What Alice Forgot

Chapter 26

“ A untie Alice! Auntie Alice!”

A boy of about three came running into Alice’s arms.

She automatically lifted his compact body up and whirled him around, while his legs gripped around her hips like a koala. She buried her nose in his dark hair and breathed in the yeasty scent. It was intensely, deliciously familiar. She breathed in again. Was she remembering this little boy? Or some other little boy? Sometimes she thought it might be easier to block her nose to stop these sudden frustrating rushes of memories that evaporated before she could pin down what exactly it was she remembered.

The little boy pressed fat palms on either side of Alice’s face and babbled something incomprehensible, his eyes serious.

“He’s asking if you brought Smarties,” said Olivia. “You always bring him Smarties.”

“Oh, dear,” said Alice.

“You don’t know who he is, do you?” said Madison with happy contempt.

“She does so,” said Olivia.

“It’s our cousin Billy,” said Tom. “Auntie Ella is his mum.”

Nick’s youngest sister had got pregnant! What a scandal! She was fifteen—still at school!

You’re really not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you, Alice? It’s 2008! She’s twenty-five! She’s probably an entirely different person by now.

Although, actually, not that different, because here she came now, unsmilingly pushing her way past people. Ella still had a gothic look about her. White skin, brooding eyes with a lot of black eyeliner, black hair parted in the middle and cut in a sharp-edged bob. She was dressed in a long black skirt, black tights, black ballet flats, and a turtlenecked black jersey with what looked like four or five strings of pearls of varying lengths around her neck. Only Ella could pull off such a look.

“Billy! Come back here,” she said sharply, trying unsuccessfully to peel her son off Alice.

“Ella,” said Alice, while Billy’s legs gripped harder and he buried his head in her neck. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” If she really had to pick a favorite Flake, it would have been Ella. She had been an intense, teary teenager who could dissolve into hysterical giggles, and she liked talking to Alice about clothes and showing her the vintage dresses she’d bought at secondhand shops that cost more to dry-clean than what she’d paid.

“Have you got a problem with me being here?” said Ella.

“What? No, of course not.”

It was the Family Talent Night at Frannie’s retirement village. They were in a wooden-floored hall with glowing red heaters mounted up high along the sides of the room, radiating an intense heat that was making all the visitors peel off cardigans and coats. There were rows of plastic chairs set up in a semicircle in front of a stage with a single microphone looking somehow pathetic in front of fraying red velvet curtains. Underneath the stage was a neat line of walkers of varying sizes, some with ribbons around them to differentiate them, like luggage at the airport.

Along the side of the hall were long trestle tables with white tablecloths laid with urns, tall stacks of Styrofoam cups, and paper plates of egg sandwiches, lamingtons, and pikelets with jam and blobs of cream melting in the heat.

The front rows of chairs were already occupied by village residents. Tiny wizened old ladies with brooches pinned to their best dresses, bent old men with hair carefully combed across spotted scalps, ties knotted beneath V-necked jumpers. The old people didn’t seem to feel the heat.

Alice could see Frannie sitting right in the center row, engaged in what looked like a rather heated conversation with a grinning white-haired man who stood out because he was wearing a shiny polka-dot vest over a white shirt.

“Actually,” said Ella, finally managing to wrench Billy out of Alice’s arms, “it was your mother who rang and asked us to come. She said Dad had stage fright about this performance, which I find hard to believe, but still. The others all refused to come.”

How strange for Barb to ring up Nick’s sisters and actually ask them to do something, as if they were equals.

Alice caught herself.

Well, of course they were equals. What a strange thing to think.

But then, really, deep down (or maybe not even that deep down) she’d always thought of her own family as inferior to Nick’s.

The Love family was from the eastern suburbs. “I rarely cross the Bridge,” Nick’s mother had once told Alice. She sometimes went to the opera on a Friday night, in the same way that Alice’s mother might pop along to Trivia Night at the church hall on a Friday night (and maybe win a meat tray or a fruit box!). The Love family knew people. Important people, like MPs and actresses, doctors and lawyers, and people with names you felt you should know. They were Anglicans and went to church only at Christmas, languidly, as if it were a rather charming little event. Nick and his sisters went to private schools and Sydney Uni. They knew the best bars and the right restaurants. It was sort of like they owned Sydney.

