I left Josh to sleep and went to the kitchen. I turned on the lights, blinking at their brightness, and picked up the phone. Fog pressed against the window. Daylight would not come for hours, if it came at all. But where the phone was ringing, it would be full, bright afternoon.
Monica picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Oh, hi, Monica. It’s Emma.”
Silence, probably icy.
“Is Patrick home?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s okay, I’m glad I got you anyway. I probably owe you an apology,” I said.
“No, you don’t.”
I hesitated.
“You owe Patrick an apology,” she said. “And Mina. And Marlon. And the rest of the Hollyhocks. But you owe me nothing, and I wouldn’t accept it anyway.”
I felt almost sick with shame. “Look, I know you’re angry. But I told Patrick that I was leaving, and he understood.”
“Did he? Because I don’t. You promised you’d be here to help with the concert, and now you’ve pissed off to England three weeks before the big night.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “I left London under such difficult circumstances. All I’ve wanted was to be back there.”
“That much was obvious,” she interjected. “Our little town wasn’t good enough for you.”
“That’s not true,” I said, but it was true. At least I’d thought it was true once. “I don’t expect you to understand, but I didn’t intend to hurt anyone.”
“I really don’t care what you intended, Emma,” Monica said. “But you did hurt a lot of people. Now I’m getting off the phone before Patrick gets home, because I don’t want him to know that you called. And I’ll thank you not to call him yourself.”
“Why not?”
“Because he needs a chance to get over you, so whatever you need to do to assuage your guilt, just stay away from my brother.” Her voice was dark, passionate. “He deserves the very best, and you’re not it.”
The line went dead, and I found myself staring at the phone, throat choked up with emotion. She was right. Patrick did deserve the best. Somebody wonderful. But I couldn’t bear the thought of him being with somebody wonderful, somebody who wasn’t me.
“Em?” This was Josh, sleepily leaning in the threshold to his bedroom. “Everything okay?” The downlights created unkind shadows on his face.
I replaced the phone in its charger. “I think so, yeah. Just trying to sort something out back in Tassie.”
He crossed the room and took me in his arms, mouth hot on my throat. I could have wept. I gently pushed him away. “Tomorrow night, I promise,” I said. “I’ll feel more in the mood after the party. I’ve been stuck here in the apartment waiting for you to get home every day. It doesn’t make me feel romantic.”
“You’re in London, for God’s sake. Get out. Shop. Do things.”
“I know. I’m not myself.”
“I hope yourself comes back soon,” he said. “Because she’s the one I asked to return to London.”
I laughed as though it were a joke, but we both knew it wasn’t.
I was cheered by the preparations for the dinner party. Josh and I had to go out and choose a couple of bottles of fine wine—I insisted on Australian wine—and then I had the chance to dress up, put on some makeup, and straighten my hair. We sped off in a cab through nighttime London, and I had my first sense of the thrill of being in a big international city, in a place where things happened. I snuggled up with Josh in the back of the cab, didn’t turn away his hot kisses on my throat and ear. Maybe the jet lag was over. Maybe I hadn’t made the wrong decision in coming back.
Hugh and his wife had recently bought and renovated a garden flat in Kensington. Hugh was a few years older than Josh and in many ways was like a big brother: someone to aspire to. He and Olivia had a toddler who had already been dispatched to bed before the guests arrived. There were eight of us in all, four couples. I forgot the names of the other people straightaway, but they formed their own subtribe in the garden to smoke under the fairy lights. Josh and I stayed in the kitchen with Hugh and Olivia.
“This place is brilliant,” Josh said, high color in his cheeks, as he surveyed the view onto the busy street from the bay windows.
“Ground floor,” Olivia said, grimacing. “Hardly ideal.”
“But you have a garden,” Josh said.
“Could have had the rooftop garden if Hugh had earned a tiny bit more last financial year.” Olivia held her fingers a few millimeters apart. She was laughing, but I sensed there was truth in her words. I didn’t warm to her.
