The Good Sister(27)

Around 9 am when the door flew open, I didn’t even have the energy to lift my head. Mum was standing in the doorway. In her hand was a glass of orange juice. She watched me for a long time. I remember thinking, She’s worried. She’s realised how sick I am. She’ll be horrified by the state of me and she’ll rush to my bedside. She might even drive me to the doctor.

Instead, she calmly sat on the bed. But instead of offering me the juice, she placed it on the bedside table just out of my reach and then held out a wad of cash – tens, twenties, even fifties.

‘You lied,’ she said quietly, holding it out to me. ‘You didn’t take the money. I just found it, in my dresser drawer.’

At first, I was confused. I’d almost forgotten the reason I was in here. So that was it. She thought I’d stolen her money. The idea, of course, was laughable. Of course I didn’t take her money! But she already knew that. She’d merely fabricated it to create some drama.

‘Sometimes I don’t know what is wrong with you, Rose. Why didn’t you just tell me you didn’t do it? You could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, or at least tried to, but my throat was too dry to project it.

Mum considered this a moment. A long moment. I glanced at the juice.

‘Well,’ Mum said, after an eternity. ‘I’ll forgive you this time, but don’t lie to me again, all right?’

I nodded.

‘Good.’ She smiled. ‘In that case . . . all is forgiven.’

Mum held out her arms for a hug indicating I should hoist myself upright. This, I think, was Mum’s favourite part. The forgiving. It made her feel like a good mother, an honourable, noble mother. Her eyes shone with goodness. But the whole time she held me all I could think of was how much longer I would have to wait before I could ask my honourable mother for that glass of juice.





FERN


Wally drives me home. I’m not used to being in a vehicle at night. It’s dark outside and the noises are sharper, more delineated. The click of the car’s indicator while we wait at the traffic lights. The sound of the steering wheel moving under Wally’s hands. It’s almost hypnotic. By the time Wally pulls up in front of my house, I’m practically in a trance.

‘How are you doing?’ he asks when I don’t get out of the car.

‘Not great,’ I say. ‘Pretty embarrassed.’

‘Embarrassed?’ Wally pulls up the handbrake. It’s loud in the quiet car. His gaze settles over my shoulder, as usual. ‘Fern, can I tell you something?’

I nod.

‘Before I lived in this van, I developed an app called Shout! with a friend of mine. It allowed people to order food and drinks from their table without having to go to the bar, and it allowed restaurants not to have to employ waiters to take orders, only to ferry food back and forth from the kitchen. There are several apps like it now, but it was the first of its kind. I was the programmer – I designed it, coded it, tested it. And it was a huge success.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thanks. It was pretty exciting at first. But then I had to start doing other stuff, apart from coding. I had to go to marketing meetings, I had to network with investors, that kind of thing. My partner kept saying things like, “This is the most important meeting of our careers.” We’d go to cocktail parties and have to talk to people – not even about Shout!, we’d just talk about sport or horseracing or whatever the other person found interesting. I didn’t understand what I was doing there, and I hated it.’ Wally glances at me briefly, then back over my shoulder. ‘The pressure was enormous. It wore away at me. I stopped going into work. I stopped getting out of bed. I think my partner would have ditched me, but we were so close to selling. Then we did sell it, and we got this ridiculous amount of money and everyone was ecstatic and I . . . just fell apart. The night after we sold, when everyone else was celebrating, I was in the emergency department, with chest pains. I thought I was having a heart attack. I was referred to a psychiatrist and kept as an inpatient at a mental facility for nearly a month. A full-blown nervous breakdown, apparently. I was so ashamed that when I got out, I left my big successful life behind and moved to Australia.’

‘Why?’

He shrugs. ‘You can’t get much further away than Australia, can you? And I had a passport, because of my mom. I thought, over here, I’d get another chance to just . . . be me. One of the reasons I got the van was because I needed to make my life small.’ Wally shakes his head. ‘But over the last few months, I’ve been developing another app. That’s what my meeting is about tomorrow. Some investors are interested. My point is that lots of people get in over their heads. It doesn’t mean you can’t try again.’

‘Are you suggesting I try bowling again?’

He thinks about this. ‘Or not. But don’t let it scare you off trying things.’

Wally looks away from me, at the windscreen. His arms loosely grip the steering wheel and I fixate on the dark brown hairs on his arms, his slender wrists, his long elegant fingers.

‘Was it the touch?’ he asks.

I wonder if I missed a critical part of the conversation. ‘Pardon?’

‘At the bowling alley. I touched your arm. Before you screamed. Was that what upset you?’