Trying something different. This is a novel I started a few years ago.

Chapter One

It didn’t help that Ellen had come to supper that day. They had sat around her beautifully painted kitchen table. Caro wouldn’t invite Ellen into her dining room, it looked over the lawn, with views of the city lights after dark. It was the kitchen and potluck suppers for Ellen. Caro’s perfect white kitchen, always in fashion, French Country White, white cupboards, whitewash. Whiter shades, pride of place her transparent Louis Ghost replica dining chairs. Ellen had sat in one of them, tipping her head back in laughter, showing her mercury fillings. 

     Caro had served fig and greens salad, knowing that Ellen would leave her goat’s cheese on the side. If only their past could be left on the side, toyed with briefly but never touched again. Ellen wasn’t ashamed of who she was or the person she had been. Not so Caro.

     “We were young, easily led. Didn’t you enjoy any of it?”

     Caro had and she was more ashamed of that fact than anything else. Shame rose up from her groin, rising across her stomach, her breasts and settling there, making it hard to breathe. “I have something good here. Something worth preserving.”

     “Darlin’, it ain’t worth preserving if you don’t even like yourself.” Ellen shook her head, a tight smile on her lips. Caro knew she was dying for a cigarette. 

     Then Robert had come home early, ducked his head through the door. He saw Ellen rocking back on Caro’s prized kitchen chairs and caught his wife’s eye with a smile. Ellen was now talking about her unreasonable boss at the casino. Showing her legs under her short skirt, blotchy legs due to bad circulation. Caro wasn’t listening, she was scratching at the paint on her perfect table, lilac, Porter’s finest. He’d raised an eyebrow, Caro had smiled. She felt warm despite her anxiety. He’d always had that effect on her. 

     “Hello ladies. How was your evening?” Caro knew he meant that the evening was over, and Ellen should leave. 

     Ellen leaned forward. “All the better for seeing you, Bobby.” 

     “I have an early start.” Robert stood behind Caro and kissed the top of her head. He grabbed his coat and briefcase and exited stage left. At least he left the kitchen and wouldn’t appear again until breakfast. 

     Ellen had knocked back the wine. “Don’t worry. Nina’s nothing like you.” She flicked her box-dye hair back. “I mean she’s not like Robert either but if you’re worried about who she might turn out like I wouldn’t, Caro.” Caro stood up and started clearing the table. Nina was late. She didn’t want a pissed Ellen seeing her daughter, alcohol loosened her tongue, loosened everything about her friend, Caro thought nastily. She wished she hadn’t brought her daughter’s worrying behaviour up with her old friend. Friend or foe, friend or foe. Words spun as she started washing up the glassware, French again, bought on a tour of the vineyards before Nina was born. They’d hired a red sports car, driven through Provence. 

     “Can I give you a hand, Carol?” Ellen cooed. Caro’s back stiffened. “Don’t call me that.” Caro shivered, the nights were still cool. Ellen wore only a short denim skirt and a tight orange tank top. Only a strong complexion could get away that shade of orange. It made Ellen’s freckles dance busily. 

     “Don’t call you what?” A figure appeared in the doorway. Long dark hair, the same shade Caro’s had been once. Washed out jeans and a grubby purple tee-shirt with the logo of an old metal band from the 80s. Chewing gum, eyes glassy. Was her daughter taking drugs?

     “Hello darling. Ellen was just leaving.”

     “I guess that’s my cue.” Ellen recovered the high street brand denim jacket from the back of her chair. Caro wished she wouldn’t use the back of her beautiful chairs to hang her coat on.

     “I’ll call you a cab.” Caro retrieved her phone from the side. She had an uber account for Ellen’s visits. Caro leaned against the kitchen cupboards and sent a message to the ap.  

     “I’ll wait outside. I could do with a smoke.” Ellen air-kissed Nina and giggled. “I think I would have made a lovely godmother.” She lurched out of the kitchen, blowing kisses to Nina and Caro.

     Nina stared at her mother, her steely gaze confronting. “She’s fun, isn’t she?” Then she turned round and headed up the stairs. She’s fun meant Caro wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t, it was as if all the fun had been used up. Now she was trying to keep her perfect together.

