The Dark Part of Me (6 page)

With all the buzz of Scott phoning, I’d clean forgotten he was getting out. Not that Hollie hadn’t told me a million times. She’d spent the past month getting ready for his
homecoming; spring-cleaning the house, buying him designer clothes to wear, planning an elaborate dinner party for his first night home. She’d even bought him the latest PlayStation as a
welcome home present, charging it to the family Amex which Mr Bailey paid off each month, no questions asked.

I snuck round to his side of the waterbed and knelt down to look at him. From a scrawny teenager, he’d become a fully-grown man, although still gaunt and skinny. He’d be twenty-two,
the same age as Scott. His face was pale and angular, framed by a shock of matted hair so black it was almost blue. There was something girlish about his long, thick eyelashes and his lips, which
were too red for a man. He was like Hollie with short hair. But he was not so much feminine as androgynous, sexless. He had on a crisp white shirt, open at the neck, and black tailored trousers.
His feet were bare and bony, his toenails painted with emerald-green varnish. Although he was fast asleep, his hands, large white hands, fluttered by his sides as if he was having a bad dream.
Fuck, those hands. I got a bit freaked thinking about what they’d done.

Outside, it was getting darker. The sky was turning a deep, backlit indigo that made me uneasy. Dusk was seeping into the room and the air felt suddenly old and stale like the inside of a
church. I looked back at Hollie and Danny sleeping in each other’s arms, like Romeo and Juliet. Like twins. They both looked so peaceful. They had a certain aura of innocence, the faintest
white glow about their skin.

‘Oh, Danny. Danny.’

I started but it was just Hollie sleep-talking. Her eyes were closed. Danny didn’t stir. If it had just been Hollie there, I would’ve woken her, but I didn’t want to disturb
Danny. He gave me the creeps. Instead, I sat down at the mahogany desk under the window and wrote Hollie a note with her tortoise-shell fountain pen:

I folded the note in half and laid it next to Hollie’s head. Pillow marks creased her cheek and I was struck by how little she had changed since I’d first known her. Not thinking, I
leant over and kissed her softly on the lips. She opened her eyes.

‘Rosie,’ she murmured sleepily, looking up at me with clear blue eyes.

‘Go back to sleep,’ I whispered, creeping backwards towards the door. ‘I left you a note.’ I knew she’d be upset about me not coming to dinner and I didn’t
want to get into an argument with her. She pushed herself upright and I thought how beautiful she was with her angel face so pale she couldn’t sit in the sun, and her lips like the pink
inside of seashells.

‘Look.’ She beamed across at Danny, who was still fast asleep, tranquil as a carved knight atop a sarcophagus.

‘Don’t wake him,’ I said.

Absently, Hollie picked up my note from her pillow. I paused, my hand resting on the doorknob, waiting for the inevitable storm. She read it quickly, her smile fading to a look of hurt and
confusion and then anger. Crumpling the note in her hands, she crossed the carpet and pushed me outside into the hall, closing the door gently behind us.

‘Hollie, please, try to understand,’ I entreated, but she pulled me down the stairs into the parlour where we stood face to face, about a metre apart.

‘I can’t believe it. After the way he’s treated you. You’re going to go crawling back to him just like that. I won’t let you do it. I won’t let you make such
a fool of yourself.’

‘But he rang me,’ I protested, lamely.

Hollie scoffed, theatrically. She looked just like her mother. ‘He never loved you, Rosie. He just used you for sex.’

‘Like I didn’t want him too! For fuck’s sake, Hollie, I’ve been celibate for two whole years.’ I sighed, realizing it was a pointless argument. ‘Not that
you’d have any idea what I’m talking about. You haven’t even pashed a guy, let alone rooted one.’ It was a low blow, one which I immediately regretted.

Hollie turned on her heel and was flying, two steps at a time, up the marble staircase. I called out to her, pleading with her to forgive me, but all I heard was the door to Mrs Bailey’s
bedroom slamming behind her.

When I got home, Mum was on her knees rolling out the plastic runners across the lounge room carpet. It was a ritual which went back a long way in our household, as long as I
can remember, and meant only one thing – that someone was coming over, a rare occurrence which caused Mum great anxiety and an entire day of preparation.

Mum has a ‘decontamination procedure’ of military precision: clear plastic covers with elasticated edging for the couches; disposable plastic tablecloths; a hand-made sign positioned
in the entry at direct eye-level – ‘Welcome to our humble home. Please remove your shoes before entering’ – then an arrow pointing down to a pair of ‘jiffy’
slippers vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag. In the bathroom, she disguises industrial-strength anti-bacterial liquid in a Palmolive ‘Gentle On Your Hands’ pump container, places a
scrubbing brush next to another sign which reads, ‘Please Use Vigorously’, and hangs disposable hand-towels.

‘Expecting visitors?’ I asked.

She spun around. From under her bathrobe, I caught a glimpse of black lace.

‘Oh, no one in particular,’ she said, smoothing out the runner with her hands.

‘C’mon, Mum. You haven’t let anyone in the house since the plumbing broke last year.’

Mum got to her feet. With android meticulousness, she scanned the room for any remaining tasks. Satisfied, she turned back to me. ‘I’ve got a date.’

‘Who? How?’ Mum hadn’t dated since the sixties.

‘Sit down and I’ll tell you.’ She dragged me onto the plastic-covered couch. ‘I’m really excited.’

‘I don’t have much time.’ I glanced at my watch.

‘Sit down.’ She patted the seat beside her.

