"Big day coming up, Alice!"
"Mum, I said excuse me and you just keep ignoring me!"
"Mum, can Clara come over this afternoon? Please, please, please, please? Her mum said it was okay!"
"Mummy?"
"Mum?"
"Not long now, Alice!"
"Mrs. Love?"
"Can I talk to you, Alice?"
Alice stood in the school playground and the world of canteen duty and playdates and birthday parties whirled around her like a spinning top.
She didn't remember any of it.
Yet it all seemed oddly familiar.
Elisabeth's Homework for Jeremy Just in case you're wondering, I decided to go to the office today.
The Caesar salad wasn't very nice. A lackluster attempt. Wilted lettuce. Stale croutons. Very disappointing. Like life.
I wasn't really serious about the telephone pole.
I would never do that. I'm far too sensible and dull.
By the way, I have canceled our next session. I do apologize for the inconvenience.
Frannie's Letter to Phil Mr. Mustache has a name, and I guess I should use it now that he no longer has a mustache.
It's Xavier. It doesn't suit him at all, does it? What was his mother thinking? Xavier is far too elegant a name for a man who "places bets on the doggies" and loves beer and "the footie season" and tomato sauce and dreadful right-wing talkback radio.
We have nothing in common, obviously. Not like you and I! Remember the plays we saw, the books we shared, the--well.
Did we like the same books? I might be making that part up. Sometimes the details become a little hazy. I couldn't tell you, for example, whether you liked tomato sauce or not. Did you?
While I was having my shower this morning, I was thinking about how just last week Alice said to me, "Frannie, when will I stop being shocked that Gina isn't alive?"
I was full of grandmotherly wisdom about how "time heals," but I understood.
It was the same when my dear, silly Barb lost their father. She must have said it a million times: "But Frannie, he ate a mandarin that morning. He was fine."
Because how is it possible for your husband to eat a mandarin at eight a.m. and be dead by ten a.m.?
And how is it possible to watch your best friend hop into a car and then for you to never hear her voice again? (And goodness, that Gina had a loud voice!)
And how is it possible to believe your lovely fiance isn't still gallivanting around Queensland when a letter full of love and jokes and a pile of snapshots arrives the day after his coffin is lowered into the ground?
Your mind resists death with all its might.
Oh, Phil, it's completely foolish that I've kept writing back to you all these years. It's become one of those habits I can't seem to break. Writing to a memory.
Someone was screaming.
"Mum! Stop it! Make it stop! Mummy!"
Alice was catapulted up and out of her bed and was walking rapidly, blindly, down the hallway, before she woke up properly, her mouth dry, her head fuzzy with interrupted dreams.
Who was it? Olivia?
The hysterical screams were coming from Madison's room. Alice pushed open the door. In the dark, she could just make out a figure on the bed thrashing about and screaming, "Get it off! Get it off!"
Alice's eyes adjusted enough to make out the lamp on the bookshelf next to Madison's bed. She switched it on.
Madison's eyes were shut, her face screwed up tight. She was tangled up in her sheets and her pillow was on her chest. She batted it away.
"Get it off!"
Alice took away the pillow and sat down on the bed next to her.
"It's only a dream, darling," she said. "It's only a dream." She knew from her own nightmares how Madison's heart would be racing, how the words from the real world would slowly infiltrate the dream world and make it fade away.
Madison's eyes opened and she threw herself at Alice, pushing her head painfully into Alice's ribs and clutching her tightly.
"Mummy, get it off Gina! Get it off her!" she sobbed.
"It's only a dream," said Alice, stroking back sweaty strands of hair from Madison's forehead. "I promise you, it's only a bad dream."
"But Mummy, you need to get it off her! Get it off Gina."
"Get what off her?"
Madison didn't answer. Her hands loosened and her breathing began to slow. She burrowed herself more comfortably into Alice's lap.
Was she falling back asleep?
"Get what off her?" whispered Alice.
"It's only a dream," said Madison sleepily.
Chapter 26
"Auntie Alice! Auntie Alice!"