“I earned more than you,” Hugh countered lightly.
Olivia looked at me and Josh, swirling the champagne in her glass. “Don’t have children if you want a rooftop garden, you two, that’s the lesson to be learned here.”
The French doors opened, and the other two couples came in, dragging with them the smell of their extinguished cigarettes, though they didn’t realize they had. The little flat was bright and warm, with Coldplay on the stereo. I drank two glasses of champagne a little too quickly and felt a flush come to my cheeks. Josh had his warm arm around my back, and it was all going to be fine. I could see that now. We would get married and have one child because we couldn’t afford more. I’d start my own ballet school and work too hard, Josh would stay at the stock exchange and work too hard, then we’d have a garden flat and a dinner party just like this when Josh turned forty. It would be easy.
Then why did the thought of it make me feel so flat?
We all took our places at the long dinner table, and Olivia served the first course. She was a little drunk and clearly displeased with how little Hugh had helped to organize the party. Josh and I raised our eyebrows at each other, suppressing laughter. One of the other guests, an elegant Indian woman with long black hair piled on top of her head, got up to help Olivia, offering around a bottle of wine. She came to where I was sitting, and said, “And for you, Sarah?”
There was a pause. The music kept playing, but the voices had all stopped. Nobody could look at me.
“I’m sorry,” she said smoothly. “I mean Emma.”
“It’s fine,” I said, offering her my glass.
Josh leaned in to me, whispering frantically. “We all went out together a few times when I was with . . . her,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I said again, but it wasn’t fine. It wasn’t. He had been cheating on me. He had dumped me. He hadn’t come near me while I was going through my operations. Was that the kind of man I wanted to marry and have a middle-class, only-child, garden-flat life with?
Olivia was tapping her glass, getting our attention. “A toast,” she said. “To Hugh on his fortieth.”
“To Hugh,” we all chorused. I gulped my wine. I was well on the way to being drunk.
The evening wore on. I was half in, half out of the proceedings. I could make conversation just fine but found myself listening in to other people’s conversations, passively observing. A large, rough-faced man at the end of the table spent half an hour bragging to Josh about his real estate. Josh was enraptured, so I watched them as if from afar.
“How do you get such low prices, though?” Josh asked. “Nothing is on the market that cheap.”
“I don’t wait for the market,” the man said. “If you know where and when, you can pick up amazing deals. Outside bankruptcy hearings, for instance. Always people desperate to sell there. Picked up a holiday house in Brighton from a bird outside court one day. She was very keen to off-load, if you know what I mean. She cried the morning I went over with the contracts.”
Josh laughed. He laughed.
“That’s a miserable business,” I said to the rough-faced man.
He squared off his shoulders as though I’d asked him to step outside for a punch-up. “It’s business, love. You don’t like it, you don’t have to play that way. But don’t be crying to me like the other have-nots. Us haves are the ones w
ho are smart enough to do what it takes.”
I turned to Josh. “Do you believe this rubbish?”
Josh shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. “It is a valid business strategy, Em. You don’t know much about it. But I think he has a point. We all do what we have to do to get ahead. You did when you were dancing. Lord knows you ignored my feelings all the time when you were preparing for a show.”
The conversation moved on. I sat there among it all, and I knew with sudden certainty that I wasn’t meant to be here. These people were not my people. This future was not my future, and I had made a terrible, terrible mistake. I had stepped out of this life, then stepped back in expecting everything to be the same—and it was, but I was different.
“Josh,” I said quietly.
He didn’t hear me, was still talking to the real-estate mogul.
“Josh,” I said more forcefully.
He turned, looked at me. In his eyes, I saw it. He knew, too. He wasn’t stupid: I had changed, it couldn’t last.
“I need to go home,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, scooping up his glass urgently. “Let me just finish this glass of wine and we’ll head straight back.”
