26.
Tanzie
Nicky actually started a conversation at breakfast. They had been sitting eating around the table like a television family – Tanzie had multigrain hoops, and Suzie and Josh had chocolate croissants, which Suzie said they had every day because it was their favourite – and it was a bit weird sitting there with Dad and his other family but not actually as bad as she’d thought. Dad was eating a bowl of bran flakes because he said he had to stay in trim now and patted his stomach a lot although she wasn’t sure why because it wasn’t like he had an actual job. ‘Things in the pipeline, Tanze,’ he said, whenever she asked what he was actually doing, and she wondered if Linzie had a garage full of air-conditioning units that didn’t work too. Linzie didn’t seem to eat anything. Nicky was toying with some toast – he never usually ate breakfast: until this trip he had never usually been up for breakfast – when he just looked at Dad and said, ‘Jess works all the time. All the time. And I don’t think it’s fair.’
Dad’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth and Tanzie wondered whether he was going to get really angry, like he used to if Nicky said anything he felt was disrespectful. Nobody said anything for a minute. Then Linzie put her hand on Dad’s and smiled. ‘He’s right, love.’
And Dad went a bit pink and said, yes, well, things were going to change a bit from now on and we all made mistakes, and because she felt a bit braver then, Tanzie said, no, strictly speaking, not all of us did make mistakes. She had made a mistake with her algorithms and Norman had made a mistake because of the cows and breaking her glasses, and Mum had made a mistake with the Rolls-Royce and getting arrested, but Nicky was the one person in their family who hadn’t made any mistakes. But halfway through her saying it Nicky kicked her hard under the table and gave her that look.
What? her eyes said to him.
Shut it, his said to her.
GRRR, don’t tell me to shut it, hers said to him.
And then he wouldn’t look at her.
‘Would you like a chocolate croissant, love?’ Linzie said, and put one on her plate before Tanzie had even answered.
Linzie had washed and dried Tanzie’s clothes overnight and they smelt of orchid and vanilla fabric conditioner. Everything in that house smelt of something. It was as if nothing was allowed to just smell of itself. She had little plug-in things that released ‘a luxurious scent of rare blossoms and rainforests’ dotted around her skirting, and bowls of pot-pourri that she sprayed from little bottles of scent, and she had about a billion candles in the bathroom (‘I do love my scented candles’). Tanzie’s nose itched the whole time they were indoors.
After they’d got dressed Linzie took Suze to ballet. Dad and Tanzie went to the park even though she hadn’t been to the park in about two years because she had sort of grown out of it. But she didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings so she sat on the swing and let him push her a few times and Nicky stood and watched, with his hands stuffed into his pockets. He had left his Nintendo in Mr Nicholls’s car and she knew he really, really wanted a cigarette but she didn’t think he felt brave enough to smoke one in front of Dad.
There were chip-shop chips for lunch (‘Don’t tell Linze,’ Dad said, patting his stomach), and Dad asked questions about Mr Nicholls, trying to sound all casual: ‘Who is he then, that bloke? Your mum’s boyfriend?’
‘No,’ said Nicky, in a way that made it hard for Dad to ask another question. Tanzie thought Dad was a bit shocked at how Nicky spoke to him. Not that he was rude, exactly, it’s just that he didn’t seem to care what Dad thought. Plus Nicky was now taller than him but when Tanzie pointed it out Dad didn’t seem to think that was amazing at all.
And then Tanzie got cold because she hadn’t brought her coat so they went back and Suze was already home from ballet so Nicky went upstairs to go on the computer, and they played some games and then they played with her terrapin and then they just went to her room and she said they could watch a DVD because she had a DVD player and that she watched a whole one by herself every night before she went to sleep.
‘Doesn’t your mum read to you?’ Tanzie said.
‘She doesn’t have time. That’s why she got me the DVD player,’ Suze said. She had a whole shelf of films, all her favourites, that she could watch up there when they were watching something she didn’t like downstairs.
‘Marty likes gangster films so they watch those,’ she said, her nose wrinkling, and it took Tanzie a few minutes to realize she was actually talking about her dad. And she didn’t know what to say.
‘I like your jacket,’ Suze said, peering into Tanzie’s bag.
‘My mum made it for me for Christmas.’
‘Your mum actually made it?’ She held it up, so that the sequins Mum had sewn into the sleeves glinted in the light. ‘Oh, my God, is she like a fashion designer or something?’
