Elsewhere in Success by Iris Lavell

holding it on her lap.
    â€˜This is not such a great idea, Louisa,’ she tells herself. ‘You won’t sleep tonight.’
    She removes the lid, and settles back on the floor with her legs outstretched and her back against the wall. She is looking for a picture of Tom, but finds her daughter instead.
    Meredith was eight when Louisa left Victor. There is a photograph of her about the age she was then, or just a bit younger, holding her cat, her face half buried in its fur. Louisa can’t remember taking it, but it must have been her because Victor wouldn’t have allowed her to put the animal up to her face like that.
    Did she tell Meri to smile and is that why she is hiding behind Ginger? Later Victor backed over the cat with the BMW, not realising it was sleeping under the rear wheel. Louisa and Harry don’t have a cat, but Louisa always checks under the wheels before she backs out, just in case.
    Meredith was Daddy’s girl. How horrible for her, Louisathinks now. How awful, the way she had to be all right for her father’s sake. He said he was sorry, but that she should have kept the cat out of the way, and that if she were a good girl he’d buy her another one from the pet shop.
    It seems to Louisa that there is deep sadness in her daughter’s eyes. Was it a fleeting unhappiness, or was it the way she had always been? Louisa hadn’t seen it at the time. The photograph has picked up something that her daughter hid well. It is no wonder that Meri seemed older than she was, and yet as Louisa looks at her now she knows that she was just a little girl, with a small child’s interpretation of the world. That would have been the time to be there for her, when she was looking for some sort of direction, when she needed some sort of stability.
    Louisa rings Meredith on a regular basis, but the conversations go nowhere. These days Louisa hears more about the details of her daughter’s life from her sister, than from Meri herself. Zoe tells Louisa that on the surface everything is fine, but she worries about the girl and says it might be a good idea to give her a ring.
    â€˜I do ring her,’ says Louisa, ‘but she never tells me anything.’
    It’s true. Whenever Louisa rings, Meredith is polite and guarded. No, there’s no special news. Todd is well. They are both working long hours to get more of the house paid off. Yes, they’re coping just fine. Louisa and Harry should come to Sydney some time, but it’s difficult arranging a time, with work and everything. There’s someone at the door, she has to go. Thanks for ringing. Yes she’ll keep in touch. She’ll ring home next time. Home? The line clicks shut.
    It’s a frustrating and pointless exercise that only seems to make things worse. After Louisa hangs up she feels empty.
    Harry seems fast asleep, but he half wakes when she crawls in beside him, and rubs his warm feet against her cold legs,reaches his arm around her body, and nuzzles into her neck.
    â€˜Night,’ she whispers, but he is in deep sleep again.
    The following week Louisa tells Lucy about Harry’s unwillingness to talk about his music, and about the photographs, and Meredith, and Victor. Lucy advises her to keep trying to reach Harry, not to let herself get shut out.
    â€˜Because, what is the point otherwise?’ Lucy says.
    â€˜I try,’ Louisa says, ‘I know I need to try harder. I do want to find more opportunities for us to talk, so that he feels comfortable to tell me things, so I can tell him things, so that we get closer, but I bend over backwards, and agree with him quite often about stupid things that don’t even matter, even when I don’t, but then he turns around and takes the opposite point of view which turns out to be what I thought in the first place, only then I can’t say it, can I? So he’s deliberately contrary. It doesn’t matter how nice I am.’
    â€˜Well,