13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
“Mum,” said Hope, “what in the world have you done to Duncan?” She stared at the mammoth tabby cat, perched like a loaf on the arm of her parents’ couch, wearing what appeared to be a red and yellow polka-dot clown collar.
“Do you like it?” Her mother bustled down the corridor behind her and looked fondly at the epic feline. “It’s to stop him from catching birds. Songbirds see colour much more clearly than his sneaky little brown camouflage.”
“Or,” Hope pointed out, “you could just keep him indoors? He’s a murdering machine.”
“I couldn’t do that to him.” Her mother crossed the living room to run one hand fondly down the cat’s back. “He’s used to his freedom. He’d be so depressed living under house arrest. ”
“I suspect he’s more depressed now,” Hope said. “What with how all the other cats must be laughing at him.”
“What would you know about it?” Her mum gave her an unrepentant smile. “The other owners really should just keep them inside. Tea?”
“Ugh…” Hope sighed. Outdoor cats drove her nuts. Slaughtering native wildlife, beating each other up, spreading diseases, breeding at a ferocious pace, getting hit by cars. Despite the gentle attempts at tough love she tried to dish out to owners, she apparently had no hope if she couldn’t even convince her own mother.
“How’s your week been, honey-bun?” her mother called from the kitchen. “We didn’t get to see you last weekend.”
“No,” she agreed, petting the psychopathic killer on the couch under his soft, fuzzy, little chin. “Bevan was sick and I ended up on call.”
“Anything interesting?” There was a clatter of tea cups over the sound of the kettle boiling.
“A cat lost an eye,” Hope said. “Some mysterious night time injury. Outdoors,” she added pointedly.
“Duncan sleeps indoors at night,” her mother protested from the other room. “It’s our compromise. ”
“I’m sure the small pile of slaughtered finches feel super relieved to know they could just start feeding in the dark.”
“Who taught you to be this relentless?” Her mother handed her a hot steaming cup and sank down next to Duncan with a small huff.
“I learned from the best.” Hope toasted her mother with her cup, then winced as the motion spilled a hot splatter of tea atop her jeans. Renee Sullivan was a carbon copy of Hope, just double the age and triple the size her mother liked to quip. Hope hated when she said that. Her mother was gorgeous, but she lived in a world that hated women taking up space.
“Well, if it’s not my two favourite girls!”
Hope spilled more tea as she almost dropped the cup on the coffee table, getting to her feet to hug her dad.
“What’s happening here?” Hope pulled back from the hug to pat her dad’s face. It was barely a fortnight since she’d been home and in that time, Dave Sullivan had apparently decided to start growing a beard.
“Do you like it?” He beamed. “I’m aiming for lumberjack.”
Hope burst out laughing. Her dad had been an accountant her whole life, a job he happily agreed was terrible for him, and his physique was that of a short man who’d spent decades with desk work being his only form of physical labour.
“You look like Magnus,” she suddenly realised. Magnus had recently started growing his first beard, and right now he and Hope’s dad shared both a similar physique and a new facial hair aesthetic.
“I always said Magnus was a thoroughly handsome guy.” Her dad looked thrilled at the comparison. “You should probably marry him.”
“Gross, Dad! I would have but now I feel weird about it.” Hope screwed up her entire face. Her father pretended to be offended and her mother started laughing.
“How’s Camille though?” she asked.
“Camille? She’s great! She and Prisha are planning a house party actually,” she remembered, flopping back down on the couch and offending Duncan, who leapt up and thundered away. “You’re invited, if you want to come? It’s the house-warming they’ve been talking about for the last three months and are finally getting their shit together to throw.”
“That’s very sweet,” her mother said. “Camille always wants to impress your parents, doesn’t she? ”
“She loves you guys,” Hope agreed. “You’re not like other parents,” she teased them, “you’re the cool parents.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not it,” her mother said wryly. The thing was, Hope kind of meant it. Her parents weren’t showy people, not rich or well-dressed or technically all that successful, but nor were they cold and disapproving like Camille’s parents, or hopelessly disengaged like Flynn’s. They were sweet and supportive and in Hope’s adulthood they’d never felt like anything less than friends. That might be the only child side of her showing, the little precocious kid who’d mostly had adults to chat to growing up. There was a dorkiness to her relationship with her parents but she’d never change it for the world. She’d missed them desperately when they’d left Sydney.
“So you’ll come? It’s next Saturday.”
Her parents exchanged looks. It could go either way. They were homebodies, content in each other’s company and not much for going out. But they loved Hope and they loved her friends.
“What do you bring to a cool kids party?” asked her dad. “Pretty sure our neighbour grows pot?”
The following Saturday, Hope packed three grocery bags full of snacks into the back of her car. It was theoretically overkill, but the combination of Prisha and Camille could go either way. They’d either be intensely excited about this party, with everything elaborately arranged and over the top, or Camille could be sidetracked by a project and Prisha busy with work, the two of them floating happily in their shared little bubble and expecting the party to magically take care of itself. Being that they lived forty-five minutes out of Gold Hill and in the middle of absolutely nowhere, Hope wasn’t going to risk it.
