They had talked about it, but Moss hadn’t wanted to listen. For a long time she had tried to ignore the obvious fact that her two mothers were growing apart. Now she couldn’t ignore it any more. On the contrary, she clung to it as the best explanation for Linsey’s departure and never allowed herself to explore the other, more disturbing possibility that she, Moss, might be the real reason that Linsey left them.
By that time, Amy was a plump, untidy woman in her early forties, with sleepy blue eyes and a slow, tantalising smile. The dimple gave her a girlish air and her skin remained remarkably fine. She had never fulfilled her early promise as a musician- but perhaps she never was very good, her grown daughter thought suddenly. Linsey was always so careful to speak well of Amy.
These thoughts were only contributing to her wakefulness. Moss returned her head to the pillow, trying to make her mind blank. She was beginning to drift off to sleep when she became aware of a soft footfall and saw Finn’s unfamiliar shape as he crept into the kitchen. She didn’t stir, but watched as he paused at the table for a moment before opening the door and disappearing into the half-light outside. She heard the gate squeak and then silence. The birds had momentarily ceased their morning song. She wriggled deeper into her sleeping bag. She was so tired.
The next thing she heard was the sound of the back door opening again. It was now full daylight, and a watery sun lit the figure of Finn as he stooped to pass beneath the low lintel.
She sat up, running her fingers through her tangled hair. ‘Hello, Finn. What time is it?’
Finn looked startled, as though he had not expected to find her still there. He pointed to the alarm clock on the mantelpiece, put a plastic shopping bag on the table and continued on down the hall. It was seven fifty. Moss climbed out of her sleeping bag and went into the bathroom. There was a striped towel on the handbasin with the name MOSS written on card with a magic marker. She turned on the shower and waited. Tepid water flowed sluggishly from the old-fashioned showerhead, and she found that she needed to duck and weave to get wet, washing herself in sections. Her shower was understandably short, and she was grateful for the roughness of the towel that warmed her a little with its friction.
When she arrived back in the kitchen Finn had lit the fire and was once more engaged in stuffing bread into the toaster. ‘I got Vegemite,’ he said with a shy smile, indicating the jar. ‘And some cheese. For lunch.’ He returned his attention to the toaster and lapsed into silence.
‘I’ll make the tea if you like,’ Moss offered. Finn took down a canister from the mismatched assortment lined up beside the clock, then nodded towards the teapot with its colourful knitted cosy. Moss was puzzled. Puzzled and hurt-he wasn’t making any effort to speak to her, and she began to feel like the intruder she undoubtedly was. The kettle boiled, and soon two steaming mugs of tea joined the wedges of toast which Finn had liberally coated with Vegemite.
‘You found the towel, then?’ Finn, unused to visitors, had been inordinately proud that he’d thought of the towel. ‘It just came to me,’ he said. ‘The idea of the towel.’ He looked at her hopefully.
‘Just the thing,’ Moss said. ‘Thank you.’ She couldn’t work him out. Was he a bit-well, simple? Hadn’t he been a mathematician? A brilliant one, from what she’d learnt. Perhaps he was just absentminded. Genius tended to be that way- at least in popular folklore. She bit thoughtfully on her toast and suppressed a grimace. For some reason Finn thought she liked Vegemite. Still, she ate her toast without complaint: she needed time and didn’t want to offend him.
The salty taste of the Vegemite was sharp on her tongue, and as she and Finn carefully chewed their toast, the sound of crunching mingled with the ticking of the clock. Neither of them spoke until Moss poured them both a second mug of tea. She could wait no longer. Her plan had been to let Finn broach the subject, but his silence was resolute.
‘You do know who I am, don’t you?’
‘What year were you born?’
‘Nineteen eighty-three.’
‘Your mother was Amy Sinclair? Partner of Linsey Brookes?’
Moss felt a sudden wave of nausea. Dear God, don’t let me vomit. Not now. She forced herself to breathe slowly, deeply, before replying. ‘Yes. Amy and Linsey-my mothers.’
‘Then you must be my daughter.’
And he just sat there, sipping his tea.
Moss had pictured this moment quite differently. This was when her father was supposed to open his arms wide and hold her for the first time. She had even imagined the roughness of his whiskers against her cheek. They would both cry a little and then laugh, and he would look at her with wonder and regret. Instead, he went on relentlessly sipping his tea. She tried to read his face but it was blank. Even the kindness she had recognised last night had been erased. Say something, she begged silently. Please.
But Finn was struggling. He had lived alone for so long that he found even small talk a challenge. Last night, before sleep claimed him, he had tried to cobble together some thoughts, some words that might at least be adequate. I’m so happy to meet you at last. That was patently untrue and Finn was a bad liar. I’ve often thought about you. Also untrue. And dangerous. It might make her think she was welcome. The last thing he wanted was another person in his life. Why was she here, anyway? Keep the conversation as neutral as possible, he advised himself.
‘How did you find me?’ he asked.
Moss swallowed her disappointment. ‘Maths,’ she said. ‘I followed the maths trail.’
A few months ago, while looking through some of Amy’s sheet music, she’d come upon the contract that had brought her into being. It was typical of Amy to be careless with such an important document. Her mother snatched it away, but not before Moss had seen the name: Michael Finbar Clancy. So, as she explained to Finn, at that point she had both his name and his profession. Fortunately, Michael was a prolific writer in his years as an academic, and had been making quite a name for himself in probability theory. Her search was temporarily frustrated when, after a few years of regular publication, his name suddenly disappeared from the learned journals. It seemed he had vanished without a trace, but by then Moss’s initial curiosity had hardened into resolve. She saw that he’d written quite a few of the articles with a Philip Cousins who was now Associate Professor of Mathematics at Monash University. It was Phil who told her where to find Michael Clancy.
‘He’s changed a lot,’ he warned her.
‘I never knew him, so it won’t matter to me,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘As I said, I’m only looking him up because my family used to know his family, and Granny would like to get in touch.’ She was surprised at her own glibness.
Finn was appalled to learn how easy it was to find him and angry with Phil for revealing his whereabouts. ‘So old Phil keeps track of me, does he? Never could mind his own business.’ Seeing the hurt on Moss’s face, he continued more gently. ‘So what started you looking?’
‘The contract. I found the contract.’ Moss was being evasive. In fact, she couldn’t really articulate her motives because she didn’t fully understand them, preferring to sidle up and consider them obliquely. Initially, there was the simple fact that she was different. None of the children she knew had two mothers. The teasing at school had ebbed and flowed as the bullies and their satellites were diverted by newer victims. In primary school it was masculine, sporadic and almost ritualistic. ‘Lezzos!’ the boys would shout, and Moss would run to the shelter of the girls’ toilets. Her friends would then cluck and cluster around, enjoying the drama. The little girls were not sure what ‘lezzos’ were, but knew they had to band together against the boys.