Less Than Perfect

by Ber Carroll

‘The money’s not for your father, it’s for all the families. We don’t know how it will be divided up yet.’

  I shake my head in bewilderment. ‘Money does nothing, Mum.’

  ‘Money is the only thing those people understand, it’s the only way to reach them.’

  ‘But money won’t bring them back, Mum. Money won’t bring any of the people who died back to life. Money does nothing.’

  She’s gentle but determined. ‘It’s a landmark case, love – you’ll understand when you see the footage for yourself.’

  ‘I’ll never understand this.’ I’m just as obstinate as she is.

  ‘Maeve will send you the disc. You’ll be proud when you see it.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I have nothing to be proud of. Nothing at all.’

  Neither of us has anything else to say. I hang up the phone and realise that I’m crying, tears that feel strangely disassociated from my eyes, silently and stealthily creeping down my face.

  *

  All day I feel off kilter. I try to centre myself by doing my usual Saturday chores and determinedly set about cleaning the apartment. But as I vacuum and mop the floors, flashbacks persistently blot my thoughts. I see my mother’s face in an array of different expressions: laughing, creased with a small worry, softened with love, shocked and distraught. I see my father’s face with just the one expression, sombre, preoccupied, slightly frowning. I can’t begin to comprehend how either of them can be pleased with this result. Money isn’t justice, it’s an insult. No price can be put on the lives lost that day in Clonmegan, or on the destroyed happiness and peace of mind of those of us left behind.

  I scour the surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom, my fingers red and stinging from detergent; I should have worn plastic gloves. I see Maeve’s reflection in the shower screen, looking young and lost in her baggy school uniform, with reddened eyes and a wan face. I see Liam holding a cue in one hand and a pint of Guinness in the other, standing in the shadows but yet his relief at being out of the house clearly discernible. I see Josh, racing down the line of the soccer pitch, recognisable only by the fluidity of his movements, his face a blur but real, so very real that I feel as though I can reach out and touch him right here in the bathroom. This feeling, this conviction that he’s close is nothing new. It happens mostly when I’m vulnerable or when my guard is down. I sense that he’s alongside me, a whisper away. Sometimes I find myself compulsively searching for his face, once even imagining him in the TV audience of Top Gear, his hands clapping madly, his face grinning and distinct though the show was recorded well after his death. More than once I’ve been convinced that he’s working on one of the building sites I pass on my way to work and I’ve stopped to scan the plasterers in their splattered clothes smoothing crevices and other imperfections from the bricks. Obviously I don’t find him but I know that he’s close, still with me. We always communicated on a different level. Being dead doesn’t change that.

  Matthew rings in the afternoon and I arrange, without much enthusiasm, to meet him later on.

  ‘What would you like to do?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Will we go for a drink?’

  ‘Okay.’

  When we meet that evening I’m still distracted, my thoughts held hostage to a different time and place. The pub is Saturday-night busy, bodies crammed together and deafening music that renders prolonged conversation impossible. The enforced silence suits my mood; Matthew asks if I would like to go somewhere quieter but I shake my head. He asks if I want to play pool and I say no to that too. More than once he asks if something is wrong. I summon a smile to indicate I’m okay and merely surrendering to the noisy atmosphere. But Matthew isn’t easily fooled and, despite my preoccupation, I can’t help noticing that he’s becoming more and more frustrated as the night goes on.

  ‘I think I’ll have another drink,’ I declare. We’ve been in the pub more than two hours now, hardly a few sentences uttered between us.

  ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve had enough.’ I get to my feet, my intention to flounce to the bar, but he catches my arm.

  ‘I’ll go.’

  He’s quickly swallowed by the crowd and I welcome the solitude while he’s gone. I shouldn’t have come out tonight. It isn’t fair on Matthew as there’s nothing he can do to improve my mood. Left alone I would succumb to the memories, and eventually sleep them out of my system.

  A while later he returns with drinks for us both along with a large glass of water. He pointedly offers me the water first.

  ‘Thanks – but I don’t remember asking for this.’

