Who We Were Read online

  Grace waitressed when she first left school. An overpriced understaffed beachfront cafe that was always frantically busy. After a year of being paid a pittance and having an aching back at the end of each day, she landed a job in a travel agency. It was there she met Tom. He came into the office early one morning, his blue eyes fixing on Grace first and then her client.

  ‘Does anyone here own registration UPL55T?’

  ‘I do,’ the client, a glamorous woman in her forties, admitted.

  ‘Can you please move your car? I don’t want to have to give you a ticket.’

  Grace was instantly attracted to him. Those glittering blue eyes. The rugged tan of his face. The way his mouth twitched with a smile. But more than anything, his decency. How many rangers sought out car owners so they could avoid giving them a ticket? How did he even manage to keep his job?

  Her client, immensely grateful that she’d avoided a 200-dollar fine, found him just as attractive.

  ‘What a gorgeous-looking man,’ she exclaimed when she came back from moving her car, presumably to a legal spot. ‘I hope you got his number.’

  Grace had. And here they are, sixteen years and four children later. She is looking forward to showing him off at the reunion. It will be his first time meeting her extended cohort: nothing was organised for the five-year or ten-year anniversary, too many people were overseas or interstate or unable to commit for one reason or another. The dress code is formal: black tie for the men, gowns for the women. Tom has a tuxedo that gets dragged out for occasions like these; he always looks particularly handsome in black tie. It will be hard not to feel smug. Take a look at him. Not just at how drop-dead gorgeous he is. This is a good man, inside and out. Grace Coleman is the luckiest woman in the world.

  The question is what should Grace herself wear? Options from her existing wardrobe are limited – most things are a size or two too small – and there simply isn’t the budget to buy something new. Plenty of time to work it out. As she tells her children, it’s not about how you look, it’s how you feel. And Grace feels great. She couldn’t be happier with her life.

  Tom is standing in the doorway.

  ‘All good?’ she asks.

  He rolls his eyes, the ones she fell in love with, indicating that the only baddies in Lauren’s room are those from her imagination.

  ‘Okay to turn out the light?’ he asks with a yawn.

  ‘Yeah.’ She closes the yearbook, pops it on the bedside table. No doubt she’ll pick it up again tomorrow.

  Twenty years. Grace’s life is completely different and, presumably, so is everyone else’s. She is genuinely excited about reconnecting with the guys from school. Seeing what they look like now, how their lives have turned out. For her own part, she’s looking forward to proving to everyone that she has well and truly come out of Annabel Moore’s shadow. Yes, they are still friends. The truth is, she likes Annabel more now than she did in school. Maybe because their friendship is on more of an equal footing. Or maybe because Grace is her own person, driven by her own moods and thoughts and not those of Annabel.

  Tom clicks off the bedside lamp. Maybe they could book a hotel room for the night of the reunion? Maybe, with some creative budgeting, there would be enough money?

  Grace cuddles up to him. ‘What was that thing you wanted me to fixate on again?’

  He takes her hand, slides it under the band of his soccer shorts. ‘It’s this.’

  Then he rolls on top of her, his lips – warm with a faint taste of toothpaste – seeking hers.

  *

  The email comes the next morning.

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Updated Yearbook

  Name: Grace Coleman (nee McCrae)

  Highest achievement at school: Being Annabel Moore’s best friend.

  What you do now: Mum to four children (three girls, one boy). Keen gardener.

  Highlights of last twenty years: Getting married. Giving birth to your children.

  Lowlights: The miscarriage between number 2 and 3.

  Deepest fears: That something bad will happen to one of your children. Lauren in particular.

  Grace recoils from her laptop. What is this? Something relating to the reunion? She reads it again, more slowly, and realises it’s set out in a format similar to the original yearbook. There’s even a photo that’s recent and quite familiar: Grace’s curly brown hair lifted by an invisible breeze, her eyes – the same colour as her hair – squinting at the camera. Did Katy send this? No, Katy wouldn’t know about either the miscarriage or her worries about Lauren, and would hardly be so insensitive. The miscarriage happened at eleven weeks, before her baby bump became noticeable. Not a lot of people knew she was pregnant, which made the grieving process both easier and more difficult.

