About a Girl Read online

  I remembered the night – I must have been about fifteen – when I lay in my bed in the dark, curled up into a tiny ball. I am this way, for ever and ever, I thought. And falling in love, finding a life partner, was something I longed to do. But at the same time it filled me with fear and terror, because the world was not this way, and I was not the way of the world.

  I had never felt so small and frightened and alone.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be quicksand. I’ll let you go whenever you want,’ I said, feeling such a wrench that I couldn’t imagine being alive if she accepted.

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘It’s not you stopping me from leaving. It’s in me, the not being able to get out.’

  But even though we appeared to have found a new openness and honesty with each other, there was a sadness there, and Flynn stayed away from me again for almost a whole week, and I from her. I wanted her to make the first move. I wanted to know that she chose to be with me.

  Then one night she let herself in with the key I had given her. I woke from sleep; in the illumination from the hall light I saw her dark shape next to my bed. She put a finger to my lips, and I nuzzled her hand. She undressed, and slid in next to me, running her hands up under my singlet. I felt her fingers play across the corrugations of my ribs; I imagined them white and bleached, like ghostly piano keys. And then the weight of her on top of me, the pressure of her lips on my mouth, so familiar and welcome.

  I remembered how she had used the word love, about us. You can choose to fall in love, she said, and she’d fallen in love with me. I couldn’t forget that. I nursed it and nursed it.

  The next night, she came round again, and as we cooked a meal together, I said, as casually as I could, ‘Hey, I’ve just had an idea. Why don’t you come and live here? I mean, you say that Caleb and Hannah are never there anyway … you could have your own room, and one for Louise as well.’

  For a long time she said nothing, and the atmosphere in the room was thick, like molasses. ‘What do you think, Flynn?’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it be fun? And you’re here an awful lot anyway. It’d be easier, in a way.’

  I waited to see what she would reply, and finally she said huskily, ‘I’ll think about it.’

  That night I woke and found her gone. Going out to the living-room, I peered through the window at the grey light, and saw her sitting on the wall with the cat beside her. When I went outside, she turned her face to me, and there was no answer in it.

  And I saw then that what I’d done was to invite her out into the snow with me, and why would she want to stand outside the ballroom window with tattered boots and icy breath and no street signs? Because that was the way it’d be – of course she’d want to be in there, drinking wine and dancing with bare shoulders far into the scented night.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘THE RAIN IT raineth every day.’ Was it the Fool, in King Lear, who said that?

  I trudged to work beneath an inadequate umbrella. There was something about being out in the unrelenting rain that suited my mood.

  I hadn’t seen Flynn for five days, since I suggested she come to live with me. Her silence had become a kind of reply. There’d been no quarrel, just her withdrawal from me. I’d noticed the absence in her that morning when she sat out with the cat, and later on when we both left for work. I felt rubbed raw inside. I couldn’t eat. We hadn’t explicitly parted, but we didn’t seem to be together, either.

  Customers told me that all this rain was typical Lismore weather. They stood damply about in the bookshop, leaving puddles from their umbrellas. The place was uglier in the wet; the lights seemed brighter, the covers on the books more garish. I felt unutterably dreary. In an attempt to cheer myself up I’d bought a pair of red gumboots, and I saw them sitting in the stockroom, near the back door. If I put them on and clicked their heels, would they take me home? Wherever that was?

  She came to see me late one night, saying nothing, and we slept curved together like spoons as the rain pounded on the roof.

  Or at least Flynn slept. I couldn’t. I kept thinking that I was surely and steadily losing her, drop by drop by drop. I knew I’d been too hasty in suggesting she live with me. We woke up face to face. I put my hand up onto her cheek and kissed her, looking into her eyes. Drawing away, I said softly, ‘What is it that you’re afraid of, Flynn? Committing yourself to me? Or embarking on a lifetime of loving women?’

  She averted her eyes from my face and did not answer, and I saw just how unreachable, how clouded she was.

  ‘I hate the way you come and go as you feel like it, as though you can’t decide.’

  I still spoke softly. I simply wanted to assert myself. But she shot me such an ambiguous, defiant look as she swung herself to a sitting position at the edge of the bed that I couldn’t think what more to say. I only knew that I loved her and, perversely, probably wouldn’t have her any other way. Perhaps deep down I liked her capricious and unattainable. I didn’t want someone predictable whose every thought and action was known to me.

  ‘You know how I feel about you, Anna,’ she said, and with a baleful glance went off to the bathroom.

  We parted that morning in the rain, and did not plan when next we would meet. And that was the last I saw of her for what seemed like a very long time, though it was really only a little over a week.

  Without acknowledging that anything was amiss between us, Flynn turned up one afternoon, and we drove to the coast. The sky was a dazzling blue. It was as if rain had never existed. But we said very little to each other, almost as though it would be too dangerous to speak.

  The sea had flung up great piles of kelp torn from the ocean floor; the roots still hung onto the rocks which had come away with it. The sand dunes had been chomped away as though by earthmovers, and thick yellow strands of the grass that once held the dunes together hung across the scars.

