The Astrologer's Daughter (20 page)

21

Hugh passes me at the tram stop on Toorak Road and doubles back. There are no trams
to escape into, so all I can do is stand and watch the chrome grille of his coupé
drawing closer. It reminds me of cartoon shark teeth.

He slides in at the kerb, right next to me, and lets the engine idle while the drivers
in the cars behind him all pile up, beeping their horns and leaning out their windows,
the
effings
flying. Still, Hugh just stares fixedly at me through the half-down passenger
window, refusing to move along until I get in beside him.

I have a high embarrassment threshold and have every intention of looking the other
way for as long as it takes, before getting on a tram. But the wind is really rising
now,
keening like a funeral mourner. Rain imminent.

I hate the cold. In all the moving around we’ve done, it’s been the one constant—how
much I hate it. The whole time since Dad died, I suddenly realise, Mum has been working
her way down the eastern seaboard, working her way back from when we were warm and
safe in the north, the three of us together, to
this
. Closing some kind of circle
that’s ending in wind and rain.

To a chorus of shouted oaths, kicking myself at my weakness, I get in, still hugging
my backpack. Sitting with knees drawn primly together—as if that will somehow minimise
my general surface area and volume—I catch sight of my reflection in the glass and
grimace. My hair is hanging in tangled dreads all down my back and shoulders and
my cheeks seem thinner, the bones and scars more prominent. I look like one of the
witches out of
Macbeth.

There are grass stains on Hugh’s torn shirt and red marks on his face, but all he
says in a normal-sounding voice is, ‘The least I could do is drive you home,’ and
then he guns it, the coupé’s engine roaring like a caged animal at the bottlenecks.

I study his profile, his downturned mouth, the line of his neck and jaw when he isn’t
looking. He’s the kind of guy I would sleep with in a shot, I decide. I would give
it up for a guy like this, no questions asked, because I’m as shallow as the next
person. But Wurbik was right. Even
if he could see past the scars, Hugh’s not for
me; he’s not one of my kind. Being with him keys me up to a pitch that only dolphins
can hear. Nothing would ever be easy. Around a guy like Hugh, I would always be falling
over my feet and saying the wrong thing and kicking myself and kicking myself and
kicking myself. I’d be flavour of the minute, not the month; I’d never even make
it into the guy’s fucking fifth-house stars, that’s how fast he’d be through with
me, and I might never recover. That’s nothing to aspire to.

Still, it will hurt me every day, knowing he’s out there, because I’m not going to
forget him. I mean, who forgets meeting
the dream guy
? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime
thing. Some people don’t even get that. But it’s okay to let him go because he was
never mine anyway, and I’ve at least seen him. I know he exists.

‘So I’ll live,’ I say out loud without meaning to, like they do in the soaps.

I cover my mouth with one hand, appalled, and Hugh darts me a curious, sidelong glance.
‘There’s living and there’s
living
,’ he says distantly, gazing back out onto the
congested road ahead.

But he’s wrong. It’s all the one state. It’s just getting through, and not letting
the absences overwhelm you.

‘Well, goodbye, then,’ I say as we drive under the painted arches of Chinatown, cringing
at how banal and
emotionless my words sound when all this,
all this
, is going on
inside my head. This is the end of the road for him and me. There should at least
be music. ‘And thanks, you know. For the lift.’

Ugh
.
Somebody sew my mouth closed, please.

My hand is on the door; I’m all ready to leap out and run from how much I suck at
small talk. Hugh slides the car into a loading zone opposite my building and turns
to me. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ he mutters. ‘I’d like to see you again.’

I blink. Two complete non sequiturs. The only thing connecting the two statements?
The word
see
. Bloody nervous word-game disorder.

Hugh hasn’t turned the engine off, which makes it all sound even more matter-of-fact:
that if he says he’d like to see me again it will, in fact, come to pass. He’s a
go-getter, a hunter. He never gives up. I know that. It’s in his chart.

‘I’ve never met anyone like you,’ he says. Which sounds like a line, but it’s
my
line and I will hug it to me and milk it later, when I’m alone, for meaning. Turning
it over and over incessantly, like a polished jewel. I blink again, everything spun
on its head, and Hugh’s dark eyes are intent on me. ‘You said you couldn’t feel anything.
But you knew about Fleur. No one will talk to me about her and you knew her
name
.’

I’m unable to summon up something sharp or sassy
in reply. I just can’t. I’m suspended.
He reaches out and actually touches the skin of my face: the scarred part, which
warms instantly. And I don’t draw away. ‘Does that hurt you?’ he murmurs, leaning
forward so that our foreheads are almost touching. The pad of his thumb is resting
against my skin and I want to close my eyes and succumb because this guy,
this guy
,
is better than Bio-Oil, better than psychotherapy. If he doesn’t see or mind the
scars? Then there
are
no scars.

We’re leaning in, about to fall, about to do all those theoretical things that theoretical
people in books do with their mouths and hands, when a familiar pattern, a worn-out
blue plaid, moves into the corner of my eye and just stays there.

I glance up, startled, so that Hugh turns his head to look, too. It’s Simon in his
knitted grey beanie. Standing very still across the road, right in my line of sight.
Arms crossed, waiting for me. His eyes don’t leave me for a second and the moment
between Hugh and I is fleeing; it flies.

