On the first day of winter, a burnt-crimson leaf floated from the ornamental grapevine choking Audrey Trott’s pergola. It fell onto the tallow wood deck without a sound. On that day, Audrey walked calmly and politely, out of her life.
She had woken at six and loaded her dryer with a tracksuit still gritty with sand. The laundry window was covered in a dull film of salt and dust. Tiny flecks of paint splintered from the border of the fly-screen; she noticed pockets of rust on its edges. It seemed to her that the house, built to prestige specifications just a few years ago, was falling apart at the seams. The skirting boards were bowing and lifting from the walls. Buds of plasterboard burst in musty blooms on the cornices.
Outside, the wind moaned, and Audrey’s camellias thrashed their pink-rimmed heads against the house. She felt absurdly composed. At church the night before, she had sung with such fervour that her husband, Steven, squirmed in his pew and pinched her leg. She usually just mouthed the words. She was, apparently, tone deaf. When it came to the chorus she fanned her hands out like a cascading spring and sang of the joy, like a fountain, in her soul.
Steven was already at work. She had packed him off with a thermos and a ham roll. A note was wedged between the bread and plastic wrap; a short note that managed to say more than enough. Audrey folded the clothes piled on the dryer. She could smell damp washing and what reminded her of kitty litter. Unusual, she thought, as the Trotts did not own a cat. Steven was very much against cats, even ones with bells around their necks. He had said that if the cat next door strayed onto their property, prowling for the Willy Wagtails that skittered across their Sir Walter buffalo, he would stun it with a slingshot. Audrey thought Steven shooting anything was unlikely. But she’d decided early on not to encourage the cat, even though on balmy days she imagined it lying on its back with its legs splayed while she stroked its lovely white belly in the sunshine.
Audrey grabbed her suitcase and a potted plant. She walked next door and pressed the chime. Her neighbour looked down at her bag and raised his eyebrows. The cat flicked its tail across his calf and butted its nose against him.
‘I’m going home Bob,’ she said.
He opened the screen door and gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder with his broad hand.
For five years, Audrey and Steven Trott had lived in Oasis Estate, a private retreat on the coast where the only intruders were kookaburras swooping onto the communal barbeque plate. Safe and relaxed living by the sea. That’s what the brochure had said. There was only one way in. ‘A bit like heaven,’ Steven joked. Restricted to those with a security code. ‘A gated community,’ he called it (a tad pompously, Audrey thought). He seemed to get a special thrill entering his unique digital sequence on the keypad. He would lean out of the car and flick his fingers over the numbers. ‘Four-eight-four-nine and up she goes,’ he’d say as the boom gate tilted into the sky. He said it every single time. Audrey would repeat the words in her head as Steven raised his index finger from the wheel and nodded at passers-by. ‘G’day mate,’ he’d mouth through the window and she would smile with her thin lips clenched together.
The road that meandered from the entrance was lined with Birds of Paradise; their purple and orange heads jutted from dark green foliage. Behind the landscaped gardens a series of glossy billboards featured smiling couples galloping bareback across sand dunes and blonde-haired toddlers frolicking in the waves. Your New Backyard was written in a looping scrawl on each sign. It was then just a short drive, until the road inclined to the high point of the estate then tipped steeply down into a labyrinth of brick and Colorbond housing.
Steven Trott was a real estate agent. They had purchased a house and land package using the part of Audrey’s inheritance that he knew about. His most common line to potential buyers was, ‘Why would you need a sales pitch from an agent who actually lives here?’ Audrey had hated it at first sight. The houses were corralled in muted huddles of grey and taupe, and cordoned tightly within their borders. The intense blue of the sky looked out of place; Audrey wondered how it could hover above a scene so bleak and not be drained of its colour. ‘There was a choice of four facades to encourage,’ Steven had said, ‘a sense of harmony.’ He had, after much deliberation, settled on the Majestic with luxe inclusions, though he wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.
In the lounge room of their apartment, on the day they’d signed off on the final stage of construction, he’d been unable to sit still. He kept leaping from the lounge to the window, peering out as though someone might hijack his carefully laid plans at the last moment.
‘We’re sea changers Audrey,’ he’d said. ‘No more little yobs fornicating on my doorstep. We’re going to be around people just like us.’
Since they’d been married, the Trotts had rented a small unit near a train line on the outskirts of the city. It was just two stations from the hospital her dad had been in, until recently. The move three hours north had been Steven’s idea. In the foggy haze of grief that had plagued her since her last visit to the hospital, she’d agreed. She would have gone along with anything. She hadn’t even seen the house. Steven had wanted it to be a surprise.
