A salty sea breeze rushed into the room. After a morning spent driving the winding roads from Melbourne, the crash of waves and brackish sea air mixed to create a soothing balsam. It was quickly turning me from Ursula the Sea Witch to Ariel the Little Mermaid, but without the fantastic hair, banging bod, dingle-hopper, or seashell bra.
‘Are you sure it’s okay for me to stay here?’ I turned to face Penny, whose brows were raised, and lips pursed. ‘The landlord said it was fine?’
‘The slumlord was no problem at all.’ She bounced on her feet. ‘In fact, he only raised the total rent by one hundred dollars a week. He’s good like that.’
‘Slumlord?’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Really?’
‘He hates it when I call him that.’ A facetious smile took hold. ‘It’s fine, I promise. I sorted the lease with him last week over a pot of tea and fruitcake.’
If you spent ten minutes listening to Penny talk about Patrick, you’d think she was describing a recently beatified saint of the rental world. He wasn’t greedy and kept rent to the lower end of the scale, he let her hang pictures, kept out of her hair, mowed the lawns, helped the local junior football team, and donated his business time and energy to charitable projects, all while running his own construction company. As if that wasn’t enough, this place was modern and clean, and had a soft homely charm about it. I felt at ease already – I loved it!
‘Now, what do you want to do first?’ she said. ‘Unpack? Drink? Do you need something to eat?’
‘No, hell no.’ I patted a full stomach. ‘Brunch was epic: bacon, eggs, black pudding—’
Penny gestured with her fingers down her throat. ‘You’re so gross.’
‘It was lovely,’ I pressed. ‘Seriously, you don’t know what you’re missing out on. Crusty sourdough toast, farm fresh butter, tomatoes, spinach, you name it, we had it. Oh, and bottomless cups of coffee.’
‘The coffee I can do.’ She finger-gunned me. ‘Want one?’
I pulled up a wicker stool by a Munchkin Land-sized breakfast bar in the kitchen. Railway tiles and modern appliances made the space look slightly less tropical than the rest of the house. That is, until I reached across the counter and flicked at a dancing hula girl toy. We watched her gyrate against a jar of Blend 43.
‘That’s Lula the Hula.’ Penny jiggled the plastic toy. Her head flopped about wildly and her painted-on smile stayed resolute. ‘I like her. She doesn’t talk back.’
I looked away and laughed into the palm of my hand. ‘It’s a bonus, I guess.’
‘It is.’ Two mugs landed on the bench with a thud. I was about to drink coffee from the top of Elvis’s head. Did that make it a coffee-flavoured lobotomy? A lobo-coffee? ‘So, tell me about your last night in Melbourne.’
As part of the Farewell Ellie Tour, as if I were moving to the next country and never returning, my flatmates insisted on a Saturday night party. What began with crackers and beetroot hummus soon devolved into too much wine and Cards Against Humanity. We rounded things out with a late-night coffee and cake blitz through St Kilda, a stroll along the beach, and an early morning taxi fare home. After just enough sleep to take the edge off, we yawned our way into the closest café for breakfast at our regular table in the corner.
‘Can we go up to Melbourne one night? It’s been forever since I went. It might have been that day we did lunch and looked at the Myer Christmas windows.’
Also known as: The Week Before Everything Went to Shit. Ah, the ignorant bliss.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Of course, absolutely. We may as well do an overnight trip, make the most of the drive.’
‘See a concert?’ she suggested.
I nodded, enthused. ‘Definitely.’
After a few moments of silence, she clicked the kettle on. ‘So, Ellie returns home, huh?’
There it was – that wisp of disappointment people tried so hard to hide, with a smile, a cup of coffee, or a gentle enquiry gift wrapped in a statement that sounded more like a question. Friends had hinted as much when I decided to leave Melbourne. Are you okay? Are you having trouble coping? Are you sure there’s nothing you want to talk about?
‘It’s not all bad news, you know.’ I folded my arms over on the counter. ‘It was months ago—’
‘Long enough for …’ She cradled an invisible infant.
Don’t think I hadn’t thought of that a thousand times over. Tick-tock-biological-clock. ‘Thank the gods we didn’t make it that far. Honestly, I’m fine. I’ve dealt with what I needed to, and I’m happy. Sure, it still stings a little, and it might look like I’m running home with my tail between my legs, but at least I have a job—’
‘Bonus!’
‘—and, really, it just felt like the right time to make a fresh start.’
It also didn’t hurt that I’d had several weeks without the responsibility of a job to simply enjoy life again. It had been a welcome break, a chance to re-evaluate life, and work through my plan of attack. Money was tight, but the rent was paid, and I had enough to see me through to at least the first payday or two. It really wasn’t the worst thing ever. After all, I’d been through worse.
‘Everyone at school is peachy keen to meet you. I caught up with some of the girls last weekend. We should all go out for dinner. Why don’t we do that tonight? Should we?’
I waved a hand. ‘Not tonight. I just want to rest.’
‘Good, good.’ Water sloshed up the sides of the coffee cups as she poured, one after the other. Milk, sugar, and sewing tin biscuits.
‘Maybe next weekend?’ I tried. ‘Let me get settled in first.’
‘Speaking of settling in.’ Penny slinked away towards the front door. ‘Let’s get you unpacked, that way it’s done, and we can relax.’
Squeezing past each other like rabbits in a warren, we ferried my belongings inside one box at a time. Initially, we stacked them neatly by the door, careful not to make too much of a mess. By the final drop, full of bric-a-brac, I didn’t care. I tossed my armful on the bed and hoped for the best.
The last battered cardboard box, held together by rounds of red electrical tape and a bit of luck, bounced a little as it landed on the bed. A picture frame spilled out onto the duvet, anxious to escape. Not today, Satan. He of wandering penis was not welcome in this bed or near this house, lest he curse this new life, too. I snatched the rose gold artefact up and, before I could stuff it back into the box or set fire to it like it rightfully deserved, I looked at the carefully posted photo.
It was nothing too dissimilar to your average, spent-way-too-much wedding photos. The suit and tie were worthy of Casino Royale, crisp and cut in all the right places, and the white dress that had been painstakingly made over weeks, months even. It was sleek and modern, no garish beading or bones poised to turn my body into a cocktail frank on the receiving end of a toothpick at a moment’s notice. It was all just perfect, blissful, happiness.
Until it wasn’t.
Penny appeared by my side, snatching the frame from my hand.
‘Why?’ She waved it about like a bag of freshly laid dog turd. ‘Just … why?’
‘I have zero idea.’ My shoulders hugged the bottoms of my ears. ‘There was probably a nanosecond in which my not-so-romantic-anymore heart thought things could be fixed. A brief second of weakness where, maybe, if he’d told me he’d simply tripped and fallen into her, I might have believed him, and things would be okay again.’
‘Tripped and fell into her?’ she squawked. ‘Ellie, you deserve better than