Paper Chains

by Nicola Moriarty

  Hannah stared at India, taking in all of the information. She had so many questions. But one was particularly bothering her. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You said you came to your senses, remembered “why you’re doing this” – what do you mean?’

  India smiled. ‘How about this – I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.’ There was a pause as Hannah looked back at India, confused, and then India laughed and added, ‘What, you think you’re the only one with secrets? Anyway, we’re not here to talk about me, I want to know more about you, my dear. More real stuff please.’ Hannah was pleased to see that India seemed to be returning to her old self, looking relaxed and laid back once more.

  India paused to think and then said decisively, ‘I know, you could tell me about your last Christmas. What was it like? Where were you? Who were you with? What did you get?’

  Hannah didn’t have time to be surprised by the random question. An image flew into her mind. She saw a beautiful Christmas tree, a real, live one – it had been the first time she’d ever had a real Christmas tree in her home. She could almost smell the pine needles, feel them crunching under her feet, hear them being sucked up by the vacuum cleaner – ping, ping, ping! She saw Liam, laughing as he sifted through their box of dismal decorations that she refused to throw out. And then she heard another voice, joining in on the laughter, jolting her senses. Her throat closed up and pin pricks speared against the back of her eyes. Her words tumbled. ‘Do you mind if I don’t . . . please?’

  India leaned across the table to grab at her hands before she could escape as she had the previous night. ‘Okay, forget it,’ she said in a rush. ‘Take a deep breath. Here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to tell you about my last Christmas. And you’re going to picture it with me, and it’s going to make you laugh and you’re going to stop thinking about whatever it is that’s so painful for you, okay?’

  Hannah nodded and India launched into her story. Apparently she had made the decision last year to skip Christmas, she wasn’t in the mood for it (for reasons she didn’t divulge) and she spent the day on the beach in Ibiza, resolutely ignoring the fact that it was the middle of winter and attempting to tan anyway. Just under two weeks later she had moved on to Moscow, glad that Christmas was all over. Apparently she was wrong. It turned out that in Russia, Christmas was celebrated on the 7th of January and she had inadvertently arrived in the city on their Christmas Eve. She gave in to fate and decided to join in the celebrations. Somehow she befriended a large welcoming family at a church service and was invited to spend the night with them sharing their twelve-course feast, eating vegetarian porridge and having honey crosses drawn on her forehead. She said it came close to the best Christmas she had ever experienced and had completely renewed her faith in the holiday.

  Hannah didn’t press her for the details as to why she had first been put off Christmas, nor did she bring up India’s revelation that she had a secret in her past; she was too busy recovering from her own moment of anxiety as she had thought about home. But India’s story had managed to calm her and the rest of the lunch break continued somewhat uneventfully.

  ‘You think a person can just be vanilla?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  India had befriended a florist. Or perhaps he had befriended her, she wasn’t really certain. Either way, she had been taking an early morning walk through Notting Hill and had stopped to admire some beautiful daisies, and ended up chatting with the young guy as he tended to his displays. Now they were having a coffee together at a café around the corner from the flower shop.

  ‘So there’s this girl. And all this time I’ve been certain that there’s more to her, that she’s hiding something massive. But what if I’m wrong? Or what if I finally find out the big secret – and it’s not the amazing revelation that I want it to be. Or what if I’m inventing all of this, because I want there to be something there to find – when there’s actually nothing at all?’

  Sebastian the florist frowned back at her as he stirred his coffee, giving India the impression that he was playing for time as he attempted to come up with an intelligent sounding response. ‘Uhh,’ he said eventually. ‘Well, I think everyone has their own story, don’t they? I mean, I would have said my year eight teacher was nothing more than grey checks and horn rimmed glasses . . . all I ever thought of her was that she was a teacher. Like, that was her whole world; when the classes were done for the day, she just folded herself up into a box and waited quietly until the bell rang again the next morning. But that was just my thirteen-year-old perspective. Obviously she was more than that. For all I know, she could have been writing erotica in her spare time. She might have done rally car driving on the weekends. Or she might have just liked to collect postage stamps – but regardless of what it was – it would have been something to her, wouldn’t it? Everyone holds the spotlight in their own story and no matter how bland their plot might be, to them – it’s still everything. Know what I mean?’

  Sebastian sat back and watched India nervously. India smiled at him. ‘You worked hard on that response huh?’

  ‘A little,’ he replied shyly.

  ‘Ah, you’re a sweetheart, Sebastian. You’re right, it doesn’t matter what it is – but as long as there’s something there, it means everything to her. I’ll keep digging.’

  Later that day, India met up with Hannah as she finished her shift at the gift shop. Sebastian’s advice had made her resolve to persevere with Hannah. She stood waiting outside the museum, her back leaning against a sandstone pillar. But when Hannah stepped out through the front door, India immediately felt guilty about her ‘vanilla’ comment. Hannah’s eyes swept the ground; her shoulders were hunched and her hands fidgeted at her sides. Hannah wasn’t vanilla, she was just plain scared.