‘Imagine when they get our Christmas card this year. We should get a special sticker done up: Steven and Audrey Trott, 7 Castaway Close, Oasis Estate. You can’t get much better than that.’
She’d put her head to one side and squinted as though she was trying to focus on something that kept blurring. ‘I’ve always thought of castaway as being like something you discard. You know, cast aside.’
Steven’s voice was strained and deliberate when he responded, like he was explaining a complex notion to a child. ‘No. Not in this context,’ he’d said.
She’d signed her name next to his. Trott. Growing up it was Maher. It was impossible to write Trott with any sort of flair. ‘As long as I can walk to the beach, that’s all that matters,’ she said, picturing herself reclining indolently on the sand and strolling down to the water’s edge. She could almost feel the cool shock of the ocean rising in increments up her body with each step.
‘It’s more than a beach Audrey,’ he’d said, folding the contract into his briefcase. ‘We’re on the bloody Tasman.’
From the air (Steven had an aerial shot of the estate hanging in the office) it did look idyllic. In the photo, Oasis Estate was bordered by a small tract of green, a smooth curve of yellow and a torn edge of blue extending off the sheet: the bush, the beach, and the sea. What the photo didn’t show was the nearby mangroves that bred grey clouds of mosquitoes which would travel ravenously east. When they moved in, it was summer. On their first night, Audrey had laid out a platter of cheeses and dips with toasted croutons. They drank red wine from plastic cups. Audrey contemplated the straw-coloured strips of turf while Steven slapped at his legs and neck. She said she would plant an ornamental grape to stop the sun streaming into the kitchen. A mosquito hummed around her head. She pulled her hair around her ears and dragged her knees up under her t-shirt. They said nothing for a while. Audrey passed the plate.
‘Blue vein’s nice,’ she said.
He hit his cheek and flicked a mosquito from the end of his bloodied fingertip.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.
They tossed the food back in the esky and ate at the breakfast bar surrounded by packing crates. The next morning at dawn, a lone lawnmower droned. Steven put his head under the pillow. Audrey started a shopping list, writing citronella candles and repellent in capital letters followed by an asterisk. Soon the mower was joined by whipper snippers and what sounded like industrial cleaners whirring in a grinding cacophony.
‘Leaf blowers,’ Steven said with authority, ‘winner of the mindless gadget award.’
By midday the summer heat hung as heavy as phlegm.
That first stifling week five years ago, Audrey had finished unpacking, pulled on her swimming costume, grabbed a book and headed down the street. As she passed her new neighbour, he waved his secateurs in the air. He was moulding the ficus trees on his front lawn into perfect green globes. She walked towards him. Perspiration beaded on his forehead in a pearly rash. He had dark stains under his armpits. He smelt like fertiliser.
‘Bob Johnson,’ he said, wiping the palm of his hand against his shirt and holding it out. ‘Welcome to paradise, land of the mortgagee.’
She laughed and extended her hand. ‘Hello, I’m Audrey.’
‘Where you off to?’
She looked down at her swimming costume and back at him. She thought perhaps it was obvious. ‘Oh, just thought I’d have a dip.’
‘They haven’t got the pool in yet, love. That’s the next stage along with the convenience shop. Long time coming. I’ve started a petition if you want to sign it.’
‘Oh, I’m not after a pool. I’m off to the beach.’
He pushed his cap back on his forehead and laughed. The skin on his nose was peeling. ‘Let me know if you find it,’ he said.
Audrey headed for the tree-rimmed perimeter of the estate. There was a gap in the scrub with four-wheel drive tracks. Trudging over the rutted surface, she followed the tyre marks until they petered out into dense trackless bushland. She swatted branches away with her book. The ground was hard and stubbled. She thought she could hear waves but she couldn’t be sure over the buzz of cicadas.
Audrey walked until it was hard to catch her breath. Her scalp was itchy with sweat. She retraced her steps, wiping her neck with her towel until she saw the glint of the road. Heat was rising from it in ripples. She followed the snaking path back to her street. Bob was still in his yard, crouching on his lawn on all fours.
‘Cool bath and a cuppa always does the trick for me,’ he said. His tone had a sort of resignation to it. His fingers fossicked through the grass. He pulled clumps of it out and flung them into a wheelbarrow. ‘Bloody kikuyu. Spend my days pulling kikuyu out of the buffalo.’
