Before I realise what I’m doing, I’ve taken the phone back to the others. I can hardly believe the texts that have come through. Talk about serendipitous timing.
‘Emily! No technology at the table,’ Mum scolds.
‘Mum, this is important.’ I lean over to Ade with the phone. ‘Look at this.’
I don’t want to antagonise her by showing her a message from Dylan, but if she doesn’t see firsthand what he’s sent me, she’s not going to believe it.
Her mouth goes pouty when she sees the message is from Dylan, then her lips fall open as she stares at the screen. She puts a finger to the glass, touching the picture. It’s a screenshot showing Tatiana’s Facebook status: Sayonara, haters. Who needs Jefferson when you’ve got a Parisian education waiting for you?
Tatiana has always bragged about the school in Paris her mother went to when she was young, and now it seems she’s going there herself. I wonder if the whole family has relocated — Tatiana’s dad’s job means he’s in Europe half the time anyway.
‘Hopefully short hair is all the rage in Paris currently,’ I say, and Adriana and I fall about laughing.
Mum and Daniel are staring at us. I try to stop laughing so I can fill them in, but this laughter is years of tension gone in an instant. Tatiana leaving is everything.
‘Dad, does that bribe still stand?’ Adriana asks.
Daniel looks half-confused, half-joyous. ‘Yes …’
‘Then I accept!’
She stands up, her fist raised in triumph, and I throw my arms around her, knocking her plate of pizza to the floor.
‘Girls, what’s going on?’ Mum’s laughing too, at the chaos.
‘Tatiana has left!’ I shout.
‘Not just the school — she’s actually left the country!’ Adriana adds.
Daniel lets out a whoop and high-fives Adriana.
Mum jumps up and throws her arms around Adriana and me. ‘I know I shouldn’t say this, but that girl was such a brat.’
‘This is a new era!’ Daniel says, joining in the mass hug.
‘The school bitch is dead!’ The words come out before I can help myself.
‘Emily!’ Mum smothers a laugh, but she’s not impressed.
‘Witch,’ I quickly add. ‘The witch is dead.’
Adriana and I start singing that classic song ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead’.
Daniel runs to grab his iPad and brings up a clip from The Wizard of Oz where all the munchkins are singing with joy. He, Adriana and I link arms, pretending to dance down an imaginary yellow brick road. Daniel shouts for Mum to join in and, to my amazement, she does. We do high kicks round the dining room, and when the song finishes we collapse back onto our seats at the table, smiling like mad.
We finish our pizzas with The Wizard of Oz still playing in the background. I’m exhilarated. Tatiana’s gone, Ade’s back, school will be different.
I look around the table. Ade’s got this ridiculous smile on her face as she stares down at my phone for the twentieth time. Mum’s laughing her head off as Daniel recounts a story about a group of monkeys in Borneo creating havoc with his shaving cream. Her cheeks are pink from the dancing. Daniel’s pulling stupid faces and making monkey sounds, echoing the Wicked Witch of the West’s monkeys on the iPad. I haven’t seen Mum laugh like that in forever.
I notice that Adriana has looked up from the phone and is staring at Daniel like he’s transformed into another person. She turns to me. She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes are mischievous.
I want to say something to Ade the whole night, but even when we’re away from Mum and Daniel, upstairs brushing our teeth, it doesn’t feel right. What if she wasn’t thinking what I was at the dinner table? As Mum said, it’s only been two years. That isn’t long. I don’t want to upset her. Still, it’s killing me to keep it to myself, like not saying anything about her transformation is killing me.
I watch her as she puts on moisturiser. She has to have realised. You couldn’t look at yourself in the mirror and not know you’re freakishly gorgeous, could you? But Adriana doesn’t look twice at herself beyond smoothing the moisturiser over her skin.
‘I’m going to put my pyjamas on,’ she says.
We head to my room. Even though there’s another guest room upstairs, we’re sharing my queen bed so we can watch movies and try and catch up on 1.5 years of news.
‘Okay, Romy and Michele?’ I ask.
