They heard the sound of a woman laughing and suddenly Patrick banged his drink down so hard on the coffee table that beer sloshed over the side. "You're kidding me."
"Kidding you about what?" said his father.
Patrick stood up and pulled back the curtain of the window that looked out on the street. He shook his head with a nasty, bitter smile, dropped the curtain and went striding from the room without looking at Ellen.
Ellen felt her heartbeat pick up. Patrick had spent the drive over with one eye in the rear-vision mirror. "No sign of bunny-boiler," he'd said happily as they pulled up in front of his parents' house.
"What's going on?" said Patrick's father.
"I think you-know-who has stopped by," said Simon. He gave Ellen a rueful, curious look.
"Bloody hell," said George. "I'd better go see if they need my help refereeing."
"I guess you know about her," said Simon carefully, when they were alone in the room. "About his ex-girlfriend."
"Yes," said Ellen. She was pressing her hands to her thighs, to stop herself from leaping out of her chair to run to the door. I just want to see what she looks like!
She strained to hear what was going on.
Simon shook his head. "Must be a bit weird--upsetting for you?"
"Oh, not really," said Ellen. "I've never even seen her." She tried not to make it sound like a complaint.
Patrick's voice carried loud and clear into the room. Ellen had never heard him speak like that, his voice so rough-edged and unpleasant. He sounded like a big, beefy, red-faced man holding his palm up to the camera on one of those early evening current affairs shows. "Saskia. If you don't leave now, I am calling the police. You've crossed the line. This is unacceptable."
And then Jack's voice, high with fear or excitement: "Daddy? Why are you calling the police?"
Simon winced. "I might just try to extricate Jack."
He left the room. Ellen stayed pinned to her seat. There was no valid excuse for her to get involved.
She wondered if she should be frightened for their safety, if Saskia was about to pull out a gun or a big shiny kitchen knife. The book she was reading said that the vast majority of stalking victims weren't even physically assaulted (just mentally terrorized), but it was still filled with horrific real-life case studies where some poor victims did end up dead.
Or perhaps her mother was right and she should be frightened for her own safety: Maybe she was Saskia's target. Ellen's mother would be so cross if Ellen ended up dead.
"OK, let's everyone just calm down." It was Patrick's dad. Ellen still hadn't properly heard Saskia's voice.
She put her drink down on the Ayers Rock coaster on top of a crocheted doily and wandered restlessly about the room. There was a bookshelf crammed with framed photos.
She recognized one of Patrick with another woman and picked it up greedily. Could this be Saskia?
Then she saw that the photo was taken in a hospital and realized that the young blond-haired woman sitting up in bed holding a baby in a blue bunny rug must be Colleen. Patrick's wife. His dead wife. Ellen wondered if the cancer cells that would take her life just a year later were already there in her body, gathering force for their malignant attack.
Patrick must have climbed up on the bed next to his wife. They were squashed close together, with their backs propped against the bars of the hospital bed. Colleen had one arm around the baby and the other hand lay entwined with Patrick's on his lap. You could tell he was holding it tightly.
Colleen was smiling at the baby; Patrick was smiling at the person taking the photo. It was only eight years ago, but Patrick looked so much younger and different: His eyes seemed rounder, his cheeks chubbier, his hair thicker and longer, his T-shirt a younger person's T-shirt. Colleen's hair was messy and Patrick was unshaven. It must have been taken only hours after Jack was born. They had that amazed look about them that Ellen had seen in other people's first-baby shots. Look what we did! The birth of a first baby. One of those everyday events that only seem incredible to the people involved.
Ellen felt vaguely embarrassed. She'd spent the day thinking about sex in the shower with that young woman's husband. How tacky. He'd had a real relationship with Colleen. He'd married her, had a child with her. It had been a grown-up relationship. You could tell how much Patrick had loved Colleen by the way his body was curved around hers.
Ellen felt a sense of kinship with poor, silly, crazy Saskia standing at the front door, still holding on, making a fool of herself. If the lovely Colleen (you could tell she was lovely, just from the photo) hadn't died, Patrick would never have spared a glance for Saskia or Ellen.
