Wind in the Wires by Joy Dettman Page A

case. She dug it out, found a box of matches in the pocket of her school uniform, then stood before her dressing table, watching her reflection light up and blow smoke – and saw what Robert had meant about her eyeliner. Wiped it off on her school uniform, then replaced it with wider lines of black, added lipstick, one of Rosie’s used-up lipsticks. She drew a beauty spot on her left cheekbone with an eyebrow pencil stub, also one of Rosie’s.
    They had noses like bloodhounds. Robert came to her door and slapped the cigarette from her hand. It flew, landed on the dressing table. He snatched it, mashed it into a pot of pancake face powder.
    ‘Wash your hands.’
    ‘They’re not dirty.’
    ‘If you plan to eat tonight, you will wash your hands. It’s your choice.’
    Braised chicken and mashed potatoes wasn’t a choice. Braised chicken and mashed potatoes was blackmail. She washed her hands and slouched into the kitchen.
    ‘Was my father one of the lodgers or someone from your church?’
    ‘He was an eighteen-year-old American boy,’ Myrtle said.

T HE Y OUNG W AR W INDOW
    ‘I ’m sick and tired of you both lying to me. As if an eighteen-year-old boy would be interested in a fat forty year old. As if an eighteen-year-old boy would even look at you without laughing.’
    ‘I didn’t give birth to you, Cara,’ Myrtle said.
    ‘It’s too late to pull that. Mrs Collins already told me I was born on the kitchen floor at Amberley.’
    That made them sit up and shut up. For ten or fifteen seconds the only sound in the kitchen was the peas hissing because the saucepan had run out of water. Myrtle lifted it from the stove, added a knob of butter, pepper.
    ‘God sent an angel to my door –’
    ‘Oh, yeah, and I’m baby Jesus – and now I’m really going to Sydney.’
    ‘You were born to a twenty-year-old country girl who already had three children,’ Robert said. ‘A young war widow –’
    Cara was halfway out the door. ‘War widow’ caught her attention. She turned.
    ‘Sit down,’ he said.
    ‘While you think up a few more lies.’
    ‘The boy’s name was Billy-Bob. He was an American sailor. Jenny was one of my lodgers. After her husband was killed, she took work at a clothing factory,’ Myrtle said.
    ‘Mrs Collins said that she and Miss Robertson were in the kitchen minutes after you had me on the floor. She said I was wrapped up in a tea towel.’
    ‘What she told you is the truth as she knew it, pet. Jenny and I deceived those dear women. You weren’t born to me, but you’ve been mine since the minute of your birth.’
    Mrs Collins had said the lodger had been a singer, not a clothing-factory worker. Liars need good memories, and Cara was about to say so, when Myrtle added, ‘She had a little boy. I looked after him for her.’
    Mrs Collins had said there was a little boy. It could have been true. And Cara didn’t want it to be true. Her every word, her every action since Easter had been aimed to punish her plummy-mouthed, too good to be true, cheating fraud of a mother – who, if she wasn’t her cheating mother, had no reason to put up with being punished.
    ‘You probably found out I was talking to Mrs Collins and you bribed her with free rent to lie for you.’
    ‘It’s the truth, pet.’
    ‘Then I’m nothing to you, to either of you?’
    ‘Only everything,’ Robert said. ‘Sit down, poppet.’
    ‘Stop calling me that – and you know what I mean. I’m not related to either of you.’
    ‘We’re related by love,’ Robert said, reaching out a hand. She flinched from his touch. ‘Had you been born to us, we couldn’t have loved you more, and you know it.’
    Silence then, a heart-thumping, wobbly sort of silence. Her legs were shaking. It was too ridiculous. Having a father called Billy-Bob was totally ridiculous – probably too ridiculous not to be true.
    Myrtle having a lover had been more ridiculous. Even in an essay she’d tried to write, the part where Captain Amberley