On the last day of autumn Audrey made porridge. She scooped it into a bowl and sprinkled it with wheat germ. She poured milk from a striped blue and white jug and felt a strange sort of joy, watching it mill in creamy swales. Porridge reminded her of her dad. It was his speciality, made with semolina and milk, stirred in a figure of eight and seasoned with sea salt. Audrey would stand next to him, on a step fashioned out of recycled timber, and test it with a tasting spoon while steam flooded the space between them.
They didn’t ever sit at the kitchen table after her mother died. It was an unspoken agreement. Audrey had tiny, splintered memories of her, like shards of glass lodged into her skin. She’d been just five. She remembered the red scarf wrapped around her mother’s head, and the way she could never get warm, even though Audrey held her hand and rubbed it over and over again. She remembered worrying that her dad would die too. After the funeral, neither of them could sleep. He ended up moving into her room. He was there when she closed her eyes and when she opened them again. Each morning they’d sit on the lounge on the veranda and rest their breakfast bowls in their laps, scooping away at porridge islands trickled with maple syrup and drowned with warm milk. After breakfast they would trudge to the end of the street in their gumboots, with fishing rods and a bucket packed with frozen prawns.
Six-year-old Audrey ran down the corrugated boat ramp, her legs in free-fall, and spilled onto the sand littered with flotsam.
‘Let’s go to the rock pools Dad.’
‘I’ll carry you Auds.’ He swept her up in his arms and wrapped her legs behind his back. ‘Just like we used to. I used to carry you in a harness on my tummy.’
‘Yay,’ said Audrey. ‘Let’s find the starfish.’
She buried her face into the warm nest of his chest. The wool from his jumper tickled her cheek. His boots grinded over broken oyster shells; tested each rock, pushing lightly against it with his foot before jumping onto it. They reached the curve of the bay and the rocks smoothed into boulders. He swung Audrey down and planted her squarely in front of him, gently nudging her towards the rock pool, then rigged up his rod and cast it in a wide arc out to sea. Audrey pushed her arms behind her and crawled down the face of the boulder, like a crab, until she reached a shallow gutter loaded with periwinkles. Her hand skimmed through the water making whirlpools. Juvenile luderick darted into shadowy gaps. She poked her finger into the maroon tentacles of a sea anemone. She screamed.
‘Daddy, Daddy, quick, it’s dead.’
He rested his fishing rod in a crevice. ‘Audrey, come away from there.’
‘It’s got no bottom.’
‘Audrey.’
‘It’s still swimming Daddy; it’s got no bottom and it’s still swimming.’
He peered into the water behind her, holding her shoulders. ‘Oh Auds, it’s just a fish, it’s the frame of a fish.’
‘It’s all bones and a head and a tail, but no bottom, and it’s swimming.’ It was moving with the flow of the tide, its tail flicking and glinting in the sun, its eyes still clear. ‘Let’s touch it,’ Audrey squealed. ‘Let’s get its eye out.’
‘No honey,’ he said. ‘Leave it alone. It’s dead, just leave it alone.’
Audrey carried the bowl of porridge to her bedroom. Steven was propped up in bed, leaning against a pillow that erupted in blue bursts through the gaps in the wrought-iron bed head. He had the real estate guide slung between his legs. On the second page there was a photo of him in a navy suit, with a cerise tie knotted precisely around his collar in the manner of private-school boys. His arms were slightly out from his sides, and his body was leaning forward like he was about to leap right out of the page. The photo had been retouched. In it, his usually ruddy skin was a lovely caramel colour. Byron-bronzed, thought Audrey. His hairline, normally travelling from his forehead in two high peaks, was styled into a smooth brown wave that hung over one eye. The profile under his picture said, ‘Steven Trott, licensed consultant’, and under this a quote: ‘I truly value people’s needs. Let me help you build you’re new lifestyle.’ His eyes were immediately drawn to the error.
‘Morons,’ he said.
She balanced the bowl in one hand and pulled the blinds open. He held a hand up to his eyes, squinting.
‘Audrey I’m not ready for light.’
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘You’re lifestyle with an apostrophe. You are lifestyle. Two hundred for that ad.’
He slapped the back of his hand over the page. ‘Oh fugod’s sake. Graham’s got the Wise listing.’
‘Not to worry,’ said Audrey.
Steven sighed and moved his head from side to side. ‘Not to worry,’ he said, parroting her. ‘Yes it is to worry Audrey. I’ve been working on that family for months. I gave their bloody kid my mountain bike.’
Audrey slid the blind back using the nylon baubled cord at the side of the window. She noticed it was dotted with tiny fly specks. She smudged them off with her fingertip and put the bowl on the bedside table.
