Except it’s Lavinia who looks after her, really. She knows this. She is grateful for it. Her aunt is her dearest friend and closest companion, and Margot wishes she had thought more about both of their circumstances before she let the money run out.
Her brothers would never have done that, she is sure. Every time her father talked about them he said how capable they were, how smart, how logical. Except if they were still here to manage the money, Margot probably wouldn’t exist at all. It is a notion that turns her brain inside out from time to time, and one that Lavinia doesn’t know about.
The boys have been phantoms haunting her whole life, but despite that Margot never asks Lavinia to not talk about them. Lavinia knew them and loved them.
‘I wish I had known them,’ Margot says to her aunt now, as she often does, although she’s never sure if that’s true.
She wanders over to the windows and looks out at Mosman Bay, at the yachts moored outside the Rowers Club, at the ferry from the city slowly making its way to the wharf to drop off passengers and pick up others. People who go to work, maybe, although at this time of day they should already be at work.
There’s no work for Margot. Each day runs into the next without the structure of a job to tell her whether it’s a weekday or not. That’s why she loses track of which day it is. Maybe. Actually, since her late teens she hasn’t been too good at keeping track of the days. Or the hours. Or the minutes.
‘Busy down there,’ Lavinia says as she puts a pot of tea on the table they use for all their meals. It has a view of the bay and a good stretch of Cremorne Point with its trees and flowers and nice houses.
Margot has a nice house too, thanks to her parents. They left it to her. There was money as well. Lots of it. But in the end not enough to live on forever. Because what they didn’t leave her was any instruction about managing that money. It was only recently that she realised she should have been investing her wealth so she could draw an income from it. No one tells you these things when you inherit a lump sum. And they really should, especially if you’re a woman who has never had to work because your parents paid for everything, then left you everything.
Because now Margot needs money to take care of Lavinia. She doesn’t really care about herself. Well, some days she does a little bit. Most days she finds the prospect of caring for herself to be overwhelming. Which is why she’s lucky to have Lavinia, who looks after her as best she can. Rather than Margot looking afterher, which was meant to be the deal. Lavinia is ‘delicate’ – that’s always been the family story. Most days Margot knows how she feels.
‘Margot?’
‘Hm?’
She closes her eyes and sees the image of Mosman Bay. Tonight, when she’s trying to sleep, she’ll replay that image and it will comfort her to think of the water and the boats and the people going about their days. Ever since her childhood she has liked to picture something when she tries to sleep, although if it actually worked she wouldn’t have chronic insomnia. It’s likea talisman now, though, the need to picture something, and she doesn’t want to give it up.
‘My darling, there’s tea for you.’
Margot opens her eyes and looks into Lavinia’s. They used to be bright, almost a cornflower blue, but they’ve faded with the years, as most things do. When she was a child Margot used to think Lavinia was magical, and it’s possible she wasn’t wrong.
‘Where did I go?’ Margot asks, even though she knows.
‘Where do you always go?’ Lavinia touches her cheek. ‘Margot in Wonderland.’
Margot’s mother used to say that when a young Margot would spend hours in the garden talking to the flowers and the birds and the butterflies.
Lavinia smiles sadly. ‘I miss your mother.’
‘So do I.’
Perry had quite a presence, and once she was gone there was a space that could never be filled. You can never replace a big personality, Margot thinks, no matter what you do. Nor should you want to.
‘Oh. Tea,’ she says, picking up her cup and sipping the tepid liquid.
‘It cools quickly,’ Lavinia says.
‘That’s all right.’ Margot smiles at her aunt then looks out the window again, at the bay and the boats and the sunshine and the trees. ‘Should we go for a walk later?’
‘I don’t know that I can, my darling.’
Lavinia’s knees haven’t been good for a while, which Margot forgets sometimes because inside the house she always seems mobile. But in order to go for a walk around the bay they’d have to descend quite a few stairs, and climb up them again to return home, and stairs aren’t good for Lavinia’s knees. If Margot had money she could take Lavinia to see a specialist and have those knees seen to, but instead they’re waiting on a place on a list in a public hospital, and that could take years.
‘Sorry, I forgot,’ she says.
‘You go, though,’ Lavinia says. ‘It’s such a lovely day.’
‘Mm.’
‘You won’t wear that dress, though, will you?’ Lavinia says, frowning.
‘Well …’ Margot glances down at it. ‘I don’t have many others.’