Where Have You Been? (5 page)

Anyway, Susan takes no offence, makes no objections because, as she sees it, her father's probably right. It's true –
she has no burning ambition, no particular talent. Judging by her final exam results, she's reasonably, but not outstandingly, bright. She has no flair for art or music or textiles or sport. She abandoned the acting fantasy in her junior years of high school. She has no desire to be a lawyer or a doctor, or to study arts or engineering. But she doesn't want to be a check-out chick or spend her life waitressing, either. So, ultimately, if rather unimaginatively, it's a choice between teaching and nursing, and considering that her mediocre marks will barely secure her a place in primary education in a rural college, nursing's really the only option. She can't claim that she has a burning desire to make people well, to heal or to nurture, but then, at her age, who does? Like many girls her age, Susan's only significant desire is the usual one. And, were anyone to ask, she'd have to admit that the prospect of meeting a nice young doctor (isn't that every young nurse's dream?) is appealing.

He is not a doctor, but a business studies student at the CAE. He's not quite a man either, but the same age as Susan: nineteen – just a boy, really. She is eating an early lunch – a pay-by-weight meat and salad sandwich – between lectures; is sitting contentedly alone at one of the courtyard tables at the college cafe, when another student, male, asks if she'd mind sharing. She says no, go ahead, but can't help wondering, after a quick look around, why he wants to share when there are so many empty tables. The boy takes the seat across from Susan, heaves his backpack onto the vacant chair. Her initial impression is that he's reasonably good-looking – maybe his hair's a bit shorter than what's currently fashionable and he is, perhaps, a bit too boy-scouty, it's possible that he's a Christian or a young Liberal on a mission – so she keeps her eyes cast down, chews her food slowly, self-consciously, trying hard not to gulp or dribble.

‘You're from the beaches aren't you?' His voice is deep, his vowels neutral.

‘What beaches?' Susan knows she sounds impatient, that her tone could even be taken as scornful, dismissive. It's just nerves.

He perseveres. ‘The northern beaches. I'm sure I've seen you swimming at Freshie. I'm from Harbord.' He's smiling warmly, encouragingly. Susan wonders when it was that he saw her there – she hasn't been in the surf for months. She wonders what swimmers she was wearing.

‘Actually, yeah, I do. I am. Well, sort of.' Susan tries to appear less wary. ‘I live in Manly, but my Mum's at Harbord. I don't know if that counts.'

‘Oh, yeah – Manly counts alright. Good surf.' He nods approvingly, smiles. ‘Mackellar Girls?'

‘Yep. You were at Manly?'

‘Uh huh. Don't know how we've never met.'

He has great teeth, and the faintest of dimples in his right cheek. ‘So. What're you studying?'

‘Nursing.'

‘Nursing? Then how come you're here? At college? I thought nurses trained in hospitals.' His eyes, wide set, heavily lashed, are an impossibly bright blue. They
twinkle.
She wonders how it is that she's never noticed him before.

‘They've changed the system.' Her reply is too abrupt.

‘Oh.' He seems suddenly at a loss, looks away, his shoulders slumped.

Susan contemplates packing up and going – her chemistry lecture begins in five minutes – but she can't leave the conversation there. She tries hard to combat her nerves, to inject some casual warmth into her voice, ‘So, what're you studying?'

He brightens at her enquiry. ‘Business. Marketing options mainly.'

‘That sounds interesting.'

‘Oh, it's fantastic. I'm learning some unbelievable stuff. Huge. Life-changing. Did you know that just through the introduction of peer reviews, a company can increase employee productivity by up to eighty per cent? Just imagine it, eighty per cent!'

Susan has no idea what he's talking about, but she doesn't care. All the other boys she's met at college have been cool, restrained, have been trying hard to be cynical, to seem grownup. This boy is different. He's so unselfconsciously enthusiastic, so convinced of the wisdom of what he's learning.

‘You should come to the three o'clock lecture, I'm sure no one would mind. He's an unreal guy, the lecturer – totally inspiring. He'll make it all much clearer than I can. Why don't you come?' He looks doubtful. ‘I mean – that is – if you're interested.'

She's interested.

