His Other House

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘But you’ve got visitors.’

  ‘Yeah, but come in.’ He beckoned, smiling. ‘We’re out the back. Grab a glass.’

  ‘Oh, look, I won’t.’ She took hold of his arm. ‘I just wanted to let you know that I’m telling people. About Quinn.’

  He turned back to her and his face had lost its boozy glimmer.

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘I should have done it ages ago.’

  Loud laughter erupted outside and someone yelled, ‘Bill! Where’s that bloody Shiraz?’

  A woman with short blonde hair appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh, hello. Are you joining us?’ It looked like they’d been drinking for a while.

  ‘Ah, no,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m on my way home.’ The woman was already turning away, a bottle from the bench in her hand.

  ‘So, you’re telling people . . .’ He stepped close and tucked a strand of her hair behind an ear. He smelled of red wine and something sugary. ‘Are you telling Marianna?’

  ‘That’s his job.’

  ‘In theory.’ He stepped back. ‘But in theory he should have told her five or six years ago.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell her? You’re her friend.’

  He smiled sadly. ‘I used to be.’ Bill looked out the window over her shoulder and sighed. He crossed the room and flopped onto the red lounge and she went to sit beside him. He wiped his hands down his face. ‘Fuck him. Fuck him for not telling her.’

  She leaned back into the lounge, the same lounge where she and Quinn had sat together many times and where she and Bill had fucked.

  Bill dropped his hands. ‘What a mess, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m sorry you got caught up in it.’

  He nodded. ‘Me too.’

  ‘I’m going. I just wanted you to know.’

  He stroked her arm. His voice was quiet. ‘Bye.’

  As she left, Rachel looked in the door of Quinn’s old room, as if it might be the last time she saw it. The rice paper blinds, the blue woven rug and narrow bed. The bed where Ned was conceived.

  What she told the women at Kate’s was true; she loved Quinn. She loved lying in bed and talking quietly when they both woke in the middle of the night. She loved watching him play with Ned. It had always been companionable and easy and gentle between them. But in seeking a gentle man had she simply ended up with a weak one?

  •

  Even though she saw Bill whenever he was back in town, they’d slept together only the once. It happened while Quinn was at Disneyland with Marianna and Adie when the kids were two.

  Rachel had turned up at Bill’s place with tomatoes and a bunch of basil. With a shy smile, he’d invited her in. Whenever she saw him she was surprised anew by how slight he was, tall but slim with small, careful hands. Quinn once said that he should have been a surgeon. Bill looked the way she imagined an English scholar would, with floppy brown hair and an old-fashioned gallantry. That day, he’d made a rope swing for Ned, who had swung back and forth under the mango tree, pointing to the darkening sky and calling out, ‘Bat! Bat!’

  Bill had been willing to answer her questions about Quinn and eventually he started telling her about Marianna, as if he knew that was why she’d really come. While he barbecued steak, he told her that, at uni, Marianna was the one the men wanted to bed and the women wanted to emulate. He described watching Marianna do her hair and makeup one day and realising that it took her about half an hour to get her natural look. Rachel didn’t ask if Bill had slept with her, but it sounded like it.

  It had been late when Bill had carried a sleeping Ned into the house and laid him carefully onto Quinn’s bed. Rachel watched him smooth Ned’s hair and she whispered, ‘Do you want children?’

  He had straightened. ‘Yeah.’ Then he looked around the room, and pointed at the few shirts of Quinn’s that still hung on the clothes rack. ‘He didn’t really give me any choice about this, you know. He told me about you and then begged me not to tell Marianna . . . I wish he hadn’t obliged me to be his alibi.’

  ‘Have you told him how pissed off you are?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ And he had touched her back to guide her ahead of him out of the room; that was all it took, just that one touch of bare skin.

  She’d expected him to kiss gently but he was forceful, his tongue intrusive. She was used to the way Quinn kissed. As they had sex on the couch, she knew that Quinn must always be comparing her and Marianna. Later, he’d said, ‘Well, I guess that was inevitable.’

