About a Girl

by Joanne Horniman

  ‘You’ll die if I tell you. You’ll die when you hear …’ I replied at once, feeling a great rush of love for him.

  He opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Try me.’

  At Josh’s gig, bodies crammed into a narrow, dark pub; I saw pools of light, people edging past each other with trays of drinks, elbows squeezed to their sides, getting into position for a good view. The band was still setting up. I watched Josh, his hips narrow in tight jeans, flicking back his hair, hauling his amp across the floor and plugging in his guitar, the quintessential rock musician.

  The band seemed to have a good following, because certain songs were greeted with cries of recognition and approval. It was all their own songs, too – why bother otherwise, was Josh’s philosophy. I loved the music, so loud and rhythmic, melodic, danceable, though mostly people stood and swayed or tapped their feet. Josh had the right voice for rock music, husky, plaintive, yearning. I felt it tugging me towards him.

  The music filled me with such longing that I suddenly wondered what Flynn was doing this Saturday night.

  There was a girl on her own standing quite near me, a girl in ballet flats, a gypsy-like gathered skirt and plain black top, who held a glass against her chest though she seldom drank from it. She had a handsome face, and wore an intent, speculative expression. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and I could see she was listening to the words.

  Again, I thought of Flynn, and saw how difficult it would be to find anyone to match her.

  But this looked a nice girl, a bookish-looking girl. The sort of girl I could imagine having as a friend. Just a friend.

  In a lull between songs we caught each other’s eye and she smiled at me. Looking towards the band, she nodded and said covetously, ‘He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘He is.’

  And I did think my brother beautiful. All the energy and ardour of his performance marked him out as special. How had I ever thought he was just a layabout?

  At the end of the gig the members of the band set up a table to sell their home-made CDs. I saw the girl who’d spoken to me approach Josh, and they started talking. I looked away for a while, and the next time I glanced over at them I was pleased to see him smiling and keying a number into his mobile phone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I UNPACKED THE boxes I’d brought back. My CDs went back on the rack; the small group of favourite books I’d taken with me (mostly the black Russians) went back on the shelves. I found the slim book of poetry Flynn had given me (did I really look like that dopey girl on the cover?) and slid it between Crime and Punishment and a copy of Notes from Underground, which I’d bought from the shop before I left because I just had to have it. The Christina Rossetti book was so tiny it was all but invisible, a leaf caught between two rocks. One day I would decide what to do with it.

  My mother came to the door. I knelt on the floor with things scattered round me.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She sat on the floor next to me. ‘It must seem as though you’ve never left home.’

  I looked around at my unpacking. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It seems as if I did. I left home, all right.’

  Then, as an afterthought, I said, ‘I kind of feel like a failure at it.’

  ‘Oh, why? You managed to get a job somewhere else, lived on your own in a flat … you just decided to come back, that’s all.’ She had that bright, upbeat tone that parents often use.

  ‘You don’t think I should have stayed away?’

  ‘Of course not! And I love having you here. You’re still only nineteen, after all.’

  ‘I plan to get some part-time work after I settle in and start uni. And I’ll find somewhere to live – a share house I think. I don’t want to live on my own again. And besides, I couldn’t afford it down here, especially if I’m a student.’

  ‘Well, don’t feel you have to leave too soon.’ She reached over for an object swathed in newspaper, and automatically unwrapped it.

  ‘A teapot!’ she said. ‘You said that you wanted to get one when I was up there.’

  ‘I think it’s actually very ugly, don’t you?’ I said. ‘And it’s not that practical. The lid doesn’t fit properly, and it’s quite hard to pour.’

  She put it aside. ‘That’s a pity. But I don’t think it’s all that ugly. Perhaps we could use it as a vase.’

  ‘It belonged to someone I knew,’ I said, forging on. ‘Her name was Flynn.’

  ‘Flynn! The girl I met when I came up.’

  ‘That’s right.’ I stopped to consider what I’d say next.

  ‘She was my girlfriend, actually. I don’t mean in a “friend” sense. I loved her. We were lovers. And … ’ I felt tears spring to my eyes, ‘it didn’t work out.’

  ‘Oh, Anna.’

  I shrugged away her attempted hug.

