Sunny swirled her hot chocolate with chilli, sitting cross-legged on her sister’s bed out in the granny flat, her phone in her hand with the message from Ari open on the screen. She’d come out here to think, but the email had caught her by surprise.
A job for Sunny on the Sunny Coast?
She lifted her eyes from the screen. A full-time job? That was unexpected.
Lara had left her little place clean and tidy, but it still smelled of her rose perfume. Mind you, if Midnight kept coming in here with her at night after the children were in bed, the place would smell like dog soon enough. The lamp beside her—a paper lantern imprinted with woodfolk—cast a soft light over the bookcase. Neat rows of novels dominated the shelfscape, but wedged in here and there were nonfiction titles.
Thrive!
Bipolar and You.
Think Yourself Happy.
Recover, Rejoice.
After Lara’s Big Breakdown, Sunny had questioned herself. Was she bipolar too? Sometimes she’d wondered if it was an invisible time bomb just waiting for the right trigger to set it off. With both their father and Lara diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, Sunny was, apparently, seven times more likely to develop it too.
When she was younger, Sunny had been cranky a lot of the time; even she recognised that. But she was a steady, oxen cranky. No flareups. No falls. Despite the genetic risk, she was certain she’d missed it. She’d been lucky; she must have inherited their mother’s sturdy psychological profile instead.
But when it came to the twins, there would be no way to know for sure for a long time yet. Daisy was pretty straight and even-tempered, while Hudson was a rollercoaster of emotions from one minute to the next. Then again, when Sunny and Lara were younger, everyone thought Lara was the straight one, the good one, the one who would go far in life. And there was Sunny, the wild one, the one with no plans for her future. Look what had happened to Lara, the high achiever, the teacher’s pet. Looks could be deceiving, as they all knew only too well.
Midnight squirmed against Sunny’s leg, chewing a rope toy, her puppy breath still sweet. Sunny ran her hand down the pup’s body and Midnight gurgled appreciatively and turned to chew Sunny’s hand with her razor-sharp teeth. Sunny had barely thought twice about adopting Midnight. That was the sort of person she’d once been all the time—impulsive, spontaneous, living in the moment. But everything had changed when the twins came along.
Before she became a mother, she’d take a job one minute and quit it the next. Move in with musicians, then pack up and go home to live at her mother’s. Sleep with this man over here, but love that one over there. She’d lived like a gypsy. Enjoyed her freedom. This job offer from Ari tugged at those old feelings, tempting her to take to the road and start over.
Sunny rubbed Midnight’s delicate velvet ear between her fingers.
She returned to the email on her phone. Creative director for a beautifully on-trend furniture, clothing and lifestyle business up on the north coast. Taking the job would mean having to move the kids away from Brisbane, from Eliza and her free housing and childcare, and from Lara.
More than sixteen years ago, Sunny had made a promise to Eliza in the dim living room, a single lamp switched on, their voices low so as not to wake Lara.
‘I’m not going to live forever,’ Eliza had said.
‘What are you talking about?’ Sunny had said, a touch irritated that now she wasn’t going to get back to her flat in time for The X-Files.
‘You saw what happened to your father,’ her mother said, wiping her eyes.
‘Oh, Mum,’ Sunny had said, not wanting to revisit those times.
‘She could end up like that,’ Eliza hissed, pointing down the hall to Lara’s bedroom.
Sunny pulled a cushion out from behind her and clutched it across her abdomen. It was true. She knew it. Today, a psychiatrist had put Lara on medication. He’d also sent her home with sleeping tablets so she could finally rest, having been awake for days.
‘I know what you’re saying,’ Sunny said. ‘I need to look after her.’
‘The three of us have to stick together. Foxleigh musketeers, remember,’ Eliza said, a phrase they’d bandied around for years while Leonard was in and out of the house. They’d be okay, she’d told the girls, as long as they stuck together.
‘I promise,’ Sunny whispered. The awful truth, which had grown like a hard ball inside her, getting bigger with every moment the conversation went on, was that Sunny should have been there for Lara earlier, back when Sunny was a teenager, even before she’d left home. Instead of taking off when things got rough and leaving Lara in the house while Leonard was wreaking havoc, Sunny should have been there protecting her. At the very least, she should have been a better big sister and taken Lara with her. Given her some respite.
What she would never know for sure was whether she might have stopped Lara’s descent, the explosion of the time bomb, had she taken her with her, looked after her, instead of spending her time drinking cask wine down at the creek and smoking with the boys.
Now, if Sunny took this job offer, it meant she would be leaving Lara again.
On the other hand, if the person driving that blue car the other day was who she thought it was, taking the kids away might be the best thing she could possibly do.