The Convent (26 page)

‘Fluke?' I hear the disappointment in her voice, and I start laughing through my tears. She'd much prefer to keep talking about nuns.

‘Yes.'

‘But you did meet him.'

‘And I can't get him out of my head even though he's …'

‘He's what?'

‘A complete dickhead.'

She pushes me away, puts both hands on my shoulders and looks me fair in the face. ‘So are you, Peach,' she says.

‘No, I'm not.'

‘Yes, you're a complete dickhead, but,' she tightens her grip on my shoulders and peers into my face, ‘you are also the daughter of … a holy woman!' she whispers hoarsely.

‘She wasn't a saint, Stella! She left the convent. And she had me.'

‘She was strong enough to withstand the temptations of the world,' Stella mumbles dreamily, looking off into the distance. ‘A strong spirit.'

‘Well, you can have her!'

‘No, I can't. She's yours.'

‘Will you
please
shut up about it?'

‘But it is so totally cool.'

‘What am I meant to do about
him
?'

She smiles and raises her eyes to heaven. ‘Think about what attracted you to him in the first place.'

It was one of those wild freezing midwinter nights that Det thrives on and just about everyone else wishes away. We'd been invited down the coast to celebrate Dicko's birthday. His parents were loaded and he had access to what he described as ‘an awesome pile of bricks' for the event.

I wish now that I'd taken heed of Stella's warning. She'd come outside while I was waiting on the front verandah in my warm coat and boots for Fluke to pick me up.

‘Be careful, Peach,' she said, frowning at the apple she was eating.

‘Why?'

‘Clear sky, full moon, winter.'

‘So?' I laughed.

‘Be careful.'

‘I'm always careful, Stella,' I said, jumping up to hug her goodbye as Fluke pulled up out the front. I picked up my waterproof and my overnight bag.

‘Enjoy the concert!' I kissed her on the nose and hurried to the gate. ‘And don't let Dad go to sleep!'

She and Dad are obsessive J.S. Bach fans. They had tickets for a special choral work that night at the Arts Centre in town. After a long day at the hospital, Dad has been known to go straight to sleep as soon as the concert starts, and then embarrass everyone around him by snoring.

She laughed and hugged me back. ‘I'll take the hatpin.'

I was ready for a party. Mid-year exams were over. Fluke had a few days off from the pier. Heading down the coast together was going to be fantastic.

Fluke drove the car he shared with his mother and I sat next to him. Det, Nick and Walter, a really nice Canadian guy that Det had hooked up with the night before, were in the back. I could tell straight away that Det was still a bit
wired.
A few weeks before she'd had a nasty break-up with a guy she'd been crazy about, and it was still clouding her mood. She hadn't wanted to come but I'd insisted. Sitting home all weekend wasn't the answer to anything, I'd told her sternly. But now I wasn't so sure. Det often found big social occasions difficult. Maybe I should have let her stay at home to lick her wounds.

Walter was older than us – probably late twenties – and for most of the way down he entertained us with stories of growing up in sub-zero temperatures.

‘So how do you take a piss in all that gear?' Nick wanted to know.

‘Well, there are these little flaps and …'

‘What about sport?'

‘Ever heard of ice hockey, Nick?'

Basically we gossiped and joked and blathered on about our lives all the way. Fluke and his mum were big fans of the blues. Underneath our chatter a succession of old gravelly songs moaned on about someone doing bad by someone else, until the rest of us couldn't take it any more.

‘Jeez, mate,' said Nick good-naturedly, ‘I'm aware that these guys are like the king daddies of everything and all but I'm ready to slit my wrists. You got any other kind of music?'

‘Radio?' Fluke laughed.

‘Yes please!' everyone chorused.

‘So, what?'

‘Bland and banal, please,' Nick moaned. ‘Kylie would be better than this.'

We wasted a fair bit of time taking wrong turns and peering at maps. Dicko's instructions were not very accurate, but at last we found the dirt track turn-off and we knew we were right.

Most of the house was secluded behind a high fence and overhanging trees but the rest of it loomed up before us like an ocean liner. The second-storey windows blazed out into the surrounding darkness like the top deck.

‘Oh shit!' Nick groaned. ‘Don't you just hate rich people?'

‘No,' Walter drawled coolly, ‘I love them. Especially when you get to use their stuff!'

Within moments of us calling through the intercom, the gate slid open and we were driving up to the front of the house and parking alongside a number of other cars. We got out to stretch after the long drive, delighted to be there at last. Music was thumping out into the night all around us.

Dicko met us at the open door in a white dinner suit, silk tie and patent leather shoes.

‘Shit, man, were we meant to dress up?' Nick tried to look concerned. He was in an old jumper and grimy jeans.

‘Yeah.' Dicko threw an arm around his shoulders, and motioned us all inside. ‘Feel bad, Nick. Feel really bad.'

We pulled off our coats and shoved them into one of the cupboards in the vast plush hallway.

I'd dressed up a bit, in tight black pants and red boots, my red silk shirt hidden under an awful long jumper that I planned to take off just as soon as I warmed up. Walter wasn't much better than Nick. Fluke was probably the best dressed in a nice charcoal jacket, jumper and clean jeans.

‘Your parents actually
own
this place?' Fluke was looking around the spacious hallway incredulously.

‘Not really.' Dicko shrugged dismissively.

‘They stole it?'

‘You got it.' We all laughed.

‘From who?'

‘Some poor deranged aunt.' He held the door at the end of the hall open for us. ‘Welcome!'

We knew quite a few people and there was the usual shrieking and wild hugs as we all recognised each other. Trying to introduce Fluke over the music was pretty well impossible, but no one seemed to care much. Nick's three totally dolled-up Greek cousins descended, squealing their greetings, pointing out possible girlfriends for Nick.