“No,” I said. “Not home to your apartment. Home. I don’t belong here.”
For the second time that evening, the conversation stopped. Josh laughed nervously. “Emma, can this wait?”
I shook my head. “Take me to the airport,” I said. “I belong at Wildflower Hill.”
THIRTY-TWO
I climbed into a taxi at Hobart airport at seven in the morning Australian time, but my body had no idea what time it was. I was completely topsy-turvy, but one thing I was certain of was that I had made the right decision.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Do you have any objections to taking me all the way up to Lewinford? I’ll tip you really well.”
He switched on his meter. “I aim to please.”
“Battery Point first,” I said.
I couldn’t remember Mina’s address, so I directed the driver there. Monica had been right: I owed the girl an apology. I’d resisted phoning her because I wasn’t sure if she’d understand how far away London was, what it meant that I’d gone there when I should have been helping her through the last few dress rehearsals.
Outside her house, I instructed the driver to wait. I went up to knock on the door and wait, with the warm yellow sun on my back.
Mina’s father answered it.
“Hello, Mr. Carter,” I said. “Is Mina here?”
He frowned at me, looked at the taxi waiting down on the street. “Are you intending to take her somewhere?”
“No, no. I just wanted to talk to her briefly.”
He didn’t take his eyes off me. “Mina!” he called. “Visitor for you.” He nodded. “Do you want to come in?”
“I should be quick. The meter’s running.”
Mina came to the door. When she saw me, she broke into a grin and raced up to hug me. I squeezed her tight.
“You came back!” she said.
“I did.”
“Marlon and Patrick said you had gone forever.”
“I changed my mind. I didn’t want to miss your concert.” I stood back to look at her. “I’m so sorry I ran off like that.”
She looked back at me blankly, I realized she hadn’t much understanding of what I’d done; nor would she think it a sin. I touched her cheek. “You’re a good girl. I can’t wait to see you dance.”
Her father touched Mina’s shoulder. “You go inside now, Mina. I need to have a word with Emma alone.”
She beamed at me, then did exactly what her father had said. I looked at him curiously.
“Let me walk you down to your taxi,” he said.
“Sure.”
I walked with him down the path, and he seemed embarrassed about something, so I said, “What did you want to speak with me about?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had thought you . . . I didn’t realize who you were. When Mina said you were a famous ballerina . . . well, that means nothing to me. Mina doesn’t understand the world all that well at times. But you are, and I’m sorry that I thought you were just . . .” He must had realized he couldn’t go on without insulting Patrick and Marlon, so he trailed off. “I’m sorry if I was rude.”
We had come to a stop on the footpath next to the taxi. As tired as I was, as dicombobulated from jet lag as I felt, I knew that this was my moment. “Mr. Carter,” I said. “I don’t care what you think about me. But I want to urge you, really strongly, to come and see Mina’s performance.”
He wouldn’t look at me. “You are very persistent,” he said.
“Answer me this, then: why don’t you want to come?”
A long silence drew out between us. The taxi driver was peering up at us through the window. The sun glinted off the water, and a warm breeze moved in the tips of the plane trees. Finally, he said, “Because I will feel embarrassed.”
This was the last thing I had expected him to say, so it took me a while to understand what he meant. And when I did, it was so profoundly sad that I couldn’t hate him for saying it.
“I promise you,” I said, “she won’t embarrass you. She will make you so proud.”
He shook his head. “You aren’t me. You can’t know that. I love my daughter, Emma, but she is not a normal teenager. I can’t pretend she is. I know her, I see her every day. I know that she can’t dance properly, and to see her try will simply make me uncomfortable. She doesn’t mind. She gets great joy from rehearsing and performing. She is better off without me there, squirming in my seat.” He tried a smile. “She’ll be happier without me.”
The taxi driver wound down the window. “Are we still going to Lewinford?”
“You’re taking a taxi all that way?” Mina’s father asked.
