I called Andrew at the end of my first week, dying to share my new discoveries with him. I felt I had experienced more in a week at the College than I had in the whole rest of my life.
“I can’t believe you gave all this up,” I admitted.
“Yeah well…” He paused. “Sometimes you just do what you have to do.” I wondered if he missed it.
“Been playing duets with the ranga kid?”
He laughed. “I hate you for deserting me.”
“I played in the orchestra,” I said. “Appalachian Spring.”
“I love that piece.”
“Me too. I have a CD of it that belongs to you.”
“Is that where it went? I should have known. I’m never going to see that again, am I?”
“I’ll give it to you next time I see you,” I said.
“And when will that be? Ten years time?” He laughed again. “It’s lost to me.”
A tidal wave of homesickness washed over me. When would I see him again? When would I see anyone I knew again? My stomach turned over.
“So how’s your boarding house?” asked Andrew.
I was silent. The more I heard his voice, the more I longed to be back in his basement. The more I longed for things I knew; the rock pool and the beach and my own bedroom with its tatty floral doona cover.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Already? You sure? Do you want to speak to Hayley? She just walked in.”
“Another time.” I hung up and raced into the bathroom before tears spilled down my cheeks. I pushed open the window. Below, cars and trams jostled each other down the road. Girls in high heels ran under the window and laughed into their mobiles. They were all strangers. I ached for familiarity.
I picked up my phone to call Andrew back, then stopped. I thought of my inspiring lesson with John. Thought of the exhilarating orchestra rehearsal. I had to move forward. I sucked in my breath. Clicking the keypad, I deleted Andrew’s number. The muscles in my throat tightened. It had to be this way, I told myself. Move forward. Don’t look back. I scrolled through my phone and kept deleting. Hayley, Hugh, Rachel… Justin. Finally, satisfied, I stood up and looked into the mirror. I smoothed my straggly ponytail and straightened my back. There was no way I was going to let the past creep back and mess up my future.
For my eighteenth birthday, Jess took me out with a group of friends from the College. I danced to techno all night and let a random buy me drinks until he tried to stick his tongue down my throat.
Jess chased me off the dance floor. “What is wrong with you? Did you see how hot that guy was? And he totally wanted you! Are you a lesbian?”
She followed me out of the bar and down the footpath. I stopped in a huff at the tram stop. The vodka shots were making the ground wobble. My ears were thumping. Jess took my arm.
“Honey, it’s nearly two.” She was still talking loudly from the music. “There won’t be any trams at this time of night. We can get a taxi.”
“I’ll just walk,” I mumbled, marching past the rows of dark shops and glowing Seven-Elevens. I skirted some girls in red and black football scarves who were singing and dancing like morons. A homeless guy had had passed out in the doorway of a souvlaki bar. Taxis wove across the tram tracks like giant yellow beetles. I began to walk faster. Jess ran after me and I gave an inward sigh of relief. I didn’t want conversation, but the city at night scared me.
“Are you okay?” She skipped to keep up.
I nodded.
I wished I had been able to kiss him. I’d planned on it. He had been wearing a white shirt and stood out in the dark. Invented stupid dance moves to make me laugh.
“Can I stay at your place?” asked Jess.
I nodded again.
He had pulled me towards him and pressed his chest against mine. He hadn’t been gentle like Justin. I realised then that I didn’t want some random, sweaty nobody. I wanted someone whose childhood I’d shared. Someone who knew everything there was to know about me. I felt sick. Justin knew me better than anyone and he had chosen Mia.
“I’m sorry,” I remembered myself spluttering. “It’s not you.”
The guy had laughed at that. “Yeah, yeah I’ve heard that one before. If it’s not me, then who is it?”
“Are you mad at me?” asked Jess. I shook my head. I was mad at Justin. Anger shot through me with every step. It was more than anger, I decided. It was hate. I hated him for refusing to stay out of my head. For refusing to let me leave my old life behind.
We walked in silence back to the boarding house. My feet ached by the time we arrived. I pulled off my heels without undoing the buckles and flicked on the bedside lamp. Clara was asleep on her back, one arm lifted over her head and her red hair cascading over the pillow.
“Look at her,” Jess snorted. “She even sleeps like a diva.”
I flopped onto my bed and buried my head in the pillow. Jess squeezed onto the mattress beside me. She rubbed my back.
“So who is he?” she asked gently.
