The Mistake

by Katie McMahon

  ‘She’s got a birthday party,’ said Bec. ‘Maybe come soon, though?’ She really wanted to talk to Kate about Ryan, apart from everything else. ‘And hey, Stuart told me he called you about Adam. What happened?’ She should have asked sooner, really. ‘Sorry I didn’t call myself. I should have. It’s just . . . crazy here at the moment. Are you OK?’

  But Kate sounded as offhand as ever. ‘Oh, you know me,’ she said. ‘I just told him, better we keep things casual. Or not see each other. Whatever, I’m not taking his calls.’

  ‘As long as you’re happy.’ Bec kept her voice very neutral. ‘That’s all we want.’

  Kate said she’d better go.

  *

  On Friday after school – still no Ryan, and it was now a fortnight since their bushwalk – Bec left the older kids with Stuart and took Essie shopping for a present for Isabel. Essie’s little hand was warm in Bec’s as they caught the escalator all the way up to the third-floor toy department at Myer. They spent nine minutes at the Beanie Boo stand, deciding which of the fluffy toys to buy. ‘Isabel likes unicorns and narwhals, but not butterflies or ladybirds,’ said Essie, with authority.

  ‘And is this for you?’ said the man behind the counter, as he handed over the booty.

  ‘No, it’s for my friend Isabel,’ said Essie chattily. ‘It’s her party tomorrow.’

  ‘Aren’t you lucky!’ said the man, with an isn’t-she-sweet? glance at Bec. ‘You have fun.’ Essie swung the bag in a merchandise-threatening arc all the way to the elevator.

  The next morning, for the first time all week, Essie got dressed without help from Bec.

  ‘Is this smart enough, Mummy?’ she asked. She was wearing a flamingo-spattered dress that had been a Christmas present. ‘And can you please braid my hair?’

  They arrived at the play centre at one minute past ten, the Beanie Boo wrapped up in pink paper with a pink sparkly ribbon, and a card made by Essie sticky-taped to the top. There was a smell of coffee and plastic, a chrome-and-Perspex barrier with a sign saying SOCKS MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES, and, beyond the barrier, a dazzling buffet of twirly slides and trampolines and huge, squashy mats.

  ‘You’re here for the Campbell party?’ said the attendant, a young woman with thick foundation that was entirely the wrong tone. She had to raise her voice above the hubbub from the play area. ‘I just need your name.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bec. ‘This is Essie Henderson.’

  ‘Isabel Campbell,’ piped up Essie, who knew the drill and was already removing her shoes.

  ‘I’m afraid Essie’s not on the list. Hang on.’ The girl appeared to be counting. ‘They’ve got twenty girls booked, twenty names on the list, but no Essie Henderson here.’ Her face was bland.

  ‘Well, I’ve got an invitation,’ said Bec, feeling something like panic.

  ‘Mummy, there’s Isabel!’ said Essie, waving to some girls who were ascending an enormous plastic climbing frame. ‘There’s Madeline S! And Madeline G!’

  Bec rifled in her handbag. The pink postcard-sized piece of cardboard, with its printed details and Essie’s name written near the top in silver pen, was in the side pocket. Bec had been carrying it around for weeks; she’d kept forgetting to put it on the fridge. She was proffering the invitation to the girl behind the counter when Isabel’s mum appeared on the other side of the barrier.

  ‘Oh, Lydia, hi!’ said Bec, more relieved than was really necessary. ‘Major drama! I thought we weren’t going to be allowed in!’

  ‘Bec, I’m sorry. There’s obviously been a mix-up,’ said Lydia. ‘We went ahead and invited the new prep girl in Essie’s place.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bec.

  ‘It’s, you know, this is a whole-class party for the Briarwood preps.’

  ‘But. Oh.’ Bec took a deep breath in. ‘Well, I mean, Essie’s here, and she’s been so excited. Maybe I could . . . maybe I could pay and she could just come in and have a play and see Isabel and the girls?’

  ‘It’s not about the money,’ Lydia said, loftily. ‘I mean, I haven’t got a party bag or anything for Essie. I haven’t set her a place at the party table. There are only twenty helium-filled balloons.’

