta night. If she had time she experimented with different sauces – creamy mushroom or spicy bacon and tomato – but usually the most variation she could offer was the type of pasta. Long strands of spaghetti, little pasta shells or sometimes thick tagliatelli. The previous year she’d found the perfect pottery storage jar in a homewares shop in the mall. It held enough pasta for three meals, with a nifty measuring ring for spaghetti built into the lid. She took it down. She’d already checked the noticeboard. Everyone would be home tonight. There should be enough spaghetti, she guessed from the weight in the jar. She took off the lid, set up the measuring ring and poured the strands into her hand. As she did so, something slipped out and landed on the table with a clatter. Something purple. Something made from glass.
She started to laugh. ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said out loud.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘What I don’t understand is how in less than two years that child has managed to infiltrate all our lives, take over our house, have us all running after her and now has ten times as much luggage as any of us. Where am I supposed to put my bag?’ Miranda was disgusted and making no bones about it.
‘There’s room, love. You just need to push a bit harder.’ Leo put a shoulder against the suitcase on top of the luggage compartment of the stationwagon and heaved. The suitcase moved, flying over the divider into the back seat.
‘Perfect. Plenty of room. And I don’t need a seat. I’ll just run along behind the car.’
‘That might be the best thing, actually.’
Clementine came out of the house with another bag. ‘Is there room for this?’
‘Clem, tell your daughter she needs to learn to pack lighter. Catwalk models have fewer clothes than her.’
‘I tried, I promise. But I’ve brought all her birthday presents with me.’
‘What’s the point? She won’t know if she’s opening boxes of cereal.’
They were on their way to a house in Bicheno on the east coast for a week’s holiday, timed to celebrate Maggie’s second birthday. Their mother had found the house years before while travelling with Leo as he visited tree plantations. They’d heard the story many times. How she had grabbed his arm, pointed out over the rocks and the coastline. ‘It was just like that at Grandma’s,’ she had said. Her grandmother was Irish, from the northwest of the country. As a child, Tessa would go every summer to her two-storey house just outside the small village of Glencolmcille in County Donegal. She’d pick blackberries, go swimming, make cakes and help her grandmother do the summer chores, like whitewashing the walls around the house.
That first day in Bicheno, Leo and Tessa had parked the car by the shore and gone walking. From the beach Tessa had caught sight of a two-storey house, back in the bush. It was brick, not stone, and modern – not over a hundred years old like her grandmother’s house – but it had delighted her. They’d called into three nearby shops and houses until they got the name of the owner. Yes, they did rent it out.
A month later the whole family had come up for a week’s holiday. It had been the middle of winter, unfortunately. They spent the week inside, looking out at the driving rain. They played card games, Monopoly, Cluedo, Twister, charades and consequences. They fought constantly.
Clementine didn’t remember that visit, although everyone always told her that was where she had first fallen in love with penguins and other birds, after Leo took her to see the colony that lived in the rocks nearby. They had gone to Bicheno twice after their mother died. The first time had been too sad. They’d come home early. The second holiday was better. The owners had redecorated. It didn’t feel too much like the place they had visited with their mother.
The mood this time was bright. The seven of them finally crammed into the stationwagon, three in the front, four in the back, Maggie and her baby seat taking up more than one space. As they took the highway out of Hobart, heading through hills, looking forward to the first dramatic glimpse of coastline, they waited for their father to tell the same story of the day he had first seen the house. How sad it was that Tessa hadn’t got to see that beloved Donegal house again.
They all knew that Leo and Tessa had been planning a trip to the UK and Ireland for the whole family. Only Tessa had returned after they emigrated, making the trip home every two years to see her parents, arriving back after the fortnight away laden with English biscuits, magazines, jams and her favourite chocolates. They would pore over photos of places she’d been and people she’d seen: her parents, old friends from school days, as well as snaps of their old house, even the corner shop she used to love visiting. Tessa had promised to take them to all her favourite places as soon as they could afford it. There’d been a tin in the pantry with a notice on it: ‘Holiday Fund’, and a little picture of a plane, drawn by their mother.
‘Seven of us to the UK? You don’t need a tin of change, you need a swimming-pool full,’ Miranda had said.
After Tessa died, the tin was pushed to the back shelf of the pantry. What money there was in it had been used to buy groceries. There’d been no more talk of a trip to the UK.