  She hadn’t known what to say. Did he think that was why she had come? ‘I’m not sure it was a good idea, though.’

  He had smiled sadly. ‘No, probably not. But not the worst thing that could have happened.’

  She’d told Quinn as soon as he returned from the States and she’d imagined she might feel some small, satisfying sense of getting even, but she’d just felt sad and started crying. Quinn’s face had fallen when she told him, but, as he had said to her while he held her, he was in no position to demand fidelity.

  •

  She was driving a bit too fast, she knew. But she loved the way Quinn’s car hugged the newly tarred road, the air rushing in the window.

  Lying was an incremental thing. If you made a decision to lie about one thing, it became much easier to lie about another. And then everything.

  The day Ned was born, she’d sat in the dimly lit living room at the cottage, her new baby on the breast. The two of them were at the centre of the universe, around them the detritus of birth: a bundle of bloody towels, the cloths that the midwife had laid on her back and the bread bowl where the placenta sat, dark and glistening. And then encircling all that were the walls and ceiling; the tin roof; the valley; the country; the planet; the universe. Everything revolving around this baby.

  Quinn and the midwife had been in the kitchen making food while Rachel watched Ned fall asleep for the first time in the outside world, his wet pink mouth slipping off her nipple.

  The midwife’s voice was loud. ‘So are you a nurse? You’ve clearly got medical knowledge.’ There was the chink of plates and the fridge door closing and Quinn said something indistinct.

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Jenny had laughed. ‘Actually I think I do recognise you from the base hospital. I’ve done a few shifts there.’

  Quinn mumbled something.

  ‘Ah! Sorry. I’ve been confused. I thought you were Rachel’s partner.’

  A leaden cold filled Rachel. Quinn had just disowned her to Jenny. What had he said? That he was a friend? Her brother? When she first met Jenny, Rachel had fudged the question of the baby’s father – as she and Quinn had agreed – but now that the baby was here, it seemed a terrible betrayal for Quinn to pretend that he was not the father.

  When the smiling midwife came back into the room with a toasted sandwich and a cup of tea, Rachel could have said something but she just took the plate and balanced it on the pillow at her side and settled Ned on one arm. By saying nothing, Rachel had lied too. It was the beginning of the lies that Rachel had told Ned every single day.

  When Ned was two weeks old, Quinn had arrived one evening with bags of shopping. Rachel sat on the couch in the dark living room, breastfeeding. ‘Why don’t you turn the light on?’ he said.

  ‘Because every time I move he wakes up. Can you bring me a glass of water, please?’

  He turned on a lamp and brought her some water. She asked, ‘Did you tell her?’

  He sat down beside her. ‘I just can’t. I know it’s crappy for you. But I just can’t.’

  Ned woke and his mouth gaped as he searched frantically for the breast. She fitted him onto her nipple. ‘You said you would.’

  Quinn stroked Ned’s bare leg that had escaped the woollen wrap. ‘I look at Adie sleeping and I can’t bear to lose my little girl or for her to lose me . . . Could you imagine walking away from Ned?’

  ‘Did you ever intend to tell her? Ever?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  She had been too tired to properly feel her anger
. ‘I should tell you to walk away, that I don’t want this half-hearted arrangement. But I want someone to share this with. I want you here . . . I want a family.’ She had stared down at their baby, his little jaw working as he fed, his eyes closed in bliss.

  The rain started up again and Rachel raised the car window and turned on the wipers. She felt a worming in her gut when she imagined telling Ned. She had failed to be the mother she wanted to be. All she could hope was that, if she was matter-of-fact about it, he’d take it in his stride.

  As she drove over Fifth Crossing, something flashed in her peripheral vision and she wrenched the steering wheel. An animal thudded into the car as she veered off the road. There was a moment of being airborne, the seatbelt holding her tightly against the seat and the engine revving as her foot pressed the accelerator. This is it, she thought. Then everything exploded and the airbag punched her hard.