  ‘Just drink it.’

  I do, and then I follow it with the vodka and Diet Coke. God, I’m so sick of vodka and Diet Coke. It even tastes stale, and my stomach clenches in protest.

  Matthew hardly gives me enough time to drain my glass before demanding, ‘Let’s go.’

  I did want to go home, but now, rather perversely, I don’t. Still, I follow him through the sweaty, densely packed crowd to the crisp winter’s night outside. He turns left in the direction of my apartment, and slows enough for me to draw alongside him, but doesn’t hold my hand. I would have to be blind not to notice that he’s annoyed, but I feel too listless to apologise, to make amends, to explain the black mood that’s shrouded me since my mother’s phone call. My hand, the one he should be holding, is cold and aimless by my side.

  We reach Grey Street and Matthew stops at the crossing. I plough past him onto the street, an oncoming car that was never a real threat blaring its horn at me.

  Matthew is even more furious when he catches up with me on the other side. ‘Jesus, Caitlin. Are you trying to get yourself killed?’ He stops me in my tracks, puts an angry, authoritative hand on my shoulder. ‘What’s wrong with you tonight?’

  Before I can decide whether or not to respond, there’s an almighty explosion, the sound so loud and sudden that it cracks the night apart. I scream in terror, digging my fingers into his arm, desperately trying to pull him to safety.

  ‘Run! Run!’ He’s too large and heavy for me to move, and he seems totally oblivious to the fact that we could die at any moment. ‘Matthew, move, damn it!’

  ‘Caitlin.’ He has me by both shoulders now, shaking me. ‘Caitlin, it’s only a ladder come off that van.’

  Another scream – or is it the same one? – drowns him out. It’s thin and piercing, chilling, and it’s coming from deep inside me. ‘For God’s sake, move,’ I wail, hysterical by now. ‘Get out of the way!’

  He has no idea how easy it is to die, how a short distance and an even shorter amount of time can mean the difference between life and death.

  He shakes me again, and though it’s only a gentle shake, my head rocks back and forth like a rag doll. ‘Calm down, Caitlin. It’s just a ladder. That’s all.’

  His words finally penetrate and the scream stops abruptly in my throat. I try to focus on what’s beyond his face, a van stopped in the middle of the road, a metal ladder strewn a few metres behind, a young man, the driver, walking back towards it.

  ‘He’s a careless fool – he should have had it properly secured. But that’s all it is.’

  I hear him more clearly this time, and realise that it really wasn’t an explosion, just the terrible bang of metal on concrete, as he said. But instead of feeling calmer, I feel sick. The last drink, the one that tasted so awful and vapid, rises up in my stomach. The last scream, still clogged in my throat, adds to the need to gag.

  Matthew steers me to a nearby bench. ‘Sit down. Put your head between your legs. Take some deep breaths.’

  I do as I’m told. After a few minutes of dragging air into my lungs, I straighten slowly.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ He’s searching my face for clues, trying to understand me.

  ‘Yes,’ I whisper.

  ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say weakly. ‘I just
got a fright.’

  ‘Jesus, Caitlin!’ he exclaims, his frustration from earlier erupting in outright anger. ‘Stop treating me like an idiot. For God’s sake, tell me what’s wrong with you tonight!’

  His anger is daunting, not just because I’ve never seen it before, but mainly because it’s justified, brought on by my own evasiveness. If there’s one negative about Matthew, it’s that I can’t fob him off, at least not for long. He wants to understand me, to know me. He’s always pressing for information, for details, and he has me cornered now. There’s no way I can plausibly explain what just happened without telling him the truth. Well, some of it anyway.

  ‘I thought it was a bomb.’ I start to shiver uncontrollably.

  His eyes fill with understanding. Just like that, his anger is gone, his face and voice are back to normal, or perhaps a shade softer than normal. ‘You’ve actually experienced a bomb?’

