The Alphabet Sisters (37 page)

But had it felt as if it was something they both were destined to do, couldn’t live without doing? No. If anything, the pressure came from people around them, their friends, who were all busily planning their weddings and buying their first houses.

They didn’t rush into any wedding planning. They set a date, booked the church for a year’s time, to be sure of a place more than anything. Bett started thinking about her wedding dress. But, mostly, life settled down—Bett with her work at the newspaper, Matthew with his work and his study, both living separately. The fact that they were engaged was a nice link between them, but nothing momentous, life-changing. Again, that thought—comforting. Which had started to feel like boring.

Bett recalled coming at the subject in a roundabout way during a phone conversation with Anna. “Did you ever have doubts about Glenn before you married him, Anna?”

Anna got to the point immediately. “Why, are you having second thoughts about Matthew?”

“No.” A pause. “But it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that you’d start to see faults in someone, especially after you’ve been going out with each other for a while?”

“You and Matthew, you mean? You’ve only been together for less than a year, though, haven’t you? I think that’s still officially known as the honeymoon period. What sort of things are you talking about?”

“Well, with Glenn, for example, do you ever, um, I don’t know, run out of things to talk about? Find yourself sitting there wondering what to say next?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Anna laughed. “If we’re not talking, we’re usually fighting about something, so communication isn’t usually the issue. Have you run out of things to say to Matthew?”

Bett had, but she’d hedged around it. “Maybe we’ve just been too tired to talk. Things have been pretty busy work-wise for both of us.”

“But you must have things in common you can talk about, even if you are tired. Do you like the same things? The same sort of books or music?”

Bett grimaced. She and Matthew couldn’t be farther apart in their musical tastes. He was strictly John Cougar Mellencamp. He listened to the rock stations; she preferred the alternative ones. He liked listening to her play piano, but now that she thought about it, only when she was playing the sing-along Top 40 ones, not the musical numbers or classical pieces Lola had taught her. Matthew didn’t read much, either, apart from veterinary magazines, whereas Bett always had two or three books on the go.

“Um, no, not really.”

“Does he make you laugh?”

She had to think. Occasionally he did. But his main party piece was his impressions of Basil Fawlty, Frank Spencer, and Elvis Presley, and the truth was she’d never found them funny. A bit embarrassing, if anything. “Sometimes,” she said to Anna.

“What about his work?”

It had been interesting enough to begin with. But she had never been that keen on animals—well, she liked cats, but she wasn’t that keen on their inner workings, not to the extent of talking about intestinal worms over dinner most nights. Carrie was the animal fiend in their house, the one who collected photos of dogs and horses and stuck them on her schoolbooks and on the wall above her bed. She’d even had an imaginary horse for a few years, called Plink for some reason, on which she would gallop around the motel carpark, to the amusement of their guests.

Bett remembered thinking that the music Matthew listened to was the same sort of music Carrie had liked. That she wasn’t a reader either. That even the way he looked was more to Carrie’s taste than Bett’s. Carrie had always liked the rugged outdoor type.

She and Anna had talked about it some more, before Bett deliberately moved the conversation on to other matters. Four days later, she got a letter from Sydney.

Dear Bett,

I’ve been thinking a lot about our phone call last night, and rather than ring again, I decided to write this to you. First up, it’s none of my business, so there’s the disclaimer out of the way—if you take my advice, I won’t be held responsible for the consequences. But what seemed to be coming loud and clear through everything you were saying is that you have serious doubts about marrying Matthew. You kept asking whether I’d had the same sorts of doubts about marrying Glenn, but as I said last night, Glenn and I are completely different from you and Matthew. It’s a different combination, a different situation. The problems we have are not the problems you and Matthew might be having or would have.

Can I ask you a very blunt question? Why are you marrying him? I’m not too sure you love him, as you’re not too sure yourself, but do you even like him all that much? It worried me when you said that you and he don’t have all that much in common. It worried me even more when you said that you weren’t getting any younger, and besides all your friends were getting married. As Lola would say, if all your friends jumped off the roof, would you do that, too?

While I’m on the subject, why does Matthew want to marry you? He sounds like the world’s greatest romantic, but has he got a sense of you? Is he interested in you, as Bett, rather than as a woman he can marry? It just sounds to me as though the pair of you have drifted into something and don’t know how to drift out of it again.

If you are still reading this, then you are probably thinking I should mind my own business. But you are my sister and I love you dearly and what you do is my business. I worry about you, worry that sometimes you stick your head in the sand, pretend everything’s okay when it patently isn’t, just to avoid confrontations. But it would be a lot less messy to get out of this engagement than it would be to get out of a marriage. It sounds as if the two of you get on okay, and maybe you would make better friends than lovers, or better acquaintances than husband and wife. You said a telling thing last night, that because Matthew was your first serious relationship, you had nothing to compare him to, so you were just assuming that being bored, being annoyed, was normal. I don’t think that’s a normal comment for someone a few months away from tripping up the aisle.

I’ll shut up now, I promise. I just wanted to say that I’m worried about you and I hope you’ll think about this carefully. Everyone makes mistakes. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if you called it off.

Never forget how much I love you, even when you are driving me up the wall.

Anna xxx

Anna had come back to the Valley not long after to see Carrie, but Bett hadn’t mentioned the letter or her doubts to her again. There’d been so much fuss about Carrie’s return that it had been easy to avoid the subject. Bett had loved the novelty of having a boyfriend to show to Carrie. She’d enjoyed the feeling of going to the pub with them that first night, watching as Carrie jokingly road tested him for her, patting him down. She hadn’t minded at all when the two of them often became the three of them, Carrie joining them for dinner, drinks in the pub. When Carrie was around, Matthew seemed to have lots more to talk about. It had been easier to have the three of them. There were none of the long silences there had often been between her and Matthew. Carrie bubbled into the space, brought out a different side of Matthew. They had kept finding things in common—music, antiques shopping, even clothes shopping. It was Bett who had suggested Carrie go to the agricultural college with Matthew and sit in on some lectures, when she’d seemed so interested in his vet stories. Bett had a clear memory of that day. “Matthew and Carrie should be together, not Matthew and me.” She had actually thought that.

