The Things We Never Knew

by Megan Mayfair

  “Keep it; that’s fine.”

  He frowned. “You look a little pale. Can I get you a glass of water?”

  She shook her head. “No, thank you, I’m fine. I’m a bit jet lagged, that’s all.”

  “I’m Harry, by the way.” He held out a hand.

  “Yeah. I saw you inside the café.” Despite being focussed on seeing Michelle, it hadn’t been hard to notice her cute colleague and certainly up close, his broad shoulders, lean frame and defined jaw were even more attractive. “I’m Bebe.” She shook his outstretched hand.

  “That’s a cool name. Where have you flown in from?”

  “London.”

  “I love London. Are you here for work or a holiday?” he asked.

  “I’m doing a short contract while I sort out a visa to go to New York. But I’m from here originally.”

  “Yeah?” He sounded confused. “I wouldn’t have picked that with your accent.”

  “We moved when I was a baby. I’ve lived all over the world.” Why was she telling him her life story?

  “I’ve always wanted to go to New York,” he said. “Bucket-list stuff for me.”

  “It’s amazing. I’m attending a design Master Class there.” For goodness sake. How many details did she need to tell him? Maybe she should just tell him about Michelle while she was at it.

  “That’s cool. I’d better get back inside. Lunch rush and all that.” His feet remained firmly planted though, as if he were reluctant to move.

  Perfect time to end the conversation before too much else tumbled out of her mouth. “Thanks for checking up on me.”

  “Anytime.” He smiled and walked back towards the café. “Hope you get over the jet lag soon,” he called back with another grin.

  She rubbed the bridge of her nose. So did she. The lack of sleep was beginning to do strange things to her thoughts.

  At her desk in the studio, she found herself staring down at the pencil in her left hand. A coincidence, or something more?

  She stared at the empty page and took a deep breath.

  Her headache hadn’t eased up, despite the coffee, paracetamol, and a never-ending supply of Cole’s fragrant tea collection.

  Her lack of attentiveness was even wearing the usually patient Cole down, especially when she accidentally deleted a brief from the files and sent him the wrong sketches.

  “Where is your mind today?” he asked, tapping at his laptop, trying to retrieve the deleted files.

  After apologising profusely, she tried to buckle down and focus, yet her mind wandered back to the card. The card that had turned her life upside down.

  She hadn’t seen it since they’d arrived in Melbourne, but she bet she knew where it was. It was always in the same place. Perhaps she needed to look at it again.

  Twirling her pencil between her thumb and forefinger, she made a decision to look for it when she got home if her mother was still out.

  After sketching an ‘I’m sorry’ note to Cole featuring a bulldog holding a rose in its mouth—that made him laugh—she caught the train back to the apartment, kicked off her ankle boots, and shrugged off her blazer.

  Surveying the neatly stocked refrigerator, she chose a ready-made meal and put it in the microwave while she changed into a large T-shirt that she’d bought at a market outside of Milan. The original emerald green colour had faded and the seam was fraying at the edges, but slipping the soft fabric over her head always made her feel comfortable and relaxed. That was the thing about not having a permanent address. It was finding the little things to make any place home.

  The microwave made a loud dinging noise that irritated her headache. Standing at the marble bench in the kitchen, she forked spoonfuls of paneer masala and saffron rice into her mouth as she listened to the trams trundle past outside the window. They sounded nice, quieter than a train, and the old-fashioned bell that dinged as they stopped had a nostalgic tone.

  Pouring herself a glass of crisp white wine to relax her mind and help her sleep later, she sat on the balcony. She ran her hand over mint, which was growing in a small black pot. The smell lingered in the warm autumn evening and took her back to travels of Vietnam with her mother where each dish was generously drizzled with mint leaves, leaving everything tasting fresh and zesty.

  And now their travels had brought them back to Melbourne. Back to where she was born and had lived the first three months of her life before her mother had taken them to London.

