Chapter 7
NOW
I plastered a smile on my face and walked into Nick and Stella’s house.
Mum’s birthday party was in full swing, and by that I mean my extended family were all milling around the Nancy Meyers–inspired kitchen.
Even though this wasn’t the house that my brother, Nick, and I had grown up in, it had a similar energy – it felt like the house was humming with warmth and care because it had absorbed all the energy of a very capable woman.
I put the cake on the bench then picked up my niece Evie, who’d been the first to notice me arrive, because nothing escaped her, ever. I spun her around, her sparkling dress twirling behind her.
‘Who invited a fairy?’ I asked. Evie was two parts exhausting to one part adorable. A few hours with her was better than any sleeping pill on earth. And yet just one of her twinkly smiles made my ovaries do somersaults.
‘I’m not a fairy, I’m Evie,’ she replied.
‘Oh, am I a fairy then?’ I asked.
‘No, you’re my grandma!’ she said. I really needed to get on to some preventative Botox. Though at thirty-three, would it still be preventative?
‘She’s obsessed with your mum, so “grandma” is her highest form of praise,’ Stella said, giving me a kiss as she scooped her daughter out of my arms.
‘I really need to up the actives in my skincare,’ I said.
‘One of the mums at Evie’s kinder offered me the name of her plastic surgeon for when I’m ready for my postpartum glow-up,’ Stella said.
‘Is that a thing?’
‘Apparently. Honestly, the only thing that has glowed about me recently is my left boob mid-mastitis,’ she replied.
I winced. ‘How is leftie?’
‘Oh, much improved. Praise be for antibiotics. And a husband who’s able to source them quickly,’ she said.
‘It’s the small things. Where is said husband?’ I asked.
‘He got called in,’ she said.
‘He’s on call tonight ?’ I felt a familiar spark of irritation.
Nick was an obstetrician, so was often called into the hospital at weird hours.
But why hadn’t he insisted on taking the night off?
Surely his mum’s birthday was enough to ring-fence some time in the roster, even if he and his wife, mother to their toddler and baby, weren’t hosting the festivities at their house.
‘He’ll be back soon,’ Stella said, as she put Evie down with a small, involuntary groan. We both knew that this was unlikely. Stella had deftly applied concealer, but even heavy-duty cover-up couldn’t mask her exhaustion.
‘Thanks for having us all.’
‘Well, it’s easier to have everyone come here than to get our circus out of the house,’ she said with a shrug.
I wondered if maybe the binary options shouldn’t have been hosting a family dinner party or dragging infant children out at night.
Maybe we should have organised a quiet lunch at a time that best suited their nap schedule, or given Mum’s non- milestone birthday a miss.
A pang of guilt rippled through me for not advocating for Stella.
‘And your mum did all the food and looked after Alice this afternoon so I could nap,’ she added.
‘Are you getting enough sleep?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said, as if there was no acceptable alternative. ‘I mean, she’s waking up at night quite a bit...’
I knew that from Stella, who was all stoicism, this invariably meant that Alice was up most of every night. And I also guessed that Stella was doing it solo – that the only thing waking up Nick was the hospital.
‘But the finish line is in sight. Only a couple of weeks until Alice and I go to sleep school. So, by the time of your wedding, I’ll be a new person!’
‘What can I do to help you tonight?’ I asked. Matt had sent a load of champagne and wine from work, and I’d put my hand up to make the cake. But I knew that booze and baked goods weren’t going to properly lighten Stella’s load.
‘Could you check on Alice? She’s with Matt in there.’ Stella jerked her head towards Nick’s study, as her arm was yanked in the direction of the kitchen by Evie, who was vigorously campaigning for carte-blanche access to the grown-up cheese platter and bowls of chips and dips.
I popped my head around the study door, holding a flute of champagne and a glass of red wine, and smiled. Matt sat at the end of the leather couch, holding a sleeping Alice in the crook of his arm, a muted movie on the TV.
‘Shh.’ He held a finger up to his smiling mouth.
I tiptoed towards him, then leaned forwards, kissed him and handed him his drink. I perched on the other end of the couch.
‘I’m pretending to be the good guy, but really I’m hiding from your family,’ he whispered. ‘Alice is my human shield.’
‘You are a good guy. But, fair call,’ I said. ‘I’m planning on drinking my way through it.’ I took an enormous gulp of my drink – the bubbles tickled my nose. I felt a temporary hit of warmth and calm as the alcohol made it to my unlined, unsettled stomach.
