A House Built on Sand, page 1
ABOUT THE BOOK
Maxine has been losing things lately. Her car in the shopping centre carpark. Important work files—and her job as a result. Her marbles? ‘Mild cognitive impairment’, according to the doctor. Time for a nursing home, according to her daughter, Rose.
Rose has her own troubles with memory: a recurring vision of a locked cupboard, claustrophobic panic. Something in the shadows. Something to do with the old family house in Kutarere.
Back in that house by the beach, Maxine and Rose try to find their bearings. But they can’t move forward without dealing with the past—and the past has a few more surprises in store.
Full of suspense and heartbreak, A House Built on Sand is a haunting novel about family secrets, the hazards of memory and ghosts that linger.
Contents
Cover Page
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
EPIGRAPHS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE UNDERGROUND CARPARK
‘AND THEN SHE
I’M DRIVING—DRIVING LIKE
ROSE IS STUCK
NOW THAT I’M
ROSE HAS DRIVEN
THE TURN-OFF, FINALLY.
THE FIRST THING
WHAT I WOULD
ROSE FINDS HER
SLEEPING DURING THE
HER PHONE RINGS
A VOICE CALLS
ROSE STRUGGLES TO
IT’S IN HERE
HER LARGELY UNCOMPLICATED
I WAKE TO
THE MUESLI BAR
A GYRO-THINGY-LIST
‘I’M GOING FOR
THE CHAIN TO
DRESSED AND CLEAN
IT’S AS CLEAR
HER PHONE RINGS
IT’S ALL VERY
‘YOU LOOK NICE,’
OUTSIDE, THE LIGHT
‘SO I’VE BEEN
IT’S SO LONG
IT’S SUCH CRAP
SOMEBODY’S LEFT SOUP
SOUP, THINKS ROSE
I STAND IN
AARON AND ROSE
I WAKE UP
ROSE IS INSIDE
‘TALKING ABOUT CABBAGES
ME AND TONY
‘REN, I DON’T
ROSE IS ON
BACK IN THE
IT’S CHRISTMAS AT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
Memory is more of a construction project, as our brain fills in gaps by weaving stories. A terrible price can be paid when this construction project goes wrong.
– unknown
Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua.
I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past.
– Māori proverb
This is a work of fiction. I have taken a few liberties with the depiction of dementia in this narrative, which is based on Lewy Body Dementia, a condition that may feature hallucinations, paranoia and confusion. My mother was afflicted with LBD and I have given elements of her illness to Maxine, although the events in this novel are entirely fictional.
THE UNDERGROUND CARPARK is huge and terrifying.
‘Everything’s fine,’ I keep muttering, trying not to panic.
There are acres of cars and they all look the same. Mine is here somewhere, it won’t have gone far. Early model Corolla hatchback. Rose would tell me to check the licence plates, but what the hell is mine? EWJ…? EMD…? Maybe it’s on my phone. I’ve started using Notes for passwords, shopping, names—normal stuff that has been slipping lately. The other day I bumped into an old friend, the parole officer, on the street and couldn’t remember her name. Em-barrassing. And more worrying than I want to admit. Clever, though, thinking to put the rego number in there. I start scrabbling around in my bag.
‘Miss?’
I swivel towards a voice that seems to have come out of nowhere. ‘Are you all right, miss?’
A young man in a baseball cap. Leaning towards me as if peering into a cave, so I must look like I need help. Miss, huh. Like I’m his teacher. He looks young enough to be my grandson—if Rose ever has kids, and that’s looking unlikely.
‘I’ve lost my car,’ I admit, keeping it casual, stripping out the fear.
He kinks a grin. ‘I did that once. Had a massive hangover, complete blank. Turned out to be another street over.’ The kid’s old enough to buy booze? ‘So how did you find it again?’
He shrugs, loosey-goosey. ‘Walked round, click-click,’ he says, pressing an invisible key remote.
‘Right.’ I squint at my key ring, thick with redundant keys, useless now that I’m no longer at work. ‘My car hasn’t got that kind of technology.’