‘Make me a coffee?’ he said to the back of her head.
Audrey started back down towards the kitchen. She heard the creak of bedsprings and turned into the room she had decorated for the baby the Trotts had been unable to conceive. ‘A bit premature don’t you think,’ Steven said when she’d started transforming it. It had aqua walls with stencilled schools of whitebait swimming to the ceiling. Against the vertical blinds, strands of fishing line swayed with sparkling silver and gold starfish. Sheer blue silk draped in curling wave barrels from a steel rod mounted above the window.
After years of trying, the doctor suggested running some tests. He said that the problem could be any number of things. When Audrey had mentioned this to Steven, he’d pushed his tongue against the inside of his lower lip. The vein in his temple had pumped rhythmically. That afternoon he’d dismantled the cot and moved in a spare bed. ‘I’m fine Audrey, don’t worry about helping me,’ he’d said, shoving the wooden slats through the sliding doors. They’d scraped along the powder coating leaving a jagged line in the paint. He’d dragged the cot in sections across the lawn to the garage. Audrey followed with her arms folded as he clambered over the retaining wall next to the garage and pushed up the door. He’d climbed onto the workbench and hoisted the timber base above his head, shoving it into a gap above the exposed beams where it wouldn’t get in the way. It teetered over the side of the beam and crashed onto the floor, splitting almost perfectly down the centre.
The spare bed’s chenille quilt had a mound in the centre of it. Cocooned inside was a child named Phoebe. The bed sighed as she rolled over. Audrey had minded her overnight. Her parents were in one of the houses that had gone up in the next stage of Oasis Estate. Steven had encouraged the arrangement saying they seemed like nice, decent people. The Trotts had originally been located on the far boundary, but they were now hemmed in. Phoebe’s parents had a two-storey house that towered over the Trott’s rear fence leaving a dark shadow on their lawn.
Audrey sat on the edge of the bed. Phoebe had one leg dangling over its side and Audrey tucked it back in. She stared at her reflection in the mirrored built-in. The starfish glinted against the light flowing through the blinds behind her. She was wearing a white towelling dressing gown that gaped, exposing a rash of pale freckles across her chest. Flecks of grey streaked her hair. What a dishevelled mermaid, she thought. She imagined what her hair would look like if it was golden-blonde. Maybe she would dye it. She fluttered her hands by her waist like she was trying to rise to the surface.
Eight-year-old Audrey and her dad walked down the stairs to the ocean baths. She was wearing a navy swimsuit with tiny ruffles fanning out from her waist. Her legs were patterned with purple blotches and her arms were covered in goose bumps. Her dad had a canvas backpack on, crammed with masks, snorkels and towels. They sat on the edge of the saltwater pool. On the other side, Audrey could see waves crashing over the chain barrier that separated them from the ocean. A lady wearing a racer-back swimsuit and a flowered cap flexed her shoulders, folded her outstretched arms across each other, and dived into the water. Her dad jumped in. The water slapped against his waist. He took her mask and spat in it, swishing around the glass with his thumb. She giggled.
‘Daddy that’s disgusting.’
‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘You don’t want it all foggy.’
He took her feet and cupped them into bright blue flippers. He stretched a mask over her face and pulled the loose wisps of her fringe out, then slotted a snorkel into her mouth.
‘Bite on it,’ he said. Her lips puffed out and he laughed at her. ‘I wish your mum could see you like this.’
He clapped his hands, and she jumped out from the edge and wrapped herself around him. His skin was warm. She clung to him like a periwinkle. He prised her off and laid her face down in the water.
‘Just breathe,’ he said. ‘Try not to think of anything.’
He held one arm under her stomach and one under her thighs. The water lapped around her hairline. She could see his legs under the water. They looked like the legs of a giant. They were white with tiny bubbles of water stuck to them. ‘Kick Audrey,’ he said. ‘Move your hands in and out like the fins of a fish.’
She felt the water take her weight as her arms and legs paddled in furious circles. His voice was muffled against the sound of her breath. She saw an orange starfish peeking out from the sand. She squealed and spluttered out her snorkel.
‘A starfish Daddy. I saw a starfish. It was huge.’
‘My little mermaid,’ he said.
Audrey picked up the teddy that Phoebe had flung onto the floor during the night. She suffered night terrors. She had to tell Bob next door that the blood-curdling screams that came from their house were nothing to be concerned about. Whenever Phoebe stayed, the stuffed toys that Audrey had tucked in next to her were spread in fluffy carnage on the green shagpile rug come morning.
