Monica Bloom by Nick Earls Page B

status. ‘I’ll be back on Monday. The mystery’llbe over then. She hit the floor like she was dead. It was terrible.’ She took a biscuit but she didn’t eat it.
    She wanted to get off the topic, and she told us more about Dublin, about sneaking out in the middle of the night to see bands. The girl next door was at uni and could get her into bars, as long as she was inconspicuous and sober when she was there. ‘But it wasn’t about the drinking,’ she said. ‘Not for me. It was about the bands, and having a life.’ A number of times she fell asleep in school the next day. It happened enough that she was sent for blood tests that said she was very mildly anaemic, so she was told to eat more meat. Her parents never noticed her sneaking out. She had her own key. ‘I don’t even know if they would have minded,’ she said. ‘We never talked about it. It was culturally enriching, so it might have been okay.’
    Katharine laughed, and poured more cordial from the jug. Ice cubes clinked against the side.
    They were going to the Gold Coast the next day, leaving early for another visit to see the twins’ grandparents. Monica said that the highlight the previous time had been Bill Hartnett getting a speeding ticket, trying to bluster his way out of it and then realising he was in a car with three teenagers and needed to be setting a good example — an example of a good, remorseful citizen who had slipped that one and only time.
    My mother called my name over the fence around then. Dinner was almost ready and I had to go. I told Monica I hoped the whole suspension issue would just fade away,become less newsworthy in a hurry, and she said, ‘Yeah, thanks.’
    â€˜And let’s hope that’s it,’ I said. ‘You don’t want them to stop you doing things. Going to dances and things. Having a life.’
    And she looked me in the eyes, and smiled.
    â€˜That should be fine, shouldn’t it?’ Katharine said. ‘Going to dances and things?’
    And Monica said, ‘Yeah. The slate’s clean. It just means two weeks of keeping the nuns happy, and I can do that. Two weeks. Easy.’
    I could smell dinner when I got to the gate. It was a chicken recipe my mother had picked up at a fundraising appearance by a celebrity chef at a lunch at school, a big mothers’ committee event. Andy had the table set, and my father was standing on the verandah holding a beer and staring out into the night.
    The open-for-inspection hadn’t gone particularly well — six people this time, and again two were apparently serious. Phone numbers had been collected and would be followed up.
    We sat and ate, my father with his beer, my mother with her watered-down wine, and for one night I didn’t care. Not about the house, not about a lot of things I spent hours on any given day caring about. I had the feeling Monica Bloom and I had made a plan and no one else in the world knew it. There was a dance at St Catherine’s in two weeks, and we would both be thereI should have kissed her, but I didn’t know if it would have gone right or not. I should have kissed her, but it was a risk I couldn’t take that afternoon. I couldn’t let another thing go wrong. This way, though, it was no worse than a missed opportunity, with all its possibilities intact and waiting for a night just two weeks ahead.
    There was something there. In my better moments I was convinced of it. That counted for a lot as my father pushed dumbly on through the meal, my mother feigned a shaky optimism about the two new potential buyers and Andy and I fought on with the pretence that all was close to normal, since that seemed to be what our parents needed from us then.
    â€˜You were right,’ Andy said. ‘She was pretty good at tennis, their cousin.’
    And I said, ‘Yeah, I told you. And you should drop in to the club some time for a hand of