Forbidden Fruit (12 page)

‘No, actually, I don’t. I’ve tried to ask several times but she either won’t talk about it or she has company.’

‘Well, basically she’s stuffed. But listen, I’ve had this great idea that solves everything.’

‘You want to adopt Lucy’s baby.’

Silence stretched. ‘How did you know?’

‘I know you. And I think it’s incredibly generous, but with both good and bad attached. And I think you need to talk to Lucy before you get too carried away.’

‘It’d be like having twins!’ said Scarlet enthusiastically. ‘Plenty of people have twins! Then the baby stays in the family.’

‘Talk to your sister,’ I repeated. ‘But put yourself in her place before you do.’

‘I have! That’s why I came up with the idea! She gets to see it this way, watch it grow up!’

‘Yes,’ I sighed, quietly.

‘Well, thanks for your support. Are you coming over for dinner tonight?’

‘No, I’m afraid I can’t. I have to meet with my father. Your grandfather.’

‘Oh, okay. Fair enough. I’d better go, my spaghetti’s boiling over. Give him my best wishes. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.’

I said my goodbyes and laid the handset on the coffee table, where it rocked gently. Gusto’s nasal snoring punctuated the silence. I wondered what it meant for Scarlet and Matt, career-wise, if my father was convicted of murder. Did the police force frown on that type of thing? What about Quinn? Would she get teased at school? For that matter, what did it mean for me? Perhaps that would be the nail in the coffin for Ashley and I, if it had not been hammered into place already. I closed my eyes and pictured my father being bustled into a divvy van, a cardigan held over his face. Dallas Patrick’s children would be interviewed on the courthouse steps and they would say that the sentence hadn’t been enough, because that was what was always said. It was never enough. And my father would no longer be an absentee parent by choice. On the one hand, the whole thing would be awkward and embarrassing and very sad, but on the other, he would be a lot easier to visit.

‘So they’ve determined that she died inside the place. Upstairs at the front, where their lounge room was.’ My father put his beer down. He looked tired, with fleshy pouches cupping his eyes. ‘Which is where I last spoke to her. So you can see how it looks.’

I nodded. ‘Do they know how?’

‘Blow to the head, they reckon. That’s not official, though. And they don’t have the weapon.’

Petra drummed her fingers on the table, as if she was short of time. She had arrived straight from her trip to town and I suspected she might be suffering a slight hangover.

‘But that’s not what I wanted to talk about tonight. It’s not even connected. Well, not really.’ He picked up his glass and stared at it, then put it back down. ‘And there’s something I need to stress before I get started. Something you need to understand.’

‘That you’re innocent?’ asked Petra.

He looked surprised, and then waved a hand dismissively. ‘Of course. But no, this is about your mother. She wasn’t in favour of this chat, see. Not in favour at all.’

‘That sounds about right,’ I said, exchanging a glance with my sister.

‘I reckon it’s best you hear it from me, though, before anything comes out. But here’s the thing, she doesn’t want to talk about it with you. Not now, not ever. She wanted me to make that crystal clear. It’s never to be mentioned.’

I nodded slowly, my curiosity tingling like pins and needles.

‘Oh, here’s our dinner!’

Andre, his hair flowing this evening, had arrived with a tray holding our meals. He doled them out, looking morose, and then collected our empty glasses as he left.

‘Sour-looking fellow,’ commented our father. He sighed happily as he examined his meal. ‘Rare as rare can be. Ah, you can’t get meat like this over there. Dig in, girls! My shout!’

I smiled rather than answer.
Man shouts daughter pub meal. Compensates for decades of neglect.

‘So what’s this all about then?’ asked Petra. She had ordered the salmon, the smoky pink flesh matching her nail polish perfectly.

He held up his fork, chewing furiously. ‘Hang on.’ He swallowed, took a sip of beer. ‘How about we work through this first? Gotta enjoy it while I can!’

I tasted my risotto and then added some salt. I didn’t feel terribly hungry, but as I was already almost through my second glass of wine, it was probably a good idea to eat regardless. This was the third time in a week I had been sitting outside this pub and I was beginning to feel like a regular. It was a beautiful evening, with a light breeze that took the edge off the summer warmth. As a result, the hotel was almost full, both inside and out, and there was the gentle buzz of conversation all around, like background static.

I ate methodically, steering my mind away from my father, and Yen, and Dallas Patrick. And the fact that the front upstairs room was now Lucy’s bedroom. Dallas had been killed in Lucy’s bedroom. As if the girl didn’t already have enough to contend with. The thought of my daughter brought with it an immediate and increasingly familiar heaviness. Heartache was such an overused word, but so apt. My heart literally ached. At the same time I wanted to pick her up and just shake her, make her see sense. If she continued in this vein, and Amy Stenhouse ended up raising my grandchild, I was not sure what I would do. The very thought made the blood pound in my temples.

My father laid his cutlery down with a clatter. He exhaled a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Ah, that was
delicious
. A slice of bloody heaven.’

