Crossing the Lines Page 6

  Standing, she rubbed the stiffness from her neck. Every small movement seemed to take effort at the moment, but perhaps that was the pregnancy. Her body was preoccupied with creating another person from scratch. It could hardly be expected to have energy for gardening as well. She smiled, cradling the thought of the new life within her. It was like having some magic secret protected inside her body, but, of course, it wasn’t a secret. Hugh knew, though he wouldn’t talk about it, was determined to ignore it for as long as possible. Madeleine longed to talk about names and look for prams, but his lack of enthusiasm made her feel silly, and so she held off.

  She shrugged off her disappointment with him. Hugh would come around and then they would be excited together. It was not as if the pregnancy was an accident. They’d agreed. Madeleine shook her head. Men were strange creatures.

  She walked inside and filled a mug from the tap. My God, she was tired. She looked again at the blotchy rash on her forearms. It was odd. She’d never had a reaction like that before. Perhaps a shower would wash off whatever pollen it was that was irritating her skin.

  It was not till she slipped off her work jeans that she saw the blotches on her thighs and then her stomach. A small flutter of panic buried quickly. Hadn’t she read that strange rashes and reactions were perfectly normal in pregnancy?

  Madeleine showered and lay down on the couch with a morning talk show. Bantering hosts with gleaming hair and teeth. Determined not to become one of those women who turned to glass the moment they became pregnant, Madeleine ignored her own uneasiness. The rash seemed more marked now, but that was probably the effect of the hot water.

  The end was signalled by blood a little later. Madeleine wasn’t sure what to do. She knew what was happening, but she wasn’t certain what should follow. Hugh was with a patient, unavailable. She left a message. And she called her own doctor. He said that it did sound like she was having a miscarriage and told her to come in the next morning.

  And so Edward alone watched as Madeleine d’Leon’s baby was lost, as from her heart slipped the quiet excitement that had nested there. He watched as she wept, ever so briefly, wiping her face and pulling herself together, containing her horror too quickly. This sort of thing happened all the time. It was not a big deal and a good job they had not made an announcement or bought a pram.

  When Hugh finally came home, they quarrelled over what to have for dinner. She picked the fight. He was trying to be nice, to cheer her up with Chinese food—a sweet and sour salve. After all she seemed to be handling it well, philosophically without undue histrionics. Miscarriages weren’t uncommon in the first trimester…it didn’t need to mean anything catastrophic. And Madeleine felt alone with her sadness—this was her loss, not his. Hugh was funny and comforting and not devastated. Here first began the thought that the baby had sensed its father’s lack of enthusiasm, that somehow that had influenced its decision not to stay.

  But Madeleine knew that was silly, unfair. And so she was just angry.

  Edward searched for the words to adequately describe the strange grief that gripped Madeleine, a sense that something had been left behind. A child who died before it could be truly loved. Perhaps that was the difference. Madeleine felt her own child’s grief, its sense of the life it had been denied, Hugh only their own disappointment.

  Desserts

  Her doctor gave her antibiotics, some pamphlets, and a speech on grief, loss, and depression. Madeleine smiled and told him she was fine. She was only ten weeks along after all. She stopped by the garden centre on the way home and bought box hedges and a weeping cherry tree, a cement plinth and a statue to sit upon it. A sleeping cherub, a fat Botticelli baby. She shook her head, mortified by the fact that she was turning into a cliché. God, how embarrassing. But still, she wanted the statue.

  They delivered her purchases that afternoon and she began to build the garden. A secret memorial so the poor small thing would know it was grieved a little at least. But no one else must know because this was silly.

  “Ned.”

  Willow’s voice pulled Edward from Madeleine’s garden. She looked tired and frightened as she stood at the desk signing forms. Bourke loomed beside her, pointing to the places on the form which required her signature.

  “Is this where you tell me not to leave town, Detective?” she asked—a forced facetiousness, a brittle bravado.

