Red Dress Walking

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S. A. Jones is a compulsive reader and writer and her first novel, Red Dress Walking, is in many ways homage to both pursuits. Her eclectic career includes stints as an academic, shadow Ministerial staffer, management consultant and confectionary vendor. S. A. Jones (‘Sarah’ to her parents and ‘Serje’ to her friends) lives in Western Australia. Her pursuits include running (at which she is not naturally gifted), champagne with her girlfriends (at which she is remarkably adept), book group, cooking and eating.

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R ed D ress W alking S . A . J O N E S

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First published in 2008 Copyright © S.A. Jones 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory board. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Jones, Sarah, 1973– Red Dress Walking/Sarah Jones. 978 174175 521 3 (pbk.) A823.4 Typeset in 11.8/16.5pt Dante by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To my parents, Hazel and Steve, who always encouraged me in my love of reading

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CONTENTS Prologue Airport PART I I The Unseen Guest II Asking the Bluestocking III Bitter Reflections IV Percolation V On Beauty VI Red Dress VII Succubus VIII John’s Party IX Provenance X Fucking It Up Royally PART II XI In the House of Maya XII Birthday Card XIII Inexplicable XIV And This Is Why I Sojourn Here, Alone and Palely Loitering XV Until Emily Comes Back XVI Fruit Bowl XVII Dear Emily XVIII Ballast XIX On-road Costs XX Launch Acknowledgements

1

19 42 57 68 88 96 107 122 134 148

163 178 192 206 219 233 239 241 270 289 309

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PROLOGUE Airport William It happened the Thursday before last. It’s weird how I’d sensed the meeting was coming. Flares in my conscious and unconscious life were firing for weeks. I dreamed about her most nights for a couple of weeks before I saw her. Not ghoulish dreams like before. Just normal, surreal dreams: Emily with Andrew and me on a black rubber tube floating in the middle of a purple lake drinking cocktails. In another dream she was giving a presentation to my company on how drilling equipment could travel quickly over rocky terrain, using dental floss and a laminated twenty-cent piece to demonstrate. Every couple of days something happened to bring her slamming into the front of my mind. For example, about a month before I ran into her at the airport, I was clearing out my filing cabinet and found a long-forgotten note from 1

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her in between some parking receipts and an old car logbook. It was a cryptic fragment of the everyday that you can’t place after a while: ‘Honey—gone out with S and T. Drycleaning on the bed. Still no luck finding your green tie. Gone to the great accessory heaven in the sky? Leftover falafel in the fridge if you want it. Catch up with you later tonight. Kisses, Emily.’ Then, only a week or so before I saw Emily, I bumped into Suella for the second time since things went to shit. It was better than the first time, at least. That first time she walked into the lift in the Exchange Building as I was walking out. I raised my hand in greeting but she fired me a warning glance and flattened herself against the wall to avoid me. I felt as if my stomach had dropped into my feet and turned red. If I’d been held in stocks in the middle of city traffic I couldn’t have been more embarrassed. If I were in Suella’s shoes I might have done the same thing; ‘after all, it’s a valid interpretation of the text’ (Emily’s voice in my head again). It was pretty clear to me from that point on that any ideas I’d had about tracking Emily down through Suella weren’t going anywhere. When I saw Suella last week, her response wasn’t as dramatic. We walked past each other in the street, both a bit worse for wear it seemed. She gave me a faint nod. It was so subtle that it looked strange; Suella was usually so excitable. I wanted to stop and talk to her, but thought better of it. I didn’t think I’d get a fair hearing. After Emily and her books, lamps and fish vanished from my flat, I got into the habit of tracking down the novels she’d made me familiar with. I can’t walk past a second-hand bookstore these days. I’m driven in by invisible hands. Emily talked about the characters in books like other people discussed their friends or reality TV stars. In the two years since I’d left (or she’d left, depending on how you look at it), I’ve read all of Jane Austen’s novels and some Henry 2

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James. (I read Portrait of a Lady but didn’t understand it. Why did she marry him? Why did she go back?) After James I picked up a South American author that Emily used to talk about all the time, Gabriel García Márquez. (There’s a magic carpet? You’re joking, right?) I really tried with Márquez but I couldn’t keep one character straight from another. (Note to author: if you give your characters the same name through several generations your readers are going to get confused.) Next I picked up Dostoyevsky. Strong, meaty realism. (Emily again: ‘Translation. Always a thorny proposition. But what can one do? Go one’s whole life and not read Crime and Punishment?’) I read The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. I stayed awake one night thinking about Raskolnikov, about what compelled him to his crime. When did it become inevitable that he would take up the axe? When was the last possible moment that a different choice could have been made? Had he atoned? And if his action was fated, what sense was there in regret? While considering these things, I came close, I think, to understanding Emily’s limited need for people outside her tight little circle, her self-sufficiency. You might get lost in fiction if you let yourself. With apologies to Mr Bennet, ‘with such narratives to hand, who would read people?’ (You see, Emily, in spite of everything you’ve made a reading man of me.) And of course I read Jane Goes to Town as soon as it came out. I found out about the book through Lisette, who kept up an email relationship with Emily and was even invited to the launch party. Lisette rationed the information she gave me. I’d learnt to quash my hunger and take the crumbs she occasionally threw me with no sign of appetite. If I pushed too hard she made flippant hand gestures and pursed her lips in a you should have thought about this before you ran off with a floozy kind of way. As soon as I knew the book was out I left the 3

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office and made for the nearest bookstore. I read it quickly the first time. I know it sounds arrogant but I scanned it to see how much of me, of us, was in there. You wouldn’t pick it. At least I knew who Jane was now. But why would Emily have kept that from me? I tracked down and read all the reviews. It got a mixed reaction, but I’m glad it got a reaction. The Daily News reviewer was the most scathing: A desperately long, desperately dull look at the interior life of a disabled woman. The novel in diary form is so bogged down in detail that one is apt to lose the little flashes of insight and humour that occasionally break through the leaden prose. Thus we get twenty-two pages of the heroine preparing herself for work. The experimentation with different, equally tragic hairstyles. The interminable descriptions of red scarves tied this way and that. The forced, halting conversations that she initiates with her would-be office paramour, humiliating herself day after day with her gauche attempts to engage him. Ultimately the reader is wearied by the ‘heroine’s’ self-abnegation and thoroughgoing dullness and can only suggest, like the well-meaning data analyst Jane sits next to at work, that she ‘try a boob job, botox and bodywave’ if she wants to initiate real change in her life. To be sure, the book improves towards the end, as if the author has belatedly remembered the reader and tightens up the narrative, but it’s a case of too little, too late. Most reviewers were a lot kinder, some genuinely excited by the book. Topical heralded it as: The debut of a genuinely interesting new talent. Emily Trahere takes us inside the mind and heart of a deeply feeling woman struggling to assert herself in a world for which she is desperately ill-equipped. Hare-lipped, uncoordinated and ungainly, Trahere’s protagonist keeps a diary in 4

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which she chronicles, in painfully honest (even claustrophobic) prose, her daily struggle to remain unapologetic about her existence and appearance. As Trahere writes, ‘the world demands that I be beautiful, and if not that, then demurely plain. And if, as is the case, I am fiercely grotesque, that I be invisible, grateful, sorry’. Thankfully for us, Jane remains trenchantly visible in the face of misplaced ideas about her intellectual capacity (tram drivers invariably speak to her at piercing volume), overblown good intentions (tourists take her elbow to help her across the street) and nauseating sexual fetishists (the attempted seduction by a club-foot obsessive is darkly comic). The novel becomes a little over-intellectualised in the final chapters but on the whole this is a triumph of substance over style. Leggere ran a long article about Emily in their August edition in which she talked about the process of writing the book and gave some slight biographical information. (Nothing about me. I wasn’t really expecting it.) The photo that ran with the article was the real shock. It was one of those moody, arty black and white head shots, with Emily looking directly at the camera, very intent on something. It was a shock seeing her face after so long. I’d always thought she looked like a little elf, cute and small with enormous brown cow eyes. Because of all the weight loss her eyes looked even bigger. I stared at the photograph for a long time. I needed to believe that the trauma was blunted but the gaunt creature staring blankly at me told a different story. Her hair was short and artfully messy. I knew that it was supposed to be significant when women cut their hair. I wouldn’t have known her but for the article. I thought she was wearing lipstick. I’m glad I saw it. I might not have recognised her at the airport if I hadn’t. 5

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I’d just returned from a conference overseas (‘Public Interest, Private Philanthropy—Getting the Balance in Community Development’) and was standing at the taxi rank when I saw her get out of Maya’s car in the transit zone. Maya and Emily struggled inside with a suitcase each. They dropped the cases a few metres inside the door and gave each other an awkward hug. I was surprised that Maya would play airport taxi for Emily, let alone hug her. It meant something big was happening. Everything went very cold and very quiet. Was Emily leaving for good? Maya turned at the door and blew an extravagant kiss back to Emily. Knowing Maya as I did, it was a bizarre, ludicrous gesture. Maya was part drag queen, part faded Broadway star. All red lips, peroxide curls and matching accessories. I watched Emily through the glass as she edged slowly towards the check-in desk. Without giving myself time to think about it I ducked out of the taxi queue and stood waiting amongst the human traffic of arrivals and departures until she’d handed over her bags, picked up her boarding pass and headed for the departure gates. I stood behind her on the escalator, tapped her lightly on the shoulder and ventured a wave when she turned around. She didn’t say anything at first, just looked at me as though she didn’t know how to respond. The end of the escalator was rapidly approaching. ‘Hi, Emily. Nice to see you,’ I said. ‘I think you’d better hop off before carnage ensues.’ She gave a short laugh and scrambled off. I took advantage of the fact that she was off balance to propel her into one of the over-lit, over-priced cafés near the departure lounge. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘I was at a conference. My plane got in about half an hour ago.’ She gave a slight nod. Panic ran through me. I’d thought a lot 6

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over the last two years about the things left unsaid between us. The things that I wanted to apologise for and those I wanted to defend. And the somethings in between that I’d misread or couldn’t read because they were in a language I didn’t know. But right then, with her there in front of me, I felt like the nerve between my head and my mouth had rusted. This collected Emily threw me off guard. I mean, she was always collected, but there was a gentleness to her that put people at ease. At least, it did before the troubles. John once said that Emily was the perfect antidote to the awkward silence. Yet there she was, hitting me with a non-committal stare. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ I asked. ‘I mean, do you have time before your plane leaves? I’d really like to buy you a drink.’ She looked down at her hands. I noticed the glaze on her nails. She made a decision. ‘I guess so, but if you’re buying and we’re talking I’d like a scotch and coke.’ I smiled and hailed the waiter. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Canada.’ ‘Wow. Are you selling well there?’ ‘I haven’t been released there yet. I’m going to do some promotional work. I’ve also got some work lined up in a publishing house in Montreal. You might remember I did something similar a few years ago?’ This reference to our old life together made her flustered. It gave me the courage to press on. ‘Actually, Emily, I’m really glad that we ran into each other. I’ve been hoping to see you for a while now.’ She didn’t look up. The tension was interrupted by the waiter who clunked down our drinks. He nearly spilled one because his eyes were on Emily instead of the table. I felt a ridiculous sense of 7

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outrage. Emily kept her head down and occupied herself by stirring her drink with its short black straw, occasionally dunking ice cubes. ‘I read your book.’ Even with her head tilted downwards I thought I could see something of a smile. ‘Actually I’ve read it several times. Don’t get mad but I even folded over the corners of the pages I really liked. I may have underlined a passage or two. I think it’s really good, and bollocks to the Daily News.’ She raised her head. ‘You read the reviews?’ ‘All of them, and the articles. I must admit I did a double-take when I saw some of the photos. You look great, Em, you really do.’ She blushed faintly and I felt warmed by the gesture. ‘Are you working on a new book?’ She wrinkled her nose, the way she did when she was pondering something. ‘Yes. Yes, I am. What are you doing with yourself ?’ ‘I’m with a new firm called Phoenix. I know—corny name. It’s smaller, a bit less cutthroat than the old place. We do a lot of community development work. I say “capacity building” a lot. I left Stapletons just after we . . . when I . . . I resigned a while back. I took a few months off. Went for long walks. Went sailing with my brothers. Hung out with my mum a lot. Read books.’ She was obviously surprised. ‘It’s true. I remember the books you had and I’ve chased a lot of them down. You could say I’ve been plugging the holes in my education.’ ‘And how’s that working out for you?’ ‘It’s a process. I’ve started late so I’m playing catch-up. I’m still an engineer though, so the leaks escape most of the people I work with.’ 8

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She smiled again and the lower pocket of my heart lurched. I took a deep breath and waded into the spaces between us. ‘I want you to know that I’ve thought about us a lot, Emily, about what happened. I don’t know how it’s been for you, where you are with it all, but it’s important to me that you know I loved you. Whatever you thought at the time, it was never a lack of love, or loss of love. And I wasn’t thinking with my dick.’ Surprise, grief and, I thought, anger moved quickly across her face, like they were chasing each other. ‘Then why did you leave? And why with Katya?’ ‘Fear, mainly. I was having terrible nightmares. These God-awful recurrent nightmares where I always got home too late. You’d hanged yourself or drowned in the bath. I couldn’t sleep. I was completely exhausted, emotionally and physically. And no one would talk to me about it. It’s strange but I always thought of myself as a fairly popular person, you know, the kind of person that doesn’t want for friends. I thought I was lucky, the golden-haired boy. It came as a shock to find out that I was completely on my own. No one wanted to know. Too difficult. I was angry at you.’ ‘At me?’ ‘Yes, at you. Angry that my best friend had disappeared on me and left me to deal with this hellish mess on my own. Angry that there was a whole heap of stuff I needed to have dealt with too but everything just got poured into you. And you were hiding things from me. That notebook that turned out to be a novel.’ She blushed fire engine red. ‘All those sessions with Dr Reiner that you wouldn’t tell me about. I felt like we were in real crisis and you were so bloody passive about it. And you had real people around you that were propping you up whereas I had no one.’ ‘I had Suella and Tash. Maya hardly counted at the time.’ 9

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‘That’s two more than I had.’ ‘But John and your brothers . . . And your mum was always over at our place.’ ‘She was cleaning. She got flustered whenever I tried to talk to her about things. She’s a lovely lady but you know her limitations. And John is a prick of a human being. We don’t speak any more. Andrew and Tom did their best but they weren’t cut out for that kind of support. Suella and Tash were great but they were in your corner. I was lonely and scared. I felt like I had to play the strong, together one all the time. I don’t think you have any conception of how scared I was.’ I watched Emily turn all of this over in her mind. It was interesting to see the emotions skimming along the surface of this new Emily. An Emily who wore lipstick and earrings and turned heads in an airport lounge. I had an inkling that it had all come together for her. As if where there’d been gas there was now rock. I wondered if she still had the dress I’d bought her. I cautioned myself as soon as this idea occurred. I’d become good at issuing these emotional red cards. ‘But Katya . . .’ she said softly, not meeting my eyes. ‘I wasn’t strong enough to go by myself. I wasn’t even well enough to go by myself. I left with Katya because of force of habit and because she couldn’t refuse me. Mostly, I think she owed me. I’ve been one of the very few constants in her life.’ I could see Emily’s interest surface despite herself. She never could resist a confidence. ‘What was in it for her?’ I hesitated. Even after a couple of years of thinking about it, I still wasn’t sure there was a neat and plausible way of describing my relationship with Katya. After our road trip we’d settled into something like real friendship. Fuck knows what Dr Reiner and her colleagues would make of that. Katya called me a lot. Sometimes she asked me 10

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for advice on relationships, which always set off hysterical laughter in my head. We didn’t mention Emily’s name if we could avoid it. ‘Katya told me once that she has no gift for happiness. I think chaos is what she’s most familiar with. Part of her loves the drama. But I think that she’s, you know, kind of despairing at the same time. What will she do when she’s older and sagging and not so beautiful any more? I think Eron loved her. I mean really loved her. And I think she knows it too. It was a dumb decision. But then I don’t think it was a decision. I don’t think she had . . . um . . . What’s that word for when you don’t really have the power to affect anything?’ ‘Agency.’ ‘Right. Agency.’ ‘He was devastated, you know. Eron.’ I nodded. ‘I know. It was, to put it mildly, a bloody mess all round. You know what’s really bizarre though? For all Katya fucked things up with Eron and screwed herself over in the process, I think what she really regrets is losing you. We don’t talk about you a lot. But she misses you. She told me once.’ Emily looked genuinely surprised. ‘Misses me? Why? I mean, we were never close really, and when you two ran off together we didn’t keep in touch.’ Although Emily’s tone was matter-of-fact I winced under the acid in the sentence. ‘I think you’re the closest thing Katya’s ever had to a real girlfriend. She was always fishing for an invitation to the Thursday Night Summit. I think she was hurt that you never asked her. She put out enough hints.’ Emily was incredulous. ‘It never for one moment occurred to me that she would want to be involved. I missed those cues completely—which is odd for me.’ She looked troubled by her oversight of this piece of evidence. 11

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‘You keep in touch then?’ she went on. ‘Yeah, we’re still in touch. We’re good friends actually. Better than we ever were before. I see her every couple of weeks. She’s hooked up with an artistic director—of course. She moved companies after . . . Well, Rocher never forgave her and you know this town. But she’s doing okay. She’s looking into a change of direction. Arts management or something like that. You can’t dance forever. Let’s just say she has a new sense of realism. It’s an odd fit on her but she’s learning to wear it.’ ‘Were the two of you ever involved? I mean, when you and I were together?’ ‘No. Never. I mean, we had sex once, but it was nothing. I’ve never loved her in the way that I loved you.’ Okay, I admit that I was cringing inside when I said that. It was a total arsehole thing to say. Tash would have shredded me if she’d heard it. But here’s the thing: it was one hundred per cent true. Emily took my confession calmly. Maybe she was so over it that it didn’t matter any more. ‘I saw you and Katya dancing that night at John’s party. You remember the night?’ Of course I remembered the night. Or, at least, I remembered the start of the night. If Emily hadn’t decided on a last-minute change of outfit things would’ve gone so differently. Instead of having a stilted conversation in an airport lounge we might’ve been married. About to jet off somewhere together. Maybe England. We could have done the literary pilgrimage together—she leading me through country houses and across rolling moors, explaining the important things to me. No, stop, I told myself. Don’t go there. Another red card. ‘It looked like you were so intimate,’ she went on. ‘When you disappeared together I assumed that something was going on from at least then.’ 12

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I shook my head. ‘I wish you’d brought it up with me. I was so hellishly drunk that night I still don’t remember what happened. And you’re asking me about it now—three years too late.’ Emily gave a sad little smile. We both stirred our drinks. My mind was racing. I’d never had so much to say before and so little right to say it. The questions crowded my brain. Is there someone in your life? Is he good to you? Why didn’t you tell me you were writing? Did you think I wouldn’t get it? Do Tash and Suella hate me, because I miss them a lot. And more than anything, the thing I needed so desperately to ask, and the one thing that had to be given freely: Are you alright, Emily? But I couldn’t ask any of these things. A plummy voice came over the loudspeaker: ‘Good afternoon, passengers. This is the boarding call for Qantas flight 743 to Montreal. Would all passengers please make their way to the departure gate.’ ‘My plane.’ ‘Of course.’ She reached down, picked up her bag and downed the rest of the drink. We looked at each other across the table. ‘I have to go.’ ‘I know.’ I walked with her. She seemed flustered (maybe angry) by my insistence on accompanying her as far as I could. I was being selfish, of course, hoping that the next minute would be the one in which the ice melted and she let me in a bit more, gave me what I needed. But it wasn’t about me, was it? We arrived at the departure point just as the second boarding call came over the loudspeaker. We stood awkwardly together in the queue. ‘You really don’t have to wait with me, you know. I have a book— actually I have several.’ 13

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I laughed at her feeble joke. I had overstayed my fragile welcome. I extended my hand and she shook it. ‘It really was good to see you, Emily. I’m glad that you’re doing well.’ She nodded, did the nose-wrinkling thing I used to adore and looked anxiously towards the rapidly approaching departure gate. ‘Take care, William.’ I wondered what she’d do if I flung myself at her feet. But of course I knew. I’d spent my life assessing cause and effect, stimulus and response. I’d calculated and acted to ensure that going back would not be an option. No residual pull of passion or habit was possible. I knew what crossing the Rubicon meant because of Emily. I smiled back, my heart thudding in my chest, and made for the escalator. Idiot. Redemption is never yours just for the asking. Look at Raskolnikov. It’s a complicated, torturous business. As I walked slowly back to the taxi rank I had a furious surge of anger towards Emily for introducing these valencies into my life. I was sure I’d thought about things in much simpler terms before I met her. Things were rational, measurable. Bollocks, I told myself. You’re rewriting history. But it felt true. Today, a fortnight after I met Emily at the airport, I received a postcard from her. The image was a streetscape in Montreal. The message was typical of the things that people write to friends when they’re on holiday—went here, saw that, bought this, hope you’re well. The words themselves were neither here nor there. In fact, I felt triumphant that they were so commonplace. It was the kind of message you send to someone you’re going to catch up with when you get home. A message to someone you’ll meet in a crowded bar for a drink after work. Someone that you’ll casually ask to go to a 14

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movie. Would it be too much of a stretch to think that dinner might be on the cards? I read the card three times and then I released the weight of the last few years. I pushed it out through every pore and I cried like I hadn’t cried since that day in the mall. Tears of regret, rage, self-pity, recrimination and absolution. And relief. Hot, salty tears of relief. Now, finally, it was over.

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PART I

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I The Unseen Guest Emily The night that Jane revealed herself to me William and I hosted a dinner party in honour of our fourth anniversary. He was in an odd humour for days beforehand. He’d taken to tracing my steps through the apartment, as if I were about to drop something of celestial importance and he was primed to pick it up. I’d turn to find him a pace behind, staring intently at me with no apparent object. ‘Will, baby, are you okay?’ I asked repeatedly. ‘Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m good,’ he’d say, before arcing his arm into a bowling action or picking up a book that I knew he had no intention of reading. Despite it being a Saturday, Will went into work for a few hours, leaving me in blissful solitude with my spices and my visions to prepare for our guests. I was glad of a little time alone. As a publishing assistant I’d been working furiously in preparation for the annual writers’ festival coming up the following week. My mind was addled by lack of sleep and my nerves a little frayed by Will’s unaccountable fidgeting. 19

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I sighed deeply, wiped the marble workbench clean and carefully laid out my ingredients. It was precisely the kind of project I relished. Glossy vegetables and virgin spices awaiting the mortar and pestle were objects of sublime hedonism to me. I quietly swooned over the stark outlines of serving dishes and the chance discoveries of exotic produce made while rummaging through the grocer’s shelves. My relationship with menus had always been quasi-erotic. They were teasers, tempters. Full of promise and possibility. Admittedly that promise was rarely fulfilled, but when it was you spoke of it for years. You remembered who was with you, for what occasion the feast was served, the smell, the conversation and (if you are Suella) the name of the waiter. I’d long been in the habit of requesting a copy of the menu when I dined out. I stored them in plastic protectors broadly divided into summer and winter themes, and perused them for inspiration when I was planning a dinner party or experiencing an insistent but elusive craving that could be sated only by something very particular. One of the few useful lessons I learned from Maya was that an epicurean sensibility covered a multitude of sins. Planning a truly great menu was a subtle and refined art. It must reflect the constitution, predilections and social limitations of one’s guests. Menus designed and served with them in mind elicited the best from one’s company. They also enabled the more reserved host (of which I was undoubtedly one) to communicate through their food, creating a sensory ambience in which conversation, goodwill and understanding flowed. The planning of our anniversary menu illustrated my general philosophy. I was blessed with a cast-iron constitution so could eat most things with equanimity, as could William. That was most certainly not the case with our guests. Firstly there was Katya to 20

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consider. A dancer, she shared with most of her professional kin the propensity to pick bird-like at her food. Will’s brothers, Andrew and Tom, were voracious eaters, if rather limited in their tastes. They were devoted adherents to a meat and three-veg diet. Anything too exotic or unfamiliar would have them exchanging nervous glances across the table. The third consideration was Tash, whose relationship with food was always a touch fraught. Unlike Katya, Tash’s ambivalence was not an occupational hazard but a habit wrought from a miserable childhood of being the ‘fat girl’. Although it was rarely discussed, and Suella and I were reluctant to raise it, Tash was engaged in a daily struggle with her weight. She approached food as a natural enemy that must be thwarted, subverted and outwitted at every turn. Suella, John and Lisette, the three remaining guests, were refreshingly free of food-related peccadilloes. As long as the wine was red and abundant Suella would be perfectly content if I served corn chips. In fact, the menu’s most arousing prospect as far as she was concerned was John. And he was more than equal to sparring with his would-be devourer. After careful consideration I decided upon the following menu. For entrée, fresh vegetarian spring rolls and sang choy bao. It would instantly appeal to Katya. I had long since discovered that the trick to ensuring she ate was to serve delicate morsels on slender platters. Food reminiscent of opening night catering was her natural milieu. It also had the advantage of doing away with the necessity of excessive cutlery. Anything more than one fork would deeply perplex Andrew and Tom. And the calorie count would be low enough for Tash to relax and enjoy her wine without fretting. For the main course: a Thai beef salad, vegetarian green curry with tofu, and steamed fish fillets in chilli, coriander and tamarind sauce. All accompanied by jasmine-infused white rice. I slyly 21

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combined the delectable and the appetite-suppressive through the combination of chilli, lime and coriander in the Thai beef salad. The green curry was higher in fat but was my contingency plan in case Suella decided that she was a vegetarian that week. William’s brothers would have the comfort of the familiar with the fish fillets, and through eschewing a whole fish I could avoid alarming any nascent vegetarian sympathies. After much deliberation I decided against serving a traditional dessert. Instead I prepared a fruit and cheese platter. My original plan was a tray of vanilla slice in deference to Will, who was extremely fond of them. But spatial politics ultimately decided me against it. Under such provocation, Katya and Tash might find it necessary to leave the table. Both being smokers their natural point of congregation was the timber landing outside the front door, but the two of them in close proximity was, to say the least, socially awkward. Tash found Katya nauseating (‘Is the vapid Biafran coming?’), and I didn’t think Katya was overly enamoured of Tash (‘Your fat friend is really hard work’). Which may lead one to question the wisdom of inviting both of them to a dinner party of so few guests that close interaction was unavoidable. For my part there was no choice but to invite Tash. The social dowry that I’d brought to my relationship with William, though arguably colourful, was not bountiful. Suella and Tash were, and remained, the flesh and blood friends closest to me in all of this world. I would not dream of hosting a dinner party and not inviting them. It would be like discussing Austen without port or Atwood without tobacco. Suella was my boss. She’d hired me after a period of postuniversity work experience, though of course she was known to me well before that. Anyone interested in publishing knew about Suella. 22

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Her status hovered somewhere between wunderkind and luminary. In another decade she would be a grand doyenne of our industry, her eccentricities the stuff of legend. Suella was frenetic—all wild hand gestures and wiry, undisciplined hair. She was never still. In meetings or presentations she couldn’t help but tap her pencil repeatedly on the table or kick the chair opposite her. It drove many people to distraction. She was aware of how much the habit annoyed those around her but just couldn’t stop it. If she concentrated hard on keeping her feet still, the incipient urge snaked its way to her fingers which inexplicably began tapping on the table. If she focused on stilling her fingers, the urge escaped through her shuffling feet. Suella was someone for whom the most mundane of tasks snowballed with astonishing speed into Greek tragedy or outright farce. If Suella volunteered to fetch coffee for the staff she would inevitably encounter an ex-lover for whom she had unresolved feelings. Arriving breathless back in the office she would throw down the tray of coffee, unsuccessfully pin back her ever-loosening hair and announce, wide eyed, ‘Oh my God. Emily! EMILY, YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME.’ (Much of Suella’s conversation took place in capitals. You became accustomed to it.) I loved that she was open to the possibilities of the most innocuous encounters and scorned common sense where it threatened to derail her instinct for the wonderful and the absurd. With the exceptions perhaps of cooking and literature, I was firmly wedded to patterns, habits and regularity, but I relished the wild contrast afforded by Suella. Contrary to appearances, Suella was neither dimwitted nor unreliable. Many a person on first meeting her was inclined to think her somewhat dizzy. Writers were sometimes aghast at what her perpetual-motion hands might do to their 23

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manuscript. In truth her recall was astonishing, almost photographic. She had a bloodhound’s scent for inconsistency, plagiarism and even the subtlest traces of the forced and the puerile. Suella’s sense of the faint line between gimmick and quirk, tragedy and melodrama was unerring. Tash was the third corner of the troika. The week Tash and I met, our high school was swept by a mania for the conical paper constructions manipulated with one’s fingers. The school was flush with pubescent gushing over big-haired rock stars and big-toothed TV actors and their names were the stock inscriptions in the cones. Tash’s proffered selections, met with stupefaction by most of our classmates, read: Vronsky, Finch, Wentworth, Dobbin, Rochester, Knightley. I liked her instantly. (Though I had reservations about Vronsky.) Tash’s personality gelled and set very early on. At fourteen she was acerbic, did not suffer fools gladly and was so bone dry in her wit and observations that she developed a (largely unfair) reputation for heartlessness. She was quiet like me, but fierce in her opinions and politics. She and Will were prone to extended conversations about the nature of choice and the degree of free will at our disposal (Will was for considerable, Tash for virtually none). She chose law, which gave free rein to the more adversarial side of her personality and rewarded it with considerable monetary compensation. Tash applied to books the same ruthless sense of analysis that she took to the bar every day. Where I fell in love with characters and Suella was attracted to complex, sweeping ideas, Tash was a minute dissector of novels. She held them up to the light to scrutinise character, theme, plot, structure, larger cultural significance, resonance, allusion, language, shifting critical responses to, pacing, originality, narrative architecture, psychological insight—all carefully weighed, 24

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evaluated and judged. Tash believed that there were very few truly great works of literature (not surprising when you considered her stringent criteria). She was a Shakespeare fanatic and, notwithstanding his limited grasp on female characters, subscribed to the school of thought that Shakespeare invented the human. She also rated Blake highly, and believed that for structure and ruthless economy of prose Austen had never been surpassed (this was one point on which the troika was in agreement). Tash rarely read anything published after 1945. On those occasions when Suella and I foisted onto her a more recent novel or play, she was almost invariably scathing. All the important things had already been said, according to Tash. Everything else was ‘just a variation on a theme with lots of fucking and violence to distract you from this essential truth’. By four o’clock my meticulously planned menu was translated into simmering pans and delectable scents. I felt a profound satisfaction in transmuting distinct and apparently contradictory ingredients into something sympathetic and delicious. The heavenly and powerful scents of garlic, ginger and basil were heavy in the air, releasing (as they always did, back then) generations of Arcadios into my kitchen to wrestle for space and attention. For as long as I could remember, chopping, grinding, tasting and stirring had been the sympathetic magic to conjure Márquez’s creations. They arrived in my world shortly after Lydia, and I was so used to them that I could cook and bake without distraction while they riffled through the cupboards or sat idly by watching meals materialise. I heard William’s quick step on the landing. ‘Hey baby.’ He swept in and clunked wine bottles on the dining table. ‘Wow,’ he sniffed the air appreciatively, ‘it smells bloody amazing in here.’ He stole a stick of carrot and loaded half the wine 25

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into the already laden fridge. ‘I got four white and four red. White will work better with Thai, don’t you think? But then I thought of Suella and went for the same amount of red. Do you think eight bottles will be enough?’ ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine, honey, everyone always brings their own anyway.’ William nodded solemnly, but he was such a social creature he couldn’t resist plying his guests with wine. ‘I put some Moët in earlier.’ He pulled the frosted bottle from the fridge. An Arcadio fingered the gold foil on the stem and gave Will a quizzical look. Arcadio was stripped to the waist. Sinew moved under his brown skin as he touched his fingers to the frosting on the bottle. ‘Shall we open it now?’ There was something forced and deliberate in his manner. Whatever had been unsettling him over the past week hadn’t been eradicated by a few hours amongst differential pressure data. ‘Not for me, Will. I’m still creating.’ I gestured towards the stainless steel pans hissing steam. ‘But you go ahead.’ He stood with the bottle in hand, peering intently at me. ‘Maybe later. I’ll open it when you’re ready.’ ‘Okay. Are you sure you’re okay, baby? You seem a little ruffled.’ ‘I’m good. Absolutely. Social anxiety perhaps.’ I laughed. ‘You’re the least socially anxious person I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.’ It was true. William was so gregarious and engaging that he more than compensated for my natural reserve. We had engineered a neat social demarcation—I assumed responsibility for the preparation of food, he for conversational obligation. ‘I can’t evolve? Perhaps I’m developing new interior depths that lead to social anxiety.’ He puckered his brows. ‘Or perhaps the idea 26

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of Tash and Katya together under the one roof is enough to make anyone nervous.’ ‘Fret ye not, William Frank. I have masterminded the perfect menu. There shall be nothing but serenity under this roof tonight.’ William showered and dressed in neatly pressed jeans and the linen shirt that Suella had bought him for Christmas last. ‘You look lovely,’ I said. ‘Thanks, baby.’ He nestled my head in the crook of his arm and kissed me on the forehead. He smelt of citrus and sage. As always I found the hot centre of his attention slightly dizzying. Releasing me from his grip, he leaned over the marble-top counter to acquaint himself with my day’s work. ‘Tell me how you made this . . . What spice is that again? . . . I wish you’d been with me to choose the wine because I’m really not sure about the unwooded chardonnay with that curry . . . Oh, do you think so? Well, if you’re sure.’ That tableau, that scene frozen right there, exemplified the warm, beating centre of our relationship. Me cooking, quasidelirious amidst my ingredients, my visions and my William. Him pottering about the apartment, always beautifully dressed, chatting or asking me questions. Arranging the dinner table, playing records, casually picking up books from the shelves and asking me questions, trying out his recently acquired knowledge. William rarely read himself, and certainly never fiction, but he was curious about my ideas on certain texts and liked to know the general plot of the books scattered around the living room. Once or twice he had startled me when out by contributing one of my opinions as his own. By seven o’clock the food was prepared, the table was set, the wine chilled and the CD player on auto-select, pulsing out a mix of jazz and lounge music. William opened the champagne after all and we sat with a glass each in the living room, watching the sky turn 27

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purple and then black, and the cars like glowing beetles scurrying their way along the roads near the bay. He leaned in and kissed me, languorous and deep, on the mouth. ‘Happy anniversary, my Emily.’ Predictably, Andrew and Tom were on time. They were of a certain old-fashioned cast of mind that believed in punctuality, opening doors for women and long, slow Sunday afternoons in the company of men, beer and televised cricket. William’s brothers were so physically alike, despite being four years apart in age, that it took me some practice to distinguish them. Their mannerisms too were eerily similar. Each took it in turns to engulf me in a strenuous bear hug and ask me how I was. I mumbled general pleasantries at their nipple lines until they let me go. ‘Is Tash here yet?’ Andrew asked. ‘Not yet.’ ‘But she is coming, right?’ ‘Yes, honey, she is.’ Andrew was always sure to take me aside at family barbecues and ask me how Tash was. He followed her high-profile cases in the press and could become quite dejected if she lost. The infatuation was as touching as it was doomed. The poor fellow had more chance of winning the Pulitzer. Twice. When Tash arrived I left them chatting in the living room while I took Lisette’s coat and checked on the food. Lisette followed me into the kitchen. She was the guest I knew the least—a tall, nervous woman who worked with Will at Stapletons. And an actual engineer. Not one of the tea and biscuit brigade that managed the masculine administrivia. Always a little fragile, she was prone to drinking too much and crying at parties, which, considering the 28

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precarious state of her emotional life, wasn’t all that surprising. She regaled me with the latest details of her ill-advised romance with her boss while I wrung water from the lettuce. I hoped she didn’t expect me to dispense advice on the subject, as I was ill equipped to do so. My range of romantic experience was fairly conventional and limited. Yet I was sympathetic to Lisette’s predicament and rather suspected that her boss was undesirable. I kept my own counsel, however. Objectivity was all the more important since William’s recent promotion made him 2IC to Lisette’s paramour. John strode in, encumbered with bottles of wine and some beautifully arranged flowers. He flourished them, ‘For the chef,’ and dived in to kiss me full on the lips (a habit of his that I’d never become comfortable with). ‘Now, my dear, do not tarry. Give me wine or I will not be answerable for the consequences,’ he said. If people were still in the habit of taking friends out to dinner expressly to warn them about charm, John would have been the object of said warning. He once whispered in my ear that if William wasn’t giving complete satisfaction he would be happy to remedy the deficiency. I wasn’t entirely certain that he meant it in jest. John was the ultimate social chameleon. Witty and worldly with Suella, Tash and me, he was blokey and laconic in other company. His seamless ability to morph was probably why I never took him into my confidence. Suella had sighed dramatically when I’d confirmed he would be at the dinner party. ‘HE IS SOOOO DAMN DELICIOUS. I am determined to get him plastered and roll around with him until he doesn’t know which way is north and which way south.’ ‘Wonderful,’ Tash had rejoindered. ‘I’ll be on my guard for a dishevelled man in need of directions.’ Suella arrived breathless and flurried. ‘Darlings, darlings.’ She 29

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bent down to kiss first Tash then me, then dropped a bottle of expensive wine—caught dextrously by Will on its descent to the wooden floor. The mysterious bowling action had served him well after all. ‘Crap, sorry. Here,’ she handed over another bottle and her bag and scarf, ‘you’d better take these too. Hang on, Will. My coat.’ He helped to peel it from her. She shook herself as if forcibly sloughing off anything standing between her and a damn good time. ‘Oh. That’s better. God, the traffic at this hour. Frightful.’ ‘Wine, Suella?’ ‘God, yes. Just give me the bottle and a straw.’ Two bottles of wine already stood empty by the time Katya arrived. She breezed in, trailing expensive perfume and her characteristic air of limitless possibility. She kissed me on the cheek and slapped William on the bottom by way of greeting. I had expected her to be late and had planned for the eventuality. What I hadn’t anticipated was that she would bring a friend with her. ‘Emily, honey—this is Eron. You might know him actually. He writes an arts column. Probably been to the launches of some of your people.’ Eron and I exchanged slightly nervous pleasantries. He was the feature arts writer for one of the local papers and quite well known to me from various opening nights and writerly meet-and-greets. He was also, to the best of my knowledge, married. ‘I hope it’s okay.’ He smiled apologetically and produced a large cake on an ornate silver platter. ‘I made a madeira cake. For dessert.’ Lisette sighed. ‘You baked? Bloody good for you. I love a man who knows his way around a kitchen.’ I thanked Eron for the cake and dispatched everyone onto the landing with their wine to enjoy the view over the bay. In truth, it was a tactical diversion. I was unprepared for the additional guest, 30

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and though I had an abundance of food I felt compelled to set the extra place at the table as surreptitiously as possible. I tried to summon a sense of anger or exasperation with Katya for being so impolite as to bring someone without telling me first. It was nothing more than a gesture on my part. I had learnt through the course of my acquaintance with Katya that she was impervious to the conventional civilities. It would no more occur to her that her behaviour would inconvenience me than I would pretend anything other than that I had expected Eron from the first. With the place subtly set I called everyone in for dinner. William refilled wine glasses and we sat down to eat. John proposed a toast. ‘To William and Emily,’ he announced with a flourish. ‘Because Emily, in addition to her other perfections, is the only person we know who can really cook. For this reason alone I have struggled through Lawrence and Fitzgerald so that I might prove worthy of continued invitations. And to William, who unaccountably made Emily fall in love with him despite being semi-literate.’ ‘Well, he is a big spunk,’ Suella interjected. John made a show of studying Will’s face. ‘Is he? I’ll take your word for it. “Big spunk” or no, he is one of my oldest and best friends and, despite a little envy, I am happy that he is so happy. To Emily and Will—we love you. Happy fourth anniversary.’ Everyone raised their glass. ‘To William and Emily.’ ‘Please, everyone, do help yourselves,’ I said. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony.’ ‘No bloody chance,’ Suella assured me, diving into the curry. She played ‘mother’, heaping plates and passing them around. I wished she wouldn’t. My beautiful tablecloth was white and gold, and I could have served without spilling a drop. By the time everyone’s plate was full the cloth resembled a Pro Hart painting. No matter. My work was done. As the conversation assumed its 31

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rhythm and continuity I settled back into my chair and relaxed. I followed all of the louder exchanges and their tributaries, occasionally joining in, more often busying myself with refilling plates and uncorking bottles. I was a listener by nature. William always denied this: ‘You are, Emily my dear, an eavesdropper.’ Suella and Tash were pursuing an argument of sorts that was then into its second day. It had partly been carried out by email and partly by phone. ‘That makes absolutely no sense,’ Tash said, putting down her fork. ‘It’s actually quite irresponsible. What if they’d turned out to be axe murderers or drug smugglers? Or if they’d been drunk or stoned and hit a tree? Out there in the middle of nowhere, who did you think would come to your rescue?’ ‘They do have phones out in the country. I just would’ve called the police. Or the breakdown service.’ ‘And where was this phone going to materialise from, Suella? You would’ve had more luck with smoke signals. Besides, the breakdown service only works if it’s your car. Which it wasn’t.’ ‘Well, maybe they were members of the breakdown service. You don’t know.’ ‘Suella.’ Tash’s voice rose slightly. I’d never actually heard Tash yell, but she could inject a fearsome gust of ice into her words. Suella, of course, was oblivious. ‘By your own account these people didn’t think to stock up on water for the trip. When you actually did hit a service station you had to buy them all food and water because they had no money. I seriously doubt any of them had thought to join a breakdown service before they set off on their little jaunt.’ ‘Well, it hardly matters, does it? The fact is, we didn’t totally break down and they weren’t axe murderers and I had a damn fine time. What’s more, I kick arse at two-up.’ 32

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‘I’m sorry,’ John interjected, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ Tash and Suella both started on their own version of the story at the same time. Wisely, John directed his gaze to me. ‘Suella went to a conference last week on media and metaphor. She met some students who’d travelled down from the Gold Coast to analyse the conference for a university assignment.’ ‘They were speaking at the conference?’ ‘No, just doing a textual analysis of it. Cultural studies apparently.’ ‘How can you do a textual analysis of something that’s not text?’ Katya asked quietly. I ran on with the story quickly to cover the inevitable snort of indignation from Tash. ‘Anyway, Suella makes friends with these kids and when they invite her to go for a ride with them in their kombi, she does. They end up two days later in a small country town, completely lost and with engine trouble. They couldn’t get any help because they’d arrived in the middle of some sort of festival, which, apparently, more or less paralyses the whole region. They thought they’d have to wait out the festival before there were any mechanics available.’ ‘So as any normal person would do,’ Suella dived in to get a head start on Tash, ‘you go with the flow and join in. There was no room left at any of the hotels but I found us a dorm room at a local hostel. We got to have a shower, freshen up. Then we went out to this enormous field where the festival was and it was awesome. They had folk bands playing and people bootscooting and pigs on spits and little ponies for the kids to ride on.’ ‘Sounds like the seventh circle of hell.’ ‘Shut up, Tash, you weren’t there. It rocked. I played my first ever game of two-up and it turns out I am a two-up goddess. Guess how 33

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much money I made?’ She challenged the table with her bright gaze. ‘C’mon, guess.’ ‘Fifty bucks,’ Andrew offered helpfully. ‘Nope. Higher.’ ‘A hundred.’ Suella brandished her fork. ‘Not even close. Five hundred dollars. Can you believe that? Five hundred dollars at two-up!’ ‘Tell them what happened next,’ Tash said. ‘Go on, tell them.’ ‘Well, it did sort of go a bit downhill from there. I lost my wallet with the five hundred dollars I’d just made thanks to being a TWO-UP DEITY.’ She upbraided Tash with her eyes. ‘Then the kids disappeared. They must’ve got the kombi fixed and figured I’d get home some other way. Or maybe they just couldn’t find me.’ ‘Or maybe they stole your wallet, blew the five hundred dollars on goon and weed and pushed the kombi out of town before you found them.’ ‘You have no faith in human nature.’ ‘Of course I don’t. I’m a lawyer. What if you’d been stuck out there? No money even for a phone? Did they stop to think about how you were going to get home?’ ‘It doesn’t matter anyway because I met Walter.’ ‘Jesus Christ.’ Tash pushed her plate away from her in disgust. ‘I’m going outside for a cigarette.’ She pulled one from her bag and pointed her lighter at Suella. ‘You are a fucking freaker who takes insane risks.’ The casual observer may not have realised that Suella and Tash were desperately fond of one another. Andrew hurried to get to the door before Tash crashed through it. Will, highly amused, filled Suella’s glass again. ‘This is Walter the shearer, right?’ 34

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‘The very same. Gorgeous guy. GORGEOUS,’ she repeated at high volume to be sure that Tash heard it from the landing. ‘We went to a B&S ball together. It was a hoot. I drank beer. Did a line dance. We slept in a field. And then he drove me to the nearest airport and paid for my flight on his credit card. Shit, Em, can you remind me to pay him back?’ ‘I sent him a cheque yesterday.’ ‘Oh good, cheers. So you see,’ she raised her wine glass triumphantly, ‘no harm done and I had a kickarse weekend.’ ‘It was a Wednesday and Thursday,’ Tash shouted from the landing and the whole table erupted into laughter. Katya’s deep, throaty laugh bounced from the exposed beams on the ceiling. Her laughter made everything twice as funny. I watched her as surreptitiously as I could. She really was extraordinary to look at. She made porcelain look blemished. Her eyes were grey, but sometimes, in certain light, appeared almost dark purple. That night her hair was a deep indigo blue and cut in the style of Clara Bow. The constant brash kaleidoscope of Katya’s hair was one of the casual taunts she offered mere mortals. Every few weeks she dipped into a pot and emerged with a head of candy floss pink, over-ripe cherries, metallic silver, glossy jet, alarming lime. Occasionally she shaved her hair off and presented a rough stubble to the world for a few weeks, before dipping into a swathe of scarves, hats and ridiculous wigs she bought at second-hand stores. These forays into the sublime and the ridiculous served only to make her beauty more conspicuous. I could almost believe her the descendant of some Ancient Greek goddess—the last of the deities to keep their hold on this reality. If she had me in a sway of scopophilic pleasure it was hardly surprising that men (straight, gay and all variations in between) 35

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found themselves helpless as babies under her serene gaze. I’d entered rooms with her and felt the almost audible sweep of eyes as she walked panther-like through parting crowds. The real centre of her power, though, was that extraordinary voice. It had a top note of crystal and champagne, slightly clipped and wry in the manner of the English patrician. I knew this to be an affectation, having met her decidedly suburban parents. But beneath it was an earthy redolence, a husky timbre that filled rooms to bursting when she laughed. When her laugh was in full flight, I imagined the dewy brightness of an English summer morning and her lazily picking grass from her hair and giving me a conspiratorial smile as the muscular undergardener emerged slightly dazed from the shed behind her. If my inclination were towards visibility, a friendship between us would have been impossible. As it was I didn’t mind being banished into obscurity in her presence. It was good camouflage. Suella’s suddenly knocking over of a wine glass with one of her extravagant gestures sent the whole table into uproar. My poor tablecloth. By the end of the main course most of our guests were quite drunk. Andrew was making repeated clumsy and doomed attempts at conversation with Tash, who had seen fit to rejoin the table. Knowing her to be interested in books he tried an ill-judged discussion about Chopper Read’s autobiography. Tash was wideeyed in her surprise. I leapt in to divert the conversation into safer channels but not before Andrew had offered to lend it to her. Tash, none too politely, declined. By the time I put on a pot of coffee and served dessert, the house no smoking rule was being roundly flouted. Suella was encouraging Andrew to sing along to the CD with her. Andrew, too polite to disoblige, joined her in murdering one of my favourite Portishead songs. Suella, cigarette in one hand and glass 36

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of red wine in the other, swayed extravagantly from side to side to the music. No doubt I would be scrubbing the rug tomorrow; stain removal was an occupational hazard of friendship with Suella. Tom sat, as he usually did, quiet and unobtrusive but apparently not unhappy. When I returned to the table laden with steaming, bitter coffee, fruit and cheese and Eron’s accomplished cake, Katya asked me if Weatherborne Press had any new titles of note due for release. The question surprised me. ‘Erm, yes, we’ve got a couple that I think will be well received, to the extent that anyone can judge these things. One or two debut novelists we’ve got high hopes for. It’s always hard to establish new writers in the market though.’ ‘I had no idea,’ Tash sneered at Katya, ‘that you were a fan of Weatherborne. Which do you think are their best titles over the last two years?’ Katya stared into her wine. ‘I seem to spend all of my time in rehearsals so I’m really not as well read as I’d like to be. I know that the three of you meet regularly to talk about books. I’d love to do something like that.’ The graciousness of the reply disarmed me. I knew very well that Katya was capable of a sharpness that, while not as polished or erudite as Tash’s, was nonetheless pointed. I’d watched assured and popular men become dribbling idiots under her withering gaze. When Katya withdrew from the ebb and flow of conversation, it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. More than once I’d been left the unenviable task of patching up a male ego shattered by one of Katya’s mercurial shifts. Tash responded with deceptive sympathy. ‘I know. It can be so very hard to find the time to improve oneself. Tell me, which are your favourite authors?’ 37

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I helpfully suggested a few that I was reasonably confident Katya had read, but Tash, with mock interest, waved me away. ‘Let her speak for herself.’ Katya swirled the wine around her glass. ‘Well, I quite like Evelyn Waugh.’ As Tash nodded sagely, incipient social panic moved through my windpipe. ‘Yes, I think that Waugh has several fans at this table. In Hooper, she created a character some of us here could certainly identify with.’ I kicked Tash hard under the table. Evidently my meticulously planned menu hadn’t lulled her into the serenity I’d hoped for. She shot me a glance of pseudo innocence. Katya looked uncomfortable. The expression, so alien on her usually tranquil, unruffled features, was fascinating. I was almost grateful to Tash for affording me the opportunity of seeing it, while at the same time mentally castigating myself for being so uncharitable. I was about to change the subject by suggesting we all pack a picnic one night and go to the open air movies now that the weather was so balmy, when Katya made her own retaliatory move. She leaned across the table, wielded the silver dessert knife and cut a generous slice of madeira cake, then handed the plate with expansive generosity to Tash. ‘Here, Tash, you really must try this cake. It’s delicious, wouldn’t you agree, Lisette?’ Lisette gave her hearty assent and I left Tash to her just deserts. I was about to leave the table to put on a fresh pot of coffee when the guest that only I could see arrived. She walked in from the hallway, surveyed the company and then met my eyes. I’d never seen her before. The light in the dining room wasn’t strong (Will had 38

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put in soft down lights that threw shadows across the room and the faces in it), but I noticed something strange about her mouth, as if her top lip was fused to her nose. I considered moving into the kitchen where the light was stronger in the hope that she would follow me, but I had learnt that it was best to let my visions reveal themselves to me as they would. She looked hesitant, as if the roomful of people was more than she’d bargained for. I gave her a smile of acknowledgement and greeting. She returned a slight nod, then inclined her head towards the hallway. I moved to follow her but I was weighed down by something. I tried to shake it off, worried in case she tired of waiting for me and disappeared. But the weight was persistent. With horror I realised that it was Eron’s hand on my arm. I experienced a brief moment of vertigo, as I often did when wrenched between worlds like that. It took a couple of breaths to steady myself. Eron dragged his chair closer to mine, brandishing his port and swaying slightly. He leaned in towards me conspiratorially. ‘I am so glad I was able to come tonight, Emily. I’ve had a lovely time. I really hope that I didn’t put you out.’ ‘Of course not. I’m delighted you could come.’ Was she still waiting in the hallway? I wondered. He looked a little sheepish and stared at the ground for a moment. ‘I know what you’re probably thinking. The truth is, my marriage ended a couple of months ago.’ ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Perhaps she would walk back into the room and take a seat at the table, curious about the people in my world, as I was about the people in hers. ‘It was coming for some time, I think. That is, when I look at it now I can see that we were headed towards it. At the time I thought we were just married, you know?’ He glanced towards Katya then 39

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back at his hands. ‘Things just happen sometimes. You’re not necessarily looking for them. Then you wonder how you ever managed without them.’ The confessional turn of the conversation piqued my interest and I felt the anchor of my attention dragged in cross-currents. I quietly encouraged him to go on. Will, however, had other ideas. Languorous under the influence of too much champagne, he wedged himself between Eron and me, slinking under the table and placing his head in my lap. This was a habit of his when he’d had too much to drink. I stroked his thick fair hair and massaged his temples as he mumbled something and affectionately nuzzled my arm. The solidity of William, the hard outline of him, his certainties and his optimism still surprised me. He pretended to bite my hand as I stroked it down his face, finally catching it after a dozen drunken attempts. ‘Can I have that back?’ I asked. He shook his head. ‘My hand now,’ he mumbled between his teeth. ‘I want your hand.’ ‘Sorry, baby. That’s my writing hand. It’s not for the having.’ He bit harder, making me wince. ‘You rotter. That hurt.’ ‘Sorry, Em.’ There were teeth marks on my hand. ‘Look.’ I held it up for him to see. He teared up a little. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, Em, Em, Em.’ It was the signal to the rest of the group that the party was winding up. I extricated myself from underneath William’s heavy head and sloppy jaw and helped with the calling of taxis and collecting of coats. I always enjoyed Suella’s ingenious, though doomed, attempts to convince John to share a taxi with her. We said our goodbyes and I stood for a moment at the top of the landing, 40

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savouring the cool, crisp air and the quiet of the street at that hour. Then I returned to the smoky apartment, my dozing, adorable man, and the unseen guest I hoped would not have tired of waiting for me.

