Truly Madly Guilty(39)

Number four, but perhaps overriding everything else, were her feelings of guilt and horror over what had happened at the barbeque. Like the memory of a nightmare you can’t quite get out of your head. Well, yes, Tiffany, we get it, all very distressing, over and over it we go, not achieving anything, just stop thinking about it, you can’t change what you did or didn’t do, what you should and shouldn’t have done.

The problem was that every item on her list was so nebulous. Impossible to pin down. She remembered the days when her worries were always related to money and solutions could be calculated.

To comfort and distract herself, she worked her way through a conservative estimate of her current net present value: Property. Shares. Self-managed superannuation fund. Family trust. Term deposits. Cheque account. Doing this always calmed her. It was like imagining the protective walls of an impenetrable fortress. She was safe. No matter what happened. If her marriage fell apart (her marriage wouldn’t fall apart), if the stock market or property market crashed, if Vid died or she died or if one of them got a rare disease requiring endless medical bills, the family was safe. She’d constructed this fortress herself, with Vid’s help, of course, but it was mainly her fortress, and she was proud of it.

Go to sleep then, safe in the financial fortress you built on a transgression and yet still it stands.

She closed her eyes and opened them again instantly. She was tired but wide awake. She felt all pop-eyed like she was on coke. So this was insomnia. She’d always thought she wasn’t the type for it.

She felt a sudden need to go and check on Dakota. She wasn’t the type for that either. She hadn’t been one of those mothers who go in to check her sleeping baby is still breathing. (She’d caught Vid doing it a few times. He’d been a little shamefaced. Mr I’m-So-Cool-and-Casual and This-Is-My-Fourth-Kid.)

She got out of bed, her arms outstretched, and expertly shuffled her way to the doorjamb, which always turned up sooner than she expected. It was much easier to see once she got out on the landing because they always left a light on, turned down low, in case Dakota got up in the night. She pushed Dakota’s bedroom door open and stood there for a moment letting her eyes adjust.

Tiffany couldn’t hear anything over the rain. She wanted to hear the even sound of Dakota breathing. She tiptoed forward, past the crammed bookshelf, and stood next to the bed looking down at Dakota, trying to make out the form of her body. Dakota appeared to be lying flat on her back just like her father, although usually she slept curled up on her side.

At the same moment she registered the twin shimmers of Dakota’s eyes staring up at her, she heard Dakota say in a perfectly clear, wide-awake voice, ‘What’s the matter, Mum?’

Tiffany jumped and yelped. ‘I thought you were asleep,’ she said, pressing her hand to her chest. ‘You gave me the fright of my life.’

‘I’m not asleep,’ said Dakota.

‘Can’t you sleep? Why are you lying there awake like that? What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ said Dakota. ‘I’m just awake.’

‘Is something worrying you? Move over.’

Dakota moved over and Tiffany got into bed with her, feeling an immediate comfort she hadn’t known she craved.

‘Are you upset about Harry?’ said Tiffany. Dakota had responded to the news of Harry’s death in the same impassive way she now responded to everything.

‘Not really,’ said Dakota flatly. ‘Not that much.’

‘No. Well. We didn’t know him very well and he wasn’t …’

‘Very nice,’ finished Dakota.

‘No. He wasn’t. But is there something else?’ said Tiffany. ‘Something on your mind?’

‘There’s nothing on my mind,’ said Dakota. ‘Nothing at all.’ She sounded absolutely certain of this and Dakota had never been able to lie.

‘You’re not worried about going to Saint Anastasias tomorrow?’ said Tiffany.

‘No,’ said Dakota.

‘It should be interesting,’ said Tiffany vaguely. She could feel sleep tugging at her consciousness like a drug. Maybe it was nothing. Prepubescent stuff. Hormones. Growing up.

‘Shall I just lie here until you fall asleep?’ said Tiffany.

‘If you want,’ said Dakota frostily.

*

Dakota’s mother lay sound asleep next to her, not snoring exactly but making a long, thin whistling sound each time she breathed out.

Long strands of her mum’s hair floated across Dakota’s face and tickled her nose. She had hooked one leg over Dakota’s leg, locking her close, like she had her in a leg-cuff.

Holding her breath, Dakota inched her leg free. She pulled back the covers and got up on her knees and flattened herself against the bedroom wall like Spiderman. She slid her way down the wall to the end of the bed. It was a covert operation. She was escaping her captor. Yes! She’d done it! She tiptoed across her bedroom, avoiding the landmines in the carpet.

Stupid stuff. Don’t think stupid, little-kid thoughts like that, Dakota, when there are real wars happening right now and real refugees in tiny boats in the middle of the ocean and real people stepping on landmines. Would you like to step on a landmine? She sat on her cushioned window seat and hugged her knees to her chest. She tried to feel gratitude for her window seat but she felt nothing about her window seat. Instead, she actually thought the terribly rude, ungrateful thought: I don’t give a shit about this window seat.