The Couple Upstairs, page 15
It was the last word that stung him. It flew out of her and hit his face, changing it from an amused, teasing leer to a furious, closed book.
‘Please!’ She kept going, her heart banging, banging, banging in her chest, her breath in ugly gulps. ‘That was horrible. You shouldn’t –’
‘You need to calm down,’ Flynn said, and his voice was calm, authoritative. ‘That was nothing. Just a joke.’
‘It wasn’t fucking funny.’
Lori turned to walk away. Away from him, away from the cliff edge and the fear. But Flynn put his hands on her shoulders, stopping her from moving any further.
‘Lori,’ he said. And she realised how infrequently she had heard him say her name and how, even here, with the panic rising, it sounded so good in his mouth. ‘As if I would have let you fall. I know what I’m doing. Always.’
They had stood there for a minute. His hands on her. She dipped her head. He let her go.
They had walked back down the cliff path. Flynn in front, her behind, trying to get her breath to return to a regular rhythm. She saw herself through the eyes of the family and fishermen as they passed them again, on their way back to the car that belonged to who knew who, toe-ring girl, bedraggled and reduced, walking behind the young man she’d been kissing in the lagoon only a short time before.
Flynn hadn’t looked back towards Lori even once. She felt like a scampering puppy, ten steps behind, head down, ragged dress, wet hair.
Now, in the car, travelling through the black trunks of the burnt-out trees, Lori asked herself why she had reacted like that. Flynn was never going to drop her over a cliff. Flynn loved her. Didn’t he?
You’re nothing like the cool girl you’re pretending to be. You’re uptight, afraid, buttoned up. Boring. He hates you now. He’s questioning why you’re even together. You’re not the girl for him. That’s what he’s thinking right now. He’s going to kick you out. Then what are you going to do?
Lori put her head against the window, closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Then exhaled, ran her hands through her salty hair and twisted towards Flynn, who was driving, staring ahead. Stone.
She leaned forward and put her head in his lap.
He swerved, the tiniest bit. Corrected. ‘What are you doing?’
‘You know what I’m doing,’ Lori said, in the primmest, most English of voices. And she unlaced his stiff board shorts.
30
November: Lori
‘Milk? Sugar?’
Mel from downstairs had PG Tips. And she did need a babysitter, after all.
She made a cup of tea just the way Lori’s dad used to. Big mug. Bag in, water straight off the boil, steaming hot. It was important that the milk did not touch the bag. Sit to steep until dark and strong. Bag out, splash of milk in. Bag in bin.
‘Oh, thank you.’ Lori closed her hands around Mel’s big mug and cradled it. ‘Thank you, thank you.’
Mel had looked at her sideways. ‘You don’t have tea upstairs?’
‘Not proper tea,’ Lori said quickly. ‘Too many people for good tea bags. Milk’s always finished or off. Oh,’ she stopped. ‘That makes me sound bad.’
‘It’s alright.’ Mel laughed. ‘I know. There’s a lot going on up there.’
‘I hope we’re not too noisy.’
Mel shook her head, although it was not necessarily a no. She picked up her mug and motioned for Lori to follow her down the hallway. She was wearing a loose, white, linen button-through dress, the kind that was in the window of the too-expensive surf shop around the corner where Lori had tentatively asked for a job. The dress was a bit nice to be wearing for an afternoon at home with your kids. Was Mel going out later? Maybe she had a date? Maybe that’s why she needed a babysitter.
In the living room, the children were staring at a video game they didn’t appear to be playing. A man in a box in the right-hand corner of the screen was wearing headphones and shouting. YouTube. Of course.
The kids didn’t look up. Mel took the remote control off the coffee table, turned the volume down. The kids looked up.
‘Mum!’
‘Monsters, this is Lori.’
Two sets of eyes turned her way.
Ava was just like Mel. Wavy dark hair, dark skin, big brown eyes. She looked at Lori the way little girls looked at big girls, with interest bordering on study. Lori knew little girls. If she was kind to Ava, if she was interested, gave her compliments, the young girl would be her champion. Little girls were easy to impress, you just had to notice them.