There was a bottle store just half a block up the Main Street, so she left her car in its hard-won supermarket parking spot - ignoring the hundreds of circling cars filled with tourists, all jostling to buy expensive pesto and caviar for their weekend away - and started to walk. The air was crisp and cool and the sun was already tracking in the direction of the horizon, at barely three in the afternoon. The sky was the deepest, most satisfying of blues, delicious scents of food and booze filtering out of the restaurants on Main Street, accompanied by blasts of laughter and conversation. Gold Hill came alive on weekends, and the sounds of dozens of city people finally relaxing could be exhilarating if you were in the right mood for it.
Walking into the bottle store, Hope found herself smiling. Standing next to a wine fridge, staring with intense concentration at a bottle of rosé in her hand, was an incredibly attractive human being she hadn’t seen in some time. Alison, as casually dressed as she was capable of being, in another pair of skintight designer black jeans and a burnished golden-brown knit jumper. Her hair was tied back but currently spilled over her right shoulder as she interrogated the wine like it had committed an offence.
Alison had been impossible to pin down for the last couple of weeks. Hope had messaged her a couple of times: A walk? A coffee? Come join us at the pub? Each time, Alison had been evasive. She’d been tired, she’d been mysteriously busy, she wasn’t in the mood for the pub tonight, thank you. Hope wasn’t especially concerned. She, of all people, knew what it was like to be socially exhausted. Besides, they were still new friends; Alison owed her nothing. Hope crossed the store towards her.
“Oh my god,” she said by way of greeting. “Are you wearing flats? ”
Alison turned quickly. She flinched slightly at Hope materialising before her, lowering the wine bottle abruptly as though she’d been sprung doing something wrong.
“Hi,” she said. Hope swooped in to give her cheek a quick hello kiss, steeling herself against how good Alison always smelled. Expensive, warm and mouth-watering, her perfume slightly smoky and yet deeply feminine. Hope swallowed the excess saliva in her mouth and flicked her eyes down Alison’s body to the unexpected sight of her standing quite levelly on the ground.
“Look at that; I barely had to stand on my tiptoes at all!” She gestured down at Alison’s neat black flats. “We’re practically the same height.”
“Hardly.” Alison looked down her nose at her and Hope laughed.
“What are you up to?” she asked. “In your casual shoes, on a Saturday? ”
“I mean… I’m wine shopping?” Alison said, like the answer was obvious. She seemed stiff, even for Alison.
“Yes, but for what purpose? What event? What are you doing tonight?”
“Some of us just like a quiet night in sometimes.” Alison’s tone was extremely level, not remotely swayed by Hope’s excited energy. “With a glass of wine with our meal.”
“Oh, of course!” Hope remembered suddenly. “It’s a weekend. Gusband time.”
“Gusband?”
“Gay husband? Harry’s up, right?”
Alison’s expression went noticeably flat. For a second, Hope felt weird. Was it the husband word she didn’t like?
“He couldn’t make it this weekend,” Alison said. “Too much work on.”
“Then you’re free!” Hope felt a rush of happiness. She quickly tried to temper it. It was definitely over the top to admit she’d missed this woman’s presence the last couple of weeks. “I mean, sorry about Harry, I know how close you two are. But unless you’re still too busy and too tired and too important to hang out anymore, that means you’re free to drink that with me!” Hope gestured to the wine in Alison’s hand, then leaned in closer with gleeful surprise. “After all, you’re holding a bottle of literally my favourite wine, so if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.”
“I-” Alison glanced down at the bottle like she’d never seen it before, then up at Hope. She looked slightly scattered, like she didn’t know what to say, the most thoroughly un - Alison expression Hope had ever seen cross her face. Hope was even more convinced that her plan was the right one. There was something there, in those grey eyes that made her sure. Alison looked like she damn well needed a friend right now.
Hope made the biggest puppy eyes she was capable of and to her intense satisfaction, Alison visibly wilted. Hope immediately levelled up, adding a convincing pout. Alison’s gaze dropped to her mouth before she quickly jerked it back up, a laugh spilling from her lips and instantly cracking her icy demeanour even as she tried to hide it by rolling her eyes.
“Excellent.” Hope let her pout melt into a wicked grin at her obvious win. An inch could so easily be a mile. “We’re going to need another two of those.” She pushed in beside Alison to open the wine fridge.
“I’m sorry, we need three bottles of wine for our evening?” Alison asked incredulously .
“Yes, of course,” Hope announced. Our evening. “We’re going to a party.”
Getting Alison from the bottle store, all the way out to Camille and Prisha’s home in the hills outside of town was something of a victory in itself. Luckily, Hope always thrived on a challenge. She liked seeing the spark in Alison’s eyes come alive as they sparred - squabbled, some might even say - over Hope’s preferred plan, which was to go there, directly, together in her car.
