The Spill Read online

  ‘Dad said Donna-Louise wasn’t comfortable having her in the house.’ Samantha shrugged, still looking at the ground.

  I didn’t realise it was Donna-Louise’s party, Nicole wanted to say but she knew it wasn’t really her party either. She looked over to where Craig and Donna-Louise were fussing over the cushions on their wrought-iron love seat. Someone had probably made the mistake of sitting on it.

  ‘Anyway, I saw you dancing with Ben Porter. You looked like you were having fun,’ Samantha said in that voice of hers that always felt like a mosquito in Nicole’s ear.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been pretending to have fun all night,’ Nicole replied far too quickly and instantly regretted it. Samantha was now looking like she was going to cry.

  ‘I thought you were having a good time,’ she said, her voice trembling slightly.

  ‘I’m having the best time,’ Nicole quickly reassured her sister. ‘I really am. Anyway, I’m sure Mum wouldn’t have come even if you had invited her.’

  Samantha nodded, eagerly swallowing the lie. Nicole felt even worse about Tina’s absence than ever.

  The speeches were mercifully short. Craig said a few words about his first-born and how proud she made him.

  ‘Look how beautiful she is,’ he said, gesturing at her and her Big Hair. Everyone clapped and Nicole’s Big Hair took a bow.

  Samantha then got up and made a short speech about how, in 1981, Nicole had swapped seats with her just before they were in a car accident and how that simple act had probably saved her life.

  ‘There was no seatbelt in the back seat and, as the younger and smaller sister, I might have been thrown from the car and killed, had I been sitting there. As sisters,’ Samantha continued, ‘I like to think we will always be each other’s seatbelt.’

  Someone at the back of the crowd made a nawwww sound and Samantha beamed, evidently pleased with her metaphor. Nicole looked around again to see if Kim had arrived but there was still no sign of her.

  ‘Speech!’ shouted a cousin, who was wearing a pink pinstriped shirt and braces, like he was Michael Douglas in Wall Street.

  Nicole stood up, thanked everyone for coming and sat down. Then she stood up again and thanked Samantha and Trent for all the work they’d done, and Craig and Donna-Louise for hosting. And then she sat down. And then she stood up one last time, wanting to say something about how she wished Tina was there, but someone had already put the stereo back on and everyone had turned away from her.

  Nicole couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever felt more alone.

  After another hour of meaningless chatter, the guests finally seemed to be getting ready to leave and Nicole began to relax. The ordeal was almost over. But then Samantha and Trent made a big point of covering Nicole’s eyes and leading her around to the front of the house.

  ‘Surprise!’ they both exclaimed, as they took away their hands, revealing the Gobbles party bus, ready to take all the guests to the Gobbles nightclub in the city.

  Nicole really was surprised. She’d had her sarcasm dial turned up to eleven when she’d told Samantha that she’d always wanted to ride on the Gobbles party bus. She should have known better; Samantha had never been good at picking up on sarcasm.

  Following the big reveal, there was a maelstrom of activity, as people piled onto the bus and into cars. Nicole even saw Craig and Donna-Louise ushering some of the pinstriped cousins into their Jaguar, which was particularly brave of Craig, considering how drunk the cousins all were.

  ‘Come on, Nic. Jump aboard!’ Samantha shouted from the steps of the bus.

  ‘Johnno wants me to ride with him!’ Nicole shouted back. ‘Johnno’ was a safe choice for the lie as there were at least three guests who answered to the name.

  ‘But the Gobbles party bus!’ Samantha exclaimed.

  Nicole shrugged, as if to say, But Johnno insists! and then went and hid around the side of the house.

  When she was sure everyone had gone, she went and sat on the love seat in the backyard. She picked at the nail polish Samantha had insisted on applying and wondered if Tom might turn up after his shift after all and if he might kiss her. She had a sudden urge to feel close to someone.

  She lay down on the love seat and closed her eyes.

  She was woken some time later by a voice ringing out. ‘My baby is turning twenty-one! Am I too late to make a speech?’

  It was Tina, teetering down the side path in a ridiculous pair of heels, triumphantly holding up a bottle of Lambrusco and two plastic champagne glasses.