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II Asking the Bluestocking William I chickened out the night of our dinner party. I’d been working up to it for weeks. It seemed like the perfect time: it was our anniversary (we celebrated the day we met because we couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment we got together), our friends were over, I’d just been promoted. Plus, after consulting with every antiques expert in the English-speaking world, I thought I had the perfect ring. I knew it had to be something particular. No solitaire diamond on a gold band for Em. It had to be something with what she’d call ‘provenance’. I found it in an eighteenth-century gold filigree number inset with a large ruby. Not the traditional thing for an engagement ring, I know, but the legend was that it had belonged to Théroigne de Méricourt. I was too embarrassed to tell the very excited antiquarian that I didn’t know who she was, but I googled her at work. Hey presto. Fucking perfect. She was an eighteenth-century French uber-babe and courtesan who read philosophy and dressed in men’s clothes. She might have even led the storming of the Bastille. Didn’t end well for her though. 42

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The whole liberté, égalité, fraternité thing meant just that—fraternity. No women. Poor old Théroigne ended up going mad after being beaten up by an angry mob who didn’t think she was quite the thing. The antiques dealer told me that only the fable that the ring belonged to Théroigne could be authenticated. There’s an arse-about statement. But I didn’t care. It was the perfect fairytale. I had it in my pocket the whole day. I told Em I was going to deal with some pipeline issues at work. Actually I was rehearsing what I was going to say. But the moment just never seemed right. First of all she didn’t want the Moët. Then, when we had the champagne and I kissed her, my brothers showed up early. (Curse my parents for their views on punctuality.) Then Katya showed up late with some new uninvited handbag, and Tash and Katya were at each other all night. I was so nervous waiting for the perfect moment I got thoroughly drunk. At which point doubt set in. I disappeared into the bathroom and studied the ring again. Under the glare of the light it looked mannish, chunky and ugly. It would be like putting a bolt on her finger. Suddenly it all seemed wrong. And it had to be right with Emily. She was a singular woman. No way was I going to get away with the traditional stuff that worked for ninety-nine per cent of the human race. The first time I ever saw Emily she had a pair of blue pantyhose on her head and was threatening to storm the building where I worked. I used to joke with her that the source of our happiness was my total lack of illusions. I never got the first date shaved legs and lipstick treatment. The day we met I was writing a report on one of our offshore wells. There was a gas build-up causing us headaches. People were being flown on and then off the rig in an endless circus of panic and denial. It was a big, fat, expensive problem that I’d been lumped with the week before. 43

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It was late on Friday afternoon and I was struggling to stay focused. John had called by earlier and we’d talked about going to the Old Hundredth (or the Red Jenny as I still called it then) for a few drinks after work. It was a regular haunt for a lot of people in the oil and gas industry. We were all members so queuing was never a problem. John usually hooked up with a leggy blonde. Sometimes I’d think she was the same girl from the week before and call her by the wrong name. John would apologise to her as if I was a retarded arsehole (‘Accident in the mine,’ he’d whisper. ‘We don’t like to mention it.’) and we’d share a cab home. The well problem meant I was tired and frustrated, but still keen to go out. Things were going nowhere with Katya (again) and I was feeling a bit angry and a bit lonely and a bit ripped off. I heard a kerfuffle in the lobby and walked down to see what was going on. There were maybe fifty or sixty young women clapping and punching the air. Every single one of them had a pair of blue pantyhose pulled onto her head. The elasticated waistband of the stockings pushed the forehead down, giving them all an exaggerated frown. Each woman had tied the legs of her headgear to someone else’s. It looked like a big blue net that had caught pissed-off women instead of fish. One of the women had a guitar and most of them were singing for all they were worth. I don’t remember all of the songs but one of them was definitely Tracy Chapman’s ‘Talkin’ Bout a Revolution’. At first I thought it was street theatre, maybe something to do with one of the arts festivals. But the singing just kept on going. When a determined rendition of ‘I am Woman’ started up, I knew it was a protest of some sort. Stapletons came in for negative press regularly, and many of us had been tongue-lashed by the righteous we met at parties or functions. I’d been accused of environmental rape, pillaging third world economies and even (once) trafficking in 44

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women after a makeshift brothel sprang up at one of our arse-endof-nowhere sites. Even before I became a target for that kind of thing I avoided marches. Placards left me cold and I switched off when people got zealous about things. I didn’t like mobs of any kind and was democratic in my suspicions: left, right and middle of the road turned me off equally when they flocked together. I’d spent enough time in an environment not naturally my own to understand a few things about ideology and privilege, but I marched up the steep gradient of the unlevel playing field without being a stand-out intellect. I didn’t see why other people couldn’t do it too. The guys loved it. It was past five so a few of them were well soused after long lunches with clients. Some of them were throwing bottle tops into the crowd. They’d cheer when they managed to lob one on the blue net, which riled the women even more. Two of the protestors kept me entertained with some (pretty accurate) mimicry of the fat men in suits drinking beer on the balcony. I noticed that there weren’t any female staff watching the show. Lisette had locked herself in her office. Maybe she was embarrassed. I didn’t notice Emily right away as she stood towards the back of the group. She mumbled the words to most of the songs and looked more bemused than outraged. Underneath her blue pantyhose I could see a lick of mousy blonde hair. She wore jeans, boots and an oversized black windcheater. Despite the baggy clothes I could tell that she was curvy. Big breasts and hips and the kind of cheeks you see on paintings of cherubs. When one of the guys landed a bottle top on the net between her and her neighbour she fished it out, groping on top of her head with a half smile on her face. The protest began to peter out as the staff left for the weekend. Vass from accounts threw his arms around a small brunette. ‘Baby, 45

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it’s your lucky day. I fuck ugly chicks.’ Janitors started pulling brooms and buckets out of cupboards and the last-minute couriers jammed the front desk area with bikes. I went back to my desk and teed things up with John. I might never have thought about Emily again except that I saw her standing at the bus stop near my office, minus the blue stocking. The whole Katya thing had given me a devil-may-care attitude and I walked up and congratulated her on setting the system a-trembling. She laughed good-naturedly and we started talking. It turned out that the march was about government cuts to study assistance and a freeze on the number of university places. I was confused. ‘But we’re an engineering firm.’ Emily sighed and cleared her throat. ‘I know. It turns out that we got the wrong building. The Department of Education is a few doors down. But since you’re a mining company, the general consensus was that you’re evil enough.’ I laughed. ‘I’m still a humble minion but I know someone on the first floor who knows someone on the fifth floor with a direct line to Satan.’ ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘you’re connected.’ On a whim I asked her to come and have a drink with me. She didn’t look too keen and seemed to be searching for a polite excuse. I wasn’t sure why I pressed her. ‘C’mon,’ I said. ‘Think of it as undercover research into how the enemy thinks. It’ll give you big-time cred amongst the sisters.’ She wouldn’t give me her number but agreed to take mine. A couple of weeks later she left her number and a message on my machine. It sounded unrehearsed. ‘Hi William, it’s Emily here. Remember? Blue-stocking girl? Anyway, I’m up for some reconnaissance, maybe at a restaurant I know in the city? I hope to hear from you soon.’ 46

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I called her back, making an effort to sound casual. We arranged to meet at a Vietnamese restaurant she liked on the east side of the city. She gave me directions but until I actually got into my car I wasn’t certain I would go. It wasn’t that I was leading her on, or even that I didn’t like her, but my heart was elsewhere. All the way on the other side of town, in a converted loft used for a performance space. My mind kept snagging on reasons not to go. Emily wasn’t at all my type physically. She was cute in an unassuming way, but I liked them tall, willowy. Plus I really didn’t have the energy or the patience for a dose of undergraduate angst. I was almost surprised when I found myself at the restaurant. It was as if I’d surrendered my will and got there on autopilot. She was there when I arrived, sitting in one of the booths, reading a book with her head on her hand. I said hello and she looked up and smiled brightly. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. With her hair off her face her eyes appeared even larger than I remembered. She really did have the most beautiful eyes—deep, deep brown, doe-like and very deep-set. Long, thick lashes that curled up and down to hit her eyelid and cheek. She wore a black woollen dress and no make-up. ‘Do you think you’re safe?’ I asked her, filling my voice with static as if I was talking to her on a two-way radio. ‘Are you afraid of reprisals from your fellow revolutionaries if you’re spotted out with me?’ ‘I’ve taken precautions. They know I’m deep undercover.’ She talked me through the menu and on her recommendation I ordered a delicious beef stew cooked in red wine and aniseed. I tried some of her stirfried chicken with cashew nuts, which was also great. It was the first time in years that I’d been out for dinner with a woman who took a real interest in her food. 47

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‘You know, you look a lot different without the blue pantyhose on your head. I almost didn’t recognise you.’ ‘Very funny. I still find myself laughing about it. Those blue stockings are a cautionary tale as to the perils of carelessness of metaphor.’ ‘They’re a what?’ ‘You should know that was my virgin march. I’m not a rabblerouser by nature, but I won a scholarship through university so I felt a moral obligation to lend my voice to the protest. My friend Tash and I went together. There was a rally beforehand for speeches and such like, and that was where the trouble started. The organisers wanted to make a symbolic statement—hence the blue stockings.’ ‘I’m not sure I follow.’ ‘Traditionally, women who had intellectual or literary pretensions were called bluestockings. The rally organisers suggested that we burn some blue stockings to illustrate the impact of the government cuts.’ ‘Sounds reasonable.’ She shook her head. ‘Not really. Where’s the sense in burning your own symbol? Surely it would be interpreted as a rejection of the whole idea of women in education rather than support for it?’ ‘Hmm, whereas the blue stocking on the head thing really packed a punch.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Please, don’t remind me. It was a nightmare. A couple of the English majors in the crowd questioned the wisdom of the blue-stocking bonfire. Personally I agree with them that it doesn’t work on a metaphorical level. Unfortunately, their objections opened the floodgates for a histrionic debate about the appropriate signifiers. The green contingent protested the environmental impact of burning hosiery; the radical feminists argued pantyhose were 48

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inherently a patriarchal conceit that enslaved women. I think there was even a tenuous connection made between blue dye and milk powder fed to infants in the third world, though to be honest I was finding the thread hard to follow by that stage . . . It went on and on. The blue stockings on the head all tied together was a grotesque hybrid that everyone appeared able to live with.’ ‘It doesn’t make much sense to me.’ ‘That’s exactly what Tash said. She flounced off before the end of the speeches, saying it was a concise illustration of why hierarchical fascism is a much more effective system than consensus democracy.’ ‘But you stuck around?’ ‘Absolutely. I had a morbid curiosity to see how it would turn out. There’s a school of thought that at some point all farce becomes genuine tragedy.’ ‘And did it?’ She wrinkled her nose as she considered the question. Already I could see it was something she did a lot. ‘No. It was unremittingly farcical. We were supposed to sweep up the Terrace at speed to take the department by storm. Of course the sweep was more of a shuffle as the pantyhose net kept trapping pedestrians. The only way we could disgorge them was to have everyone spin around at the same time. Did you know we got caught in the revolving door of your building? And then to discover that we’d stormed the wrong building and our quaking adversaries comprised drunk engineers, bored janitors and harried bike couriers . . . It was priceless. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’ I loved the way she spoke. It lulled and interested me at the same time. I’d never heard anyone use ‘disgorge’ in a sentence before. We talked about our work. She’d recently finished a postgraduate degree in theatre and arts management following an undergraduate 49

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degree in English literature. I wondered how she hoped to make a living out of that. She’d got work with a small press with a good reputation in the publishing world. When the bill came we split it. Not my usual modus operandi. My dad was an old-fashioned guy who’d drummed into me and my brothers that men paid for dinner and shows. (It was always ‘dinner and shows’ but I was almost certain my dad hadn’t seen a ‘show’, as he called them, in a quarter of a century.) But I sensed that if I insisted on paying it wasn’t going to sit well with Emily. Not that I thought she was an ideologue out to make a point, but I had an inkling that her attitude was ‘start as we mean to go on’. Well before coffee I knew that I wanted to take things further. ‘I’d really like to see you again, Emily.’ She smiled. ‘With or without my accoutrements?’ ‘Definitely with. The blue brings out your eyes.’ Before I called Emily again, there was something I had to deal with. I hadn’t seen Katya for weeks, and the last time we met it had ended in tears (mine) and recrimination (hers). My relationship with Katya was a sickening cul de sac. I found myself in the same place over and over again. The friendship slipped into sex and dinner dates and arms around the waist when we were out. Then, a few weeks down the track, she’d tell me she was seeing some pasty-faced wanker who could do twelve pirouettes. She’d do the wide-eyed innocent routine when I expressed outrage and sadness. We’d keep an angry distance for a while and then move back into each other’s lives. ‘But we were never seeing each other’—it was the get-out-of-jail-free card that she played every time. Technically correct but morally wobbly. For all that she provoked me, Katya was important to me. We met for a drink and tacked in the worn weatherboards of our 50

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friendship once again. She played her usual card almost immediately: ‘We were never going out together,’ she protested. ‘You know, Katya, you say that like it absolves you from all responsibility. Like it’s a magic phrase that disappears everything that happens between us. It doesn’t. You know that I’ve been in love with you, and that every time you fuck me off it’s hell for me.’ She looked shocked. ‘But we’ve never said that we’re in a relationship.’ ‘No, of course we haven’t. You because you don’t want to have to wear the responsibility of making that kind of commitment, and me because I’m terrified of scaring you off. This arrangement works well for you. You get a faithful lap-dog that you can fuck off when it suits you.’ ‘I didn’t see you protesting too hard in the back of the car, and on the lounge room floor, and behind the Red Jenny.’ ‘Of course I don’t protest. Sex with you is great. It always has been. I’ve just wanted it to mean more than it does.’ ‘You’re angry with me.’ ‘Yes. And no. We’ve been friends for a bloody long time. I love you, Katya, I do. I just wish that you . . . I don’t know . . . took a bit more care with the people around you.’ She looked down at her milky white hands and inspected her manicure. ‘Things didn’t work out with André, the dancer I told you about.’ ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ I was actually genuinely sorry then annoyed with myself for being so. That was one of Katya’s spectacular gifts: she could click a conversation over in a heartbeat and move your sympathies around like pieces on a chessboard. ‘I think there’s only room for so much neurosis in a relationship. You put two dancers together and the quota is way overfilled.’ She 51

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gave a thin laugh. ‘Two dancers out for dinner inspecting a menu and discussing all the things that they won’t be eating.’ She leaned across the table and stroked my hand. I felt the hairs stiffen on the back of my neck. As casually as I could I extracted my hand. ‘You know, Katya, I think I may have met someone.’ She arched a Japanese-brushstroke eyebrow. ‘Really?’ I plunged on before I had time to think about it. ‘Her name’s Emily, Emily Trahere. She works in publishing. Smart. Funny. I like her.’ Katya leaned back in her chair and lit a cigarette. ‘William, you know that I care about you, right?’ I nodded. ‘Good. I just wanted to know that you know.’ I called Emily again. She couldn’t chat for long as she was going to the theatre (she sounded genuine). She told me that she would call me back the next day. I surprised myself by checking my machine twice. I even called in from work to see if she’d called. When she eventually did ring about three days later from a payphone my stomach flooded with warm relief. It turned out that she’d tried to call me but her phone had been cut off. ‘God. Why did they cut your phone off ?’ I asked. ‘Because I didn’t pay the bill.’ ‘Why didn’t you pay the bill?’ ‘I couldn’t afford it.’ I felt like a total arsehole. Why didn’t it occur to me that she might be broke? After that we started seeing each other once or twice a week. She took me to a couple of weird French films full of tortured love between siblings. She was mad keen on restaurants and knew some 52

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amazing places. At least that was one area where I could impress. I introduced her to some of my favourite places and she had these long, involved discussions with the waiters about ragouts and risottos and the implications of ‘fusion’. Everywhere we went she asked for a photocopy of the menu. Nine times out of ten they gave her one and almost thanked her for the bother. I was careful to choose places that I knew she could afford because we almost always went halves. She started to cook in my kitchen—elaborate four-course affairs that she began preparing at around two o’clock in the afternoon. I helped to wash, chop and stir things when I was allowed, but mostly I just sipped wine and played CDs. I told her about my work and my friends. She told me about her thesis, her manuscripts and the books she was reading. Emily made me feel okay about being curious. The unstudied asking of questions was new for me. I worked in an environment where ignorance about a given subject wasn’t taken as a weakness but as proof that the subject itself couldn’t be that important. I had huge blanks when it came to politics, literature, painting. The only arty thing I knew anything about was dance and I would never have gone near that if it weren’t for Katya. But Emily knew things. It wasn’t sound-bite information but big, colourful, meaty knowledge. When we walked around the supermarket aisles collecting groceries for a cook-up she’d stop mid-aisle, brandishing carrots, to tell me about how William Burroughs killed his wife William Tell-style and avoided ever having to face charges. Once we went shopping for bloody awful-sounding eggplant parmesan. She circled the produce section and almost went into a trance telling me about three sisters who used to narrate stories to each other during the evening when everyone else had gone to bed or were off doing whatever obscure things nineteenth-century folk 53

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did after dark. They supposedly walked round and round a dining table, developing a rhythm with their feet and chanting out the stories as they came to them. I felt like I could picture it. It was as if Emily had dozens and dozens of eccentric cousins and was filling me in on the family history. I liked her. I liked her a lot. After the whole Katya debacle, her frankness felt like salve on an open wound. She showed up when she said she was going to. Returned my calls. Didn’t tease or withdraw. She was interesting and real. The guys that I worked with had wives and girlfriends that either didn’t work or worked as personal assistants or in admin or human resources. Women that left work to go home and cook dinner. Who talked about diets with real earnestness, obsessed about their weight and read glossy magazines. Women that clustered after work at the pub saying things like ‘I really should be at the gym’. Women that cried at parties. Women that were nothing like Emily. My bluestocking. That’s why asking her to marry me had to be pitch perfect. The only issue between us was the sex thing. Emily wasn’t what you would describe as a flirty woman. She didn’t go in for sexual banter or play. It wasn’t that she was uptight. She leafed through the porn magazine she found next to my bed when we were first going out and displayed no sign of outrage. (I watched with interest, pushing down a memory I had of fucking Katya from behind as she stared at the pages of Oui! magazine.) ‘Chummy’ was perhaps the best way of describing my relationship with Emily. After six months of seeing each other we’d done no more than kiss. I had only the vaguest idea of what her naked body looked like. She went in for baggy pants and jumpers. I’d never seen her in anything fitted. It was clear that she had large breasts but I had only limited clues as to the shape and feel of them. I was itching to know. 54

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I was increasingly nervous about the physical distance between us. Sometimes I had this panicky feeling that she’d spent so long with her head in the clouds that the ‘facts of life’ thing had passed her by. I’d always had a strong, insistent sex drive and I loved women. I loved the smell at the crook of their neck. The way they tasted. Those hills and dells that seemed like such an unfair advantage to men with our flat planks of torso and bits that didn’t look right unless they were hard. I used to fantasise about the two of us, Emily and me. I had this recurring ramrod raunchy dream where she read poetry to me wearing a tight red leather bustier. She held the book in one hand and a riding crop in the other. I still had that dream. I didn’t know how to broach the sex thing, and I didn’t want to give her any excuse to stop returning my calls. Finally she made the decision for me. We’d cooked a coq au vin with green beans and crusty French bread. We were sitting talking after dinner with a brandy each when she took the balloon out of my hand, straddled me and kissed me fiercely. She bit my lower lip and then ran her tongue along the roof of my mouth, grinding into me. I was completely taken aback. She was one hell of a turn-on. Totally uninhibited. Totally passionate. This stalking way she moved: half playful, half praying mantis. And the most beautiful real breasts. I was used to slender women with the small breasts that come from a steady diet of yoghurt, black coffee, cigarettes and treadmill workouts. And I was pretty well acquainted with silicone jobs. That wasn’t Emily though. Big, firm, smooth breasts, enormous brown nipples. I just wanted to feast my eyes on them. Fortunately she decided to fuck me from on top so I could perve all I wanted to. She ran the tips of my fingers around the outline of her nipples, brushed my fingers along the lips 55

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of her pussy. ‘Harder,’ she demanded. ‘No, no, softer. Just hold your finger there. Oh God, yes. Don’t come. Fuck me harder.’ Yes, ma’am. I couldn’t believe this was Emily. Emily, who used words like ‘absurd’ and ‘wretched’ in sentences, was talking dirty to me as she straddled me on my couch. Her head was thrown back, her mouth open. Squeezing her thigh muscles against my chest. When she came she rocked her head back and forth very fast, biting her lower lip. She had clumps of my hair between her fingers. I felt used, whorish, sated. It was brilliant. Afterwards, she lay on my chest and I stroked her hair. I felt myself getting smaller and the rush of wetness. A weight lifted from me. I didn’t have to worry about the sex thing between us any more. She looked up at me and smiled dreamily. ‘That was nice.’ We sipped our brandy and watched the traffic roll by before she freaked out that the couch might have been stained and insisted on getting out the stain remover and a damp cloth. The sight of her bent naked over the couch, bottom in the air, intent on sanitising the cushions was so cute that I made up my mind then and there that I would marry her. ‘I love you, Emily.’ She dropped the cloth. ‘Really?’ ‘Really.’ Three and a half years later and I still hadn’t found the right moment.

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III Bitter Reflections Emily It was six forty-five on the Thursday after the dinner party and I was running late. I loathed being late. Besides which, Suella and I had been away at a festival and hadn’t seen Tash since the Saturday last. I’d just spent one and a quarter hours on the phone with one of our writers who was obsessing that ‘I don’t seem able to render the architecture of the story. It’s so damn visible. The bastard just won’t stay buried.’ I was far from indifferent to questions of structure; however, it was a Thursday, and Thursday 7 pm had a very specific architecture. The three of us met every Thursday night to talk books, love, life and criticism with a liberal sprinkling of the banal and the ridiculous thrown in. On rare occasions there were tears. In such company, no one held your inconsistencies or follies against you. It was Will who coined the phrase ‘Thursday Night Summit’ to describe the ritual that saw Suella, Tash and me converge on a city eatery, notebooks and novels in hand, to make points with our forks in the air and nod solemnly over shiraz. Masonic in the subtlety of its signs of membership and mafia-like 57

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in its fanaticism, our small pocket of subculture had its idiosyncrasies and quirks. We’d all had ill-fated attempts at library membership. We began with the best of intentions and pinned the polite notes reminding us of due dates to our fridge. Slowly the courtesy drained from the notes and they became increasingly strident, demanding prompt return or immediate payment for replacement copies. The fact is, people who are covetous of books are ill suited to the collective endeavour of libraries. We’re constitutionally incapable of lending or returning. Notes scribbled in margins and pages turned down at the edge were the stuff of nausea. Even Suella, with her propensity to ash her cigarettes indiscriminately and slosh her coffee over the side of her cup while making a point, was careful to keep her repasts well away from her books. When Will wanted to provoke me he picked up one of my paperbacks, opened it, danced it around cheekily and threatened to splay it face-down on the coffee table. It was a sign of confidence and intimacy if one of our trio agreed to lend a book, equivalent to a blood oath or sacrament. I exaggerate only slightly in asserting that the real book lover will sever long and abiding friendships over the sacrilege of books not returned or returned with dog-eared pages and scuffed spines. The subculture was defined as much by its taboos as its rituals. Acquaintances who recommended tart noir, bodice rippers, historical fiction and murder mysteries were met with tight smiles and spare nods. We took our time over our literary purchases and liked to support local, non-franchised bookstores. We were embarrassed if, running out of time between work commitments, we bought books from the airport vendor. Tash believed this was a sure-fire indicator of cavalier, even reckless, time management. (‘Airport 58

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books are like airport food—tasteless, unsatisfying and they give you the shits.’) We couldn’t bring ourselves to purchase editions that were released to coincide with movie releases, however great the book might be in itself. This wasn’t reflective of a general contempt for celluloid. There were quite a few excellent adaptations that garnered faint praise even from Tash: The Remains of the Day or Persuasion, for example. Yet even when I desperately wanted to read a recently adapted book, I scoured second-hand shops for the most dog-eared edition before I would sink to the purchase of a volume with the glassy eyes of an actor staring at me from the cover. Will believed our views on such matters were perilously narrow. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘you’ve got no guarantee that someone who swoons over the same stuff you do is any more trustworthy or decent than someone who doesn’t.’ The fact that I was with Will for so long surely proved that sympathy with my literary taste wasn’t a prerequisite for intimacy. But it helped. It suggested sensory receptors of the same height and depth and saved the trouble of translation, which was always fraught. Thus much for the shared views of the Summit. Some quirks were mine alone. I had an innate aversion to carrying books with the titles facing outwards. To do so made me feel a touch queasy; it was as if I had notated all the deepest, most vulnerable parts of myself and was waving them about in public. When I owned this to Suella she burst out laughing. ‘God, Em, how do you ever get out the door in the morning?’ She was right, of course. I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that these idiosyncrasies were snobbish and more than a little neurotic, and could laugh at myself for my literature-related oddities, not least of which was the fact that I was completely inconsistent. While I was compelled to hide the books I was carrying, I often caught myself unconsciously contorting into odd positions on 59

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the train to make out what my fellow commuters were reading. More than once I had to ward off puzzled or hostile stares by pantomiming retrieving my water bottle from underneath the seat or pretending to do neck exercises. One of the things I loved about being in love with books was the feeling of instant communion with someone engrossed in a wellloved title. I imagined they were inwardly replaying paragraphs, trying out phrases on their tongue, rewriting endings in their head when the heartbreak inflicted by the novelist was too great to be borne. (Think Arkady leaving Irina in the snow. Suella and I cried for a week.) I imagined them as people like me, for whom unfamiliar words could spring off a page and bounce into my consciousness with all the esprit of an energetic child. So it was that I was introduced to ‘crepuscular’ in Hunt the Slipper and carried it around with me, a blood-borne literature virus. Years later it leapt from The Virgin Suicides and announced that Trefusis, Eugenides and I were inexplicably bound by our shared intimacy with this arcane and delicious word. Espying someone engrossed in To Kill a Mockingbird it was all I could do not to disturb the reader and ask them how they bore their love for Atticus. Of course I never did, I was far too shy; but I treasured the feeling, however inchoate and illusory, that in the absence of any strong religious or political affiliation I was nevertheless part of a community. Without wishing to sound melodramatic, literature saved me from what might otherwise have been rather an isolated, sad childhood. Indeed, when I tried to remember that time, I found it hard to pinpoint real human beings. Lydia Bennet was more fixed in my mind as a presence than Maya, my mother. The Summit didn’t have a fixed address but was a moving feast in the city’s restaurants and bars. I monitored the restaurant reviews 60

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in the local paper, we listened to recommendations from friends and colleagues, and had four long-established favourites that we frequented. Sometimes one of us recalled a dish that we’d enjoyed years ago and I would dive into my voluminous stock of historical menus to emerge victorious with the name of the restaurant in hand. It was remarkable too how books demanded a specific ambience in which they could best be savoured. For example, Atwood (one of the few moderns that Tash deigned to grant an audience) was always discussed at Vaughans. Vaughans was really rather an odd place— one of those subterranean bars entered from a staircase at pavement level. It was faintly alarming to watch disembodied feet walking by in the rectangular windows at the very top of the wall. The décor was all wood panelling and rich, robust leather sofas that squeaked slightly when you shuffled along them. In addition to top-shelf spirits and premium wine, Sobranies were available at the bar. Discussion of Atwood was one of the few occasions I allowed myself to smoke. She seemed to demand it, and I didn’t argue with deities. The lighting in Vaughans was very sombre: small arcs of incandescence at the corners of the room, stronger light behind the bar. You could lose all sense of time down there. For the English classics we patronised a Tudor-style pub called the Crown and Sixpence. It served traditional fare like shepherd’s pie, Guinness and beef pies, ploughman’s lunch, roast pork and black pudding. The Crown and Sixpence had three major drawbacks. It was situated a forty-five-minute drive from the centre of town, and Tash could eat barely anything on the menu. She invariably negotiated for a variation on the ploughman’s special—no bread, all fat removed from the meat, mustard rather than chutney, side salad etc. (In her defence, she was always a very generous 61

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tipper.) Third, and probably most importantly, they served only ale. Accursed stuff. Many a time whilst taking my tankard from the ‘serving wench’ (this really was written on their badges) I heartily wished for a robust, peppery shiraz. Thursday nights were student nights, so there was a suitably bawdy atmosphere. We perched on the upstairs balcony, tankards in hand, and talked above the revelry. That particular Thursday night we were meeting at one of the many Asian fusion restaurants that were springing up in the city centre. It reminded me of Will’s apartment in that it was heavy on the chrome and stainless steel appliances. Its sleek lines and colours were described as ‘bold’ in the fashion magazines, or so Suella informed me. ‘I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,’ I said, bending down to give first Tash and then Suella a hug. ‘I just couldn’t get off the phone.’ Tash frowned. ‘I keep telling you, you’ve got to learn to hang up. “No” is a very important word.’ ‘I know, but I like this writer and he’s fretting and so desperately earnest.’ ‘What’s the problem?’ ‘Architecture of the story won’t stay buried apparently.’ ‘Want me to sue him for you?’ ‘On what grounds?’ I reached for the wine and poured myself a large glass. ‘Iyunno.’ Tash looked up at the deep burgundy ceiling. ‘Gross and unwarranted irritation? Pretentious wankery?’ ‘Not sure anyone at this table is on firm ground with that last accusation.’ ‘Touché.’ She held out her hand for the bottle. I passed it back. ‘Great dinner party last week, Em.’ ‘Thanks. I’m glad you enjoyed it.’ 62

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‘Well, I assume I did. I felt fucking awful the next day so it must’ve been good. How did you pull up, Suella?’ ‘Rancid. I remember most of the night pretty clearly. But some of it’s a blank. Largely the part where John declared his undying love for me and ravished me in the spare room.’ ‘Bummer.’ ‘Yes. Did either of you happen to walk in when that happened by the way?’ ‘Mercifully not.’ ‘Em?’ ‘Afraid not, sweetie.’ ‘Crap. You never have any evidence for the good stuff.’ ‘Nonsense. All things are possible with good representation. So, tell me about the festival. Are the rumours true? Were you feted at the dinner?’ ‘I was actually. Very nice things were said about me—all true— and I was given this oddly phallic objet d’art in recognition of my efforts.’ Suella drew a large penis in the air to illustrate her trophy. ‘Maybe they took a cast from John especially for you?’ Suella and I laughed. ‘Actually, Tash, the dinner wasn’t the unsullied triumph it should have been,’ Suella went on. ‘Did Em tell you about the dress debacle?’ ‘A bit. We’ve not really had a chance to catch up properly though.’ I’d sketched the scene for Tash over the phone between meetings, but erred on the side of discretion. It was clear to me that the incident had unsettled Suella. I just wasn’t sure how much. Suella and I had worked viciously long hours in the run-up to the festival and then were saddled with the chaperoning of a boorish, declamatory writer when we got there. To our inexpressible relief 63

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he decided in the afternoon that he needed to return to his hotel room to ‘summon the muse’. Suella instantly propelled me into a cab which she directed towards a street of high-end boutiques. We alighted from the taxi into glorious sunshine. It was still cold but so bright. A succession of fashionably dressed, fashionably coiffed people passed us, tossing their glossy hair and talking on mobile phones while encumbered with beautifully embossed bags. Suella tugged me into one clothing boutique after another, where we were set upon by emaciated women wearing the same shade of bronze lipstick. The subtext became clear to me as Suella peeled outfits from racks, holding them against her and repeatedly asking me what I thought. The fact that she was to be honoured with an award on the last night of the festival was a poorly kept secret. That explained at least some of the schoolgirl giddiness. I smiled to myself and tried to be helpful, but I was out of my depth on those sorts of expeditions, as Suella well knew. She eventually descended on a low-cut burgundy dress, sweeping it off the rack as though it was a friend she hadn’t seen in years. ‘Emily, what do you think? Isn’t it FANTASTIC?’ She hit me with a camp expression. ‘Is it too much? Or just enough?’ ‘Try it on,’ I offered hopefully. Suella emerged from the change room and sashayed to the mirror. I knew instantly that the scene that had been unfolding in her mind’s eye had collapsed under the weight of her reflected image. I didn’t need her to tell me that she didn’t see the ripe, scarlet voluptuary of her imagination but a somewhat clumsy woman with unruly hair and a doughy stomach. The delicious, heady sense of expectation the day had held shrivelled into cold, hard remains. We left the store in silence, hailed a cab and made our way back to the hotel. 64

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‘I’ve thought about it over and over,’ Suella said, compulsively flicking the menu cover back and forth. ‘Like, how is it possible that I could have invested so much in the idea of who I would be in that dress? I mean, I know it’s totally ludicrous. A couple of metres of expensive fabric isn’t going to make my hair more manageable or make me wittier or more attractive to the general public, is it?’ Tash smiled. ‘I think I know what you mean. I can critique the system precisely and judiciously. I can expound on the evils of capitalism. Yet I’m a walking example of the vagaries of consumerism and saturation advertising. I spend half my time savaging the pressure to look a certain way and the other half trying to achieve it. And you know what’s the most bizarre thing? When I’m really low, when I feel utterly overwhelmed by the whole thing, you know what makes me feel better? I go shopping!’ Suella and I laughed, and Tash nodded. ‘I know, it’s utterly, utterly ludicrous. The very thing, the very system that can reduce me to such depression, also has the tonic. And the freakish thing is that if I buy something I do feel better. I can buy expensive skin care that intellectually I know doesn’t have any transformative power, but I want to believe in the idea of it. And that’s why we part with the money, isn’t it?’ ‘It reminds me of something . . .’ I said, ‘scarf buying . . . Suella, help me out here.’ ‘Carol Shields?’ ‘Right, Unless.’ We hit on it at the same time. Tash fixed us with her ‘disdain for contemporary fiction’ face. ‘I’m not sure I understand the transformative power of purchase,’ I went on. ‘I loathe clothes shops. I loathe clothes shopping. I have a disciplined and inventive regime of avoidance.’ ‘So, tell us, oh wise one. What’s the secret?’ Suella asked. 65

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‘Once every couple of years—always on the cusp of the season— check your credit card balance, don your sneakers, eat a good breakfast and set a limit. Two hours maximum. The formula is: two jackets, two pairs of pants, one pair of boots, one pair of flats, two jumpers, six wash-and-wear shirts, two that require ironing, ten knickers, new bra. Done. Finished. Don’t think about it again until everything’s threadbare or you gain weight.’ Tash shook her head. ‘I don’t buy it, Em. I think you’re being disingenuous. It would take a species of lunacy to be exempt. No one is that lucky. Not even the smart ones. Perhaps especially not the smart ones. Remember when you bought those fucking awful lamps?’ ‘My divine lamps, you mean?’ ‘No. They’re awful,’ Suella assured me. ‘The point is, Em, you were as excited by those lamps as Suella was about her dress.’ I wanted to say, ‘Because they were Sylvia Roehampton’s lamps and she bequeathed them to me in a little bazaar. I was meant to find them.’ But my visions are a secret, even from Suella and Tash. I simply said, ‘They suit me.’ Suella was almost still. ‘In some ways I envy you, Em. God knows how you did it, but you’re about the only woman I know that’s bought out of the whole thing. I’d put money on your being the only woman in this restaurant that doesn’t have a meltdown before a party about what to wear. And then on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to be you at all because I still like the idea.’ I also genuinely believed I’d bought out. Ironic, in retrospect. Suella knotted her hand into a fist and hammered it lightly on the table, one of her habits when she was trying to articulate something difficult. ‘Standing in front of that mirror, I wanted it to be the way 66

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it was in my mind, you know? And I felt so optimistic that it was going to be. I gave everything over to that moment. I felt so innocent.’ I reached over and squeezed her hand. My darling friend with her crazy life and crazy hair. ‘Was it worth it?’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Well, do you prefer that you thought it could be a certain way and were disappointed? Or would you rather not have had the fantasy at all?’ She flourished her shiraz. ‘Definitely the former. One day fantasy and reality are going to meet and I will be so utterly fabulous you won’t know me.’ I laughed and refilled her glass. ‘I sincerely hope not.’ I chinked my glass against Suella’s, but her wish was the antithesis of mine. I guarded my fantasy life from the intrusion of reality. My visions were personal, nourishing and inviolate. And completely mine. I drank to Suella’s desire, and wished the opposite for myself.

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IV Percolation William By degrees Em and I percolated through each other’s life. Four years in and I understood why couples who couldn’t stand the sight of each other stayed together. After a while, it got hard to say where your life stopped and theirs began. This didn’t worry me all that much because I was so in love with Em and was certain our future was together. I adored her. Still, the longer I waited for some planetary alignment after the dinner party, the more it occurred to me that if push came to shove, it would be bloody hard to sort out what rightly belonged to her and what to me. Suella had become one of my all-time favourite people. I liked her right away. Em brought her along to dinner when we’d been seeing each other for about two months. She wouldn’t tell me what Suella was like. ‘I’m not sure I can describe her. You just have to experience her.’ Suella was very tall with thick, shag-pile hair. At dinner, she knocked over a glass of red wine, repeatedly apologised to the waiter and tried to help him mop it up. I could tell he wasn’t worried. Suella was flashing so much cleavage she could power the 68

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entire restaurant, and every time she bent over to attack the stain he had a front row seat. She fretted about an ex-boyfriend who stepped into her cab as she got out. ‘He was wearing make-up. And I don’t just mean a hint of mascara or blush. I mean the full Priscilla makeover. And believe me this is not a guy into queer theory praxis. I think he’s gay. Em, do you think he was gay? He always liked anal way more than anything. I’m sure of it. Damn. I’m turning them gay now. Shit. Shit. Shit.’ She was a riot. Without doubt the most physically unconscious woman I’d ever met. At first I couldn’t put my finger on what was so different about her, but then I realised: Suella had absolutely no idea about how she moved in space. She had these fantastic long, muscular legs. When I first met her she was keen on a very tight, very pink leather miniskirt. Sitting down, she’d splay her legs about, as if she’d completely forgotten about them. More than once she offered me a generous expanse of crotch material. I was torn between politely drawing it to her attention and trying not to get sprung looking. In some ways Suella reminded me of myself. She was enthusiastic about things, wanted to dig her fingers into the black holes in her own experience. The first night we met she asked me about my job. We talked about wells, about seismic surveys, pipeline pressure, offshore drilling. I thought she was being polite, but she retained it all. She could hold well-informed conversations about a few of our operations, but was never rewarded with equally well-informed conversation about literature. John and the other guys from work loved her. The women said she was a slapper. I asked Em what exactly ‘slapper’ meant. Her theory was that it was an amalgam of flapper and slut with the onomatopoeic force of physical violence. (I had become someone who could confidently use ‘onomatopoeia’ in a sentence.) Suella was 69

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very energetic and persistent in her efforts to get John into bed. I asked him after the dinner party why he was so reluctant to accept the offer. ‘It’s not that I’m not into it,’ he said. ‘I’m just afraid that if I give in once she’ll stop chasing me. And it’s so much fun.’ Tash I didn’t take to for a long time. She never seemed to feel any sense of social obligation. Nothing was easy with her. When Tash didn’t have anything to say she stayed quiet. You could probably argue there’s a moral force behind that, but I thought it was selfish. It put too much of a strain on everyone else. I never could figure her and Em out. They were such a strange fit. But then I guess you make allowances for people that have been around forever. Behind her back John called Tash the feminazi. I had a go at him out of respect for Em—‘Well, John, if she doesn’t want to screw you she must be a dyke, mustn’t she?’—but privately I thought that Tash was in love with Em and this explained some of her standoffishness with me. I did ask Em once if Tash was gay. She looked surprised: ‘God, whatever gave you that idea?’ Whether Tash’s love was what you’d call sexual or romantic or whatever, there was no denying that she adored Em. And that made it hard for me to dislike her. It took me about a year to really get comfortable with Tash. She was brutally funny, fucking quick. When she called for Em she’d chat to me on the phone. If you could call what Tash did ‘chat’. ‘Still gashing holes in the ecosystem, Will?’ ‘Well, I don’t like to brag about my accomplishments, but last week I was personally responsible for increasing global warming by half a per cent.’ ‘Good on you, tiger. Sleeping okay?’ ‘Like a crack baby, thanks. You want to talk to my woman?’ ‘Do us a favour and lengthen her chain so she can get from the kitchen to the phone, will you?’ 70

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I shouted to Em that her hairy friend was on the phone. Tash called me a ‘bastard’ over the static and I laughed. Fuck knows how my brother managed to get up such a crush on her. Both my brothers loved Emily, even though they were just the tiniest bit awed by her. (At family get-togethers, when Andrew and Tom were asked about Em they’d say, ‘Smart. Real smart. And nice. Real smart and real nice.’) My mum, in her polite ‘I wouldn’t dream of interfering’ way, was approving. Emily was a ‘nice girl’, much more suitable than my previous girlfriends (whatever ‘suitable’ meant). Lisette waltzed into my office the day after meeting Em and announced, ‘Emily is the business. Marry her. Now!’ By the time of the anniversary dinner party, Suella and Tash were glued into my life. I thought of them as close friends. Most Friday nights they came over for a drink and we’d get takeout or go to a restaurant. (I thought I had a restaurant fetish but those girls left me for dead.) Occasionally John and some of the other guys from work would drop by. My brothers too. It was a comfortable, raucous arrangement. Lots of red wine, bullshit arguments, sexual banter and laughs. Suella used me as a sounding board for her romantic problems. (‘Do you think, Will, that I’m being too subtle with John?’) Both Suella and Tash included me on their email lists (a lot of Suella’s got blocked by the server). Once, Tash even ‘borrowed’ me for a formal dinner she had to go to—black tie affair for the legal movers and shakers. It meant a lot to Em, and I surprised myself by having a halfway good time. But one evening with those people and I wasn’t surprised Tash had issues. I let myself be dragged to award nights, debuts at the theatre and, ye gods, poetry readings. God, were they ever dull. Lots of earnest but poor types there for the free grog and canapés. Apparently these things could get out of hand at the bigger publishing firms. Suella’s 71

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favourite story was about a well-known author who got thoroughly trashed at his book launch. Instead of reading aloud from the novel and inviting questions from the audience like he was supposed to, he launched into a tirade about a couple of his literary rivals and rounded out his attack with the claim that given a choice between fucking a rival author’s wife and fucking a sea cucumber, he’d go for the sea cucumber. He then assured the audience that he spoke from experience. On both counts. The impromptu speech made the papers and became a bit of a scandal, which didn’t do the book sales any harm. None of the stuff I went to with Em ever threatened to get interesting. She reckoned differential pressure was dull but I was about ready to punch the next git who told me something was ‘postmodern’ or, worse, ‘po mo’. The only person in Em’s life I had real problems with was her mother, Maya. Luckily for me she was hardly a constant presence. I’d never met Em’s dad and was never likely to, even if we’d stayed together. This bothered me a bit because of the whole formal askingpermission thing. I knew Em would wrinkle up her nose at anything so ridiculous as asking her parent for her hand; it was more my folks I was worried about. My dad would expect it as ‘the right thing’. I would have asked Maya except that she was so bloody awful. She had this weird quota-like approach to parenting, as if there was only so much that she could give to Emily in the way of maternal support, and she’d store it up and splurge it over a two- or three-week period in which we’d see or hear from her a dozen times. Then total silence, unless there was something she could call to impress us about or she’d got herself in the financial shit. I thought Maya might have a bit of a problem with the sauce. I worked with enough raving alcoholics to spot one. Maya spent Christmas Day with us once, the second year Em and I were together. We went to my parents’ house for lunch like we 72

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always did. It was the usual raucous affair: lots of people, smoke pouring out of several barbecues, screaming kids, the crack and whoosh of opening beer cans. Maya parked herself on a shaded bench and sipped scotch and soda under her wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses. She’d kitted herself out in pink. Pink suit, pink bag, pink shoes. Even pink gloves on a summer’s day, for fuck’s sake. She smiled thinly at everyone and everything and irritated me by calling Em ‘Emily Darling’ or ‘Emily Precious’. Maya had to give everything a glowing context. It was all ‘My illustrious son-in-law . . . Perhaps you know of my daughter Emily’s best friend, Natasha Stenton, the lawyer who handled the Walsh case? . . . I lunched recently with my close friend Mayor Nester . . . blah blah blah.’ Just once I’d have liked to introduce her as ‘My mother-in-law, Maya Trahere, the famous female impersonator’. My mum tried to get Maya involved in the kitchen, organising all the women to take out the heaped trays of salad, lasagne, bread rolls, sausages. Maya let it be known that kitchens were not her arena: ‘Myself, I wouldn’t know where my serving tongs are, or even if I have any. Do I have any, Emily Precious? I am utterly dependent on two or three delightful French restaurants and a simply fabulous gourmet deli. If ever I found myself in the suburbs I’m sure I’d simply starve to death.’ Maya was like a slowly settling ice shower over my mum, the plastic cutlery, the cheap Christmas crackers, the pregnant cousins and the novelty swizzle sticks. Emily threw herself between her mother and the world, smoothing things over, doubling the soda in the glass, being extra courteous to make up for Maya’s pathetic snobbery. A lifetime of dealing with her was probably what made Emily so good with people. It was as if she had an internal Richter scale hooked up to potential trouble— Em could sniff out rejection, awkwardness, grief, tension, everything. 73

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At parties she was the person that made black coffee for everyone at three in the morning, deflected aggro, organised taxis, rescued burning food, soothed jealousies sobbed out in pub toilets. Perhaps because Emily was so genuinely (even pathologically) interested in people’s lives, they warmed to her. Something about her encouraged confidence. Friday lunches at the pub were the norm at my work. Sometimes Em would drop by, often with Suella. Where Katya attracted attention but little conversation, Emily spent a long time deep in discussion with Lisette. (I overheard Vass remark to John in the toilet, ‘William really doesn’t have a type, does he?’) To my absolute astonishment I discovered later that Lisette confessed to Em about her relationship with Dom DeLuce, head of business development for Asia Pacific at Stapletons. A very big deal. And married. His wife was a lady who lunched (Maya would like her) and she would have shredded Dom limb from tailored limb if she knew. Actually, I was angry with Dom too. I didn’t want to get on my moral high horse but Lisette was a sweet girl. When the shit hit the fan, the bigwigs would just transfer Dom to Beijing or Texas; Lisette would be the one left to deal with the rooms that stopped talking when she walked in. Em knew more about the people that I spent my day-today life with after half a dozen encounters than I’d sussed out after five years. Maybe I wanted to assimilate so badly I didn’t press too hard on the critical pedal. The flip side of Em’s interest in people was that it wasn’t discriminating. She was unbelievably nosy about other people’s lives— friends, strangers, relatives, everyone. She had a radar for overheard snatches of conversation. The half sentences that I tuned out, Emily strained for. ‘I waited around . . . took the silverware’; ‘Turned out it 74

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was a business-class ticket . . . really odd material’.) It took me two years of close observation to get a handle on that weird habit of hers. You had to know her pretty well to pick up the signs that she wasn’t giving you her full attention because it had snagged on something else. It was in the eyes. There was a slight loss of focus. She wore glasses a lot of the time which could make it hard to spot. At first I panicked a bit that I wasn’t holding her attention. I could feel her drifting off and thought she must find me boring. I didn’t have any pretensions to being literary or intellectual; I dug holes in the ground, I made a lot of money, I listened for leaks in pipelines. I wasn’t what you’d call ‘well rounded’. My limitations didn’t shame or embarrass me; I’d made a decision to be an engineer for reasons I still thought were good. But I wanted Em to like me. Really like me. When I tackled her on the issue she went beet red. She gave me a spiel that I more or less believed about how she had to be ‘attuned to idiom’ for her job so she’d developed a habit of homing in on other people’s conversations. As I got to know her better I understood more about this strange habit. Constant practice improved her naturally phenomenal hearing. At dinner one night she quietly told me about the couple at the table by the wall, three tables away from us. Their names were Maurice and Betsy and they ran a car dealership in the light industrial centre that ringed the western part of the city. He was having an affair with her cousin Paula, who had just fallen pregnant. Betsy was infertile and desperate for a child so leaving Maurice was out of the question. That night, over osso bucco and chicken cacciatore, they were discussing the possibility of Paula and the child living with them. They spoke gently to one another. There was a lot of hand-holding. When we stood behind them later at the cash register, my cheeks were burning with embarrassment and I couldn’t look at them. Emily gave no sign that she was intimately 75

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acquainted with their private grief. She wasn’t blushing and fumbling and suddenly fascinated by the contents of her wallet like I was. I wondered how she stood her accidental intimacy with diners and commuters. I found it excruciating. After the Maurice and Betsy experience, I only wanted to hear the funny stories. Still, I thought it must be fascinating to be Emily. To be able to create whole worlds out of overheard conversations and the casual gestures of unsuspecting people. She told me that as a child she whiled away hours in class building her teachers’ and classmates’ histories out of little clues. At eleven she realised that Thomas O’Brien’s father was a cross-dresser. When they were forced on ‘play dates’ (Mr O’Brien was a bank manager so of course Maya was going to push that), Em noticed that there were two distinct sizes of feminine underwear on the line in a household of one woman. And way too many pairs for a weekly wash. Then there was the barely suppressed nervousness of Thomas’s mother when she opened doors. Em told me this, nearly twenty years later, in the strictest of confidence. She took her responsibilities seriously. When we first got together, Emily spent most of her time at my place. I stayed at hers occasionally, but it was cramped and you could hear the people next door. Emily was obsessively clean but not much bothered by the creature comforts. There was nowhere to sit in her apartment unless you counted two blue milk crates and a beanbag missing so many beans that you could feel your butt against the floor. She wouldn’t buy furniture but she spent a fortune on the most garish pair of red lamps you’ve ever seen. There were dozens of piles of books stacked around the edges of the room. On top of a pile of hardbacks sat a largish fish bowl housing Melchior and Peregrine, her goldfish. It always looked precarious to me. I think they 76

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became much more secure fish after they moved into my apartment and the little nook I had made especially for them. Emily and I didn’t talk about where we were going as a couple or where we saw ourselves in five years’ time. Things just unfolded. It got a bit sticky two years in when her landlord came back from Europe unexpectedly and she had to move out. I wanted her to move in with me right away, I really did. But the truth was—and God, I feel like an arsehole admitting this—I was a bit scared that if it all went to shit then everything I’d worked so hard for, like the apartment and the car, would go up in smoke. Not that I thought for a second that Em was mercenary, but even the most reasonable of people turned into total bastards when relationships imploded. I should know. The question of where she was going to live was like an enormous truck coming towards me at high speed. It was Em who solved it in her usual matter-of-fact, unassuming way. She suggested that she move in, pay me an agreed sum in rent, and contribute half to all household expenses bar rates and strata fees which were costs of ownership. I closed my mouth, agreed and wondered if she was the most sensible person I’d ever met in my life. I’d heard horror stories from mates about bathroom cupboards overflowing with female paraphernalia and mysterious vials, jars and torturous hair-removal implements, but when Emily moved in, the only things she brought with her were books, the fish, half a dozen stainless steel pots, a mortar and pestle, a wooden box that she kept her personal papers in, boxes full of condiments and those God-awful red lamps. Even after were living together I still went to the Old Hundredth with the guys from work. Emily came along occasionally. She kept up the Thursday Night Summit with Suella and Tash. I was always curious what they found to talk about, especially given that Suella and Emily worked together and Tash was on the email every half-hour. 77

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As Em and I wore grooves into each other’s life the issue of Katya inevitably came up. A bit like Tash and Em, I’d known Katya for what seemed like forever. But how to explain her? Ex-girlfriend? Tormentor I used to have sex with? Woman I was helplessly, hopelessly in love with down to the last grim shred of my self-respect? In the end I decided to be honest. ‘Ahh,’ Em said knowingly, ‘the love that doesn’t have to survive real life.’ And how could it? I met Katya in the final year of high school. She’d transferred from a school in another state and was plain old Katherine back then. I remembered the first day I ever saw her: like all new kids she had to suffer the humiliation of introductions to the whole class. ‘Excuse me, everyone. I’d like to introduce Katherine. She’s new here. Just transferred from Richmond High in South Australia. Isn’t that right, Katherine?’ She’d nodded slightly and made no eye contact with anyone. Her contempt was clear. Later, I found out that she’d gone through this routine so many times that it didn’t even register with her any more. Her father was in the army and that meant the family moved around a lot. By the time she arrived at my school, Katya had been at six primary schools and four high schools and had given up on making friends due to its poor cost–benefit ratio. Of course all the guys were buzzing about her right away, which meant that even if she’d wanted to make friends with the girls they were already circling territorially. Katya was tall, really tall, and so peaches and cream that she made the rest of us feel more gangly, oily and spotty than we did already. She had long dark wavy hair, so dark it was almost black. Her eyes were sea-water grey. But it was her skin that really got me. She was so pale, but not in a sickly way. More like cream. Totally smooth. Totally even. Like she’d been cased in a thin layer of Polyfilla. It gave me a visceral urge to touch her. 78