And checking out Fluke as if he was some kind of prize at a raffle.

‘Way to go, Peach!'

‘He's cute!'

‘Got a twin brother?'

Fluke grinned and put his arm around me.

Drinks were shoved into our hands, and Det, Fluke and I headed through the crowd to the glass doors at the back of the huge living space and peered out. The big fluorescent-blue square of the pool was surrounded by wooden decking and further out were paving stones heading down to a row of tall eucalypts along the back fence. Det sidled out to join the smokers braving the cold, leaving Fluke and I inside, smiling at each other.

‘You and me, Peach!'

I nodded happily and took his hand. ‘You and me.'

When Dicko came over to refill our drinks I asked him if we could go upstairs for a look.

‘By all means.' He waved us towards the stairs. ‘Just hold off throwing yourselves over the balcony. I don't want any trouble with the police.'

Fluke and I made our way up the wide marble staircase, hand in hand. It was like being on a movie set. We poked our noses into bedrooms and bathrooms and studies, marvelling at the huge lights and luxurious carpets and nice paintings and knick-knacks. The master bedroom opened up onto a wide, tiled balcony.

Out there without our coats it was absolutely freezing, but the clear, bright night gave us such a fantastic view that neither of us wanted to go back inside. We laughed and yelled, pretending we were on the
Titanic
about to go down, and clinging to each other in the bitter wind.

But after a while we grew silent.

The house was built out on a cliff and the ocean lay below like a huge, dark desert. The moon sat up high in the clear sky, sending an arch of light skidding across the shining surface of the water. The occasional flashing light from passing fishing boats in the distance enhanced the dreamlike feeling. I let my mind float out across the expanse of water, almost able to feel it against the bare skin of my face and arms.

Luke stood behind me. He put his hands under my jumper and shirt, encircling my bare waist, and turned me around so we were facing each other. Then he pulled me closer, caressing my back. I pulled his shirt out of his trousers and we stood there our bare bellies pressed against each other. I felt for the coarse dark hair of his chest and then followed the line of it down from his chest past his navel and into his jeans. He gasped in shock, but I laughed and kept touching him.

Desire licked up between us like a flame, getting hotter and hotter with each kiss.
Oh God, I could die now.
I let my head fall back, feeling his lips on my neck.
I could die and I wouldn't care.
Our bodies trembled and ached as we clutched each other in the biting wind, skin on skin, laughing through chattering teeth, swaying like reeds at the bottom of the ocean.

We pulled away eventually, tucked in our shirts and rearranged our clothes and hair.

‘Just keeping things nice, bro,' I joked.

‘Okay, sister.'

We both knew that later, after the party was over, we'd be alone in the dark, in the warmth of some borrowed bed, or mattress on the floor, or maybe even in the double sleeping bag that I'd thrown into the boot just in case. That same desire would hold and devour us until we fell asleep in each other's arms. And when we woke it would be as if our lives had just begun.

‘I will never leave you, Peach,' Fluke said seriously, doing up the buttons of his shirt, staring straight ahead.

‘
What?
' It was such an odd thing to say.

‘I will never leave you,' he said again.

I stared at his profile against the light streaming from the bedroom, trying to quell the sudden tears that had raced into my eyes. It was too much. Way too much. And yet … my heart leapt towards those words like a parched person grabbing at a bottle of water, and my pulse quickened all over again with giddy gladness.

I hadn't told him anything about the dreams I used to have, but his words told me that on some instinctual level he knew anyway. It was as though he had seen right down into the very core of me and understood where my deepest fears lay.

‘But what if we break up?' I said, trying to sound light, desperate not to give myself away.

‘You're in my heart,' he said. Then he grinned. ‘Nothing will change that. You are in my heart.'

I buried my face in his shoulder and wished that I could bottle what I was feeling right at that moment.
Imagine having a row of
little glass bottles of this lined up in my room,
I thought. Whenever I woke feeling bleak, I'd just reach over and suck one down before I got up.

‘Let's go inside,' I said at last. ‘My face is turning numb.'

‘As long as you know.'

‘I know.'

We walked back down the stairs, hand in hand. Why do people say that love is hard? I was in love and it was the easiest thing that had ever happened to me.

The party had hotted up in our absence. More people had arrived and a lot of them were getting pretty smashed. The lights had been turned down and the music up, and people were laughing and screaming inanities at each other above the din. Raucous and crazy, but it was fun too. Doubly so because of what had happened on the balcony between Fluke and me. I was living on another planet to everyone else.

Nick, his face glowing with alcohol and pleasure, put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Got to get the dancing going, Peach,' he declared, and prising me out from under Fluke's arm he hauled me out onto the polished floor near the speakers.

But I didn't need encouraging. I felt like dancing. I tried to pull Fluke in with us, but he laughed and waved me on and went over to get himself another drink.

Cassie and Stephano joined us and within a few minutes the square of polished floorboards was full. Then came a sequence of events that are impossible to remember with absolute accuracy. First up, I lost sight of Fluke for some time. After I'd danced myself to exhaustion I had a couple of drinks in quick succession – probably too quickly – and felt quite pissed for a while. So I went and got myself some water and found a seat next to a girl named Robin who I hadn't seen for ages. We had an interesting conversation about the time she'd spent working up in an Aboriginal community near Darwin the year before. We were interrupted by Dicko, who insisted that everyone had to stop talking and get into his Gatsby mood with some weird sort of conga dance that he'd worked out was all the rage in the roaring twenties. Dicko was known and loved for his eccentricities, so just about everyone put down their glasses and joined in. Even the smokers came inside for it.