Dying was such an elegant way to leave a relationship. No infidelity, no boredom, no long, complicated conversations late into the night. No "She's still single, I hear." No running into each other at parties and weddings. No "She's stacked on the weight" or "She's showing her age." Dying was final and mysterious and gave you the last word forever.
"That's my mum."
Ellen started. Jack was standing next to her, looking at the photo in her hand. "That's the day I was born. My mum is dead."
"Yes." Ellen carefully put the photo back in its place. She wondered if Jack felt the same way about his dead mother as she did about her nonexistent father: a sort of emotion without emotion. "I know."
"My dad's ex-girlfriend is at the front door," said Jack. "Saskia. She lived with us for a while."
"Do you remember her?" asked Ellen curiously.
Jack looked shifty. "Sort of. Like, I remember her picking me up from school, and she used to say, 'Welcome back, Jack!' She always had this little plate ready with biscuits and fruit and stuff." He gave her a quick, warning glance. "Dad doesn't like to talk about her."
"I know," said Ellen. Why was Saskia picking him up from school? Didn't she have to work? Why wasn't Patrick picking him up after school?
Out the front of the house, there was the sound of a woman's raised voice, and then a car door slammed and tires squealed.
He said he would call the police if I didn't leave.
I hadn't even known he was going to be there. I was so pleased with how good I looked in my red dress and I still felt so cleansed from that naked swim at the beach, and I had this idea that going to visit Patrick's mum and dad was just a normal, social, everyday thing to do. I was half thinking that maybe it was time to start looking up some old friends, and they seemed like a good place to start.
I didn't think of it as part of my "habit." My dirty, nasty little habit.
The proof is that I didn't even notice Patrick's car was parked out front! And I'm fixated on that car. I've got so used to following it, my vision telescopes in on it even when I'm stuck in traffic miles behind.
All I was thinking about as I walked up the front path was about the first time Patrick brought me here to meet the family. Jack running up the path ahead of us. I was nervous because it had been less than a year since Colleen had died and I thought they might think I was too quick to snap up the grieving widower.
I remember Simon was in his last year of school. He was still wearing his school uniform and for some reason he'd got hold of some elastic bands and done his hair in a whole lot of tiny little pigtails sticking up all over his head, like a hedgehog's quills. Maureen kept apologizing for him.
That's what I was thinking about as I walked up the driveway: how nice they'd all been to me. The front door looked exactly the same.
Stupid. For an intelligent woman, sometimes I'm so, so stupid. Did I really think that just because their front door looked the same that the last few years had never happened, that I was just a regular old friend dropping by? My capacity for self-delusion is enormous.
Then I knocked on the door and I heard a burst of laughter, as if they were all laughing at me. It made me snap back to reality, and that's when I turned my head and saw Patrick's car. I couldn't believe I'd missed it, and I thought, He's brought Ellen over. He's introducing them to Ellen.
I thought about running away, except that they would have seen me, and, anyway, part of me wanted to march into that house to say, "How can you meet this new woman as if I never existed? How can you do it all, the interested questions, the careful pouring of not very good wine, the special Harbour Bridge tray, I bet, with the Jatz biscuits, all exactly the same, except with a different woman? Doesn't that seem bizarre? Wrong?"
And then Jack opened the door. Of course I've seen him, more often than Patrick knows, but I haven't got this close to him since the day I left. I could have approached him many times, but I never wanted to confuse him or upset him.
He smiled at me. The loveliest open smile. His beautiful eyes are still exactly the same. And then he started chatting with me, perfectly naturally, telling me about how I'd knocked at the same time as he'd said "knock knock" to tell a knock knock joke, and what were the chances of that happening, like one chance in a thousand, in a million? And I was laughing when Maureen appeared and she had a polite, perplexed expression on her face, and it vanished as soon as she saw me. She looked horrified, as if I was a home invader.