Now she’s in her singlet top and pyjama bottoms, I can see she has boobs now too. Not huge, not Tatiana-sized, but at least a C, which against her frame is decent. For some reason I immediately look down at my own chest, expecting the virtually flat landscape to have become small hills. For a moment I feel a pang of envy. For three years, I’ve been expecting the boob fairy to come in the night and deliver something. Nope. Apparently I’ve only been gifted with additional centimetres in the hip region.
‘Em!’ Ade’s waving a hand in front of my face. ‘Movie?’
I start the DVD. We know the movie so well we’re not worried about talking over it, or breaking off into tangents. There’s too much to catch up on and our sentences feel like they’re spilling out at hyper-speed.
It’s during the scene where Romy and Michele have their fight that I notice Adriana’s eyes are drooping.
‘Jetlag’s getting the better of you,’ I say and switch off my lamp.
She murmurs something.
‘Ade?’
‘You don’t think Dad will listen to me, do you? About going back to Borneo? I know he decided to come home, but part of him felt guilty about it — he knew he was doing something positive there. And now I’ve stupidly said we shouldn’t have left.’ She sighs. ‘I didn’t mean it, it’s just the thought of everything at school was getting to me.’
‘Daniel knows you didn’t mean it,’ I reassure her, hoping I’m right.
‘I’m not leaving again.’ She sounds wide awake now. ‘Now Tatiana’s gone, I can handle everything else at school. Even Dylan. I’m not leaving because of him.’
‘I’m not letting you leave again.’ I think back to how brokenhearted I felt when she said she wasn’t returning to school. ‘If your dad changes his mind and wants to go back to the jungle, then I’ll hide you somewhere. Or we’ll run away together.’
‘What if …’ Adriana’s voice seems to inflect four different emotions at once — cheeky, hesitant, inspired and confused.
Is she about to say what I was thinking? My heart starts to beat faster.
‘What if there was a way to ensure my dad didn’t leave, and our lives would always be connected against all odds?’
I sit up in bed, staring at her in the darkness.
‘What’s the strongest bond?’ Her voice is all confidence now.
‘Best friendship?’ I’m trying not to jump the gun on this. I don’t want to be heinously insensitive.
‘Family!’ Ade says what I’ve been holding back. ‘Family ties are the strongest. Come on, Em — I saw your face at the dinner table.’
I’m grinning now. ‘So what I think you’re saying is, your dad …’
‘And your mum.’
I switch on the lamp. ‘Like together? That’s what you’re saying right, together in a romantic way — like kissing …?’
Ade makes a face. ‘That’s icky to think about in actual terms, but yes! Because just think, then we’d be —’
‘OMG, sisters!’ I grab her arm.
‘Like we always wanted!’
We fling our arms around each other.
If Mum and Daniel get together, we’ll see him and Ade even more than we normally do. If they move in, Ade will be right here, always by my side. And if, best-case scenario, Daniel and Mum actually wind up married, our lives will always be entwined no matter what. I’ve always wanted a sibling. And now I could wind up with the best one ever.
I realise I’m getting over-excited and it scares me. If I get too hung up on this idea before we’ve thought it through, I’ll be devastated if it doesn�
�t eventuate.
I pull away. ‘Do you think it could work?’
Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson
I knew Emily was holding back on me. She’d been radiating ‘I have to tell you something!’ vibes all night. Part of me wonders if she came up with the her mum/my dad idea when I told her we were coming home. She was looking at me funny all day. Maybe she was trying to sense whether I’d be upset at the idea of Dad with someone else.
It’s funny — in Borneo, there was this other doctor, Dr Hayes. I loved chatting to her and helping her out onsite, until a few months in when I noticed that her eyes softened whenever she listened to Dad speak. It was subtle, but I knew she was developing feelings for him.
Dad didn’t realise. At that point, he was working from the moment the sun came up to the time he crashed out late in the evening. I knew he was doing all he could to keep busy, to not go back into the state we’d both been in the first six months after we lost Mum. But when I realised Dr Hayes saw him in a romantic way, I became terrified that one day the fog would lift and he’d see Dr Hayes and her soft eyes and understanding smile and start feeling something back. So after that, I always found a reason to interrupt when they were talking too intently. It was ugly, and I felt bad every time I saw Dr Hayes’ face reveal that flash of disappointment, but I couldn’t help myself. Nice as she was, I didn’t want her taking Mum’s place. After a year, she was transferred to another site, and it was only when her truck disappeared from view that I felt like I could breathe again.
