Truly Madly Guilty, Page 22

  Clementine's mother had bought the girls beautiful little winter coats she'd seen on special in David Jones. Erika knew this because she'd been shopping with Pam when she found them. Erika liked going shopping with Pam because she rarely, if ever, actually bought anything. This drove Clementine nuts, whereas Erika loved watching Pam frown while she turned a garment inside out to study the quality of the lining, then slowly take her reading glasses out of her handbag so she could confirm the price tag, then hum and haw and finally say, 'Nope!'

  The cute little woollen coats, with their black toggles and hoods, however, had been impossible for Pam to resist, and Erika had agreed, even though they probably wouldn't get that much wear in Sydney's climate.

  As Clementine removed Ruby's fairy wings and helped her into her pink coat (Holly's was green) Erika didn't say anything about being there when the coats were purchased. She had learned over the years that although Clementine didn't want to go shopping with her mother, she didn't seem especially pleased to hear that Erika had gone shopping with her. She never said anything. It was just a flicker. A Clementine flicker that said, Stop stealing my mother. You've got your own.

  The pink coat, Erika saw with satisfaction, fit Ruby perfectly. She'd told Pam to get the bigger size.

  'You look like Little Pink Riding Hood,' said Oliver as Ruby twirled around in her coat.

  Ruby chuckled. She got the joke, the clever little thing. She climbed onto her mother's lap and snuggled up contentedly as if Clementine were a favourite couch, and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

  'So does Whisk ever actually ... whisk?' Tiffany asked Clementine.

  'No, when Whisk became Whisk she wasn't allowed to do anything so menial,' said Clementine. 'Her whisking days were over.'

  Ruby took her thumb out of her mouth. 'Shh. Whisk is sleepy.' She caressed Whisk as if it were a baby and everyone laughed, as she knew they would. Ruby stuck her thumb back in her mouth with a satisfied smirk.

  'I think Ruby and Whisk must be getting tired,' said Clementine. 'We should be going soon.'

  'But first you must have dessert,' said Vid firmly. 'I made cremeschnitte. It's another old family recipe I got off the internet.'

  'It's a vanilla and custard cream cake,' said Tiffany. 'To die for.'

  'Well, then,' said Clementine. 'We'd better not miss that.'

  'We've got those nice chocolate almonds you brought too, Erika,' said Tiffany. 'I love them. My grandfather used to have them every Christmas. Brings back memories.'

  Erika smiled thinly back at her. Yeah, sure they bring back memories. Chocolate nuts were really going to stand up well against to-die-for creme-bloody-schnitte.

  'Hey, look!' said Oliver, suddenly animated. 'Kids!' He pointed up at a tree towards the back of the garden. 'Is that a possum I spy?'

  chapter thirty-nine The freaking rain had got louder again. It was starting to do Tiffany's head in. Vid and Tiffany, who had both cancelled appointments so they could stay home for the rest of the day, were having coffee in the kitchen while Dakota watched TV in the adjoining room with Barney curled up on the couch next to her. They were keeping her home from school, of course. 'Give the other kids a chance to catch up,' said Vid.

  Tiffany was still reeling from Dakota's sobbing confession in the back of the car on the side of the road.

  It was tiny. It was huge. Blind Freddy could have seen it and yet Tiffany might have missed it forever. If Vid hadn't made his remark about Clementine teaching her the cello, Dakota might never have broken down, and they might never have learned the truth.

  Tiffany and Vid had both been prepared to sit on either side of Dakota for the whole day, letting her talk, or just being there for her, but Dakota had finally said, 'Uh, guys? Don't take this the wrong way but can I get a bit of space?' And she'd made a circular motion with her hands to indicate the space she required around her. She already seemed more like herself, as if that glass bubble she'd encased herself in was already thinning and cracking.

  It was time to be thinking about dinner but Tiffany had suddenly developed a craving for chocolate to go with her coffee, and she'd remembered the jar of chocolate almonds sitting in the back of the pantry.

  Vid grunted as he tried to loosen the lid. 'What the ...?' His face was red. He'd never been defeated by a lid before. He held it up and examined the label. 'Where did we get these from anyway?'