‘No,’ Tanzie said. ‘She’s a cleaner.’
Suze laughed as if she was joking.
‘What are all those?’ she said, when she saw the maths papers in her bag.
This time Tanzie kept her mouth closed.
‘Is that maths? Oh, my God, it’s like … squiggles. It’s like … Greek.’ She giggled, flicking through them, then holding them from two fingers, like they were something horrible. ‘Are they your brother’s? Is he, like, a maths freak?’
‘I don’t know.’ Tanzie blushed because she was not very good at lying.
‘Ugh. What a brainiac. Freaky. Geeky.’ She tossed them to one side, while she pulled out Tanzie’s other clothes.
Tanzie didn’t say anything. She left them there on the floor because she didn’t want to have to explain. And she didn’t want to think about the Olympiad. And she just thought maybe it would be easier if she tried to be like Suze from now on because she seemed really happy and Dad seemed really happy here and then she said maybe they should watch television downstairs because she really didn’t want to think about anything any more.
They were three-quarters of the way through Fantasia when Tanzie heard Dad calling, ‘Tanze, your mum’s here.’ Mum stood on the doorstep with her chin up like she was ready for an argument, and when Tanzie stopped and stared at her face, she put a hand to her lip as if she had only just remembered it was split, and said, ‘I fell over,’ and then Tanzie looked behind her to Mr Nicholls who was sitting in the car, and Mum said, quick as anything, ‘He fell over too.’ Even though she hadn’t actually been able to see his face and she had just wanted to see whether they were getting in the car or if they were going to have to get a bus after all.
And Dad said, ‘Does everything you come into contact with, these days, suffer some kind of injury?’ Mum gave him a look and he muttered something about repairs, then said he’d go and get her bag, and Tanzie let out a big breath and ran into Mum’s arms because although she’d had a nice time at Linzie’s house, she’d missed Norman and she wanted to be with Mum and she was suddenly really, really tired.
The cabin that Mr Nicholls had rented was like something out of an advertisement for what old people want to do when they retire, or maybe pills for urine problems. It was on a lake and there were a few other houses but they were mostly set back behind trees or at angles so that no single window looked directly at any other house. There were fifty-six ducks and twenty geese on the water and all but three were still there by the time they’d had tea. Tanzie thought Norman might chase them but he just flopped down on the grass and watched.
‘Awesome,’ said Nicky, even though he didn’t really like the outdoors at all. He inhaled deeply. She realized he hadn’t smoked a cigarette for four days.
‘Isn’t it?’ said Mum. She gazed out at the lake and didn’t say anything for a while. She started to say something about paying their share, and Mr Nicholls held up his hands and made this ‘no-no-no-no’ noise like he didn’t even want to hear it, and Mum went a bit pink and stopped.
They had dinner on a barbecue outside, even though it was not really barbecue weather, because Mum said it would be a fun end to the trip, and when did she ever get time to do a barbecue, anyway? She seemed determined to make everyone happy and just chatted away about twice as much as anyone else, and she said she’d blown the budget because sometimes you had to count your blessings and live a little. It seemed like it was her way of saying thank you. So they had sausages and chicken thighs in spicy sauce and fresh rolls and salad, and Mum had bought two tubs of the good ice cream, not the cheap stuff that came in the white plastic cartons. She didn’t ask anything about Dad’s new house, but she did hug Tanzie a lot and said that she’d missed her and wasn’t that silly because it was only one night after all.
They each told jokes, and even though Tanzie could only remember the one about a stick being brown and sticky, everyone laughed, and they played the game where you put a broom to your forehead and run around it in circles until you fall over, which always made everyone laugh. Mum did it once, even though she could barely walk with her foot all strapped up, and kept saying, ‘Ow ow ow,’ as she went round in a circle. And that made Tanzie laugh because it was just nice to see Mum being silly for a change. And Mr Nicholls kept saying, no, no, not for him thanks, he would just watch. And then Mum limped over to him and said something really quiet in his ear and he raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Really?’ And she nodded. And he said, ‘Well, all right, then.’ And when he crashed over he actually made the ground vibrate a little. And even Nicky, who never did anything, did it, his legs sticking out like a daddy-long-legs’s, and when he laughed his laugh was really strange like this huh huh huh sound and then Tanzie decided she hadn’t heard him laugh like that for ages. Maybe ever.
