Ivy was gone, she had left her here alone. Days had passed since the sea, and still she had not come home. Sam’s hand hovered over the rosellas staring glum-eyed from the biscuit tin. She picked it up, opened it against her hip and took out half the money. She thought for a minute, then took the other half as well. It should be hers anyway. There was a debt.
She could not go out yet. The smell of rot was still thick, spiced with the smell of her sickness and the older tang of damp in the house. Unwashed sheets, sweat, the toxins leaked by the body in pain. Sam hadn’t left the house, waiting for it to ease. She wasn’t certain that it hadn’t. Anything might be hallucination. The knock at the door, for one.
She opened it to find Ivy there, as though summoned.
‘You left,’ said Sam.
‘I tried,’ said Ivy. She moved towards her. Sam made as if to block her entry, but reconsidered. She thrust the hand with the cash in it behind her, out of sight, and stood back against the open door. Ivy had found the time to cut her hair. It didn’t suit her.
If there was a moment when they might have embraced, it was deflected. Neither spoke. Ivy’s eyes searched her face. They were the same height; Sam might even be a little taller. They were each other’s mirror, one dark, the other light.
‘Why did you knock?’ Sam asked. ‘It’s still your house.’ The precious emphasis.
A look of hurt or defeat moved across Ivy’s face, and she did not answer except by exhaling, impatiently, and moving past her daughter down the hall.
Sam looked out before closing the door. The air seemed a little better. A dog trotted down the street, shaggy and grey, its mouth agape. Sam watched it break into a run.
‘I couldn’t find my key,’ said Ivy, turning in the kitchen when Sam entered. She scanned the ransacked shelves, the missing books and papers.
‘He took off, then,’ she said.
‘Days ago,’ said Sam, looking with her.
Ivy swallowed. ‘What did he say to you?’ she asked, addressing the empty shelves, the empty table.
‘Not much,’ said Sam. He hadn’t meant it anyway.
Ivy turned, leaned back against the shelf, her arms folded. ‘Did you see this?’ she asked. Her face was drawn, tired-looking, her lips determined. For a moment Sam thought that she was showing her something, looked for an object in her hand. But then she understood.
‘It’s happening everywhere. You know that.’ It made no difference now what she claimed to have seen. Ivy had made up her mind a long time ago.
‘That’s not an answer,’ Ivy said. But she didn’t press her.
‘Are they angry?’
Ivy sighed, ran her hand through her hair. It hung just to the ears now. Silver-blonde strands fell away. ‘I don’t know. People have a right to be. But Roger doesn’t think so.’
‘Is that where you’ve been?’ Ivy didn’t owe her anything. Not her days, and not an answer. But she looked apologetic anyway.
‘It’s not like that. I’ve been trying to get things clear in my head,’ said Ivy.
‘Oh.’ What might a clear head feel like? Sam thought of snow.
‘I wasn’t going to leave without saying goodbye.’
Sam tried not to move her face. Her throat was burning. Ivy swallowed. Her fingernails were fighting with the seams of her jeans, moving faster than they should be. She was leaving, then.
‘It seems to me that none of this should have happened,’ said Ivy. ‘It got so out of hand.’
‘I couldn’t stop it,’ said Sam. She’d never seen snow, except from a can. Perhaps she’d go and find some and lie down in it.
‘Did you try?’
Sam looked away.
‘Thing is,’ said Ivy. Her eyes flicked to the arm Sam held behind her back. Something like pity crept into her expression, but it crept out again. ‘Thing is, I think we both need some space right now.’ Her voice was shaking.
Sam dragged herself out of the cold dream. The air in the room was humid, suffocating. Had she heard that right? ‘It sounds like you’re breaking up with me.’
Ivy looked at her hands. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’
‘Ivy, this isn’t funny. It’s fucked up. You’re my mother.’
‘I know, Sam. But you’re seventeen now, and this illness, it’s too much. It has its own force field. It sucks everything in. I need some time, I need to remember who I am.’
Who she was, before migraine. Ivy could still get free. Sam gripped the wad of money, her fist warm against the small of her back. Her fingers shifted on the grimy plastic. Ivy looked again at her arm, then at the bag in the hallway. She blinked twice.
‘Were you on your way out somewhere?’