With Ellen gone, back to her cheap little unit, Caro could still smell the sadness that seeped through her skin. Caro wondered if other people could smell it. Alone in her perfect kitchen drinking Riesling left over from Christmas. That morning she’d searched in the back of the pantry for it, on her knees. Ellen hadn’t noticed. The Riesling had been a gift from a neighbour. Caro held the stem and turned the wine glass in her hands, her fingerprints obscuring the pale liquid, smudging the light. The light fractures colours from the crystal droplets of her New York chandelier that Robert had bought her for her last birthday. It caught the highlights in Caro’s hair. She wore it short these days, and as blond as she could get away with. Beauty, as always, blotted out the ugly. At least for a moment. Ugly moments were popping up to haunt her more and more.

     Robert was deep in sleep when Caro crawled into her side of their bed sometime after midnight. 

The light found Caro’s face around dawn. She could hear Robert whistling in the shower from the ensuite. She loved the cool spring mornings that didn’t bring her out in a sweat, like summer ones did. If she pulled on her exercise gear, hanging from hangers in the wardrobe, expensive shades of mauve and blue, she’d be able to make quinoa porridge for Robert before he left. 

     In the kitchen Caro opened windows to let out the stale air from the night before, while the quinoa gently cooked on the stove top. She tidied Ellen’s visit away, but the air needed clearing. If she were the type Caro would have probably lit sage and waved it around the corners of her kitchen. 

     “Sorry love. I’m late. Slept so well.” The sight of Robert in his suit, carrying an overcoat and dragging his case on wheels made Caro’s heart jump. Her clean man. She could smell him, lemon and a heady herb, rosemary perhaps. She stopped stirring his breakfast, maybe Nina could eat it. Caro wouldn’t, it would sit in her stomach, ruin her yoga class. Caro walked over to her husband, re-tied his tie. Starred into his blue eyes, already distracted by the day ahead. 

     “Dinner then? I’ll see you at dinner.”

     “I’m away tonight, that meeting in Melbourne. Remember?”

     Damn Ellen. She always unsettled her, made her forget the now, but never her past. Robert away, what would she do to fill the time? Nina perhaps, a girl’s movie? 

     “Sure. I’d forgotten. Stand still.”

       That slow lazy smile of her husband’s. She had his gaze now. “How late did that Ellen keep you up last night?”

     Caro shrugged. “She went home as Nina came in.”

     Robert left with an empty stomach and a quick kiss that pleasantly burned Caro’s lips for a moment. She wanted to hold on to him, his arms grounding her giddiness. 

     Keeping busy was Caro’s raison d’etre. Cooking meals, yoga classes, interior decorating. Creative ways to stop the ugly noise. She had the day in front of her, and the night after that. Nina walked into the kitchen. Caro turned to her holding the pan of quinoa, smiling, doing a knockout impression of Margaret Fulton.

     “Porridge, darling?”

     Her daughter sneered. “No thanks, Mum. I don’t do breakfast.” 

     Nina moved through the kitchen like a vampire, quick movements, pale face, dressed all in black. Then she was gone. Gone before Caro realised Nina wasn’t wearing school uniform. She ran to the hallway, opened the front door, no sign of her daughter. Caro was clutching a school lunch in her hand, handmade sushi rolls in a brown paper bag. She’d attached a sticker with a smiling cartoon face on the outside. Nina has once loved Caro’s lunches. What was her daughter going to eat now? Greasy chips and donuts? Caro stood in the doorway, visible to the neighbours, in her exercise gear and clutching a cut lunch in a bag. She retreated back into the house, closed the front door.      She would have loved to have a mother like her rather than the car crash she’d grown up with. She couldn’t tell Nina the stories of her teenage years, maybe she never would. Nina barely resembled the cute, plump princess loving little girl who squeezed Caro like she would never let go. Caro sat down and ate the porridge straight from the pan, without using a table mat. It ran down her chin, she kept shoving it in her mouth. Fuck yoga. Fuck her perfectly painted kitchen table. She would touch it up later with the spare tin she kept in the garage.