A Story of Now (45 page)

They come out at the top of the trail, and Claire pauses again to take in the harried scene. The ginger-haired man is packing Rhiannon into the back of the car with the help of Claire’s father. A small, thin woman holds the door open on the other side. The other kids are clustered near the car in a tight group, looking cold and still a little scared.

Her parents have clearly just arrived, the doors of the four-wheel drive, which is parked halfway up the drive instead of the usual spot, hang wide open.

Claire’s mother trots out of the house, cushions and a blanket in her hand. She comes around the side of the car and hands them to the woman.

“We’ll take care of them, don’t worry,” her mother says as the woman climbs in the back of the car.

The man scrambles into the driver’s seat and starts the car as Christine shoos the remaining kids off the driveway and watches him make a turn and speed off down the driveway. That’s when she spots Mia and Claire standing at the top of the lake path.

“Sweetheart,” she calls out, hands on hips. “Not quite what we were expecting.”

Reluctantly, Claire takes a deep breath and trudges slowly over to her, Mia and Blue beside her.

“Hey, Mum,” Claire mumbles. “This my friend, Mia. Mia, this…this is my mother. And that’s my dad.” Her father gives her a wave as he closes the doors of the four-wheel drive.

“Hello, Mia. Call me Christine.” She turns back to Claire, straight to business. “They’re taking the girl to the hospital. And I said we’d look after these little ones until the aunt comes to get them. She’s still a way away.” She shields her eyes from the afternoon sun and appraises the little group. She gives the kids her best Christine Pearson smile.

They smile politely back, still huddled in a tight cluster.

“What on earth happened, sweetheart?” Christine asks as Claire’s father comes over to join them. He leans down to pat Blue. “Were you with them?”

As she wrings out her wet T-shirt onto the gravel driveway, Claire gives them a brief explanation of what happened.

“Well, it was lucky you were here,” her father says. “Good job, girls.” He pats Claire’s shoulder and then holds out a hand to Mia.

Claire watches numbly as Mia shakes his hand and shivers slightly with cold.

Her mother goes straight into crisis-management mode and hustles the kids into the house, telling Claire that due to a dropped case they had been able to leave a day earlier. Then she busies herself making sandwiches and warm drinks for the kids.

Meanwhile, Claire ducks off to the sleeping porch and digs through her packed bag for her jeans and a jumper, warm clothes she hasn’t needed to put on since they arrived. Once dried and changed, she pauses by the door and takes a deep breath before she returns to the house. This is not the day she expected. Nor is it the one she hoped for. Not one little bit.

CHAPTER 55

As the afternoon light wanes, Claire and Mia walk the kids back to their house to change and to wait for the aunt to come and collect them. It’s almost chilly now as the sun drops and clouds gather over the lake, and the kids are still in their shorts and T-shirts from the day’s sunshine. They hurry along the lake path under the shade of the casuarina trees.

Letting themselves into the large, two-story house, the kids disperse to various rooms to hunt out warmer clothes while Claire and Mia wait in the huge, open-plan living and kitchen area. Claire wonders what Mia makes of the sudden appearance of Claire’s parents, of what has happened to this day. For the first time since her mum and dad arrived, Claire makes eye contact with her.

“Sorry about my parents turning up,” she mumbles and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Why? It’s their house. And they seem nice.”

Claire shakes her head. That’s not what she meant.

But Mia doesn’t appear to be thinking about that. She leans back against the bench, shakes her head slowly, and smiles at her.

“What?” Claire pulls a face at her, rendered uncomfortable.

“You were
amazing
before, you know.”

Claire thrusts her hands in jeans pockets and sits against the back of the couch. “Yeah, well, so were you.”

“What? No. I just did basic first aid. I learned that at camp. But you, you were incredible.” She stares at Claire. “Knowing what to do, dealing with the kids, keeping Rhiannon calm.” She shakes her head again. “Seriously.”

Claire tries to shrug it off, blushing a little at such praise. “Well my parents taught me what to do in every single possible kind of emergency situation from the age of, like, six. They’re big on contingencies.”

“Whatever, it was amazing.” Mia smiles defiantly at her as if she dares her to protest again.

