Lola's Secret Page 4

  The sobbing stopped. ‘I don’t care, I told you. I don’t want to meet them again and I don’t want to spend Christmas with them. Ever!’

  His temper flowed back, patience and understanding instantly wiped away. ‘Fine. Fine, Ellen. You’ve made yourself perfectly clear. You’ve made your bed, and now you can lie in it. Neither of us will have Christmas with Denise and her family. You win. We’ll stay here and we’ll have a horrible lonely time and I hope that will make you happy, because nothing else seems to!’

  His shout was met with silence. He felt a rush of fury combined with self-loathing. Oh, yes, he was really being the adult in this relationship. He placed his hand on the door, took a deep breath, spoke again, in quieter, calmer tones. ‘Ellen, I’m sick of this. Day after day, all this fighting. But I can’t do it any more tonight. Stay in there, Ellen. Stay in there until you realise just how hurtful and selfish you’re being —’ he hesitated for just a moment, ‘and how much your mother would hate to see it. Think about that.’

  He heard her gasp, followed immediately by more sobbing. He’d gone too far. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Ellen?’ No answer. ‘Ellen?’ Nothing. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for saying that. But —’ He ran out of words then, too. Holding his hand against the door for one more minute, knowing there was no sense knocking again, no sense trying to talk reason to her, even less chance of stopping her crying, he had no option but to walk away, to go and sit in the living room and stare out across the skyline.

  Denise was due any moment. He’d promised her everything was going to be all right with Ellen, that she was just going through a stage. He’d sensed Denise’s subtle withdrawal from him recently, perhaps a slight doubt about him, about them, the thought that perhaps it was all too much trouble, more trouble than it was worth. It was then he’d realised how much she meant to him. He didn’t want to lose her. He didn’t want to upset Ellen. But he was in an impossible situation. It seemed he couldn’t please one without upsetting the other. And what a mess he’d made of it all just now.

  For God’s sake, he thought, standing again and pouring himself a glass of wine from the bottle chilling ready for Denise. He was a businessman. He had a staff of forty working efficiently and profitably for him. He’d managed equally successful offices in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney. He was renowned for his quick decision-making, his strong work ethic, for being tough but fair. He had enviable client lists, more work than his agency could handle. Yet he was no match for a twelve-year-old girl, even if she was his adored daughter. What else had his mother said to him in her recent pep talk? Think of it as a campaign, darling. Step by step, battle by battle, you’ll both get to Armistice Day eventually. If he had just won this latest battle, it was a hollow victory.

  The doorbell rang. Finding a smile from somewhere, he walked over, trying to decide how to break the news of this latest setback to Denise.

  In her room, Ellen didn’t know whether she wanted to stop crying or sob even louder. She didn’t know whether to feel good that she’d made her dad lose control like that, made him actually apologise to her, or to feel guilty that she’d upset him so much that he had lost it. She didn’t know how she felt about anything any more. It was like a whole mass of feelings was all churning inside of her, out of her control, like a volcano inside her body that erupted again and again, without warning. Always at her father. She picked up the photo – a copy of the one in the living room – and put it on her bedspread, stroking the glass softly. Her mother smiled up at her. She was smiling in all the photos Ellen had of her around the apartment. Ellen only wanted to remember her mother as being happy. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she would remember other things about her too. The games they played. The stories Anna read her. And then, no matter how much Ellen tried to block out the memories, she would remember her mother when she was so sick, in those final weeks. Ellen remembered it all. The whispering, at first. Everyone kept whispering and they would stop talking if they saw Ellen was listening. Then one day she was taken to her and Lola’s favourite spot at the motel, the bench that looked over the vine-covered hill, and her dad and her auntie Bett told her everything. That her mother was very sick and that she wasn’t going to be better and the time they had now was very precious and special.

  Ellen wasn’t sure any more if she remembered the actual funeral or all the times she had replayed it in her mind, adding little details here and there. For the first two years after Anna died, Ellen and her dad had gone back to the Clare Valley on the anniversary of her death. But not the third year. Ellen had been sick with tonsillitis and they’d agreed it was best to stay home in Singapore. On the fourth anniversary, they’d been in the middle of their move to Hong Kong, for her dad’s job. There had been many conversations between Lola and Glenn, and as many conversations between Ellen and Lola.