  Edward put his arm around her. “Will, are you all right?”

  Bourke left them to it. It was only then she broke down, burying her face in Edward’s shoulder so the desk sergeant would not see.

  Edward said nothing, manoeuvring her out of the station in the protection of his arms. Outside he gave her his handkerchief.

  Madeleine lingered over the gesture, the fact that a man of his age even carried a handkerchief. There was something archaically gallant about the way he handed it to her, like the old-fashioned manner in which he cursed. She wondered where that came from. There was a sense to Edward McGinnity that seemed to run counter to the past she’d given him. She pondered what she didn’t yet know.

  Edward took Willow to a quiet restaurant. He ordered tea and all the desserts on the menu. The waiter asked only if they’d like the desserts served on a single tray. Edward nodded. “We’d better have some ice cream in the middle.”

  “Naturally, sir.”

  Madeleine laughed, aware she was romanticising her protagonist ludicrously. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a man who’d order all the desserts on offer? That on its own made Edward McGinnity irresistible.

  Willow began with the chocolate mousse, Edward the citrus-almond cake on his side of the tray. She told him about the interrogation then, the endless questions, repeated and restructured so she became confused and tongue-tied.

  “They think I pushed him, Ned.”

  “God…why?”

  “They found part of his review of my show in the stairs, a torn fragment of a draft.”

  “So?”

  “They say he showed me the review…that I got angry, tore it up, and pushed him down the stairs.” Willow cut the brandied pear in half and pushed one section towards Edward. “Detective Bourke kept promising I could say it was an accident…that I didn’t intend for him to fall. I just got so flustered…”

  Edward swallowed his share of the pear. “Why didn’t you ask for a lawyer, Will?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was hoarse. “I didn’t want to seem…I don’t know. Who would I have called, Ned? I don’t know any lawyers.”

  “You would have called me and I would have done the rest. We’ll find you a lawyer today. I’ll ring Andy.”

  “Isn’t he overseas?” Willow reminded Madeleine of what she’d written before.

  “Yes, but he’s due back in a day or two. At the very least he’ll be able to give us the name of someone to call.”

  “Ned, we can’t afford—”

  “I can, so you can.”

  “Elliot wouldn’t like—”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Ned—”

  “Will, he wouldn’t even come to the station.”

  “I told him not to.”

  Edward took a breath, stopped himself before he broke and told her that Elliot was beneath her, that he did not deserve her. “Will, you should have a lawyer. We’ll come to some arrangement about the money. Do this for me. I need to know that you’ve got the best representation possible.”

  “I didn’t do anything, Ned.”

  “I know. A good lawyer will be able to make sure it’s sorted out quickly, without your name ending up in the papers.” He flinched a little as he said the last, thinking of the reporter from the day before. It might already be too late for that.

  They argued about the lawyer through a rhubarb clafoutis and the vanilla bean pana cotta, but the crème caramel saw Willow give in as Edward knew she would. He saw from the beg
inning that she was scared beyond pride.

  Willow considered the demolished remains of the tray of desserts. “Call Mr. Finlay,” she said. “Ask if he’ll speak to me as soon as I come out of my sugar-induced coma.”

  Edward nodded. “It’ll be all right, Will.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She wiped her eye with the heel of her hand. “Tell me about your book. How are you and your crime-writer finding each other?”

  “We’re rubbing along.”

  “Tell me, is she terribly macabre? Does she read the obituaries for research?”

  “Hmmm, hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps she should.”

  Madeleine smiled at the thought. People always assumed obituaries contained much more detail about the manner of the deceased’s passing than they actually did.

  Willow shook her head. “Oh, Ned, it’s a good thing you’re single.”

  “What? Why?” Edward contemplated being offended.

  “Well, look at you! You’re completely smitten with a figment of your imagination. A real woman wouldn’t have a chance.”

  Edward laughed. “She’s married. Even my figment is married.”

