Family Baggage

by Monica McInerney

  ‘They were like vultures, Harriet. I was a rotting set of bones in that cocktail room.’ He looked at her and once again surprised her with a deep burst of laughter. ‘I’m taking it a bit seriously, aren’t I?’

  She smiled. ‘A little bit.’

  ‘It’s only a television show, isn’t it?’

  ‘A very popular TV show.’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to beat them at their own game.’ He sat down on the end of the bed and patted the cover beside him. ‘I’m ready when you are.’

  She sat next to him, conscious that she was perched on the end of her bed in a tiny room next to their guest of honour. She pointed the remote control and sat back as the theme music started to play and the opening credits began.

  Several times over the next hour she shot a glance at Patrick. Once she was sure she saw him wincing, at a particularly emotional moment between Willoughby and Lady Garvan. And he was definitely smiling – laughing softly even – at a scene involving Willoughby and one of the postmasters from a neighbouring village. She referred to the itinerary notes a couple of times, checking what had happened at each of the sights, a small fishing village, a police station, a cliff lookout point. Lara and James had really done their research. All sorts of locations had been picked out for the group to visit, from houses and churches to scenic lookouts and harbour pubs.

  In the break between episodes she made him a cup of tea, boiling the plastic kettle on the cupboard. He took it with a smile and then they turned back to the TV. Towards the end of the second episode her phone beeped to alert her to the arrival of a text message. She checked it. It was from Austin. She quickly read it. Still no word on Lara. Flights booked. Arriving day after tomorrow. See you then. A x

  Patrick Shawcross pressed pause on the remote control and stood up. ‘I’m sorry, I’m probably keeping you from work business.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. It’s a message from my brother.’

  ‘That’s probably enough for tonight in any case.’ He seemed distracted now. ‘That’s been very helpful. I’ll cast my mind back and see what stories I can remember from those filming days.’

  ‘I know they’ll appreciate whatever you can tell them.’ She turned to the video player, finding it disconcerting to be standing so close to him. It had to be the change from staring at him for so long on the screen to finding him standing beside her like this.

  As he went to leave, she half-expected him to kiss her on the forehead again or give her a flamboyant actor hug. Instead, he gave a formal nod of his head. ‘Thanks again, Harriet. I’ll see you in the morning.’ He looked down at the itinerary, then read aloud in an excitable voice that exactly matched James’s tone and exclamation marks.

  ‘We’ll be reliving Willoughby’s dramatic altercation with Sergeant Kendall, the corrupt policeman, at the harbour in Boscastle, followed by lunch in the restaurant near the old mill!! Perhaps they’ll even have those famous crab claws on the menu from the lunch scene in episode six, “The Case of the Crooked Chef”!! Yum!!’ He glanced at her. ‘You’re sure you didn’t write this?’

  ‘I promise you I didn’t.’

  A flash of that grin of his again. ‘Thanks again. Goodnight.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Molly Turner was outraged. ‘Lara’s gone missing? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She had come in to the Turner Travel office after swimming training and overheard her mother on the phone to her father. Her mum hadn’t realised she was there. Molly heard the whole thing. ‘No, James, not a word yet. It’s like she’s disappeared into thin air. Austin’s on the case with her flatmate. No, apparently Harriet’s doing fine on her own. Well, no dramas yet but it’s early days. I’m sick with worry about it. I don’t think she’s told them anything much, no. What’s she going to say, in any case? “Sorry it’s just me in charge, Lara’s mysteriously gone missing”?’

  Molly had barely let her mother hang up before she demanded an explanation.

  Melissa turned around. ‘Molly, calm down. She’s not missing. We just don’t know where she is.’

  ‘That’s missing, isn’t it? Is she all right?’

  ‘Of couse she is. She’s probably just got some personal problems she wants to sort out on her own.’

  ‘So why are you so worried?’

  ‘We’re not worried.’

  ‘You are. I heard you talking to Dad.’

  ‘Of course we’re concerned. It’s a lot to ask of Harriet, her first tour in months. We were expecting Lara to be there to help her.’

