Too Close to Home

Cover

Also by Georgia Blain

Title Page

Copyright

Imprint Page

SUMMER

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

WINTER

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

LAST NIGHT

Chapter 30

Acknowledgements

About the Author

ANNA HADN'T WANTED TO celebrate her birthday. Freya remembers this months later as she sits in her workroom clearing out old papers, the date of that dinner scribbled on the bottom of a gas bill. She throws it on top of the morning's
Herald
. She has read each page, the election coverage detailing the stalemate they'd reached: both major political parties now so similar, neither able to govern in their own right. Editorials warn they will be in for days of negotiations as each leader tries to strike a deal that will let them govern.

It's strange, she thinks, how much has changed in less than a year. When she was trying to convince Anna to mark the occasion, she would never have contemplated such a fall from grace for the Labor Party.

She looks at the details of the evening once again, shaking her head at how long ago it seems. She remembers her attempts at arranging a celebration and Anna's refusal to agree to any suggestion. She wonders at her own failure to realise that perhaps her friend was truly scared of turning forty.

All that Anna wanted, or so she claimed, was to forget it was even happening.

But when Freya had shown her an article about the Portuguese Club in the paper, she'd finally relented. After all, Anna's grandmother had come from Lisbon. And with its checked plastic tablecloths, bad green carpet, low hanging fans and dishes below twenty dollars, it didn't look like a place you would pick for a celebration.

‘We can commiserate with greasy steak, eggs and chips,' Anna had said. ‘But we have to keep it small.'

On the day of the dinner, Freya was working at home, trying to write her doctoral thesis. She'd never wanted an academic career, but the scholarship gave her an income to keep writing for at least three years.

‘It's the new arts funding,' she'd told all her friends. ‘All I have to do is fill out endless forms with impossible questions: How am I contributing to the field of research? What is the original step I'm taking? It makes no sense but it's a small price to pay.'

Her creative work, a play, was done, and she was pleased with it. She'd written draft after draft, wanting each phrase to work. But the thesis overwhelmed her. The words sank, heavy and dull, and each time she tried to pick a new path through the sludge of her argument, she became lost again, eager for any diversion.

At lunch, she walked up the street to clear her head. The main road was crowded with traffic and the supermarket busy. It was the last pension day before Christmas. In front of her, a woman waited, sweaty beneath her make-up, her nylon dress sticking to her pale skin, her wide eyes blank and expressionless. Whatever medication she was on slowed her to a pace that was at odds with the rest of the pre-holiday rush, and Freya could only give herself over to the woman's careful unpacking
of a trolley filled with cakes in plastic containers, bags of sweets and tubs of pink ice-cream, each item placed in front of the cashier with shaking hands. She put her own fruit and vegetables (all from the organic shelves) onto the conveyor belt with a sense of shame. She was the new middle class in the area, and it was only a matter of time before people such as herself squeezed out the last of the Thursday pensioners.

Out on the street, she saw their neighbour, an Arts student (‘I thought we were an extinct species,' she'd joked when he'd first told her), and she toyed with the idea of crossing the road and asking him in for a cup of tea. He was listening to his iPod, unaware of her presence, and she decided to keep walking, saving the invitation for when she had less work and more time.

‘Once again, I've done nothing,' she sighed when Matt called to tell her he'd probably be late for Anna's dinner. ‘In fact, I can even count the number of words – 127.'

And so she gave in, writing the afternoon off as useless. She would get Ella early and take her swimming before the babysitter arrived.

Some hours later, she dressed in a new denim skirt, a bright green top and black clogs, taking care not to wear anything too celebratory. The restaurant was at the back of a deserted oval, next to the train tracks. Lit by a single streetlight, the building resembled a toilet block in a suburban park. But when she opened the door, it was, as the newspaper had promised, truly authentic. Apart from their table, everyone who was there was Portuguese.

‘What an amazing place,' they all exclaimed.

‘Don't say it.' Freya rolled her eyes as she looked at Clara.

‘What?'

