Danny barely slept all night. When she finally gave up trying, the dawn chorus was in full voice and her eyes felt as if the sandman had parked his bags in her eyeballs as payment for his thwarted attempt to visit her. It was still raining. The wind had picked up and gusted around the old house, finding its way between cracks and under the rusting roof.
Danny kept reliving the moment Ross told her he owned most of the house. He might as well have said he owned her. Every time she imagined a stranger watching her and the children, recording their every move, her skin crawled. And when she thought about how eager she’d been to sleep with Ross, Danny wanted to curl into a ball and hide. He’d pulled her strings, and she’d reacted like a puppet. Just like her mother and sister, she’d been weak and malleable. She’d always prided herself on being different, but last night had shown Danny she wasn’t any different at all. Ross had reduced her to something she despised. It wouldn’t happen again.
She lay in her bed in the darkness and felt his presence in the house. It was like an electric current, the atmosphere seemed to pulse and vibrate. Ross was asleep in the living room—if it were indeed possible to get any sleep on the badly sprung couch. Danny remembered the feel of his body and the slow sweep of his tongue against hers. She rolled over restlessly and swept her bare leg across the coolness of the sheet. It was hard enough trying to patch their lives back together without him interfering. There wasn’t a pattern or book of instructions Danny could buy to tell her how to repair the hole left behind by Nella’s death. She could only follow her instincts and hope for the best. She was flying solo and by the seat of her pants.
They had to find a way to curb their tempers and live together for Matt and Mia’s sakes. Danny had to control this…thing between them. The man she’d kissed was not the real Ross; the real Ross was devious and vengeful. She felt even more wretched and guilty as she thought of Matt and Mia being dragged into the ugliness between them.
At six, she gave up trying to sleep and visited the toilet as quietly as possible lest Ross bloody Fabello hear her from his bed on the couch. The morning before, she’d been free to make as much noise as she liked—she could have walked into the bathroom starknaked and sung the national anthem at the top of her voice. But everything had changed; her home had been invaded by the enemy. She had to get out. Danny decided to go and collect the children early and break the news about Ross moving in. She peeked into the living room as she walked by.
Ross was asleep, one long arm flung above his head, a tuft of black armpit hair and one shoulder showing. Danny doubted he’d had a very comfortable night. The couch had several rogue springs capable of disabling the unwary. The night before, she’d been disappointed by Ross’s lack of reaction when she refused to let him sleep in Nella’s bed. Instead of arguing, he’d merely begun a search of the hallway cupboard when Danny pointed to it as a possible source of blankets. When he opened the door, a jumble sale’s worth of junk came tumbling down on his head. Ross managed to find Matt’s old Thomas the Tank Engine quilt and a lumpy pillow. When Nella was alive the household cupboards had been models of tidiness, but now they were like black holes—things went into them and disappeared forever. It took all of his weight against the door to force it shut.
Danny slammed the front door as she left the house, and kicked the wheel of the Explorer as she walked past on her way to the garage. Ross would soon be missing more than the king-sized bed and private elevator at his penthouse apartment.
Vanessa wasn’t surprised to see Danny so early. She opened the door wearing a green kimono dressing gown decorated with white cranes and a pair of white towelling slippers. ‘Did he find the passports?’
Danny brushed past. ‘Yes.’
Mia was watching cartoons in the lounge, while Matt was still asleep in the spare bedroom.
Vanessa waited until they were in the kitchen. ‘I didn’t realize Deryl had given you my bag until after you’d left. I didn’t want to risk calling you until I thought you were at the party and the noise would cover the sound of my cellphone ringing.’
Danny sat on a breakfast stool and nodded. ‘I know. I guessed it was you.’
‘I’m so sorry, Danny! I should have gone to get your bag. If I had, none of this would have happened. I’ve been so worried,’ Vanessa said miserably. ‘What did Ross say when he saw the passports?’
‘He’s moved in.’