And Claire is just about to brush it off again when Will comes in wearing a woollen jumper that is far too big to actually be his. His legs and feet are still bare, and he’s carrying a large plastic dinosaur. He takes it to Mia and holds it up with a grin. It seems he’s forgotten all about Rhiannon’s accident.

It’s only then that Claire realises she hasn’t heard him say a single word yet. She wonders if he can actually speak.

They patiently encourage Will to put on some pants and, despite the rapidly cooling weather, all go wait out on the porch.

The house is situated in a beautiful spot, and the high veranda gives a more expansive view of the lake and the bushland around than her parents’ place. Mia sits at the picnic table with Will and the girl, Stella, and plays a board game Will dragged out with them. Liam parks himself on the steps leading to the garden, his freckled arms resting on his knobby little knees. Claire watches him stare out at the lake. He hasn’t said anything much since his parents drove off to the hospital.

“Your sister’s going to be okay, you know,” Claire tells him lightly and sits next to him.

He nods his freckled little face and frowns as though he may not believe her.

“I
promise
.”

He nods again and hugs his knees to his chest.

“And you know what?” Claire nudges him gently with her arm. “She’ll probably have a cast put on her arm, so you’ll get to draw on it and stuff.”

But that’s not what’s on his mind. “Her leg was bleeding
a lot
.”

Claire bites her lip. Of course that cut frightened him more than the arm, she realises. All that blood. It looked pretty bad.

Years ago, one of the summer boys cut his foot open on a broken beer bottle on the shore of the lake. At eight she’d been horrified at the way the kid’s face blanched at the sight of the blood and how he left a trail of red on the path as he limped back up to the house.

“It was a bit of blood,” she agrees casually. “But don’t worry, she’s got plenty left. There’s lots of blood inside you, you know. She can definitely spare some.”

He turns to face her, curious now. “How much?”

“I’m not exactly sure. But I bet Mia knows. You should ask her.”

“That’s okay.”

His freckles stand out against his pale skin even as the light wanes.

She nudges his shoulder gently. “Hey, don’t worry. It looked bad, but it really wasn’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was totally gross.”

He smiles. A small one.

“But it really wasn’t bad. She’ll be fine.”

He nods again, looking a little calmer. They sit in silence together as the sun drops further behind the trees.

“I wish I could have a cast on my arm,” he suddenly says. “Or maybe on my leg. Then I wouldn’t have to go to school for a few days, at least. That would be so cool.”

Claire laughs.

CHAPTER 56

Christine loves Mia. Of course she does. On paper and in person, Mia is everything Christine desires in the kind of company Claire keeps.

By the time they left the kids with their aunt and walked back to the cottage, it was early evening. Claire’s parents both, in a united front of insistence, demanded that they stay the night, unwilling to let Claire drive back to Melbourne so late. Because apparently Claire is not capable of driving in the dark and will most likely kill them both.

In fact, Christine’s so determined that they are to stay that by the time they returned, she’s bundled Mia’s belongings into the spare room and remade the bed in there. And, to make it even more difficult to protest, she’d put the makings of dinner together for them all, so they couldn’t really refuse.

Claire knows there is little she can do to convince her parents otherwise when they are both agreed on something, and she barely tries to protest. Mia, clearly dizzied by the whirlwind of energy that is Christine, quietly acquiesces.

So, to Claire’s incredible discomfort, they’re swiftly and violently submitted to a night with her parents at the cottage. And in one fell Christine-driven swoop, the night that Claire hoped for—a quiet, private night to be with Mia, to possibly make sense of this new dynamic between them—disappeared. Instead, that night, so full of potential and promise, was swiftly exchanged for this highly awkward imposter replacement. And now she’s relegated to the charade of Claire and her friend just hanging out at the cottage with Claire’s parents. It’s the last role she wants to play tonight. Or any other night.

They sit at the dinner table, so recently the site of raucous poker and drinking games and of fun, messy meals. Now it’s the site of Claire’s almost paralysing social anxiety. And Christine, of course, submits Mia to the usual barrage of questions that she mistakes for normal human conversation. Nothing is left un-interrogated. She asks about her studies, her career plans, her job, her parents, Blue, where she lives, everything.