It wasn’t just the expense or their study commitments. Their links with family over there were fading. Leo’s parents had died when he was in his mid-forties. Their mother’s parents were in a retirement village in north London. They’d been too unwell to come to her funeral. Her mother was apparently prone to high blood pressure and her father wouldn’t travel without her. There were occasional letters, phone calls at Christmas, but they had never been close. Leo hinted once that Tessa, an only child, hadn’t got on well with her parents, her mother especially. The Faradays’ closest relative in the UK was Leo’s brother Bill, a doctor. He’d been out to Australia twice to visit them, the first time soon after they emigrated, the second time just a few months before Tessa died. Juliet could remember him well: all jolly, great company, as outgoing as her father was gentle. He’d reminded her of a character in a war film, with his short hair, Errol Flynn looks and flamboyance. He and Tessa had been great friends, singing and even dancing around the kitchen one night, to the delight of the girls. ‘Come on, Daddy,’ a nine-year-old Miranda had allegedly shouted. ‘You dance with me too. I be the lady and you be Fred the Stair.’
Bill had phoned every day for the first two weeks after he heard the news Tessa had died. Juliet spoke to him most days, her father unable to take the call. Her uncle often sounded drunk, Juliet thought, though she hadn’t said anything to her father. ‘She was a beautiful girl,’ he would repeat. ‘This is a tragedy.’
‘Your mother loved Bicheno so much because it reminded her of her grandmother’s house in Donegal,’ Leo announced, the road ahead of them rising into the hills.
In the backseat, squished between Clementine and the door, Miranda made a loud snoring noise. Juliet glared at her.
‘Dad, you tell us this every time we drive this road,’ Clementine said mildly.
‘Do I?’
Miranda shook her head and turned and looked out the window. ‘This is an appalling state of affairs. Me, twenty-four, trapped in a car with too many members of my immediate family, including a very stinky child.’ She blocked her nose with her fingers and spoke in a nasally voice. ‘I know, Dad, why don’t you invent a really huge nappy with compartments, and the baby could wear it all day, with little tubes that funnel the waste into the separate areas, therefore saving the mother many hours of nappy-changing time and —’
‘Not a bad idea. By the way, have I told you about my latest project?’
Miranda put her hands over her ears. ‘No, but please do.’
Eliza returned to the book she was reading. She’d always been able to read in a moving car without getting carsick. Sadie went back to playing peekaboo over the front seat with Maggie. Beside her, Juliet was making a shopping list. They’d have to buy everything in Bicheno, she’d realised. There was no room in the car for groceries.
Leo talked on, oblivious to his lack of an audience. ‘I actually got the idea for it watching Pete next door doing his mowing. He must have refilled the petrol tank three times in the space of an hour. There had to be a more efficient way, I thought. So what I’ve been working on is a —’
Miranda shut her eyes. She was asleep within five minutes. She didn’t wake up until they pulled into the driveway of the holiday house.
‘I’m worried about Clementine,’ Juliet said a few days later. The weather had been mixed, rain in the morning, sunshine in the afternoon. There had been a lot of lying around reading. Maggie was everyone’s plaything. Juliet had noticed Clementine leaving her with them more and more. She had said she was using the time to study but Juliet noticed her books were still in their bag. ‘I think she’s depressed.’
‘I don’t know about depressed, but she’s certainly clean,’ Miranda said.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Have you noticed she’s started taking two showers every day? Not just here, but when we’re at home too? And she’s in the bathroom for nearly an hour each time. She asked me to mind Maggie for her last week while she nipped in for a shower, or so she told me. She took forever. I was late for work because of her.’
Eliza joined in. ‘She did that to me too.’
‘She’s finding it hard,’ Juliet said.
‘We’re all finding it hard,’ Eliza said. ‘But do you hear me complaining?’
‘No, but I don’t hear you offering to help. She hasn’t said anything, but I get the feeling her study is suffering,’ Juliet said.
‘She shouldn’t have accepted her place on that course, then. Or she should have thought about this happening before she got pregnant.’
Miranda snorted. ‘And from high judgement, Eliza Faraday speaks. How nice of you to drop in from Mount Olympus to pass on your words of wisdom.’
‘I’m not condemning her. I’m just being realistic. If I pull a muscle in my leg and have to withdraw from a race, I can’t blame anyone else. It’s my fault.’
‘Thanks for that touching insight into the mind of an athlete, Eliza, but what does that have to do with Clementine and Maggie?’
‘She needs to work it out for herself. We won’t be around to help her all the time, will we?’
Juliet looked shocked. ‘She’s our little sister, Eliza.’
‘I know who she is. And I know Maggie is our niece.’ Her expression was defiant. ‘But I’m sorry, someone has to be realistic here. All five of us can’t become full-time mothers just because Clementine decided to have a baby.’
‘She didn’t decide to have a baby.’ Juliet was angry now. ‘God, Eliza, what’s got into —’
Sadie interrupted. ‘I’m happy to do more. I’ll do Eliza’s share. I don’t mind. I think Maggie is beautiful.’
‘I think she’s beautiful too.’ Eliza was exasperated now. ‘I’m not suggesting we hand her over to an orphanage. I just think Clementine has to find her own way out of this mess.’
‘I’ve had an idea.’
They all turned to look at Sadie.
