by Kylie Ladd
‘Nice,’ Ben said approvingly as she and James once more hauled the drawing up against the wall. ‘That’s really good, guys. It will look great as a mosaic.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Higher, I think.’
Skye couldn’t resist. ‘That’s what I told them,’ she said, stretching up. James, she noticed, was standing on tiptoes.
‘No, even higher,’ Ben commanded. Then, to show her, he walked across and lifted the corner of the drawing out of her hands, momentarily pinning her to the wall. Skye closed her eyes. She could smell the laundry powder in his shirt, feel the warmth from his hip where it nudged against hers. The students dissolved; her body angled itself towards his.
‘Mr Cunningham, I can’t hold it now!’ shouted James. Skye felt the paper go slack. Ben moved away and she opened her eyes, disoriented.
After school that day she followed him home. She hadn’t planned to—she was due at the gym—but as she saw his car pull out of the gates she fell in behind it without thinking. He indicated, she indicated. He turned, she turned. She didn’t try to be discreet or keep her distance, simply tagged along until she found herself pulling up outside a block of units. Ben parked in the forecourt, then waited as she got out of her car. Without a word, he walked to his front door, opened it, then stood back so she could enter first. Inside, he kicked the door closed with his foot, and his arms went around her. His mouth came down on hers, forced her head back so hard it banged against a wall. It hurt, but she didn’t stop kissing him; held on tighter, if anything, as they slid to the floor, landing in a tangled heap of limbs and skin. And oh, his skin. His skin was intoxicating. Hamish was always doused with deodorant. Working at the gym he had to be—helping out in a weights session, taking a class if an instructor didn’t show, the personal training sessions he ran at least once a day. Skye understood that, but until Ben held her she hadn’t realised how much she detested all those chemicals. Ben, in contrast, smelled of nothing but skin. She lowered her face to his chest and breathed it in. When that wasn’t enough, she slipped her hands beneath his shirt, dimly aware as she did so how much she’d wanted to touch him ever since he’d pressed against her at school earlier that day. His own hands were on her breasts; his erection pulsed against her thigh. She pushed herself against him and was reaching for the waistband of his jeans when the electronic tones of ‘YMCA’ suddenly rang out through the flat. Ben froze. Skye’s eyes flew open.
The guilt flooded through her immediately.
‘What’s that?’ Ben asked. Three buttons on his shirt were undone; his pupils were dilated.
‘My phone,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s probably the gym calling. Hamish. He’ll be wondering where I am.’ She pulled her t-shirt down and struggled to sit up. She had to go. She couldn’t bear to go.
‘What’s happening, Skye? Why did you come here?’
Ben’s voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear him. She glanced at him to see if he was angry, but he didn’t appear to be, only confused. A part of her resented it. She wished he’d yell and rant or even call her a bitch; that he’d order her to leave or push her through the door of his flat. She felt terrible, yes, but she still couldn’t bring herself to go.
‘I don’t know. I don’t do this, Ben,’ she whispered, horrified to find she was close to tears.
‘I don’t either,’ he said, pulling himself up to sit beside her, their backs to the wall. He reached for her hand, and she knew he understood the little of this there was to understand—that it wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t right, but it wasn’t under her control either. Then her phone shrilled again and Ben’s expression changed.
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he said, dropping her hand and standing up. ‘Please don’t be here when I get out.’
Skye reached for her bag and turned off her phone. She would leave now, but only because he had told her to. She wished more than anything that he’d asked her to stay.
8
They were on a ferry, leaning over the rail, the wind flinging spray in their eyes. Charlie was laughing, unconcerned, his arm wrapped around her; she was worried about her camera and trying to shield it beneath her jacket. Every time she looked up the horizon had shifted. The waves were tossing them from side to side and the boat yawed alarmingly, but the sun shone brightly and land, in the form of a green cliff rising from a beach of shingle, wasn’t too far away. They could probably swim if they had to. She would grab Skye, who was so at home in the water. Charlie would have to take Arran, who wasn’t. Nell was just looking around for the children when she heard a dull thump. Had they hit something? Were they breaking up? Her heart began to race and she woke up, shaking.
