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  Although she had been on the pill, she stopped taking it. Three months later, she went to Marcel, bubbling with enthusiasm.

  He looked at her coolly. “I thought you were taking precautions,” he said, looking at her questioningly.

  “I’ve been sick. I mean, I was sick before, about a month ago. And when you vomit you can accidently throw the pill back up. Anyway, it’s not one hundred per cent safe. The doctor said it wasn’t. So, it’s a miracle, a little miracle.”

  “Well, this miracle is inconvenient. We will have to fix it.”

  “But I want to keep it, Marcel. I want to have your child. I want us to be a family.” She was expecting him to embrace her, to be delighted that she had given him this gift, not want to leave her.

  Instead, he stood back from her and laughed. “Cherie. A man does not want his mistress to turn into a wife. I already have one of those. I don’t want another. Where is the fun in that?”

  “But what about our baby, your baby?” she pleaded.

  “What would I do with one of those? I do not know why you think that I would want something around me that does nothing but cry and shit. I would rather have a puppy. They don’t need nappies.”

  Daisy felt cold, she pulled her arms around her body and she looked at Marcel. She could see in his eyes that he was displeased. It was a look she saw when he spoke of Madelaine and the things she did that he did not like — buying a new car without asking him, expanding her business in some way. She hoped his reaction was just due to surprise and that once he got used to the idea, he would change his mind. Marcel sat in his chair and opened his cigarette case.

  “Darling,” she began, “I know this is a shock, not what we expected, but think about it.”

  He looked at her and lit a cigarette. He said, “Oh, Daisy. I hope you did not think that this little trick would get me to leave my wife and marry you? Cherie, you are a lovely little woman, beautiful and sexy, but I have a wife.”

  “But you don’t love her. You love me. You say all the time that she is not a good wife. I would be. I would do anything for you, Marcel. I do everything you say.”

  “Ah, my sweet girl, you do not understand. I couldn’t have you as my wife. There are some women who are made to be wives and some who are made to be mistresses. You, my darling, are not wife material. You are like an exotic flower and should be savoured. You are not one for the kitchen and for child-bearing.” He drew on his cigarette and levelled his gaze at her.

  “Well, I am going to have this baby anyway, whether you like it or not.”

  Marcel laughed at her again. “And what will you live on?”

  He kept smoking, waiting for her to answer. When she started to cry, he remained unmoved.

  “I will not support you. And you do not have a job. You could get one, but you are a little too used to a comfortable apartment, fine clothes and your life of luxury, I think.”

  Daisy had no means to support herself when she became Marcel’s mistress and she realised she had less ability to do so now. She had expected Marcel to bend to her will and was shocked by his coldness. She also realised for the first time that no matter what she did, Marcel would never take her as his wife.

  He did not visit her for two weeks, the longest time he had stayed away since she moved into the apartment. She ran out of money after ten days and began to panic, remembering Marcel’s taunts. On the twelfth day, she rang him at home. When Madelaine answered she hung up. She rang again several hours later and this time Marcel answered. He was furious with her for calling. “I will come and see you tomorrow”, he said through gritted teeth.

  “When?” she begged.

  “When I get there. Don’t call here again.”

  He was still fuming when he arrived the following day.

  “Oh Marcel, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said, running to him as he entered. She began kissing him on his lips and cheeks. “I was so worried that you weren’t coming back. Please forgive me.”

  He stood coldly still while she wept. “Really, Daisy. These theatrics are tiring.”

  Marcel — and his money — arranged for a car to drive her from her apartment to a small terrace house in Kings Cross, then back to her apartment. There were roses waiting for her when she returned, but no Marcel to greet her. He did not come until two days later, and by that time she was not able to do anything but cry.

  “This will get very boring soon, my love,” Marcel said. “If I wanted a dull time, I could stay at home with Madelaine.”