  ‘Do you think about your mum every day, darling?’ Lola had asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Ellen answered.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Wherever I am. At school, at home, in the park.’

  ‘You see, darling. Your thoughts happen inside you, no matter what’s outside you. Perhaps it’s time for you to start your own special ceremony for Anna, wherever you are at the time, rather than thinking it can only happen here, at her grave, or at the motel where she died.’

  Ellen liked that her great-grandmother wasn’t scared to use words like ‘grave’ and ‘died’. Too many people used strange words with her when they heard that her mother was dead. Passed away. Gone to heaven. In God’s arms. Final resting place. Lola had also gently explained that, in her opinion, Anna was far, far away from the Clare Valley now, in any case. Part of the sky, the stars, the moon, even. ‘That’s the wonderful thing, Ellen. Your mum can be wherever you want her to be, because she’s wherever you are, in your thoughts.’

  That fourth year Ellen and her dad made their own ceremony in Hong Kong, high up in the hotel they’d been staying in until their apartment was ready, looking out over Victoria Harbour. There were skyscrapers all around them, a bustle of ferries, freighters and little boats in the water far below, so many at once it always amazed Ellen that they didn’t keep crashing into each other. They sat at a table right by the window, so high that Ellen felt a bit sick looking down. Her dad ordered two elaborate cocktails for them both, his with champagne, Anna’s favourite drink, and Ellen’s with three different fruit juices, four curly straws, umbrellas and enough fruit that it was more a fruit salad than a cocktail. They made a toast, to Anna and to each other and to everyone back home in Australia, and then her dad let her ring the motel on his mobile phone.

  The whole family was there. She’d talked to Lola and her grandpa and grandma and her two aunties, Carrie and Bett. They all cried and laughed, the way they did whenever they spoke about Anna. Ellen talked to her little cousins too – well, she hadn’t talked to Bett’s twins exactly, as they weren’t born yet, but she insisted Bett hold the receiver against her stomach and she’d shouted down the phone to them.

  Six months after that, she and her dad flew to Adelaide and drove up to the Valley to see everyone, and to meet Zachary and Yvette. All her memories rushed back at her again that day too, seeing Lola, the motel, her grandparents. She didn’t want to leave. But Lola took her to their bench and talked to her in that lovely way she did, saying that even if Ellen was on the other side of the world, it didn’t matter because they all thought about each other all the time, many times every day, even sometimes in the night, and all those thought-waves shot across the sky. They didn’t even need phone lines or satellites or submarine cables. They were magic, and any time Ellen felt an itch, or she sneezed, or hiccupped, or her eye twitched, it was because at that exact moment, all the way across the seas and the countries, Lola or Bett or Carrie, or all three of them, were thinking about her. Ellen was old enough to know Lola was joking, but still, back home in Hong Kong, it was like a little secret any time she did sneeze or hiccup … Maybe there was some truth in it.
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  There was a knock at the door.

  Her father again. ‘Ellen, Denise is here. With her daughter.’

  All her guilt flew out the window immediately. ‘I don’t care! Go away!’

  ‘Ellen, please. I’m sorry. Please.’

  ‘No!’

  She could imagine how horrified Lola would be if she heard Ellen talking to her father like that, but right now, she didn’t care. It was how she felt. Angry and sad and lonely and everything, all mixed up together. And homesick, a feeling like being homesick, for her mum. And for Lola. And for all her family, there, thousands of kilometres away while she was stuck here, stuck in Hong Kong with her dad being evil and some hideous, horrible witch. Not just a witch, a bitch of a woman out there with her fake smiles and fake nails and everything else fake about her trying to push her way into their lives. Well, it wasn’t going to work. Not if Ellen had anything to do with it. She would never, ever, ever be nice to Denise. She’d already had one mother, the best, kindest mother in the world, and she didn’t need another one.

