The Accident (20 page)

Two multiple-choice to go. Punnet squares, of course. I force my eyes back onto the paper and my mind onto the questions, as if it’s the last precious minute of the exam. But the words are suddenly meaningless. The click-clacking of Mrs Clegg’s heels. A light touch on my shoulder. ‘Eliat.’

It’s Teresa from Tash’s childcare centre. Tash has a temperature. They’ve tried Panadol and damp towels but her temperature hasn’t dropped enough.

I might not know everything but I know this particular policy. Rose-Marie made me read through all the paperwork from the childcare centre when we first put Tash in. They have an hour from the time the temperature is first recorded. If it’s still too high at the end of the hour and nobody has picked Tash up, the policy is to call an ambulance.

‘Did you already try Rose-Marie? And Terry?’

‘Rose-Marie is stuck at work. She said you should be able.’

Stuck at work my arse. She’s just seized a chance to make things harder for me. If I made them call her again, or Terry…But if I do…

We wait our turn at the doctors’ surgery. There’s a few other kids here, playing in the corner with the pile of toys. Tash is slouched on my lap, thumb in her mouth again. She was crying when I picked her up. I’m slouched too, arm looped loosely around her.

I’m handed a script to get filled. It’s most likely a run-of-the-mill virus.

It takes an hour and three buses to get to the pharmacy and then get home, and Tash whinges the whole way. The medicine is cherry flavoured but I still have to almost force it down her throat. Lies on the lounge sucking on her thumb, red-faced and snot-nosed, and watches her Wiggles DVD.

My phone, on silent on the kitchen bench, buzzes at ten-minute intervals. Izzy trying to call me. After an hour of watching it I give in and answer.

‘What?’

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

She’s the best and worst of friends at a time like this, refusing to take no for an answer. ‘I’m coming over,’ she announces, and she hangs up.

Turns up at the door with a bottle of tequila in hand. Part of me is thankful to have company. The rest of me marvels at her idiocy. Sometimes she just doesn’t get it.

‘Are you stupid? I’ve got Tash.’

Shrugs, tucks it behind her back. ‘Just in case. So what do you want to do?’

Look past her to the dented nineties BMW parked crookedly in the no-parking zone, bright plastic P-plate jammed in beside the number plate. Her parents bought it when she threatened to drop out of school last year. If she gets through the HSC, it’s hers to keep. If.

‘Can we just drive somewhere?’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere.’

There’s a spare booster seat for Tash in the garage. I spend ten minutes doubled over in Izzy’s back seat trying to remember how to anchor it in properly. Tash has fallen asleep on the couch and she’s grumpy when I wake her. Kicks up a fuss about being put in the car seat and chucks her Tippee cup at me. Izzy puts on a dance track for her. ‘How’s that? Or do you want Britney?’

Ten minutes later she’s sound asleep again, thumb back in mouth, cheeks flushed. I can’t help feeling edgy. Part of me wonders what Izzy would say if I asked her to drive and drive and not turn back. Part of me wishes I had those two packed suitcases in the boot.

‘So where are we going?’

My answer comes completely out of the blue, but suddenly it’s the only thing that makes sense. ‘Singleton.’

‘Singleton like your last name?’

‘Just head north.’

We don’t talk much. Izzy tries to start up conversation a few times. I don’t give her much to work with. Stare at the city passing by, then the suburbs, then the massive sandstone walling us in as we speed along the freeway.

‘How far is it?’

‘I’ll let you know.’

We drive for nearly three hours. Tash is completely out of it. When we finally stop in the town centre it takes a while to rouse her. She looks around, bleary-eyed. Her hair is sweaty and flattened from sleeping in the car seat. The medicine must be wearing off; she’s a ball of heat as I lift her up and hold her against me.

Izzy climbs out and looks at me across the top of the car as she stretches. ‘Okay, now do you want to fill me in?’

The Coles supermarket logo shines brightly against the dusky sky. Tail end of peak hour, or as close as it gets here. People are bustling around, but to me everything just seems to have stopped.

‘What?’ Izzy prods, halfway between exasperated and freaked out. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘Let’s go in.’

‘What are we getting?’

Look at my watch. Just past six. ‘Dinner. And some stuff for Tash.’

Bright and buzzing and not quite real. Fluoro lights and packed shelves and screaming specials. I send Izzy to find us something to eat and take Tash with me looking for Panadol. She’s starting to whinge, rubbing at her face and her ears like she does when she’s tired or sick. I don’t have a thermometer but can tell just from holding her that her temperature’s back. Seems worse than before.

‘Yeah, I know, I know. I’m finding the medicine, okay?’

The medical section is at the very end of aisle nine. I find the children’s Panadol and go in search of Izzy. Then I stop.

The frozen food section is spread out in front of me, along the back wall of the building. Brightly lit cabinets full of frozen peas and pizza and ice-cream.

Everything goes fuzzy. The humming, buzzing sound of the freezers fills my ears. The lights dim a little. Tash is a heavy weight in my arms.

Eyes on the freezers. Let her slide to the ground. Aware of her reaching back up for me, starting to cry. It’s as if I’m underwater. I don’t even look at her. Glimpses of sound, of smell, the tipping point of memory…I’m close to it. A swell of confusion, of lostness…

‘Eliat!’

Izzy’s voice. The world starts to come back into focus. Tash pulling at my leg, crying. Iz stares at me.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

Can’t answer her. I nearly had it…My mind scrambles to catch hold of the last traces.