A boy of about three came running into Alice's arms.
She automatically lifted his compact body up and whirled him around, while his legs gripped around her hips like a koala. She buried her nose in his dark hair and breathed in the yeasty scent. It was intensely, deliciously familiar. She breathed in again. Was she remembering this little boy? Or some other little boy? Sometimes she thought it might be easier to block her nose to stop these sudden frustrating rushes of memories that evaporated before she could pin down what exactly it was she remembered.
The little boy pressed fat palms on either side of Alice's face and babbled something incomprehensible, his eyes serious.
"He's asking if you brought Smarties," said Olivia. "You always bring him Smarties."
"Oh, dear," said Alice.
"You don't know who he is, do you?" said Madison with happy contempt.
"She does so," said Olivia.
"It's our cousin Billy," said Tom. "Auntie Ella is his mum."
Nick's youngest sister had got pregnant! What a scandal! She was fifteen--still at school!
You're really not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you, Alice? It's 2008! She's twenty-five! She's probably an entirely different person by now.
Although, actually, not that different, because here she came now, unsmilingly pushing her way past people. Ella still had a gothic look about her. White skin, brooding eyes with a lot of black eyeliner, black hair parted in the middle and cut in a sharp-edged bob. She was dressed in a long black skirt, black tights, black ballet flats, and a turtlenecked black jersey with what looked like four or five strings of pearls of varying lengths around her neck. Only Ella could pull off such a look.
"Billy! Come back here," she said sharply, trying unsuccessfully to peel her son off Alice.
"Ella," said Alice, while Billy's legs gripped harder and he buried his head in her neck. "I didn't expect to see you here." If she really had to pick a favorite Flake, it would have been Ella. She had been an intense, teary teenager who could dissolve into hysterical giggles, and she liked talking to Alice about clothes and showing her the vintage dresses she'd bought at secondhand shops that cost more to dry-clean than what she'd paid.
"Have you got a problem with me being here?" said Ella.
"What? No, of course not."
It was the Family Talent Night at Frannie's retirement village. They were in a wooden-floored hall with glowing red heaters mounted up high along the sides of the room, radiating an intense heat that was making all the visitors peel off cardigans and coats. There were rows of plastic chairs set up in a semicircle in front of a stage with a single microphone looking somehow pathetic in front of fraying red velvet curtains. Underneath the stage was a neat line of walkers of varying sizes, some with ribbons around them to differentiate them, like luggage at the airport.
Along the side of the hall were long trestle tables with white tablecloths laid with urns, tall stacks of Styrofoam cups, and paper plates of egg sandwiches, lamingtons, and pikelets with jam and blobs of cream melting in the heat.
The front rows of chairs were already occupied by village residents. Tiny wizened old ladies with brooches pinned to their best dresses, bent old men with hair carefully combed across spotted scalps, ties knotted beneath V-necked jumpers. The old people didn't seem to feel the heat.
/> Alice could see Frannie sitting right in the center row, engaged in what looked like a rather heated conversation with a grinning white-haired man who stood out because he was wearing a shiny polka-dot vest over a white shirt.
"Actually," said Ella, finally managing to wrench Billy out of Alice's arms, "it was your mother who rang and asked us to come. She said Dad had stage fright about this performance, which I find hard to believe, but still. The others all refused to come."
How strange for Barb to ring up Nick's sisters and actually ask them to do something, as if they were equals.
Alice caught herself.
Well, of course they were equals. What a strange thing to think.
But then, really, deep down (or maybe not even that deep down) she'd always thought of her own family as inferior to Nick's.
The Love family was from the eastern suburbs. "I rarely cross the Bridge," Nick's mother had once told Alice. She sometimes went to the opera on a Friday night, in the same way that Alice's mother might pop along to Trivia Night at the church hall on a Friday night (and maybe win a meat tray or a fruit box!). The Love family knew people. Important people, like MPs and actresses, doctors and lawyers, and people with names you felt you should know. They were Anglicans and went to church only at Christmas, languidly, as if it were a rather charming little event. Nick and his sisters went to private schools and Sydney Uni. They knew the best bars and the right restaurants. It was sort of like they owned Sydney.