Tonight, seeing Dad and Isobel laughing like that, I realised what I’d feared was happening. Two years on, he was emerging from the fog. I saw from his face that he was admiring Isobel, that there was this little frisson of attraction. It was disorientating because I’d never have thought Dad would be attracted to Isobel. Not that she isn’t beautiful, but he, Mum and Isobel, all three of them, had been friends for years. But funnily enough, I don’t feel that fear I had with Dr Hayes. In fact, I feel excited. Not just because something might happen and Emily and I might end up related, but because I like the idea of Isobel for Dad.
She doesn’t feel like a threat — like someone who’d want to wipe away the imprints left of Mum. She knew Mum and loved her too, and from day one after the funeral she’s always told Dad and me we have to talk about her, remember the good and bad things, the perfect and the imperfect — the real Mum. She wants to keep her alive, and I know that whatever happens, she’ll always respect the past. She feels like someone I want to have in our lives.
4
ADRIANA
‘Do you think it could work?’ Emily asks, staring at me. ‘I mean, your dad, a doctor, with my artistic, alternative mum? His goofiness and Mum’s intensity? Is that compatible?’
‘You saw them tonight, the way they smiled at each other. There was a spark. I know my dad —’
‘And I know Mum,’ Emily says. ‘I’ve never seen her cheeks pink like that. She was feeling something. That’s major for her.’
‘Has she been on any dates since we left?’
‘Like two or three, I think? They never go anywhere.’ She looks thoughtful. ‘I think she cuts them off before they become anything. I never ask — you know Mum.’
I always feel cautious talking about this topic. Emily acts like it doesn’t bother her, but I know it does.
She sighs. ‘Maybe I should be more sensitive instead of thinking the whole father-of-your-baby-abandons-you-during-the-pregnancy thing is easy to get over.’ She shakes her head and gives me a ‘you’d better answer me honestly’ look. ‘But back to you — are you alright about the idea of my mum with your dad? It’s a weird thought. They’ve always just been friends …’
I know she feels uncomfortable planning this seemingly perfect romantic setup that would never happen if Mum hadn’t died.
I shake my head. ‘My mum would have wanted Dad and me to be happy. I know it’s weird that she and your mum were friends, but maybe Mum would like that. She loved your mum. I love your mum. If I had to choose anyone to step in for Mum, it would be Isobel.’
I don’t tell her about Dr Hayes. For some reason I get a lump in my throat over that. Maybe it’s guilt. No-one ever tells you that after someone dies, you don’t just feel angry and sad. All sorts of messy feelings rise up out of the muck called grief.
‘Okay.’ Emily looks at me like she’s not entirely convinced. ‘But you tell me at any point if you want to abort Operation Parent Trap.’
I laugh. ‘Looking back, I can totally see why we loved that movie. Maybe we had a sixth sense that one day we’d be throwing two people together against their will. It’s going to be a challenge, Em. I mean, my dad’s probably going to be guilty about feeling something for someone other than Mum — even though that’s natural.’
‘And Mum is going to freak out and overthink the whole thing,’ Emily adds. ‘And then try and sabotage it. She definitely believes it’s safer being a hermit whose only mate is inspiration.’
‘So how do we pull this off?’
‘How do we stop them getting totally weird about a setup?’
‘It can’t look like a setup,’ I say. ‘If it does, they’ll both run a mile. It has to be subtle, you know, get them to spend more time together.’
‘I think you’re right. If there’s that much spark, and they’re simply around each other more than normal, things will happen naturally.’ Emily rubs her palms together gleefully.
I mimic her gesture and laugh. ‘Now I want to send the energy company flowers! They’ve effectively thrown Dad and Isobel together for the next seventy-two hours — the perfect conditions for getting this off the ground.’
‘Now we just need to arrange some alone time for them,’ Emily says.