  ‘You’re far too late,’ Nicole told her.

  ‘Good. I hate all that shit,’ Tina said, setting the glasses and the Lambrusco on a table. The glasses had little star stickers on them, like the kind that Nicole used to get on her work in primary school. ‘Jesus,’ Tina continued, ‘what happened to your hair?’

  ‘Samantha.’

  ‘Enough said.’

  Tina unscrewed the bottle, pausing to make a popping noise with her mouth, and poured two generous glasses, the Lambrusco slopping all over the place.

  She handed one to Nicole and then held hers up high above her head like a torch. ‘To you getting the key to the door. Or whatever,’ Tina said. ‘I wish you many things, my darling Nicole. But mostly, I wish you a full life. Don’t do what I’ve done. Don’t piss most of it away.’

  Nicole went to speak but Tina stopped her, the smile now completely gone from her face. ‘I know you think the bongs are different, but they’re not. They’re really not.’

  They remained on the love seat in silence, drinking the sickeningly sweet Lambrusco as the fairy lights flickered and, one by one, the tea lights burnt out. When the Lambrusco was finished, Tina foraged around until she found a bottle of Tia Maria stashed under one of the trestle tables.

  ‘Tia Maria, golden brown,’ she sang, as she poured some into their plastic glasses. ‘Drink it while everyone else is in town.’

  Not everyone was in town, though. Nicole thought of Kim and Tom on the couch in Inverness Crescent and knew she didn’t want to be there with them. Not when they hadn’t bothered to travel the two kilometres to come to her party.

  ‘I’ve really missed this place,’ Tina said, after a pause. Nicole looked at her mother, surprised. It had been so long since they had all lived there together – her, Samantha, Tina and Craig – she’d kind of forgotten that it had ever been Tina’s home. Certainly, since Donna-Louise had moved in and beige-ified it, it was hard to imagine Tina having ever lived there at all.

  ‘There’s some stuff,’ Tina said, but then paused to drink her Tia Maria. She started again. ‘There’s some stuff I’ve been waiting until you were old enough to tell you. And now—’ She paused again for another sip. ‘Now you’re old enough.’

  ‘Like what?’ Nicole leant in, afraid and slightly excited at the same time.

  ‘Like your stepmother is a cunt.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Oh come on, Nicole. It’s always been the Pritikin scone in the room. I’ve tried to be polite about her all these years and Samantha probably loves her better than she loves me, but it’s true. She’s a cunt.’

  ‘Donna-Louise is not that bad,’ Nicole said, but even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t necessarily true. Donna-Louise was generally as warm towards Nicole as the iceberg that struck the Titanic.

  ‘And there’s other stuff. Lots of stuff. But not stuff for tonight. Tonight, my beautiful child, is a party night.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that!’ Nicole said, bringing her glass to her lips and then grimacing. The Tia Maria tasted like coffee-flavoured cough mixture.

  ‘There you are,’ Craig said from behind them as he stepped out from the house through the sliding doors. Nicole felt Tina stiffen next to her. ‘Samantha was looking for you everywhere at the club. Everyone missed you.’

  Nicole noticed that even though he was talking to her, he was looking at Tina.

  ‘I just wasn’t in the mood for a nightclub,’ Nicole said, placing her Tia Mar
ia on the table. ‘Where’s Donna-Louise?’

  ‘DL went to bed with a headache. I was turning off the lights when I heard your voices out here and I realised the party was still going.’

  He was still looking at Tina. Nicole couldn’t remember the last time she’d been alone with both her parents like this.

  Tina grabbed Nicole’s glass of Tia Maria and slugged it back. Nicole could feel a storm brewing.

  ‘We should go, Mum.’

  ‘I’ll drop you both home,’ Craig said.

  Nicole frowned. ‘But we live in opposite directions.’

  ‘It’s okay, you’re just down the road, Nic. I’ll drop you first and then take Tina to Bassendean. It’s too late for you to be walking. Especially in those heels, Teensy.’

  His use of the old nickname thankfully made Tina smile, like the sun breaking through dark clouds.

  ‘“Teensy”,’ she repeated and then took another slug, this time directly from the bottle. ‘Nobody’s called me that for years. What was that thing I used to call you? Other than “arsehole”, that is.’