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A few of the guys tried to make inroads with her but she cut them off dead, and so publicly that people mostly avoided her after that. We all knew that she danced, which made her even more foreign. I had my own problems at high school and would never have approached her if I hadn’t happened to be sent to pick up some baseball equipment left on the oval after outdoor ed one Thursday afternoon. The gym was deserted, everyone by now showered and back in class. I dropped the bags in the storeroom and decided to walk back to class through the performing arts centre. The centre was only two months old, the product of some major pork-barrelling when our sleepy industrial suburb became a hotly contested marginal seat. The piano hadn’t yet been vandalised and there weren’t any cigarette burns in the floor matting. Walking past a rehearsal studio, I saw Katya, or rather Katya’s reflection, in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. She wore black tights and a black leotard. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was moving her arms in front of her, head bent forward and spine curved, then raising her head and curving her arms behind her; back and forth. She reminded me of an otter breaching the surface of a pool. Her concentration was total. A thin layer of sweat shone across her arms and back. Wisps of hair escaped from her elastic band and stuck to her forehead. She raised her arms and stood on her toes and turned suddenly several times, very fast, from the same spot on the floor. I was mesmerised. I think that was the first time I saw something and thought it was beautiful in the real sense of the word. It touched something, a nagging longing that it would take me several more years to identify and understand. I couldn’t move away, not even when she noticed my reflection in the mirror. I braced myself for a tongue lashing of some kind. But she just coolly registered my presence and went on pursuing her own private rhythm. 79

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I forced myself to leave, but I couldn’t get the image out of my head. Of course I’d had crushes before. In the playground I’d pulled the pigtails of girls that I liked. Later, I’d graduated to a more sophisticated technique of verbal sledging and some botched attempts at flattery. I’d tongue-kissed Donna Hemmings behind the hibiscus in the courtyard of the Blue Light disco and later told everyone that she’d let me feel her up. It was total bullshit, and from the first second I started the rumour I felt bad about it. But these people had a bloodhound’s nose for difference and they were on to me. They didn’t know what kind of different I was exactly, so they fell back on all-purpose slurs like ‘faggot’ and ‘pillow-biter’. I figured I needed to fondle Donna Hemmings’ breasts more than she needed to get through school without being called a slut. Right through to the end of school, more than two years from when I kissed her, she served me up a cold silence every single day. I deserved it. I didn’t mention a word to anyone about seeing Katya dancing. She must have been waiting for the sly remarks but they never came. I couldn’t have conveyed what I’d seen in a way that would be true to how it made me feel. And anyway, the only person I wanted to talk to was her. About two weeks after the incident I found her walking home with me. She followed a few metres behind me until we were out of range of people from school and then caught up, casually saying ‘hi’ as if we did this every day. I was so surprised by her presence, her actual real-life presence in my air space, that I didn’t say very much, but that seemed to suit her okay. Eventually, we talked about lots of things. She was determined to get into the Performing Arts Academy in Montrose. From my compulsive reading of university brochures even I knew this was a big deal. Her audition was at the end of the year, the same time when I would be sitting my HSC. She couldn’t wait. She spoke of it 80

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as a fait accompli. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she wouldn’t make the cut. She told me about the instructors, the famous graduates, the artists-in-residence. I didn’t understand dance but I understood her passion well enough. She was particularly determined to study under Lillian Rocher, who had worked with Baryshnikov in the seventies and now was head of modern dance at the Academy. People came from all over the country and even overseas to work with her. For Katya, the Academy wasn’t just the realisation of her ambition but a release from a life of constant upheaval. No more packing up and moving every six to twelve months. It was the anchor she threw into her life. The new beginning. I was pretty sure that’s why she started calling herself Katya when she enrolled. Along with the extra letters went several kilos (too many, in my opinion), so that within months of being accepted her slender frame was even more wiry, the small breasts that made so many appearances in my dreams even smaller. Her voice changed too. The vowels got less rounded, the register a bit deeper. And that laugh. She could slay me with that husky, throaty laugh. For me, for the first time in my life there was someone I could tell about my ambitions. Which were more like mantras I needed them so badly. I wanted to get into university and do an engineering degree. I wanted to work for a major firm in the city. I wanted to go all around western Europe, not with a backpack and staying in crowded youth hostels but in a decent car with the top down. I wanted to stay in a limestone villa on the coast in Greece and drink ouzo while scoping the scene from underneath my Versace sunglasses. I wanted a nice house on the water. I wanted to wear good cologne and tailored suits and go to the right places. For every university brochure that I sent away for, the school careers officer invited a 81

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guest speaker from the local trucking depot or construction site or car yard. I didn’t want a bar of it. I never wanted the smell of industrial grease or rubber from the tyre factory in my nostrils ever again. These were the things we understood about each other. A few weeks before her audition Katya confessed to me that she was having an affair with her dance teacher. He was twenty-one years her senior and married. He gave her private tuition on Wednesday nights, at the end of which they drew the curtains around the rehearsal room, locked the door and fucked in front of the mirrors. I wanted her to think I was worldly so I tried not to look shocked when she told me. I’d casually ask about it as if I heard this kind of thing all the time. It only heightened my sense of her as a creature from another universe. I was dreaming of this life that I thought would miraculously start if I could just get out of there. I fantasised about a new world of sophistication with me sophisticated in it. Me hopping on planes like they were buses. Me suddenly fluent in a more subtle, seductive language. Katya, it seemed, had already moved into this other, more exotic, more adult world. We didn’t have much to do with each other during school hours, but kept up our routine of walking home together for the rest of that year. We talked on the phone a bit too. It was a strange intimacy, being so geographically specific. Anyone passing us in the corridor at school would never guess that I was walking around with explosive knowledge about her that could purchase me instant popularity; or at least an attentive audience, which was a pretty good approximation. Sitting with my friends in rollcall I’d barely look up if she walked past. I tried not to notice that she was almost always alone. We grew close enough that on the day of her final practical audition at the Academy I drove her down there. She explained the theory behind the choreography to me, the schools that had 82

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influenced her choice and how she would ‘emote’. I nodded as if I understood, but the whole time I was plagued by images of her and her tutor. I took a seat in the auditorium while she went to change. Highly strung young women with the same severe hairdo flitted around the stage looking pale and stricken. Some were in intense conversation with parents or their mentors and instructors. Others filled out the forms being handed round by poker-faced officials. Still others were doing slow stretches and intricate little steps on tiptoe. There was so much tension in the room that it was impossible not to feel anxious. I scanned the crowd while I waited for Katya to take her place with the other girls. Of course I was looking for him. I’d never seen him but I was perfectly familiar with him as he existed in my head. I pictured a tall, wiry but slender man, tanned and self-assured. He wore well-cut white shirts open at the throat, never a tie. His boots were leather, the toes slightly more pointed and the heels just a bit higher than would have been considered fashionable. He had an expensive watch but other than that didn’t go in much for jewellery. He was the sort of person who ordered with confidence and ease from menus in classy restaurants, who never stumbled over his choice of wine or laughed too loud at parties. The sort of person I wanted to be. I was sick with jealousy of this man I’d never seen, who filled my imagination and guilty dreams. I was obsessed with images of the two of them on the floor in front of the mirrors, a thin film of sweat on Katya’s body from the leaping and bending she’d finished just minutes before. I traced the auditorium over and over again, turning my head every time I heard a door open behind me. None of the men there could possibly have been him. At last Katya emerged from the change rooms. Self-assured as ever, if she felt nervous she didn’t show it. She filled out a form and 83

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listened intently to the instructions from one of the officials. I scrutinised every man she spoke to, craning my neck at one point and raising myself out of my chair on my hands to get a better look. She made me ache all over. My love was totally self-abasing. I would have licked her ballet shoes, endured any humiliation, if she had asked it of me. I wanted to prove something to her, anything to her. My desire for another city and another life got mixed up with my desire for Katya so that they felt like the same thing. They were the same thing. I watched a few performances before it was Katya’s turn. The tension in the room was suffocating. Everyone looked like they were ready to spill over. A loose thread or a missing form would push them to fury or to tears. I felt strangely at home in the overwrought atmosphere; being so close to something that you could almost smell it, taste it, was familiar. The dizzying possibility of change. The students that were warming up kept an eye on the audition pieces going on to their right, all the while pretending not to care. One girl landed awkwardly coming out of a leap. Her ankle gave way and she fell heavily on her butt. There was an audible gasp in the auditorium. She stood up immediately, biting her lip and looking straight ahead so as not to see her mother whose hands had flown to her face and cupped around her mouth. The fall seemed to bring some relief to the girls getting ready to try out next. You could see it in their eyes: one more down. The girl tried to continue but her ankle wouldn’t support her. In tears by now, she hobbled off the stage and into God only knew what kind of recrimination or sympathy. Finally Katya took her place on the stage. I clapped too loudly as she was introduced and felt the air humming in my ears. The music started and she began to dance. Her moves were slow, controlled and 84

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deliberate. She stood on one foot and raised her other leg, toes pointed, so agonisingly slowly that I thought there was no way she could maintain her momentum. I wanted to applaud every pirouette, every gesture, every leap, but sat on my hands and held my breath. She was magnificent, as I had known she would be. I turned to watch the other dancers. No relief in their eyes now. We met in the lobby. I saw a movie once where a guy rushed in to give his girlfriend a bouquet of flowers after her brilliant audition. I wanted to replay this scene for Katya: me with the classy flowers, sweeping her into a great hug of congratulation. But I didn’t have enough money for flowers so I just gave her a hug and told her I thought she was great. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty happy with it.’ Walking out to the car I asked her, as casually as I could, where he was. ‘Who?’ she responded. ‘Your tutor.’ ‘Oh,’ she waved her hand airily, ‘I didn’t want him to come.’ And we drove home, stopping in for a celebratory burger and fries bought with the ten dollars I’d wrung out of my dad for cleaning his car. Emily knew all about my relationship with Katya. And, just as you would expect, it didn’t ruffle her one bit. There was no jealousy in her, no insecurity. And why the hell would there be? Emily was always the smartest person in the room. The most together. The warmest. She could get inside your head and tell you things you didn’t even know were there. It was one of the reasons I fell so bloody hard and will never really be over her. The night I introduced Emily to Katya was a fucking triumph for me. Introductions between Katya and other girlfriends had not gone well. I’d watched those interactions really closely over the years to try to pinpoint exactly what it was that always made them go arseup but could never find it. I’m sure Emily could have. So many times 85

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I’d felt the temperature drop about twenty degrees within seconds of my girlfriend shaking Katya’s hand. I’m not being melodramatic here. It really was as if an arctic wind had blown through the room. My date might have been chatty and cuddly five minutes before but suddenly she had nothing to say. Nine times out of ten you could bet that once a girlfriend was introduced to Katya I got the silent treatment from her. As if it was my fault she felt that way. We’d be heading home and she’d be staring wordlessly out of the car window. ‘What’s wrong?’ I’d ask. ‘Nothing.’ ‘Well, there’s obviously something wrong. You’ve barely said two words to me all night.’ ‘I’m fine.’ ‘Look. You can tell me that you don’t want to talk about it. That’s cool. But don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong because there obviously is.’ And then she’d start to get funny if Katya phoned me. Refuse to go out if Katya was going to be there. And then the accusations would start, of things I hadn’t done but which she found impossible to believe I hadn’t because no straight man could be around someone like Katya and not be up to something. But Emily wasn’t like that. They met at one of John’s gatherings. John knew a tonne of people and was loaded so his parties were always fun. Katya was standing out by the pool, champagne glass in hand. We hugged in greeting. ‘Emily, I’d like you to meet Katya. Katya, this is Emily.’ They shook hands. ‘So nice to meet you at last, Katya. Will has told me so much about you I feel like we’re intimate already.’ 86

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‘Really? And what titbits has Will been filling your head with?’ Katya gave me a sly look. ‘Nothing too risqué, I hope.’ ‘I like risqué. Anything too prim would be fearfully dull, don’t you think?’ Katya smiled wryly. ‘I guess so. Will tells me you’re in publishing. What does that mean exactly?’ Emily wrinkled up her adorable nose. ‘I’m like a midwife for writers. I try to keep them breathing while they birth impossibly difficult things.’ ‘Do you write yourself ?’ ‘No, not really. A little. My strength is in being support crew, not centre stage. Unlike you. Will tells me that you studied under Lillian Rocher. I saw her production of Giselle a while back. It was stunning. What’s it like to work with her?’ They fell into a lengthy conversation about dance, about which Emily knew a surprising amount. I watched Katya closely. I could tell she was trying to figure Emily out. I practically wanted to let off streamers every time Emily said something funny or interesting or well-informed; which was all the time. It was the first time I’d ever sensed Katya circling, trying to get a handle on something, rather than the other way around. They seemed to get along really well. In all the time we were together, Emily never tried to freeze Katya out. Like I said, Emily was a singular woman. In the lead-up to the dinner party and my aborted proposal, I had an incredible feeling of energy and motion. As if the universe was turning my way. Not just turning but positively bending my way. All I needed was the right moment.

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V On Beauty Emily Can an ugly woman be a literary heroine? I mean a heroine in the true sense of the word. Someone who captures the imagination. Who evokes not just empathy but trails in her wake the reader’s every wish-fulfilment fantasy. A cursory survey of western literature would lead one to conclude that the answer to this question is, quite simply, no. I had trawled through my memory to find the mousy, physically unremarkable heroines and was astonished to discover that I could recall precisely two: Jane Eyre and Catherine Sloper. I put the question to Suella and Tash during one of our Thursday Night Summits and all three of us, erudite and with considerable powers of memory, failed to expand the list. The paucity of the list shocked me. Could it be that we were so wedded to beauty that we couldn’t countenance protagonists, especially female ones, who were as physically unremarkable as their readers? Was beauty so intrinsic to the literary venture that it could only very rarely be separated from it with any degree of success? All 88

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of the greats were reliant on beauty: Thackeray, Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Eliot. Even Austen could go only two lines before assuring us of Emma’s physical allure. Cleverness too. But beauty above all. Mr Knightley, we are assured, loved to look at her. And thus relieved of our anxiety that the heroine may be homely, we are free to plunge into the story. The question began whirring around my brain after the dinner party and Suella’s ill-fated dress-buying expedition amplified the conundrum. It kept tugging at the corners of my mind when I was trying to pursue other things. Jane personified the vagaries of our obsession with beauty. She would never feature in a great work of literature. Never be cherished by adoring readers. Never played on film by a porcelain beauty. It was up to me to restore her. With the strange sensation of anticipation and perfect peace I experienced when I sat down to write, I chronicled Jane’s story. She sat patiently in one of the hard-backed chairs at the dining table and let me take her likeness. When first revealed, she was in half light; her features were obscured and her story fragmentary. Over a period of weeks she became as real as I. She had been born with a cleft lip—the kind of deformity that would have seen her exposed on a hillside as a child centuries before, left to the mercy of roving wolves and gathering skies, and which gave her a profoundly nasal vocal delivery. She was also clubfooted, like Byron and Grenouille. Red-haired, freckled and profoundly pale. Her name, of course, was Jane. My challenge was to bend whatever wordsmithing skills I possessed to render this woman’s daily life epic. I wanted to challenge our slavish obsession with beauty, to lionise Jane whose every act, however pedestrian and banal, was a hard-fought battle, a manifesto. For what can possibly be more truly heroic, more truly expressive of what is best in the human condition, than someone 89

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who will not sink to freakdom? Who refuses to turn clown for the amusement and attention of the lowest common denominator? I absorbed Jane’s life into mine, filtering every moment through my alveoli and into my bloodstream. Her memories became mine and I grasped, at the molecular level, everything it was to be her. I saw her with perfect clarity. Tall, proud, willing herself through the agony of school sports carnivals where well-meaning teachers pressed her into taking part in tunnel ball and sundry idiotic games involving beanbags and flags under the furious sun. I saw her, tongue out, damp, straining to catch the beanbag, arms outstretched, pivoting awkwardly around the useless stump of her foot. Refusing to apologise when the bag was out of her reach; moving with all the speed she could muster to recover it and pass it to her frustrated teammates. Parents and spectators quietly expressed sympathy for the team with the mongo, the spastic, the retard who was holding up the day’s events with her provoking inability to pass a small bag a short distance. Jane knew that each year one or more of the competitive parents stormed into the school and demanded that their Jimmy or Sarah not be ‘held back’ by her clumsiness. She almost preferred this frankness to the pinch-mouthed parody of patience and charity practised by the more well-mannered parents and their offspring. She willed herself through every physical education class, every team-building exercise, every camping expedition. ‘I will be here,’ she told herself. It was her self-devised mantra; a cognitive charm against the blissful oblivion of invisibility. And invisibility wouldn’t have been hard—just a note from her parents, who were always suggesting, as tactfully as they could, that such a note be written to excuse her from the more exposing of life’s rituals. What agony it was for them to watch their sensitive, darling only child butting up 90

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against the carping, the smirking, the over-strained patience that lurked in every classroom, in every office, at every social gathering, even on the street. And what strength had Jane, knowing that a simple note could have spared them this pain. I suspected an element of aggression in Jane’s resistance. After all, in a climate of ostensible tolerance and inclusion, few dared vent their spleen openly. Jane surveyed with a serene gaze the tightening jaw muscles of teammates, the breath control practised by teachers when she was holding up the line again. There was a certain perverse power in arousing such emotion. ‘I will be here.’ This was my heroine: unapologetic, dignified, a touch passive aggressive. Could her everyday struggles be epic? Could such a woman find love? Could she transcend her physical limitations to come alive on paper, to hold the interest and sympathy of the reader? It was remarkable how, in writing her story, I could so easily be seduced into inflating her redeeming features. My pen moved, seemingly of its own accord, to note her rather slender waist, fine-boned wrists, naturally winged eyebrows. Mere parentheses in the wider arc of the story, but aesthetic hooks on which the reader could hang their sympathy. I had a parent’s partiality for the vision that appeared so unassumingly at our dinner table the night of Will and my anniversary. Notwithstanding the fact that I believed no one would ever read what I wrote, I so wanted my Jane to be liked that any authorial embellishment appeared perfectly justified. After all, the beguiling voice whispered, if you truly wish to burrow into the trials and travails of the everyday, then surely there is more truth in creating someone who wouldn’t draw attention at all? Someone plain, someone middling. Jane sensed my struggles and gave me an almost apologetic smile, the left corner of her mouth curling up into a snarl where her lip was fused to her nose. 91

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I had always kept faith with my visions and tried to be a fair and objective biographer of their chimerical world. To do otherwise would be to tempt fate. I tried to record what was revealed to me as faithfully as I could. Sometimes I was thrown roughly against the limits of my own vocabulary when trying to express scenes of great beauty or tragedy, or the visions themselves would shake their heads at me, dissatisfied with my portraiture. I pored over drafts, whittling them down to their essence. I was joyful when I felt I had rendered a scene exactly. There was a space in the writing that I moved into when the harmonics were just right. Approaching it through the drafts was like listening to an orchestra tune up: the various elements were there, it was a matter of connecting them. That moment of synthesis was the keenest pleasure I knew. Therefore, I could not change how Jane looked and maintain the integrity of her story. The way others saw her would shift by infinitesimal degrees as I made her features slightly more chiselled, the lashes that touch longer. Shop assistants might offer greater assistance; fingers might push buttons to keep lift doors open a second longer; chance conversations might strike up, filling the silence that otherwise would reverberate silently the length of the elevator shaft as she steeled herself against the sidelong glances of her fellow travellers. All of these trifling yet tectonic shifts causing different chances, dilemmas, climaxes and denouements. I wanted to celebrate decency and kindness and self-love. I wasn’t sure that I could do it, or do it unflinchingly, when beauty was in the mix. I had thought much on this topic, not just through close reading but through my observations of Katya. And I’d discovered an interesting thing. One did not ‘observe’ beauty. Instead one was always implicated in it. It was profoundly catalytic; not just changing itself but mutating everything around it. 92

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I had known Katya for a year or so when our conversation turned to the subject of relationships. She was single at the time but engaged in fleeting dalliances with some among the armies of men that were always pursuing her in one guise or another. It was early evening. I was driving us along the bay to a performance by an American dance company. Will was running late and had arranged to meet us at the venue. Katya and I found ourselves alone for the first time in our acquaintance. Katya did most of the talking. She was earnestly describing her most recent flurry of dates when, with apparent seriousness, she said to me, ‘You know, Emily, one day a man is going to say no to me, and I really don’t know what that will be like.’ She stared out the car window, apparently pondering this eventuality. I simply nodded in response and the conversation diverted into other avenues. But I kept turning the phrase over in my mind. It illustrated how beauty conceived of her own dilemma: one day, somewhere, there may be disappointment, thwarting, obstruction. An experience so wholly without precedent that she could only guess at her reaction. Perhaps Katya thought of this impending rejection the way most of us thought about death. It waited out there, at some unforeseen time and place, and what lay on the other side of it could only be guessed. My own silence illustrated how beauty implicated us all, robbed us of our everyday social conventions and left us smarting that we could not use them. For Katya’s ‘dilemma’ was so arrogant, so replete with vanity, so heedless, that surely it called for something more than my polite segue into another source of conversation. If Suella or Tash or Lisette or anyone else I knew had uttered that sentence I wasn’t sure I would have kept silent. It was the sort of philosophy that demanded a response. But I did nothing, save almost 93

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choke on my surprise. Only a woman of Katya’s superlative, unarguable beauty could have made such a remark without prompting, at best, snide laughter from her audience. I almost had a grudging respect for her candour—why should she pretend that the same rules applied to her as to the rest of us? I sometimes wondered how Tash would have responded had Katya said this to her, for of all of us Tash was the least beguiled by Katya. She’d told me once to be wary of her. ‘I’m not competing with her for Will,’ I’d responded. ‘No,’ she conceded. ‘But you mark my words, the second she thinks she’s been supplanted in Will’s eyes she’ll step into the ring with you.’ ‘And you don’t think she’s supplanted yet?’ ‘Actually I do. I think Will’s totally into you. I just don’t think Katya knows it yet. When she does, she won’t be subtle. You’ll know.’ ‘Christ, Tash,’ Suella had muttered, ‘for a feminist you don’t like women very much.’ It must have cost Tash something to steel herself against Katya as determinedly as she did. None of us wants to be alienated from beauty, do we? We all want to be within the radius of its warmth because we are all heightened through our proximity to it. To be within the radar of beauty is to be a little bit beautiful ourselves. When beauty deigns to listen to us, our most banal conversation becomes richly layered; we must be articulate, charming. I’d had many opportunities to see this played out. People, male and female, would visibly swell when Katya gave them her ear. You could see their sense of confidence, of self-worth, multiply exponentially with each sentence she attended to, each reply or nod of her head. I wondered if she had missed her calling. Katya would have made a superb psychiatrist. 94

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Give me your addicts, your abused, your angry, your wretched. Lay them gently on my couch and leave them to my tender care. I will speak sweet words to them in my accents of crystal and russet brown leaves. I will lean forward with attention at every confidence and incline my beautiful head in sympathy with their sorrow. And at the end of the allotted hour, they shall arise from the couch, refreshed and vested with new wonderment at their own wit, their insight, their strength, their uniqueness. Cast off your cerements, oh wretched, for here is the enchanted fairy come to make you dance. The truth was, Katya no less beguiled me than anyone else. When Calvino’s Viola stepped from the pages and into my office she bore a striking resemblance to Katya. When I considered the situation objectively, Katya could not help but be the way she was. What would it do to your powers of empathy if you had discovered a direct correlation between a well-placed pout or throaty laugh and the indulgence of your every whim? If other people didn’t set limits on your behaviour for fear of being banished to the outer darkness of your indifference, why trouble yourself to set them? I sometimes asked myself after an evening of observing Katya, if the gods bent their ear to me, would I trade my invisibility for such beauty? I thought not. Now, I’m not so sure.

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VI Red Dress William The ring was a dud. I kept it for a few weeks after the dinner party and then took it back. The antiques dealer was so upset when I returned it that I felt bad and actually lied and told him Emily had refused me. He got quite choked up. ‘Théroigne,’ he muttered, ‘Théroigne. Still no rest.’ I decided my offering had to be a story. A daring, complex story about me. About us. Not some French bit who went loony. There was something I needed Emily to understand. I’d been aware of it for a long time before the dinner party. But afterwards, when I couldn’t find the right moment and then it kept getting further and further away, it became more urgent. I wasn’t great with words like Emily was (I’m still not)—I couldn’t construct elegant, witty sentences or describe events and emotions with clarity. I worked with facts, hard matter. Laws of physics and chemistry that had solid outlines and predictable outcomes. I knew I didn’t have any great skill when it came to conveying layers of subtlety, but there was something about me, and about us, that I wanted her to get. I thought she’d be able to make good on my ham-fisted attempts at telling it right. 96

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Six years ago I went to a brothel. It wasn’t the first time I’d been inside one but it was the first time I’d purchased someone’s services. Engineering had a strong culture of alcohol and paid sex. Everyone drank, a lot of them did coke. They were just about all blokes, especially at the management level, and it was common for drunken evenings to end up at strip clubs and brothels. I thought they drank so much to pretend irresponsibility about what they’d always intended to do in the first place. It was a bit of a rite of passage for new recruits to have one ‘on the house’. All the other blokes chipped in and you got your pick of girls. They did this to both John and me. I found it nauseating. It was probably the most sickening sexual encounter of my life. It wasn’t that I was against using the services of prostitutes necessarily, but the idea of my colleagues buying someone for me like a present, standing around bleary-eyed, offering ribald encouragement (‘I’ve had her, William mate. Tightest pussy south of Thailand!’) while I chose a girl from a parading line-up, left me with a massive soft-on and a rising feeling of panic. John chose a leggy blonde with vacant eyes and disappeared upstairs while the other blokes whooped and clapped. The girl behind the desk looked nervous. I felt sick and drunk and would have staggered out of there as fast as I could except I knew I’d never hear the end of it. I chose a brunette with porcelain skin who felt so delicate when I shook her hand that I wondered how her body held up night after night in the job. We went upstairs into a dimly lit room. I collapsed onto the bed and explained, probably not very coherently, that though I thought she was very nice and very pretty I really just wasn’t in the mood. Would she mind if we chatted for the hour before I made my way back downstairs? She laughed kindly and said it wasn’t a problem at all and not to feel bad. I got the feeling that more than one man 97

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staggered to the top of the stairs to find that he had less bottle than he thought he did, or else was far too drunk to do half of what he’d paid for. I chatted to her, making small talk. I think I asked her a couple of questions about her job. That seemed to make her uncomfortable which I thought strange. This girl let men inside her every night (how many? five? ten?) but was awkward talking about it. At the end of the hour I shook her bird-like hand and wandered back downstairs, relieved to have sobered up slightly. John came down a bit later, grinning like he’d just won the lottery. We took a taxi home. After that night I became adept at dodging those situations. I usually left before the sorry gaggle made their way to the strip club. Sometimes, when I thought they were in no shape to look after themselves, I’d pack colleagues into taxis and send them home to their wives and kids. I wasn’t bothered by the morality question—I figured that couples made their own accommodations. What gave me the absolute shits was the misogyny that went with it—balding blokes with beer guts standing around dancing poles yelling, ‘tits and ass, give me tits and ass.’ It gave me a cold, hard fear in my gut that Tash was right about a few things. What I wanted to tell Em about was the night I went to a brothel stone cold sober and alone just because I felt insistently horny—and something more than that. A sharp, biting loneliness was following me around. I was just starting to understand what I should have twigged a long time before: that Katya was never going to commit to me. Not really. Loving her would always mean this sick, junkie ache lodged in my lower stomach. I began to loathe the cringing dog that she brought out in me, the pathetic creature that pleaded not to be hit but put up with it out of hope that the next raised arm might bring a pat instead of a slap. 98

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I was never really into casual sex but I started pursuing it in the couple of years before I met and fell in love with Em. Maybe I wanted to make Katya jealous. Or maybe I thought that if I played it like I didn’t care the rest of me would eventually catch up. I had to force it because I couldn’t relax enough to sleep when there was some strange woman’s hair splayed over the pillow next to me. I’d doze lightly for a little while only to wake up with that panicky feeling that there was someone else in the room. Morning-after etiquette was not my strength. John’s method was to go out for a run, leaving a polite note that he couldn’t skip his training but would catch up with her when he got back—hoping she’d take the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat and not steal anything on the way out. I was never sure if I should shower and dress, pick up her clothes and fold them conspicuously at the end of the bed. Or pretend to have a breakfast meeting. Or ask for her number and insist that I’d call, never meaning it. It was all too hard. Besides which, Katya never batted an eyelid at the women I paraded in front of her. For acute heartsickness nothing beats pretending intimacy with one woman when everything in you is screaming out to be with another. I found the whole thing empty, corrosive and a bit frightening. Which, I guess, says something about acting from impure motives. Visiting prostitutes was the more honest option. I wanted the pleasure of paying for an experience that was supposed to be hollow. I chose a place with discreet street frontage and three or four nice cars parked out the back. There was a Volvo, a Mercedes and a fourwheel-drive with a bumper sticker that said ‘My child is an honour student at Collins Primary School’. The place was like Emily heaven—so many stories, impulses and justifications swirling around. The receptionist greeted me pleasantly and asked me to take a seat. She had several girls available that she sent out for ‘a chat’. It 99

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was weird to me that a place that serviced our most basic instinct relied on euphemism. They weren’t sending the girls out to ‘chat’: they were sending them out to fuck. Maybe a lot of blokes needed the illusion of the chase. Straightaway I knew the girl I wanted. She was Eurasian and called herself Jade. Long, thick, glossy dark hair that hung loose to her shoulders. Beautiful skin, slender. Enormous brown eyes that she turned on me with something like sympathy. She was wearing a semi-transparent black lace sheath that told me she had high breasts and a tightly packed arse. We sat next to each other on a black leather sofa in the sedate waiting room and she asked me if there was anything particular I’d like. I knew exactly and told her. I wanted her to strip for me, slowly. I wanted her to suck me. Then I wanted to fuck her hard from behind, holding both hips. I wanted to do it in front of a mirror. Such frankness felt pure. No games. No energy expended on predicting what someone else (Katya) might do in a given situation. Jade parted her lips slightly and named a price. I paid by credit card at the reception and she led me upstairs. She stripped slowly to an old grinding blues number that I didn’t recognise. Considering how little she was wearing to start with it was amazing how much she found to take off. The dance was a revelation. She ground on my lap, capturing my hard-on through the fabric of my pants in her buttocks. She straddled me, taking down the straps of her dress so slowly. When her brown nipples finally came into view I groaned in ecstasy. She let me worship her body, taking it all as her due. This is what most women just don’t get. We don’t care about your cellulite, your frizzy pubic hair, the soft flesh around your stomach. Stop apologising for it, just let us feast. Naked, Jade stood with her back to me and drizzled baby lotion on her rump. The contrast between her dark skin and the pink lotion 100

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made an indelible impression on my mind. She spanked herself hard and the lotion splayed in all directions. She set about sucking me with a fervour that was electric. But there was more to it than that. She was so tactile, so . . . what’s the word? Reciprocal. I licked her pussy for ages and ages. I was reverent, grateful. We fucked slowly, kissing. I wasn’t entirely naïve; I knew she made her living from convincing clients they’d given her a really good time. But there seemed to be something between us. The more she got off, the more I got off. I held back my climax till she pursed up her perfect little mouth and pumped me as hard as she could. Afterwards, I stroked her skin and gave her a massage with some oil by the bed. I paid for an hour and stayed for two and a half. She kissed me deeply when I left. What I wanted Emily to understand about this pretty weird encounter was something that I felt more than I could intellectualise. Something about passion, about letting go. About the release we could give each other. About giving yourself over entirely to someone else, even in places where you didn’t expect it and places where you weren’t supposed to. I’d only once felt Emily do this with me and that was the first time we ever had sex. I was bowled over by her intensity, her wetness, her determination. She distilled sex from every pore. She was drenched from my first touch. My God, the smell of her. I didn’t shower for two days just to keep finding her on my clothes and my skin. But towards the end I felt her draw away, almost as if she were a bit embarrassed by her own response. I tried to take her back to that place when we were in bed but I always felt her avoid me or disappear on me. As if she wasn’t fully present. I kept trying to connect her to me, to give her all the corporeal worship that I wanted to give her, but she was always just out of reach. It wasn’t like we didn’t have good sex. We had comfortable, 101

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cuddly, warm, regular sex. But I wanted something more with her, and felt frustrated because I knew we were capable of it. I told Emily about my encounter with Jade a few weeks after the dinner party, when I’d given up on the Théroigne de Méricourt ring idea. It sounds like a bizarre thing to tell the woman you’re in love with, but you had to know Emily. The beacon for confidences. Lover of stories. Able to dig straight to the heart of the thing. She listened carefully, as she always did when people gave her something of themselves. Re-creating the bare outlines of the encounter was easy enough, but I groped around for the open sesame words that showed what I meant. I couldn’t get the story straight. Midway through telling it, it struck me what an incredibly stupid thing I was doing. I should have kept the ring. Afterwards, Emily teased me about the story occasionally. She wasn’t upset or jealous or any of the things most men would probably worry about. She just didn’t get it. Or I told it wrong. Or both. I was incredibly frustrated by the whole situation. I’d wanted to make her a present of my passion, my adoration. Instead I just gave her something to rib me about. Maybe that first night in my apartment was a fluke. Maybe I just didn’t do it for her. That night she could’ve been thinking of someone else. Christ, there was a thought. For all I knew, Emily could’ve been involved with someone right up until we started going out. Maybe she was fucking me to get back at him. It wouldn’t be the first time. But it had felt real. Connected. I kept searching for the something that would move Emily. It wasn’t jewellery, however great the ‘provenance’. And it wasn’t my story of a strangely electric encounter with a call girl. I found it a couple of months after the dinner party. It was a red dress. 102

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I’d had lunch with Katya and we were walking together through the city; me back to my office, her back to rehearsal. We were discussing transport options for John’s party, which was still weeks away but any event at his place required a storming-of-the-beaches kind of strategy to counter the parking nightmare. We were walking past an expensive clothing boutique when I saw it: a deep red dress on a white faceless mannequin in a white window space with white drapes. It wasn’t a modern dress. It was old world, which I thought Emily would like. It was the same colour as her lamps and, amazingly, had the same intricate beads, although a different colour. I’d never liked those lamps but they had something to do with a dazzling, beautiful fictional character and her bluestocking creator. Emily thought it was a great story. ‘Imperfectly told,’ she said, ‘but a great story.’ The dress had a sheer sash that wound around the bodice several times then fell to the floor. The dress was very long, with about two inches of beading at the bottom that touched the floor slightly. Low at the neck but not so low. Tight, clingy, filmy material, with sparks shot through it, and tiny beads at the bodice. It was as if there were ice crystals sewn into the dress. We stopped. ‘Look at that dress,’ I said to Katya. She sucked in her breath. ‘It’s gorgeous.’ ‘I want to buy it for Emily.’ ‘You’re not serious.’ ‘Completely. I think she would look ravishing in it.’ I dragged Katya into the shop with me, despite her protestations that she needed to get back to rehearsal. I couldn’t say what I wanted to Emily but the dress would speak for me. She got signs and symbols. She and Suella and Tash were always on about them. I had no doubt that she would understand the dress instantly. 103

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The fawning saleswoman lovingly removed the dress from the rack and pressed it against Katya as if checking the size. ‘You’re a very lucky woman,’ she said. Katya laughed and touched the fabric. ‘Was lucky, honey. This dress is for another very lucky lady.’ She replaced the dress on the rack and selected another. ‘What’s the difference?’ I asked. ‘Three dress sizes.’ ‘You’re sure? The other one looked right to me.’ ‘Trust me. Emily’s not going to love you for a size eight.’ Katya walked to a rectangle of mirror near the counter. She pressed the dress against her torso and pursed her lips, as if considering. I stood behind her, overjoyed at my good fortune. The sales assistant stood behind me, overjoyed at hers. The price tag was three thousand dollars. Katya ran her hands along the bodice, studying her reflection. ‘You can see Emily in this dress?’ she asked me quietly, meeting my eyes in the glass. ‘See her in it? It was made for her.’ Katya bit her lip and looked a bit quizzical. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. I didn’t care what she thought of my taste. After getting it wrong twice I was sure I had made the connection. This was the thing. I handed over the plastic and had it giftwrapped. That night I opened a bottle of champagne, turned the lights down low and waited for Emily to get home. ‘What’s the occasion?’ she asked, stepping through the front door into the candle glow of the lounge room. ‘You, my love, are the occasion.’ 104

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I kissed her, took her coat and bag, propelled her into an easy chair and flourished a glass of champagne in front of her. She thanked me and took a sip. ‘I have a present for you.’ ‘Really? How sweet. But why?’ ‘Because I saw it and thought instantly of you and knew you had to have it.’ I handed her the creamy white box. She looked mystified, pulled off the red ribbon and carefully peeled aside the layers of tissue paper. I watched her face closely as she pulled the dress from the packaging. She stared hard, stood up and held it against herself. She smoothed the folds down with her free hand, jiggling them slightly to make the beads clack together. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ ‘Say that you like it.’ ‘I do . . . I do like it. I’m just . . . well, speechless really. Overwhelmed.’ I insisted that she try it on. She showered first and took ages dressing. Finally she came into the living room to show me. I couldn’t read her expression. ‘So, baby, what do you think?’ I said. She shook her head. ‘This is extraordinary. Just extraordinary. Where did you find it?’ She looked exactly as I knew she would—like little sparks were coming off her skin. She’d left her hair loose. The dress clung to her breasts. It suggested, rather than showed, cleavage but left the full outline of each breast to press taut against the fabric. I was instantly hard. I walked quickly to her and kissed her passionately on the mouth. She responded. I dropped to the floor and pawed through the layers of the dress until I was underneath it. I heard the beads 105

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click clack as I disappeared into the sanctuary. I nuzzled her pussy through her underpants, inhaling the scent of her. I felt her dip to the side just slightly. I gently moved the pants aside, closer to the real seat of worship. The phone rang. I felt her stiffen. ‘Ignore it, baby,’ I choked out. I felt her hesitate then she neatly sidestepped me and walked quickly to the phone. It was Suella with a Suella-shaped crisis. Emily gave her attention to the call. I stormed into the kitchen with the sound of beads smashing in my head.

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VII Succubus Emily From the moment I pulled the dress from the box it knocked me sideways somehow. In the days that followed I tried not to look at it when I rummaged through my wardrobe for work clothes each morning. I toyed with the idea of ripping it from the hanger, burrowing it into tissue paper and stuffing it back into the innocent waxy white box it had come from. I could leave it at the drycleaners, or loan it to Suella knowing there was a very good chance it would never come back. I could accidentally spill coffee on it, have it catch in the shredder at work in a bizarre series of events. I invented many ludicrous means of permanently disposing of the dress. Ideas sprang at me during work meetings or when doing the grocery shopping yet I pursued none of them. I found myself strangely impotent. And even if I destroyed the physical evidence, there remained the impulse that had impelled Will to buy it in the first place. How could I exorcise that? Instead of destroying the dress, I set up a rival to its power. My notebook became my talisman and protector. I found myself 107

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reaching into my satchel to be sure it was there. Writing was the mantra, the meditative state where I cocooned myself from all that the dress portended. I consciously invested Jane’s unfolding story with the opposite energy of the red ghost and tunnelled into it like a person possessed. My progress was rapid: fifty thousand words in four weeks. I took the notebook with me everywhere—my holy water and crucifix. It calmed me. One morning, I left for work in a hurry and found I’d left my notebook at the apartment. The wraith descended, sinking its teeth into my skull. I borrowed Suella’s car, drove home, dived onto the bed and pulled the notebook from beneath my pillow. I cradled it against my chest, drawing even breaths and coaxing my heart into its normal pattern. When I first pulled the dress from the tissue paper and held it up to myself it made a click-clack noise as the beading rearranged itself, like an insistent pendulum clock. The sound was lulling and hypnotic in the low glow of the candles that Will had lit in the living room. I moved my hands over and through the dress to set the beads in motion. Click-clack. Click-clack. The fabric felt rippling, liquid, light. So beguilingly soft and tactile I was compelled to keep swimming my hands and arms through it. Will was clearly excited by his purchase. He poured me more champagne and gleefully told me how the dress had stopped him dead in his tracks during his lunch break. ‘As soon as I saw it, I thought of you. I knew you already owned this dress. The universe left it for you. And you thought I didn’t get that whole thing. Luckily Katya was there or the sizing thing would really have—’ ‘Katya was with you?’ I internally recalibrated at this piece of information. I imagined Katya holding the dress up to herself, satisfied with her reflection. 108

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Scarlet and ripe in the mirror as in the head. The way Suella and I would never be. ‘Yeah, we met for lunch just before. The sales assistant was really helpful but I wouldn’t have wanted to guess with sizes. But Kat was pretty confident she had it right so I laid down the plastic and brought it home.’ The thought radiated from the centre of my head like a truth long known but never before required: If I wear this dress I will atomise and disperse into the ether. I laid the dress on the bed and made for the shower, leaving William, very pleased with himself, to down the rest of the bottle of champagne before I returned. Showered, I approached the dress with trepidation. I had known women with dresses like this. Visions like Lady Roehampton and Daisy Miller. Women like Katya. Women that were nothing like me. And that was when it struck me. The colour and texture of the dress were virtually identical to my beloved red lamps that stood like awkward guests in Will’s apartment. The lamps were my very first purchase as a gainfully employed full-time worker. After years of scraping by on government handouts and all the freelance festival work I could find, I felt drunk on my comparative prosperity as Suella’s newest recruit. I walked slowly and purposefully around the market, practically swooning with all the possibilities afforded by my modest stipend. I handled objects and sat in chairs, sorted through musty volumes of books and picked through assorted crockery before the lamps found me. I knew instantly that they were mine. They were an oldfashioned metal casting in two tones of bronze, standing at just under one and a half metres with enormous umbrella-like red silk stretched over delicate bronze filigree fingers. Faux pearls and glass beads hung from the shades on red threads. Where the beading on 109

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the red dress was shiny and transparent, on the lamps they were assorted dark blues, greys and blacks. The beads made a lovely clacking sound, like stepping through beaded curtains, when you ran your hands over them. The lamps were more than I could afford but so over-ripe and hedonistic I thought they’d be delicious to own. I was certain they’d once stood in a fin-de-siècle boudoir in old London town. Lady Sylvia must have owned the exact same pair; perhaps these very ones. I called Suella from a payphone at the front of the markets and she trundled over in her car and helped me carry the lamps home. With a raised eyebrow she asked if I had plans to open a bordello. The beads clicked sympathetically every time we stopped at traffic lights. I placed the lamps in my tiny lounge room and lay languorous on my beanbag bathed in deep pink light as the beads pendulumed in the breeze from the open window. Will despised those lamps. I’d explained all about Vita and Virginia and Violet and the overblown Indian-summer heroine with her scandalous younger lover, and how I came to find her lamps in a suburban flea market in my home town. He’d listened politely, stooping down to inspect the metal casing at the base. ‘They’re a bit much though, don’t you think?’ ‘I think they’re just enough.’ He’d slapped me playfully on the bottom. ‘It’s your apartment.’ When we moved in together he nonchalantly asked me what I was planning on doing with the lamps. I just as nonchalantly replied that where I went so did Sylvia’s lamps. He didn’t argue though I could tell he was far from thrilled. There was no doubt they were thoroughly incongruous in his apartment with its sleek lines, blondwood panelling and so much glass I sometimes felt trapped in a glacier. 110

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I put them in the bedroom. They outraged the modernity and threw their lurid light along the wall. Their glow in the window probably scandalised the well-to-do neighbours. The lamps stood sentinel over my tenure of the apartment where I felt more like a perpetually welcome guest than a bona fide resident. The feeling didn’t overwhelm me; it didn’t scream that I was an impostor when I stepped inside at night. But the space remained his. I never liked the windows that ran around the entire lounge room. I loved the view of the lights over the city and how I could trace cars as they rumbled along the roads, but it was disconcerting to catch my reflection in the glass when I wasn’t prepared for it. I was used to visions materialising from other worlds and following me around, but my unsolicited reflection startled me. Sometimes when walking through Will’s apartment I had the unnerving sensation that I was being stalked by a pallid, watery doppelganger. The dress was fanned out across the bed. It really was delicious to touch. I pulled it over my head and tugged the hem down, arranging the folds around my breasts, shoulders and waist. I stilled myself in front of the mirror, breathing deeply into the core of my stomach, willing myself to look with a stranger’s eyes. I saw a short, milkywhite, curvaceous woman, too round to be fashionable. I had Valkyrie breasts (‘serving-wench breasts’, Will called them), which threatened to tumble out of the dress. It would take no more than an ill-executed grab for a champagne flute to find the evening breeze kissing my nipples and rumpled lengths of displaced silk about my stomach. When I finally emerged from the bedroom Will was fulsome in his praise. He made me parade up and down the living room several times. At every turn I was met by my reflection in the inescapable glass panelling. A pale woman in a tight red sheath. It was clear that Will was slightly drunk. His lustful excitement faintly repelled me. It 111

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was the first time that I couldn’t reciprocate his desire in any measure. I felt like a cipher in a red flag; an apparition of his conjuring. He fell on me, his energy crashing into me like a wave. I felt swaddled in the voluminous folds of the dress. Will probed his tongue hungrily in my mouth. I wanted to say, ‘Slow, slow down’, but I was strangely enveloped in silence. He dived underneath the dress and ran his hands over my thighs. I felt light-headed, as though my skull was going to open to the elements and my essence pour out into the night sky. The ringing phone brought me back to myself. Will hung on to my legs, rooting me to the spot. I took a moment to collect myself, then shook him off. Since then the dress had haunted my steps. Flashes of red on the street mesmerised me: red cars, red shoes, the red of Suella’s lipstick. The dress was silken laudanum throwing a distorting film over everything. It fluttered through my dream life like a taunting red banner. Dreams, innocuous and surreal, were sure to be punctuated by a crimson flash. Sometimes there was just the barest hint of it so I wasn’t certain it had flared. But I always awoke with the knowledge of its visitation. In spite of myself, the dress could beguile me. I would turn my head from Jane and flirt with the idea that Will saw me as the siren of the dress. It was like a voluptuous itch snaking around the back of my head. I thought of Katya and Jade and the power they had over William. Might I have such power? Could I wrap myself in the indecently expensive fabric and emerge a new, shining thing? A woman who ate men like air. The night of John’s party I resolved to wear the red dress. John held his soirees every six months or so, filling his house with 112

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svelte women, expensive champagne and pulsing music. Inevitably I found myself holed up in the kitchen in the early hours of the morning, pouring water down the white throat of a tearful woman or consoling a man choking on his desire for Katya. This time Tash couldn’t make it and Suella wasn’t available till much later in the evening. For once I was glad of their absence. There was a battle ahead of me and I needed to engage without distraction. I had to exorcise the power of the dress. My rational mind knew that my corporeal being wouldn’t vanish when I slipped it over my head, but for my subconscious the dress was a minacious presence in the house. I was in thrall to it. I had slipped away from all of Will’s suggestions and requests to wear it but that night I was determined. A few hours before the party I drew a very hot bath and poured a thick stream of bubble bath into the water. I lit candles and incense, turned off all the lights in the bathroom, and submerged myself. The candles flickered on the inside of my closed eyelids. I listened to the subtle crisp and hiss of the bubbles as I moved through them. The scent of jasmine sat heavy in the steamy atmosphere. Lydia Bennet perched on the tiled ledge of the bath, sometimes dipping her bare feet in the water. It was fitting that Lydia attend me. My faithful companion of many years, she was the first, in many ways the most beloved, of the visions. She watched me, immersed in tiny bubbles up to my neck, and drew in the smoking incense through flared nostrils. I sensed Sylvia in the bedroom, stroking her hand over the dress’s fabric. I sent my mind to a serene space, enjoying the semi-darkness, the weightlessness of my body in the over-sized bathtub. I raised my arms slowly above my head. Drops of water sizzled into the foaming bubbles. I had a strange sensation of disembodiment, as if I could disappear forever into the water and the steam and the curling fronds of jasmine-scented smoke. 113

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I stayed in the bath for a long time. Will wasn’t home from work yet. When I finally did emerge I went slowly and purposefully about my business. I pulled an expensive bottle of moisturiser from the back of Will’s bathroom cupboard. It wasn’t mine. It had a pungent, spicy cinnamon smell and I wondered about the woman who had owned it. Had she purchased it the day she came to Will’s, then left it here accidentally? Or had she placed it deliberately in the bathroom cupboard as an act of optimism? A claim on the territory? Will claimed ignorance as to the glass bottle’s ownership. It occurred to me now that it might be Katya’s. The idea sent a sharp sting through my head and genitals. I opened the bottle, held it high in the air and let the glorious stream of piquant liquid pour into my open hand. I lavished the cream purposefully all over my body. When I was finished I turned on the mirror lights, careful to keep the rest of the bathroom as much in darkness as possible. I was not practised nor particularly skilled at applying make-up so I took my time. I painted slow, careful patterns on my lids, concentrating on the feel of the brushes and powders on my skin. I filled in my lips with all the concentration of a child warned not to go outside the lines in her colouring book. I blow-dried my hair, scrunching it in my palm to encourage the faint wave that ran through it. Still in semi-darkness I approached the bed where I had set out the dress. It lay serenely on the covers. I pulled it on over my head, careful not to smudge my make-up. I smoothed out the wrinkles one by one, arranged my breasts into the folds of the slippery material and stepped into the high-heeled black shoes I’d borrowed from Suella. Lydia and Sylvia attended me like handmaidens. Jane, anxious, watched from the doorway. It was done. I left the candles to burn out and moved into the lounge room to wait for Will to arrive home. I poured myself a glass 114

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of red wine and walked aimlessly through the dark apartment. In the daylight I found it slightly bourgeois. At night it became a different place. I imagined that the Victorian-style street lamps outside were flicked on every evening by the impeccably manicured hand of a genteel civil servant. Perhaps that’s why Will liked the apartment. The cars switched on their headlights so all the ring-roads leading to the bay were lit up with tiny fireflies. I traced their routes from the ample windows. As I turned I caught my reflection in the enormous glass sheathing. I was a stranger to myself. Will’s response to the dress was oddly silent. Normally loquacious, he barely spoke, just looked at me a good deal, circling. My lungs felt as if they’d been severed from the rest of my body. I couldn’t take in enough oxygen. I nearly made it to the car park before panic assailed me. Fighting nausea, I returned to the house to change my outfit. I’d lasted precisely thirty-seven minutes in the dress. William was furious. He barely spoke a word to me in the taxi on the way to John’s. I reached for his hand and he gave mine the most perfunctory squeeze while continuing to stare intently out the window. What was it that had angered him? I wanted to walk around in his head and see how it looked to him. Was he hurt that I’d spurned his gift? Was he bewildered by my frumpiness? Was it thwarted desire? I couldn’t tell. And he wouldn’t tell me. Things didn’t improve when we got to the party. William disappeared into the throng shortly after we arrived. I walked aimlessly through the high-ceilinged rooms, champagne glass in hand. For all Will was angry with me I was relieved that I had changed my outfit. The house was full of people I didn’t know. Tall, slender women in halter-necked tops leaned casually against walls chatting to one another. Their gazes slid off me as I walked by. Had I worn the dress 115

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they would have stared and made a summary diagnosis: fat, white, misguided, tragic. I found Eron on the decking near the thin rectangle of impossibly blue water that ran the length of John’s house. He welcomed me warmly and we chatted for an hour or so until Will’s absence began to alarm me. I went looking for him and found him in the last place I thought to look. John had a very large spare bedroom that opened onto a spacious hallway. He’d hired a DJ who’d set up her equipment there and the poorly lit space was thick with people. Will wasn’t a dancer so I was surprised to see his tall form in the crowd. I sipped my champagne as I squeezed through the writhing throng to where William was dancing with Katya. The first shock was that he was dancing at all. On the rare occasions Will took to the floor he had a manic, Ian Curtis-like rhythm, something between dogged determination and an epileptic fit. The second shock was what he and Katya were doing. She was holding his wrists and slowly, deliberately, moving his hands over her waist. She wore a black dress, square cut along the clavicle and backless. Tight. I think perhaps velvet. It was very long—you could barely see the tips of her shoes poking out from underneath the skirt. She was looking squarely into William’s face. He was looking at his hands as she moved them slowly along the curve of her waist. He was very drunk. They seemed to be in a hermetically sealed bubble, all their concentration focused on where Katya would guide his hands next. I couldn’t move. I could hardly breathe. In that moment I think I came close to understanding how a human being could plunge a knife with intent and deliberation into the soft protuberance of another human’s belly. How you might hold that person firmly by the shoulder and yank the handle of the knife ninety degrees and thrust it even deeper until warm blood spilled over the handle and onto your hands. 116

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Katya moved William’s hands along the flat expanse of the velvet tight across her stomach and agonisingly slowly towards her breasts. She held his hands slightly aloft from her for a few seconds, then, never taking her eyes from his face, gently moulded them to her breasts. He was transfixed. He closed his eyes. His expression was beatific, hers a little harder to read. Was it triumph that I saw there? Or contempt? I really didn’t know. But when she saw me watching them from the opposite corner of the room I knew that she knew. She had looked into the bare chamber where the red dress lived deep in my psyche. She saw what I could never articulate to Suella or to Tash, and could barely admit to myself. I could not move away because I didn’t want to. The scene moved me, compelled me. It turned me on. That’s how complicated beauty is. It was a few days after John’s party that I first heard it: an intake of breath from within the wrapping around the red dress. The sound was barely audible but was unmistakably a human inhalation. It rooted me to the floor. I had to force myself to open the wardrobe doors and examine every inch of the space. It happened again twelve days later. This time the breath was louder and, to my ear, decidedly feminine. I was afraid. During all my years of visitations nothing had ever occurred to alarm me. Nothing like this. I began to think that Will’s apartment might be haunted, although it seemed unlikely given that he was its first inhabitant. My limited knowledge of the supernatural suggested that hauntings required the accretion of powerful energies within a space over a long period of time. Was it simply a matter of time before the magic of my visions went amiss and a wraith of darker, more malevolent temper was 117

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raised? Perhaps the dress had broken its bonds from another’s interior sanctuary, abandoned its conjurer and floated unfettered into my universe. Perhaps it was sent. Was it possible that I wasn’t the only shaman in that house of steel and glass? I watched William closely but he betrayed no sign of wizardry. But then, I thought, do I? Neither Suella nor Tash, nor William, had ever guessed at the worlds I had entrée to and so zealously protected. I knew I had to talk to someone about what was happening but I couldn’t reconcile the shift in my sense of self that required. My visions were intensely personal experiences and I had long since learnt to hide evidence of them. The dissimulation was a necessity learned as a child. From the moment Lydia materialised, Maya was alert to the change in me. I was about seven or eight years old, and sitting quietly on the swing, hoping to evade my mother who was even more fractious than usual, when, unaccountably, chamber music began pouring out of a nearby hibiscus. Lydia came waltzing out from behind the shrub. She was perhaps ten years older than me and wore a lemon-coloured dress, her dark hair pulled back with a blue ribbon. She had an air of barely repressed anxiety as she leaned for a moment against the tree trunk that supported my swing. Lydia Bennet was well known to me. I could read long before I began school, which probably accounted for my aversion to attending. But this wasn’t the Lydia I had read about. Her tense smile, the set of her jaw, the absent way she tugged at the ribbon in her hair were things Austen did not write of, but the physical fact of her wrenched another narrative that Austen had furrowed deep into her text where no one could find it. Lydia came to me frequently over the years and bequeathed to me an alternative history, one that lived in the half-light of the margins, which authors liked to cordon 118

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off from their readers. She spoke to me of the struggle for selfrealisation as the youngest child in a family where the roles of beauty, wit, scholar and dullard had already been cast. I felt her sexual curiosity crackle in the still, hot air around me, the insistent energy that followed her from home to church to each morning visit, to the milliner and to dinner dances. I felt her compulsion to dance herself into exhaustion at every opportunity, willing the music to speed up, to never end. I entered fulsomely into Lydia’s travails over the years, chuckling inwardly at Austen’s temerity in being so one-eyed about the whole thing. That first day, though, we spoke of dancing, of which she was fond and I was not—until interrupted by Maya. ‘Emily? Emily, where are you?’ I stayed very still on the swing, hoping she wouldn’t find me. ‘Emily, who were you talking to?’ ‘No one.’ She gave me an odd look, almost of fear. ‘I’m sure I heard you talking to someone.’ ‘No.’ Clearly, Maya couldn’t see Lydia standing just metres away, annoyed at the intrusion. It thrilled me to think this was a private vision, safe from my mother’s interference. I was dragged away to help her pin dresses, everything in me electrified by my new-found ability. Lying awake at night, I was no longer troubled by Maya’s crying. I could conjure a Rochester or a Dobbin to sweep through the house and comfort her, flourishing flowers. I heard the drum of a horse’s hooves in the distance long before he reached the house, drowning out her choking sobs. I could will away the guests that Maya invited over, replacing them with visions more to my taste. My mother and 119

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the people she surrounded herself with became, by degrees, nothing more than persistent, mildly irritating background noise. Maya sensed the shift in me. She would sneak up on me, feigning casualness, like a child suspecting exclusion from a treat. ‘Who are you speaking to? Are you playing make believe? What do you see?’ I tried to shrug her off but she materialised in the oddest places, breaking and entering into my reveries. I tried to guard my abstraction, forced myself not to address the air. It didn’t convince her. The more I slipped away, the more she pursued me. Lydia tried to teach me the indifferent expression she used at Pemberly but I couldn’t arrange my features like hers. I practised in front of the mirror but just looked provokingly smug and slightly pained. Eventually, I perfected a neutral face that gave few signs of my inner absorption. I learned to bring my attention back to the present quickly and without the wrenching nausea I first experienced when Maya rudely interrupted my meditations. Those first few weeks I felt that I was lifted bodily out of my castle of air, sucked through dimensions and roughly set down in the present. It left me dizzy. With practice it became the work of three breaths at most. After Lydia, other visions materialised. The Arcadios and Sylvia were the most constant. Others appeared for brief periods of time, bestowing on me their histories before slipping away. Sometimes I lived in a swathe of visions. The noise could be deafening. Talking. Laughing. Dancing. It was mesmeric. At other times my world shrank to only two or three manifestations: intimate, deep connections that nourished and fascinated me. To pacify Maya I stopped conversing aloud with the apparitions and instead began committing their stories to paper, losing myself in them. I became a chronicler of the ages, a champion of the dispossessed; I restored crazy aunts, wallflowers, overlooked younger 120

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sisters and hapless foils to the centre of things. But I was no Jean Rhys. The chronicles were private missives for my enjoyment only. The ever-multiplying sheets of paper didn’t seem to trouble Maya. As long as I wasn’t speaking to the air or leaving sentences half finished, she appeared satisfied. By the time I started work at Weatherborne I had four full-length novels and dozens of short stories—mostly alternative histories prised from the jaws of existing narratives. After a time, my apparitions became independent of novels, emerging fully formed from unseen worlds. Like Jane. Until now, nothing had occurred to blunt my pleasure in the visions. My habit of hiding their existence from the people around me was so long ingrained that to speak of them seemed treacherous. I was aware that my experiences were singular and I wasn’t sorry for that. I felt privileged to have the other world. Chosen. But the dress and its wraith were something else entirely. Something fearful. Something nefarious. I couldn’t articulate the pervasive sense of threat I felt. Tash and Suella used to joke that I was ‘Hospital Corners Emily’. They meant it kindly and I felt it to be an apt descriptor. I was organised and particular and fastidious. I always had been. To now confess to being someone who couldn’t sleep if the wardrobe door was open felt akin to confessing that I was a long-term heroin user or had been prostituting myself every Tuesday night for the last decade. Between the uncertainty as to what Will wanted from me and my own fears about what was happening to me, I felt as if I was damming a hole in a dyke with my fragile, frozen finger.