And then Patrick appeared, his face so ugly with anger, and then his dad, all serious and frowning, as if there had been a car accident, and Simon, all grown up, no pigtails, not even looking at me, just grabbing for Jack's hand as if he needed to rescue him from me.
Nothing I said could make any difference. They just wanted me to go.
I wanted to scream: But I loved you all! You were my family!
"We loved her," said Maureen to Ellen. "We really did."
"Can we please change the subject to something more interesting?" said Patrick, but everyone ignored him.
They had finished dinner and Jack had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, and Ellen thought that everyone had maybe drunk a little more than they normally would have following the stress of the Saskia incident, and their tongues were loosening up nicely.
"Of course, we were upset when Patrick broke up with her. I felt absolutely terrible for her," continued Maureen. "She didn't have any family here, you see, she grew up in Tasmania, so we were like her family."
"I'm sure Ellen doesn't want to hear all this," said Patrick.
"I don't mind," said Ellen, which was the understatement of the century.
"People fall out of love," said George. "You can't blame him for how he felt."
"I know that, George," said Maureen irritably. "It doesn't stop me from feeling for the poor girl."
"She needs to let Patrick be now," said George. "This has gone on long enough."
"She was like a mother to Jack." Maureen ignored her husband and talked directly to Ellen.
"You should have let her keep seeing Jack," said Simon to Patrick.
"How many times do I have to say this? She never asked to see him," said Patrick. "As soon as I said I wanted to end it, she just went crazy, completely, certifiably crazy."
"Her heart was broken," said Maureen.
"Whatever, I didn't think Jack was safe around her."
"Also, her mother had just died," said Maureen.
"Yeah, your timing sort of sucked," said Simon.
"She was very close to her mother," said Maureen to Ellen. "They spoke on the telephone every single day. My boys would go crazy if I tried to speak to them every day! Although, of course, I'm sure it's different with daughters." She looked wistful for a moment. "Do you speak to your mother every day, Ellen?"
"No." Ellen smiled, although they did actually e-mail or text or have some form of communication nearly every day.
"Saskia's father died when she was very young, you see, and she had no sisters or brothers, so her mother was all the family she had," said Maureen. "She took her mother's death very hard."
"It was a month after her mother had died," said Patrick. "Her mother had been sick for a whole year. How much longer was I meant to wait? I didn't think it was fair to her to keep pretending."
"A month is nothing," said Simon.
Ellen privately agreed.
"Listen to Mr. Sensitive here. You broke up with your last girlfriend by text message!" said Patrick.
"It was a very caring text message. Anyway, I wasn't living with her."
"When Patrick first went into business for himself, he was very busy, obviously, and Saskia started working part-time so she could look after Jack." Maureen was directing all of her conversation at Ellen. "She really was a wonderful mother to him."
"Colleen was his mother," said Patrick.
"Well, of course she was, darling, but Colleen wasn't there."
"Which wasn't her fault."
"Of course it wasn't, I'm just trying to be fair to Saskia, and to say that she did a wonderful job."
"Colleen would have done it better. And Colleen wasn't crazy."
"You never dumped Colleen," said Simon. "So you don't know."
"I do know," said Patrick. "I do know. And anyway, I would never have dumped Colleen." There was a perceptible tremor of emotion in his voice that caused a hush around the table. Ellen saw that everyone was trying not to look at her. She felt Maureen's excellent roast lamb and baked potatoes sitting lumpily in her stomach. Well, naturally he's still in love with his dead wife. The damned girl had to go and die before she had time to get boring or annoying.
Patrick's father took a deep breath and smiled at Ellen without quite meeting her eyes. "Well, I want to hear more about the hypnotism business."
Ellen smiled weakly. They had already talked at length about the "hypnotism business" over dinner.
"I read somewhere that Hitler used hypnosis," said Simon.
"Most politicians are experts at conversational hypnosis patterns," began Ellen, automatically. She was asked this question all the time when she did speaking engagements. "Simple things, like repetition--"
"There's an ad on TV at the moment," said Patrick, looking down at the table. "I don't know what it's for, but it's got a man in a swimming pool and someone's old bloody bandage is floating in the water and it gets stuck to his mouth, and he pulls it off and throws it away, with this sort of all-over shudder, like, get it off, get it off."
