As Far as You Can Go (25 page)

Maybe she gave her the wrong drugs? Or not enough? Or maybe Mara spat the Complan out without her seeing?

‘Are you feeling OK?’ She certainly looks OK, not crazy or violent. Apart from her nakedness she seems perfectly normal. And even the nakedness has come to seem almost normal. It would be weirder if she put on a dress. Was that a sort of
joke
about Larry?

‘Coffee?’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘No, no.’ All the same, best keep her away from boiling water. The fan swishes, a faint squeak. Three or four flies dance in the air below it. Another crawls on Mara’s gleamy shoulder.

Cassie breaks eggs, beats them together with powdered milk, water and flour.
Cassie’s Outback Kitchen. Pancakes, a good staple from store-cupboard ingredients
.

‘You do look so like Lucy,’ Mara says.

‘Lucy and Ben, you mean.’ Cassie keeps her voice level. Not too interested. ‘No one ever seems to mention them. How long ago did they leave?’

Mara shakes her head. ‘Don’t know. Lost track.’

‘Do you know why they went?’

‘One day they were gone, that’s all.’

‘Oh?’

‘You wouldn’t do that, would you? Go without saying.’

Cassie shakes her head, a shadow settling in her chest. Should she tell Mara? Could she expect her to keep that quiet?
No
. She lifts the whisk and watches a long yellow gloop of batter drool back into the bowl. Questions boil up quietly in her head. She moves over to the stove, pours water on to coffee grounds, moves the frying pan on to the centre of the heat. Mara is quiet – maybe she’s falling asleep, the drugs working after all, having a delayed effect?

‘He’s so mysterious, Larry, isn’t he?’ Cassie tries. ‘Enigmatic. I mean, I know he is a doctor but –’

‘No,’ Mara says. Then she looks scared.

‘No?’ Cassie pours a pool of batter into the pan, swills it around, watches the surface glaze and pock.

‘Shouldn’t say. My mind is clear. Funny. Like someone took the lid off, type of thing. Like looking through fog, normally. And then I don’t care about anything, you know? Don’t care.’

‘Sounds horrible.’

‘Then all I want is sleep.’

Cassie turns to look at her. ‘Poor you.’ Mara’s eyes are large and bright brown. Cassie has never really noticed how lovely they are. She looks younger too.

‘Like a dream,’ Mara continues, twisting a finger in her hair, ‘life, can’t tell which part is real and which a dream. Like there are no proper edges. Do you get that?’

‘Not – no, not usually,’ Cassie says carefully, ‘but I think I know what you mean.’

‘Though now –’ Mara holds a hand out, swivels it on her wrist, ‘I
feel
awake. Am I? Do you want to pinch me?’

Cassie smiles, ‘Of course you’re awake. Mara, why – why do you stay in the shed?’

‘Not
shed!
Studio.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Always wanted my own studio. Like Larry has his own bathroom.’ She laughs again, a kind of mockery in the laugh.

‘Why
does he need his own bathroom?’

Mara shrugs and shakes her head. Cassie eases the spatula under the pancake, she daren’t flip it. It sticks and tears. ‘So, Larry isn’t a doctor,’ she tries.

Mara huddles into herself, fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arms, breasts and hair all squashed together. ‘Shouldn’t have said.’ She buries her face in her hands. ‘Don’t tell him I said –’

‘Don’t worry, Mara. I won’t say a thing.’

Mara peeps through her fingers. ‘Won’t you?’

‘Promise.’

‘Larry says I mustn’t tell anyone ever, otherwise –’

‘Just a mo.’ Cassie turns the pancake. ‘Otherwise?’

‘It’ll all go wrong again.’

The pancake is a disaster. ‘How do you mean?’ Cassie says. ‘Do you want this one? It’s a mess.’

‘Don’t care.’

‘What do you mean,
again
?’ Cassie carries the frying pan across the kitchen, and slides the messed-up lump of a pancake on to her plate. Mara slathers it in maple syrup, rolls it up and stuffs half of it in her mouth.

‘But sometimes it’s good to talk.’ Cassie winces at herself. Mara fills her mouth again, chews stolidly. Boiling over with questions, Cassie wants to shake Mara, shake it all out of her.
But must be patient. She pours in another pool of creamy batter, tips the pan to fill the bottom. This time the pan is hot enough and it will work.

‘When he was a kid,’ Mara says at last, mouth full. ‘Mmm,
lovely
. See, he wanted to be a doctor but he wasn’t good enough at school. His brother, his little brother, he
was
a doctor –’ She swallows the last mouthful and wipes her sticky lips. ‘We could have lemon and sugar next?’