  ‘You didn’t maybe want to let me know?’ said Bec. ‘She’s been . . . I’m sorry.’ Bec pressed two fingertips against the tip of her own nose. ‘She’s been really very much looking forward to seeing everyone.’

  ‘I think it’s probably better for everyone if Essie focuses on making new friends at her new school,’ said Lydia. ‘It gets a bit confusing for all the girls otherwise.’

  ‘Could she maybe just come in and give Isabel her present?’ said Bec. Essie was holding Bec’s hand now; her shoes were unbuckled but still on; she was staring at a point in front of her on the white linoleum floor. ‘We chose it especially. It’s a unicorn Beanie Boo,’ Bec added, pathetically.

  ‘I’ll take it for you,’ said Lydia. ‘We’re not opening anything here anyway.’ She extended her hand over the barrier. Essie relinquished the gift as if it was her baby. ‘Thank you. I’ll pop it on the table with the other presents.’ Lydia looked at Essie for the first time. ‘Isabel will open it at home. Now. You have a great weekend, Essie! Enjoy your new school, won’t you? Bye, Bec!’

  ‘Come on darling,’ said Bec, swiping at her cheeks. It was all she could do to keep her voice steady. ‘I’m afraid Mummy got a bit mixed up and it’s not Isabel’s party after all. Let’s go and have a big ice cream instead!’ She couldn’t even look at Essie’s face.

  They turned for the doors.

  ‘Would she want a free jelly snake?’ called the bad make-up girl, and Bec derived a crumb of comfort from the fact that she looked utterly appalled. ‘Would you – maybe want a tissue?’

  ‘Oh no, that’s fine,’ said Bec. ‘Thank you, though—’ she checked the girl’s name badge ‘– Tegan.’

  They turned and walked out through the sliding doors, hand squeezing hand. Bec thought about how, to a casual observer, it would have looked as if nothing very much had happened.

  *

  ‘That absolute bitch.’ You could always rely on Kate. ‘That absolute fucking bitch.’ They were on the phone later that night.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’d like to kill her,’ said Kate, who had never met Lydia. ‘I’d like to get a lethal injection and stab her through her new-season bulge-disguising knit.’ It had been a long time since Bec had heard Kate be so catty. She sounded more like her twenty-something self. ‘Or else I’d do it while she slept. I could creep up and strangle her. With a silk scarf. I’d leave it there, as if I was some sort of glamorous serial killer.’ She paused. ‘Actually, you’ll probably have to help me if we go for the strangling option.’

  Bec laughed sadly. This was very comforting. When they’d arrived home – Essie with ice cream and tears all over her face; she’d started sobbing in the car, of course – Stuart had said, ‘What’s wrong with Essie?’ and when Bec told him he’d said, ‘Sheesh. Poor kid,’ and gone back to trimming the hydrangeas.

  ‘Darling little Essie,’ Bec said, now. ‘She’d even put on her favourite undies.’ Bec had intended to say that with a laugh, but she lost control of her voice halfway through and it came out more like a gasp. ‘Oh Kate. Why would anyone be so awful?’

  ‘Because they’re an absolute fucking bitch,’ said Kate, and there was not a shred of laughter in her voice. ‘I’ll be down next weekend.’

  *

  ‘Well, there’s one plus about this whole state of affairs,’ said Kate, between sips of her coffee-van long black. ‘State school dads are hotter, apparently.’

  It was the next Saturday, and Kate had arrived as promised. Unbelievably, only a week had passed since Isabel’s party. Bec had been to work (three times), cooked dinner (five and a half times), organised lunch boxes (four times), and had sex with Stuart (one time).

  Also, quite a few other things.

  She sipped her own coffee and scanned the soccer field boundary line. They were wat
ching Mathilda’s first match for her new school. Clusters of unfamiliar parents stood in snug groups; their breath was visible in the freezing morning air as they chatted and called out, ‘Go, Ashton Heights!’ and, ‘Good effort, Ruby!’ and (to an adventurous toddler), ‘Come back here, Ada, love; it’s only for the big girls!’

  ‘Actually, you’re right,’ said Bec. Most of the dads had that sort of lean, windswept, stubbly look. They were wearing outdoorsy clothes: all well-worn down jackets and scrubby polar fleeces, as if they were just about to go mountain-bike riding or kayaking or something. Bec thought of the Briarwood dads: their suits and bellies and darting, kid-tracking eyes. Their phones and lanyards and terse instructions. They weren’t all like that, she reminded herself.