Whereas Alice’s family was from the stodgy northwest, home to happy clappy Christians, middle managers, CPAs, and conveyancers. Alice’s mother rarely crossed the Bridge either, but that was because she didn’t know her way around the city. Catching the train into town was a big event. Alice and Elisabeth went to local Catholic girls’ schools, where the students were expected to become nurses and teachers, not doctors and lawyers. They went to church every Sunday, and local kids played the guitar while the congregation sang along in thin, reedy voices, following the words projected up on the wall above Father’s bald head while the light from the stained-glass windows reflected off his glasses. Alice had often thought it would have been preferable to come from the proper western suburbs. That way she could have been a gritty, tough-talking westie chick. Maybe she would have had a tattoo on her ankle. Or, if only her parents could have been immigrants, with accents. Alice could have been bilingual and her mother could have made her own pasta. Instead, they were just the plain old suburban Jones family. As bland as Weet-Bix.

Until Nick came along and made her feel interesting and exotic.

“So what do you actually confess at confession?” he’d asked once. “Are you allowed to tell?” He’d looked at pictures of Alice in her pleated Catholic-school uniform hanging well past her knees and said into her ear, “I am crazy with lust right now.” He’d sat on Alice’s mother’s floral couch, with a square brown coffee table next to him (the biggest one from the “nest” of coffee tables) with an embroidered doily on top, eating a thickly buttered piece of bun with bright-pink icing and drinking his tea, and said, “When was this house built?” As if their red-brick bungalow deserved such a respectful question! “Nineteen sixty-five,” said Barb. “We paid twelve thousand pounds for it.” Alice had never known that! Nick had given their house a history . He’d nodded along, making some comment about the light fittings, and he was exactly the same as when he was sitting at his mother’s antique dining room table, eating fresh figs and goat cheese and drinking champagne. Alice had felt faint with adoration.

“Will we sit with Daddy when he gets here?” Olivia tugged at Alice’s sleeve. “Will you two sit together? So when I’m dancing, you can say to each other, ‘Oh, that’s our darling daughter. How proud we are!’”

Olivia was dressed in a leotard with a frothy tulle skirt and ballet slippers, ready for her performance. Alice had done her makeup for her, although according to Olivia she hadn’t applied nearly enough.

“Of course we’ll sit together,” said Alice.

“You are the most embarrassing person alive, Olivia,” said Madison.

“No, she’s not,” said Ella, hugging Olivia to her, and then she pulled at the hem of Madison’s long-sleeved dark red top. “That top looks gorgeous on you. I knew it would.”

“It’s my favorite,” said Madison fiercely. “Except Mum always takes ages washing it.”

Alice watched Ella watching Madison and saw how her face softened. It seemed that Nick’s sister loved Alice’s children, and judging by the way Billy was still hopefully trying to grab at Alice’s bag, searching for Smarties, Alice loved her little boy. They were aunties to each other’s children. Even if they hadn’t become stepsisters, they were family. Alice was filled with affection for her.

“You’ve grown up so beautiful and elegant,” said Alice to Ella.

“Is that a joke?” Ella stiffened and her jaw set.

“You might find Mum a bit weird tonight, Auntie Ella,” said Tom. “She’s had a traumatic head injury. I’ve printed some stuff out from the Internet if you want to read it. FYI. That means for your information . You say it when you want to tell somebody something. FYI.”

“Darling Daddy!” cried Olivia.

Nick had just walked in the door of the hall and was scanning the crowd. He was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, his collar unbuttoned, and no tie. He looked like a successful, sexy, older man. A man who made important decisions, who knew his place in the world and no longer dropped toast on his shirt before a presentation.

Nick saw the children first and his face lit up. A second later he saw Alice and his face closed down. He walked toward them and Olivia threw herself into his arms.

“Oh, I’ve missed you three roosters,” said Nick into Olivia’s neck, his voice muffled, while he reached out with one hand to ruffle Tom’s hair and the other to pat Madison on the shoulder.

“Hey, Dad, guess how many kilometers it was from our place to here,” said Tom. “Guess. Go on guess.”

“Umm, fifteen k.”

“Close! Thirteen kilometers. FYI.”

“Hey kid,” said Nick to Ella, using the nickname he’d always given Ella. Ella looked at him adoringly. Nothing had changed there. “And the kid’s kid!” He scooped up Billy into his arms, so he was holding both Olivia and Billy. Billy chortled and repeated, “Kid’s kid! Kid’s kid!”

“How are you, Alice?” His eyes were on the children. He didn’t look at her. Alice was last to be greeted. She was the least-favorite person. He used his polite voice for her.

“I’m well, thank you.” Do not under any circumstances cry. She found herself longing, bizarrely, for Dominick. For someone who liked her best. How horrible it was to be despised. To feel yourself to be despicable.

