The Ripple Effect (17 page)

“That’s right, you told me. There’s no reason why you won’t one day.”

Joelle smiled. “No.” One day.

“Can you speak Japanese?”

“Yes. I took it at school.”

“I’m hopeless at languages,” said Shay.

“You must have been good at science.”

“I was.” So many things they didn’t know about each other.

Back at number fourteen, Shay made plunger coffee while Joelle arranged their purchases on a blue patterned dinner plate. Everything about his little house delighted her. Compared to her own clean, sleek, modern apartment this one room wide terrace reeked with charm. She loved the way the floorboards creaked in the tiny hallway when someone walked there, the steep staircase to the bedrooms with its awkward corner half way up, the coloured lead light glass panels in the arched front windows.

It was cosy and intimate, filled with Shay and his possessions. CDs neatly arranged in a cabinet. Books not so neatly lined a long bookshelf, two large tomes, probably medical references lying open on the table next to the newspaper and a pile of opened mail. One of the lovely and distinctive Margaret Preston wildflower prints fitted perfectly over the fireplace. A bamboo flute with red tassels hung over the doorway to the kitchen. A comfortable looking couch covered in black fabric and strewn with cushions in jewel colours took up most of the living room. A pair of his shoes lay on the floor together with two navy socks.

Joelle, under Shay’s instructions loaded a tray with cutlery, plates and cups for two and took it outside to the table in the sun. Shay followed with the plunger pot and a jug of milk.

“Sugar?” she asked.

“In the cupboard over the sink,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t use it so I didn’t think.”

When Joelle returned Shay had poured the coffee and was waiting for her.

“That’s one of the things we’ll learn about each other,” he remarked.

“Sometimes separated siblings meet after years and years and discover they wear the same colour clothes and eat the same food and everything.” Joelle took a croissant and broke a piece off to eat. It was still warm from the bakery and made her fingers slippery with butter.

“Try some of Mum’s jam.” Shay pushed the jar towards her.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had fig jam,” she said. She spooned some onto her plate. It had big chunks of fruit and was a greyish green colour, which wasn’t appealing at all. Raw figs had a pink, moist suggestiveness…

“Those people are usually twins,” said Shay. “The ones who do the same things.” He took a danish and ate a third in one mouthful.

“Are they?” Joelle spread some of the jam on another piece of croissant. It was very sweet but surprisingly tasty. Shay was watching her eat, she knew. She smiled and deliberately put more on the next mouthful.

“Good?”

“Mmm.” Her mouth was full of rich sweetness. Sinfully fattening but delicious. A treat with her new brother.

“You know we may not have the same father,” said Shay slowly. He placed the remains of the Danish on his plate and licked his index finger and thumb. “And we might not ever find either of them.”

Hypnotised, her eyes watched sticky fingers slide in and out between full, moist lips. He wiped his hands on a paper serviette.

Joelle blinked, concentrated, said, “If there are two. Emily was very young, wasn’t she? Especially when she had you. I wonder what sort of girl she was.” The obvious answer was not pleasant. A junkie? A girl who sold her body for drugs and ended up with extra responsibilities she couldn’t hope to cope with?

“And what made her run away from home in the first place. That’s one of the things we might find out if we can find someone who knew her. I’ve tried googling her but all I can find is an American author and some other people who are obviously not our mother—born in 1845 or whatever.”

“Ads!” cried Joelle. “We should put ads in the classifieds in all the major papers. I see them all the time—you know—‘anyone knowing the whereabouts of’. We might get an answer from a non-family member—a school friend or a neighbour or someone.”

“Good idea. We can do that today.” He grinned into her eyes and made her absurdly happy.

Joelle poured them both more coffee. Her brother. Shay was her brother.

“What sort of music do you like?” she asked.

“Country mainly. But now I like classical too. I had a girlfriend who was studying violin at the conservatorium and she made me go to concerts with her. I discovered Bach, Vivaldi and Handel through her. What about you?”

Joelle wrinkled her nose at the mention of country music. The idea of a girlfriend she didn’t want to address. He’d used past tense. Leave it.