  My throat feels full, a sensation I get when I’m about to cry. I gulp some air, but the tears come anyway, welling in my eyes, blurring Matthew’s face. ‘There was a bomb in Clonmegan. Fifty-three people were killed, hundreds more injured.’ His fingers brush the tears dripping down my face. More rush to take their place. ‘I was only a short distance away when it happened …’ I can’t go on. I’m crying too hard.

  He gathers me in his arms, pressing me against him as though to keep me safe. ‘It’s all right,’ I hear him say. ‘It’s all right, Caitlin.’

  Over and over he assures me that everything’s all right. Lulled by his voice and the security of his arms around me, I finally stop crying.

  ‘It’s all right, Caitlin … It’s all right … I love you.’

  Josh was the last boyfriend who loved me. Josh whose life has been callously valued at a certain sum of money: a share of 2.5 million pounds. This thought prompts another bout of tears that soak into the fleece of Matthew’s sweater, and he continues to hold me and reassure me until I’m all cried out.

  At home he makes tea and supervises me as I drink it.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it some more?’ he asks carefully.

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’ I shake my head to make myself absolutely clear.

  I never talk about it, not with anyone, not even Mum or Maeve who can at least understand some of what I feel. It’s too distressing, even now, so many years later. I can see that this is hard for Matthew and that he feels helpless without more details on what happened. I feel sorry for him, but I can’t tell him anything further. I’m already quite traumatised by what has occurred tonight.

  When I finish my tea, he ushers me to the bedroom where he locates my pyjamas and helps me get undressed. He tucks me in, like a child, the bedcovers stretched tight and secure, and then lies on the bed beside me.

  ‘Thanks.’ My gratitude comes out sounding rather feeble, but it’s totally heartfelt. He’s wonderful, really wonderful.

  ‘Sleep now,’ he says, stroking my hair. ‘I love you.’

  As I close my eyes, I think that I might love him too, but I find it impossible to tell him this. I can’t help worrying that fate is out there, lurking, and if I say those words aloud, declare my feelings in the same naive way I did with Josh, I’ll be putting myself at its mercy. I don’t trust fate, not one little bit.

  Somehow I sleep, and when I wake with a start during the night Matthew’s still lying there next to me, a fully clothed, slumbering guardian angel.

  Chapter 25

  August 2009

  Zoe squints at me, her already smallish eyes threatening to disappear as they focus on a point in the centre of my forehead. Her scrutiny is so intense it verges on comical. I smother the urge to laugh.

  ‘Orange and yellow, that’s good.’

  ‘What do those colours mean?’

  ‘Shush, I’m not finished,’ she admonishes, closing her eyes. ‘Grey too, both light and dark …’ Her eyes pop open again, confronting me. ‘There’s more black than is considered normal.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Black – hatred, anger. Quite concerning when coupled with the greys, which denote deceit and fear.’

  ‘Oh. Anything good in there?’

  ‘The orange denotes ambition and yellow, intelligence.’

  ‘Something positive, thank God,’ I joke. ‘Good to know I’m more than an angry, deceitful ball of hate.’

  ‘And I see crimson,’ Zoe’s expression becomes sly, ‘which means love, of course.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Yes. Is there something, or rather someone, you’ve forgotten to tell me about?’

  Zoe’s phone begins to ring in what I consider a very timely interruption. ‘Err … time to get back to work, I think.’ I scoot my chair from Zoe’s workstation to my own.

  The clock on my laptop states the time as 3.45 pm. Having my aura read has killed only fifteen minutes of a terminally long day. My phone rings and I allow it to shrill four times before picking up; no point in making it obvious that I have so little to do. It’s Mike, the technician responsible for the Net Banc rollout, and he launches straight into a detailed account of what needs to be done before the much-revised start date. I listen a lot more attentively than I would have done if the conversation had occurred six months ago – when I was still relatively busy.

  When I put down the phone, my ear is stinging from having it pressed too close. I should get headphones like Zoe. In fact, I’ll log on to the stationery website and order a set right away, and in the process kill another ten minutes or so. There won’t be any time to spare when the Net Banc rollout begins; I’ll be run off my feet for a few months at least. And I almost can’t wait.

