I wish you were my mum . . .
My eyes snapped open. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
She placed the photos on the bookshelf, lining them up carefully, side by side. ‘Yvie went through three bouts of IVF to conceive you. She carried you inside her body for nine months; she gave birth to you. As far as she was concerned, you were hers. She didn’t want anyone, especially not you or Jimmy, worrying about –’ she paused, searching for the right words ‘– genetic issues.’
I wish you were my mum . . .
‘Then, after your mum died, things got . . .’ She hesitated.
‘Pretty dire?’ I suggested, picking at a loose thread at the hem of my shorts.
‘A bit more complicated,’ she finished, diplomatically.
I could feel her eyes on me, but I was too churned up to look at her, my fingers tapping out distress signals in Morse code against my leg.
Her hand closed around mine, stilling the movement, forcing me to look at her. ‘The night you were born, I made your mum a promise . . .’ Her voice faltered, but her gaze was rock-steady. ‘I promised her that I would be the third most important person in your life. And that’s what I’ve always tried to be.’
Third most important. She meant after Jimmy and my mum.
I fought to breathe against the crushing pressure in my chest. ‘And now?’
‘Now things are even more complicated.’ She patted my hand and leaned back. ‘What with Herc, and now Al on the scene, I guess I’d be lucky to scrape into your Top Five.’ She winked and rocked me with a shoulder.
‘Top Four,’ I murmured, tucking the errant thread under the lacy hem before everything unravelled completely. ‘Mum’s not here anymore.’
‘She still counts,’ she said firmly. ‘She always will.’
We might have had a moment there, me and Edie, but her phone chose that moment to go off like an alarm clock. She grabbed it and held it out at arm’s length, squinting at the message.
‘It’s the security company,’ she said, suddenly all business. ‘The police are on their way. The cameras have caught someone on tape trying to break into your house.’
It was like a re-run of the previous week, except that this time it was Edie by my side, while uniformed police and fingerprinting technicians crawled over the house.
Bill acknowledged us both with a nod, but kept his distance, monitoring the bustle around him, his eyes not missing a trick. And when he finally did stride over, it wasn’t to exchange pleasantries.
‘Do either of you recognise this person?’ He held out a sketch of a man’s face. ‘Kat? Have you ever seen him before?’
I grabbed the paper, struck by the lifelike detail – the uncut dark hair, the distance between the eyes, the weak chin – conscious of Edie craning past my shoulder, doing the same. His face was older than Al’s, younger than Jimmy’s. Aged somewhere between twenty and forty. It was a good likeness of someone, just not anyone I knew. I flicked a questioning glance Edie’s way, and she shook her head.
‘Pity,’ Bill rumbled. ‘Baden drew it. We didn’t need to bring a police artist in, after all. The boy has a gift.’ His finger tapped at the paper. ‘He swears this is the person he saw wearing his ring and throwing something over your fence, just before Herc took that bait.’
I looked again at the sketch, this time with such intensity I was surprised scorch marks didn’t curl the edges of the paper.
But still nothing had changed. It was the face of a stranger. Unremarkable in every way. A face that would get lost in a crowd. A nobody.
Disappointed, I handed the drawing back to Bill. ‘Did you get a sketch of his hands?’
He shook his head. ‘We can make do with this.’
The faint note of satisfaction in his voice made me regard him more sharply. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
He folded the sketch, slid it into his breast pocket and patted it. ‘One would hope so, Kat. One would certainly hope so.’ He turned to leave, but was held back by a hand anchoring his arm at the elbow.
‘Tell us,’ Edie demanded.
He glanced down at her hand, and raised an eyebrow. There was definitely something going on between these two. She tilted her head, focusing her formidable mind-reading powers on someone other than me for a change.
‘You’ve seen the security footage of tonight’s break-in.’ It wasn’t a question.
He stared her out. ‘No comment.’
Her eyes dropped to his top pocket, then flicked back up at him. ‘You’ve already matched the sketch with the footage. It’s the same guy.’