Whereas Alice's family was from the stodgy northwest, home to happy clappy Christians, middle managers, CPAs, and conveyancers. Alice's mother rarely crossed the Bridge either, but that was because she didn't know her way around the city. Catching the train into town was a big event. Alice and Elisabeth went to local Catholic girls' schools, where the students were expected to become nurses and teachers, not doctors and lawyers. They went to church every Sunday, and local kids played the guitar while the congregation sang along in thin, reedy voices, following the words projected up on the wall above Father's bald head while the light from the stainedglass windows reflected off his glasses. Alice had often thought it would have been preferable to come from the proper western suburbs. That way she could have been a gritty, tough-talking westie chick. Maybe she would have had a tattoo on her ankle. Or, if only her parents could have been immigrants, with accents. Alice could have been bilingual and her mother could have made her own pasta. Instead, they were just the plain old suburban Jones family. As bland as Weet-Bix.
Until Nick came along and made her feel interesting and exotic.
"So what do you actually confess at confession?" he'd asked once. "Are you allowed to tell?" He'd looked at pictures of Alice in her pleated Catholicschool uniform hanging well past her knees and said into her ear, "I am crazy with lust right now." He'd sat on Alice's mother's floral couch, with a square brown coffee table next to him (the biggest one from the "nest" of coffee tables) with an embroidered doily on top, eating a thickly buttered piece of bun with bright-pink icing and drinking his tea, and said, "When was this house built?" As if their red-brick bungalow deserved such a respectful question! "Nineteen sixty-five," said Barb. "We paid twelve thousand pounds for it." Alice had never known that! Nick had given their house a history. He'd nodded along, making some comment about the light fittings, and he was exactly the same as when he was sitting at his mother's antique dining room table, eating fresh figs and goat cheese and drinking champagne. Alice had felt faint with adoration.
"Will we sit with Daddy when he gets here?" Olivia tugged at Alice's sleeve. "Will you two sit together? So when I'm dancing, you can say to each other, 'Oh, that's our darling daughter. How proud we are!'"
Olivia was dressed in a leotard with a frothy tulle skirt and ballet slippers, ready for her performance. Alice had done her makeup for her, although according to Olivia she hadn't applied nearly enough.
"Of course we'll sit together," said Alice.
"You are the most embarrassing person alive, Olivia," said Madison.
"No, she's not," said Ella, hugging Olivia to her, and then she pulled at the hem of Madison's long-sleeved dark red top. "That top looks gorgeous on you. I knew it would."
"It's my favorite," said Madison fiercely. "Except Mum always takes ages washing it."
Alice watched Ella watching Madison and saw how her face softened. It seemed that Nick's sister loved Alice's children, and judging by the way Billy was still hopefully trying to grab at Alice's bag, searching for Smarties, Alice loved her little boy. They were aunties to each other's children. Even if they hadn't become stepsisters, they were family. Alice was filled with affection for her.
"You've grown up so beautiful and elegant," said Alice to Ella.
"Is that a joke?" Ella stiffened and her jaw set.
"You might find Mum a bit weird tonight, Auntie Ella," said Tom. "She's had a traumatic head injury. I've printed some stuff out from the Internet if you want to read it. FYI. That means for your information. You say it when you want to tell somebody something. FYI."
"Darling Daddy!" cried Olivia.
Nick had just walked in the door of the hall and was scanning the crowd. He was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, his collar unbuttoned, and no tie. He looked like a successful, sexy, older man. A man who made important decisions, who knew his place in the world and no longer dropped toast on his shirt before a presentation.
Nick saw the children first and his face lit up. A second later he saw Alice and his face closed down. He walked toward them and Olivia threw herself into his arms.
"Oh, I've missed you three roosters," said Nick into Olivia's neck, his voice muffled, while he reached out with one hand to ruffle Tom's hair and the other to pat Madison on the shoulder.
