About a Girl (12 page)

Chapter Eight

O
NE NIGHT
I found myself with Flynn and Caleb, driving down a dark country road to an old wooden hall on the ridge of a hill. On the way, the headlights cut a swathe through the tall nodding grass that lined the road. Caleb drove, and Flynn sat in the seat next to him and bit into her lips with anxiety.

‘So,' said Caleb. ‘You're playing the new song?'

Flynn nodded. I hunched forward in the back, listening to their conversation, which seemed coded: musicians' talk.

The hall thronged with people, many of them clutching instruments. Each would play two songs, so it was clear that the session could go on all night. I sat in the dark beside Flynn while she waited her turn, watching the other performers. When I placed my hand on her arm, I felt how her skin burned before she shook me away. I could see that she was preoccupied.
When I perform, I like to play each time as if it's my last,
she'd told me.
It's almost your sacred obligation to the people who've come to see you, put their trust in you.

The various doors and windows were flung open, and a moon sailed in the sky. Inside, the squash of bodies created their own heat; I sat cocooned in it; I had a moustache of sweat on my lip. I was glad of the dim lighting; the darkness made it at least
appear
cooler.

At last it was Flynn's turn. She went and fetched Louise from the car. I watched her wait in the wings, guitar case hugged to her chest, looking so small and anxious and vulnerable. I loved her so much!

She walked onto the stage and clicked open the case. Plugging Louise into the communal amp, she tested the sound briefly, then sat down on a chair someone had placed for her.

Was it my imagination, or did she seek out my face to smile wanly at me before she started? The lights on the stage washed out her features.

The only other time I'd seen her perform, she had not introduced her songs, merely launched into them. But that night, looking out into the crowd, she said with that rueful pull to her mouth, ‘This is Louise, my best friend and bosom buddy. Only she knows how difficult it is to write a song.' She tapped the guitar. ‘So this one is called, “Come on, Louise”.'

And there followed a song about her guitar, with Flynn talking to it and egging it on. It was sweet and funny and endearing. Everyone laughed at all the right places, and afterwards they whistled and stamped their feet.

Then Flynn said quickly, without even waiting for the applause to die down, ‘This next one is a very new song, and I'm not sure if I've got it quite right. I wrote it on the anniversary of my brother's death – a lot of you will remember Simon?'

The hall became absolutely silent, and filled with an intense feeling of anticipation.

And I think I forgot to breathe. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A brother who'd
died
?

‘Well, he was the one who taught me to play. He even went with me when I bought Louise – “That one,” he said, “is a little beauty.”'

A look of confusion and shyness came over her face, and she lowered her eyes and spoke to her lap, and if everyone had not been so still you might not have heard her. ‘Um … on the anniversary of the day he died, I went to the beach and listened to what the sea was telling me, and wrote it down. So this song is about him – it's
for
him. It's called “What the sea said”.'

The song was about going to the place where her brother had died, hoping to speak to him, wanting to ask questions about how to live her life after such a loss. And even though her brother had not answered, the sea had, and one day, if she could ever understand the sea, she would know what the answer was.

And all I could think was,
so that was what was going on that day. And she never told me
.

I sat with my mind reeling. Then the song was suddenly over. ‘Thank you,' she said, adding automatically, ‘I'm called Every Little Thing.'

A moment's silence followed. And then everyone started clapping. As Flynn left the stage, people came up to embrace her, and rub her back tenderly, or kiss her shyly on the cheek. She looked at no one, and used the cased guitar as a kind of buffer. She headed outside.

I'd thought that Flynn had privileged me with intimacy, but it had been an illusion. Did she really trust me so little?

The next item was a group playing a
1950S
dance tune, and people got to their feet, almost in relief, and spilled out of the hall onto the grass, where they danced under the stars in the hot, still night.

There was so much I wanted to say to Flynn, so many questions. I had thought that she'd disappeared, but, having put away her guitar, she squeezed back through the press of people and took my hand. She took me outside where the others danced, and we jived to the rock and roll music, taking it in turns to swing each other round. When she swung into my arms, and pressed against me, I felt how warm she was still, how feverishly hot.

I did not have the heart, or the opportunity, to ask Flynn about her brother, or why she had kept him a secret from me.

We danced for ages under the moonlight – music floating from inside the building – doors flung wide – the moon and stars – candles lighting the shrubbery. Everything magic.

