She stood without moving for a moment. When she was little she used to like going into her backyard and turning round and round in circles until the world spun. That's exactly how she felt now. Why had she deliberately done that? It wasn't a nice feeling. She must be drunk. Why would Oliver's parents choose this feeling? Plan for it? Long for it? It was awful.
She focused on the little girls. Ruby toddled out of the gazebo holding Whisk in one hand and Holly's little blue sequinned bag in the other. Holly wouldn't like that. No one was allowed to touch her rock collection. Where was Holly?
Sure enough, Holly suddenly appeared behind Ruby, shouting something Erika couldn't hear over the sound of classical music pouring again from Vid's sound system. Ruby looked over her shoulder and quickened her pace. It was so cute. She looked determined to escape with her contraband.
Careful, thought Erika. Are your parents even watching you?
She looked over at the adults. Oliver was nowhere to be seen. Clementine was talking to Vid. Tiffany was talking to Sam. The four of them were just totally thrilled by each other. She and Oliver might as well not be there. They were spoiling the fun. Neither Sam nor Clementine was watching the girls right now. It was neglectful, negligent.
She watched Vid pick up a knife and pretend to conduct along to the music. She saw Clementine laugh merrily. What had she said exactly, earlier, upstairs? What was that word she'd used? Repulsive. The idea of donating her eggs to Erika was repulsive. All that time she and Oliver had spent discussing it. She thought of Oliver telling their IVF doctor, 'We're going to approach Erika's best friend. They're like sisters.'
Like sisters. What a joke. What a lie.
Erika watched Clementine pull her hair over her shoulder as Vid fed her a spoonful of something and she leaned forward to take it. Clementine was like that princess in the fairy tale who received all those gifts from her fairy godmothers at her christening. You shall have parents who adore you! Ding! You shall have musical talent! Ding! You shall live in cleanliness and comfort! Ding! You shall fall pregnant naturally as soon as you feel like it and go on to give birth to two beautiful daughters! Ding, ding!!
One old fairy got left off the invitation list. The uninvited crone. Erika hadn't been invited to a lot of parties when she was a kid. What did the uninvited fairy do? She laid a curse of some sort. You shall prick your finger on a spinning wheel and die, so watch out for needles. But then a nice fairy stepped in and modified it. You'll just fall asleep for a hundred years. That's not too bad. Wait. It was Sleeping Beauty. The fairy tale was Sleeping Beauty!
She was really very drunk. She should move from this spot, but she didn't move.
Sleeping Beauty. Clementine did like her sleep. Sleeping bloody Beauty, that's exactly right. You're asleep right now. You're not even bothering to watch your children.
There was a sound. From somewhere. A sound trying to slide beneath the classical music pouring and tumbling from Vid's sound system.
Is Clementine performing? Of course she's not performing, Erika, you're in the neighbour's backyard, you're drunk, this is drunkenness, your brain has turned to water and your thoughts are slipping and sloshing all over the place.
She heard it again.
It was knocking. That was the sound. A rapid knock, knock, knocking. She saw her mother's face. Finger to her lips. Don't answer the door. Yes, Mum, I know what I need to do. Not make a sound. We never, ever answer the door. We don't want people to see our filthy secret. It's none of their business. How dare they knock on our door uninvited?! No courtesy. They have no right to make us feel like this. We stay very quiet and very still until they go away. Some people knock in a loud, angry, accusing way, as if they know they are being tricked and they're angry about it, but eventually they give up and go away.
Sure enough the knocking got louder and angrier. Her mother's eyes burned with hatred. They have no right. No right.
Erika shook herself. There was no one knocking on her front door. She was at a barbeque. Where were the little girls? She saw a flash of blue in the corner of the yard. Holly sat cross-legged on the grass with her bag, carefully taking out her rocks and laying them down in a row one by one. She liked to catalogue her collection at intervals.
There was a burst of laughter from the table.
Still that knocking sound. Where was it coming from?