A familiar quavery voice came over the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, it’s my very great pleasure to welcome you all to the Tranquillity Wood Retirement Village Family Talent Night. Could I ask you all to take your seats?”

“Frannie!” said Olivia.

It was Frannie up onstage, looking rather beautiful in a royal-blue dress and speaking calmly into the microphone, although she was putting on a posh voice.

“She doesn’t look nervous,” said Madison. “If it was me, I would be so nervous talking to all these people, I would probably faint.”

“Me too,” agreed Alice.

Madison curled her lip. “No, you wouldn’t.”

“I would!” protested Alice.

There was some confusion as they all settled into their seats. Madison, Tom, and Olivia all wanted to sit next to their father, and Olivia needed to be at the end of the row so she could be ready to go up when her name was called, and she also wanted Nick and Alice to sit together, while Billy wanted to sit on Alice’s lap, which Ella clearly did not want. She finally gave in and Alice found herself with Madison on one side and Nick on the other, and Billy’s warm little body snuggled into hers. At least he liked her.

Where was Elisabeth? Alice twisted around in her seat to look for her. She was meant to be coming tonight, but maybe she’d changed her mind. Mum had called to say that the blood-test results had been negative and Elisabeth seemed fine, although a little peculiar. “I actually wondered if she was drunk,” Barb had said. Alice still had Dino’s fertility doll in her handbag to give her. Would it just upset her now? But what if she was depriving Elisabeth of its magical powers? She would ask Nick what he thought.

She glanced over at Nick’s stern profile. Could she still ask his opinion on things like that? Maybe not. Maybe he didn’t care.

When the crowd had settled down, Frannie tapped the microphone and said, “Our first act is Mary Barber’s great-granddaughter performing ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow.’”

A little girl in a glittery sequined dress, plastered with makeup (“See, Mummy?” hissed Olivia, leaning forward across Nick to look reproachfully at Alice), strode out onto the stage, shimmying her chest like an aging cabaret singer. “Jesus,” said Nick under his breath. She clasped the microphone with both hands and began to sing, her voice filled with exaggerated emotion, making the audience flinch in unison each time she hit the high notes.

She was followed by tap-dancing grandchildren in top hats and canes, a great-nephew’s magic show (“FYI, I know exactly how he did that,” Tom whispered loudly), and a niece’s gymnastic routine. Ella’s little boy got bored and started a game where he clambered from lap to lap, touching each person on the nose, saying, “Chin,” or touching them on the chin and saying, “Nose,” and then falling about laughing at his own wit.

Finally Frannie said, “Next up, Olivia Love, my own great-granddaughter, performing a routine she choreographed herself called ‘The Butterfly.’”

Alice was terrified. Choreographed it herself ? She’d assumed Olivia would be performing something she’d learned at ballet school. Good Lord, it would probably be dreadful. Her hands were sweaty. It was as if she were going up there herself.

“Hmmmm,” said Olivia without moving.

“Olivia,” said Tom. “It’s your turn .”

“I actually feel a bit sick,” said Olivia.

Nick said, “All the best performers feel sick, sweetie. It’s a sign. It means you’re going to be great.”

“You don’t have to—” began Alice.

Nick put a hand on her arm and Alice stopped.

“As soon as you start, the sick feeling will go away,” he said to Olivia.

“Promise?” Olivia looked up at him trustingly.

“Cross my heart and hope to be killed by a rabid dog.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “You’re so silly, Dad.” She slid down from the chair and marched down the aisle toward the stage, her tulle skirt bobbing. Alice’s heart twisted. She was so little . So alone.

“Have you seen this routine?” whispered Nick, as he adjusted the focus on a tiny silver camera.

“No. Have you?”

“No.” They watched as Olivia climbed the stairs of the stage. Nick said, “I actually feel a bit sick myself.”

“Me too,” said Alice.

Oliva stood in the center of the stage with her head bowed and her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes closed.

Alice massaged her stomach. She could feel the tension emanating from Nick.

The music started. Olivia slowly opened one eye, then the other. She yawned enormously, wriggled and squirmed. She was a caterpillar sleepily emerging from its cocoon. She looked over her shoulder, pretended to catch sight of a wing and her mouth dropped comically.

The audience laughed.

They laughed.

Alice’s daughter was funny! Publicly funny!

Olivia looked over her other shoulder and staggered with delight. She was a butterfly! She fluttered this way and that, trying out her new wings, falling over at first and then finally getting the hang of it.

