SOUND

deeper than a bight, wider than a fjord

When I finally headed home to Marjorie it was past dinnertime and I could see lights on inside from down the street as I got closer.

Steph and Robin were in the kitchen, which was soft yellow and smelt like oranges. It was very cold that night, though it was still only autumn, still fall, and they were making mulled wine on the old brown stove. I took a mugful and they asked me to sit.

‘Are you okay, Ness?’ Robin asked, turning towards me with his slight face.

The fatigue rushed up and I started to cry. I felt Steph take my cup and Robin come up to rub my back, and heard Whitney mewling below me.

‘Hetty’s upstairs,’ Steph said from above me.

It was a shock to hear she was back. I had imagined she would stay at Rick’s for days, too ashamed or sick or apathetic to make the journey back to us. Robin and Steph knew Hetty had been struggling, and I wondered what she’d said to them when she got back, if anything.

I looked up through the wet of my tears and saw them both half-standing, half-crouched, hovering for me. It felt good—they were such good people. I hoped they didn’t regret letting us live with them.

‘She seemed okay, you know. Just so you know,’ Robin told me.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

I didn’t want to go up and find her. We sat, and I felt the tears dry on my face and my cheeks shrink slightly from the salt, and Robin poured more steaming wine into his cup and told us about the new guy at his work who had asked him out for coffee. Everyone wanted to have coffee with Robin. He was so pretty and delightful. I imagined kissing him and tasted the memory of honey. The wine warmed my hands but I didn’t want to drink it. Hetty was probably drunk up there, lying on our bed with one long leg crossed over another, wishing she was somewhere else. For once, it felt pathetic to try to join her.

‘Let’s go to Sneak’s,’ Steph said.

Sneak’s was Sneaky Dee’s: a tacky Mexican cafe with five-dollar breakfasts and two-dollar beers that stayed open late and had a dance floor upstairs that nearly broke through the ceiling every Saturday night. I had been there with Hetty soon after we had arrived and it had been boiling in the small room that held the dance floor above the stairs. Hetty’s face had shone as she bounced up and down, her hair flicking at me and sticking to my chest when she twisted. I’d vomited in a gutter on the way back to Jo’s and we’d laughed, arms over shoulders, at the mess of ourselves. Maybe it would be good to go there again and shake off some of the loss that was clinging to me.

I realised then that they were both quite drunk, the heat of it coming off them. Steph’s eyes flicked from Robin to me as she tipped her cup up into her mouth. Robin pulled me up and danced me across the floor.

‘Hey, Ness,’ I heard from behind me as Robin tipped me down towards the ground and pulled me back up to swing me out again.

Hetty was standing at the entrance of the kitchen. She looked tired and tall and very thin, and her hair was looped up above her head and pinned so it looked like a private nest. She was instantly familiar.

We stepped towards each other and moved into a hug and I felt her neck cool against my cheek. She put her hands on my shoulders, moved me back and looked at me, as if she hadn’t seen me in so long, which she hadn’t, and as if I was worth seeing again. I watched her face through the wool of hair which had fallen across mine. She was smiling and crying. She always cried.

‘I’m so sorry I haven’t checked in.’

I didn’t want to say that it was okay, but I hadn’t had any practice telling Hetty things she didn’t want to hear.

‘You don’t have to say it’s okay. I know it’s not okay.’ She pushed my hair back, tapped her finger against my nose. ‘How are you?’

I didn’t want to talk about how I’d lost Faith before I’d even really had her or how I was exhausted from worrying about Hetty being in some unmoved jerk’s room curled up like a scared child or how I wanted to leave Toronto because it felt like I’d never be a part of the city but I’d never felt a part of Melbourne either or that I was truly wondering what the point of anything was, really.

‘I’m all right,’ I said.

‘Ness…’

I turned to see if Robin and Steph were listening. They were standing next to each other at the stove, Robin stirring the saucepan of wine, Steph leaning against him.

I turned back to Hetty, who was looking at me, waiting. ‘I don’t want to talk about anything, Het.’

