Page 14 of Birds of a Feather

‘It was a different time back then, darling. You couldn’t just “hook up” with whomever you wanted.’

She used her fingers to create air quotes around ‘hook up’ to indicate it was a concept that was not familiar to her generation.

‘Gerry’s family was noble, and there were certain …’ she paused to search for the right word, ‘obligations that came with being born into a world of such extreme wealth and privilege. They would not have approved of our relationship at all.’

‘What did your family think?’ I asked. ‘Surely they would have been keen to welcome an aristocrat into the family.’

‘No one ever knew we were together,’ she said wistfully. ‘It was just the two of us, in our own little bubble. Just Gerry and me. It was lovely, actually. But it meant that no one understood how utterly devastated I was when it ended.

‘Anyway,’ she chirped after a moment, with a little shudder of her head, as if shaking off the memories. ‘About six months after Gerry left, I met your grandpa. Then we got married and lived happily ever after.’

She smiled at me, but I could tell she wasn’t telling me the whole story.

‘Did Grandpa ever know about Gerry?’

‘No. Well … no, not really.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, it’s all ancient history now. I probably shouldn’t have even brought it up. I don’t know what made me think of it.’

As I put my indicator on to turn into Mum and Dad’s street, I wondered if I could use my winnings to help resolve the mystery around Gerry. I could hire a private detective to find him and arrange a reunion. Or perhaps I could enlist the help of a historian to work out whether there was an explanation for why he never wrote.

‘You’ve been to the UK lots of times since you were at uni,’ I said. ‘Did you ever try to get in touch?’

‘No. I never did. I thought about it a lot and spent many nights planning what I would say if we ever saw each other again. But it wouldn’t have been fair to your grandpa while he was alive, and I haven’t been to the UK since he died.’

We pulled up outside my parents’ house and made the journey up the front path. As we reached the front door, Gran turned to look at me.

‘I know you don’t believe in fate, Beth,’ she said earnestly. ‘But if things had worked out with Gerry and me, none of you would exist. And I wouldn’t change that for anything.’

I exaggeratedly squinted my eyes at her, partly in gest, and partly because I hadn’t heard Gran – a trusted voice – speak of fate like that before. It was unnerving.

The front door opened, revealing my dad standing in the doorway wearing one of Mum’s old kimono dressing gowns, white socks and thongs.

‘Konichiwa,’ he said, with his hands in a prayer position, bowing his head. ‘Anyone for sushi?’

Chapter 10

Beth

I didn’t think Jarrah did it intentionally, but somehow, she always seemed to trump my news and special occasions with a drama or announcement of her own.

I used to think it was because she was older, so her news sat higher on the scale of significant life events than my milestones. But, as I got older, I grew to realise that Mum, Dad and Elijah just seemed more interested in her announcements than mine, so it wasn’t hard for her to pull focus. Additionally, her lack of self-awareness meant she often rushed up on the stage to steal the mic while I was gearing up for a rare moment in the spotlight. Metaphorically speaking, of course; I wouldn’t be caught dead on stage.

My earliest memory of this was when I was elected school environment captain in Grade Six – a position I had dreamed of holding from my first day of school. I had convinced my peers to vote for me during a stirring campaign speech when I promised to create a wind farm to power the school by buying up all the surrounding houses. It was an ambitious policy platform that, unsurprisingly, never came to fruition. Nevertheless, the news of my appointment was usurped by Jarrah’s joy that the school principal had decided not to expel her after she was caught stealing cinnamon buns from the tuckshop.

The day I received my Year 12 score, which earned me a place in my preferred university course, she interrupted Dad’s celebratory toast to declare she planned to get bangs. She sobbed through dinner at an Italian restaurant to celebrate me getting a job at the council after her boyfriend of two months texted to say he wanted to ‘slow down’. She made such a spectacle that a waitress brought her a piece of complimentary tiramisu to cheer her up. It didn’t. The tiramisu ended up coating the outside of Dad’s car after she threw up the dessert, and the two bottles of champagne she’d washed it down with, on the way home.

I hoped this announcement would be different.

‘Family,’ I planned to start, ‘I have some news. Someone recently told me that Mark Twain said “Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in a life.” As you know, I don’t believe in fate or luck. And I certainly don’t believe that “fortune” is an entity capable of knocking on anything. However, something surprising and completely unexpected has happened.’

At this point, I would pause for dramatic effect.

‘I have come into some money,’ I would continue. ‘It’s not a huge amount, but it is enough to make a difference to my life. And I would like to make a difference to yours too.’

Then I had planned to announce that I would gift $10,000 to Jarrah and Elijah, $15,000 to my parents and buy Gran whatever she wanted. I would tell her that I had been researching taxidermied wolpertingers – a construct of a rabbit head, squirrel body, antlers and wings – as a mantle ornament for underneath her jackalope. There was one available on eBay, which had a decorative pipe hanging from its mouth. The current bid was at $594.43, plus international postage.

But it did not play out that way.

‘Family,’ I began after we had finished the last of the California rolls, and the dining table was littered with tiny fish-shaped soy sauce containers. ‘I have some news.’

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