It was true that she probably wasn’t quite in time with the music, and some of her dance moves were, well, unusual, but her facial expressions were priceless. In Alice’s opinion, and she felt she was being quite objective, there had never been a funnier, cuter performance of a butterfly.

By the time the music had stopped Alice was suffused with pride, her face aching from smiling so much. She looked about at the audience and saw that people were smiling and clapping, clearly charmed, although they were perhaps holding themselves back so as not to make the other performers feel bad (why not a standing ovation, for example?), and she was shocked to see a woman in the middle of checking her mobile phone. How could she have dragged her eyes away from the stage?

“She’s a comic genius,” she whispered to Nick.

Nick lowered the camera, and his face, when he turned to look at her, was filled with identical awe and pleasure.

“Mum. I helped her a bit,” said Madison tentatively.

“Did you?” Alice put her arm around Madison’s shoulder and pulled her close. She lowered her voice. “I bet you helped her a lot. You’re a great big sister. Just like your Auntie Libby was to me.”

Madison looked amazed for a second, and then she smiled that exquisite smile that transformed her face.

“How did I get such talented children?” said Alice, and her voice shook. Why had Madison looked so surprised?

“Comes from their father,” said Nick.

Olivia came dancing back down the aisle and sat up on the chair next to Nick, grinning self-consciously. “Was I good? Was I excellent?”

“You were the best!” said Nick. “Everybody is saying we may as well just pack up our bags and go, now that Olivia Love has performed.”

“Silly,” giggled Olivia.

They sat through another four acts, including a comedy act by someone’s middle-aged daughter that was so incredibly unfunny it was sort of funny, and a little boy who lost his nerve and got stage fright halfway through reciting a Banjo Paterson poem until his grandfather came unsteadily up onstage and held his hand, and they read it together, which made Alice cry.

Frannie walked up to the microphone again. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this has been such a special night and in a moment you can enjoy supper, but we have just one final act for you and I hope you’ll forgive me, but it’s another one of my own family members. Please put your hands together for Barb and Roger performing the salsa!”

The stage went dark. A single spotlight revealed Alice’s mother and Nick’s father in full Latin costumes, standing completely still. Roger had one knee thrust between Barb’s legs, his arm around her waist. Barb was leaning back, exposing her neck. Roger’s head was bowed toward hers, his face dramatic, frowning tremendously.

Nick made a sound like something was stuck in his throat. Ella made a sympathetic choking sound back.

“Grandma and Grandpa look like people on TV,” said Tom happily. “They look famous .”

“They do not,” said Madison.

“They do so.”

“Shhhh,” said Alice and Nick together.

The music started and their parents began to move. They were good in a horrendous sort of way. Swiveling their hips proficiently. Moving in and out of each other’s arms. It was just so mortifyingly sexual —and in front of all these old people!

After five agonizing minutes of dancing, Roger stopped at the microphone while Barb danced around him, flicking up the sides of her skirt and stamping her feet provocatively. Alice could feel an attack of giggles about to sweep over her. What on earth are you doing , Mum?

“Folks!” said Roger in his best plummy radio-announcer voice. The spotlight lit up the beads of sweat on his yellow-tanned forehead. “You may have heard that my lovely wife and I will be offering salsa-dance lessons every second Tuesday. It’s great exercise, and a lot of fun to boot! Now, anybody can do the salsa, and to prove it, I want to invite two people out of the audience who have never salsa-danced before up onto the stage. Let’s see now . . .”

The spotlight began bouncing around the audience. Alice watched the light, hoping Roger had the sense to choose a couple who could actually walk.

The spotlight stopped on Alice and Nick and they both held up their hands to shield their eyes.

“Yes, those two blinking like rabbits in the headlights look like the perfect victims, don’t you think, Barb?” said Roger.

Olivia, Tom, and Madison jumped from their seats like lottery winners. They began pulling at their parents’ arms, shrieking, “Yes, yes! Mum and Dad dance! Come on!”

“No, no! Pick somebody else!” Alice swatted away their hands in a panic. She never, ever volunteered for this sort of thing.

“I think they’d be perfect, Roger,” said Barb from the stage, with a big game-show-hostess smile.

“I’m going to kill them,” said Nick quietly. Then he yelled, “Sorry! Bad back!”

The old people weren’t buying that. They were the ones with arthritis.

“Bad back, my foot!” cried out an old lady.

“Have a go, you mug!”

“Don’t be party poopers!”