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VIII John’s Party William When I woke up after John’s party my mouth was fuzzy and metallic, the way I imagined a chook cage would taste if you ever (for God knows what reason) licked the bottom of it. I lay in bed completely motionless for about fifteen minutes, easing my way back into consciousness. My head was pounding. I coaxed myself into turning it to see if Em was still in the bed. That was way too much effort so I moved my arm as far back behind me as I could and groped about on the mattress. She wasn’t there. I had no idea what time it was. My mobile went off in the other room. I waited to see if Em picked it up but it rang out. I became aware of a gnawing in the bottom of my stomach. Great, I thought, I’m going to be sick. But the gnawing didn’t seem to have anything to do with the nausea happily surfing my gastric juices. It was pervasive, but at low volume, and it really unsettled me. Slowly and gingerly I made my way to the shower and the Berocca in the cabinet. Christ, I felt rotten. I tried to put the evening back together in my mind but there were pieces that refused to fit. 122

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I knew Em and I had gone there by cab, but had zero recollection of how or when we got home. Come to think of it, I only had a patchy recall of the night from about two hours in. I knew we’d taken a couple of bottles of champagne, but I was certain that Lisette had brought some schnapps and I’d knocked a few back at one stage. ‘Em,’ I called, as loudly as my throbbing head would allow. ‘Em, honey, are you there?’ No reply. I walked through the apartment and found a note from her on the kitchen table: ‘Gone out for lunch with Suella and Tash. Home later. Stuff for a fry-up in the fridge if you feel wretched. Love, Em.’ I checked the clock. It was four. I felt stifled and hemmed in and absolutely certain that I was about to throw up. A walk would do me good. I took my keys and phone and headed for the bay, which was about an eight-minute walk from my place. I loved it down there. From the first time I drove along it, past the yachts and restaurants and picnicking families, I knew that was where I wanted to live. I took in huge gulps of the fresh sea air and felt my stomach begin to settle. A breeze was blowing across the water. I inhaled it and my head started to clear. I checked my phone. John had called twice. I rang his number. ‘Hey buddy,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Are you in the doghouse?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Very funny.’ ‘Not being funny. Too green for funny. Why am I doghoused?’ ‘Jesus, you don’t remember?’ ‘I think we’ve established that.’ The gnawing got sharper. John laughed. ‘The little 91⁄2 Weeks routine you and Katya put on for everyone last night. If Emily is still with you I suggest you try some serious arse-kissing. I hear diamonds are a good strategy, but Emily’s probably too smart to fall for that. How about a first edition of something? Like, say, the Bible?’ 123

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I paused for a moment, certain I was about to vomit. ‘Was it really that bad? I’m being serious—I don’t remember anything.’ ‘Honestly? It was pretty out there.’ There was silence for half a minute. ‘William?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘You want to get this sorted. I mean, really sorted. If Emily’s what you want, don’t fuck it up over some ego trip.’ I wanted to explain to John about the red dress. That it wasn’t about ego, or me having too much to drink, or some latent desire for Katya. It was about something a whole lot more . . . could I use the word ‘pure’? I tried to arrange the feelings into a sentence but he’d hung up. The irony of John giving me relationship advice was clear despite my hangover. Small waves rippled gently across the expanse of water. Two children and their parents were picnicking near the shoreline. The toddler kept running after seagulls, tripping over in his excitement. His dad propped him up and off he went again. When I’d seen Emily in the red dress the night before I’d thought the top of my head was about to come off. I had almost resigned myself to the fact that she would never wear it. I’d let myself believe that she’d been distracted by Suella’s phone call the first time she tried it on. I clung to that optimism for ages and kept suggesting she wear it out for dinner, to the Old Hundredth, to the theatre. She always had an excuse or just avoided the issue. Eventually I started to feel panicked; I mean really panicked. Because this wasn’t just about two metres of expensive material that showed off her breasts and made me want to ravish her on the spot. Everything I wanted to give Emily and was capable of giving Emily was sewn into that material. It was well beyond anything I’d ever felt for Katya, or any 124

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other woman I’d been involved with or could imagine being involved with. I wanted Emily to understand how I saw her: the complete package, with her wit and warmth and intellect and uninhibited passion—if only she’d give in to it. The pole dancer with the PhD that somehow loved me back. When I saw her in the dress for John’s party I could have thrashed about for joy. She was unearthly. I’d wanted to ask her to marry me from that moment I’d seen her, bare-arsed, bending over my couch with a cloth in her hand. I’d tried with the ring and the incredibly dumb story about Jade. The dress was perfect. There was a frangipani tree at the bottom of our steps. The smell moved through the apartment in summer. Emily loved it. When we got to the tree I planned to pick a flower, put it behind her ear and ask her to marry me. I didn’t give a rat’s if it sounded corny. My skin was practically humming in anticipation of it. I couldn’t take my gaze off her. She had done something with her eyes. They seemed even darker and wider. Her hair fell onto her shoulders. She was ravishing. The sound of her when she walked—click clack, click clack—was sending me into a trance. ‘Emily, you are so beautiful.’ She smiled shyly, patted her stomach and smoothed the material along her waist. So beautiful, so beautiful. Emily Emily Emily Emily Emily Emily Emily. We gathered up our bottles and keys and phones and I took her free hand as we walked along the decked area to the stairs. I was grinning like a maniac. We’d made it halfway down when she froze and pulled her hand out from mine. ‘William, I’m sorry but I can’t do it, I just can’t go out wearing this.’ ‘You can’t be serious . . . please, Em . . . you look fucking amazing. You look so beautiful I can’t stop staring at you.’ 125

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She wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stuttered out again and moved back up the stairs to change. I felt winded. I could barely speak to her in the cab. I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth. She’d gutted me. I started drinking pretty heavily when we arrived at John’s. I wanted to anaesthetise myself. After that, things started getting hazy. I didn’t recall speaking to Emily for the whole night. But I didn’t remember speaking to anybody much. I had to take John’s word for it about what happened with Katya because I didn’t remember a damn thing. I must have been completely cut. I tried hard to be clear-eyed about my relationship with Katya. I knew that our boundaries were a bit rubbery. Perhaps when you’ve been sexually involved with someone you can’t do the friends thing. John’s view was that with women you’re attracted to, you don’t have boundaries so much as goalposts. I wasn’t that cynical, but the physical habits between Katya and me were so long ingrained that maybe we unconsciously fell into them. I wished I could remember the incident. Were we talking groin-to-groin waltzing here, hands on arses, nuzzling of necks? Any defence or apology was going to sound pretty half-baked with such a fuzzy recollection. There had been times in the past when I’d decided I wasn’t going to see Katya any more. She put me through too much, she was hazardous to my self-respect. It really had been a debasing, shameful love on my part for too much of the relationship. When I looked back I was sickened by how little I’d accepted from her and had been grateful for. My own idiocy revolted me. Sometimes I thought that I kept her in my life because I was waiting for the balance of power to shift. I used to fantasise about a sudden and complete indifference on my part; her panicked realisation, her pleading, my polite but firm refusals. 126

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There was a night at the Old Hundredth, like so many other nights, but this one will do for all. It was just after I’d started working at Stapletons and was getting into the swing of things. The Old Hundredth was really called the Red Jenny but I’d picked up the nickname from Em and Suella. Apparently it’s from a novel. The club was a converted cinema decked out in 1920s style. They served old-fashioned cocktails that came on trays to your table. The bar staff wore dark bowler suits or flapper dresses. The place had very low lighting and round tables with vases of flowers on them to try to capture that cabaret feel. On Friday nights there was a swing band. I took Katya with me to meet John and Lisette and some of the other guys from work. She was wearing a tight black dress and strappy shoes. Her muscled arms and back were on full view. She has the kind of legs that you know exist because you’ve seen shots of them in magazines but when you actually see them striding by on a real human being you have to go back for a second look. Katya did everything slowly: lighting her cigarette, scanning the crowd, crossing and uncrossing her legs. All gestures that were embryonic in high school, but practised by now. When I walked around the room with my arm in hers, people looked at us. When I lit her cigarette, I knew that all of the guys from work were tapping John on the arm to ask who she was. She drank vodka and lime. I had a few wines. I was bold and leaned in and kissed her full on the lips. She responded, opening her hot little mouth and probing around. I knew that the whole club was watching. We went home and fucked for hours. She was all long, pale, strong limbs. Long fingers, tiny waist, long neck. Newly dyed purple hair that smelled like perfume and stuck to her forehead with sweat. The contrast between the colour of her hair and the whiteness of her skin was striking. Her only imperfection was her tiny breasts, erased 127

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by years of constant, punishing exercise. She liked it when I spanked her perfect round bottom, and hooked her hands around the wrought-iron bar when I fucked her from on top. I pictured her as a teenager, on all fours being fucked from behind by her tutor. I saw her turning her head so she could watch him grab her hips and pump her furiously in the few minutes they had before her mother came to pick her up and he hit the shower and took his wife out for dinner. The image had lost none of its potency for me over the years. I savoured it in that private corner of my head that was shared with no one. I made her breakfast the next day. Bacon, eggs, orange juice, the sliced mushrooms in butter that I knew she liked, strong black coffee. I refused to admit to myself that I was playing for ways to keep her in the apartment. She emerged from the shower, dressed in the black dress from the night before. ‘You made breakfast?’ she asked. I gave her a plate. She ignored it and drank two glasses of juice and a coffee before eating a few mouthfuls. I asked if she had plans for the rest of the day. She was vague and non-committal. I invented tickets to shows I thought she’d like, entrées to clubs I knew she wanted to go to. I dropped them casually, steadying my breathing so she wouldn’t hear the pleading in the back of my throat. No matter what I threw out there, I couldn’t make her bite. ‘I don’t have my diary with me, William. You know I can’t make a decision without my diary.’ She flashed me her mega-watt smile, yawning and stretching. ‘I’m incapable of it.’ When she left I felt lost and short of breath. I calculated how long I could reasonably wait until I called her. I emailed her, pacing the messages so they didn’t seem too desperate. After a couple of days of that I was exhausted, sick, depleted. I hated myself and I hated her. I’d experienced variations of that story so many times. But the situation between Katya and me wasn’t that simple. (When is it ever that 128

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simple?) The deeper truth was that Katya and I were the only really scrappy people we knew. John, Tash, Eron and Suella all came from money. Not private jet and a house in the south of France money, but money all the same. The sort of money that sent its kids to private schools, bought them a car when they turned seventeen and financed a gap year in Europe or South America before university. They had grandparents and aunts who were doctors, lawyers, physiotherapists. Even Em, whose mum did it tough financially, still went to a private school and always knew that she was destined for university. There was a kind of secret knowledge that they all accepted as their birthright but which Katya and I had to fight for. If I cut her out of my life I’d be the only person I knew with dual citizenship. Katya was there when I got my ticket into this other world. My parents, Tom, Andrew and Katya all came to my university graduation, but only Katya knew what it meant. This was freedom from the invisible hands. At high school, and I suppose even before, I’d had this eerie sense that hundreds of unseen hands were channelling me along corridors, closing certain doors in my face, turning me in circles so that I became disoriented. The invisible hands that sent Dad and then later Andrew and Tom to work each morning with a polyethylene esky packed by Mum—a life of spare parts, muck, grease, permanent sunburn and crud beneath your nails that never came out. No, thanks. Then came Stapletons. Cocktail parties, opening nights, sundowners, client dinners. Katya and I developed a taste for the sushi bars near the river with their wooden floorboards and tatami mats. We were like two kids let loose in a candy store. We bought bottles of expensive wine, referred to a wine guide as we sipped and agreed that we could definitely taste melon, passionfruit, cigar. We flipped through racks of imported fabrics. She chose ties and cufflinks for 129

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me. I bought her French perfume and once, on a trip to Thailand, a silk wrap with gold thread that she wore to opening nights. We liked clubs with valet parking and members’ rooms where you got waved through the door. We pored over colognes, suits, briefcases, wallets, rings, coffee table books, hair products. I filled up my cupboards with the stuff. My mum was confused and pointed out that I could get this or that for half the price at Target. My brothers shook their heads at the bottles multiplying in the bathroom the three of us shared. I think they decided I was a bit of a fairy. Only Katya got the point that there was nothing blue collar and inevitable about the expensive colognes and shirts and the car. They didn’t reek of Sunday afternoon suburban barbecues and the decaying marriages of people who got hitched at nineteen and had three kids by their early twenties. None of the things I bought implied mortgage-belt houses with asbestos fencing and a holiday every two years on a crowded beach near a mall reeking of deepfried fish. Everything I acquired was a step further away from the parallel life I was being corralled into. Katya and I didn’t have a detached, ironic approach to our newfound good fortune. Not like Tash. Sometimes it really shat me that Tash, with her six-figure lawyer’s salary, nice car and lineage that included a high court judge and a heart surgeon, gave me a hard time about being a capitalist pig. As far as I could tell, the only difference between us was that I made no bones about enjoying what success brought me. I never felt guilty about my apartment or my sports car. I’d worked hard for those things and from a much less promising start than Tash’s. Where was the sense in being embarrassed about them now I had them? Irony was a false position. You got to enjoy all the nice things with the self-satisfaction of poohpoohing them at the same time. 130

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Everyone around Katya and me came from money and knew other people that came from money and they all hung around being monied together. I wasn’t resentful. I was no class warrior. As someone who’d crashed the club I was careful to learn the unwritten rules, the codes, the ‘done thing’. That was where Katya helped me out: she was a distraction from all the subtle little things I didn’t know. While everyone was busy staring at her, I was studying what wines to buy, what time to show up to parties, which restaurants to go to and what to order when I got there. She helped me out in other ways too. Soon after I started work as an engineer, I discovered there were some things about my conventional working class habits that I wasn’t prepared to shed. I didn’t get pumped by business trips to Thailand with the side benefit of paying some thirteen-year-old girl for her cherry. I didn’t particularly want to sleep with women that had been out with my colleagues. I didn’t want to wind up every second Friday at a brothel with the guys from work. Katya shielded me from this kind of thing—my girlfriend as far as everyone else was concerned. She was so damn hot that it made sense I wouldn’t need extracurricular activities. And for all that Katya’s love life was an endless parade of new faces, she never went fishing in my work pond, which would really have ballsed things up for me if it got complicated. No, when it got complicated. But it was a two-way street. I was good for Katya too. She was hopeless with money, couldn’t budget her way out of a paper bag. I helped her out financially, did her taxes, arranged her managed fund, sorted out anything administrative in her life. All of Katya’s interfaces with officialdom were mediated through me: jury duty, her will, voting registration, official forms of any kind. Whenever she moved house it was me that packed her up, sorted out the lease, tided her over with loans. I even extricated her from a couple of 131

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relationships that got messy, fending off jealous girlfriends and belligerent ex-boyfriends. I very nearly came to blows with a dancers’ agent who wouldn’t leave her alone, bombarding her with messages and showing up at her house at odd hours. And I was a useful handbag for her. I’m not bad looking, I’m tall and I fill out a suit. I was a good standby for her at opening nights and meet-andgreets when she decided she was through with the snot-nosed principal dancer or the theatre director who’d been ‘reading scripts’ for the past three years. I know this all sounds cynical and transactional, and there was a good dose of both in our relationship. But there were other things that got clouded over because of the various hurts and disappointments. Before I met Emily, there was a moment when I thought, okay, this is good, this is how it can be. It was the opening night of a new experimental dance piece. Rocher had this idea of recreating a mythical agrarian past through dance complete with maypoles and a miniature papier-mâché Stonehenge. Katya was quite scathing of the whole idea. Privately, she called it ‘hobbits on ice’. They’d kitted her out in this diaphanous, gauzy material. When she stood still she looked almost like a mummy, trailing yards of white material. But when the piece began and they trained the wind machine on her, all the material flew about and gave the impression that she was flying. The press went nuts for it. Katya practically floated off the stage. We drank champagne and ate nibbly food from the circulating silver trays. Everyone wanted to get close to her. Coincidentally it was Eron that took the photos for the arts review. Afterwards, we swiped a bottle from behind the bar and tripped up the stairwell to the roof. We sat there, swigging out of the bottle, watching the whole city go about its business below us. We talked for ages about our plans, all the things we were going to 132

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do. There was no pressure and, I was pretty sure, no expectation. It made me think that Katya and I could be real friends. It was only since falling in love with Emily that I’d been able to more or less approximate the vision I’d had of Katya and me up there on that rooftop. Emily and Katya actually liked each other. When Katya sent out gratis invitations for performances she addressed them to ‘Dear William and Emily’. My other girlfriends got the ‘William and friend’ treatment. And Emily was never for one second threatened by Katya. I’d got so close to making it the way I wanted it to be, and now I’d torpedoed it with the party debacle. As Suella would’ve said, ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ I picked myself up from the grass and took a deep gulp of the sea air. I still didn’t feel well. I was in no physical shape for a fight. But there was music to be faced. Loud, chaotic, discordant music. It occurred to me that I’d never seen Emily angry before. I’d seen her irritated and frustrated, but never furious. Never seething. I tried to imagine it. It was terrifying. Quiet people like Em were always the scariest in anger. It was the metal in them. The firm, unyielding inner core that everything broke against. Would she scream at me? Throw things? Spit verbal bullets at me? I stopped and slumped onto a bench. I didn’t want to go home. I couldn’t face it. What if she left me? What if me cutting Katya off wasn’t enough? I tried to imagine life without Em but had to pull my mind back from the thought. It was too awful. Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, I would do. No matter that I was so fucking hungover I didn’t know my own name. Katya and I were through. No more. Not even friends. Determined this time, I stood up, took another breath of the reviving air and headed purposefully for home.

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IX Provenance Emily The train had barely hit full speed and Suella was already bored. She compulsively flipped the pages of her conference guide back and forth. ‘So why is this thing at the arse end of nowhere?’ I reached across and took the conference guide from her hands, found the appropriate page and read from it in the strongest Australian twang that I could muster: ‘. . . both a celebration and interrogation of the Australian landscape as motif, inspiration, obstruction and signifier. The rural setting will allow both writer and those involved in the industry to—’ ‘Poor choice of words—rural and industry. They clash. Who writes this stuff ?’ ‘The opposition. Anyway, apparently the richness and depth of our understanding of the primal, inspiring and often fearsome place of landscape in the writerly imagination will be enhanced by the setting.’ Suella sighed, settling back into her chair and drumming her hands on the seat. ‘I wish we were going somewhere nice.’ 134

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‘It might turn out to be alright.’ ‘Please. You and I both know that “rural” is a euphemism for instant coffee and chilly rooms. There’s probably not even a bar fridge.’ ‘I heard a rumour that Tim Winton’s going.’ ‘Bullshit. You did not.’ ‘Well,’ I said theatrically, ‘if he is there and you’ve determined it’s bullshit you can’t talk to him. Those are the karmic rules. No kissy, kissy, poachy, poachy.’ As a child, Suella would have been constitutionally incapable of refusing a dare. ‘Where did you hear it from?’ ‘A source.’ She feigned indifference, still thrumming her fingers on the seat. ‘Reliable source?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Hmmm.’ She stared out the window. ‘I guess it might turn out okay. But won’t we have to eat beef the whole time?’ ‘Sorry, darling, why beef ?’ ‘Well,’ she waved her hand, ‘you know—rural and all. Buy Australian. Beef, lamb. Whatever.’ ‘You like beef.’ ‘Not really.’ ‘You ordered it at Vaughans last week.’ ‘Yes, but that was dinner. With a red wine jus and artichoke risotto. I bet they don’t know what “jus” is out there.’ ‘So much the better. It’s a ridiculous word.’ ‘It is a bit, isn’t it? “Jus.” I wonder what happened to sauce or gravy.’ ‘Passé apparently.’ 135

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‘Strange, isn’t it, what happens to words? One day you can use them wholly unself-consciously and then suddenly you don’t sign letters “yours and c”, you don’t “make violent love” (unless of course you are, in which case you shouldn’t be) and you sure as hell don’t order beef with sauce.’ ‘Perhaps this place will prove old-fashioned in a culinary sense,’ I said. ‘No jus. No vinaigrette. No delicate fricassee of game. But who knows? They might serve an excellent beef stew or pie. I bet they describe it as “hearty” on the menu.’ Suella pouted. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’ ‘You are not.’ ‘I am too.’ ‘Since when?’ ‘Since Friday.’ I addressed the cattle that were beginning to replace townhouses as we flew past. ‘Don’t get too comfortable.’ Suella grabbed the conference guide from my hands and whacked me on the thigh with it. ‘Shall we phone Tash?’ she said. ‘She’s in court this morning.’ ‘Oh.’ Suella absently kicked the seat opposite her. My seat. I didn’t know a more awful object than Suella, on particular occasions, and in particular places, when she had nothing to do. ‘Do you have your talking points all prepared?’ I asked. Suella was leading a panel discussion on the Landscape and the Novel. We’d written some of it during the Summit last week. ‘Uh-huh. What are you wearing to the conference dinner?’ I surreptitiously drew my satchel closer, resting my fingers on the hard outline of what I knew to be my notebook. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘But what have you brought? Your black suit?’ 136

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‘Yes.’ ‘I brought something new. It’s blue. I mean really, really blue. L-O-U-D loud. No one is going to miss me at this conference, baby.’ ‘No one misses you anywhere, honey.’ She gave me a brief bright smile before the interminable journey impeded on her consciousness again. ‘How long till we get there?’ ‘Four hours.’ She groaned extravagantly. ‘What are we supposed to do in the meantime?’ She slumped in her seat, sulky head on her chest like a petulant child. ‘You should practise your speech notes. And the deadline on that volume of critical essays is creeping up. Would you like the proofs? I brought them.’ She poked her tongue out at me and pantomimed banging her feet on the floor in a tantrum. ‘I want something fun.’ ‘Well, why don’t you go to the catering car and see if there’s anyone worth talking to?’ ‘Come with?’ ‘No. Some of us have work to do.’ ‘I’m your boss. I’m ordering you to the catering car.’ ‘I’m with the union. Sod off.’ She kicked my seat again in mock petulance and wandered off in quest of amusement. The train was at full pelt now. We zipped past towns large and small and increasing expanses of open country. I took my notebook from my bag and rested it on my knees, my palms splayed across the cracked, Waterhouse-green leather cover. I had packed the red dress and was seriously considering wearing it to the conference dinner. Perhaps there, away from William, I might be able to pass the evening with it about me. It had been quietly mocking me from its plastic wrapping in the wardrobe ever since 137

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John’s party. It no longer troubled itself to make the exhalations that had so terrified me before. Confident of a complete rout, it mostly maintained a serene, deafening silence. It had conquered the entire apartment. Our entire lives. From malicious sprite it had been elevated to supreme deity. William still hadn’t uttered one word about John’s party. Nor had he mentioned the dress. His attempts to cajole me into wearing it had ceased. Part of me almost wished he would revive the habit. As we were preparing to leave for a restaurant or the theatre I would say, ‘What do you think I should wear?’ He’d shrug and pat me playfully on the bottom: ‘Nothing.’ ‘No, Will, I’m serious, I don’t know what to wear.’ I cringed internally at these ridiculous, coquettish ploys and wanted to slap myself. The dress tittered from its confines. Will was puzzled, as he had a right to be. I’d never been that sort of woman before. Sometimes he made a genuine effort to be helpful, suggesting one suit or another. Sometimes he looked bewildered and said, ‘Sorry, baby, you’re on your own with this one.’ Never did he suggest the red dress. The idea of me in it, whatever it was, had died for him. I would never be the scarlet siren. With the notebook cradled against me and the train racing through fields, I allowed myself to see, with perfect clarity, Katya and Will dancing together. The tight, clinging velvet of Katya’s dress, her sinewy form and the way her muscles rippled like little waves when she moved. Will’s perfect absorption. Whatever it was Will wanted had been sated in that moment. He had no more need of the dress. What should I do with it? I asked Jane but she had little to say on the subject. Like me, her romantic range was limited. A curling of the lips into what I knew she intended to be a sympathetic smile was the best she could offer me. Lydia, with whom I might have had more luck, took on the gossamer-like fuzziness, the slight 138

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pixelation, that afflicted the visions when we approached the topic of desire. I veered away from the subject because I needed them whole and indissolubly three-dimensional. Ironically, the only person to ask me about the red dress was Katya. Will and I didn’t hear from her for about a week after John’s party and when she did call it was to talk to me. She suggested that we go to a dance recital by a French company: ‘Just the two of us. You know, a girls thing.’ It was the first time Katya had ever proposed a ‘girls thing’ to me. It may well have been the first time she’d proposed it to anyone. I sensed that the apparent spontaneity of her invitation was forced; that she had practised her performance and her breathlessness was less from excitement at the proposition than nervousness at being spurned. I accepted and we went to the performance together a couple of weeks later. She brought it up during the car ride. ‘What did you think of the dress Will bought you?’ I tugged my satchel closer to me. The comforting outline of my notebook pressed against the worn leather. ‘I think it’s extraordinary.’ ‘It is, isn’t it? Did you notice how reflective the fabric is? Be great in a power outage. I was raving about it to Mlle Rocher—it’d be perfect for a piece we’re working on at the moment involving mirror-image movements. I’m dropping not so subtle hints to the costume department that they should contact the designer.’ She laughed her spectacular, throaty laugh. ‘I’m also dropping hints to Eron, but, my God, that man can be dense sometimes.’ ‘Isn’t he taking the bait?’ ‘Not remotely. Have you worn it yet?’ ‘I’m waiting for the right moment.’ ‘You should have worn it tonight.’ 139

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‘It’s a bit over the top for a dance recital, don’t you think?’ She arched a perfect eyebrow. ‘Please. This is a French company. Your dress would be perfect.’ ‘Perhaps next time.’ Katya barely left my side the entire evening. No flirtation or witty banter, even from foreign choreographers, could divert her attention from me. She chaperoned me faithfully and her introductions were generous. ‘Mlle Rocher, I’m sure that you remember my good friend Emily Trahere, senior editor at Weatherborne Press?’ Rocher leaned in to kiss me on both cheeks with her icy lips, convinced by Katya’s claim of intimacy. As always when I saw Mlle Rocher, she conjured up Miss Haversham for me. She was bent and sour with a penchant for girlish white lace that made her look even older than she was. Katya made a point of including me in all the circling conversations, lowering her voice to regale me with gossipy titbits about this dancer and that company director. Our appearance of intimacy was heady. Again I felt what it was to be in beauty’s inner circle. My proximity to her made me ever more interesting to the party. I never wanted for a cocktail or morsel of asparagus and smoked salmon. Raffish, slender men stood at my elbow and arched their eyebrows in mock interest at what I said, waiting till they could engage Katya’s attention. But her mission was clear and she never let me stray for more than a few moments. I overheard her warm commendations of me to others, sure that mine was the ear they were intended for: ‘Of course, you’d know of Emily’s work. Weatherborne won the Camden the year before last for that memoir by the Vietnam veteran. I’m sure you remember. Emily was instrumental in its publication. The author said she was his muse.’ He’d said no such thing, but in spite of myself I was drawn in, flattered. 140

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We drove home in what felt like high spirits but may have been spiralling hysteria. She hugged me warmly when we arrived at the apartment. ‘Would you like to come in for a coffee or port?’ I asked. She appeared hesitant. ‘No, I won’t, thanks, Em. Eron will be wondering where I am. Thank you so much for tonight. I had such a nice time. We have to do it again soon. We don’t spend enough time together, just you and me.’ I smiled and left the car, entered the house to find Will circling the door nervously. I glanced my fingers over the notebook in my bag. I wondered now if Katya’s invitation to the dance recital and her studied attentiveness was the graciousness of the victor. The Cambridge Eleven, resplendent in their striped jackets and bowler hats, buying drinks for defeated Oxford after the game. Undoubtedly that was what Tash would make of it. Suella might have an alternative interpretation. If I could surmount my fear and wear the dress to the conference dinner Suella would certainly ask me about it. I heard her disembodied voice in the cabin. ‘Emily! What the . . . ? Where did you get THAT DRESS? Oh my God! Would you get a load of that. Hello, cleavage. Meet the conference guests. Conference guests—cleavage. WHAT? Will bought THAT for you? Crikey Moses. He’s got two brothers, right? The ones from your dinner party. Which is the one with the thing for Tash? The other—what’s his name? Do you think he’d fancy me? Hello, boys. Would you get a load of you!’ With her initial volubility expended, Suella would talk seriously and sensitively with me about the dress. She was far more experienced and worldly than I. But how could I communicate the depth of the dress’s menace without alluding to my other world, the lush and layered place that offered me sanctuary? 141

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I selected a pen from the dozen in my satchel and opened the notebook. It was the third such devoted to Jane and was already three-quarters covered with my tight scrawl. I was increasingly in thrall to Jane. Her thoughts moved across mine in idle moments. I found myself wondering if she would like the manuscripts that passed across my desk, or the recipe for wild rice salad that Tash emailed me, or the bottle of viognier that made Will so curious. I burrowed into her story, bunkering down into the warm centre of it. When the shadows cast by the dress lengthened I summoned more biographical information. I knew I wouldn’t have a use for half of what I conjured. Perhaps even Turgenev would think I’d been a touch excessive. I filled notebooks with Jane’s journal entries and notes that she wrote in class from the ages of eight through eleven. I wrote biographies on the children the notes were written to, and knew whether they wrote back tightly folded missives under the cover of a textbook or, in the playground, shared and laughed at Jane’s attempts at intimacy. I wrote Jane’s travel diaries. Love letters, hopeless paeans to passion poured into scented notepaper and never sent. Even prosaic things like shopping lists and reminder notes were committed to the notebook. The task of committing my visions to paper was soothing. I was methodically shoring up structural cracks in Jane’s personality, giving her texture and depth. The notebook was my constant companion. When Will wasn’t looking I slipped it under my pillow at night, letting its contents seep into my subconscious and war with the red dress. Battle scenes punctuated my dreams—the red army against Jane. I was deeply superstitious that every sentence I wrote, every biographical shred I excavated, fortified Jane against the threat. The three months after John’s party, leading up to the conference, 142

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passed in a crescending fever. I wrote frenetically, manically, omitting no detail. On the bus, slyly during meetings, in the margins of other people’s manuscripts when I was supposed to be reading them. Even when ostensibly giving my attention to Will I hid my hands under the table and typed invisible words on its smooth jarrah underside. Now, on the train, for as long as Suella left me in peace, I would interrogate Jane’s workplace. Her colleagues, the contents of her desk, the tall man who sat four desks over to whom she was hopelessly attracted, the Italian café where she ordered pasta marinara almost every day—I would pore over them all. I was deep into these details when the train slowed and pulled into a station. There was a flurry as some people boarded and others alighted. We were still three-quarters of an hour from our destination. Suella hadn’t returned; there must have been something amusing in the catering car after all. I stared out of the window as the train pulled smoothly away. The landscape seemed oddly familiar, like something from a dream I hadn’t recalled until then. Sense memory assailed me: the scent of marzipan and cloves. I had conjured this place at some time. I put my notebook down on the seat beside me and moved closer to the window. Squares of green and brown country sheltering intermittent towns streamed past. I was no stranger to the feeling of déjà vu. My lived experiences sometimes had an undertow from my visions and I’d learnt to resist the false sense of intimacy weaving through such encounters. I had met perhaps half a dozen people who bore uncanny resemblance to Sylvia or Lydia. Katya was so like Viola I’d almost exclaimed when we first met. I’d seen buildings and bridges that were new to me but intensely familiar. Places from dreamscapes and visions. If a thing of beauty was beautiful forever, perhaps the idea of it pre-existed and my visions and their castles, country houses, fields and towns 143

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coalesced from perfect, inevitable molecules of beauty. But the country passing now had a provenance that I couldn’t place. An answering sympathy. Perhaps it was a form that I was yet to come to and I had pre-empted myself. When Suella returned I would ask her the names of those quaint little towns. Better still, I would ask the conductor. I put the notebook on the seat beside me, secured my pen in my satchel and turned to leave the carriage. As I did so, Lydia swept in, slammed the door shut and threw herself onto Suella’s seat with a heavy sigh. ‘Lydia,’ I said. ‘Forgive me but I need to step out for a moment.’ Her hand darted out for my wrist and pulled me towards her. ‘Stay with me, please.’ Lydia’s voice was low and urgent. ‘Do not go out.’ I wrestled with myself. The pull of the countryside streaming past was strong and persistent. That strange feeling of familiarity. It made me feel oddly homesick; a sensation I couldn’t remember ever having experienced. Lydia tightened her grip on my arm. The grief in her face decided me. I bent down to kiss her flushed cheek. ‘I’ll stay.’ ‘Thank you.’ I sat opposite Lydia, cradling her shaking hand. ‘He knows,’ she said softly, tears pouring down her cheek. ‘Who knows?’ ‘Darcy.’ ‘Oh no.’ Lydia was a guest at Pemberly as Wickham had gone to ‘enjoy himself ’ in Bath (a euphemism that made Lydia laugh scornfully). Recently, she had taken to slipping down the dark servants’ passage of that great house for urgent, fleeting encounters with the under butler; simultaneously thrilled and aghast at her daring. When 144

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he poured her wine in the evening they smuggled secret, heated glances under the radar of her sister and her cold, distant husband. The intrigue had worried me for some time. ‘What will you do?’ I asked softly. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ She planted her face in her hands and cried like a child. ‘They can’t marry me off this time,’ she said bitterly. ‘If they send me from the house I’ll be ruined. They’ll never let me back in.’ ‘The Darcys won’t risk a scandal, Lydia. They’ll keep it quiet.’ ‘He hates me,’ she sobbed. I stroked her hand and tried to soothe her. She cried for a long time, occasionally repeating her fear of exile. It was a raw, primal grief. I’d never seen Lydia stripped of her brashness. It was her armour against the disapproval Darcy threw her way. He considered that her behaviour might be infectious, a miasma of ungodliness snaking through the house. He thought himself mightily charitable and highly regarded the great concession he made for Lizzy. Their preening self-congratulation made the gorge rise in Lydia’s throat. She coated herself in a thick layer of intractability each day to ward off the vapour of disgust Mr Darcy discharged when she was near. She sat in their richly furnished drawing room, the contents of which could support an annuity for her, and surreptitiously pulled threads from the furniture. Once, she took her scissors to the butler’s bell in the dining room so that no amount of pulling on the silken cord would bring the servant to do her sister’s bidding. Seeing her so vulnerable frightened me. Lydia was still inconsolable when Suella threw back the door to the carriage. ‘Hey ho, did you miss me?’ Lydia nimbly sprang back and tucked herself into the corner of Suella’s bunk, wiping her streaming face with a handkerchief. 145

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‘Desperately,’ I said. ‘Where were you?’ ‘I bumped into the other panel members. We had a couple of drinks. More than a couple actually. Feel a bit tipsy.’ She pointed at the notebook that I’d carelessly left open. ‘What are you working on?’ ‘Just some notes on the essays. A few ideas for how we might tighten them up.’ Lying discomfited me and I was generally careful to avoid it. But alchemy necessitated a degree of dissimulation. ‘Suella, do you know this country at all?’ She stood up, a little unsteady on her feet, and walked to the window. ‘Nope. Never been this far inland before. Not even with Walter. Christ. I think I’d better sit down again.’ ‘Do you know the name of any of these towns?’ ‘No. Shit. You don’t think I’m going to need to know that for the panel, do you?’ ‘Doubtful. I was just wondering.’ Lydia stood up and leaned against the window, bracing herself on the handrail as the train slowed down. Suella tugged at her luggage under the seat. ‘God, that took forever. I thought we’d never get here. You ready to rock and roll?’ I glanced out of the window, the dreamscape still calling me. Lydia gestured at me to pack up my notes and conference papers. ‘Yes, absolutely.’ Suella and I stuffed our books and magazines into our bags and gathered our cases. The train took an age to come to a complete stop. Lydia grew more impatient. She tapped her dainty shoe on the carriage floor, her head turned towards the window. She was scowling, as if there were something offensive in her field of view. Finally we were ready to disembark. ‘Do you have everything, Suella?’ 146

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Suella bent down to check beneath her seat, pausing to groan slightly. ‘Oh. I feel a bit sick.’ ‘Did you check the overhead locker?’ ‘Yes. God, it would be just like me to leave something behind.’ As we stepped out of the carriage and into the corridor I glanced behind me to take leave of Lydia. She was gone.

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X Fucking It Up Royally William When I came back from my walk along the river the day after John’s party, I waited impatiently for Emily to come home. I spent hours wading through my hangover trying to put together what had happened—the dress, the spat, the drinking, the party, the dancing. My decision to cut my ties with Katya made me sad. I sat in the apartment, green with my heaving stomach, and pretty nearly cried over the fact that I was going to end my oldest and most important friendship. Christ knew it wasn’t perfect, and much more complicated than a lot of friendships, but it had been damn important. It had been formative. (I thought that was the word.) With every hour that Emily didn’t come back I felt more nauseated. I wanted to call her mobile, but argued with myself that she needed space, needed to talk things through with Suella and Tash. I pinned my hopes on Suella and Tash being tolerant and understanding. We’re friends too, I reasoned. They like me. They’re not going to write me off because of one instance of bad behaviour. 148

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The hours ticked by and still she didn’t come home. By seven I was dizzy with anticipation and fear. I started to panic that she’d left me, had stuffed some clothes and her notebook into a bag and taken off to stay with her friends. It would be like Emily to do that and not leave a note. She’d probably think it was melodramatic to announce her departure. Far better to leave dumbass to figure out what’s going on all by himself. I poked through her wardrobe but couldn’t find anything missing. The red dress was there. I took it out and sat on the bed looking at it; feasting on the image of the brief time Emily had worn it. That was what I was doing when I heard the key in the lock. Relief flooded through me like a warm injection. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t sure whether to throw myself on the floor in front of her and beg, or sit quietly and wait for her to come to me. Wait for her anger. I quietly returned the dress to the wardrobe. She called for me from the lounge room and still I couldn’t move. She poked her head around the bedroom door. ‘Hey, baby. There you are. How are you feeling? Queasy? I thought it best to leave you alone while you dealt with the contents of your stomach. You know how feeble I am about the smell of vomit.’ She walked over to me, ruffled my hair and stood on tiptoes to kiss my cheek. ‘Gracious, you do look terrible. Do you want to sit down?’ I half walked and was half dragged to the living room couch. I tried to understand what was happening; I couldn’t detect the smallest trace of anger or sulkiness in her. It took me a few minutes to get myself into a state where I could talk. ‘Are you okay, Em? I mean, you’re not mad?’ 149

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‘Well, given a choice I’d prefer that you refrained from projectile vomiting on our freshly laundered bedspread. But given that you don’t make a habit of it—all the more commendable given the company you keep—I’m prepared to look the other way.’ I scanned her face, her body language, her voice, but there was nothing. There was just nothing. ‘Have you stopped vomiting? Do you think you can eat anything?’ she went on. ‘Um . . . maybe. Maybe I could eat. I feel a bit green still. But I haven’t been sick in a while.’ She ran her cool hand over my forehead. ‘You feel okay. Better than when I left you. I fed you some Panadol at about ten this morning but I’ll wager you have no recollection of that.’ I nodded. She smiled indulgently at me and gave me a tight hug. ‘I’m going to make you some peppermint tea and then a vegetable stirfry, heavy on the grated ginger. It’ll do wonders for your stomach.’ I nodded dumbly. And I waited. I waited all that evening and all the next day and the day after that. But there was nothing. Not the vaguest, scantest hint of aggro. I watched her throwing ingredients about in the kitchen. Sometimes I thought her chopping and grinding a bit aggressive, but then I thought, no, it’s just me reading more into it than is there. I asked her way too often if everything was okay, and she gave me a big smile and said everything was perfect. I started eavesdropping on her conversations with Suella and Tash, trying to find out how she really felt. I became a snoop. I picked her notebook out of her satchel and skimmed it when I heard the shower going. She’d covered just about every page in really small handwriting that was difficult to read. The writing curled in the 150

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margins, down the sides. I couldn’t connect the sentences together. At first I thought it was a diary and she was spewing out all this stuff about being ugly and unattractive. I was going to bring it up with her, take the heat for reading her writing when she’d specifically asked me not to, because I thought at least I could put her fear to rest. But when I read a bit more I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t think she was talking about herself, but I didn’t have the first clue who Jane was, which added to the weird feeling of disorientation. I felt like she’d locked me out of an important place. Her writing was a no-go zone. Like her dad. I put the notebook back in the satchel. The longer I waited for a sign from her the more agitated I got. If I’d sprung her in a clinch with John or Eron or anyone for that matter, I’d be completely fucking ropable. I mean, screamingly, off the wall, out of my head psychotic. Ready to shred him limb from limb. And maybe her too. I’d scream and probably cry and throw furniture and threaten to pack my bags. What’s more, I’d be pretty much justified. That was how people acted when they were in love and jealous. That was how it was done. No one could be that damn calm and indifferent, not even someone who spent half her life in a book and was always polite and sweet to everyone and thought that unfailing courtesy was the closest thing you’d get to meeting Jane Austen in this lifetime. I didn’t buy it and I didn’t like it and I was starting to get really, really fucked off. Then a thought hit me like a bucket of ice on a cold day: maybe she didn’t care. If Emily was indifferent, then I was in real trouble. Because I was in there, boots and all. If she wasn’t, I needed to get out. This could be ten times worse than anything Katya had ever dished out to me. 151

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I tried to pinpoint a time when Emily and I had had a really big fight. We’d had little spats here and there, mostly about schedule clashes and whose commitment was going to win out. But as to bloody great raging rows that shook the relationship down to its foundations—nothing. I’d always thought it a sign of how good we were together, but maybe I had that wrong. Maybe Emily just didn’t confront things. Looking at Maya, you could understand how Emily had learnt to go through life doing a patch-up job on everything. But that wasn’t going to work here. This was really important and had to be dealt with. Emily had gone through a Forster stage a couple of years into our relationship. She’d raved about how he’d managed to distil a complex philosophy in only two words: ‘Only connect.’ I remembered agreeing with her that it was pretty impressive. But here was the thing: Emily was impressed with what he did with language. I was the one who actually seemed to get Forster. I mean, really get the ‘connect’ thing. I was searching for the way in. I’d been trying for ages to move into more intimacy with Emily. I’d thought the dress would be the fuse between us. The ‘only connect’ moment. The absolutely worst thing about all this was that I couldn’t bring it up myself. I couldn’t talk to Em about what had happened with Katya because I didn’t remember it. I mean, what the fuck was I supposed to say? ‘Excuse me, dear, but I think I may have done something to upset you. I’m a drunken lout so I don’t recall it exactly so help me out and take this quiz. Did I: (a) stick my tongue down someone’s throat? (b) put my hand up somebody’s skirt? (c) pin someone against the wall and jam her hand down my pants? or (d) all of the above? Be a dear and tell me which it is. Oh, (d) was it? Very good. Frightfully sorry, dear, must have been feeling tired and emotional. But let’s forget all about it and get married.’ 152

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I was completely reliant on her bringing it up. I wanted her to throw the accusations at me so I could offer up my severed friendship in penance. I had a vaccine but I couldn’t use it till the patient admitted she was sick. I tried to talk to Katya about it a couple of days after she and Em had their girly date. That put the wind up me, I can tell you. I thought for sure it would end in fireworks. I was fucking terrified when they drove off together to see some frog experimental dance piece from which I was pointedly excluded. But I also wanted the whole thing thrashed out so I just sat at home, gagging with fear, and waited. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Niente. The two of them returned apparently quite chummy. When I raised it with Katya over lunch she laughed at me and called me a ‘silly boy’ in her sexy-nanny voice. ‘God, Will, talk about a storm in a teacup. We’re practically brother and sister—I think we’re allowed a bit of cheeky leeway.’ I was dubious. She laughed again, an undercurrent of sympathy and indulgence in her voice. ‘Sweetheart, you can’t be serious. God, if you’d been dancing with Lisette or even Suella I can understand you feeling a bit uncomfortable, but this is me for heaven’s sake. You’re not suggesting that Emily’s upset about it?’ She arched one eyebrow in disbelief. ‘Did she say something? What? When?’ ‘No, Emily hasn’t said anything. Not a single word. In fact, she seems to think that everything’s fine, which is why I want you to tell me what happened.’ ‘God, were you that drunk that you don’t remember? Great!’ She waved her hand airily and gave a world-weary sigh. ‘I do my raunchy dance routine with my best friend and he doesn’t even remember.’ 153

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I couldn’t help but smile. ‘I was drunk. But, Kat, I have a really strong sense that my behaviour was . . . well, pretty out of line. So whether you want to hear it or not, I’m apologising to you, and I’m apologising to Em and I just . . . Fuck, I just feel bad is all, and I want someone to at least give me the courtesy of accepting an apology.’ I sounded sulky and petulant, even to myself. She laughed again. A big, throaty laugh with her head back, as if I was the most amusing thing she could imagine. ‘Will, honestly. I think this might be one of those alcohol guilt scenarios. Remember the day after the Terra opening and I couldn’t remember a thing about the party and was absolutely certain that I’d offended Mlle Rocher and was so frightened I didn’t go to rehearsal for three days? Turned out no one even knew I was drunk. And besides, I’ve seen Em—we went to that recital together, remember, and she was totally, one hundred per cent fine. I really don’t think she thinks it’s an issue, so why do you want to make it one?’ I wanted to throw myself into the warm picture of cosy intimacy that Katya sketched for me. It was pretty seductive: her and me in our quasi-incestuous friendship with all the allowances that were made for history and longevity. The vision of the two of us swigging from the same bottle on a rooftop, sharing our fears and ambitions, rose up before me. Em’s indifference seemed to me then not bizarre and unsettling but the quiet confidence of a woman who knew her worth and wasn’t about to be rattled by a bit of flirtation. I felt myself giving in to that certainty. I wanted to believe it. But there was something in my stomach that wouldn’t let up, like a lozenge that never dissolved. I felt as if the two of them were strangling me, manoeuvring me into a corner that I was trying to fight my way out of. And that was when I began having the dream. 154

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* It started with this surround sound feel: a pulsing heartbeat that was strong and regular. It pounded away in the darkness and, although I was aware of the noise, it didn’t interrupt my sleep. Then slowly, really slowly, the heartbeat became irregular and persistently louder. Nothing too serious at first. Nothing that made me panic. But then the irregularity and the noise started to jar. There was a sort of spluttering sound between each dozen or so beats. The noise you hear when you turn on a rusty backyard tap and the pipe thuds and shudders before it spews out murky water. Through my sleep I was aware that the spluttering sound was worrying so I scanned down my body. I focused my mind down my face and throat, took two brief detours along my shoulders and arms, before tracking back up to my chest cavity in search of the erratic beating noise. When it became a deafening thumping I turned on my internal light switch and my heart levitated in the sudden glare. The diagnosis was obvious. While the heart itself was plump and thick with muscles, the arteries around it were gnarled and twisted like ancient tree roots, crusted with glistening pustules. The heart bulged between the arteries as it pulsed, making a wet, wheezing sound. It reminded me of the time Melchior was accidentally upended from his bowl during one of Emily’s cleaning frenzies and lay gasping on our rug. My heart, increasingly starved, turned purple and then blue. The wheezing became wetter, more rasping. The coils of arteries and veins multiplied, taking the blood in everdecreasing circles away from the heart. Its pulsing became weaker and the veins moved like worms over it, until they strangled it. The first time I had the dream I woke to find Emily propped up next to me, her glasses on and the night light clipped to that damn notebook. It was 3.20 am. 155

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‘Hey, baby,’ she said, bending down to kiss me on the forehead. ‘My God,’ she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, ‘you’re drenched.’ ‘Bad dream.’ She reached for a tissue and mopped at my forehead. ‘What were you dreaming about?’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘Well, try to relax, honey. Close your eyes. Go back to sleep.’ She ran her fingernails lightly over my forehead, cheeks and eyelids until I felt myself relaxing and moving back into sleep. But I remembered the dream. And I understood it. Even a dumbass like me could put two and two together when necessary. The really spectacularly weird thing was, I was less and less confident that Emily could. And my reducing confidence scared the absolute bejesus out of me. I had the dream almost every night for three months. Every day I thought, that’s it, Emily and I are talking tonight. We’re having this out. It never happened. I’d get scared and chicken out, or she’d do that loss of focus thing and I felt like I couldn’t reach her and it was all pointless. When she was getting ready to go to a writers’ festival with Suella in woop woop I was damn near ready to throw myself to the ground and beg her to stay. We needed to talk. I couldn’t live like that any more. She was busy and flustered as she threw clothes and books into her suitcase, pausing now and then to smack me playfully on the arse as she thought about what else she needed to take. I felt empty, sad and desperate. She called me from the hotel when she got there and sounded chirpy enough, if a bit distracted. She and Suella were going to eat dinner together in the restaurant and have an early night. 156

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Deeply depressed, I spent that evening drinking scotch in the dark. I couldn’t help but compare it to how I used to feel when Emily went away. Within half an hour I’d be stripped down to my jocks and drinking Grolsch straight from the bottle, euphoric with freedom. There were certain rituals I’d practise when she wasn’t there. I’d leave the toilet seat up, buy FHM and Playboy, pull out the trashy novels I was too embarrassed to read around her. I’d luxuriate all Saturday morning on the lounge, spreading the bits of the paper around me, shaking out the crumbs from my toast as I turned the page. Once or twice I’d even rearranged Em’s alphabetical tin arrangement in the kitchen cupboards, knowing full well that I’d put them all back in order before she returned. Sometimes I stayed out past dawn, kicking on with John at the Old Hundredth. I never hid that I was in a relationship, but didn’t necessarily advertise it either. I toyed with the idea that I could still score if I wanted to (not that I did). It was sheer ego but it was reassuring to know that women still looked at me like I was a prospect. Like I hadn’t gone to seed. When the club closed at around six John and I would head to Sarsies for a breakfast of strong back coffee, sausages and eggs. There was something decadent about heading home in the clothes you’d put on the night before, travelling through blue streets that were just waking up. Besides which, with Emily gone I never felt there was much to go home for. I’d drop my clothes on the floor and feed the fish before heading into the warm shower and the infinite bliss of daytime sleep, knowing there was no one there to make me feel guilty with their energy and time management. By the fourth day I’d be over having the place to myself. I’d put the utensils back in the right drawer and replace the toilet roll in the hanger, as if these rituals would summon her home. I’d check 157

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the messages in case she’d changed her plans and was coming home early. At work I’d find myself getting excited and start checking my watch every half-hour. I always picked her up from the station and bought her flowers as a welcome home gift. When she stepped off the train I’d be grinning from ear to ear. I didn’t care who saw my Cary Grant impression as I swept her up and whirled her around. I missed her like oxygen, that little elfin creature who, in her unobtrusive way, had turned my life completely on its head. I’d carry her suitcase out of the station as she sniffed the flowers and hooked her arm around mine. This time it was different. I felt lethargic and dull. I couldn’t be bothered even to stand up and flick the light switch on. I waited for the scotch to start deadening that terrible mix of anger and guilt and reducing confidence that I didn’t know how to fix. I pictured Tash in a judge’s wig and gown looking sternly at me. ‘Your Honour, I submit my sincere apology for all things stated and done on the night of John’s party from about the hour of nine.’ ‘And what things are you specifically apologetic for, defendant?’ ‘All of them, ma’am. But please let the record show that before the hour of nine I apologise for nothing at all and submit that in this matter I represent the prosecution.’ Because the deeper truth was, I was really, really angry at myself for clouding an already difficult issue. I didn’t want to be talking to Emily about some fucked-up flirtation with Katya. I wanted to be talking about us. But I had to hack my way through all that incidental crap before we got to the clearing and the stuff that really mattered. The ‘only connect’ stuff. Katya called me at around 11 pm. I was determinedly drunk. ‘Hey, gorgeous. Whatchya doing?’ ‘Nothing. Going to bed. Bye.’ 158

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‘Okay, grumpy, you go do that. But if you feel like some company, Eron and I are heading to the Old Hundredth for a wee drink. Why don’t you come with us?’ ‘No, thanks.’ ‘Oh, come on, you grumpy old shit. What are you going to do? Sit on the couch brooding until she comes home? Don’t be a prat. Go and have a shower and some strong coffee and get dressed. We’ll come and pick you up.’ I made one last effort to extricate myself. ‘Katya, no. I feel really average. I think I might be coming down with something.’ ‘Self-pity?’ she said with extravagant sympathy. ‘Now go and get yourself organised because we’ll be over in forty.’ She put the phone down. I hauled myself up and walked gingerly towards the kitchen where I poured myself a large glass of water. I was way too drunk and depressed for company, much less the company of strangers giddy with potential pick-ups and disco biccies at the Old Hundredth. Nevertheless, I headed for the shower and a change of clothes.

