I stir my smoothie around the glass with a spoon. ‘She won’t talk to me about any of it. What she went through. What it was like for her.’
‘It’s not just you. She won’t talk to me about it, either. I don’t think she can really stand to think about any of it.’ Mary studies me. ‘I still can’t believe she wrote you those letters and had you come to stay, Stell. She’s so boxed in about the whole thing.’
‘I just wish I knew about her, you know?’
‘What about her, specifically?’
‘How can you go from being a pregnant teenager to being how she is? Like, how?’
Mary sips her drink. ‘Mum loved roses. That’s why she has so many. Roses and lilacs. After Dad made Kelly give you up, she just slept. She wouldn’t go to school, she wouldn’t eat. She just curled up in a ball and slept. And it was Mum’s garden that got her out of bed – everything was getting overgrown and Kelly couldn’t stand it. So she tidied it. And then she tidied her room. And then she tidied the house. And then she decided she wanted to do some sort of work with gardens – that Mum would like that. So she went back to school. She never . . . she never went back to the high school she’d been at when it happened. I don’t know the details – she’s never talked about it – but I’m pretty sure it happened at the school. So she enrolled in another school. Dad wasn’t happy about it, but he knew it was the only way she was going to graduate. So she finished Year Twelve and got a job doing landscaping, and she read every book and design magazine she could get her hands on, did lots of extra hours, and eventually she learned enough to set up her own business. She worked from home, to start off with. Back when she was in a flat near the train tracks outside Harrington. She’s so single-minded and has such a good eye for detail, her business just went from strength to strength. Soon she had enough money to get a loan out for her house, and then it expanded enough for her to get an office space in Lockwood. But it’s the gardens she loves. It’s where she feels Mum. Does that answer your question?’
I think about how my own mum sits and sews and thinks of her mother making clothes for her as a child. How there are so many different ways to feel connected to the people we’d loved and lost. ‘She put flowers in the envelopes that she sent me.’
‘She did?’ Mary blinks. ‘What type?’
‘A lilac. Roses. Leaves from things. I don’t know – I’m not very plant savvy.’
Mary shakes her head. ‘She’ll confuse me forever, that one. But she does love you, Stella. It’s a weird, broken kind of love, but it’s real. She loves you.’
***
Mary gives me a photo of my grandmother, of Katrina, standing in amongst her roses. I press it to my heart, where I’d kept Kelly’s letters, and then I tuck it carefully into my bag. At dusk, I go down to the beach and watch people jogging past and walking their dogs. I text Taylor, but she doesn’t text me back. As it’s getting dark, I wander back to Kelly’s and sit against the brick wall, watching cars driving slowly past. My stomach grumbles and I wish I’d thought to get something to eat when the places between here and school were open.
The sky continues to dim. My phone goes flat. A cool breeze picks up from the direction of the sea so that I can taste the salt of it on my tongue.
It’s after ten by the time Kelly gets home.
‘Sorry – appointment ran late and then I had a conference call.’ She shakes her head as she unlocks the gate. ‘One of those days! You’ve eaten?’
‘No.’ We go into the kitchen and I unhook my schoolbag from my shoulder. ‘Kelly?’
‘Hmm?’ She bites into an apple and opens up her laptop on the kitchen bench.
‘Did you have a name picked out for me?’
‘What?’
‘A name. When you were pregnant.’
‘No. I didn’t.’
‘Did you have names that you liked, though? That you might have used? If things had been different?’
‘No,’ she says.
I think about what Mary said about the key, about how Kelly wanted to give it to me but probably wouldn’t. ‘Is that key cut yet?’
‘What?’
‘The key. My key.’
She doesn’t look up from her laptop. I see her swallow. Her voice, when she speaks, is too casual. Forced. ‘No, not yet. I keep forgetting. Sorry, Stell.’
***
I write out text messages for Clem. Snippets of our time together. Do you remember . . . ? Do you remember . . . ? I write them out until my brain hums with memories and stories and I feel bereft at the thought of us not really speaking. I write out a message telling him about the key that Kelly hasn’t given me. It’s humiliating, that absent key. But the idea of telling Clem doesn’t make me cringe. But then I let memories of the last few weeks wash over me like water and I feel the void that I’m not sure we can claw our way out of. I write and write and then I delete them. I don’t send a single one. Outside, a seagull calls and I wonder what it’s doing, awake so late at night.
***
The next day, Kelly and I eat breakfast at her kitchen table. I stare at my phone. Taylor has been texting me, but when I text back, she never replies. I suppose she wants to know I’m still here, but she’s too mad to actually have a conversation with me. I haven’t told Kelly about visiting Graceleigh and I’m sure her father hasn’t, either. She scrolls through her laptop and I flip through a book, knowing that soon she’ll go and brush her teeth and leave me money for food that I won’t use.
This morning, the radio’s on. Something about homelessness. Kelly looks up from her laptop and shakes her head.
‘They choose to be homeless and then expect handouts,’ she says. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
‘What?’
‘The people on the street. They make choices and then expect to be rescued. It’s disgusting.’
‘People don’t choose to be homeless.’
‘People make bad choices, Stella. People make bad choices, convince themselves that they’re not responsible for them and expect help. There are too many people out there completely unable to stand on their own two feet.’
I think of Fairyland, how so many people there are skimming on the edge of living in cars or on the street. Of how many would have been completely homeless if the floodwaters had risen that little bit higher. I open my mouth to say something angry – the sort of thing Lara or Taylor or Clem would say – but no words come out.
‘Some people need help,’ I say instead.
She raises her eyebrows. ‘Wow. Didn’t realise you were such a bleeding heart.’
‘I’m not a bleeding heart – I just know that sometimes people are up against it and it doesn’t make them less human or less deserving of help.’
Outside, a magpie lands on Kelly’s brick fence and warbles for a moment before landing near the fishpond.
Kelly looks down. ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you.’
I don’t look at her.
‘I know I said you could stay as long as you wanted, but I’ve got a work thing. It’s just cropped up. I’ll be gone for three months and I think it’s best if you go home to your family.’