Chapter 4
As she waited for a break in the rain, she studied the Federation cottage, seeing it with new eyes.
It looked like a child’s drawing of a house.
One curtained window on either side of a front door under a pretty pitched roof.
It was smaller than she remembered though, and the woodwork had been repainted pink and blue.
Her mum had mentioned it in one of her long monthly emails.
Rose pink and duck-egg blue, she’d written.
Nel had thought it sounded horrendous, but somehow it worked. It gave the cottage a whimsical feel.
She adjusted the rear-view mirror to look at her face.
Her pale skin—which people described as porcelain on a good day—was sallow and dull, and there were dark circles under her blue eyes.
She ran her fingers through her long blunt fringe and contemplated putting on some lip gloss but decided she couldn’t be bothered.
The rain wasn’t getting any lighter so she made a run for it, landing one foot in a deep puddle. When she reached the shelter of the porch, she wiped her wet face with her jumper and pushed off her soggy trainers. She knocked twice and turned the handle.
A sense of deja vu came over her as she stepped inside.
She stood for a moment, absorbing the strange familiarity of the space.
The little table by the door, with a pottery bowl holding keys.
The landscape painting that hung above it.
Even the floorboards, worn down the middle from years of footsteps in and out. It was all exactly the same.
She could hear voices.
‘Hello?’ she called.
‘We’re out the back.’
Nel unclenched her fists and relaxed her shoulders as she followed her mum’s voice to the dining room where she and Lauren sat at the table. The mantel was lined with an eclectic array of bouquets in vases, big and small, bright and sombre.
There was a strange delay as they looked at each other, love and pain and loss unspoken in the space between them.
The air felt thick, heavy, then her mum stood and pulled her into an awkward embrace, pressing Nel’s face into her coarse blonde hair, the floral scent of her shampoo overpowering.
When they parted, Lauren stood up and drew Nel into a tentative hug.
Nel swallowed. ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ she asked, immediately cringing at the inadequacy of the question, but what were the right words for this moment?
Cath shrugged sadly. ‘I just … I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.’ She released a shaky breath, then gestured to Nel’s wet hair. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’
Lauren sighed. ‘Are you hungry?’
Nel nodded. ‘Famished.’
‘I’ll make toasties.’ She picked up two empty mugs and went into the kitchen.
Nel warmed herself by the fire. Through the large window, the rolling green hills to the west were cloaked with misty clouds. In the garden below, her nephews were kicking a soccer ball, oblivious to the rain.
She’d seen them six months ago for the first time since she’d returned from Dublin, when they came through Sydney en route to Fiji.
They’d FaceTimed while she was away, but seeing them in the flesh had been a little confronting.
Archie, who’d been a chubby toddler when they’d farewelled her at Sydney Airport five years ago, was now seven.
Leo, at twelve, had her father’s lanky build and easy confidence.
Nel watched as he kicked a goal and ran the length of the yard in a victory celebration, while Archie’s shoulders slumped in defeat.
She went to the doorway of the lounge room where her fifteen-year-old niece was curled up on the sofa, long legs tucked up to her chest. Her dark hair fell forward obscuring her face, eyes glued to her phone.
‘Hey there, stranger. Remember me?’
Poppy looked up through swollen eyes and flashed Nel a beautiful smile. A sprinkle of tiny freckles covered her nose and cheeks.
‘Auntie Nel! When did you get here?’
‘Just now.’
Nel sat on the arm of the sofa, a soft hand on Poppy’s shoulder.
She felt closer to her niece than anyone else in the family.
Not long after she’d arrived in Dublin, Poppy had emailed asking to interview her for a school project about ‘the person I admire most’.
They’d been emailing back and forth ever since.
‘How are you holding up?’
Poppy’s eyes pooled with tears and Nel pulled her into a tight embrace.
‘How long are you going to stay?’ Poppy asked when they separated.
‘Not sure. About a week, I guess. It’ll depend when the funeral is.’
Poppy nodded and went to speak, but there was a ping from her phone. She smiled as she read the message and started typing a response. Nel gave her shoulder a squeeze and went back to the dining room as Cath returned with a fluffy towel. Nel pulled the elastic from her hair and rubbed it over.
‘Aren’t they cold?’ Nel asked, pointing to Leo and Archie outside.
‘No sense, no feeling,’ Cath said. She had a cliché for every occasion. Nel and Lauren used to roll their eyes behind her back, but now Nel felt a pang of affection.
Cath tapped on the glass and gestured for the boys to come back inside, but Leo shook his head and kicked the ball into the goal while Archie was distracted.
Nel went to the door of the kitchen where Lauren was cutting toasted sandwiches.
‘Do you need a hand?’
‘Nearly done,’ Lauren said.
Nel watched as she arranged the golden triangles on a platter.
Her sister was a younger version of their mother.
She had a tightness about her though, which Nel had noticed was common in excessively fit people.
Her blonde hair was styled in a sleek bob that got shorter and shorter with every passing year.
Nel tried to remember if they’d ever been close.
They were the best of friends when they were little, according to Cath, but it was hard to imagine now.
They were so different. It was as though their parents’ genes had been passed on entirely intact—Cath’s going to Lauren, Rob’s to Nel.
‘I’ll grab some plates,’ Nel said as Lauren carried the platter into the dining room and called the kids.
Once they’d eaten, Nel asked her mum to recount what had happened the day before, trying to make sense of it from a medical perspective.