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PART II

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XI In the House of Maya William Suella called me from the conference. ‘I think you need to come out here, Will. Fast. Emily’s sick. I mean . . . There’s something wrong. You’d better come.’ Feeling hungover to fuck, I got on the first plane. When I arrived, Emily was sitting on the hotel balcony wrapped in a blanket. Suella and I packed up her stuff. I thought I knew exactly how Suella would act in a major crisis: frenetic pacing, hand-wringing, wall-punching, long stream-of-consciousness sentences. Not to be cruel, but Suella slipped into crisis half a dozen times a week and seemed to enjoy the retelling almost as much as the melodrama itself. Failed romances, potential romances, bizarre and mundane sexual encounters—they were all spilled out for you in her breathless way. It was endearing. And there was such kookiness about Suella, you felt confident that any first-degree pain would be deflected. It freed you to feel entertained and sympathetic at the same time. But she was nothing like that. The only gesture I recognised was when she placed her hands on her skull and pulled the skin around 163

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her forehead tight. With her elbows jutting out at right angles she looked like she’d sprouted enormous triangulated ears. I liked the gesture. It looked familiar. Other than that she was eerily quiet. She spoke, but her tone was low and regulated. She methodically moved from drawer to suitcase. It didn’t feel like Suella at all. We made revolting instant coffee from the sachets in the kitchenette. I could tell that Suella was playing things back in her mind. It was a habit that I would soon acquire too. But I didn’t know that yet. ‘I was supposed to meet Em at breakfast at seven this morning,’ she told me. ‘You know me—I overslept, couldn’t get my act together. When I eventually walked into the restaurant it was about seven thirty and I figured Em had got sick of waiting for me and was wandering around the gardens till I got my shit together. So I sat down and had a coffee, chatted to the waiter, Eric, who seemed a bit familiar. I was trying to place him and then . . . Anyway, that doesn’t matter. By about quarter to eight I’m thinking, this is all very weird, and starting to worry that Em was really annoyed with me. You know, I don’t try to be late. I really have every intention of being on time but somehow it never works out that way. So anyway, I went to Em’s room and knocked and got no answer. ‘I tried the door and it was open so I went in. And that’s when I found her. She was fully dressed and sitting on the bed like she was waiting for someone. You know the first thing that went through my mind? That she hadn’t made the bed. She was just sitting there, neat as a pin, in the middle of these rumpled sheets. Unmade bed and Emily just don’t go together, do they? I sat down next to her. It wasn’t until I said her name that she registered me. She gave me a sad little smile and then turned back to staring out the window. ‘By this stage I was on the verge of full-tilt panic. I think I asked her what was wrong and she just shook her head slightly, like it was 164

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impossible to go into. I asked her again and she whispered that it was “quiet, just so quiet” and that’s all she said.’ Suella opened the wardrobe and I was flabbergasted to see the red dress I’d bought for Em in amongst the dark pants and jackets. ‘God, where did this come from?’ Suella said, holding it up to herself. ‘I bought it for Emily a while ago.’ ‘Really?’ Suella gave me a piercing look. ‘Fuck, Will. You’re a bit of a score, aren’t you?’ She folded the dress carefully and placed it on top of the sensible cardigans in Emily’s carry-all. I couldn’t help but reach out and touch the beads. I forced myself not to cry. ‘I called Tash, and then I called you, and then I just sat with her and waited for you to come,’ Suella went on. (It wasn’t until later, when I was driving to Maya’s with Emily silent in the passenger seat, that I got angry about the order of those phone calls.) ‘Did you know something was wrong?’ I asked. ‘I mean, before today.’ Suella threw another shirt into the suitcase and splayed her palms across her temples to pull the skin back, her eyes narrowing to slits, for the umpteenth time. ‘Now I think I did. But if you’d asked me at seven thirty this morning I don’t know what I would have said. It all looks obvious to me now, so it feels like something I’ve always known. You know?’ ‘No. Be more specific. Was she okay last night?’ ‘Completely fine. A bit quiet maybe. But nothing untoward. We had dinner together, compared the seminars we were going to, talked about the conference dinner. Shared a bottle of shiraz.’ ‘Then what about before tonight? What have you noticed that’s . . . I don’t know . . . uncharacteristic?’ 165

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She sat heavily on the corner of the bed opposite me, Emily’s bag between us. ‘I remember noticing something weird about Em’s desk a couple of weeks ago.’ ‘Weird how?’ She looked at me, exasperated. And then she let it go. In a matter of hours I had become someone people made allowances for. ‘Emily’s always been such a creature of habit. I mean, we joke about it, Tash and I, “Hospital Corners Emily”. She’s stacked her stationery in the same way when she leaves for the evening since she started. Always the same routine—hole punch, stapler, ruler all in the same place on the desk at the same right angle. The pens grouped by colour; the A4 paper separated from the A5 by colour in the plastic trays. The desk gets wiped down every Friday just before we head off to meet up with you guys. We tease her about it. You know what she’s like.’ I had to smile at this. Emily had these obscure rules about how things should be done at home too. Windows were washed every six weeks, floors mopped every two days, the toilet disinfected every third. The rules were so rigid you’d think they’d been passed down in stone tablet to Emily’s tribe. Suella glanced across at Emily, still sitting outside on the balcony, then leaned in closer towards me, as if we were conspiring. ‘Lately, her desk has been a mess. I mean, maybe not a mess for most people, but chaos in Emily-speak. She stopped lining up her pens about four weeks ago. The reason I remember it is because I’d worked late and as I was leaving I walked past Emily’s desk and noticed the pens and some other stuff weren’t lined up. I assumed that one of the consultants or work experience girls had been using Emily’s desk after she’d gone and thought there’d be hell to pay the next day. But Em never mentioned it. And I’ve been noticing other 166

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odd things—like not calling people back. I mean, you don’t need me to tell you that in the world according to Emily people who don’t return phone calls rank somewhere between Hitler and Pol Pot on the scale of human sin.’ I found myself getting angry with Suella. ‘You saw all this stuff and you never thought to mention it to me? You never thought that there might be something really wrong here?’ Of course, exactly the same accusations could be thrown at me. The things I’d casually written off as ‘Emily being Emily’ started to look sinister. She’d been off in her own world a lot (she’s always been off in her own world a lot); she was quieter, less frenetic (she’s working a lot, probably stressed out); she wasn’t as interested in sex (we’ve been together more than four years, it’s not like it’s still going to be a twenty-four-hour raunch-fest). But for all the things I could find excuses for, there were other signs I really should have found alarming. That bloody notebook that was like an extension of her right arm, which I wasn’t allowed to get close to. Sometimes she’d give me that look, as if she suspected me of poisoning her fish or turning the pages down on her favourite book. The look that made my guts go cold as I waited for her to bring up the incident at John’s party. And that was the crux of it. I’d been looking so obsessively for signs of anger that I’d missed everything but their absence. ‘What time’s your flight back?’ Suella said. ‘Three o’clock.’ ‘What should we do till then?’ ‘I don’t know. Let’s see if she’ll come inside.’ I slid the balcony door open and kneeled to be level with Emily. ‘Emily, baby, why don’t you come inside? It’s cold out here.’ She looked mournfully out over the balustrade at the quaint main street lined with jacarandas. 167

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‘Come on, love, come inside. Our flight’s in a couple of hours. We’ll be home before dinner.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not going home.’ ‘What? What do you mean?’ Suella had stepped out onto the balcony too. She lit a cigarette, leaning against the barrier. ‘I don’t want to go back to the apartment. I want to go to Maya’s.’ Suella and I exchanged looks. ‘Baby, think about this,’ I said. ‘Why would you want to go to Maya’s?’ Emily bit her lip, avoiding my gaze. ‘I want to go to Maya’s,’ she said again, quietly. Suella ashed her cigarette over the balcony and waved away a cloud of smoke. ‘Babe, think about this. Why not go back home where you’ve got your books and your fish and it’s familiar. Tash is going to be there. She’s organising dinner for you both. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I just have to deal with the panel thing tomorrow and then I’m on the next plane. We can all be there for you.’ Emily said nothing. ‘Suella’s right, Em. Whatever’s going on, the best place for us to deal with it is at home. Your own bed. Melchior and Peregrine . . . Em, please. Love, look at me.’ She turned her wide, dark stare on me. I stroked my hand down the side of her face. ‘Let’s go home where I can look after you.’ She spoke slowly and carefully, in monosyllables. ‘I want to go to Maya’s.’ Then she turned her head away and looked out at the horizon. Suella motioned me back inside. We huddled in the kitchenette. ‘What the fuck? Why would she want to go to Maya’s?’ I said. ‘Buggered if I know. Sounds like the mother of all bad ideas to me.’ 168

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‘Me too. What the hell is Maya going to do? Guilt her to death? Beat her into denial so deep she never comes out again?’ ‘It’s a bad, bad idea.’ The two of us stood there, looking at the forlorn creature on the balcony. ‘Maybe we should speak to Tash,’ Suella suggested. ‘She’s good in a crisis.’ Tash listened carefully. I could hear her breathing down the phone. She didn’t speak for nearly a minute. ‘I’d let her have her way, Will.’ ‘You can’t be serious. You know what Maya’s like. She’s a bloody nightmare.’ ‘I know that. And I agree it’s hard to see how she can possibly be of any assistance to Emily at this juncture. But the point is, it’s what Emily asked for. Whatever’s going on, Will, and I don’t pretend to know what it is, Emily probably needs to feel like she’s got some power. Stopping her having her own way right now may not be the best thing.’ ‘Christ.’ I pinched my eyebrows with my free hand. I wished to God I wasn’t so hungover. I couldn’t think clearly. ‘You can drive to Maya’s from there, can’t you?’ I forced myself to think logically. ‘Yes. I can get a hire car from the hotel. It’ll probably take about five or six hours.’ ‘Are you okay to drive?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Will, listen to me carefully. Are you okay to drive? Because if not I can get on a plane this afternoon and come and meet you. I can drive.’ ‘It’s okay, Tash. Thanks. I’ll be fine.’ Suella organised the hire car at the front desk while I phoned Maya. We made small talk at first, like we did on those occasions 169

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when we had to talk to each other before I could hand her over to Emily. Something in my voice must have tipped her off because she asked me if there was anything wrong. I felt my throat constrict and I loosened my tie. ‘You see, Maya, the thing is . . . The thing is that I’m here with Emily and she’s . . . she’s not well. Not well at all.’ Total silence down the phone. Then: ‘What do you mean not well? Is she hurt?’ ‘No, I don’t think so. As near as I can tell, she’s had some kind of breakdown. Maybe from stress or overwork or whatever, I don’t know, but that’s pretty much what’s going on. The thing is, she wants to see you. She’s kind of insisting on it.’ ‘Why?’ It was on the tip of my tongue to say ‘No one knows.’ Instead I said, ‘I’m not sure, Maya. Suella and I both thought it best if we got her home but she was pretty adamant that we go out to your place. Suella’s organising a car now. We can be there tonight. Is that alright with you?’ Maya sighed extravagantly, as if I was making the most profound imposition. I really didn’t like her. ‘Very well, William. I will rearrange my schedule to accommodate you.’ ‘You’re too kind, Maya. Really.’ Within half an hour Emily and I were in the car. I had a map spread out on my knees, trying to figure out the best route. I’d only been to Emily’s family home once and that was in daylight so I was worried I was going to get us completely lost. Emily seemed compliant and dreamy in an over-medicated way. I kept wanting to ask if she was okay, but there were only so many times you could ask someone this before it got really annoying—for them and for you. 170

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Whenever I did look at her I felt a rising sense of panic and a prickling sensation in my throat and eyes. How come I hadn’t noticed how thin she’d become? Her stillness was so freakish I could hardly stand it. She sat very upright with her head turned to look out at the encroaching darkness. The hire car rushed past the white lines on the road. The whooshing sound was freakishly loud. I saw Emily’s vacant stare reflected in the window. I tried to get the plot together in my mind. I’d call work tomorrow, speak to Dom and explain what had happened. Exactly what I was going to say I didn’t know, but something about a family crisis needing my attention. I’d speak with John about my work priorities. He’d be able to take over most of it, and for the rest—well, it was just going to have to wait. Tash and Suella could keep an eye on my plants and pick up the mail every day. Melchior and Peregrine would need feeding. The milk would need to be thrown away. There were other people I should call: my folks, Tom, Andrew, Katya, Lisette. I glanced across at Emily’s reflection. She looked calm. ‘Are you okay, baby? Do you want the radio on?’ She half smiled. ‘The radio would be fine.’ ‘Are you hungry? We could stop and get something to eat if you like.’ ‘Okay.’ I pulled into a late night café about sixty kilometres along the highway. She ordered a black coffee and a toasted cheese sandwich of which she ate half. I leaned across the table and took her hand. ‘It’s going to be okay, sweetie, it’s going to be fine.’ She looked at me with a face so open that I saw with total clarity what the five-year-old Emily had looked like. The weight of it on my heart was so crushing that I wanted to cry and hold this creature where the world couldn’t get to her. 171

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She fell asleep when we got back in the car, and I imagined the scene ahead. The idea of Maya being able to help anyone, least of all Emily, was darkly funny to me. I just couldn’t imagine anybody telling Maya a confidence that was shameful or perverse or compromising. She just wasn’t equipped to deal with such things. The old bag did lunches and air kisses and went to the opening of envelopes so she could say that she knew the Mayor of Naught and the Patron of Sweet Fuck-All. She couldn’t even ask Emily frankly for a loan because then she’d have to thank her and, God forbid, maybe even make a half-arsed attempt to pay it back. Not Maya. She went in for asking you out to lunch and accidentally letting a bunch of red ‘final demand’ payments fall from her diary onto the table. Then she’d make a big fuss about her clumsiness as she spread them across the table to be certain we’d seen them. I wished Emily would ignore Maya’s blackmail but she saved her every time. I didn’t begrudge helping Maya out; I just wanted her to ask for help like a normal person. The self-satisfied smile she pasted across her face every time Em reached for her chequebook really yanked my chain. She called the handouts ‘campaign donations’, or told us she’d send a receipt for our support of this or that charity because it was tax deductible. What a farce. If Maya had any self-respect she’d have got a job. But no. She’d sponge off everybody she knew before she’d join the great unwashed. No wonder Em’s dad left her. I bet he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And this was the person whose house I was driving to in the middle of the night to help the woman I loved. By the time we pulled into the gravel driveway leading up to Maya’s house I was torn between fury and tears. Maya was on the verandah in a dressing gown pulled tight around her to keep out the cold. She 172

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looked much as she always did: thin, pinched and haughty. I turned off the engine and unlocked my seatbelt. I didn’t want to wake Emily up. I nuzzled my face into her hair and she fixed me with her doe eyes. ‘Are we there?’ ‘Yes, sweetie, we’re there.’ I took her bag and her arm and we crunched up the driveway to the stationary figure on the verandah. We walked up the steps and Maya took Emily by the shoulders, looking her hard in the face. ‘What’s going on, Emily?’ Emily swayed slightly and I dropped the bags in case I needed to catch her. Maya shot me a look. ‘It’s alright, William. Emily, what is going on?’ Emily’s voice was small and childlike. ‘I don’t know. It’s all just so quiet suddenly.’ Maya held on to her for another second, then squired us into the house. She directed me to the pot of brewed tea with an extravagant gesture and took Emily upstairs. I noticed that I wasn’t deemed worthy of the best china I’d got on my first visit. It would be just like Maya to palm this whole thing off onto me. The old bitch had another thing coming if she expected me to wear that. I heard the bath running upstairs and sank into one of the easy chairs in the lounge room, drinking tea that I didn’t really want. I was tired and wired at the same time. I wandered around the living room, pulling the curtain aside to look out at the garden and the streetlights along the road. It was so quiet here. There was very little traffic at night, or anytime I guessed. Maya and Emily were gone what felt like ages. Maya finally reappeared. ‘Emily’s going to bed now, William. You may go and see her if you wish. She’s in her old room.’ 173

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If I wished? What the fuck was going on here? For a split second I visualised grabbing Maya by her immaculate hair and ramming her face into the glass of the prints tacked up along the walls. Instead I nodded and walked past her. I found Emily in a bedroom at the far end of the hall. She was wearing a nightdress I hadn’t seen before and was sitting on the bed looking through the open window. She must have been freezing. She was so still she could have been sitting for a portrait, or even been the portrait itself. I leaned across her to close the window, sat down next to her and took her hand. She put her head on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Don’t be, baby. We’re going to be fine. We’ll work through this, whatever it is. Don’t worry.’ She sighed. ‘Was this your room, baby?’ She nodded. ‘Emily . . . do you think that your dad has something to do with . . . with this? With your not being well?’ I didn’t know where I’d got this idea. It just suddenly and obviously felt like something I had to ask. She sat up and stared intently out of the window again. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why this is happening. I woke up this morning and I couldn’t get out.’ ‘What do you mean? Get out of where?’ More sighing. ‘I don’t know. I think I need to sleep now.’ ‘Of course, baby. I’m going to take a shower and I’ll be in soon.’ ‘Okay.’ I tucked her in and kissed her forehead. It may have been the associations with the room but I saw her as a child, small and defenceless. I didn’t want to leave her alone. ‘You call me if you need anything, alright, honey?’ 174

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‘Alright. I love you.’ ‘I love you too, beautiful creature.’ I turned the light off and walked back down the stairs. Maya was standing in the middle of the living room with a glass of scotch in her hand. She poured one for me, at least. She reminded me of those Hollywood film stars from the thirties and forties—all severe platinum curls and suppressed histrionics. ‘Is she sleeping?’ she asked. ‘She will be soon, I think. I can’t stay down here long. She might need me.’ Maya nodded slightly and positioned herself primly on her chair. ‘I just don’t know what to make of this.’ She looked me square in the face. ‘She must have given you some signal, some sign that things weren’t right.’ I reached back into my memory again, scanning everything that had happened in the preceding weeks and months for something portentous, some kind of neon sign that should have alerted me to this eventuality. The only thing I could think of—the only one that Emily knew about—she was resolutely okay with. Too bloody okay with for my liking. I wished I’d never gone to John’s stupid party. I shook my head. ‘Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that? I’ve gone back and back during the drive down here. I can think of a few things, but taken by themselves they seem pretty insignificant. You think that something like this is going to be preceded by a big fucking sign that you can’t miss.’ Maya stiffened in her chair and I was glad that I’d made her uncomfortable. ‘There must have been something.’ She sighed dramatically, implying both that she would have seen it at once and that its origins must lie with me. 175

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I gulped my scotch. ‘Was there something before Emily’s dad left? A big sign that you couldn’t miss? Because the way Emily tells it, he just upped and left one day, no warning that she can recall.’ Maya jerked her head slightly, as if she’d been slapped. I’d made her really angry and I was glad of it. Her thin lips got even thinner and she pressed one perfectly pearlised nail into the upholstery of the chair. She didn’t answer. Suddenly I felt ashamed of myself. ‘Look, Maya, I’m sorry I said that. It’s none of my business. I’m just exhausted and frankly at a bit of a loss what to do here.’ She nodded, parading her bruised feelings as she swept from the chair. ‘It is, of course, a difficult time. I think I will turn in. Goodnight.’ ‘Goodnight.’ She walked proudly up the stairs, neck so stiff she could have been carrying a pitcher of water on her head. The theme music from Gone with the Wind played across my mind. She was so different from Emily. Wherever it was that Emily had learnt to let go of things, to be so bloody reasonable, it wasn’t from Maya, who’d cornered the family market on drama. I wondered again about Emily’s dad. Had he been a solid, sober type, able to instil in Emily some measure of good sense and grounding that all of Maya’s influence couldn’t dent? I’d never seen a photo of him. I didn’t think Emily had one. When I went upstairs Emily was sleeping, but not soundly. She turned her head on the pillow, muttering something that I couldn’t make out. I pulled her towards me and rested her head on my chest, stroking her hair. I’d never been a religious person. I was christened a Catholic but had been in a church only a few times in my life, for weddings and a couple of cousins’ kids’ christenings. I’d heard it said that the power of Catholicism was in how they got you young, and once caught you could never quite shake it off. My parents must have been half-arsed Catholics because I couldn’t summon up even an 176

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echo of a time when I’d believed in or feared God. Nonetheless, I offered up an impromptu prayer, making the kind of bargain that must float through the universe countless times each day: Please, God, keep Emily safe. Help her to get through this, whatever it is. If you do this for me, I’ll be a better person, give more money to the poor. Whatever. Crap (sorry), I’ll even support Maya—happily. Without a snide remark, except maybe in my head. Show me what it is you need from me and I’ll do it. Just keep her safe. Amen. I fell asleep quickly, my mind and body exhausted after the turbulent forty-eight hours I’d just endured. I woke about two hours later with a deep feeling that something was wrong. Emily wasn’t in the bed next to me. Panicked, I threw on a jumper and padded quietly through the house looking for her. Was it possible she was in Maya’s room? I dismissed the idea and tried the front porch. It was bitterly cold. I walked around to the back of the house. Emily was sitting on a swing suspended from a ghost gum, looking out into the blackness. ‘For God’s sake, Emily, what the hell are you doing?’ She didn’t look at me, but kept her gaze on something out in the bush. ‘When I was little this was my favourite place.’ ‘Em, it’s freezing out here. Look at you. You haven’t even got shoes on.’ ‘I thought they might be waiting for me here.’ ‘Who?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Who’s waiting for you here, Em?’ I moved my weight from one foot to the other. Piercing cold shot through my shoes into my calves. ‘Em, honey, the only thing waiting for you here is pneumonia.’ She sent a searching, almost pleading look towards a monstrous, overgrown hibiscus, then sighed heavily, sending a gust of white into the air. ‘You’re right.’ I took her hand and led her back inside the house. 177

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XII Birthday Card Emily Dr Reiner was tall, formal and precise. She wore suits in soft pastels and an alarming shade of fuchsia lipstick. Although I suspected she was only in her late forties, her hair was iron grey and frizzy. She scraped it back from her forehead in a severe ponytail or bun. I wondered if the pastel suits were a conscious attempt to detract attention from her hair, which gave her the unfortunate air of a prison guard. Though her appearance was austere, her rooms were opulent. The waiting area featured three plush couches draped with throw rugs in a deep blue oriental design. Paintings of Japanese snowscapes, flying geese and kimono-clad women adorned the walls. The scent of gardenias drifted through the open window from the flower beds outside. Magazines were stacked neatly on a coffee table. Despite the surplus couches I never saw anyone else waiting in the consulting rooms where doctors Reiner, Klete and Smith practised. The receptionist always smiled when she took my name and offered to make tea for me. The CD player behind her emitted a 178

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constant stream of whale song, Buddhist chanting and slow dripping water. I thought of the latter as the Chinese water torture CD but presumed it was sounds of the rainforest. The studied serenity provoked me. I wanted to ash the incense onto the cream carpet and leave my ink-stained fingerprints on the glass over the paintings. As I had on my first two visits and would continue to do for some time, on that third visit I planted myself squarely in front of the large painting on the far wall, digging my shoes into the carpet pile. I dropped my shoulders, steadied my breathing and centred my concentration on the rural Japanese scene. A serene-looking woman in a dark blue kimono fed geese. Far in the distance behind her was a snow-capped mountain. She appeared ignorant of the fact that a man with a fierce ponytail brandished a sword just a few metres away from her. Despite the sword-wielding, the warrior’s expression was non-committal. I speculated about the painting. Was the sword intended for the geese that were unknowingly enjoying their last meal of grain? Was the warrior, in fact, a bandit, distracted from guarding the road by the sight of the woman in the kimono, determined to enjoy her milky loveliness and leave her terrified and shamed with only the geese for witness? But the bandit couldn’t know that the woman was the last surviving member of an ancient secret society; that her body and mind had been shaped by hours of arduous training, leaving her skilled in the ways of combat and honour. The geese swarmed in ever-tighter circles, sensing the impending climax. I considered the snow. Was it crunchy underfoot and splintery? Or soft and powdery like frozen talc? I threw my mind at the painting, willing life into the woman, the bandit, the geese. I bored into the frame, seeking spells to inflate the two-dimensional into flesh and bone so that the room fell away and the painting became the whole world. Once, I could have bade her 179

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forth. She would have stepped nimbly from the painting, her delicate white ankle securing her footing on the carpet. She would have known me and bowed ceremoniously in greeting. Her turn of phrase would have been elegant and rich with metaphor. I would have relished committing it to paper. I waited. Nothing happened. My face was reflected in the glass of the painting, mocking me. My failure affirmed why I was there, awaiting Dr Reiner’s gracious invitation to step into her consulting room. My visions had deserted me. ‘Good morning, Emily.’ Dr Reiner shook my hand. ‘Good morning, Dr Reiner.’ As with the rest of the house, Dr Reiner’s room was decorated with flair and taste. The furniture was simple, sleek and unobtrusive. There were dark red vases holding artfully arranged dried black flowers. Calligraphic scrolls adorned each wall. I settled back onto the couch I always chose and sighed deeply. I spent an hour and a half each week with Dr Reiner. Eron had recommended her to William, thinking she would appeal to my sensibilities. He was right. It soothed me to sit in that perfumed room and speak quietly with someone who hadn’t known me before I was stripped of my power. Dr Reiner had none of the expectations of my loved ones, shared none of their certainties about who Emily was and how she behaved. Under the weight of their preconceptions I was susceptible to terrible anxiety attacks. But I was new to Dr Reiner, and she to me. It was respite. We spent our time plotting a precarious verbal course through my life, meandering slowly, in more or less chronological order. In the first two sessions we spoke about my potted memories of 180

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childhood, my years at school and university, and the year I spent in literary pilgrimage in Europe. There were occasional digressions to explore phrases or images I used to describe an incident or emotion. Dr Reiner didn’t press me. She appeared content to let me proceed at my own pace. We could have been any new acquaintances, except that the revelations were all on my side. I knew very little about her. I followed where she led, answering her questions as truthfully as I could. She nodded at me encouragingly, gently turning the conversation when it appeared to run aground. She seemed to me an astute woman and I genuinely hoped she could help me. I made only oblique references to what it was I suffered. I dared not speak to her of why I was really there. My world of visions had always been a lush and secret place. Spoken language alone was insufficient to explain or exult it. What was more, I shrank from verbalising the truth about them: that they were gone. That I had been abandoned in a place of terrible silence and vertigo. To speak it would be to acknowledge a finality I could not face. I wanted Dr Reiner to help me reconnect to my old life; to return me to my lost kingdom, not subject it to a post-mortem. The grief of speaking my bereavement would have killed me. Whatever rite I had first used to summon my visions was lost to me. It had been such an effortless, graceful incantation that I knew intellectual exertion alone could not restore it. I tried to come upon it slowly, willing my mind and body to stillness, as if I might catch it unawares. Out there in the freezing cold of Maya’s garden, I waited for Lydia for a week, hope ebbing away with each passing hour that I stared at the birthing hibiscus. When we went back to William’s I sought her again in the text, but Austen was stern with me. She furrowed me along her chosen, narrow channels and I was borne towards those two marriages that did not interest me. I wanted to 181

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leap from her narrative raft and struggle to the margins where my visions were used to encamp. But the way there was sealed. I walked slowly and carefully around my head, pressing my hands to the flesh to find the gate, but encountered only smooth, impermeable barriers. I could not get in. Even the numen of the dress was slain, banished with all the rest. I could have put it on if I’d wanted to. I could have draped it around me without fear of rousing the spectre that lived in the folds of red silk. There was silence in the raiment as there was in my head. I would almost have welcomed the red sprite back if it meant the restoration of my lost world. What had happened? Oh God, what had happened? Perhaps Dr Reiner could lead me by degrees back to the chink in the wall without my telling her it had once been there. If I didn’t get in soon I thought I might self-harm. I was sinking under the weight of concern and affection being thrown on me like blankets. I struggled under them, trying to slough them off so I could breathe. William let a steady stream of people through the door, bearing tributes that I did not want. Oranges, herbal teas, small glass bottles with foul-smelling remedies, paperbacks new and old, home-made soups, bunches of grapes, frozen meals, greeting cards, magazines. I didn’t know what to do with any of these things. Suella, Tash, William, Eron, Maya, Andrew, Tom, Lisette—all of them talked to me with comfortable familiarity. They shared an easy assumption that I knew the appropriate response, the right gesture to return to their chatter. Couldn’t they see that I was fundamentally changed, half of what I was? I hyperventilated under the weight of their expectation. In one such moment of terror it occurred to me that my capacity for intimacy with these people was contingent on my ability to slip away from them. Tethered to them, I was being crushed by them. When they pressed me, asking questions or 182

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relaying anecdotes, I turned on the searchlight inside, scouring the rubble for some sign of how Emily would respond. And when I couldn’t find it, I fell into panic so vicious that I thought it would tear me apart. My heart thumped. I felt as if a great, malevolent pressure was sitting gleefully on my chest. The panic had a presence, and it was dark and spiteful. But it wasn’t a presence of another world; it came ruthlessly, relentlessly, from within. The air grew dense and viscous. I struggled to draw it into my lungs. I seemed never to have enough oxygen. The hard outline of objects dissolved, making me want to rub my eyes and clean my glasses. I had moments of utter certainty that I was about to die. I fought for air, hands clutching my chest to try to shift the weight that sprawled there. When William was with me, he made me breathe into a paper bag, rubbing my temples and telling me to breathe slowly, calmly. After the panic came the fragmentation. An extraordinary feeling that I was receding at speed and must topple over. I felt the whirl of the earth on its axis and lurched for walls and posts to steady myself. It was horrible when this happened in public. It took more courage than I possessed to venture forth from my front door knowing that I might have to seek support from a lamppost or street sign, clutch blindly to its solidity while the good people around me muttered about junkies. I was splitting apart in impossible directions, while some part of me fought to maintain an anchor that we could all come back to. I avoided going out. I stopped going to work. Suella continued to pay me, optimistically dropping off files and papers for me to ‘look at’, as if that constituted work. I wished that she wouldn’t. The only place I was free from the anxiety, the claustrophobia, was in the cool stillness of Dr Reiner’s room. When I left, my skin immediately 183

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zipped tighter around me, as if I’d entered a cave that tapered to a place of dark and silence. I yearned for my lost world with an acuteness too great to be borne. I’d heard it said that psychiatrists were modern-day witch doctors and I placed a childlike faith in Dr Reiner’s powers. I wanted to believe that the apparently innocuous questions she put to me were illuminating fundamental truths to her, revealing the way out of my prison. If I was patient and answered her honestly, she might shake her chicken’s feet over my head and anoint me again. Restore to me my sympathetic magic. ‘Emily, in all our discussions about your childhood and school life you’ve spoken barely a word about your father,’ Dr Reiner said. ‘I take it that he wasn’t much involved in your life. Why is that?’ ‘That’s a question I really can’t answer. You’d have to put it to Maya, and she wouldn’t tell you.’ Dr Reiner cocked her head slightly to one side. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know why he exited your life or what happened to him?’ ‘Pretty much.’ ‘But your mother knows. Have you asked her?’ Had I asked her? Of course, but it was like trying to prise a hunk of meat from the jaws of a wolf. As a child I’d dwelt in the Orwellian universe Maya had constructed—a place where my father was an unperson. Maya’s ruthless purge of my father’s existence before we decamped for the house by the sea was as thorough and brutal as anything devised by the most devoted Soviet apparatchik. His clothes, his gardening tools, his bicycle were all thrown out on the verge. Maya moved through our house, a rubber-gloved assassin, tearing him out of family photo albums and frames. He was dumped unceremoniously in green garbage bags. I snuck out late the night 184

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before the collection and retrieved one black and white photograph. He was bent down inspecting something unseen on a shrub, perhaps a flower or an insect. His expression was difficult to read, partly because he was caught in profile. I would have liked to save more but was afraid of being caught. Had Lydia been with me then, I might have salvaged a richer haul. She was braver than I. At one stage I believed I could remember the day he’d left, but it had been eroded from my memory by Maya’s revisionism. She bought the run-down old house near the beach and began a zealous reconstruction of it and our lives. If I asked where my father was, she would look grim and set her jaw, the way she did when I stalled going to school in the morning. Sometimes she would say, ‘He’s gone.’ Mostly, she simply refused to answer me. I felt I had a great, pustulant wound on my forehead that I kept trying to draw to her attention. She would slightly avert her gaze or avow that it was nothing. In the end, I think I concluded that the wound was a figment of my imagination. If I kept pointing to it and she kept insisting that nothing was there, perhaps I was wrong. We spent grim evenings in that house, suffering through the winter chill with no heating. I would lie awake at night listening to her crying. Great heaving sobs that rattled the fragile timbers of the house and threatened to bring the whole tottering edifice down on top of us. I lay there, wringing my bedclothes, willing her to stop. I wanted to go back to our old house. ‘There is no old house,’ she’d say, and by degrees I came almost to believe that the dim recollection I had of a small house surrounded by a profuse and scented garden was a fairytale I had invented. Nothing had changed in our lives. Oceania was at war with Eurasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. When I was fourteen I received a birthday card from my father. It read ‘Happy Birthday Emily, with love, Mischa (your father)’. 185

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The postmark was Canadian. It struck me as an odd missive under the circumstances. I thought, were I in his place, I would be compelled to explanation, to contrition, to words. The sentence he chose was so blank. It occurred to me that there had probably been other offerings. Other birthday cards. Perhaps even letters. Maya must have stood sentry over the post, scouring it for his epistles and shredding them. I confronted Maya with the card and with my suspicions. She hadn’t spoken his name in six years. Whenever she was forced to refer to him she called him ‘your father’ when speaking to me or, in conversation with other people, ‘Emily’s father’, as if the connection between them had been at my instigation. She was sitting outside under a wide-brimmed hat reading a magazine. She had recently paved a section of the garden according to a new-found mania for things Tuscan, and terracotta pots were dotted around the paving, spilling over with flowers. I dropped the card onto the page she was reading. It slid down and onto her lap. ‘Emily, what are you doing? What’s this? Are you—’ She stopped then. She must have recognised the handwriting immediately. The blood drained from her face and her upper body swayed ever so slightly. ‘Where did you get this?’ she asked me quietly. ‘It came in the post.’ She blinked. She must have forgotten to check it. Or perhaps she’d been distracted and not subjected the letters to her usual keen scrutiny. I waited for her to speak. I had a strange suspicion that if I struck her she would shatter into thousands of pieces. I waited a long time. She said nothing, simply stared at the card in her lap, her upper body gently swooning in slow circles. ‘Have there been others?’ She showed no signs of hearing me. 186

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I stepped forward and touched her shoulder, bending towards her ear and saying more loudly, ‘Have there been others?’ She flinched at my touch. She would probably have sprung from the chair if I hadn’t been standing above her. A rabbit in headlights, I thought. She doesn’t know where to run. At least she was looking at me now. ‘I want to know if he sent me other cards. Or letters. You’ve no right. They’re mine. Give them to me.’ She looked at me in horror, as if I were a fat, hairy spider. She swallowed. Audibly. The hydraulics of her throat appeared to move all at once. Perhaps she was going to be sick. She pulled herself up from her seat. Magazine and card fell from her lap. Suddenly she bent, the quickness of the movement surprising me after her torpor. She grabbed the card and leapt towards the stairs, taking them two at a time and darting into the house. I gave chase, but she was too fast for me. She locked herself in her room. I banged on the door, demanding that she open it. I was frenzied. I’d never felt such aggression before. I hit the wooden panels with all the force I could muster. I slapped at them until my palms stung. I pummelled with my hands curled into fists, but she made no sound. My whirling dervish at the door couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. When the fury drained from me I felt utterly spent. I sank to the ground and placed my forehead and palm to the door. ‘Maya, please open this door. Please.’ But she wouldn’t hear me. I stayed like that for an hour or more, periodically asking her to let me in. She made no sound. By late afternoon she hadn’t emerged. Nor by evening. I became afraid. I slipped a note under her door. It was difficult to write because I’d bruised and bloodied the knuckles on both hands. ‘Dear Maya. You can keep the card. I don’t mind. I will make us some spaghetti. Please come out. Love Emily xoxoxo.’ 187

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I waited for a response to my missive but there wasn’t one. If I bent down and peered through the crack underneath the door I could see the thin sliver of paper still sitting where I’d pushed it. She didn’t come out that night. I slept fitfully. My visions were elusive. I longed for the reassurance of Rochester’s horse’s hooves beating over the hillside towards my mother’s tower of distress. I knew enough by then to see the limitations of this particular fancy— the woman in the tower, the gentleman on his noble steed plunging to her rescue. Yet that night I summoned it willingly. By afternoon of the next day she still hadn’t emerged. My fear spiralled upwards, stopping just short of hysteria. I wanted to phone for help but was afraid of how Maya would respond if I did. The shame of it might overwhelm her. So I waited. She came out at about four o’clock. She looked terrible. I knew Maya well, was as familiar with her brittle histrionics as with my own hands, but this was a Maya I had never seen. All of the curl had dropped from her hair and it lay lank about her shoulders. Her eyes were deep set with exhaustion. She walked to where I sat trying to read a book in the lounge room, swaying slightly, probably from lack of food. She dropped to the arm of my chair and gave me a big hug. We weren’t physically demonstrative, then or now. Our infrequent displays of affection usually consisted of Maya brushing my cheek with her pursed lips. Now she swaddled me in her thin arms, resting her cheek against my head. She kissed the top of my head, brushed the hair back from my eyes. ‘Emily. Can you forgive me?’ Who was this woman, frank and contrite, hanging over me asking my forgiveness? I wondered if I had slipped into one of my other worlds. I breathed slowly and deliberately three times, but no, there she was, my mother, enveloping me, supplicant. 188

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‘Yes,’ I stammered. She smoothed my hair back again and spoke very quietly. ‘Thank you.’ She didn’t give the card back to me. Nor did I ask for it. By degrees our lives assumed their usual rhythm. The next day her hair was washed and set, and her gestures and mannerisms slowly returned. I planned our meals carefully, wanting to restore her strength. Within a week it was as if the incident had never happened. I had never raised it with her from that day till this. Dr Reiner leaned forward in her chair and tapped her pencil lightly on her bound notebook. (I couldn’t help but notice she used the same brand I’d used to record my visions. Lush, dark green leather. It made my mind ravenous.) ‘Did you ever receive cards or notes after that?’ she asked. I shook my head. ‘Never.’ ‘Did you ever make a point of checking the post before Maya could get to it?’ I shook my head again. She scribbled something into the notebook, her lips slightly pursed. ‘Emily, do you have memories of your father?’ I didn’t really. I’d been too young when he left to retain coherent memories. And, unlike other people I knew, I hadn’t had the benefit of continual reinforcement to bolster and fortify them. What I did have were kaleidoscopic impressions. Even as a small child I was aware of my father’s melancholy. Deep and impenetrable silence followed him. I didn’t recall him as morose or sullen, simply burdened with a grief of some kind that I could not scale. I didn’t think I’d ever been a high-spirited child, but I’d subdued myself around him because pranks and squealing seemed inappropriate. 189

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‘Why do you think Maya is so reluctant to discuss her husband?’ Dr Reiner said. I sighed heavily. If Maya were anyone else, I’d have concluded that she was trying to protect me from some terrible truth. Maybe he was violent, abusive or involved in some kind of unsavoury dealings. I had confronted the possibility that his attentions to me were not fatherly; that Maya had discovered this and banished him from our lives on pain of public defamation or criminal investigation. I had tried to find a place inside me that felt violated, that shrank at the thought of him, but if it was there it was well hidden. I couldn’t find anything in my remnants of memory that was threatening or shameful. ‘Honestly? I don’t know. It’s even possible that she doesn’t know. Do you think it’s important?’ ‘Possibly. But not necessarily. In my experience, people who go off in search of their family histories expecting earth-quaking epiphanies are usually disappointed. But most of us benefit from knowing where we come from. It’s like ballast.’ ‘I did try to find him once.’ ‘Really? When was that, Emily?’ ‘Shortly after William and I became a couple.’ ‘How did you do it without Maya’s help?’ ‘Unsuccessfully. I contacted the Red Cross and made a formal application. They never found anything.’ ‘Those things can take years, you know.’ Dr Reiner tapped her pencil again and gave me an encouraging nod. ‘What made you do it, Emily? Why then?’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Instinct. Whim. Devilry. Perhaps Maya was being unusually provoking.’ Dr Reiner smiled her tight, contained fuchsia smile. ‘That’s the end of our session, I’m afraid, Emily.’ She looked genuinely 190

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disappointed, as if all her other clients were dull compared with me. ‘How are you feeling today?’ ‘Okay, I think.’ I didn’t want to leave her room. I knew that William was waiting for me out there with the dead painting. ‘How did it go?’ he said when I finally emerged. ‘Fine.’ ‘Yes?’ He nodded encouragingly, straining to tether his eagerness, his need. He believed I’d emerge from there one day recognisable as the woman he loved. He expected that the pieces would miraculously coalesce, the ‘thing’ would be identified, processed, dealt with, and we would move on with our lives after the temporary detour. His disappointment was palpable when the longed-for disclosure remained unsaid. I toyed with the idea of trying to explain the loss of my visions to William. I knew he was suffering, although he valiantly tried to hide it from me. I felt I owed him something. Sharing the visions would be a grand gesture. But as with Dr Reiner, I was terrified to speak about my lost world. Perhaps the visions were just testing me. Perhaps if I kept my covenant of silence for just a little longer they would return. I forced a smile and told him nothing.