  Daisy had thought that by doing what Marcel wanted and getting rid of the baby their relationship would be as before. She could live with not being his wife, she reasoned, so long as she was still his mistress. It was a better life than working. But she knew now that she was faced with the possibility that he might not want her any more. That she did love Marcel.

  She also noticed he was no longer playful and indulgent. He did not visit her every day, sometimes visiting her only once a week. He did not stay for long and was not interested in caressing her.

  Daisy, trying even harder to please him, spent more time on her hair and skin before he arrived. She would lie naked on the couch for him, but he would barely look at her.

  “Daisy,” he would sigh, “you are too old for that now. It was charming when you were eighteen. You will be thirty in a few years.”

  “Marcel, don’t you love me any more?” she whispered.

  “Cherie, the time has come for us to part,” he continued, his eyes on his shoes. “I know that you will need some time to get a new life, find a new boyfriend. So I will pay for the lease for six more months, but then no more.”

  “No!” she yelled, crossing the room and kneeling before him, clinging to his legs. “No, Marcel. Don’t leave me. I love you. I love you so much. I’ll do anything for you. Anything. I am sorry that I got pregnant but I did what you wanted — I got rid of it, just like you said. Please. Oh, please.”

  Marcel sighed, stroking his moustache. “You are a clever girl, Daisy. You will find a way. Just like the day you marched up to my front door and found me.”

  “But I am not like that any more. I love you,” she pleaded.

  “Girls like you don’t change, Daisy.” He stood to leave. “You will fall on your feet, my dear. Now get up off the floor.”

  Daisy stayed in her apartment for most of the six months. She did not have Marcel’s money to keep her going, so she started pawning the gifts he had given her to buy food, gin and cigarettes. Although she ate very little, she drank and smoked quite a lot. She would drink herself to sleep on the couch where she had once posed for Marcel. When she awoke in the morning, she would look in the mirror at the wrinkles that had begun to cross her forehead and creep around the comers of her eyes.

  Who would want me now? she thought to herself. She had spent over ten years with Marcel. He had been the focus of her life. Without him, she was helpless. What will I do? she asked herself into the misty hours of the night.

  With three weeks before her lease ran out, and no further visits from Marcel, Daisy had to plan. She could get herself a job, but she had no skills. She had looked through the paper, but the only jobs she could have applied for — shop assistant, seamstress, waitress — all paid so little she would have to give up her apartment. She would not be able to afford much at all.

  She remembered that Marcel had spoken about Patricia’s wedding. It had been held at his house; Madelaine had gone overboard with the arrangements, he had grumbled, and teased her about not being invited. Daisy felt a mixture of contempt — that Patricia would be marrying some old Italian at Madelaine’s home — and jealousy that Patricia was getting married at all. Marcel had also mentioned that Patricia was finally living in her own place, much to Madelaine’s delight, as she now had extra room in the shop. Patricia, Daisy knew, would look after her and not make her get a job.

  Daisy couldn’t bring herself to feel grateful that Patricia had taken her back in; her sister’s good nature only irrit
ated her. Daisy thought that it was unfair that Patricia, with her innocence about the world, her inability to stand up to anyone, should end up with a house of her own, a husband who was making a reasonable income and a family on the way. Prettier, smarter and more sophisticated than her sister, Daisy thought she was the one who should have been mistress of her own home. Patricia seemed to have obtained all these things without even trying.

  Pasquale was not the sort of man that Daisy would have chosen for herself. He was too old and unattractive, without Marcel’s smoothed hair and tailored clothes. But, she observed, he was devoted to Patricia, would follow her around the kitchen with his eyes as she made his breakfast and he pretended to read the paper. He had stability and a soundness that she knew now was more valuable than gold bracelets, shiny earrings and pretty dresses.

  As she watched Pasquale’s affection for her sister, Daisy remembered Marcel’s words to her: that she was the sort of woman who a man would want as a mistress, not a wife. She had fallen in love with Marcel’s worldliness, his urbanity. But, now she was older, she began to think that instead of a man like Marcel, what she really wanted was a warm, kind man like Pasquale, someone who would adore her. Yes, Pasquale, who rubbed Patricia’s feet when she was pregnant and who thought she was beautiful even when she was fat.