Vanessa frowned. ‘What do you mean, he’s moved in?’
‘Last night—he moved in.’
‘Moved in? Why would he move in?’ Vanessa hesitated. ‘You and he didn’t—’
‘No!’ Danny felt her face heat. ‘We did not!’
‘OK! Keep your hair on.’ She hurriedly closed the kitchen door. ‘Perhaps it’d be better if you told me the whole story.’
Danny did, minus the lip-lock she’d shared with Ross by the bar.
‘He’s been having you followed?’
‘Yes. He’s got photos and daily reports and everything.’
‘And now he says he owns the house? But you gave Daniella half the deposit, and you paid most of the monthly repayments!’
Danny rested her elbows on the breakfast bar and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. ‘I feel such a prat. I was so certain Nella had left a will saying all that.’
Vanessa made a sound of disgust. ‘You’re not to blame. This mess has been caused by Daniella and Patrick.’ She raised a hand when Danny opened her mouth to defend her sister. ‘I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, but honestly, sometimes Nella had the IQ of an amoeba. And Patrick only ever looked out for himself. I’d like to wring both their necks. You’ve got to see a lawyer.’
‘And show him what?’ Danny asked bitterly. ‘The will I can’t find?’
Vanessa sighed. ‘Knowing Nella, she probably wrote it on the back of a cereal box and used it to mark where she planted carrots.’
It was a possibility. Danny made a note to check out the garden.
‘I know you can’t afford to see a lawyer at the moment, but I could lend—’
‘No.’
‘This isn’t the time to be stubborn, Daneka.’
‘I’m not being stubborn,’ Danny said stubbornly.
‘What about the children?’ Vanessa asked. ‘How do you think it’s going to be for them watching you two fighting all the time?’
‘We’ll stop.’
‘Do you really think you can?’
‘We don’t have a choice,’ Danny replied wearily. ‘We have to.’
Ross was awoken by what sounded like a herd of elephants charging through the house, but turned out to be Mia and Matt returning. He was sure he’d only managed to get a total of twelve minutes of uninterrupted sleep after spending a tormented night contorted into an unnatural position to avoid the couch springs poking him in his ass, left shoulder blade and right calf. He’d done his best to wind himself around the lumps and bumps, but, never having trained as a contortionist, failed miserably. Halfway through the night he’d started to fantasize about a bed of nails. Each time the spring dug him in the ass, he heard Danny’s voice saying, Why don’t you go excavate yourself a new rectum?
When Mia shrieked ‘Uncle Ross!’ in his ear, Ross’s entire body jerked in response, upsetting the delicate balance he’d established to allow him to fall asleep. The sofa came alive and attempted to skewer his left shoulder blade to his right one.
‘Aarghh!’ He leapt from the sofa, spilling Matt’s Thomas the Tank Engine cover to the floor.
Mia was standing in the middle of the living room, staring at his crotch. Ross’s hand shot towards his johnson, his shoulders sagging in relief when he encountered his Calvin Kleins. Usually, he slept in the buff. Considering his state of mind the previous night, it was touch and go whether he’d remembered to keep his underwear on before he climbed onto the sofa.
‘They’re pretty knickers,’ Mia said.
Ross snatched the Thomas the Tank Engine quilt from the floor and wound it around his hips. It didn’t seem right to be discussing his underwear with his eight-year-old niece. Danny’s muffled voice came through the door leading to the kitchen. ‘Mia, come out of there and let Uncle Ross have some privacy.’
Ross shuffled over and pushed the door open.
Danny stood at one of the kitchen counters. She looked as bad as he felt; purple crescents marred the skin beneath her eyes. She wore her Coco-The-Clown pants and a T-shirt that read I Started With Nothing And Still Have Most Of It Left.
Just looking at the inscription made Ross angry. The springs weren’t the only reason he’d spent the night tossing and turning. He kept thinking about Danny reading that her father was dead in the private investigator’s report. It was a shitty way to find out something so important. She didn’t deserve that.