Audrey had bought the rug at a department store sale at the complex, an hour’s bus ride from Oasis Estate. Her period had been late. She had thought the rug looked just like a bed of soft weed, with its fibres looping in on each other. She’d passed her money to the shop assistant saying it was for the nursery. As she walked to the bus stop, with her shopping bags slung under her arm that day, she pictured the ropes of green fibre from the rug twisting between her baby’s curled pink toes.
It would be a boy. She could smell his skin, freshly bathed and massaged with lavender oil. She would tickle his feet with a strand of wool and he would giggle. He would have her hazel eyes. Sitting on the bus, with the breeze blowing through her hair, she had pulled the bunny rug from its bag and held it against her cheek. The woman sitting next to her nodded and smiled. Audrey rubbed her stomach. She imagined it swelling as the baby grew inside her, suspended in its warm ocean, floating and tumbling, immersed within her. She had wondered what the churning in her belly would sound like to her child. Perhaps like the echoing rumble of a shell when you hold it to your ear.
Her stop had been just up the road. Audrey slid across the seat and rocked from side to side against the aisle. Her spare hand pressed lightly on the shoulders of passengers. She thanked the driver and stepped onto the curb. As she did, her face flushed, and she felt a warm trickle between her legs. She ran into the estate, past the Birds of Paradise; their dead flower bulbs drooped over the garden’s perimeter, discarded in brown shadows, clinging like cicadas. She reached the crest of the hill. Spread in front of her in the midday sun, was the blinding shimmer of Colorbond; brown-brick houses with patchwork shale facades teetering from their borders.
Audrey reached her house. Bob was playing with his cat. His hand scuttled under a piece of newspaper and the cat pounced on it.
‘Lovely day Audrey,’ he said.
‘Perfect beach weather,’ she said.
She pushed open the front door and ran to the bathroom, pulling down her pants and sliding them over her feet. She rinsed them in the sink and crouched on the tiles with her head between her knees.
Phoebe rolled over in her sleep. Audrey turned to watch her nestle her face into the quilt. Her blonde hair spilled across the pillow. She had hair just like her mother, Kylie. Audrey only really knew Kylie on a weather-talking basis, but she did know the babysitting was arranged so she and her husband, Michael, could go on scheduled date nights. Steven played golf with him. Michael had said recently, out on the course, that Kylie thought he had an alcohol problem. He’d confided to Steven that he’d only started drinking heavily to cope with her therapy-induced manic optimism. Audrey had laughed the way you do when someone else’s burdens make your own seem more bearable.
Phoebe had spindly blue veins on her eyelids and her mouth was open. She tucked the teddy back under Phoebe’s neck and inhaled her bitter, milky breath. Steven called out from the bedroom.
‘Do you want me to make my coffee Audrey? I’ve got inspections at the new subdivision all day.’
After Steven had left for work and Kylie had arrived (flustered and an hour late) to collect her daughter, Audrey walked down the hallway to the office. For two years she’d operated a home-based typing service. It made sense, Steven had said, for her to work from home. The Trotts could after all, only afford one vehicle, and the bus service made commuting to work almost impossible. Steven had bought a new model Statesman. He’d said the car was a reflection of his ability as an agent. A luxury car was expected.
That day she entered client records without really absorbing them. The wind rattled the window frames. As she moved her fingers over the keypad, tapping lightly and efficiently (she was a touch typist), she fell into a daze. She saw herself trudging along the sand. Her brown calves flexed as she picked her way past abandoned footprints and ribbon weed. It was the summer holidays. Parents twisted umbrellas into the sand and dabbed their children with sunscreen. Teenage girls sprawled on their stomachs, their pale heels pointing up to the sky, their boy-leg bikinis stretched tightly across their bottoms. She saw a topless woman engulfed by a huge inflatable tyre bobbing languidly in the water. As Audrey typed, the woman’s fingertips trawled through the surface of the ocean netting tiny silver fish. She propped herself up higher. She felt invigorated. Her skin was golden with tiny pale hairs. She had a mulloway bone on a piece of fishing line dangling between her breasts. She spread out her towel and leaned back pushing her fingers deep into the sand. A young boy crawled out from the water. He was draped in a cloak of seaweed. He looked at her with yellow eyes. He shuffled up the sand until he reached her, then turned and pushed his body into the space on the towel between her legs. She picked the seaweed off his back. He was covered in dark, soft down and his shoulder blades protruded like wasted, distorted wings. Tiny moles were dotted over his body. While she waited for her file to save, Audrey rested her cheek against his back. He was damp, his skin flecked with salt. She licked the tiny indentations of his backbone. He tasted like the roe from a cracked sea urchin.
