The Alphabet Sisters Read online

  He’d sounded wary on the phone. Exhausted. But he’d agreed to make the long drive from the station he was working at, to hear what it was she had to say. That counted for something, surely.

  The problem was she didn’t really know what she wanted to say to him. She jumped as a flicker of light was reflected against the pale bark of the gum trees. Car headlights. Matthew? Her heart started beating faster as the car came closer.…

  Three hours later the peace of the farmhouse was broken by the sound of a long, shuddering snore from the other side of the double bed.

  “Shut up, Matthew,” Carrie said crossly into the darkness. She gave him a sharp pinch, which caused a moment’s break in his loud snoring, before he settled back into it again. She sat up looking at him. Well, that had gone really well. It had been after midnight by the time he’d finally arrived. She’d worn a track in the veranda from her pacing, had nearly leaped out of her skin each time car headlights appeared down the road. By the time he had rung to say he’d had serious engine trouble and been stuck on the side of the road trying to fix it for the past two hours, she’d been beside herself with worry. She’d also been a little drunk from the red wine she’d been sipping out of nervousness. When he’d finally arrived, she’d wanted to fly at him in anger and frustration, but the thought of Anna and Bett laughing at her and her broken marriage had kept her voice low and sweet. She greeted him, offered him a beer.

  She had led the way into their living room, smiling as he took a chair—not his usual chair, she noticed—offering him a sandwich, some cheese. It was too late for the dinner she’d prepared. He’d shaken his head, watching her closely, as nervous of her as she was of him, she realized.

  “So how was work today?” she asked cheerily, even though the sight of him—dirty, exhausted, his clothes covered in dust—supplied her with the answer.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. She knew the gesture well. It meant he was tired, and it also meant he was feeling impatient. “Can we cut to the chase here, Carrie? What did you want to talk about?”

  He was angry, too. And she supposed he had every right to be. She’d kicked him out of the house after all. Hung up on him each time he’d called. Returned his letters unopened and unanswered. She felt a dart of shame that, yes, perhaps he had some right to be cross with her. So what did she want to talk to him about? She didn’t know anymore. “Us, I suppose.”

  “What else have you got to say? I thought you’d made yourself pretty clear.”

  She took some heart from the fact he had at least come tonight, long drive, long day and all. She decided to tell him the truth. “It’s about Bett.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair again.

  “She’s staying on in the Valley. She’s taken a job at the local paper again.” She debated whether to tell him about Lola’s musical, then decided against it. This was about Bett, not Lola.

  “Has she? Good for her.”

  “So how does it make you feel?”

  “About her job? Carrie, it’s got nothing to do with me. It’s up to Bett where she wants to work.”

  “I don’t mean about her job. I mean how do you feel about Bett being close by again.”

  She saw a flash of something—temper?—canceling out the exhaustion in his eyes. “Carrie, I feel what I felt when you asked me about Bett three weeks ago. Six months ago. A year ago. I can’t keep telling you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He raised his voice at her then. “Because you don’t want to believe me. And I can’t do anything about that. Jesus, Carrie, it’s like banging my head against a brick wall, and I’m sick of it—” He stopped there. “Listen, can I have a shower, have a coffee maybe? Can we talk about it after that?”

  She turned her back, shrugged. She saw in the reflection in the window that he stood and looked at her for a few moments, before he went to the bathroom. She took her drink out onto the veranda, waited for him to join her, calming herself, preparing the words again, hoping to make herself understood this time. Twenty minutes later she was still waiting.

  She had walked into their bedroom and found him asleep on top of the bed, half undressed. He’d been so exhausted it seemed he hadn’t even gotten to the shower, simply lain down on their bed and fallen asleep. And he was still asleep. No amount of clanging saucepans or poking had stirred him. She had felt a ripple of guilt looking down at him, at the boyish face asleep on the pillow, the light brown hair tousled, dirty.