‘No.’ The biscuit tin lay open on the counter behind her mother. She stared at the rusted geometry of its rim. Then she turned and put the money down on the table.
‘Illness,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Ivy.
‘So that’s it.’ She had chosen a side, an explanation. May it be of use to her.
‘I only wanted to help you. You have to deal with it, Sam. All this business with the future, it’s not a game. It’s got to stop.’
‘Who says it’s a game?’ Sam faced her. It wasn’t that Ivy was staring at the small pile of cash, just that her gaze was affected by its presence, like water by the moon.
‘You know what I mean. You’re still young. When you get older, your sense of time changes. It gets faster. You can see how some things start to matter, and other things don’t.’
Sam’s hands were pressed against the table. She felt the grain print itself into her skin. The cracks in the grain polished by years of hands.
‘Which am I?’ she said.
Ivy pretended not to hear. She turned, pacing. ‘You start to see the threads. The patterns. The way your actions have consequences. I just wanted to tell you that it’s not too late. If you have to cope on your own for a while, maybe you’ll see a way to move on. You can grow out of this.’
Sam heard the break in her mother’s voice, and with it all the decay that hung in the air was not outside her any more but in her body, emanating from some wound. She remembered the days of broken bottles, broken glass. The two of them always took care of each other. But they didn’t have to.
‘You grow out of it,’ said Sam, the words burning her throat. Her mother’s face crumbled.
‘Honestly, I’ve fucking had it. I’ve had enough.’
‘I didn’t make this happen,’ Sam said, gesturing out the window. But the gesture was feeble against the weight of what she knew. The wheel already held her in its spiderweb embrace. She glanced back at the money, smiled sadly. A couple of thousand, a shitty life’s savings.
‘You should take this,’ she said. ‘Compensation. For wasting your time.’
Her mother stepped across the room, reached for her arm. Her eyes were red but her expression was controlled. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what else to say. It’s been so impossible for so long.’
Sam thought of snow. Clean, white snow. The bloated dead lay stretched out in her throat, a barren coast, run to acid. She felt the notes slip in her fist. Loose, multicoloured plastic spread in her hand like scales.
‘Take it,’ she said, and thrust the money at Ivy. ‘Here.’
‘Sam.’ Ivy’s voice had softened, but it wasn’t weak. She pushed the money away with her palm. ‘Don’t be like this. You could still come with me, if you wanted to. We could go somewhere new. Start again. We’ll get work somewhere. Fruit picking, or a shop. You can finish school. No-one will know you.’
The life was flimsy, too unthought out. A dead end.
‘You’ll know me,’ Sam said.
If only she had seen something good. Lottery numbers, a cure for sickness, something worth knowing. The anger in her body now was worse than any migraine. Sam wanted only to climb back inside the shuttered room of her pain. Inside its walls, no actions could be taken, no consequences made. This desperate wish to be too weak to matter. To find herself no more responsible for the mess they were in than anyone else.
‘I told you not to punish yourself,’ said Ivy, cool with proof.
‘I’ll leave that to you.’ Sam held the notes out.
‘Sam.’ Ivy stepped back, began to move towards the hallway. Sam followed her, took her by the shoulder.
‘You’re just like him, you know.’ Her anger surprised her. There were reservoirs of this, all buried. She could not help it.
‘Stop it,’ said Ivy, and twisted from her grip. Her hand was on the front door.
‘Here,’ Sam said. So calm now, and yet with such compulsion. She couldn’t stop moving towards this. Some machinery in her body did the work for her: it pushed her fist, threw the money out onto the concrete driveway. This automation turned, slammed closed the door. It slid the bolts behind her. She leaned her back against the wood, hid from her reflection, and felt her vision cloud black. For a moment, action, consequence were gone. Only her heart’s insistent metronome.
When her vision cleared, she watched through the narrow window. Ivy crawled on the ground collecting money, stuffing it in a pocket. As she reached out for a twenty, Sam’s stomach flowered with a small, pale sorrow.
She watched her climb into the van, yank at the seatbelt. It didn’t stick like the old one had, but habits like that were hard to break. They went into the body somehow and made a home there. This was for the best. It was the only way. There was still a long way to go, and Ivy at least should be free.
‘Don’t come back,’ Sam whispered, her forehead pressed against the glass.