I sat, my thighs squeaking hot and sticky against the plastic.

‘I went to see Clive this week.’

‘I thought you were done with him.’

‘No. He’s got this new therapy he thinks could really help.’ Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes glittered. ‘It worked on one of his other patients, a woman who
couldn’t stop pulling out her hair. She was a lost cause, but then Clive recommended she join a dating agency.’

‘Come off the grass.’

Mum wasn’t listening. ‘Clive calls it his love therapy technique. Learning to love again. You know I never loved your father. But now Clive says it’s time I went out and found
myself a nice man, before it’s too late.’

‘That’s great, Mum.’ I stood up but she yanked me back down.

‘So, this morning, I went to a dating agency in Spring Hill. A lovely woman called Jeanie asked me all these questions like, “What’s your favourite movie?”, “Are
you an early morning person?” and “Do you like spicy food?”, and inputted my answers into a special computer which came out with my “compatibility partners”. It was
all very hitech.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Then I watched the videos and picked out my favourite one.’

‘Did he say how big his—’

‘His name’s Andy Bronson and he’s a widower with no kids. His first wife died of cancer, very sad, but now, three years later, he’s ready to move on. He’s into
ballroom dancing and fine dining. He’s after a sensitive, caring woman who’s not too tall.’

‘What? Is he a dwarf?’

‘Don’t be smart. He’s picking me up for dinner at eight so I need you to help me decide what to wear.’

She pulled me into her bedroom. Arms crossed, she stood in front of the built-in wardrobe, her pastel suits hanging like corpses in see-through plastic body-bags.

‘I’m going for classy and sophisticated.’

‘Mum, can’t you do this yourself?’ It was already six-thirty. ‘I’ve got to get ready, too.’

She turned around sharply. ‘Why? Where are you going?’ Like I didn’t have a life.

‘Just out. With friends.’

‘What friends?’

I stared back at her, defiant. ‘You don’t know them.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Rosemary. I know you’re going over to Scott’s. He rang here this afternoon looking for you.’ My heart sang with those three little words –
‘looking for you’. She turned back to the wardrobe and started throwing suit after suit down on the bed. ‘I hope you’re not going to jump straight back into bed with him. I
hate to think where he’s been putting his thingo. Bet he’s picked up all sorts of venereal diseases overseas. I read in the paper that syphilis is making a comeback.’

I squeezed my fists into tight balls and tried hard not to lose it. How dare she talk about Scott like that. I hated her with a passion. I hated the revolting apricot damask suit with gold
buttons and grid-iron shoulder pads she was holding against her small rounded frame. I willed Andy Bronson to be a small-dicked loser with a lisp, hairy earlobes and bad personal hygiene.

‘What do you think?’ She pivoted back and forth between the mirror and me.

‘Whatever. I don’t really care.’

Her face collapsed like a crushed petal. She looked at me, her doe-eyes baleful with hurt like she was going to cry. ‘I thought you’d be happy for me. It’s not easy, you know.
After all this time.’ She put the apricot damask back in the wardrobe and picked up another one, sky-blue chiffon.

My rage sludged into guilt. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but you said yourself you’ve never been in love so how would you know anything about Scott and me?’

She addressed her reflection in the mirror. ‘Face it, Rosemary, he treated you like dirt. You must have rocks in your head.’

‘You’ve got no idea.’

‘After all we’ve been through… ’

I let her ramble on about all the stupid, psycho things I did when Scott broke up with me. Like the nights I slept in her bed because I couldn’t bear to sleep alone and the time I went
walking the streets in my PJs. I can’t believe now how mental I went. For months it went on. Thanks to Trish, I got better in the end. She toughened me up, got me into new things like tatts
and pot and not taking life too serious. But I never stopped thinking about Scott. I knew he’d be coming back, sooner or later.

Mum put the sky-blue chiffon back in the wardrobe and held a purple paisley number with pearl buttons up against her.

‘How about this?’ she said.

‘It’s hideous,’ I said, and strode out of the room to take a shower.

I washed my hair, shaved my bikini line in to a thin porno-strip (how Scott liked) and plucked the spider hairs from around my nipples. Later on, after everyone had left the
party and his parents had gone to bed, Scott would lead me into his bedroom, push me down on the bed and, not saying a word, undress me in the dark. He’d lick my breasts and tug at my nipples
and bite my neck, whispering how much he’d missed me, how much he still loved me. I positioned the stream of hard hot water up into me and waited for the shock, the little weakening in my
knees, then did it again. I turned off the taps. Fuck. No towel. I stuck my head out the door.

‘Mum! Can you bring me a towel?’

Her heels clacked across the tiles. The linen cupboard squeaked open and closed. I stuck my arm out into the hallway, my body shielded behind the door. Mum didn’t understand that once you
got to a certain age it was no longer OK to see each other in the nude. A soft, lavender-fresh towel landed in my hand but then Mum was inside, decked out a pink gingham ensemble.

‘How about this?’ She twirled in the steam.

I shook out the towel and wrapped it around me. Too late, she’d seen two things she wasn’t meant to see:

My butterfly butt-tatt.

My porno-strip bikini.

For a moment I thought she would pull the towel off me for a closer look. I waited for the inevitable onslaught – the risks of catching AIDS from the tattooist’s needle, the slutty
hairlessness of my pussy. She switched her gaze to the mirror, wiping a circle for her face in the mist. As she checked her frosted lips, her head shook like she was fighting some inner demon. For
a few seconds it looked as though she was going to speak but she just gave a little restrained sigh and exited the bathroom.