And despite the fact that she must feel at least a fraction of the awkwardness that Claire feels, Mia deals with it well. Claire listens to the cross-examination and to Mia’s cheerful responses. She politely provides answers to everything she’s asked and responds with queries of her own. For a moment, Claire finds herself staring in utter admiration at Mia’s open, friendly face as she talks. Of course, Mia is good at parents. No parent has probably ever disliked or disapproved of Mia, ever.

A bonus to this unexpected social arrangement, though, is that Christine is so taken with her new friend, she’s too busy to pay any attention to Claire. And Claire is incredibly grateful to be left to herself, to concentrate on the simple hand-to-mouth task of eating, playing the patient listener alongside her father. He leaves the table the minute he finishes dinner. Claire stays, though, and pushes the food around her plate, not wanting to abandon Mia.

Slightly wary of Christine’s historic ability to deduct everything Claire doesn’t want her to discover, she wonders if there is any way her mother could possibly figure out what transpired between Mia and her. Why they are still here, alone.
Of course not
. Her mother is quick, but how can she see something that can’t actually be seen? Besides, Claire barely knows what this thing is between her and Mia. How could her mother know? But just to be careful, she drags her eyes from Mia and doesn’t look at her again in case her expression reveals too much.

“Do you have a boyfriend, Mia?” Christine suddenly asks.

Oh god
. Claire’s fork freezes momentarily on the journey from her plate to her mouth. She bids herself to keep eating, to pretend she hasn’t even heard.

“No,” Mia tells her lightly. “I don’t have much time for a social life,” she adds as she smiles and tucks her hair behind one ear.

“Ah, I guess not,” Christine says airily. “With all that study you have to do.” She places her knife and fork neatly beside each other, done with her dinner. “I don’t know what Claire’s excuse is, though. She has plenty of time on her hands these days.”

And with that double whammy, Claire clenches her teeth and puts down her fork. Dinner is officially over.

“What happened to that musician you met, honey?” Christine throws her napkin on her plate.

“He isn’t a musician,” Claire mumbles as she stands abruptly. She starts to clear the table, desperate to end this meal and this particularly awkward conversation tangent. Now she
really
can’t look at Mia. She picks up the plates and takes them into the kitchen.

* * *

Later, in the safety of her sleeping porch, she lies tucked under the blankets and stares into the darkness, sleepless. Thank God the evening is over. Now they can just pack up in the morning and leave.

After they finished dinner, Christine settled in the living room, with the television on, still busily drawing out every aspect of Mia’s life. Unable to cope with any more of her mother’s questions or comments, Claire escaped to the porch where her father was going over his fishing gear. Her father, of course, wanted her to retell the entire story of what happened to Rhiannon and the kids, to run through every step taken, to assess how Claire had handled it. Claire submitted to it, though, as the better of two evils. By the time she went back inside, Mia had taken herself off to bed. Claire has no idea if it was tiredness or just a need to escape Christine.

Claire said a quiet good night to them both and bolted herself, using the morning departure as an excuse for an early bedtime. And now, as she lies under the covers, she wonders if Mia is awake, wonders how she feels about this whole turn of events. Poor Mia, subjected to her parents on this most surreal of days.

What also keeps her wide awake long into the night is the realisation of another question that she hasn’t yet given a second’s thought to. What would they—what would her
mother
especially—say about it if she were to date a girl? Christine will have
plenty
of opinions about it, Claire knows that for sure. But she isn’t sure she wants to know what they will be. And she certainly doesn’t want to know any time soon.

She’s still lying there, turning these thoughts over in her mind, when her phone lights up over on the dresser and emits a quiet buzz. A message. She wonders if it’s from Mia. She doesn’t get up and look though. Because what if Mia wants to come out here to her? Claire wouldn’t dare. Her parents, ever vigilant, hear everything that goes on in this place, and she doesn’t want them to hear any sneaking around. But Claire doesn’t want to say no to Mia, either, so she ignores it and squeezes her eyes shut and bids sleep to come.