Kate said I was a “natural knitter.” I didn’t understand why she was being so kind to me. She didn’t seem like a “do-gooder,” as my mother used to call certain ladies from our church: the ones with saintly smiles who dropped off casseroles and bags of secondhand clothes but were always too busy being charitable to other needy folk to accept Mum’s offer of a cup of tea. I’ve always blamed those women for my godlessness.
I liked Kate. She was a tiny bit odd. Not eccentric, just a bit off-kilter. She always spoke a beat too late or too soon, and she dropped things a lot. She was friendly but not in that look-at-me-demonstrating-my-excellent-social-skills way. I felt strangely comfortable with her.
She told me that after we’d met at the Christmas party last year, she’d been telling Lance to invite me over for dinner one night, but Lance was too shy. She and Lance had only been in Sydney for a year.
“We’re on the hunt for new friends,” said Kate. “See, now that you’re trapped in your bed, you can’t get away from me. I’m stalking you.”
I laughed a bit too loudly at that.
Kate cleared her throat, and we fell silent. I listened to the gentle clack-clack of our knitting needles and the muted busy sounds of the hospital that had become the backdrop of my life.
“Speaking of making new friends, Tammy and I did a yoga class on the weekend,” said Kate suddenly. “I picked her up from your place.”
“I know,” I said. “She told me.”
Tammy had been coming in every few days, bringing books and DVDs, takeaway food, and gossip about our old circle of friends that she was rejoining. I enjoyed seeing her, but I was always tired after she left. Kate’s visits were somehow more restful. Maybe it was the knitting.
“Is that weird?” said Kate. “That I’ve been to your house without you there?”
It was a bit weird, but I didn’t really care.
“Of course not,” I said.
“I was a bit worried you might feel like I’m stealing your friend,” said Kate, in her odd, almost childlike way. I realized what made her odd was her honesty. She didn’t seem to filter her comments. She was a bit like the hypnotist.
“Tammy and I have been out of touch for years,” I said to Kate. “She’s up for grabs.”
Kate smiled. “When you’re back on your feet, we could all three go to yoga. We had coffee afterward at this café that makes the best chocolate mud cake I have ever had in my entire life. It brought tears to my eyes, it was that good.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to imagine facing my life again after leaving the hospital. “You must be counting the days,” one of the nurses had said to me, and I said yes, I was, but not in the way she meant. The thought of returning home, to my real life, made me feel sick.
“You should have had herbal tea after a yoga class,” I said.
“I know. We probably ruined the energy flow with caffeine,” said Kate.
We knitted again in silence. I liked the rhythmic feel of the needles sliding in, up and over, the sense of achievement as the rows multiplied.
“You’re getting hooked.” Kate nodded her head at my knitting.
“It’s sort of hypnotic,” I said, and I saw the hypnotist’s face the day I first visited her as “Deborah” and we stood together looking out her window at the ocean. It felt like a very long time ago.
The police had been to see me the day after my ankle operation. A man and a woman. They both seemed very young to me, which didn’t stop me from feeling terrified, and humiliated, and full of burning shame. What would Mum think? She was so respectful of the police. They read me a caution. It was a bit different from the one you hear on the American cop shows, drier, not as glamorous, and therefore scarier.
“So how did you end up here?” said the policeman, indicating the hospital bed, and he took out a notepad. I told him, and they both listened, their faces expressionless.
I guess they’d heard worse.
They asked me if I was aware that stalking was now a criminal offense. They said that they were serving me with an interim Apprehended Violence Order, on Patrick’s behalf, effective immediately, and that I wouldn’t be able to go within one hundred meters of him, his home or his workplace, and that I was legally bound not to “assault, molest, harass, threaten, intimidate or stalk” Patrick. I would have the option to contest the Apprehended Violence Order at a court hearing. They said this in a tone of voice that made it obvious I would not succeed. The penalty for breaking the terms of the AVO was a $5,000 fine or two years in jail.
Assault. Molest. Harass. Threaten. Intimidate. Stalk.
Those words are burned permanently in my head. They were using those words in relation to me: A good girl. A school prefect. A pacifist. I cried when I got my first and only speeding ticket.
There was more.
In addition to the Apprehended Violence Order, I was also charged with a break and enter. The policewoman handed me a court attendance notice, which I took with such badly trembling fingers it slipped from my hand and nearly fell to the floor. She grabbed it just in time and placed it carefully on my bedside cabinet, and for a moment her eyes lost their official sheen and I saw just a hint of pity.
Then they left, their blue hats under their arms, their guns in their holsters. My heart was still hammering three hours later.
“Knitting is how I met Lance,” said Kate. “He sat next to me on a bus and he said, ‘What are you knitting?’”
“Great pickup line.”
“I know. So creative,” said Kate. “What about you? You’re single, right?”
I said, “I haven’t been in a relationship for three years, but I guess I haven’t really felt single for that time.”
“What do you mean?” Kate glanced up. Her needles kept moving.
I wasn’t going to say anything, I barely knew the girl. I had the right to remain silent, but all of a sudden the words came pouring, tumbling out.
He’s early, thought Ellen, as she went to the door.
Her father was coming to take her out. They were going, bizarrely, to some event in Parramatta called the Festival of the Olive.
It was David’s idea. “Might be interesting,” he’d said when he rang to suggest it. “It’s at Elizabeth Farm. Don’t know if you’ve been there. It’s Australia’s oldest surviving European dwelling.” He was obviously reading aloud from something. He cleared his throat. “Sounds like a bit of fun. Something different.”