The Good Daughter Read Online Free

embarrassment she knows she shouldn’t feel. It’s the bitter taste of resentment in the back of her throat. The same resentment she knows chewed her mother up, ate into every part of her like the cancer and made her eagle-eyed and fork-tongued. She doesn’t want to be like that. It’s tough, though – a real struggle with Zach’s good breeding so evident in everything about him. Pedigree seems to ooze from his skin.
    ‘Midnight Oil,’ he answers belatedly. ‘Or AC/DC.’
    This time when he follows her he walks closer. She feels his gaze heavy over her hair and her shoulders, almost as though he feels resentment of his own.
    Zach has long limbs, not yet filled out or muscled. His back and chest are pale, with dark moles in what seem like predesignated spots – on his shoulder blade, high on his chest, on his lower back, spaced and perfectly placed, as though his artist mother had drawn them on. He has dark pubic hair that runs in a thin line up to his navel, soft brown hair beneath his armpits, narrow hips, a hollow stomach, big hands and bony wrists. Feet and legs she can’t say – his pants stay mostly twisted and bunched around his thighs, and then around his ankles. He doesn’t like to be naked, she can tell. What some boys would have taken advantage of – an empty house, no chance of being sprung – leaves him still reserved. The kiss, when it comes, is more or less a disco pash, perhaps a bit more urgent considering the circumstances.
    He pushes her back on the bed, lies on top of her, has her smiling beneath his lips because it is so back seat of the car , so rushed. She closes her eyes and waits for some degree of arousal to come over her; nothing does.
    He touches her, and she ends up against the wall in an effort to make him touch her more gently. Pressure in general he seems mixed up with – his hands hover over the places she wants him to touch and don’t touch the places they should. What is nice, if nice is the right word, is his arousal. He is like he was on the bus: excited but with the brakes applied, held back by inexperience.
    Sex by numbers, dot to dot, is what it is like under him – fingers inside her, tongue in her mouth, hand on her breast, erection pressed against her leg. Not that she minds. The general sense is that they have a job to do, a hurdle to get over. At least he’s aroused.
    So she believes herself responsible when things start to go wrong.
    The reality is she is shut up tight – mind, body, soul, her eyebrows drawn in, mouth pressed into a thin line, frowning even harder as he puts his weight between her legs, tries to push inside her. It’s no wonder she looks up to see him staring down at her, the sleepy look gone from his face, able to focus, his breath coming short and sharp. She has to suck in her cheeks to try and wipe the grimace from her face. Sorry is probably not what you’re meant to say to a man at the moment of penetration.
    ‘Sorry,’ she says.
    He withdraws.
    ‘No, Zach, I want you to.’
    But he is pulling up his pants, reaching for his shirt.
    Fair to say he runs. What she does get to see of his face is a strange softness around his mouth, a vague look in his eyes, confusion. She has the impression he will get out of view of the house and stop to catch his breath, gather his thoughts, but he isn’t going to do it in front of her.
    They speak briefly in the kitchen. He runs a hand through his hair and mutters something about getting back, his father thinking he’s at the dam checking the pump. She wraps her arms around herself and nods.
    ‘If it’s hot tomorrow,’ she manages, ‘do you want to meet at the swimming hole?’
    ‘I might have to work,’ he says.

5
    If the Kincaid property is big and rambling – kilometre-wide tussock-filled gullies, a blue sky from one horizon to the other, nothing to break your line of sight – then the homestead is perfectly positioned in the centre of it. The house is airy, with wide verandas, spacious