Paper Chains

by Nicola Moriarty

  Eventually she stopped by a payphone. She stared at it. She willed it to ring. She sent Liam a silent message. Figure it out. I’m here, I’m back. Can’t you sense how close I am? Ring. Ridiculous. It was time to grow up. If she couldn’t bring herself to just turn up at their home, then she may as well start with a phone call. She stepped up to the phone, found the right money – extracting the familiar dollar coins from among the last few pounds and pence she had in her wallet – and dialled.

  Hannah stood still, listening intently to the crackling sound of the phone ringing. It rang six times before there was a click as someone picked up.

  ‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice. Hannah didn’t move, her entire body tensed.

  ‘Hello?’ repeated the smooth voice insistently. And then she heard it, the voice of a small child in the background, the voice of her small child. ‘Mummy!’ called the voice. She sounded happy. Happy and carefree. She had been wrong. She could never return to her family. Even if what India said was true, if she had never meant to stay gone . . . it was too late. She hung up before she could hear that woman’s voice again. That woman who had taken her place, just as she had intended that someone would. But she simply hadn’t thought it would happen so soon. She burst into tears.

  He’s already met someone else. Already replaced me. And my Gracie is actually calling her mummy. Instinctively she placed her hands against her gut, where pain had flared up, as though she had just run flat out and now she was trying to soothe a stitch. But then she realised that she was standing dead still, that she couldn’t have a stitch, that the pain wasn’t physical.

  She didn’t want to think any more. She didn’t want to keep crying, her eyes felt drained. Instead, she needed to keep moving; it was the only thing she could think to do. Her children were okay. Just as she had planned, they were happy now. Her family had moved on. They were safe. India was right – she had sent that email to Liam with her new phone number as a way to keep some sort of link with her family. But that was selfish and stupid. She needed to close it down. Needed to stay away. She should have known when Liam sent her that text message that they truly were through.

  She looked out across the water and saw a ferry slicing effortlessly through the churning foam towards her. A ferry. Good. Fine, she thought blindly. Buying a ticket to somewhere, anywhere, felt like the only option – just something to get her moving. She felt sick. She had made such a mess of everything. When she had boarded that plane to Sydney, it had felt like the right thing to do. But now that she was here, she had no idea what to do next.

  Liam had met someone else. She let those five words hang for a moment in the air around her. Let them settle on her shoulders. Tried them on. Attempted to understand them. But they wouldn’t fit right and a small part of her thought, No, surely she had it wrong, surely he hasn’t really moved on so soon?

  But then she realised that Ethan would have already forgotten her. And Gracie would begin to forget, soon. And how could they ever forgive her anyway? She understood everything now. India was right – she had been suffering from postnatal depression. She had tried to deny this fact and hide her true feelings and eventually she had believed that running away was her only choice. She realised how senseless it all was. She should have just asked for help. But it didn’t change the fact that it was too late. And it didn’t change the fact that she was still messed up in the head. Beyond repair. That she was a danger to everyone she touched. That she was a walking disease. And as much as she was wishing for Liam to come striding towards her – to gather her into a hug and tell her it was all going to be okay, that he could fix everything – that wasn’t going to happen.

  Liam sat down on the bed and placed his head in his hands. It still seemed to hit him like this every now and then – this startling realisation that his wife was gone. That Hannah had left him – alone with their two children – and he still just didn’t understand why. Why hadn’t she just talked with him? Why hadn’t she told him that she was unhappy? He could have helped if he had just known. He would have done anything for her. Taken time off. Moved house to . . . anywhere. For God’s sake, he would have sold his damn business if that were what it had taken. All she had to do was say something, instead of being this bloody superwoman all the time. And now it had come to this.

  There was guilt as well though. Guilt for the part that he had played in all of this. Deep down, he’d known that something wasn’t right – and what did he do? He let her continue to push him away and he kissed another woman. He should have tried to talk with her sooner.

