In the last few weeks of school, Annabelle had grown a different skin, shedding who she used to be when I wasn’t looking. A new, brittle layer masked any softness she’d ever shown. I saw less and less of her as the year wound down; we didn’t always walk home together, and when we did she would walk slightly ahead of me, and I could never quite catch up.
She didn’t want to talk about Frank, still licking his wounds under his mother’s roof, and she certainly didn’t want to discuss Annie, ensconced again at the River House, her affair with Fergus, for the time being at least, over.
Annabelle had asked me to be there for Annie’s homecoming, probably the last conversation we’d had that had scratched the surface, the two of us waiting on the front steps for the taxi to arrive.
“Are you all right?” I’d asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “just a bit nervous.”
“Are you glad she’s coming home?”
“I don’t know, sort of, I guess, in between being really pissed off with her.”
We laughed, sipped our Cokes.
“Do you want to go inside and wait?”
“No, I want to see her get out of the car.”
“Why?”
“I want to see her face, Tallulah.”
“Okay,” I’d said uncertainly. But the instant Annie got out of the cab, and Annabelle drew back beside me, I knew that whatever expression the prodigal mother wore to greet her daughter was apparently the wrong one.
Annie arrived as she’d left, in a hurry, slamming the cab’s door and striding up the path carrying her paints and bags filled with sarongs, shell necklaces, and two grass skirts, one for Annabelle and one for me.
She had quickened her steps to get to her daughter, fallen into her.
“You look beautiful, darling,” she said. “I missed you every day,” and I looked at Annie’s face and knew that it was true.
Not that it helped any.
We had gone inside and Annie had unpacked her treasures, telling us stories about where she had been, but not who she had been with, and then giving us the grass skirts.
“Thanks, Annie,” I said, studying the row of perfect white cowrie shells sewn into the skirt’s waistband. “Let’s go and try them on, Annabelle.”
Annabelle glared at me, and I realized I had made a mistake. “No, thanks, Tallulah,” she said, tossing her skirt on the floor.
“Oh, come on, Annabelle,” Annie said, “try it on. What else are you going to do with it?”
Annabelle stood up, looked into her mother’s face. “I thought I’d burn it,” she said coolly. “I wouldn’t want to catch anything off it.”
Annie had put her head in her hands. “So this is how it’s going to be?” she said.
“You started it,” said Annabelle, and walked out.
After that, the two of them cohabited under the one roof, Annabelle affording her mother only the merest hint of herself, silently complying with domestic instructions and answering when she had to.
I saw it the few times I visited, but the absence of Frank throbbed through the house as Annie tried to repair the damage under its roof.
“How long,” she asked one day, appearing at Annabelle’s bedroom door while we were studying, “is this marathon sulk going to go on for, Annabelle? Because I have better things to do than spend my life dealing with an obdurate teenager.”
“Then don’t,” Annabelle answered, flipping over on her bed to her stomach. “Do what you like, you always have.”
“Do something with her, Lulu,” Annie said, “before I go back to the bloody Solomons.”
But there was nothing I could do; Annabelle was slipping through my fingers too.
I missed her.
But in between studying for my exams, helping Rose look after Mattie and Sam, and being consumed by Josh Keaton and his determination to get under every inch of my skin, much of the drama being played out at the River House coursed by me, and I didn’t miss her enough.
We were going to travel.
We were going to Indonesia first, so Josh could surf Uluwatu, then Japan so I could see the cherry blossoms, then Europe, where we were both going to see everything.
While I studied for my exams, Josh studied Lonely Planet guides, working out our route, when was the best time to go where, what we would need to take with us, what jobs we could do to pay our way.
“I’m going to learn how to say I love you in seventeen languages,” he told me, “and then I’m going to show you.”
Josh had it all worked out. All I had to do was tell Rose and Harry. Because while Pearl Keaton would one day look through her haze of smoke, realize her son was gone, and keep doggedly puffing away without a moment’s pause, my parents were another matter.
Harry was growing wary of Josh, worrying that we were too serious, too young, never mind that when he was nineteen, he had fallen head over heels for a girl in a buttercup-yellow dress that swished when she walked.
And Rose . . . well, I hated to think of Rose without me. She had been good for so long—Doris had not put in an appearance for months—but Rose was, I knew, unpredictable. She needed me beside her as she moved around the house making her cakes and casseroles, knitting her jumpers for Harry and the boys, in case she dropped a stitch.
So I put off telling them, and Josh grew more and more impatient.
The last week of school came, and I still hadn’t told them.
“Have you said anything to your parents yet?” Josh had asked me by the river.
“No, but I will, Josh, I told you, after exams.”
“I told my mum this morning.”
“What did she say?”
“She said it was fine, that she’d always wanted to travel herself, you know, how she never got the chance, the usual guilt trip.”
“Oh,” I said, “well, at least you’ve told her.”
“What do you reckon your folks will say?”
“I think they’ll say we need to slow down; I think they’ll say I should go to college first before traveling; I think they’ll say that I need something to fall back on.” I snuggled in a little closer and looked up at his face. “And I’ll say I’ve already got something to fall back on.”
“Lulu?”
“Mmm.” My mouth on his earlobe.
“We really need to do this thing.”
“I know.”