‘You must be Ava! Nice to meet you properly. Gosh, you have beautiful hair.’
Ava’s face broke into a big comfortable grin.
Eddie was more circumspect, much less interested in this person blocking his view of the TV. He looked different, too. Fair and pale, unsmiling. He flicked his gaze towards her, returned it to the screen. ‘Hi.’
‘Not cool, Eddie,’ said Mel, crossing in front of them to the big round wooden table in the sunroom. ‘Be polite.’
This table, it was clear, was where life happened. Laptop open, kids’ scrawl in notebooks, felt-tip pens strewn everywhere, an empty plate with Vegemite smears, two plastic cups. The unit was a perfect copy of upstairs, but scattered with a very different kind of mess.
‘Lori is going to look after you sometimes this summer,’ Mel said, in a deliberately slow, loud voice, the signal that the kids should be listening to her. ‘Daddy’s got to go away for a bit, and I’ve got to work.’
‘Dad’s going away?’ Eddie’s attention was caught and he looked at his mum, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Lori took a sip of her tea and walked around Mel to sit down at the table.
‘Just to visit Grandpa, while he can, nothing to worry about.’
‘But the borders –’
‘Borders, schmorders,’ Mel said, and Lori observed the way she stayed loose and relaxed, giving nothing away. ‘Grandpa doesn’t live that far. And things are fine for now. Put your worry away, Eds.’
What a weird little world for kids, Lori thought. Their normal was so abnormal.
Mel raised her eyebrows at Lori and the kids. ‘Worries a lot,’ she mouthed to Lori, silently.
Lori nodded, took another sip. Who doesn’t? she thought. Smart kid.
‘So, how are things upstairs?’ Mel asked, again.
‘Good,’ said Lori. Today, she added, silently. Good, today.
‘You and Flynn seem happy,’ Mel said, in a tone that Lori immediately recognised as the one her mother used when she was fishing for something specific. Elise seems like a nice girl. You seem to be sleeping a lot lately. You seem to really like that Adam boy.
‘Yes, we are,’ Lori said, keeping her smile as light as possible. She raised her mug in a tiny cheers motion. ‘Thanks again for the tea.’
‘Is he working at the moment?’
‘Oh, you know, this and that. Weird times, but he’s keeping busy.’
Lori wasn’t really sure what it was that Flynn was working at, exactly. Some days he seemed to leave to go to a building site that one of his friends – Des, perhaps, or Rich – was the ‘gaffer’ for, down at Maroubra. Sometimes he was working in the apartment block that was being gutted just a few doors down from here. What he did on these sites exactly was unclear, undiscussed. But he came back shining with sweat and dust and sometimes with envelopes of actual cash. Other times he gave a pleasing nod at his phone’s pinging bank app. It was rare to hear Flynn talk about money, or work, or anything so ordinary, so basic. Which was annoying, really, when someone had to pay for the bread, the milk and the beer. All too often it was her, and her dwindling savings.
She did know that he would like to be doing something else. Something about music, and engineering, and equipment that he would like to be able to afford. Lori heard him talking about that with other people, but never with her. That work, which seemed to rely on gigs and artists and venues and dates, was on and off, on and off, with the unpredictability that was becoming predictable. Living with him for several weeks now hadn’t given Lori any firmer impression of his purpose. Only that if he didn’t feel like getting out of bed and going to work, he didn’t, and no-one seemed to have a problem with that.
‘Yeah.’ Mel was looking at her. ‘Seems that way.’
Lori wasn’t sure what Mel wanted from her. Did she want to know if Lori was reliable? Was she fishing to work out her financial status? Sometimes Mel seemed cool. Other times, like now, she seemed irritated, suspicious.
Let’s get on with it, thought Lori. ‘So when would you like me to start?’
Mel broke her study of Lori’s face. ‘Simon’s dad’s really unwell,’ she said, in a hushed whisper, her eyes flicking over to the TV-hypnotised kids.
‘Simon?’
‘Their dad.’ Mel looked down at her tea. ‘My ex.’
‘Oh, okay.’