‘By the way,' he says, holding out his hand, ‘I'm Ed. Ed Middleton.'

Although there's the odd occasion when parents are absent and surreptitious overnight stays are possible, it's almost impossible for Ed and Susan to spend long periods of time together.

It even proves difficult to meet outside college during the week – Ed's mother, though not overtly hostile, doesn't approve of Susan. ‘Ed's studying, I'm afraid,' she'll say over the phone, ‘I don't think I should disturb him.' Or, ‘He's helping his dad at the factory today, dear, and you can't call him there. I'll let him know you called ... er ... Sally, is it? Perhaps he can get back to you tomorrow...?'

Ed, though anxious himself, and conspicuously nervous whenever they're both in his mother's company, tries to reassure her. ‘I think it's just that you're so quiet around her,
Sue, so reserved. I think quiet people make her uncomfortable.' He makes suggestions: ‘Perhaps if you'd open up a little; try to be more friendly. Maybe
you
could start conversations; talk about the weather, the tennis...? I think she just doesn't know what to make of you.'

But Susan suspects that it is the little she does know of her that offends the respectable Mrs Middleton: her parents' divorce (‘Such a sad thing, divorce,' she sniffs. ‘We're lucky, in our family, we've all managed to keep together. Seven siblings between us, Mr Middleton and I have. And there's not been a single divorce. Not one!'); her mother's ‘illness' (‘Oh dear, a psychological problem is it? Fortunately we've never had to cope with that sort of thing in our family. It's just not in our make-up, I suppose.'); her father's live-in girlfriend (‘Gillian's your stepmother, is she, dear? They're not actually married? Oh, I see.'); even the fact that Susan lives in a unit (‘Oh, I do think that must be hard. All those neighbours. And no garden. No sunshine. It can't be healthy.'). It is possible too that, being local, she remembers Karen's disappearance, though Susan has never mentioned it to her. Or to Ed. Instead, she has told Ed that her older sister died of meningitis when she was a child. This is the tale she tells any new friends or acquaintances. It's an easier story to tell, somehow, and the more frequently she's called upon to tell it, the more real it feels.

While he doesn't disapprove of Ed in particular, Susan's father has made it clear (despite both Gillian's and his daughter's remonstrations) that he will not welcome frequent visits by young men. ‘They take up so much space,' he huffs. ‘Their big feet. Their pimples. Their callow arrogance.' He sucks in his cheeks, ‘And they
eat
so much.' Ed's visits, as awkward and uncomfortable as Sue's visits to the Middleton home, are restricted to Friday nights, between the hours of six and ten pm.

Though neither of them are especially keen on the outdoors, out of desperation Ed and Susan take up camping. They go away together every few weekends when Ed can get away from work, stop at different beaches and camping grounds along the Central Coast, sleep in the back of Ed's newly resprayed EH Holden wagon, his pride and joy.

Susan tells her father that they are staying at a friend's holiday house at The Entrance. It is his imagined response to them sleeping in the back of the car, rather than to the outrageous fact of their sleeping
together,
that keeps Susan from telling him the truth – and though she knows he has reservations about Ed's driving ability and the age and reliability of his vehicle, he makes no real objections to their weekends away. Susan's not sure what Ed tells his parents, but assumes, noting his barely suppressed panic whenever they are held up on the congested freeway on Sunday nights and the frequent calls he makes from garage payphones along the way, that he, too, is lying.

‘Why don't we move in together?' Susan has woken up cramped and cold in the back of the wagon. Ed is lying on his side, facing away from her, his knees pulled up almost to his chest in order to fit. They have been going out for more than six months, and with no perceptible diminution of interest, but Susan can no longer pretend to herself that the extreme inconvenience, the humiliating privation of their weekends together – the mosquitos, the lack of decent food, the vaguely sordid coupling on the hard floor of the wagon-tray (or occasionally, for variety, on the back seat), the interminable walks to the smelly amenity block for a pee – represents in any way the apotheosis of romantic love. Moving in together seems a reasonable way to avoid these weekends of deception and discomfort. ‘Ed?' she nudges him gently when no answer's forthcoming, ‘why not move in together?'

