‘We’ll supply you with all the receipts, of course,’ Maxie joked.
‘We also expect Eliza to pay us back in the years ahead,’ Olivia said.
‘We have an ulterior motive, obviously,’ Maxie said. ‘We spoil her now with all these exotic holidays. When we’re old and grey, she visits us in our nursing homes.’
‘To fill our drips with gin,’ Olivia said.
‘Spoon the finest of pureed food into our drooling mouths,’ Maxie said.
‘Nursing homes plural?’ Jeannie said, smiling by then. ‘No way. We’ll end up in the same one, won’t we? In the same room. Three beds in a row.’ She’d lifted her glass and made them toast the idea.
‘Together till the end!’ Jeannie had shouted, before laughing, also too loudly. ‘Wouldn’t Sister Teresa spin in her grave at the idea! All those years she tried to separate us!’
They spent the rest of the evening reminiscing about their Catholic boarding school days. It still caused them great hilarity, the idea of them being sent to such a strict and religious school. What on earth had their parents been thinking? That they might consider becoming nuns themselves?
At least they’d all got neat handwriting out of it, they agreed. And Olivia might never have developed an interest in art history if it hadn’t been for cranky old Sister Bernadine. Would Maxie have become an actress if Sister Frances hadn’t insisted she take the lead role in their all-female version of The Crucible? And while none of them went to Mass any more, they could hold their own in religious discussions, after being taught politics and theology by the fierce Sister Roberta.
‘As for me,’ Jeannie said as she refilled their glasses, ‘I’d definitely have been locked up if it wasn’t for the Catholic network. I might not have a good career like you two, but at least I’m not a jailbird!’
For the rest of the weekend, Jeannie had been in great form, making them laugh, exaggerating as always. She’d been full of fanciful yarns at school too. They’d all heard of Jeannie’s adventures when she was left alone in the family car as a nine-year-old. A thief had leapt into the driver’s seat and taken off, with her in the back. It involved a police chase, blaring sirens, until the car was cornered and Jeannie rescued. Ironic, really, considering what happened all those years later in Carlton.
Mind you, Olivia had to concede, Jeannie’s quick wit had been handy whenever one of the nuns or teachers caught them out of bounds or up past curfew. In the blink of an eye, she was always able to come up with an elaborate and convincing story about a bad nightmare causing one of them to sleepwalk, or a sudden debilitating cramp requiring an urgent late-night visit to the first-aid room.
It was in the years following that visit to Jeannie and Eliza that they had become more concerned about her gift for storytelling. Or compulsive lying, as Olivia began to think of it. They slowly discovered she’d been telling Eliza increasingly fanciful tales about her own childhood, her school days, her overseas travels. Eliza occasionally shared details of them during her annual holidays.
‘Well, I don’t think it was exactly like that,’ Olivia remembered saying once, after twelve-year-old Eliza earnestly told her about Jeannie running away from home as a child. According to Eliza, Jeannie had stowed away in the back of a semitrailer until she reached the outback, where she spent a week living in a tent made from leaves and branches, surviving on ants, berries and dew, until the police arrived in a helicopter and brought her home again. Yes, Olivia had said, carefully choosing her words, Jeannie possibly had once run away from home. Most children did at some stage. But for a week to the outback? Living on insects? Rescued by helicopters? No.
‘But Mum told me it happened,’ Eliza insisted. ‘She said it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She even said, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”’
Olivia had challenged Jeannie about that story, ringing her during school hours once Eliza had arrived back home. She’d kept it light, treading gently, joking that she hadn’t realised Jeannie had had such an adventurous childhood. ‘Huckleberry Finn had nothing on you,’ she’d said, before sharing some of the stories Eliza had told her. Halfway through, Jeannie had started laughing.
‘I’m a master storyteller, if I do say so myself. Did she tell you I was also winched up into the helicopter, when it wasn’t safe to land? And that there was a glitch and I had to travel fifty kilometres swinging from the rescue rope like a trapeze artist, until they pulled me up properly?’
‘Jeannie, she believes every word you tell her. I really think you —’
Jeannie interrupted. ‘She’s a child, Olivia. My story-loving child. She also believes in giant peaches, chocolate factories, lands at the tops of trees and chairs that grow wings. Should I stop reading those books to her too? Only read her bedtime tales from Encyclopaedia Britannica?’
Olivia backed down. Jeannie had been surprisingly fierce. She knew what she was doing, she insisted. She was nurturing Eliza’s imagination. Giving her a childhood filled with fun, stories and adventures. All that Olivia knew Jeannie hadn’t experienced in her own childhood. She’d only met Jeannie’s parents twice during their school days. She’d been struck by how cold they were. How formal.
Jeannie’s stories continued, many colourful ones about Eliza’s father among them. Olivia and Maxie often discussed it. They felt it wasn’t fair to fill Eliza’s head with elaborate stories of a father who was an astronaut, or a circus performer, or whatever occupation took Jeannie’s fancy at the time. They’d carefully raised that with her too. Jeannie laughed it off.
‘It’s just a bit of fun. I told you, I’ve promised to tell her everything when she’s eighteen. Not just about her father. All my dark secrets. You have to promise not to say a word to her until then, too.’
They’d promised. They’d kept their promise. It was Jeannie who had been unable to keep hers, through the cruellest of circumstances.
They had been such terrible, dark days. Eliza was inconsolable. There was the added distress of an autopsy and coroner’s report being ordered, due to the tragic circumstances. Jeannie’s funeral finally took place, the weather as bleak as their hearts, the gathering in the country church surprisingly large for a small town. Jeannie’s colleagues from the supermarket. Teachers and classmates from Eliza’s school. Throughout it all, the two of them tried to keep Eliza afloat, while dazed with shock themselves. Every night, the sound of her weeping filling the house. Every day, her initial shock turning into the deepest of grief. The plaintive questions that broke their hearts. ‘Was it my fault?’ ‘Did I do something wrong?’ And even more heartbreakingly: ‘What if I forget her?’
‘You never will, darling, I promise. Never. We’ll always help you remember her.’ Olivia clearly recalled saying it, holding the seventeen-year-old Eliza tightly.
‘We’ll always be here for you, Eliza,’ Maxie had said. ‘We promise.’
Each day, Eliza asked them to keep telling her the stories about Jeannie. It had been so urgent, almost panicked. ‘Which ones?’ Olivia remembered Maxie asking. The one when the three of you shoplifted the chocolate and the nuns made you crawl on your hands and knees to return it to the shop. The one when she went backpacking around Europe and she slept on a beach and woke up to find a snake in her sleeping bag.