Promise Read Online Free Page B

my landlord. And he wants it.’ She had no idea if Jack – who lived in Shanghai – wanted the bath. But Anna wanted it. A green tree frog had moved in recently, and every day she found it perched on a different part of the bath, ridiculously glossy and healthy looking, its little feet suckered to the yellow enamel.
    ‘Ah.’ He smiled and looked her up and down, theatrically examining her t-shirt and boxer shorts and bare feet. ‘I took you for a homeowner and all.’
    ‘Maybe I
am
a homeowner but I don’t happen to live in my own home.’ Who the hell did this guy think he was?
    ‘Who wouldn’t live in their own home if they had one?’ He smiled at her but it appeared more mocking than friendly. ‘I hear you were good friends with the old lady,’ he said. ‘Some of her stuff is still here, you know.’ The way he looked at her was too confident, too intimate. Charlie had something similar about her.
    ‘What sort of stuff?’ She moved the hose onto the irises.
    ‘Papers and books. It’s as if her kids just walked out and left half her gear behind.’
    ‘Papers?’
    ‘Old bills . . . medical stuff. I’m going to throw it all out. Unless you want to come and get it.’
    Helen’s house had been unrecognisable a few days after her death. Her son, Oliver, left random piles of books and folded linen on the front porch, and told Anna to take anything she wanted. So swiftly he had undone all the small decisions Helen made over the decades, all the subtle ordering of possessions that represented Helen and her sensibilities.
    ‘You should talk to Oliver about that,’ she said.
    The man glanced at her back door. ‘Do you live here by yourself, then?’
    She didn’t want to tell him. ‘Yes.’
    ‘No kids?’ He raised his eyebrows.
    None of your damn business
, she wanted to say. ‘No.’
    He nodded slowly, looking at the back of her house. ‘A lot of room for one person.’ He smiled. ‘I hear you rescued Charlie, came in on your charger.’
    She refused to engage. ‘Sorry, but the bath’s not available.’
    He nodded. ‘Let me know if you change your mind.’
    ‘Alright.’ She turned back to the irises.
    •
    It baffled her that perfect strangers felt entitled to inquire about her reproductive plans and fertility.
Do you want kids? Better hurry up, love, if you’re going to do it!
The question most often came from people who had children, as if that gave them some special dispensation to pry. Her dad never asked the question, bless him. In her twenties, Anna had simply assumed she’d end up with babies. But she’d had only three relationships that lasted longer than six months and only one of those three men wanted babies. Ben and Anna had even tried to get pregnant for a few months, the sex especially thrilling, and then he came home from a surfing holiday and told her it was over. And so it was.
    Dave let her know early on – the first night they slept together – that he’d had a vasectomy. And so Anna was drifting into childlessness, and perhaps that’s how it was always going to be. She didn’t yearn for children like some women, so she would never go out of her way to make it happen. And the one time she was pregnant, at nineteen, she had a termination. If she’d really wanted a kid, she’d have one. A seventeen-year-old.
    •
    On her way home from the bus stop, Anna walked past Helen’s house, where a glossy black ute was parked in the driveway. The sound of kids’ television drifted out.
    Anna let herself into her dark house and shucked off her sneakers. Helen used to joke about them being two single women living side by side, but it seemed to Anna that Helen laughed just a little too heartily about it. Anna liked being part of a couple, but wasn’t afraid of being single; she figured everyone was essentially alone anyway, and simply circling and sashaying around other people as the years passed. She knew others sometimes saw her as aloof but she thought of herself as