Cassie takes a deep breath. She digs amongst the oranges in the bowl and finds a lemon. Bit wizened but still. She slices it in half, the sharp sting of its juice making her mouth flood with spit. ‘And?’

‘Wasn’t fair.’ Mara licks her fingers and looks at the pan.

‘Coming up.’ Cassie turns it over: better, lovely brown frizzy edges. ‘What wasn’t fair?’

‘Larry
was the one who was always experimenting with frogs and things but then his brother – he gets to be a doctor. Larry was a pharmacist. Always second best.’

‘So,’ Cassie keeps her voice light. ‘He’s never really been a doctor.’

‘Oh yes, well, he’s
been
a doctor.’

Cassie slides another pancake on to Mara’s plate. She waits agonising moments while Mara concentrates on spooning a line of sugar down its centre, squeezing lemon till the sugar goes translucent, rolling it and taking a bite.
The perfect brunch. Oh shut up
.

‘Mmmmmm.’ Mara chews with her eyes shut for a moment, the gritty sound of sugar between her teeth. She swallows and opens her eyes. ‘Aren’t you having one?’

‘Maybe when you’ve finished. There’s loads of batter. You might as well tell me now,’ Cassie says, ‘you’ve told me the rest. And honestly, Mara, I can keep a secret.’

Mara pauses, cheek bulging. ‘If you tell Larry I told you, I’ll tell him about your bath.’

‘I wouldn’t anyway.’

Mara swallows her mouthful. ‘This is what he told me anyway – I think. Sometimes I forget things …’ She tails off, her eyes focused somewhere in the distance.

‘Yes?
’

‘They were the dead spit, Larry and his younger brother, practically like twins. Larry went to visit him when he’d just moved to a new town, new practice and his brother died, suddenly, a heart attack, nothing Larry could do, then – and Larry didn’t plan this, funny things do happen, don’t they?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Someone phoned him – an emergency, took him for the doctor, and he went to help and then, well, then he swapped places with his brother. His brother was buried as him.’

‘No!
Did it work? What about his family?’

‘Dad dead, mum gaga. Kept away from family friends and so on. And they
were
peas in a pod.’ Mara hesitates. ‘Didn’t know him then. Wasn’t really wrong, was it?’

‘We-ll.’

‘He worked there for a while and he managed all right. I was a patient, that’s how I met him.’ She stops, a cloud darkening her face.

‘Yes,’ Cassie waits. ‘You lost a baby, didn’t you? Graham told me. I’m sorry.’

‘Larry says I mustn’t tell anyone ever, otherwise I’ll be put in prison, I’ll be locked away. Larry takes care of me. Have to do what he says. Or else.’

‘I –’ Cassie flounders, startled by the sudden change in Mara, her whole shape and voice have altered. Perhaps she really is mad. About to go berserk. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. Another pancake?’

But Mara keeps talking. Cassie slides the pan off the heat and sits down. ‘When the baby died I – went off my head type of thing – and Larry and me, well we – we had an affair – sort of – well, we
got together. Started with him helping me and then one night – don’t remember this but he told me – I went mad, completely off my head and –’ she whispers, ‘killed my husband.’

‘You killed your husband?
How?
’ Cassie says.
‘Why?
’

‘Don’t remember. He was ill anyway. Larry was treating him. But
violence
. I was off my head. Larry covered it up somehow.
See
, if he hadn’t brought me here and hidden me then, then I would be in prison or in some mad house. Mad and dangerous.’ She pauses. ‘Mad and dangerous. Don’t remember what I do. Sometimes don’t know what I do. Some things I do that I don’t want to do I do for Larry. Sorry. Sorry.’

What?
Cassie can’t think of anything that Mara does. ‘But,’ she says, her mouth dry, ‘you don’t
seem
dangerous.’

Mara gets up and, involuntarily, Cassie flinches. Mara laughs. ‘No? Need a drink of water. Room for one more pancake.’

‘Sure, sit down.’ Cassie fills a glass for her and pushes the pan back on the heat.

Mara drinks. ‘Not dangerous
now,’
she says. ‘Right now I feel fine. Sort of clear-headed. But shouldn’t have told you. Larry says, he says if I ever tell anyone I’ll be sorry.’

‘You’ve never told anyone?’

‘Fred knows everything. Fred’s my friend.’

‘Fred’s lovely,’ Cassie agrees.

‘Don’t tell anyone this,’ Mara leans towards her and whispers loudly, ‘but I love Fred and he loves me. If we could be together we would. One day …’ She sits back and smiles.

Cassie sits down. Too much to take in. She finds herself wavering, losing faith. Fantasy, like Larry said?

