‘We won’t let you be tied to a chair, darling,’ Amy’s mother used to say. ‘Anyway, I actually think you’re more like Auntie Mary and she didn’t end up tied to a chair.’
Auntie Mary was killed after she stepped in front of a tram in the city, but she absolutely didn’t step out in front of that tram on purpose, no matter what some people implied. The truth, according to Amy’s mother, was that Auntie Mary got distracted trying to save a little girl’s panama hat when a southerly buster blew it straight from her head one summer afternoon a week before Christmas, which, according to Amy’s mother, was exactly the sort of reckless thing Amy would do, and if she did, Joy would never forgive her. Look both ways. Especially when Christmas is coming up. Make that one of your funny little rituals. Looking both ways.
Amy didn’t have any funny little rituals at the moment. Or none that people would notice. Anyway, they all had their rituals and superstitions, their strange little habits. Troy had to tap his nose three times before he served. Logan had to wear his lucky red socks whenever he competed, even when his feet grew too big for them. Brooke still had trouble getting out of the car whenever she arrived somewhere. Brooke thought no-one knew that. Amy knew.
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, sweetheart,’ her father said. ‘It’s all in your head.’
All in your head. Her dad was so cute and clueless.
She lay still and breathed while she chatted with the spirits of Auntie Edna and Auntie Mary. She had never met either of her mad great-aunts but she felt like they would have got along.
I’ve kind of got a bad feeling about this girl staying with my parents.
Me too, said Auntie Edna.
Me too, said Auntie Mary.
Get rid of her, said Auntie Edna, who was bossy.
The bad feeling intensified, took hold of her stomach, twisted. A car alarm started up down the street. Someone knocked on her bedroom door.
Amy grabbed at the sheets and pulled them up, covering her nakedness.
‘Who is it?’ she called out.
‘Sorry!’ said a deep hoarse male voice. ‘It’s just me.’ He paused. ‘Simon.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Simon Barrington.’ As if there were several Simons living in the house.
She looked at the ceiling. She’d kind of known this might happen, and she’d told herself that under no circumstances should she let it happen.
‘Are you awake?’ he said through the door.
‘No,’ she called back. ‘I’m not awake, Simon Barrington.’ Just lying here chatting to the spirits of my crazy dead aunts, Simon Barrington.
She wouldn’t say anything else. It was a mistake to sleep with your flatmates. Especially when they were still in their twenties, and you were on the cusp of leaving your thirties. Simon’s long-term girlfriend had recently dumped him while they were out at yum cha. He’d been going out with her since high school and they were meant to be getting married next year, and he didn’t see it coming and he loved yum cha, which his girlfriend knew, so that added an extra layer of tragedy.
Now he was broken-hearted and drunk and he’d come home and remembered his single flatmate on the top floor, like remembering some leftover takeaway in the fridge, and he’d thought, Huh. He was a nice enough guy, sweet and polite and scrupulous about housework, but he read those boring biographies all the way through to the end, and he was an ex–rugby player, with a rugby player’s top-heavy body （she liked tall, lean, inscrutable men; there was nothing inscrutable about Simon Barrington） and he had a boring job she could never remember, something to do with telecommunications or property or possibly he was an accountant, and he was younger than her, and shorter than her, and men always said they didn’t care about the height thing, but they did, they surely did, and that repressed fury always came to the surface eventually.
So it would be once, and it wouldn’t be good sex, and then there would be awkwardness between them for the next seven months of her rental agreement and then she’d have to find somewhere else to live, and she liked it here, she liked the neon light from the miniature golf course, she liked the possum with a panic disorder.
‘Sorry!’ Simon called through the door. ‘So sorry! I’ll go.’
She waited.
There was silence. Had he gone? She should let him go.
She got out of bed, put on a t-shirt and opened the door. He was walking towards the top of the stairs.
‘Simon?’ she said. ‘Simon Barrington?’
He turned. His shirt was pulled loose from the waistband of his jeans, his glasses were askew, his eyes were bloodshot and he was in need of a shave.