‘Which would mean heaven was a cow,’ said Petra.

‘What a thought!’ He grinned. ‘How’re your meals, girls?’

‘Lovely, thanks.’ I pushed my half-eaten risotto aside and cradled my wineglass. ‘Shall we get to it? What is it that we should hear from you first?’

‘Yeah, good idea. No point stalling. Like a bandaid, hey? Just rip the bugger off.’

‘Rip away,’ said Petra. ‘We’re listening.’

‘We married too young,’ he said abruptly. ‘I should say that first. Your mum had quite a sheltered upbringing. Her father kept her on a tight rein, had grand plans for her. And none of those included me. But young people usually find a way.’ He looked across at me. ‘Even so, I don’t reckon we would have ended up together if it wasn’t for you.’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘No matter. Anyway, the old guy never forgave her. But we got married and moved up here when my uncle took sick. Terrific stroke of luck. Not for him, of course. So there we were, two people totally unsuited to each other. Nothing in common.’

‘We know all this,’ said Petra acerbically.

‘Just trying to set the background. It’s important, makes sense of what happened after.’ He took a sip of beer and then wiped his mouth. ‘It just got worse, see. At least I had the trade, but your mum, she had nothing. Tried hard, joined mothers’ clubs and the like, but …’

I nodded slowly, trying to picture my mother in such a setting.

‘The last couple of years we barely spoke. She looked after the house, I looked after the shop, and evenings, after you two went to bed, were spent in silence.’ He ran a finger down his beer glass, clearing a shiny path. ‘It was shit.’

‘Why didn’t you just get divorced?’ asked Petra.

‘Wasn’t the done thing like now. No-fault divorce didn’t even come in till 1975. And then there were the finances. We couldn’t afford to run two households.’

Andre materialised by our table to collect the plates. ‘Anyone for dessert?’

Our father raised his eyebrows but we both shook our heads. He turned back to Andre. ‘No thanks, mate, but another round of drinks’d be good.’

‘Well, you split up anyway, didn’t you?’ said Petra as soon as Andre left. ‘In 1970.’

‘Yes. But there were reasons then. That year changed everything, otherwise I reckon we would’ve limped along forever.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It started with the Australia Day weekend. We were at a barbecue next door, at Jim’s place. I remember it was stinking hot. The chemist was there too, Paul Patrick, and his wife.’

‘Dallas Patrick,’ I said.

He nodded, staring at a point over my right shoulder. ‘She was a beautiful woman, you know. Not just pretty, beautiful. A little wisp of a thing. Blonde, with blue eyes you could drown in.’ His words drifted off. In the ensuing silence, the conversations around us seemed to double in volume. ‘Christ, Nell, I
love
the fact you’ve got a road named after you!’

I blinked with surprise, then followed his gaze and realised he was now focused on the street sign. ‘Ah, good. But can we get back on track? Australia Day. Uncle Jim’s house.’

‘Of course.’ He brought his gaze back. ‘Where was I? Yeah, so your mum put you lot to bed around eight and we sat around drinking. It was so damn hot. And then Paul asked if we’d ever heard of swinging.’

‘What?’ Petra gaped at him. ‘
Swinging?
Are you kidding me?’

‘No. At first we just brushed it off, laughed. But the more we talked, and drank, the more … feasible it sounded. And so we did.’

‘What?’ said Petra again, but this time she rose to her feet. ‘
What
?’

I motioned for her to sit down. I felt ill, even though I’d had an inkling, but I didn’t want him to stop. ‘Keep going.’

‘With a gutful of grog it seemed like a grand idea. Daring. Like we weren’t just boring couples living boring lives. Put some spice back, you know? But it just made things worse.’

‘Really?’ said Petra. ‘You mean group sex didn’t improve the marriage? What a shock.’

‘It wasn’t group sex,’ he replied shortly. ‘I’m not giving details, but it wasn’t like that.’

‘No, just keys in the bowl, I expect. So much more civilised.’

He stared at her evenly. ‘I don’t have the right to tell you to behave, but you might consider that this isn’t easy, telling you this. I could’ve left it, let you find out elsewhere.’

‘She’s just surprised, that’s all,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

‘Yeah, I’m surprised too.’ His expression softened. ‘I mean, I know it was me, and I was only twenty-five, twenty-six, but it’s like a different person. I don’t even know him any more.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Ah well. We didn’t speak about it, afterwards. Never mentioned it. But it was always there. I worked beside Paul Patrick for Christ’s sake, and we had the Hurleys next bloody door.’

‘Oh my god.’ I gaped at him. ‘Rita Hurley!’

Petra made a gagging noise and grabbed at her wine. With excellent timing, Andre arrived with our fresh drinks. A car honked and I turned to see Lucy and Quinn waving from Lucy’s fleshy-pink hatchback as it came around the corner. Kate was in the passenger seat.