‘No worries,’ he says.
I tilt my head to one side to get a better look at him—he’s the buoyant kind of kid I’ve come across now and then in foster homes, a kid who’ll end up in a good place simply because of his optimistic nature.
‘Here, what colour’s your car, miss?’
‘It’s a 2005 Toyota Corolla, hatchback.’ It rolls off my tongue satisfyingly. Years of practice.
He takes off then, ambling along the nearest row of parked cars and I just stay put. Breathe, Maxine, don’t freak out. I watch his dark head bob in and out of the cars, rows of them lined up like a bargain basement sale of cars, until finally he stops and points.
‘This one?’ the kid shouts.
With a jerk and a lurch—I’m a wonky boat launching from a jetty—I make my way over. It looks like any other car and panic rises up to grab my throat. The kid lifts the bundle of keys from my hand and tries the driver’s door.
‘Bingo!’ He stands back grinning in triumph.
I can’t help grinning as well. ‘Genius,’ I tell him. My feet in the clumpy trainers stutter forward, then I remember my manners. ‘Thanks so much,’ I say, brisk to mask my gratitude. ‘Don’t know what I would’ve done without your help.’ Thank God for lovely boys.
He looks pleased as he fakes a shrug. ‘No worries, miss.’ Digging into my boomerang bag of groceries, I extract a bunch of wine-dark grapes and shove it at him, raising my free hand in a salute.
‘Um, thanks,’ he says, taking the grapes like he doesn’t know what to do with them.
As he trots off to whatever carefree life he is used to I turn my attention to the car.
‘All right, you,’ I tell it, climbing in and shoving the groceries onto the passenger seat, ‘let’s get going before any other crappy thing happens.’
So on to the doctor’s, according to the calendar on the phone that I check umpteen dozen times a day. The list for stuff, the calendar, increasingly thin, for other stuff. Don’t know why Doctor Prod didn’t just call with my test results, but no, she would like me to come in, somebody told me on the phone, and I was welcome to bring a support person. Duh. I’ve been a social worker long enough to know that. And at least I don’t need to worry about getting to work late, thanks to Marisa bloody Hattrick.
The weird thing about the list of stuff on my phone is that half of it doesn’t make any sense. But how can that be when I wrote those things myself? Molasses. As I stare at the list in the doctor’s waiting room, the list stares back at me. Hat Trick. That one’s obvious at least, the bitch. But Sunset Vista? It rings a bell, a sickening kind of toll, though I can’t for the life of me think why.
Could somebody have got into my phone and written these things down to confuse me? It wouldn’t be the strangest thing that’s happened lately. Maybe I left my phone lying around somewhere—like I apparently left a certain file—and some malicious person got into it. Screwing with my head. Right at this minute, for instance, a young woman who looks just like Rose is standing at the counter with her back to me. It can’t be her, she’ll be at school…no, that kindy place where she works…
Concentrate, Maxine—the list.
‘Mum?’
I look up and there’s Rose, who’s supposed to be at work. Must have a day off. She’s wearing a sundress and her cheeks are pink, her mouse-brown hair limp on her shoulders. My face opens in a smile. My Rose.
She plumps into the chair next to me, looking unhappy. I hope she and that bloke of hers are all right. She hasn’t said anything. There are signs, though. Rose is an open book: she can’t hide something like that from me.
‘Where were you?’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘I’ve been trying to phone you—’ She whips away my phone, her thumb flying over the screen, and holds it out to me in triumph: a bunch of missed calls. Must’ve been when I was stuck in that underground carpark.
She’s swiping furiously, her face going pointy. ‘Mum, it’s on mute.’
‘Well, my bad,’ I sniff.
Rose pushes the phone back at me. ‘The appointment was an hour ago,’ she accuses. ‘Lucky the doctor can squeeze us in. I don’t even know why I came back. I’ve been all the way over to your place, thinking you’d forgotten.’
Now that she mentions it, Rose does look frazzled—Auckland traffic can do that to a person.