  As we had on that long-ago earlier occasion, Flynn and I balanced our way along the trunks of trees that had been washed up on the beach, but there was no longer any joy in it. We were like oversized children who had lost the ability to play. I felt I was losing her, but in a strange way I had never felt closer.

  ‘This is the beach where Simon was washed up,’ she said, staring out to sea, her whole body utterly still. ‘Some early-morning walkers found him.’ It was as though she was talking to herself.

  I wanted to go to her, put my arms round her, but I could see that nothing I could do or say could make her feel better in the face of all that grief.

  As we kept walking slowly up the beach, I found ropes of seaweed beaded like a necklace, and looped them round her neck, but she only tugged herself free of them. Not wanting to see the expression on her face, I ran ahead, and then, unable to bear being separated from her, I waited for her to catch up.

  Someone had taken long branches that had washed up with the tide and buried them in the ground like posts, and then threaded ropey lines of dune grass between them, making a kind of sculpture, or a primitive washing line. Working silently, as though by instinct, Flynn began to pick up the long strands of ragged kelp and hung them over the lines. Without her inviting me, I joined in, and we went silently back and forth with the seaweed, like creatures instinctively performing some atavistic ritual. And as I walked up and down the beach, my arms full of seaweed, I knew with dread that everything was hopeless.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THAT DAY, WE went back to her room and lay down on her bed. When we kissed, her mouth was not yielding at all, but hard and questioning. We grappled with each other for a while like wrestlers, until Flynn sat up. She pushed her hair away from her eyes, and said she would make a cup of tea.

  I watched as she pulled on her clothes and went out to the kitchen. When she returned with the tray I followed her onto the roof. The galvanised iron creaked under my weight, and I knelt while she poured t
ea. I felt very sandy and windswept and primitive crouched there, in clothes still damp from salt spray. My hands smelled of seaweed, or of Flynn. It occurred to me that Lavinia was a very ugly teapot, and quite impractical. It poured very badly, and the lid never sat straight.

  SHADOW, said the graffiti on the wall across the street. Timothy sat nearby, licking his haunches. We drank tea, and ate, without appetite, the inevitable banana cake. Everything was an echo of that first day. Only we were different.

  She chose then to tell me that Rocco was finally coming home for certain. ‘When?’ I demanded, jealousy flowering in my belly.

  ‘In a month,’ she said.

  ‘And what have you decided? Which of us do you want?’

  She only shook her head miserably, and did not reply.

  I had already decided what I would do – what I must do, for myself, if not for Flynn.

  ‘Then I will choose for you,’ I said, crumbling cake between my fingers.

  She did not look at me.

  ‘I will go,’ I said, woodenly.

  ‘Anna, don’t do this. Please.’

  She looked up, and I saw that she was crying.

  ‘You know, Flynn,’ I went on, sounding as hard as steel, but crumbling inside, ‘you have a choice, but I don’t. I like girls. Only girls.’ (‘Only you’, I should have said, because it was true.) ‘And I can see that if you have a choice, in the end you’re going to choose boys. Why should you choose me, and make life difficult for yourself? But this is the way I am!’

  I listened to myself, appalled.

  ‘Anna. Please. Please. Don’t do this.’

  Awkwardly, making my way carefully across the iron roof, I went and knelt in front of her and kissed her most tenderly. I ran my finger over her lips, across the tiny dent above the middle of the lip that makes the mouth into a bow. I am sure there is a word for that dent, but I don’t know it. I don’t think there is a word for walking away from someone when every part of you shrieks that you want to stay.

  I finished with Flynn, that day on the roof, as though love were easy to come by. I walked away from her, just like that, climbing in through the window and not looking back.

  I walked away like a dead thing, seeing only the walls, the floor, the stairs, the street.

  Only then did I pause to take a breath.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AND THAT WAS how I lost her.

  When I opened the door of my flat, it was horribly silent. I walked to the windows and looked out, then turned my back on the offending, beautiful view.

  An empty cup sat on the table. The cushions on which we’d perched to eat the Japanese food she’d made were still scattered on the floor. I ran a glass of water from the kitchen tap, took a sip, and tipped it out. There was a sharp pain in the middle of my body, as though I’d sustained a life-threatening injury.

  I gnawed at my knuckles in an attempt to stop the pain. Pacing the room, I turned the CD player on, and off again at once. The music that had filled the room was wrong. All music would be wrong. What could be right when you have lost the person you love?

  I took up a book and let it fall to the floor. What do you read when your heart is breaking? How can you breathe? I sat on the sofa with my fists pressed to my mouth. I thought I was dying.

  Outside, I could hear the children next door, calling and calling as though they had lost something. The innocent purity of their voices cut into my chest, and I picked up a cushion and clutched it to me, at the place where my life was leaking away.

  When I heard a knock at the door I leapt up, hope flooding through me as warm as alcohol. But it was only the children. ‘Have you seen our kitten?’ they asked. Their faces, boy and girl, with identical blue eyes and high, smooth foreheads, were pale and serious and trusting. They looked up at me as though I might answer their prayers. The younger one, a boy of about six, took my hand for a moment. ‘It’s a white kitten,’ he said, ‘with a black nose. It’s called Fluff.’