‘We can't.' His voice is low, slightly muffled. ‘How could we afford it?'

‘Oh, Ed. Don't be so stupid. It's easy.' Most of Susan's school friends have moved out of home by now, so she knows how it's done. ‘We'll both get some sort of student allowance. I can get more part-time work. You've still got your work at your dad's factory – it's not like he'll care. We'll be able to rent a little flat somewhere. We can get other people in if it gets too dear. I've only got another year of study, anyway. Come on, Ed – it'd be fantastic.'

‘It'd be too hard. We couldn't. Not live together.'

‘Oh Ed.' He doesn't say what is bothering him, but Susan knows without being told that it is his mother. She wouldn't approve. (‘Living In Sin? No one in the Middleton family has ever...')

‘But we could get married.' He turns towards her now, grinning widely, wildly. ‘Let's get married, Susy.'

‘Married?' Susan is not yet twenty. Twenty-year-olds live together; share dingy flats with other cohabiting students. Marriage is something you do when you grow up. Marriage is something else entirely. ‘Married?'

Ed shuffles about in the cabin until he is kneeling, one leg tucked awkwardly behind him. He takes Susan's hand, takes both hands, clasps them between his two, ‘Will you do me the honour,' he says, raising her hands to his lips. ‘Susan my love, my darling, my life,' he brushes the backs of her hands gently with his lips, then turns them over, kisses her wrists, ‘will you do me the honour of becoming my wife? Go on. Say you will.'

And he looks so sweetly ridiculous, bare naked, his rangy body all hunched over in that small space, his face as crumpled and tender with sleep as a baby's.

How can she refuse?

‘You're not what Ed needs,' his mother hisses the words, though she smiles politely for the camera. ‘You're not the right kind of girl for my son,' she elaborates, making sure the message sinks in. ‘And you'll never last.'

‘Could you ladies stand a little closer,' the photographer calls. ‘So your shoulders are just touching. Great. Now, how about a smile from the bride. This isn't your funeral, honey. That's better. Perfect. Perfect.'

It takes Susan a moment to recover from the flash and dazzle, and by then it's too late for any response – she's standing with her arm around Ed's waist, smiling triumphantly for the camera.

The solicitor's secretary phones. It is late afternoon, a month after the notice was first placed. ‘Mr Hamilton's very busy, Mrs Middleton,' she says briskly, ‘or he'd have rung you himself. He wants me to tee up an appointment with you. If you could come in as soon as possible?'

‘There's been a response, hasn't there?' Susan tries hard to keep her voice level, detached.

‘I really don't know anything about it, Mrs Middleton. How about ten tomorrow?'

She sounds so breezy, so offhand, so indifferent.

Doesn't she know what this means?

‘I asked her what her mother's full name was, her mother's maiden name, her – your mother's date of birth. Her own full name, date of birth, place of birth, former residences. And,' here he sorts through papers, aligns them briskly on his desk, ‘she knew all the answers. She hesitated a little when I asked her your mother's birthday, but the date she finally gave was quite correct.'

Susan is sitting in Howard Hamilton's office. It is only ten in the morning and the room is air-conditioned, but even so she is hot; the heat prickles her scalp, her legs stick moistly to the leather seat, she is conscious of the gradually spreading damp patches beneath her arms. It has been a struggle to get here, to get the children off to school on time, to drive through manic peak-hour traffic and find a park. She's had to hurry, in uncomfortably high heels, along the busy Chatswood streets. She's had no time to catch her breath while waiting. She arrived just on the hour, was ushered in still panting from the rush and is sitting now, trying to make sense, react sensibly.

‘And the DNA?'

‘Well, as I warned you, the test is not conclusive, but it seems it can't rule out the possibility that this woman is your sister. In my opinion, it's not likely that she'd have agreed to undergo a test at all if there was really any question.'

‘What about looks? Does she
look
like Karen?'

‘Well, from the little I had to go on, I would say that the woman I met yesterday is physically consistent with your sister. She's fair-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed. Regular features. She's thinner. Older. But that's only to be expected.'

‘So do you think it's her? Do you think you've got enough to go on? If the DNA's inconclusive? And these facts? Surely anyone could know these ... these things.'