  Thankfully, Craig laughed, although Nicole felt it really could have gone either way. ‘You used to call me “Craggy”.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Craggy,’ Tina said. ‘Well, Craggy, I would love a lift home.’

  ‘This way, Teensy,’ Craig said, offering her his arm. Tina took it and the two of them headed off down the side path.

  Nicole hung back, observing the two of them walking arm in arm, like they were heading down the aisle. She couldn’t wait to tell Samantha about this strange moment of truce – if Samantha ever forgave her for not going to Gobbles nightclub, that was.

  Samantha

  Everyone at the wake kept going on about how tasteful everything was. The house. The furnishings. The catering. Normally, it would be driving me nuts because I knew it had nothing to do with Nicole’s amazing taste and everything to do with her boyfriend’s money. But today, there was something else that was bothering me even more.

  After all my phone calls and texts and emails telling Nicole not to serve alcohol at the wake, she’d completely ignored me and now, here we were, with the wine flowing freely. At Tina’s wake, of all places.

  I stood in Nicole’s living room, sipping mineral water from a wine glass and trying to remain calm. Next to me, Trent was having a conversation with some man he’d met, a distant cousin of Tina’s, but my focus kept drifting over to the large group in the corner.

  Back at the funeral home and the cemetery, the group had been quiet enough, introducing themselves as Tina’s ‘friends from the pub’. But now at the house, the more they drank, the louder they became. They had started squawking and flapping like a flock of geese about to either take flight or peck each other to death. Watching them now, I couldn’t help but imagine Tina among them, the squawkiest and flappiest of them all. I felt my chest constrict.

  Trent nudged me.

  ‘Huh?’ I looked at him, and he directed my attention to Tina’s cousin, standing beside us.

  ‘I said, you have a nice house,’ the cousin said. ‘Very tasteful.’

  Even though he’d introduced himself to us less than ten minutes ago, I had already forgotten his name.

  ‘It’s not—’ I started to say.

  ‘Thank you,’ Trent butted in. ‘We’re very proud of it.’

  He grinned at me, pleased with himself.

  ‘Yes, we are. Very, very proud,’ I said, playing along. Trent’s grin grew even wider.

  ‘I’m more of a boat person myself,’ the cousin said. ‘I took Tina out on the river a few years back. Not on the boat I have now. My old boat. She was an interesting beast.’

  ‘Who, Tina?’ Trent asked, clearly having the time of his life.

  ‘No, no, my boat,’ the cousin said. ‘I have a new one these days. I’ve called it Second Wind. You know, after that Billy Joel song . . .’

  But he had lost my attention again. Now I was busy watching one of the catering staff approach us with a full tray of drinks. The cousin took a glass of champagne but Trent just shook his head. He knew better, today of all days, than to drink in front of me. I kept watching the tray-bearer as he made his way to the couch behind us, where my daughter Rosemary was sitting, immersed in her phone, the great love of her life. He offered her a glass of wine and even though she didn’t accept it, I almost imploded.

  ‘Did you see that?’ I hissed to Trent, the minute the cousin had stepped away to re-fill his plate. ‘That waiter just offered Rose a drink.’

  ‘She’s twenty, Sam,’ Trent said through a mouth full of food. ‘Geez, this foie gras is good. Have you tried it?’

  ‘But she looks seventeen,’ I told him. Trent was obviously going to be no help, so I left him to his fancy food and headed to the kitchen.

  ‘Who’s in charge?’ I demanded.

  A flustered woman wearing a striped apron over a loud floral dress hesitantly stepped forward. ‘I am?’

  ‘Can you please slow down the drinks service,’ I said using the same voice I use whenever I get cold calls on my mobile.

  ‘We’re just doing what Nico—’

  ‘Nicole’s mother – my mother – was an alcoholic who died of acute liver failure. Plying the guests with alcohol at her wake, particularly my underage daughter, is inappropriate. I’d hate to have to make a complaint.’

  The caterer swallowed my small yet necessary lie about Rosemary’s age and nodded.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘We understand each other.’

  I returned to Trent and his new friend, my heart thumping hard.