“You need to tell them we’re going. And I need to start booking tickets.”
“I told you, Josh, I will, after exams.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Lulu?”
“Yes, Josh?” I smiled.
He sat up.
“I’ve got to get the hell out of Juniper Bay,” he said.
On the last day of school, Annabelle didn’t show up, so when we all threw our school hats in the air, hers was missing, and in all the photos taken that day—me and Stella and Simone grinning from ear to ear, poking our tongues out, squashing our faces together, Simone making stupid rabbit ears behind Stella’s head in every single one—there was nothing of her.
There was not one image from that day to record that Annabelle Andrews ever sashayed through Saint Rita’s stained-glass doors and left her reflection there wherever I looked.
But I needed to share the final school day with her somehow, so when the last bell rang, I tore myself away from all the other girls going crazy on the oval, Stacey Ryan taking off her shirt to do cartwheels in her bra, and ran all the way to the River House.
“Annabelle,” I yelled, letting myself in through its never-locked door and running up the stairs. “Annabelle, I can’t believe you didn’t come today, where were you? Where are you? Annabelle, ANNABELLE!”
My uniform was covered in felt-tipped scrawls from overexcited schoolgirls who’d drawn flowers and love-hearts beside their names. My hat was pulled low over my ears, completely destroyed by Bata Scout–clad feet stomping all over it, and in my bag, bumping all the way against my legs as I ran, was the book I had planned to give Annabelle.
It was a journal of every single word we had made up together, and its meaning—starting with Absoletely: absolutely/completely—To agree wholeheartedly with, and ending with Zigot: zealot/bigot—Person with very extreme views they insist on shouting at people.
“She’s not here,” Annie said, materializing at the bottom of the stairs. “I thought she’d be with you, Lulu, celebrating the last day of Saint Rita’s serfdom.”
“No,” I said uncertainly, not wanting to get Annabelle into trouble, “we didn’t go home together—do you mind if I wait here for a few minutes, Annie?”
She shook her head and floated away.
I waited on the stairs, perspiration trickling down the back of my neck, between my legs, and biting into the back of my knees, making me thankful for the cool silence of the house. It was so quiet there these days: no dinner parties with guests who filled the house with smoke and laughter; no glasses tinkling or music playing.
I thought about Frank, sitting on that step, about how much I missed him and how much Annabelle pretended not to, remembering what she had said at the beach the previous weekend, when the two of us were under the shower.
Josh was running up from the water, holding his board under his arm, his board shorts low and long on his hips, and Annabelle and I were arguing—again—about Frank.
Annabelle switched off her shower and shook her body from head to toe, covering me in salty droplets. “Will you let it rest, Tallulah?” she said. “Honestly, you’re like a dog with a bone over this thing.”
“I’ll let it rest when you tell me what exactly Frank did to deserve the silent treatment and when you tell me what your problem is.”
“My problem,” she said slowly, watching Josh run toward us, “is that I have a father who was too stupid to see what was going on right in front of his own eyes, and with his own brother.” She reached down and picked up her towel, eyes still on Josh. “And if people are too stupid, or don’t care enough, to see what’s going on right in front of them, Tallulah, then they get what they deserve.”
Before the thought was even completely finished, it seemed like my legs stood up all by themselves from the River House’s stairs, to run down them, out the front door and past Annie’s “See you, Tallulah.”
I ran down the side of the house, past Frank’s workshop, the tree house, the tiny moon-shaped beach, along the scrappy paths with the branches that snatched at my skin all the way to the canoe club with its graying jetty sighing with the lovers who lay beneath it.
As I ran, images clicked through my head, like I was looking through a viewfinder: Josh tucking a curl back behind Annabelle’s ear; looking down at Snow’s to see their feet swinging together under the table; the two red dots on Annabelle’s cheeks when I’d walked into Frank’s shed last Saturday morning and Josh was there, with no shirt on—“It’s so hot,” he’d said. “It’s so hot”; Josh’s urgent “I’ve got to get the hell out of Juniper Bay.”
I ran until I saw them, and the last image clicked into place, the two of them, naked, silvery fish beneath the dock.
Josh sat up with his hand on his mouth, and said “Lulu.” Annabelle brought her knees to her chest, as my own buckled beneath me and I fought to stand.
I said their names, my arms outstretched—for what?
For what? I always asked myself later, long after I had turned on my heel and ran as fast as I could all the way back the way I had come, stumbling and tripping on my own feet, not bothering to push branches away as they scratched at my face so that by the time I ran to my own front gate and past the DE LONGLAND PLUMBERS—PLUMBING THE DEPTHS OF EXCELLENCE sign and straight into Rose’s bewildered, outstretched arms, my chest was heaving with shuddering sobs and I was bleeding outside and in.
Annabelle and Josh would spend the next few years doing all the things Josh and I were meant to do: Josh helping Annabelle put on her backpack, laughing as she fell with the weight of it. They would travel and take pictures with the camera Fergus had given them as a going-away present; they would drink too much red wine in crooked little bars in Spain; they would squint their eyes against the whitewashed walls that hold up the Greek islands; they would land like lemmings in Earls Court in London, and I would stay at home, on the streets I grew up on.
I would stay at home with Harry and Rose, look out my window, and wonder which one of them I ached for more.