12
I AM ABOUT to apply my tooth-whitening strips when I hear a quiet but insistent knocking.
I walk out of my room and see four faces at the glass of the front door. Mum, Dad, Bobbi and Jean. All wearing pyjamas.
‘What’s wrong?’ I say, opening the door.
‘Hello, darling,’ Mum says. ‘You wouldn’t believe it.’
‘Our house has a gas leak,’ Bobbi says.
‘What ?’
‘We all went to bed, and we smelt gas,’ Mum says.
‘Don’t make the obvious joke, no one has the capacity for it right now. Tensions have been running high,’ Jean says to me.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘Exactly what we said: we smelt gas in the kitchen. We couldn’t find a source, so we grabbed our stuff and got out.’
‘I think I could have fixed it, but they wouldn’t let me pull the oven out from the wall,’ Dad says.
‘Did you call the fire brigade?’ I ask.
‘We called the Airbnb owner and they are coming out to deal with it,’ Bobbi says.
‘Meanwhile, darling, we’re staying here tonight,’ Mum says.
‘Oh.’
At this moment, Joel opens his bedroom door, carrying his toothbrush. He looks startled and then slightly terrified at the sight of everyone. In their dressing gowns, Mum, Bobbi and Jean look like a coven of witches, and all three look at him with furrowed brows.
‘Hello,’ he says.
‘Their house has a gas leak,’ I say. ‘Don’t make the obvious joke.’
‘What’s the obvious joke?’ he says.
‘Never mind.’
‘Well I’m sorry to hear that,’ he says.
‘They’re going to stay here tonight.’
‘Sounds good,’ he says, backing into his room. ‘Goodnight everyone!’ He shuts his bedroom door quickly. Coward.
‘The gentlemanly thing to do would be to offer his bed to three old ladies in need,’ Mum says.
‘You’re old ladies now?’ I say. ‘Last week, you were freaking out when someone asked you for a seniors card.’
‘Context matters, darling. At midnight, we’re old. And he’s young.’
‘He can’t give you his bed.’
‘Why not?’
‘Bianca is unwell.’
Bobbi gasps.
‘No. Well we can’t stay here then, we’ll all get sick.’
‘It’s not contagious,’ I say.
‘Did she drink too much?’ Mum asks, looking interested.
‘No.’
‘Oh, some kind of existing condition?’ Jean says, her doctor hat on.
‘Yes, something like that.’
‘What exactly?’ Bobbi asks.
‘It’s a private thing.’ This is the wrong thing to say.
‘You can tell us,’ Mum says. ‘Jean’s a doctor.’
‘I’d rather not,’ I say, walking towards Mac’s bedroom. Hayley needs her sleep, I’m not going to wake her if I can help it. Which leaves me with Mac as the only option.
I knock on his door. For some reason, Mum, Bobbi and Jean have all followed me down the hall and are hovering behind me. Dad has already plonked himself on the reclining armchair. He’ll be asleep in two minutes.
‘Come in,’ Mac says.
I open the door. He’s sitting in bed, reading my book. He smiles at me.
‘Oh, hello, I knew you’d change your mind and—’
‘No, no, my mum is here,’ I say, talking over him as loudly as possible and holding up my hands because I am terrified of what he is about to say in front of the mums.
‘There was a gas leak at their house and they need to stay here.’
‘Oh shit,’ he says.
I notice he is about three chapters into my book already.
‘So, um, I was wondering if you would consider sleeping in one of the bunk beds tonight and giving Bobbi and Jean your bed?’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t ask except Jean has a bad hip and Bobbi has a shoulder thing—’
‘Anna, we don’t need to give him our full medical records,’ Bobbi says, as if they hadn’t moments before been prying into Bianca’s.
‘I’m just giving him the full picture, because I know he’s very against sleeping in a bunk bed,’ I say.
He makes a face at me.
‘I’m happy to sleep in a bunk bed,’ he says. ‘Or on the couch, if your mum would prefer a bed.’ His voice is back to the formal tone I noticed he used around the mums before.
‘No, I better take the couch, Anna’s father is sleeping out there too, and he snores, and I have ear plugs,’ Mum says.
‘The couch looks comfier anyway,’ I say. ‘The mattress on the bunks is very thin.’
‘Let me just pack up my stuff,’ Mac says.
‘Thank you,’ Bobbi and Jean chorus. He nods to them.
Bobbi, Mum, Jean and I start setting up the couch for Mum. As predicted, Dad is already dozing off in the recliner.
Mac walks past with his bags and his suit, and dumps his things in my room.
‘All good,’ he says.
‘Thank you, we do very much appreciate it,’ Jean says.
‘Not a problem,’ Mac says.
‘Okay, I’m going to bed,’ I say to the mums.
I shut the door to the bedroom and find Mac lying in the bottom bunk, still reading my book.
‘I’m in the bottom,’ I say.
