Chapter 13

A woman’s relationship with her father will have a profound impact on all her future relationships with men. The fatherless daughter lacks a template. Fatherless daughters are more likely to be promiscuous—so GREAT, thanks Mum, I’m going to be a slut!!!!!!!!!!

—Entry in Ellen O’Farrell’s diary, written a

week before her fifteenth birthday

Ellen’s mother was nervous.

It was suddenly perfectly clear. Ever since they had arrived at the restaurant for lunch, Ellen had been observing Anne, trying to work out what was different about her. Anyone else would have said that Anne was calm and at ease as she chatted with Ellen about the pregnancy, argued amiably with Ellen’s godmothers about the choice of wine and asked the waiter probing questions about the specials. Yet, there was something odd about the way she was sitting: her back was unnaturally straight, even for someone who was a passionate advocate of good posture, her chin too high, her shoulders too braced. Her beautiful violet eyes kept sweeping past Ellen. Normally Ellen was aware of her mother’s eyes giving her a rigorous health check: monitoring her skin tone, her weight, the whites of her eyes. She had always thought that Anne would have preferred to strap a blood pressure monitor around her arm and shove a thermometer in her mouth each time they met rather than hug her.

She turned her attention to her godmothers. Phillipa had an air of suppressed excitement, as if she was about to see a slightly risqué show. At first, she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary about Melanie, but then she saw the way her eyes kept returning to Anne, waiting for something. Ellen remembered Mel’s phone call, only two weeks ago now, when she’d said that “Anne was behaving oddly.” With the pregnancy and the engagement she’d forgotten all about it.

As soon as the waiter left after taking their orders, Ellen spoke up. “OK, what’s going on?”

Anne’s hand went straight to her neck, and Ellen saw that she was wearing a beautiful, expensive-looking necklace that Ellen had never seen before, and also that the skin of her neck seemed older and more vulnerable than the rest of her, like a crumpled piece of silk; Ellen wanted to reach out and smooth it.

“Where did you get that necklace?” asked Ellen.

“You really can’t put anything past this one,” said Phillipa proudly. “She’s always been like that. Remember that time we tried to convince her that—”

“Pip,” said Melanie. “This is between Anne and Ellen.”

“Exactly! I agree! I don’t even know why we’re here! Would you like us to go off somewhere and give you two some privacy?”

Anne sighed. “The three of us brought up Ellen together. That’s why I wanted you two here as well. You’ve both been like mothers to Ellen. The four of us are a family. We’re a family and this is … a family matter.”

Ellen was horrified. Her mother did not talk like this.

“It’s cancer, isn’t it?” she said.

“It’s good news.” Anne smiled. Suddenly she looked radiant. “I came around to tell you the other night actually, but then we got distracted, didn’t we.”

“OK,” said Ellen.

“Well, it’s just that I’ve met up with your father, that’s all.”

“Well, not quite all,” said Phillipa.

“I’m sort of … in a relationship with him,” said Anne.

“It’s so romantic,” sighed Phillipa.

“I don’t understand,” said Ellen. “I thought he was married and living in the UK.”

“Divorced,” said Anne blissfully, as if divorce was one of life’s sweetest pleasures.

“And he’s moved back to Sydney,” added Melanie. “Your mother has been seeing him for weeks. She never told us. I knew something was going on.”

“It’s all due to me,” said Phillipa. “He found me on Facebook! He asked if I’d kept in touch with Anne O’Farrell, and when I told your mother, I could tell by the expression on her face that she still had a thing for him, even after all these years!”

“A thing for him?” said Ellen. She could feel the most profound sense of irritation rising in her chest. The three of them were acting like teenagers. “But you picked him from a list!”

“Yes, yes, all that happened,” said Anne. “Don’t worry. Your life isn’t based on a lie. The part I didn’t ever tell you was that I did actually have a little crush on him.”

“More than a little,” said Melanie. “Pip and I saw right through her, of course.”

Now all three of them were chewing at their expensively lipsticked mouths, like schoolgirls trying not to giggle in class. Anne refilled their wineglasses, and Ellen, who was drinking mineral water, felt like their middle-aged mother. They were all being so silly.

“And it turns out that he’s always had a thing for me too,” said Anne with pride. “He thought about me throughout his marriage. I was always popping up in his dreams apparently.”

“That poor woman,” said Ellen.

“What poor woman?” Her mother frowned.

“His wife! The one he was engaged to when you slept with him to conceive me!”

“Oh, don’t be so—” Anne stopped and flicked her hand as if to wave away a harmless insect. Ellen suspected she’d been about to say “boring.”

Mel spoke up. “Ellen, your mother had nothing to do with their marriage breakdown. There is nothing untoward going on here.”

Ellen thought about some poor woman in London, sleeping next to her husband each night, while he dreamed of a violet-eyed girl back in sunny Sydney. Nothing untoward indeed.

“So.” Ellen tried not to sound snappish. “You’ve told him about me?”

Anne’s moony expression vanished and she looked nervous again.

“He was very shocked, of course, and so cross with me for not telling him. He said he would have called off the wedding if he’d known and married me. Imagine! I could have been quite the little housewife.”

“Oh, Mum,” said Ellen.

There was something cozy and self-satisfied about her mother’s tone. It made Ellen’s whole existence seem tacky and trite instead of bohemian and brave.

“You’ll meet him, of course, won’t you, Ellen?” said Phillipa. “It will be just like that television show where they reunite lost families. I’m crying already, just thinking about it.”