  What could her life have been like if she’d been raised here with the backdrop of the trams, large parks, funny little alleyways and unpredictable weather?

  How had it been for Michelle growing up here?

  It had been strange to see her in person, and while the chain of events had left her on edge and unfocussed for the rest of the day, she couldn’t help but come back to one point.

  She’d liked Michelle. She’d been friendly and open. Perhaps not surprising, given the amount she shared on social media. Her Australian accent had seemed stronger than she’d ever imagined, and she was much shorter in person. Her face had been a little rounder and fuller, making her look younger. Sometimes on social media, her photos seemed heavily airbrushed and full of pouty lips and contoured cheeks. More glamorous, yes, but Bebe had liked the natural version she’d met today.

  She ran her finger across the screen of her phone and flicked through Michelle’s feed, hovering over a photo of Michelle with a number of people, all of whom Bebe had pieced together as Fitzgeralds.

  Staring at the photo of Michelle’s father, she locked the phone as her thoughts of earlier that day rushing back to her. She’d been right. Too many people could be hurt with what was little more than a hunch.

  Yet, she still couldn’t get the thought from her head. It was time to find the card. Maybe that would help. Perhaps it wasn’t as strange as she’d remembered, or perhaps looking at it with fresh eyes would help unravel the mystery.

  Re-entering the apartment and locking the balcony door behind her, she crept into her mother’s bedroom. She opened the doors of the ornately carved wooden wardrobe and noted some of the few but outstanding pieces of clothing in her mother’s collection. A beautifully tailored blazer, a black woollen coat, two pairs of slim-fitting cigarette trousers, two crisp white shirts, a French navy crepe dress with an elegant boat neck, and an evening gown made from a glittering fabric that Bebe loved to touch.

  But she wasn’t here to admire the craftsmanship and elegance of her mother’s capsule collection tonight. What she wanted was behind these items, hidden way back on a shelf. That was where it always was, no matter where on the planet they had landed over the last twenty-something years.

  She slipped her hand along the shelf, searching for a wooden box wrapped in a soft scarf. Sliding it out, she carefully unwound the vibrant fabric and flipped the lid of the box open to examine the items.

  Her mother wasn’t sentimental. She claimed she didn’t need things to remind her of people or places—the memories and feelings were enough. Yet, there were a few things that were kept securely in this small box.

  The box itself had come from Morocco when they’d visited there when Bebe was maybe five years old. Or was it six? Whenever it was, she vividly remembered the trip, and especially the weather. After living in London, the blinding, all-encompassing heat had wrapped her up.

  Procured from a crowded street market her mother had taken her to, the box was wooden with a silver inlay. Despite being wood, it was light and the clasp was secure. Although, there were a few dints in it thanks to all the moves they’d made.

  As if testament to her mother’s view of the unimportance of mementoes in one’s life, there were very few items inside.

  Bebe sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled out the first piece of paper. Her mother’s birth certificate, nestled along with her passport. Bebe’s birth certificate was underneath it (she kept her own passport in her handbag). Unfolding it, she ran her finger over the key information and looked at the name of her
father. Arne Andersson. She’d never known him—the name was that of a virtual stranger.

  Her eyes moved to a thin, silver ring that sat inside the box, along with a piece of rose quartz and a gold St Christopher’s medal on a short chain. Bebe had no idea why any of those items were in there, and, given she hadn’t been shown them, she’d never asked her mother about them. She’d never seen her mother wear the ring, nor the chain, and they were separated from the jewellery she did wear on a regular basis. Were they hers, or had they belonged to someone else? Arne? Her parents? A trusted friend? Someone else?

  The items were still as strange and seemingly unconnected to anything as they had been when she’d first stumbled upon the box while looking for a belt to borrow.