“Don’t worry, the sick feeling will go away, Daddy,” said Olivia sweetly.

“Dance, dance, dance!” shouted the old people, stamping their feet with surprising energy.

Nick sighed and stood up. He looked down at Alice. “Let’s just get it over with.”

They walked up onto the stage, Alice pulling self-consciously at her skirt, worried it was riding up at the back. Frannie shrugged from her place in the front row and held up her hands in a “nothing to do with me” gesture.

“Facing each other, please,” said Roger.

Roger stood behind Nick and Barb stood behind Alice. Their parents maneuvered them so that Alice’s hand was on Nick’s shoulder, his around her waist.

“Closer now,” boomed Roger. “Don’t be shy. Now look into each other’s eyes.”

Alice looked miserably up at Nick. His face was blankly polite, as if they were two strangers who had been pulled out of the audience. This was excruciating.

“Come on now, are you a man or a mouse?” Roger clapped his son on the shoulder. “The man has got to take charge! You’re the leader. She’s the follower!”

Nick’s nostril twitched, which meant he was highly irritated.

In a sudden movement, he put his hand on Alice’s lower back and pulled her close to him, frowning masterfully in an over-the-top imitation of his father.

The audience erupted.

“I think we’ve got a natural here, folks!” said Roger. His eyes met Alice’s and seemed to be sending her some sort of kindly message. He was a pompous old twit, but he meant well.

“Okay, light on your toes!” said Barb, demonstrating to Nick. “And forward on your right foot, back with your left foot, rock back onto your right foot, step back with your left foot. Shift your weight to your left foot, step back with your right foot. That’s it! That’s it!”

“And let’s get those hips moving!” cried Roger.

Alice and Nick didn’t dance much in public. Alice was always too self-conscious, and Nick wasn’t fussed either way, but sometimes at home, if they’d had wine with dinner and they had the right sort of CD on while they were packing the dishwasher, they danced in the kitchen. A silly, hamming-it-up dance. It was always Alice who initiated it, because actually, she quite liked to dance, and actually, she wasn’t bad.

She began to move her hips in imitation of her mother, while trying to keep the top half of her body still. The crowd roared its approval and she heard a child, probably Olivia, shout, “Go, Mummy !” Nick laughed. He was stepping on her toes. Barb and Roger were grinning like Cheshire cats. She could hear their children shouting out from the audience.

There was still chemistry. She could feel it in their hands. She could see it in his eyes. Even if it was just a memory of chemistry. There was still something. Alice’s head was dizzy with hope.

The music stopped. “See! Anyone can learn to salsa!” cried Roger as Nick dropped his hands from her waist and turned away.

Elisabeth’s Homework for Jeremy

We were driving to the Family Talent Night when I had a sudden craving for television.

House was on. I needed to see Dr. House being nasty and sarcastic while he diagnosed impossible medical conditions. What would Dr. House say about me? I wish you were more like Dr. House, Jeremy. You’re so nice and polite. It’s annoying. Niceness doesn’t cure anyone. Why don’t you just bring me face-to-face with a few home truths?

“You’re infertile. Get over it,” House would sneer, brandishing his cane, and I’d be shocked and invigorated.

“Can we turn around?” I told Ben.

He didn’t try to change my mind. He is being very gentle and careful at the moment. The adoption application forms have disappeared from the kitchen counter. He’s put them away. Temporarily. I can see the idea still shining in his eyes. He still has hope. Which is exactly the problem. I cannot afford any more hope.

I rang him after I got the blood-test results and when I went to speak, I found no words came out of my mouth, and when he didn’t say anything, I knew he was trying not to cry. You can always tell when he’s trying not to cry. Like he’s fighting off something invisible trying to take over his head.

“We’ll be okay,” he finally said.

No we won’t, I thought. “Yes,” I said.

I almost told him the truth.

Actually, no I didn’t. Not even close.

After House I watched Medium , and then Boston Legal and then Cheaters ! That’s the show where they spy on real people cheating on their spouses and then confront them with television cameras. It’s seedy and gray and trashy. We sure do live in a seedy, gray, trashy world, Jeremy.

It’s possible my mental health is poorly at the moment.

The show was over and the adults were standing around, drinking tea and coffee from paper cups and balancing pikelets on serviettes in the palms of their hands.

A huge gang of grandchildren and great-grandchildren were whooping with joy, racing on wheelchairs down the front of the hall.

“Should they be playing on those?” Alice asked Frannie, trying to be a responsible grown-up, as she saw Madison pushing a chair with Olivia and Tom squished in side by side, their legs stuck straight out in front of them.