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XIII Inexplicable William After the run-in with Maya that first night, I was a model of politeness. Maya swanned about the place being loudly imposed upon. She alternated between giving Emily stern, upbeat little lectures about ‘toughening up’ and ‘getting on with it’ and swooning bouts of self-pity in which she was the put-upon martyr. Emily seemed indifferent, and sat for hours and hours out on the fraying swing, staring at the ground. I cooked most of our meals and did the shopping, leaving Maya free to mop at her brow and sigh heavily. When Emily finally agreed that we could leave after a fortnight I wanted to uncork a champagne bottle, but again I was Mr Courteous—packing our bags, straightening the room. I even left a cheque on the kitchen sideboard. Maya never mentioned it but it got cashed. Eight weeks after I’d gone out to Mount Banks to pick up Emily I reached breaking point. I’d held it together pretty well up until then. It was a Saturday, and I thought that if I didn’t release some of the pressure I’d go postal. I left Emily at home pretending to read a book. She was settled into the couch, a counterfeit expression of 192

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contentment on her face, glasses on, cup of tea on the floor next to her. The book was upside down. I knew it was a pretence at normality but I was thankful for the charade. I drove towards the city, parked and walked slowly through the crowded mall. It was overcast but not raining. I tried to focus on the sights and sounds around me. Couples were ambling along the cobblestones, pointing in shop windows, all exaggerated head movements and smiles. Harried businessmen barked into mobile phones. Their gestures were minutely familiar to me. At one time, I’d have looked very much like them: same suit, same strut, similar conversations with colleagues and clients. But by then I was spending less and less time in the office. A couple of small children were begging ice-cream from parents who looked like they were being pushed to the limits of their tolerance. I knew how they felt. Emily, the old Emily, would have had an elegant phrase for where I was then. ‘Fucked’ was the best I could do. In the moment that I admitted it to myself, all of the air left my body, folding me at the centre and propelling my head forward. I stumbled to the empty corner of a wooden bench and sat down. I’m not one of those blokes that can’t cry or is embarrassed about it when he does. Buster, the family labrador, died while I was studying for my year eleven exams and I bawled. I’d cried over Katya more than once. But those were private moments. Now I was sobbing on a bench in the middle of a busy mall as if powered by some giant internal engine. I remember being amazed that there was so much water inside me. Where did it come from? Where did the body store it in the years and months that you didn’t need it? People were looking at me. Through blurred vision I saw two young punks with pink hair and tartan skirts hastily vacate the far end of the bench. A Japanese tourist taking photographs of his 193

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family waved them a few metres down the mall to get psycho boy out of the frame. Parents dragged their children by the hand to give me a wide berth. I knew I should be concerned. I should get up, go somewhere private, but all the things I’d navigated by in the past, the obvious arrows on the ground that made me sure-footed, had dissolved. ‘Inexplicable’ is a funny word. When Emily used to talk to me about literature, the books she liked, the psychological power of a certain character’s trajectory, I couldn’t really get to the heart of their dilemmas. It was obvious to me what the character should do—the way out of the jam, the steps to self-preservation or material satisfaction. The tension generated by their decisions or inactivity was false to me; the drama too contrived. I liked talking to Em about it, and especially liked it when Tash, Em and Suella got all riled up about things and argued with each other, but privately I’d often wondered if they didn’t overcomplicate things for their own amusement. You couldn’t really talk about Hamlet like it told you much about your own circumstance because, in real life, any prince worth his salt would, quietly and without fuss, have disposed of the new king. (Tash had a conniption when I told her this one Friday night at our house. ‘If you don’t understand Hamlet, you don’t understand life,’ she said.) In reality, Isabel Archer would’ve buggered off to some farflung corner of the world with the American bloke, invented a new history and gone on from there. Tragedy, and the weird decisions people made in tragedies, existed to keep people turning pages as far as I was concerned. But ‘inexplicable’ now makes perfect sense to me. Since Suella and I first conferred in the hotel room, I hadn’t really known what to do. I thought that going to Maya’s was a dumb idea and didn’t see that it had achieved anything. When we got home, I tried to be proactive about the situation. With Eron’s help I found 194

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Dr Reiner and Emily started to see her regularly. But whatever got spoken about in those sessions wasn’t shared with me. I’d pace in that ridiculous waiting room, wanting to smash the vases and the CD player that churned out that God-awful whale song crap. I wanted to scream my guts out. I AM NOT CALM. THERE IS NO CALM HERE. Emily was pretty tight-lipped about the sessions with Reiner and I didn’t want to press her too hard. I’d ask her what she needed from me, and she’d just give me this sad, apologetic half smile, or sometimes a hug, in answer. She didn’t know. And I didn’t know. And I didn’t think Suella and Tash knew either. When I was able to snatch a few moments of private conversation with either of them, Tash counselled me to be patient and not to push. ‘Let her find her way, Will,’ she’d say, tapping me on the back in a comradely way. Suella was aggressively normal: maximum volume, forced cheer. She dropped files and papers off at our place for Emily as if this was part of our normal routine, or just a slight divergence from it. Taking my cue from Suella, I tried to jam our new life more or less into the contours of our old one. No matter how surreal that made it. Some of our friends still came over on Friday nights, though Katya was conspicuous by her absence. I still poured red wine. I picked fights with Tash even though I was completely indifferent about the topics. I subtly left Suella and John alone in the same room at every opportunity. Emily curled up cat-like and silent on the couch, watching the unfolding scene as if it was a film. Sometimes she’d wander off and sit quietly in the bedroom until everyone had left. I didn’t know what to do. That day in the busy mall, on the empty bench, I cried out all of my uncertainty and fear. And then suddenly I was angry. Unbearably, edge-of-my-skin angry, and I was pounding the bench with my fist 195

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and the pain was good and I was pounding some more, as hard as I could. The shoppers around me looked alarmed. I knew that at some point a security guard, full of false bravado, would approach and march me off. Me, William Frank, with the great job and the flash car and the expensive apartment and the amazing woman, escorted off the premises for unsavoury behaviour. Inexplicable. We talked about our situation in those hours that Emily was ‘there’. She described the panic to me: the terrible anxiety, the certainty that death was imminent, the fight for oxygen. I focused on the words with every bit of concentration I had. The physical symptoms gutted me. It was like watching an invisible assailant beat up the woman you love while you flail around at nothing. She’d beat her chest like she was trying to kick-start it or punch a hole in it to get more air through. Gasp for breath. Bend forward with her hands folded across her head, warding it off. I googled everything I could on panic and anxiety. I went to see my own GP and got pamphlets on antidepressants and tranquillisers and tried to interest Emily in reading them. I thought they might help. But she had become so weirdly passive about everything that I didn’t think she gave them a second glance. It was almost like she was resigned to going under. We had moments that felt like how things used to be. A couple of weeks before my meltdown in the mall we sat watching a silly television show after dinner; the kind she used to rib me about. I had taken over most of the cooking and the grocery shopping. That night I’d made a ham-fisted attempt at a pizza. The show was a reality TV thing about groups of couples that got sent to a tropical island. Once there, they were split up, with the women housed on one side and the men on the other, and their loyalty (and sense) was 196

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tested by a parade of hot-looking tempters. It was hilarious. Emily did voiceovers in American accents with pinpoint accuracy. I was deliriously happy—out of all proportion—just to have her there and laughing and recognisable. We didn’t have sex. I didn’t try to initiate it. I could barely even get hard any more if the truth be known. I couldn’t remember a time from the age of ten onwards when my interest in sex had been so low. I noticed the absence of that particular energy in my body. As a child I used to sneak off with my mother’s copies of Cosmopolitan for the visceral pleasure of looking at women. Later, my older brothers gave me Playboy and Penthouse on the sly. When I walked down the crowded city streets my attention was drawn in all directions to attractive women. A glimpse of thigh in a short skirt, an ankle withdrawn from the pavement into a taxi, the waitress in the coffee shop near work with the amazing breasts—all creamy skin and endless cleavage. I’d felt glowing and alive from the constant emission and receipt of sexually charged energy. Now I felt lethargic and dull. Like I’d spent too many afternoons on a couch watching daytime television and eating chips. The vitality had drained from me. But what shocked me most about the whole thing was the realisation of how utterly alone I was. Before everything fell apart, I used to see myself as someone who was satisfied. Things were good for me. I’d worked hard and it was coming together. I’d bought the apartment, I’d been promoted, there was Emily. She was the woman for me, as far as I was concerned, and I thought I’d found the ‘only connect’ moment with the dress. Okay, I’d fucked things up royally at John’s party and needed to make reparation. But I thought it could be done. I could cut Katya out of my life and make Emily understand what I wanted from her. I considered myself a fairly popular guy—not a ladies man 197

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or life-of-the-party type like John, but someone with real connections with real people. I was shocked by people’s responses to what had happened to us. My family were what you might call ‘supportive’, but the support they gave was entirely of a practical kind. I’m not knocking this. I appreciated that Mum came over every week bearing groceries that she put away amidst her cheery, newsy chat. I was glad that she ran the vacuum cleaner over the rugs and tackled the festering pile of dishes in the sink. Between trying to keep up appearances at work and keep the house going, I was run pretty ragged. I needed all the help I could get and was grateful for it. But Mum and I were unable to get at why it was that she was doing the housework in the first place. I wanted to take the duster from her hand, make her a cup of tea and sit her at the kitchen table and talk about what was going on. I tried, but it made her nervous and flustered so I gave up. Dad phoned me every few days. We talked about real estate near the bay area that he and Mum were thinking about investing in. We talked about the gazebo he was building in their backyard. He asked me if Emily was feeling ‘better’. In Dad’s universe these were significant gestures: clear signals that he cared and was worried. But that was as close as we could get to the real heart of the matter. My brothers were the same. If they were going out anywhere they’d call and ask me along. Even when they knew it wasn’t my thing, they still called. When I said I couldn’t go they’d respond with ‘You busy then, mate?’ or ‘Maybe next time when you’ve not got so much on.’ They always told me to give their love to Emily. I imagined myself putting down the phone, cupping my hands and announcing: ‘Emily—here is love from my brothers. They’re not equipped to talk to me, but they’ve asked me to give you this.’ I was sure my family thought I’d become an alien being. I knew they were 198

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proud of me but they didn’t really get me either. They thought Emily and I were experiencing a weird ‘rich person thing’ that they couldn’t possibly understand—like a cocaine addiction or a tricky trust fund problem. At first, work was quite sympathetic. Dom gave me some time off and some words of vague encouragement. Lisette sent me cheery emails and popped her head around the door a couple of times a week to ask after Emily. John advised me to ‘kick back’ and take it easy for a couple of weeks. He suggested that Emily had been working really hard and probably needed a holiday. In my absence I guessed there was time for the rumour mill to start grinding out half truths. If there was one thing I learned from the whole experience it was that mental illness or breakdown or madness or whatever the hell you want to call it is guaranteed to make most people uncomfortable. They want to put some distance between that kind of ‘unpleasantness’ and themselves. When I went back to work there seemed to be an office-wide agreement that it was all ‘sorted’. Lisette was sympathetic, but so walled up in her own drama that she didn’t have anything in the tank for me. Dom told me that he was glad I was back and that the ‘episode’ could be put behind us and we could move on. Like he was doing me a big favour by agreeing not to mention it. Pretty rich from a guy who banged Lisette most evenings in his office before going home to his wife and kids. Some of my colleagues made vague allusions to Emily being ‘unwell’ and asked me to wish her a ‘speedy recovery’. I felt powerless in the face of the Hallmark optimism. But it was how most of the people around me, people I’d considered friends, wanted to approach the crisis: as a vaguely distasteful episode that we’d all be very glad to forget. At work, this attitude was so prevalent that I bought into it. I didn’t have a choice. There wasn’t room for 199

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anything else. Emily had taken me to see a play once where the lead character shot herself at the end. Another character responded by saying, ‘People don’t do that sort of thing.’ I was living Ibsen in the office. I could halfway understand this response from colleagues I didn’t really know all that well, but John’s behaviour shocked the living shit out of me. He texted me a couple of times when I was in hell at Maya’s: cheery, cheeky messages that implied Emily and I were up to our necks in margaritas and massage oil. I put it down to an attempt on his part to cheer me up; gallows humour, even. But when I went back to work it was pretty damn clear that he had no intention of helping me through this in the way I’d thought he would. On my first day back he came into my office and sat down. I thought that now, surely, we could drop the banter and talk about what was really going on. He asked me how I was. I sighed, relieved to be able to talk about me for a change rather than focusing purely on Emily. I spoke to him about Emily going to see Dr Reiner for intensive therapy, about her refusal to try any form of medication, about how upside down our lives had become, about how drained I felt and confused. He barely made eye contact with me and played with my sticky tape dispenser. I suddenly felt embarrassed about my stream-of-consciousness monologue and tailed off, waiting for him to say something. He told me about the wheeling and dealing I’d missed at work, the results of the surveys conducted in my absence. About how one of the contractors had driven a forklift over the pipeline and tried to hide the evidence with twigs and sand while the SCADA went nuts from the pressure drop. He talked about the high jinks at the Red Jenny, the rumours about downsizing and forced redundancies, that Vass from accounts had actually been on a date with the busty 200

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waitress from the coffee shop. ‘Actually,’ he laughed, setting aside the dispenser, ‘it’s a really funny story’, and he regaled me with the details of their date, meeting my eyes for the first time. I tried to laugh with him but felt on the verge of total panic. ‘John,’ I said quietly, ‘I think it’s serious with Emily. I think we may really have a problem.’ He looked quickly at the open door. ‘William,’ he began, and this time he looked me squarely in the face, ‘be careful with this stuff. I know there are always rumours about costcutting but this time I think it’s for real. Don’t give them any excuse.’ I was completely flummoxed. So this was the deal. I fronted up to work every day and played a charade called ‘William’s life’, complicit in a perception that I went home every night to my curvaceous partner, rising star in the world of publishing and hostess extraordinaire, who’d had a little episode brought on by overwork, which was all behind us now. We moved on, happy DINKS in our inner city apartment with our inner city lives and our inner city friends. In reality, I felt sick to my stomach when I turned the key in the lock each evening and walked into the apartment. Is this the day? I’d think. Is this the moment I walk in to find that she’s exited from my life? I’d never been a big dreamer before the heart dreams started. Or if I was, I didn’t remember my dreams. But when Emily broke down I started having terrible nightmares. I’d walk in to find her hanging from the exposed wooden beams in the lounge room. I’d flail around looking for a chair to stand on so I could cut her down or support her weight so she could breathe, but for some reason all the chairs were gone, or when I found them they were inexplicably heavy and I couldn’t budge them. In other versions of the dream, the chair shrank the closer I got it to the sickening sound of creaking rope, so I couldn’t reach high enough to cut her down. 201

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Or the dream where I came home from work and ran a bath. I got in and began scrubbing my back, then noticed that the water had turned red and that there was a bloody razor on the soap dish. Then Emily’s gashed arms came floating up from beneath me and grabbed my head and pulled me under the water. I struggled but that made the gashes on her wrists wider and blood spurted in fountains all over the bathroom as I was dragged under again. I woke from these nightmares in sweat and tears, and walked into my apartment almost every night fearful that they might have been realised. Then there were the things I couldn’t tell anyone even if there was someone to tell. The days when I just wanted it to end. The days when I imagined myself climbing into my car, taking the coast road and not coming back. Or those very few times when part of me thought it might be for the best if Emily did end it. If there was no cure, no end, and this was how our lives were going to be, then ending it would be better for her and for me. Sometimes I got so angry with Suella and Tash I could scream. They were doing the best they could, and they were supportive of me in a general way, but I felt so damned ripped off by the realisation that I didn’t have a Suella and Tash of my own. How come women watched each other’s backs like that? I wanted to plead with them: Can it be about me for half an hour? Can the three of us go for a drink and a laugh? Can you call me at work too just to check in and see that things are ticking over? It was selfish and repulsive and I beat myself up for having those thoughts. Ironically, the person who made the most sympathetic overtures towards me was Eron. He called me a couple of days after we came back from Maya’s. I braced myself when he said who it was. The last thing I could deal with then was a showdown with Eron. But that 202

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wasn’t why he was calling me. Katya had stopped talking to me, but enough of the truth of the matter must have filtered through my messages because Eron knew what was going on. ‘Look, Will, I’m really not trying to pry, and I know it’s not my place, but look, well . . . the thing is, I had an aunt that was schizophrenic. Not that I’m saying that’s what Emily has, but if you want to talk about any of this, or you just want to get out of the house, then I’m here.’ I leaned against the wall, into the sympathy he was sending me down the wire. I knew I didn’t deserve it, that he wouldn’t be doing this if he knew. We arranged to meet for lunch. We went to Vaughans. ‘Hi, Will,’ he said, slipping into the booth opposite me and shaking my hand. ‘Good to see you, mate.’ ‘You too.’ He looked around. ‘So this is the famous Vaughans. A favourite local haunt of the Thursday Night Summit?’ ‘The very same.’ I’d never bothered to get to know Eron. I saw him about the traps, and he was an occasional Friday night guest at our place since he’d got together with Katya, but I never thought of him as much more than background. I was generally dismissive of the blokes Katya got involved with because they were all cut from the same pattern—pretty, affected, artsy. This was unfair to Eron. He’d gone out of his way to contact me, to try to offer me some comfort and companionship. He was nothing like Katya’s usual handbag. ‘So, Will. How are you holding up?’ I wanted to be honest and tell him I was completely fucked. But it was in such incredibly bad taste under the circumstances. 203

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‘I’m doing okay. Adjusting. It’s tough though. I’ve never been through anything like this before.’ He nodded sympathetically and reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Look, I know we don’t know each other that well. And I’m really conscious of sticking my nose into your business. But er . . .’ He cleared his throat and pulled a slim white card from his jacket and handed it to me across the table. ‘You might want this.’ I looked at the elegant script: Dr Maryanne Reiner, Consulting Psychiatrist. ‘She’s good, Will. Very good. My aunt saw her for years. She’s not cheap. But she’s good.’ ‘I don’t care about the cost. Thanks, Eron.’ We enjoyed a nice lunch. It was good to be eating something that had had some thought put into it. We talked a bit about Em, how tough it’d been. He was a good listener. Eron told me how much he and Katya liked her. He talked mostly about his work, about Katya, her training, a little bit about his aunt. I didn’t tell him that I’d fucked his girlfriend the night before my own partner’s life disintegrated. I didn’t tell him that the taxi driver had dropped us at my place after the Old Hundredth and we did it standing up against the kitchen table because I thought it would be awkward doing it in the bed I shared with Emily. I didn’t tell him of my morbid fear that I’d released a poison into the air that night that had found its way to Emily and continued to make her cells fester. At the end of the lunch, he insisted on paying. I watched him take the credit card from his wallet and place it on the red enamel tray, waving away my attempts to pay. I experienced a sudden black curiosity about how low I was capable of sinking. I think if things had been different, I’d have told Emily about what happened between Katya and me. There was no way I’d have been 204

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able to keep something like that in and carry on as normal. I’d have told her about my infidelity, about the red dress, about my fear that she wasn’t all that into me. That she was holding back. And then she’d have had to make a choice. Either put in, boots and all, or end it. Connect or uncouple. That was no longer an option. We were just clinging on, waiting till one of us cracked.

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XIV And This Is Why I Sojourn Here, Alone and Palely Loitering Emily Was I mad? I think so. The radiant worlds I’d been able to disappear into were gone. Words were flat on the page, dull, drear. A hideous cataclysm had happened for reasons unknown to me. All I knew was that even if I could summon the energy to throw William’s kitchen into culinary chaos, the Arcadios would not sit again at my table. Lydia wouldn’t perch on the edge of my bath, regaling me with stories from Pemberly and the Bingley manor. Sylvia would not pace about my living room, searching the evening skyline and giving me her knowing smile when William hugged me. I could hold my green leatherbound book to my chest, but still Jane wouldn’t speak the painful details of her life to me. My conjuring gifts were gone. 206

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When I woke that morning in the hotel room it was to the silence of apocalypse. At first I thought there had been a natural disaster. My thoughts flew to William. I looked outside but the main street was busy with early morning shoppers and flannel-clad men driving utes. There were no signs of hysteria. I reached for the remote control and flicked through the news programs on the television. I threw open the door to my room in my underwear and grabbed the paper lying outside, hastily scanned the front page. There was no mention of disaster. No earthquake, no plague or fatwa come to drain the world of its noise. It wasn’t until I’d showered and dressed and was preparing to meet Suella for breakfast that the meaning of the silence became agonisingly clear to me. My other world simply wasn’t there. It amazed me now to think that just months ago the mementoes of Jane’s life that I had so painstakingly crafted—letters, school reports, diary entries—had had meaning for me. Opening the box in which I kept them was like stepping into a tomb. Those biographical relics that had been so palpably alive to me were dreary, faintly embarrassing echoes. I was still searching for the restorative incantation and it occurred to me that writing might be the magic rite. Sometimes, at its purest, it was such a joyful and sanctified act. If I could only connect with that again it might be enough. I tried to go on with Jane’s story. I scrawled some words down. The pen in my hand was an obtrusive and foreign object, not the extension of myself as before. Jane was determined to go to the party. Jane got dressed. She left the house. Jane arrived at the party. See Spot run. Can you see Spot? I was a monarch in exile. I could no longer marshal armies of marginal characters from the interstices of books for my own amusement. I could not prise characters from obscurity or ignominy 207

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and launch them headlong into romance, loss, insanity, battle and tragedy unlooked for. I had to learn everything anew. My gestures and speech felt awkward, strained and heavy. I felt myself splintering under the confident expectation of my family and friends that I knew how to be. It was too pressured. ‘I don’t know how,’ I wanted to scream. ‘What do you want from me?’ Rooms seemed empty and human voices gratingly loud. Anxiety lived close to the surface of my skin. So close I could feel its electricity crackling through the hairs on my arm. Panic prickled along the hairs at the base of my neck. It fingered my epiglottis and coaxed a wave of nausea the length of my gullet. Dr Reiner disapproved of the term ‘madness’. She gently corrected me when I used it. She employed phrases like ‘mental illness’ and ‘cognitive dissonance’ and ‘psychological imbalance’. Dr Reiner was wrong. Those other words were too clinical. They implied solubility. Madness was grim and Dickensian. It was part nineteenth-century sideshow and part gothic pastiche. Lunar-cy— the madness that comes with the moon. Witches, werewolves, goblins. The stuff of nightmare. It would not meet its match in a neat, rectangular alfoil packet of pop-out pills. William believed that when you knew the ‘thing’, you could point to it and say, ‘Aha. That is the moment when madness began, at quarter past four on a Thursday afternoon.’ He thought that once the genesis was known, it would be a relatively simple exercise to plot backwards from it to find the cause of the germination. Of course, in William’s mind there was no doubt that all things had their antidote. His empirical mind was looking for cause and effect. He left pamphlets and articles on Zoloft and Prozac and Arrowpax and other pseudo-scientific pretend words about the house for my edification. Although he never said it, I suspected he thought my 208

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refusal to accept this course of action a perverse recalcitrance, a total capitulation to my condition. But I knew I couldn’t afford to move even further away from where the apparitions had last been. What was more, I couldn’t have coped with another variable thrown into the already bewildering mix of symptoms I was experiencing. I careered from grief and deafening silence to wrenching panic and claustrophobia, sometimes within minutes of each other. There was no pill for that. I thought madness might be genetic, carried in the body as an ancestral memory. Lying dormant in the genes, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The right environment, a confluence of events, and there it was: knocking loudly on the crisp outer shell of the chromosome that carried it, sending it off kilter and rearranging the data about who I was. In the course of our discussions I hoped Dr Reiner and I might stumble over ‘the thing’ that William was so confident had existed before the latent genes began slowly festering, multiplying and dividing. I imagined this ‘thing’ to be a poisonous weed grown in tangles across my longed-for doorway. A literary Paterson’s curse. I pictured myself bending down and tearing it away, ecstatic when the rusted handle turned and I was through. Inevitably, Dr Reiner wanted to talk about William. I had been waiting for this eventuality. We had slowly and carefully catalogued all of the people in my life. Notwithstanding my need to believe that Dr Reiner could guide me back to my visions if I helped her to, I was very reluctant to discuss William. It felt disloyal and tactless to offer him up for dissection when he was suffering so much. Dr Reiner sensed my hesitation and tried a different tack. ‘Tell me about your relationships prior to William. Were they markedly different?’ 209

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I didn’t think that my ‘relationships’ prior to Will were really worthy of the term. They were more like closely observed experiments. My visions, usually so loquacious and worldly, were rent with one gaping lacuna: desire. They revealed to me epic battles, intrigues, romance, dilemmas, sacrifice, but of desire they had little to say. Of things allied to desire yes—longing and hedonism. Even, sometimes, details of furtive, charged encounters like those Lydia spoke of. But they were always just a little unsatisfying, as if they dissolved at the edges of fleshy reality, panning away to trains passing through tunnels or waves breaking on golden sands. My Arcadios had a muscular, robust presence about them and an earthy, sweaty smell. But my visions, though three-dimensional, were like gossamer to the touch. Desire was the one place where my writing felt gauche and coy. Growing up, my household was relentlessly sexless. During the years after my father disappeared and we moved to the house by the sea, Maya went on a few dates. (I’ve always thought that such a quaint term.) She’d preen herself for hours and sally forth in her starched garments to accompany a man to the pictures or a restaurant. She insisted on hiring a babysitter for me until I was fifteen, then she was satisfied if Tash came over. She took pains to assure me that everything was ‘above board’. I wondered how many more years would need to pass before Maya caught up with current mores. I wondered too what her escorts made of her flighty gestures and stylish but prim outfits. I knew about the mechanics of sex in the way that every teenager does, but the strange, inchoate ways in which desire moved I could only garner through observation. I watched, intrigued, what desire wrought on my university peers. Chaos, disruption and selfabasement appeared to be the reward for desire. I was fascinated by 210

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how people I knew and liked, sensible people, unburdened themselves of self-respect and mental quietude in their pursuit of the desired object. It looked to me like throwing essential supplies out of a lifeboat in an attempt to make the craft lighter and faster as it sped towards land that may or may not grant you sanctuary. Some time after Suella and I became good friends, I went with her to a famous sex shop on one of our conference trips. While Suella gleefully selected stockings and PVC halters I leafed through the magazines on offer to see what they could tell me. I browsed through row upon row upon row of photographed flesh, clearing a path through furtive men as I did so. I had never felt in such complete command of space. It might be the closest I would ever come to being Katya or Jade. I took magazines from their cellophane wrapping and pored through them. I felt I was looking at a butcher’s catalogue. Meat of all cuts and colours, displayed from all angles and in all possible combinations. These were inquisitorial shots, the camera placed as close to the surface of flesh as possible. Millions upon millions upon millions of photographs of what Maya quaintly termed ‘womanhood’. What did they think they would find, the men who consumed these anatomical images? It wouldn’t have surprised me to find a magazine devoted to ultrasound shots of cervixes and wombs. This wasn’t desire, it was an interrogation. Perhaps desire was too ephemeral and fragile to be captured on film. I went looking elsewhere. His name was David Jennings and he was a friend of Tash’s. They were studying law together. He had ambitions of becoming a human rights lawyer and was rather earnest but very sweet. He seemed to like me. Tash and I occasionally went to campus events, particularly theatre (often excruciating) or, more rarely, parties and festivals. David would seek us out and spend most of the evening refilling my drink or evincing an interest 211

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in my studies. Eventually he asked me out. We went to the movies on one occasion and took a bottle of wine out to the bay to watch the sunset on another. I wondered how many such encounters we were expected to have before it was permissible to go to bed together. I didn’t ache for him to touch me, or feel even vaguely troubled if he spoke to other women at parties. I wasn’t distracted from my studies by thoughts of what he looked like naked. Truth be told, I could summon little more than a vague curiosity about his body. Perhaps, I thought, desire lived only in the act itself. Something chemical happened at a certain point in the touching and fondling and then I would feel it. It seemed David would never come to the point so, feeling rather Machiavellian, I plied him with wine at a party and offered to drive him home. I invited myself in and, after pouring him a generous glass of water, commenced kissing him. He seemed surprised, though perfectly willing to assent to my plans for the evening. When we were both naked I was compelled more by curiosity and a prosaic work ethic (you finish what you start) than something more animal. I felt almost as if I were operating from an unseen checklist: remove brassiere. Check. Stroke engorged penis. Check. Heavy breathing. Condom. Check. Check. Towards the end I started to drift off and began mentally composing an assignment due on Tuesday next. If my performance dissatisfied David he showed no evidence of it and even seemed rather eager for an encore. We had sex a couple more times after that but the mystery, if mystery it was, was never revealed to me. Perhaps my visions were right to be silent. There were other encounters over the years, more or less consistent with the first. One—with Kendrick Kendle, a member of the American university debating team—was notable for being the first 212

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occasion that Sylvia Roehampton materialised. Kendrick was a rare creature: an ironic American. He had an arch, laconic manner that I found quite sexy. We had long, fascinating discussions about Faulkner and West that he wasn’t compelled to ‘win’. When he got up from the table in the university bar to refill my drink I felt suddenly conscious of the space between us. When he came back I monitored it. He leaned in against my ear with his hand on my waist—was that to be heard above the band? Or was it an excuse to touch me? ‘Is this okay?’ he kept saying, undressing me later in his dorm room. ‘Is this okay?’ I sucked in my breath when he placed his hand between my legs. I hadn’t known I could feel like that. I was on all fours, promoting cultural exchange, when Sylvia swept imperious into the room. She gave me a rather knowing, sly smile and sat patiently waiting for us to be done before accompanying me home. I gave Dr Reiner an abridged version of these events, omitting the visions and trying to steer a course between delicacy and honesty in the rest. It was an odd experience to relate intimate sexual details to a virtual stranger. For all I knew, her sexual repertoire included chaps, toys, straps, chains. She might don a white lab coat (for surely she had one) at the behest of a certain lover. All I knew about her with certainty was that she had a penchant for twin sets in soft blues and pinks. ‘Emily, tell me what attracted you to William.’ How to answer that question? It was everything and nothing at once. It was partly his enthusiasm. William’s interests were expansive and unaffected. His own ignorance was no deterrent to him. I suspected he enjoyed my erudition. He may even have taken a certain pride in it. He threw out questions to my girlfriends and me and gorged on our answers with such genuine relish that it was infectious. I loved how he pottered about the house, getting under my 213

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feet when I cooked. I loved his forbearance towards Maya. He felt rancour towards her I knew, but he struggled to surmount it and never put me in the impossible position of discussing it. His general email group included Suella and Tash high on the list. He hugged me in public, took my hand as we did our grocery shopping, surprised me with a ferocious bear hug in the freezer aisle. The things that trip a person into love aren’t the grand, sweeping traits you expect (must adore Waugh, display altruism, respect my space). The truly endearing properties are the small and apparently trivial gestures and habits that differentiate us one from another. And of course I loved William because he loved me. Undeterred by poor renditions of protest songs and a dubious choice of headgear he’d picked me from a crowd of shouting women. I was familiar with the school of thought that attraction proceeded exponentially with effort, but I was all for reciprocity. He made it clear that I was his object and I saw no good reason to deter him. I was attracted to him instantly. His voice was gorgeous. If it was a wine it would be a well-oaked red, mellow, rich and soothing. When he spoke to me I felt I had his total attention. It made me slightly dizzy. Desire, when it came, had its price. I wanted William. I physically wanted him. I wanted him in the same way that I wanted Irina to turn around in the snow or Daisy to love Gatsby. It was what I’d first felt stirring with Kendrick but intensely magnified. When William sat across from me at dinner in those first few months, telling me about his job or asking me about Suella and Tash, I wanted him unzipped. Hard. Against me. I understood that ‘fuck’ wasn’t a crude and limiting word. It was a stripped-back description of physical essence, hunger, need. I wanted it. It was a liquid, molten feeling, as if all my bones had dissolved into warm treacle and were flowing to one place on my body. A hungry, devouring place. Ah, I thought, this 214

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is why the camera keeps its watch but millimetres away. Those furtive men sought assurance about this place, its contours, its depth. A carnivorous place that could expand to fill the universe. They were right to be afraid. William didn’t appear to want me in the same way I wanted him. He was physically reticent, doing little more than holding my hand or kissing me at the close of the evening when he dropped me off. I had never wanted anyone with such intensity before so it was of little moment to me if they wanted me back. But eventually William’s apparent indifference to me physically began to rankle. He introduced me to Katya at one of John’s gatherings. I knew from our conversations that the two of them had been involved in a longrunning, tortured, fractious way. I despaired. She was everything I wasn’t and never would be—sylph-like, graceful, stunning. With every gesture and silvery-accented laugh, she promised an ambrosia of sexual satisfaction. I couldn’t begrudge William his platonic response to me. Yet the knowledge that I wasn’t what he desired did nothing to dull my own craving. If anything, it sharpened it. I would have him. William and I made dinner together. I fortified myself with wine and brandy. I’d taken more care with my appearance than I usually did; had applied war paint to my lips and bought a pair of French knickers and matching camisole. I knew that for women practised in the art of seduction these were paltry accoutrements. For me they were a radical about-face. Arcadios, stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat, bent about me as I cooked. Lydia perched herself on the marble benchtop, her deep blue dress plunging at the neckline. Sylvia gave me a sly wink as I refilled my glass. I was in a sybaritic haven. I was acutely aware of my body. The gears of my hips sliding my stockinged feet along the floor. The flex in my bicep as I 215

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reached for my glass. The brush of lace along my thigh. The flip in my stomach as if I’d walked into a pocket of turbulence. After dinner, without giving myself pause to think, I took William’s drink from his hand and straddled him, kissing him fiercely on the mouth. I let loose with my hunger. I devoured him and he let me. When finally he was inside me I was burning, the molten treacle at a hundred degrees. I wanted the hunger simultaneously satisfied and prolonged. I know with certainty what I looked like in that moment. I had my head thrown back and was moving up and down on him, driven by a rhythm that seemed to come from my cells. I was holding his hand to my breast and clutching his hair with my fingers. The reason I know this is because I brought my head up to look at him and instead saw my own reflection in the glass window. When the reflection and I met, something integral within me shifted slightly, teetered, then moved back into place through force of habit and gravity. I am not using this description in a figurative sense. It happened on a physical level. The woman I saw reflected back at me was open-mouthed, hungry, dark blonde hair spilling out from the elastic she had used to pull it back. Her eyes appeared vacant, as if she had turned them inward and was examining the internal mechanics that were pushing her to this pleasure. She was gripping the back of William’s head, clumps of hair between her fingers. I realised with shock that this must have been painful for him. It took me a micro second to understand that the woman reflected and the woman looking were the same person. If I had been born blind and suddenly awakened to sight after an operation I don’t think I could have been more shaken. I looked down at William to discover that, like the reflection, he was looking at me. Really looking at me. Every atom of concentra216

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tion in the universe had stilled its course, turned about and steered itself towards me. There was only us. William and I were hermetically sealed there, our bodies fringed with white light, in a silent place marooned from anything other than William and me. The kitchen, I knew with certainty, was empty. The Arcadios and Sylvia and Lydia were nowhere about me. Whatever place William and I had come to, it was the other side of the island. I struggled to free myself from that bubble, punching a hole through it and gasping for more familiar air. Without the visions I was unmoored and desolate. I took care to never return to that terrifying place. In future, when William and I were intimate, I kept half my senses trained on the visions. Seeking them out. Holding them fast. ‘Why do you think you were so shaken?’ asked Dr Reiner. How to speak truth and not betray my lost kingdom? ‘I think . . . I think, I didn’t know myself. I felt disoriented and, I don’t know, conspicuous, visible. Like I was lit up with neon lights ten metres high.’ She nodded thoughtfully, her brow furrowed. Her response could mean anything. Suella suddenly rushed to my mind, all frenetic movement that left you in no doubt of what she was thinking and intending. I was hungry for a Suella-like lack of ambiguity. Dr Reiner wrote something in her pad. ‘Did you feel powerful?’ she asked. ‘No. Yes.’ God, how could I explain it? ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Have you experienced anything similar since?’ Once. In a crowded room to the thrum of drum and bass music. Two beautiful people revealing themselves to each other and to me. Hot liquid pouring through me. Jealousy. Lust. Too complicated to speak of. I never raised it with William. If I wouldn’t enclose myself 217

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with him in that white space what right had I to begrudge him inviting someone else to enter? And I had too little store of hypocrisy to upbraid him with something that compromised me too. Beauty unhinges us all.

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XV Until Emily Comes Back William Four months after we got back from Maya’s I still hadn’t heard a single word from Katya. At first I was too busy and freaked out to think about it. Pretty much all of my focus and energy went on finding some help for Em, sorting out our finances, trying to get my head around what was happening to us. But when the bewilderment dropped a couple of degrees and we settled into our surreal new ‘routine’, Katya’s silence started to unnerve me. I knew that after what had happened between us things were going to be weird. I felt shitty about it and so I got that she did too. You couldn’t say I didn’t get my instant karma. I wondered if Katya was still waiting for hers. Maybe she thought it was going to come in Will-shaped form. I thought that after I’d had lunch with Eron she’d make contact with me. After all, I hadn’t confessed all to Eron. I’d kept my guilt to myself. And he must have told her what kind of state I was in and the situation with Emily. But I heard nothing from her. I let a few more days go by and then started leaving messages on her mobile, at 219

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the rehearsal space, on the company admin line, even at the Old Hundredth. Nothing. I was in a pathetic state by then, having public meltdowns in shopping malls and getting nowhere trying to coax some meaningful support out of John and my family. I didn’t have anywhere else to go but to Katya. I parked my car on the street out the front of Eron’s place. He had a third-floor flat in a complex of five detached blocks. The blocks were oddly arranged in a quasi-circular form so they looked like white obelisks facing each other. The light in Eron’s window was on. I checked my watch. It was quarter past ten. Katya would have been home from rehearsal for about forty minutes. It was never a good time to catch her. She was often tired, grumpy and insanely hungry. Most of the time she’d go to bed having eaten only a small tub of yoghurt, if anything at all. When we were seeing each other she’d get snarky with me if I took something out of the fridge late at night. I used to think of it as her ‘testy’ zone. I shook myself mentally and walked quietly up the stairs, careful to keep my keys from jangling in my pocket. I heard their voices inside. I knocked, loud and brisk. Eron opened the door. He was obviously surprised to see me but was warm in his greeting and practically dragged me over the threshold, keeping hold of my arm the whole time. I deliberately kept my eyes away from the cherrytopped form on the sofa that I knew to be Katya. I could feel her tension crackling through the room towards me. ‘God, it’s so good to see you,’ said Eron, taking my coat and ushering me to the sofa opposite Katya, before disappearing into his tiny kitchen. The pungent smell of warm tomatoes and basil almost brought me to my knees. ‘I’ve got a bolognaise on, Will. Have you eaten?’ 220

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‘No, I’m fine, thank you,’ I responded, pushing down the acheful nostalgia in my throat for the evenings when I used to walk into a kitchen that was alive with Emily and aromas and chaos. ‘How about a glass of red then? I opened it for the sauce but since it’s open we may as well have some.’ ‘Sounds great. Thanks.’ While he clunked around in the kitchen I looked Katya in the face for the first time since she’d practically flown out of my apartment and into a waiting taxi. Her grey eyes were flinty and hard, her lips tight. ‘Katya, would you like a glass too?’ She cleared her throat. ‘Thanks, baby doll. I will have one.’ She grazed his fingers with her plummy nails when she took the glass from his hand. Eron threw a beanbag in front of the couch and sat on it. ‘God, Will. I’m so bloody happy to see you. We’ve been so worried. How are you holding up?’ ‘Holding. In a fashion.’ He nodded sympathetically. ‘Did you call Dr Reiner?’ ‘Yes. Thanks for that. Emily’s seeing her regularly.’ ‘How is our lovely Emily?’ ‘Well, there’s been no change really from when I last saw you. She has weekly sessions with Reiner but no major leap forward yet. I’m back at work, which is a bit tough, but we’re muddling through I think.’ Eron put a hand on Katya’s knee and squeezed it affectionately. ‘Poor Kat’s been beside herself not being able to get in touch with you, haven’t you, babe?’ Katya gave a quick, nervous smile. ‘We certainly haven’t spoken in a while.’ 221

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Eron shook his head. ‘It’s like you just dropped off the radar altogether. Katya called in to your place a few times but never caught you at home. I’d hoped maybe it was a good sign that Emily was getting out more.’ I turned to Katya. ‘That’s uncanny. The only time Em really leaves the house is to go to see Dr Reiner or for the occasional walk with Tash and Suella. How strange that you’d miss her every time.’ Katya glared at me. ‘Not to worry, Will,’ Eron said, oblivious. ‘At least we know that you’re safe now. Katya was planning on staking out your office if you hadn’t shown up by Friday so you’ve saved your security guards some bother.’ I gave what I hoped was a passably authentic laugh. ‘Let me save you the trouble of corporate espionage, Kat. Why don’t you meet me for lunch tomorrow instead?’ Katya picked at knobbles of fluff on the sofa. ‘Oh Will, I’d love to, and if it were any other day it would be like . . . absolutely, but it’s a dress rehearsal tomorrow and . . . well, you know what that’s like . . . important to be there and . . . yeah.’ ‘Oh look, hey, of course. I know how seriously you take dress rehearsal.’ Eron looked surprised. ‘Dress rehearsal so soon? I thought they’d only finished the costumes for the principals?’ Katya didn’t miss a beat. ‘It’s a principals-only run-through.’ ‘Oh. But still, Kat, I’m sure you could pull a few strings and show up a bit late . . . everything considered.’ He squeezed her knee again and gave her an indulgent smile. Katya wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’m sure Will understands, better than most people, that you don’t fuck around with Rocher two weeks out from opening night.’ 222

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Eron looked embarrassed. He took his hand from her knee and awkwardly surveyed the room. ‘Right, well then. I think my sauce is just about done. I’ll go and put some pasta on. Will—are you sure I can’t tempt you? It’s Emily’s recipe.’ Katya flinched slightly. ‘Thanks, Eron, but even the delicious smell is making me teary. One mouthful and I’m liable to have a full-tilt meltdown. No,’ I said, standing up and draining my glass, ‘I’d better get back. Night-time is usually the worst and I don’t like to leave Em alone for too long. I really just wanted to drop round so you could see I still break bread with the living.’ I made for my coat on the hatstand near the door and sensed the gestures and expressions passing from Eron to Katya behind my back. When my hand was on the doorknob Katya had a sudden change of heart. ‘You know, Will, I think maybe I can make lunch tomorrow. Probably only for an hour or so though because, you know, rehearsal . . .’ ‘That would be great, Kat. I’ve missed you.’ I gave her tight, unyielding body a hug. Over her shoulder Eron gave me a big smile and the thumbs up. Poor bastard. Katya was late for lunch. I knew she’d be even later still. I calculated I had another forty minutes at least before she breezed into the café. I knew how she’d play it too. She’d open the door from the windswept street with an air of indifference, like she wasn’t quite sure this was the place she was supposed to be. She’d look to the left and to the right, somehow avoiding the table where I sat glowering. 223

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I had to smile at my own prescience. At ten minutes to two she opened the door to the café. A white, crumpled paper bag blew in with her, disturbing two patrons over their newspapers and coffee. She shot the waiter an apologetic glance that melted him in an instant. You had to admire that touch. She met my eyes and walked slowly towards me, conspicuously trailing the green pashmina that Eron had bought her on a trip to India. As she strode arrogantly across the tiles, I saw her for what she really was at that moment: my oldest friend. Impossibly, unfairly, cripplingly beautiful. She was also terrified of what I might say and what it might mean for her. She was guilt-ridden and inadequate just like the rest of us. Just as scared, just as helpless, just as desperate for approval. No. Scratch that. Far more desperate for approval than the rest of us. It was funny to think that four months ago I’d been prepared to sever all contact with Katya to prove to Em just how serious I was about her. Now Emily had gone to a place where I couldn’t follow and Katya was the only person I could call on to hold my hand until Emily came back. It was reasonable to expect it of her. That she didn’t give it freely, after all the time we’d been friends, made me furious. All the years during which sickness and loss and sadness had defined my relationship with Katya drained into that moment in the restaurant. She slid into the booth opposite me and took an age to drag the emerald green pashmina the length of her long white neck. ‘Hello, Will.’ ‘Katya. It’s bloody good to see you.’ I took her right hand and pressed it to my forehead, leaning towards her with my full weight. Shock registered in her eyes as she withdrew her hand and casually picked up the menu. 224

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‘Are you okay?’ she said. ‘You . . . uh, you don’t look that great to be honest.’ ‘Really? What a shock. I thought that my steady diet of disturbed sleep, worry and takeout food would do wonders for me. I guess I won’t be writing that book How to Crack Up and Influence People.’ ‘Okay. Out with it. What’s going on?’ ‘What’s going on?’ I couldn’t help but laugh at the question. ‘What’s going on? Well now, let’s see . . .’ I raised my hand melodramatically, all five fingers splayed towards the ceiling for maximum effect. I really could be an arsehole when I was provoked. ‘Let’s review all the possible reasons why Will might just be in the biggest pit of his life.’ Katya looked nervously towards the door. ‘No exits if you please, Katherine. I really must demand your full attention.’ Ah, Emily, I am indebted to you for many things. At that moment it was for a conversance with sardonic language. Long live Mr Bennet. Long live Austen. ‘Will, you’re making me nervous. What the fuck is going on?’ I saw the expletive for everything it was. I saw the quaking little girl behind the viciously red hair and the milky white skin and the low-cut top to nowhere. I folded down one digit. ‘Firstly, my partner has gone stark raving bonkers.’ Katya flinched and looked again towards the door. ‘But I’m sure you already know that. Oh sure, it’s not like you’ve been on the phone every second day or calling round with a casserole or bags of groceries, but I’m sure it’s reached even you on the grapevine. Like to hazard a guess as to how I know that, Kathy?’ ‘My name is Katya.’ ‘Of course.’ 225

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A waitress hovered expectantly near our booth. ‘I’ll have a burger with the lot, a coke, a large fries and a serve of steamed green vegetables, please.’ If I ate up big I wouldn’t have to think about the dinner ritual. I might even be able to get away with a pot of strong coffee for breakfast the next day. ‘And for you, honey?’ The waitress sent her best expression of indifference towards Katya, taking in the smoky eyes and chinawhite skin as if they were things she saw every day. ‘Katya—are you eating?’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘She’s waiting to take your order. You need to decide whether today’s an eating day or not.’ ‘Um.’ Katya cleared her throat. ‘I’ll have a chickpea salad and a diet coke, please.’ The waitress scribbled down the order and wandered to the kitchen. Katya glared at me. ‘You’re being very rude.’ ‘Do you think so? I think I’m behaving pretty reasonably for somebody who had to practically get on all fours and grovel to be granted an audience with their oldest friend.’ She looked down at the table. I still had four digits in the air. ‘Shall I continue with my list of grievances?’ ‘Why are you talking like that?’ ‘Like what?’ ‘Like a total prat.’ ‘Well now, it seems to go with the territory.’ I folded down my index finger. ‘Number two. My life has fallen apart. I don’t just mean taken a little detour into headache land, I mean gone completely titsup, and I find that the friends embassy has closed for the winter. I look around and my so-called best friend is nowhere to be seen.’ 226

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She looked towards the door. ‘It didn’t seem right.’ ‘What’s that?’ She repeated herself a bit more loudly. ‘I said it didn’t seem right.’ ‘Oh, it didn’t seem right to call the guy who’s helped you move half a dozen times. Who’s lent you thousands of dollars to tide you over and never asked for them back. Who’s been to every single one of your fucking opening night boredom fests, scared off exboyfriends, been a faithful handbag and done God knows what else. It didn’t seem right to call me or drop round or send an email to ask how I was doing?’ She still wouldn’t look at me. ‘No.’ ‘Speak up, please, I can’t hear you.’ ‘No—it didn’t seem right to call you.’ I folded down another digit. ‘Okay then. So now I’m going to do some guesswork. I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that the reason for your conspicuous silence has something to do with the fact that just before my life went belly-up you and I had a little margarita-fuelled indiscretion. Am I right?’ ‘Is that how you think of it? An indiscretion?’ ‘Actually, Katya, that’s pretty much exactly how I think of it.’ She looked ashen, as if I’d reached across the table and slapped her. ‘Katya, I’m not in love with you. You’re not in love with me. We had too much to drink and we did something stupid. It happens. It didn’t change the way I feel about Emily and I don’t think it changed your feelings for Eron. It doesn’t help either of us to do penance for the rest of our lives.’ ‘Well, I’m glad you can dismiss it so lightly. I haven’t been able to.’ To my utter astonishment there were tears in her eyes and she looked like she was going to be sick. 227

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* On the night in question Katya had cajoled me into going to the Old Hundredth with her and Eron. I hadn’t wanted to go. I was determined to get quietly drunk alone in the apartment after Emily had left with Suella for the conference. Katya and Eron picked me up and tried to infuse me with their good humour. I was plied with more drinks than were good for me at the club. I just wanted to go home. Everything in me was aching for Emily. I wanted her near me. I wanted to tell her everything. Instead she was miles away, probably in bed by then in her hotel room. I wasn’t sure how it happened, but one by one everyone left. Eron had a piece to finish on a new gallery space; John left with a minor radio personality. Katya and I were alone, drinking margaritas and talking over the throbbing music. We agreed to split a cab home. It was about 4 am when we walked out into the cold. The sky was blue-black in the way it can be on very cold nights just before dawn. We toyed with the idea of going for breakfast, then decided to just head home. The cab driver would drop me first, then continue on with Katya to Eron’s. I was drunk, so I left my jacket off and inhaled the chill air, willing it to cut through the booze. As soon as we got into the back of the cab the heat between us was like a third passenger. Something had shifted, like we’d left our present selves outside on the pavement and stepped back into longlost but oddly familiar habits. It was nothing overt. The way she glanced at me. The sweep of her hand along her thigh as she pulled her grey coat tighter around her. Her heel lingered a fraction too long on my side of the car before she settled into her seat. I felt intoxicated. Deep, melting heat coursed through me. I folded my jacket across my lap. I felt slightly sick, anticipatory, charged. I kept telling myself that nothing was happening, nothing could happen. 228

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As we rounded the bend taking us to the river, Katya coolly placed her hand on my knee and traced small, delicate circles up my thigh. The taxi driver stopped in front of my building. ‘Are you coming up?’ I asked her. She didn’t answer, just stepped out of the cab and followed me up the stairs. It was over quickly. Afterwards, she threw on her clothes and bolted, calling a cab from her mobile as she headed for the street. I didn’t try and talk her into staying. Talking about it seemed pointless. ‘Do you think I haven’t wanted to call? Do you think I’ve felt right about not dropping in to see Emily? Do you?’ She was being very loud. Other diners were looking over at us. God help me, but I loved how conspicuous we were. After months of pretending to be Joe normal I was aching for a scene. ‘I wouldn’t have the first clue about what’s been going through your vain and pointless little head, would I, Katya?’ She pressed the knuckles of her right hand into her mouth and mashed them about, leaving blots of red lipstick on her hands and a thin bleed into the lines around her nose. ‘I know that you saw Eron. I know that Emily has been really sick. I’ve picked out bunches of flowers for her. I’ve actually bought these little fuckers and taken them home and sat looking at them on my dining room table for twenty minutes at a time.’ She was crying. The realness of it was balm to my heart. When snot emerged from her nose and she wiped it absently across the back of her hand I was so thankful I could have leaned at her feet. ‘But what the fuck was I supposed to do?’ The waitress was back. She quietly placed Katya’s plate of salad in front of her. Katya stifled a sob and dragged a serviette ineffectually across her face. With each clunk of the plates of my 229

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considerable meal, she choked down a sob. The waitress gave me a short smile of sympathy. I still had two digits in the air, Winston Churchill-style. I enjoyed the irony. ‘Eat up, Katya. Skinny little fuck like you could do with some meat on her bones. Give a man something to hold on to.’ She stopped mid-forkful and retched. So this was the private ritual she’d hidden from me for all these years. The moment of excavation that kept her empty, brittle and, in her eyes at least, desirable. Her eyes streamed water as she struggled to surmount the reflex. ‘You really are a bastard.’ ‘Yeah, well, I’ve earned a few indulgences. Let me tell you what it feels like to fuck someone like you, Katya.’ ‘For God’s sake, Will, stop it.’ ‘You look okay with your clothes on. You’ve got that long, lithe thing going on, especially with your legs. You’re the kind of woman that other men notice. But when I actually get you home and the clothes come off, that’s when the disappointment sets in.’ She was sobbing again. ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it.’ ‘Because there’s no tits, no arse. There’s nothing to tell me that you’re a woman at all. If I flipped you over, you could be a twelveyear-old boy.’ The diners nearest to us were vacating their booths. I’d become Evacuation Man, guaranteed to clear a public place in a matter of minutes. ‘So you’re a boring fuck. There are worse things in the world. But see, here’s the thing.’ I waved my one remaining finger in the air, pointing it in her face. ‘The worst thing about you, Katya, is the total lack of follow-through. Sometimes you talk the talk—like up there on the rooftop with a bottle of red wine between us. You talk about 230

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friendship and the future and support. But when you have to really put out, I mean emotionally put out, you’re like tits on a bull. Completely fucking useless. After all these years I thought I could rely on you at a moment like this. But you’ve proved yourself exactly what you’ve always feared—pointless, empty, useless.’ She was sobbing for all she was worth, choking on her words. ‘I could have called. I would have called. I’ve wanted to come round so many times. But it seemed disrespectful to Emily. I couldn’t.’ She banged her hand on the table. Hard. A chickpea jerked up from her salad and onto the table, tumbling off the side to the floor. I sensed the staff over at the counter keeping an eye on us. I really hoped they’d ask us to leave. I’d scream the place down. ‘Goddamn it, William. It’s not about Eron or you. It’s Emily. I thought we’d be friends. You know. Girlfriends. I thought she’d go to the movies with me or take me to a book signing. Even invite me to one of those damn dinners she’s always having with Suella and that bitch Tash.’ ‘O-k-a-y then. So let me ask the obvious question. If you wanted all that, why in hell would you sleep with me?’ There was a pleading in her eyes I’d never seen before. A desperation. ‘Just to see if I still could.’ She was really bawling now. Her face was wet and there were silvery streaks of snot across her cheeks. It was the most beautiful I’d ever seen her. ‘I’m sorry, Will. Oh God, I’m so so sorry. I should’ve called.’ I stood up, leaned across the table and took her wet face in my hands. I kissed her forehead. ‘It’s okay, Katya, it’s okay. Come on now. Stop crying. It’s okay.’ I held her face until her breathing steadied then walked to the nearest table where diners remained. ‘Can I have these?’ I asked, picking up their serviettes. They nodded hurriedly, willing me away. 231

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‘Thanks.’ I walked back to our booth and mopped up Katya’s streaming face. She attempted a little laugh. ‘You really are a prick when you’re angry.’ I nodded. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. I was really fucked off and I guess I was trying to inflict maximum damage.’ ‘I think it’s safe to say you hit your target.’ She ran her index finger under both eyes, rubbed the leaked mascara on the sodden clump of serviette. ‘The anger’s real for me, Kat. I can’t believe that you didn’t call me, didn’t email. I had a right to expect it. I felt betrayed. Do you understand that?’ She thought for a moment. ‘I do get it . . . I think. I’m not great with other people’s expectations. Doesn’t that sound awful?’ ‘Yes.’ She smiled weakly and blew her nose into a serviette. She was becoming more and more real to me. She crumpled the serviette, sipped her coke and steadied herself. She took my hand. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’ I opened my mouth and the torrent poured out.