‘Morning,’ Ross said.
Danny stared out the window over the sink and replied tonelessly, ‘Good morning.’ She wished Ross would put some clothes on. Something was wrong with her; a part of her wanted to hit him, while another part wanted to pull the Thomas the Tank Engine cover away and climb all over him.
‘Auntie Danny said you’re going to be living with us for a while,’ Mia said.
Ross shuffled into kitchen en route to the bathroom. Danny flattened herself against the kitchen counter so he didn’t brush against her. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘For a while.’
He needed to pee and have some breakfast. He needed a back massage or to be stretched on a rack. Ross had forgotten just how much Mia could talk. She was still gabbing when he shut the bathroom door in her face. When he came out again, she was waiting for him. His eye began twitching. Ross began to understand the enormity of his decision to move in with Pat’s kids, certain he could hear his brother laughing in whichever afterlife he’d landed. Ross longed for the peace and quiet of his apartment, a bed with springs on the inside, and the privacy of his own bathroom. He hauled on last night’s trousers and a black V-necked sweater, and headed into the kitchen to hunt out breakfast.
Matt was at the table, eating a bowl of cereal. Ross took a seat beside him. Danny stayed by the sink, eating toast thickly smeared with some dark-brown paste. Ross’s stomach growled loudly. Danny sank her teeth into the toast with a crunch, took a bite and chewed slowly. Ross knew he’d starve if he waited for her to offer him breakfast. He went to the refrigerator and looked inside. ‘Do you have any eggs?’
Danny sipped her tea. ‘In the chook house.’
‘The chook house?’
‘The henhouse.’
Behind her, rain and wind rattled the window panes.
Ross opened a cupboard. ‘Where’s the coffee I bought?’
She pondered. ‘I threw it away.’
‘You threw it away! Why?’
She munched on her toast. ‘Nobody here to drink it.’
Ross dragged his hands slowly down his face. She was going to make him pay—with blood.
Matt helped himself to more cereal.
‘Can I have some of that?’ Ross asked.
Matt slid the box across the table. Ross shook some cereal into a bowl, added milk and took a mouthful. He gagged on the sugary sweetness.
Mia was shocked. ‘Don’t you like it? It’s our favourite.’
Ross scraped cereal off his tongue with his spoon. He watched as Danny finished her toast and licked her thumb and forefinger. Their gazes locked. Awareness leapt between them like ectoplasm. Danny was the first to look away, and Ross found himself wondering why it was they could read each other’s minds when it came to sex but drew a blank when it came to anything else.
An inspection of the kitchen cupboards after breakfast confirmed his suspicions that he would either starve or be poisoned if he didn’t do some grocery shopping. The only food Ross found was the kind of processed crap that kids were fond of and enough oatmeal to feed half of Scotland. He grabbed some clean clothes from his suitcase and was headed towards the bathroom for a shower when the front door slammed and a voice warbled ‘Coooeee!’
Deryl Snedden appeared in the hallway. Ross had never seen her so dressed-up, or, to be more accurate, he’d never seen Deryl in a dress. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. The dress was long and shapeless and made from a lumpy brown material, with a belt from the same fabric fastened about her waist—except Deryl didn’t have a waist. The woman was the same shape from shoulder to hip—long, lanky and flat as a pancake. She wore knee-high pantyhose that ended just below the hem of the godawful dress, and a pair of ugly brown shoes. Her thin, greying hair had been set into small grey sausages across her pink scalp. There was even a smear of orange lipstick on her thin lips.
‘What’re you doing here so early?’ Deryl demanded. ‘Has your car been outside all night?’
Danny hurried into the hallway from the kitchen, looking anxious. ‘Morning, Dee,’ she exclaimed brightly. ‘You’re dressed up to the nines. Where are you off to?’
Deryl pointed at Ross. ‘Did he spend the night here?’
