Out of My Depth (19 page)

'And?’

Tamsin laughed. ‘Oh, right. You want to know what happened next?

Amanda spread her hands. ‘Of course we bloody do! Come on, woman!’

‘Sure. Well, by the time I got to Australia I was feeling thoroughly disorientated. I’d sat for nine hours in a transit lounge at Singapore, staring into space. I hadn’t slept at all on the whole journey because it felt as if my life had taken a weird wrong turning. I was expecting it all to snap back to the way it had been, and wake up in my bed in Penarth with Mum opening my curtains and telling me I had to get up for school and me saying I hated school and I wished I’d gone to sixth-form college. And I thought about Lodwell’s and the cocoon they kept us in there, and how unhealthy it was to be kept in school like that and treated like children when all the time we could have been doing this, flying to Australia with a working visa and making a new life. And I thought that seventeen was a funny age, because I’d been quite happy to go to Welsh Prayers, and do my homework and for nothing more exciting to happen than a drink in the Railway. But now I knew I was ready to find a job and embark on a new life, on my own. Seventeen is an age when you can be a child or an adult and I knew that my childhood had ended when my mother died next to me, in the Astra.

‘I didn’t even pretend to read anything on the plane. Sometimes I watched a bit of a film, but never for long. There were people who were interested in speaking to me, but I just answered questions politely with one word and they soon stopped.

‘I landed in Sydney sometime in the afternoon, and as soon as I stepped out of the airport I knew it was going to be my home. It’s hard to explain this, but Sydney worked for me. The sun was shining but it was bearable, not too hot. It was winter, and even that was good because it made me feel further from the accident: the accident was in spring, now it was winter, so in a way I was six months further on than I’d been two days before.

‘People were happy and they looked fit and they smiled at me with my rucksack and my pale skin, because they could tell straightaway that I was fresh from Europe. Sydney kind of opened up to let me in, and closed again behind me and by then I was a part of it. I’d gone from Cardiff schoolgirl taught by her mother, to independent woman with nobody I knew in a whole hemisphere. I got a bus into town, and I hopped off it in King’s Cross and went to a hostel. I told the hostel woman I’d like to stay for a month. So I lay down on my top bunk in a dormitory full of Europeans, and I slept for about sixteen hours. And then I woke up and I was on my own.’

Susie was fascinated. ‘You were doing all this when we were revising for our A levels.’

‘I know. It seems like a parallel universe kind of thing-
lik
e it could not be literally happening at the same time-but it’s true. I had my exam timetable in my head. When I was supposed to be taking my first exam, which would have been a maths paper, I was halfway through my first night working in a restaurant across the road from Bondi beach. I loved waitressing because it kept me so busy. I couldn’t have borne a job where I had to sit at a desk and stare at a screen because I would have thought about my mum all the time.’

‘But Tamsin,’ said Izzy, ‘you must have thought about your mum all of the time anyway.’

Tamsin shook her hair back. ‘Of course. But if you’ve got your hands full of barracuda and chips, and you have to get it to table five and then rush some espressos to table eleven and try to remember that table three asked you for the ketchup, you can’t brood as much. I did plenty of brooding, don’t worry. I did get over it, in a manner of speaking. I felt close to her in a way, out there, because I was looking after myself and in some way I felt she’d be proud of me. I kind of glossed over the fact that I’d run away from my obligations. And I worked ten-hour shifts, I cleaned espresso machines, I scrubbed toilets, I sprayed tables with disinfectant, I mopped up baby sick and backpacker sick. I did it all gladly. I could never, ever regret it.’

Amanda was accusing. ‘What about your father?’

Tamsin sighed. ‘Yes. I know. He lost Mum and then he lost me, too. But he didn’t quite lose me, did he? I would have left home a few months later anyway. He knew where I was and he had Billy, and I wrote great long letters home all the time and I tried and tried and tried to get him to emigrate with me because I thought that Sydney was everybody’s magic answer. He came out to see what this enchanted, seductive city was all about, and I think he did get it, but his life was rooted in Penarth and mine wasn’t. I never came back, until now. And now he’s getting remarried, to Val, and he’s happy again, and I really am pleased about that, honestly.’