‘You only know her now,’ said our father as soon as the car had sailed past. ‘Back then she was a lovely-looking girl.’ He gave a sudden bark of laughter. ‘As if that makes it better. Anyway, so we limped along for another month or so. It was around then that the council up and says the road’s being moved. We were given the option to relocate or get compensation. I didn’t have much choice but to relocate. Needed a regular wage. See, your grandad had died and we knew we were up for some money, but because he and your mum had been estranged, there was talk of the will being contested.’ He shrugged philosophically. ‘Anyway, Paul opted for compo. He had a cousin or someone up Ballarat way who wanted a partnership. Then he comes up with this idea of a goodbye weekend away. I said no, straight up, but Lilly said yes.’

I blinked, trying to absorb this latest piece of information.

‘To be fair, I didn’t need much persuading. It was sort of like, how much harm could it do? Couldn’t get much worse. Besides …’ He took a sip of beer and then smacked his lips. The sound was particularly unpleasant, given the context. ‘By then I’d, well, started a bit of a friendship with Dallas. Nothing untoward, mind you.’

‘Really?’ Petra looked from him to me as if hoping for some sanity, somewhere.

‘Yeah. See, she was a terribly unhappy woman. Paul was a bit of a chauvinist. I got the impression he’d got her involved in that sort of stuff before, and she hated it. So I figured that if I went along with this trip, then at least she’d have some support.’

Petra was still staring at me. She shook her head slowly. I suddenly realised that my father was a rescuer. A white knight. He was attracted to women who were vulnerable, needy. My mother with her overprotective father, Dallas with her chauvinist husband. I wondered about Edie, his Cornish wife, and what the situation had been there.

‘We went to Queenscliff. It was the weekend before Easter. Paul knew a couple with a holiday house there. Christ, the place was spectacular! Overlooking the beach with big glass windows and a balcony that ran all the way round. What we didn’t realise was they’d be there too.’

‘Oh, excellent,’ said Petra. ‘More players. Can I ask what you did with your children while you were off playing swapsies?’

‘Jean from across the road had you both for the weekend. You were perfectly safe.’

I thought of Rita Hurley’s photo; eight young people in beachwear. ‘This other couple. What were their names?’

‘The bloke was Rex. Rex Fletcher. Suave sort of fellow. Couple of years older. His wife’s name was Clare. By Christ, she was stunning. Hollywood stunning. Tall brunette with legs that … yeah, looked like Gloria Swanson in her heyday.’

‘What a relief,’ said Petra. ‘I mean, it would have been so awkward if she’d been ugly.’

‘I know you’re finding this hard,’ said our father. ‘So how about I just get it over with?’

‘Fine.’

‘I was annoyed at first, and Jim was bloody furious. But Rex said they were okay to just keep to themselves if that’s what we wanted. And the thing is, having them there made it a little easier. See, we were all a bit nervous and they were just so damn relaxed, so casual. It turned out to be a good weekend. Really good.’

‘Very pleased to hear it,’ said Petra.

He ignored her. ‘But it was after that trip I realised, well, that I was in love with Dallas. And that’s also when your mother took up with Jim in earnest. Then a couple of things happened. First, we found out just before Easter that your grandad’s will had come through probate and Lilly was due a tidy sum. Enough to pay off our mortgage and more. Suddenly we had options. Your mother and I had a talk, a really good talk, and we thought it could all work out. We’d divorce and start up again, her with Jim and me with Dallas. It seemed so simple.’

Petra sent another look in my direction and I gave her a half-smile.

‘But it didn’t turn out that way. Firstly Dallas was shit scared that if she left Paul, he’d take the kids. I hit a bit of a downer. Felt trapped by everything.’ He stopped to have another drink of beer and I noticed he was no longer making easy eye contact. ‘We’d signed a lease, see. So your mum comes up with this idea of opening a bookshop instead, using her father’s money to get going. I could help out while I worked out what I wanted to do. I think she thought that’d free me up so she wouldn’t feel so bad about her and Jim. But then a few weeks later Rita announces she’s pregnant. Poor bloody Jim was trapped.’ He grimaced. ‘Dallas had left by then. And that was it.’

‘Except she came back,’ I said in a low voice. ‘On the twenty-fifth of April. Anzac Day.’

‘Yes.’ He smiled grimly. ‘D’you know, first up I thought she’d changed her mind. Christ, I was thrilled when I saw the car. But she’d just dropped in for something. Not me.’

I watched him carefully. He certainly seemed genuine, but then I simply didn’t know him well enough to make that call. ‘So is that why you left the country? Because of her?’

‘Yes and no. She was the catalyst, I reckon, but it was everything else too. Then when I saw her that day, and she … well, she laughed. That was it, I’d had enough. Helped your mother open up and then headed over to Adelaide to catch up with my folks. Left for London that Friday. I just
had
to get away. Leave it all behind.’

Neither Petra nor I said anything, because we were part of what he’d left behind.