  She put the pillow over her head to try to block out the sound of her father’s voice. After a minute, he went away. She closed her eyes tight and tried to do what Lola had suggested – fill her head with only good thoughts and good memories. Trying not to cry, trying to ignore the murmur of voices from the living room that she could hear despite the pillow, she did everything she could to think of only good things – Lola, her auntie Bett, the funny twins, Carrie and her noisy, happy family. It didn’t help. It just made her wish even more that she was there with them, having fun, laughing and joking and feeling safe and happy and loved. All the things she didn’t feel now.

  Chapter Four

  At home in her renovated farmhouse south of Clare, Carrie was wishing she had never met Matthew, never married him and definitely never had three children with him.

  ‘Delia, stop hitting your sister. Freya, turn that TV down, George is asleep. And, Delia, put your toys away please. I’ve asked you five times already.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pardon, not what. Four times. You’ve asked me four times, not five.’

  ‘And I’ll ask you fifty times if I have to. Go. Now. Do it.’

  ‘Why are you always so cross?’

  ‘Why are you always so naughty?’

  ‘We’re kids. Kids get naughty.’

  Carrie did her best not to scream. Where was Matthew? Off at work, allegedly. How convenient that he always had a lot of work to do whenever she happened to mention that the house had to be cleaned, or the garden needed weeding. Or, like today, when she’d sighed and said she wasn’t sure how on earth she was going to finish making all the relishes and chutneys she’d promised for the school street stall on the weekend, as well as plan for their Christmas trip to visit his family.

  ‘You’ll manage, Carrie. You’re great at that stuff.’ His compliments had long lost their lustre. At first, she’d fallen for them. ‘What’s the point in me cooking dinner?’ he’d say. ‘It’s never as nice as your cooking.’ ‘How come I can never get my shirts as white as you can?’ She’d enjoyed the praise until she realised it was a way of him wriggling out of ever doing his share. She’d had to force him to cook dinner even occasionally, and force herself not to complain when it was invariably barbecued sausages and oven-baked chips. And why did he have to make such a song and dance of it any time he did do some housework? ‘I’ve emptied the bin. Look, Carrie.’ ‘I’ve just swept the verandah.’ ‘The grass looks great now I’ve mowed it, doesn’t it?’ What did he want, a medal? She did all of that and more every day but she didn’t present him with a printed list of completed chores every night when he walked through the door, did she?

  He seemed to take great delight in stirring up the children, too, coming in most nights from work around seven, just as she’d got them fed and bathed and about to settle into quiet pre-bedtime activities. She’d asked him time and time again to keep his voice down, not to start tickling little George or playing chasey with Delia and Freya. ‘Not play with my kids at the end of a long day? They love playing with me, don’t you, kids?’ Of course they agreed with him, and of course they hung off him, squealing with fake terror at his wild piggy-backing, shrieking with pretend-fright when he found them during games of hide and seek, dragging him by the hand to show him this or that. ‘Watch me, Daddy!’, ‘Look at me, Daddy!’ Carrie knew she should have stood by smiling, enjoying the sight of father-children bonding, been glad that she had a husband who took such pleasure in his children. So why did she feel only a burning combination of jealousy and resentment? Because as soon as Matthew came in, the children couldn’t care less about her. She became their maid, their cook, their cleaner, relegated to second-hand citizen.

  She loved them still, of course she did. Always. Hugely. She loved Matthew. Of course she did. Didn’t she? But sometimes … More than sometimes, more often than not lately, she wished she could spray them all with some sort of immobilising potion, not just the children, but Matthew too, just for a day or two, to give her some breathing space. In her day, in her life, in her head. It was the constancy of it all that was killing her. The relentlessness of it all. The feeling of never finishing anything properly. Of being a mouse on a wheel, except the wheel was a conveyor belt of housework, children’s demands, children’s arguments and tears and squabbles. She couldn’t even have a shower without one of them either coming into the bathroom to ask her something, or standing outside knocking until she was forced to turn the water off. ‘Mum?’ ‘Mum?’ Their voices were an endless soundtrack in her head. Delia had wanted to get a cat, and Carrie had shocked her and herself by her vehement ‘No!’ One more voice in the house, asking, begging, pleading for attention and food? At least the cat would have washed itself. Perhaps she should have turned into a cat-lover rather than a mother. But knowing her luck, she’d have ended up with a house full of cats, and turned into a mad old lady smelling of …

  ‘Mum, Freya bit me!’