Audrey printed the file. She moved her fingers from the keyboard and cupped her coffee mug. She let the last sip fall against her tongue. It was cold and metallic. Above her head a fluorescent light flickered. Huddles of flies dotted its casing. She heard a blowfly buzz into a gap to reach the light, hurtling back and forth against the hard plastic edge in tiny death vibrations. She should take down the fitting and clean it. On the cork noticeboard in front of her, her dad smiled up from a photo she had pierced with a thumbtack. He was standing in the front yard of her childhood home. It was a white weatherboard cottage wrapped in a hardwood veranda. In the photo, she could see the jasmine-covered bearers that she used to scale as a kid. The garden was littered with scallop and abalone shells. A sagging lounge covered with newspapers and books leaned near the front door. Netted glass floats dangled from the beams. Her dad had his hands pushed into the flowered red gills of a mulloway. It was almost as big as he was. He’d given her the shiny bones from the cavity at the top of its spine to take for news. She told the class what her dad had told her while they had eaten the fish for dinner the previous night. She told them about the humming noise the bones made that sounded like the fish was singing. Her teacher held her back at recess and told her that news was meant to be something real. She’d gone home that night and her dad had asked how it went. She’d said there hadn’t been time. She’d gone to her bedroom and dropped the bones into her jewellery box.
Thirteen-year-old Audrey clipped her weight belt around her waist and staggered backwards in her fins like her dad had taught her. On the shoreline, a toddler giggled and twisted his body into the sand. Audrey swivelled around and pushed out into the ocean. The water worked its way through her wetsuit. She shuddered. Around her, the light played like balls of mercury swirling and bumping against each other. Clumps of weed hung in dull blooms from craggy drop-offs. Her dad held his speargun beside him and reached out a gloved hand. She clenched it and he dragged her through the water. It chinked and rumbled around her like an out of tune orchestra. Reeds flowed in speckled ribbons from puckered crevices. Her dad pointed out a flathead. It looked like a fossil camouflaged against the sand. He pulled her up to the surface. They spat out their snorkels.
‘You okay?’
The water smacked against them. ‘Yep. I’ll be fine.’
‘Let’s keep going then.’
They glided with slow flicks of their fins past boulders flecked gaudily with pink algae and purple turf weed. A school of bonito startled and skittered. Her dad let go of her hand and tipped himself into the drop-off. She hovered over him while he loaded the gun. A Sampson fish swam around his fins as inquisitive as a dog. Her dad fired his spear through the water and the rubber buckled and curled like a tentacle. The fish twisted and arched. It started swimming down, then turned and flicked towards the surface. She watched its body shake in silvery spasms. She could hear her dad whoop through his snorkel. He slid the spear back through the fish and toggled it onto the line. They kicked back to the surface again. The water gurgled in the curve of her snorkel and she blew it out.
‘Want to have a shot?’ he asked, holding the fish in his hand. It was still twitching. She kicked her legs to stay afloat. The water was dark and rippled. She felt cold. They’d travelled a long way from the shore. The ocean tugged at her.
‘Dad, I think I want to go back in.’
‘Audrey we’re safe here. We’re just swimming to that bommie. I’ll put you up on the rock and you can sit there like a shag. This one’s mine. I’ve still got to get your dinner.’ He put his snorkel back in his mouth and held out his hand. She reached across and followed him. A long strip of green weed curled around her arm. She pulled it free and let it float away.
By mid-morning Audrey had finished most of her typing. She stood and turned to her grey filing cabinet. On it was a potted plant with waxy emerald leaves. Audrey always thought it would look more at home in the ocean. It reminded her of seaweed. Steven had bought it for her the day after she told him the pregnancy had failed. It had a pointed plastic label stabbed into the soil. In bubbled writing it said, ‘Thrives on Neglect.’
‘It’s just a little something,’ he’d said, oblivious to the inference that had struck her like a dull punch to the gut.
He’d continued chatting away while she nudged the corner of her eye with her sleeve. ‘The lady at the shop said you don’t really have to do anything with it at all. Just a drop of water now and then.’ He’d put her hand between his and given her firm but inadequate pats.
The lady in the shop was right. Then, the plant had been just two shoots with the leaves curled in on each other like clasped fingers. Now it cascaded over her cabinet falling in all directions, looping into the drawer as she pulled it out on its warped hinge. She poked her finger into the soil. It was a little dry. She lifted the leaves and tipped some water around its base. A new shoot was just starting to form, pointing towards the tiny shaft of light from the window. Audrey felt like the walls were closing in on her.