  Trent gave me an enquiring look. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, laying his hand on my arm.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, breathing out. There was something about the feeling of his skin against mine that always grounded me. ‘I just had to deal with something in the kitchen.’

  Rosemary came over, her coat in her hand. ‘It’s time to go, Dad,’ she said to Trent, not even looking at me. We’d had a fight before the funeral about her outfit and she still hadn’t forgiven me.

  ‘Why are you taking Rose?’ I asked Trent, confused. Rose had come in her own car, which, after our argument, had been a bit of a relief.

  ‘I’m dropping her off at her shift and then taking her piece-of-shit car to Simon. He said he’d look at it as a favour.’ Trent turned back to the cousin. ‘Sorry, Rick, mate, I’ve got to bail. Rose has work.’

  ‘Today?’ Rick, whose name I finally remembered was actually Nick, was clearly surprised.

  ‘She couldn’t get out of it,’ I rushed in to explain on Rosemary’s behalf. ‘And really, she and Tina weren’t exactly close.’

  Rosemary looked away, embarrassed, and I suddenly found myself wanting to let this complete stranger know that it wasn’t Rosemary’s fault. It had been my decision to let Tina see her granddaughter only a handful of times in the last decade and, I’d have this Nick/Rick know, I’d done it for good reasons.

  But Rosemary and Trent were already leaving, and the cousin had gone back to talking about his boat.

  ‘You should come out on the river some time. Your husband and daughter, too,’ the cousin was saying, but I was watching Rosemary as she waited for Trent to grab some more foie gras. I was wondering how she would feel at my funeral. Would she cry like Aunt Meg when my coffin was lowered? Or would she feel numb like I did now?

  My attention shifted from Rosemary over to the kitchen, where I could see Nicole through the open door, talking to the caterer. I felt my body tense up in anticipation of a further battle, but then she turned to look at me and raised her empty glass. I nodded, relieved and yet strangely disappointed that she had surrendered. All my outrage about the wine had at least given me something to feel.

  As Nicole was seeing the last guest out, I tried to make myself comfortable on the white suede couch. The whiteness and obvious expense of the couch always made it hard for me to relax on it. Only someone without kids could buy such an impractical thing.

  I a
lso couldn’t relax because Nicole was slurring her words a little as she tried to push the ridiculous jigsaw puzzle with its inevitably missing pieces on me.

  At first, I tried to put it down to tiredness. After all, Nicole had only had tea all afternoon. But then the conversation started to careen out of control and I realised that Nicole was actually drunk. I stood up and started tidying away the empty glasses, turning my anger into order like Donna-Louise had taught me.

  ‘Just like old times,’ Nicole said, lying back on the white suede monstrosity.

  I thought of the hundreds of times I’d cleaned the brick townhouse on Railway Parade while Tina lay drunk and Nicole read her books.

  Now Tina was dead and Nicole lay drunk.

  It wasn’t like old times at all.

  As I worked my way around the room, stacking glasses on a tray, I did my best to ignore my sister, who was now snoring gently on the couch. I also did my best not to think of my dead mother, back in that cold cemetery. I hadn’t properly said goodbye to her and, when I allowed myself to feel my shame, it felt as sharp as pressing glass into my flesh.

  After a few minutes of actively doing my best, I abandoned the tray and decided to have a look around the ground floor of the house. I hadn’t really had a chance to do so in years, not since that disastrous dinner Nicole had hosted for her fortieth birthday – another memory that stung, like glass into flesh.

  I pushed it all aside and concentrated on the house. I had never admitted this to anyone, not even Trent, but I really loved this place. It was everything that our dark, narrow townhouse in Maylands was not. It had high ceilings. It had natural light. It had spacious rooms and spectacular views of the river. It also had millions and millions of dollars of equity behind it.

  I wandered into my favourite room, the front living room, with its large windows overlooking the river. I sat on one of the large Chesterfields, bolstered by cushions fluffed up like colourful clouds, and gazed out at the view. During the day, the river shone like a jewel, and even in the fading light, it was still spectacular. As I leaned back against one of the cushions, it gave a small sigh and I realised it was filled with feathers, probably from some rare, endangered bird.