‘Oh, I love drunk Becs,’ he said, a hopeful glint appearing behind his glasses.
I smiled back at him, attempting come-hither eyes. Matt looked particularly gorgeous this evening with his shiny brown hair a bit mussed up.
I felt a sense of calm for the first time all day.
I was lucky that this was my Friday night.
I could smell spices simmering and hear people laughing and talking over each other.
I was with my smart, funny fiancé who happily attended my family’s gatherings, close enough to my niece to admire her rosebud lips, and drinking champagne that tasted like engagement parties, so was probably expensive – generosity came as naturally to Matt as breathing.
‘Is my darling girl in here?’ Mum burst into the room, speaking in a mock stage whisper. Alice stirred in Matt’s arms.
‘I think she’s just waking up now,’ he said, not ascribing any blame.
She swooped forwards to grab Alice, her billowing sparkly kaftan flapping like the wings of a rosella.
She tattooed her granddaughter’s face with a crimson-lipstick kiss and then held her close, no doubt overpowering Alice’s naturally intoxicating baby smell with Shalimar.
I finished my flute of champagne.
‘Another drink?’ Matt asked, eyeing my empty glass, the hopeful light still in his eyes.
An image of crumpled bedsheets in an ancient stone tower sprang unbidden into my mind.
‘Yes, please, keep them coming,’ I replied quickly, and he followed Mum out of the room.
I shook my head. I didn’t need to relive memories from the past, I just needed to let off some steam.
I’d drink a little bit too much champagne, help Stella with Evie and Alice as much as possible and then go home for some tipsy sex.
I lingered for a moment in Nick’s empty study.
Behind the desk was a gallery wall that was clearly Stella’s handiwork.
In the centre was a family photo that had been taken at my grandma Evelyn’s eightieth birthday, sixteen years earlier.
Evelyn, Evie’s namesake, looked as coiffed as she always did – ash hair curled into submission and lips coated with her signature fairy floss–pink lipstick.
In the image she was flanked by Mum and Dad, dressed up and smiling widely at the camera.
Mum had her arm around sixteen-year-old me, with my freshly straightened teeth and badly highlighted boofy hair.
Nick, who would have been about to finish med school, stood next to Dad.
I wondered if this was the last photo taken of our family, unfractured?
Had there been clues? I stepped towards the frame as if there might be a clenched jaw or sidewards glare if you really looked hard.
I’d always been the kid who noticed everything, then the observant teenager.
Except I’d completely missed my parents’ marriage imploding.
My memories from the day everything broke, and the rest of that summer, really, were blurry.
I’d come home from staying the night at Lily’s house and found Mum, as usual, in the kitchen.
Except nothing was usual. There was no fresh bread, the flowers in the vase on the bench were wilting, dropping their orange pollen all over the white countertop.
Mum sat me down and told me she was leaving.
It was as if she was speaking another language. A really hard one, like Finnish. I’m leaving – two words I didn’t understand.
She’d fallen in love with another man: Hamish, the father of Caroline, who was in the year below me at school. Dad had found out and they were breaking up. Dad wanted to stay at the house, and given Mum had met someone else, she’d agreed.
Up until that moment, everything in my life had seemed big and important – I was going into my final year of school. Over the summer I had coursework to start, assigned books to read, practice tests to study for... Now I realised I’d led a life of solipsism and almost no stakes.
Then Dad was home sometimes, which was strange because the house had always felt like mine and Mum’s. Nick had moved to Sydney for uni years earlier, and Dad was always coming and going, but mainly going.
A few days after Mum left, Grandma Evelyn arrived.
And this I remember clearly, through the fog of that summer.
We were in the kitchen, and I was mixing her another Gordon’s gin and tonic (a slug of gin and a hint of tonic) when she shook her head and said, ‘Well, I suppose it was inevitable. All the women in our family are cursed.’
For the first time since my world had shattered, I felt something that wasn’t abject shock, misery or confusion: I was suddenly curious.
‘What do you mean “cursed”?’ I asked.
‘All the women in our family break off their engagements before they finally make it down the aisle. And then we all marry the wrong man: one who makes us miserable!’
‘Mum was engaged to someone else before Dad?’ I asked.
‘Yes. A lovely man,’ Grandma said, misty-eyed. ‘Then she met your father at the hospital, and called off the wedding. She’d fallen instantly and madly in love with your father. She was intoxicated by him...’