His lips tightened, but it wasn’t clear if he was annoyed or biting down on a smile. ‘Are you deaf, woman? I said, no comment.’
‘We missed you tonight.’ Edie released his elbow and patted his arm. ‘Let me know when you finish night shift.’ She didn’t wait for an answer, just slipped her arm through mine and hauled me away. ‘He’s got this, Katty. Come on, let’s go home.’
I opted to sleep at Edie’s, in my old lime and pink bedroom downstairs.
The old bolthole that I’d hidden in a hundred times before. The one place I’d always gone to when I needed to escape. The only place I wanted to be right now.
Over the past week my whole world had been shaken and spun on its axis; I was in freefall, bearings lost. I needed an anchor, something safe and familiar to cling to through the crazy kaleidoscoping chaos . . .
I needed time to process everything that had happened – with Al, and Herc, and Jimmy, and Edie – but I wasn’t ready for the echoing emptiness at home. I needed the reassurance of footsteps tracking overhead, back and forth, across the creaking floorboards.
Jimmy was never there when I needed him. And now that the secret passageway to Edie’s had reopened, I didn’t need to be alone anymore.
I wish you were my mum . . .
The words crashed like waves inside my head, until finally I kicked aside the sweaty tangle of sheets and swung myself up into a sitting position. Arms braced on the edge of the bed, I fought to rise above the crazy swirling whirlpool of wishes and regrets.
Edie wasn’t my mum. I knew that. She was something else. Something foreign yet familiar that had shadowed me all my life. Part of me but not. Skipping at my heels when I was a kid. Looming blackly at the edges of my vision through those awful years when I couldn’t even bear to look at her, or think about what she and Jimmy had done . . .
I didn’t want to think about it now, either. Not while I was under her roof, accepting her help.
I rocked on the edge of the bed, wishing for a tsunami of sleep to rear up out of the darkness, sweep me up and carry me off into unconsciousness.
Muffled voices drifted down from upstairs: Edie’s melodic murmur and a man’s low rumble. Maybe it was Bill, thinking it was safe to update her, now that they were finally alone. Or maybe they had other things to say to each other in the early hours of a brand new year.
The thought made me smile. Bill and Edie. Who’d have thought. A chance encounter at a dog park and boom! Just like me and Al. His mother’s words echoed in my mind. He’s a keeper.
A wave of happiness rippled through me. I thumped my pillow, keen to push up some zeds before it drained away.
But a scuffling noise from the doorway made me turn, and a split second later something sandbagged me in the chest, knocking the wind out of me. I landed flat on my back, pinned to the bed by an intruder pressing his face urgently into mine.
‘Get away!’ I screamed, arching my neck away.
‘Geez, Herc, how many times do I have to tell you? No tongues!’
Thirty-Five
Herc’s delirious full-body wagging shimmied the pair of us back and forth across the sheets. Joy and relief bubbled out of me in a weird mix of tears and laughter.
Then the hall light flicked on, and we froze. Jim
my stood in the doorway, still resplendent at two in the morning, his hands buried in the pockets of his all-white tux.
‘The vet’s lights were on when I came past,’ he said. ‘Poor bastard works worse hours than I do.’ He settled himself up against the doorframe, taking my silence as encouragement to continue. ‘He was fishing a bone out of some poor old labrador’s windpipe. Said I could take Herc home – so long as we keep up his fluids and stick to a plain diet, he should be good as gold in no time.’
Herc’s upper lip had stuck to a tooth, adding a crazed touch to his usual loopy grin. He lunged forward for a tongue kiss. And for once I didn’t fight it.
‘So, how was the party?’ Jimmy asked, trying to lure me into conversation.
I buried my face into the soft folds of Herc’s neck, and gave him a thumbs up.
‘Edie says the police won’t have any trouble identifying that prowler now that they’ve got him on tape.’
I nodded, hoping he’d take the hint. All I wanted was to curl up with Herc, and wait for the next wave of sleep to carry us both away. Everything else could wait.