“My Dad loves Latin American music—tangos and stuff from South America and Cuba. I grew up with it, he plays it at every party, says it makes people dance. Mum’s a classical nut and they both go to concerts and sometimes to the opera in Sydney so I also grew up hearing that. I like funky dance stuff.” Mum and Dad. The terms had slipped out. Shay didn’t comment.

“Pretty broad range,” he said.

Joelle nodded. “I like just about anything—except country music.” She grinned at him.

“Growing up where I did you don’t hear much else, especially as Birrigai is fairly close to Tamworth—country music capital of Australia,” he added with a broad, twanging American accent.

“I suppose our taste in music comes from nurture versus nature,” said Joelle.

“Probably. Favourite food?” asked Shay.

“Fresh fruit,” said Joelle promptly. “I love mangoes.”

“Me too. What about dinner type food? I can’t go past a good steak.”

“Seafood,” said Joelle.

“Not keen on lobster and shellfish,” said Shay, “but I like fish.”

“Oysters. Yum,” said Joelle. “That’s probably because we can get them so fresh and you wouldn’t in Birrigai.”

Shay laughed. “I doubt whether Beryl at the pub would have even seen a lobster. She used to have fish fingers on the menu. Fresh from the deep freeze. The pub had the only restaurant when I was growing up. There’s a café in town now.”

“Did you like growing up in Birrigai?” asked Joelle.

“Loved it,” said Shay. “We were free as can be. We raced around on our bikes till it got too dark to see, swam in the river, rode horses, played footie and cricket, climbed trees. Broke our arms and legs, fought each other. It was great.”

“Sounds fantastic,” said Joelle. “Especially the last bit.”

Shay chuckled. “I was ready to leave though. We had to go to high school in Tamworth and I learned about all sorts of things I never knew existed. Then I came to University in Sydney.”

“So you’re here to stay now? In the city?”

“Not really. I’ve always had in the back of my mind that our mother died because there weren’t the facilities to cope with her complications. Country areas are desperately short of doctors. I’m needed out there.”

Joelle nodded. “So you’ll be leaving.” Disappointment fogged her throat.

Shay leaned across and grasped her hand. “But we’ll still be together. We’re family. Anyway, I’m here for the rest of the year. I need the experience.”

Joelle clutched his hand. The rest of the year? A matter of months and then this wonderful man would disappear. Birrigai was hundreds of kilometres away. Too far for regular visits. She wanted to see him every day. She wanted to drink him in and absorb every part of him so that she knew him as well as she knew herself. They had twenty seven years to fill in. His fingers were warm in hers and she couldn’t release her grip on him. She’d only just found him.

“Don’t cry, Joelle,” he murmured and she realised tears had begun running down her cheeks. “We’ll always be in touch now. For the rest of our lives. We’re inseparable.”

He moved to sit beside her on the bench and then his arms were around her and he held her close. Like a lover.

But he wasn’t her lover. He could never be to her what she craved. Even to think along those lines was wrong and unnatural. Abhorrent even. Joelle rested her head on his shoulder and he sat with his arms around her, holding her like a brother.

Mel hit her with a barrage of questions as soon as she walked in the door—“What did you talk about? What did he tell you? When are you going to meet his family? When are you going to Birrigai? Are you going to look for more relatives? Can I help?”—until Joelle said, “I’m tired, Mel. Can we do this tomorrow? I hardly slept last night and I got up at dawn. I really need to go to bed.”

“But what did you and Shay talk about? Anything?” Mel said her voice rising with frustration and impatience. She stood with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face. The TV blared behind her adding to the tension with its screaming ads for discount furniture.

“Heaps of things. Everything and nothing. You know how it is?” Joelle flung her arms wide. “We just talked and got to know each other. I don’t need an inquisition at the moment. Okay?”

“Hmmph.” Mel grunted and threw herself back on to the couch. She picked up the remote, clicked and in the ensuing silence said, “I thought you’d be home for dinner. I made a tuna casserole.”

“Oh, sorry, I should have rung. I had dinner with Shay.” Joelle headed for her room.

“I rang Bridget.” The words chased her down the hall like retrievers, snapping at her, drawing her back.

Caught, Joelle retraced her steps. “What did she say?”

“She was amazed. Just like us. She wondered why you hadn’t called.” Mel said with an accusing emphasis in her gaze at odds with her casually sprawled body. “Dad rang her first.”

