Free-Falling (9 page)

Jeez, if I can't even name a dog that's been keeping me company for over two months, what chance do these little guys have?
She instinctively touched her stomach.
Little guys. Or is it girls in there? Or maybe, between the two of you, you're representing both genders, eh?

She felt a shiver travel up her spine and watched goosebumps appear on her arms. This was the first time she had really acknowledged the two new human beings that were growing inside her. It felt even stranger than chatting to the puppy.

She took a deep breath, then whispered nervously, ‘Listen, guys. I just wanted to tell you that I'm really sorry about today. I never meant to do anything that might put you two in any danger.' Her voice started to crack and she rushed on, ‘I know so far I'm not shaping up to be the best mum, but um . . . I'm going to try and improve, okay? So good night and be good and no fighting with each other in there.'

She switched off her bedside lamp and rolled onto her side, snuggling into the pillows. A tear slipped down her cheek, but there was a smile on her face as she drifted into sleep, her arms wrapped protectively around her stomach.

Chapter 8

Evelyn

‘Evelyn McGavin speaking.'

‘Oh! Hi. Um, is this . . . is this James and Andy's mum?'

Evelyn huffed a little at the immature, breathy sound of the girl's voice. ‘James and
Andrew
? Yes, this is she.' She tugged irritably on the phone cord and waited for this unfamiliar and therefore irrelevant girl to get to the point.

‘Right, yeah, Andrew I meant. Uh, you wouldn't really know me. I went to school with them – your sons. Actually, I was a couple of years above them and it's just that Andy asked me out once and, uh, well, he was so sweet and . . . Oh, sorry, I mean
Andrew
. But, look, that's getting kind of off point. So . . . anyway, I heard through some friends of friends and stuff that . . . Andrew had—' There was an uncomfortable sounding cough.

‘Spit it out, dear.' Evelyn examined her fingernails as she waited for the girl to get on with it. She was in no mood to be patient and sensitive.

‘Is Andy dead?' The words tumbled out in a rush followed immediately by a gasp as though the girl was shocked by her own bluntness.

Evelyn sighed. This one sounded even worse than that silly Belinda, but she supposed that she could cut her a little slack. ‘Yes. I'm sorry to say that he has passed away. I'm afraid you've missed the funeral, though, it's actually been a few weeks . . . months, in fact, since . . .' It was Evelyn's turn to find that she was struggling with the right words.

‘Oh, no, that's okay. It's just that I wanted to – you know – pass on my condolences. So yeah, I'm really sorry. He seemed like a nice kid. Although I suppose he wasn't really a kid anymore. Not to say that he wasn't young . . . because he was. I'm not trying to say he'd already lived a full life or something like that. Because I know – you know, he was young so it must have been . . . hard. You know, for you. And for James, of course.' The more the girl tried to explain herself, the more upset she sounded, as though she just couldn't stop herself. There was an awkward pause and when Evelyn refused to fill the silence, the girl said in a rush, ‘I'm just gonna go then.'

The stark vulnerability in her voice gave Evelyn a twinge of sympathy, so she relented and said quickly, ‘What's your name?' before the girl could hang up.

‘Tania Stevens,' she answered obediently.

‘Well, Tania, thank you for your call. I appreciate you taking the time.'

Relief flooded her voice as Tania began to gush again. ‘That's no problem at all. Like I said, I just wanted to tell you that I was so sad to hear about it and it was just a shock, you know? But then, you know that already, don't you? Because obviously it would have been even more of a shock to you and I hardly even knew him that well, so you probably don't need to be told by complete strangers that it was a shock when you—'

‘Tania?' Evelyn cut her short.

‘Yes?'

‘Quit while you're ahead.'

‘Right. Yes. Umm . . . bye then?' She sounded unsure.

‘Goodbye.' Evelyn tried to keep her voice kind as she confirmed that it
was
actually time for the phone call to end.

