Odd One Out (6 page)

It took Sylvie one pot of coffee, two chocolate croissants and one and a half hours the next morning to unjumble the dares. By Sebastian’s standards, they were mild. No leaping off tall buildings. No eating of worms or spiders or caterpillars.

He’d sent her three dares. She could spread them out over the next week or get the whole lot over and done with in a day. It was up to her. He wanted full reports, preferably typed or in PowerPoint form, but he would also settle for quick calls or messages left on his mobile phone. He would prefer it if she did them in the order listed but he gave her permission to be flexible.

The list was titled
Sylvie’s Three-Step Search for Certainty
.

One: Ask someone out on a date.

Two: Host a dinner party. Dishes must contain the following ingredients: coriander, fish sauce, sesame oil, chili, rice wine, galangal, lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves.

Three: To be divulged when dares one and two are successfully completed.

The phone rang before she had a chance to start thinking about them. She snatched it up before it went to the answering machine. It was Mill.

“Oh, what a shame to get you, Sylvie,” she said immediately. “I’ve really started to prefer answering machines. So much more efficient. No need to ask how are you, what have you been doing, how’s the weather etcetera, don’t you find? You can get straight to the point.”

“I can hang up if you like.”

Mill gave a roar of laughter. “That would teach me. I must say I do like that cheeky little spirit of yours. I was just talking about you, in fact. Telling George here that you’re coming to live with me when you get back from Melbourne.”

“George?”

“My new gardener. Marvelous man. Strong and hardy, like a plant himself. He said you sounded nice too. He’s surprisingly knowledgeable about all sorts of things, not only plants. Quite the antiques expert. Says I’m sitting on some valuable objects here. I’m not surprised. Vincent had a wonderful eye.”

An alarm bell rang. “Mill, who is this George?”

“George. Of George’s Gorgeous Gardens. He’s perfectly legitimate. Large ad in the Yellow Pages. A website even, he tells me. Not that I’m too sure what that is.”

Sylvie decided she’d check it out as soon as possible. But in the meantime . . .

“Mill, please don’t tell people I’m coming to live with you.”

“You want to keep it a secret? No problem at all. I was saying to George that the blue room is definitely the best one for you, but he said we might get bats in the Moreton Bay out the front, or even the occasional funnel web spider. You wouldn’t mind them, would you? You don’t look the squeamish, timid type to me.”

“Mill, I don’t know how to make this any clearer, but I’m not planning on coming back to Sydney for a while. Possibly ever. I’m looking for work here.”

“I understand completely. Just let me know when you’re due back and I’ll get someone to meet you at the airport. Now, I’d better give you today’s tip. When you’re frying eggs, sprinkle a little bit of flour in the hot oil. It stops any spatters. Bye for now, Sylvie.”

That hadn’t gone right, Sylvie thought, looking down at the phone. The call had warmed her up, though. Before there was time to think, she took out the piece of paper with Max’s number on it and dialed.

It rang six times before a man answered. Was it him? She didn’t know his voice well enough. “Max?”

“Sylvie, I was just thinking about you.”

“You were?”

“I was going to ring and ask if you wanted to meet me for a drink at the end of the week.”

Drat, he’d got in first. She needed to ask him out on a date. Did it count that she was the one who had rung him?

“Sylvie, are you there? I’ve asked you for a drink, not a round-the-world cruise. Just say yes.”

The laughter in his voice gave her nerve. “Max, I’m sorry, but can you hang up and then answer it again when I ring?”

“I could, if you truly think that makes any sense.”

“I’ll explain why later.”

“I’ll look forward to that.” He hung up.

She dialed the number again. “Max?”

“Sylvie, hello. Who’d have thought? How are you today?” He sounded like a detective trying to talk a mad person off a window ledge.

“Would you like to meet me for a drink on Friday night?”

“What a lovely idea. I wish I’d thought of it myself.”

She crossed the dare off the list. “Thank you very much. Seven o’clock? The Spanish bar? Great, see you then.”

She hung up. She felt great. Really great. And not only because she’d already done one of her dares.

***

There was a knock at the front door just after three o’clock. It was Leila. She didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “That coffee you mentioned the other day. I don’t suppose it’s still up for grabs?”

