Paper Chains (12 page)

Nick pressed his Visa into Liam’s hand. ‘Here you go, dinner’s on us,’ he said, winking at the two of them.

‘You don’t need to do that –’ began Liam; it was enough that they were babysitting so that he and Hannah could get some time to themselves.

‘Ah, let your father treat you,’ said Trish, rocking Ethan in her arms, her eyes glinting. ‘We like to do something nice once in a while for you both.’

‘Dad, I can’t use your credit card anyway. How am I supposed to sign for it?’

‘Nonsense, just scrawl, it’s not like they check anyway. If you’re worried, use the pin; it’s your mother’s birth year.’ They were ushered out the door then and they walked to the car in the driveway in silence.

Liam automatically hopped in the driver’s side and Hannah circled around the car to climb into the passenger seat.

As they reversed out of the driveway, Liam gave a sudden groan of contentment and Hannah looked over, startled. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean what? We’re free! Just the two of us for the night! Doesn’t it feel great?’ ‘Oh,’ said Hannah. ‘Right, sorry, I thought you’d hurt yourself or something.’

Liam glanced sideways at her as he negotiated out onto the road and then swung the car around and headed up the street. ‘You’re worried about him, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘Don’t worry, babe, he’ll be no trouble for Mum. You have to leave him for the first time eventually!’ and he reached across to pat her thigh. Hannah looked out the window.

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Just hoping he’ll feed okay for them,’ she said, ‘and that they’ll be able to put him down to bed without too much hassle.’ But her voice sounded monotone as she spoke, almost as though she were inventing the concerns as she went along.

‘Try not to think about it. We can call during dinner if you want, check up on him?’ Liam tried.

‘Yeah, sure.’

They drove in silence then, and Liam tried to remember what the two of them usually talked about when they spent time together on their own. Why did he feel so nervous? As if it were a first date and he was keen to impress.

Why can’t I seem to get through to you at the moment, Han?

They picked a busy Greek restaurant on Terminus Street and were given a table in a corner. Hannah was relieved to find the place buzzing with noise and movement. Maybe she could be swallowed up in all that buzz. Maybe she could find her personality hidden among it. Or maybe she could just stay quiet and Liam wouldn’t notice because everything else would fill the silence for her. Maybe she could sink into her chair and disappear and Liam could replace her with that waitress over there, the one with the long, dark, spiral curls and the olive skin and the unreasonably large breasts. She looked like the motherly type. As Hannah disintegrated into her chair, the waitress could seamlessly take her place. As she leaned forward, pouring the wine for Liam, she could carefully ease herself into Hannah’s seat. Watch out! I’m not completely dissolved yet; you’re sitting on my head! And then Liam would play with her cute, bouncy curls and he would be in awe of her massive chest and she would be entranced by his big brown eyes and he would take her home and Trish and Nick would say, ‘Nice time, love?’ and he would say, ‘Fantastic! I found a new wife and mother for my children!’ And Trish would beam as she gave her new daughter-in-law a welcoming hug and she would whisper, her voice a little watery, ‘Oh good choice, son! That Hannah was like a corpse on a trolley!’ and Nick would say, ‘Great rack!’ and they would all laugh together and Gracie would come running from her bedroom to throw herself into her new mummy’s arms.

‘Hannah. Hannah!
Hannah!
’

Hannah’s eyes fluttered and she looked up in surprise. Jeez, she had been completely lost in that one.
Concentrate, Hannah. Participate in the world!

‘Sorry, yes?’ she asked. She had no idea what he might have been trying to talk with her about.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

She peered back at him in confusion.
What do I want? What do I want? Oh God, Liam, how do I even begin?

‘What do you want to drink?’ he repeated – and he indicated the waitress who was standing by their table. Towering over it, in fact. God, she was ridiculously tall. And up close her breasts were like small mountains, shooting out from her chest and hovering over them. Hannah realised she was staring and quickly lifted her eyes to fix them on the waitress’s face instead. The waitress raised her eyebrows as she waited.

‘Oh right. Yes, um. Glass of wine,’ she said quickly.

‘Any particular type or would you like me to just guess?’ the waitress responded contemptuously as Liam said simultaneously, ‘Are you drinking tonight? I just ordered a beer – sorry, I just assumed you’d be driving because you’ll need to feed again when we get home.’