Tomorrow would be winter.
She went to the kitchen and washed the toast crumbs down the sink. She wiped the grease from last night’s grilled chops from the stovetop. The house felt grimy. She’d feel better if she got out for a while.
Steven had said the new subdivision tours would take all day. He wouldn’t be home until six when they would go to church. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and yanked open the front door; it had swollen from the salty air. She slammed it. Outside, Bob had his car jacked up. He was lying underneath it with his knees sticking out. She walked past him and he slid out on a trolley.
‘Getting too old for this nonsense,’ he said. He dipped a paintbrush into an ice-cream bucket and smoothed off a slick of oil against the edge of the container. He was always pottering. A bit like her really, she thought.
‘Bit of fish oil,’ he said.
‘You’ve lost me Bob.’
‘Ever seen a rusty fish Audrey?’
He winked at her and skated back under the car on his back. He had brown, muscular calves. He had told her that he’d been really fit once. He reminded her a bit of her dad.
‘Bye Bob,’ she said to his legs. He wagged one of his feet at her.
Audrey thought she would walk along the roads in the second stage of the estate. She could then follow the path that curved around the tract of bushland. She meandered past reticulation systems and solar garden lights that were bent and pitted. The grass was strangled with clover. She turned down into Drifters Way. A pair of terriers raced along the perimeter of their yard hurling themselves against the fence and yelping at her. ‘Ssh, it’s okay,’ she said. They snarled.
Mirage Close veered off to the right. It was a cul-de-sac lined with a series of blocks that were vacant, apart from a few surveyor pegs and signs listing the site dimensions. The ground on the lots was sandy and pliable, full of give. Her feet sunk into it. It would soon be compacted and pierced with pilings, slabbed and trussed and put on display. She looked towards the curve of the turning circle. There was a silver car parked facing the bush. Audrey thought it looked a bit like Steven’s. A bright blue sporty-looking hatch was parked next to it. She’d seen it before too, but she couldn’t quite place it. She walked a bit closer. It was definitely a Statesman. If it was him he was going to be late for his subdivision tours. She took tiny steps. She wasn’t sure why. It looked like there were two people in the Statesman. She could see the backs of their heads. Steven would be mortified if he was trying to close a deal, and she wandered past. She would pretend she hadn’t seen him. The way she looked, with her hair plastered against her face and her joggers on, would be bad for business. Bedraggled women didn’t feature in the brochures.
She stared at the heads. They had turned towards each other. She could see now that the other person was a female. She had long blonde hair. Audrey watched as they moved towards each other into the space between the car seats. Their faces pressed together. Audrey stood transfixed as the man’s hands reached up and clutched either side of the woman’s face. They nuzzled in on each other. She was inching closer now, just like Bob’s cat did when it skulked along the fence with its eyes fixed on the birdbath. Slinking along the path, her heart rose in her throat so quick and sweet that she thought she might be sick. It was his numberplate. They were still locked together.
She remembered now where she’d seen the other car. It was the one that Kylie had backed down her driveway in after picking up Phoebe. Normally Michael collected the child. Audrey was guiltily mesmerised. She wondered when they would take a breath. She felt repulsed and seduced at the same time. The blood in her ears thudded but her skin tingled. She could not remember the last time Steven had seemed so absorbed in something other than real estate. She backed away slowly in small, shuffling steps and then turned and ran down the street.
Twenty-nine-year-old Audrey sat on the edge of the hospital bed. Lying against stiff white pillows her dad smiled at her, and then motioned towards the bedside table. On it sat an envelope.
‘It’s something for a rainy day Audrey.’
‘I don’t want anything.’
He turned onto his side, the plastic of the mattress protector crinkled against his skin. His breath came in short, sharp bursts. His skin was grey, the colour of a trapped fish.
‘That was a great fish you caught that time Audrey,’ he said.
‘Guess I couldn’t go wrong with a flathead. It wasn’t even moving before I hit it.’
‘Gave you a bit of a fight though.’
‘Yeah thanks Dad, it nearly killed me. I mean . . . God, I hate this.’
‘I’m okay with it Audrey. Really.’ He smiled and took a deep gasp. He felt cold. She rubbed his skin but it made him wince. She put both their hands under the cover. She thought of her mother’s hands. A tiny sliver of memory.
‘How long since you’ve been for a dive?’
‘I can’t get Steven into a wetsuit. He’s petrified of sharks. Of the water really. He doesn’t trust it. He thinks it’s too unpredictable.’
