Truly Madly Guilty

As she rapped the lion's head door knocker, she wondered if she might hear cello music, but instead she heard a man's voice shouting. Sam? Surely not. He was too genial. Now she could hear a woman yelling. Oh, jeez Louise. Great timing. She'd 'dropped by' when they were in the middle of a fight. She turned indecisively back towards the street. Mission abort? Go eat Sydney's best freaking tempura.

The door swung open.

It was Holly. She wore a blue and white checked school uniform, long fluffy purple socks and strands of coloured beads around her neck.

'Hello.' Tiffany smiled. 'Remember me?'

'You're Dakota's mum,' said Holly. 'I'm going to invite Dakota to my birthday party. My daddy said she wouldn't want to come.'

'I think she'd love to come,' said Tiffany.

Holly got a look of pure vindication on her face. She turned on her heel and ran. 'Da-ad!'

'Tiffany!' Clementine appeared in the hallway. She looked aghast. 'Hi. How - I didn't even hear the knock on the door ... um, how are you?'

'I'm fine,' said Tiffany.

Clementine looked thinner than when Tiffany had seen her last, and drabber, older.

'We're going out to dinner,' said Tiffany. 'And I knew you lived nearby, so I thought I'd drop off some of Vid's strudel, I remember you liked it. Dakota and Vid are in the car.'

She took the container with the frozen strudel from her handbag and handed it over to Clementine, who took it warily, as if it were radioactive.

'Thank you,' she said. 'And thank you again for the lovely doll you sent for Ruby.'

'You're welcome,' said Tiffany. 'We got your thank-you card. I think Vid has been trying to call you ...'

Clementine winced. 'I'm sorry, yes, I know, I've been meaning to give you a call, it's just ...'

'It's just that you don't really want to have any contact with us because you don't want to think about that day and because you didn't really know us that well in the first place,' said Tiffany. She was sick of the bullshit. 'I get it. I do get it.'

Clementine flinched.

'But the thing is, Dakota blames herself for what happened to Ruby that day. She's been making herself sick with guilt over it.'

Clementine's mouth dropped. She looked like she might cry. 'Really? Seriously? I'm so sorry. I'll talk to her. I'll tell her it was nothing to do with her.'

'Dakota needs to see Ruby,' said Tiffany. 'She needs to see she's okay. And actually I think Vid needs to see her too. Just for a minute. I know we don't know your family that well, but it happened at our home and you've got to realise, this affected us too, and ... and ...'

She stopped, because Ruby had suddenly come running down the hallway, carrying her whisk. When she saw the unexpected guest at the front door she wrapped her arm around her mother's leg, put her thumb in her mouth and considered Tiffany.

'Hello, Ruby.' Tiffany squatted down to Ruby's height and put the back of her hand on her pink, velvety cheek. Ruby gazed back at her with big blue disinterested eyes. Some random grown-up who didn't appear to be carrying gifts.

Tiffany smiled up at Clementine. It turned out that she'd needed to see Ruby too. 'She looks great,' she said.

Clementine pushed open the front door a little wider. 'Why don't you go and get Vid and Dakota?' she said.

chapter sixty-six

Another rainy morning. Another talk to a group of elderly people. Clementine's eyes felt hot and dry as she drove into the car park of the community hall where the Hills District Retirees Association held their monthly meeting. She'd been up most of the night with the word 'separate' going round and round in her head, until finally she'd sat up, found a notepad and a pen and wrote in it: I'm worried that my marriage is over. Because wasn't there some research that suggested the act of writing down your worries reduced stress? In fact, it was shocking to see it written down so baldly like that. It hadn't helped her stress levels at all. She had torn out the sheet of paper and ripped it up into tiny pieces.

When Vid, Tiffany and Dakota had left last night after their unexpected visit, Clementine had felt almost cheerful. There had been a definite sense of relief: the slip-sliding feeling of release after a fearfully anticipated event had finally taken place. The idea of seeing Vid and Tiffany had been so much more traumatic than the reality. All their qualities had become exaggerated in her memories of that night when in fact they were just ordinary, friendly people. Tiffany wasn't quite as sexy as Clementine remembered. Vid wasn't quite as charismatic. They didn't have special hypnotic sexual powers. And poor little Dakota was just a kid who had been carrying around a terrible burden of guilt that had not been hers to bear.

But it was immediately clear that Sam didn't feel the same way. As soon as they'd left, he'd turned on his heel and gone straight into the kitchen to pack the dishwasher. He'd refused to talk about anything except the ongoing administration of their lives: he was taking Holly for her taekwondo class before school, she would transfer some money onto the credit card, they didn't need to worry about dinner tomorrow night because they were going to Clementine's parents' house. Then off they'd gone to their separate beds. It had occurred to her during the long night that she and Sam already were separated. People could legally separate and live under the same roof. That's exactly what they were doing.

It was a relief when her alarm had gone off and she could give up trying to sleep. She'd got up and done her audition practice, and then she'd had an early mo

rning lesson with thirteen-year-old Logan, who she had been teaching for the past two years and who didn't want to be there but smiled so politely at her as if he did. Logan's music teacher had told his mother that he had talent, and that 'it would be a crime not to foster it'. Logan was technically proficient but his heart was with the electric guitar. That was his passion. As Logan had played that morning, dutifully following every one of Clementine's instructions, she'd found herself wondering if that was how she sounded to Ainsley when she practised her audition pieces. What was that awful word she'd used? Robotic. Should she tell poor little Logan he sounded robotic? But what would be the point? She bet he didn't sound robotic on his electric guitar.