  “You could write an end to that. Kill him off or something.” Willow’s eyes gleamed wickedly. “You could have her do him in herself.”

  “She’s the crime-writer, not me,” Edward said, though he knew she was teasing him. “Besides, she loves him. It’s important that she loves him.”

  “But does her husband love her?”

  “Yes, but I think not enough.”

  Madeleine stopped, staring at the screen. What made him say that, what made her think that? She highlighted the text but faltered at pressing delete. It was what he’d said. She couldn’t unthink it now.

  “I’m afraid that’s usually the case.” Willow frowned. She rubbed his sleeve. “It’s lovely to see that look in your eye again, Ned. I haven’t seen it that strong since Sentience.”

  It was only then that Edward remembered he hadn’t told her about the change in his first novel’s fortunes. He put right the oversight, and she cheered and celebrated completely, despite the trouble in her own life. And he loved her more.

  Madeleine closed her eyes, languishing in the way he looked at the young artist. Did men look at women like that in real life, or was she conjuring something wishful and impossibly romantic in the heart of Edward McGinnity? Had anyone ever looked at her like that? She pulled her mind from that thought, lest it take hold.

  Madeleine closed the laptop, blanching as she checked her watch. She was going to be late.

  Tearing into the bedroom she exchanged her writing pyjamas for jeans, a pinstriped blouse, and her navy jacket. Not an exciting outfit, but reliable. On good days it suited her, on bad days it didn’t look awful.

  She pulled her car out of the drive and turned left towards Warradale, about an hour’s drive away. The road was quiet as country roads tend to be, though there were places where experience told her to be vigilant for roos or wallabies intent on meeting an untimely end by leaping across in front of the only car that may have come that way in hours.

  The journey gave her another hour with Edward. Just with him. When her laptop was open, she was writing his story, sharing him with plot and theme, and…well, others. When she was driving, unable to write, she could just be with him. Wonder about him. And linger over the smaller parts of his life that would never make it to print. She liked that. This hour she found snippets of his childhood before the crash. The brother who was his best friend and frequent nemesis. Games, name-calling, half-earnest tussles. She named him. Jacob McGinnity, brother of Edward. What part he’d have in this story she wasn’t sure. Perhaps none at all. Perhaps she just needed to know him, how he was with Edward, so that she could know Edward.

  The house outside which Madeleine pulled up was not extraordinary. Neither modern nor quaintly old, it existed in the no-man’s-land of the dated. Its colours were inoffensive, its architecture bland. But the building was surrounded by a garden that was as extravagant as the structure was unremarkable. Roses competed for space with trumpet vines, lantern flowers, and a perplexing number of arbours, garden gnomes, and trellises. Madeleine had always thought her father’s house an overdressed wallflower trying to hide her plainness with a loud, blowsy skirt.

  She entered through the side gate to avoid the sprinklers, waving as her grandmother came out onto the porch. The old woman wore a sari.

  “Hello, Aach-chi. I’m sorry I’m late.”

  Edward put down his pen. Realisation. Surprise. Why had he not noticed that Madeleine had eastern heritage? She was brown. He could see it when he looked at her now, but he hadn’t noticed it before. She looked a little like Harijini, the Sri Lankan exchange student he’d known at school. Gosh, he’d forgotten about Harijini till now. This might add an interesting twist if he could pull it off.

  “Twist?” Madeleine laughed at him. “Maybe it’s just who I am…Anglo-Saxon isn’t the only normal.”

  Edward blanched. “You’re right. Sorry.”

  “Harijini, come in, come in,” the old woman clucked.

  Madeleine exhaled. She hated her second name, but her grandmother insisted on using it because it was the Sinhalese. There were lovely Sinhalese names. Sadly her parents had chosen the ugliest one possible. She sometimes wondered if her militantly western mother had done that intentionally, to ensure her daughter would use Madeleine.