  Even so, Katy seems to be the obvious person to contact. The call goes straight to voicemail. Of course, it’s mid-morning and Katy would be in class. Katy’s a science teacher at a high school in the inner west. Grace knows the school: it attracts ‘creative’ types and has an ethos of encouraging the students’ individuality. Grace and Tom are seriously considering it for Tahlia.

  Grace decides not to leave a voicemail and calls Annabel instead. Annabel picks up straight away. It’s rare she doesn’t; she’s one of those women whose phone is like one of her limbs.

  ‘Hey, Annabel. I got this weird email just now ... Like a fake yearbook entry.’

  There’s a noticeable pause at the end of the line. Then: ‘Me too. A few days ago.’

  Grace is perplexed. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  Another pause. Then an embarrassed sigh. ‘There was something in there that nobody knows. Some trouble we’re having with Daniel.’

  Grace wants to ask what the trouble is but senses that Annabel’s failure to elaborate is deliberate. She has always been a selective confidante.

  ‘Mine mentioned Lauren and my miscarriage. It was really quite upsetting.’

  ‘Look, I think it’s someone trying to be funny and missing the mark,’ Annabel states with her signature curtness.

  Missing the mark by a goddam mile, Grace thinks. Then a guilty niggle. ‘Hey, you don’t think it’s Melissa, do you?’

  Annabel snorts. ‘She wouldn’t lower herself. Luke Willis came into my head. I have no idea why.’

  Luke Willis. The one who did his own thing, never cared what people thought and defied all the rules when it came to popularity.

  Grace frowns. ‘Didn’t he and Katy used to be friends?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Annabel’s laugh is unkind. ‘I still don’t understand what he saw in her!’

  Grace casts her mind back. She sees Luke singing and dancing in the Grease musical, totally at home centre stage. She sees him standing near the locker room, smirking after delivering a retort that had everyone falling around with laughter. She remembers the excitement that built in him as Year 12 drew to a close, the blatant impatience to leave school behind and strike out in the real world.

  She has a moment of clarity. ‘Annabel, I’m pretty sure that Luke Willis hasn’t thought about you or me since the day he left high school.’

  Grace keeps busy for the rest of the day. She vacuums the entire house, sews a button on to Tahlia’s school shirt and scrubs some mould from the bathroom wall. The shower is leaking; the entire bathroom needs to be gutted and replaced. The roof also needs replacing, as does the kitchen, but there’s no money, not even for minor renovations. Just another couple of years of scraping by. Just another couple of years of full-time parenting to ensure that all the children are on track, to ensure that they’re independent, resilient and responsible for their own behaviour. Then Grace will get a paid job. Something with short hours. Something she can fit around school. Maybe something involving children.

  After lunch Grace puts on a sunhat and goes outside to do some gardening. The weeds are thriving but, on the positive side, so is her vegetable patch. While she’s down on her hands and knees, perspiration dripping into
her eyes, she thinks again about Annabel and Daniel. She hopes that the trouble isn’t something serious or irredeemable. Teenage boys are such a difficult species.

  Just don’t let it be drugs.

  Grace hears horrific stories from Tom, shocking things seen while doing his rounds of the local parks and beaches. Kids as young as twelve drinking alcohol. Teenagers unconscious in pools of vomit. The unforgettable morning he found a drug addict’s body hanging from the monkey bars at one of the playgrounds.

  The heat of the sun eventually drives Grace back inside, where she turns her attention to dinner. She deftly chops vegetables – some of which are home-grown – that she’ll stir-fry later on. According to the yearbook, food technology was her worst memory of high school. Really? She quite likes cooking now. Finds it therapeutic. At least on the days when there’s enough time to relax while she’s doing it.

  What was so bad about food technology? Why did she hate it so much?