‘Are you back over now for their wedding?’ asked Izzy.

Tamsin smiled. ‘I’m back over here because I needed to come. I’m thirty-two. It’s early days, but I’ve met somebody I like, in Sydney. I want to give things a proper go with him. I’ve never been able to do anything like that, because however settled I’ve been, I’ve always been running away. It’s been the strongest compulsion, this year. I’ve been pulled back here. I adore Australia, but when I got there, I was running away. I think, partly, I’ve needed to check that I didn’t secretly belong here. Not here, that is, but in Britain. I didn’t want Australia to be a bolthole any more. It’s worth more than that. And I can’t settle down properly in Australia without saying a proper goodbye to Britain.’

‘Watch out,’ said Amanda. ‘We’ll all be visiting.’

‘Please do. Life is good. Perhaps it’s morbid, but I also needed to go back to where the accident happened, kind of to pay my respects.’

Izzy gulped. Amanda drained her glass.

‘And did you?’ Susie managed to say.

‘Yes. I retraced the journey, from City Hall to the dual carriageway. I’m glad I did it. Somewhere along the way I accepted that I’m never going to know why it happened.’ She shook her head, as if to banish the memories. ‘So, yes, come and visit. I live in Bronte, in an apartment above my bar, and in summer I sleep with the windows open and the sea air blowing in. It gets noisy sometimes with the British kids but they mainly congregate in Bondi. My bloke, Vikram, lives in Manly, which is miles away from me, but I go to visit him on the ferry. It takes forever to get to the terminal, but once you’re there, it’s magic, crossing the water to go and see someone who I hope will be a part of my future. That’s what I want. That future. That’s why I’ve had to come and lay it all to rest. Your invitation was incredibly timely, Susie. Thank you.’

‘You’ve done stunningly,’ Izzy said, with tears in her eyes. ‘You’re such a survivor. How can you possibly say you overreacted?’

‘I did,’ said Tamsin. ‘I went to the other side of the earth and I never spoke to any of you again. I shouldn’t have been upset that you didn’t know what to say to me. I probably wouldn’t have known what to say if it had been one of you, either. Other people lose their mothers without jettisoning all their friends at the same time.’

Amanda and Susie were looking at the table.

‘No, your instincts were right,’ Susie said quietly.

Freya woke first. She yawned, rolled over, and opened her eyes. She was lying on top of her Barbie duvet and her hair was sweaty. There was only a bit of light, squeezing round the edges of the shutters. It made the ceiling look grey. She turned her head towards her brother. Jake was sleeping on his back, with his mouth a little bit open. His Action Man duvet was trailing on the floor. His cheeks were rosy. Freya wondered whether it would be funny if she dropped something into his mouth, but decided she wouldn’t bother. She was still tired.

She didn’t like the Barbie sheets. They were too pink, and she thought Barbie was meant to be bad, because if she was real she wouldn’t be able to stand up. She screwed her eyes shut, and yawned as widely as she could. She snuggled down and tried to make herself go back to sleep. She could hear someone walking around downstairs. Nobody was talking. It sounded like one person walking and that was all.

She curled up. It was definitely Mum downstairs. If there was someone doing stuff when everyone else was asleep, it was Mum. Sometimes, at home, Freya would go down, early in the morning, to see her, but Mum didn’t always like that. Normally she gave a funny little smile, and Freya knew that it meant something like, ‘I wanted a bit longer on my own but I can’t really say that so I’ll pretend to be pleased to see you.’ Not very often, but sometimes, Mum would shout at her to go back to bed. Then she would say something cross and quiet, something like, ‘I can never bloody get you up when I need to, and just when I don’t want you . . .’ and Freya would go quietly upstairs. Once, Mum had been writing with a marker pen on the whiteboard, and as soon as she saw Freya, she grabbed some kitchen roll and rubbed it all out and shouted at Freya. Later Freya had tried to read what Mum had written, but all she could see was ‘Grey’. She’d almost asked Mum what ‘grey’ meant, but then she hadn’t dared.