She lay in the darkness listening to her own ragged breaths. Make it real, her mother had told her whenever she had had a bad dream as a child, and obediently Nell tried to do so. She wasn’t on a ferry, she began, reasoning her way out of her panic. She was in her own bed, with her children safe and her husband beside her. That worked for a second, but then it hit her, and her pulse hammered again in her ears. She buried her face in the pillow and waited for the shock of pain to recede. How long would she have to keep remembering like this? How many more times until Charlie’s death became something she knew in her bones, just like she knew her own name or the sun in the sky? Slowly, deliberately, she opened her eyes and started again. She wasn’t on a ferry. No one was drowning, or in danger. They’d never even had a rough crossing, as far as she could remember, never had any trouble at all. Oh, they’d missed plenty of ferries, she thought, allowing her mind to wander, due to a combination of Charlie’s laissez-faire approach to timetables and her wretched map-reading skills, but they’d always got where they were going in the end. Besides, it wasn’t as if they’d had a schedule.
Another thump, only this time Nell realised it was coming from her door. She reached for her bedside light, but before she could switch it on Skye had come into the room and was hissing her name. ‘Mum. Nell. Are you awake?’
‘I am now,’ said Nell, sitting up in bed. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I just wanted to talk. Can I get in?’ asked Skye, already climbing across her to the empty side of the bed. Nell fumbled again for the light, but Skye moaned and threw her arm across her face. ‘Turn it off! I don’t need to see you.’ She burrowed down under the covers, pulling them almost up over her face.
‘Bad dream?’ Nell asked as the room returned to shadow. ‘I had one too. We were on a ferry. In Scotland, I think, though maybe it was Greece. You were about twelve, and there was this storm—’
‘No, I didn’t have a dream.’ Skye cut her off and rolled onto her side, her back to Nell. She was silent for a few minutes, but Nell knew she hadn’t fallen asleep. The whole bed hummed with Skye’s agitation. ‘I want you to tell me something,’ she finally said, ‘but you can’t ask why, OK? There’s no real reason. It’s just . . . hypothetical.’
‘Of course,’ Nell replied. ‘You can ask me anything. I’ve never lied to you.’
Skye sighed. ‘I know you haven’t, but it still feels wrong. It’s none of my business.’ She swallowed, then said in a rush, ‘When Dad was alive, did you ever fancy anyone else?’
Nell almost laughed, but stopped herself in deference to Skye’s palpable discomfort. To be married thirty-two years, and not ever to have looked away, or imagined different hands, a different body . . . it wasn’t possible. Skye would learn that, though it sounded like she might have already.
‘Oh, honey,’ she said gently, reaching out to stroke her daughter’s hair. ‘Of course I did. You know Charlie and I loved each other very much, but we were both human. It didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything.’
‘So you fucked around,’ Skye stated bluntly.
Nell winced. ‘Not exactly. Not at all, after the first year or two. Maybe a bit before then, but we were never particularly conventional, you know that. We didn’t do it for the sake of it, but we’d agreed that we could sleep with other people if we really wanted to, as long as we told each oth
er, and our relationship always came first.’ She shrugged. ‘It sounds naive, but that’s how it was then. It didn’t matter,’ she repeated. ‘Is that what you’re worried about? Staying faithful to Hamish?’
She felt Skye stiffen beside her in the bed. ‘I’m not worried about anything,’ she said, emphasising the word. ‘I just wondered, that’s all. When did you stop?’
Nell lay there in the darkness, thinking, still stroking Skye’s hair. It was so long ago. ‘Once it got serious, I guess. Once I knew that your dad was who I wanted to be with always, and not just for that week.’ A vision of Charlie as he’d looked when they first met flashed into her head: long hair, large hands, and that terrible waistcoat, so tatty and stained that she’d thrown it out a year into their marriage. She wished she’d kept it now.
