The Listmaker Page 13

  They were too much of a joke-sharing, things-in-common group, and I felt easier where I was. They gossiped together all the way to the next station. A crowd of other people got on there, and the seat beside me was taken. At the station after that, the carriage became even more crowded, and I lost sight of Corrie altogether until we reached the city and she squeezed out next to me.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘But why didn’t you come and sit with us while there was still room? You could have met Bron – she lives just round the corner from us. And Kelly and Tracey – they’re in the same class as me at school. They were heading for the Moreton Centre, so they got off at South. I was a bit worried in case you didn’t realise it was an express train and hopped off there, too. Remember how I was raving on about the bus connection? Just as well you stayed put, because I mightn’t have been able to make a grab and haul you back in. There were just too many fat people and prams in between.’

  ‘No one could miss all those City Express signs. I’m not that dumb.’

  ‘Didn’t say you were. It’s just that going somewhere strange, people can make mistakes. Want me to take a turn lugging that parcel? It looks pretty heavy.’

  ‘I’d better be responsible for it. It’s a chess set, and the pieces are valuable because they’re made out of crystal stuff. We’ve been minding it while Dad’s overseas.’

  ‘A chess set? What’s so urgent about that?’

  ‘Piriel wanted it back in a hurry because … because the security’s better at the apartment,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Or maybe because she thinks crystal wouldn’t last long in the same house as Dosh,’ Corrie said. ‘Are we catching a tram up to your place? Cool! I hardly ever get to ride on one!’

  I wished she wasn’t quite so keen about everything; it was embarrassing on the tram, sitting next to someone so energetic. When we reached the apartment block, she was even more of a pest. The glass entry doors weren’t meant to have such a curious face and splayed fingers pasted up against them.

  ‘Wow!’ she cried. ‘Just look at that floor in there – it’s like a mirror! And one of those intercom things, too! Can I press the button to tell her we’ve got here? Only let’s try some of the other ones first …’

  ‘You mean the other apartments? What for?’

  ‘Just for a laugh. We could freak people out by pretending we’re van drivers delivering a grand piano. There’s no way you could fit a piano in that little lift.’

  ‘They’d probably be able to get it up the staircase. And there’s a service lift round the back somewhere, anyway.’

  ‘Can’t we go up in that, then? We could pretend we were a couple of grand pianos.’

  ‘Stop mucking around,’ I ordered, hastily buzzing our apartment before she could get at the intercom. ‘Piriel? Hi, it’s me. I’ve brought the chess set in …’

  ‘Sarah? Good heavens, is Nat with you?’

  ‘No, she was out when you rang, so I just …’

  ‘Okay, you’d better come up, then,’ Piriel said. ‘I can’t very well leave you standing around on the street, can I?’

  She didn’t sound particularly welcoming, I thought anxiously. Her voice had an edge to it, like teachers at school when people asked dopey questions about work which had already been covered in detail. I worried about it in the lift, just about biting Corrie’s head off when she suggested hooning right up to the top floor and all the way down again. Perhaps I’d made a silly mistake and Piriel hadn’t meant me to come in today at all. But although she looked startled to find two of us when she opened the door, she smiled nicely enough. When I introduced Corrie, I tried to drop a few hints that she wasn’t really a close friend of mine. I knew Piriel wouldn’t be impressed to think she was.

  Corrie made herself at home straightaway, plunging out on to the balcony to gape at city landmarks. I followed, wanting to gaze at them again myself. But the balcony was sizzling with heat, and I was glad when Piriel suggested almost immediately that we go back inside and see the rest of the apartment. (Corrie loudly cheering a passing fire truck might have had something to do with that.) Inside, now completed and furnished, looked fabulous! The living-room walls had been painted the palest shade of milky-beige, the same colour as the carpet, and the only ornament was a large earthenware pot filled with dried grasses. It seemed exactly right, just like the pair of beautiful smoke-coloured jars on the kitchen bench. Corrie started to fiddle with the stoppers on those jars, but Piriel quickly moved them out of reach.

  ‘Not to touch my precious French vinegar and oil decanters!’ she said. ‘They’re an early wedding present from a friend just back from Paris, and I treasure them very much indeed.’