  ‘So bite her back,’ she said to Delia. The mobile phone rang in her handbag. Someone else wanting something from her? She had nothing else to give. She let it ring out. When it rang again a few minutes later, she let it go unanswered then as well.

  In her small cottage on the northern edge of Clare, Bett put down the phone, cursing under her breath. Where could Carrie be? She had just one last-minute favour to ask her younger sister, something she’d never done. Right now, though, she had no choice. The friend she’d lined up a week ago to be her babysitter this afternoon had just rung, full of apologies, to say her elderly mother had twisted her ankle and needed to go to hospital. ‘Of course I understand,’ Bett had said, also assuring her she’d easily find a replacement.

  Who, though? Carrie was the obvious choice. Not that Bett could tell her why she needed a babysitter. As she tried her sister’s number again, she decided to say she had a medical appointment. There was still no answer.

  ‘Damn,’ she said, loud enough to get the attention of Yvette, wide-eyed and alert as ever, in her bouncer on the floor beside her. Next to her, in his chair, Zach was on the verge of sleep, his eyes fluttering. ‘Sorry, sweethearts,’ she whispered. ‘Mummy’s not cross, I promise.’

  Tiptoeing out of the room with the phone, she dialled another number. Jane, her nearest neighbour. Bett could probably have shouted across the dry yellow paddock that separated their properties, the sound carried so well on hot days like today. As Jane answered, Bett sent up a prayer of thanks. Her neighbour was a stay-at-home mother too, but unlike Bett, she was rarely at home, filling her and her daughter’s days with a constant schedule of playgroups and outings around the Valley.

  ‘Of course I can mind the twins,’ she said, even before Bett had finished asking. ‘See you soon.’

  It was all Bett could do not to throw her arms around Jane and kiss her when she arrived, smiling, her equally smiley three-year-old daughter, Lexie, beside her. Bett signed a hello and got a h
ello back, a quick movement of her little fingers. Lexie made another sign and Bett looked to Jane for a translation.

  ‘She wants to know how you are.’

  Bett gave her a thumbs up and got a thumbs up and big smile from Lexie in return.

  ‘Thanks so much, Jane,’ Bett called from her bedroom a moment later, trying to zip up the one good summer dress she’d found on the rail. ‘The twins are due a sleep, but when —’

  Jane interrupted her. ‘When they wake up, would I look after them and perhaps feed them and change them if they need changing?’ She laughed. ‘Bett, I know what babysitting means. Go. You look like you’ll burst a gasket if you don’t get out of here now.’

  Bett did kiss her that time. Five minutes later, having pulled a brush through her short, dark-brown curls, cursed her size sixteen figure, wished she had her sister’s petite blonde looks, found a lipstick that had something left in the tube – too red for this time of day, let alone for a sleep-deprived thirty-six-year-old, but beggars couldn’t be choosers – and changed her clothes after discovering a splodge of unidentified something on the left shoulder of her first dress, she was on her way into town, driving too fast.

  She made herself slow down. It was difficult. She’d got into the habit of doing everything too fast these days. Dressing, showering, sleeping - they all seemed to happen in record time. Conversely, things she did wish could be over in an instant - crying sessions, sleepless nights with two unsettled babies - seemed never-ending. She couldn’t understand it. Time felt as if it had taken on a different shape in the seven months since the twins had arrived.

  She thought of Jane, so happy, so relaxed, taking in her stride the fact that her daughter had been born deaf. She and her husband had just got on with it once the diagnosis was made, both of them learning how to sign, teaching Lexie as soon as she was old enough. Bett had never once heard Jane complain, or express anxiety about how life might be for Lexie. And here Bett was with two healthy babies, doing nothing but stress and worry. She should be grateful, shouldn’t she? Happy every moment of every day? And yet …