Chapter 1
“We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced.”
-Joan Dideon,Slouching Towards Bethlehem
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves
-Mary Oliver,Wild Geese
Nicole DaSilva sat on the couch and folded herself like lady origami—right knee over left, fingers woven in her lap. She scanned the Airbnb for loose papers, stray glasses, but every corner of the apartment was spotless. That should have been reassuring but uncertainty quivered in her belly.
“Breathe,” she told herself. “Just breathe.”
But each inhalation only made her chest tighter. Impatient, Nicole stood and walked to the bathroom mirror. She scanned herself for pimples, grey hairs, chips in her manicure. There was nothing. Short of surgery, the woman before her couldn’t be improved. She’d spent the day getting The Full Beauty. A cut, colour, blowout, manicure, pedicure, eyebrow threading and tinting, lash extensions and a thorough wax of her underarms, legs and labia. Her makeup had been professionally done and she’d chosen her outfit a week ago; a Country Road shirt, peach silk shorts and Dior sandals. Pretty but nottoofeminine, the pastels contrasting her black hair and blue eyes.
She lingered at the mirror, cataloging the things she couldn’t change—her widow’s peak, her slightly larger left eye, the thinness of her top lip. She’d always been hyper aware of her flaws. When people told her she was beautiful, she wanted to demand, “What about the widow’s peak? The mismatched eyes? Have you taken them into consideration, or do you think they’requirkyor something?”
The woman in the mirror looked so unhappy, Nicole was embarrassed.
“Smile,” she demanded. “You’re pretty and well-off and you have a good job. You’re going to see your fiancé for the first time in three weeks. You’re lucky sobe happy.”
She drew her cheeks back, but her smile was joyless. She let her face fall back into gloom.
Aaron hadn’t wanted to come to Melbourne. He considered the city enemy territory. DaSilva Country. He’d wanted her to spend the weekend at their house in Adelaide and it had taken a lot of arguments to get him to agree to fly to Melbourne.
“We’re not fucking staying at your house,” he’d said. “Your sisters hate me. They’ll put a frog in my bag or call the cops on me at the airport or something.”
Nicole wished she could have told him he was paranoid, but he was right; Sam and Tabby did hate him, and they weren’t known for their subtlety. As heavily tattooed extraverts, they were known for the opposite of that. In the end, she’d booked an Airbnb as far from Brunswick as possible and hoped her sisters were too busy for long-distance sabotage.
Nicole studied her reflection, pushing her lackluster top lip out.
I could always get some filler put in.Aaron said that girl at work has it and it looks sexy…
She imagined how her sisters would respond if she showed up to Silver Daughters with lip injections.
“Oi, someone call the council! There’s a wild duck on the loose and she looks huuuuungry,” Tabby would say, while taking as many photos as possible.
Sam might laugh or she might be insulted. They were identical twins, after all, and her getting fillers was akin to saying Sam’s top lip was too thin.
“Our mouth’s not good enough for you now?” Sam might say, though she was the one who’d covered herself in tattoos and separated them into distinct individuals—the sexy artist and her boring double. As the only non-tattooist in her family, Nicole was used to being treated as the vanilla sheep, but it still grated sometimes. Although if she had lip injections…
She rolled her eyes at herself. “You’d be a boring accountant with lip injections.”
It was irritating to still be wading in her teenage insecurities. She was twenty-eight and engaged, too old to resent her lack of edginess. Too old to worry about what her sisters thought of her fiancé.
We don’t want to think anything about him,Sam announced.But he’s such a dickhead, he makes it impossible.
Yeah, you can do better,Tabby chipped in.For example, Ivan Milat is still alive.
Nicole prodded her top lip. “Shut up. Aaron and I are getting married. We have a house together.”