“You’re not in charge here, Neville. You may be god on your little dollhouse farm, but here you’re out of your jurisdiction. You’re only a bogan like me with bad teeth and too many dogs. I didn’t drive five hours to be turned away. What are you afraid of? Afraid I’d hurt her in her sleep? How do you figure that? I don’t know what she’s told you, but I’ve never done anything illegal to her.”
“Where have you been?” The question came out harsher than Nev intended.How come I’ve never met you before? How come you haven’t been doing your job?“You created a vacuum when you left that no one can fill! I don’t want to be your kid’s mum! I want to be my fucking self, and live my fucking life, not be the solution to your lack of responsibility!”
“I’ve been trying to get back in with her for years! She doesn’t talk to me.”
Nev raised her eyebrows.Whose fault is that?“You should have had Ron’s back. Kids need their mothers. They need to be able to trust them. You messed with her head. That fucked my life in ways you will never understand.”
Matilda-Jane relented. “Let me see her while she’s asleep.”
Nev shook her head.
Matilda-Jane jerked the door again.
Nev kept her foot in front of the door. “Take a walk. I need a smoke.”
Outside, lighting up together in the car park, Nev felt generous.
“She hates me,” Matilda-Jane complained.
“Whose fault is that?”
Matilda-Jane perched on the edge of the curb with her heels hanging in mid-air, then proceeded to do calf raises on the balls of her feet. “Don’t judge me.”
It was oddly familiar, talking to this older version of Ron. This lesser version. It was sad, really. She wondered what Matilda-Jane’s childhood had been like. She had been a teen mother, a single mum, below the poverty line. Homeless, jobless, living out of a van. How the hell would she have learned emotional intelligence? From one of her redneck boyfriends? From the man who worked at the petrol station?
Matilda-Jane was smiling to herself at some private joke, for all appearances enjoying the weather and the day. She had snakeskin boots and a homemade wallet attached to a dog chain hanging out of a back pocket of her leather pants. It was like looking at a character out of a Mad Max film. Matilda-Jane was larger than life—not in a good way.
Nev took a drag from her cigarette, blew out smoke. She needed to quit, would quit this year. Matilda-Jane probably had a handle of Bundy in her van and wouldn’t blink an eye if Nev suggested shots. Nev considered it, decided she would rather die. “You’re exactly like they said you were.”
Matilda-Jane snorted. “Did they say Crocodile Dundee?”
Nev nodded.
The woman tossed her cigarette stub in the bushes. “You’re smaller than I thought you would be.”
“That’s what I hear.”
Matilda-Jane ran her fingers through Nev’s short hair. “This your natural color? It’s nice. Like sand in Valencia.”
“You go for the bullfights?” Nev asked.
“How’d you guess?”
“I’ve been,” Nev admitted.
“Two types of people: those who like killing things and those who don’t.”
“That’s more or less what Hemingway said.” Nev had gone to Valencia to find out if she was a man or not. Real men, Hemingway wrote, loved the thrill of the dance, the communion between man and bull. Nev hadn’t seen any of that, only a calf looking for kindness and finding none. She had stumbled out of the arena blinded by tears. Not a good day.
“What’s your deal?” Matilda-Jane asked. “You a greenie tree-hugger?”
Nev shrugged. “Yeah, nah, that’s Reg’s deal.”
“You got more money than god?”
Nev shook her head. “I’m land rich, cash poor. Nothing in the bank. Comes in and goes out.”
“Well shite. What are you good for? Other than bossing people around?”