  ‘Lara said she’d be back at the end of May. In six weeks.’ Molly was counting down the days. She wanted Lara to be home in time to help her plan her sixteenth birthday party.

  ‘And I’m sure she will.’

  ‘Why don’t you ring her and ask her what’s wrong?’

  ‘We did. She hasn’t answered.’

  ‘She’d answer me. We’ve been texting each other the whole time she’s been away.’

  ‘Have you heard from her in the past few days?’

  ‘Well, no, but I thought she might have got busy.’

  ‘Would you write her a quick text now?’

  Molly nodded, reaching into her pocket for her mobile phone. She nimbly pressed buttons. Hi L. R u ok? Worried about u. L Mol xxx Send. Message sent. ‘She’ll text me back now. I know she will.’

  ‘When she does, could you ask her to give us a call? As soon as she can.’

  ‘Of course.’ Molly hesitated. ‘Are we still going shopping tomorrow, Mum? You and me? Even though Lara has—’ What? Disappeared? Gone missing?

  ‘Of course, Molly.’ She leaned over and gave her a kiss. ‘You know how much I like our trips. I wouldn’t give it up for anything.’

  Molly tried to smile. It sounded good, but it wasn’t true. Her mum cancelled week after week. ‘Sorry, Molly, I need to finish these bookings or poor old Mr and Mrs Jennings won’t get to have their holiday and wouldn’t that be terrible?’ ‘I’m sorry, Molly, but I completely forgot I’d agreed to help out at the golf club luncheon. Did you have to get anything urgent, or will it wait until next week?’

  No, Mum, it won’t. I need to talk to you. I want to talk about what feeling in love is, and check if that’s what’s happening to me. I need to talk to you about having sex or not. She loved her mum, she really did, but she made it hard sometimes. Come back, Lara, Molly said to herself as her mother turned back to her computer. Lara never cancelled on her. She always listened to her, too.

  Once when Molly was about thirteen she’d had a crush on a boy at school. One of her friends had told him and it had been horrible, because the boy had wanted nothing to do with her. It had been so awful, she had felt like her heart was breaking in two, and she had felt so stupid as well, knowing that he and his friends were probably laughing at her. Lara had heard her crying in her bedroom and had come in and been so quiet and gentle about it that Molly had told her everything. She thought that Lara would probably have said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, Molly, you’ll get over it,’ but Lara hadn’t. She had said that yes, of course it hurt. If you loved someone and they didn’t love you back then that wasn’t a nice feeling, but the thing to do was be patient and wait for the person who did feel the same way about you. And she’d told Molly that there were so many special things about her and it was a good thing to wait for the person who saw all those things. It had really helped.

  Molly went back into the house and into her bedroom. She sat on the bed and took out her mobile phone again. It was getting urgent. Maybe she should send Lara a long text, spell it out, so Lara would know why it was important. She wrote it out in full, seeing the words appear on the tiny screen. She knew there was only enough space for 500 letters. She kept it as short as she could.

  Drst Lara. Hav got sm big news. Am going out w my new swimng coach. Yes, ther is age difrence, but doesn’t mattr, he loves me & I love him, 2. No, havn’t had sex. But he wants to & so do I. He wants me to tell M&D I am at swimng camp for w-end but inst
ed we going 2 motel 2gethr. Shld I?????? I think I want to do it. Am on pill, in case, but I’m just not sure. Help!!!!! Love Molly xxxxxoooo

  She hesitated, her thumb poised over the Send button. It looked a bit funny written out like that, but she really needed to talk to someone about it. It had nearly come up at school today. Sitting around at lunchtime with her girlfriends, Hailey had been making a big deal about the fact she and her boyfriend Jake had been caught kissing on the sofa by his parents. ‘I was mortified,’ she said. Hailey was always mortified about something. That was her favourite word. The others had all shrieked about it for ages. Molly had got annoyed with them in the end. That was one of the problems. The other girls were all so immature, and hers was an adult problem.

  She imagined if she had told them. ‘Do you remember that trainee swimming coach I had?’ She pictured them screwing their eyes up, trying to remember. ‘The student teacher?’ she’d prompt. ‘Dean?’

