Laura Nesci was about to do something she had never done before. Casting a guilty eye over her shoulder she grabbed up the binoculars and held them to unblinking eyes, aiming not at a yacht on the horizon or a kayak in the shallows, or at dolphins fracturing the sunlight sprinkled across the ocean’s surface, but at a human figure striding through the dunes in front of her house.
Regardless that Laura found the habit of studying unsuspecting people at close range an abhorrent breach of privacy, she allowed herself the sight of the faded blue T-shirt over broad shoulders, the unruly steel-grey hair, the muscled calves below khaki board shorts. He turned towards her then, bending to pick up a stick from the sand, his brown terrier instantly alert at his feet. Laura watched his arm draw back to send the stick pirouetting across the marbled sky, the dog scampering through the dunes like a rabbit. His smile crept across his face, reminding her of that day not so long ago when after several occasions of exchanging nods and tentative smiles as they passed each other on the beach, he had finally stopped and struck up a benign, somewhat reserved conversation about something she had already forgotten, and introduced himself as Flynn O’Connor.
Clearing her throat, Laura set the binoculars down again on the coffee table.
Turning her thoughts to the more mundane, she straightened the cushions on the white leather couches facing each other over the coffee table and surveyed the panorama of Ackland Bay before her. She stepped into the kitchen doorway, glancing at her watch and calling down the passage towards the bedrooms, ‘Seth. Come on, dude. We’ll be late.’ She waited, throwing her leather bag over her shoulder, straightening her black jacket and brushing a scattering of fluff from her black pants.
‘Don’t worry about that, mate.’ She smiled as Seth stumbled towards her from his room, struggling to get his small shoulder under the strap of his disproportionate backpack. ‘You’ll only have to take it off again in the car.’ Catching his fringe between gentle fingers she swept it back from his forehead, deriving a jolt of pleasure from his neatness, his freshly laundered shorts and pressed school shirt, the dark sheen of his shoes.
An off-sea breeze met them outside the back door, but not even the tangy salt air could calm her frustration as she pulled and jiggled the key. ‘This goddamned lock is getting stickier by the day,’ she mumbled before it finally relented, and her wedged heels clicked along the concrete path to follow Seth’s gambolling progress towards the carport. Pushing aside melancholic, even angry thoughts of her husband Simon, which in his absence seemed to invade more frequently now, she concentrated instead on Seth’s humming, sounds of unfettered joy that only a six year old can produce out of nowhere so early in the day. Pointing the remote at her car, she glanced at the sea sparkling like crushed glass under the sun, knowing that when she returned it would be to the moon’s silver path across the water.
‘You’re quiet this morning, Seth,’ she said turning to the passenger seat as he clicked the safety belt in place. ‘Is there something on your mind?’ she added, reversing from the driveway.
Seth shook his head. Gazed out the side window. She knew her grandson well and she knew he was bothered. She also knew he would tell her when he was ready.
Ackland Bay’s foreshore boasted a continuum of fibro weekenders and Malibu mansions, and in between, the predictably boring cream-brick rectangles of the 1980s, like her own. But the long stretches of timber decking and sliding glass she and Simon had added when they bought and renovated the house eight years ago provided another dimension. Now at every opportunity during summer they would throw open all the doors, enticing sea breezes to flow unfettered through the house. Well, that is until Simon had walked out on her.
Without words Laura and Seth cruised along the esplanade and onto the ribbon of road winding through the Fleurieu Peninsula, which wore the final vestiges of winter green and the beginnings of spring – sloping emerald pastures, roadside bursts of golden wattle, distant patches of almond groves exploding into white with blossom. Half the time it took to drive to work each day was spent within this magical region. Yet, she had never tired of seeing Herefords and sheep grazing on one side of the road and the glistening splendour of the ocean and coastline on the other.
‘We should take a sickie today,’ Seth said, breaking the silence.
‘Mm. I don’t think your mother would approve.’
‘Oh, Tara wouldn’t mind,’ he said. ‘She thinks mental health days are important.’
Laura’s forehead creased. ‘Does she? I’d have thought she’d rather collapse with exhaustion than take a mental health day.’
‘She doesn’t take them herself but she thinks they’re good for other people,’ Seth said, opening his mouth wide and wiggling at a loose tooth.
‘Leave it, darling, it will come out on its own,’ she said, frowning at the vigour he was applying to the task. ‘And I think we should reserve the mental health day for another time. What does your mother think of you calling her Tara, by the way?’
Seth shrugged. ‘She doesn’t really care.’ He glanced at Laura before turning back to the side window, covering his mouth with one hand and attacking his tooth again.