  As the children came along, Patricia seemed more interested in motherhood than in her husband, and Daisy could see Pasquale becoming frustrated with his place at the periphery of his wife’s attention.

  “Oh, Pasquale,” she would coo to him. “If I had a husband like you, I would give him all the attention he wanted. But Patricia is different to me, so you’ll just have to accept it and hope she stops taking you for granted.”

  Daisy spent more and more time in the restaurant, assisting Pasquale with the orders for the kitchen, with the books and customers. She would float around the tables, cigarette in hand, standing with her figure at its best advantage, talking cheerfully and flirtatiously to the diners, looking over to Pasquale to see if he noticed the attention she was getting. Although all the regulars had lost their hearts to her, it was Pasquale who had captured hers.

  “You know if you ever need to talk, I am here for you,” she would say to him, patting his arm as he tried to count the night’s takings. “I know how lonely you are.”

  Patricia had been the one their mother had spent the most time with, cosily sewing at the kitchen table or cooking the evening meal. “When you are older,” they would say to Daisy, “you can help too.” But that time never came. Instead, Patricia was able to live and work in Sydney while she was placed in a home with other girls who were spiteful and mean. If it had not been for Mr Spencer taking her side against everyone else, her life would have been unbearable. And now she was the one who did not have a man to love her and who had to give up her baby while Patricia had a man who loved her, her own home and children.

  Some days Daisy wondered why she had decided that staying with Patricia was the best way to get back on her feet. She knew that Patricia would always welcome her back, but her focus on her children made Daisy think that she’d paid a high price for this salvation. She was further irritated by the smugness of Bob’s wife, who came over with her two spoiled and overdressed children. The five children would run and scream through the house, thundering up stairs and under tables while their mothers chatted on as though the world was full of silence.

  “I can’t stand it,” Daisy would say to Patricia as she saw Carole and her two children walking up the front path. Grabbing her cigarettes she would declare: “I’m not staying to listen to you two talk about your little brats. And if I have to listen to Bob’s wife complain one more time about how she would like to go back to work, I’m going to throw a glass at her.” She stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the mantelpiece. “I hate women like that, always whinging when they have everything.”

  “Oh, Daisy,” Patricia would say, removing the dirty ashtray. “You’ll feel differently when you have children of your own.”

  Daisy would roll her eyes, toss her cigarette case into her handbag, then turn on her heel and leave the house for the restaurant. She would nod at Carole as they passed at the door, a tight, forced smile on her face.

  Despite her efforts to distract Pasquale’s attention from Patricia by offering him a sympathetic ear or a shoulder to cry on, Daisy had not succeeded. Even though she was prettier, slimmer, more stylish and younger, Pasquale did not try to touch her, did not flirt with her, did not even seem to look at her. So she tried a different tactic.

  At the end of the evening, when Pasquale had finished stacking the chairs on the tables and was about to start counting the money in the till, Daisy burst into tears, sobbing in the kitchen. At first he did not seem to hear, so she sobbed louder. This time he heard and asked, “What is wrong, little Daisy?”

  She continued crying, ignoring his question.

  “Please tell me. You are always try so hard to help me, let me help you if I can.”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s too horrible.” He searched in his pants pocket and found his handkerchief. He unfolded it and handed it to her. “Do not be sad, Daisy. And you can tell me. I am your friend.”

  She sobbed into his handkerchief before she continued, “Oh, Pasquale, I can’t keep anything from you. I’m just so upset about something Patricia said.”

  Daisy leaned on his shoulder as she continued to sob. “She said she didn’t need you any more, that her children were enough. I told her how selfish she was and how much you loved her. How lucky she was to have you.”

  “There, there. You are so kind, so sweet to worry about me. I know she is busy with the children and has not so much time for me now.” He patted her arm. “Do not worry for me. I am getting used to things being this way.”