  Suddenly, she’s back there, in the food tech room, wearing the compulsory blue apron, Melissa’s face flushed and scornful.

  ‘What do you mean I can’t be your partner? We’re always partners.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Grace shrugged helplessly. ‘Annabel—’

  ’What? Annabel isn’t even in this class, for God’s sake. Do you care who her partner is in chemistry?’

  ‘She ... I ... Sorry.’

  ‘You’re pathetic, Grace. She says, “Jump,” and you say, “How high?” Have some fucking backbone for a change.’

  Melissa flounced off and found herself another partner. Grace got stuck with one of the boys, who was even more clueless than she was. She remembers glancing intermittently at Melissa, looking for signs of forgiveness, or even some level of understanding of the predicament she was in because of Annabel. Melissa’s eyes were firmly trained on her chopping knife, which she was using in a furious manner much beyond her level of skill. Grace had turned her attention to her own dish when she heard Melissa’s cry. She looked up to see blood dripping down her friend’s hand, blooming on the sleeve of her white shirt. There was blood on the blade of the abandoned knife, the plastic chopping board and even the food itself, celery and onion splattered with red. Grace stepped forward to help, but the teacher was already there, pressing a clean cloth to the wound, muttering about hospital and stitches.

  Now Grace cringes at the memory of that day. Her role in causing Melissa to be so uncharacteristically upset and therefore careless. How she was prepared to ostracise her purely on Annabel’s say-so. Her lack of ‘fucking backbone’.

  Thankfully, she is not the same person as she was back then.

  Is anyone?

  As is always the case, Grace never quite achieves everything on her to-do list. Almost 2.30 p.m.: time to pick up Billy from preschool. She’s on her way out the door when it comes to her. The photograph. She knows where it came from. In fact, she sees it a dozen times a day. It’s from a group shot of the family, but everyone else has been cropped out. The photo was taken in the back garden on a sunny day in the lead-up to last Christmas. Grace had multiple copies printed so it could be popped into Christmas cards.

  Grace backtracks to the kitchen. There’s a gap on the fridge door where the photo should be. Where on earth has it gone to? Then a paralysing thought.

  Has someone been in the house and taken it?

  Name: Katy Buckley

  What you will be remembered for: Probably, unfortunately, my hair.

  Best memories of high school: Decorating lockers on birthdays.

  Worst memories of high school: PE class. Especially on the really hot days, when my face would end up the same colour as my hair.

  What will you be doing ten years from now: President of the Wilderness Society.

  4

  KATY

  ‘Someone took that photograph from my fridge, Katy. And the other night my daughter said she heard noises ... I thought she was imagining things but now I’m not so sure ... What if someone’s been in my house?’

  Recess is a mere twenty minutes. Barely enough time to go to the bathroom, make a cup of tea, take stock before her next class. Katy regrets answering her phone. She should’ve waited until lunchtime. Now, despite the potential gravity of what Grace is saying, Katy has no choice but to cut her short.

  ‘Look, Grace, that all sounds extremely serious and disturbing. The problem is that I’m due in class in five minutes. I’ll call you back later, okay?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We’ll talk later.’

  Grace’s practicality throws Katy a little bit. Being reasonable is not one of the things she remembers about her. Maybe because she was always in the vicinity of Annabel who could be so unreasonable (and caustic, her speciality). The truth is she doesn’t know Grace any more than Grace knows her, either today or back then.

  Katy gathers her notes for her next class and powers down the hallway, the walls of which are covered in colourful graffiti art.

  ‘Hey, Miss Buckley.’

  ‘Hello, Georgia.’

  Katy is relatively popular among the students, despite the fact that the subject she teaches – science – isn’t popular at all. Music, drama and visual arts are the favoured subjects at the school, followed by history and English. Bottom of the pile are science and maths. This doesn’t bother Katy too much. There are always enough enthusiastic students to make up for the ones who are bored out of their minds.

  ‘Hi, Miss Buckley.’

  ‘Having a good day, Leo?’