Flynn went to the tank at the side of the hall and drank direct from the tap, and doused her head with water, as others were doing. She drank and drank, as if she could not get enough. And then she said she felt ill. So Caleb drove us home, down the winding mountain road, stopping so Flynn could be sick in the grass. He drove us both to my place, carrying her guitar in after us. I put her to bed and crawled in with her.

Chapter Nine

F
LYNN BURNED IN
my arms all night.

She sweated with fever, and I got up to fetch tablets and water. I applied a cold towel to her forehead. I wanted to be close to her, despite the heat of her sick body. Every so often, she'd push me away. Finally she slept, and I found myself at dawn out on the wall watching the sunrise.

I crept around the house and did a few things while she went on sleeping. The grey cat accompanied me, purring when it saw me opening a tin of food, winding round my legs and collapsing at my feet at every opportunity. I didn't feel that it was
mine
, in any way, and yet here it was.

When Flynn woke, I sponged her clean, changed the damp sheets, and put her into one of my own clean nighties, one that my mother had bought for me. Perversely, it gave me pleasure tending to her small wants, anticipating her needs. Flynn was so weak, so helpless, so dependent.

Mid-morning, while I was offering her tea and toast, her mobile rang. I handed it to her. She looked at the screen and did not answer it.

‘My mother,' she said, quietly. ‘I don't have the energy to talk to her. If I answer she'll work out I'm ill. She'll want to come and look
afte
r me. She'll want to come and take me
home
. Next time she rings, can you answer and tell her a little white lie? She likes you; she'll believe anything you say.'

She sank back onto the pillows and fell asleep.

So her mother liked me! I felt obscurely pleased.

I took the phone outside where it wouldn't disturb her, and sat in the shade against the side of the house and painted my toenails green. When it rang again, the screen said,
Mum
.

I answered it, saying, ‘Hello, this is Flynn's phone. Anna speaking.'

‘Anna? Hello … is Flynn there?'

‘No, um …'

‘Is anything the matter with her?' There was an edge of panic in her voice.

‘No! She's fine … she's just …'

Flynn hadn't said what the little white lie should be, but I told her mother that Flynn was out helping Caleb with something that would take all day – that she'd accidentally left her phone with me and I wasn't sure when I could get it back to her. I promised to tell her that her mother had rung – no reason, just to see how she was.

Soon after I'd hung up, the phone beeped. Message. Automatically I looked to see who it was from. It was from
Rocco
.

My pulse quickened. I heard the children next door calling to their father. A bird piped shrilly from a branch of the pawpaw tree. The morning was bright and ordinary but my belly felt heavy with dread and anxiety.

And then, idly, guiltily, I looked to see what the message was.

Hey, Flynn, what's this people keep telling me about a grrl?

By Monday morning, she was still sleeping most of the time. I called the café to say she was sick.

Coming home at lunchtime (I'd driven to work so I could do this), I found her still asleep, but her temperature felt normal. I made myself a coffee and a slice of bread and cheese, fed the cat, kissed Flynn on the cheek, and departed, leaving a glass of lemonade and a stack of Sao biscuits next to the bed. When I got home that evening she was in the shower.

I remembered to tell her the story I'd told her mother. I didn't report how anxious her mother had sounded about her. I remembered her mother's sorrowful face, and it all fell into place.

After her shower, Flynn put on the clean clothes I'd brought up from her place, and started eating ravenously.

I couldn't forget that she'd not told me her brother had died. But I could see why she didn't like to think or talk about it; it was too painful. Singing a song about him was different – it was a way of making sense of her feelings.

I didn't even ask who this Rocco was, or about the text message that seemed to be referring to me:
What's this people keep telling me about a grrl?

I pretended everything was fine. I did not want anything to come between us.

When I remarked that I needed a haircut, she offered to do it, bringing from her own place a pair of haircutting scissors that belonged to Hannah. We sat on the wall in late afternoon sunlight, and as she clipped my hair I remembered Morgan, the day we had cut each other's hair, the thrill of being close to her, and later, the shame I had felt at my helpless desire.

Chapter Ten

A
ND THEN I
spoiled everything.

I keep remembering her in her kitchen, with her hands full of apples.

I blurted out, ‘Who's Rocco?'

I couldn't help myself. It just came out and, once there, hanging in the air, couldn't be retrieved.

She tipped the fruit into a bowl. They might have been pomegranates, they were so round and red and unreal-looking. They might have been plucked from the underworld, the place where the dead go.

An apple tumbled onto the table. She picked it up and put it with the others. Flynn, the keeper of apples and pomegranates.

