Chapter 2 Lottie
LOTTIE
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
I am mentally sifting through my Very Important List of Things to Consider.
Today it includes permanent vegetarianism and looking for an affordable flat away from Miriam, who is currently carving the lamb roast. There is repulsive pink juice running across the serving dish.
‘I told you I’d gone vego,’ I say. ‘No meat for me.’
Miriam looks at me sharply, knife deep in the joint. ‘I thought you were joking! How am I supposed to eat all this lamb on my own? I won’t have space in the fridge.’
I wasn’t planning to ruin my mother’s fridge space ratio, but it suddenly feels blindingly obvious that eating meat is strange and disgusting.
This will be the only proper meal Miriam will eat this week, though, so leftovers will definitely be a problem.
She hardly ever eats, which is why she is a beautiful skeleton.
One that is nicely preserved in alcohol.
She forks lamb onto her plate and pushes a bowl of carrots with spiky green ends towards me. They are the colour of beetroot and have bits scattered over them. ‘What’s this?’ A weird-looking bit lands on top of my potato. It appears to be bacon with fat attached.
‘Roasted root vegetables. I combined two of Yotam’s recipes. The lardons aren’t from him, but I thought they’d go well with the carrots.’
She is waiting for my praise, and I can see she has gone to a lot of trouble.
She had an Ottolenghi cookbook on the bench when I came in, so I’d know who to thank for today’s Sunday spread.
She calls him Yotam, as if she’s a Knightsbridge local who’s just popped down to the Harrods Food Hall for a ten-pound Bavarian yak milk latte and run into him in the organic vegetable market for a chat.
‘Right. Yum,’ I murmur.
I move the lardon to the side of my plate and take a huge sip of wine, even though I rarely drink.
There are plenty of tricks to getting through Sunday lunch with Miriam, but wine is the fail-safe.
My phone buzzes and I make the mistake of checking it.
A text from Lila to my ex-boyfriend Hugo and me.
Hi you guys! Coming to Sydney next week. Can we do dinner at Lou’s in Bondi? Can’t wait to catch up on your news. Xx
I put the phone down. Miriam’s glare does nothing to improve my mood.
‘It’s Lila,’ I explain. ‘She’s coming to Sydney.’
‘Who’s Lila?’
‘Hugo’s cousin from Hobart. You’ve met her. She came down to that charity book sale Phyllida helped organise last year.’
‘Why are you still talking to Hugo’s cousin?’
‘Because she’s my friend! Just because I’m not with Hugo anymore doesn’t mean I have to ditch my whole life.’
Miriam raises a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Does she know you broke up?’
I feel myself redden. My mother knows I am avoidant in most things. The breakup is hard to talk about because nobody who knew Hugo and I as a couple can believe I have blown the whole thing up.
Miriam swipes the air as she puts her wine glass back onto the table. ‘Hugo needed a decent haircut and a proper job. You made the right decision.’
‘He’s a barista. That’s a proper job.’
‘Rubbish. You need to find a new man. It will spice things up for you.’
I sigh. ‘There are no single men in this town. They left because they are not all idiots like me.’
‘Plenty of married ones, though.’
Internally, I am flinching, but there are carrots, turnips and potatoes still taking up half my plate and Miriam is only on to her second glass of wine.
I decide to humour her by participating in the conversation, because that is another top tip for surviving Sunday lunch with my mother.
‘Is it ever okay to sleep with a married man, do you think?’
‘It depends,’ she says.
Sweat runs down my back and I look through the open French door, out onto Miriam’s beautiful garden in search of a breeze.
Despite the fact that it is more than thirty degrees and the middle of the Australian summer, we are having a hot Sunday lunch because David (my father) apparently thought it was a nice tradition, and Miriam clings to David’s words as tightly as she would to a surviving package of Botox in the ruins of her cosmetic clinic after a bomb explosion.
I plough on: ‘Like, if he really didn’t want to hurt his wife, but he was in a marriage that was never right for him in the first place and you were his real soulmate?’ I peer across the top of my vegetables, interested in her view. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d instigated affairs.
Miriam gives a little head shake. ‘Of course it’s fine.
Think logically, Charlotte. He’d be the one cheating, not you.
He’s the one who has to examine his motives.
Although’—Miriam grimaces and begins to shrug one shoulder repeatedly, as if a pain has set in—‘I don’t really see you having the courage to seduce a married man.
You’ve always been such a rule follower. Not sure where I went wrong there.’
This is a familiar dance from my childhood.
A memory comes: Miriam placing a bunch of grapes into the trolley then blithely popping them into her mouth as we shop, and enthusiastically encouraging me to eat them too, even though I have pointed out to her that she is stealing because we won’t be able to weigh them; then Miriam laughing to the checkout operator, pointing to the naked grape stem and shaking her head.
‘Would you look at that? Little scallywag’s eaten the lot! ’ Me, burning with shame.
‘What’s wrong with rules?’ I say, pushing the memory away. ‘If there were no rules, I could just’—I think for a moment—‘tip my wine onto the carpet. No consequences.’ I hold up my glass and Miriam ignores me.
I sigh and put down the glass. ‘Most parents are happy that their children don’t drink-drive or hold up banks.’