  What are you running from?

  Why won’t you let me in?

  ‘Hannah!’ India watched as Hannah’s head snapped up in surprise.

  ‘Oh hey,’ said Hannah, a nervous smile twitching the corners of her mouth as she approached India. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Waiting for you, obviously.’

  ‘Right,’ said Hannah. ‘Of course,’ and she looked irritatingly unsure of herself. India couldn’t help it – she reached out a hand and gripped Hannah’s upper arm. ‘Hannah! Lighten up, woman!’ she said as she shook Hannah, possibly more violently than she had intended.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Hannah sounded alarmed.

  ‘I mean stop being so nervous around me. I’m not THAT GREAT! Just, you know . . . be yourself for once.’

  ‘Oh.’ Hannah paused. ‘What if I don’t know how?’

  India felt like screaming. Instead she spoke evenly, ‘Well the obvious thing would be for you to tell me the truth. But since it’s clear you’re not going to do that, we’ll have to figure out something else.’

  She stood still, thinking, and was taken aback when Hannah suddenly spoke up. ‘Do you want to come back to my flat? We could have sort of a girls’ night. Pizza, wine, maybe watch a movie? Or is that lame?’ Hannah looked visibly frightened as she waited for India’s response.

  ‘YES!’ India exclaimed. ‘I mean, yes to the girls’ night, not yes it’s lame,’ she clarified. She immediately linked her arm through Hannah’s and they set off walking. As they passed a collection of cardboard boxes, haphazardly stacked to create a small shelter for a homeless man tucked inside, Hannah pulled away from India. ‘Hang on one sec,’ she said. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a packaged oat and raisin bar and walked over to the boxes. Kneeling down, she pressed the bar into the man’s hand.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ croaked the voice that was connected to the hand. ‘Liked those crisps you brought me yesterday, though,’ the voice added.

  ‘I’ll get another packet for you tomorrow,’ Hannah promised. Then she stood and rejoined I
ndia.

  ‘What was that all about?’ India asked as they continued on down the road.

  ‘That’s Fred,’ Hannah replied. ‘Offered him my muesli bar once on the way home from the museum and I’ve just sort of been dropping something off to him every day since. I like him, he’s always so friendly. I remember once back home I tried to buy a homeless woman a sausage sandwich for her lunch and she spat on me and told me to piss off unless I had any money or cigarettes for her.’

  ‘Seriously?’ India exclaimed. Then she grinned. ‘Ahh, Hannah, you’re a good kid, aren’t you? Sorry about shaking you before; you’re just a bit infuriating, that’s all.’

  They picked up a bottle of wine and a large margarita pizza on the way back to Hannah’s flat. ‘I don’t have a DVD player,’ Hannah apologised as they headed up the creaking stairs, ‘but there’s usually an old movie on Channel 4 or 5 every night.’

  Once inside, Hannah rushed to tidy up the few items of clothing that were strewn around the single-room flat, bundling everything up and tossing it onto the bed. Then they set themselves down on the floor with the pizza box open between them and a couple of plastic wine goblets, filled with generous amounts of the red wine they had just bought. After flicking through the channels, they settled on a nineties romantic comedy. They chatted through the ad breaks and India felt pleased as she watched Hannah begin to relax and ease into her own skin. Maybe it was time to ask her some more probing questions?

  Hannah was beginning to enjoy herself. She didn’t know how she had come to invite India back to her place for a girls’ night. A girls’ night! As if she even knew what one of those involved. It had been far too long since she’d had girlfriends.

  But she’d had the feeling that India was getting fed up. Their friendship was completely one-sided, with India pretty much carrying her.

  Take, take, take. She needed to put some effort in. She needed to give a little.

  Hannah hadn’t had any close friends since she had left her first high school at the end of year nine when her parents had split up. Her mum had immediately pulled her out of Plumpton High and moved them to a small apartment in Neutral Bay and enrolled her at North Sydney Girls’ High.

  None of the girls at her new school were keen to accept a girl from out west into any of their cliquey little groups and mostly seemed to look down on her and her Doc Martens boots. She tried to remain friends with her old group from Plumpton, even sneaking out one night to visit that nightclub in Penrith with them, despite the fact that they were only sixteen at the time – but she soon drifted apart from them as well. While the North Shore girls looked down on her, her old friends began to think that she was most probably beginning to look down on them, and so Hannah remained stuck in the middle, friendless and lonely.