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XVI Fruit Bowl Emily ‘I was at Tash’s.’ It was one of my good days. Suella had collected me and we’d driven to Tash’s. We sat in her lounge room drinking coffee and talking like we used to. Dr Reiner leaned forward, her legs crossed, to give me her full attention. ‘Yes, go on, Emily.’ ‘We were talking about books and about the press—nothing unusual there. Suella’s editing a collection of critical essays on Wuthering Heights. She noticed that the essayists refer to the older Catherine as Catherine Earnshaw and her daughter as Catherine Linton. It’s a convention, of course, because you have to be able to differentiate between the two.’ Dr Reiner nodded blankly. ‘Tash thinks it’s insidious. Catherine Earnshaw chose to be Catherine Linton, she married Edgar of her own volition—a fact that Heathcliff is aware of and holds her responsible for. So why do we, readers and critics, call her Earnshaw? Are we presuming to know more about her true nature than she did?’ 233

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Dr Reiner tapped her pen on her notebook. ‘We’re referring here to a fictional character?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘A fictional character in a book can’t know her true nature because it, and she, do not exist. You are arguing about a figment.’ ‘I don’t think so. The characters may not be real in a literal sense, but what we do with them, how we absorb them, is very real.’ The tapping on the notebook slowed down. ‘How do you think of her, Emily?’ I sat quiet and still, afraid to wake the anxiety in my cells lest it shatter my peace. ‘I have a . . . I had a complex relationship with fictional characters. But that isn’t really why I brought it up. You see, something happened at Tash’s. It sounds foolish to say it really but . . .’ I cleared my throat, uncertain how to describe the incident with clarity. ‘It involves a bowl of fruit.’ The tapping stopped. Dr Reiner rearranged herself in her chair. It was a subtle movement. I really couldn’t blame her if she wanted to laugh out loud. It sounded ludicrous to me too. I gave her an encouraging smile. ‘I’m not sure I understand you, Emily. What is the significance of fruit in Wuthering Heights?’ Then it was me who wanted to laugh. Dr Reiner had spent a decade in prestigious universities but the western canon appeared to have fired far over her head. I took a grim satisfaction in my intellectual snobbery. But the fruit was important. I was yet to penetrate its full implications but I felt that my blurred vision would soon clear. I’d been interested in Suella’s and Tash’s argument, listening as I usually did, but with the heightened concentration that came of vigilance 234

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against anxiety. There was a bowl of fruit on the table we sat at. Tash had arranged it in typical Tash fashion, which is to say it wasn’t arranged at all. The white bowl had small grey fissures through it, reminiscent of the ancient Greek urns and plates you see reproduced in coffee table books. Suella sat a little apart from the table, near the open door, through which she was blowing cigarette smoke, head askew to send it ineffectually away from us. There were four types of fruit in the bowl—peaches, nectarines, bananas and plums. They were jumbled precariously and I pictured Tash removing them absent-mindedly from the grocery bag, her thoughts elsewhere; perhaps on some tortuous legal problem or a philosophical quandary that Suella had thrown her way. The bowl engrossed me. The light streaming through the open door touched softly around the contour of a nectarine. Round, smooth, dappled reds and golds turned lazily in the mid-morning sun. I trained my attention on the sight, much as I had with the painting in Dr Reiner’s waiting room. It was a gesture born of habit from which I no longer expected anything. Yet, as I stared at the fruit, the walls around me dissolved and I had a sensation of being bathed in a sun too, a delicious feeling of warm liquid gold hitting my arms and face, causing a slightly prickling sensation. I was held aloft from the ground in an arboreal heaven. Leaves, fruit and flowers were all around me. I was dipped towards opening buds and a butterfly settling on a leaf. A hand reached up and pulled a mandarin from a branch above me, held it to my nose. Tingling acid citrus and earth smells filled me. I kept myself very still in Tash’s chair. Very still indeed. The warmth from the other sun was so palpable I grew soporific under it. The low humming of busy summer insects caused the air to vibrate. Whatever arms were suspending me there in sunlight and foliage they were secure. I had no fear of falling. I admitted the 235

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thought slowly and cautiously, letting it seep around the edges of the aureate tableau one atom at a time: my power was returning. Gold fairy dust, just a smattering of it, had fallen into my palm. I threw it in the air and conjured this place of golds and warmth and sweet scent. A glow of profound humility and thankfulness diffused through me before understanding crash-tackled me. It was no vision. It was a memory. Reeling, bewildered and so disappointed I could have flung myself onto the floor in a childish tantrum, I upturned the fruit bowl and jumped away from the table. We all three of us watched the plums, nectarines and peaches roll under tables and chairs. Away from the beguiling light they were rendered utilitarian again. Some had bruised or split on their torpedo from the table to Tash’s beige carpet. I tried to stammer out an apology but seemed to have lost the faculty of speech. I felt cold and newly orphaned. Panic cawed from Tash’s roof and swooped at me. Suella stabbed out her cigarette and hurried around the room collecting the wayward fruit, offering a commentary as she bent and retrieved. ‘If you just cut this bit off the peach it’ll be fine, better eat it soon though . . . All the bananas are fine . . . Urgh, bit of a situation with this plum, Tash. You have scotch guard, right? I’ll give it a spray . . . Damn it, this one’s rolled right underneath the couch. I’ll try to get it out with the broom handle.’ Tash hadn’t moved. She stared at me. I groped for words and sound, coaxing breath from my lungs. ‘Is the bowl broken?’ She looked down at the floor where the bowl had landed, then turned her level gaze back on me. ‘No.’ ‘Good.’ 236

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For the smallest fraction of a second, her face wore an expression usually reserved for people who talked loudly and inappropriately on public transport. Then she stood and gave me a sly smile. ‘Now that Emily’s slain the evil fruit shall we go and get some lunch?’ She tucked her arm in mine and briefly laid her head on my shoulder, patting my arm affectionately. ‘Don’t worry, Em,’ she whispered. We went to a local patisserie for bagels and they were soon goodnaturedly ribbing me about ‘the fruit incident.’ Dr Reiner gave her trademark slow nod. ‘What was your memory of, Emily?’ ‘I was in my father’s garden. In the old house. He was walking me around, holding me up, showing me different plants. I don’t think I could have been more than four.’ Oceania was not at war with Eurasia. Oceania had never been at war with Eurasia. Dr Reiner read back over her notes. ‘When you realised that you were experiencing a memory, you said you felt disappointed. Why was it disappointing? It sounds rather a warm, pleasant memory to me.’ She looked at me attentively, pen poised. If I spoke it would be irreversible. I would take up permanent residence in that place of exile. I breathed slowly and deeply. I was on the bank of a mighty river. My visions were on the other side. If I spoke I relinquished all hope of finding a bridge or a raft to ferry me across. My life would be here, away from them. With Will and Suella and Tash and work and breathing in and out. Nothing more. Dr Reiner leaned forward expectantly; her habit when she thought I might yield something that she could scribble in her notebook. I stared at the book, bound in deep, cracked green leather. Hunger tore through my mind again, seeking the gate like a ravening animal. Did the lives of humans turn on a pinhead like that? 237

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Collect at one distilled, tiny moment that would change the colour of everything? I opened my mouth and told Dr Reiner about the other world of which I was chief historian. About Lydia Bennet and the visions that followed her. About my antique wooden box filled with my faithful chronicling of narratives bequeathed to me as gifts. About Jane. And, finally, about the unseen apocalypse during which they’d all vanished. Dr Reiner didn’t take a single note as I spoke. She sat crosslegged, looking at me with an expression that seemed between bafflement and sympathy. Perhaps she felt the way I used to when my visions revealed themselves to me: exultant; privileged. Or perhaps she was chastising herself for having missed this crucial fact about my psychological make-up. Perhaps she was considering having me committed. By the time I came to the end of my story I was heaving and sobbing. Dr Reiner plucked scented tissues from the box on the table between us. She talked encouragingly to me. I suspected that she would have liked to hug me, but professional decorum forbade it. ‘Dr Reiner, I think I’m going to be sick.’ She hurried to her desk and retrieved a large stainless steel bowl into which I emptied the contents of my stomach.

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XVII Dear Emily William Emily, my love, I’ve tried to write this letter to you so many times. This is probably the most difficult thing I have ever done. I’m leaving you. I can’t do this relationship for one second longer. I’m stretched to bursting. I hope that when some time has gone by and we’ve both got a bit of perspective you’ll see that I did the absolute best I could for as long as I could. I’ve taken some time off work to go for a long drive up the coast and get myself together. By the time you get this I’ll be miles away. There is no easy way of explaining this, but Katya is with me. I need someone with me. And who else is there? I’ve left cash in an envelope in the sleeve jacket of your hardback copy of Brideshead Revisited. I’ve also put some money in your account. I don’t want you to feel like you have to be in a hurry to move out. You’re welcome to stay in our place for as long as you need to. When I come back (which 239

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won’t be for at least a month) I can stay with Andrew or get a place on my own. There hasn’t been a moment that I haven’t loved you. Will

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XVIII Ballast Emily When I left Dr Reiner’s after telling her about the fruit bowl and my world of visions, I wanted to make a gift of my newly excavated memory to William. It might seem a paltry offering, but I wanted to reward his patience and his devotion with a sign of progress, however small. I knew he was hungering for one. I felt I had found something overlooked by Maya’s purge. It was akin to how someone might feel when, returning to their village after years of war and pestilence and famine, they rejoiced to find that one flagstone of their house had escaped unscathed. It occurred to me that I was a vessel that could be filled. There might be more memories; and, if not, there was hope. Of who Tash and Suella might become. Of Will and me. Perhaps—and there was an electric current pulsing through my body as I admitted the thought—I might write again. A different kind of writing undoubtedly, but perhaps I could learn. I had made a decision. Committed myself. Rightly or wrongly I had turned my back on the river and taken my first halting steps in the other direction. There would be grief and loss as my visions 241

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receded from me. But there was also movement, motion, reactions in space. These were things that William would grasp and rejoice in. After months and months of anxiety, grief and fragmentation, to feel something decisive was a profound relief. I didn’t tell Suella and Tash, who were waiting, what the fruit bowl meant. I wanted to save the revelation for William, to present it to him pristine and unhandled. The three of us had planned a late afternoon coffee and cake at Mitchell’s on Ninth but I was in no shape for that. My bout of strenuous vomiting had left me with a biting acrid trail the length of my gullet and a hollow feeling as if I had been vacuumed between my pubic bone and my throat. Dr Reiner spoke with Tash, who assured her that they would take me straight home. ‘Come on you,’ she said, slipping her arm in mine, ‘let’s get you home. I think a warm bath, a good book, soup and a brandy is about all you’re good for.’ We drove back to my place, Suella chatting the whole way about a manuscript we’d just been sent that she was passionately enthused about. Buoyed by my incipient, tentative optimism I encouraged her, showing more interest than I felt. We trooped up the stairs together, something we must have done hundreds of times before. Tash pulled out a chair from the table for me and then went into the kitchen to make tea. Suella walked to the large glass windows to enjoy the view, still extolling the virtues of the writer’s ‘lean, fierce use of language’ and the ‘coiled sexual energy springing from the page’. (I could tell that she was already mentally composing the blurb.) Turning around, Suella saw the note on the coffee table. ‘Hey, look—Will left you a billet-doux. Cute.’ She picked it up and began breezily reading it aloud. After two sentences she trailed off. Tash walked briskly from the kitchen, 242

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teabag in hand, and took the note from Suella, who looked stricken. Tash read the note through quietly. ‘It’s a joke, right?’ Suella said. ‘Tash? It’s a joke. I mean, it’s a bad joke but it’s a joke, right? Em? Tash?’ Tash pulled my copy of Brideshead Revisited from the bookshelf and drew a wad of cash from the sleeve. I thought: this is surreal. I’ve been transported into a Beckett play. ‘May I see the note, please?’ I asked. Reluctantly Tash gave it to me. Carefully, as if she were handing over scissors. I read it through several times. I stood up. Suella and Tash lunged for me, as if primed to catch me. ‘I’m alright,’ I assured them and walked from the lounge room into the hallway and to the bedroom. I could tell immediately that William had packed his belongings. I could feel the vacuum in the room. A tomb, I thought, I’m standing in a tomb. The three of us stood there, not speaking for what felt like an age. The silence was broken by Suella who began to cry. ‘Oh God, Em. I’m so . . .’ a heaving breath, ‘sorry. I just cacan’t . . .’ sob, ‘believe it.’ And then Tash was moving. I felt her arms on me, steering me out of the bedroom and back to the lounge room, where I was placed on the couch. Tissues, tea and a tumbler of scotch materialised in front of me. I felt numb. Perhaps, I thought, this is shock. I must be in shock. Suella disappeared for about half an hour. When she returned she placed two circular pills in my hand. ‘What’s this?’ I said. ‘Valium. Wash it down with the scotch.’ ‘What’ll it do?’ ‘It’ll make the next six hours bearable.’ 243

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I didn’t feel like the next six hours were going to be unbearable. I didn’t feel at all. However, I swilled the pills down with the fiery drink. Soon, I was floating above the sofa, watching Tash and me sitting next to each other. Suella was flopped on a beanbag in front of us. From the ceiling her hair was a profusion of coils. The amber liquid in the bottle was drained and then replaced by a vodka bottle. I watched the clear liquid disappear down our throats. I caught little bubbles of Suella and Tash’s conversation drifting up to the roof. ‘Fucking slag . . . Knew it would end badly . . . Women are always the worst enemies of other women . . . Good divorce lawyer . . . Take the prick to the cleaners . . . Didn’t pick him for this kind of caper . . . How long do you think? . . . They’re all arseholes in the end . . . I’ll call work.’ Those first few days passed in a blur. Suella and Tash barely left my side. They propelled any movement I made, ushering me towards shower, bed, kitchen table and couch. Obediently I did as I was told. I have a vague recollection of the three of us ensconced under blankets in the lounge room, watching a seemingly endless parade of DVDs. Judging by the number of styrofoam boxes I marched to the bin when I finally came to, a lot of takeaway was eaten. Tash fed me hard liquor and cigarettes. Suella had the magic pills but I found I didn’t need them. I was the Michelin man, with rolls of somnolence blubbering from my head to my feet. I had sufficient wit to be grateful that the vicious anxiety that had stalked me for so long could not get at me. I was too far submerged under shock, or perhaps a strange form of grief or fatalism, for the panic to have any power. I felt pleasantly medicated. It was Tash who cranked the handle of the temporal world about ten days after William left. Despite being owed more than eight 244

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months of leave she was under enormous pressure to return to work immediately. Suella was doing her best to run the office from Will’s lounge room, even setting up a fax machine near Melchior and Peregrine’s cubbyhole. ‘Emily, I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but we need to pack up your stuff and move you out of here.’ Silence washed through the room. I had occasionally dipped my toe into the practical questions of money, housing and work and swiftly retracted it. The water there was icy and dark. ‘I think Tash is right, Em,’ added Suella. ‘It’s not healthy to stay here. Too much baggage and bad energy. We need to find you somewhere to live. William said he’d be gone about a month. That leaves us less than three weeks to pack up and move. Unless, um, you actually want to be here when he gets back. Big showdown. That kind of thing.’ ‘God, no. No showdowns. I couldn’t handle a scene.’ Suella looked just the tiniest bit disappointed. ‘Em, why don’t you come and live with me?’ Tash said. ‘You can have the spare room. We might need to put some of your books into storage but I think we’ll manage alright.’ ‘Thank you, Tash. I’d love that. Thank you.’ What had I done, I wondered, to earn such devotion as this? Tash was immediately on the phone to a removalist and the cardboard boxes were delivered that afternoon. The three of us started in the kitchen, moved into the large open space that served for lounge and dining, swept quickly through the hallway and its concealed cupboards, then into the bedroom, bathroom and study. I focused on the task immediately before me. There was nothing but the cardboard box to be carefully filled with my books, reinforced with tape and labelled. I could not let myself think beyond the box. 245

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After one box there was another; and at the moment that new box became the task I gave it my full attention. We had almost finished by eight o’clock in the evening. Melchior and Peregrine and my essential toiletries remained the only unboxed remnants of my tenure in that place. ‘Okay then,’ Tash wiped some sweaty dirt from her forehead, ‘I think we’re done. Em, the spare bed at my place is all made up so we can leave any time you like.’ ‘Actually, I think I’ll stay here tonight and come to your place tomorrow.’ Tash and Suella exchanged slightly anxious looks. ‘Don’t be concerned. I’m just not quite ready yet.’ ‘Alright. Do you want us to stay?’ ‘No. Thank you, but no.’ Clearly reluctant to leave me alone, Tash and Suella eventually departed. I practically had to throw them out. I turned off all the lights in the apartment and lit candles instead, then wandered aimlessly from room to room. It must have been my imagination playing tricks on me, but Melchior and Peregrine appeared fidgety. They swished their tails about, peering anxiously from the bowl, puzzling as to the emptied spaces and William’s extended absence. As I paced I felt a low pulse just beneath the surface of my conscious mind. It wasn’t insistent, nor was it deafeningly loud. But it was undeniably there. I sliced through the tape on a packing box and pulled out my journal. The antiqued green leather was so familiar and so foreign in my hands. I pulled a long, white envelope from between the covers. The letter hadn’t been in my possession long. It had arrived shortly before I told Dr Reiner about the apocalypse; shortly before Will left. I hadn’t had the strength to open it. 246

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I took the letter and sat beneath Melchior and Peregrine’s cubbyhole for comfort. They peered at me. I gently tapped the bowl and they flourished their tails. Courage, Emily. I read by candlelight, and spent the rest of the night there in the flickering glow, with my goldfish for company. By the time daylight started to sweep across the bay my plan was formed. I phoned Suella. ‘Honey, it’s Em. Look, I know we talked about me returning to work today but I’m going to need a few more days. Maybe a week. And I won’t be here . . . No, not at Tash’s. I mean that I won’t be in the city. I’m going to see Maya. Could you please feed my fish for me? . . . Yes, I’m sure . . . No, I haven’t told Tash yet . . . I’m organising a hire car . . . Thanks, but I need to do this alone . . . No, she doesn’t know I’m coming . . .’ I hadn’t slept all night but I was brutally awake during the drive. I phoned Maya from a phone booth on the highway and told her I was coming to visit. Something in my voice clearly alerted her. ‘Emily precious, that would be lovely but I’m so fully committed at the moment. Mayor Nester simply cannot make a decision without me. And there’s the flower show, and—’ ‘I’ll be there in three hours.’ I hung up the phone. Three hours was more than enough time to allow Maya to ready her arsenal. I arrived prepared for a barrage of stalling tactics, of reproach, denial and overblown histrionics. But I had a retaliatory tactic I’d never possessed before: a subterranean and slow-burning pure need. It gave me the feeling that I could outlast anything. Maya wasn’t there. I let myself in and put away my clothes in my old room. The tranquillity of the place broke against my internal chaos. Bird calls floated through the windows on still air. The trees were so tall that in some places the sky was visible only in patches 247

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through the leaves. The house was close to the beach and had a long, crunchy driveway. It was the kind of house that signalled its owner had ‘arrived’. I used to fantasise that the front approach was like the entrance to Pemberly. (Lydia laughed at this many years ago and told me it was nothing like.) I walked slowly through the house room by room, waiting for Maya to return. I looked closely at the photographs, the ornaments, the books and paintings. The house was constructed from Maya’s sheer determination to live a certain kind of life. Despite Suella’s call to let her know that William and I had separated, his business card was still pinned to the fridge with a magnet, as was the postcard we’d sent her from Kota Kinabalu. Prominent on her writing desk was a handwritten note from the mayor on thick, creamy notepaper. A glossy, earnest brochure from one of Katya’s performances was casually strewn open on the coffee table. Maya didn’t attend the season but William arranged for the principals to sign the program and sent it to her. It was open at the stunning headshot of Katya and the (in my view, rather inappropriate) gushing note she’d written to Maya. I screwed up the program and shoved it into the bin. My graduation photo was tastefully framed and placed on a cabinet near the front door. Near it was a black and white photograph of William and me at one of Katya’s opening nights. I’d looked away at the last minute, distracted by a bitter argument erupting between an elegant, pursed-lipped couple. The wind had taken a strand of my hair across my face. I looked quizzical and intense. William held my hand and was looking confidently at the camera. It had caught him at his full height. He looked handsome. He looked ‘arrived’. There was a formal photograph of my grandparents, whom I’d barely known. I remembered a few starchy, awkward meetings 248

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dripping with some unnamed tension between them and Maya. It was at one of these stilted meetings that my grandfather had made me a present of the exquisite hand-carved box in which I kept the relics of my visions and the furtively purloined photograph of my father. Needless to say, there was no sign of my father here. Maya cultivated the impression that my coming into the world had been a cold and clinical process. As if she had ordered me from an upmarket catalogue after careful consideration of the options. Hers was the lifelong disappointment of someone who had purchased faulty goods and discovered too late that there was no means of consumer redress. Maya’s world was singularly devoid of puerile but amusing internet quizzes or horoscopes clipped from the newspaper. There were no candid shots stuck haphazardly on the fridge or tacked onto message boards. There were no pictures of me with the gaping smile of childhood, with deflating balloon and party hat askew. Not even a hastily scrawled shopping list ruffled the cultured artifice of the house. The place was a shrine to the narrative that Maya obsessively constructed. ‘Look at me,’ it whispered. ‘There is success here, there is culture here, there is completion here.’ When the fragments were dismantled, exposed and examined, what would be left? Did Maya still know who she was underneath the edifice? Or had she withered away long ago, starved of light and oxygen? I felt something like fear for the effect of what I was about to do. I opened the French doors and stepped onto the patio. A slight salt tang hung in the still air. I walked to the end of the paved area and jumped into the semi-cleared patch of scrub where my swing was; the grizzled orange rope was frayed and precarious. When Will and I had come to Maya’s after the apocalypse, I’d spent hours on that swing, just waiting. I was still bewildered and bereft then, 249

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feeling my way around a world grown so awesomely quiet. My need for restoration was yet to acquire its frenetic desperation. The emptiness of my dreams would wake me and I would get up, careful not to disturb William, and make my way in the darkness to the swing. I bore the cold like a penance, an offering to the gods. I dug my bare feet into the freezing sand and idly pushed the swing into a futile arc. The darkness was a curtain that might go up at any minute and restore to me my Lydia, my Sylvia. Sometimes it would take Will a couple of hours to miss me. Sometimes my feet barely had time to go numb before he was wrapping me in a dressing gown and ushering me back into the house. I sat on the swing and rested my head on my knees. I wondered where William was. What he was doing. Who. I slapped my palm repeatedly against my forehead, as if that might force some discipline into my wayward mind. I bent it in every direction but there was no circuit that did not imply him. There was a trace element of William in my every cell. It bounced his name around in my head. It upset my stomach and made it virtually impossible to keep food down. My body craved emptiness, rejecting everything but alcohol and pulped fruit. I was a cavern of longing for William. Ironic, really. The visions were gone. I could have moved into that white hot light with Will without fear of losing them. But he had flicked the switch and gone elsewhere. I heard Maya let herself into the house. The click clack of her heels echoed across the timber floors. I tightened my grip around the orange rope and slid my hand, fast and tight, along its roughness. I concentrated on the rope burn. My stinging palms. I couldn’t afford to give in to my grief for William. Not yet. Maya breezed onto the patio carrying a potted indoor plant. ‘Look at this, Emily precious. I picked it up from the flower show this 250

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morning. Isn’t it darling?’ She bent and gave me a cursory kiss on my cheek. She busied herself in the kitchen heating up a quiche, then turned the plant into a glazed pot, all the while chatting inanely about the mayor. I was prepared for this approach. I expected Maya to simply ignore the purpose of my visit and hope that I would disappear, wilted under the sheer force of her well-practised illusion. I looked at the red welts on my palm. Not today. She set out the quiche and salad and opened a bottle of wine. We sat outside amidst the flower pots and ferns. ‘My goodness, Emily,’ she affected a wide-eyed stare, ‘you have lost weight, my darling. You look sensational. I’m sure William must be delighted with your new look.’ ‘William and I are separated, Maya. As you are well aware.’ Even saying his name was painful. I felt I might cut my tonsils on it. She waved away my words as you’d brush away a loud, buzzing fly at your picnic. ‘A hiccup, my dear, a small hiccup. You’ll sort it out. You’ll see. And look at you—those cheekbones, those eyes!’ She gave the quiche a cautionary glance. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t know you were on a diet. Maybe we shouldn’t have quiche. We could just stick with the salad. There’s a fantastic organic vegetable shop just opened up. Very pricey, of course, but the quality of the produce is . . . well, it’s unsurpassable. Try it. I’m sure you’ll agree.’ I took a mouthful of the quiche, forcing myself to chew. Please stay down, I thought. My stomach heaved at the imposition on its emptiness. ‘I’m not on a diet, Maya. I’m struggling to keep food down at the moment if the truth be known.’ She wavered for a moment, as if she might respond, thought better of it and launched into a long story about a lunch she’d had 251

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with the mayor. This was one of Maya’s favourite themes: noblesse oblige. Civic responsibility. Her duty to the less fortunate. I begrudgingly saluted the sheer vigour with which she maintained the edifice. Of course I knew that I was sure to be applied to when the rates notice arrived or the water bill required payment. ‘Maya, I think you know why I’m here. This isn’t optional. You’re going to tell me.’ She pretended she hadn’t heard me and ate her quiche with relish. ‘Isn’t this good? They have a new pastry chef at Bella Mia, you know. I think you can really tell the difference.’ I put my fork down and arranged it perfectly straight on my place mat, next to the knife. I leaned across the table and took her hand, holding it tightly. ‘You will tell me what happened to my father.’ She tried to pull her hand from mine but I increased the pressure. ‘I’ve been very sick.’ She flinched as I said this. I felt the boards of the house creak and groan. She buttressed the foundations. ‘Nonsense. You’ve had a difficult time. It’s not surprising with all the stress of the last few years. Being on the career fast track. People get burnt out. I see it all the time. You know, Mayor Nester remarked to me that—’ ‘Everything’s gone, Maya. Do you understand that? My past. My future—what I thought would be my future. I feel hollowed out. As if I might float out into the universe and never come back. I need some ballast. You’re going to give it to me.’ She was exasperated. ‘You look great, healthy. Better than I’ve seen you look in years. Are you sure this isn’t just some mumbo jumbo this doctor is feeding you to keep William handing over the dollars?’ 252

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I had to laugh. ‘I’m relatively certain that I’m not manufacturing phantoms as a means of getting rid of surplus cash.’ ‘Well, if William thinks it’s a good use of his money who am I to argue? It must be nice, though, having a wealthy partner.’ The house was girding itself, refortifying. I picked up the sledgehammer again. ‘William isn’t my partner any more, Maya. He left me. For Katya. You know that.’ She writhed, looking about for her optimism, as if she might have left it beneath one of the gum trees. I smiled weakly. I was in a position to end it all. I had the whip hand, though she didn’t yet know it. But I wanted to give her every chance to tell me of her own accord, to offer it freely. I wanted to believe in the possibility of selfless love in her. A latent parenting instinct buried under the layers of Chanel talc and neutral linens. The phone rang and she rose with alacrity to answer it. But it had begun. I plugged all the cracks through which she might slip. I was relentless. I repeated the same questions over and over again. I followed her around the house, the supermarket and, to her utter mortification, the annual flower show of which she was self-styled patron. I was a terrier in pursuit. I saw the uncertain expression on her face. She was searching my features for their usual pliability and reticence. Not today. I became almost meditative in the face of the tricks and stratagems she’d had a lifetime to perfect. She ran the gamut of her emotional theatre: everything from put-upon martyrdom to denial to injured silence. Seeing that I was inured to all this, she turned spiteful. Beneath her diaphanous dress and wide-brimmed straw hat, she was scrappy, mean and petty. The gloves were off. She rattled on. I let her go. Her vitriol could have been a cotton ball hurled at a wall for all the 253

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impact it had on me. I waited until she had spent her invective before I played my trump card. I walked to the kitchen table, took a long white envelope from my bag, sat back down on the couch and held the envelope up in front of me so she could see the logo. She flagged slightly. I removed the letter within, unfolded it carefully, laid it on my lap and smoothed it out several times with my palm, before I raised it and began reading. ‘Dear Ms Trahere, I am pleased to inform you that we have some information in relation to your request to locate Mr Mischa Trahere, formerly of New South Wales, Australia.’ (I heard Maya sink into the couch opposite me but didn’t raise my eyes from the letter.) ‘Mr Trahere is alive and well and residing in Montreal, Canada. He has been advised of your interest in locating him and has authorised us to provide you with his current residential address.’ ‘Stop.’ ‘Oh, but there are only a few lines to go.’ ‘Stop. Please.’ She bowed her head and raised her hand in a halt gesture. ‘Please.’ It wasn’t a demanding posture. There was no aggression in it. It was more a plea for clemency. I stood up and walked to the liquor cabinet where I poured us each a generous glass of scotch and soda. I placed Maya’s on the table in front of her. She looked at me quizzically, as if expecting an admonition. I slightly raised my glass to her and took a large gulp of my drink. She kept her eyes on me and did the same, except she drained the glass. Wordlessly, I took it from her and refilled it. She looked older. As if all the starchy willpower that was holding the curl in her hair and the gloss on her lips had drained away. ‘Well, Emily,’ she said. ‘Well.’ 254

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It wasn’t even the same voice. It was harsher, more worldly. My heart was beating very fast. I wasn’t quite certain what to do. We had crossed the Rubicon now and there was no safe passage back. My instincts, so in going to the house and cornering her, were faltering. She was changed already. Who would she be by the end? ‘Well,’ she said again. I emptied my glass. This time I took the scotch bottle from the cabinet and placed it on the table between us. She slightly raised an eyebrow and gave me a half smile. ‘Good idea.’ She stared out the window for a long time, cradling her glass. I knew she was going to tell me. She knew it too. I thought perhaps she was arranging it in her head, struggling to articulate what I needed to hear. But no. Maya had been replaying this for a quarter of a century. Little else had engrossed her. When she did speak, she didn’t lack fluency or coherence. ‘I was sixteen,’ she said, addressing the window rather than me, ‘and my God, I was so bored. You’ve no idea what it was like for girls back then, Emily. No idea. You and Suella and Natasha run around doing what you like, thinking nothing of it. Standing in judgement over your mothers and aunts as if they’d had the same freedoms you have. It was summer. I was still in school and it was so hot. So damn hot. No air conditioning. And women weren’t even allowed to be hot. Sweating was what men and horses did. You had to arrange your face as if you were utterly oblivious to the fact that it was thirty degrees in the shade. At most you could mop delicately at your brow.’ She pantomimed the action. It was such a caricature of herself that I had to force down a laugh. ‘Women were allowed a certain kind of feebleness and, by God, you needed it. Starched gingham dresses to the lower calf. Hot rollers. Hours in dusty, chalky classrooms and the time just 255

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didn’t seem to move. And we knew nothing. I mean nothing.’ Her voice grew clipped with contempt. ‘You and your friends meeting every Thursday to talk about politics and sex and great works of art. And then you dare to look down on people who don’t know as much as you.’ She turned from the window to meet my eyes. I wanted to protest as I thought this neither true nor fair, but I had given her the floor. ‘You’ve got no idea what it was like for women like me. Stuck out there in the middle of nowhere. We were supposed to be empty. I think “wholesome” was the word for it. So you spend the rest of your life trying to catch up on what your own children take for granted. But where do you even start? Do you know,’ she laughed a little at the recollection, ‘the school sent these very solemn letters to our mothers inviting them and their daughters to an evening where the facts of life could be discussed in exclusively female company. I wish I’d kept that letter, Emily. You’d think it a hoot. It was written entirely in euphemisms so you practically had to be a Soviet spy to make it out. Anyway, my mother starched and curled and primped us both and off we went. All of my friends and their mothers were there too. The atmosphere was hushed. Everyone was a bit nervous, a bit embarrassed. But nobody wanted to say anything. The speaker was a middle-aged woman with an assistant. I think they were travelling across the country giving these little “educational” seminars. ‘After a rather awkward introduction, they showed a film. You know the sort—those post-war black and white reels that are all splotchy and everyone moves too fast. There were these pictures of the female reproductive system and then pictures of the male.’ She burst into laughter at the recollection. ‘And suddenly they showed this field of flowers with all these bees hovering around. And then 256

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rabbits. Two rabbits being handled by men in lab coats and spectacles. Scientific-looking. And that,’ she clapped her hands, ‘was the end of the film. The matronly lady clicked off the projector and asked if anybody had any questions. You could have heard a pin drop. My friend Evelyn and I caught each other’s eye. We were both completely mystified. My mother was shifting in her seat, keeping her eyes on the presenter. I wanted to ask questions but I didn’t even know what the subject was. What had I just been shown? Was it about fields? Bees? Rabbits? I was baffled. Nobody asked any questions, which seemed to make the woman and her assistant happy. Smug, even. ‘You’ve got to understand, Emily, back then no one wanted to appear . . . you’d call it “indecorous”. Of course there were rumours at school and in the town about certain naughty girls who were rumoured to have done it. What ‘it” was I wasn’t sure, but it was something unspeakable. After the film they put on tea and biscuits. Evelyn and I took our tea into a corner and whispered to each other. “Did you get that?” “No. Did you?” “I’ve heard about the rabbit problem though,” Evelyn said. “Dad says there’s a plague. They’re trying some chemical to wipe them out.” ’ Maya laughed again. ‘My mother and I walked home. She kept making remarks about it being “all settled”. She seemed relieved. As if we’d got past some sort of unpleasantness.’ Maya shook her head. ‘It’s a scandal when you think about it.’ I remembered her sallying forth on her infrequent dates over the years, so prim and sexless in her creaseless dresses and powdered nose. ‘So that was it. My formal sex education. Sometimes my mother would refer to it as “the little seminar we went to”. “You remember, Maya, don’t you, that little seminar we went to?” It came up if there 257

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were unpleasant rumours circulating. Sometimes girls disappeared. There was a phrase for it—they “went to the country to visit relatives”. They were very long visits. Most of them didn’t come back. If they did, it was without the baby. They were all dried and pinched. As if they’d had the essence drained out of them. Horrible.’ Maya turned her eyes from me and gave her attention to the window once again. I could see the gum trees and patches of blue through the leaves. With a little shock of recognition I registered her abstraction. ‘Mischa and I met in church, or rather in the church grounds. I’ve always thought that was important. Everyone went to church then. You used to wear your Sunday best and off you’d go. I never minded it, not that I was particularly religious. All your friends were there, and the CWA would serve cake and lamingtons under the eaves in the garden. The men talked politics and wool prices. They all wore hats, you know. The women cut cake and talked recipes and television. Evelyn and I always stood together, pretending we weren’t hot. I liked Sundays because it meant a roast when we got home. ‘That particular Sunday your grandmother asked me to help her serve her chocolate cake. It was hot and the frosting was melting. I didn’t want to get any on my dress. It was pink gingham and I thought it quite the thing. What Suella would call “the business”. Mischa politely accepted some cake. I knew him by sight. After the war there were so many refugees. They arrived by the boatload. Slavs and Italians and Greeks mainly. Mischa was Hungarian. Mostly they stayed near the cities. But some of them went rural, sent to work on things like the Snowy scheme or farm labouring. People were a bit suspicious of them, said not very nice things. Called them reffos, wops. But people needed the labour. It was years after the war but it was still fresh. Too many men had died. Even in our little town 258

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there were a dozen families who’d lost men at the front. ‘Mischa was very tall and quiet. He removed his hat when he approached the trestle table where I was serving. I know it’s an oldfashioned word but he was so gallant. I handed the plate to him. When he took it from me his index finger touched mine. How long can that have taken? A second? Half a second? And I knew.’ She waved her hand slightly in a gesture that encompassed everything. ‘I just knew. It all came together. As though there was an almost audible click in the universe. Everything shifting and moving back into a new place.’ She was quiet a moment, four decades insufficient to have made it explicable to her. ‘That silly film, women’s troubles, nice girls—it all made sense. Just because a tall man, a foreigner from a place I couldn’t point to on a map, had touched my finger. He knew. I knew. Our courtship started in that second. Of course, we were very discreet. We barely met except on Sundays at church. It just wasn’t done then for young people of the opposite sex to talk freely. And that wasn’t all. He was much older than me. Thirty-two when we met. Thirty-three when we married. And a foreigner. His English was good but by no means perfect. Understand, Emily, back then “mixed marriages” were still taken by some to mean relationships between Catholics and Protestants. ‘When Mischa asked for my hand when I was sixteen, it was a scandal. Everyone assumed I was pregnant. Actually, we’d barely kissed. I was as God made me until the day we married. Evelyn’s mother wouldn’t let her speak to me. My parents were horrified. The whole town was gossiping about us.’ ‘Where was that exactly?’ Maya jumped a little at my interruption. ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘The town where you lived—where was it?’ 259

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‘Lyennell. Between Carbudjee and Mount Banks. You wouldn’t remember it. You were too little.’ ‘No,’ I said quietly, ‘I don’t remember.’ But I had flown past it on a train with Lydia trying to block my view. ‘I’m sorry. Please go on.’ I steeled myself to ask no more questions until she was finished. ‘My mother tried to talk me out of it. “He’s not our kind,” she said. My father didn’t like it but he was a decent man—when he saw that we were determined he relented, on condition of a long engagement. We were engaged for more than a year. But because we were engaged and I had the ring on my finger to prove it, it was acceptable for Mischa to call. Those were the rules. It was as if we were providing entertainment for the whole town. It was hard on my mother, now that I think about it. She pretty much stopped leaving the house at one point. But at the time, I didn’t care what anybody thought. Honestly, if the sky had fallen down around me and he was next to me I wouldn’t have cared a fig. It was good that he could come and visit. It meant that we could talk. ‘He had no family left. He’d come here alone on the boat, haunted by memories, though I didn’t find that out until after we were married. Some things you can’t know about someone until you’ve shared a bed. I don’t mean sex. I mean, when they’re sleeping. Everyone’s soul is naked when they sleep. He told me, in an almost matter-of-fact way, that the war had taken his parents, his sisters, his younger brother. There might have been uncles and aunts left, but by the end of the war he was so far from home, so displaced and shell-shocked, he just kept moving. He travelled up and down the coast when he got here, looking for work. He’d laid railway sleepers, done farm labouring, construction. When we married, he worked for the local mechanic. But you know, Emily, there was something almost aristocratic about him. You could cover him from head to toe 260

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in grease and dirt and he still had this air of nobility. You remind me of him—so self-contained, self-sufficient.’ Maya was still talking to the window rather than to me so she didn’t notice how shocked I was. She had barely spoken his name to me, let alone made glowing comparisons between the two of us. ‘If he’d stayed in Hungary, he would have stood in front of the tanks in ’56. He was that sort. I was still in school when that happened, you know. I read about it in the papers. That last broadcast: “The shadows are lengthening across Hungary’s soil”—it made me shiver. But no one had the stomach to do anything. There’d been too much blood in the war. And no one wanted to risk an all-out stoush with the Russians. ‘I tried to talk to Mischa about it but he didn’t want anything to do with his homeland. “I’m Aussie,” he’d say. “True blue.” And he so wasn’t. After we were married we rented a shabby one-bedroom brick and tile. It was all we could afford. Mischa bought this awful orange shag-pile rug and a radio. We used to put the wireless on in the evening and dance on the rug. He picked wildflowers for me in the spring and put them in a middy glass we had. He liked to garden. We had an amazing garden. We grew lots of our own produce. It’s quite trendy to do that now but it was considered a bit embarrassing then. Like an admission that you couldn’t get by. He grew eggplant and basil and lettuce and radishes. I can still see him out there, stripped to the waist, digging into the soil. Sweaty and beautiful. I used to sit on the back steps and watch him. My God, he was a thing to behold. ‘People talked about us even after we were married. Because Mischa wasn’t like other men. He gardened and cooked and picked flowers for his wife. And we thought we were in paradise. When he came home I didn’t see the God-awful rug or the formica table or 261

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that bloody wood-fuelled stove that took the strength of Hercules to operate. There was just us. Dancing. He wanted to be an Australian so we tried to drink beer. Bloody awful stuff. I thought so then and I still think so now. I don’t think he liked it either. And when we retired for the evening . . .’ Her voice trailed off. I was burning with embarrassment. I could feel the heat beaming from my face. But Maya wasn’t looking at me. Her attention was fixed on the past. ‘The only time I ever heard him speak in his own language was when he slept. He had bad dreams. Terrible dreams. He didn’t talk about them much, but sometimes he’d cry out at night. Strange words that I couldn’t understand. I used to pull him to me, cradling his head. I’d stroke his hair and whisper that it was alright. I was there. It soothed him. He’d drift off again, calmer. He told me I was a thing of wonder. Handing me the little posy of wildflowers that he’d picked on his way home: “Maya, you are a thing of wonder to me.” I believed him. I was a thing of wonder. ‘When I fell pregnant with you, it was as if . . . as if God himself had picked us. We thought we couldn’t, you know, because we were married more than six years and were, ahem, active the whole time. When the doctor confirmed it, Mischa was delirious. We bought our own house. Two bedrooms this time. Mischa painted your room himself. It was canary yellow. The pregnancy healed the rift with my parents too. My father used to make you beautiful things—timber chests, intricate mobiles that Mischa hung from the roof. Evelyn, who was married herself by then, started calling again. And I had an easy pregnancy. No sickness. But these cravings—out-of-control cravings. Mischa pickled vegetables in olive oil—capsicum, eggplant, even salted lemons—and I used to devour them by the jar. We’d sit out the back in the evening, always with the radio on, and I’d be 262

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stuffing myself with these pickles. I was eating them faster than he could make them. He used to wipe my mouth with his thumb. “More grease than at work,” he’d say. ‘When you were born I thought Mischa might die from happiness. I was still in hospital—they kept you in longer then—but I heard from Evelyn that Mischa had gone into the church and wept. She looked sort of wistful when she told me, and I realised that half of the gossip about us was envy. Other women weren’t loved the way I was. The way you were. ‘Mischa had a bicycle. Most people had cars by then, of course, but we couldn’t afford one. He used to cycle everywhere. He’d cycle home at lunchtime to see me and play with you. He picked two posies now. One that stood in the beer glass in the lounge room like usual, and one for your room. We were funny about you having a beer glass so we bought you a vase. No money and we bought you a vase for your flowers. ‘It was good for a long while. Mischa still had the dreams occasionally, but things were wonderful. He left the mechanic and started to work in the bank. That was a big thing for an outsider to achieve, you know. We made a bit more money and started to put some by. Mischa had big plans. He wanted to build us our own house and he wanted to take me to Paris. It was like an obsession with him. “Maya, you must see Paris. Paris must see you.” He’d been there before the war, as a student. I really believed that I was going to Paris. You were such a good child, so bright. My parents adored you. Everything was coming together.’ Maya stopped abruptly. She had been calm through most of the story, but now she looked distressed. Her hands were pressed together, the fingers entwined so tightly that her knuckles were white. I wanted to tell her that was enough, I didn’t need more. Yet 263

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I sensed that she couldn’t stop now, even if I asked her to. The tale had acquired its own momentum. If I left the room, she would be compelled to continue. ‘It was when you started school that I noticed the difference. You went early, being so bright, reading already. I thought it best. But he didn’t like you being too far away. He walked you to school in the morning, he walked you home in the afternoon. I told myself it was cute, just another sign of his utter devotion to us. But he started to cycle to the school during lunchtime to check on you. People were talking about us again and this time I couldn’t just dismiss it. The dreams started happening every week, and then every second night. He would be covered in sweat, knotting the bedclothes together with his hands. Crying out. Waking up sobbing. It was a terrible thing to witness.’ Her voice was so low I had to lean forward to hear her. ‘You have to remember, I was still quite young. Younger than you are now. Inexperienced. I didn’t know what to do. The world was changing but people still didn’t talk about that sort of thing then. I didn’t even know what the word for it was. Now it seems every second person has post-traumatic stress or depression or anxiety. It’s no great shame. But it was different then. I couldn’t talk to anyone. Mischa was the person I told everything to and he was slipping away from me. Moving into some dark place and I didn’t know how to bring him back. I’d always been able to before. It was part of what made me a thing of wonder. It was why I had to see Paris. But now, I couldn’t reach him. ‘I’d wake up sometimes and he wouldn’t be in the bed. I’d get up to find him and he’d be asleep on the floor next to your bed or in the doorway to your room. He’d phone in from work asking me to go down to the school to check you were there. I’d try to reason with him and he’d get angry. He never raised his voice, but I could hear it all the 264

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same. He started to leave work. Cycling down to the school and peering into the classroom windows to make sure you were there. ‘Eventually the bank fired him. Then people really started to talk. He didn’t even try to find work again. He wouldn’t listen to me if I brought it up. We got by on our savings and help from my parents. Every day it was like he disappeared a little bit more.’ Maya was speeding up. She shot the words out without inflection to get to the end. ‘I went to my parents and told them everything. I didn’t know what else to do. My father took charge. He made some enquiries and told me that there was a clinic in Mount Banks. He’d phoned them and described Mischa’s behaviour and they wanted to examine him. We agreed it was best that we didn’t tell Mischa what we were up to. ‘I’d never kept a secret from him before. It was as if he sensed it. He became even more agitated. We went days without sleep. He started to speak what I assumed was Hungarian even when he was awake, like he was talking to someone. My father came to pick Mischa up on a Saturday. He had a hell of a time coaxing him into the car. In the end he managed it by saying he was going to Mount Banks to pick out a birthday present for you from the toy store there. You were how they got him into the car.’ She heaved in her breath. I was uncertain what to do. Feeling cowardly, I fell back on the liquor. I poured neat scotch into her glass and handed it to her. She seemed not to see me. I walked the few steps around the coffee table, prised her fingers apart and curled them around the glass. Force of habit carried the drink to her lips and she threw it back. I didn’t return to my seat opposite. I sat down on the floor next to her. I wanted to hold her hand or offer some physical gesture of support but it was so alien I couldn’t. ‘He never came home.’ Tears were pouring down her face, 265

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pooling in the lines that seemed to have materialised in the last hour. Globs of mascara adhered to her cheeks and the corners of her mouth. I hadn’t seen her dishevelled like this since she’d locked herself in her room over the birthday card. ‘The clinic just swallowed him up. They told me he was a danger to himself and they were going to treat him. I went there. I had a fit, screaming at them to let me see my husband. They called my father who came down to get me. They pumped me full of something to keep me calm. This went on for months. I was hysterical apparently. Mischa was in no fit state to be released into my care. I was given a prescription for something and started to drift through the days. We had no money. The savings were gone. My parents were feeding us. You were frightened. I was in a state of near collapse. Time went into a sort of void. When I thought about it later, they must have kept him for about nine months. I was barely hanging on, emotionally, physically, mentally. ‘They sent me a letter advising me that Mr Mischa Trahere had been released from the clinic on Tuesday last. That was it. I phoned them. I went down there. All they could tell me was that he was no longer considered a danger to himself or the community and that he’d been released at nine in the morning and was last seen walking in the direction of the train station. He hadn’t advised them of his intentions. That’s what they said to me: “We were not advised of his intentions.” He wasn’t technically missing so the police wouldn’t touch it. He was just gone. I stayed in the house another six months. Waiting. Every day just waiting.’ I poured scotch into her glass again and helped her carry it to her mouth as her hands were shaking. ‘One day I couldn’t stand it any more. I knew if I sat still for one more second it was going to suck me down and I’d never get up again. I had you to think of. I sold the house. Packed us up. That was it.’ 266

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‘But how did he find us? I mean, he sent me a birthday card. Do you remember?’ She nodded slightly. Mascara was now drying on the crisply ironed pink fabric of her blouse. ‘I don’t know. He sent you four cards. Never anything to me. And never with a forwarding address.’ A sound moved through the room, like the howling of a furious ghost. Maya’s mouth was open. The sound came from her. A quarter of a century of grief and loss tearing through the still air. When the freakish sound stopped she collapsed. I had to practically carry her up the stairs to her room. I remembered the pills Suella had given me and fed her three of them. She took them without enquiry, her gaze unfocused. I wiped the clotted mascara from her face and took off her shoes. She slept for fourteen hours. When she woke I fed her the vegetable soup I’d made. In an eerie repetition of my own experience months before, Maya kept to her bed for three days. I brought her tea and lavender compresses. She lay there, meek and compliant, utterly spent. I found myself waiting for the cobra in her to stir, nervous that it had retreated to prepare for one final battle. But it seemed the serpent was gone. Like me, Maya is still pondering how to furnish the vacated space. I sat by her bed for hours, relighting the oil burner, reading to her and replenishing the teapot. Sometimes, while she slept, I placed a chair near the bay window in her bedroom and watched clouds chase each other across the sky. This must have been how William spent his time during the week we were here after the apocalypse— trooping up and down the stairs with tea and potions, keeping anxious vigil, staring out the window as the sun turned from blazing orange to spitfire red over the bushland. William. All the cells in my body paused in unison when I thought of him, which was constantly. He was in me, waking and sleeping. Terrible, terrible grief was 267

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coming. It stalked the boundaries of my consciousness, ready to throttle my longing with cold, hard loss. But not now. Not yet. I needed to fortify my mother against her grief before I could submit to mine. The hard facts of the story were rendered easily enough. He was a refugee of World War II, alighting here like so many others from ships of unthinkable loss. He was much older than her and she loved him instantly and irrevocably. They were happy, despite some opposition to the match. She navigated him carefully around the rocks of his terrible trauma, each of them surprised by her ability to do so. I was born. He loved me. He wanted above all things to protect me and keep me safe, an urge that tipped him into paranoia. She watched his descent helplessly, eventually entrusting him to the care of doctors. He was released. He did not come back to us. That was it in its baldest form. The most formative years of Maya’s life, and perhaps mine, condensed in one bloodless paragraph. It didn’t mention the grief of it, and did little to explain why, in that little house by the sea, Maya cried herself to sleep every night, unknowingly comforted by visions of my creation. It barely hinted at why she couldn’t speak his name, could scarcely admit his existence for a quarter of a century. The bleached bones of the story dissatisfied me. I wanted the connective tissue, the gristle, the fleshy, nervy reality running through it. I wanted to honour it, and the painful, halting labour of committing it to paper seemed a fitting tribute, like a literary genuflection. It was my first story after the death of the visions. It cost me more to pen a few pages than it had the reams of vision chronicles in my hand-carved box. I hewed away at it for weeks, agonising over each word. Maya had given me the bare outlines that first day. During the 268

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two weeks I stayed with her she gave me the shading and the contours. I think it was a relief for her to finally speak about him. The past was all around me. Fragments of long-forgotten conversations sprang into the air. I was assailed by disembodied sense memories of citrus and olive oil and marzipan. Restored memory assumed tenancy in the grief-coloured spaces left by my visions. William would have seen in this a neat cause and effect, were he with me, and I wished to God he was. I craved his solidity. The firm, unambiguous topography of his mind and body. I bought a new, crisp leatherbound notebook to record it all, but I couldn’t balance my pen comfortably. It felt heavy and awkward. My handwriting sloped first one way and then another, crabbed and close. I had to admit to myself that particular circuit was charred and useless. I tried again with the laptop I’d summarily commandeered from work. The new medium lessened my frustration and my nostalgia for my formerly flowing, spilling narratives. I pecked at the keys, writing and erasing, writing and erasing, so that at the end of a day’s forced labour I sometimes had a hard-won blank page. It was discouraging, but I knew that I had to turn all of the pieces over until I was minutely familiar with them. It was new for me to have to exercise such judgement. The visions had revealed themselves to me whole and inexorable. I was simply their chronicler. Now, I had to make decisions. The evidence needed to be carefully weighed. In the end, I understood why Maya had reached in and twisted out my memory, leaving the airy gaps through which my visions had poured. That was the story I would tell. That was how it was.