‘Er…yes.’ Danny looked nervous. Ross hadn’t realized the old bat’s opinion mattered so much to her.
‘Where did he sleep?’
‘On the sofa,’ he said curtly.
Deryl pursed her lips so tightly the orange lipstick disappeared. ‘I’m very disappointed in you, Daneka.’ She jerked her head in Ross’s direction. ‘Him I’d expect it from, but not you.’
‘Who the hell are—’ Ross stopped when Danny threw him a desperate look. ‘She does know better!’ he protested.
Danny seemed surprised to hear Ross defending her. So was Ross.
‘She wouldn’t be the first girl in this family to be led astray by one of you lot,’ Deryl sniffed.
‘I have not led Danny astray!’ I tried, but I failed. He wondered why even in the twenty-first century men were always the despoiler of innocents, especially when the woman in question had the instincts of a trained assassin.
Danny began to haltingly explain that Ross had moved in.
Ross decided to quit the scene before he gave into the urge to stuff Deryl’s shoes in her mouth. Danny might care about her good opinion, but he didn’t give a crap. However, he hadn’t bargained on Deryl following him into the bathroom. He stopped her at the door. ‘Sorry, Deryl: not only do I not force my unwanted attentions on women, I also disapprove of communal bathing. You’ll have to go home to take a shower.’
Danny ground her teeth. When it came to Matt and Mia and her, Deryl didn’t have a sense of humour.
‘You can’t just move in!’ Deryl raged. ‘It’s wrong! There are children in the house. What sort of an example are you setting for them?’
Ross pointed a thumb at his chest: ‘I’m their uncle.’ He turned the thumb on Danny, who was hovering in the hallway behind Deryl: ‘She’s their aunt.’
‘You’re sharing a house and you’re not married! What sort of message are you sending to Matt and Mia about sex?’
‘We’re not having sex!’ Ross snapped.
Mia pushed through a gap between Danny and Deryl. ‘What’s sex?’
‘Nothing!’ the adults shouted.
Mia went into full Hollywood mode, complete with trembling lips and brimming eyes. ‘What did I say?’
In frustration Ross thumped the bathroom wall with the heel of his hand. The wall emitted a squelch. He frowned and gave it a gentle tap with his fist.
SQUEEELCH!
‘What the—’
The fracas had dragged Matt away from his book. He watched Ross poke a finger experimentally into the flaking plaster. A large chunk fell to the floor. ‘Why’s Uncle Ross poking holes in the wall?’
Danny pushed past Deryl and grabbed Ross by the arm. ‘Stop that!’
He shrugged her off and continued digging. ‘This isn’t a wall; it’s Swiss cheese.’
Danny hung off his arm like a terrier, dragged onto the tips of her toes as Ross raised his arm and poked at a suspicious damp spot higher on the wall. ‘Leave it alone!’ she shouted. ‘It’s my Swiss cheese!’
Ross stopped poking and looked down at her through narrowed eyes. ‘Whose Swiss cheese?’
Danny’s face contorted with fury. She hooked a leg around one of his, arched her back and heaved on his arm.
‘Daneka!’ Deryl was aghast. ‘Get off him!’
Ross was so surprised that he burst out laughing. This was better than the blank-eyed expression she’d worn in the kitchen.
Danny stiffened, her eyes filling with tears. Ross’s smile faded. She abruptly let go of his arm and walked blindly from the bathroom. A few seconds later, her bedroom door closed.
Deryl glowered at Ross. ‘I hope you’re happy. I’m taking the children home with me. When you and Danny have sorted out your differences, you can come and get them.’
As she herded Matt and Mia along the hallway, Ross heard Mia ask forlornly, ‘What’s wrong with Auntie Danny? Is she going to be alright?’ before the front door closed.
