Caro noticed a difference in Nina. In the way Nina wore her school uniform now she had started back at school. A button or two loosened, showing the silk bow of her bra. Nina’s skirt appeared shorter, and it wasn’t because of weight gain as she was still skipping breakfast. She left the house in the morning, a fake smile pasted across her face, picking up an apple from the fruit bowl. 

     Last night Nina played with the meal Caro had prepared. “Are you going out tonight?” Caro asked. 

      “Later. Kaitlyn and Gus both have work.”

     “You’ve hardly mentioned Kaitlyn but you haven’t mentioned Gus at all.”

     Nina smiled her enigmatic smile, the one Caro had mastered a long time ago. She saw through her daughter’s and wondered if Nina saw through her own guarded smile. The idea worried her, and she almost forgot to question her. If Nina could see through her smile, what else could she see through? Caro had kept so much of herself deeply hidden, the thought of her daughter uncovering even a handful of secrets, finding the underbelly of Caro’s life, frightened her. 

     Caro scraped the salad debris into the compost bucket and pulled herself back. She wanted to ask Nina about boys and sex. Basically, the stuff that she didn’t want to share about herself. 

     “Is there a boy?” Caro catches Nina as she reaches the door Caro sees her face drop briefly. She quickly rearranges her expression, there’s a flicker of something, then it was gone. “No Mum. There is no boy.”

     The thought of her little girl out there among boys who want her, like her, love her even is confronting. But there may be boys who hate Nina, and they are the ones to watch. Men who encourage intimacy but will cause Nina shame. Caro knows her own shame will kill her one day. It’s too much ugliness to keep inside. She knows this on one level, but still a bolt of shock runs through her body. She clasps the kitchen bench top until her knuckles turn white. Perhaps she’ll die without escaping this beautifully decorated prison she’s carefully constructed.

A young Carol hid between two empty houses on the new housing estate. She liked to come here and peer in the windows, dreaming of living in one of the new builds. Everything was fresh, so unblemished. Carol imagines completing menial tasks, vacuuming the stairs, taking the rubbish out to the specially made place where the bins were kept. Today she was hiding from Wayne who was coming for her. She could hear his big shoes clumping on the concrete. Carol holds her breath but suddenly he appears at the end of path, a sickening smile on his big stupid face. A shadow from one of the houses darkens his features. Then he’s all over her, hands pinching, grabbing. She tries to scream but one of his huge hands is over her mouth, her nose. Carol can’t breathe, she feels his sweaty body pushed hard against hers. His other hand thrusts between her legs, he rips at her underpants. It hurts. A pain like no other rocks through her. 

     “Tell anyone and I’ll kill you.” Wayne spat on the ground and left her. Carol sank to the floor, sobbing, her breath ragged. 

Caro regains her strength and pours a large glass of wine. She hopes Nina’s first time is kinder. She wants to warn her about what can go wrong. The bruises and bite marks she had to hide for weeks. The disgust on Wayne’s face when he looked at her. But she doesn’t. 

     Carol had no mother to go to, she only had Wayne’s horrible mother who hated her. When Carol forced herself to go home that day the sun was going down. Avoiding that great galumphed brute. She ran upstairs to throw up her dinner in Doreen’s toilet. The mess matched the rest of her bathroom suite, a pale orange. Apricot Delight, Doreen boasted.    There were days Carol almost forgave Wayne for what he’d done, he didn’t have a hope being the progeny of Frank and Doreen. But more often she wasn’t so generous. He could have impregnated her. His seed, luckily for her, was as useless as the rest of him.

     Nina had still not come home as Caro sat on the white sofa in her lounge room. She hadn’t drawn the curtains yet, she watched the sky change from a colour palette of summer to inky blue. She hadn’t moved for hours. The dregs at the bottom of her wine glass beside her, her attempt at a coffee nearby, growing cold with a skin on the top. Caro craved a cigarette, she hadn’t had one for 20 years, but she hadn’t visited that particular memory for as long. Robert was due home in an hour or two. Too late for dinner but he would be home and holding her in their bed tonight. He was a patient man. A loving man. Caro knew the difference.

     She’d met him in a city café, crowded with people, hardly any room to sit. It was winter, the windows were steamed up. Caro had squeezed into the booth where he had work papers all over the table. She’d heaved her handbag onto her seat, knocking his cold coffee all over his papers. Caro flinched, expecting the worse. “Oh god! So sorry.” Grabbing paper napkins from a dispenser on the table, making it worse. 

     “Don’t worry. I wasn’t enjoying it at all. No harm done.” He looked up and smiled. His reaction, his pale blue eyes full of kindness, warmed her insides. He was so unexpected. 

     Their first date had been a gallery just out of town. One of the forgotten impressionists. Caro had never heard of him anyway. They walked round a nearby park, Robert had made a picnic lunch for them. He’d even cut the crusts off the grated vegetable sandwiches. Packed a couple of glasses for the New Zealand wine which was still cold. Strawberries for afterwards. It wasn’t an imaginative picnic, but he had thought about it. He was dressed in a button-down shirt and pressed trousers, his blond hair fluffed by the breeze. He was unlike anybody else she’d met in her short ugly life. He smiled at her with his whole face, and Caro decided right there that she would have to keep her history secret. No one could be that kind, not even him.