Girl Next Door - Alyssa Brugman [30]
'Let me get Mum. She's sleeping,' says Will, grinning. He's so excited he's almost hopping up and down on the spot. 'She's still not feeling great after, you know . . . the miscarriage, or whatever.'
A wave of colour washes across Dad's face, but he plasters on a weird approximation of a sympathetic smile. He didn't know that Mum lost the baby.
They're not even talking to each other.
'Ah, no. I don't want to disturb her. How about we go, just the three of us, and I'll catch up with your mum later.' He tosses his keys in his hand, and I follow his gaze to the car at the kerb. It's not his car. It's a rental with a logo on the side.
I walk across the lawn with a weird buzzing in my ears. 'Your mum', so not, 'my wife', or even, 'Sue'. The knot in my gut tightens. He hasn't just gone away for a while. They've broken up. This whole time I've been assuming that this was all temporary. I'd thought it was like when there's a storm and the satellite is out. But that's not how it is. Our account has been cancelled.
'There's this guy, Bryce Cole, living here now,' Will tells Dad. He's got his elbow out the window and his foot on the dashboard. 'Nothing's going on, though. I just thought you'd want to know. And Annie's in the granny flat. Still. Mum must have told you about that.'
'Mm,' Dad grunts.
Will goes on. 'Did you know Jenna-Belle got kicked out of Finsbury? I got a scholarship.'
Dad nods but he doesn't say anything. He pretends to be concentrating on driving. I'm staring at the back of his head. We drive past the fish and chip shop. I'm expecting him to stop, but he drives on.
He takes us to McDonald's. We don't even eat in. He takes us to the drive-through, and then we pull up in the car park opposite the supermarket. Classy.
Will's tucking in to his Quarter Pounder, as if he's cool with that. He mustn't have the gut knot. The smell of my McChicken makes me want to heave.
About four years ago we went on a camping holiday to this place called Wombat Crossing, which was unusual for us. Mum preferred to go to resorts where there was a pool and a cocktail bar; you could order a masseuse on the room service menu and, of course, there was a kids' club, so they could go off and see boring grown-up stuff without us whining.
Dad preferred the resorts too – they always had a nine-hole golf course. But Wombat Crossing was a place that Will found on the internet. There was assorted wildlife in all the pictures. They had grass skiing, windsurfing and all that outdoorsy Boy Scout stuff that Will is into, so we went.
It must have been off-season, although I don't know when would be on-season for a place like that. We were the only ones staying there, aside from the caretaker who was a hundred years old.
It wasn't camping camping. We stayed in a cabin, but there was no electricity and we washed from a bucket that you filled with warm water from the billy on the gas stove or the barbecue fire outside.
Mum hated it, but we never laughed as much as we did that week – usually at the look of dismay on Mum's face every time she made a new discovery, like if we didn't keep the door shut then all the wildlife would come inside, and wouldn't want to leave. Possums and wallabies might look cute, but they have fearsome teeth and claws, and make sounds like a lion cub when you try to pick them up.
Dad and Will made bad jokes, particularly about the long-drop toilet.
We attempted to bake a damper. It was disastrous, but we ate it anyway, because we were starving, and afterwards Mum tried to order pizza from her mobile, but they wouldn't deliver so Dad had to drive out and meet them on the main road. By the time he got back it was cold, but we ate it anyway, and then went straight to bed even though it was only about half-past six. Willem and I had to share a room and we played Joke Jeopardy in the dark.
Wombat Crossing was awful, but we managed to pull together and make it work. Or maybe I just remember it more fondly the more time passes. The people that we were at Wombat Crossing seem about a million years away from