  She came to with the sound of the crash ringing in her ears and she touched her face. Shit, that hurts. There was the sound of running water, loud and close. Was she beside the creek? Her hands shook as she undid her seatbelt and groped for the door handle.

  The car door swung open and after a moment she understood that the car was sitting on boulders in the creek, headlights shining into the fast-flowing water. As she eased herself to the edge of the seat, hot pain sliced through her side, and she yelled out as she dropped into a metre of cold, fast-running water. She waded away from the car to the reedy bank and climbed up to the road, grabbing at saplings and clumps of weeds, crying out in pain. At the top she crawled onto the road, the rain gently tapping her back.

  A few metres away, a wallaby lay sprawled, the rain already washing away the blood pooled by its head.

  She started walking towards home and soon the pain in her ribs became almost unbearable. She had to stop and rest. She pictured the car’s headlights shining into the water and knew that she could have died. If she had, what would have happened to Ned? His memory of Rachel would be that she was someone who had lied to him.

  She remembered a sci-fi book she’d read when she was a teenager. The main character could jump between threads that represented the different paths her life might have taken. Rachel used to dream of finding the thread where Scotty was still alive or the thread where it was Rachel who had drowned.

  What if she could find her way now to that thread where she had refused to lie to the midwife? What if she’d said, He looks like Quinn, don’t you think? What life would she find there?

  Chapter Thirty-two

  He was reading in bed when he heard the kitchen door bang open. He read the same page over and over, listening to her get a drink of water in the kitchen and go into Ned’s room, then the bathroom, where she ran the water for ages.

  She appeared in the doorway of their bedroom, wearing a pair of underpants and pressing a bloody handkerchief to her forehead. She stood very straight. ‘I’m afraid I crashed your car.’

  He swung out of bed. ‘Are you okay?’ He reached for the bloodied hanky.

  ‘Yes.’ She smelled of alcohol. ‘Really.’

  ‘Let me look.’

  She closed her eyes. A deep cut bisected the eyebrow and she winced as he pressed around her eye socket. ‘It’s just soft tissue damage, I think,’ he said. He took the hanky from her hand to blot blood from her eyebrow.

  She was breathing shallowly. When he touched her ribs, she nodded and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Sore.’

  ‘On a scale of one to ten?’ he asked.

  ‘Seven. Eight.’

  ‘Do you have pain anywhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you hit your head?’ He brushed his fingers down her cheek.

  ‘I guess so. Or something hit my head. I had powder all over me from the airbag.’

  ‘Did you lose consciousness?’

  ‘Maybe. For a second.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  He helped her slide gingerly down the wall, her wet hair leaving a shiny trail. ‘I hit a wallaby near Fifth Crossing and I completely lost it. Ended up in the creek.’

  ‘You went down the bank into the creek? Holy shit, Rachel.’ The car would be a write-off. He sat beside her on the floor.

  ‘I was going too fast.’

  ‘How did you get home?’

  ‘I walked.’

  ‘I need to get some butterfly strips onto that cut. It’s deep.’ He started to get up.

  ‘Just leave it for a minute, will you?’ She closed her eyes.

  He had to tell her about Ned. The longer he left it, the harder it would be.

  ‘I’m sorry about the car,’ she said, her eyes still closed.

  ‘It’s just a car.’

  She opened her eyes and turned to him. ‘If I’d died, what would have happened to Ned?’

  ‘I’d have looked after him.’ There were three small deep cuts at her hairline. He touched his fingertips to her forehead. Her skin was damp and cool.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here, I guess.’

  ‘And if something happened to Marianna? Would Adie come to live with us?’

  ‘Yes. I guess so.’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘Are you different when you’re with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She whispered, ‘How?’

  ‘I’m happier here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m just happier with you.’

  ‘But why?’

  His throat was thick. ‘Because of who you are and who I am when I’m with you.’

  ‘Is it just because you don’t have to pretend here?’

  ‘It’s not just that. You are . . . easier to be with. I feel more myself.’