She hung up and stood leaning against the wall, tapping her fingers on the glass top of the hall table.
Tania.
Why was that name so familiar? It was giving her a strange feeling, a mixture of suppressed laughter and a tiny bit of sorrow. She concentrated harder and slowly a memory floated its way to the surface.

She saw Andrew, thirteen years old, stomping his way into the house one afternoon, his tie askew, his face grubby, and hurling his school bag across the living room before disappearing into his bedroom and slamming the door behind him. James was through the front door moments later. His attempts at a pokerface were unmistakable.

‘What did you do to your brother?'

A look of outrage. ‘Why do think it was
me
?'

‘Because only you have the capacity to get Andrew that worked up.'

‘I didn't do nothin'. I was just trying to help.'

‘You didn't do
anything
,' Evelyn corrected.

‘Exactly!' James looked pleased.

Evelyn rolled her eyes. ‘No, that's not what I meant . . . Never mind. Just tell me what happened at school today.'

‘No problem, Mum.' James flopped down on the couch and started yanking off his scuffed school shoes. ‘First we had homeroom. Samantha Forresdale was five minutes late and old Big W went ape at her cause she's been late every day this week, and so then Samantha just started crying – in front of
everyone
!
Oh, man, it was a classic. But then her best friend, Linda, jumped up and called Big W a fat cow and said she couldn't believe she was being so mean to Samantha when her Nanna had just died this morning. So Big W is all shocked that Linda just called her a fat cow and is also trying to figure out which guy up the back had called out “Moooo” – that was my piece of work, by the way –
and
at the same time, she looked like she actually felt
guilty
about Samantha being upset and so she's patting Samantha on the shoulder and saying, “There, there,” and she was being nice for the
first
time in her life and we all thought it might give her a brain tumour or something, until Samantha looked up and said, “Thanks, Mrs Warren, it's just that I loved that fish,” and then Big W is all gasping and staring at Linda with death-ray eyes and Linda's like, “What? Her fish was
called
Nanna!” And then they both got put in detention plus—'

‘James.'

‘Yeah, Mum?'

‘Stop talking this instant.'

‘Well, okay, but you wanted to know what happened at school today and I haven't even got past period one yet, so I gotta tell ya, you're missing out on some choice info.'

‘Firstly, what could possibly make you think it would be a good idea to actually
tell
me that it was you making crass animal noises at your teacher? Next, I've told you in the past, do not refer to Mrs Warren as Big W. It's rude and, worst of all,
unoriginal
. Finally, you know full well that I want to hear about what happened to upset Andrew, not every trivial event of your day – as riveting as it all sounds.'

James stretched his arms up behind his head and then began to stroke his chin thoughtfully, as though he had a long goatee that he could twirl around his finger. Finally, he looked up at his
mum and announced, ‘I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you exactly what happened today as long as you guarantee that I can watch as much TV as I like for the rest of the night.'

‘This is not a negotiation. Speak now or you'll be lucky to ever see your Nintendo again.'

James sat up a little straighter. ‘Okay, okay, no need to overreact here.' He squinted thoughtfully as though getting the facts straight in his head first, then finally launched into the story.

‘Andy's been hot for this chick that's a couple of years above us for
ages.
I was getting totally sick of him whingeing about her, so today I decided it was time to do something about it. I was doing him a
favour,
Mum. Anyway, at lunch I just went straight up to her and asked her out for him.' James puffed out his chest importantly.

Evelyn's eyes narrowed distrustfully. ‘Tell me exactly what you said to this girl.'

‘I can't remember the exact words I used . . .'

‘James!'

‘All right, all right, I
might
have said something like, “My brother really wants to pop your cherry, and he cries himself to sleep every night about how pretty you are, so do you wanna go out with him or what?”'

Evelyn gasped. ‘Oh, James, please tell me that's not what you really said!'

James saw the look of horror on his mum's face and realised she was about to get really mad. ‘Sorry, gotta go!' He jumped up off the couch, dodged passed her and took off out into the backyard. Evelyn knew she wouldn't catch him if she tried; the gate at the back of the yard led out into the reserve. She wouldn't see him again until dinner time. She allowed herself a moment to wonder how Carl would deal with this if he were still around, and
then composed her face before heading tentatively into Andy's bedroom.