Hannah felt flustered as she looked back and forth between the waitress and her husband. ‘Right, of course,’ she said. ‘Ah, I’ll just have a lemonade?’ and her voice faltered as the waitress rolled her eyes and scribbled on her notepad. As she turned swiftly and left the table Liam said hurriedly, ‘Sorry, you didn’t need to change your order. I wasn’t saying you shouldn’t drink; I mean, you can have a glass of wine, can’t you? When will he be due to feed again?’

‘No, no, it’s fine. Best if I don’t, just in case he won’t take the expressed milk for your parents. I just wasn’t thinking, that’s all.’

Through dinner, they talked about Liam’s work, about Gracie’s tantrums, about how nice it was to have Trish and Nick staying with them, about the weather, about the mains – Liam’s was nice but a little salty, Hannah’s was better, maybe not enough sauce though – about whether or not they should have dessert. Should we be getting back, or do you think everything is fine? Should we have one each or choose something to share? They discussed the floods up in Queensland and Hannah pretended to know what Liam was talking about – she hadn’t watched or listened to the news in weeks, she hadn’t known that not only had there been floods, but inland tsunamis. She almost asked Liam how he knew about the floods, but at the last second, she caught herself as she remembered,
Oh right, you live out in the real world, don’t you? You have discussions with other people, give your opinion, chat, laugh.
Mostly, Hannah kept her shoulders stiff and her smile fixed as she fraudulently joined in on their conversation. But at one point, she forgot that she was a cardboard cut-out and she fell into her feelings. It was when Liam told her a story about one particular drowning victim in the floods. An elderly woman and her husband had been clinging to a tree as a swollen river rushed around them. An SES rescuer had waded out to rescue them, but could take only one at a time. The woman’s husband insisted that his wife be taken first. He promised her he’d be right behind her. But just after the woman was taken to safety, a new surge of floodwaters had rushed through and her husband had been washed away. They found his body a few kilometres up the river.

As Hannah heard the story, and pictured that elderly man, chivalrously putting his wife’s life before his, she remembered something.
I am part of an entire world. There are other people with much greater problems than me – whole towns being swept away – and more importantly, sweet old men who sacrifice themselves for the love of their life. Pull yourself together, Hannah. Remember who you are.
And she cried for that man and for his family and for the wife who maybe wished she had been swept away with him. Liam reached across the table to squeeze her hand and said, ‘Sorry, Han, I shouldn’t have told you that story. This is meant to be a happy night.’ And Hannah wanted to scream, ‘Why shouldn’t we talk about him? Why shouldn’t we cry for him and his family? Why should we have a blissful night out when his wife will never be able to feel joy again?’ But instead she nodded and shrugged and rubbed at her eyes and told him not to worry. And soon she was just torn cardboard and dead wood and sterile plastic again.

When the bill came, Liam had to admit that he couldn’t remember what year his mother was born.
1959,
thought Hannah immediately. But for some reason she didn’t tell him that she knew and she pretended to join in on Liam’s jovial banter as he tried to work it out and then debated whether or not he should sign for the credit card and finally settled on just paying for the dinner themselves seeing as he actually earned more than his parents did and he felt guilty accepting their generous gesture when they were already babysitting for them. Hannah agreed, and when they stood up to leave, Liam looped his fingers through hers and she tried to feel relaxed and comfortable with her hand in his, but instead it felt clunky and their bodies seemed to be out of sync and her skin felt sweaty and Liam’s hand felt too cold, like a dead fish in her palm and she thought again about that elderly couple, clinging to that tree and Liam’s hand turned to rough bark and she squeezed it, suddenly and involuntarily.

CHAPTER NINE

He hadn’t intended on having a drink with her. In fact, tonight, for once he was going to get home on time. But as he had headed out of the office, he’d bumped straight in her – quite literally.

‘Hey, latte-boy!’ she said with a smile as they stepped back from one another.

‘Coffee-shop-girl,’ he responded cheerfully. He hesitated then, as there was an awkward moment as they both stood staring at one another. ‘Ahh, finished your shift for the day?’ Liam asked.

‘Yep. Actually, I was just thinking of stopping in at Chance Bar for a drink. Why don’t you have one with me? My shout.’

‘Oh,’ said Liam, caught off guard. ‘Well I was just about to . . .’

But she interrupted him. ‘Come on, one drink,’ she coaxed and then she started walking and Liam felt as though he had no choice but to fall into step beside her. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I guess just one quick drink.’ And he thought as they headed down the street,
Who says you can’t have a friendly drink with a member of the opposite sex? Completely harmless.