‘How lucky we are, Matt and I, living right near here, with all the great food. It's all anyone ever said when we first moved.'

Clara grinned. ‘Well you are. There's nothing like this in the east.'

‘I know, I know. And we live with the Real People.' Freya grimaced.

‘Who said that?'

Freya closed her mouth and shook her head. ‘Someone did – truly. I won't say their name, but you know them.'

‘Does anyone speak the language?' Anna asked when she realised that they couldn't decipher the menu. She'd greeted everyone with a smile that sparkled, and a tight hug, her slender arms wrapped close around each friend with a whisper in the ear that made you feel as though your presence alone was all she'd wanted.

Freya remembered a little Portuguese from the time she'd spent in Lisbon in her mid twenties.

‘
Frango com piri-piri, se faz favor
, and that's about it.' She poured herself a glass of wine and one for Clara. ‘I was drunk most of the time. That was my hangover food. I was staying with people I didn't really know. Every night we were out until morning. On the last night, I ended up in bed with the guy, while his girlfriend was making her way home. I vomited all over his sheets and passed out. The next day I left.' She shook her head at the memory. ‘No wonder we all miss our youth.'

The waitress went through the specials with them. She wanted them to order before the next large table arrived, and Freya insisted that they did, despite the fact that Matt still hadn't turned up. ‘You know what he's like,' she said.

He walked in as the entrees were being served, apologising to everyone, and bent down to give her a quick kiss, his lips cool with the evening air, their touch light on her skin.

As he took a seat at the other end of the table, Freya's eyes followed him. He leant forward to speak to Mikhala, the line of his cheek smooth and clean, his hands resting on the base of his wineglass, fingers lean and strong, dark eyes focused, and yet also distant. When he was in the room, she always knew where he was, and who he was talking to; she could even sense how much of himself was given to that particular moment. It was a habit. And not one that they shared. She knew her presence didn't register with him unless she actually asked for his attention. Once she'd wanted this to change, now she simply found it curious, a fact she occasionally liked to play with, wondering what she would have to do to make him notice her in the way she noticed him.

Clara asked Freya how her thesis was going.

‘The play is done, and my agent is trying to sell it.' She smiled. ‘But the thesis is killing me. I'm not an academic, and I find it so hard to write.'

Clara served them both rice. ‘What's it about again?'

Freya moved her chair in, trying to be heard above the noise of the restaurant. ‘It's on whether art can make a difference.' She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Incredibly broad, I know. I suppose all I have to do is examine my
own work and put it in some kind of context, but it's not easy.'

Clara sipped her wine as she contemplated the topic. Her pale hair had come loose from the clip and she tucked it behind her ears, pressing her lips together as she thought. When she finally spoke, her curiosity was genuine. ‘Do you think it can?' she asked. ‘Make a difference, that is?'

Freya hoped so. ‘But it's not why I write. I do it because I love what I do,' she said. ‘I don't consciously want to make a difference but as an audience member I so appreciate work that makes me see life in a new way. I can recall – exactly – those times when I've truly looked at the world with fresh eyes after seeing a play or reading a book, and it's such an extraordinary moment. I spent today staring out the window trying to remember those experiences. I suppose I was searching for what would shock, move or change me.' She leant over and helped herself to the salad. ‘What's so radical that it would shake me, or any of us, to the core?'

Clara smiled, pausing again to consider her response. She narrowed her eyes for a moment. ‘I don't know if that's the kind of impact that matters.'

From the other end of the table, Paolo proposed a toast. ‘To Anna,' he said, and they all raised their glasses.

‘So much art is lazy,' Clara continued. ‘It peddles extremes. It allows us to congratulate ourselves. We are not that xenophobic, or that misogynistic, or that wicked. It simply reaffirms our own comfortable position, allowing us to ignore any challenges to that. I'm happy to look at what you've done, if you like.'

Clara worked for a left-wing academic publisher. She was a designer by profession, but she was also a good editor, and read widely. Julia, her girlfriend, frequently complained about Clara sitting up all night, immersed in a book, usually essays or feminist science fiction, the turn of the pages irritating enough to keep her awake.

