Page 80 of Just One Look

He didn’t want to talk about this. “I’ve never told anyone. You’re the first.”

She looked at him with too much perception.I’m trained to listen to what people say,she’d told him once,and judge the truth of it.“How old were you when you started doing that?”

“Dunno. Fifteen, maybe. Before I went away to school. Once I got strong enough to carry her.”

“You must see how odd that seems,” she said. “She’s how much older than you?”

“Seventeen years. Mum had her when she was barely eighteen.”

“Right. The first time. Tell me how the first time happened.” And, yes, that was the surgeon, controlling the conversation.

Oh, bloody hell. It was share this, or have her wonder whether he was a pervert. Probably because he’d been, what? Sexually abused by his sister? Also,she’djust practically opened a vein, and he’d told her that was OK to do.

Why hadn’t he just dumped her on the bed in her jeans and left? Why had he needed to … what? Tuck her in? Whimpering or not, he should’ve dumped her.

This was why he didn’t get involved. This right here.

He was going to have to share something, anyway, and he was going to have to do it now. How did he explain it, though?

* * *

The first timehadn’t really been the first time. Lana had been coming home pissed from the bar every Saturday since he could remember. Mum and Gran wouldn’t even wake up, but Sofia, who shared a room with her sister, would come into Luka’s bedroom, climb into his bed with a sort of angry, stabbing energy, and say, “She’s spewing in the toilet again. Lying across the bed in her clothes and groaning, too. I’m sleeping with you.”

He’d wanted to say, “I’m a boy! You don’t get to come sleep in your brother’s bed!” Boundary issues, they’d call that now, but in that house? There’d been no boundaries like that. None for being a boy, anyway. He was the baby. He was the soft one. He didn’t count.

In the morning, there’d be a sour smell in the house, Gran would hand Lana a cup of tea in silence, Lana would sit very still and hold her head, and Luka would fix her eggs and toast where she sat, huddled in a kitchen chair in her dressing gown, her hair a mess and her makeup smeared, as Mum said, “When are you going to learn, girl? Take a couple of Panadol and get a shower, then, because we’ve work to do, and your bit won’t get itself done.”

After a while, it got to where Lana wouldn’t even make it to the bedroom, but would fall asleep on the couch in the lounge. Mum didn’t like it if she woke up and found her there, Sofia hated it when Lana came into the bedroom and crashed around, and Luka knew one thing for sure. He didn’t want Sofia in his bed anymore. Or he knew two things, because he didn’t like screaming rows, either. So he’d help Lana to bed. Sometimes, though, she wouldn’t wake up enough to walk, and one night, when he was fifteen or so, he thought,I could carry her.So he did, and pulled the covers back on the bed and helped her into it while Sofia mumbled and protested from the other bed, half-asleep.

Lana woke a bit, struggled with the zip on her short skirt, and said, “Help me.” He was embarrassed, but she mumbled,“Helpme. Going to be …” She swallowed, then put a hand over her mouth. “Sick.”

He ran for the plastic basin from the kitchen, held it for her, helped her pull off her skirt and jumper, tried not to notice that she’d lost her undies somewhere, and wished himself far, far away. Amongst men. Many men. Possibly in the Army.

After that, it was their secret. He’d sleep with one ear open for her, and when he heard the door, the staggering footsteps, would go into the kitchen and hoist her up into his arms. She wasn’t small, but he was strong. She’d open her eyes and mumble, “Thanks,” smelling like gin and men’s aftershave, and he’d feel sorry for her and angry at her in equal measures. There she’d be, stinking like whoever she’d been diving into oblivion with that night, and the bastard wouldn’t even have made sure she got home safe. Didn’t she care that they were using her? Didn’t she have any more self-respect than that? He never said it, though, and during the day, neither of them mentioned it at all.

He went away to school a year later, leaving her on her own with the drink and the clothes and the basin, and he was secretly, shamefully glad. When he was home in the school holidays, she’d take him out to work with her and be daytime-Lana again, ordering him about when she needed to and silent the rest of the time. When he came home the summer before university, though, she said, while they were standing on either side of a tree, wielding the long clipper poles to harvest the fruit, “If you’re as clever as they say, you won’t come back.”

He paused, then sliced through the stem, felt the fruit drop into the bag, and lowered it down to add it carefully to the box. “Ever?’

She snorted. “Of course not ever. Just find something else to do, that’s all. Find something else to be.”

“Rugby,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Not likely,” she answered. “If you don’t have another plan, you’ll end up back here, and Mum doesn’t want you on the farm anyway. It’s a living for two, she’ll tell you. Two, and maybe their kids. The real reason is that you wouldn’t be having kids on your own, not like us. You’d bring another woman here, because you’re soft like that. Conventional. She won’t have that, another woman getting in the way, wanting a say. So find something else. Do the work to get a certificate, a diploma, whatever.”

“Why don’t you go?” he asked, keeping on with the clipper, getting the rhythm of it. “If you don’t like it here?”

“I’m not trained for anything else,” she said. “Left school at sixteen. Got no money, either. What would I do? Go work on somebody else’s avo farm?”

“If you didn’t spend money on drink, maybe,” he said.

“If I didn’t spend money on drink,” she said sardonically. “The drink’s the only thing that gets me from one week to the next. Besides, the farm’s my inheritance. Only one I’m going to get. I’m going to help keep it going, and someday, it’ll be up to me, and I’ll do it my way. Me and Sofia. Not you, so don’t think it.”

“It’s a woman thing,” he said. “I know.”