“Of course not,” sighed Frannie. “But I think it might be one of our residents running the race.” She pointed to the white-haired man she’d been arguing with earlier who was wearing the shiny polka-dot waistcoat. He was racing along in a wheelchair, spinning the wheels with his hands, yelling, “You can’t catch me!”

Frannie’s lips twitched. “He’s eighty-five going on five.” She paused. “Actually, I might just take some photos for the newsletter.” She hurried off. Nick, Alice, and Ella were left together.

“Well, that was quite a performance.” Ella was carrying Billy, who had his thumb in his mouth, his head draped over her shoulder. She squinted over his head at Nick and Alice as if they were scientific specimens. “That was the last thing I expected to see.”

“Just wanted to show Dad up,” said Nick. He picked up a scone and put the whole thing in his mouth.

“Are you hungry?” asked Alice. She scanned the tables. “Do you want a sandwich? They’ve got curried egg.” Nick liked curried egg sandwiches.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably and glanced at Ella. “No, that’s okay, thanks.”

Ella was now openly staring.

“So how come you’re the only one of the sisters here tonight, Ella?” asked Alice. Normally the Flakes traveled in a pack.

“Well, to be frank, Alice,” said Ella, “they sort of refuse to be in the same room as you.”

Alice flinched. “Goodness.” She wasn’t used to provoking such violent reactions in people, although, then again, she didn’t mind the idea of having such power over the Flakes. It was sort of delicious.

“Ella,” remonstrated Nick.

“I’m just saying it like it is,” said Ella. “I’m trying to stay neutral. Of course, it would help if you gave back Granny Love’s ring, Alice.”

“Oh! That reminds me.” Alice unzipped her handbag, pulled out a jewelry box. “I brought it to give to you tonight. Here it is.”

Nick took the ring slowly. “Thank you.” He held the jewelry case in his palm as if he didn’t know what to do with it and finally stuffed it into the pocket of his suit jacket.

“Well, if it’s that easy,” said Ella, “maybe I should bring up another few issues, like, I don’t know, the financial situation.”

“Ella, this is really none of your business,” said Nick.

“And why are you being such a cow over the custody?”

“Ella, this is not acceptable,” said Nick.

“Moo,” said Alice.

Ella and Nick stared.

Alice recited, “Who says ‘moo’? A cow says ‘moo’!” She smiled. “Sorry. It just came into my head when you said ‘cow.’ ”

Billy lifted his head from Ella’s shoulder, removed his thumb from his mouth, and said, “Moo!” He grinned appreciatively at Alice before replacing his thumb and putting his head back down on Ella’s shoulder again. Ella and Nick seemed lost for words.

“I guess it must come from a book we used to read the children,” said Alice.

It had been happening a lot. Strange words and phrases and lines from songs kept appearing in her head. It seemed that those ten years’ worth of memories had been stuffed in a too-small cupboard at the back of her mind, and every now and then a fragment of nonsense would escape.

Any second now that cupboard door was going to burst open and her head was going to overflow with memories of grief and joy and who knew what else. She didn’t know if she was looking forward to that moment or not.

“I dropped something the other day,” said Alice, “and I said, ‘Oh my dosh.’ And it just sounded so familiar. Oh my dosh.”

“Olivia used to say it when she was little,” said Nick. He smiled. “We all said it for a while. Oh my dosh. I’d forgotten that. Oh my dosh.”

“Am I missing something here?” said Ella.

“Maybe it’s time you got Billy home to bed,” said Nick.

“Right,” said Ella. “Fine. I’ll see you on Sunday.” She kissed Nick on the cheek.

“Sunday?”

“Mother’s Day? Lunch with Mum? She said you were coming.”

“Oh, right. Yes, of course.”

How did Nick handle his social life without Alice? That was her job, telling Nick what he was meant to be doing on the weekend. He must be missing things all over the place.

“Bye, Alice,” said Ella, without making a move to kiss her. The only person in 2008 who didn’t seem intent on plastering her with kisses. She paused. “Thanks for giving back the ring. It means a lot to our family.”

In other words, You are not our family any longer .

“No problem,” said Alice. You’re perfectly welcome to that horrendous ring.

When Ella had gone, Nick looked at Alice and said, “Still haven’t got your memory back, then?”

“Not quite. Any minute now.”

“How are you coping with the children?”

