Truly Madly Guilty(44)

Then one day Clementine’s mother was driving them both to some school picnic, and they’d stopped at Erika’s place to quickly pick up something she’d forgotten. A hat? Clementine couldn’t remember. What she did remember was jumping out of the car and running after her, to tell Erika Mum said to bring a warm top as well because it was getting chilly, and how she’d stopped in the hallway of the house, bewildered. The front door wouldn’t swing all the way open. Erika must have turned sideways to get through. The door was blocked by a ceiling-high tower of overflowing cardboard boxes.

‘Get out of here! What are you doing here?’ Erika had screamed, suddenly appearing in the hallway, her face a frightening grotesque mask of fury, and Clementine had leaped back, but she’d never forgotten that glimpse of Erika’s hallway.

It was like coming upon a slum in a suburban home. The stuff: skyscrapers of old newspapers, tangles of coathangers and winter coats and shoes, a frypan filled with bead necklaces, and piles of bulging, knotted plastic bags. It was like someone’s life had exploded.

And the smell. The smell of rot and mould and decay.

Erika’s mother, Sylvia, was a nurse, supposedly a perfectly capable one. She held down a job at a nursing home for years before she retired. It seemed so extraordinary to Clementine that someone who lived like that could work in healthcare, where things like cleanliness and hygiene and order mattered so much. According to Erika, who was now able to freely discuss her mother’s hoarding, it wasn’t that unusual; in fact, it was quite common for hoarders to work in the healthcare industry. ‘They say it has something to do with them focusing on taking care of others so they don’t take care of themselves,’ Erika said. Then she added, ‘Or their children.’

For years, Erika’s mother’s problems had been something they all referred to obliquely and delicately, even when those shows started appearing on TV and they suddenly had a word for the horror: hoarding. Erika’s mum was a ‘hoarder’. It was a thing. A condition. But it wasn’t until Erika had started with her ‘lovely psychologist’ about a year ago that Erika herself had begun saying the word ‘hoarding’ out loud, and discussing the psychology behind it, in this strange, new, clipped way, as if it had never been a deep, dark secret at all.

How could Clementine begrudge sharing her home and her life with Erika after she’d seen her home? She couldn’t and yet she did.

It was the same now. She hadn’t become a good person. She still didn’t feel pleasure at the thought of helping her friend achieve her deepest desire. In truth she still felt the same overwhelming aversion as when they’d first asked her to donate her eggs, but the difference was that now she relished her aversion. She wanted the doctors to cut her open. She wanted them to remove a piece of herself and hand it over to Erika. Here you go. Let’s balance the scales.

She turned out her lamp and rolled over to the middle of the bed and tried to think about anything, anything at all, other than that day. That so-called ‘ordinary day’.





chapter twenty-two



The day of the barbeque

Erika watched Clementine try to rescue the Mo?t that was foaming and frothing from the bottle, while Vid stood in the middle of his gigantic kitchen, the champagne held aloft in both hands, grinning idiotically like a Formula One winner posing for a photo.

Clementine laughed as if it were all a great hoot, as if it didn’t matter that expensive champagne was being wasted. She shouldn’t have spent that much. It wasn’t necessary to turn up to a backyard barbeque with French champagne. She and Sam always lived beyond their means. The mortgage on their damp little trendy place! Erika and Oliver couldn’t believe it when they heard how much they’d borrowed, and then they’d taken the little girls off for a holiday in Italy last year! Fiscal madness. They’d put the trip on their credit card even though the children would have been just as happy with a one-hour drive to the Central Coast, but only Tuscany would do for Sam and Clementine.

That’s why Clementine really needed to get the full-time orchestra job. She always got herself worked up over auditions, suddenly doubting herself. Erika couldn’t imagine having a job where you doubted your ability to perform it. In Erika’s world you were either qualified for a job or you weren’t.

Perhaps Erika had misinterpreted the expression on Clementine’s face. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help them by donating her eggs; it was just that she had so much on her mind at the moment. They should have waited until after the audition to ask her. But that was months away. If she got it, she’d be starting a new job. If she didn’t get it, she’d be devastated. It was now or never.

Maybe it was never.

Was that tablet she’d taken affecting her balance? No, of course it wasn’t. She was fine.

‘Here you go!’ Clementine handed Erika a glass, not quite meeting her eyes.

‘I’ll have one of those too,’ said Oliver. His disappointment with the way their ‘meeting’ had turned out tugged at the corners of his mouth, so he looked like a sad clown. He’d been so hopeful about today. ‘Do you think she’ll say yes?’ he’d said suddenly last night as they watched TV, and Erika could hardly bear the yearning in his voice, and her fear made her snap, ‘How would I know?’

‘Yeah, I’ll have a drink too,’ said Sam. It was like everyone was dying of thirst. Erika had served sparkling mineral water at her place, with lemon. She took a big mouthful of champagne. She wasn’t that fond of it. Did everyone just pretend to like champagne?