A Little Spark Read online

  I opened my eyes to the car’s bonnet and interior bathed in a weird orange light.

  Something was above us. I could see the rays of light around the bonnet, and outside, to my left, parts of the surrounding bushes were illuminated as if by a torch. We were pinned by a beam of light from whatever was hovering above. I listened but there was no noise.

  ‘What do we do, Dad?’ I whispered. I glanced over at him. He sat forward in his seat, trying to look up into the sky, eyes squinting against the light.

  ‘Stay calm, Cate,’ he said.

  ‘Should we get out of the car?’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

  I was relieved. I didn’t think it was a good idea either. But the notion of sitting here and not doing anything also wasn’t very appealing.

  Suddenly the light blinked out. One moment we were in a spotlight, the next in total darkness. Dad turned the key in the ignition and the engine started. He put the headlights on full beam and turned onto the road. I arched myself as far to my left as I could, but the angles weren’t right to see much through the passenger window and I really didn’t want to wind it down and stick my head out. Neither of us said anything until we’d driven maybe a couple of kilometres.

  ‘Could you see anything above us?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘I’m touched, Cate, that you still think I might have answers. For this, I haven’t. I’ve no idea what we just experienced.’

  ‘It’ll be beyond cool when I’m back in my bedroom. Right now, I’m scared.’

  We drove in silence for another couple of kilometres and then Dad laughed.

  ‘The joke?’ I asked. My eyes were starting to droop. This had been one of the most exciting nights of my life, but my body had decided it had had enough. I was beginning to shut down.

  ‘Just checked my watch,’ said Dad. ‘You’ll be pleased to know we haven’t lost any time. You know. You hear about people who lose hours and then, through hypnosis, discover that aliens abducted them and performed experiments.’

  ‘Anal probes, mainly,’ I replied.

  ‘They wouldn’t want to probe my anus,’ said Dad. He started laughing again and it took a second or so before the smell hit me.

  ‘Dad, that is so gross,’ I said, winding the window down and putting my head out into the cold night air. Being abducted by aliens was better than keeping my nose inside that car.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  ‘And you didn’t take pictures on your phone? Videos? You know, like any freaking normal person would’ve done?’ The last five words built in volume, so that the final syllable was a blast in my ear.

  I hate Elise sometimes. Most times I love her.

  ‘I know. I’m an idiot.’

  ‘True that, CC.’

  ‘But I didn’t think. At the time I was too busy watching, you know?’

  ‘You didn’t think? True that, CC.’

  We have a very strict routine at lunchtimes, me and Elise, and it goes beyond where we sit and what we eat. We have five minutes of having a go at anyone we feel like, from singers to actors to teachers to fellow students to each other, leading in to a frank discussion of what is going wrong and right with our lives. In this, we have to be brutally honest. I don’t think we ever talked about that as a rule or a routine, but it’s kinda accepted. We tell each other everything. Well, nearly. I knew today that Elise had something important on her mind. It was my job to drag it out into the open. Anyway, I was anxious to get beyond my UFO experience, which only proved, apparently, that my self-proclaimed stupidity was drastically understated.

  ‘What’s the problem, Elise?’ I said.

  ‘My life’s turning to shit,’ she said.

  ‘Specifics? Everyone’s life is turning to shit. What makes yours special?’

  ‘I got this feeling Mum and Dad are getting a divorce.’

  Ah. Now here was something I knew a lot about. For once I’d actually be able to give advice without feeling like a fraud.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘’Cos last night they said, “We’re getting a divorce.”’

  I couldn’t help it; I nearly pissed myself laughing. To be fair, Elise howled with laughter too. It’s one of the things that makes us so close – we have a very similar sense of humour.

  ‘Your lines of deduction oft seem like magic, Sherlock Holmes,’ I said when I’d calmed down a little. We giggled a bit more.

  ‘I’ll tell you what they said then, if you like,’ I continued. ‘They said that they both still loved you more than anything in this world, that their split was nothing to do with you and that they will do everything in their power to ensure that you remain the absolute focus of their lives. They may also have said that they couldn’t regret their relationship because it produced you, but that the time had come to find happiness apart. They don’t hate each other, in fact they hoped to remain good friends and they won’t do anything to punish the other. It’s blame-free and all for the best. How am I doing?’

  ‘Freaking amazing, to be fair. Is it all bullshit?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I said. I picked at my salad, tried to find more chickpeas. ‘They mean every single word. Now. The trouble is in the future when they start to think the other is getting away with stuff or has got a better deal or – wait for it – another partner. Watch out for that, Elise. That’s a helluva time.’

  ‘That’s what happened with your mum, yeah?’

  Mum and Dad split up seven years ago and the conversation I predicted with Elise’s parents was pretty much what had occurred with mine. The thing is, they believed it. I believed it. It was the truth. Until Sam came along and swept Mum off her feet. My parents must have predicted that something like this would happen – was bound to happen, sooner or later. Might’ve been Mum, might’ve been Dad. Just happened to be Mum. Sam was a personal trainer at the gym that Mum joined a couple of months after the divorce came through. I know! It sounds like a plot line in one of those shocking soaps where everyone is obsessed with image and, it seems, everyone else’s partner. Maybe she should have recognised it for a cliché and taken up another activity. Lawn bowls, maybe. Full-contact crossword puzzles. She didn’t. She took up Sam and he took up her. Within a couple of months he’d moved in and the bathroom smelled of sweat and cheap cologne.

