Page 27

In some ways, in certain moods, it feels a little like Orly is my first child. I was there with Claire for the birth of Raff and then mind-blowingly soon after for Fen. I was there in the thick of it, for every feed, every nappy change, every illness. Of course I was. But I wasn’t Claire, who knew what cracked and bleeding nipples felt like, who had to sit on a rolled-up towel to avoid putting pressure on the episiotomy stitches in her vagina. And before all that, who endured the morning sickness that lasted six months and made her vomit all day every day. Claire, who felt the postnatal depletion and depression, who was an alien in her own stretched and flabby body, who once shat herself because she couldn’t get her pants off while also holding a baby to her breast, a baby that sucked and sucked and took all her vitality. Claire, who also had the hormones and the deep instinctive body connection and the bond that went deeper than her foundations, who had love like she invented it.

Parenting, for her, was in the body.

Problem is, I thought it was only in the body, and that’s why she was better at it than I was.

What a mystery it was to me then: how she knew what temperature to keep the room overnight and what to dress the babies in so they’d be warm but not overly so, how she knew when to give paracetamol for a fever, and what times they needed to sleep depending on how old they were, and when to bring them into our beds for cuddles and when to be strict about sleep skills, and what the fuck sleep skills are, and not to use soap in their baths, and to try olive oil for the cradle cap, and which foods were safe for starting solids, and exactly how to serve them. How did she know all of this? It must have been built in, that’s what I thought.

When Orly came along and it was just me, I realized how she’d known. She’d fucking learned. She’d had to, because somebody had to keep the babies alive, and so she bloody well got on with it. And now I was going to have to do the same, except without any backup, and the burden of this division of labor became astoundingly, mortifyingly clear to me. Oh, how I had coasted upon the back of this woman, deep in the trenches with her and also very happy to let her learn all the things and know all the things. How many times did I ask her which sleeping bag I should put the kids in? Or where the swaddles were? How many times did I pass over a crying baby, disappointed but also—come on, let’s be honest— relieved to know that they just wanted Mum and that I would never truly be the last line of defense?

Then she went.

And here I remained, and it was just me and baby. I did not know how I could ever be enough for him. I thought seriously of finding another home for him. I told myself he would be better without me. That I would break him in some way. Because he had not come from my body, not in the same way he had come from Claire’s, not in a meaningful way.

And then. There they were. Eight and nine years old. Having lost their mother and yet stepping forward to save me, teaching themselves what to do so that I wouldn’t have to do it alone. I knew then that it was not me against the little fella; there were no lines of defense. It was the four of us together, always. Maybe Raff and Fen did more than kids ought to have to, or perhaps it is simply the nature of us, that deep in our cells we are nurturers. They changed nappies and fed bottles, they learned how to clean vomit out of car seats and scoop poo from bathwater, they rocked him burning with fever while I drove, maddened, for the midnight medicine. They figured out how to get him to sleep when he wouldn’t go to sleep. But they also cuddled and played and laughed and sang, they read and told stories and they loved him. Purely and without resentment, and now he does the same for us, he nurtures and loves us. And within the sphere of my children’s courage, of their generosity of spirit, I found a way to be more. To ask of myself more. We forged an unbreakable four.

For the first time in our life together, our life of four, I have started, against all my better judgment, to wonder what it might be like to add another, making five. Would the capacity of that love find its limit? Or would it soar?

Tonight, under the covers with Orly in my arms and his breath tickling my chin, I ask him what he hears in the wind.

“They’re saying we tried to fix something that can’t be fixed. Not without loss.”

I pull away a little so I can look at his face. He is unbothered. This is why I don’t usually ask him what the voices say—because his answers are terrifying.

“Are you frightened of them?” I ask.

He shakes his head. There is that, at least.

“What do they mean, tried to fix something?”

“With Rowan on the beach,” he says, and I can hear the hesitation that means he wasn’t supposed to tell me. “We pulled down the barrels and turned them into something else.”

“What?”

“A big red penguin.”

I find myself smiling, and it hurts, abruptly, that they would not want to tell me about doing that. That they wouldn’t invite me to help them.

“Is Mum here?” Orly asks me.

Perhaps I should lie. Is this damaging him?

In the end it feels cruel to keep her from him. “She’s on your other side. Her hand is in your hair.”

He sighs, letting his eyes fall shut. The wind speaks again and this time I understand it. You would have to let her go.

Rowan is very quiet over breakfast. I catch her staring at me. The sensation of that gaze is a prickle. She has huge dark eyes and they remind me of the bottomless eyes of the seals. I find myself imagining again what her hair feels like, I imagine reaching out and running my hand over the short spiky ends of it, right now while sitting here at the brekky table.

“Dad?” Orly asks and I blink.

“Yeah?”

“I think I’ve decided on Tasmania.”

“Huh?”

“For when we go back. It’s the diversity of the vegetation,” he explains. “The Lomatia tasmanica is a clone plant that only propagates by dropping branches and creating genetically identical plants, and it’s been doing this for forty-three thousand and six hundred years.”

I stare at him. “So?”

“Don’t you want to live near that? It’s incredible!”

I can’t help laughing. “Yeah, sure. Wherever you want, mate.”

“There’s loads more interesting things, too. The mountain ash is one of the world’s tallest trees. There are forests of seaweeds in the reefs. Heathlands and moors, ancient rainforests—”

“I believe you,” I tell him. My eyes are on Rowan. She’s not listening, she’s worrying about something, and her face is cold like I’ve never seen it.

She stands abruptly. “Going for a walk.”

“Where?” I ask.

She gives me this look like it’s none of your damn business, which it’s not, only it makes me nervous, her roaming around the island.

“Can I come?” Orly asks her.

She shrugs, heads off.

Orly looks at me for permission. I nod, because if he goes with her then he can report back later, and I do feel guilty about turning my child into a spy, but he’s happy, he bounds off after her.

Raff and I sit quietly, finishing our breakfast. He is on his third bowl of cereal, a bottomless pit. I remember that feeling. An aching hole you could never fill no matter how much you ate.

He looks at me. “Are we really not gonna tell her?”

I don’t know what to say. He has such a leveling gaze. A dismantling one.

“There’s bad, and then there’s bad,” he says. “I think not telling her is bad .”

“We don’t know her,” I say simply. “We don’t know what she might do.” Or what kind of threat she could become.

I run my fingers over the smooth finish of the tabletop. It feels like silk. The hours she must have spent to transform the rough, chipped timber into this … I am breathless anew, as I am each time I walk into this room and see this work of art sitting so casually in our old kitchen. I’m a handyman, I slap things together, bash in a few nails, hope they hold. Rowan is a craftswoman. And it’s true, we don’t know her, but there is surely a clue in this table to the truth of her.

Raff finishes his breakfast by drinking the remaining milk straight from the bowl. I should tell him it’s bad manners but I don’t have the energy.

He says, “Maybe we’d better get to know her then,” and he is right; he is much cleverer than I am.