‘Most of them bus their children to private schools in Werribee or Geelong or South Yarra because the local schools aren’t good enough. But the lefties, like Ashleigh’s parents, who are so committed to public education that they send their children to the local high school, take over the school councils and expect everyone else to tow the line. Jo doesn’t want to be like me. She wants to be like them.’ Mandy sighed. ‘I can’t blame her. I want her to be… to have a better life.’
When Sarah was growing up, she knew that there were people in her street who were poor and she knew her mother was a snob who avoided some people. But she hadn’t thought about how much those poorer neighbours might have resented her and her family.
They continued talking about the social problems arising from gentrification while Mandy set out the mugs, put the milk, full fat, and the sugar, white, on the table, and leant against the bench, waiting for the kettle to boil.
The previous day at the police interview Sarah had not had a chance to pay much attention to Mandy. Now she noticed how much Mandy looked like Ada: the same shoulder-length straight brown hair, with a fringe that covered her eyebrows. It was the sort of shapeless haircut that Sarah’s hairdresser would’ve despised, but Sarah couldn’t imagine Mandy sitting in Christina’s chair for three hours at a time and paying the $200 for the privilege. Like Ada, Mandy was a plain dresser. Like Ada, she was average — average height, average build. Mandy probably didn’t belong to a gym or go on diets. But Mandy was older than Ada — her hair was threaded with grey streaks, and the first fine wrinkles were developing around her eyes. Ada wasn’t going to get old.
‘Where is Jo?’ Sarah asked as Mandy placed the mugs of coffee on the table and sat down opposite Sarah.
‘In her room. Just lies in the dark. She’s come out to eat a couple of times when I’ve called her. Not that she eats much.’
‘How are you going?’ Sarah asked.
‘I’m struggling. I’m worried about Jo, about money.’ Mandy’s voice quavered. ‘Sorry, it’s not what you came to talk about.’
‘Mandy, it’s a tough thing you’re going through,’ Sarah said, realising that Mandy was working hard at being stoic and composed. ‘You’re grieving for Ashleigh and for the life you imagined for Jo. The legal system is slow, and it may take months before the hearing. It leaves everyone hanging. Most people need some support. I can organise a counsellor or a social worker.’
‘Thanks, Sarah, but I’m not much of a believer in counselling. Life is tough, and paying someone to listen to you talk about it isn’t going to make it any easier. But you came to ask me some questions?’
Sarah opened her notebook and wrote the date on top of a new page. ‘I’d like to know more about Jo.’
‘What kind of things?’ Mandy asked.
‘Your relationship, her childhood, her relationship with Ashleigh. I need to get more sense of who she is.’
Mandy told Sarah about falling pregnant at seventeen, about her short-lived relationship with Jo’s father, David, and about the decision to move back into the family home as a twenty-year-old single mother. ‘Dad was a great help, and David’s parents too. Living here with Dad made it easier for me to work — he loved Jo and they got on well. In those days, she thought I was the best mum in the world,’ Mandy said and shook her head. ‘Not anymore. I was a young mum, I thought it’d always be like that… For years and years, when she saw me standing outside the classroom door with the other mothers at the end of the school day, she’d race out and I’d scoop her into my arms; she was so happy to see me.’
‘And then she changed?’
Mandy shrugged. ‘I guess it’s just, she grew up. Became a teenager, started to see that there were other ways of living, other kinds of mothers.’
Sarah was relieved she didn’t need to do much prodding to get Mandy to talk. Mandy seemed to be in a reflective mood, scouring through the past as if they were on an archeological dig, on the brink of a major discovery, as if by unearthing the moment when her relationship with Jo changed — as if it were possible to reduce it to one moment — she’d have a chance to make things right, to undo the accident, Ashleigh’s death, and the bleak future that lay ahead for Jo.
‘In hindsight I can see there were things that happened in Jo’s childhood that I should’ve… I tried to deal with them as best I could. I didn’t think long term. I didn’t think, This might affect her forever. I didn’t know what a mother was supposed to do.’ Mandy’s voice was thin and tight.
‘It’s like that for every parent,’ Sarah said.
‘I’d no idea what I was supposed to do, especially after my father died. Sometimes I resented Jo so much… At the end of her primary school, I sent her to stay with her father for two weeks. He had two more children and I thought it was important for her to get to know her brothers. And to be honest, I wanted a break,’ Mandy confessed.
‘That’s understandable,’ Sarah said.
Mandy told Sarah how that summer, she’d had a relationship with Theo, the manager of the storeroom at the supermarket, who was newly separated from his wife. He was the first man she’d met in years that she wanted to spend time with and he’d invited her to go away with him for two weeks. It didn’t last long; in the end he’d gone back to his wife.
‘Jo and I had never been apart for more than a couple of nights before that. I’d even gone as a volunteer on most of her school camps. And both she and David were keen. It was unusual for David, but he sent the money for her ticket. When she came back, she’d lost weight. She was a chubby kid — not fat, just not skinny…’ Mandy hesitated. ‘I’m sorry. Do you mind me telling you this?’
‘No, I don’t mind,’ Sarah said. People were awkward saying the word fat when Sarah was around. As if the mere mention of the word would be offensive. And in a way they were right. Fat, obese, chubby, overweight — even when the speaker wasn’t talking about her, the words slapped Sarah right back into her fat body, to the edges of the chair cutting into her thighs, the tight cling of her trouser waistband, the clammy stickiness of flesh rubbing against flesh between her thighs.
‘Anyway, she said she was on a diet. Her father had put her on a diet. I was furious. She was too young for diets. She didn’t need to be on a diet. I told her she was perfect the way she was, you know, said all the right things.’
‘Of course,’ Sarah said.
‘It turned out that her father and his wife told her that she was fat. Apparently they’re super fit, gym junkies. I didn’t know. David played some football when he was at school, but most of the time he was in trouble with the coach for not turning up to training. Or turning up late and drunk. I had a big fight with David on the phone, but I didn’t find out exactly what happened. Later, all this stuff came out about how she didn’t have many friends and it was because she was fat. And that the reason she didn’t do well at school was because she was fat. And the reason her father didn’t want to see her was because she was fat.’
‘So they’d made her feel like her weight was a problem and she had to do something about it?’ Sarah asked.
‘Yes, and I was to blame. She’d been a normal eater, but she stopped eating properly. I worried about anorexia and bulimia and hassled her about eating and we had some big fights. She didn’t become anorexic. She lost more weight over that summer and she didn’t put it back on. Since then she’s controlled her eating. She pecks at the food on her plate, leaves meals unfinished. When she’s done, she pushes the plate away, as if the remaining food might be toxic.’
If only, Sarah thought. Of all the diets she’d been on, for more than twenty years now — since her mother put her on her first diet when she was fourteen — if anything her love of food had intensified. She dreamed about food. She planned what she was going to eat days in advance, thinking about treats and food-related outings. Eat to live, don’t live to eat. Another of her mother’s annoying sayings. Sarah made a few notes, but she doubted that she could make much of a story out of an obnoxious father and a chubby childhood.