  Nic’s in top form, a force of nature as she replenishes drinks long before glasses are emptied, flirts outrageously with men she deems worthy and finishes her sentences with peals of laughter that cause other groups to look, somewhat enviously, in our direction. Nic isn’t just doing it for show. She’s having fun, lots of it. In this kind of mood she’s irresistible. Being single suits her much more than being part of a couple.

  It’s Thursday night, not one of our usual nights at the pub, but Nic was persuasive and I was keen for some excitement after another too-quiet day at the office.

  Nic leans close. ‘Man alert. Traditionally dark and handsome. Paying for his drink at the bar as I speak.’

  I swing my head to take a look. The man in question is handsome, too handsome if there’s such a thing. David is off the scene, callously dumped by Nic the week after he lost his job. She’s already been on several dates with other men, ironically all the same prototype as David, the only difference being their employment status. I can’t help hoping that David gets a job soon, paying even more than his last one, and that he’ll saunter into the pub one evening smelling of money and success and snub Nic in the way she deserves. I check myself: I’m being mean. I look back at Nic and raise my shoulders in a non-committal shrug. The man at the bar, though Nic’s type, is not mine. My type is currently sitting behind his desk in the St Kilda police station, wrestling with paperwork. Or maybe he’s out in the car with Will. This pub, this very corporate and high-flying scene, isn’t his thing, which is one of the reasons I never arrange to meet him here.

  ‘You should get Zoe to read your aura,’ I say, changing the subject.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ Nic snorts.

  ‘It’s fun.’

  ‘What did she have to say about yours?’

  ‘That it showed I was incredibly intelligent and ambitious.’

  Rather conveniently, I omit to mention that I am, at least according to my aura, in love. Crimson, if I recall the colour correctly. Since that June night Matthew’s told me many times that he loves me. He whispers it, his voice so low and breathy in my ear that I sometimes wonder if I’ve misheard. His eyes, though, reaffirm the message, their brilliance softened by the depth of his feelings and, when I don’t respond in kind, growing hurt.

  I also omit to mention that my aura reveals me to be deceitful. If I admitted th
is to Nic, I could immediately prove it correct by telling her that I’ve been secretly dating a police officer, a sergeant no less, without her knowledge. The extent of my deceit sounds worse than it is, though. For a start, Nic isn’t exactly easy to confide in. She’s very cynical about men at the moment; well, she’s always been cynical but she’s even more so since the split with David. Nic’s use-and-abuse attitude towards men isn’t the kind of philosophy that encourages me to open up about Matthew and the terrifying love that I feel for him.

  The reason I haven’t told Jeanie is harder to pin down. From a logistical point of view alone, it makes sense to tell her. She’s spending more time at the apartment these days, her travelling budget slashed after recent cutbacks in her firm. If I told her about Matthew, I could at least have him around more often. Because I haven’t told her, we spend most of our time at Matthew’s house, which also happens to be the preferred gathering place for his flatmates’ extensive network of friends and colleagues. An average night at the house is like being in Melbourne Central Station, and about as romantic!

  But telling Jeanie means trusting that fate doesn’t have something terrible in store, trusting that things will work out okay. Along with everything else I lost that day in Clonmegan, I lost the ability to trust in the future. And for that reason it feels safer to keep this relationship secret, to hug it deep inside.

  Nic throws back the last of her drink and presses her fingers to her lips to contain a hiccup. ‘You know, Caitlin, you’re a bad influence on me.’

  ‘No, Nic, you’re the bad influence.’

  She shakes her head theatrically. ‘I beg to differ.’

  I grin. ‘Beg all you like. It’s always you that’s the bad influence.’

  Nic eyes the bar and its surrounds, no doubt working out the most aesthetically interesting route to get there. A few moments later she lurches off to get more drinks and, no doubt, flirt madly with the investment banker she spotted earlier. When she’s out of sight, I check my phone and see that there’s a message from Matthew: Hope you’re having fun.