Shudder.
What had happened to Claire Henderson? The Claire Henderson I knew would never get on a motorbike, purely because it meant she’d get helmet hair and that just wouldn’t do.
I wandered dazed into the apartment and banged my knee on the coffee table.
“Ahhhh, sonofa … Ahhhh!”
How much more could my body take? I plonked onto the coffee table that was covered in papers and remotes. It could have been my near-death experience, fatigue from travel, or the overwhelming mess that lay before me that made my shoulders sag. What had seemed like a brilliant idea, to escape to the country for the summer, was literally falling apart. While Mum and Dad lived up the summer in the city, I was trapped in this smelly, grotty tomb. I wanted to run screaming, and maybe if I rang up now I could book a ticket on the first bus for tomorrow morning. I didn’t want to stay in the Onslow; not like this.
I shifted awkwardly on my lumpy, makeshift seat and grabbed the one thing that jabbed into me: a dog-eared copy of House and Garden magazine? Ha! Surely it was Mum’s, but as I eyed the date, September 1999, I knew it couldn’t be. It was only a few months old; Mum hadn’t been here for months and months. What had Dad been doing with House and Garden, of all things?
I flicked open the cover, half expecting it to reveal a fishing magazine inside. Instead, it fell open to a folded down page. There was writing scrawled in the corner: Dad’s writing. Clearing any doubts I had, I cocked my head and read, ‘Claire’s dream kitchen,’ with an arrow pointing to the image on the page. The photo was of a sleek, white kitchen with modern stainless steel appliances.
As I flicked further through the magazine, a smile curled my lips up. It was marked with several dog-eared pages of interest: a cosy lounge, a circled wall colour Dad would like for the living room, page after page of little comments on what he liked. My smile faded as I flicked through to another page.
A picture of a beautiful bedroom. A paper chain lantern was draped over the headboard of a gorgeous wooden bed with matching desk and a plush wingback chair. The bedspread was a lighter shade of a divine purple that offset the deep colour of the walls. It was such an intense colour, but the room could take it because the trimmings were a crisp white with polished floors and a gorgeous feature rug. It was so beautiful my fingers trailed over the glossed image to trace along the arrow to the scrawled handwriting that read, ‘Amy’s room’.
I blinked rapidly to clear my blurring vision as I focused on Dad’s handwriting. He knew what I liked. He must have sat here in this room, looking at beautiful pictures, daydreaming about the things he wished he had, the things he would like to have been able to give us.
It spoke to me, such a subtle gesture, because it was so unexpected and completely something I would do. People always said I was my father’s daughter; I had always scoffed at the comparison. Dad was a big, gruff, bearded bloke I didn’t like much being compared to, but maybe sometimes I was like my dad in other ways?
I lifted my gaze from the show-home display of dreamy, unlived-in images of perfection, to my bleak, littered surrounds. My heart sank.
Oh, hell no! This shit would not fly with me.
I squared my shoulders and chucked the magazine on the couch. Standing up, I circled the room with my hands on my hips.
“Nope, this won’t do at all,” I said aloud to the room.
The cogs in my mind started whirring and thoughts of a bus ticket home were long gone.
I walked over to the window I couldn’t open before and wiped a clean spot in the grimy glass. The sun twinkled on the lake’s surface – so beautiful, so familiar. I slowly tore my eyes from the view and looked back into the apartment and then back to the scene outside.
I smiled, slow and wicked. “It’s time to take out the trash!”
Chapter Six
The seventh black garbage bag flew down the chute.
The chute being my earlier, self-made, human-shaped skylight through the balcony floor. I dusted my hands off on my jeans with immense satisfaction as the last garbage bag made a clinking crash on top of the rubbish mound. It was so damn therapeutic; I had gone from tired, bruised, and down-and-out to having a new lease on life.
I had peeled off the threadbare throw covers from the couch, and cleared all the empty food containers, boxes, papers, bottles, and ashtrays. Instantly it had created clean spots throughout the apartment.
Well, sort of.
I lifted up an old beer bottle and it left a clean, circular marking in the thick layer of dust; this was the pattern all over the apartment. I worked on stripping cushion covers, bed sheets, doonas, and took down curtains, making a pile in the middle of the living room. They were ready to be washed for the first time in, well … I didn’t know how long. The last curtain crumpled in a heap on the floor and a cloud of dust shot into the air. I coughed up a storm, wiped my brow and re-evaluated the scene: Was I actually getting anywhere?