  She picked up the photographs first. Some were of Bebe’s late grandparents, and others a series of snaps charting Bebe’s age across different places. Four years old in London, five years old in Milan, seven years old in, perhaps, Copenhagen? So much of her childhood was a blur of places. Some they spent a lot of time in, like London, or others had been for a few months, like St Petersburg or Helsinki, where her mother had fulfilled short contracts.

  As Bebe flipped through the snapshots, she gazed at her mother, in awe of the strength and courage associated with raising a child on her own in foreign lands while studying and working. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal as a kid. After all, she’d known nothing else, but as she’d grown, she’d realised it couldn’t have been easy to juggle high-pressure work commitments, a young daughter, and the constant movement of schools and apartments.

  She flicked through the photos until she found a faded and dog-eared photograph of a man on a motorcycle. Arne Andersson. Her father. He conjured up thoughts of Nordic homelands, and certainly explained the fair hair and pale eyes they seemed to share, but otherwise, they seemed nothing alike. She couldn’t see her nose, or the shape of her face or her eyes in either of her parents.

  Her mother told her Arne had been killed in an accident before she was born, but other than that, she knew next to nothing of the man and as she grew, she occasionally asked questions about him, but was met with changes of topic, or short answers that gave no further information.

  “Did Dad have any family in Australia?” Bebe had asked one morning as they rode the Tube together on the way to her school in London. She’d been watching an older couple with a small child rugged up in a knitted hat and matching scarf. The child was sitting on the lap of the man, and had called him “grandpa” several times as part of an in-depth conversation about whether chickens could fly.

  Her own grandparents had died when she was a small child, and without her father’s parents, it seemed like she and her mother were very alone in this world.

  “No.” Her mother had been adamant and turned back to a book in a way that suggested the matter was over.

  But it wasn’t over for Bebe. “No brothers or sisters?”

  “He was an only child.”

  “No cousins?”

  Her mother had put the book in her lap and looked at Bebe. “None of which I’m aware are in Australia. There may have been some in Sweden. His parents migrated from there when he was small. Now, I thought you were revising your notes for your literature assessment.”

  Bebe had shrugged, removed her book from her bag, and continued her schoolwork while still watching the small child interact with his grandparents opposite, a warm, loving glow in the older couple’s eyes as they entertained him. That sort of relationship with extended family had eluded her and, given her mother’s responses, seemed like it always would.

  Yet something didn’t click.

  Staring at the photograph now of her father, Bebe’s questions were still unanswered. A name on a birth certificate and a photograph, and perhaps his fair colouring, were the only things she had of him.

  She put her hand in the box and removed the last item: a card with a floral arrangement on the front. It looked old-fashioned and yellow with age.

  She opened and read the note again.

  Petra. I know you want the world, but if you ever need anything, I’m here.

  And it was signed.

  Greg Fitzgerald.

  It was still there. Her mother had kept it for all these years.

  She turned back to the photos and peered closely at the last one in the pile: her mother, young and dressed in a black turtleneck top and grey, A-line skirt, standing in front of a giant computer. Two men, one of whom was Arne, flanked her. He was looking at the camera and smiling. He had a nice smile, but in the photo, her mother was looking directly at the other man who, after many years of searching and piecing things together, Bebe had come to learn was Greg Fitzgerald. He was also looking at the camera, a grin on his face and his arm around her mother’s shoulders.

  Having seen Michelle in person, she could see her similarities to her father in clearer detail. They shared the same shape nose for sure, and there was a similarity around the eyes.

  She gasped. Greg was gripping a pencil in his left hand. She’d never noticed that before. Michelle’s words came rushing back at her and she shoved the contents back in the box, wound the scarf around it, and pushed it back on the shelf in her mother’s room.

  She climbed into bed and rolled onto her side, digging her head deeper into the cool linen pillowcase and shutting her eyes tightly to avoid any light from the outside street lamps filtering in and further aggravating her head.

  And to keep the whirling of thoughts as grounded as possible as she contemplated exactly why Greg Fitzgerald had written that card, and why her unsentimental mother had kept it.

