It worried Willa. She tried to put it out of her mind but it was strange. Back at work, Kevin teased Louie about the play for days, but he never mentioned Keith, and for some reason neither did Willa. Then, one night the following week, Keith turned up at Burger Giant.
It was late, almost midnight, and he walked straight up to her with the same small smile.
“Hello.”
Willa found she couldn’t look back at him straight. She didn’t say anything.
“Bit of a change from a pub, isn’t it?” He smiled fully at her now, and Willa frowned. He was wearing a suit again, and bright tie.
“Can I help you?”
“Cathy’s brother.”
“I know who you are.”
Stepbrother, actually.
“Still remember, then, do you?” he asked coolly. “So do I.”
Willa’s shoulders tightened. “What do you want, Keith?”
He raised his eyebrows and looked at the board above. “A Coke, and regular french fries.”
As she filled his order, Kevin appeared. He greeted Keith with a clap on the shoulder and they started talking cars and stereos. Willa followed their conversation, noting that Keith, unlike Kevin, actually knew what he was talking about. She handed his order over the counter.
“Hey, it’s on the house,” insisted Kevin, putting his hand over the register to stop Willa charging him. “Just tell me about that natty little four wheel drive out there, what type’s that?”
“Rav 4,” said Willa, when Keith hesitated.
Kevin turned to her, surprised. “Since when did you know about cars?”
She shrugged, wishing she hadn’t said anything.
“Keith’s in car sales you know,” Kevin told Willa. “He’s going to get me a good deal. What’s the name of your rip-off place?”
“Mannix Motors, on the main drag.”
Willa went cold. That was the car sales across the road from the Duke. “I didn’t know that,” she said.
Keith just lifted his eyebrows.
“You wouldn’t warrant it, you were such a dunce at school, mate,” offered Kevin cheerfully. He took Keith off to a table out of hearing, where they sat and laughed, glancing occasionally at Willa.
“What’s with Mr. Up-Himself?” asked Joan, making a face. “Found himself a friend?”
“Looks like it,” replied Willa. She emptied the last of the chips from the warmer.
“Must be desperate.” Joan stared at Keith. “Mmm, nice tie,” she said, and giggled. “Bet his mum chose it for him!”
Willa tried not to think about Keith’s mum, but a hash of trapdoor mouth and accusing eyes shot through her. She slopped water in the warmer and began scrubbing. Kevin and Keith were watching and she was aware of her face going red in the steam, her hair straggling out from the clips and paper hat, and of her breasts moving in time with the scrubbing.
Joan stacked the plates and lowered her voice. “Hey, Deirdre reckons there’s something wrong with Kevin, the way he goes on. She said those that talk about it, don’t do it. She thinks Kevin’s in denial.”
“What?”
“Kevin,” she said, nodding towards their table. “She reckons he’s a poof, just doesn’t know it. Eh,” she came over, snorting with suppressed laughter, “maybe that’s his boyfriend. Old mummy’s boy in his hash suit. Certainly looks the type.”
Willa had breathed in too much steam from inside the cabinet and everything went white. She tried to pull out quickly and banged her head on the door. The water splashed somewhere, her feet slipped, then there was a crash and she was on the floor.
“Willa! Ooh, shit, are you all right?”
Joan was trying to pull her up, but her elbow hurt where she’d landed. Willa sat for a moment on the ground, then slowly picked herself up as Kevin and Keith appeared. Kevin cracked a joke but then he saw her face and looked worried. He took her arm gently and examined it. Over his shoulder Willa caught Keiths eye and he gave her a sheepish grin.
“Should I take her in to Accident and Emergency?” asked Joan, who had got some ice and handed it to her.
Willa pulled her arm from Kevin’s grasp and wrapped the ice bag round her elbow. “It’s okay, really. Just a thump.”
“You sure?” Kevin asked. “You went down like a sack of spuds.”
“I could take you in,” offered Keith, concerned.
Stop being nice to me,
thought Willa. “No, please. It’s feeling better already. Just the funny bone, you know?” She grinned painfully at Joan. “Must’ve been your jokes.”