‘Do you want coffee now?’ she says.

‘Fred and me, we – we understand each other.’ Mara gets up suddenly, juddering the table. ‘Be careful, won’t you?’ she says.

‘Careful?’

‘You looked just like her when you came out of the bathroom.
Made me start. Wait.’ She goes out. Chair marks printed on her buttocks. The screen clatters. Cassie’s heart skitters. A fly lands on the corner of her mouth and as she slaps it her fingernail snags her lip. She follows Mara out of the door and waits. Mara emerges from her shed with something in her hand, a bit of paper, no a snapshot. She comes up the steps. ‘See,’ she says.

‘Lucy?’ Lucy is blonde, medium build and height. Her hair hangs over her chest in two long plaits, raggy ribbons at the ends.

‘See what I mean?’

Cassie frowns. ‘A bit similar maybe, longer hair.’

Mara starts to speak, stops, lifts up her hand. There is the sound of a vehicle approaching. ‘Larry,’ she says, peering into the distance.

Cassie shades her eyes and squints. ‘But he said a few days,’ she says. ‘Could be the others coming back for some reason.’
Please, please let it be them
. Not yet possible to tell what is inside the approaching cloud of dust.

‘Shouldn’t you maybe go and lie down?’ she says, ‘he might be –’ But Mara doesn’t move. Stands so close to Cassie that her breast presses coolly against her bare arm.

‘Why be careful?’ Cassie says. ‘What did you mean?’ She runs her fingers through her hair, nearly dry now, but getting sticky already with sweat and she never even brushed it smooth. A sickly weight settles in her stomach as she sees the glimpse of white that means it is Larry’s car.

‘Don’t ever say anything I told you,’ Mara whispers, urgently.
‘Promise.’

‘Course not.’

‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ she repeats. And shivers. ‘Really, maybe you should go and lie down.’

But there is no time for that.

The car draws up. Larry gets out and slams the door. Yella goes out to greet him, wagging his half-mast tail. Larry greets her with a tight smile on his face. He looks flushed, even a little dusty. He will want a bath.

‘Mara awake!’ he says. ‘I’m surprised. Are you all right?’ He looks darkly at Cassie. ‘There are some things in the car, could you possibly?’

‘Oh no!’ Smelling burning she darts back into the kitchen and pulls the pan off the heat; the pancake is black, the kitchen hazed with smoke and stink. She avoids Larry’s eyes as she goes out again. The stupid hens scutter squawkily up to her, expecting food again. Never thought she’d be the sort of person to want to kick a hen. On the floor inside the car is an eskie and some carrier bags of food. The smell of bruised apples. She loops a carrier over each wrist and holds the eskie in front of her. When she gets back, the kitchen is empty but for the smoke. She begins to unpack food into the fridge. Butter, milk, bacon, mince. No sign of any post. When she turns her head, Larry’s there.

‘Where’s Mara?’

‘Back in her room.’

‘But she was –’
Fine
, she wants to say,
absolutely fine
.

‘How little you understand,’ Larry says. He shakes his head
at her. ‘Now, more to the point, where are the others?’ He waits, gives a little bark of a laugh. ‘Surely not abandoned you?’

‘No, no, they went to see some cave art. Just a little trip.’

He looks puzzled. ‘I don’t remember being consulted.’

‘Well –’

‘What the eye don’t see, eh?’

‘But everything’s
fine
. And they’ll be back tonight. Maybe late afternoon. I said I didn’t mind.’

‘Everything’s fine?’ Larry repeats.
‘Everything’s fine?
This!’ He waves his hand through the haze of smoke. ‘And Mara overstimulated, on the verge, I would say, of a psychotic episode. Always heralded by lying. Has she been lying?’

‘No, I don’t think so. No. We were just – chatting.’

‘What were you
chatting
about?’

‘Not anything really. Food. Pancakes.’

Larry looks into her eyes for a moment and she flushes, looks down at her feet, her smoothly shaved legs.

‘And did Fred give Mara her medication before they set off on their
jaunt
?’

‘He told me exactly what to give her.’

‘What was it?’

‘Well –’ Cassie swallows. ‘See, I knocked the bottles over,’ she says. ‘He’d left them in the right order. It wasn’t his fault. A yellow, was it, a white, three blues –’

‘Show me.’

Her hands shake so that she can hardly unscrew the lid.

‘Fortunate I came back when I did,’ Larry says. ‘Most fortunate they
didn’t
trigger a psychosis.
These
are
blue.’
For Larry, he has almost lost his cool, his breath coming hard behind his words. He tips some capsules into his palm, a different colour, yes, she can see now.