Love and Punishment by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd

Sixteen

It was Saturday night. Francie sat by the window in her childhood bedroom and looked out at the cloudy sky. The moon had disappeared.

She was back at the old house in the quiet leafy suburb of Blackburn with her mother and brother, but Francie had never felt more alone in her life. She closed the curtains, lay back on her bed and stared at the ghostly orb of the tattered rice paper light shade she had hung when she was a teenager.

There was not much left in the room from that time—her Pet Shop Boys and Bros posters had long gone. Her mother had claimed the room for her sewing and Francie’s single bed was now jammed in one corner behind a dressmaker’s mannequin and a clothes rack. Francie thought she just might stay in this hidey-hole forever. She didn’t see how she could possibly show her face again. She had been revealed to the world as an unhinged housebreaker and there didn’t seem to be any way back to the company of rational grown-up human beings after that.

Every time she closed her eyes she saw Poppy’s downturned wobbly lip and Nick’s hot, pink cheeks. It had been an award-winning performance. She had to congratulate Poppy on that.

Francie could see that this was a story which would run and run. She could imagine her competitors over at the Sunday Star jumping on it with glee. She could see tomorrow’s front page with Poppy holding up a shredded pair of knickers, her face a perfect portrait of outrage. What had Francie said in her own Seriously Single column about revenge? That’s right: I don’t actually believe in revenge. All the best ones have been done . . . leave it to a higher power to exact karmic retribution. As ye sow so shall ye reap . . .

Sanctimonious crap! So she was a hypocrite and a liar along with everything else. After this she’d be lucky to get a job on a free TV guide. Everything was finished—her career, social life, her relationship—and she was back here in this house boarded up with painful memories. She might have known that the notion of living happily ever after with Nick was a mirage, that one day her past would come back to claim her. She felt that for the past five years she had been swimming on top of a lake and then, with the shore almost in sight, she had been pulled back under the surface. She didn’t have the strength to fight anymore. She would just lie here on her old bed and let her lungs fill with tears until she drowned.

She buried her face in the pillow. She was instantly back there. Behind the wheel of her car, trying to resist the urge to drive towards 35 Everton Street, Parkville. The last time she’d driven there—three months ago now, a cool night in August—she’d parked outside the house with its immaculately trimmed lavender bushes (to match Poppy’s perfectly tended pubic hair?) and seen Nick’s car in the driveway.

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