41

It takes years for Louisa to admit there’s something wrong in the deepest part of herself, that the darkness she sees may be within her. Mostly she’s okay, but then years later, she’s not. One day it seems she isn’t going to work, but she explains this to herself by deciding that she deserves a sickie here and there and that her boss will understand. Mr Conti is a prince among men, she thinks, a prince. Oh, to have such a father, calm and kind and fair.

When the darkness first comes, she just feels heavy and sadder, as though someone has turned her down and she can’t see how. Sometimes she thinks about things that she hasn’t meant to think about. For instance, about John and the kids and that it’s become too hard. The kids are moving away from her and, while she wants this, she also wants them back. The intricacies of her children’s lives, their fights and their dreams, are lost to her.

There is too much to do. Can’t do everything. She wants to go away. She wonders where the tough girl she was has gone. The one who stood up to Emmett, who could stand up to anyone; but then she remembers she only stood up to the old bastard once and boy, did it cost her. Used it up, that’s what I did, I used myself up, she decides.

Each morning, if she can, she makes the kids’ lunches. Puts a few little packets and a couple of pieces of dubious fruit into brown bags. Vegemite sandwich for Beck and peanut butter for Tom. She’s having trouble remembering even that. Useless at work, she thinks. Utterly useless. She leaves the two lunches on the bench for them and goes to her room where the gloom and the stale air are comforting.

She sits on her mother’s little wooden chair, and it feels like her mother has her arms around her. Nothing is the thing that most appeals. It’s the mirror image of something. Emptiness swarms around her and when she gets tired of sitting she goes to the bed and lies down. She pulls her arms and legs in and becomes a lump.

She doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with this because it seems so natural, a slide into another reality. She’s always been a bit like this, a bit of a loner, and now it’s inescapable.

People have been telling Louisa she should get out more all her life. But she never knew what it meant and still doesn’t. She’d still be herself wherever she was. There can be no escape.

If she’s awake in the little room she stares at her summer-brown hands, the wedding ring still on the left hand, even after all this time; or she looks at the walls and tries to think about nothing. When thoughts come she sends them away. It isn’t long before the most persistent thought is about death. Then comes ways that might get her there.

Food tastes like cardboard and nothing makes sense when she reads and nothing interests her. And in the end she can’t talk much either. Words won’t form. She’s shutting down.

When the phone rings, she leaves it echoing throughout the house looking for attention, the ringing coming and going like a memory. If she picks it up, she can’t get a word out anyway. One day she hears Mr Conti tell her to take some time off to fix herself up. He puts her on half pay for a few weeks and she doesn’t think any further.

In the afternoon, the children let themselves into the house and scrounge around for something to eat, a stale Salada, an old apple. Once Beck knocks on the door of Louisa’s room. She’s about ten and her dark hair is in plaits, just like her mother’s used to be. She knocks at the door with a picture of the world she made at school and when she hears nothing, she opens it. When Louisa sees Beck, she believes she’s seeing herself. The child moves into the room bringing the stiff painting and stands beside her mother in the little chair and lays the world on her knee. She puts her hand on her mother’s head and pats her hair while Tom is a shape in the doorway.