‘Andrew, sweetheart. Can we please have a chat?'

He was lying face down on his bed, his head buried into his pillow. ‘Go away!' came the muffled, shaky voice.

‘You know that's not how it works in this house. I run a dictatorship, not a democracy. If I think we need to talk – then we talk.' She sat down on the edge of his bed and tried to stroke his hair. ‘Your brother told me what he did at school today. Come on, sit up and let's talk about this.'

Andy turned towards his mum to show an angry, blotched, tear-stained face.

‘It was
Tania Stevens,
Mum. All her friends heard what he said to her. She looked over at me and just laughed. Like I was nothing. Like I was just a big joke. They must all think I'm some kind of crybaby idiot. I can't believe he told her that I cry about her, cause I don't. Why would I cry myself to sleep over her?' He shoved his face back into his pillow. ‘Can you please just go away, Mum? There's no point talking about this cause there's nothing you can do about it.'

‘How do you know if you don't give me the chance?'

Andy sat up and gave his mum a contemptuous stare. ‘Can you turn back time?'

‘No, obviously I can't turn back time,' she snapped.

‘Then you can't fix it, can you?' He made to throw himself dramatically back into his pillow but she caught him by the elbow.

‘Enough moping. We
can
fix this. Your mum still has a few tricks up her sleeve. You just wait and see.'

Evelyn was startled out of her trip down memory lane and back into the present by the sound of James's footsteps thudding down the stairs.

‘Going out.' He grabbed his keys off the side table and brushed brusquely passed her towards the front door.

‘Where?' she asked sharply.

‘
Out.
' As if that explained it.

‘How's the job search going?'

‘Not now, Mum.' He was through the door before she could get another word in.

Since coming home for his brother's funeral, James seemed to have settled into a routine of sleeping in until one or two in the afternoon, then disappearing and not coming back home until the early hours. His savings account must have been getting somewhat depleted, but he didn't seem to have any set plans for what he was going to do. She didn't even know if he might suddenly announce one day that he was going back overseas – yet again. And his sullen mood was intermittently broken up by bursts of rage. One minute, he'd be quietly watching the television in the living room; the next, she'd find him trashing his old bedroom, kicking junk from one side of the room to the other. She had no idea how to respond to these outbursts. Ignore them? Yell back at him? Gather him into her arms and let him cry it out? But that wasn't the sort of family they were now. They didn't hug. And they certainly didn't
share
their feelings. They quashed them. They ignored them and they spoke to one another in short, snappy sentences, letting the tension just keep on mounting.

Evelyn hadn't told James that she'd been skydiving yet either. She wasn't sure how he would react to her taking his place in the activity that she had banned him from experiencing. Her first jump had been terrifying and exhilarating all at once. Hurtling
through the sky, plummeting down towards the earth, landing breathless with her head spinning. She had been instantly hooked. She had jumped again two days later. But both of those jumps had been tandem: each time she'd had Bazza strapped to her back, in charge of the important things like counting out each thousand feet and, more importantly, pulling the ripcord. Since then, she'd been torn between a desperate desire to skydive on her own and an alarming fear at the very thought of doing just that.

She had managed to put it off for quite some time, but eventually she had steeled her nerves and booked herself in to obtain her skydiving licence. She wasn't sure why, but she needed this. Within a few days she had completed the first stage of the licence, which consisted of intense on-ground training and yet another tandem jump. This meant she was now due to make her first solo jump – that very afternoon. She picked up her own set of keys and was about to head for the door when the phone rang again.

‘Evelyn McGavin speaking.'

‘Hi, Evelyn, how are you going? It's Gabbie . . . from the office?' She was speaking to her slowly and clearly as though she were a five-year-old child.

‘I'm well, thank you, Gabbie. What can I do for you? I'm just about to go out the door.' Evelyn kept her voice curt.