  The lamps in the main bedroom were treasures, too, she explained, showing them to us, but keeping a close eye on Corrie. The lamps were simple white spheres. I thought of my own bedside light, given to me by Aunty Nat years ago. It was bluebell-shaped, like something a fairy would wear on her head. Glancing at the elegant glass spheres, I knew I’d have to find some way of leaving that bluebell lamp behind at Avian Cottage when I moved. It just didn’t belong here.

  Corrie romped into the ensuite, exclaiming noisily at the triangular bath. I thought for one horrified moment that she was going to scramble right inside it with her grungy old gym shoes, but she was just leaning over to inspect the spa fittings. There were cakes of soap piled in a bowl on the rim. Corrie, in her usual slapdash way, sent them toppling. I fished them all hurriedly out of the bath, because Piriel’s eyebrows were starting to pleat. Everyone else except Corrie would have realised that such a perfect soap pyramid didn’t happen by chance, I thought. It must have taken almost as long to create as the dried-grass arrangement in the living-room.

  ‘You’d probably like to see Sarah’s room,’ Piriel said, herding Corrie firmly out into the hallway. ‘Though I’m afraid it’s rather a muddle, because I’ve had to use it to store a few bits and pieces. There was just nowhere else to put them. Still, we’ll get everything straightened out sooner or later. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind about the walls, Sarah. You were probably keen to do your own thing, but once the decorators actually started, it seemed better to stay with the one colour all through.’

  Since I’d last seen it, my room had been painted the same creamy beige as the rest of the apartment. Which didn’t matter in the least, I told myself quickly. Piriel was the expert when it came to interior decorating, and her choice must be the right one. Not that you could actually see a great deal of paintwork at the moment, anyway. The room was crammed with suitcases, an exercise bike, a home-gym treadmill, stereo equipment, a sewing machine, a swivel office-chair, and all Dad’s computer stuff on a large work table just underneath the window. The new curtains framing the window were beige linen, the same colour as the walls.

  Corrie Ryder, I remembered suddenly, had seen the curtain material I’d already bought. She’d come over one morning while Aunty Nat was cutting it out ready for sewing. (It was to ask me to the local pool with a bunch of her schoolmates, but I hadn’t gone. In the first place, I didn’t know any of those other kids, and secondly, Aunty Nat was likely to stick on a few ruffles if I wasn’t there to stop her.) Before a certain person could open her big mouth, I said quickly to Piriel, ‘I like those curtains you’ve put up. They’re so nice and plain. Aunty Nat made some other ones, actually, but it was just cheap stuff we noticed at a sale. Nothing really special, and it’s not as though they’ll be going to waste. She can use them for Avian Cottage.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ Piriel said. ‘Now you’ve mentioned it, poppet, I do recall something about you choosing the curtains for this room. I completely forgot! All the decorating was done by the same firm, including the drapes, and I just didn’t think … What a shame you’d already gone ahead and bought something else on your own.’

  ‘Sarah’s was blue with clouds on it. And there was going to be a special doona cover to match, too,’ Corrie remarked, as though it was her business. If she’d known abou
t the scrap of material in my pocket, I thought angrily, no doubt she would have insisted I drag it out to show.

  ‘Well, a special doona cover probably won’t even be needed for in here,’ Piriel said. ‘One of those couches that folds out might be more practical, because the room’s so small. How about if we made it into something like an extra little sitting room? A converter couch would be handy if you happened to be staying at Parchment Hills and we had overnight guests. Then they could use this room – if you didn’t mind, of course. What do you think, Sarah?’

  For a moment I didn’t really know what to think. It felt a bit like being back at school, with Tara McCabe saying, ‘You’re not spewing because I changed the beds around, are you? I wanted the one under the window. You weren’t here to ask, so I just went ahead and moved all your stuff.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ I said slowly. ‘I guess if we’re short of space …’

  ‘We can sort out the details after we’ve moved in and got ourselves into some kind of routine,’ Piriel said. ‘Right now, let’s have a nice cold drink. I’ve got some absolutely delicious almond biscuits as well, though I’m afraid you’ll have to be content with just two each. I’m expecting visitors later this afternoon.’