"I know the one. It's for a car," said Simon.
"What's an old bandage got to do with cars?" Maureen frowned.
"The point is that every time I see Saskia's car in the rear-vision mirror, or I get another one of her letters ranting and raving about God knows what, or an e-mail, or a text, or I have to listen to her voice on my answering machine, or she delivers a bunch of fucking flowers--I'm sorry for swearing, Mum, but--roses, to my work, I feel like that guy in the ad, I just want to get it off, get it off."
"She sent you roses?" said Maureen. "She sent flowers to a man?"
"So that's why I don't want to hear that Saskia was a great mother, or that my timing sucked when I broke up with her," said Patrick. "If I did wrong by her, I have paid the price. I have paid and paid and paid."
With that, he stood up from the table and left the room.
"Oh, dearie me," sighed Maureen.
"Welcome to our family, Ellen!" said Simon brightly.
"He started up with Saskia too soon after he lost Colleen," said Maureen. "That was the problem. Much too soon. He never grieved. Men are terrible grievers. Whenever they feel anything bad they just try and stomp it down."
"Whereas women talk and talk everything to death," said George.
"Talking helps!" said Maureen. She turned her attention back to Ellen. "After we lost Colleen, Patrick got this thing in his head that he had to be a good provider for Jack. He was obsessed with it. He threw himself into work. That's why Saskia ended up doing so much for Jack. Patrick was working all the time."
"Mum, I think we've probably shared enough with Ellen for one night," said Simon.
"Maybe you're right," said Maureen. She stood up and began to stack plates, and without looking at Ellen she said quickly, "Tell me, Ellen, are you a Catholic by any chance?"
Simon snorted.
"I
'm not actually," said Ellen apologetically.
"Oh! Well, that's--and do you mind me asking what religion you are?" Maureen took her husband's plate. "Not that it matters, of course, I was just curious."
"Well, I'm not really anything," said Ellen. "I wasn't brought up in any particular religion. My mother is a staunch atheist."
Maureen looked startled. "A staunch--? You mean, she doesn't believe in God? Not at all? But you do, of course?"
"Isn't there some rule about not discussing religion or politics at the dinner table?" said Simon.
"I guess I'm more of a spiritual person than my mother," said Ellen. "I'm very interested in Buddhism, for example. I like its philosophies--practicing mindfulness, that sort of thing."
"Oh, yes, I've heard that's all very 'in' at the moment," said Maureen. Ellen could sense that she was losing points.
"Ommmmm," chanted George. He placed his palms together under his chin and bowed his head. "That's what you Buddhists do, isn't it. Ommmmm. Ommmmm."
"George! She's not an actual Buddhist," said Maureen. She gave Ellen a frantic look. "That is, are you, darling?"
Simon rocked with laughter.
"I just find it interesting," said Ellen meekly.
"Well!" Maureen squared her shoulders, as if to say that one must soldier on whatever life throws at you. She tapped a finger to her mouth. "Do you like babies, Ellen?"
"Mum!" Simon slapped a hand to his head.
Ellen caught the roguish glint in Maureen's eyes. She knew exactly what she was doing.
"I adore babies," she said firmly.
"Lovely," said Maureen. "Me too." They understood each other perfectly.
"Having one for dessert, are we?" said George.
Maureen rolled her eyes. "We're having apple crumble with cream and ice cream."
"Maybe just a very small portion for me," said Ellen.
"Oh, you're as thin as a rake," scolded Maureen. "I'll get you a nice big plate."
Later that night, Ellen and Patrick lay in her bed, flat on their backs, both of them sucking on antacid tablets. At Maureen's insistence, Jack had stayed with her for another night. Patrick had carried him from the couch into her spare bedroom, and he hadn't woken at all. Then Patrick and Ellen had caught a taxi back to her place because they'd both had too much to drink.
"I'm sorry about tonight," said Patrick.