  ‘Oh, him. Yes. Why?’

  ‘We’ve been going out for the past two months. He’s invited me to go away for the weekend with him. Just him and I, in a motel.’

  Would she say it as simply as that? And what would they say back?

  ‘But he’s a teacher!’

  She had her arguments ready, even in pretend conversations. ‘It would only matter if he was a teacher at my school. And school is only for a few hours each day. The rest of my life I’m me, and Dean is a man, not a teacher.’

  ‘But he’s so much older than you!’

  ‘Not really. He’s only just turned twenty-six, and I’m nearly sixteen, so it’s only about ten years. That’s nothing.’

  ‘Just tell your parents it’s a training camp, Molly,’ he’d said last time they met. ‘I’m going crazy not seeing you. Imagine what it would be like. Just you and me, together. The whole weekend.’ He’d leaned down and kissed her lips, her neck. She’d got that incredible feeling again, of being scared and excited and thrilled, somewhere deep inside her body.

  She knew he was talking about having sex. They’d had enough lessons about it. There’d been one particularly embarrassing video the previous term. Two actors pretending to be lovers, stopping and starting at different points. Kissing. Touching. Him touching her breasts. Every now and then words would flash up on the screen in red letters. Stop if you feel uncomfortable! It’s your body! Say no if you want to!

  Those videos always made it sound as though sex was like fighting off an army or something. What they hadn’t told them was how good it felt to be kissed and cuddled and caressed the way Dean did it. It was the same with the magazines. They warned you about diseases and getting pregnant and being called a slut and all the reasons why you shouldn’t have sex until you were sixteen, or even older. But if it was so wrong to do all those things, how come it felt so right with Dean?

  Just thinking about him gave her that lurching, tumbling, breathless feeling again. It wasn’t anything like the few times she’d kissed any of the boys from school, not that she had done very much of it. Or even the story Hailey had been telling, being caught kissing Jake like that. It didn’t feel bad, either. They’d all been warned about chat rooms on the Internet. About being with strangers. The teachers carried on sometimes as if there was a whole tribe of perverts lurking in a shadowy ring outside the school. That there were dirty men out there waiting for them to let down their guard, to smile too brightly, or offering them lollies or rides into town in exchange for something dirty.

  It just hadn’t been like that with Dean. It had happened so naturally, as if it was meant to be. That’s what Dean always said, too. And her swimming had improved, as well. Because apart from the talking, and the drives they took together, and the kissing, he really had been helping her to swim better.

  She reached up to the shelf above her bed and took down the photo. It had been taken at her last swimming carnival. Her mum and dad had wanted to come, but there had been an association of travel agents’ dinner in Melbourne that weekend. To Molly’s delight, Harriet and Lara both came along instead.

  Lara had brought her camera, the one with the long lens, and had taken all sorts of action shots. One of Molly diving off the blocks, and one of her winning her race. She’d even taken one with a sort of slow exposure that had made the water look all silky, like it was carved marble. Molly had framed that one and put it up on her bedroom wall. There were the victory photos too. One of Molly standing up on the top step of the podium. Best of all was this one, the only photo she had of her and Dean together. It had been a natural one for Lara to take, too – the swimmer with her coach. Both Lara and Harriet had been so proud of her. ‘Come on, arms around each other. The winning combination.’

  Molly touched Dean’s face in the photo. The cropped blond hair, that beautiful smile. He was all muscly, too, but in a nice way, not like a bodybuilder. She really liked his body. She felt different in her own body, too, since she and Dean had started seeing each other. He’d told her so many times how beautiful it was, and that he loved how she looked. He often whispered that he especially loved her breasts, that she shouldn’t try and hide them like she used to do under baggy windcheaters and T-shirts. ‘Not that I want you showing them to anyone else. You won’t, will you?’

  She’d shaken her head.

  ‘And you haven’t told anyone about us?’

  ‘I won’t.’ She’d affected a casualness. ‘What, and have you get into trouble for interfering with an underage girl?’