  ‘And it wasn’t just some crush. I really did love her. And the thing you need to know is … this isn’t some temporary thing with me – some whim. I’m just not attracted to boys. I never have been.’

  ‘Anna, come here …’

  And I became her child again. I put my arms around her, and closed my eyes. ‘Annie – I’m so glad you told me.’

  ‘Why?’ I sat up and sniffed.

  ‘Because it’s you, isn’t it? And I need to know. And … ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it fits a little piece of the jigsaw of you together, that I’ve been looking for for so long.’

  ‘You mean, why I’m so strange and peculiar?’

  ‘Yes, you goose.’

  ‘I really did love her,’ I repeated. It was something I’d been telling myself over and over. ‘And it was me who finished it. Maybe if I’d done things differently we’d still be together.’

  ‘Life is full of maybes and what-ifs. Some things just don’t work out. That’s life.’

  I looked at her. She shrugged, and I saw that after all that had happened over the last few years, with my father and everything, she really was all right.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ she said.

  And I discovered in Canberra that spring a little half-sister. No – a little sister – how can sisters come in halves?

  Her name was Freya.

  My mother had let me know when she was born, four months before, but I’d been so tied up with Flynn that it had passed right over me. So I brought her a belated gift – one of my favourite books, Mr Rabbit and the Lovely Present, with pictures by Maurice Sendak.

  She was a beautiful baby, solid and sure of herself. She had astonishing red hair, standing up on top in a bush, translucent in the sunlight. Like Molly and me, she had Molly McGuire’s hair and skin.

  Molly and I sat next to her where she lay in her baby bouncer on the back deck. ‘All my girls,’ said my father, fondly, as he walked past. ‘Like peas in a pod.’

  Freya looked at me, pursed her lips, and looked away again. She caught sight of Molly, and smiled.

  ‘Freya loves Molly,’ said Morgan gently to her baby. ‘Don’t you?’

  Molly smiled, and jiggled Freya’s foot.

  Morgan had cut all her long hair off so that it was short and spiky. She looked thinner in the face, and tired. With great tenderness, she picked up the baby and put her into my arms. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. ‘Babies are fairly unbreakable as long as you’re reasonably careful … yes, support her head like that. Anna – you’re a natural!’

  I didn’t know about that. I looked down at Freya. She had a face like the magnolia flowers in our garden, creamy and scented, unfolding very slowly and gracefully, all in her own time.

  Epilogue

  I WRITE ABOUT my life, not because I think it is important, but because there are images I can’t forget. I
remembered what Flynn said about how she wrote a song – how she started with an image that kept returning to her, and saw where it led. And so I began with the night when I went to the gig and felt the music she made – and my heart opened up. And now I have something that resembles some sort of story, although perhaps it is only about a girl.

  I will confess now that before I decided to leave Lismore I had gone looking for Flynn.

  But she had already gone. Hannah opened the door and said peremptorily, ‘She doesn’t live here anymore.’

  I thought quickly, and said that I’d like to go to her room; there was something I’d left behind.

  Hannah watched me from the doorway of Flynn’s room for a moment, then turned on her heel and left.

  And I stood there wondering what it was I’d hoped to find – an answer to my misery, perhaps, a scrap of my broken heart, or some other indefinable thing that might help it all make sense. The room had the forlorn look of the hastily abandoned. A few confetti-like scraps of paper and balls of fluff lay sadly on the carpet. There was a wilted flower in a vase on the windowsill.

  So this was it. I guessed that she’d gone to live with her parents again, but I wouldn’t search for her there. Leaning my hands on the sill, I stared out over the roof.

  And there was the teapot, Lavinia, in all her maiden-aunt glory. Impulsively, I clambered out of the window and scooped the teapot up, tipping out the contents before hiding it away in my shoulder bag.

  And I left, climbing back through the window quickly, across the floor of the room that was no longer Flynn’s, and out through the flat.

  ‘Close the door after you,’ called Hannah sardonically, from the kitchen.

  Leaving it flagrantly open, I skipped down the purple stairs and away.

  About the Author

  JOANNE HORNIMAN is the author of numerous novels, including the award-winning Mahalia and Secret Scribbled Notebooks. She is the mother of two grown-up sons, and lives outside Lismore with her partner Tony, various chooks and ducks, and a grey cat named Tom.