Where Have You Been? (18 page)

She looks over at her sister and smiles widely, as if to take some of the sting out of her words. But Susan's stung. She gropes for a reply, finds none. She turns back to hurry the kids, who've stopped, are squatting in the middle of the footpath, examining a particularly interesting mound.

Just for a moment Susan can't see them, feels her eyes fill, her vision blur. She shouts: ‘Come on you two,' feels her voice reedy, slightly tremulous. ‘Hurry up, or we'll be late.' They keep their heads down, ignore her, poking at the mound with sticks now. She takes a deep breath, calls again, more forcefully. ‘Come
on.
'

Mitchell gets up reluctantly, but hovers, while Stella skips towards them, her stick waving about dangerously, breaks into a run.

‘Aunty Carly, Mummy. It's a dead mad-pie. Come and look. It's gross – there's blood and stuff and it's all hard like cement. And Mitch poked out its eyes. Come and see.' She pulls at Carly's hand. ‘Come and look, Aunty Carly.'

Carly gives Susan a wry smile: ‘Never a dull moment, is there?' and lets herself be led back down the street. Susan
follows more slowly; wonders about real life, dull moments, early morning diplomacy.

She tells her out of the blue. Over lunch.

‘I left because I was bored.' She says it casually, conversationally. Susan is not prepared; she chokes on her sandwich.

‘You were bored?'

‘Shitless.'

‘That was it?'

‘Yep. Sorry, Suse. There are no gory details, no skeletons in the family closet. Your father wasn't hitting me, Mum wasn't treating me cruelly – well, no more cruelly than most mothers of teenage daughters did back then – I didn't have a secret lover, I wasn't a drug addict. I didn't even mean to leave home. I set out for the dance, walked to the corner, kept walking. Didn't come back.' Carly butters a slice of bread, layers on ham and cheese, bites down hungrily.

‘You were
bored?
' Susan shakes her head, can't quite fathom it. All the pain, all the waiting.

‘Uh-huh.' Carly's voice is muffled, her mouth full. ‘It's as good a reason as any for leaving home, isn't it? And better than some I can think of. I was just a pretty ordinary teenager, Susan. I just wanted to be left alone, y'know? Nothing complicated.' Swallows. Adds clearly, almost jauntily: ‘So there you go, Susy. Now you know. Satisfied?'

Karen is going to see
Picnic at Hanging Rock
with her best friend Julie. Susan begs her and begs her and finally Karen agrees to take her along. The child is overjoyed, but her mother is not so happy. ‘It's not a children's movie is it, Karen? It looks a bit too frightening for Susy. I don't know.'

‘Please, Mum. Please.' Susan is desperate. She's not that interested in the movie – though the pretty girls in long white dresses she's seen in the ads are appealing. But there's the ferry across the harbour and then the bus to the cinema; there's chips and Fantales and Coke and maybe a hamburger after. ‘Please. I promise I won't get scared. I'll close my eyes if it gets really scary.'

‘She'll be fine, Mum. We can always take her out if she gets scared.'

‘Well, you take good care of her, then. Take good care of my baby.' Mum reaches down to give her a hug but Susan wriggles away, impatient to get going.

‘I'm nearly nine, mum. I'm a big girl, not a baby.'

Her mother smiles, chucks her under the chin.

‘Ah, but you'll always be my baby.'

It's a windy day and the usually calm harbour waters are choppy, and get gradually rougher as they chug between the heads. The ferry dives and plunges from side to side and Susan clings, terrified, to her older sister, convinced that they are going to capsize, to drown, to die. Karen prises the child's fingers from hers and tells her that she is to go with Julie, that Julie will take her upstairs. ‘It's not as rough up there,' she says.

Susan grabs hold of Karen's shirt. ‘But what're you going to do? Can't you come too? Please come.'

‘No. Now, go on, off you go,' she says firmly. ‘Julie'll look after you.'

Susan lurches up the stairs with the older girl, holding on hard to the rails. Even Julie looks a little worried, her face pale and slightly green. When they reach the top Susan forces herself to turn and wave to Karen, but her sister is standing in the gangway facing the sea and doesn't notice. She isn't holding on to anything, but braces herself, legs apart, head back, at one with the surge.