‘Why don’t I become Maggie’s part-time nanny? I can juggle my lectures. Defer one or two subjects if I need to. My course is different to Clementine’s. She has to keep up the research if she wants to pass.’ Clementine’s main project was an investigation into the impact of airborne pollutants on seabirds in Tasmania. ‘The world can wait to find out what I think of Jane Austen’s use of metaphors. That would give me lots more free time. I’m happy to do more looking after of Maggie.’
‘Really?’ Eliza said. ‘For payment, you mean, or for free?’
‘I’ll do it for free. We’re doing all right financially, aren’t we? We could try it for a year, anyway. And it will get easier the older Maggie gets, once she starts kindergarten or school.’
‘Why would you do this, though? Why would anyone volunteer to spend more time crawling on the floor picking up bricks and changing smelly squares of flannelette?’
‘Out of kindness, Miranda,’ Juliet said. ‘Ever heard of that?’
Miranda just flicked the page of her magazine.
Clementine protested about Sadie’s offer at first. It wasn’t fair, she said. She’d feel guilty leaving Maggie. She wasn’t leaving her permanently, just for a few hours every day, Sadie reminded her. It was too much to ask, Clementine said. I’m happy to do it, Sadie insisted. Thank you, Sadie, Clementine said. You’re welcome, Clementine, Sadie answered.
The new arrangement coincided with Sadie’s latest attempt to lose weight. She’d been talking about losing a stone for as long as any of them could remember. It wasn’t that she was overweight, though Miranda enjoyed telling her she was. She just hadn’t inherited the slender figure and fast metabolism her sisters had. It was so unfair, she told them all as often as possible. Every week she made an event of weighing herself, and every week she was disappointed. ‘There must be something wrong with me. I’m exercising more and I’m just staying the same.’
‘That’s because you work your way through at least five packets of biscuits each week,’ Eliza said.
‘I’m hungry when I get back from my walk,’ she said defensively. ‘I’ve earned a few biscuits, haven’t I?’
‘To lose weight you have to move more and eat less. You’re moving more and eating more. They cancel each other out. Ipso facto, status quo.’
‘What have they got to do with it?’
‘I don’t mean the band. I mean nothing will change.’
She sighed. ‘I’ll have to forget about it for now, anyway. I won’t be able to go on a diet when I’m home looking after Maggie. I’ll find myself picking all day.’
‘So get out of the house more,’ Eliza said.
‘And do what?’
‘Look at things. Walk. Show Maggie the world.’
‘We like it here. All her toys are here.’
Miranda roused herself from her position on the sofa. ‘Your problem, Sadie Faraday, is you just don’t want to lose weight. In fact, I bet you can’t lose weight.’
Sadie narrowed her eyes. ‘You bet me? How much?’
Juliet looked at the two of them and laughed. ‘You should see your faces.’
‘Fifty dollars if you lose one stone by Christmas. That’s December Christmas, not our July Christmas.’
Juliet was appalled. ‘Miranda! You can’t afford that.’
‘I won’t have to pay up. Sadie w
ill never do it.’
‘Let me get this clear,’ Sadie said. ‘You’ll pay me fifty dollars if I lose a stone in the next eight months?’
‘That’s it in a nutshell. Except nuts are fattening. That’s it on a crispbread.’
Sadie held out her hand. ‘It’s a deal.’
Sadie started both projects on the same day. Over breakfast – she had grapefruit, dry toast and coffee – Clementine ran through all the arrangements: what time Maggie liked to have her daytime sleep, what to give her for lunch, which were her favourite toys. Sadie eventually called a halt to it.
‘Clem, I’ve watched you with her every day for the past two years. I love her as much as you do. I know how to look after her.’
‘You’ll ring me at the university if you need to? If anything happens at all?’
‘Straightaway, I promise. It’s only for a few hours. You’ll be back in the afternoon. Forget about us. Go and worry about your feathered friends.’
Things went beautifully for the first two months. Clementine slowly relaxed into the new arrangement. They all noticed the change in her. The tense look disappeared. Her study books appeared in her room again. She spoke about her course research over dinner, about her lecturer, about latest findings.
Miranda leaned back in her chair. ‘What is this I see before me? A normal student? A young woman able to speak of something more than toilet training? Boring us rigid with tales of Tasmanian bird life instead? Oh, happy day. Welcome back, Clementine.’
Meanwhile, Sadie spent an hour every day walking with Maggie in her pram. She took a stopwatch with her and sent away for a pedometer.
‘I’d start getting worried for that fifty dollars of yours, Miranda,’ Juliet said one evening as Sadie ate a small serving of Juliet’s roast beef, said no to potatoes and had a fresh peach rather than the apple pie everyone else was having.
Maggie’s clothes were washed each day, her toys tidied away. Sadie did more than her share of the housekeeping. They all agreed it was working very well.
Those Faraday Girls Page 10