“Of course, come in. How did it go?”

“The soap audition? It was disastrous.”

“What happened?”

“Self-sabotage.” Leila gave a big sigh as she followed Sylvie into the kitchen. “Something got into me about two minutes after I arrived and I couldn’t stop giggling. Which would have been fine if it had been a girly part, but I was going for the part of a newly widowed young mother. I read the lines as if it was the most hilarious thing that had ever happened to me.”

“Oh, Leila.”

“‘Oh, Leila’ is right. And do you know what made it worse? I heard them talking about it afterward. They said it was the worst audition they’d ever seen. The producer said that one is definitely going on the bloopers tape. I don’t blame them. You should have seen me. ‘
He’s dead? My husband’s dead? But how will I go on without him?
’ And me laughing as if I’ve inhaled a hot-air balloon full of laughing gas.”

“It must have been nerves.”

“Not nerves. The gods telling me to find a new career. Sylvie, do you have any cigarettes?”

“Sorry, no. I don’t smoke.”

“Neither do I. I want to start, though. Forget the coffee. Do you have to do anything today? Will you come and get drunk with me? You didn’t have anything else planned, did you?”

Sylvie thought of Sebastian’s list. “Actually, yes. A dinner party. For next Saturday night. Would you like to come?”

“Sure. If you come and get drunk with me now.”

“It’s a deal.”

Six hours later, it took Sylvie five tries to get her key in the lock. It was nearly midnight. Her head was spinning from too much vodka, too much loud music and eight unaccustomed cigarettes. She squinted as she looked at the answering machine. No messages from Mill tonight. Oh, God. That reminded her. She’d meant to check the George’s Gorgeous Gardens website. Some great-niece she was. Mill could be cut up in tiny pieces and buried under the flagstones of her newly gorgeous garden by now.

As she waited for Sebastian’s computer to warm up, Sylvie went to the kitchen and made herself drink three large glasses of water. She caught sight of her reflection in the dark of the kitchen window. A panda looked back at her. She always ended up with mascara smudges under her eyes when she laughed. She’d spent most of the afternoon laughing.

“What Midas is to gold, I am to chaos,” Leila had announced as they walked to a bar she knew in Prahran. “Everything I touch turns to ruin. I’m the original Calamity Jane. It’s not funny, Sylvie. Stop smiling. I can’t help it. I’ve been like it since I was a child.”

As they played pool, Leila entertained her with a litany of her disasters. Her first cubbyhouse, built by her farmer father in secret for her tenth birthday, swept away in a flash flood the day after her party. Her first day at high school ruined when she spent the day with her school uniform tucked into her knickers. Her step into independence, moving to Melbourne from a country town north of Ballarat as a twenty-eight-year-old, hitting a major road hump when the removal van carrying all her belongings caught fire en route. Her attempt to stave off loneliness in her first few months by volunteering to visit old people in their homes coming to an end when her allocated old lady sacked her for not being interesting enough. Her attempt to get fit ending in failure when her clothes were stolen from the side of the Harold Holt pool while she was swimming laps one winter afternoon. She’d had to catch the tram home wearing only her bathers.

“That’s why it’s good to hang around me,” Leila had said. “I attract everybody else’s share of bad luck as well as my own. Do you think I could hire myself out? As a kind of reverse good-luck charm?”

Still smiling at the memory, Sylvie carried a fourth glass of water into Sebastian’s office. The computer rippled into life.
After one or two vodka-fueled spelling mistakes, she found the website for George’s Gorgeous Gardens. It was professional, with photographs, a detailed profile of George himself, a long list of his qualifications. There were more than a dozen testimonials from happy clients. Good. It looked like Mill and her garden were in safe hands. Safe green thumbs, even.

In bed soon after, trying to get to sleep and ignoring her spinning head, Sylvie remembered something else Leila had said that day. Something that didn’t make her smile.

They’d been in the third bar of the day, playing their fourth game of pool, drinking their third or possibly fourth vodka and tonic. Sylvie had told Leila about the treasure hunt Sebastian had left, the clues leading to the bookshop and the list of dares. Pressed for more details, she’d told her about the situation with her mother and sisters in Sydney, and all that had happened the night of Vanessa’s wedding.