  “You have got a little fat!” Madeleine’s grandmother led her into the kitchen. “Any good signs yet, Pu-thaa?”

  “No.”

  “You mustn’t put it off too long, you know. I had a cousin who was waited until she was old and then she couldn’t conceive. Everyone was laughing. What to do?”

  “Where’s Dad, Aach-chi?” Madeleine let her grandmother’s prattle slip into the ether. There was no point arguing with her.

  “He’s walked to get the newspaper. I’ve told him, why don’t you have them deliver? But he won’t listen.”

  “He enjoys the walk, Aach-chi.”

  “No wonder he’s so thin!” She poured boiling water from the kettle into a battered tin teapot. “I made some bibikkan for you. Come, eat. I haven’t been able to eat anything in days. The doctors don’t know what is wrong with me.”

  Madeleine murmured sympathetically but without undue alarm as she sat at the vinyl-clothed kitchen table. The central vase of plastic roses, complete with artificial dewdrops, had graced the table since she was about six. Their centres had collected a little dust but their colour was unfaded, chemically fixed for eternity.

  Edward studied the room, reading Madeleine into its peach and lemon walls. The furniture was oddly mismatched, more discordant than eclectic. Like every piece had been chosen in isolation with no regard for what else would be in the room. Photographs were displayed in gold gilt frames—Madeleine in mortar board and colours, and then again in her wedding dress. A family portrait taken many years before. Madeleine with her front teeth missing, a handsome man, middle-aged in a suit, his smile white against his dark skin, and a woman with closely cropped black hair. So this was Madeleine’s DNA.

  She had not mentioned her mother as yet.

  “She left—when I was small.”

  “Why?”

  “One day, she stopped being happy. Aach-chi came to live with us then…or maybe just before. I can’t really remember.”

  “Do you see her?”

  “She died of cancer five years ago.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “I miss what she should have been.”

  Madeleine’s grandmother broke in, detailing the promises she’d made to God in exchange for a great-grandchild. She was sure the Almighty would be tempted by her latest offer, but it was important that Madeleine try not to irritate Him.

  The door opened and a man came in with
a sheaf of newspapers folded and clamped under his arm. Elmo Dhanusinghe was perhaps sixty, well-groomed and straight-backed. His voice was refined, and slightly accented. “Madeleine,” he said smiling. “How long have you been here?”

  “Only a few minutes, Dad. How are you?”

  He sat at the table and the old woman stood to pour him a cup of tea. He asked Madeleine about her latest manuscript, winking as his mother clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

  Madeleine rolled her eyes. Her grandmother had got it into her head that writing crime was somehow affecting her fertility. She told her father a little about her new protagonist, though she was vague, strangely protective. He listened eagerly.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Madeleine,” he declared when she finished. “Where you get these ideas! I sold three of your books yesterday, by the way.”

  “Really, to whom?” Madeleine tried not to laugh. Her father was unquestionably her most evangelical fan. He bought extra copies of her books to foist upon those who were silly enough to answer in the affirmative when he asked, “Do you read?” And nowadays he asked that question of everyone he met.

  “A client of mine. I got her an excellent return.”

  Madeleine groaned. She could almost hear the chatter among her father’s tax clients. “He’s a great accountant but you’ll have to buy his daughter’s books. Still, he’ll probably find a way to classify it as a work-related expense.”

  “Did you hear, Rumani Fernando won that big prize? I can’t think what it’s called…”

  “The Sydney Book Prize,” Madeleine said naming one of the country’s premier literary awards.

  “She’s a Sri Lankan girl,” her father pointed out. “Sri Lankan writers are considered very good, you know. I think this new book of yours will be the one to win prizes.”

  Madeleine sighed. “Literary prizes go to literary writers, Dad. I write crime fiction.”

  “Why shouldn’t you win?”

  “My novels aren’t really the worthy kind.”

  “Your English is very good…excellent!”