"Hey, Dad, guess how many kilometers it was from our place to here," said Tom. "Guess. Go on guess."
"Umm, fifteen k."
"Close! Thirteen kilometers. FYI."
"Hey kid," said Nick to Ella, using the nickname he'd always given Ella. Ella looked at him adoringly. Nothing had changed there. "And the kid's kid!" He scooped up Billy into his arms, so he was holding both Olivia and Billy. Billy chortled and repeated, "Kid's kid! Kid's kid!"
"How are you, Alice?" His eyes were on the children. He didn't look at her. Alice was last to be greeted. She was the least-favorite person. He used his polite voice for her.
"I'm well, thank you." Do not under any circumstances cry. She found herself longing, bizarrely, for Dominick. For someone who liked her best. How horrible it was to be despised. To feel yourself to be despicable.
A familiar quavery voice came over the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, it's my very great pleasure to welcome you all to the Tranquillity Wood Retirement Village Family Talent Night. Could I ask you all to take your seats?"
"Frannie!" said Olivia.
It was Frannie up onstage, looking rather beautiful in a royal-blue dress and speaking calmly into the microphone, although she was putting on a posh voice.
"She doesn't look nervous," said Madison. "If it was me, I would be so nervous talking to all these people, I would probably faint."
"Me too," agreed Alice.
Madison curled her lip. "No, you wouldn't."
"I would!" protested Alice.
There was some confusion as they all settled into their seats. Madison, Tom, and Olivia all wanted to sit next to their father, and Olivia needed to be at the end of the row so she could be ready to go up when her name was called, and she also wanted Nick and Alice to sit together, while Billy wanted to sit on Alice's lap, which Ella clearly did not want. She finally gave in and Alice found herself with Madison on one side and Nick on the other, and Billy's warm little body snuggled into hers. At least he liked her.
Where was Elisabeth? Alice twisted around in her seat to look for her. She was meant to be coming tonight, but maybe she'd changed her mind. Mum had called to say that the blood-test results had been negative and Elisabeth seemed fine, although a little peculiar.
"I actually wondered if she was drunk," Barb had said. Alice still had Dino's fertility doll in her handbag to give her. Would it just upset her now? But what if she was depriving Elisabeth of its magical powers? She would ask Nick what he thought.
She glanced over at Nick's stern profile. Could she still ask his opinion on things like that? Maybe not. Maybe he didn't care.
When the crowd had settled down, Frannie tapped the microphone and said, "Our first act is Mary Barber's great-granddaughter performing 'Somewhere over the Rainbow.'"
A little girl in a glittery sequined dress, plastered with makeup ("See, Mummy?" hissed Olivia, leaning forward across Nick to look reproachfully at Alice), strode out onto the stage, shimmying her chest like an aging cabaret singer. "Jesus," said Nick under his breath. She clasped the microphone with both hands and began to sing, her voice filled with exaggerated emotion, making the audience flinch in unison each time she hit the high notes.
She was followed by tap-dancing grandchildren in top hats and canes, a great-nephew's magic show ("FYI, I know exactly how he did that," Tom whispered loudly), and a niece's gymnastic routine. Ella's little boy got bored and started a game where he clambered from lap to lap, touching each person on the nose, saying, "Chin," or touching them on the chin and saying, "Nose," and then falling about laughing at his own wit.
Finally Frannie said, "Next up, Olivia Love, my own great-granddaughter, performing a routine she choreographed herself called 'The Butterfly.'"
Alice was terrified. Choreographed it herself ? She'd assumed Olivia would be performing something she'd learned at ballet school. Good Lord, it would probably be dreadful. Her hands were sweaty. It was as if she were going up there herself.
"Hmmmm," said Olivia without moving.
"Olivia," said Tom. "It's your turn."
"I actually feel a bit sick," said Olivia.
Nick said, "All the best performers feel sick, sweetie. It's a sign. It means you're going to be great."
"You don't have to--" began Alice.
Nick put a hand on her arm and Alice stopped.