‘Do you mean it?' Freya never liked discussing her work with anyone, but this was different. She knew she needed help.

Next to her, Julia was talking about the publication of literacy and numeracy test results to measure school performance. She'd taught woodwork to teenage boys for years before recently moving to a position in the Union. ‘If they want a My School website, teachers should be allowed to start a My Parent website.' She raised her hand to order another beer. ‘We could rank individual parents, compare them to others in the area –' she laughed – ‘and then create a league table.'

‘I like it,' someone replied. ‘But I don't know if the government's going to embrace it in a hurry.'

Looking down the table, Freya saw them all, talking, drinking, eating, the words becoming a blur around her, a din that was impossible to separate into individual conversations. ‘I think we should have a speech,' she suggested, the ring of her fork on her glass cutting through the talk. ‘I know you didn't want to celebrate,' she apologised to Anna, ‘but we do.'

‘Are you volunteering?' Anna asked.

Freya shook her head emphatically.

‘Come on.' Matt grinned at her. ‘She's your best friend.'

‘Okay, okay,' and Freya stood. She was drunker than she'd thought she was, and as she saw all her friends, watching her, waiting for her to talk, she was struck by how old they all appeared under the harshness of the bright lights. She could see herself too, reflected in the mirror on the wall opposite, the flush of wine florid across her pale skin, her freckles marked, and she averted her gaze, opening her mouth without further thought.

‘I met Anna in first-year university,' she said, expecting the words to just follow on from each other. The table was silent and she could feel them all staring at her. She didn't know why she was doing this. She hated making speeches, even to her friends, people she knew and loved. ‘We were both studying drama, but when I saw Anna act, I didn't have a hope in hell of even matching her.'

‘So you stole my boyfriend instead,' Anna laughed.

‘I didn't steal him.' Freya held up her hands in mock outrage, but as she did, she was surprised by a slight sway of nausea. Motion sickness. ‘You'd already thrown him on the waste heap with all the other heartbroken.' Matt was also laughing as he called out thanks from the other end of the table. Freya wished she could just sit down. ‘Anyway,' and she blew Matt a kiss, ‘this isn't about then. It's about now and what I really wanted to say was, here's to Anna, a good friend, a wonderful actor, and finally, a mature woman. Forty at last!' Freya lifted her glass.

‘And what a wealth of good roles I have to look forward to.' Anna's smile was saccharine. ‘No doubt I'll be offered the part of a grandmother next week.'

Paolo pulled Anna close, his lips touching hers. They looked into each other's eyes and he tucked her hair
behind her ears. He whispered to her, and she kissed him again. They had always been like this, Freya thought, intimate with each other in a way that bleached all colour from any other love, including her own for Matt, leaving it pale and insipid.

‘She's an actor,' Matt would say, and as Freya looked down to where he should have been sitting, she saw him pushing his chair in, a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He and Mikhala were heading outside, where they would lean against a wall under the spray of stars, looking out across the deserted oval and idly chatting with the slow intensity that smokers always have.

For a moment she thought about joining them. Everyone around her was engaged in conversation. She took another helping of
arroz de mariscos
, accidentally knocking Louise's wineglass, only to right it in the instant before it toppled. Louise had directed Freya's first play for the screen. Its success both here and, in a more modest way, overseas, had made Louise something of a celebrity. She'd gone to live in Paris for three years, where she'd made a bad art-house film that had lasted no more than a few days in the cinemas. She'd returned from Europe a couple of months ago, and she told everyone she was finding the cultural change a challenge.

She turned to Freya now. ‘You and Matt still seem happy.'

‘You know we bought a house,' she replied, ‘just around the corner?'

‘And you like it here?'

Freya said they did. The diversity of the area was a relief. ‘It sounds pat left liberal, but it does make for a much more interesting neighbourhood.'

‘And what about Ella?'

Ella was good, Freya said. ‘She's starting school next year. A great one just behind our place; small, really mixed, all that stuff.'