  She leaned her head against his shoulder.

  He took a breath. ‘Rachel?’ His stomach dropped. ‘I told Ned.’

  She did nothing for a moment, as if the words took time to settle and make sense. She lifted her head. ‘About them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She edged away from him. ‘But we agreed to tell him together! No, Quinn!’

  ‘It just came out. I’m sorry.’ But if he knew anything by now, he knew that there was always a moment of decision. ‘I’m sorry. I should have waited.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Her mouth crumpled and tears spilt from her eyes. ‘I wanted to be there.’

  ‘He asked me a few questions. How old Adie is. Where she lives.’

  ‘Did you do it just to put me in my place? To remind me who’s powerful?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I should have waited for you. I just felt like it was my mistake, my big lie and that I should tell him . . .’

  ‘So what exactly did you say? What words did you use?’

  His face heated up. ‘I don’t remember the actual words. I just told him that I have another family and that it makes no difference to how much I love him.’

  The cut was oozing down into her eye and she wiped at the blood with her hand. ‘I can’t believe you did that.’ She stood up, inhaling sharply, and walked to the doorway. ‘You don’t get to make all the decisions anymore.’ She spoke through tight lips. ‘You don’t control the flow of information. Not here and not at your other house.’

  ‘What’s that? A threat? Ned knows, and that’s what you wanted. Marianna and Adie are not your business.’

  ‘You never intended to tell her. Never. I see that now.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for the moment I could tell her. And then Adie came.’ His heart filled to remember Adie’s scrunched newborn face and shock of fine dark hair. After Marianna’s caesarean it had been just him and Adie for half an hour while they sewed Marianna up. He’d held his baby girl and she’d looked up at him with those eyes, and everything changed, all his plans to tell Marianna, all his determination to be honest. ‘Can you imagine walking away from your newborn child? Could you have done that? Walked away from Ned? I just couldn’t do it.’r />
  ‘You make it sound like it was about Adie. But we both know it was about you.’ She disappeared up the hall and into Ned’s bedroom.

  He lay back down on the bed. Her bed. Her house. He remembered looking down at Adie swaddled in the pink and blue checked hospital wrap and knowing he couldn’t bear for his daughter to grow up thinking that he’d abandoned her as soon as he laid eyes on her.

  You don’t control the flow of information. Not here and not at your other house. He would have to tell Marianna before Rachel did.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Quinn was brushing his teeth when Ned shuffled into the bathroom in his blue cotton pyjama shorts. ‘Hi, Daddy.’ The boy stood at the toilet to wee.

  ‘Hey there.’ He ruffled Ned’s hair with his free hand. ‘How’d you sleep?’

  The boy nodded and shook his penis in the direction of the toilet bowl. Ned looked up at Quinn and his eyes widened. ‘Oh! Did you see Mummy’s face?’

  ‘I did. Looks pretty sore, huh?’

  He poked his tongue out. ‘It looks disgusting.’ He spotted Quinn’s comb and picked it up. ‘Can you cut my hair? I want it short like yours.’

  ‘I’m not very good at cutting hair. But I’ll take you to the barber if you want it cut like mine.’

  ‘Daddy’s taking me to the barber,’ Ned said to Rachel, who appeared in the doorway, drinking a glass of water. The bruise on her face was larger than Quinn had expected and stretched from her hairline to her mouth. Her left eye was swollen shut. The wound gaped.

  ‘Oh. If that’s what you want.’ She didn’t look at Quinn but lowered herself painfully onto the toilet. Ned fossicked in one of the bathroom drawers at Quinn’s side.

  ‘Hey, let me clean that wound for you and put the strips on it,’ said Quinn. ‘It shouldn’t be left any longer, you know.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I’ll drop you at work and go to the hospital.’ She wiped herself and flushed the toilet, still avoiding Quinn’s eye.

  ‘Let me do it, Rach. It will take me five minutes. It might not heal properly even if we do it now.’

  She looked over at Ned, who was fiddling with one of her hair bands but clearly listening.