The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay by Rebecca Sparrow Page B

purse. Then I’ll make a fresh start on the monologue. Using my foot I nudge my purse to within arms reach. Then I immediately pull everything out of it. For some reason cleaning out my purse always makes me feel better. What I don’t expect to discover halfway through my ritual is that my library card is missing. I pull everything out of my purse all over again. Perhaps it is stuck to another card, like myVideo Ezy card? It’s not stuck to my Video Ezy card. I pull everything out of my school bag (which includes six textbooks, a plastic container of dried apricots, three school newsletters, a weepy red pen, two old crumpled bus tickets and a hair band). I check the pockets of my dress, my pencil case, Dad’s car. I search my school bag again. This is unlike me. Caitlin loses things. Zoë loses things. I’m organised. I have places and systems. I don’t lose things.
    Except, apparently, my library card. Shit.
    I sit on the floor and contemplate the hassle of having to report my library card as lost and arrange for a new one. Where did I have it last? Where did I have it last?
    The bedside table.
    I left my library card in the bedside-table drawer next to the bed downstairs. In Nick’s room.
    He watches me walk down the courtyard steps to the pool area and as I march towards him he calls out, ‘How now, Ophelia?’
    My brow furrows in response.
    â€˜Your window’s open.’ His eyes flicker up to my room. ‘It’s been a bit like Shakespeare in the Park down here. If I didn’t know how much you hated my guts, I’d think you were serenading me.’
    â€˜In your dreams.’
    â€˜So, do you like it?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Shakespeare. Hamlet .’
    I shrug.
    â€˜I like him . Hamlet. I like him the best out of all of Shakespeare’s protagonists,’ he announces, with more conviction than I expect.
    â€˜How come?’ I ask, trying to remember what protagonist means.
    â€˜Well . . .’ He searches my face, as though he suspects the answer is written in faint pen on my forehead. Then he says, ‘Miss Kennedy explained that Hamlet’s feeling a certain amount of guilt and doesn’t know how to cope with it. So really it’s about him struggling with making the right decision. He’s complex and flawed and . . .’
    â€˜And a wimp. And a procrastinator who sits around all day complaining about his life but never doing anything about it. And you’re going to get lung cancer if you don’t stop smoking.’
    With that he takes a long drag and then exhales the smoke, blowing it this time into one big billowy circle.
    â€˜What are you doing?’
    â€˜I’m offering you a friendship ring.’
    â€˜I’m not signing the form, Nick.’
    â€˜I know.’ I can tell from his tone that he’s not going to hassle me about it anymore.
    I don’t know what else to say, so I turn to leave.
    â€˜So was Mrs Ramsay suspicious?’
    I turn back around.
    â€˜No. Because I covered for you.’
    He nods his head, slowly. ‘Where did you say I was?’
    â€˜I said you were at home with a migraine, okay?’ But I don’t wait to hear his reaction because I’m not interested. I just walk straight back up to the house.
    It’s not until I’m walking back up the courtyard steps that I realise I never asked him if I could go into his room to fetch my library card. I stand outside his bedroom door. I look out the window and see him hugging his knees and staring up at the sky. I look back at his bedroom door. Bugger him. I’m going in.
    I push the door open and tentatively take a few steps inside. Looking around I feel a little disappointed. His room is not so different from the way I left it the Sunday he moved in. There are no posters on the wall, no photo frames adorning the desk. Just yesterday’s school uniform lying in a heap on the floor. His school bag is dumped in