‘Well, I’m not most parents, am I? And who holds up banks anymore? There’s no cash to be had. You are so unimaginative, Charlotte.’
‘That’s not true. I have an excellent imagination.
I just choose not to reveal my imaginative thoughts to you.
’ I think about my recent imaginings: about finding long-lost family members and discovering they are not all self-obsessed, attention-seeking egomaniacs like my mother.
‘I wonder if my DNA test will show I have Nordic heritage.’ I sent the test away six weeks ago and am impatiently awaiting the results.
I never met David—the man who was in Miriam’s life for only a few months and left her pregnant with me—but I am dying to find out any family connections he might have.
I have him to thank for my excellent grandmother, Phyllida.
She’s been a rock my whole life. Although, I haven’t mentioned the DNA test to Phyllida because I have a feeling she might not want me digging around.
She’s always been vague about David’s father.
She’s never talked about being married or ever having a partner, so it’s a bit of an unspoken family mystery.
‘Why would you think you’re Nordic?’ asks Miriam.
I shrug. ‘I feel like I might be a Viking.’
Miriam regards me sceptically. ‘My parents had English and Scottish heritage. And Phyllida is English.’ She sips her wine thoughtfully. ‘But that woman has plenty of secrets, so I suppose there might be some Nordic blood in you.’
‘I do think I’ve got a Nordic vibe. I like their ethos of collective responsibility. And those tea-light candles. I might move to Scandinavia one day.’
Miriam tips her head to one side and blinks slowly, as if she is utterly perplexed. ‘Have you actually lost your mind, Charlotte? You have dark hair. You’re not Nordic.’
‘There were lots of dark-haired Vikings.’
My mother shakes her head. ‘I told my therapist about your obsession with the fact that you don’t look like David or me and how you think this DNA test is going to reveal long-lost family.
And she agrees with me—you’re bound to be disappointed.
’ Miriam pauses to refill her wine glass. ‘Leave the past in the past, darling.’
Miriam has taken to therapy with gusto and spouts her new pearls of wisdom at me frequently.
She sighs. ‘Put the kettle on.’
‘I haven’t finished lunch yet.’ But I pick up my phone and head to the kitchen.
I need to think about how to respond to Lila’s text message.
In the mirror above the kitchen table I startle at my tired reflection.
I’m not terrible to look at, just a bit weird: dark brown hair, wide green eyes, a nose too big, chin too small.
A cupid’s bow for lips that is oddly too perfect.
A bizarre collection of features that gives me a feeling of otherness.
Miriam has probably contributed to that.
She’s always told me I’m different; that we don’t belong here.
She got stuck in this village when I was born, because Phyllida begged her to stay so she could be involved in my life, as per David’s dying wishes.
And then, apparently, it was easier to stay because the house prices in Sydney were too expensive, and Phyllida was on hand to babysit.
Then Miriam joined the golf club and became quite addicted to being mere minutes away from a quick nine holes.
So although Sydney is only an hour or so down the freeway, my mother is constantly complaining that she is stuck living ‘in the country’ where she is forced to endure a cultural vacuum, and irritatingly laid-back tradies who run to the ticking of their own clocks, and under-dressed neighbours with no regard for her nuanced style choices.
She should have moved back to Sydney years ago.
The kettle clicks off and I make tea. Back in the living room, Miriam is finishing the wine. She puts down the empty bottle and holds the strainer over her teacup while I pour from the pot. The tea is her way of pretending she hasn’t just downed four-fifths of a bottle of wine in thirty minutes.
‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘I could find out if I have distant cousins. If they’ve registered on the ancestry website and they link our DNA. Wouldn’t that be good?’
Miriam shrugs and looks away. Eventually she says, ‘Was the test expensive? You’re behind on your rent payments to me.’
‘I’m transferring it today.’
‘I’m thinking of putting it up to cover costs, by the way. That useless man who does the garden is now charging eighty dollars an hour. And he says he won’t do the hedging! What’s the good of him?’
‘He still mows the lawn?’ I offer.
Miriam makes a huffing sound.
The doorbell rings and she hurries down the hall. There are faint voices, indistinct and rising. When she returns to the living room, Miriam is looking ruffled. She is holding an envelope, staring at the writing on the front. Reluctantly, she holds it out.
The envelope is thick and creamy, like a wedding invitation. I take it and turn it over. There’s nothing on the back, but the front is addressed to Miss Charlotte Peters-Banks and is marked Private and Confidential. I immediately clock the old-fashioned handwriting as my grandmother’s.
‘Who was that?’ I ask. ‘Was it Phyllida?’ I tug at the edge of the flap, but something about the envelope and its heft makes me stop. ‘Mum? Was it Phyllida at the door?’
Miriam is staring at the envelope, blinking slowly, as if hypnotised. Eventually she says, ‘It was Mary. She asked if you were okay, and said she was sorry she had to tell you the bad news on voicemail.’ She regards me warily. ‘I pretended I knew what she was talking about.’
I stare at her. Why didn’t Mary come in?
What bad news was on a voicemail I missed?
A cold sensation sweeps through me. Why had my grandmother asked Mary to deliver this letter?
But before I can voice these thoughts, Miriam says through gritted teeth, ‘Bloody Phyllida Banks. What’s she gone and done now? ’