  Staring at him in the bed beside her now, she was reminded of earlier days, in the first year of their marriage, when he’d arrive home from similar busy, dirty days working out on farms and stations. She’d greet him at the door with a kiss, putting her finger on his mouth to stop him talking, leading him into the bathroom where she’d slowly undress him, and then herself, moving him into the shower, still silent, now kissing him on the lips, on the shoulder, on the brown skin of his arms, on his flat brown belly, lower down until he would be groaning against the side of the shower. And after that it would be into the bedroom, where he would return the favor, no longer tired, stroking and caressing her, until she could hardly bear it and would pull him down into her. The memory stirred her now, and she moved in closer to him.

  “Matthew?”

  She touched his back through his T-shirt. No response. She ran her hand down his side, and he flinched. She waited, tried again, moving lower toward his crotch. He muttered something, moved away, lying on his front, out of reach.

  “Forget it, then,” she said loudly, crossly. When had this happened? The two of them who had barely been able to keep their hands off each other since the first night they met. She thumped the pillow in frustration. How had she made such a mess of things?

  She fought back tears, fanning angry feelings instead. If it hadn’t been for Lola, the way she had started talking incessantly about how much she missed the three of them, how she had dreamed about the Alphabet Sisters again, she’d never have been in this position. Lola had never said it, but Carrie knew what was beneath it all—it was all Carrie’s fault, for stealing Matthew from Bett. If she had never done that, they would all be living happily ever after, wouldn’t they? She hadn’t been able to get the guilty feelings out of her mind, at the same time that Matthew’s work started taking him away for stretches at a time. When he was home, they seemed to fight. And not just about having a baby anymore, either. They’d found plenty of other subject matter instead. Finally, in a fit of temper two months earlier, she had said they needed a trial separation.

  He’d been shocked. “Why?”

  “Because it’s not right. We shouldn’t have got together. You should have stayed with Bett.”

  “Carrie, we’ve been through this. I fell in love with you. It would have been wrong for me to stay with her.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe that’s what you should have done. It was a test of your love for Bett.”

  “What?”

  “You know, like a temptation. And you failed. And now we’re both being punished.”

  “What are you talking about? Have you had religious cranks staying at the motel?”

  She couldn’t explain it any better. And then he’d gotten angry, and they had rowed about all sorts of other things, until they had both been glad when he had stormed out and she had told him not to come back.

  At the back of her mind were Bett and Anna’s voices. “We told you so.” She couldn’t bear it. What a horrible, awful, unfair mess, she thought, curling tighter into a ball on the very edge of the bed.

  Beside her Matthew gave another loud snore. It was all she could do not to smother him with her pillow.

  In her room at the motel, Anna was lying on her bed, with Ellen tucked in beside her fast asleep. Anna’s eyes were wide open as she stared into space. Her skin felt clammy, her stomach was churning, she felt exhausted but unable to sleep. She was in the country, the fresh air—wasn’t she supposed to feel better? Truth was, she’d never felt so tired or so awf
ul in her life.

  She’d had another fight with Glenn on the phone that evening. More guilt, more blaming, more heated words, all in hushed tones so that Ellen, in the bath, couldn’t hear. She’d come out wrapped in a towel, and asked, “Is that Daddy?” At Anna’s nod, she’d reached for the phone and settled herself on the bed, chattering away to him, all the solemn little phrases tumbling out of her. “Is work busy?” “Is Singapore hot like here?” “Will you bring me a present when you come home?” As if things were perfectly normal with them all. And then the worst of it. “Will you say hello to Julie for me, too?” Anna had nearly been sick. Ellen was friendly enough with her father’s lover to send her messages.

  When Ellen had handed back the phone, Anna had barely been able to speak to him, only keeping her voice civil because she knew Ellen was listening to every word. Afterward, she’d wanted to throw the mobile across the room, hoping to see it smash, the parts fly into all corners. On the verge of doing that, in sight of Ellen or not, it had started ringing again. Not Glenn this time, but her booking agent, Roz. She apologized for ringing so late, but explained that a big job had come up from one of her past clients. Was Anna available?

