The Good Parents Read Online Free

morning he’d held onto her like a child does, his head against her stomach. He was breaking up inside and didn’t
     know it. She knew she was harnessed to him now, wherever he was going.
    No one had taught her how to pray. Who is God? she’dasked her parents when she was a kid, and they had thrown their arms about and talked of trees and kindness and the way families
     love each other. Jason Kay’s God was the Great Headmaster, watching you wherever you went. Jason lived in fear of Hell, yet
     when she rode past his Brethren meeting hall, it seemed to her that
it
was Hell, chocolate-brick, windowless like a big toilet block, a yard of gray sand, a high cyclone fence all around.
    Churches always made her curious. What was supposed to happen there? Comfort? Inspiration? But the cold dusty light and vinegary
     smell inside this old church had no power to calm her.
    The tram was packed with very loud schoolkids. She was only a year or so older than some of them but she shut her eyes in
     their midst like a middle-aged woman with worries. If she could have prayed it would have been for Cecile to be home but Cecile
     was in Kuala Lumpur visiting her sister. There was nobody else in Melbourne she could talk to. Her secret life with Maynard
     cut her off, from her own past, her own family. She belonged nowhere.
    Above all do not panic, she told herself. She would buy some takeaway noodles, have a long shower and watch a rerun of
Friends
, which was like going to bed with your teddy.
    The next morning he wasn’t there. She strode straight through the dark office to the flickering answering machine and listened
     to the voice of a woman with a foreign accent telling her that Mr Flynn would not be coming in today, because unfortunately,
     yesterday afternoon, Mrs Flynn passed away.
Mr Flynn will be in touch
, said the woman in her precise, gentleforeign voice. Francine, Bernadette or Tina? Whoever she was, she didn’t feel comfortable speaking into an answering machine.
Er – thank you
.
All the best …
Like signing off a letter.
    Maya sat down in his chair. Through the window she could see the very tip of the spire, a mysterious, ornate black knob. What
     was it supposed to be? An acorn? A bud? She’d asked some workers at the church, but they didn’t know. All that care, she thought,
     put into something that nobody knew about or saw. Just the birds, year after year. For some reason, this made her want to
     cry.
    She didn’t know how long she sat there. It was cold, she’d forgotten to switch on the heating. She sat sunk into her jacket,
     the collar turned up, the wool around her jaw. A phone rang on and on somewhere in the empty building. It felt like days since
     she’d spoken to another human being. What to do next? She took her little bag from the drawer of her desk and made her way
     down the stairs to the Ladies’ Restroom.
    A toilet was flushing and the black-haired beautician from Mimi’s was washing her hands. She had switched on the lights and
     was peering critically at her skin, though her geisha-pale face looked perfect to Maya. She smiled at Maya from the mirror.
     All the women from Mimi’s were friendly. She was wearing tight black pants and a pale-blue smock and high black platform heels.
     The air carried drafts of her airy, floral perfume.
    ‘Busy day?’ she said to Maya, as she reached for a paper towel. Her name, Jody, was embroidered on the pocket of her smock.
     Jody had a kid, Maya had watched her once on the footpath, blowing kisses to a little tear-blotched face in a car driving
     off up the street.
    ‘Not really. My boss’s wife died last night.’
    ‘Oh no!’ A concerned, maternal frown appeared beneathJody’s dead-straight, blue-black fringe. ‘Was it expected?’
    ‘She’d been sick for a while. Cancer.’ They stared at one another as Jody slowly dried her hands.
    ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’ Maya heard her own voice echo, high and plaintive in the tiled