Erika looked at the ridiculous fountain. She could see rubbish floating in the fountain. Someone's old coat spinning in a slow circle.
Her mother had piles and piles of coats. Big winter coats. As if they lived in Siberia, not Sydney. Well, she wasn't going to pull that coat out of the fountain. It was not her responsibility. She'd had enough of cleaning up.
Knock, knock, knock. How dare you knock on our door in that entitled way? It was coming from somewhere above her. She looked up and there was Harry, grumpy old Harry, standing at his upstairs window as though he were pressed against it, not knocking but banging on the glass, like he was trying to escape. He saw her looking. He pointed. He jabbed his finger violently in the direction of the fountain. His mouth gaped in a silent shout. She could tell from the stance of his body and his gestures that he was angry with her. He was yelling something at her. He wanted her to clean up that rubbish. The neighbours were always angry. They always wanted her to clean up the rubbish. She wouldn't. It was not her responsibility.
She stared at the fountain, at the old pink coat turning in slow circles.
She saw Whisk lying on the side of the fountain.
That wasn't an old coat. That wasn't rubbish.
The adrenaline was like a shot to her heart. All the things she'd stolen from Clementine, but she'd never meant to do this. Her fault, her fault, her fault.
The plates fell from her hands. She screamed Clementine's name.
chapter seventy-nine
The first aid course was held at the local high school which their girls would presumably one day attend, although the thought of a time when they were old enough to go to high school felt like science fiction. Their teacher was a large, cheerful, mildly condescending woman called Jan, who reminded Clementine of an insufferable flautist she used to see each year at music camp.
Jan began the day by going around the room and asking everyone to say their name and reason for being there and, 'as a fun little icebreaker exercise!', to answer the question: 'If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?'
They started with a muscly young personal trainer called Dale, who was there because he needed first aid training for his 'PT licence', and who would be a baby kale if given the choice because it was a powerhouse vegetable - at this point he flexed an impressive bicep - and he had a baby-face. 'Excellent answer!' said Jan, looking momentarily overcome by Dale's bicep, which made Clementine feel fondly towards her.
Next was a squat middle-aged woman who was there because there had been a fatal accident at the office where she worked. A tradesman got electrocuted and the woman had never felt so useless or helpless in her life and she didn't want to ever feel that way again, even though she didn't believe it would have made a difference to the poor tradesman. 'If I was a vegetable I'd be a potato,' said the woman, 'obviously,' and she indicated her body, and everyone laughed loudly and then stopped abruptly in case they weren't meant to laugh.
Sam was next, and he spoke up confidently and clearly, sitting casually back in his chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. He said that he and his wife - he indicated Clementine - were doing the course because they had small children. Clementine looked at him. She would have told the truth. She would have said that their daughter had nearly drowned. She was always ready to share the story, but even when they were with Ruby at the hospital Sam had avoided telling people why they were there, as if it were a deeply shameful secret. 'I'd be an onion,' said Sam. 'Because I'm very complex. I have layers.' That got a good laugh too, and Clementine realised that Sam did this sort of thing all the time - training workshops, team-building days - this was his jokey,
blokey corporate persona. He probably always chose the onion.
When it was her turn she didn't bother saying why she was there as Sam had covered it. She said that she'd be a tomato, because it went so well with onion, and Sam smiled, but warily, as if she were a stranger trying to come on to him, and she was reminded of the humiliation of waking up that morning and talking to him when he wasn't there.
'Aww,' said everyone, except for the person behind Clementine who said, 'A tomato is a fruit.'
'It's a vegetable today,' said Jan crisply, and Clementine decided she was nothing like the flautist.
Once they'd gone around the class Jan said that if she were a vegetable she'd be an avocado because she took a while to soften up ('An avocado is a fruit,' sighed the fruit expert behind Clementine), and she was there today because 'first aid was her passion', which made Clementine feel teary. How wonderful it was that there were people in the world like Jan with a 'passion' for helping strangers.