  “They’ve specifically asked for you. It’s a good gig, Anna. You could do it in your sleep.” It was the voice-over for three separate teenage sex-education videos, as well as a series of radio ads directed at parents and teachers. If the response was good, there could even be follow-up commercials. “Top rates, too. For a few days’ work, maximum. Can you do it?”

  Anna had massaged her temple with her spare hand. She’d promised Ellen they would have a long break together. God knows they both needed it. But this job would pay well. Which would mean she wouldn’t need to take Glenn’s money, for a little while at least. The thought made her feel good. “Of course I can,” she’d said.

  Ellen murmured in her sleep. Anna pressed a kiss on her head. Lola’s ban on any talk of Matthew came to mind. Was that the key to life? Simply ignoring any difficult subject? Should she have ignored the fact that Glenn had become bored with her? Just kept on smiling, attending social functions with him, perhaps taken a lover or two of her own? Ignored the calls from Julie, the intimacy in her phone conversations with Glenn proof that their relationship had changed from colleagues to lovers? Just kept smiling, smiling, smiling? Until her face hurt and her body ached with the tension?

  She’d managed to avoid the subject here beautifully so far. She had skillfully answered her parents’ few questions about him, deftly explaining his absences from these home visits, murmuring something about work pressures and promotions and overseas trips. There was no risk of Carrie and Bett asking after him—they’d made their feelings about Glenn clear three years ago. She’d felt Lola’s eyes on her, as ever, waiting for the questions, but so far, nothing.

  Not that she would answer them anyway. “Yes, Lola, Bett and Carrie were right that night. I did make a very bad decision years ago, and I’ve lived with it ever since. I did ignore all my own instincts, went ahead with a marriage to someone who I knew only cared about my face and my body, not my heart, definitely not my mind or soul.”

  But how did she fix the unfixable? Did she go to Bett and Carrie and admit that they had been right? That the terrible things they had shouted at her, the night of their big fight, had actually turned out to be true? That her marriage was over, that she was exactly what they accused her of becoming—cold, fake, self-obsessed? Would they say it had served her right, that she had made her bed when she married Glenn for his money, his social standing, his contacts?

  In her arms, Ellen gave a little wriggle. Anna held her tighter and shut her eyes, tired of thinking, willing sleep to come to her, too.

  Matthew was gone by the time Carrie woke up the next morning. She looked for a note, an apology. Nothing.

  “That’s why!” she shouted out the door, to no one but the birds in the paddocks opposite. “You don’t talk to me; you don’t tell me anything anymore. It’s no wonder it’s ruined.” She burst into tears and ran back into their bedroom, grabbing the pillow he had slept on and sobbing until it was wet under her cheek.

  Chapter Ten

  Bett tried out her new swivel chair again, giving it a little spin and ending up facing Rebecca’s office across the corridor. A stack of newspapers lay on the desk beside her. She’d already skimmed through them, enjoying every article, getting up-to-date with the ins and outs of Clare Valley life. There were stories about water shortages next to photos of largest-ever pumpkins, schoolchildren’s charity efforts alongside politicians handshaking.

  She’d had a long meeting with Rebecca that morning. Apart from writing general news and feature stories, Rebecca wanted her to write the editorial for a new project, a twelve-page supplement on the Valley’s tourist attractions, sponsored by the tourism commission. “They’ve asked for lots of color, all the sights and smells and tastes, so I want you and the photographer to actually try everything out, so you can write it from the visitor’s perspective.”

  “You want me to do it? The new girl?” It was a dream assignment.

  Rebecca laughed. “Yes, I know. I’d rather be doing it myself. Let me tell you, being editor’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Bett had returned to her desk, feeling buoyed and enthusiastic about a writing project for the first time in months. She started drawing up a list of subjects: the wine-tasting tours, the gourmet cooking course in one of the Clare Valley’s grand country homes, the overnight sleeping under the stars experience at the Valley’s oldest sheep station, the guided historical walk along the path of the old railway line.… This was more like it, she thought. She wrote the lead sentence of an article in her head, as she often did for practice. Bett Quinlan, thirty-two, announced today that she was very happy to be back working for a real newspaper.