‘You didn’t change your mind, not even for a month or two?’
Nell shook her head. ‘We decided to get married pretty quickly after that. I would have been happy just to live together, but it was your father’s idea. He never did anything by the book, except that.’
Still Skye persisted. ‘And you never wanted anyone ever again, not even after we were born?’
‘Well, you took a long time to be born, didn’t you? All those years of trying, and then the IVF.’ Nell rolled against Skye and put her arms around her. ‘But no, not really. Maybe once or twice, but I honestly can’t remember. We were both too worn out from looking after twins.’
‘Mmmm,’ said Skye, finally relaxing and snuggling back against her. ‘You got lucky, didn’t you?’
‘Sure did,’ murmured Nell into her hair. ‘Two babies on only our second go. A boy and a girl, perfect and healthy.’ Lucky, she wanted to add, that they had been living in Melbourne, where all the IVF research was taking place. Lucky, too, that she and Charlie had survived the process, when so many marriages went under from the strain. All those tests and drugs, the endless waiting—but it had brought them closer in the end. After their years of infertility, when Skye and then Arran were lifted from her body, bloody and screaming, it felt to Nell as if she and Charlie had truly made them. Not just conceived them, but put them together cell by precious cell. She’d first seen them, barely zygotes, under a microscope in the clinic’s lab. How many other parents could say that?
Beside her, Skye had fallen asleep. Nell wondered if she should wake her up and send her back to her own bed, but knew she wouldn’t. She’d missed the warmth of a body next to hers, the comfort of having a fellow traveller alongside throughout the night. It wasn’t like Skye to need her either, and she wanted to be there in case her daughter woke again. Of her children, Skye was more likely to confide in her than Arran, but she rarely needed to. Skye was an open book. She’d fitted in easily wherever they went: from country to country, school to school. Sport had made sure of that. Skye excelled at gymnastics, but she quickly mastered whatever she turned her hand to. There was always a place for her in the netball team or the swimming squad, and friends came easily from that. For Arran it had been different. He’d never liked football or soccer or cricket, whatever it was the other boys were playing. People rarely guessed that he and Skye were twins—though technically, Nell corrected herself, they weren’t. She eased her arm out from under Skye’s body. As part of the IVF procedure, both embryos had been placed in her uterus at the same time. People did that more frequently back then, returning two or three or even four zygotes to the womb at once, so as to maximise their chances of success. Perhaps, Nell wondered, it would have been better if they’d done separate transfers. If they had, and assuming both were successful, Arran and Skye would have simply been siblings, rather than twins. That way maybe no one would have expected Arran to be as sporty as his sister, or Skye to have stayed at school as long as Arran had done.
Nell sighed and rolled over, away from Skye. It was a stupid thought. She and Charlie had been lucky to have children at all, when so many others on the program had been left with nothing to show for all the injections, the scans, the emotional and financial outlay. And Arran was fine. The break-up with Mark had been tough on him, and there were all those years after he dropped out of law school when she feared he’d never settle, never find what it was he wanted to do. But he had eventually, hadn’t he? He seemed to be really enjoying his new job; when he came over for dinner he spoke about it with a light in his eyes. It was ironic but somehow so apt that he’d ended up helping others find their place in society, when he’d taken so long to fit in himself.
And Skye. Lovely, sunny Skye. Nell turned back over and pushed herself up on one elbow so that she could watch her daughter sleeping, just as she’d done when she was a baby. Arran had had colic, but Skye had slept right through his screaming, even though their cribs were side by side. What was it that was troubling her now? Something was going on. Anything that had to be discussed in the middle of the night must be more than a mere hypothetical. Were she and Hamish having problems? They fought occasionally—or rather, Skye argued with him—but they’d been together for two years now, since Skye was twenty-four. Maybe Hamish had proposed, and she was getting cold feet? Nell lay back down and closed her eyes. Had she felt any doubts before marrying Charlie? She couldn’t be certain, but her gut told her no. He would have saved her on that ferry, she thought, sinking into sleep. Greece or Scotland, Charlie would have got them all safely to the shore.