  ‘I’m serious, Molly.’

  ‘I’m joking.’ She’d wanted to kiss him, kiss that line of worry away from his face. But they had made a rule that they never touched in front of other people. They had to be so careful. He’d told her it was enough to have him thrown out of teaching for ever. Maybe even a prison sentence.

  ‘No one would understand the truth of us, Molly. They wouldn’t believe that I tried to fight it. I did. But I knew that it was something special between us.’

  She could replay all the things he had ever said to her. Sometimes in bed, when it had been a while since she had seen him – they tried not to make it longer than two weeks, but sometimes his training commitments made it hard – she made up plays in her head, reliving the whole thing.

  It had been special from the start. She thought so, at least. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she had slightly rewritten his arrival in her life, made it more dramatic than it might have been, because of what had happened afterwards. But it didn’t matter either way. It still felt the same now.

  It had been a normal training session, straight after school. Her coach Mr Green was there. They called him Greenie. Beside him that day was a young man, dressed in a tracksuit. They were all quickly introduced. ‘This is Dean, down from Melbourne. He’s going to be my assistant coach for the term.’ She shook hands with him, then went into the changing room. He told her afterwards, when they were together, that he had noticed her straightaway. ‘How couldn’t I, you were so beautiful.’

  She had wrinkled her nose. ‘I was in my training suit, in my cap and goggles. You couldn’t tell what I looked like.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I saw what was important.’

  It was just like Lara had said. She’d been patient and someone who loved her for herself had come along. It was terrible when he first had to go back to Melbourne after his work placement finished, but he kept texting her, telling her he loved her every single morning without fail, calling when he could. She hung out for the carnivals when she’d see him. He managed to come back once every fortnight or so for a training session and it was fun to pretend they were normal swimmer and coach. He’d stay back late those nights, and they’d go in his car to the lookout in the hills back behind the town or to one of the beaches further down the coast from Merryn Bay. They’d talk a bit, but mostly they’d kiss. A lot. He was always so patient and kind to her, telling her how pretty she was, and kissing her really slowly and checking each time that she was happy with what he was doing.

  He had asked her the la
st night he was in Merryn Bay if she wanted to go in the back seat, where there was more room, but she had felt funny. He’d been so kind. ‘That’s okay, Molly. We’ll only do what you want to do.’

  She’d felt bad then, so she’d let him touch her a bit more than she wanted, and then she’d touched him as well. She’d felt really shy and inexperienced, but he had been so good then as well, showing her what to do, how to touch him. ‘You’re so beautiful, Molly. That’s it, that’s perfect, don’t stop.’ She replayed that over and over in her head as well.

  He’d touched her again afterwards too, and she had felt incredible, all kind of full and open and hungry in a funny way, as if she really wanted something to eat or drink or have, in some way, but wasn’t sure what it was. She’d tried to tell him that and he had given her another kiss and whispered in her ear. ‘Just wait, Molly, if you thought that was good.’

  It was Dean who’d suggested she go on the pill. ‘I’m not putting any pressure on you, Molly. It’s about being responsible. Looking out for you.’

  ‘But wouldn’t we use condoms?’ She felt shy saying that, but all the classes insisted that they were the most important thing.

  ‘For a start, if that’s what you want. But condoms are only if you’re not committed to the person you’re sleeping with.’

  ‘But what about AIDS? And other diseases?’

  He kissed her again. ‘I promise you, Molly, I don’t have AIDS, or VD, or chickenpox, or even a hint of a cold. Will you do that for me? Will you go on the pill? Then when we’re together, you and me, it’ll be just us, skin on skin …’

  Another long kiss. His voice whispering, ‘You’re so beautiful.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You’re like a colt.’

  ‘A colt? A horse?’

  ‘All long legs and silky.’

  She was embarrassed about going to the doctor, but she did what her friends had done. Jenny had bragged how easy it was. It was better if you got the male doctor, she said. Tell him you are having problems with your period. Bad pains, irregular cycles, something like that. And make sure you have a cover story ready to tell your mum, in case someone tells her you were at the doctor’s.