  She had picked up the phone to dial one of the tour operators when a voice behind her made her jump. “Bett Quinlan, as I live and breathe.” It was Neil, the gray-haired sports reporter who’d been with the paper since it started. “It’s great to see you. Welcome back on board.”

  She stood and hugged him. “Great to see you, too, Neil.” It had been good to see lots of her old colleagues. They’d asked after London, after her family, normal things. No one had mentioned Matthew yet.

  “I’ve been hearing all about your grandmother’s musical. Don’t suppose you’ve got a part for an old fellow like me?” He burst into the first line of “The Sound of Music.”

  “Auditions are on tomorrow night. Why don’t you come along?”

  “You know, I just might. I wouldn’t mind treading the boards one more time.” He gave a quick little soft-shoe shuffle before he walked away.

  Rebecca came out of her office. “I’m thinking about coming along myself.”

  “You’re kidding. Do you want to be in it?”

  “Of course not. But I wouldn’t want to miss the chance of seeing some of the locals auditioning. Much better than watching those reality shows on telly. Now then, Hildie’s just come in, the photographer you’ll be doing the tourism supplement with.” She poked her head into one of the side rooms and called out. “Hildie, are you around? Come and meet our new reporter.” Then she lowered her voice. “You might remember him, actually. It was before my time in the Valley, but he used to work here before he went to Melbourne for a few years. I snapped him up when he came back last year.” She smiled over Bett’s head at the new arrival.

  “Bett Quinlan, all the way from London, I’d like you to meet Daniel Hilder.”

  Bett turned and felt the color run from her face. Her one-night stand had just walked into the room.

  In the gym at the country club, Anna looked up at the clock. She’d been on the treadmill for only ten minutes, and she was already breathless, feeling out of shape after just a few days away from exercise. She could almost hear her personal trainer’s voice. “A little every day keeps age and fat away.” Too bad. She could do nothing about her age, and it w
asn’t as if she needed to lose weight at the moment. If anything, she needed to put some on. Irony of ironies—now the pressure was off, now that Glenn was gone and she could put on some weight if she wanted, she wasn’t hungry. She could let herself go completely if she wanted. It wasn’t as if there was another man on the sidelines dying to see her naked body.

  “Hello, Anna.”

  She turned. It was Richard Lawrence, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, a towel over his shoulder. It was the first time she’d seen him since the morning after Lola’s party. He certainly looked much fresher today. Taller than she remembered. Still wearing his glasses. His hair was cropped very short. He looked quite like an athlete, she thought. Like a marathon runner, in fact. Lean and spare.

  “Richard, how are you?” She coolly reached forward and turned off the treadmill, gradually adjusting her steps as the belt slowed. She’d always taken care stepping off this kind of equipment, especially since Bett had rung her in Sydney some years before and recounted her humiliating first and last visit to this gym. She had mistimed stepping off the treadmill and been catapulted backward onto the rowing machine, landing on another woman and pushing her onto the floor as well. It was one of Anna’s favorite Bett stories. She had nearly cried laughing while Bett was telling her.

  Richard smiled. “I’m well, thank you. I didn’t realize you liked to work out here, too.”

  “Occasionally. But I’m not in the mood this morning. I think I’ll try the natural-air approach and walk back to the motel instead.”

  “Do you mind if I join you? I’ve been hoping to have the chance to talk to you again.”

  She stood in front of him, a towel in her hands. Years ago she had decided to get it out into the open when men made approaches to her like this. “Really, Richard, you’re being very forward. Are you trying to pick me up?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said calmly. “You’re certainly very beautiful, and I like that spark in your eye, but I like to be able to have a conversation with my lovers, not just look at them. So it’s probably too early to tell.”