Danny looked at the clock on her bedside table. Two minutes had passed since she’d last checked it. She could hear the sound of the shower running. It had been running for the past fourteen minutes. Ross had been taking a leisurely shower while Danny sat in her room feeling ashamed. He was as much to blame as she was. Deryl was right: they had to sort things out before the kids came home, but Ross seemed unaffected by what had happened.
Danny went into the hallway and tapped on the bathroom door. ‘Ross? I need to talk to you.’
The water continued to run. Sixteen minutes.
She knocked louder. ‘Ross! Can you hear me?’
No response.
Danny’s temper began to simmer. Ross wasn’t at his swanky apartment with a limitless supply of hot water—at this rate he’d empty the hot-water tank and run up the electricity bill. The aged plumbing meant it was possible he couldn’t hear her knocking, and Danny considered pounding the door with her fist but was terrified she’d lose it and attack him again. She had to think smarter and retain her dignity; it wasn’t her fault if that meant Mr Fabello had to sacrifice some of his. In the kitchen she took out the big plastic jug she used to make cordial for the kids and put it in the sink. Danny turned on the cold water.
‘Aaarrggh!’
The pipes groaned as the water was hastily shut off.
Danny turned off the tap and waited.
Ross erupted into the kitchen, a towel around his hips and shampoo suds dripping from his head and chest hair. ‘You did that on purpose!’
Now wasn’t the time to be sidetracked by all that wet skin and muscle. ‘You can’t take twenty-minute showers.’
‘What?’ He was wild-eyed. ‘Why not?’
‘Because it drains the hot-water tank.’
He flinched as shampoo dripped into his eyes. ‘What?’
‘We have four-minute showers. There’s an egg timer in the bathroom.’ His expression told Danny exactly what she could do with her egg timer. ‘I did knock, but you mustn’t have heard me.’
‘Oh yeah!’ he snapped. ‘I bet you tried real hard to get my attention.’ It was entirely possible he hadn’t heard her. He’d been so sunk in gloom that a freight train could have roared through the bathroom and he wouldn’t have noticed.
‘As soon as you’re dressed I’d like you to meet me in the henhouse,’ Danny said. ‘We need to talk.’
Ross looked at the chicken manure clinging to his white Nikes. He was standing opposite Danny in the small, warm confines of the chicken house surrounded by indignant, clucking hens sitting on nesting boxes or perched on the ceiling rafters glaring at him. Ross never knew that chickens could glare. The ceiling was too low for him to stand upright, so he was forced to tilt his head to keep from braining himself on one of the rafters.
‘Is this your idea of a joke? To force me out of the shower so I can stand in chicken shit?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry about your shower,’ Danny said.
Ross blinked. ‘Were you smoking something in your room?’
She gritted her teeth. ‘No.’
He still harboured suspicions. ‘You’re sure the real Danny hasn’t been kidnapped by aliens and isn’t hanging in a cocoon in the bedroom closet?’
She refused to rise to the bait.
Ross was intrigued by this new, calm, reasonable Danny. ‘You damn near scalded me to death.’
‘So close and yet so far,’ she muttered.
That was more like it. He changed the angle of his head to ease the crick in his neck, and got pecked on the ear by one of the hens roosting in the rafters. ‘Ow! Shit!’
‘Stay still—Beyonce gets upset if people make any sudden moves.’
‘Beyonce? You’ve got a chicken called Beyonce?’
‘Mia named them.’ Danny indicated the other two chickens in the rafters: ‘That’s Kylie and Madonna, and the three on the nesting boxes are The Dixie Chicks.’
Ross raised his hands in defeat, narrowly missing getting taken out by Kylie. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
She ignored him. ‘We can’t fight in front of Matt and Mia.’
He searched her words for a hidden motive, but couldn’t find one. ‘I know.’
‘We need to act like adults and speak reasonably to one another. Do you think you can do that?’ she asked.
‘It will be hard—very hard,’ Danny admitted. ‘But I can do it for Matt and Mia. We’ll both need some sort of a safety valve so we don’t snap and murder each other in our beds.’