  He stood back up determinedly. There was no point sitting here thinking over it all again; he’d covered this ground enough in the past month or two. And if he didn’t get moving, he wouldn’t have Gracie ready in time to be picked up for the birthday party. A small girl from Gracie’s preschool had invited her along to her fourth birthday party at Luna Park. It was the last place where Liam wanted to be, so when another one of the mums had offered to pick Gracie up and take her along for him, Liam had jumped at the chance.

  Right, what did he need to pack in her backpack for the day out? He tried to work his way through his mental checklist – spare change of clothes, drink bottle, snacks – but at the sight of the bedside clock, tick, tick, ticking away, the minutes sliding effortlessly past, he lost his concentration.

  ‘Dammit!’ He turned and kicked their dressing table, hard. A small glass ornament of a ballerina wobbled and then fell, smashing on the tiled floor. That was Hannah’s. He’d given it to her on her twenty-fifth birthday. He swore and was about to bend down to pick up the pieces when Ethan’s cry began to echo down the hall. He huffed in frustration and turned to walk down the hall. At the same time as Ethan’s cries increased in fervour and volume, the doorbell rang. Perfect, he thought bitterly. You know what, Han? I bloody well get it, I get what you were going through. I just don’t know why you didn’t tell me.

  Liam pulled open the door with Ethan screaming in his arms.

  ‘Oh, darling, what’s up?’ said the preschool mum immediately, turning doe-like eyes on Ethan.

  Liam racked his brain, trying to remember her name. Donna? Diana?

  ‘Hi, Diane,’ Liam said uncertainly, standing back so she could step inside. ‘Deanne,’ she corrected. ‘Just call me Dee though. Can I take him?’ she added, reaching out for Ethan. Her own little boy was hiding behind her legs, squinting up at Liam distrustfully. Liam hesitated and then allowed Dee to extract Ethan expertly from his arms. She began to sway back and forth, cradling Ethan, and he stopped crying almost immediately.

  ‘Where have you been all my life?’ Liam joked with a sigh of relief at the blissful silence. He immediately regretted his words though when he saw Dee jerk her face up towards him, a wolfish glint in her eyes. Oh shit, Dee wasn’t one of the divorced mums, was she?

  ‘Let me just go and find Gracie. She’s hiding in her room for some reason,’ Liam said quickly, and he headed down the hall to see what was going on with her.

  Opening Gracie’s bedroom door, he scanned the room and then spotted the lumpy shape hidden under the covers on the bed. Liam walked over and sat down, pulling back the quilt. ‘Grace honey, Dee and Cody are here to take you to the party. Time to go.’

  ‘Don’t want to,’ Gracie replied.

  ‘What do you mean? You’ve been looking forward to this. You’ll have a great time!’

  ‘Nup. Not going.’

  ‘Why don’t you want to go, sweetheart?’

  ‘Want to stay here with you.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? How much fun are you going to have here at home with me? Ethan and I are just going to be doing boring stuff, like . . . like eating vegetables!’ he said.

  ‘I like veges,’ said Gracie stubbornly. ‘Don’t like Cody’s mummy,’ she added then.

  ‘Why not?’ Liam asked in surprise.

  ‘When she picks up Cody from preschool s
he always wants to blow my nose or brush my hair.’

  Maybe Dee was planning on moving in on their family? Or maybe he was getting carried away and she was just trying to help out. Ever since Hannah had vanished, all sorts of people were constantly coming out of the woodwork offering advice and wanting to get involved – be that mother figure that his children apparently so desperately needed.

  ‘Right,’ said Liam, trying to think of how to solve the situation. But he had a feeling that there was only one solution. ‘Will you go to the party if Ethan and I come too?’ he asked tentatively.

  Gracie’s face lit up. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed at once.

  ‘All right, let’s get moving then. Looks like I’ve got to pack a few more things and we’re already running late. Will you help Daddy get organised?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Gracie, already leaping out of bed to reveal herself fully dressed in party mode, shoes and all. Hmm, was this her plan all along?