It was knocking-off time anyway. Willa sat down with a drink and ignored Keith while Kevin finished the cabinet and Joan washed the floor. They all wanted to drive her home but she insisted she needed the fresh air and Judas needed the walk. All the way home in the dark streets she saw Keith’s face, and then Cathy’s, their mother’s, their father’s. And she saw Mrs. Angelo’s face, with that wary, closed expression. Dare she go through it all again? The lights were off at the pub, everything closed up. Willa gave Judas a bowl of water and to the sound of his glock glock glock she went straight to bed and cried.
p.
The next day she told Louie.
“It’s just—like I can’t escape the past, eh. Keith’s not even horrible, he’s just—there. How long before he tells Kevin about me and Cathy?”
“Hey, who cares what Kevin thinks. He’s a dropkick, anyway.” Louie stretched out on the sofa with a sandwich.
“You wouldn’t care?”
Louie looked at her in surprise. “No.” But her eyes slid away.
Willa got up and walked around the room fiddling with things. There was a display case of blue Venetian glass that was placed to catch the light. Willa watched the white light settle like water on the round edges.
“Has your mum mentioned Bali again?” she asked lightly.
Louie shifted on the couch. “Yep. We had argument number two last night. Final points, me twenty, her none, but she still wins. This house is a logic-free zone, honestly.” She took a bite of her sandwich and talked with her mouth full. “Apparently I’m not old enough to stay here on my own. Even though Nic did,” she added. “She complains one minute that I’m not working hard enough on schoolwork, that I’m not spending much time on netball or debating and the next minute she wants to whisk me away overseas for three weeks.”
Willa stared through a bowl into the view outside, making the bush dark blue like thunder clouds. “She doesn’t trust you, eh. With me.”
“Tell me about it,” said Louie. “It’s a mission. Destroy Willa, the Alien from Planet Duke. She’s always poking around, asking questions, trying to catch me out. There are these little suspicious sparks that bounce off her every time she walks into my room.”
“Well, she’s right, isn’t she. You are hiding something from her.”
Louie had been about to say something else, but she stopped and went silent. Willa moved her eye down a glass to its narrow base and watched the blue world outside go from very big to very small. “Maybe you’d be better just to go to Bali.”
“I don’t want to go!” Louie sounded petulant, like a child. “Why should I go on an expensive holiday when I just want to stay here?” Her voice softened. “With you.”
Willa smiled at the blue world and turned to Louie. “I don’t want you to go, either. I just thought it might help get your mother off your case.”
That night Willa left Judas at the pub and crept round the back of the Metal Petal to where Louie had left her sliding doors open. She took off her clothes and slipped into bed beside Louie and held her tight. She knew Louie wasn’t going to win the argument with Susi. In less than a fortnight it would be the holidays and Louie would be gone for three whole weeks. Willa was shocked at how much the thought upset her. She stroked Louie’s arm, her back, her long thigh, she kissed her passionately. Louie threw off her tee shirt and wound herself around Willa. Her skin was smooth and warm, there seemed to be a layer of electricity between them. Louie held Willa’s long hair off her face and kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. A tide rose within them and in the darkness Willa saw shadowy angles of arm, shoulder, hip, knee. Their love-making was wild and silent, heightened by the edge of grief.
They slept for a while afterwards, before Willa awoke, cold. She pulled the cover over Louie and began to get dressed. The bedside clock read 1:34.
“Don’t go,” murmured Louie.
“Have to.”
She sat up in bed. “It’s raining.”
Willa tied her boots, and glanced at the window.
“Have you got an umbrella?” asked Louie.
“I don’t mind getting wet.”
“Take an umbrella. Please?” Louie leaned over and kissed her. Willa’s brain began to fizz.
“Okay.”
“There’s about twenty in the stand by the back door. Never know when a busload of needy wet people might turn up. Just take any, no one’ll miss it.”
Willa hated moving around the house at night—usually she wouldn’t even go to the toilet, which Louie found hilarious. “Do you think they can tell it’s your pee?” she laughed. Tony and Susi slept upstairs so Willa would be safe going as far as the back door.
Or so she thought. As Willa slipped along the hall she suddenly heard a swish of material and saw a dense shape on the stairs. She side-stepped lightly into the living room. To her horror the shadow came through another door into the same room, and the light from the windows lit her up clearly. Mrs. Angelo. Willa fled behind a pillar, then ladybird-stepped carefully round it to keep out of vision as Susi walked across the room with a glass in her hand. Then Willa ducked down behind a large rolled armchair and prayed Susi couldn’t hear her heart gunning like a Harley Davidson.