“I wish I had a big brother who cared about me like that,” Leila said. “My three little brothers are demons. Heavy metal music-lovers. Motorbike-addicts. If there’s ever an earthquake in Victoria, the epicenter will be our house.” She expertly potted three balls, then looked across the green table.

“Where’s your father, Sylvie? You haven’t mentioned him.”

“Here. In Melbourne.”

“They’re divorced?”

Sylvie nodded.

“What happened?”

“Irreconcilable differences. Is that the legal term for screaming at each other all the time? He left when I was eight. Sebastian went with him.”

“Have you seen your dad since you’ve been down here?”

“I haven’t seen him since I was eight.”

Leila stopped lining up her shot. “Twenty years?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Why not?”

“Mum didn’t want me to when I was younger. It would upset her too much if I suggested it. And since then . . .” She shrugged.

“Aren’t you curious? Even to have a look at him?”

What she felt wasn’t curiosity. It was hurt, wrapped up in years of no phone calls or birthday cards. “It’s too late now. And I still wouldn’t like to upset Mum.” It sounded feeble even to her own ears.

“But you’re an adult female. Your role in life as a daughter is to upset your mother. Didn’t you know that? I drive my mother bananas.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“You must be curious, though?”

Sylvie wanted to drop this topic. “Of course. But he’s always known where I was as well. It takes two.”

“I disagree. It takes one. One of you to make the first move.” They played two shots each before Leila spoke again. “Can I ask you a blunt question?”

In Sylvie’s experience, the best answer to an inquiry like that was usually no. “Go ahead.”

“Have you ever thought about taking charge of your own life?”

“Pardon?”

Leila chalked the end of her cue, looking seriously over at Sylvie. “I’m sorry if this comes out wrong, but the way you’ve told it, you’ve spent the past few years doing whatever your mother and sisters told you to do. Now you’re down here doing what Sebastian wants you to do. Not just coming to Melbourne and minding his house, but this whole treasure hunt thing.”

“It’s only a bit of fun.”

“I know. And I told you, I’d love a big brother who did something like this for me. But you’re nearly thirty. When are you going to start making your own decisions? About life. About seeing your father. You’re obviously bright, you’re great company. I can’t see why you haven’t broken out on your own before now.”

Sylvie couldn’t tell whether Leila was insulting or complimenting her. “I haven’t been sure what I wanted to do yet.”

“No? Fair enough.” Leila lined up the ball, played her shot. It missed. “It’s probably easier to let other people boss you around, then. Your turn, Sylvie.”

Leila’s words kept going around her head. Is that what she’d been doing? Taking the easy way out by letting people boss her around? She hoped not. Wasn’t it that she liked helping people? Being busy? Feeling needed? Or had she let it become an excuse?

It was past three before she got to sleep.

***

She rang her mother first thing the next morning, before she made coffee or tried to find some headache tablets. If she kept waiting for her to call, it might never happen. If she wanted to talk to her mother, then it was up to her to ring.

Fidelma sounded genuinely delighted to hear from her. “Sylvie, darling, how are things? I was leaving you alone. You have enough of me in Sydney. I thought you might like the peace. Ray and I are back from the retreat and I feel truly inspired. I’ve already got ideas for my next exhibition. I do believe the landscape there speaks right to my inner self. Ray was up before dawn each morning meditating, and he agrees that being close to nature is so important, not just for our creativity but for our souls. I’m thinking of introducing a new element to my work, possibly multimedia, incorporating . . .”

When she hung up ten minutes later, Sylvie realized her mother had never actually heard how things were going for her in Melbourne or how she was feeling. Either Sylvie was still numb from all the vodka the day before, or she didn’t mind as much as usual.

As she went out for a walk a little later her eyes were drawn once again to her father’s photograph in the hallway. She stopped and looked at it.

What would they talk about if she did ring him? His poetry? The truth was she’d never really understood it. It was experimental, jagged, angry writing. What else had Sebastian said about him? That he spoke Swahili? Lived in a penthouse? Drove a new car? Or maybe none of those things?