“Fine,” said Alice. No need to mention her daily failures with lost permission notes, unwashed school uniforms, and forgotten homework, or how she didn’t know what to do when they fought with each other over the computer or the PlayStation. “They’re lovely. We made lovely children.”

“I know we did,” said Nick, and his face seemed to collapse. “I know we did.” He paused, as if not sure whether he should speak, and then said, “That’s why the thought of only seeing them on weekends kills me.”

“Oh, that,” said Alice. “Well, if we don’t get back together, then of course we should do the fifty-fifty thing. One week for you. One week for me. Why not?”

“You don’t mean that,” said Nick.

“Of course I do,” said Alice. “I’ll sign something!”

“Fine,” said Nick. “I’ll get my lawyer to draft something. I’ll have it couriered over to you tomorrow.”

“No problem.”

“Once you get your memory back, you’re going to change your mind,” said Nick. He laughed harshly. “And you’re not going to want to get back together, I’d put money on that.”

“Twenty bucks,” said Alice, holding out her hand.

Nick shook her hand. “Done.”

She still loved the feel of his hand holding hers. Wouldn’t her body tell her if she hated him?

“I found out it was Gina’s husband who kissed the woman in the laundry,” said Alice. “Not you.”

“Oh yes, the infamous laundry incident.” Nick smiled at an old lady with a walking stick in one hand attempting to hand around a sagging plate of sandwiches. “Oh, all right, you twisted my arm!” He took a sandwich. Alice noted it was curried egg.

“What did you mean when you said you found it interesting that I thought that was you?” asked Alice, taking a sandwich herself to save it from sliding onto the floor.

“Because I was always saying to you, ‘I’m not Mike Boyle,’” said Nick. Even with his mouth full of sandwich, she could hear the leftover anger in his voice. “You identified so strongly with Gina, it was as if it was happening to you. I said to you, ‘But it wasn’t me.’ You got so caught up in that ‘all men are bastards’ thing.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alice. Her sandwich was ham and mustard, and the taste of mustard was reminding her of something. This constant feeling of fleeting memories was like having a mosquito buzzing in your ear when you’re asleep, and you know that when you turn out the light, it will have vanished, until you lie back down, close your eyes, and then . . . bzzzzzzz .

Nick wiped his serviette across his mouth. “You don’t need to be sorry. It’s all water under the bridge now.” He paused and his eyes went blank, looking back on a shared past that Alice couldn’t see.

He said, “I often think the four of us were too close. We got all tangled up in Mike and Gina’s marriage problems. We caught their divorce. Like a virus.”

“Well, let’s just get better from it,” said Alice. How dare this stupid Mike and Gina come into their lives, spreading their germy marriage problems?

Nick smiled and shook his head. “You sound so . . .” He couldn’t find the right word. Finally he said, “Young.”

After a pause, he continued: “Anyway, it wasn’t just Mike and Gina. That’s too simplistic. Maybe we were too young when we got together. Mmmm. Do you think fame might have gone to Olivia’s head?”

Alice followed his gaze to see Olivia back onstage. She had the microphone held close to her mouth and was doing a grandiose performance of some song they couldn’t hear because the sound was turned off. Tom was on his hands and knees next to her, following the microphone lead back to the power plug. Madison was sitting in the front row of the empty chairs in the audience, next to the white-haired wheelchair-race organizer. They were deep in conversation.

“Tell me a happy memory from the last ten years,” said Alice.

“Alice.”

“Come on. What’s the first thing that comes into your head?”

“Ummm. God. I don’t know. I suppose when the children were born. Is that too obvious an answer? Although not the actual births. I didn’t like the actual births.”

“Didn’t you?” said Alice, disappointed. She’d imagined herself and Nick sobbing and laughing and holding each other while a movie soundtrack played in the background. “Why not?”

“I guess I was in a crazy panic the whole time, and I couldn’t control anything, and I couldn’t help you. I kept doing the wrong thing.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

Nick glanced at Alice, then looked away again quickly.

“And all the blood, and you screaming your head off, and that incompetent obstetrician who didn’t turn up until it was all over with Madison, I was going to knock him out. If it wasn’t for that midwife—she was great, the one we said could have been Melanie Barker’s twin sister.”

He looked distractedly down at his hands. Alice wondered if he knew he was twisting the skin beneath the knuckle on his finger where his wedding ring should have been. It had become a habit of his, fiddling with his ring when he was thinking. Now he was still doing it, even though he wasn’t wearing the ring.

“And when they had to do the emergency cesarean with Olivia”—Nick shoved his hands in his pockets—“I genuinely thought I was having a heart attack.”

