Page 24

24

“Where the hell have you been?” her dad roars as Cassie quietly lets herself into the house just after ten. She was hoping he would be in bed by now, but he’s sitting on the bottom of the stairs, waiting and aggrieved.

“I…” she starts, not quite prepared with a plausible excuse.

“Let me guess…” says her dad, his voice simultaneously loaded with rage and resignation. “You’re about to tell me that you went straight to work from school.”

Cassie’s head nods even though she knows it’s probably the wrong thing to do.

“Except you didn’t go to school today, did you ?”

What? How did he know that? Amelia had sounded a dead ringer for her mum when she called the headmistress this morning, claiming her daughter had been up all night with a sickness bug.

“Or work. So where were you?”

Cassie chews on the inside of her cheek as she deliberates how many lies are going to get her out of this. She could say that the school had got it wrong; that of course she was there. She could say that Woolworths had begged her to cover a staff shortage. She could say that her mum had given her permission to go and study in the local library instead of the classroom. What she can’t tell him is that she spent the day at Amelia’s house—well, more of a caravan on blocks in the middle of a field. She’d discovered that the mother Amelia claimed worried about her if she went to the corner shop had actually been so high that she didn’t even know who her daughter was, opting to chase the dragon with two unsavory-looking men on the couch rather than question why Amelia wasn’t in school.

With every peach schnapps she’d drunk, Cassie had found herself marveling at how cool it must be to have parents who didn’t care what you did. But as day had turned to night, and Amelia’s mum had passed out in a drug-induced stupor, she had started to wonder if being loved was better than being ignored.

“I’m sorry,” Cassie says to her dad, knowing by the look on his face that it’s best to be conciliatory. “It was Sports Day today and I didn’t want to miss out on a whole day of studying, so I went to Amelia’s house with my books.” She picks up her heavy school bag, as if to prove her point, praying that she’d not left any rattling empties in there.

“Well, while you’ve been wherever you’ve been, your mum…” His shoulders convulse and his head falls into his hands.

“Mum what ?” Her voice breaks, fear rendering her speechless. She races up the stairs, without waiting for an answer, tripping over herself in her efforts to get to her mother’s bedroom.

In the soft light of the shaded bedside lamp, Gigi looks like she always does when she’s asleep, serene and peaceful. But her skin is sallow, reflecting the light instead of absorbing it.

“Mum, can you hear me?” cries Cassie, begging her to answer, or to at least see the flicker of her eyelids—a sign of recognition when she doesn’t have the energy to open them. But there’s nothing.

She forces a trembling hand toward her mother’s face, willing her fingers to feel the warmth of her cheeks. But she stops herself just millimeters away, terrified that she’ll be met with stone-cold porcelain.

“What’s wrong with her?” she wails, as if the deterioration is unexpected.

Her father appears by her side, reaching a hand out to hold hers. “It’s time” is all he says.

“No!” sobs Cassie, falling into him.

“Now listen,” he says, peeling her away and holding her at arm’s length. “I need you to go over to your sister’s to see if she’s there. Her phone’s been off the hook for the past couple of hours, so I can only assume she is. I don’t know if she was intending to stay there tonight, but I need her to come here straightaway.” He looks at her as she nods numbly. “OK?”

Cassie can’t remember making the two-mile journey, the route thankfully hardwired into her brain.

The communal front door is on the latch, as it so often is, and the hall is thick with the pungent aroma of what the Victorian building’s twelve residents had for their dinner—people who, on this normal Tuesday night, have no idea that a woman is dying just down the road; people who will wake up tomorrow morning and get on with their day, while Cassie’s life will never be the same again.

As she reaches Nicole’s first-floor flat, there’s a low, pulsating beat of music drifting up from under the front door. Cassie stands there for a moment, listening to the dulcet tones of the duo singing, wanting to give Nicole a couple more seconds of life as she knows it.

She knocks quietly, hoping that Nicole won’t hear; but, knowing she can’t put off the inevitable forever, she knocks again, louder this time.

“Shh, there’s somebody at the door,” Cassie hears Nicole say.

Cassie can’t help but feel incensed that, while their mother’s life is ebbing away, Nicole is entertaining a random man in her flat instead of being at home, where she belongs. The irony that Cassie also wasn’t where she should have been until thirty minutes ago is lost on her.

“Nicole!” she calls out, banging on the door with an open palm. “It’s me, Cassie!”

The ensuing panic can be heard over the music, as feet clamber on the wooden floor, no doubt shuffling away evidence. When Nicole eventually opens the door, her face is angst-ridden.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, her tone accusatory as she peers out through a crack.

“It’s Mum,” says Cassie, her chest collapsing in on itself. “Dad wants you to come straightaway.”

The color drains from Nicole’s face as she bolts away from the door, leaving it swinging in her wake.

“Stay there,” she calls out from the bedroom. “I need to get dressed.”

Cassie has no intention of crossing the threshold, knowing that doing so will give her a view into the tiny flat’s bedroom. She doesn’t need to see who her sister was about to screw, if indeed she hasn’t already, though the white pixie boots beside the tape deck indicate he might be cooler than some of her previous mistakes.

So instead, she stands at the doorway, listening to the music:

“ There are things I could never teach you, no matter how hard I try,

Because only you can decide how high you fly…”

A lump forms in the back of her throat as the lilting melody reaches into her soul; the poignant words resonate as if they were her own. But there’s something even more than that, something recognizable that she can’t quite put her finger on. It’s not a song she’s heard before, but the voices—they wrap themselves around her like a security blanket she didn’t know she needed, their familiarity so comforting that she could just lie down right here and travel away with them to a place where death doesn’t happen—to where good people get to live forever.

She checks herself as a completely ludicrous thought occurs to her. It seems insane to suggest it—because how could it even be possible? But the longer Nicole keeps her waiting, the more Cassie is convinced that the voice belongs to someone she knows.

“Is… is that you ?” she asks when Nicole appears, falling over herself to get her pumps on.

“What?” she exclaims, patting down her unkempt hair. “Of course not.”

“But it sounds…”

“How would that even be possible?” says Nicole, pushing Cassie out of the door, clearly flustered.

“You’re not going to leave him there on his own, are you?” Cassie asks.

“Who?”

“Jesus, Nic, I’m not stupid.”

Nicole grimaces.

“So, who is he then?” asks Cassie, more because she doesn’t want to talk about their mum than because she’s nosy.

“He’s just someone from work,” says Nicole.

“Is it serious?”

“No,” says Nicole, far too quickly. But Cassie sees something in her eyes that she’s not seen before and can’t help but wonder why Nicole would lie.