The Grass Castle (21 page)

Later Abby takes a shambling, drunken, pre-bed walk, and Cameron accompanies her. She wanted to go alone, but he insisted on coming, won’t let her rove the streets on her own so late at night. They head into the muted darkness of the suburb and she attempts to march away from him but he keeps up with ease, striding just behind to allow space for her anger.

‘Your parents hate me,’ she says. ‘I’m not upper-class enough for them.’

‘They don’t hate you. They’re appalling snobs.’

‘You mean I’m not good enough for them.’

‘Nobody is good enough for them; I’m not good enough either. I’ve had a lifetime of not measuring up. I’m not the person they wanted me to be.’

‘Well, there’s something wrong with them if they can’t see how well you’ve turned out.’

His laugh has a resigned edge to it. ‘Sometimes you look at your parents and wonder how you emerged from their combined genetics. Philosophically and politically I’m not like either of them. Temperamentally, I suppose I’m more similar to my father.’

‘Well philosophically, politically, genetically
and
financially I fall short, in their view. That’s obvious.’

He catches up and grabs her hand, pity and anxiety on his face. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here, should I?’

Abby walks, half-dragging him along. ‘It’s been a difficult evening,’ she admits.

‘I wanted to make a point,’ Cameron says. ‘To show how important you are to me. I’m sorry about my parents. And I forgot to tell them about your mum.’

Abby tugs her hand free. ‘Mum’s death isn’t something I like to talk about.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He tries to reach for her hand again, but she evades him. ‘Please let’s go home,’ he says. ‘It’s late.’

‘No. I need to walk. I’m not ready for bed.’

He blocks her way, shoulders looming in the dark. ‘Okay, walk then. But be careful. I don’t want you to get hit.’

She pushes past him, colliding with the hardness of his chest and stumbling across the nature strip, off the edge of the gutter and onto the road. A pair of headlights arcs past and Cameron grabs her into his arms.

‘See what I mean?’ he says. ‘You don’t even know what you’re doing.’ He presses her against him, checking her resisting limbs. For a moment, she leans into him, jolting with hard dry sobs.

He strokes her hair. ‘You should talk to me about your mother,’ he says. ‘I know it upsets you. But I care enough to want to know.’

She drags herself loose and starts walking again. ‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘I survive by forgetting.’

The weekend is saved by a day spent wandering the streets of the city. In the morning, they escape Cameron’s parents’ house and head for a yum cha brunch in Chinatown where they sample dishes of chicken’s feet, bean curd noodles with seafood and fungus, and chilli king crab. Then they browse through a few expensive boutiques, and Cameron insists on buying a skimpy pink dress for Abby to wear that night.

Later in the afternoon, they go to the zoo, which Abby hasn’t visited in years. Her favourite exhibit is the butterfly house. She and Cameron sit on a bench seat for a long dreamy period while gorgeous butterflies dip and float around them. One lands on Abby’s knee, a lovely iridescent blue creature with sculpted wings. It remains with her for an impossibly long time, occasionally opening and closing its wings, until a rowdy child dashes past and dislodges it from its quiet pew.

They finish the day with a fun and depraved evening, drinking alcohol with some of Cameron’s Melbourne journalist friends in a Turkish restaurant. Around a low table, they sit cross-legged on dimpled cushions, pouring wine into tumblers and downing it like water. His friends are accepting of her, and Abby feels warm and confident with them. They include her in the conversation, and they laugh at her comments as if she is witty and discerning. Cameron has a fine glow about him when he looks at her, a lustful aura of happiness, and it’s as if he can’t keep his hands off her, his fingers resting too high on her thigh. The clingy short dress must have something to do with it, she surmises, but whatever the cause, she enjoys it, and feels sexy and desirable. It’s such a relief to feel so free after last night’s awkwardness.

Afterwards, they sway down the street, singing. Cameron has organised a room in a ritzy hotel—unable to face another sleep beneath his parents’ roof. They say goodbye to his friends at a taxi rank, and he keeps his arm around her waist, rubs his hand over her hips, wanting her.

In the room, they fall on each other, stripping clothes and taking each other on the floor. Initial lust dispensed with, they take a bubble bath together and drink champagne. Then they make love again with Abby sitting on the vanity.

The bed is the last place they explore, and it is here Abby feels the remnants of the weekend’s tension leaving her. This is what she will remember: frolicking with Cameron in this sumptuous suite, giving in to the tug of desire, curling up to the warmth of his body. She suppresses thoughts of that uncomfortable evening with his parents into the mist of the past. That’s what works best, she thinks: moving forward without looking back. It’s a recipe that has served her well since she was thirteen.

19

Abby is eating breakfast alone in her bungalow a couple of weeks later when her father calls. Since the trip to Melbourne, she’s been attempting to carve out a small amount of time away from Cameron. Cameron is hurt by it, but Abby is sure a bit of distance will be good for them. They’ve been so consumed with each other, to the extent Abby feels she’s almost forgotten who she is. Sometimes, she’s not sure she can make this thing happen anyway. She and Cameron are poles apart, opposite ends of a magnet, but attracted to each other by physics and chemistry.

Her father sounds cautious as he says hello, as if he’s expecting her to say something—about what, she’s not quite sure. ‘How are things?’ he asks. ‘How’s your work going?’

‘Everything’s good,’ she says. ‘Same old. How are you and Brenda? Still fighting?’

‘We’re okay. Same old.’

Abby laughs. Some things never change.

‘Just wondered if you’d heard from Matt,’ her father says.