‘Just sit back and close your eyes,' Julie croaks when they finally make it to a vacant seat, ‘and then you won't see the boat move. You'll feel better, believe me,' she says, squeezing her own eyes shut, ‘if you can't see what's happening.'

Susan has to keep her eyes closed tight, or peer between spread fingers through much of the movie, too, which is not about a picnic at all but about something terrible and terrifying and unknowable that takes the schoolgirls away or sends them mad. She tries to grab Karen's hand occasionally, when she's really scared, but Karen's like the girls on the screen, entranced, lost, transported. Mouth open, eyes shining, she pushes Susan's fingers away, irritably.

‘Leave me alone,' she hisses, when Susan's desperate hands can no longer be ignored. ‘Will you just leave me alone.'

Susan leaves the decision until the last minute, makes a sudden detour, doesn't tell her sister where they're going. Pulls up outside the empty house. Sits for a moment, breathing.

‘What are you doing here? I thought we were going straight home?' Carly sounds vaguely peevish, put-upon.

‘I just thought I'd like one last look before it's sold. The real estate guy said I could meet him here at two, he's showing someone through. We're fifteen minutes early, but I found a spare set of keys anyway.'

‘Look at what?' Susan has worried that Carly might be angry, or unwilling. She seems merely bewildered.

‘At the house, Carly. Mum's place. Our place. What else would I mean?'

‘Oh, yeah,' she says quickly, ‘the house ... I thought you meant something else as well.'

Susan walks down the hallway, pushes open the first door on the right. ‘Your room, Carly.'

The room is empty, just a small square space with a sheet-covered window and worn shag pile carpet. Like the rest of the house this room smells sour – a combination of cat piss, unwashed clothes and stale food. Their mother or the tenants?

‘Don't you remember, Carly, your beautiful dressing table? Right here. God, I was so jealous. Mum wouldn't let me near it after you left. Had it taken away. Carly? D'you remember?'

Her sister is silent, makes no reply, but Susan can't help it, she is desperate for a response, for some confirmation of shared memory.

‘And that bedspread you had. Covered in pink roses. It was quilted – you know, I can almost feel the pattern. Remember how you used to fold it back so carefully? You showed me once. Three folds down then two across. I thought you were so clever. God. I'd forgotten all about that. Funny isn't it?'

‘Hilarious.' Carly smiles vaguely, stands fingering the dusty sheet, then thrusts it aside, unlatches the window. ‘God, this place is stuffy,' she says, pushing at the bottom sash. We should open everything up.' The window is reluctant, shrieks. ‘Let in some bloody air.'

The agent, a sleek young man in a too-shiny double-breasted suit, arrives before his clients and is immediately overcome by a fit of sneezing, is unable to greet Susan in a dignified manner. Carly's open windows have stirred up months, maybe years, of dust. He walks quickly through the house, handkerchief at the ready, peering and tapping, scribbling now and then in a notebook he produces from his inside pocket.

‘We haven't actually shown this place yet,' he explains. ‘These'll be the first lookers. Glad you're here. You might be able to tell me a few things.' He trails along in Susan's wake as she walks through the house, asking occasional choked questions. (‘When was the wiring last done? The plumbing?
The gutters?') In the back bedroom, Susan's old room, he interrupts his scribbles, frowns out the window.

‘Who's that out there?' he asks. Carly is wandering about in the garden, absent-mindedly breaking off twigs, rubbing leaves between her fingers.

‘That's my sister,' she tells him.

‘Your sister? Truly?' He shakes his head, disbelieving.

‘Truly. Why?'

He moves closer to the window. ‘God,' he mutters, ‘I could have sworn...' He turns back to face her. ‘Sorry,' he says, ‘but it's just that she looks like someone...' His cheeks are slightly pink, his voice creaks slightly. ‘I ... er ... met once. But it couldn't be her.'

‘Well,' Susan says, ‘maybe it is ... but she's been away for years. We've actually only been reunited recently. It's been amazing...'

He interrupts. ‘What did you say her name was?'

‘Carly.'

‘Carly?' He breathes out heavily. ‘Carly. Christ.' He starts up his coughing again.

When Susan introduces them in the front garden, he shakes Carly's hand quickly but is unable to look her in the eye. Carly doesn't seem to notice, gets straight down to business. ‘So? What's the verdict? How much?' she asks. ‘And how quickly?'