‘We’re usually sharing stuff that comes up with the kids, after school, holidays . . . But he’s got to go to his dad and so maybe I do need to take you up on your offer . . . Pick the kids up and drop them off from some activities. Maybe give them dinner if I’m working late.’
A job downstairs. Exactly what Flynn told me to do. He’s going to be so pleased. Ever since their day at the national park, she’d needed new ways to please him.
Also, hanging out with a couple of kids was going to be easier than scrounging for shifts at the juice bar again.
‘Of course,’ said Lori, smiling and setting her tea down. ‘I’d love to. I think that me and Evie –’
‘Ava.’
‘Ava.’ Shit, that would cost her. ‘And Eddie, are going to get along great. Don’t you, kids?’ She threw that last line loudly towards the children, and then quietly, back to Mel, ‘Sorry, there was a little girl at the care club I worked at called Evie. She and I were great friends.’
That was almost true. There were about twelve little girls called Evie at the school holiday club, and one of them followed her around and told Lori her shoes were ugly.
Mel nodded once and took a glug from her tea.
‘There will be a few rules, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘If you’re picking them up from school, please don’t let them have ice creams, even if they tell you that’s what they do every day.’
‘Oh, I don’t do dairy,’ Lori reassured, realising as it came out of her mouth that this was not entirely relevant.
‘They do,’ said Mel, her gaze steady. ‘But still. No ice cream unless I say so. Their dad,’ she mouthed the word dad, as if, even if the kids were listening, they wouldn’t be able to guess who she was talking about, ‘gives them way too many treats already.’
‘No ice cream.’
‘And screen time –’
‘Is not allowed,’ Lori jumped in, certain she’d got it right this time.
‘Is allowed,’ Mel said. ‘But only for half an hour when they get home from school. If you end up doing bedtime, I’ll tell you how it works, but they’re allowed screen time just before bed.’
Isn’t that what every doctor says you shouldn’t do?
I should say something about this, thought Lori. Show that I know stuff, that I’m knowledgeable about kids.
‘Did you hear,’ Lori leaned in towards Mel, ‘that in Silicon Valley, all the guys who invented iPhones –’
‘Don’t let their kids touch them, yes, I heard,’ Mel interrupted, eye-rolling. ‘But the guys who invented iPhones also have French-speaking nannies and housekeepers who do all their domestic labour so excuse me while I don’t take real-world parenting advice from those men.’
Lori chuckled, nervously. Aren’t you about to hire me to do your domestic labour?
‘Where did you say you were from?’ asked Mel. She was looking at Lori in that intense way again, and Lori remembered this was a job interview. Not a done deal.
‘Dorking. It’s in Surrey.’ It sounded like such a silly word, and so far away. ‘Bit different to here, hey? As you know.’
‘Do you miss it?’
‘Nope.’
‘You didn’t have to think about that for very long.’ Mel was smiling. ‘But you will.’
Why were old people so patronising? Did Mel want to argue with her about her own feelings?
‘I wanted to come away. Dorking isn’t going anywhere.’
‘You think that,’ Mel said, looking into her tea. ‘But if you stay away long enough, it will move on without you.’
‘How long have you been here?’ Lori didn’t really want to get deep with Mel from downstairs. There was a lot to be said for keeping this relationship at arm’s-length. She didn’t need Mel knowing any more about her than what she was overhearing from upstairs. Even that was too much. Much too much.
‘Almost twenty years.’ Mel looked up again. ‘Long time now.’
‘Did you always know you were staying?’
Mel shook her head. ‘Life happened. But I love it. If my sister lived round the corner, I would never even think about home. There’s nothing else I miss.’
Home. After decades and a family made here, that’s still what Mel called the place she grew up.
‘Only PG Tips,’ said Lori.
Mel smiled. ‘You can get them here now. World gets smaller every day. Until, of course, this happened,’ she gestured around, sweeping hands that Lori knew took in viruses, borders, grounded planes. ‘Doesn’t your mum miss you?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Travelling. Being so far away. Doesn’t your mum miss you?’
The kids in the next room shifted a little. They had been listening, Lori could tell.
‘Well, yes, she does,’ said Lori. ‘But she also wants me to live my life.’