‘Have a look Audrey.’
‘You never give in do you Dad?’ She reached across and opened the envelope. In it was a photo of him in front of her childhood home, holding up his prize mulloway. She still had the bones out of its neck.
‘It’s yours Audrey. When you’re ready.’
‘We already ate it Dad.’
‘Funny. I mean the lot, everything in the photo. Well, not the lounge. I think it went. Come to think, it could be in the shed. It mightn’t be what you’re after. It needs a bit of work.’
‘I couldn’t Dad. It would feel too strange.’
‘Your mum and I will always be in that house Audrey. And if I’m not home I’m just down the road at the beach swimming out to that bloody bommie.’
Audrey turned towards the bushland at the end of the estate. The wind had picked up and storm clouds loomed in the distance. She pushed her hands out in front of her and peeled her way through the scrub. The ground was littered with leaves and twigs. Overhead the gums twisted in on each other. Audrey thought of Steven clutching Kylie’s face, holding her like he would never let her go. Branches grabbed at her, catching her clothes. Tiny embraces that she shrugged herself out of. She could hear the distant rumble of the ocean. The salty air burned the back of her throat. Bob had said there was about a kilometre of bush and then the sand dunes. He’d said no one in their right mind would bother.
Audrey pictured Steven tonight, sitting next to her on the orange plastic chairs at church. He loved it. He said it was his main source of business. ‘The louder they clap the more that’s wrong with them Audrey,’ he’d said last week. ‘They’re all on the rocks and divorce means at least one listing.’ Steven embraced the church just like he embraced real estate. He said that it all came down to good marketing: ‘Product Eternity or Product House, Price Negotiable, Place Morality, Promotion, Promotion, Promotion.’ It was the same little chant he did each Sunday. ‘That’s how they get you in Audrey, clapping and bickies and selling the dream.’
She reached the blinding white of the sand dunes and ran towards them. She felt like she could run forever like she did in her dreams, more powerful with every step; her legs so strong that life could never catch up with her.
Her heart was pounding. She stripped off her tracksuit top and plunged into the sand. It was in her eyes and her ears and her mouth, burying her, shutting down her senses. She scrambled up the slope digging her fists into the ground. She reached the crest of the dune and rolled down the other side, tumbling like a child. Her hair slapped against her face. She forced herself up again and climbed over the next one. She could hear the ocean heaving. She clawed towards the sound.
Then she saw it: Steven’s bloody Tasman.
Huge waves were crashing right on the shoreline, thumping into the sand, eroding it. There was no sign of life. No footsteps, no voices, just the wild, deep howling of a treacherous sea.
Audrey peeled off the rest of her clothes and ran down to the edge. Her skin was so cold it was burning. Blasts of sand whipped her legs. She stumbled into the icy water and fell onto her knees. The grey wash surged around her and dragged her in, tossing her onto her back. She gulped in a shock of saltwater and coughed it out again. Her hair spilled into her mouth and she giggled. How ridiculous she would look right now to Steven; Steven stroking Kylie’s smooth blonde hair while she was flung about like washing in a dryer. She would let the sea engulf her until she couldn’t breathe anymore; let it drown her in the moment.
She pushed under a wave and gasped in more water. Her head thudded with an instinct that forced her up to the surface. She looked back at the sand dunes shifting along grain by grain; travelling without anyone noticing. The next wave smacked her hard across the face. ‘Turn on your side Audrey,’ her dad said. The current grabbed her and dragged her out deeper. She thrashed against it feeling a giddy stab of panic. She was caught in a rip. The water curled around her arms and legs like rope and pulled her into it.
Audrey cried out but her voice was swept away by the wind. A wave pushed her back into the sea. She opened her eyes. There was nothing but a vast, lonely emptiness. The water rushed past in a white blur, like a desert storm. ‘Kick as hard as you can,’ she heard him say. She forced her face back out of the water. She could still see the shoreline. Another wave broke over her head. She thought of the lounge slumped on the veranda with her dad curled into it, gouging an urchin spine out of his toe while she squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed him on the back. Audrey kicked and breathed. She kicked until she felt her dad’s arms wrap around her. He pushed her forward with strong strokes. They swam together until the ocean stopped pulling, swam until she was safe and the waves could pummel her back towards the shore.
Around her, the land and the sea and the sky stretched out forever. She staggered out of the water gasping for air and fell onto the sand. She took deep breaths and pressed against it, forcing herself in deeper. Drops of water flicked across her skin. She rolled over and opened her mouth to taste them.
It had started to rain.