Page 26 of Mad Mabel

“Susan McGinty,” I repeated. It felt familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. But suddenly, I did. Susan McGinty was the woman from the party. The one who’d talked about Kitty.

Mum’s gaze snapped to me. “Yes. Do you know her?”

I thought of the noises in the hallway. The platinum-blond hair. The creamy-white legs. My father’s socks.

“I think I met her once, at a party at Rosehill.”

“Oh.”

“Why is she going on a business trip with Dad?”

She stood and walked to the window. “I’m not sure. I found their shipping tickets for the P & O Liner in his bag. I’ll ask him when he’s home from work. There’s sure to be a reason.”

Mum inhaled deeply on her cigarette. I watched the delicate bones of her neck move gently and wondered what kind of reason would satisfy her. Did it even need to be true? Or did it merely have to be plausible enough to allow her to maintain the status quo of the deeply unhappy life she lived with my father?

“I saw them,” I said, a spur-of-the-moment decision. “Dad and Susan. I saw them together.”

Mum looked at me. Her gaze was somehow unfocused and intense all at once. “What?”

“In the hallway at Rosehill. It was during a party. They were upstairs, near my bedroom.”

Mum’s hand, pale and shaking, reached for the windowsill and missed, brushing empty air. “What were they doing?”

I tried to find words for what they were doing while Mum butted the cigarette out in the ashtray.

“They… her legs were kind of…” I tried to move my legs to show her. “… and Dad was standing up, lifting her… and they were grunting.”

I was still deep in thought, trying to find the right words to explain what I’d seen, so I didn’t see Mum move until it was too late. Her open palm struck my cheek and nose—clumsy, but hard. Hard enough to make me taste blood. The shock of it stole my breath.

“You vile girl. Why would you say such a thing? What is the matter with you?”

She leaned in, forehead nearly touching mine. Her breath was hot, her body trembling. Her eyes were no longer Mum’s—they belonged to something wild, something cornered. She appeared to be waiting for an answer to her question. What was the matter with me?

It was a good question. Certainly there was something. Something very wrong. She felt it, and in that moment, I felt it too.

Mum stood abruptly, standing and moving with such purpose that I thought she was leaving. But instead of walking out of the room, she strode toward the balcony and flung open the door.

I sat upright, tossing my legs over the side of the bed.

“Mum,” I called after her, then petered out because she was moving so fast. Too fast. She didn’t so much as pause or glance back over her shoulder. She simply launched over the balcony railing and disappeared without a sound.

16

NOW

Daphne and I take the bus to Harris Scarfe and I buy a new pair of Homypeds. Burgundy, as per Daphne’s insistence. Better to hide the blood, she says mischievously, and I laugh, but I have to say, I prefer the navy.

The trip to the shops wipes me out. There, I’ve said it. I don’t like admitting this sort of thing—not even to myself. I’ve never minded getting old, not really. Helps when you never had much beauty to lose in the first place. But this part—this business of needing a lie- down after buying a pair of shoes—this bothers me.

I should be able to catch the bus to Westfield, pick out something vaguely orthopedic, and return home without feeling like I’ve run the Melbourne bloody Marathon. But here we are.

Daphne and I both collapse into our respective caves, and I don’t stir until morning. When I do, Persephone is at my door, rapping like a debt collector. By the time I’ve ascertained it’s her, she’s muscled herway in far enough that I can’t close the door without causing her a semi-serious injury.

“I’m hungry,” she announces.

“Does this look like McDonald’s?”

I try again to shut the door, but she pushes past me and charges down the hallway. “Mum says I can’t have McDonald’s,” she calls over her shoulder. “What have you got?”