‘Why? What’s up?’ Abby surrenders to a moment of guilt—she’s neglected her brother since Cameron exploded into her life. She hasn’t kept up her daily phone calls—not that Matt seemed to need them anyway, he was so abrupt when she rang him, annoyed with her for mothering him.

‘He hasn’t phoned you?’ her father asks.

‘No. I’ve been busy. I haven’t spoken to him for a while.’

‘Damn,’ her father curses. ‘I was hoping he would have rung you.’

Abby swallows a clutch of fear. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘We think he’s taken off somewhere. His house is empty and the car is gone. He’s left a note saying we shouldn’t look for him.’

Abby’s heart trampolines in her chest. ‘How long has he been missing?’

‘A week or so. We thought he might show up. Thought he might have gone hiking in the mountains or something.’

Abby turns over possibilities in her head and she doesn’t like any of them. ‘How was he when you last saw him?’ she asks.

‘He was quiet. You know Matt.’

‘Did he look okay? Did he say anything?’

Her father is evasive. ‘We haven’t seen much of him lately. Brenda’s daughter’s been having a crisis and we’ve been caught up in it.’

‘Have you talked to the police?’ Abby asks.

‘Not yet. He left a note. Not sure he qualifies as a missing person.’

Abby tells her father about her discussion with Matt when she was last down in Mansfield, how he might be susceptible to depression. Steve is silent, and Abby knows she’s just added to his worry.

‘I’ll come down,’ she says. If Matt has gone bush she knows where he’s most likely to go. She knows his favourite haunts. He might simply be enjoying time out—she can understand that—but she can’t suppress a nagging concern. The mountains cover a large area; if Matt wants to disappear she hasn’t a chance of finding him.

She phones Cameron to tell him she’s going away, that her brother is missing.
Missing
—it sounds so lonely and uncertain, so frightening. It seems, as she talks, as if she is somewhere else, somewhere up in the sky, watching herself talking on the phone. Cameron insists on coming with her. He says he’s put in some big hours at work since the Melbourne trip, and he’s also filed a couple of major feature articles so he’s owed some time off. He also insists on driving. There’s no way he’ll let her go to Mansfield in that bomb of a Laser.

Having Cameron along isn’t quite what Abby intended, but she feels fragile and guilty and worried, and it’s nice to let him take charge. Plus, it could also be good to have him in the mix to defuse things. Abby is sure of one thing: she won’t have patience for Brenda’s dramatics this time.

Home looks incredibly normal as they turn off the road to the farm the next afternoon: the short-cropped pastures, a cow rubbing its head on a fence post, a kookaburra craning from the wires, the oak trees by the house gradually discarding their brown cardboard leaves. Cameron’s car finds every dip and rut on the driveway. He takes it slowly, but the WRX The bottoms out more than once. Abby sees him wince, but he says nothing. No sacrifice is too great to get her here, it seems.

Brenda meets them at the door. She reserves her best welcoming smile for Cameron—immediately impressed by his city-chic appearance. She manages to gush over Abby too, almost convincingly, but Abby isn’t fooled; it’s all about showing off for Cameron.

Brenda is surprisingly upset about Matt’s disappearance. She talks about it as she makes tea, and she’s radiating concern. ‘Poor Matt,’ she says. ‘I hope he’s all right.’

Abby never thought Brenda liked Matt very much, and now she realises perhaps the disconnection is more on Matt’s side. Abby knows she’s guilty of her own biases.

‘We haven’t looked after him enough,’ Brenda says, tilting the teapot to pour strong tea into Willow cups laid out on matching saucers. ‘After this, we’ll make sure he isn’t left alone. We just want him back.’ She flusters busily in the kitchen, pulling out cake tins and laying out a stunning array of home-cooked cakes and slices. ‘Steve likes a good spread,’ Brenda says modestly.

Cameron is suitably flattering—Abby knows she can rely on him for tact. He tries a piece of everything and comments enthusiastically. The way Brenda blushes is almost sickening, but Abby can’t bring herself to enter the conversation. She’s too worried, consumed by a deep fear that something terrible has happened to her brother.

Steve comes in at last from the back paddock where he’s been rolling out hay for the cattle. He’s a soft touch with the cows, likes to feed them up before winter, warding off the lice that seem to appear when cattle get run-down in the cold weather. Abby watches him shake hands with Cameron. He looks thinner and more tired than usual, and he’s hay-spattered and rough. He sounds rough too with a broad flat country accent. She hadn’t realised how small-town he is until she sees him slouching here in the kitchen beside Cameron who is so sophisticated and smart. Cameron is significantly taller than her father, and he sits down quickly after shaking hands, sensitive to Steve’s status as man of the house. Abby silently thanks him. She feels a surge of warmth towards him and is suddenly glad she brought him along.

Over several cups of tea they talk about Matt, and Abby is too preoccupied with her brother’s disappearance to worry about the significance of Cameron looking in through this window on her family life. Steve has been out to Matt’s house several times and he’s been trying to call, but he can’t raise Matt anywhere. Abby too has left about a million messages on Matt’s phone since her father alerted her to his absence. She imagines him lying at the base of a cliff somewhere in the mountains, spread-eagled and still on the ground, his phone ringing into the silence. Eventually the battery will go flat and the phone will be dead. She shudders at the word. It can’t be possible that Matt’s not coming back.

After Brenda’s cakes are packed away, Abby takes Cameron out to Matt’s place. There’s just enough time before dinner, and even though her father says everything seems normal out there, Abby wants to see for herself. Her father might have missed something.