  Fluff. Such a ridiculous name. But their anxiety was real. And I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t even help myself.

  I sent them away with promises, and as I closed the door I wished I’d found an excuse for them to stay. I should have drawn them inside, given them a glass of juice, or gone out with them to hunt for Fluff. Alone, I thought that I might go under.

  Of course, I didn’t. I found that you don’t die of a broken heart. You can lose an eternity of sleep, live for a time without food. The pain subsides to a dull ache. And then pure animal need takes over.

  On the third day, I got home from work and was suddenly ravenous. I tore into hunks of bread and cheese and squashed a sweet, over-ripe tomato into my mouth, eating at the kitchen sink. I finally slept through sheer exhaustion, oversleeping because I found that when you sleep you are not thinking.

  I did not dream of her.

  In desperation, I made a list of things I could do to help me survive.

  It said:

  Go for walks – or drive into the country

  Buy new CDs

  Enjoy your life! It’s the only one you’ve got!

  Two days later I added:

  Go back and finish that university course (??)

  Go home …

  The idea lodged in my mind.

  I gave two weeks’ notice and resigned from my job.

  Chapter Fifteen

  IT WAS SPRING.

  I had spent more than six months of my life obsessed with Flynn. And when I got home to Canberra, there was my family, almost exactly as I had left them.

  I found my mother barefoot, watering the front garden (though I could tell she was out there waiting for me to arrive); she was so pleased to see me it brought tears to my eyes. And then Molly came running out, bursting with news so that she forgot to even say hello.

  ‘The cat’s name is Puddy!’ she announced. ‘And it’s a boy. And Mummy’s going to take it to the vet soon, to …’ Here she floundered.

  ‘“Get fixed up,”’ said my mother, nodding discreetly at me.

  I had sent the grey cat down on the plane a week before, and it looked very much at home already. It lay on the floor of the kitchen whisking its tail while we had afternoon tea. I felt like an important visitor – my mother and Molly had made scones with jam and cream. But then, I remembered that we always had nice things to eat.

  ‘Hey, Sis!’ Josh said, passing through the kitchen and stopping for a minute to grab a scone.

  ‘Still out in the garage?’ I asked.

  ‘Still there,’ he said. ‘Gig on Saturday night. Coming?’

  ‘Might.’

  We brought all my bags and boxes in from the car, and apart from my clothes, I piled everything up in the corner of my old bedroom. I didn’t want to unpack it all yet, and really, there wasn’t a lot. Before I left, I’d sold or given away the old furniture and most of the crockery I’d been using.

  Later, as I sat watching my mother make dinner (she in her northern sarong because of the warm day), she asked, ‘How are you really, Annie? You seem very quiet. And so thin!’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m just a bit tired from the trip, that’s all.’

  There was no way, yet, that I could tell her about Flynn.

  I wanted to go and see Michael, even though we’d not contacted each other in all my time up north. I found that he’d moved out of home; his mother gave me the address and I went round at once – it wasn’t far. He lived in a flat at the back of a house a few streets away.

  ‘Hey!’ he said, when he came to the door, his face lit up with surprise. We stood there for a moment looking at each other. He wore a T-shirt that said PAVEMENT, and shorts, and his face was unbearably sweet, the face I remembered from age eleven when he said, Everyone’s different in their own
little way.

  ‘How about showing me inside,’ I said, gesturing wildly to cover my awkwardness.

  We went into a combined kitchen and living area. There were various shabby couches, covered by throws. ‘Canberra, city of discarded couches,’ said Michael, sitting me down and taking one facing me. We were silent for a moment, just taking each other in. ‘Sometimes I thought I’d never see you again,’ he said. ‘Is this just a visit, or … ?’

  ‘I’ve come home,’ I replied, feeling a slight sense of shame, as though I’d failed at the whole leaving-home thing. ‘I’m applying for uni here next year.’

  He nodded. ‘You need to get back to what you’re good at.’

  ‘I still don’t quite know what I want to do with myself after that,’ I admitted. ‘But it’s a beginning. Actually, I think I can’t wait to start studying again.’ But I was reluctant to talk about myself, so I changed the conversation. ‘So look at you – your own flat!’

  ‘I share with Anna …’

  ‘Your mum said.’

  ‘I’ve been tutoring at uni in my Honours year, which is how I can afford it. And Anna’s on a PhD scholarship – she’s at uni today. I’ve a good chance of getting a scholarship next year as well.’

  From Michael, it didn’t sound like boasting. He got up and went to the fridge for juice. A half-grown kitten ran in and he lifted her up and draped her round his shoulders. ‘This is Florence,’ he said. ‘She just came to us out of the blue.’

  ‘The best way to get a cat. I brought one home from up north, but I’ve given it to Molly. Him, I should say – his name’s Puddy.’

  We couldn’t stop smiling at each other, but it still felt strained.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, putting the cat down. ‘Let’s go out for a walk to the park.’

  We walked down familiar streets to the selfsame park we used to lie about in as teenagers and, as we reclined on the scratchy grass, our faces to the sun, eyes squinted shut against the glare, he murmured, liltingly, ‘Tell me about Anna Livia. I want to know – all – about – Anna – Livia.’