But Jimmy had other ideas. He pushed off the doorjamb and strode over to the bookshelf, heading straight for the photo of Edie and me at Ballymore.
Damn.
He picked up the picture frame, rubbing his thumbs gently over the glass. ‘Remember monkeying up that goalpost? And swinging off the crossbar? I thought your mum was going to have a heart attack. It must have been three metres off the ground.’
I pulled Herc closer. Clearly, the only way out of this conversation was to go through with it. ‘Edie told you, didn’t she?’
He nodded, eyes fixed on the photo.
‘She says you didn’t know. Is that true?’
He hesitated, his face shadowed in the half-light. ‘I suspected,’ he said finally. ‘Yvie refused to discuss the donor. She kept saying it didn’t matter – you were our baby, nobody else’s.’ He lowered himself onto the bed, the frame still clutched in his hands. ‘By the time you were three or four, Blind Freddy could have seen the resemblance. But the cancer had come back . . .’
And they had other things to worry about. I got that. But it still hurt.
Jimmy’s face softened. ‘She changed her mind towards the end, Katty. That’s why she left you with Edie more and more. She wanted –’ he searched for the right words ‘– to make it easier for you . . . after . . .’
Three years down the track and he still couldn’t say it.
‘After she was gone,’ I finished quietly for him.
She had known she wasn’t going to make it, so she trusted her best friend to look after me, and one day, to tell me the truth.
Edie’s the keeper of our secrets . . . if you need to know anything, Kitty Kat, ask Edie . . .
‘But by then everything had gone to hell in a hand basket.’ He rubbed his hand across bloodshot eyes. ‘I wasn’t coping. You had some burr up your bum about Edie – you wouldn’t speak to her, wouldn’t even walk past her house. You’d put your hands over your ears and scream if I so much as mentioned her name. I didn’t know what to do.’
I stayed silent, intent on massaging Herc’s thick skull.
‘Edie said to give you time – however long you needed. She organised her share-trading business so that she’d be at home while I worked, and we waited. We figured you’d get over it eventually.’ A rueful note entered his voice. ‘We never thought it would take this long . . .’
I really was that kind of stubborn.
And they’d been that kind of patient.
‘Kat?’ The change in his tone made me look up. He leaned forward, replacing the photo frame on the bookshelf. ‘Edie says you saw something that you might have misunderstood . . . the day your mum died.’
I pulled Herc in closer, shielding myself with his solid bulk.
‘She says you saw –’
‘Jimmy, please.’ Heat pooled in my face. I knew what I had seen, and didn’t want to go there. Not with Jimmy. Not now. Not ever. ‘Can we not?’
‘You need to know what happened that day, Katty.’ He reached over and scratched at Herc’s forehead. ‘God knows, I’ve tried to forget, but Edie says –’
‘All right, that’s enough.’ I yanked Herc out of his reach. ‘I get the picture, okay? You both loved Mum, she was dying, and you and Edwina were, I don’t know, upset and . . . reaching out, or something –’ I started sweating; I had to end this conversation. ‘I get it. Can I go to sleep now?’
‘No. Edie’s right – what you’re imagining is worse than the truth.’
No, she was wrong; nothing could be worse than the truth of that day. ‘I didn’t imagine anything. I saw you, both of you –’
He shook his head. ‘You saw nothing. Edie was the one who saw it all. And she doesn’t think it’s her place to tell you.’
That didn’t make any sense. ‘What are you talking about? What did she see?’
‘Me,’ he said grimly. ‘Coming apart at the seams.’
I recoiled, afraid now of hearing any more, holding Herc as a barrier against the words that were threatening the last of my defences.
‘Edie found me that day . . . naked, in an empty bathtub.’
‘Don’t, please.’ I hunched forward, fingers pressed into my ears. ‘I can’t do this.’
He grabbed my hands and wrenched them free of my head, forcing me to hear him out. ‘Kat, I was trying to decide if I had the guts to end it, to use the razor blade in my hand –’
My bones melted and it was only the grip of his hands that held me upright.