  'Erika brought them to the barbeque,' said Tiffany.

  Vid's face shuttered instantly and Tiffany saw with startled clarity just how affected he still was, even after all these weeks, by what had happened, even though he said he didn't think about it anymore. What a fool she was to have taken his words at face value. Vid was all smoke and mirrors. The more distressed he was the more he joked.

  'I think this lid is superglued on,' said Vid with a final twist. 'I really do.'

  'Dammit,' said Tiffany. 'I had a real craving for one.'

  She took the jar from him and began tapping the lid around the edges with a butter knife as her mother always did.

  'That won't work,' scoffed Vid. 'Give it back. Let me try again.'

  'Has Clementine called you back yet?' said Tiffany.

  'No,' said Vid.

  'Do you leave actual messages?' said Tiffany. 'Or do you just hang up?'

  'Hang up,' admitted Vid. 'Why won't she answer? I thought she liked me.'

  They wanted Clementine to talk to Dakota, to set the record straight.

  'She did like you,' said Tiffany. 'She liked you a lot. That's part of the problem.'

  Vid took the jar from Tiffany and began twisting the lid again, grunting and swearing. 'Fuck it. Open, you fucker. We should all ... just ... see each other again. That would make us all feel better, I think. This ... silence, it makes everything ... bigger, worse ... Oh, to hell with this thing!'

  He gave the lid such a violent wrench the jar flew from his hands and onto the floor where it shattered instantly, sending chocolate nuts and glass shards cascading across the tiles.

  'There you go,' said Vid morosely. 'It's open now.'

  chapter forty

  The day of the barbeque

  'Do you see it? Look closely!' Oliver stood beneath a tree just outside the cabana, holding Holly up high, his hands gripping her calves as though she were a little circus performer.

  There was a rustle of leaves and a flash of surprised bright round eyes as the possum suddenly emerged.

  'I see it!' shrieked Holly.

  'It's a ringtail possum,' said Oliver. 'See how he's got the white tip on his tail? Little factoid for you: he's got two thumbs on each front foot to help him climb. Two thumbs! Imagine that!'

  Good Lord, Oliver would be a wonderful father, thought Clementine, pressing her lips to Ruby's scalp. Maybe she could do it. Give them her eggs. She donated her blood, why not her eggs? And then she could just forget that the child was biologically hers. It was a state-of-mind thing.

  Be generous, Clementine, be kind. Not everyone has your good fortune. Clementine thought of the time her mother invited Erika to come away on a beach holiday with them when they were thirteen, a holiday Clementine had been desperately anticipating because it would be two weeks without that shameful prickly sensation she'd been experiencing every day at school, when Erika would hurry up to her each lunchtime and stand far too close, her voice low and intimate, 'Let's eat lunch over there. Somewhere private.' Clementine was only a kid. The necessary negotiations, all conducted within the parameters of her mother's all-important code of kindness, felt amazingly complex. Sometimes she'd promise Erika she'd spend just half of lunchtime with her. Sometimes she'd convince Erika to join her with other kids, but Erika was happiest when it was just the two of them. Clementine had other friendships she wanted to cultivate: normal, easy friendships. It felt like Clementine had to make a daily choice: my happiness or her happiness?

  She'd wanted a holiday with just her big brothers, where she would have been included in their adventures, but instead it had been a holiday where
the boys had gone one way and the girls another, and every single day Clementine had had to forcibly suppress her rage and disguise her selfishness because poor Erika had never had a family holiday like this, and you had to share what you had.

  She looked over at Erika, who had sunk down in her chair and was scowling into her wineglass. There was no doubt about it. Erika was tipsy.

  Was she drinking more than usual because of the awful things she'd overheard? Clementine stretched her arm around Ruby's curved little body to pick up her own wineglass again.

  Vid and Tiffany stacked plates to take inside.

  'Let me do it,' said Sam to Tiffany. He stood and held out his hands for the plates. 'You relax for a bit.'

  'All right,' said Tiffany, handing over the plates and sinking back into her chair. 'You won't have to ask me twice.'

  'You got the girls?' called Sam to Clementine over his shoulder as he went to follow Vid out of the yard.