  I like Sam. In fact, he’s great. Right from the start he made it clear that he wasn’t going to try to be a father to me. I knew this because he and Mum sat me down and hammered that point home.

  ‘I’m never going to try to be your father, Cate,’ he said. ‘You have a father. I know that and I respect that. You are their child, not mine, and I know I have no power over you, nor do I want any. I just hope to be your friend; that you’ll look at me as someone who, in time, you might trust, maybe even confide in.’ He held up a hand. ‘Though I certainly don’t expect that. Do you think we could try to be friends, Cate?’

  What could I say? Of course I’d try. But I had no power in this and we all knew it. He’d come to live in my house and there was no veto available to me. He was a walking, talking symbol of my lack of control.

  They’d obviously told Dad, because when he picked me up for our fortnightly weekend at his place he was overly cheerful, smiling all the time and talking in a voice that was way too perky. Nothing was going to crack through that facade of sheer joy at what cards the world had dealt him. But later, when I couldn’t sleep, I heard his sobs through the thin partition between our bedrooms. The sound cut me like a knife.

  I shook my head. Elise, way back when, had asked me a question. I tried to remember what it was.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Sam. He suddenly became a player in a game beyond all our understandings.’

  ‘He screwed things up?’

  ‘No.’ I thought about it. It’s not often you’re forced to think about things like that. ‘No. He’s a nice guy. Even Dad thinks so. But he was a force of change and that, by definition, I guess, threw us all out of our orbits.’

  ‘I reckon Dad’s got another woman,’ said Elise.

  ‘Then brown stuff might be about to hit a fan,’ I said. ‘Keep your head down, is my best advice.’

  ‘Did you have a good time with your dad this weekend?’ I hadn’t seen Sam when I got back late on Sunday. Mum normally asked Dad to get me back by eight in the evening, so I could shower, get everything ready for school and get a decent night’s sleep. Dad always swore he would, but normally it would be after ten by the time he dropped me off. He was always very sorry about it, though.

  Sam was busying himself in the kitchen making dinner, which smelled pretty amazing, I have to say. Mum was going to be home late because there was a parent/teacher night at the school where she teaches. Sam does most of the cooking, even when Mum is here. I was finishing a small bit of maths homework at the dining table, and put down my pencil.

  ‘Yeah. Great, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Did you do anything fun?’

  Now, here’s the thing. I could have told Sam about the UFOs or whatever the hell Dad calls them. I could more easily tell Mum. But I don’t tell them anything about my weekends with Dad, and I’m not sure I understand why. No, that’s not strictly true, I do partly get it. It’s about protecting Dad, as if telling them we went to a burger joint or we watched movies or we hung around the shopping centre or we just laughed at stupid stuff, would be giving them tickets into that world. The world Dad and I have created. And I don’t want to do that. It’s ours. It’s all we have. It’s all we’ve been allowed since my parents got divorced. So maybe not just protecting Dad, but protecting me as well. I don’t know. It’s hard thinking about this kind of thing.

  ‘Oh, you know. Stuff.’

  Sam doesn’t normally push. Like I said to Elise, he’s so defensive about our relationship that it borders on the funny. But he gave a small shove.

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Things.’

  ‘Oh, things,’ he said. ‘I get it now.’

  ‘Stuff, things and whatever,’ I added.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, dipping a spoon into the pot on the stove and taking a sip. He frowned and reached for the salt. ‘I can’t compete with that level of excitement. You must be glad to get home and give your nervous system a chance to settle down.’

  I smiled, put my school stuff away in my bag and started to set the table. Mum arrived ten minutes later, complaining about the parents who didn’t show up at all, and the parents who did.

  ‘You know, when I see their mums and dads, I understand why some of the kids I teach are the way they are. God, that smells good, Sam. What is it?’

  ‘Bean ragu.’ Mum is vegetarian, which means Sam and I, by default, tend to be as well.

  ‘Don’t care what it’s been,’ said Mum. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Boom, drop mic,’ said Sam.

  ‘Stop being embarrassing, you two,’ I said.

  The ragu was good, the conversation okay and when all of it was over I went to my room to work on my short story. It needed work. But even as I lay on my stomach, pencil in my mouth, staring at the pages I’d already written, wondering if they really were any good at all, loud words from downstairs drifted towards me. Mum and Sam were keeping it as quiet as they could, but the noise wafted under my bedroom door nonetheless. I only caught a few words. ‘London’ was one. ‘Opportunity’ was another. ‘Life-changing’ might have been another.

  But my name was definitely in the mix.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  ‘Do you want to read my short story?’ I said to Elise. We sat at our normal places on a bench by the canteen.

  ‘No,’ said Elise.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yup.’

  I put the sheets down on the bench, being careful to avoid the damp patch from my water bottle. I figured you’d have to have a heart of stone to not be tempted by the words marching down each page.