No. It’s gone.

Izzy takes charge. Picks up Tash and nudges me with the bag of Doritos in her hand. ‘We’re going.’

She pays. Manages, somehow, to strap Tash into the car seat. I drop into the passenger seat and pull my seatbelt on.

Still numb, I flip down the sunvisor. Stare at my reflection in the tiny mirror. Dark eyes stare back at me. Near-black but still shaped like a Caucasian’s. My hair still holds a few curls from my efforts this morning, but otherwise it’s straight and limp. Asian father, white mother. Asian mother, white father? That’s the question, and I’m even guessing about that. But I can’t get rid of it no matter how hard I try.

I was named after a woman named Eliat Smith. Don’t know who named her or where the name came from. I hate it. I’ve always hated it.

Eliat Smith found me one day in the freezer aisle in the Singleton Coles. Not crying, but sitting on the floor clutching a stuffed yellow bunny rabbit and scowling furiously at everyone who walked past through an untidy black fringe. Or that’s the way she told it.

Nobody knew who I was. Nobody knew where I had come from. And sixteen years and a dozen lifetimes later, nothing has changed.

before
after
later

The darkroom is empty. I feel cheated somehow by Morgan’s absence, though it would be a fair exchange for mine on Friday. Friday, which seems another lifetime ago.

I have art just before lunch and I stay in the darkroom right through to produce four proper prints. I don’t dare leave them in the drying racks—things get lost and ripped up when the junior classes come in here—so I take the final prints out into the classroom to dry them with the hairdryer.

Sarah Bancroft.

She’s bent over the desk, a fine brush in her hand and ink bottles spread out on the desk. I can’t see what she’s actually painting but from the slow, careful movements I can tell it must be meticulous.

I move closer and she looks up, hand mid-air. A moment of unmasked surprise at the interruption, then the habitual scowl—habitual at least as far as I’m concerned—drops into place.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was working in the darkroom.’ I’m suddenly conscious not just that I’m holding the prints, but of the subject matter. I move across to another desk and lay them flat so that she can’t see them. As I do I catch a glimpse of her painting.

A portrait of a woman. A damn impressive one at that. If I wasn’t looking at the ink and brush in her hand I would have easily believed it was a black and white photograph.

I can’t help myself. I’m curious. ‘Who is that?’

She looks at me, a long, cold stare. Then, without saying anything, returns to her work. Ouch.

I shake my prints for a few seconds to try to get rid of excess water, then fire up the hairdryer. Bancroft is dipping her brush into the ink and she jumps at the sound, knocking the bottle right over. Ink gurgles out, pools on the desk.

‘Shit!’

She grabs her art paper and lifts it right up off the desk, before the spreading ink reaches it. It runs towards the edge of the table and she backs right up, moving away just as it starts to drip onto the floor.

‘Sorry.’ I shift the hairdryer onto a quieter setting. ‘My bad.’

‘You could have ruined my portrait!’

‘And I said sorry. I apologised. What more do you want?’ I honestly would have felt bad if that had happened. But the portrait is fine. And this whole queen-of-the-world routine just bugs me.

She makes no attempt to hide her anger and disgust. I arch an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I get it. You don’t make mistakes.’

‘No, I don’t.’ She strides across to the sinks, twists the tap on and shoves her brushes underneath.

‘Wow. Life must be easy if you’re born perfect.’

‘Born perfect?’ she echoes coldly. She shakes the brushes dry, then gives a self-righteous shrug. ‘At least I’m not ordinary.’

It’s supposed to be an insult, of course. I still remember back in primary school when we had to look up the meaning of our name. I found out that Sarah meant princess and for weeks I carried around the guilt of thinking I had failed my parents. Princesses are beautiful and blonde. I was a feral eight-year-old with big feet, unmanageable hair and a habit of losing things. Not regal at all.

Yet if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that I don’t want to be a princess anyway. Of course I want to do extraordinary things, but I don’t ever want to get to the point where I look down my nose at people like she does, and think I’m better than them. And I don’t want the attention on me.

I pass Morgan in the corridor on my way to last period. She grabs my arm. ‘Hey, where were you on Friday? I wanted to show you one of my photos.’

‘I took a day off. Where were you today?’

‘Debating. Well, getting ready for a debate tomorrow. Bludging.’ She grins.

‘Does Sarah Bancroft hate everybody’s guts or just mine?’ I ask suddenly.

‘Yeah, she’s got issues.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Seriously, though…’ Morgan leans in closer, confidential. ‘Her mum hanged herself last year. Her dad was about to get remarried and everything, big drama. I heard Sarah was the one who actually found her. That’s gotta screw someone up, right?’

There’s something about the way she says it. Not exactly blasé but with a sort of morbid enthusiasm. It makes me feel a little sad. Not for myself, but for how naive I once was; for how naive you’re able to be when nothing truly terrible has ever happened to you.

I picture Sarah Bancroft in my mind, that stiff arrogance. Makes a lot of sense, now. Must be hard to turn up every day knowing everybody knows your story.

Mum’s car is in the garage, and based on the almost overpowering smell of roasted coffee, I guess she’s been home for a while. I find her in the lounge room sitting on the couch. Iago is beside her, head on her lap. She never lets him on the couch…

‘Mum?’

She and Iago both look up, and I see. She’s crying. And when Mum cries, she cries. She’s got mascara and tissues everywhere.