‘Houses here are selling fast, it's a desirable suburb. The surf. The laid-back atmosphere. It's still seen as being family-friendly, the local shopping centre's big enough, but intimate too, if you know what I mean. There's a sense of community.' He directs his reply to Susan, still avoiding Carly's gaze.

The house itself isn't great, he tells them, but it isn't too bad, and if they wanted to give the interior a coat of paint and a good clean it'd be beneficial. But even in its current state he'd expect a sale somewhere around the early eights,
purely because of the enormous block. The home could be knocked down – it's perfect for flats, dual occupancy ... They could get more if they changed their minds and were willing to go to auction.

‘What do you mean by early eights? Eight one? Eight five? Eight thirty? And how long?' Carly's voice is brusque, impatient.

‘Eight forty-five, I'd say. Six weeks. But, really, you should consider an auction.'

‘Oh,' she says slowly. ‘Oh. But we don't want to go to any that fuss, do we Suse?' Carly's voice has lightened consider ably, is casual, cordial. ‘We just want to get rid of the place as quickly as possible. It's not the money. The money's not important.' She turns to her sister for confirmation. ‘Is it Susy?'

‘No, not important at all,' Susan's echo goes unheard, she may as well not have spoken.

The man's attention is all with Carly. ‘Money's not important?' He's looking at her directly now. Is looking hard. ‘I haven't heard that line for a while,' he says. ‘Not for quite some time.' He runs his fingers through his too-shiny hair, smirks unpleasantly.

‘I don't suppose you would,' Carly smirks back, ‘doing what you do. You can't run a car like that,' she gestures towards the flash y black BMW that he's parked in the driveway, ‘on hot air, can you? And it isn't a line, anyway, mate; it's the truth. There are some people out there,' she adds helpfully, ‘who don't do lines. You should try to remember that.'

It is a shock, a big shock, to meet someone she's known from her previous life. It wasn't something she'd counted on, not something she'd expected, but in the end not something to
get too anxious about. There are plenty of ways to persuade people to keep quiet. And all sorts of payments, not all of them involving money.

Not all of them unpleasant.

‘What will you do with the money?'

‘What will I do?' Ed is surprised by Carly's question. He never asks questions about other people's money – considers this one of the most personal of personal questions – and a vulgar one at that. Ed knows that talking about one's own financial situation is equally taboo: that this can only be construed in one of two ways: either bragging or, what's worse, complaining.

‘Yeah. I mean it's not like you really need anything is it?' Carly yawns and stretches her arms behind her head. Surveys the room. ‘You've got everything you could possibly ever need. All the material things.'

Ed looks around trying to see it through a stranger's eyes, the eyes of someone who hasn't much in the way of personal belongings. Ed doesn't consider himself particularly materialistic, as being overly concerned with accumulating things, but he supposes that this would not be obvious to everyone. They do seem to have an overabundance. Good cars, quality clothes, a decent stereo, two televisions, a personal computer, an SLR camera, a pile of videos, mountain bikes, a substantial collection of books, an oversupply of children's toys.

The house itself: oh, it's nothing flash y, a 1930s brick bungalow, but it's solid, respectable, comfortable, and (his heart still contracts with pride when he turns into the drive) it's his. Theirs. Inside, everything is neat, clean, in good
working order. The kitchen with its sleek, high-gloss colours, granite bench tops, mid-range European appliances, is efficient without being merely utilitarian. The lounge room with its Persian rugs, chintzy sofas, his favourite Heidelberg School prints on the walls, is warm and welcoming as well as tasteful. The bathrooms (two shared; one ensuite), newly renovated, are unpretentiously stylish. The bedrooms are cosy – as bedrooms should be – and are kept in order: beds made, clothes and toys packed away, with built-ins for this purpose. There is no peeling paint, no worn carpet, there are no holes in the walls, no door handles hanging loose. And Susan is a committed and talented housewife, the house is clean as well as tidy: there's no dust, no grime, no cobwebs or cockroaches. To Ed it is just as a home should be – simple, comfortable, harmonious – but he can imagine that to someone like Carly it would seem fantastically luxurious – like a home out of one of the glossy magazines.