  ‘You might enjoy it,’ I said.

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not going to read it.’

  I sighed. ‘Don’t you care about my feelings at all?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Surely you must be the tiniest bit curious?’

  This time Elise sighed.

  ‘I know what it’ll be like,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s okay to be just, you know, shit-hot at English. A whiz kid with words. But no. You have to be a freaking genius.’ She picked up her sandwich and pointed it at the sheets, then at me. ‘It’ll be brilliant and I have no reason to feel more inadequate than I do now. No wonder you’ve got no friends.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘Friends are supportive and would read short stories that other friends have written.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘You’ve got no friends. Proves my point.’

  I gave it up.

  ‘How’s the war zone at home?’ I said.

  She unscrewed the cap from her orange juice.

  ‘It’s hilarious,’ she said. ‘Now the D word is out there, it’s all happiness and light. They are so nice to each other. And to me. It’s like they’re in some kind of reality TV show where everyone is disgustingly … freaking nice. Tell ya, I wish they’d always been unhappy. My childhood would’ve been brilliant.’

  ‘I’ll bet they talk a lot and don’t say anything.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Elise. ‘That’s exactly what they do. What idiots.’

  ‘You’re still in Phase 1,’ I said. ‘That’s a good phase.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of pre-judging. But hey, kid. All I can say is strap yourself in, because it’s a wild ride.’

  ‘I hate you, CC,’ said Elise.

  ‘I know.’

  As always when it’s his turn to have me for the weekend, Dad picked me up after school on the Friday.

  ‘What do you want to do this weekend, kiddo?’ he said as I belted myself into the front seat.

  ‘We could go in search of UFOs,’ I said.

  Dad put the car into gear and pulled out into traffic.

  ‘We could,’ he said. ‘But you know what I reckon? I think UFOs are not the kind of thing you can go looking for. I think they’ll find you when they’re good and ready. When you least expect it.’ He glanced over at me. ‘Tell you what. You think about Saturday and Sunday. Tonight we’ll go down to St Kilda beach, have a picnic. What do you say? We could get a takeaway pizza from Republica, watch the sunset, chew the fat or the margherita, whichever you prefer. Solve all the world’s problems.’

  ‘Solving all the world’s problems seems like a great way to spend a Friday evening,’ I replied. ‘And the other good thing is once we get that out of the way, we’ve still got the weekend.’

  ‘Atta girl,’ said Dad.

  It wasn’t going to be a spectacular sunset. You can tell by the way the clouds ride the horizon. But the sun was pretty and fire-red as it kissed the sea. You could almost hear it hiss.

  Dad and I had got a good spot and we sat eating and drinking and not really talking too much. It’s one of the things I love about Dad. He knows when to shut up, when to keep his thoughts to himself and let others do the same. That’s not to say he won’t talk when I want to. And after I’d put away over half a large pizza, I suddenly wanted to.

  ‘Dad?’ I said.

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Why have you never found another woman after Mum?’

  Dad shifted himself onto his knees and faced me.

  ‘What’s to say I’m into women anymore?’ he said. ‘Maybe after the divorce I decided that men were the way to go. That’s the problem with your generation, Cate. You’re closed off to possibilities.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I am suitably ashamed. Let me rephrase. Why have you never found another partner after Mum?’

  ‘What makes you think I haven’t?’

  I gave this some thought.

  ‘Maybe because I’ve been staying with you every other weekend for seven years,’ I said, ‘and not once have I seen you with anyone else. It’s always just the two of us.’

  ‘That’s a problem?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ I didn’t really understand why I was having this conversation. I’d thought about Dad’s apparent monastic existence plenty, but the time had never seemed right to bring it up. It didn’t seem right now. Maybe it’s like UFOs. Maybe sometimes conversations find you. ‘But I worry about you, Dad. Sometimes I think that perhaps you’ll grow old and lonely, that you’ll never find someone to talk to about adult stuff or … I don’t know … I don’t like the idea that you’ll never have someone to keep you warm in bed, no one to snuggle into, no one to tell you how wonderful you are, no one who will make your eyes light up when you see them.’ I felt like crying and I didn’t know why. Actually, I did know why. Dad took my hand in his.

  ‘Answer me something, Cate,’ he said. ‘At what age do you think you’ll be an adult? I don’t mean when you can vote or drive a car or have sex or any of that stuff. When do you feel you will be an adult?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad.’ When I thought about it, it seemed like a question without an answer. You’d only know when it happened.

  ‘I’m thinking sixteen,’ he said. ‘And I know that’s arbitrary. Like, fifteen years and three hundred and sixty-four days you’re a kid and then, bang, you wake up an adult.’ He took a swig of his ginger beer and frowned. I knew he wanted a proper beer but you can’t have alcohol on St Kilda beach. ‘That’s stupid. But I have to work with something.’

  ‘Where’s this going, Dad?’

  ‘I want to give you my full attention while you’re still a child, Cate. I don’t want to share you with anyone else. For our weekends, it’s just us. The rest of the time?’ He shrugged. ‘I work. I see people. Believe it or not, I go on dates.’ He chuckled. ‘My bed hasn’t always been cold, you know.’