  Hannah wasn’t particularly close to her family either. She and her father got along okay – they just didn’t have much to talk about. Perhaps an unspoken blame still hung in the air between them from when her father had first left her mother. And although his new wife had always been perfectly nice, Hannah had just never really known how to build any sort of relationship with her. Hannah thought back to the fantasies she used to have when she was fifteen and her parents had first divorced. Her dad was quick to remarry and Hannah had always suspected that he must have been having an affair with this new woman, because otherwise their relationship had moved awfully fast from meeting to marrying. His new wife, Carol, had three children already, one older than Hannah, one younger than her, and then there was Amy. Amy was the exact same age as Hannah – down to the month even. And for years Hannah had felt certain that Amy had replaced her in her dad’s eyes. She was beautiful – in that typical blonde hair and blue eyes kind of way – and funny and talented. Hannah would spend hours at a time imagining a world where she and Amy swapped places. She fantasised about what it would be like to have a big sister who would lend her funky clothes and jewellery, who would give her advice about boys and maybe even buy her alcohol for parties. And of course, a younger brother who would look up to her and adore her. She imagined that the three of them would share secrets, would be best friends, and one day, when they were all in their twenties, they would go backpacking around Europe together! She would move into their gorgeous two-storey house by Coogee Beach, with its hardwood floors and fresh white paint and she would become the clever, talented one. She would learn to surf and be tanned golden brown and she would have both a mum and a dad. And Amy could move in with Anne, into the cold, unfeeling apartment in Neutral Bay with its grey tiles and its snobby furniture. The fantasy would always fill her with simultaneous feelings of guilt and longing.

  Hannah was often told off in school for daydreaming too much.

  The pizza box was empty and they’d worked their way through a block of white raspberry Dove chocolate now as well.

  ‘So why all the running?’ India asked casually, pressing her thumb against the last crumbs of chocolate left on the silver foil packaging by their feet. She had a new purple stud in her nose and it sparkled when it caught the light. Hannah still found herself in awe of how India could constantly reinvent herself with each simple change to her appearance. Hannah would never be brave enough to just go out one day and get her nose pierced. ‘I mean, we’ve established that you’re not really training for the New York marathon, right? Is it because you eat too much of this?’ India asked, indicating the chocolate wrappers.

  Hannah felt slightly alarmed for a moment and then she relented. Give a little, Hannah, tell the truth for once. ‘Sort of I guess . . . yes. Thing is, I don’t really eat properly. Most days I starve myself, then I wake in the middle of the night famished and I gorge on chocolate. Next day I punish myself by running. It’s not about looking good,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s not a body image thing, more of a self-mutilation, I guess you could say.’

  India peered at her. ‘Oh, okay, it’s just self-mutilation, yeah that’s much better,’ she said sarcastically. ‘So is that the big secret? You have an eating disorder?’

  ‘Umm, no.’

  ‘But you hate yourself. Why?’

  Hannah paused, trying to figure out how best to respond. Finally she shook her head. There was no way she could tell India the truth, no matter how much she wanted to open up to her. ‘I don’t want you to hate me too,’ she said quietly.

  India shrugged. ‘Whatever. I think I know what it is anyway. I’ve been thinking and it all adds up.’

  Hannah froze. ‘You do?’

  ‘Yep. Let’s see, you’ve a mark on your ring finger, you’re clearly running away from something and you’re torturing yourself for having done something awful.’

  Hannah waited, holding her breath.

  ‘You left someone at the altar, right?’

  Hannah almost began to laugh, as she imagined herself as a runaway bride, fleeing to the airport with her lace veil flying behind her, but then the laughter twisted in her throat. ‘I wish it was that simple,’ she said, her voice bitter.

  India looked disappointed. ‘Dammit, I thought I was on to you. Never mind, I’ll keep swinging and eventually I’ll come up with a hit.’

  Hannah picked up the empty wine bottle, keen to change the subject. ‘We’re out,’ she announced, then said decisively, ‘Screw the girls’ night in. Let’s go out to a pub.’

  ‘Why, Hannah, I do believe you’re becoming a bad influence on me.’ India looked pleased though as she leapt to her feet and Hannah wondered how long she would be able to keep up this confident façade. More importantly, she wondered how much of it actually was the real her and not just the part of her that was so desperate to impress India.

  As they wandered down the road towards the closest pub, Hannah glanced sideways at India. ‘You know what we never do?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Talk about you.’

  ‘Ahh.’ India paused. ‘Well that’s not what we’re
here for though, is it?’

  ‘Says who?’ Hannah smiled nervously and looked down at the ground, her hands tucked tightly into her jacket pockets. ‘Tell me more about Simon,’ she suggested hopefully.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Are you still writing to him?’

  ‘Yes. It’s stupid though, hey? None of my letters are ever going to get to him.’

  ‘So why don’t you actually start posting them? You know, like a normal person.’

  India jabbed her in the ribs as they turned right to step off the footpath and head in through a vine-covered archway at the entrance to the Elephant Whistle pub’s front beer garden. ‘Hannah! Are you mocking me?’

  ‘Looks that way, doesn’t it?’ Hannah tried to suppress the flutter of nerves in her stomach. Was she being too confident now?

  ‘I’m liking the new Hannah,’ India announced as they made their way through the tables and then inside to the bar. ‘It’s nice to see you’ve got a bit of spark to you, girl.’

  ‘Half a bottle of red wine helped,’ Hannah admitted.

  ‘Agh, don’t tell me you’re the kind of girl who can only loosen up when she has a few drinks,’ said India crossly.