Then they got down to business, and Clementine and Sam both diligently took notes as Jan took them through the 'basic life support' procedure, interspersed with stories from Jan's own first aid experience, like the time she'd run a course and found herself in the middle of a real-life scenario when one of the participants collapsed in class. 'Did you use it as a demonstration?' asked someone. 'No, I had to clear the room,' said Jan. 'People started dropping like flies. Down they went like dominoes: bang, bang, bang.' She said this with relish, to indicate the weakness of the general population. 'That's why you've got to give everyone a job - go and call the ambulance, get me some ice - or send them away, because otherwise people go into shock. It's a traumatic event. You can suffer from post-traumatic stress. We'll talk about that later.'
Clementine glanced over at Sam to see if he was remembering their own 'traumatic event' but his face was impassive. He wrote something down in his notepad.
Jan got Dale the muscly personal trainer to lie on the floor and then picked two attractive young girls (carrot and cauliflower) to have a go at putting Dale into the recovery position, which they did, and because they were three attractive young people it was kind of enjoyable to watch, and when they rolled Dale over you could see his underwear riding up under his shorts and Jan said, 'Nice to see you're wearing Calvin Klein today.'
It was all good fun. It was interesting and informative, and Sam asked intelligent questions and made the occasional well-timed joke. That's why it was so unexpected when it happened.
Clementine had to breathe hard when Jan demonstrated CPR on a bright blue plastic dummy of a head and torso. The rocking motion of Jan's hands, pushing so forcefully and rapidly, brought it all back: the hard pavers beneath her knees, Ruby's waxen cheeks and blue lips, the fairy lights winking in her peripheral vision. But she breathed through it, and when she looked at Sam he seemed fine.
Then Jan asked everyone to get into pairs and she gave each pair one blue dummy and two disposable resuscitation face shields. (Jan always had a spare disposable face shield on her key ring: that's how prepared she was to offer her services.) They had to find a free spot on the floor where they could lay the dummy out flat.
Jan wandered around the room checking on everyone's progress.
'Do you want to go first?' said Clementine to Sam. They were both on their knees on either side of the dummy.
'Sure,' said Sam, and he seemed fine as he methodically worked his way through the acronym Jan had just taught them: 'DRS ABCD', standing for Danger, Response, Send for help, Airway, Breathing, CPR and Defibrillator.
He cleared the airway, he looked, listened and felt for breathing, he commenced CPR, his locked hands pressing rhythmically on the dummy's chest, and as he did, his eyes met Clementine's and she saw a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face.
'Sam? Are you all right?' said Clementine.
He shook his head, a tiny 'no', but he didn't stop doing CPR compressions. His face was dead white. His eyes were bloodshot.
She didn't know what to do. 'Are you ... having chest pains?' At least they were in the right place. Jan seemed just as competent as any doctor or paramedic, and certainly more passionate.
He shook his head again.
He bent his head, pinched the dummy's nostrils and gave it two breaths. The dummy's chest rose to show that he'd done it correctly. He lifted his head and recommenced compressions and Clementine saw, with a kick-in-the-stomach sense of shock, that tears were sliding down his face and dripping onto the dummy. She'd never seen her husband cry, properly cry, not on their wedding day, not when the children were born, not when Ruby was not breathing, not when she woke up the next day. And she'd never questioned it because she'd never seen her father cry either, and her older brothers weren't criers, they were door slammers and wall hitters during their angry-young-man years. Her mother got teary at times but Clementine was the family's only true crier, she was always in floods of tears over something. Maybe all those staunch, stoic men around her had resulted in her internalising that ancient cliche: boys don't cry, because it was absolutely astonishing to Clementine that Sam could cry like that, that his body was even capable of doing that, of producing that many tears. As she watched his tears drip onto the dummy, she felt something break inside her and a great welling of sympathy rise within her chest, and the terrible thought occurred to her that perhaps she'd always unconsciously believed that because Sam didn't cry, he therefore didn't feel, or he felt less, not as profoundly and deeply as she did. Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him; as if a 'man' were a product or a service and she'd finally chosen the right brand to get the right response. Was it possible she'd never seen or truly loved him the way he deserved to be seen and loved? As a person? An ordinary, flawed, feeling person?
