Cathy’s voice has taken on a tight, brittle quality, vibrating like a taut wire. “‘It’s about time you stopped blaming your sister for the mistakesyoumade, Cathy.’ I was so shocked. I just sat there open-mouthed. I remember thinking,She’s going to kill him. Hazel is really going to kill him and you’re not doing anything to stop it. Thank God Joe got her into this place before she really did him some harm.”
She points toward the large, imposing house they are approaching along the tree-lined drive. It is old, washed stone, with ornamental turrets at either end. Looking at it hurts Suzie’s eyes. It is built new to look old, even down to the gabled roof and sweeping front steps that lead up to the double doors. It is an impression of a history that doesn’t exist, like seeing someone in medieval armor walking through a supermarket. It doesn’tfit.
“Are you okay, Suzie?”
“Yes. Just thinking what an ugly building that is.”
“You’re still going in there, though, right?”
Suzie nods, although her heart is beating so hard she can feel it in her eyes and her wrists, the side of her jaw. She pulls into one of the dozens of parking spaces out front and turns off the engine. Cathy holds out the depleted paper bag of sherbet lemons to her.
“One minute, Cathy.”
Outside, a cold wind skitters dead leaves across the lawn. The sky is low and gray and thick, curdled like cream. So far there’s only been a light dusting of snow, but Suzie knows that is just the beginning. She sits back, loosening her seat belt and thinking about the day Hazel came into the chemist. There had been something about her that set off an alarm in Suzie’s gut, hadn’t there? Something that had unnerved Suzie so much at the time that she’d thought about her old school friend Hazel for the rest of the day. She’d even talked about it to Teddy at dinner that night, taking the old photo down off the wall to show him. A discomfort that had settled on her skin like heat rash, itchy and uncomfortable, crawling up her arms. Something about the way Hazel had smiled, too wide, like invisible fingers were stretching her lips. It was that expression which Suzie was familiar with, because she remembers Hazel’s moods had a premonitory aspect, like thewash of heat before a storm. Or the taste of metal on the wind before the snow blows in.
“Suzie?”
“She was with her the day I saw Hazel. The ‘other sister,’ I mean. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was there, even if she was just small, like an infected cut, or an ulcer. She was festering.” Suzie turns to look at Cathy, her eyes fervent. She closes her gloved hand over Cathy’s own.
“I wish I’d stopped her. I wish I’d been brave enough to say something.”
“You couldn’t have done, Suzie,” Cathy tells her calmly, surprised at the alacrity of Suzie’s reaction. “Don’t blame yourself.”
But Suzie is taking the bag of sweets and getting out of the car before Cathy has finished, her coat floating around her in the bitter wind. As she walks toward Belle Vue, Cathy turns in her seat to watch her go. She thinks she sees Suzie wiping away tears.
About a minute after Suzie has disappeared inside the opulent double doors—arched, with scrollwork cast-iron filigrees overlaid on the glass—Cathy gets out of the car for a cigarette. Her legs feel stiff and sore, tendons strung tight across the backs of her knees. She stretches, pulling a woolen hat from her pocket and over her head. She thinks it is probably one of Danny’s—that boy has more beanie hats than he knows what to do with—but she’s pretty sure he won’t notice it missing. In the other pocket, she finds a lighter and one of Scout’s pacifiers.
Cathy knows there will be a day in the not-too-distant future when her bags and pockets won’t be full of all that stuff—spare nappies, Tupperware snack boxes, toys and wipes and balled-upbaby socks—and the thought is like a wrecking ball to the gut. She never thought she was cut out for motherhood. She still doesn’t, if you want the truth. Cathy has always felt her whole life like she is waiting for an adult to step in and take over, someone who knows what they are doing. It’s still a shock to discover that the adult isher.
She walks around the side of the building, gravel crunching softly under her feet. The silence here is strange—cushionedis the word that floats easily into her mind—as if even the birds have been subdued and medicated. Back here, beyond the visitor’s gaze, the view is less palatial. A cluster of prefab buildings squat in the shadows, with flat bitumen roofs and plastic windows covered in chicken wire. Here, between a row of bins and a compost heap, Cathy stands with her back to the wind to light her cigarette. The breeze is thin and icy, reddening her fingers as she cups them around the flame.
“Oi. You can’t smoke here,” a male voice says.
Cathy’s head snaps up, immediately on the defensive. She can feel the words ready to spill out of her mouth like a held mouthful of bile,Yeah, all right, mate, keep your hair on, but manages to bite her tongue as she whips around. There is a man standing a few feet away with his hands full of potted plants—hydrangeas, Cathy knows. She had planted some herself in the garden last summer.
“You’ll need to go in there and do it. You’re basically standing in a wind tunnel there. It’ll never get lit.”
The man nods toward the open door of the nearest prefab, his smile hung slightly crooked on his face, a sly crescent. Beneath his knitted hat, his eyes are very pale, very watchful. When he laughs, Cathy sees a flash of teeth.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
She shakes her head. “No, but Idoknow if you plant thosehydrangeas out now, they’ll die. There’s a snowstorm coming. They reckon the roads’ll have to close.”
“Is that right? Guess I’ll have to get out my thermal vest, then.” The man laughs, and Cathy realizes that she does know him after all.
She lowers the unlit cigarette from her mouth and points it at him. “Oh shit. You’re the handyman! You came to look at the window in my son’s room!”
“Andrew.” He steps forward, nudging the door of the shed open with his shoulder and turning so he can face her. “That’s right, and you’re Catherine. That window of yours got fixed yet?”
“What do you think?”
He laughs again, easy-breezy. The color of his eyes reminds her of tea right before you pour the milk in. Pale amber.
“You want to come in out of the cold? If that strikes you as uncomfortable, you can leave the door open. At least you’ll get a smoke in peace.”
Cathy considers this. She hasn’t forgotten the feeling which had overwhelmed her the last time she was in a room with this man, how it had felt like she was being strangled by the air. She looks down at the cigarette in her hand, then into the shed. It looks cozy inside. There is an electric heater hanging from the ceiling, emitting a warm, orange glow. At one end of a long newspaper-covered table is a steaming tea urn. At the other, a long foldout camp bed, neatly made.
“You sleep in here?”