“How horrible for you,” said Alice. Although she guessed maybe it hadn’t been a barrel of laughs for her either.

Nick smiled and shook his head in wonder. “I remember, I didn’t want to distract them from you and the baby, you know, like some man in a movie who faints. I thought, I’ll just die discreetly in this corner. I thought you were going to die, too, and the children were going to be orphans. Have I ever told you that before? I must have.”

“I thought we were talking happy memories.” Alice was appalled. Without those memories, it felt like all that blood and screaming were still ahead of her, still to be endured.

“The happy part was when it was all over and quiet, and they left us alone, with the baby all wrapped up, and we could talk about which doctors and nurses we hated, and have a cup of tea, and just look at the baby for the first time. Count their tiny fingers. That new little person. That was—special.” He cleared his throat.

“What’s your saddest memory of the last ten years?” said Alice.

“Oh, I’ve got lots of contenders.” Nick smiled strangely. She couldn’t tell if it was a nasty smile or a sad one. “Take your pick. The day we told the children we were separating. The day I moved out. The night Madison rang me up, sobbing her heart out and begging me to come home.”

All around them people talked and laughed and drank their cups of tea. Alice could feel the warmth from the heaters beating down upon her head. She felt as though the top of her head were melting, softening like chocolate. She imagined Madison on the phone, crying for her dad to come home.

He should have put down the phone and come right home that second, and they should have watched a family video together, snuggled on the couch, eating fish-and-chips. It should have been easy to be happy. There were poor Elisabeth and Ben, desperately trying to have a family, while Nick and Alice had just let theirs fall apart.

She stepped closer to Nick.

“Don’t you think we should try again? For them? For the children? Actually, not just for them. For us. For the old us.”

“Excuse me!” It was another old lady, with a blue-gray perm and a wrinkled, happy face. “You’re Nick and Alice, aren’t you!” She leaned toward them confidentially. “I recognize you from Frannie’s Facebook page. She mentioned that you were separated now, and I just want you to know that I think you two belong together. I could tell it was true love by the way you danced just then!”

“Frannie has photos of us on the Internet?” said Nick.

The old lady turned to Alice. “Have you got your memory back yet, love? You know, a similar thing happened to a friend of mine in 1954. We could not convince her that the war was over. Of course, she ended up forgetting her own name, which I’m sure won’t happen to you.”

“No,” said Alice. “It’s Alice. Alice, Alice.”

“Tell me she doesn’t post photos of the children on the Internet,” said Nick.

“Oh, your children are just beautiful,” said the old lady.

“Great. An open invitation to murderers and pedophiles,” said Nick.

“I’m sure she doesn’t actually invite people to murder the children,” said Alice. “‘Murderers, check out our delicious little victims here!’ ”

“This is serious. Why do you always think bad things can’t happen to us? It’s just like that time you let Olivia go missing at the beach. You’re so blasé.”

“Am I?” said Alice, bemused. Had she really let Olivia go missing?

“We’re not immune from tragedy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Alice, and Nick’s face gave an actual spasm of irritation, as if he’d just been bitten by a mosquito.

“What?” said Alice. “What did I say?”

“Is your sister here?” said the old lady to Alice. “I wanted to tell her that I think she should adopt a baby. There must be lots of lovely babies up for adoption after that cyclone in Burma. Of course, in my day a lot more babies were left on church doorsteps, but that doesn’t seem to happen so much anymore, which is a pity. Oh, there’s your mother!” The old lady spotted Barb, still in her outfit and makeup, holding a clipboard and surrounded by eager old ladies. “I’m going to sign up for salsa! You two have inspired me!”

She tottered off.

“Will you please tell Frannie that I don’t appreciate her putting photos of my children on the Net,” said Nick. That detached, pompous voice was back.

“Tell her yourself!” said Alice. Nick adored Frannie. The old Nick would have been off to accost Frannie for a spirited debate. At family functions they argued about politics and played cards together.

Nick sighed heavily. He massaged his cheeks as if he had a toothache, pushing the flesh up around his eyes, causing them to crease oddly, so that his face looked like a gargoyle.

“Don’t do that,” said Alice, pulling on his arm.

“What?” said Nick. “Jesus, what?”

“Oh my goodness,” said Alice. “How did our relationship get so prickly ?”

“I should go,” said Nick.

“What happened to George and Mildred?” said Alice.

Nick just looked at her blankly.

“The sandstone lions,” Alice reminded him.

“I have no idea,” said Nick.