  'Yes, I've got the girls,' said Clementine, indicating Ruby on her lap and Holly still with Oliver, checking out the possum.

  'I think Dakota has gone inside to read a book,' said Tiffany, looking around. 'Sorry. She does that sometimes, disappears, and you find her lying on her bed reading.'

  'That's no problem,' said Clementine. 'It was great to have her playing with them for as long as we did.'

  'Dakota is obsessed with reading at the moment,' said Tiffany, and Clementine could see by the way she pulled her lips down at the corners that she was trying to conceal her pride. 'When I was her age I was obsessed with make-up and clothes and boys.'

  Yeah, and I bet the boys were obsessed with you, thought Clementine.

  'Were you obsessed with music?' Tiffany pulled at a strand of hair that had got caught on her lip. Literally everything she did was sensual. What would she be like as an old lady? It was impossible to imagine Tiffany elderly, whereas Clementine only had to glance at Erika frowning ferociously off into the distance to see the old lady she would one day be, the lines between her eyes that would become deep furrows, the slight stoop in her back that would become a hunch.

  Imagining Erika as a grumpy old lady, full of complaints and refutations, made Clementine feel fondly towards her. Somehow she knew there would be an unspoken truce on their unspoken battle over God knew what when they were old. They could both surrender to their innate grumpiness. It was going to be a lovely relief.

  'I guess it was important to me,' said Clementine. Music wasn't her obsession so much as her escape. She didn't have to share that world with Erika, except for when she came to watch her perform, but there was enough space between them then - both literally and figuratively.

  'Were your parents musical?' asked Tiffany.

  'Not in the slightest,' said Clementine. She laughed a little. 'I'm surrounded by the unmusical. Mum and Dad. Sam. My kids!'

  'Is that tricky?' asked Tiffany.

  'Tricky?' repeated Clementine.

  What a funny choice of word. Was it tricky being surrounded by the unmusical?

  Nobody could accuse Clementine's parents of being unsupportive. They'd helped her with the money to buy her beautiful Viennese cello (she'd paid back a little over half, and after Ruby was born, her dad had told her not to worry about the rest, he'd 'take it off her inheritance'): an instrument that aroused so many conflicting emotions in Clementine it sometimes felt like a marriage. Her dad was proud of Clementine in a distant, awestruck way. She'd been so touched that time she'd discovered him watching the tennis with a copy of Classical Music for Dummies face down on the couch next to him. But Clementine knew that nothing she played would ever come close to a Johnny Cash song for her dad.

  Clementine's mother was supportive too, of course she was - after all, she'd been the one to drive Clementine to lessons and auditions and performances without ever a word of complaint - but over the years Clementine had come to feel that her mother had complicated feelings about her music. It wasn't disapproval - why would it be? - but it often felt like disapproval. She sometimes wondered if Pam saw Clementine's career as flighty or self-indulgent, more like a hobby, especially when compared to Erika's solid, sensible job. When Pam talked to Erika about her work she nodded along respectfully, whereas she seemed to find Clementine's job amusing, a little outlandish. 'You're imagining it,' Sam always said. He thought it said more about Clementine's resentment towards her mother for making Erika part of her family and thereby forcing a friendship upon her.

  'You probably felt supplanted by Erika,' he'd once said.

  'No,' said Clementine. 'I just wanted her to go home.'

  'Exactly,' said Sam, as if he'd made his point.

  And what about Sam? Was it 'tricky' that he wasn't a musician? Sometimes, after a performance, he'd ask her how it had gone and she'd say 'Good' and he'd say 'That's good' and that would be it, and she'd feel a little wistful because if he were a fellow musician she would have had so much more to share with him. She knew lots of couples who worked together in orchestras and talked constantly about work. Ainsley and Hu, for example, had a pact that they were only allowed to talk about work up until when they crossed the Anzac Bridge because otherwise it just got 'too intense'. Clementine couldn't imagine that. She and Sam talked about other things. The children. Game of Thrones. Their families. They didn't need to talk about music. It didn't matter.

  Now Erika sat up straight, as though rousing herself. 'I was there when Clementine heard the cello for the first time,' she said to Tiffany. There was an unmistakeable sloppiness to her speech. 'One of the boys in our class had a mother who played the cello, and she came in one day and played it for us. I thought it was nice enough, but then I looked over at Clementine and she looked like she'd found nirvana.'