  The biscuits were so thin you could almost see light filtering through each one, and they had come from a specialist bakery just down the street. When I lived here and asked people home after school, I thought, I’d stop at that same shop and buy yummy things for afternoon tea, too. Kids would be breaking their necks to get invited, once word had got around about my new lifestyle! Maybe I wouldn’t ask Belinda or Tara, though. I couldn’t quite see them appreciating delicate little almond wafers from a gourmet bakery. Jammy cream buns were more their style. They were almost as uncivilised as Corrie Ryder, who was dropping crumbs on the beautiful new coffee table. It had a polish on it like frost. Horace, I thought suddenly, would be rather a nightmare in the same room as that coffee table. He’d never managed to get it through his thick head that furniture legs weren’t designed for sharpening claws. Aunty Nat didn’t mind too much. She said her old furniture was so battered from Aunt Dorothy crashing into it, that a few extra scratches wouldn’t matter. Piriel might not be so relaxed, though, about marks on her lovely glossy table …

  ‘This room’s nice, but the walls look a bit bare,’ Corrie said, even though no one had asked her opinion. ‘It needs pictures or a goldfish tank or something.’

  ‘I like bare walls,’ Piriel said, obviously finding her a bit hard to take. ‘And I’ve never really understood why people want to load themselves with pets. I’ve never felt the urge to acquire one myself. They’re such a nuisance if you want to go away anywhere.’

  ‘You can get automatic timers for fish food,’ Corrie persisted.

  I wished she’d shut up about fish tanks. It reminded me of a quarrel between Aunty Nat and Dad a couple of years ago, and even though it had just been angry words over the telephone, I still hated thinking about it. Aunty Nat hadn’t realised I was sitting outside and could hear every one of those sharp words through the open window. I’d been waiting for Dad to come and pick me up. We were going to buy an aquarium for my birthday; a proper tropical one, not just a little tank with a couple of goldfish. He’d said we’d do a whole lot of other things before that, spending the whole day together as a birthday treat. Stuff like a boat ride up the river, feeding the ducks on the lake in the public gardens, visiting the dinosaur exhibition, and I was looking forward to all that much more than being given an aquarium. (Tropical fish always made me think of dentists’ waiting rooms, but I hadn’t liked to say so when Dad had already suggested it as a present.)

  He was late, so I was threading periwinkle flowers into a chain to make the time go faster. (Blue periwinkle was really a weed – I looked it up in one of Aunt Dorothy’s gardening books. Its correct title was Vinca major.) The phone had rung in the living room, Aunty Nat answered it, and suddenly her voice began to sound like a wasp trapped against glass. (It was actually almost impossible to make a chain out of Vinca major; the stems were too fragile.) Aunty Nat was saying furious things to Dad; that she was sick of being the one to break the news about cancelled outings; how selfish he was; that he didn’t deserve to have a child; how no one would even guess he was a parent, for all the interest he took. (Making proper slits in flower stems with bitten-down nails was difficult.) Aunty Nat’s voice was like a whole swarm of angry wasps. She dragged boarding school into it, saying I’d just been dumped there because of out-of-sight, out-of-mind convenience; that anyone whose conscience was eased by a whole lot of ridiculous expensive presents should feel ashamed of themselves, that anyone so conceited and arrogant –

  She slammed the phone down after saying all those things. I’d thrown the useless flower chain away and crept around the back quietly so she wouldn’t know I’d overheard. It wasn’t even true, anyhow; Aunty Nat had got it all wrong. When I moved to the apartment, she’d see just how wrong she’d been. Dad, Piriel and I would have a fantastic time together. We’d take boat rides up the river, feed the ducks in the gardens, go to museum exhibitions. Every weekend we’d be doing something different, and not only weekends, either, but every afternoon. There’d be all that free time after school …

  ‘Looking forward to the theatre workshop starting, Sarah?’ Piriel asked.

  I immediately found myself wishing Corrie would go on boring everyone about fish. I still didn’t like to be reminded of that workshop. If Piriel knew someone who taught there, they might report back to her how hopeless I was!

