Page 30 of The Mother-in-Law

Nettie stops.

‘Now ofall timeswe should be coming together as a family.’

‘Family?’ Nettie squares up against me. ‘You and Ollie and the kids are a family. Patrick and I . . . we’re just two people. Two people who don’t even—’

‘I know—’

‘Youdon’t know. You couldn’t possibly know.’

I sigh. ‘Nettie, I want so much for us to put this behind us. I want to help you through this.’

I’m not hopeful, but I think I have a chance. Here, without Patrick, without Ollie, I might be able to get through to her. And Iwantto get through to her. There has already been too much loss for this family. First Tom. Then Diana. I can’t lose Nettie too.

‘I don’t care what you want.’

She turns away and continues walking down the street. It’s not until later that I realise she never told me what happened to her wrist.

15

DIANA

The past . . .

I‘ve heard it said that a parent spends eighty per cent of their energy on one child, and spreads the remaining twenty per cent among any other children. Ollie has always been my eighty per cent child. I spent most of his childhood wondering if he was eating enough, learning enough, doing enough. He wasn’t the most popular kid in school, but he wasn’t a social leper either. His general contentment, which should have comforted me, somehow only served to baffle me. Did he want to invite his little friend over to play, or did he wish I’d stop inviting that friend over? He never seemed to care either way.

Nettie, on the other hand, was born so capable and articulate, I never bothered worrying about her. Being her mother was like having a tiny peer who accompanied me everywhere. If someone picked on her at school she’d simply have a quiet word to the bully, telling them that if they didn’t stop being mean they’d have no friends left, and wouldn’t that be silly? When I served them vegetables for dinner and Ollie, five years her senior, refused to eat them, she’d ask him: ‘Don’t you want to be big and strong like Superman?’

Once, when Ollie was eleven and Nettie was six, they’d been swimming in the pool for most of the afternoon when I had to go inside. Ollie and Nettie were both strong swimmers, it wasn’t a big deal to pop back to the house for a short while.

‘Keep an eye on your sister,’ I must have said, or something to that effect.

I went to the kitchen and started on dinner, peeling potatoes. It was a warm day and the sun beamed in through the window. As I picked up the last potato, a funny feeling came over me. Mother’s instinct, perhaps.I should check the kids, I thought.

When I got outside, I saw a tangle of bodies just under the surface of the water.

I didn’t pause even to take off my shoes before leaping into the water.

I grabbed Nettie first, but Ollie had a hold of her and wasn’t letting go. I pulled and twisted her but he was like an anchor, weighing her down. Finally, I gave Ollie a kick in the stomach and she came free. I pushed her to the side of the pool and a moment later did the same with Ollie. He clung to the side of the pool, blood and water dripping down his face and filling the hollowed-out part of his collarbones.

‘What . . . on earth . . . happened?’ I said, panting.

‘Ollie did a flip and hit his head,’ Nettie gasped. ‘I saw blood and he wasn’t moving. I tried to save his life and then he tried to drown me!’

I looked at Ollie, sucking in wild breaths at the side of the pool. ‘Did you panic, Ollie? Is that why you were holding onto Nettie?’

Ollie didn’t reply. He seemed just as confused as Nettie was.

That’s when I realised. Some people jumped in and tried to save someone who was in trouble; others did anything they could to save themselves. Ollie hadn’t meant to drown Nettie, he was simply following his instincts, just as she was following hers.

My children had just showed me who they were.

When I arrive home, Nettie is sitting on a bar stool in my kitchen, leafing through the newspaper. Her suit jacket is on the back of the stool and her hair is swept into a very corporate-looking chignon.

‘Hello, darling,’ I say, jostling with my bags from the supermarket.

Her gaze flickers up from the newspaper. Nettie stops by like this from time to time on her way home from work, sometimes under the guise of dropping something off, sometimes justbecause. I don’t really understand it, but I’ve come to quite enjoy the routine of it. ‘Hey, Mum,’ she says.

‘I saw your friend Lisa in the supermarket just now.’ I haul the bags onto the counter. ‘She mentioned a bunch of you were going to Hong Kong for a girls trip.’