  “It just makes me feel so bad. I see how hard you work here.” Daisy took his hands and held them in hers. “Especially after you stayed so long by her side after she had Elizabeth and was so sick.”

  “You should not upset yourself like this, little Daisy. Always you try to help me. Please, please, stop crying.”

  “I’d do anything to help you.” She looked at Pasquale, tears still in her eyes, and said, “Could you please just give me a hug?”

  Awkwardly, he stepped towards her and she pulled him tightly to her, crying against his chest.

  Daisy knew that when he had first come to her, first made love to her, it was his loneliness that drove him to her. She felt confident, though, that over time, he would begin to love her back. But as Pasquale’s eyes continued to follow Patricia, Daisy would rub up against him in the restaurant during the night so that when the door was locked, the staff gone and the money counted, he would bend her back over the kitchen counter and start to unbutton her dress.

  “It was your fault,” she would say to Pasquale after Patricia died. “If you had told her the way I said, it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did. But don’t worry, my darling. You have me to look after you now.”

  Pasquale was too heartbroken to argue when Daisy moved into the bedroom he had shared with Patricia.

  Nor did he argue as she packed his three children off to boarding school while she had their daughter, Rose.

  Daisy had seen the disbelief on Patricia’s face before she walked out of the restaurant. Daisy had expected her to be upset, but thought that the logical conclusion was for Pasquale to leave Patricia and buy Daisy a home of her own. She had never intended to cause her sister’s heart attack. I never wanted her dead, she thought to herself, as she looked at the jade brooch that had been locked in the bottom of her jewellery box. She felt the stone in her hand as she looked at the pattern, like a rose blossoming.

  Patricia had always been fond of the brooch because it had been their mother’s. When Daisy had packed her bags to go and live with Marcel, she’d seen it amongst Patricia’s things and taken it. Daisy never wore it, she did not even like it, but it was a piece of their mother that she, not Patricia, now h
ad. Even though she knew her sister valued it, Daisy never gave it back. She thought of Patricia now, of the attempts to make her happy, how she would sew dresses for her and admire her looks. There is no one now who will forgive me and love me despite my faults, Daisy thought, clutching the brooch in her hand. She took it to Pasquale. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. He looked at it, puzzled. “Patricia would want to be buried with this. It was our mother’s.” She pulled Pasquale’s hand towards her and pressed the brooch into his fleshy palm.

  27

  1982

  THE ONLY CONSOLATION, Bob thought to himself, was that Patricia did not know about Pasquale’s infidelity before she died. “That would have killed her if her weak heart hadn’t,” he said to Carole.

  Patricia’s death was the most painful loss that he had experienced in his life. There would be no more talks in her kitchen, no more goodbye hugs when she would squeeze him tightly. She had always been there for him — when he was in the home, when he was on shore leave, when he felt frustrated with Carole.

  His connection to Daisy had been severed when her pregnancy was discovered. He had not known at the time of Patricia’s funeral that Daisy had become Pasquale’s mistress — only the timing of Rose’s birth revealed the sins of the parents. That Daisy had so quickly taken over Patricia’s home confirmed Bob’s misgivings about his younger sister and he could not bring himself to speak to her. Her betrayal of Patricia was something Bob thought he had to punish her for.

  Bob tormented himself over not having been more forthright with Patricia about the dangers of letting Daisy into her home. He should have taken the same firm line with his sister as he did with his wife.

  Patricia left a void in his life that he was unable to come to terms with. He worked more, slept less, took on extra shifts at the airport, became increasingly irritable and ate irregularly. The more Carole tried to console him, the less he wanted her to help him. The anger inside him seemed always to be just below the surface. The world was turning against him — the people who cut him off in the traffic, the woman at the cash register who insisted on counting out one-cent pieces, the bank that failed to credit the last payment on his home loan. Each thing seemed intentionally directed at him, making his heart and head pound. When his anger subsided, it left a pain in his chest.