  ‘Absolutely, Miss.’ She’s treated to a flirtatious smile.

  Katy is particularly popular with the boys. If only they knew that she’d been one of the most nondescript girls at school. This is precisely what she wants to get across to the current Year 12s. As soon as they walk out the door into the world, everything can – and should – change. They can reinvent themselves, if they want to. They can leave behind the fact that they were the quiet one, or the socially awkward one, or the silly one.

  Katy reaches her class just as the bell sounds. This class is a particularly eclectic group, with plentiful body piercings and hair colour ranging from hot pink to electric blue. The school’s policy is to foster the students’ individuality and sense of self, helping them to experiment and have fun in a safe environment.

  ‘Good morning, everyone. Today we are going to start a new unit – the chemical earth. The earth’s biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere are mixtures of thousands and thousands of substances ...’ Katy pretends not to hear their groans.

  She is on supervising duty at lunchtime – something that had completely slipped her mind – and there is no opportunity to call Grace. The grounds of the school are quite extensive, as are opportunities to get into mischief. Katy changes her shoes so she can walk the perimeter comfortably.

  ‘Hey, Miss Buckley.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Dylan.’

  Dylan is easy to imagine twenty years from now. He’ll work in sales or real estate, where his easy charm will make him lots of money. He’ll wear trendy suits, drive a flashy car, and will be one of those men who walk around with their hands in their pockets.

  Katy comes across a group of Year 9s clustered together at the edge of the perimeter.

  ‘What are you doing there, girls?’

  ‘Charlotte lost her jumper,’ one of them replies, slightly out of breath.

  ‘Yeah, we thought she left it here before school,’ another adds, cheeks pink.

  Charlotte herself looks bemused. The lost jumper is obviously news to her.

  ‘Better try lost property, then,’ Katy says chirpily. ‘Move along.’

  She waits until they’ve headed in the right direction, although she very much doubts that lost property is where they’ll end up. Charlotte looks over her shoulder a few times. There’s something arrogant about those backward glances. Charlotte has always reminded her of Annabel Moore. Katy loves all her students. She loves Charlotte a little bit less than the others because of this similari
ty.

  Katy’s thoughts turn to Grace. Has there really been an intruder in her house? No, there must be some other, less sinister explanation for the missing photograph. But someone is certainly up to mischief, sending those joke yearbook entries to both Grace and Annabel. Who would do such a thing? Someone who knows them well enough to guess at what might be bothering them? Should Katy expect a similar email? Good thing she has no major secrets or fears. The untold advantages of being a school teacher: a squeaky-clean private life and nerves of steel from day-to-day dealings with the most brutal of species: teenagers.

  The music pounds in Katy’s ears, propelling her up the final hill, towards home. Shorter stride on the incline, careful not to lean forward too much. This is what she’ll be citing as her greatest achievement in the updated yearbook. The fact that she has transformed herself from an inactive, self-conscious girl to an athletic, confident woman.

  I am a runner. I run ten kilometres a couple of times a week, and on weekends I run twenty: just because I can. I am fitter than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

  Katy is looking forward to hearing about everyone’s achievements, but the replies have been disappointingly slow coming in. She has managed to track down seventy-two of the eighty-odd students and has more than fifty RSVPs for the sit-down dinner at a city-centre hotel. Overall, pretty good and hopefully more to come. It’s the information for the updated yearbook that seems to be the sticking point: only a dozen responses so far.

  At home – a two-bedroom apartment that Katy is planning to renovate as soon as she gets enough money together – she peels off her sweaty clothes and steps into the shower. The water cascades over her face and she remembers Grace. Damn it. She must call her back before she forgets again.

  ‘Hi, Grace. It’s Katy. I’m so sorry, the school day is always busier than I think it will be.’

  Grace laughs, as though she knows about days that simply slip away from you. ‘No problem. Look, I feel quite sheepish now ... Tom, my husband, found the missing photograph down the side of the fridge.’

  Katy smiles with relief. ‘Phew. I was beginning to think that maybe the police should be called.’