Susi turned on a table lamp and fossicked in the magazine stand. Eventually, just when Willa thought her strangulated breathing had to give her away, she heard a click and the lamp was out. The darkness was blinding for a few seconds, then she saw the door swing closed behind Susi Angelo.
Willa took two deep breaths then stood up. She felt so shaky she collapsed in the chair she’d hidden behind, her mouth still wide open in disbelief. It was just changing into a grin when the door opened a second time, and Mrs. Angelo reentered.
This time Willa was caught in full view. She froze, sitting like a corpse with its mouth open. Susi walked straight over to the table with the lamp and as Willa held her breath, Mrs. Angelo reached down and picked up her glass of water with a tut-tut sound. She turned and walked back out the door again without, unbelievably, seeing Willa right in front of her.
She’d never really lied to her family before. She liked her family actually They were kind to her, they were proud of her, they wanted to believe everything she told them. Now she was playing her father against her mother; he trusted her word, Susi didn’t. Now she was saying Marietta had a nightmare—that’s why Susi heard voices in the night. Now she blamed Nic for leaving doors unlocked at odd times. She used her other friends as covers for spending more and more time with Willa, and she let Marietta insinuate she was keen on Mo’s brother Jay, to keep Susi off the track.
And slowly, Louie felt sick.
She tried to go to church, to regain something of a sense of family of trust, of being the daughter they always thought she was. But she found herself staring at the limp, crucified Jesus and thinking of Willa squinting at the picture of Jesus at home and shaking her head. The laughter bubbled inside her and she saw the church through Willa’s eyes—all the ornamentation, the priest in a frock, the standing, sitting, kneeling, reciting congregation like an obedient flock of sheep. Still, the feeling in the church, the feeling behind the words and the ritual and the people singing together meant something to Louie. It had always made her feel opened up inside, somehow, like the painting of Jesus, his heart exposed, pulsing on the outside of his body. Now it flooded her with feeling for Willa. She wanted to cry out how wonderful this thing was, how overwhelmingly happy it made her to be in love. But the guilt at having to hide it from her family was overwhelming too. She stared at the Christ in a huge confusion of feeling and could only say over and over again, “please,
please.
” Then the priest, the nice young, new priest talked of family, of openness, of love. He asked them all to turn to each other and greet them in the name of God. Louie smiled weakly and shook hands with Nic, with Marietta, with Tony, with Susi, with Bernadette and Martin from down the road, with Shaun and Pam who’d been to dinner the other night, and they all said to each other, “Peace be with you, peace be with you.” It sounded like the whole church was murmuring “baaa baaa baaa.”
At the door they stopped to talk with the new young priest, Father Campion. He nodded and smiled and asked them politely about their forthcoming holiday to Bali. Louie looked at her feet while her father answered, and noticed something odd about Father Campion. He had on running shoes under his vestments, quite shabby old Reeboks. She looked up to see him following her gaze. He smiled at her, secretly, mischievously.
At home the Metal Petal was cold and unwelcoming. All the underfloor heating in the world couldn’t make the large open spaces cosy on a wet day. Louie longed for a small room, with comfortable furniture and no how. She fantasised about being with Willa in a cabin in the mountains, drinking soup and snuggling up in front of a log fire. Instead, the ceiling eye lights stared at her accusingly and Susi told her to gel her feet off the couch.
“Why don’t you start organising your clothes for Bali? There must be things that need a wash,” her mother suggested.
“I’m not coming to Bali.”
Susi snapped the kettle on to boil. “Don’t be silly, Louie. It’s all booked.”
“So unbook it. You own the travel agency.”
“It’s too late. You know all this.”
“I never agreed to come,” Louie said angrily. “Why take me on a holiday I don’t want to go on? What a waste of money.”
“You’ll enjoy it once you’re there.”
Louie was cold and hurt and fed up. “You just want to get me away from Willa.”
The air went tight. Louie felt a rush of adrenalin. She’d said it.
“Don’t you think that might be a good idea?” answered Susi in a careful tone. “You do spend an awful lot of time together.”