Laura knew Tara well enough to know she would not approve of Seth using her Christian name, particularly in public. But her daughter was wise enough to leave the trivial alone and to raise only significant issues with Seth, whose stubborn streak rivalled her own.
As Seth lapsed into silence again Laura enjoyed the headspace – the opportunity to plan her day, to anticipate what surprises may be in store when she arrived at the station. By the time they reached the expressway, the morning sun had risen to play across the dewy canopy of the urban sprawl she had watched creep closer to her coastal homeland since she made it hers eight years ago.
‘When is Pops coming back?’
She turned to see Seth’s innocent expression, his question stabbing at her like a dagger.
‘I don’t know Seth,’ she said softly, feeling as though her heart was opening up to swallow her whole.
‘He’s taking a long time to make up his mind. Mum said he might not come back,’ Seth muttered, turning back to the side window.
Anger burst in Laura’s chest like a grenade. ‘Oh. So your mother tells the future now, does she, Seth?’ she said, immediately regretting it.
‘Sometimes,’ Seth said, undeterred. ‘She’s pretty smart.’ He stared ahead at the countless cars tearing along the expressway with them. ‘Anyway, I miss him,’ he added, glancing at her as though needing to be reassured that she understood.
‘Me too,’ she murmured, not really certain how she felt.
Again the car filled with silence. Laura’s mind cast back to three months ago as, fresh from the shower, she had been drying her hair in front of the mirrored doors of their wardrobe, studying the apple shape of her body that had once been an hourglass, occasionally glancing at the reflection of Simon propped up in bed watching her, his arms folded behind his head.
‘I need to go on a diet,’ she had said to her reflection more than to him, the flesh of her midriff and arms moving in unison as she rubbed her hair. She waited for his usual response – something like ‘You’re fine’ or ‘You always say that’ – but he said nothing, leaving her to assume that once again he had slipped into a state of selective deafness. Laura had never relied on Simon for reassurance. Spending over twenty-five years of her life as a single mother had rendered that requirement superfluous. So she had easily ignored his silence and continued to study her thickening torso in the mirror. Celebrities like Helen Mirren and Jane Fonda – not much older than she but still with curves – inspired her to truly believe that having a waistline at sixty was a distinct possibility for anyone, even her. She had turned her head on the side and tried to imagine herself carrying a few less kilos, eventually unable to tolerate the sight any longer and turning away. ‘Oh, who cares?’ she had said, tipping her hair upside down and blasting it with the dryer. Knowing that she did care – constantly.
‘I’m going away for a while,’ Simon had announced at that very moment, his voice smashing through her thoughts, his eyes boring into her reflection in the mirror as he sat straighter in the bed.
‘What do you mean?’ Laura said, switching off the dryer.
‘Just what I said – I need time out . . . I’m going away for a while.’
Stunned into silence, she had been unable to do anything other than stare at his reflection. They were supposed to grow old together. Hell, she had assumed after eight years of marriage, despite this being the second time for them both, that they definitely would grow old together.
She turned away from the mirror to face him, certain she had seen his shoulder flinch at that moment. ‘Where will you go?’
‘I’ve rented a small flat in the city. It’s not brilliant but it’s all I can afford from my consultancy dollars.’
‘But . . . why, Simon? I thought we were happy – or at least okay.’
For the next four days, as he had prepared to depart, Laura had snatched up every opportunity for conversation, had made several attempts, tried different tactics to get him talking in a way that made sense of his rigidly determined stance to leave. But still, by the time he had finally driven off, towing a rented trailer with a rattling collection of furniture and personal possessions, she had been none the wiser about why. Simon refusing to engage in meaningful dialogue was nothing new, but never before had his reticence mattered as it did now. All she could conclude from his paltry tight-lipped revelations was that Simon’s perception of their married life together bore absolutely no resemblance to her own.
He had returned home twice to mow the lawn, replace a rotted sleeper in the back garden and change the batteries in the smoke alarms, in the three months since that day. She clung to this as an omen that he intended to return home for good, more from a need for a sense of predictability in her life than from missing him, because in his absence she was slipping back with alarming ease into a familiar, enjoyable state of independence. She loved coming home to find the house was still as she had left it; she loved being able to eat when and whatever she pleased, meaning that, ironically, she was losing weight without effort; she loved how she could stay at work for longer hours without fearing the chagrin of Simon and his needs.
But then there was Seth. Since the very day of Seth’s birth Simon had been there for him. He and Seth had become inseparable, constantly referring to each other as ‘man’ or ‘buddy.’ Not only had Simon left her in limbo, Laura reflected with gnashing anger as the expressway traffic tore past them, but he had abandoned Seth as well.