‘– or the guts to put down the blade and live out the rest of my life without your mum.’
A distant siren erupted along Enoggera Road, grew to an urgent scream as it raced past our street, and then faded slowly away. I couldn’t meet his eyes, and stared numbly at his hands, still wrapped around mine, mesmerised by the scars that had seared the past into his flesh. His daily reminders of all that he’d lost.
‘Edie stopped you –’
Bile rose in my throat. It had finally come to this, the realisation of my worst fears. I’d been right to worry; I’d been right to walk on eggshells around him. I’d been right to be afraid.
He cradled my hands in his and brought them slowly to his lips. ‘Your mum and I had been together since we were fourteen years old; we’d grown up together, I thought we’d grow old together. I didn’t know who I was without her –’
‘But . . .’ I couldn’t help myself, the words came out as a wail. ‘What about me? I hadn’t even finished primary school. How could you do that?’
‘That’s what Edie said.’ His breath was hot against my white knuckles, his voice a hoarse whisper. He stared through me, the past alive in his face. ‘She summed up the only thing that mattered, the one thing that made any sense, in just three little words: What about Katty?’
His gaze sharpened, travelling forward in time, to here and now, zeroing back in on me.
‘It was enough.’
We sat cross-legged on the bed while Jimmy talked, explaining things about Mum and him, and how I came to be. The words washed over me in a weirdly comforting way; though, to be honest, not much was really sinking in.
Maybe it was exhaustion or too many things coming at me at once, but it felt like I was having an out-of-body experience as I watched the scene unfold: me in my Betty Boops, head cocked, nodding, while my hands found consolation in the loose folds of Herc’s neck; Jimmy, leaning forward in his ridiculous tuxedo, letting it all out, while his hands massaged our comatose canine. Herc was our living connection, the lucky charm we stroked compulsively like a rabbit’s foot, in our need to believe that everything would turn out all right in the end.
For three years, I’d lived with a mind-numbing terror that I’d lose Jimmy. That I wouldn’t be enough to anchor him to this l
ife, and that he’d leave me, just like my mum had. To protect myself I’d pushed him and everyone else away, hurting us all in the process.
But now I knew that I was enough. Even at his lowest ebb, Jimmy had put me first. He’d stuck around – for me. I was enough then, when things were at their worst, and I was enough now that things were starting to get better. The thought gave me hope.
Herc opened a bloodshot eye and thumped his tail against the sheets. I dipped my head and kissed his wrinkled brow. Then Jimmy bent down and kissed mine.
Edie was right. We all needed something to love, something to plug us into life and connect us to others.
‘Well, Katty?’
I blinked, and just like that I was back in my body, staring into Jimmy’s red-rimmed eyes, not sure what he was asking. ‘Sorry?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ He smiled and patted my leg. ‘It’s late, you’re tired. We’ll talk more in the morning.’ He pushed himself to his feet, took two steps towards the door, then hesitated and turned back. ‘I just wanted to know if you’re okay with me talking to Edie . . . you know . . . about stuff?’
‘It’s all right, I know you like to talk about Mum.’ I gave him a lopsided smile. ‘Like you said, loving the same person gives you a lot to talk about – right?’
Jimmy opened his mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it, and pointed instead at the glassy-eyed dog sprawled in my lap. ‘You know you’re spoiling him.’
‘He deserves it.’
He bent and rubbed his knuckles between Herc’s eyebrows. ‘No, you deserve it. That’s why I brought him home.’ He straightened and stretched. ‘I’m knackered – you happy to stay here at Edie’s tonight?’
I was. It seemed the most natural place in the world to be. ‘I’ll come home for breakfast, okay?’
‘More than okay. And if you bring Edie with you, it’ll make the past three years worthwhile.’
The emotion in his voice made me blink. ‘Has it been that bad?’
He ran a hand through his slicked-back hair, choking on a laugh. ‘Kat, it’s been horrible. Working two jobs, all hours, to pay a mortgage I couldn’t afford, just so I could keep you near someone you hated.’
Intruder Page 19