Cath was a little hazy on the details, understandably, but it seemed that the ambos had found Rob unconscious but still alive, slumped on his desk in a pool of vomit.
They’d started CPR, attached a monitor and tried to shock him three times, but they were unable to bring him back.
While all this was happening, Cath had been wondering why he wasn’t home. When he didn’t answer her calls, she’d driven to the clinic and arrived to see the ambulance parked outside. The paramedics were wheeling him out on a stretcher when she reached the door.
‘God, poor Dad,’ Nel said eventually, wiping away tears as she imagined the panic of her father’s final moments. ‘Do we know when the funeral will be?’
‘Probably Thursday, but it’s not confirmed yet,’ Lauren said, glassy-eyed, as the doorbell rang. ‘We’re meeting with the undertaker tomorrow.’
Lauren went to answer the door, returning moments later with two bouquets of flowers that she laid across the table. She unpinned one of the cards.
‘From the staff of Carrinya High School,’ she read.
She looked at the row of vases on the mantel, tapping a finger on her lips.
‘We’re going to need more vases. I’ll get Steve to bring some of ours.
’ She reached for her phone and typed a message, then looked back at the flowers, frowning.
‘We’ll need to send thankyou cards for these. I’ll start a list.’
Nel didn’t think that was necessary, but she didn’t say so. She reached for the other card on an oversized bunch of dark pink lilies. Sending our condolences at this very difficult time, all our love, Geoff and Faye.
Lauren looked over. ‘Who are those from?’
After a moment, Nel said, ‘The Marshalls.’
There was a charged silence, then Cath said, ‘That’s nice of Faye. Lovely arrangement.’
Nel could feel them watching her. ‘Do you see her much these days, Mum?’ she asked, still looking at the florist’s childish handwriting. The i’s were dotted with little circles.
Cath shook her head. ‘I think she spends most of her time painting.’
‘She’s never been the same since losing Maddie,’ Lauren added. Cath shot her a look, but she carried on. ‘Geoff spends most of his time in Canberra these days, probably even more so, now that he’s taken over the leadership of the National Party. She’s basically alone, poor woman.’
Nel’s heart dropped as she realised she would have to see the Marshalls at the funeral. It was obvious—Geoff had been her father’s best friend since long before he’d been elected to federal parliament—she just hadn’t thought of it until now.
‘What other news is there around town?’ she asked, keen to change the subject.
Cath and Lauren took turns updating her on events in Carrinya.
Marriages and divorces, infidelities and bankruptcies.
Nel leaned back and listened. She had no idea who half the people were, despite their insistence that she would remember so-and-so from such-and-such, but it was a relief to be talking about strangers.
‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I nearly forgot,’ Lauren said, sitting forward. ‘Jimmy’s back!’
‘Jimmy Galatas?’
Lauren nodded. ‘He got transferred back here a couple of months ago.’
Nel pictured her old schoolfriend’s dark curls and wide smile, wondering what had brought him back to town.
Last she’d heard, he was married and living in Wollongong.
She was about to ask more questions but there were footsteps in the hallway and Steve appeared, holding a wine box. Raindrops beaded on his glasses.
‘I brought vases and wine,’ he announced, then he saw Nel and smiled. ‘Hello, Nel.’ He put down the box and kissed her cheek. ‘I’m so sorry about your dad.’ He said this with such genuine feeling that Nel felt like she might cry and could only nod in response.
Lauren took a tall vase out of the box and began unwrapping the lilies. Cath reached for a bottle of red.
‘Is it too early for a glass?’ she asked, holding up the bottle and glancing at the clock.
There was a surreal feel to the afternoon, as though they were in a bubble, where time was suspended and the real world outside the front door was on a different plane altogether.
As it got dark, they turned on lights and the house was filled with a warm yellow glow.
Leo and Archie returned from the garden, their lips blue. Lauren ran them a bath.
An hour later the kids were watching YouTube in the lounge room, tummies full of Hawaiian pizza, while the adults sat at the dining table among the empty boxes.
They toasted Rob as they started a second bottle, a nice pinot that Cath had selected from his makeshift cellar under the house.
It felt like a fitting tribute to her poor dad who had died with an extensive wine collection he would never get to enjoy.
The conversation swung between heaviness and lightness, tears and laughter.
‘How about when he got roped into being Santa at the primary school Christmas concert and the kids mobbed him?’ Lauren said.
‘They pulled off his beard!’ Steve laughed. ‘I had to escort him to the staffroom, like a bodyguard.’
‘Poor Rob, he was quite shaken. Who would have thought a bunch of little kids could be so terrifying?’ Cath said.
They all laughed. Nel smiled, picturing the scene, and felt suddenly overwhelmed with regret. She’d missed so much. Why had she assumed there were decades ahead? She excused herself and went to the bathroom where she splashed water onto her face.
As she walked back down the hall towards the dining room, she could see Lauren looking intently at their mother.
‘… you need to ask her, Mum,’ she was saying in a forceful undertone.
Nel stood at the doorway, listening.
‘Not yet,’ Cath replied.
Lauren sighed. ‘When, then?’
‘Leave it, Lauren,’ she heard Steve’s deeper voice say.
Nel cleared her throat and stepped into the room. ‘What do you need to ask me?’
Cath shot Lauren a look, clearly annoyed. ‘Nothing. We’ll talk about it later.’