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XIX On-road Costs William After the horrible lunch where I railroaded her into listening to me, Katya became a patient ally. I poured all my worry, rage, bewilderment and fear into the tilted ear on her lovely head. I was brutally frank about the ongoing battle in my house. I had to be. I’d bottled everything up for so bloody long that the pressure in my veins was off the charts. If I’d been a pipeline they would have sent out the emergency services. Some days—not often—I was optimistic. Emily would come home from Reiner’s with some vitality, would talk optimistically about ‘resolution’. Then there were the endless, nauseating days when we went round and round the same details, the same information, until I felt I was trapped in a deadening cul-de-sac from which I might never find the exit. There was the endless debate about the use of medications. Emily flat out refused to consider taking anything. It drove me crazy. Once she really went for me about it. 270

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‘I am NOT going on any fucking antidepressants. Do you hear me? I refuse. I have relinquished all agency, all power, all semblance of what it is to be me and I am not going to hand over those last threads of Emily to any fucking quackery.’ I’d never heard Emily use language like that. I’d never seen her really angry before. She was deathly pale, her knuckles clenched. Her eyes were wide, the way they were when she was engrossed by something, but fierce. She looked like she might take a swing at me. I was kind of glad at that moment that I’d never brought up the incident at John’s party. ‘But it might help you even out long enough to get at what’s causing this.’ ‘And if there isn’t a cause, William, what then? Have you thought of that? That this great kernel of determinism might not exist. Sometimes you are such a fucking engineer. This could just be something that happened. And just as it’s something that happened it might be something that stops.’ ‘Or not,’ I said. She turned then and lurched, like a drunk, to the window facing the bay, spread her arms along the ledge and pressed her pale cheek up against the glass. ‘You could leave,’ she said softly; so softly that I had to ask her to repeat it. ‘You could leave. No one could blame you. I wouldn’t blame you.’ I wished I could see her face as she said this but she kept her back to me. ‘I don’t want to leave you, Emily. I want my life to be with you. I’ve made that choice. I stand by it. It’s a good choice. But I want our lives to be happy lives. Together. I want us to work through this, but . . .’ I ran my hand through my hair in exasperation, ‘I need to feel that we’re making progress. That there’s some light at the end 271

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of this tunnel. Not necessarily tomorrow, or next week, or even next year, but that there’s some movement.’ Emily began to cry. Soft whimpering that ran through me like fingernails on a blackboard. I went to her then and pulled her soft, blonde head to my chest and she sobbed until there wasn’t any more water inside. We never spoke about the possibility of ending the relationship again. I related this story to Katya, as I’d come to relate most of my and Emily’s day-to-day intimacies. I didn’t realise it until later, but I was well into the process of mourning my relationship before it was officially over. I can pinpoint the exact moment when I knew that I would leave. I’d been guilted by my boss into attending a work function to celebrate winning a lucrative tender. I stood on the fringes of the conference room, holding my obligatory beer, picking indifferently at the tray of limp sushi that made its way around the room, calculating how long until I could make a discreet exit. The noise of chatter and backslapping around me was deafening and inane. I still can’t believe I used to get off on those things. Someone (probably Lisette) had brought a CD player into the room and it was playing old Van Morrison tunes. The competing effects of chatter and music collected around me like whining mosquitoes. Colleagues and people I’d thought of as friends circled round me. Dom approached me and thanked me for the work I’d done on the tender. He made a big show of shaking my hand and holding onto my shoulder—one of those overblown gestures I’d come to understand signified that all the ‘unpleasantness’ was behind me. John clinked his beer against mine in a grim parody of our former camaraderie. The party got louder and louder. My loneliness and misery magnified with each circuit of the drinks tray 272

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under my nose. Suddenly, I knew it was over. There was nothing more I could give. As I admitted this to myself, I felt a hot wave of relief. I elbowed my way through my inebriated colleagues to the balcony at the far end of the room, flung open the doors and stepped into the circle of smokers huddling under the eaves. They assumed I was drunk as I opened my arms wide and raised my face to the rain. A couple of them laughed and drunkenly mimicked me. I didn’t care. I was celebrating my decision to divorce myself from my life. The plan germinated in my mind as I swung my briefcase into the lift and down to the basement car park. It solidified as I drove through the city and took the turn towards the warehouse where I knew Katya would be rehearsing late. By the time I turned into the visitors car park I had a watertight mental itinerary. I cornered her in the corridor as she came out of rehearsal, all damp-cheeked with strands of cherry-coloured hair plastered against her head. ‘Hey—what’s up? You look awful.’ She touched my jacket. ‘Why are you so wet?’ ‘That doesn’t matter. Is there somewhere we can talk?’ ‘Yeah. Give me a minute.’ She changed into a tracksuit and led me into one of the deserted rehearsal spaces. ‘Here.’ She threw a small towel at me. ‘Cheers.’ I peeled off my jacket and ran the towel over my damp face. It was pointless. I was soaked. We sat and talked in the rehearsal space. It was strange. I felt like there should have been an audience there to vet my performance, to judge me. (Why did I always picture Tash in that role?) ‘I’m leaving Emily. I have to get out. I’m going to pack a bag, get in my car and drive.’ 273

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Katya sat on the stage, both legs out in front of her, pointing and flexing her bare feet. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said softly. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes. It’s her or me. This is my bid for self-preservation.’ She reached into her bag, pulled out a cigarette and lighter and lit up (strictly forbidden in the building—even I knew that). She took a greedy drag and passed it to me. ‘Thanks. Is this going to set off an alarm?’ She pointed to the smoke detectors. ‘We took the batteries out. Everyone comes in here to smoke. Even Rocher. It’s the worst-kept secret at the Academy.’ I inhaled, letting my corrupted lungs fill with smoke. ‘Revolting habit,’ I said, passing the cigarette back to her. ‘You’ll be chaining by the end of the week, trust me. Relationship breakdowns and cigarettes go together like . . . I don’t know. Things that go together. How did Emily take it?’ ‘I haven’t told her.’ ‘You what?’ ‘I haven’t told her. I’m going to leave her a note when she’s at Dr Reiner’s and then I’m getting in the car and I’m going.’ ‘That’s insane, Will.’ She shook her head. ‘And nasty. Emily deserves better than that.’ ‘You’re lecturing me on relationship etiquette?’ ‘I’m not lecturing you, I’m stating a fact. I know it’s not wine and roses between you and Emily right now, but you’ve had five bloody good years together. I think you need to . . . I don’t know . . .’ she waved her fine-boned wrist in the air, ‘honour that.’ ‘Again, Katya, the irony of you pointing this out to me is kind of swamping the moment.’ She gave me a look—hard, world-weary, disappointed. ‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘I’m an arsehole. Don’t give me that look.’ 274

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I stood up and walked to one of the windows facing east. My apartment was out there somewhere. Emily was in it. Maybe waiting for me to get home. Maybe oblivious to the fact that I’d left. ‘There’s no other way, Katya. I’m not strong enough to face her. If I do the decent thing and tell her, I won’t be able to get through it. Believe me, I’ve thought this through. It’s the only way.’ ‘Christ,’ she said again, under her breath. ‘Have you thought about what she’s going to do when you’re gone? Even the practical things, like where she’s going to live and how she’s going to get to her appointments?’ ‘I’ll be gone for at least a month. That’s enough time for her to find somewhere else to live. And if it isn’t, then I’ll go and stay with Andrew or my folks until she gets something. Anyway, Suella and Tash will get her through it,’ I said dryly. Because I’d finally taken the decision to leave I allowed myself to feel the anger. Emily’s friends were there from the get-go. Coming over, phoning up, bringing presents, propping up, catching falls. But not for me. I had no one until I gave Katya a swift kick up the arse to jolt her out of her guilt-induced indifference. Those outbursts of self-righteousness were good for me. I clung to them like kickboards. They kept my head above water, out of the inertia that was ready to suck me down if I let it. ‘Katya, I need to ask you something.’ ‘What is it?’ Her tone was wary. I think she already knew. ‘I want you to come with me. I don’t think I can go by myself. I’m scared of what I might do.’ It was true. When I pictured the road ahead I had a momentary feeling of blankness and then fear. Crushing, brutal fear. I couldn’t face what was out there. ‘You’re asking me to take care of you? Fuck, you really are out of options, aren’t you?’ 275

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‘Yes.’ I stood with my back against the window, watching her take it all in. She shook her head slowly, still unconsciously pointing her toes. I wondered if she did it in her sleep. ‘That would mean leaving Eron, wouldn’t it?’ The other, unspoken things I was asking hung in the air between us, thicker than the cigarette smoke. ‘Yes.’ ‘Fuck.’ She drew her knees into her chest and rested her forehead on them. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. You’re putting me in an impossible position, Will. Fucking impossible.’ ‘I know.’ We were silent for a few moments. Finally she raised her head. ‘How long have we been friends?’ ‘Seventeen years.’ ‘I haven’t been a very good friend.’ ‘No. But I’m not exactly a saint, Katya.’ ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay. When are we leaving?’ ‘The day after tomorrow.’ I spent the next forty-eight hours imprinting Emily’s features on my retinas. I wanted to carry her in me always. I followed her from room to room. I traced her face with my index finger as she leaned against my chest. The old Emily would have instantly homed in on the shift in me. This Emily was blissfully ignorant that I was saying goodbye. When we went to bed that last night I stayed awake for hours to watch her sleeping. It was a good night for her. She wasn’t too restless. I placed her hand across my chest and gently kissed her eyelids. I watched her dress the next morning, drink her coffee and walk down the steps to where Suella sat in her illegally parked car, 276

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arguing with a parking officer. Tash was next to her, trying to calm her down. Suella eventually accepted the ticket with much cursing and exasperation. Emily stood passively on the pavement, waiting for the drama to end so Suella could drive her to Dr Reiner’s. She looked up to see me standing there on the landing and gave me a gentle, rueful smile, as if to say, ‘Situation normal in Suella land.’ The smile flayed me. I raised my hand and waved to her. She waved back and got into the car and they drove off. I packed my bags, left money in one of Emily’s books and placed the letter on our coffee table. I picked up my keys and walked out the door, down the steps, into the car, drove to Eron’s and waited in the driveway while Katya dragged out bag after bag. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, doing a silly cheesecake pose on the hood of my car, indicating her platinum bob. I could see the curtain moving in Eron’s apartment and knew he was watching us. ‘Very subtle,’ I said. I opened the passenger door and ushered her in as quickly and politely as I could. I piled the bags into the back and tore out of the car park. ‘How did he take it?’ ‘Not well. Let’s not talk about it.’ ‘Agreed.’ Our pace was leisurely and unstructured. We didn’t know where we were going and we didn’t care. Each morning I glanced at the map, more to make sure the road kept going than anything else. I discovered a talent for both knowing and not knowing things at the same time. On the second day of our journey I drove along the same road I’d taken the night I drove Emily to her mother’s. We passed within five kilometres of Maya’s house. I was pretty sure that Katya knew this, but, like me, she could sidestep her awareness. As we drove past the turn-off that led to Maya’s, I pointed out the escarpment on the opposite side of the road where they grew grenache 277

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grapes. I reeled off the various restaurants and bars we’d been to that served wine from the region. Katya listened intently, her head tilted resolutely away from the road to Maya’s. By our seventh day on the road we’d hit a strange kind of routine. We stopped at winery restaurants and the cosy, busy cafés in the thriving coastal towns. Six times we detoured into state forests to have obnoxiously loud sex barely out of earshot of picnickers, and once to the edification of two thirteen-year-old girls who had strayed from their parents. I looked up to find them staring at us. We grabbed our clothes and ran naked back to the car, laughing the whole way. We stayed at good hotels where we ordered the best wine available. To the casual observer we were a young couple in the first flush of romance. I made a point of holding doors open for Katya through which she swept appreciatively. Once, I removed the pink rose from the brandy balloon used as a centrepiece on the table and tucked it behind her ear. We didn’t examine these overblown gestures, careful to both remember and forget. I encouraged Katya to talk the whole way. I couldn’t stand silence. It made me feel panicked and brought Emily striding to the front of my mind, banging her fists on the back of my eyeballs. I wanted Katya’s life story right from the start. I wanted to know every single town that she’d lived in (thirteen), the names of all her aunts and uncles (she didn’t know most of them), what her mum did before she married Katya’s father (stenographer in a government department). Sometimes, when her mother was depressed, she would sit very still holding a pencil as if waiting for some obscure dictation. I wanted to know everything. ‘What would you have done if you weren’t a dancer?’ ‘Nothing.’ 278

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‘No, seriously. If dancing wasn’t an option what would you have done?’ ‘I can’t do anything else.’ ‘Okay, but suppose you lost your leg?’ ‘How?’ ‘Fuck, I don’t know. Tragic and deeply improbable accident with a ham grinder.’ There was that burst of champagne-coloured laughter again. ‘If I weren’t a dancer?’ She thought for a long time, staring out the window. ‘I don’t know. I always thought that I was a dancer, you know? Like it was a personality type that just happened to have a profession attached.’ She remained thoughtful, staring out at the road. She wore over-sized sunglasses and a white silk scarf that held back her newly platinum hair. ‘Tell me something about this road, this region,’ I demanded. ‘This hemisphere. This planet.’ She smiled brightly. Good, I thought, come back into the car. Talk to me. ‘You know all my stories.’ ‘I don’t care. Tell me again.’ ‘Soon after I joined Rocher’s company we put in for an arts grant. It was for a tour through rural and regional Australia. Outback towns. Farming communities. You know, the whole “art for the people” thing. We actually got a lot of money from the government and everyone was really excited. Rocher choreographed this quite amazing piece that could be performed anywhere. Remember, we didn’t know how much floor space we’d have at the different venues. What kind of floor. Whether it would be elevated. A whole bunch of unknowns. Rocher was very inventive, putting together related but self-contained pieces that worked in various spaces. So for example, if we showed up and it was a concrete floor we’d drop the 279

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third piece to minimise the risk of injury. If the space was really, really small we’d drop the fifth and go with a solo. Really, it was very clever. ‘It was my first role as a principal so she could have had me jeté in a shearing shed and I’d have been happy. The thing was planned like a major military offensive. It had to be. I mean, three months on the road. Next to no rehearsal time when you’re on the tour. Long hours on a coach so fitness and warming up becomes a problem. Bad food. Sometimes three performances over three nights. Sometimes four days of just straight driving. You know how damn big this country is. I was pretty okay with it. You know my life. I’ve lived everywhere because of my parents. I can pack. Fast. People don’t realise it but there’s a real skill to packing correctly. It all started out happily enough. Everyone in high spirits. We got lots of publicity before we even started out.’ I remembered. The Australian magazine put the principals and Rocher on the front cover. I’d had it framed. It had hung in my office for ages. ‘So off we go and it’s okay at first. A big novelty. Some of these dancers, you know—they’ve done London, New York, but they’ve never lived outside of a city. Everywhere we performed was packed. I mean, we were the biggest thing to hit some of these towns since the rabbit-proof fence. People came from miles, and I mean miles, away. And they were determined to have a good time. The energy was good. People were appreciative that we were there. I think they really wanted to like it. You know? Most people, they were very kind, very welcoming. But they didn’t know what to say in response to the dancing. This one young chap,’ she burst out laughing, all tinkling silver that filled up the car, ‘I think he must’ve been a farmer. He shook my hand and said, “Geez. You’re very bendy.” 280

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‘You know that thing about dance being a universal language? It’s a crock. There are some people, probably lots of them, that don’t speak dance. Tash had a go at me once at one of John’s gatherings about dance being an elitist art form. I said that at least dance didn’t require literacy to be able to engage with it. You can just feel it. Actually, though, I think Tash was probably right.’ I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, willing the story on. Tash was way too close. ‘We were performing in shearing sheds and school yards and community halls, and these people—I mean, they’re good people. Farmers and shearers. You’d get the occasional city-gone-hippy type in their tie-dyeds growing organic produce. But mostly these were people looking for a bootscoot or a B&S. They just didn’t get it. It makes me wonder, you know. The people—I mean the patrons—that come to see us, do they get it because people like Eron tell them they get it? Or do they just go to be seen? Everywhere we went, they served the same watery orange cordial from the same white plastic cups on what I’d swear was the same trestle table. I mean, how is that even possible? It was like the orange cordial conspiracy of rural Australia. ‘By the end of the tour the whole company had adopted a siege mentality. It was like, what do you call that when . . . cabin fever, that’s it. All these little intrigues going on. People changing sides. People not talking to each other. Marathon sulks. Plus, we couldn’t get the right food. Try ordering a chickpea salad with a side of unbuttered rye bread at a truck stop. So we had all these dancers getting fat on hot chicken rolls. Rocher had to change some of the choreography on the fly so none of the guys were injured from having to catch a porker. That’s what she actually called us! The Porkers.’ Katya laughed. I wanted to lean into it. To hide in that raucous, wonderful place. 281

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‘Do you know though, Will, that story has a really fabulous twist. Do you remember Terra?’ ‘Of course.’ It was an Australiana-themed piece that featured Katya. One of Rocher’s protégés came up with it. It was probably the performance that made Katya a star. ‘Do you remember the set?’ ‘Yeah, it was amazing.’ They’d created a sweeping desert scene with costumes of burnt orange and dirt red. Katya nodded. ‘The thing is, a couple of months after we got back from the disastrous outback tour, this little country bumpkin shows up as an apprentice in set and lighting. She saw us in some backwater town and was apparently bedazzled. She packs up, leaves her family and friends and hits the big smoke. Really, she was the sweetest little thing, only about seventeen. So naïve, but tough under it. Worked really hard, eventually got hired by the company and worked as a design assistant on Terra. That set had such power, don’t you think? I think she drew on something from seeing us. Drew on a memory from years ago, like a battery.’ Emily would have loved that story, that idea of drawing on a memory like a battery. It was precisely the kind of phrase that made her give you her whole attention. She’d lean forward, her head bent to one side, those wide eyes swallowing you up. A vision of Emily rose up on the highway in front of me. I sped up to move past it. I didn’t ask Katya if she’d ever told Emily that story. I just hoped she had. When I couldn’t push Emily away through listening to Katya’s stories, we pulled into hotels or forests or bus shelters and I poured it all into her body. Sometimes I felt like Emily was haunting me. 282

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Every stupid tree or restaurant or situation had the potential to suggest her in one way or another. Like the time we stopped at one of the many petrol stations along the way. A drab, utilitarian block, so out of place in the beautiful surroundings. Clear blue sky, bright sunshine and a crisp, clean smell on the chill air. A minivan pulled up and offloaded what looked to be half a dozen kids and their bouncy parents. In they trooped to choose ice-creams. One of the girls—I think she was about eight—applied herself to the treat so quietly, so precisely: peeling off the wrapper in spirals, eating the cone carefully one bite at a time. The gesture was so absorbed and absorbing, it brought Emily screaming into the top of my mind. It made me lose my balance. I wanted to howl like a wild animal, just give myself over to the terrible pain of it. Katya consoled me with the tools at her disposal. She brought her beauty on the road trip like a bandage for my cuts. When I packed, I threw jumpers and pants into a carryall. I didn’t care what I looked like; I just wanted to be out of there. I was amazed to see Katya’s three large bags and a hatbox. ‘How far are you planning on going?’ I’d asked. She smiled at me and patted me playfully on the leg but as the days went on I was grateful for her attention to detail. She made a present of her beauty to me. Each day she dressed carefully. Some days she went in for short dresses or skirts in striking colours. Other days, elegant jackets and knee-high boots. We strode through wineries with all eyes on us. She made a point of turning back and taking my hand when we passed a minibus of celebratory footballers. To the uninitiated, she sought my protection from their appreciative stares. But I knew that far from being shy or inhibited, Katya was passing her tributes straight to me. She resisted winking back at the tall, wealthy, well-suited men in hushed, exclusive restaurants. She didn’t flash even the hint of a 283

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cheeky smile at the bare-chested soccer player in the park who kicked the ball her way and asked if she wanted to be his team’s mascot. He was impossibly lean, brown and young. He doesn’t know yet, I thought. At seventeen or eighteen the hammer hasn’t fallen. You don’t know, can’t possibly imagine, how much it is going to hurt. Katya stopped the ball daintily with her boot and flicked it to me. I managed a full-blooded kick back onto the field. The boy grinned and Katya took my hand. We checked into a hotel each night at around four or five, giving Katya plenty of time to prepare for dinner. Sometimes I perched on the edge of the bath, drinking scotch on the rocks and absorbing myself in her couple of hours of self-homage. She tied her hair up and coated a white mask on her face. She filled the tub to its absolute limit and emptied the entire bottle of complimentary bubble bath into it. She luxuriated, listening to opera. I was invited in for these nightly aquatic indulgences but preferred to watch her perform her rites. She rinsed her face of the gooey white mask and proceeded to slowly, carefully wash herself with a sponge. She gathered bubbles to herself and occasionally sang along to the tinny opera winding its way from the bedside radio. After her bath she coated herself in a weirdly familiar cinnamonscented orange liquid. It was like something I remembered from a dream. She dressed slowly and carefully. The hatbox turned out to be full of underwear. She selected pieces from the rainbow of material and pulled on bras, suspenders, French knickers, camisoles, bustiers, teddies and even an amazing pair of bumless pantyhose studded with diamantés. She stepped into her heels and paraded in front of me, asking for my approval. I nodded my appreciation and she moved to the bathroom mirror and absorbed herself in painting her face. I found it fascinating. Utterly bare of make-up Katya was 284

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stunning. Her skin was preternaturally even and white. I watched her paint and dab and curl and coax and gloss. She brushed along her cheeks and forehead and the planes of her face suddenly stood to attention. No wonder the press always photographed her at opening nights, much to the annoyance of the other principals. She was all impossible angles painted in gold dust. A slick of glossy cherry on her lips. She sprayed her perfume away from her and walked into it, turning herself around. Sometimes, depending on the light, I could make out each globule. She looked like she was twirling in champagne. Each evening she asked me to select an outfit for her. I dived into her bags and pulled out a skin-tight PVC dress; a long, flowing diaphanous white that was almost see-through; an elegant deep blue dress that ran to the floor; a reddish velvet dress that tied with a clasp at the throat. She wore whatever I picked without comment. Although we were staying at the best places, it was low season and our fellow diners were generally dressed in jeans, pullovers and jackets. Katya appeared oblivious to the evening cold, or else it was part of the mortification that she was offering me. When we stepped into the dining room, the chink of porcelain and silverware stopped for a couple of seconds and the background music appeared louder in proportion to the simmer-down in conversation. Katya would look bashfully at the floor and reach for my hand. Or she’d tuck herself under my arm and rest her silver head on my shoulder, looking up at me. Men gave me grudging looks of envy and the curious respect we awarded each other when we recognised universal currency. Women wondered about me, what power I had. They gave me searching looks or tried to strike up conversations. I was flashed more flesh than usual, despite the cold. Occasionally, I was even outright propositioned. 285

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I’d never had Katya so unambiguously close before. Five years ago I would have thought I’d died and gone to heaven. But at that point I was just some guy who kept drinking in order to put off his hangover. I knew that the road trip was an interlude, a little space in which I held my breath and readied myself. On the other side of it, hell was waiting. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of the explanations I was going to have to give. My parents and brothers would be appalled. They’d never entirely approved of Katya and would understand the situation in a very straight-up-and-down way with all the nuance of an afternoon current affairs show— Arsehole Dumps Sick Wife and Responsibilities to Party on with Glamorous Dancer. If they knew I wasn’t serious about Katya in a long-term sense it would make it even worse. I expected that my mum would be very quiet and might even sob. My dad would take me aside and give me a talk about resisting temptation and the joys and benefits of trust and fidelity that would be excruciating for both of us. I had no intention of ducking any of this. I knew it was coming. Work was going to be even worse. I wouldn’t put it past Dom and John to give me a sly grin or even slap my back as I walked past. John would say something like, ‘So, is the latest season at the company as good as the first? Ripening through experience or becoming a little, shall we say, slack?’ I’d want to punch him, but I wouldn’t. I’d touch my finger to my nose and say that a gentleman never tells. I’d probably even pretend to be upset when Katya and I settled back into our particular version of friendship. From Lisette, I expected the silent treatment for a while; which was precisely what I got. Interesting given that she continued to screw our married boss intermittently though she firmly believed she was the victim in that relationship. It was strange to think that all of these people—family, friends, work 286

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acquaintances—had a take on my situation and felt justified in letting me know. And all of them were wrong. Only Katya knew. We didn’t talk about Emily if we could help it. When we had to say her name, we hurried over it, as if it was incidental. But we knew. When Katya stripped for me after dinner, slowly gyrating to the tinny radio, both of us knew that she was pushing Emily from my mind. It was a matter of hydraulics. I was pooling all the blood in my sexual response to cut off memory and loss. I surrendered to lust like falling into a freshly laundered eiderdown. When I steered the car off the highway and Katya straddled me on a dirt track in the national park, we both knew I was summoning my desire to ward off the inevitable. Katya made her body available to me like a living bandage. She refused me nothing, astonishing me sometimes with her complaisance. She, who had been so unpredictable throughout the whole of our relationship, would now, it seemed, do anything. I was grateful to her. I still am. I wouldn’t have got through without her. After dinner one night, we took advantage of the relative balminess to walk through the garden before we turned in. We both carried a brandy balloon. Katya was smoking a thin cigar. We weren’t talking very much. We’d had a great dinner with great wine and knew we had a night of lazy lovemaking ahead of us. Without really thinking, I lifted her hand to my lips to kiss it. I inhaled that heady cinnamon scent of the lotion she wore and suddenly knew why it was familiar. My memory threw me out of that garden and back to the steps of my apartment building. Emily was there in the red dress. I was all primed to pick the frangipani flower from the tree at the base of the stairs. Cinnamon. ‘William? William, are you alright?’ 287

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I felt as if someone twice my size had punched me in the guts. Katya was bending over me, concerned. I reached for her. She helped me to a nearby wrought-iron garden bench and unzipped me. She kneeled on the bench, her back to me, and tucked her long skirts around her waist. I knew that we were being watched by a pair of returning hikers—I could feel their eyes on us. I didn’t care. If I didn’t have her right then I might have smashed the brandy balloon on the bench and opened up my wrists. Katya guided me into her and moved against me. I coiled myself around her and surrendered. It started to rain. I watched the drops pool on her thin, bare arms, her fingers clutching the railing. She was breathing hard. When we were done I was aware of the smell of cigarette smoke and wondered how many people had caught the show. We didn’t hang around to find out. I took Katya’s hand and we sprinted back to our rustic little cabin in the woods. We were both drenched by the time we tumbled through the door. Katya walked to the mini bar and removed the small bottle of scotch. She poured even amounts into the water glasses in the bathroom and handed one to me. There was so much adrenaline coursing through my body I thought I might be sick. I poured the scotch down my throat—one more layer of white noise on top of my longing for Emily. Katya surprised me by kissing me gently, almost maternally, on the forehead. ‘It’ll be alright, William.’ Tears stung in my eyes. ‘It’ll be alright. You need to trust me.’ To my surprise, I found that I did.

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XX Launch Emily The night before I left for Canada, the Summit met at the Crown and Sixpence. The place was already rowdy by six when I arrived. I squeezed through the throng to our reserved table and sat cradling a glass of shiraz (they’d recently sacrificed historical accuracy to begin serving a decent selection of red and white wines) whilst waiting for Suella and Tash. I contentedly sipped my drink, diving in and out of the cross-currents of conversation around me—work colleagues dropped in for a quick drink before heading home, couples enjoying a pre-dinner aperitif, gaggles of undergraduates gleefully arguing and flirting with one another. Mercifully, the apocalypse hadn’t stripped me of my acute auditory power. It was one of the compensations of my exile. I had become a bowerbird collecting the shiny slivers of themselves that people dropped about me. I greedily snatched them up and took them home for my stories. Some of the trinkets—a few pre-owned, some post-apocalypse—would become novels. At the table next to me, two young undergraduates were vying for the attention of a tall man in a beret. I smiled into my wine glass as 289

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the women pretended they weren’t competing whilst each tried to win. I surreptitiously watched the young man under cover of my menu. He wore thin-rimmed spectacles and had precisely cut sideburns that arrowed perfectly into the dimples made when he smiled; which was rarely. He had beautiful hands. I watched the slender, long fingers curled around his beer glass every time he carried it to his mouth. I wondered if he would look back on this moment ten years from now and smile wryly at the cliché of his accoutrements—beret, Guevara-style flapjacket, Lennonesque glasses. Or perhaps these would be remembered as his halcyon days. A time when he had to do so little to attract the kind of fiery attention engulfing him now. They were discussing Foucault. It was enough to make me cringe, but I kept the practised serenity of my features. ‘. . . which is why, in some ways, The Archaeology of Knowledge is a superior text to The History of Sexuality.’ ‘Do you think so? But you miss so much of it in translation, Lizzie. Unless you read him in the language in which he intended to be read, you can’t appreciate the nuances. His use of language is so deliberate.’ The girl waved her cigarette in the air for emphasis. ‘English dilutes Foucault. It diminishes him.’ She took a greedy drag, blew a perfect smoke ring between her friends. The other girl waved the smoke aside. ‘French is passé, Cara. The lingua franca these days is Mandarin.’ The two women stared at each other across the table, smiling thinly. The young man’s brow was furrowed, as if he was earnestly meditating on the silly conversation. He raised his glass to his mouth again, giving me further opportunity to admire those beautiful hands. As he tilted his head to swallow, I met his eyes over the rim of the glass. He was naked for a half second and I saw it all. He hadn’t read Foucault. He hated philosophy. The conversation was boring 290

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him witless. He didn’t speak for fear of betraying his ignorance. They thrilled me to the core, these little moments of truth, of human vulnerability. They were gifts to me. I picked them up and examined them intently, turning them over, smelling them, moving in and through them. When I felt I understood them, I worked them into short stories, trying always to re-create the truth of the encounter. The story I would write much later that night, fighting nerves and trepidation, began to form in my mind. Intuited sensations and scenes sparked through my neural network. My task was to connect the threads into an authentic and viable whole. In my story, the young man with the beautiful hands left the tavern and headed for his tiny bedsit near the university. With the door safely closed, he sloughed off the costume he’d hit on more or less by accident and imitation—the jacket, the glasses that he didn’t need, the beret, the Doc Martens. Lizzie and Cara would have been shocked to see him, pasty-white and a little overweight, lolling on his couch. The lounge room was dark save for the television. He drank beer from a Spiderman mug that he rested on his protruding belly. He was watching Star Trek. He’d seen the episode nine times, but it was one of his favourites. He had the entire collection. When he should have been writing earnest essays on Derrida or Locke or Irigaray he was online in the Trek chatroom. Spock69. He was considered something of an authority in those circles. His argument for the superiority of Picard over Kirk was inspired. He would have excelled in one of the cultural studies courses offered outside the sandstone university. Instead, he laboured over theorists he couldn’t abide in courses he didn’t understand. He got by with a few pat phrases and a silence that he hoped was mysterious. He was lucky to be so tall. It gave him an air of 291

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intellectual credibility. He wondered what he should do about Lizzie and Cara. He’d been lucky so far—they kept each other in a sort of holding pattern. He carefully avoided one-on-one encounters but knew his good fortune would end sooner or later and one of them would corner him. It would be at a party, of this he was certain. She would have drunk goon. There would be little red triangles above her top lip where the wine had stained. She would be making a point with her cigarette (she was always making a point). He would use his precious fallback phrases at certain intervals. But can we ever really be certain of authorial intent? Isn’t the study of the written word itself a kind of intellectual snobbery? How do you operate a moral compass when all perspectives are privileged equally? He wasn’t certain where or how he had alighted on these phrases but he was amazed at and grateful for their efficacy. They were almost magic. He was careful not to use them too often and he’d found a puzzled, almost pained, tone of voice to deliver them. The effect was like a conversational chequered flag. It never failed to send his entourage off into a barrage of words and more words. He knew he was a fraud. He wondered when his luck would run out. I was so intent on the deliciously unfolding narrative that it took me a moment to register the flurry erupting at the table in question. For a moment I thought the girls had broken into open warfare, but no. They had recognised me as the minor literary celebrity I’d become since Jane Goes to Town had been published. They descended on my table. ‘Excuse me, but you’re Emily Trahere, aren’t you? I adored Jane. So empowering. So—’ ‘So visceral,’ Lizzie jumped in. Cara proffered her student diary for my autograph. Lizzie unravelled her bandana and pointed to where she would like me to sign. 292

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‘Cool,’ she said as I handed it back. ‘Thanks.’ She deftly wrapped it around her head with my signature showing. ‘I write myself,’ Cara said earnestly. ‘It’s tough going. So draining. So isolating.’ ‘It can be.’ ‘I’m thinking of starting a writers group at uni. A community of writers. You know, where we can share our stuff and give each other feedback. Try and reach out from the isolation, you know?’ ‘Um-hmm.’ I was glad Tash wasn’t there yet. She couldn’t abide this sort of exchange. ‘Well, thanks, Emily.’ Cara used my name confidentially, as though we were intimates now. ‘Can’t wait for your next book. What’s it about?’ ‘It’s a follow-up to Jane. About beauty.’ It was about Katya. Now that I was a bona fide author there were audiences to be considered. If they had suffered a Jane they would devour a Katya. Beauty unhinges us all. I was increasingly curious about what it did to beauty herself. With William won, would she be happy for a week, a month, six months? And what then? The return to the restless, obsessive quest for the longed-for and dreaded rejection? What a desolate odyssey that must be. Was I wreaking my revenge under cover of respectability? Perhaps there was an element of that. But I had to fashion my tales out of what I found lying around. Besides, beauty belonged to us all. That was part of the deal. ‘Will it be out soon?’ Cara asked. ‘Probably another eighteen months. These things don’t move quickly.’ ‘I’ll look out for it.’ ‘Thank you. And good luck with your writing.’ ‘Cheers.’ She beamed at me and sashayed back to her table. 293

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If I had to put money on it, I’d guess she would never complete a story, much less a novel. But then if someone had suggested to me eighteen months ago that I would have offered myself up to public scrutiny through publication I would have thought it a ludicrous proposition. I finished Jane Goes to Town not because the writing of it held any pleasure for me or because I thought it merited publication, but because the fact of its incompletion troubled me. There was much about me that had changed since the apocalypse, but Hospital Corners Emily had more or less survived. She’d picked her way gingerly out of the rubble and begun marshalling Tash’s apartment into order. The tins were alphabetised. The surfaces were scrubbed. The books were organised into fiction, non-fiction, quartos and journals. Melchior and Peregrine lived atop the television. ‘Gee, Em. Thanks for letting me live with you,’ Tash had observed dryly as the apartment assumed a military-style tidiness. The more routine and order returned to my life, the more the messy, slatternly half-finished endeavour niggled me. It was like a small stone in my shoe that forced me to subtly adjust my gait. When I hesitantly returned to it after sweating out the short story about my parents, it was only six chapters shy of completion. It was ridiculous, I told myself, to feel embarrassed by this unfinished business. Yet it was like a moral failing that I wanted to explain to Suella and Tash despite their complete ignorance of the story’s existence. Annoyed with myself, I struck a compromise: I would type up the last chapters, indifferent to tone and quality, just to finish the piece and seal up the lacuna I kept falling into. It was a fool’s bargain of course, because once in I was beguiled by the promise of an orchestra in complete harmony. Those sentences I was going to carelessly tap out became obsessions. I came to the process like a mortician to a cadaver, trying to make beautiful again what was 294

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now cold and lifeless after having once been so gloriously, palpably alive. It felt clinical and yet was agony. I wondered if most writers proceeded like this: forensic detectives fusing clues together; endlessly sanding back to create a seamless narrative. It was claimed that Sylvia Plath wrote her poetry with the aid of a thesaurus. I had never believed it. Now I understand. It was bloody hard work. It was slow, painful and laborious. You had to fight for those infrequent expansive places of joy and energy that sometimes unfurled in the middle of a sentence. Perhaps I’d cheated all those years in describing my rambles through other people’s castles. The moment of completion of Jane Goes to Town was ecstasy. It took me six months to finish those last chapters. One chapter a month! A spectacular descent from my fevered visionary activity. Regardless of the book’s merit, I felt an overblown sense of triumph. I had produced something from wreckage. It seemed worth celebrating. Shyly I handed the manuscript to Suella. The English language lacks a word that encapsulates surprise, awe, pleasure, pride, volubility and hysterical excitement. When it springs into existence I will use it to describe Suella’s response to my novel. Just shy of a year later, we had the launch party for Jane Goes to Town. Maya travelled from the country to stay with Tash and me. She was nervous and highly strung, girding herself up on my behalf. Unbelievable as it sounds, she was battening down the hatches before the critical onslaught or, even worse, polite indifference as my first literary offering sank without trace. That I could even think Maya capable of empathising with me showed how far we had come. I still wasn’t entirely certain who she was; I kept catching myself on little things, like her reaching into her bag for tissues rather than the pressed linen handkerchief she used to use to delicately dab at eyes frosted with affected laughter or hay fever. 295

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There were also little slivers of spontaneity that caught me off guard, such as a surprisingly chortling laugh. We felt our way cautiously. The boundaries of our intimacy were not yet solidified. We skirted gently around our confidences and the sticky, bloody edges of wounds that were yet to scab over. A few weeks before the launch Maya asked if I would like to see a new modern dance performance under the stars in an open air quarry. There was a moment of old Maya as she threw around words like ‘cutting edge’ and ‘tour de force’ with all the assurance of the long-time arts patron. Then our eyes met and she trailed off midsentence. She looked down at the flyer she was holding, scanned the cast list, pursed her lips slightly and dropped it unceremoniously in the bin. She flicked the switch on the kettle, muttering something about ‘modern dance being incomprehensible anyway’. Suella handled the launch party. The guests received invitations on rectangles of thin red paper embossed with gold lettering. The dress code was ‘sharp/glamorous’. I fretted that it was such an arcane description that everyone would stay at home for fear of getting it wrong. Tash peered dubiously at her hand-delivered invitation. ‘Sharp/Glamorous? What is that, pray tell?’ ‘Think James Bond casino extra,’ Suella said confidently. Suella was determined that I buy something new. ‘Emily, there is nothing in your wardrobe that screams celebration. You are not fronting up to your own launch party wearing jeans and an oversized jacket. I don’t care if I have to stuff you into Collette Dinnigan myself.’ We trooped through a succession of hushed boutiques, Suella flourishing cocktail gowns and evening dresses at me. I didn’t tell her that I was seriously considering wearing the red dress. I took it from its plastic cover at the back of my wardrobe and had it altered to 296

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account for my weight loss. As I had once before, I pulled the dress on and stood before a mirror, willing myself to see with clarity. Of course, the last time I’d done this I was in William’s apartment in our bedroom. Now I was in Tash’s spare room. The contrasting circumstances brought a lump to my throat. I planted myself before the mirror, stilled my mind and steadied my breathing. I looked at myself. There was no denying that I had changed. Some of the changes were at my instigation: the short hair, for instance. I’d walked into the hairdresser’s on a whim, flipped through a magazine and pointed hopefully to a headshot of a miserable-looking woman with tousled, jagged hair. The hairdresser had been more or less able to approximate it, and I, product-assisted, could do a reasonable impersonation of his effort. I’d never owned scales but I’d hazard a guess that by the time of the launch I was perhaps ten kilos lighter than I had been before the apocalypse. It didn’t show so much on my body but my face was much thinner. My eyes appeared too large for my head. It was a source of dark amusement to me that slight acquaintances asked my ‘secret’. I was impishly tempted to detail my three-step plan to involuntary anorexia. One: Loss of most of your oldest, most beloved friends in a terrible accident. Two: Complete mental disintegration. Three: Desertion by your significant other. Of course I never spoke it, although Tash encouraged me to. Instead, I explained my newly acquired swimming and walking habits. I smoothed the folds of the dress around my stomach and hips. Without doubt it was a beautiful object. The moon was high that night and the beads reflected its light, creating a lovely, milky, pearlised glow around me. The dress could have been one of those shining, phosphorescent jellyfish that I’d seen on David Attenborough documentaries. I ran my hands over the fine rivulets on the 297

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bodice. Places where William had once touched me. This was the standard he had planted across the river from where my visions were encamped. It had cost me Lydia and Sylvia, the Arcadios and a Jane who lived elsewhere than on the page. Without this dress I would still be a shaman. But Maya would not have told me why. It seemed fitting to wear the dress to the launch. I didn’t look bad in it, yet I couldn’t bring myself to feel that I looked good in it either. What hadn’t changed was that I would certainly be looked at a good deal if I wore it; a position in space that remained discomfiting for me. I placed the dress back in its protective wrapper. It was like a rich and delicate secret that I wasn’t ready to share for fear of cheapening it through poor expression. Launching myself into the visibility of authorship was challenge enough for now. Besides, if I accepted the avatar I would have to invite the wizard, and that was something I was not ready for. As my visions receded, William came ever more into focus for me. Moments from our time together returned with startling clarity, so vivid they were almost tactile. Some of them were so trivial it seemed odd that my memory had stored them so acutely: William speaking on his mobile phone to his boss, voice modulated and polite whilst performing an obscene gesture with his free hand; William throwing a cushion at Tash during Friday night drinks at our place, though I didn’t remember why; William flipping through a book that Weatherborne had recently published and asking me the meaning of onomatopoeia. Even then, thinking about him in a crowded pub, my breathing quickened. I thought of the first night we’d had sex, the shock of it. Being fully present in my body. Being fully present with someone else in my body. The white exposing light of desire. No visions to disappear into, no torches lighting a narrow path to places of air and fancy. 298

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I focused on my breathing. Smooth, even breaths in and out. Breathe, I told myself. Breathe. The moment passed. I was relieved to have been spared tears. Sometimes, I wasn’t so fortunate. Two weeks before, whilst choosing produce at the local supermarket, I’d been assailed by a memory of William and me on a similar expedition to make eggplant parmesan. We had picked up and examined several of the purple fruit, their skins shiny and leathery. ‘No smell,’ he’d said, holding one to his nose. ‘Eggplant don’t smell.’ ‘No, I guess they don’t.’ He looked dubious. ‘Not sure I trust a vegetable that doesn’t smell.’ ‘It’s a fruit, baby.’ ‘Well then, I definitely don’t trust it. Let’s go to La Comtesse instead.’ ‘No. We’re making eggplant parmesan and you’re going to enjoy it.’ ‘Yes, boss.’ We’d bought suitably aromatic basil and thick slices of mozzarella from our local deli. We drank wine that smelled like frangipani as I chopped and stirred. I cut the eggplant into thin circles, washed them and poured salt on them. Will half suspected me of inventing the word ‘degorged’. The more I protested the word’s veracity, the more suspicious he became. Both of us were quite drunk and found it all very funny. Eventually I rinsed my hands of chopped Roma tomatoes and salt and fetched the dictionary. Before I could find the word he pulled the book from my hand and riffled through it. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘No such word.’ ‘You’re probably not looking in the right place.’ 299

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He stuck his tongue into his cheek, slightly crossed his eyes and spelled the word slowly. ‘D-E-G-O-R-G-E-D. Give it up for the engineer in the room.’ He waved the dictionary above my head, much taller than I. I pretended that I didn’t really care then earnestly jumped for it. That made him laugh even more. The smell of the meal as the last slices of cheese were grilled was heavenly. We ate large portions sitting on cushions on the landing outside even though it was quite cold. A second bottle of wine was opened. It grew dark. The memory roared at me in the fresh produce aisle where I was buying groceries for Tash and me. I could almost feel the heat from William’s skin. As if I might touch his fingertips if I flexed my hand just slightly. The knowledge that I couldn’t made the water pour from my eyes. There, in the supermarket, I spilled over. The grief of it. I didn’t even attempt to choke down on the salt and the mucus and the hot water erupting from wellsprings deep in my body. Embarrassed shoppers reached gingerly across me to pluck avocados from the pile. An elderly woman touched me briefly on the elbow. ‘This too shall pass, dear,’ she whispered. Her touch, so fleeting and foreign, made the sense of loss all the more unbearable. I abandoned my basket on the floor and ran for my car. It was a strange thing, falling in love with someone who was no longer there. My curse was the poorly dubbed life: memory, the moment and imagination out of sync with one another. I had a strong suspicion that I was going to the right place to catch up to the present. Will and I didn’t speak to one another after he left. We’d exchanged a couple of stilted, awkward emails at tax time to share income information with one another. I wondered if it struck him as odd too, this mighty tumble from intimacy to cold practicalities. But 300

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then, could I rightly use the term ‘intimacy’? How much love had there really been between us? Did he run from me or to Katya? At what moment did he fall out of love with me? Could William pinpoint the moment? Had I already exited the stage by John’s party, but continued in character long after the audience had gone home? The irony of me demanding to know what was real and what fanciful in our relationship was not lost on me. William could equally well demand a similar account from me. Indeed, it was this sense of justice that inclined me towards inviting him to the launch. Some part of the physical fact of the book was his. I went so far as to include him on an early version of the guest list before crossing out his name with more decisiveness than I felt. In the end, I let Suella dress me for the launch party. I’d always suspected she had a secret desire to ‘make over’ Tash and me. We gave her a free hand. It was worth it to see her sheer, unbridled enthusiasm as she dunked our hands in creams, filed back our nails and did obscure things with our cuticles and eyebrows. She found me a fairly simple, long, flowing black dress with straps that ran in a V from my cleavage to my neck. They were a thick, stiff material with a row of black sequins either side. I was photographed in the dress, standing next to Maya, for the social pages. It sent Maya into paroxysms of joy. Tash and Suella were resplendent. I saw them every day so was apt to forget how beautiful they were. Tash wore a finely cut indigo blue suit, black boots and silver jewellery. ‘Natasha,’ my mother said, taking her hands when the taxi arrived to pick us up, ‘how elegant you look.’ As she turned to Suella, I could see Maya’s mind recalibrating to find a suitable descriptor. ‘Suella, my dear. What a daring outfit.’ Suella was decked from head to toe in silver sequins. She wore a thin band of sequins in her hair, a skin-tight sequined 301

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minidress and sequined high heels. When she stood up to deliver the launch speech she was like an eloquent disco ball. At the launch party Maya threw herself at the champagne with the same velocity that Suella threw herself at the best-looking of the waiters hired for the event. I didn’t mind on either count. I overheard Maya telling those kind souls that would listen that I was her daughter. ‘You must be very proud.’ ‘Desperately proud. You know my dear friend Mayor Nester remarked to me the other day that there are qualities in Emily’s work that remind her of . . .’ The time that Suella could spare from her determined conquest of the waiter was given to me on the dance floor. We were even able to coax Tash up there after an indecent amount of champagne and a promise that we would dance in the darkest corner we could find. I had a wonderful time but I missed William. I thought he would have been proud of me. I wondered if he ever thought about me. At four in the morning we all piled into a cab and headed home. Tash, Maya and I returned to Tash’s apartment where, far too keyed up to sleep, we stayed up till 7 am drinking tea and scotch. Suella and Lucas (the waiter) went back to Suella’s. To everyone’s surprise, they are still together. He was the reason she gave for arriving late at the Crown and Sixpence. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’ She leaned in to give me a kiss. ‘It’s my fault we’re late. I was with Lucas and so, you know, I left the house late, so I didn’t get to Tash’s work till after five, and then there was traffic and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, how are you?’ I hugged Tash and poured wine for them. Suella removed her scarf to reveal a neck dappled with red and purple. Tash was horrified. 302

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‘For God’s sake, Suella. You look like the main course for a gang of bulimic vampires.’ I winked at Suella. ‘Bulimic vampires from the trailer park.’ Suella laughed guiltily. ‘I know. It’s Lucas. He’s an animal. Sigh.’ She looked dreamily at the ceiling. Tash rolled her eyes. ‘Are you all set, Em?’ ‘I think so. Passport, ticket, visa, money, Dutch courage.’ ‘Maya is picking you up at two, right?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you sure you don’t want us to come to the airport?’ ‘Yes. This is a solo mission.’ ‘Shit, Emily, I’m going to miss you.’ ‘Oh Christ, Suella, don’t start again,’ I said. Suella had been tearing up for weeks at the thought of my leaving. At the previous day’s staff meeting she’d broken down in great heaving sobs. I put down my glass and took my friends’ free hands in mine. ‘It’s just for six months. I’m coming back. I’ll write. You know I will.’ ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help it,’ Suella blubbed. ‘I’m just so depressed. I have this weird feeling that I’ll wake up the morning after you’ve gone and I’ll have forgotten how to walk or something.’ She produced a tissue from her sleeve and blew loudly into it. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. Look what Lucas the Scrumptious bought to cheer me up.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a bodysuit. Oblivious to the appreciative stares of the men near us, she held it up to herself. ‘HELLO, BOYS! Well? What do you think?’ ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ Tash was incredulous. The bodysuit was made from red mesh and PVC and tied at the neck with a thick, rubbery studded collar. ‘It really screams “hey baby, cheer up”. Call me conservative but I would’ve gone with flowers.’ 303

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‘What’s wrong with it?’ Suella said. ‘Are you serious? It has a collar, for God’s sake. Good dog. Sit, Suella.’ Tash shook her head. ‘And to think I was beginning to like him.’ ‘Okay, Tash, you’re amongst friends,’ Suella said. ‘You can take the wig off. I think it’s a sweet gesture.’ ‘Sweet? Sweet?’ Any second now and Tash would be in full adversarial flight. I was going to miss her terribly. ‘Someone wanting to objectify you is not sweet, Suella. It’s demeaning. Isn’t that what we’ve been fighting to overcome for the last three decades?’ ‘I bloody well hope not. Personally, I love being objectified. Not all the time, of course, and not by everyone. But to know that the bloke you’re involved with desires you in a really throw-down kind of way—what the hell’s wrong with that?’ ‘The problem, Suella, is that you can’t control it. Dance on a table just once with your tits out and see how seriously people take you after that. You could’ve been working on a cure for cancer for the last decade and it won’t mean shit. Believe me, I’ve seen it.’ We all knew what Tash was referring to. When she was a junior lawyer a couple of years out from articles, she and a dozen other promising up-and-comers were invited to join a mentoring program. They were paired with Supreme Court judges or QCs and fared quite well from the patronage. All save one young woman, a very competent defence lawyer who, by all accounts, was nicely assembled. The program included twice-yearly parties at an exclusive bar. Tash had sensed an insidious vibe in the air. Wary, she refused the stream of cocktails and champagne foisted on the young lawyers. Her colleague’s radar wasn’t so well honed. She drank rather too much and, encouraged by the group, danced on a table with her sedate skirt hiked up and her blouse unbuttoned. The party, 304

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overwhelmingly men, brayed and bellowed. Tash said it was like observing a ritual slaughter. The woman in question lasted another four days in her job and then moved states. ‘I know what you’re talking about, Tash, and that sucks. But this is me and Lucas behind closed doors in our own lives. Surely the point is that when someone’s, I don’t know, witty or warm or sensitive or quirky or whatever they kind of become sexy to you. They become object because they’re subject.’ She laughed and took a gulp of wine. ‘God—did I just say that? “They become object because they’re subject.” And the Pompous Arse Award for the day goes to Suella. Hooray.’ She launched into her gorgeously infectious cackle, which propelled Tash and me into hysterics too. I wiped my eyes and tried to quell the bubble in my stomach enough to quiz Suella further on this topic. ‘But seriously, how do you know what a man means by this sort of gift?’ ‘Christ. Did the two of you take stupid pills today?’ She fixed us with a mock angry stare. ‘The same way I know anything else. How do I know when Jane Austen is being ironic? Because she’s given me enough information to know what her real position is. If Lucas is a raving misogynist who thinks that women are only good for cleaning and fucking I’m guessing it would have come out by now.’ ‘William bought me a dress once,’ I said. My friends stilled at the mention of his name. ‘What Tash would call a “tits out” number. I was never sure what to make of it. I only wore it once and I felt like I was in a Halloween costume. I think it really upset him that I wouldn’t wear it.’ There was a moment of awkwardness. None of us was truly comfortable with the idea of William, even after two years. The weight of 305

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his absence was like an obnoxious guest whom we ignored in the hope that they’d leave. ‘Was this the red dress, Em?’ Suella asked. ‘Yes. How did you know?’ ‘You took it to that conference in Mount Banks. I packed it up when Will came to get you. It was beautiful.’ ‘Yes. Yes, it was. Is. But strange. Not me.’ Suella thrummed her fingers on the table. None of us knew quite what to say. Tash was the first to square off against the idea of the absent William. ‘I always liked him. I mean, up until the end.’ Suella nodded. ‘Me too. I actually saw him, you know, not long ago. Like all good exes should, he looked like hell. I think he wanted to speak to me but I just freaked and bolted. I knew if I spoke to him I was going to go psycho. Not a good look.’ ‘You don’t need to be angry on my account,’ I said. ‘I don’t need to be. I just am. Frankly I’d like to rip him a new arsehole.’ Tash snorted into her red wine and then descended into a coughing fit. ‘Where in the name of all that is good and holy did you pick up that charming expression?’ Suella shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just made it up. It’s how I feel.’ ‘You needn’t,’ I said again. ‘I mean that. If I don’t feel angry I don’t know why you should have to suffer it.’ ‘How can you not feel angry?’ ‘I don’t know. I have my moments, don’t get me wrong. But I think perhaps there’s just been too much loss for anger. Maya, me being so ill, my father, Will leaving. It’s too big for anger.’ ‘Well, call me petty but I’m glad he looked like shit.’ 306

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Our food arrived. I was ravenous. I’d ordered a steak—medium rare—with a side of baked potato and wilted greens in butter, salt and pepper. Simple, nourishing fare. Perfect. ‘Have I told you that I think you’re really brave, Em?’ Tash asked. ‘I mean, I do. I think you’re brave.’ In truth, I thought I was brave too. In just over forty-eight hours I would be meeting the father I’d last seen more than a quarter of a century ago. We had spoken on the phone once but it was too difficult for both of us. There was a lot of sound but few words. After I’d said my name he was unable to do more than repeat it between sobs. I’d cradled the phone like it was an extension of him. We’d chosen to communicate by email since then. Our messages made for odd reading. We gave each other information about our lives. He was seventy-four years old and, until ten years ago, had worked on the railways, a job that he’d held for fifteen years, criss-crossing the length and breadth of Canada. He lived with a lady called Millicent (always Millicent, never Milly) in a flat in Montreal. He occupied himself with making railway models and belonged to a railway club. He liked schnitzel and European red wine. He sent me some photographs of himself. I stared at them for a long time. I have his deep-set brown eyes. Indeed, there’s very little of Maya in me at all. I must have been a walking reproach to her all these years. I told him about my job, my degree, my love of writing. I told him about Suella and Tash. Once he made a vague reference to Maya, which I interpreted as a request for information. I pondered what to say and then included the following sentences in my email: ‘Maya is well. She volunteers in the local mayor’s office and keeps herself very busy. I see more of her now than I used to.’ It appeared to suffice because he didn’t ask me anything more about her. 307

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Maya was similarly reticent about him, for which I was grateful. It was probably the first selfless thing I’d ever seen her do. I’d decided against staying with Mischa and Millicent (although they’d offered) and had arranged a rental flat a few streets away from their home. I’d reacquainted myself with Richlier and Shields and Munro. I’d organised some work experience with a publishing house, about which I was tremendously excited. Mischa and Millicent were hosting a formal dinner for me a couple of weeks into my visit as they wanted me to meet their friends. I also had the distinct impression that Mischa wanted to show me off. He’d emailed me the menu he was planning—roe on thick black bread, bean goulash, beef stroganoff, linguini. Clearly, I’d inherited more from him than my deep-set brown eyes. Millicent and he had bought themselves new outfits which they were saving for the occasion. I was determined to match their investment. I packed my laundered black dress from the launch party. It was stylish and had positive, even joyful associations. The occasion perhaps called for something a degree or two more complex, though. Something with provenance; something compromised and blooded. Like the rusted, chafing chainmail of a warrior when the bugle sounded to mark the end of battle. I believed I had just the thing.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book took me three years to write and about the same length of time to see through to publication. There are many people who supported me through the sometimes arduous process. First and foremost, an incalculable debt of gratitude to my family: Hazel, Steve and Bex. I love you. To Donnie and Neenz, who taught me so much of what I know about female friendship. They were my sanctuary in the long, dark night of the soul. To the amazing people at Allen & Unwin who believed in the rough-hewn manuscript they first read and challenged me into making it the best book I possibly could: Catherine Milne, Selena Hanet-Hutchins, Jo Paul, Annette Barlow, Ali Lavau, Siobhán Cantrill and Nicola O’Shea. Thank you. To the Marlborough Street Book Group—Sarah T., Evie, Mel, Good Clare, Naughty Clare, Suse, Sarah E., Mands, Kazza and Simone—who combine so elegantly the roles of cheer squad and critics. An especial debt to Mel, who prodded me into ‘coming out’ as an author; Evie, who handed over her kitchen table when I had nowhere to write; Sarah T., who believes in me so fulsomely; and Suse, who talked me through when I fell down. A big shout-out to my colleagues in the Licensing Business Unit of the Department for Planning and Infrastructure, who were so firmly in my corner in sometimes difficult circumstances. Particular 309

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thanks to Dr Neville Binning, Allan Gregory, Rob Leicester, Rita Halton, Carolyn Edwards, Sue Nelmes, Orellie Tylor, Katherine Drakeford, Mike Celenza, Phil Snelling (the Governor) and Cassie Ahearne. And finally, huge thanks to the people who backed me up in their various ways as this book came to fruition: Mykl, Mark H., The Plastic Scene, Marcel, Dion (sorry for kicking you out of your room, Baba Louie!), Austin (my endless source of cuddles), Jaksen, Franny, Liam, Jill Jill, Jason and Santi.

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