  The phone began to ring from the kitchen and almost immediately he heard Dee’s voice call down the hall, ‘Shall I grab that for you, Lee?’

  Lee? What the hell? No one ever shortened his name. And then he stifled a laugh as a thought crossed his mind. If Deanne was planning on making a move on him, was she expecting that they become some sort of cutesy rhyming couple – Dee and Lee?

  ‘That’s okay,’ he called back. ‘The machine can get it.’ But a moment later he heard her answer the phone anyway. Ah. Gracie suddenly reached out a hand to grab Liam’s arm. ‘Mummy!’ she exclaimed in excitement.

  ‘What?’ Liam said, confused.

  ‘That must be Mummy on the phone, calling to see if she can come to the party too!’ And before Liam could stop her, she turned and dashed from the room, calling down the hallway, ‘Mummy! Mummy!’

  ‘Gracie, wait!’ he said weakly, his heart breaking for her.

  Dammit. That was his own stupid fault. In the early days when Hannah had first left, he jumped almost every time the phone rang. ‘Hannah?’ he would say into the receiver as he snatched it up, certain it would be her. So sure she would be phoning to tell him where she was, to say that she was ready to come back home. He hadn’t realised that he must have been doing that right in front of poor Gracie.

  Back out in the living room, Liam smiled apologetically at Dee who had already hung up the phone. He placed a protective arm around Gracie’s shoulder who was staring from Dee to the phone and back again, a suspicious frown on her face, as though she thought Cody’s mum must have done something to make Hannah vanish from the other end of the line. ‘Change of plans,’ he said. ‘Looks like I’m going to be bringing the kids in after all. I’m so sorry you came out of your way to pick up Gracie for no reason.’

  ‘You’re coming to the party?’ Dee asked, looking positively delighted. ‘That’s great. We’ll drive together, shall we?’

  ‘Ahh, no – car seats,’ said Liam quickly. ‘You don’t have a seat for Ethan and I don’t have one for Cody.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Dee, her face falling for a moment, but then she rallied. ‘Never mind, we’ll meet you there. Need a hand getting out the door?’

  ‘No, no, you go. We’ll be right behind you.’ Liam reached across to take Ethan back and began herding Dee and her son towards the front door. At the last second he remembered the call Dee had picked up for him. ‘Oh, who was on the phone?’ he asked.

  ‘No one there, they just hung up. Wrong number maybe?’

  Hannah wondered now as she headed down the wharf where the ferry was going to take her next and what she would do when she arrived at her destination. Hop straight back on another ferry? And then another and another? Could you live like that? Constantly in transit? Did the ferries even run through the night? Would someone kick her off eventually?

  When she was little her dad had made fun of her once for the way she pronounced ferry.

  ‘Dad! Me and Mum took a fairy to Manly today!’

  ‘You took a what to Manly?’

  ‘A fairy!’

  ‘Oh-ho! Rode on a fairy, did you? Flew you there with her pretty pink butterfly wings, did she?’

  ‘Stop teasing her, Jack, you know what she means.’

  Now as she stepped on board the ferry she imagined responding to her father, ‘Fuck off, Dad.’ Wow. Where had that thought come from? She loved her dad. Even with that small sliver of blame over her mother’s death. But truthfully, no one made her mum step in front of that train. People got divorced – that was life. Sure she had felt jealous at times, had worried that her dad had replaced her with his three new step-children, his ready-made family, but she had got over that, hadn’t she? It was her mum who made her angry the most. Hannah had been pregnant with her mother’s first grandchild when Anne had decided to take her own life. How could she have done that? The hypocrisy of this wasn’t lost on her.

  Hannah took a seat outside on the ferry and rested her head in her hands. Her mind felt too full, too confusing, all these thoughts and feelings clamouring to be heard. She just wanted to clear it all out, but when she closed her eyes she saw faces. Mum. Dad. Liam. Gracie. Ethan. India. All glaring at her, asking her, ‘What’s next, Hannah? What the fuck are you going to do now?’

