Free Gracious Living by Andrea Goldsmith Page A

Penny said over her shoulder as they walked down the hall. Penny’s own Indian print pranced about her large frame. ‘I’m so grateful for these loose clothes, they hide a multitude of sins. Not that you need worry.’
    They entered a bright sunny living area with a wall of windows looking out to one of those wispy, climbing courtyard gardens where plants and pots and baskets and ivy look to have simply fallen into place. The room exuded a similar ambience of perfectlychoreographed naturalness. Even the two women and three children were placed appropriately.
    ‘This is Elizabeth,’ Penny said to the others, ‘Elizabeth Dadswell.’
    In subsequent years, Elizabeth and Kate would often recall that first meeting. In the end Elizabeth no longer recognised which were her memories and which were Kate’s; except for the children – how they looked – and the fear; those memories would always be hers. One child looked completely normal, another was mildly different, only the third looked as bad as Ginnie. And the fear rushed in along with a sense of failure so bitter that she actually choked on her saliva. Afterwards, Elizabeth would say it was like coming bottom of your class, but at the time all she could do was withdraw, wrapping herself up tightly and observing the scene in front of her as one would a stage arranged with props and actors, all in the right place, each
knowing
the right place, in a play that had already begun.
    It was partly her own fault. Elizabeth, realising she would be nervously early, had pottered around her makeup table until she was fashionably late. Lauren Warneke had been desperately punctual, while Kate, steered always by whim rather than convention, had arrived when she was ready – not long after breakfast. By the time Elizabeth stood in the doorway of Penny’s living-room, dirty nappies had been changed, there was an aroma of fresh coffee and more or less comfortably ensconced were Kate Marley and Lauren Warneke, together with Kate’s Walter, Lauren’s Sherrie and Penny’s Sean.
    Kate and Lauren were sitting on a low-slung chocolate brown corduroy suite. Kate was sprawled across the soft cushions, cigarette in hand, head sinking into the low back of the couch; she looked as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Lauren, in contrast, was perched at the edge of an armchair, each thumb tucked into a fist, ready to pounce. Kate’s Walter, a boy of two and half and the most beautiful child Elizabeth had ever seen, stood at the plate-glass windows peering out at the garden. The little boy just stood and stared, forehead rubbing the glass, brown eyes breathlessly still. His skin was fine and white, a bloodless skin thatbeckoned touch. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ Kate said, as if she had read Elizabeth’s mind. So Elizabeth did not, not ever. Only Kate touched the boy and he either sat passively while she did what needed to be done, or, if he was in one of his moods, he fought, pushing and punching and pinching vast handfuls of skin in a desperate rejection of the invasion. Kate managed him well, staying calm even when he was at his most wretched and yet she was worried, she said, what would happen when he grew bigger, when he was stronger. His father had been strong, Kate said, or at least he looked to be; although, she added with a smile, you need to know someone for a while to be sure about such things.
    But on the first day none of this was known, and Walter was so quiet, so docile, that if it were not for his beautiful unblemished face you might have forgotten he was there. Elizabeth had envied Kate such a child with an envy that lasted exactly one week. The following Thursday Kate arrived late, Walter was in one of his moods she said, and she was unsure how long they could stay. The child had soiled his pants and smelled awful but Kate dared not touch him. An hour later faeces were everywhere: on his hands, in his hair, smearing the windows, on his mother. And how the child, the