  Clementine remembered when she'd first heard that luscious sound. She hadn't known a sound like that was possible, and the fact that an ordinary-looking mother had the ability to make it! It was Erika who'd told Clementine she should ask her parents if she could have cello lessons, and Clementine often wondered if it would have occurred to her to have asked. She thought perhaps not; she would have tried to find a way to listen to the cello again, but no one in even her extended family played a stringed instrument.

  Erika must not remember that she was the one who suggested it or else she would have found ways to mention it at every opportunity, to take ownership of Clementine's career.

  'So you two have known each other since you were kids,' said Tiffany. 'That's great to have a friendship last all these years.'

  'Clementine's mother kind of adopted me,' said Erika. 'Because I didn't have a great "home environment".' She made air quotes around the words 'home environment'. 'It wasn't really Clementine's choice, was it, Clementine?'

  chapter forty-one

  'Thank you for fitting me in today.' Erika sat in the blue leather recliner across from her psychologist, who sat in a matching lounge chair angled towards her, as though Erika were a guest on a talk show. There was a large round ottoman in between them, with a box of tissues on it, as if the ottoman were a coffee table. (A tiny annoyance. Why not get a coffee table?)

  'No problem at all. I've had a lot of cancellations because of the rain. They're advising people to stay off the roads if possible.' Erika's psychologist's name was apparently Merilyn. That's how she'd introduced herself, and that's the name that appeared on her stationery, but as far as Erika was concerned it was a real error of judgement. Merilyn was entirely the wrong name for her. She looked nothing like a Merilyn. She looked like a Pat.

  Merilyn bore a startling resemblance to a secretary who had worked for Erika for many years, and was correctly, appropriately, called Pat. That particular type of (round, rosy) face and the name Pat were therefore linked together forever in Erika's subconscious and every time she looked at her psychologist she had to remind herself: Not Pat.

  'This rain really is extraordinary, isn't it?' said Not Pat, looking out the window.

  There was no way Erika was going to waste a minute of paid time dis
cussing the weather, so she ignored that fatuous remark and launched straight in.

  'So whenever I get invited to someone's place, I always take a jar of chocolate nuts,' she said. 'Chocolate almonds.'

  'Yum,' said Not Pat cheerily.

  'I'm not that keen on them myself,' said Erika.

  Not Pat tilted her head. 'Why do you take them then?'

  'Clementine's mother used to take chocolate nuts whenever she went to someone's place,' said Erika. 'I think she bought them in bulk. She was quite thrifty like that.'

  'She was like a role model for you,' suggested Not Pat.

  'They used to invite me to come with them,' said Erika. 'To barbeques and ... things. I always said yes. I was always so happy to get out of my house.'

  'That's understandable,' said Not Pat. She was looking at Erika curiously.

  'I'm doing that thing my mum does when she tells a story,' said Erika. 'She rambles. She can't stick to the point. I read that it's quite common with hoarders. They can't keep their conversation in order any better than their homes.'

  'Rambling is good,' said Not Pat. 'Actually, I think you're circling. I think you're coming to something.'

  'Well, you know, chocolate nuts aren't really an appropriate hostess gift anymore,' said Erika. 'Because of allergies. Everyone has allergies these days. Once Clementine looked at my jar of nuts and said, "You can tell you don't have kids, Erika." '

  'Did that offend you?'

  'Not especially,' said Erika, considering. 'You would think it would have because we'd just that day found out that we'd failed another round of IVF. Clementine didn't know that, of course. She would have felt terrible for saying that if she'd known.'

  Not Pat tilted her head even further, like a cute little Disney chipmunk listening out for something in the woods. 'You went through IVF? Or you're going through IVF?'

  'I know it's strange that I haven't mentioned it up until now,' said Erika defensively.

  'Not strange,' said Not Pat. 'But I do find it interesting.'

  'About eight weeks ago,' said Erika, 'we had a barbeque at our next-door neighbour's place.'

  'Okay,' said Not Pat.

  Watch me circle, Not Pat.