‘Like an ice cream sandwich.’ I nudge with my elbow to locate her sense of humour.
‘What?’
‘Squeeze us in?’
Rose smiles faintly, and folds her hands on her knee. ‘Well, we’re here now,’ she huffs. ‘Though I’m going to be late back to work.’
A short bespectacled Indian woman emerges from a corridor and fixes her blackbird eye on me. ‘Maxine Christensen.’
We traipse after this woman and into a small room with a window overlooking a ga
‘How are you, Maxine?’ the woman asks in a friendlier tone. We’re all seated cosily around her desk, knees almost touching. Next she’ll be bringing out the tea and bickies.
‘Never better,’ I say automatically, through a bubble of anxiety.
Some things have been happening lately that have been out of my control. People have been acting oddly. The Hat Trick accusing me of the cold shoulder. Objects turning up where they shouldn’t. Just the other night I was visited by a black dog, not the depression dog, but a fey-faced dog that might have been a labrador. It’s been years since I had a dog, labrador or not. Then it turned out to be my black coat on the chair. Tricksy. I was going to tell Rose about the coat-dog but she would only have told Doctor Prod, so I thought it better to keep my mouth shut. Now that we’re in this stuffy little room with the doctor-person I think it was a wise decision. It’s entirely possible she and Rose will gang up and put me in the loony bin. Isn’t that where they put stroppy women who’ve gone past their use-by date? Rose’s bloke certainly would, so he can get his hands on my money.
‘I wanted to see you both,’ says Prod, ‘as the tests we’ve done so far haven’t been all that conclusive, and…’
The woman rambles on in her doctorly way, and I cut my eyes to Rose. Could they be in cahoots? And how much does the doctor-person know about me? I was in this room recently…not for a smear or a shear or any of those other female health checks, but because of all the things that have been going on, and there have been some tests and other visits I don’t want to think about that Rose has very kindly been taking me to. So all right, it’s possible, in fact highly likely, that I might be sick and the doctor has found out something, probably cancer…
As I zone back into the conversation Rose speaks up. Talking about somebody else now, apparently.
‘So are we looking at, um, dementia?’
‘No, not necessarily,’ says Doctor Prod, pushing the glasses up her nose. ‘I’d like to get a CT scan done, though. In the meantime, I think last time we spoke you mentioned looking at retirement homes? How’s that going?’
That smacks me back to reality. The ‘visits’—of course. ‘Hardly an option.’ I make it snappy. ‘Not exactly needed at this stage.’
Rose flashes me a look. ‘Yes, we have been looking into it,’ she says. ‘It seems a bit, well, early.’
The doctor is frowning at her computer. ‘I know you’re only…fifty-eight, Maxine. Still, it may be useful to explore your options. You can always put your name down for a place you like, just in case.’
Just in case the old bat goes batty? Those visits come rushing back at me like a grey wave of dishwater. It’s that bloke of Rose’s behind it, licking his lips at what my townhouse could fetch in the overheated Auckland market.
‘And I believe you’re no longer working, Maxine?’ The doctor gazes innocently at me from behind glasses that mask her true expression. Rose must have told her all about it.
‘Yep, finished work,’ I croak. The Hat Trick took care of that.
I fumble for Rose’s bottle of water. She notices and pushes it at me. As we perform this little manoeuvre, their voices float around the room. I’m far too young to be shoved into some old folks’ home. There was a vista opening up that seemed all right…I won’t tell Rose that, though. Those poor old ducks dribbling in their chairs…makes me shudder.
‘…and so, for the present, it may be a good idea to give up driving, for the time being, and get some home help in on a regular basis, just to keep things on an even keel until we know a little more.’
I blink in surprise. Did I miss something? ‘Excuse me, what did you say about driving?’
They both look at me as if realising I am actually present too, hello, and not just some textbook case.
‘Mum, the doctor thinks it might be time to retire the car,’ says Rose. She looks at me with her googly brown eyes like we’ve just been told I’ve got two days left to live. ‘Remember how you drove the wrong way up Crowhurst Street the other day?’