And she did it about six times until the world bucked and rolled beneath her and she collapsed on her back on the grass and watched the sky spin slowly around her and thought that was a bit like life for their family. Never quite the way up it was meant to be.
They ate the food, and Mum and Mr Nicholls had some wine, and Tanzie took all the scraps off the bones and gave them to Norman because dogs die if you give them chicken bones. And then they put their coats on and just sat out on the nice wicker chairs that went with the cabin, all lined up in a row in front of the lake, and watched the birds on the water until it got dark. ‘I love this place,’ said Mum, into the silence. Tanzie wasn’t sure anyone was meant to see it, but Mr Nicholls reached over and gave Mum’s hand a squeeze.
Mr Nicholls seemed a bit sad most of the evening. Tanzie wasn’t sure why. She wondered if it was because they’d reached the end of the little trip. But she heard the geese and ducks quacking and splashing on the far side of the lake, and then just the water lapping against the shore and it was really calm and peaceful and then she must have fallen asleep because she sort of remembered Mr Nicholls carrying her upstairs and Mum tucking her in and telling her she loved her, but what she mostly remembered about that whole evening was that nobody talked about the Olympiad and she was just really, really glad.
Because here’s the thing. While Mum was getting the barbecue set up Tanzie asked to borrow Mr Nicholls’s computer and looked up the statistics for children of low-income families at private schools. And she saw within a few minutes that the probability of her actually going to St Anne’s had always been in single-figure percentages. And she understood that it didn’t matter how well she had done in that entrance test, she should have checked this figure before they had even left home because you only ever went wrong in life when you didn’t pay attention to the numbers. Nicky came upstairs, and when he saw what she was doing he stood there without saying anything for a minute, then patted her arm and said he would speak to a couple of people he knew in the year below him at McArthur’s to make sure they looked out for her.
When they were at Linzie’s, Dad had told her that private school was no guarantee of success. He’d said it three times. ‘Success is all about what’s inside you,’ he’d said. ‘Determination.’ And then he said Tanzie should get Suze to show her how she did her hair because maybe hers would look nice like that too.
Mum said she would sleep on the sofa that night so that Tanzie and Nicky could have the second bedroom but Tanzie didn’t think she did because she woke up really thirsty in the middle of the night because of Mum’s cooking and she went downstairs and Mum wasn’t there. And in the morning Mum was wearing Mr Nicholls’s grey T-shirt that he wore every single day and Tanzie waited twenty minutes watching his door because she was curious to know what he was going to come down in.
A faint mist hung across the lake in the morning. It rose off the water like a magician’s trick as everyone packed up the car. Norman sniffed around the grass, his tail wagging slowly. ‘Rabbits,’ said Mr Nicholls (he was wearing another grey T-shirt). The morning was chill and grey and the wood pigeons cooed softly in the trees and Tanzie had that sad feeling like you’ve been somewhere really nice and it’s all come to an end.
‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said quietly, as Mum shut the boot.
She flinched. ‘What, love?’
‘I don’t want to go back home,’ Tanzie said.
Mum glanced at Mr Nicholls and then she tried to smile, walked over slowly and said, ‘Do you mean you want to be with your dad, Tanze? Because if that’s what you really want I’ll –’
‘No. I just like this house and it’s nice here.’ She wanted to say, ‘And there’s nothing to look forward to when we get back because everything is spoiled and, besides, here there are no Fishers,’ but she could see from Mum’s face that that was what she was thinking too, because she immediately looked at Nicky and he shrugged.
‘You know, there’s no shame in having tried to do something, right?’ Mum gazed at them both. ‘We all did our best to make something happen, and it didn’t happen, but some good things have come out of it. We got to see some parts of the country we would never have seen. We learnt a few things. We sorted it out with your dad. We made some friends.’ It’s possible she meant Linzie and her children but her eyes were on Mr Nicholls when she said it. ‘So all in all I think it was a good thing that we tried, even if it didn’t go quite the way we’d planned. And, you know, maybe things won’t be so bad once we get home.’
Nicky’s face didn’t show anything. Tanzie knew he was thinking about all the money.
And then Mr Nicholls, who had said barely anything all morning, walked around the car, opened the door for her and said, ‘Yes. Well. I’ve been thinking about that. And we’re going to make a little detour.’