She turned to him now. ‘Guess what?’ she said, her tone forced even to her own ears, but at least it had broken the drowning silence.
‘What?’ Seth’s grin revealed the gap left by the tooth he had yanked out weeks ago alongside the one he’d been grappling with earlier. ‘You might be staying with me again next weekend.’ Laura glanced at him momentarily before turning her eyes back to the road.
‘Really?’ Seth chimed, his smile widening to create the single dimple that he had inherited from his biological grandfather, Nic Nesci, Tara’s psychologically and physically absent father.
Nic had abandoned Laura and Tara when Tara was only four months old. Nic and Laura had both been twenty-five when he had literally fallen on bended knees, telling her through tearful gasps that parenting was far too stressful and that he wanted out. So, with Nic fleeing to the open arms and homemade agnolotti of his mother, and with her own parents living in the UK, Laura had entered the world of single motherhood with a broken heart, little support, and even less income.
Now grown, Tara was close to Laura in every way, but like Nic, her thoughts were deep and silent until they reached crisis point. Fiercely private about her love life, Tara had refused to reveal the identity of Seth’s father, meaning Seth’s paternal lineage always was and always would be a mystery to everyone but Tara, who had stubbornly refused to cite the name even on the birth certificate. Over the years, Laura’s sometimes gentle, often forceful attempts at convincing Tara that if Seth was to grow up comfortable in his own skin he needed to know who his father was, invariably fell on deaf ears, with defiant jaw-clenching and back-turning on Tara’s part.
‘How come I’m staying with you next weekend?’ Seth said.
‘Because your mum has a big trial starting Monday and may have to work all weekend.’
‘Cool. Can we go out in the kayak?’
‘Maybe,’ Laura said, suddenly feeling much brighter. ‘Let’s wait and see what the weather is like. We don’t want to be caught in a storm, do we?’
Seth’s smile morphed into his uninhibited chuckle that always made her heart swell. ‘And we’ll invite Pops too,’ he said, his dimple denting his cheek again.
‘Maybe. We’ll see,’ she said.
Tara’s black SUV squatted in its space at the end of a row of six carports.
‘I hope Mum’s ready. I don’t like hanging around waiting for her all the time,’ Seth said, stretching his neck and peering anxiously over the dashboard as Laura idled towards Tara’s car. She worried about Seth’s exaggerated sense of responsibility, which she believed was a burden for one so young. Tara was frustratingly disorganised to the point where Laura seriously pondered how her daughter managed to function as such an excellent criminal prosecutor when other aspects of her life were in constant turmoil. Seth, on the other hand, was much like Laura – punctual and organised to the extreme.
Seth unclipped his booster strap and jumped from the car, dragging his backpack from the rear seat, dodging shrubs in need of pruning as he clopped along the narrow pathway to the heavy timber gate of the townhouse he shared with his mother.
‘Hold the gate open, will you, please, champ?’ Laura called, straightening her bag on her shoulder and pointing the remote at her car.
Tara smiled at Laura and Seth as they walked across the bare sandstone courtyard to where she stood at the front door. Every time she came here Laura felt tempted to buy Tara a few potted plants, maybe an inexpensive outdoor setting to make the space more inviting. But she knew Tara would think she was interfering. Her daughter was the least domesticated woman Laura knew. If it hadn’t been for her dark colouring and her height – both inherited from Nic – Laura could easily be convinced that her only child had been swapped at birth.
‘Hello, gorgeous boy.’ Tara hugged her son into her and bent to kiss the top of his head. Seth returned her hug, then dropped his backpack onto the entrance tiles and clattered up the timber stairs towards his bedroom with astounding speed.
‘Thanks for having him, Mum. I hope he wasn’t too much trouble,’ Tara said as she did every time Laura returned Seth home.
‘He’s never any trouble, darling.’ Laura kissed her daughter’s cheek and followed her across the open lounge-dining area. ‘You look nice,’ she said, taking in Tara’s fitted charcoal suit, the pearl drops swinging gently from her ears – a thirtieth birthday gift from her and Simon – her long dark hair wound into a glossy twist at the nape of her neck. ‘Do your feet ache by the end of the day?’ she added, eyeing the way Tara clicked with expert grace across the white tiles in her astoundingly high stilettos.
‘No, not at all. These are really comfortable,’ Tara said, her eyes suddenly widening as she spotted what looked to Laura like a pullover abandoned on a stool at the breakfast bar. Pushing past Laura like a hawk to her prey, Tara swooped up the offending garment and tossed it onto her cluttered computer desk in the corner.