It was after work, almost dark, and the tai chi women in the room across the way were moving their arms in arcs, bending and twisting like old trees in the wind. I watched them. I wished, for a moment, that
I
was old, and all the difficult parts of my life, like falling in love – all the agonies and uncertainties – were over, and I could stand in a room and spread my wings like the white dove.

Who's Rocco?

‘A friend,' she said. ‘Just a friend of mine. Anyway, how do you know about Rocco?'

‘Your mother asked about him, that day in the café.'

She laughed, without humour. ‘You certainly have a good memory, Anna.'

Her sarcasm made me reckless, and I rushed on.

‘Is he the boy in the photo?' I demanded.

‘What photo?'

‘The one in your drawer,' I said reluctantly.

Flynn's face looked incredulous, and then angry.

‘You looked through my
things
?' She stood with one hand on her hip, furious, and I felt my heart contract with dismay.

Coldly, without looking at me, she reached for the bowl she'd been softening butter in and tipped in some sugar, added eggs, mashed some bananas with a fork. She automatically stuck a finger into the mixture and tasted it, then added some flour, not even bothering to sift it. Timothy put his paw into the bowl and hooked some out, but she did not push him away. She stood with her hands clutching the bowl as if it was supporting her, looking ahead, her eyes fixed somewhere on the wall.

‘If you must know,' she said, ‘The boy in the picture is my brother Simon. I keep the picture in a drawer because I can't face looking at it all the time, just yet.'

The women next door had finished being white doves and were collecting their bags and hugging each other and laughing, preparing to leave. One day I would be an old woman, and all the painful parts of my life would be over. I would be a flying white dove.

‘I'm sorry, because I should have told you about him, but I just can't, yet. That's why I wrote the song. It was a way of saying how I feel.'

She picked up the spoon and began mixing the cake batter.

There was a shabby kitchen at twilight, there was a table, and two girls, and a cat, and apples came into it somewhere. They looked like pomegranates in a certain light, if you squinted your eyes and used your imagination. They could remind you of death if you wanted them to, those apples, or pomegranates. They reminded you of folly.

There were bananas and flour and a cat licking cake mix from the bowl. There was a girl who knew about death and wouldn't say, and another girl who knew nothing. This girl could have gone to the other and said,
I am so, so sorry. I was completely in the wrong.

But she didn't. She was like a car without a handbrake. She was on a hill and about to roll down, about to gather speed and crash. She was an accident waiting to happen.

‘That message Rocco sent you …
What's this people keep telling me about a girl?
Or something. Why should they think he needs to know?'

She put down the wooden spoon and shook her head, as if she couldn't believe it. ‘You read
a text sent to me!'

But I pressed on.

‘You said a “friend”. You mean, like a
boy
friend.'

‘Yes, if you must know. A
boyfriend
.'

The cat jumped down from the table.

The lights went out in the room across the way.

I looked at Flynn but she wouldn't meet my eye.

‘But where
is
he, if he hasn't come back yet? And is he coming back to you? I mean, are you still on with him or anything?'

‘If you
must
know, we're still
friends
.' Flynn spoke as if she was pounding rocks to smithereens. ‘And because he was going overseas for a year we decided we'd leave each other free for that time. I mean, long-distance relationships are
difficult
, aren't they? And
yes
, when he comes back I'll
see
him. And I don't know
what
will happen! Does
that
satisfy your curiosity? Or do you want to control my
whole
life
?'

She slammed the cake into the oven.

‘Anyway, I bet there are things about yourself you haven't told
me
,' she went on.

I went to the window and looked out into the dark, narrow space between the buildings. It was so empty, so devoid of light.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. Though what I was sorry for I didn't know.

That day I told her about my first year at university – about my
madness,
as I called it. I told her about my anger, my illogical fury at receiving a high distinction for my essay. I told her about Molly's accident and how it had been
all my fault
. I told her about my father's defection from the family, but not about falling in love with Morgan.

And then I told her about ‘The Tablets' that had worked such wonders, and made me not care about anything at all.

She looked at me rather dubiously. I'd suspected that she would, which was why I'd not said anything before.

She said, 'Don't people get addicted to those things?'

‘Well, I didn't,' I said, defensively. ‘I think they helped me a lot. They helped me to think clearly and rationally again. They got rid of all the static in my head.'

I teetered on the edge of hostility.

We looked at each other. Neither of us could think what to say. It was like some sort of standoff. I wondered if we could ever make each other happy again.