LITMIR.BIZ

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takes the letters into the kitchen to read while waiting for the kettle to boil.

      Duncan looks up from his butterflies. More than a half an hour has passed and still no coffee. No jacket either, although with the room so warm he no longer needs one. He calls, and calls again, and when there is no answer goes into the kitchen. Juliet is seated at the table, her head resting on her hands, the mail spread before her. The kettle has boiled dry and there is a smell of burning.

      ‘What on earth are you doing, Juliet?’

      She starts, looks up, grabs the kettle from the stove.

      ‘Is something wrong?’ he asks, and when she does not answer, asks again. ‘Is something wrong?’

      She holds out a letter. ‘Anna’s coming home.’

      TWO

      The man rolled into a wedge of sun, his chest was bare and there was a gentle snoring. Anna glanced at him, then was staring, the man resembled Duncan, the man in the bed looked like her father: the same heavy brown hair, the same chalky skin, the same pulpy cheeks, the same ribbed forehead, and over it all the loosening flesh of a man in clear view of old age. She shuddered and swallowed and escaped the bed; how was it possible that on the day she was to see Duncan after an absence of twelve years she should first find him on her pillow?

      It had been such a joyless night. She should have worked, or cleaned the house, should have done anything but pick up a stranger in a Hobart bar and go back to his hotel. She looked again; he had not resembled Duncan in the floury light of early morning, only now, as he lay sleeping, his body slack, his face in repose, did she see her father. Only now, with Duncan just a few hours away, did she feel the touch of her father’s mighty hand.

      She turned away, tried the window for some fresh air, but it would not open. The excesses of last night were pressing on her; she grabbed her clothes, hurried into the bathroom and drank straight from the tap. Immediately, a flush of heat, slick and prickly. She peered into the mirror, she looked terrible; her pale skin was streaked with grey, her hair, recently renewed to a luscious orange, was a corroded mess, and her eyes had almost disappeared in the huge bruises of last night’s makeup. She splashed water on her face, inhaled two or three times, felt suddenly dizzy and sank to the toilet seat. The noise of crackling plastic had her on her feet again; the lid had split, three neat breaks and nothing she could fix. She threw a towel on the floor and sat down. She could hardly feel any worse: the stranger in the bed, Duncan with his expectant hovering, and a head corsetted by too much alcohol and too many cigarettes. Yet she had planned last night, had wanted to avoid any fretful and useless rehearsals of future woes, had wanted, in truth, not to think.

      But with the midday plane to Melbourne to catch, could delay no longer. She dragged herself to her feet and started to dress. First to extricate herself from the stranger, a visiting businessman, or so he had said last night, in Hobart to buy hand-crafted furniture. ‘Although I’ve nothing planned for tomorrow morning, so we can have breakfast together, see in the day slowly.’ They had been walking from the bar to his hotel, he had given her a squeeze and winked in the night light. She heard herself groan, she’d had quite enough of his groping, all she wanted to do now was leave.

      How uncomplicated sex used to be, but not last night. Rather than the oblivion she had sought, her fears were sharper than ever, and just when she needed her wits about her, she was exhausted and sick and saddled with a Duncan look-alike in the next room. She returned to the bedroom; stale odours fanned her disgust, his snoring too; she took one last look, then woke him. With his eyes open, the resemblance to Duncan fortunately disappeared; the man, however, was reluctant for her to do the same. He reached across the sheets, caught a hand, clutched at a breast. She pulled away, stood out of range.

      ‘What’s wrong with you? I told you I had the morning free.’ He reached for his watch. ‘Christ! You must be bloody crazy. It’s Saturday morning, it’s fucking seven o’clock and you’re up and dressed – ’

      ‘ – and must be off.’

      ‘Why in bloody hell didn’t you tell me this last night.’ He was silent and sulking and stubbornly supine. She left him to his moping and set about collecting keys and handbag.

      ‘Come here.’ The words oozed out of him. ‘Come here, darlin’, what’s the hurry?’ She shook her head and made for the door. His anger flared again and a nastiness about the eyes. ‘Going to your next bloke, eh?’

      She left without another word, dropping the television remote control unit into his briefcase on the way out. In the lobby, she informed the porter that the man in room 253 was planning to leave without paying, had vandalised the toilet and stolen the television controls, then stepped into the late autumn morning.

      Within thirty minutes she was home, and after a shower rang Raphe. Lily had settled in well, he said, although had not been much interested in sleeping. They had been up for hours, had finished breakfast by six, then Lily had organised a concert for the pets – ‘Your daughter will be running the country one day’ – and had been about to leave for the market when Anna had phoned. He laughed. ‘I feel as if I’ve put in a day’s work already.’

      Then Lily was on the line, full of the morning’s activities and not in the least perturbed about being away from her mother. She told Anna about the concert and her plans for ‘something really cool’ later in the day. ‘I’ve rigged up some percussion for Raphe – he’s got no ear but plenty of rhythm – ’ there were protests from Raphe in the background, ‘ – and I’ll do all the rest. Of course the cats and dogs like different things which makes it a bit hard.’

      ‘And the budgerigars?’

      ‘They like anything but don’t really matter, they’ve got even less sense of a tune than Raphe. I wish we had some pets, Mum. How about a dog?’

      Anna said they’d discuss it when she returned from Melbourne.

      ‘And you’ll be home on Monday?’

      Anna assured her she would, and after sending kisses down the line, asked to speak to Raphe.

      ‘You’ve got the number at the college, and my parents’ number as well. You’re to ring if anything happens, anything at all.’

      ‘I understand Anna, stop worrying. I’m sure there’ll be no reason to contact you ’

      ‘But if there is – ’

      ‘I’ll be discreet.’

      ‘They must not know about Lily.’

      ‘And won’t from me.’

      ‘Thank you Raphe, thank you. It’d be impossible without you.’

      She waited for him to hang up, stood cradling the receiver against her chest, closed her eyes and saw her dark-eyed daughter alongside Raphe – a child with a man not her father but someone who knew and loved her – and told herself to stop worrying, Lily was no ordinary child.

      When Anna became pregnant eight, nearly nine years ago in London, the decision to have the baby would have been so much easier if she could have known the joy this child would bring. As it was, when the decision was finally made the reasons were not particularly clear, although she knew she wanted something of her own.

      ‘How about a cat?’ Lewis had suggested. ‘I wouldn’t mind a cat here.’ He had cast a not-altogether-confident gaze about the scrappy London flat they shared.

      ‘No, cats tie you down. I want to move, to travel. A baby can come with me. A baby,’ she had cupped her hands, ‘is a little flame of life.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Anna. How’s your little flame of life going to keep you? How will the two of you live?’

      ‘I’ll stay with the group until I can’t fit around the cello – you flautists don’t know how lucky you are – I’m earning a bit from my composition, and there’s always copying work. I’ll manage.’

      ‘And the father?’ Lewis

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