‘I am worried about the top bunk holding my weight,’ he says. ‘Imagine if it collapsed on you in the night.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I say, but of course, I cannot sleep on the bottom bunk now he’s put that idea in my head, which he surely knows. ‘All right, I’ll take the top. Do you want to keep reading or turn off the light?’
‘We can turn off the light.’
‘Okay.’
I switch it off, and gingerly climb the rickety ladder in the darkness. I lie down and stare at the ceiling. I haven’t been in a top bunk in a very long time. I feel dizzy. I’m too old for this. I don’t love heights at the best of times and now it’s dark, I feel like I have vertigo. If I fall off the bed in the night, will I die or just be badly injured? I should ask Jean the likelihood of death when falling from a top bunk while sleeping.
Mac is silent below me, which annoys me. He’s probably comfortable. He’s probably asleep already. He has read up to page thirty-seven of my book, I noted. And he’s saying nothing about it? That feels rude.
‘You okay up there?’ he says.
‘Fine.’
‘A lot of tossing and turning.’
‘Just trying to get comfortable.’
‘Well, just so you know, I am jolted with every movement.’
‘Do you want to strap me down so I don’t move at all?’
‘Yes, if you’re open to that kind of thing.’
‘Is that sexual innuendo?’
‘No.’
‘We are sharing a room. You got your wish.’
‘It is not my wish to do anything in this bunk bed. Unless you want to.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Absolutely not?’
‘The hammock was an anomaly. Caused by the full moon.’
‘Oh, the full moon. Of course. What about the bathroom?’
‘Also the full moon.’
This is leading exactly where I don’t want to go. I am already wondering if I can fit into the bed below. I can’t. Well, I probably can. And there’s the floor. No. My parents are out there a few metres on the other side of the door. But every time I close my eyes, there he is, kissing me, his hands sliding down my back, hoisting me onto the bathroom bench, blowing out the smoke, saying ‘Let me show you’ in the sexiest version of his sexy voice. It’s all on a pleasure loop in my brain.
There’s something pushing my mattress under me. He’s pushing it with his foot, I realise.
‘Yes?’ I say.
‘I like your book.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s funny.’
‘Thank you. It’s meant to be darkly comic, but I don’t know if everyone gets that.’
‘I laughed out loud.’
‘Oh. Good.’
There’s a beat of silence.
‘Do you read a lot?’ I ask. I need to gauge how seriously to take his feedback.
‘I do,’ he says.
‘Really?’ I turn onto my side, and the bed squeaks. ‘Fiction?’
‘Yes. I am insulted that you sound surprised,’ he says.
‘Luke never mentioned it, that’s all.’
‘Does Luke give you a list of everyone he knows who reads?’
‘No. But he works with a woman who reads a lot, and his mum reads a bit, and the fact I know that does kind of make me think he does tell me about every reader in his life. Plus, you know, Hayley’s mother runs a bookshop. We’re very invested in books. As a group.’
‘Well, I read. Luke maybe doesn’t know because he and I aren’t really in each other’s daily lives anymore.’
‘Oh.’
‘I mean, we’re friends, for life, obviously. He just doesn’t see me day to day.’
‘Who sees you day to day?’
‘Oh. Well. I don’t know. I’ve made a pretty good group of friends in New York over the last year. And a guy I worked with in LA, we still talk a lot.’
‘What about girlfriends?’
‘What about them?’
‘Who has been your most serious relationship?’
Luke has mentioned that Mac doesn’t do relationships. Or that he doesn’t do well at relationships. Or doesn’t have time for relationships. I can’t remember which way it was now.
‘Her name was Fern. We went out for about eighteen months.’
‘Fern. I like that name. Why did you break up?’
‘She moved away. We tried long distance and it didn’t work.’
‘And you didn’t want to move to her city?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘And she left yours.’
‘She was English, an actress, and she moved back to London. We’d been living in LA, and she hated it.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I am picturing her, Fern, a beautiful English actress, with an impossibly posh accent, a hatred of hot weather, stylish but sensible shoes, expensive wool jackets.
‘It’s okay. It wasn’t the best relationship anyway.’
‘Would you get back together, if she changed her mind?’
‘She’s married now. And no.’
‘Oh. Is that why you were saying that it was hard to be here, at the wedding?’
‘No.’
I wait, to see if he’ll tell me.
‘It’s not the wedding. It’s nothing to do with weddings. It was hard to come here because I haven’t been back to Australia since my mum died. Six years ago.’
‘Oh. I’m really sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘I know. Trust me. My family lets me know constantly.’
‘Why haven’t you been back?’
‘Work. There’s always something with work.’
‘Right.’
‘And, I didn’t want to, I guess.’
I want to ask him so many more questions, but I can’t just go digging into his grief.
‘So how has it been, being back?’ I ask.
He doesn’t answer, for so long that I think maybe he’s fallen asleep.
‘Terrible,’ he says finally. ‘I hate it here without her.’
And after that we don’t say any more.