Somehow one drink turned into two. And two drinks turned into three, and somewhere along the line, Liam began to realise that Paige (that was coffee-shop-girl’s actual name) wasn’t just flirting harmlessly with him, she was hitting on him. He had to put a stop to this. They were sitting opposite one another in a cosy booth. It was only a Tuesday night, but the bar was packed nonetheless.

‘Hey, Paige,’ he said, trying to figure out how best to word this. ‘You know that I’m married, right?’ he asked, twisting the wedding band nervously around his ring finger.

‘So?’ she replied.

‘Well it’s just that – I mean maybe I’m misinterpreting here – but I thought maybe you were expecting . . .’ he drifted off, embarrassed. Maybe he
did
have the wrong idea? But then her foot was against his leg under the table and she leaned forward to whisper suggestively, ‘I really don’t care . . .’

On the same day that Liam was having a drink with a pretty girl named Paige, Hannah was in the car, driving. It had been a horrendous day, with Gracie throwing tantrum after tantrum and Ethan refusing to sleep; finally Hannah had strapped both kids into the car and started driving. She had no idea where she was going, but it seemed to be the only way to settle Ethan and even Gracie cheered up when she realised they were going out. After an hour, both children had fallen asleep and Hannah continued to drive. Another thirty minutes later, she realised her legs were beginning to feel stiff and she started peering at road signs, trying to figure out where exactly they were. A couple more turns and she saw a sliver of blue in front of her. Instantly she was struck by the sensation of a memory, a feeling of anticipation and excitement. Almost immediately she realised why. It was because when she was small, and her parents drove her up the coast for a holiday at the beach (long before they split up), there was always a competition to be the first one to spot the ocean. They would be winding through the hair-pin turns, and Hannah would be peering out of the window, scanning the view through the gaps in the bush, and usually they would round one particular corner, right at the top of the hill above Gosford, and there it would be, way off in the distance, and if the sun hit it right, it would look like diamonds on the horizon and you had to be the first to shout out those five magic words.

I can see the water!

Hannah had to restrain herself from calling out in triumph. She pulled up by the beach, hopped out of the car and checked a sign. Brighton-Le-Sands. She had no idea how they had ended up here, but she gently woke Gracie, popped Ethan in the stroller and they walked down to a nearby fish and chip shop to buy some dinner. They spent the late afternoon and early evening on the beach. It had been a hot day, so she stripped Gracie down to her underpants and singlet and she ran around at the water’s edge, splashing and laughing. Ethan sat unsteadily on the sand, his back propped up against Hannah’s legs and his face set with concentration and wonder as he attempted to control the movements of his hands as his fingers ran through the soft, cool sand.

Later, when they had finished eating, she watched as thick, dark purple clouds spread across the sky. A wind whipped up around them and she gathered their things and raced back to the car with the kids as fat drops of rain began to fall. They sat in the car and watched the storm rage around them, Ethan on her lap and Gracie kneeling in the front passenger seat, her hands and nose pressed against the window as she watched the storm in awe. Whenever the thunder clapped, the three of them would huddle together, and for those ten minutes until the storm passed over, Hannah thought,
Oh
this
is what it’s supposed to feel like.
But then they were driving back home and the kids started to get whingey because they had been in the car for too long and the thought of everything that was waiting for her at home – cleaning, washing, putting the kids to bed – made her feel stressed and sick and she wished they could have stayed by that beach forever.

She didn’t tell Liam about their impromptu trip down to one of Sydney’s southern beaches. For some reason it felt as though she needed to keep it to herself; it felt like a magical time that she had shared with her children and if she tried to explain it, it might break the spell. She wondered if they could just do that every day.

Liam was feeling tense. Tense and stressed and guilty and confused. Nothing had happened with Paige. He had extracted his legs from her wandering foot under the table, paid the bar tab and left. He had to leave his car in the office car park because he had had way more drinks then he intended. The long train trip home was suitably sobering though.

You haven’t done anything wrong
, he kept reminding himself. It was just a few drinks with a friendly person . . . a very friendly person.

And anyway, could he be blamed for wanting some company from someone who actually wanted to talk with him? Who
wanted
to touch him? Lately he felt like he was constantly just trying to keep up with Hannah. A couple of times he’d called on the way home from work offering to pick up some takeaway for dinner. Hannah always refused, assuring him she had dinner under control. The other day he had gone to iron his work shirts only to find the washing basket empty and all the shirts hanging in his wardrobe. ‘You don’t need to iron my shirts for me, babe, you have enough on your plate,’ he’d tried to protest. ‘I don’t mind,’ she’d replied in a martyred tone that seemed to say the exact opposite.