  Chapter 7

  “I know you!”

  Michelle glanced up from stacking cups and locked eyes with a man. He was about her age, tanned and muscular. He had messy, dark blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes. Workman style overalls sat over a blue fitted T-shirt that appeared to have been chosen to highlight his eyes and show off toned, sun-kissed arms.

  Or perhaps he’d thrown it on that morning and the combination magically worked. His hashtag on Instagram? #hottradesman.

  As much as she could appreciate his physical attributes, she had no idea who he was. “I’m sorry …” Would he offer a name or some detail to help fill in the blanks?

  “You’re Michelle Fitzgerald!”

  “I am.”

  Oh no. Her heart sank. Had one of her brothers gotten into a dispute with him over some money? Steve, in particular, could get a little argumentative with people on worksites.

  He held out a hand to her over the counter, accompanied by a grin far too friendly for someone seeking revenge or retribution. “Leon Marek.”

  She shook his hand. Leon Marek? Her jaw dropped, and she hurriedly clasped it shut again despite her stunned disbelief. It couldn’t be.

  Leon Marek had been a plump kid at her primary school who never seemed to say anything to anyone. Until grade three, she’d wondered if he could talk at all. By grade four, bigger kids would steal his order from the canteen, and she remembered sneaking him half of her doughnut as a gesture of goodwill. By grade six, Michelle hadn’t really noticed him at all. She’d been too focussed on the boys playing footy at lunchtime and batting her eyelids at them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognise you. How are you, Leon?”

  “I’m good. You look exactly the same.” His grin widened.

  “You don’t” was what she wanted to say, but she managed to hold her tongue to prevent herself asking how he’d gone from dorky kid to suburban Adonis. Talk about ugly duckling to gorgeous swan. She murmured a vague agreement.

  “I heard you were in Canada.” He furrowed his brow in confusion. “Studying or working or something?”

  “I was, but I’m back now. I did a bit of uni and some ski instructing. How did you hear that?” How long could she gloss over her multiple failures before people started to see the cracks in her story? Or had one of her family members opened their big mouths? That was perhaps even more likely.

  “I occasi
onally see Steve on some jobs. I’m a locksmith now.”

  “Really?” That would explain the overalls and how he knew about Canada. Steve possibly had the biggest mouth in the family. “And Steve is okay to work with?” she added, hesitantly.

  “Yeah! He’s a great guy. A bit of a perfectionist, but I get that. Do the job right or don’t do it all, that’s what I say.”

  Phew. “How long have you been a locksmith?”

  “I started my apprenticeship as soon as I finished year twelve so what, five years?” He scratched his head.

  “That’s cool. Do you enjoy it?”

  He nodded. “It’s good. How long have you been working here? I swear I’ve been in here heaps of times, but I’ve never seen you.”

  “I only started a week ago. Would you like a coffee? Sorry, that’s why you’ve come in, I imagine.”

  “It was,” he said, rubbing his neck. “I got distracted. It’s really good to see you again. How long has it been?”

  A customer stood behind Leon and coughed, loudly, as if to gain Michelle’s attention and indicate how much of an inconvenience their little school reunion was.

  Leon turned around. “Sorry, mate. I don’t know what I want so you order ahead of me. I don’t want to hold you up.”

  The man gave a relieved nod, and Michelle took his order. While she was making his coffee, Leon moved to the side and continued to talk to her. “Do your parents still live near the school?”

  “They do.”

  “I remember you lived the closest to the school and were always late.”

  Michelle gave a shrug. “That was just me, I think. I’m not great with keeping track of time. Are your parents still out that way?” She had a vague recollection of a cheery set of plump parents with the same fair hair as Leon's, and like the Fitzgeralds, a tribe of loud children chowing down on muesli bars and crammed into a people-mover.

  “Yep. They are indeed. Surrounded by grandkids now.”