Free Sussex Drive: A Novel by Linda Svendsen

contaminated door handles, benches, water fountains and toilet seats. Martha had probably picked up a virus, which would be contagious, but more importantly, time-consuming for the prime caregiver.
    She stayed low beside her daughter, aware of the beeping vehicles outside. Vans delivered booze and bouquets.
    Martha flushed the toilet, pushed down the lid and rested her head upon it.
    “I’m calling the doctor,” Becky said.
    “No, Mom. Please.”
    “Yes, Martha. I don’t want everybody to get this.”
    “They won’t. I promise I’ll stay in my room. I don’t want to see anyone anyway.”
    Martha looked up at her for the first time. Her daughter’s face was pasty, puffy and pale green. Becky took her hands in her own and almost got brain freeze from the chill.
    And so it happened, in the middle of the day, when Becky had umpteen demands upon her, especially in the fervour ofa campaign and in the waning hours before a gathering, that she hauled up a tray of hot tea and digestives, crawled onto the bed of her daughter, snuggled an arm around her vomit-scented girl and hung out. The doctor was on her way.
    Martha’s room was comforting in its Martha-like ways, with the unicorn poster, collector spoons from her father’s relatively recent international treks and the ubiquitous stuffies. Her laptop, with CSIS-installed controls, sat cold on her desk under a Jesus wearing jeans and hanging from a mother-of-pearl cross—Martha’s hip memento from Bible boot camp. Like a princess behind her moat, Martha had a view of the Ottawa River, the steep drop and the secret service decoy boats.
    “So how did you fall in love with Dad?” Martha asked.
    “Boring,” Becky sang.
    “It’s not boring, Mom. It’s as good as Genesis.”
    “Well,” Becky said, “we’d only been dating for a little while.”
    “How dating?”
    “Oh, going to a movie, Sunday brunching—that sort of thing.”
    “He never goes to movies.”
    “He did then. And then our dating took off and became more regular because we both belonged to the Federal Agenda party. It was brand new and he was magnificent.”
    “How regular?”
    “Well, we’d see each other every weekend and talk during the week.”
    “Did you fool around?”
    Becky went on super-high alert. “No.”
    “Never?”
    “No.”
    “Never?”
    “No. What do you mean by ‘fool around’?”
    “Kiss.”
    “And?”
    “Hold hands.”
    “And?”
    “That’s all.”
    “Okay,” Becky said.
    “So, how did you know it was love?”
    “It just gradually occurred to me. To us.”
    Becky wasn’t about to reveal that moment, even though she remembered. It was Greg’s oldest stepbrother, Paul, the verbal one, who’d introduced them. She’d always thought Paul was sort of sweet on her. She’d met him a few times at political fundraisers and he’d caught her eye. Paul, however, was engaged and on his way to clerk in the Attorney-General’s office in Australia, and she suspected he’d asked if she wanted to meet his brother to somehow corral her, to keep her in the circulatory system of the Federal Agenda.
    The son of Becky’s parents’ friends was tying the knot and Becky roped Greg in as her date. Her dad had started reminiscing at a spontaneous champagne breakfast. He remembered when Lance, the bridegroom, had brushed a pony’s teeth with his toothbrush, he remembered whenLance had stolen a penguin; there was an animal piece to Lance. By the time Greg arrived, in a suit jacket that was scrunched and too short in the sleeves and had a distinct Zellers air to it, and Glenn drove them all to the church in his buff waxed Cadillac, it was clear that Glenn would not be driving the Cadillac to the reception. Becky had thought it would be her. If her mother, Nancy, had intervened with Glenn, he’d have had a fit, which would have been tricky.
    But Greg approached her father in the parking lot. “Glenn,” he said, “I’ve always wondered how this model handles …” And, so