Mel snorted. ‘She does not.’
‘I think she does.’
‘She has to say she does,’ said Mel, and her demeanour had changed, she was leaning forward, animated. ‘Just like my mum did. But she doesn’t mean it. She would like it a lot better if, during a global pandemic, you were upstairs in your room, where she can see you and feed you and know that you’re safe.’
An image of Jools watching Countdown with her nan in that little blond-brick terrace came into Lori’s mind. ‘I think she’s okay with it.’
Mel smirked. Lori decided it was time to go. She drained the last of the delicious, hot, strong tea.
‘Your mum probably also isn’t wild about Flynn,’ Mel said.
‘Oh, she doesn’t know about Flynn.’
‘She does.’
‘Mel, I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is –’
‘She knows there’s a love interest, believe me. Why else would a young woman decide she’s going to strand herself on the other side of the world from everyone who knows her, for God knows how long, with a virus on the loose?’
Jesus. ‘That’s not how it is.’ Lori’s face was getting hot. ‘I just don’t want to go back.’
‘Would you want to go back if it wasn’t for . . .’ Mel pointedly looked upwards.
‘With all respect,’ Lori said, digging deep for a smile, ‘you don’t know me, Mel.’
The little girl, Ava, was suddenly standing next to her mum. ‘Mum, you sound a bit rude.’
‘Do I?’ Mel laughed, reached out to stroke her daughter’s hair and then looked back at Lori. ‘Sorry, Lori, I don’t want to sound like the worst kind of old lady.’
‘Oh, no, you –’
‘I just see a lot of myself in you,’ Mel rushed on. ‘I’ve been a bit homesick lately, and I’m projecting.’
Ava was crawling onto her mum’s knee and sitting down. She was a bit too big to do that, but maybe she was used to being her mum’s comforter.
Lori was still shaking, just a little, from saying what she said. You don’t know me, Mel. It had flown out of her mouth.
‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’ Mel was resting her head on her daughter’s now, softer.
‘A brother.’ Her brother’s face, big smile, sad eyes.
‘Do you miss him?’
‘Not really, he’s doing medicine in London. Our parents are doctors. It’s kind of . . . expected.’
‘And you?’
‘Not interested,’ Lori said. ‘I didn’t get that gene.’
‘Girls can be doctors,’ said Ava. ‘Girls can be anything.’
Lori laughed. ‘Yes, Ava, they can. But I don’t want to be a doctor.’
‘So what do you want to be?’ It was the little girl again, fixing her big brown eyes on Lori with curiosity.
The laugh was still in Lori’s mouth.
‘Right now,’ she said, ‘I want to be your babysitter.’
*
Outside Mel’s door, in the cool hallway, Lori added up the number of dollars the hours she’d just agreed to would get her. It wasn’t bad. She wouldn’t need to ask Flynn to pay for anything for a little while, which was ideal. The fewer ripples the better.
The front door opened as Lori started on the first steps up to Flynn’s apartment.
The fresh breeze from the street carried in a young woman’s voice. ‘I know. It’s crazy here, too.’
The voice was familiar, but it took Lori a moment to place it. Long car rides. Fish and chips by the water. That hostel, in the dark, adrenaline pumping.
‘Kat?’
It was her. Dropping the phone from her ear, looking up at Lori. ‘Oh, hi. Of course, Lori.’
Kat looked different. Her hair was shinier, smoother, redder. She was wearing clothes that weren’t for sitting in cars all day. Fitted, smooth colours that showed every mark. Kat was dressed as if she belonged, not like she was passing through.
‘This is such a weird coincidence.’ Lori had forgotten, but was quickly remembering, how Kat didn’t rush to fill a silence, didn’t hurry to make anyone feel comfortable. ‘I live here. What are you . . . what about you?’
Kat flipped her hair over her shoulder. ‘Visiting an old friend. He lives here, too.’
‘Flynn?’
The way Kat looked at Lori then – her gaze steady, her shiny mouth just ever so slightly turning up at the edges – made Lori feel like there was something that she didn’t understand. A joke she was missing.
‘Flynn.’