‘Presuming I get any sleep,’ Ross said bitterly.
She gave him a syrupy smile. ‘There’s always that big, soft, well-sprung bed waiting for you on the other side of the harbour bridge.’
Ross wondered what kind of a safety valve Danny had in mind. He was warming to the idea: he could think of a perfect way to let off steam. ‘Tell me more about this safety valve.’
She gestured at the interior of the chicken house. ‘This is it.’
Ross looked around him. ‘What is?’
‘The chicken house: this is where we sort out our differences—any time we need to have one of our discussions, we bring it out here where Matt and Mia can’t hear us.’
He searched her face. She was serious. ‘Let me get this straight: if I want to have a discussion with you, I have to cross the back yard, dodge a couple of stupid, fat sheep and stand ankle-deep in chicken shit with my head hunched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame?’
He’d offended her. ‘Persil and Charcoal aren’t stupid, just a bit overweight.’
‘Tell me you’re not serious,’ Ross said.
‘Tell me you’re not deaf,’ Danny replied.
He was incredulous. ‘This is a chicken house, not the United Nations!’
She was unmoved. ‘You can either accept my terms or develop an ulcer and a chronic back problem.’
They locked gazes.
‘You really think you can beat me?’ Ross asked, wonderingly.
The smell and sound of the clucking, fussing chickens receded. The little wooden henhouse suddenly became a warm and intimate place. Danny licked her lips nervously. ‘I mean it, Ross. The house is out of bounds for fighting.’
Ross’s eyelids slid to half-mast. He smiled his pirate’s smile. ‘OK. But out here the gloves are off.’
Danny squared her shoulders. ‘Out here, anything goes.’
‘But—but he can’t just move in!’
‘Too late, he already has.’
‘Yes, but…’ Deryl fiddled with the covered buttons on her dress.
Danny had arrived to collect the children and explain that Ross owned two-thirds of the house, which was why she couldn’t kick him out.
‘He must know you can’t stay there together. You’re not married.’
Sometimes Danny wondered which century Deryl inhabited. ‘Dee, does Ross Fabello strike you as the sort of person who cares what other people think? He does exactly what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.’
Deryl’s sausage curls quivered. ‘It’s not right! I’ll get Lloyd to have a word with him. That’ll change his tune.’
Considering Lloyd was the wrong side of seventy with high blood pressure and even higher cholesterol, Danny didn’t think that was such a good idea. ‘No, Dee, I don’t think that would help.’
‘No?’ Deryl was dismayed. ‘Perhaps you and the children should move in here.’
Danny suppressed a shudder. With all those pigs? She thought she was better off coping with just one; after all, Ross smelt a lot better than Deryl’s porkers—and looked a lot better, too, she conceded grudgingly. There was no way Danny was handing over her house to Darth Vader. Two could play at his game. The only thing Danny had on her side was time—and the springs in the sofa. ‘Thanks for the offer, Dee,’ she said, ‘but I think it’s best that we stay right where we are. I’m sure Ross will be gone soon.’
Deryl still looked unhappy. ‘If you should ever need us, you know we’re just across the road, don’t you, dear?’
Danny smiled. Lloyd and Deryl were the closest thing she had to parents. ‘Yes.’
‘Any time of the day or night—you and the kiddies come right over to us. Alright?’
Danny nodded.
‘Tell him if he’s not prepared to make a long-term commitment, he has to go.’
She frowned. ‘Long-term commitment?’
‘Marriage, of course. We can’t let him treat you the way his brother treated Daniella.’
Danny was appalled. ‘It’s not the same thing, Dee, not the same thing at all!’
She could just imagine Ross laughing himself sick. As for Danny, the very thought of a long-term commitment with Ross Fabello would send her screaming to the nearest cliff.
‘Tell him if he’s still living in that house with you in another month, I’ll start planning the wedding.’
‘Waste of time,’ Danny said. ‘He’ll never show up in the photos.’