Love You Two by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli

Author:Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2008-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

Back at Narnia, Wei Lee puts Zi Don’s cake in the fridge, then heads into the study to check her emails and answer phone messages. I wander in and browse through her books while she smiles at me. I look at the antique table with the hideous model on it. It sure looks like a prison or a hospital; lots of long red-brick buildings with lots of little windows in a circular pattern. In the middle is something like a watchtower.

‘I made that for Don,’ she says, putting the phone down. ‘It was for our first anniversary.’ She winces at my raised eyebrows and dubious face. ‘It’s a model of a prison. Do you know anything about the nineteenth century architect Jeremy Bentham? This is his panopticon model of the perfect prison.’

She squats down near the model, her chin barely bobbing over the table. She motions for me to squat down too. ‘This is a panopticon. If you look at each door and each window from the watchtower, you can see inside them all. But if you try and see the watchtower from any of the windows or doors, you can’t see the guard.’

I try it from lots of angles and see that she’s right. Wei Lee’s looking at her model with hushed and wry awe.

‘It was Bentham’s perfect system of control and surveillance. Be able to observe everyone but not be seen observing. If the prisoners feel they’re always being watched, even when you may not be watching at all, they’ll police themselves. They’ll behave as if they’re always being watched. And there’s soon no need for a guard to be there at all.’ She smiles dryly. ‘Quite a master plan, hey? Like life really.’

She holds up a finger as if she’s about to launch into another lecture but just then the phone rings. As she goes to answer it, she says, ‘But sometimes some people get on with their lives anyway. They find a corner, somehow, away from the watchtower where they can be their harmless loving selves.’

Wei Lee begins to chat on the phone about skylights and sunlight, angles and mirrors. The doorbell rings and she signals to me to go and open it.

There’s a man – sorry, a hot male model type straight out of Cleo – standing there wearing a see-through shirt contoured by large biceps, and the tightest of dark blue jeans. The breeze sways his glossy hair while he peers at me with steel-blue eyes over the top of designer glasses. I’m hardly breathing as this mirage, this hunk of sexiness, says in a deep voice, ‘Hello sweetness, is Don in?’

‘No, but Wei Lee is.’ I’m hoping he’ll come in so I can lust some more. Is this one of their Narnia friends? Is there one like this closer to my age? I smile brightly in hope.

‘Why Lee, darling?’ he repeats slowly, lowering his glasses and sneering at me.

Maybe he doesn’t know who she is. Anyway, the sneer’s putting me off from the sexiness.

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