‘I thought it would be fun if I came shopping with you two today,’ Isobel says the next morning at breakfast.
‘No!’ Emily and I answer at the same time.
I give her a look. Keeping Dad and Isobel together has to appear subtle.
Isobel laughs. ‘Come on, it’s not that bad shopping with your mum, is it, Emily?’
‘Mum, we’re still catching up,’ Emily says. ‘Do you want to be exposed to a whole day of school gossip and celebrity talk?’
Dad brings over the coffee he’s made for us. ‘Well, I thought I’d get up on the roof and clear the gutters, Isobel, while you’re all at the shopping centre. They’re a fire hazard with summer coming up.’
He’s already wanting to help her — that’s a great sign! I waggle my eyebrows at Emily when I know Dad and Isobel can’t see me.
Isobel shakes her head. ‘Daniel, you’re a guest. And you should be getting ready for starting work this week. I’ve been meaning to book someone to clear the leaves — I’ll lock it in ASAP.’
‘Actually, the grocery shopping was the only thing I needed to do.’ Dad takes a seat at the table. ‘The furniture’s in, Adriana’s registered at the school, and I’ve simply got to turn up at the practice tomorrow at 8 am.’ He gives Isobel a smile. ‘Let me handle the gutters … please. Otherwise I’ll be worrying about you two the moment the temperatures start rising.’
Isobel hesitates. I can see Emily holding her breath. My gut tells me Isobel won’t let Dad help out. She’s fiercely independent.
‘Okay,’ she says.
Okay? I see my surprise repeated in Emily’s wide eyes as we exchange glances.
‘But I get to help,’ she adds. ‘I don’t trust you up on a roof alone while you’re still jetlagged.’
‘Deal.’ Dad smiles. ‘Looks like you girls have a chaperone-free shopping day.’
And you have a chaperone-free day too! my brain chimes back. I force myself to hold back a giggle.
‘Woohoo!’ Emily says. ‘I’ll be taking that card, thank you, Mum!’
‘With great power comes great responsibility,’ Isobel says as she pulls a credit card from her purse and hands it to Em.
Emily leaps up from the table. ‘Ade, there’s shopping t
o be done. Shower, stat!’
It’s weird to be back in a shopping centre. Everything’s extra loud, from the other shoppers weaving by us to the music blaring in the stores. Emily doesn’t look fazed, so I know it’s being away so long that’s making everything seem like sensory overload.
You’d think all the distraction would completely eliminate any thoughts of Dylan. Nope. There’s no counting on my brain to be anything but obsessive. It keeps going over minute details. How he looked. What he said. His body language. My body language. If only my brain was a USB and I could wipe all the contents.
‘He was so weird from the moment I opened the door,’ I say as we head in the direction of the food court to grab hot chocolates.
Emily laughs. ‘Um, this is Dylan we’re talking about. He’s kind of left-field.’
‘I’m used to his quirkiness, but the way he was yesterday — it completely threw me. Obviously seeing him for the first time was always going to be weird, but last night was even more awkward than I’d imagined.’
‘I actually thought it would go way worse than it did,’ she says. ‘I’d expected more drama.’
Like I’m going to satisfy Dylan with tears again. Remembering the semi-ocean I cried the first few months while alone in bed in Borneo is beyond mortifying.
I shake my head. ‘It didn’t need drama to be the definition of awkward. Em, he stood there looking me up and down!’ I feel icky talking about it. ‘Like I was some hideous creature in a science museum. I don’t know if it was his way of getting the upper hand — you know, reinforcing that he finds me grossly unattractive —’
Emily lets out a snort. I stare at her.
She looks instantly ashamed. ‘Ade, I wasn’t laughing at you.’
‘I hope not.’
I feel hurt. Obviously eighteen months cured the crying, but sometimes I feel like heartache is all too similar to nerve pain — once triggered, it seems to creep through your body and makes it hard to focus on anything else for days.
‘No! I’m laughing because … well, I don’t know how to put this.’ Emily, who never agonises over what to say, is hesitating. ‘I thought you might bring it up first.’
My Best Friend Is a Goddess Page 4