She couldn’t get back to sleep. They didn’t have a clock in here, and she wanted to know if it was an all right time to get up, like eight, or if it was a bad one, like five. Jake’s watch was probably on the table next to his bed. She sat up and looked around. It was already hot. It must be time to get up. She swung her feet onto the wooden floor, and picked her way over their bags. Jake’s watch said it was twenty to seven. Freya couldn’t remember whether he had changed it to French time, or not. He probably had. He usually did.

‘Jakey,’ she said quietly, sitting on his bed. ‘Jakey, wake up. Let’s go into the garden. It’s early.’

The stairs creaked as they went down, as quietly as they could. They had dressed quickly, in shorts and T-shirts, and they had shut their door behind them so no one would know they were up.

They were setting off on an early morning adventure. There wasn’t any sign of Mum, or anybody else, downstairs. It was all quiet and shadowy, with the shutters mostly closed.

In the kitchen, a coffee cup was still warm on the side. Jake broke some pieces of bread off a stick and they unlocked the back door and stepped outside, closing it almost silently behind them.

Freya looked at the upstairs windows. Both of the bedroom windows that looked out the back still had their shutters closed. That was Izzy and Sam’s room, and Tamsin’s room. So they weren’t awake yet, probably.

The grass was wet and the sky was pink. Lots of birds were singing and there was no wind at all. They walked across the lawn, to the trees. A big bird flew away suddenly from the very middle of a tree, and it made Freya jump.

‘Oooooh,’ said Jake, laughing at her. 'A ghost!’

‘Shut up. It was a bird.’

‘It was a ghost bird.’

‘You’re stupid.’

‘You’re stupid. You were the one who was scared of a bird.’

‘Birds can be scary. Like that film we watched with the babysitter.’ Freya had had nightmares for weeks after that. She had never dared tell Mum why. She would have told Dad, but he had never asked.

They walked through the trees, and came out next to the pool. Jake opened the gate, kicked his shoes off and sat down on the edge. He dangled his feet in the water. Freya joined him, and he handed her a chunk of bread.

‘You know what it feels like?’ she said, kicking up a splash of water. ‘It feels like we’re Hansel and Gretel. Looking after ourselves, without any adults.’

Jake laughed. ‘Right. Hansel and Gretel had a swimming pool. Hansel and Gretel lived in a posh house in France. I wish there was a gingerbread house somewhere round here. I’m starving, and this bread is boring.’

‘It’s stale. Jake, if there was a witch here, like in Hansel and Gretel, who do you think it would be?’

He didn’t hesitate. ‘Susie.’

‘Why?’

‘Well. Because it’s her house and this place could be kind of witchy. Mostly because I keep hearing Mum saying how much Susie’s changed and how she used to be fat and ugly and now she’s thin and she’s got loads of money. I think she did it by magic.’

‘She did it by painting.’

‘That’s kind of magic. I wish I could be so good at painting that I could have a pool.’

Freya threw her bread at him. ‘No chance. You’re crap at art.’

Jake pushed his sister. She almost fell in the water, but regained her balance in time. She put a hand behind his head and yanked it forwards so quickly that she overbalanced him, and sent him flailing into the swimming pool. She roared with laughter as he resurfaced, spluttering and rubbing the water off his face.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘You asked for it!’ He grabbed her by the foot and pulled her. Freya knew she could get away, but splashing around in the water with her clothes on would be fun, so she let him drag her down. Her bottom slid off the edge of the tiles, and she knew she was about to hit water. She took a deep breath before she went under, the back of her head smacking on the surface of the water. Then everything closed in on her. She kept her eyes tight shut and tried to touch the bottom with her feet. Jake was still holding her left foot, so she almost had to do the splits while she sought out solid ground with her right. It wasn’t there. She felt she was sinking and sinking, and she had already breathed all the air out of her lungs. Suddenly, she knew she needed to go upwards, not down. She kicked her left leg frantically, but Jake was not letting go. She was trapped underwater. She moved her arms around, trying to push herself to the surface. She couldn’t get herself moving, because of her leg. She was going to die. She opened her mouth, even though she knew she couldn’t shout. She kicked again, trying to shake him off. He tightened his grip.