“My knee’s still no good for driving,” I replied.
“I could have taken you.”
“It’s fine.” A breeze off the water caught my hair, and I brushed it away from my face. “I promise you,” I said again. “The girl has talent.”
He shrugged, and my taxi fare was creeping up, so I said goodbye and climbed back in the car. Mina’s father was still standing, thoughtful in the sunshine, as we sped off down the street.
I had no idea what kind of groceries I had left in the fridge at Wildflower Hill. It felt like a lifetime had passed rather than one hectic week. I instructed the taxi driver to stop in town and quickly dashed into the grocery store for bread, milk, and a premade lasagna. As I was heading back out into the sunny street, I literally ran into Penelope Sykes coming the other way.
“Penelope!” I said, taking a step back.
“Emma? We thought you’d gone to England.”
“I went. I came back.” I smiled weakly. “Changed my mind.”
She raised her drawn-on eyebrows at me. “Are you staying on at Wildflower Hill, then?”
“I haven’t made any firm plans either way. I wanted to be here for the Hollyhocks concert that I’ve been helping Patrick Taylor with.” I dropped my voice. “If he forgives me.”
“I’m sure Patrick will,” Penelope said. “I’m not so sure about Monica.”
“Yes. She’s very protective.”
“We all know how protective she is.” Penelope shifted her empty shopping basket onto her other hip. “You know that Patrick was engaged a few years ago?”
A barb of completely unjustified jealousy hit me out of nowhere. “Really?”
“It ended badly. The young woman was seeing someone else at the same time. Monica found her out; she was the one who had to tell him.”
I thought I had reached my high tide of guilt over Patrick, but I was wrong. No wonder Monica hated me.
I glanced at the taxi. The fare was already astronomical; it didn’t matter if I took another five minutes with Penelope. “I have to tell you something,” I said. “I found a memorial—a cross with a name on it—at Wildflower Hill. Under the big
cabbage gum near the house. It said CHARLIE.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Is that right?”
“You know something?”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe. I’ve been tracing some of the local stories, as you know. There was a stockman—far more than a stockman, really—who worked in Bligh for some years. Charlie Harris. He was well known for his affinity with the work, and in great demand. He left there in 1935, and I often wondered where he went. I wonder if he did go up to Wildflower Hill.”
I grew excited. “Yes! He must have. Grandma would have come to rely on him; I can just imagine it. Penelope, I think he was the person she wrote the letter to. You know . . . the sexy letter.”
She was already shaking her head. “I don’t think so, love. It was the thirties, after all, and a mixed-race relationship would have been frowned on.”
“Mixed-race?”
“Charlie Harris was Aboriginal.”
“Oh.”
“I doubt he was her lover.”
But the memorial just outside her window. I didn’t say anything to Penelope Sykes, but I was almost certain she was wrong.
I was surprised—almost frightened—by how good it was to open the front door of Wildflower Hill and drop my bags. The familiar scents of the soap powder I used, the wood paneling, the years. I put my groceries in the fridge and put the kettle on. My answering machine blinked at me.
It was Mum. “Emma? Where on earth are you?”
She sounded worried. No, worried wasn’t the right word. She sounded frightened, and my sudden realization of her vulnerability gave me a sense of vertigo. The folly of my trip to London was becoming more and more apparent. How many people’s feelings had I trod on? My poor mother. I picked up the phone and called her.
I told Mum everything: Josh, London, the realization that I wasn’t what I had been. But most of all, I told her that I loved her, because I hadn’t said it nearly enough in my lifetime. I cried, felt embarrassed for crying. But Mum was wonderful, knowing just what to say and when. I don’t know why I’d locked her out of my life so firmly. I kept talking long after the kettle had whistled and exhausted itself, and I eventually found the courage to admit to Grandma’s secrets—the photos and the poker game, Charlie—and ask her what she made of it all.
Wildflower Hill Page 38