Alison wanted to go home first, to get changed - probably to put her damn heels back on - and to take her own vehicle to meet her there. Hope knew with absolute clarity that Alison was trying to wriggle out of the whole party altogether, so she all but stamped her foot and stood her ground. Hope could - and did - appreciate a good boundary, but she felt convinced Alison was trying to wall herself off, alone and isolated, and she was determined to figure out why. Alison had been avoiding her, that much was clear, and now Harry wasn’t allowed in either? She remembered the first time she met Alison, all frost and spikes, warning Hope off from the danger of her company.
Alison was trying to put walls up again, but Hope was starting to know this woman and she was pretty sure she could figure out where the footholds were. Besides, needling her when she had her ice queen facades up was so much fun.
“So what did Harry do to piss you off?” she asked as she drove them through the eucalyptus forest out toward the vast grassy plains of north-western Victoria. Alison shot her a look that was just this side of a glare.
“Nothing,” she said. “He’s busy.”
“Harry? The same devoted Harry that sat across the table from me and told me he comes up every single weekend to keep Alison in line?”
“He was joking, obviously. He’s a working barrister, with a big court case lined up all week.”
“Oh, now I know you mean a different Harry. Because the one I met boasted how his underlings do all the hard work and he can do his job in his sleep.”
“Yes, well, he talks a big game. But he’s sixty-four and he needs to rest sometime.”
“He seemed pretty spry to me. And very keen to interrogate me on my intentions ,” she teased Alison now. Harry had in no way used those words but his implications had not been subtle. “I wouldn’t want to face him in a courtroom,” she reflected.
Alison turned her head to look intently out the passenger window, avoiding all eye contact, and Hope smirked a little. She’d liked Harry, with his twinkling eyes and sharp tongue. He’d picked up instantly on the sparks that still hadn’t been extinguished between herself and Alison, a fact that had fascinated her. Was Harry’s gaydar that finely honed - Hope clearly a gay disaster around this woman - or did Harry know something concrete about Alison’s sexuality that she did not? Hope had tried damn hard not to give a thing away, but she might as well have yelled obviously I want to fuck her across the table because Harry had known from the start.
It was probably a frequent occurrence, Hope figured. Harry must have seen an entire procession of humans crumble to their knees around Alison, Hope just the latest in line. Alison had almost visibly squirmed at his teasing though, which Hope found slightly adorable. She would never, ever out another person, especially one so clearly unready for it like Alison, but watching her flush at Harry’s little pokes across the dining table and studiously avoiding her gaze right now did give her a slight thrill. Alison absolutely wasn’t unaffected by her, and even though Hope would stay adamantly on the friendship side of the fence as requested, she liked the little flare of heat this knowledge gave her. She wasn’t alone in this, of that she was sure.
“Seriously,” Hope said, “what happened? Did you kick him out?”
“Hope,” Alison turned back, her eyebrows sky high, “were you just born this nosy? I literally just said he was working.”
“Yes,” agreed Hope. “And I don’t believe you. Because it coincided with you also being mysteriously busy all the time. You’re not subtle when you push people out, are you? ”
Alison was actually just gaping at her now.
“We barely know each other,” she reminded Hope. “It’s entirely obnoxious of you to act like you think you can read me somehow.”
“It’s entirely obnoxious of you to be so easy to read and then get all offended when people read you. ”
Alison glared at her, and Hope mock glared back. She was concentrating on the road again so she didn’t get to see it when Alison snorted out a small laugh, clearly against her own will. Hope struggled to hold in her own grin. There you are, she thought smugly. Found you.
“Oh,” said Alison, as the car pulled up at the end of the long single track gravel road. She’d protested mightily that Hope was all but kidnapping her into the middle of nowhere, as if a small crowd of hipsters and artists might prove dangerous to her safety.
“Told you,” said Hope.
Alison ignored her and got out of the car. Hope followed and for a moment they just stood, side by side, gazing at the vision before them. Hope never tired of this view.
They’d pulled up in the expansive, chipped-rock lot that was the visitor car space. Before them lay a vast open vista, gleaming grasslands of pale gold spread out over gently undulating hillsides under the slowly sinking sun, rippling out to what looked like forever until finally you saw the distant mountains, purple against the sky. To their left was a beautiful sprawling cottage, softly rendered in pale cream earth both inside and out, that Hope could never quite stop herself from stroking, quite in love with the warmth of the straw bale design. The windows and doors were framed with cedar, the gardens under each window no longer bright with flowers at this time of year, but with the remnants of deep red, gold and purple autumn foliage, because even Camille’s gardens were art.
From the other side of the house, voices and laughter spilled. There were already eight other cars in the carpark. Hope led Alison - both of them loaded up with wine and food - into the glowing evening ahead.