  ‘Theatre workshop?’ Corrie said inquisitively. ‘Is that like acting lessons? You never told me you were …’

  ‘It was a Christmas present. It’s going to be terrific and I can hardly wait,’ I lied, then hurriedly changed the subject. ‘I’ve been getting my school things ready, Piriel. That’ll be one job out of the way before the wedding. It felt funny, though, not having to bother about the boarding-house list this year. Just a little suitcase to see me through the first couple of weeks, then I’ll be able to –’

  ‘Actually, Sarah, there might be occasions when you’ll still have to board,’ Piriel said. ‘Technically you’ll be a day-girl from now on, of course, but there’ll be times your father and I both happen to be away. You couldn’t very well stay here by yourself then, could you? Such as after Easter when Brett’s off to Tokyo for three weeks and I might go along for the trip. There’ll be other times, too, when we’d both have to go straight from work to various things and not get home till all hours.’

  ‘That part should be okay,’ I said eagerly, wanting her to know how self-reliant I could be. ‘I wouldn’t get nervous here on my own, not with the security cameras and the intercom and everything. Even if you were both going to be late back …’

  ‘Well, we’ll see. Brett did say he’d come to some arrangement with the school for the odd weeknights, so it’s up to him. And if we’re ever away for weekends, I guess you could always go to Nat’s as usual … How are the renovations coming along, by the way?’

  ‘You should see it!’ Corrie said. ‘Ed’s painting the outside now, white with green trim round the windows. And their little summerhouse is the same. Mum’s hoping Dad will get shamed into doing something about our place.’

  ‘Aunt Dorothy’s planted roses all around the summerhouse. They’ve got masses of flowers on them, so you’d be able to use it for wedding photos,’ I said. ‘And we’ve bought a new sun-umbrella for the deck table. It’s green with a white fringe, but Aunty Nat won’t put it up yet. She wants to save it for the wedding.’

  ‘I really wish the old dears wouldn’t carry on as though Avian Cottage is an established fact for the wedding,’ Piriel said abruptly. ‘You, too, Sarah. You’re starting to sound just like them, you know.’

  ‘But I thought you’d –’

  ‘It was only an option, nothing more. I haven’t decided yet. Another possibility was having it in Sydney, which is what we originally plann
ed. Brett has work to do there when he gets back from the States, and I’ve got heaps of people up there I want to catch up with, too. It would certainly save a lot of travelling back and forth if we based ourselves there for a few days. Goodness, neither of us wanted all this great fuss made about the wedding! I really wish Nat would wait until I give her the green light to go ahead. She’s just taking it for granted. And if there is a last-minute change of plans, it’s going to mean hurt feelings for her, and awkwardness for me.’

  ‘She’ll probably feel a bit disappointed,’ Corrie said.

  I looked at her quickly to see if she was being sarcastic, because I knew that disappointment wasn’t the right word at all. Aunty Nat would be devastated.

  ‘There’s no denying that Avian Cottage is the most attractive old place,’ Piriel went on. ‘Or at least it will be when what’s-his-name finishes the repairs. I quite like the idea of having it there, and it was sweet of Nat to offer. But she seems bent on turning the whole thing into such a ghastly, over-the-top affair. All Brett and I want are just a few friends around for drinks, after the registry-office part is out of the way. Either here, or in Sydney, it doesn’t really matter which. Even the friends and drinks bit isn’t all that vital.’

  But … Aunty Nat’s already made the cake, I thought helplessly. She’s spent hours piping little icing designs on a board every night, getting her hand in for the real thing. Her wedding bells guest towel has just had satin bows sewn on the corners. She’s polished all the brass doorhandles so you can see your reflection in them …

  ‘Goodness, look at the time!’ Piriel said. ‘Sorry, but I’ll have to throw you two out now. My visitors will be on the doorstep soon, and I want to have a shower before they get here. Pity I didn’t know you were coming, Sarah, otherwise I might have been able to put them off. We’ll be talking business, so you’d be very bored if you stayed. Actually, it might be a sensible idea next time to let me know if you plan to drop in. Just in case I’ve made other plans.’