  Hard drops of rain began to fall and Hannah stayed outside, allowing herself to get drenched as the storm got into full swing, soaking her clothes through, plastering her hair to her face. The ferry took her to Cremorne Point, South Mosman and Old Cremorne before finally arriving at Mosman Bay, the last stop before it would swing around and return across the harbour to Circular Quay. She was just wondering what she should do, stay on or hop off, when a voice exclaimed, ‘Hannah! Is that you?’

  She looked up to see a woman staring at her, one foot hovering above the plank that stretched across to the wharf. She was holding a newspaper over her head to protect her hair from the rain and her eyes were widened in amazement.

  Hannah squinted through the rain at her. ‘Amy?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh my God, it is you! Come on, quick, the ferry’s about to move off again.’ Amy dashed over to where Hannah sat and grabbed her by the arm. Hannah was too stunned to resist; she allowed Amy to drag her and her backpack off the ferry and onto the wharf. They stopped once they were under cover and sat down together on a bench seat.

  ‘Jesus, Hannah, what are you doing here? Do you have any idea how worried everyone has been? I thought Liam said you’d run off overseas somewhere? Are you back? I mean, are you back at home, with your family?’

  Hannah stared at her step-sister, unable to form an answer. She felt as though she had just been caught doing something dirty in public, like picking her nose and then licking her finger. She had forgotten that being back in Sydney meant there was a very real possibility of running into someone she knew. She had thought that she would be invisible still, like she had been in London. And did it have to be Amy? The girl who Hannah had aspired to be for such a long time. The girl with the perfect life – her perfect life. And look at her. She was wearing a stylish black pencil skirt and a cream blouse along with stiletto heels. Her hair was tied back in a sleek blonde ponytail and her make-up was flawless. The humiliation of what she had done, of how she must have looked, of the awful person that she had become, set in and she started to cry.

  Amy placed a tentative arm around her shoulder. She let her cry for several minutes before standing and pulling her to her feet. ‘Right, you’ll catch pneumonia if you stay in those wet clothes any longer. I’ll take you back to my place and you can have a hot shower and change. Then you can tell me what’s going on.’

  Amy lived in a gorgeous townhouse, a five-minute walk from the ferry wharf in Mosman. Her husband was the art director for a massive advertising agency and she had one perfect, angelic baby, who was looked after by a nanny when she went to work two and a half days a week as a graphic designer for a firm which was in constant competition with her husband’s c
ompany. Hannah could just imagine the spritely, intelligent arguments they would have during the evenings after work, over who stole whose client or who came up with a concept for a particular campaign first.

  Hannah took her shower in the most modern bathroom she had ever set foot in. A giant showerhead cascaded scalding hot water over her and the bathroom filled up with plumes of perfumed steam from Amy’s frangipani scented shower gel. When she stepped out of the shower, she wrapped herself up in the luxurious bath-sheet and stood in front of the large mirror. She couldn’t see her reflection; the mirror was steamed up and she was too afraid to wipe it clear for fear of leaving streaks in an otherwise pristine room.

  When she was dry and dressed in some of Amy’s clothes – her backpack had been soaked through as well – Hannah walked downstairs to the living room, wondering what her step-sister was going to say to her. Amy had changed her clothes too. She was now wearing skinny Levi jeans and a deep red top, her hair was down and she was holding her plump, rosy-cheeked baby boy on her hip. Even the baby was wearing designer clothes – Pumpkin Patch overalls and a smart chequered shirt.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ said Amy. ‘I made you a peppermint tea, I hope that’s okay?’

  ‘Of course,’ Hannah replied, her voice quivering nervously. She sat down on the white leather lounge, tucking her wet hair behind her ears before placing her hands awkwardly on her lap.

  ‘I can’t believe how lucky it is that I ran into you. I mean, I wouldn’t normally be in at work on a Saturday, it’s only because Luke’s away for the weekend that I decided to do a half day at the office. Otherwise I would never have been on that ferry.