Shit, did I tell Rose about that? ‘Anybody could,’ I protest, heart fluttering, and I catch a look between Rose and Doctor Prod.
The doctor is nodding sagely in agreement. ‘With a condition that may well be neurological, Maxine, it’s best to minimise risk.’
So they are in cahoots. I knew it. But why bring my car into it? Me and that car have been together a long time. I find myself scrabbling to my feet and gathering my things together. I’m on a sinking ship, that much is clear.
‘Gotta go,’ I mutter, casting around for the escape hatch.
‘Mum, wait—’
‘Things to do, people to see.’
‘AND THEN SHE just took off,’ Rose says breathlessly. ‘It was so embarrassing. Just when the doctor was going through the plan and we’re all just trying to help her. And she left me to pay the bill. By the time I’d sorted that, she was gone, no sign of her precious old bomb out front.’
She pokes at her pasta with her fork. She’s sitting at the breakfast bar with Paul, twinkling lights in the western ranges visible through the open venetians. ‘I could’ve gone round there to check, but I’d been to her place once already and I was late for work.’
Paul is forking pasta into his mouth, a small line between his eyebrows, meeting her gaze.
‘So is it Alzheimer’s? Like, early onset?’
Rose puts down her fork, feeling queasy. It feels like morning sickness, except she got her period this afternoon. Three days late, hope building despite herself.
‘No,’ says Rose flatly, ‘nup, no way.’ Although, says a tiny voice, maybe it is and we just don’t have the right diagnosis yet. ‘The doctor said there’s a chance it could develop into that, but I don’t think she really knows. For now, she’s calling it mild cognitive impairment. She’s referred us to a specialist.’
From the street below comes the rising wail of a siren.
Paul waits until it passes. ‘Not driving seems a bit harsh.’
‘Mum obviously thought so too.’ Rose moves the pepper grinder three centimetres to the left. ‘So that’s something you can both agree on.’
Paul has never been a great fan of Maxine: they rub each other up the wrong way, and her mother makes too many snide remarks in Paul’s hearing. It’s like her mother has a vision of the perfect son-in-law and Paul doesn’t make the grade. God knows what kind of man Maxine would like for Rose. Maybe none.
Paul is eyeing her pasta. ‘Are you going to eat that?’
Rose pushes her plate across the bench.
Rose is dreaming. She is walking alone through a house with high airy ceilings and spacious rooms opening off a long central hallway—a villa, something she will never be able to afford in real life, yet in her dream it is apparently a house she has just purchased. She walks into a large though shabby room and is thinking that a pink-striped wallpaper would look great in here when she hears a voice calling—bleating—from another part of the house. Possibly calling her name, though it’s not clear. The fat, satisfying feeling of home ownership, of being alone and making plans, immediately morphs into anxiety. Who could possibly be wanting her now of all times?
She hears knocking.
Paul groans and switches on the bedside lamp. ‘Rose, wake up, it’s your mother.’
‘What?’ But he’ll be right, Maxine is the only person who knocks like that on their door instead of using the doorbell. ‘What time is it?’ She sits up, still thickly in the dream, thinking, Why don’t you get it? Why do I have to go?
‘Three a.m.,’ Paul mutters, already turning over, his thick brown hair sticking up on the pillow.
‘What if it’s somebody else? That drunk from the rear apartment?’
He doesn’t bother answering. Of course it’s not that—she can hear Maxine calling at the door: the bleating from her dream. Rose slips on her towelling dressing gown. She cinches the ties angrily at her waist and plods off into the other room. In the tiny vestibule, her mother’s shape is visible through the milky glass. Rose flings open the door.
‘Mum…’ The waspish words die on her lips. ‘Are you all right?’
Maxine looks dreadful, unrecognisable. Her hair is wedged in hanks, as if superglued, her eyes are bloodshot and staring, her trademark lightweight black coat is buttoned the wrong way.
