Chapter Two: Blood

1974

FORTY YEARS EARLIER – before the secret of Lisa’s past came to be – there is a share house that sits above a busy Melbourne café. Café Arezzo is owned by Mr and Mrs Beltrame, who immigrated from Italy six years earlier. They converted the second storey into rented accommodation, to support their growing business and family.

Wow, wow, wow, wow …

Teresa is in the kitchen upstairs, swinging her hips while singing and cooking bacon and eggs. The hot December sun is blaring down. Through the rickety window above the sink, a cluster of buildings spreads out into the back streets and alleyways. Tin roofs shine like beacons and a spattering of rooftop gardens relieves the eye from the glaring mass of metal. Teresa turns a rasher of bacon with one hand and takes another hungry suck of her cigarette with the other. Smoky fumes fill the air and Teresa’s warbly voice swallows up the sweet radio melody. It’s eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning and she was the first up, as usual. Her tight pyjama shorts ride high up over her fleshy behind and her brightly coloured bikini top struggles to keep the contents safe inside. Teresa taps her cigarette over a dirty yellow ashtray on the bench. She looks up when the door creaks open.

‘Oh, hey sugar.’
Annie rubs her eyes in response. She had woken to the sounds of Teresa’s less-than-tuneful singing, along with the familiar ding! of the tram on Brunswick Street. The faint smell of incense had wafted around the room and shafts of late morning sun streamed in from her bedroom window. Her lips were pulsing and dry as she searched her room for a T-shirt. Shrugging it on, she pulled her hair free. It was already damp with sweat. She had opened her windows the night before for some relief but they had become channels for the sauna-like heat outside. Bang! She slammed the windows shut, the clatter and chatter below becoming a dull and muted drone.
‘Sharpy not up yet?’ she mumbles to Teresa, helping herself to what’s left in the pan.
‘God no, are you kidding?’ replies Teresa. ‘He was snoring like a trooper when I woke.’

Annie isn’t surprised. That was a busy shift, she thinks. She’d worked the tables with Sharpy last night, at the café downstairs. She cuts into another piece of bacon and thinks about how good Maria and Alfonzo are to her. They give her as many shifts as she wants but Friday night is the shift she looks forward to the most. That’s when Sharpy is there. He’s like a brother to her and boy, does he make her laugh with his clever university talk and dry humour. Last night after their shift – and into the early hours of the morning – they’d fallen over each other laughing until they cried, the bong discarded on the floor.

Teresa had already gone to bed. Which bed Teresa ends up in, however, is somewhat of a guessing game for Annie. Sometimes it’s with Sharpy, sometimes it’s her own. Their on-again-off-again relationship makes Annie giddy.

‘God, I can’t keep up with you guys!’ she’d complained once, in mock anger. Whenever it looked like they were back together and could rent out the third room, they’d have a fight and be back to separate beds. The mood between them would sometimes become uncomfortably tense, but mostly it wasn’t a problem.

Annie isn’t envious of their relationship. She has no shortage of admirers. Her long blonde hair, green eyes and slight but shapely build keep a steady stream of star-struck men bounding up the stairs to her room.

‘That one,’ Sharpy would often say, as he saw the attraction build in a customer during a shift, ‘watch out for that one, Annie girl.’ Annie would laugh that pretty laugh of hers.
‘Aw, Sharpy, aren’t you sweet?’ she’d say. ‘Don’t you worry about me.’
Teresa sees it too, the kindness Sharpy has for Annie. But it has been nothing to rouse any jealous concern. ‘What about you and Sharpy?’ Teresa had once suggested in a half serious attempt to test Annie’s platonic exterior and, maybe, reveal a competitor. ‘Me and Sharpy?’ Annie had exclaimed, her eyes wide with shock. The infectious giggle that bubbled up soon had both girls falling to the floor, writhing in agonising laughter. No, Annie does not feel that way about Sharpy.

But what neither Teresa nor Annie knows is that Sharpy’s interest in Annie is more than just a friendly flame; it is an obsession. Neither of them knows how many times Sharpy has held Annie’s bathroom towel against his nose to inhale the sweetness of her perfume, how many dreams wove together in her honour or how he likes to watch her work a table from the safety of the bar.

Sharpy is obsessed with Annie: the way her lips purse when deep in thought, the way her hair slips over her shoulder as she bends, her womanly shape plain to see. He can’t explain what her eyes do to him, when they sparkle playfully or soften, dreamlike. Annie has no idea how much Sharpy desires her or how aggrieved he is with the knowledge that she does not feel the same.

The two girls chat over breakfast in the small but bright kitchen. Lime green cupboards surround the perimeter and a red laminex table dominates the centre of the room. Annie is resting her head on the table when Sharpy walks in. ‘Why Sharpy?’ Annie had asked once about his nickname. ‘That’s for me to know, Annie, and you to never find out,’ he’d said, grinning broadly.

Sharpy walks over and sits down next to Annie, pretending not to notice her see-through T-shirt. As always, he keeps his affections buried deep. He holds his secret the way a pickpocket might relish freshly stolen trinkets. Only late at night, in private, he unpacks all of the images that he has stored away and savours them like a child does a long-awaited ice-cream.

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