'Oh, Sam.'
He stood up so fast from his kneeling position that he nearly toppled backwards. He averted his face, rubbing his cheek hard with the heel of one hand, as if something had stung him. He turned and left the room.
chapter eighty
'Sorry,' said Clementine to the teacher. 'I'll just go and check on my husband. I think he's not feeling well.'
'Of course,' said Jan. She added, hopefully, 'Let me know if you need me.'
Clementine left the classroom and looked to the left. He was already nearly at the far end of the corridor. 'Sam!' she called, half-running past classrooms filled with adults bettering themselves.
He seemed to pick up his pace.
'Sam!' she called again. 'Wait!'
She followed him to a quiet, deserted passageway with a glass ceiling that connected two buildings. The walls were jammed with grey lockers. Sam suddenly stopped. He found a narrow column of space in between two blocks of lockers, the sort of hidey-hole the girls would gravitate towards, and he sat down, his back against the wall. He rested his forehead on his knees. His shoulders heaved silently. There was a round patch of sweat on his shirt. She went to touch his shoulder, but her hand hovered uncertainly for a few seconds before she changed her mind.
Instead she sat down opposite him, on the other side of the passageway, her back against the cool metal of a locker. There were squares of sunlight all the way along the corridor, like a train of sunshine. She felt strangely peaceful as she waited for Sam to stop crying, breathing in the nostalgic fragrance of high school.
At last Sam looked up, his face wet and puffy. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Well, that was dignified.'
'Are you all right?' she said.
'It was the compressions,' said Sam. He ran the back of his hand across his nose and sniffed.
'I know,' said Clementine.
'It felt like I was there.' He used his palms to rub his cheekbones in a circular motion.
'I know,' she said again.
He looked up at the ceiling and did something with his tongue as if he were trying to get food out of his teeth. The sunlight shone on the wall behind him and made
his eyes look very blue in the shadowiness of his face. He looked simultaneously very young and very old, as if all the past and future versions of himself were overlaid on his face.
'I always had this idea in my head that I was good in a crisis,' said Sam.
'You are good in a crisis.'
'I thought if I was ever tested, if there was a fire, or a gunman or a zombie apocalypse, I'd take care of my family. I'd be the man.' He made his voice deep and contemptuous on the word 'man'.
'Sam -'
'It wasn't just that I took my eyes off Ruby. It wasn't just that I was trying to open a jar of nuts to impress a bloody stripper, of all things, while my little girl drowned right next to me ...' He took a deep, shaky breath. 'But I didn't move. I watched another man drag my little girl from that god-awful fountain and I just stood there, like a stunned mullet.'
'You did move,' said Clementine. 'It's just that they got there first, and they knew what they were doing. It was only a split second. It just feels like longer. And then you did move, I promise you, you did.'
Sam lifted his shoulders. An expression of complete self-loathing crossed his face. 'Anyway. I can't change what I did or didn't do. I've just got to stop thinking about it. I've got to get it out of my head. I keep replaying it, over and over and over. It's stupid, pointless. I can't work and I can't sleep, and I'm taking it out on you, and ... I just need to pull myself together.'
'Maybe,' said Clementine tentatively, 'you could, or we could, talk to someone. Like a professional sort of person?'
'Like a shrink,' said Sam with a strained smile. 'Because I'm losing my mind.'
'Like a shrink,' said Clementine. 'Because it sounds like you are losing your mind. Just a little bit. I was thinking when the teacher mentioned post-traumatic stress earlier -'
Sam looked appalled. 'Post-traumatic stress,' he said. 'Like a war veteran. Except I didn't come back from Iraq or Afghanistan where I saw people get blown up, no, I've just come back from a backyard barbeque.'
'Where you saw your daughter nearly drown,' said Clementine.