Maybe we can get it back.
Or maybe
, says the voice of reason in my head, reasserting
itself huffishly,
you should just let it go, okay? You were saying
goodbye
. Quick
ones are easier all round.

My own body fighting me, I sit back from Hugh. ‘I can’t,’ I say simply, ‘not right
now.’

Hugh’s posture changes; going rigid. He knows it has something to do with the tall,
beat-up-looking guy trying to melt the car from the outside with his grey-green eyes.
He turns back quickly, moving so that Simon is entirely blocked from my view. ‘This
isn’t the end of it,’ he warns, stroking the skin of my scar again with the pad of
his thumb, bringing the heat. ‘I know where to find you.’

I move away from him, putting my pack back up between us like the fence that will
always stand between the
haves
and the
have-nots
.

‘Everyone does,’ I reply quietly. ‘Best of luck with your life.’ Still holding his
gaze, I open my car door and scramble out backwards, adding, like a gibbering numbskull,
‘Really, I mean it. It’ll be a great life. You’ll do great.’

I almost add, thinking better of it:
Don’t let having a murderous sicko for a father
hold you back.
I shut the door—flushed and hot from shooting my mouth off like a
fool. Over the roof of the car, all I see is Simon’s taut, bleak face, bones and
bruises prominent.

The coupé moves off in a squeal of tyres—I register that, but I don’t really see
it go—as I dodge across the street towards Simon. What are we, really? I’ve got nothing
to feel guilty about, but I feel it. I’m hangdog, hesitant, like
I’ve done something
wrong, as I come up onto the kerb in front of him. Simon’s voice is biting, his arms
still crossed. ‘Is that the rich guy Wurbik told me about? Why don’t you ever answer
your damned
phone
? You aced it by the way. Dalgeish wasn’t even looking at me after
you left. You held the floor then you wiped me with it. Prize is in the bag.’

His tone is as bitter as his body language and fury rises in me, sudden and sharp.

‘How is it my fault if I did
better
?’ I say incredulously. ‘You had all the answers.
You were
prepared
. You stayed on point. I cried all over my shoes, for fuck’s sake.
Give the fat, ugly chick a little credit for being able to—’

Simon cuts me off. ‘Hook a stud? He only wants one thing, Cen; it’s so obvious, it’s
nauseating.’

I mean, look at you
is what Simon’s really saying.

‘And, like, I’d just give it to him? Right there in his car in the middle of Chinatown?’
I screech, fumbling my house keys out of my bag and punching them into Simon’s chest
so hard that he rocks backwards. ‘Like that’s all a rich, good-looking guy would
want from me.
Sex
, not conversation? Not answers? He wants to know whether his dad
is responsible for a cold-case rape-murder. And if he happens to like me as well?
Well, isn’t that just my
luck
.’ Simon’s mouth is opening and shutting as I snarl,
‘Get out of my sight, you hypocrite. It’s okay for you to want all of those things—the
beautiful life, all the
trappings—but not okay for
me
. When I want it, when I want
to reach out and take it because, maybe, just maybe, something’s being handed my
way for a change, it’s not permissible. My motives are suspect, or his are.
Don’t
judge me
.’

Simon tries to catch me by the sleeve but I step around him, almost dancing on my
toes like a prize fighter. ‘I hope I
do
win the Tichborne, because if I do I’m going
to buy you a car you can actually sleep in which will take you right out of my
life
.
Do what you like,’ I add, pointing up at the darkened windows of my place. ‘Make
yourself a sandwich. Plot my downfall. Shit, play me a word in a game you’re never
going to win. I’m going for a walk.’

And a moment later I’m lost in the late-afternoon crowd moving uphill through Little
Bourke Street, everyone hurrying to get somewhere, be somewhere. I duck through one
alleyway, then another, finding that I know the streets like the back of my hand,
like the local I never thought I was.

He calls and calls and I ignore him, not sure where I’m really going. People see
the shine of tears on my face and stare; most just avert their eyes. When the rain
comes down, in sheets, in torrents, I keep walking in circles and
squares and zigzaggy
lines while people rush and huddle and battle their pop-up umbrellas going inside
out from the wind. The noise is immense, water rushing down the bluestone gutters,
pooling in the dips and warps in the road. Soon my feet and shoes, the legs of my
jeans are sodden. I pause outside the 7-Eleven on Exhibition Street feeling stupid
about grand gestures, when this prickling starts up, in my gut.

Maybe I
do
feel things because I’m suddenly aware—an intense awareness—that I’m being
observed.

I look across the road, my eyes searching the darkness under the deserted front marquee
of the Comedy Theatre. But there is nobody there. Around me, people are hurrying
to catch things—the pedestrian crossing, a blue bus, taxis. I am the only still point
in a streetscape alive with motion. But the feeling won’t go away; it crawls across
me, like something trapped under my skin trying to burrow its way out, and I step
into the brightly lit convenience store, spooked.

I check my phone and it chooses that moment to emit the sparkly
bling
sound that
happens when someone plays you a word. Fingers fat and wet and clumsy from the cold,
I open the app, thinking it must be Mum, even though it can’t be. But I see that
it is
Changeling_ 29
. Simon. Not with a word worth anything, but a message. My first
message from him, ever.

Chilled to the core, I read:
Where are you?? Get home. I’m worried.

Home.

And I realise it is. It’s a fetid dump, but in so many ways I’m connected to it now
and I want to be there more than anything. But it’s at least three blocks away, more.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.