She stopped walking, alone on the path, the early-morning air crisp around her, cool against her skin. Her memory jumped to the night Matthew had told her about Carrie. He had called her at the office, his voice sounding strange, asking if he could meet her after work. He said he had something very important he needed to tell her.…

Fury, hurt, and anger had propelled her through the next few months. Then the ticket overseas had turned out to be a lifeline. A chance to start afresh, leave the mess that was her life in the Clare Valley, her relationship with her sisters, far behind her.

It had been frightening, but it had been a chance to be herself, to stop measuring herself against Anna and Carrie. Except she hadn’t been able to leave them behind, had she? All the memories had come with her.

And they were still there.

Chapter Twenty-three

S
everal days later, out at the farmhouse, Carrie pointed the remote control at the TV and turned down the volume. Lola had insisted she take the night off from the motel. “You’ve been working too hard, darling. Have a break. Prepare yourself for the musical, with lots of relaxing, lots of good food, lots of snuggling up to Matthew.”

Some chance of that. She was too stressed to relax, there was no food in the house, and the only snuggling she’d been doing was with the sofa cushions. She’d spent all afternoon watching imported American confrontational chat shows on TV. It was so much easier for Americans, Carrie thought. They were so good at that “come on TV and let it all hang out” approach. She didn’t think her own Irish-Australian heritage stretched to the same candidness. The program credits came up, with a contact number if you needed a family matter sorted out. Would the producer’s budget stretch to flying the entire Quinlan family over to America? she wondered. They could start small and work their way up, she supposed. Just fly her and Matthew over for a start.

If only it were that easy. What would the producers do? Make them talk about their true feelings? Insist they were honest? Carrie could almost hear herself telling Matthew how sorry she was for all the fighting. How much she missed him. How she wanted to give it another go.

She sat upright.

She did. That was exactly how she felt. But what would Matthew say if she told him all that? If she asked him to come home again?

She realized there was only one way to find out.

A
nna ran her hands down Richard’s body, stretching herself so she was full length against him, skin against skin. He smiled into her eyes, leaned forward, kissed her on the lips again. There was just a white cotton sheet covering them, the one lamp throwing a soft light into the room. There had barely been time to draw the curtains when she had come to his room that evening before they had undressed each other and started kissing for a very long time. Luxurious, gentle lovemaking had given way to more conversation, whispered confidences, shy offerings of what they thought of each other, which had led to more lovemaking.

Anna felt wrapped in warmth, in compliments, in his admiration. She loved the touch of his fingers on her body, his lips on hers, the sound of his voice telling her stories, asking her questions, showing interest in her like she hadn’t felt in years. She’d felt the same intense curiosity about him, wanting to hear all about him as well. She had never had this with Glenn, simple lying under the sheet together, talking, their bodies entangled, the memory of lovemaking fresh on their skin and in their minds, the promise of more to come in the stroking of fingers on bodies, the look in each other’s eyes. She felt reckless, like a naughty teenager again, staying out late, comforted by the thought of Ellen safe with Lola.

He had just told her some of the conversation from his dinner with Bett several nights before. She was struck equally by his gentleness and his curiosity, as if he was trying to understand her, and her sisters, and the feud between them.

“I can understand why Carrie and Bett might have fought, but why did you and Bett fight about it all?”

“Oh, not just me and Bett. Me and Carrie, too.” She smiled. “We were never a family to do things by halves. I fought with her straight after I’d fought with Bett, actually.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You really want to hear?”

“I do. I love hearing you talk.”

A
nna had been in Clare on a quick weekend visit, while Glenn had taken Ellen to visit his parents in Queensland. She was in her room when Bett burst in, wild-eyed, her mop of curls more unruly than usual. She spilled out the story in moments, before Anna sat her down and made her go through it again, slowly and in detail.

Bett took a deep breath. “Matthew had some news, he told me. Something urgent he needed to talk to me about. So we met here, in the bar. I thought it would be about a job move or something about work, but no …” A pause, as Anna could see Bett was trying not to lose control. “No, he said he needed to call off our wedding.” Bett told Anna that she had scarcely mouthed the word “Why?” before Matthew had delivered the answer. “He said: ‘Because I’ve fallen in love with Carrie.’ ”

And then into the bar walked Carrie. A glance between her and Matthew, Bett said, and she had known. Carrie felt the same way about Matthew.

“You should have seen them, Anna. The two of them sitting there, holding hands, telling me how hard it was for them, for
them,
but that they’d thought it best if they broke the news to me together.”

Anna winced. “They were holding hands in front of you? Being that open about it? So they’ve been lovers? Already?”

“I don’t know. They must have been. Of course they have.” Bett was very distressed. “Carrie kept going on about how they had tried to fight it, but it had been too strong, too
passionate,
between them to ignore.”

“I can’t believe Carrie would do this. And what is Matthew playing at? Creeping from your bed to Carrie’s? What has he got, some kind of sister fetish?”

Bett shifted uncomfortably. “Matthew and I … hadn’t actually been … well, not for a while.”

“Since before Carrie got back or after?”

“Before. I don’t know, between everything, all the wedding plans, and my work and his work, there hadn’t been time.”

Hadn’t been time? Anna was puzzled. Wasn’t sex something you made time for—especially when you were in the first flush of love? “Bett, things really hadn’t been okay with you and Matthew before this, had they?”