9
Zia turned his key in the lock and slowly pushed the front door open. Without meaning to, he held his breath, listening intently for any sound of activity. There was none.
Farid pushed past him, banging his schoolbag against the back of Zia’s legs. ‘Madar?’ he called, thumping into the kitchen of their small flat. ‘Madar?’
Zia ran after him, but quietly, like a panther. ‘Don’t yell,’ he hissed, catching his younger brother by the arm. ‘She might be asleep.’
Farid looked up at him, dark eyes angry. ‘Then I will wake her up. She should come to school to meet us, like she used to.’
‘She needs to sleep,’ said Zia, though he didn’t really know why. It was the explanation his father gave whenever she didn’t join them for dinner or head out to the market in the morning. Zia couldn’t actually remember the last time his mother had been to the market. She had gone every day when they first arrived in Australia, getting up early to secure the cheapest groceries and the freshest produce, but lately it seemed to be his father who did the shopping, leaving after Zia and Farid had gone to school, returning more often than not with the wrong cut of lamb or overripe fruit.
Farid wrenched his arm from Zia’s grasp and made a dash for their parents’ bedroom. Before Zia could stop him, he had barged through the door and thrown himself onto the bed, where he curled up against his mother. She didn’t look as if she had been asleep, Zia thought, following his brother into the darkened room. Her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. As Farid nestled against her she roused herself to stroke his hair, but didn’t look at him.
‘Madar,’ Zia whispered in Farsi, ‘do you need anything?’
His mother slowly turned her face towards him, blinking to bring him into focus. ‘Zia,’ she said, almost formally. ‘There is washing to be hung out. I meant to do it this morning, but . . .’ Her voice trailed off. With an effort she went on, ‘And if you could perhaps start the dinner? Your father should be home soon.’
Zia lingered at the foot of the bed, waiting to see if she would ask him about school or even tell him to do his homework, but she had gone back to gazing at the ceiling. Beside her, Farid was sucking his thumb. For a moment, Zia felt an urge to lie down with them, to bury his face in his mother’s neck as he had when he was little, to close his eyes, to smell her rosewater and face cream while she told him the ancient story of Simurg and the pomegranates and the god who had three sons. ‘Yet I am richer,’ she had always added at the end of the story, leaning down to kiss him on the forehead, ‘for I have four,’ and he would wriggle under her lips until she tickled him. It had been a long time
since he had heard the tale.
The washing was all tangled. His mother had obviously thrown in everything she could find, turned it on and then left it, overwhelmed. Zia had to strain to drag it from the ancient machine, and as he hauled out a jumper entwined with a pair of jeans the heavy lid fell and hit him across one bicep, the blow resonating down to the bone. He rubbed the area ruefully. Last week the lid had got him across his shoulders.
Zia’s arm still ached as he stretched up to hang the wet clothes on the washing line. Still, at least he was alone in the communal courtyard today, no one else here to blow smoke at him or mutter about terrorists. Zia didn’t like living so close to other people. The smells of their cooking clogged the hallways; their arguments came through his bedroom walls late at night. Worst of all, there was nowhere for him and Farid to play save for this grubby concrete square littered with cigarette butts. The one time they’d tried to kick their football here—a real football, not the red egg-shaped one that all the boys at school were so in love with—the smokers had laughed and the women hanging out their washing had shouted at them to go away.
Shiraz had been different, Zia thought, shaking out one of his father’s shirts and remembering to peg it from the bottom. There were many gardens in Shiraz, parks and fruit trees that no one minded if he climbed or kicked his ball against. They had had a proper home there. He’d had his own room, rather than having to share with Farid, who wheezed at night and sometimes wet the bed. There had always been someone visiting—cousins, aunts, friends—someone for his father to talk to or his mother to laugh and gossip with over coffee. There had been his older brothers.