My chest heaved with a huge sob. Jess wriggled the doona out from under us and pulled it over our shoulders. I squeezed my eyes shut and launched into the whole saga about Justin. I began with stories of Shipwreck and the rock pool, telling Jess everything up to the night of the ball.
“And then,” I sobbed. “He had the nerve to ask me out.”
Jess didn’t speak right away. Her socks brushed against my bare toes. “It sounds to me as though you wanted to say yes,” she told me finally.
“Why would I want to say yes? I hate him.” The realisation was still new to me. Saying it gave me a sort of power.
Jess stroked my hair. “Why did you turn that guy down tonight? Was it because he wasn’t Justin?”
I tried to cough down my tears, afraid of waking Clara. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe.” My hair clung to my wet cheeks.
“What do you want?” asked Jess. “Do you want Justin to come down here and tell you how sorry he is and that you’re the only girl he’s ever wanted?”
“No,” I said. “All I want to do is forget about him.”
In June, I experienced my first winter. Snuggled into flannelette pyjamas, I buried myself under two doonas and listened to the wind howl through the drainpipes. Outside my room, a loose piece of lattice rattled against the wall. Water poured from the gutter.
Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata.
I could hear the violent minor thirds in the crashes of thunder and the rippling triplets in the drumming rain. It had been one of my favourite pieces, ever since that hot afternoon in Queensland when Andrew had played it before my lesson. Every time I heard it, I thought of standing in awe on the top step of the basement, my anger towards Sarah getting washed away in the flood of music.
“That piece isn’t about a storm, Abby,” Clara snorted. “It’s about overwhelming despair and anger.”
I tucked my doona over my chin. “How do you know?”
“It’s a fact,” said Clara. “My dad told me.”
I wasn’t convinced. “But how could anyone really know what was going on in Beethoven’s head when he was writing it? It could be about a storm…”
Clara sighed. “Whatever.”
I rolled over. I wondered what Beethoven had been so angry about. Maybe a girl.
“Your dad called, by the way,” I said, curling up beneath my blankets. “This afternoon while you were at your lesson. I told him you’d call back.”
Clara groaned dramatically and slid out of bed for the phone. She sat cross-legged on the floor in her silky pyjamas.
“Hi Dad… Yes… Yes I know. I’m sorry. Yes well my roommate only just gave me the message…”
I pulled my doona over my head. Clara’s daily conversations with her father always hit me with a stab of guilt. Reminded me of the family I was trying so hard to detach myself from.
I’d written to Nick a lot. Hounded him to join the twenty-first century and get a mobile, or email address at least. I refused to call him on the home phone in case I stumbled across Sarah. Six months in and I was still waiting for a reply. Still, I thought, the letters gave him something to at least think about doing.
“Your mum will come around,” Dad had promised as he drove me to the airport. I guessed it had been my mother’s attempt at one final stand by locking herself in her bedroom and refusing to say goodbye. With a place waiting at one of Australia’s most prestigious music schools, I had barely given it a second thought.
I knew I had thrown my dad into hell though. I thought about him every night while Clara rattled off the day’s events to her father. I had heard my parents fighting the night I had told them about the scholarship.
“You gave her permission without even asking me? How could you do that, David? How could you?”
“I didn’t realise I needed your blessing for everything I did! You’ve been locking our daughter up in this place!”
“And now we’re losing her. I hope you’re happy.”
Dad had started the year by calling me once a week. He’d rattle off a list of questions he had clearly written down before he rang.
“How’s the weather down there?”
“School going okay?”
“Are you eating properly?”
I’d give one word answers then hang up feeling guilty for not being chattier. The calls had gradually dwindled to once a fortnight. I suspected they’d be monthly by the end of the year.
I was forced to come out of the blankets for air. Clara was pacing around the dorm, wrapping herself in the phone cord.
“Yes Dad, I know, I did ask him… But the teacher I have now is fine… But Dad-” Her voice was thin and reedy. “Of course I’m putting in the hours… That wasn’t my fault, the pianist was no good. My unaccompanied piece was fine…”
I tried to imagine my parents giving two shits how my violin lessons went.
“So how did your unaccompanied piece go, possum?” I laughed aloud at the thought, then felt a dull ache inside me.
Clara shot me a glare. She slipped into the bathroom and pulled the door closed around the phone cord. Her voice dropped to an inaudible mumble.
I clicked off the light and listened to winter.