“I’ll call her.” The TV bounced back into life. Joelle shut herself in her room. She would call Bridget but not now. At this moment she needed a shower and sleep. And she couldn’t deal with any more questions and explanations.

When she awoke, the same thoughts swam in her head, as though her brain had continued working through the night. Like a CD player, going on and on, endlessly repeating the same tunes until someone walked back into the room and switched it off. Except she couldn’t switch off. She didn’t want to think about any of it this morning any more than she wanted to think about any of it last night.

She didn’t want to think about the lie. The irony of the whole situation was not being able to discuss such an enormous problem with her parents. They were the ones she’d always taken her worries to, especially William. Never before had she experienced an estrangement from them. Not on this scale, this Grand Canyon scale. The awareness sat deep in her stomach like a lead weight but she was powerless to lift the phone and call them. She was the victim, the wronged one. They should be calling her. They should be doing the apologising and begging for forgiveness. Not her.

She could barely force herself out of bed and into the shower. For the first time ever, she didn’t want to go to the shop. Her room was a sanctuary. Outside was reality. A world she had to face in the knowledge, she couldn’t have the one she loved—and couldn’t seek comfort from anyone. Couldn’t tell anyone, least of all the object of her love.

Don’t think about it. Focus. Get out of the bathroom, get dressed.

Joelle finished brushing her hair and twisted its length into a roll she pinned and held fast with a tortoiseshell grip. Tendrils of hair always escaped and fluffed around her face. Too curly. She’d never properly noticed how curly compared to Natalie’s. Finer too, even though the colour was similar. That’s what had distracted her from the myriad of differences that were apparent the closer she studied her face in the mirror. The nose, of course, was nothing like the Paice conk. It wouldn’t be.

Neither of her sisters had eyes anything like the blue of hers. Or the shape. Her brow was wider and the eyebrows more finely arched. Bridget always complained about her own thicker straighter eyebrow line. Mel’s was similar.

Her mouth was fuller, her smile curved upward while theirs went across in a wider opening. Teeth, hands, walk, build. Everything. They must have all been blind not to notice. Shay said Stan Brookes told him their mother had the same slim, blonde looks.

Joelle downed a cup of tea before she left the flat. There was no sign of Mel but that wasn’t surprising, she’d never been a morning person. No questions, thank goodness.

The morning dragged. Customers came and went. She took two bookings for weddings and one golden wedding anniversary party. She wanted to talk to Shay again but he’d be at work, too. She couldn’t interrupt a doctor with personal calls. Would he be thinking about her?

Just before lunchtime Viv, who’d been eyeing her askance all morning, asked if she was feeling all right. Of course—neither Viv nor Tracey knew anything about her altered state of being.

“I slept badly,” she said, then offered the distracting information that pregnant Mel had come to stay for an indefinite period.

“Say no more,” said Viv with a sympathetic grimace. “That’d keep me awake at night too.”

“We’re getting on all right,” Joelle said defensively. Viv’s glib remark peeved her. Had she herself always referred to Mel’s antics in the same throwaway manner? The shameful answer was yes. “She needs some support at the moment. The parents weren’t very impressed by the news.”

“I’ll bet. How is she?”

“Pretty good physically. Scared though, I think.”

“Good thing she’s got a sister like you,” said Viv. “Heard from Paul?”

“Paul?” Joelle stared vacantly. How did he figure in this conversation about Mel?

“Yeah, you remember—tall, friendly, besotted, wants to marry you?”

“Uh, no. I haven’t. I think we broke up.”

“You think you broke up?”

“We did. I haven’t seen or heard from him in weeks.”

“He was in here only a week ago.” Viv strode through to the shop with an armful of flowers in bunches she’d prepared. Joelle followed with her own arms full of fragrant posies and helped her fill the display buckets.

A week? Was that all? Just over a week really. Paul hadn’t so much as entered her head. He seemed to inhabit a different world, a parallel universe completely disconnected to the girl she now was.

This week and the next would pass even more slowly. Shay was on call for the practice the following weekend and had to be available at a moment’s notice. He’d told her he also did night shifts at the emergency department of the local hospital to gain extra experience. The weekend after next, he was scheduled to be on duty. They may not see each other for three weeks if he couldn’t change the roster. An eternity.