Walking home from the station, he tried to think of what he would say to explain the fact that he was arriving home so late – and probably smelling like spirits. As it turned out though, he needn’t have worried. When he walked in the front door, Hannah looked up from the couch. ‘Dinner’s in the oven,’ she said. ‘I’m off to bed.’

‘Han, I’m so sorry I’m late,’ he began.

‘Don’t be,’ she cut in, ‘I know you have to work long hours.’ And then she disappeared down the hall and Liam found himself wishing that she
had
smelt the alcohol on his breath, because maybe then they would have had a real conversation.

On Thursday night, Hannah was feeling a bit out of control. She had fallen behind on the housework today. She didn’t have dinner sorted out yet. She looked up at the clock.
Shit, Liam’s due home soon and I haven’t tidied the kitchen yet and I still need to get the kids bathed and in bed.
She started the bath running (they couldn’t possibly skip a bath tonight, she’d skipped it the night before) and rushed to check that Gracie had finished her dinner. She was sitting in front of her barely touched plate, eyes on the television;
In the Night Garden
was on, Upsy Daisy dancing across the screen.

‘Gracie,’ she exclaimed in exasperation. ‘Why haven’t you eaten your dinner? I’ve started your bath; I thought you’d be finished by now.’

‘Don’t like it,’ said Gracie firmly.

‘You liked cheesy pasta yesterday,’ Hannah replied, trying hard to stay calm.

‘S’yuck.’

‘It’s not yuck, it’s a yummy dinner. Please,
please
will you just eat it up?’

‘Yuck, yuck, yuck,’ Gracie chanted, picking up a piece of the pasta between two fingers and examining it with revulsion.

‘Stop it,’ Hannah said quietly. ‘Stop saying that. It’s not yuck, I cooked it especially for you because yesterday you said you loved it.’

‘Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck,’ Gracie continued to sing tunelessly.

‘Stop it,’ Hannah said again. Anger was boiling deep in her gut, dangerously threatening to erupt. Gracie’s voice was like a vegetable peeler, scraping away layers of her skin. ‘Gracie,
please
. Stop saying that right now.’ Hannah clenched her jaw.
Stay in control, stay in control.

‘Yuck, yuck, yuck . . .’

‘STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!’ As Hannah began to scream she lost control of her body; she picked up Gracie’s plate and hurled it against the wall. The plate smashed and pasta and vegetables flew everywhere. Ethan, who had been lying on the floor happily playing with his toes, burst into tears. A second later Gracie joined in with him. ‘My food is on the wall!’ she sobbed uncontrollably. ‘My food is on the wall! Get my food off the wall!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Hannah whispered, looking from the broken pieces of the ceramic Peter Rabbit dish to her two crying children to the smears of food across the wall. Some had even splattered right up to the ceiling. She collapsed onto the floor and buried her face in her hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she cried through her tears, ‘I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

As all three of them continued to sob, Hannah reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. This had to end. She couldn’t go on like this. She typed a text message with shaking hands:

please, please, could you please just come home on time tonight. In fact, could you come home now? Right now. I really need you.

She would send this message to Liam and then she would sit here, on the floor, surrounded by the mess and the broken pieces of the little plate that had been her own before it was Gracie’s. She would sit here by her crying children and she would wait. And when Liam came home he would see all of this and he would finally know the truth.

She was just about to press send when her phone beeped with a text. She opened up the new text instead.

So sorry, babe, but it’s going to be a late one tonight. Probably won’t be home before midnight so better have dinner without me. I’ll eat takeaway at the office. Love you.

Hannah stared at the message with burning eyes. What would have happened if she had sent hers first? Would he still have stayed back anyway? And what would he do if she still sent the text anyway? Would he drop everything and rush home? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. His work was important, after all. It didn’t matter though, because she hadn’t sent it and she wasn’t going to, and she certainly couldn’t sit here on the floor until midnight. This was a second chance to pull herself together all on her own. To fix things before Liam ever found out what was going on. She wiped her tears away and looked around at the scene. She stood up. ‘Come here, sweetheart,’ she said, picking Gracie up from her chair and hugging her close. She walked over to Ethan and scooped him up with her other arm and then she sat down on the couch with the two of them, stroking Gracie’s hair and rubbing Ethan’s back until they had both settled down. She didn’t remember that she had started the bath running until ten minutes later. When she realised, she leapt up and raced to the bathroom. But by this time most of the bathroom was flooded. The floor mat was soaked through and bright yellow rubber ducks floated by across the tiles.