‘Mum. Pleeease,’ she said, glancing momentarily at Laura’s arched eyebrow. ‘It’s no biggie, okay? He was only here for a couple of hours yesterday.’ She clicked her way back into the kitchen, refusing to meet Laura’s gaze, stepping behind the breakfast bar as though establishing a physical barrier between them. ‘Women your age can go without sex forever, but I still happen to need it, so please don’t judge me,’ she said, pulling back her shoulders and finally looking Laura in the eye.
Laura’s own shoulders tightened. Despite Tara’s passionate aversion to sharing information about herself, she had always seemed more than willing to form judgements and dish out free advice to Laura. She glanced at her watch, suddenly anxious to be out of there and on her way to work.
‘What do you still happen to need, Mum?’ Seth’s voice chimed as he appeared seemingly from nowhere and climbed onto a stool at the breakfast bar.
Laura and Tara made brief eye contact before Tara bent to stack the dishwasher, and Laura wiped a smear of freshly applied hair gel from Seth’s now chaotic hairstyle. He gently pushed Laura’s hand away. ‘Don’t, Lol,’ he said softly before turning to Tara with a hopeful expression. ‘Mum, Lol said I can go to her house again next weekend.’
Tara’s crossed to her computer desk where she pushed the offending pullover aside to search through stacks of files. ‘Maybe, Seth,’ she said, her lips pressing into a tight red line. ‘It depends on how much prep I can do for this trial during the week. I really think you and I need to spend some quality time together.’
Laura could not fathom Tara’s expression as she snapped her briefcase closed.
‘Can I? Please, Mum. I really want to go to Lol’s. We’re going to invite Pops as well. Please, Mum?’
Her stomach lurching, Laura placed a gentle hand on his knee. ‘I said “maybe”, Seth darling. It really depends—’
‘Well, can you ring and ask him?’ Seth said, his brown eyes widening.
‘Seth, let Lol sort it out, OK? Now go up and get your tennis racket, please.’ Tara heaved her briefcase off the computer desk to the floor while Laura eyed the smeary, cluttered benches, fighting an almost overpowering urge to grab a dishcloth.
‘I wish I didn’t have to play tennis tonight.’ Seth’s voice floated above his slow clomping footfall on the stairs. ‘And I’m not taking that mental brown racket cover. It’s way embarrassing.’
‘You’ll be taking it, Seth,’ Tara called after him. She turned to Laura. ‘What’s this about you contacting Simon?’
Again Laura felt Tara was delving into business that was not her own. ‘Seth’s missing Simon terribly,’ she said. ‘He wanted to invite him over next weekend, and I happen to think it’s a good idea,’ she insisted in the face of Tara’s intense frown. ‘Tara, Simon is the only grandfather, hell, the only significant male Seth knows. They need to keep their relationship alive regardless of what happens between Simon and me.’
‘Are you sure you are doing this for Seth?’ Tara said, one dark eyebrow forming a perfect arch as she dropped a cereal bowl into the dishwasher and closed the door with a gentle thud.
‘Yes, of course,’ Laura snapped, resentment and anger billowing in her gut. She glanced at her watch and sprang from the stool, lifting her bag onto her shoulder. ‘Time for me to be off,’ she said, rushing towards the front door and calling, ‘I’m going, Seth.’
Within seconds Seth materialised, throwing his arms around her hips and lifting his face for a kiss.
‘Be good.’ She smiled, tugging at his chin after kissing him.
‘Yeah. I’ll see you next weekend with Pops,’ he said, turning and trudging up the stairs again.
‘Seth we have to go,’ Tara’s voice echoed as Laura pulled the front door closed behind her.
The heavy slam of the courtyard gate only exacerbated Laura’s frustration. Fists balled, she thumped along the path, swiping at overhanging branches, finally pointing the remote at her car, and getting in, tossing her bag onto the passenger seat. ‘“It’s no biggie, Mum”,’ she mimicked, screwing up her face. ‘“Women of your age can go without sex forever but I happen to still need it”.’ Rolling her eyes, she started the car. ‘What makes you think I have moved beyond needing sex Tara?’
Her frustration morphing into anger, Laura slammed her foot onto the accelerator, reversing at what she knew to be a dangerous speed. Despite the squealing of her wheels and the slight fishtailing of her car’s rear, despite the frown tossed at her by an elderly man frozen to his walking frame on the pavement, she did not lift her foot for at least fifty metres, and only then because the tail-lights of the stationary traffic forced her to stop. And as tears slid down her cheeks for the first time since Simon and his trailer of possessions had sailed out of her life three months ago, she pondered the significance of today – the eighth anniversary of their wedding.