She sighed and pulled her jumper sleeves down to cover the whole of her arms. ‘Rick told me you and Dill came to see me.’

I pictured Rick sitting on that bed next to Hetty after she had finally woken up, telling her with his hard voice that two of her weird friends had knocked on his door asking for her. There was something about him that made me wonder what he’d done in his life, and how bad it had been. And that bed had been so grimy.

‘We came to see if you were there because we didn’t know where you were. You missed work and weren’t answering your phone. If you hadn’t been at Rick’s I would have had to call the police.’

I didn’t want her to feel guilty but I didn’t want her to do it again either. I knew that since we were little I’d given Hetty more kindness than was good for her. It was almost like it had turned her into a spoilt child.

‘Why did you do that? What happened?’ I asked, my voice louder now.

She was looking down, at the floorboards or at her feet with their chipped yellowed nails. People like Hetty didn’t have to make sure they cleaned themselves up so that people wouldn’t think them lazy or ugly. The world thought them exceptional and beautiful anyway.

‘Hetty!’

I was sick of her avoiding everything. It hurt me too much and it was selfish. Her family had given her safety in numbers. Over here she only had me, and she was neglecting that.

‘Sorry. I don’t know,’ she answered finally, her voice a small bird in a high tree.

‘You don’t know?’

‘No. I’m sorry.’

I turned away from her and walked towards Robin and Steph. ‘Are we going out?’ I said.

They were excited, the two of them, and they jumped and clapped a little. We got ready quickly, leaving Hetty to stand where she had been standing looking at the floor and then move to the couch in the living room, where she curled up into a ball and kissed her knees again. I didn’t go to her and I didn’t ask her if she wanted to come with us. I wish now that I had, but at the time the anger in me was churning and I wanted to be away from her again.

Sneaky Dee’s was heaving, and so full of heat I had to wipe the sweat off my upper lip as soon as we had pushed our way in. Robin and Steph were completely possessed by then, in a way that made me feel invisible, which was fine. It was enough that I’d cried in front of both of them and let them see how weird things were between me and Hetty.

The music was familiar but I couldn’t find the tune and then I couldn’t see Robin or Steph and there seemed to be big, wide men all around me, so wet with sweat it was spraying off them as they moved. It hadn’t been a good idea to come. I was tired and heavy from seeing Hetty even though it meant she was safe, and I couldn’t bear Steph and Robin seeing any more of my vulnerability.

I let myself move slowly towards the stairs, trying not to push at anyone on my way, despite seeing the lights in people’s eyes that covered their pupils and meant they wouldn’t have noticed someone trying to make them move anyway. The door to the street was heavy and I pushed at it until a bouncer opened it for me from the other side, smiling with his cheeks at me.

It was brisk outside, and I breathed the night in deep. I’d go home and lie with Hetty. She would be sad that I’d left her at home and hadn’t wanted to talk to her. I still didn’t want to, but maybe we could listen to some music and fall asleep together.

I wondered how Faith was, what she was doing, as I walked towards Marjorie. I missed her cool fingers. I hoped she knew that I was in love with her. I knew then that I was and even though it hurt it also felt huge, like a sunflower in bloom. Maybe I’d text her in the morning. That way, she wouldn’t have to answer me.

All the lights were off when I got back to the house. I could smell the mulled wine still sitting, no longer warm, on the stove. Whitney came to say hello as I stood in the bathroom, cleaning my face with one of Hetty’s baby wipes, the ones she used to take off her mascara that made her smell like powder. I brushed my teeth slowly, watching my cheeks move a little as I edged the toothbrush back and forth, back and forth. Hetty was terrible at brushing her teeth—would say she hated it, it was boring, she couldn’t bear to do it. Would drag herself to the bathroom once every couple of nights to do a half-hearted job. Despite this, her teeth were royal, white, clean. Mine were crooked and slightly stained—too big for my mouth.

I could see the lump of Hetty in the bed when I opened our bedroom door. She shifted, whimpered and put her hand up to shield her face from the light.

‘Sorry, Het.’

‘It’s okay,’ her sleep voice said.