  A tall man with a shaved head yelled, ‘You can do it, Esther!’ and then clapped with his hands over his head as a spindly girl kicked the ball a long way up the field.

  ‘And nicer,’ said Kate.

  ‘Who knew?’ Bec took another sip of her cofffee.

  ‘Yeah, some of those Briarwood dads,’ said Kate. ‘Remember that tosser in the car park last year?’ Bec nodded. Kate was referring to a time when Bec had come close to scraping someone’s shiny four-wheel drive with her own. (The school was old; its driveway hadn’t been designed for cars that big.) There had been an altercation, and Kate, who had been in Bec’s passenger seat, had ended up getting out and telling the other driver, who’d turned out to be a grade-six dad, to go and relieve himself manually.

  ‘Ordinarily I’d suggest you get fucked,’ she said. She was leaning into his window and speaking sweetly and quietly so that none of the children would hear. ‘But clearly it’d be impossible for you to get a fuck under any circumstances.’

  ‘I don’t even know who he was,’ Bec told Stuart later, when the kids were in bed and the three of them were drinking wine. Kate had been staying with them for the Regatta Day long weekend.

  ‘Some penis in an Audi,’ Kate supplied.

  ‘Well, that narrows it down,’ Stuart said, grinning and clinking Kate’s glass. Bec had been stranded between mortification (‘Was that your sister?’ people would ask her at drop-off on Monday) and pride (Kate was so cool. Stuart was so relaxed. Even if both he and Bec did drive enormous Audis).

  ‘So,’ Kate said, as Ada-the-toddler made another dash towards the goals, ‘how are you guys holding up?’

  ‘Um,’ said Bec. Of course, Kate would assume that the complaint against Stuart was the most pressing thing in her life. ‘I actually said to Stu he should see a doctor, but . . .’ She shrugged. Kate made a spluttering noise.

  ‘Oh, as if,’ she said. ‘He needs a better lawyer, not a doctor. It’s outrageous, this reputational damage. What does Rodney say about that? And what’s happening with MPRA? Did Rodney send that letter in the end?’

  ‘He sent it. We’re waiting. I don’t know.’ She told Kate that she had deleted both Twitter and Facebook from her phone.

  ‘Don’t blame you. I saw some of it,’ Kate said, in a flat tone.

  They watched the soccer for a while. Mathilda was doing a lot of running up and down the wing. Someone called Imogen seemed like an extremely good kicker.

  ‘Heard from that Adam guy?’ said Bec, after a decent interval. It was the best segue she could think of.

  ‘Oh,’ said Kate. ‘I blocked him. As you do.’ She waved a dismissive coffee cup. ‘It’s not as if we were, you know, serious, or anything, Bec.’

  Bec barely heard.

  ‘Kate. I have to tell you something.’ There was no one anywhere near them, but she lowered her voice anyway, and cast a quick look over her shoulder. Kate would be horrified. Kate would say things. Kate would know how to make her stop.

  ‘What?’ said Kate. ‘God, what now?’

  There was a little moment when the world seemed very quiet. Then Bec touched her sister’s wrist and said, ‘I’m sleeping with someone else.’

  Because that week, she had also had sex with Ryan. (At least three times. Possibly more, depending on how you defined sex.)

  Last Monday morning he’d called her. Not a text. An actual phone call. ‘I need to see you. Today. Please?’ he’d said, as soon as she answered. She’d walked so much more slowly, that morning, down his path.

  ‘You sure about this?’ he said, in his hallway. But he was already kissing her, properly this time. His hands were already moving from her shoulders to her hips; he was already breathing hard and fast, already walking her backwards into his bedroom, angling her mauve jumper up over her head, muttering things like so soft and your beautiful skin and oh God, Bec, finally.

  ‘Pardon?’ Kate turned towards Bec, and peered at Bec’s mouth, as if she honestly thought she had misheard.

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘What, Bec? Just, what?’

  ‘With the fire-eater,’ said Bec, penitently. But she was loving talking about it. In fact, she felt like giggling, a bit like when the slightly famous rugby player had winked at her in the Qantas lounge. (When she’d had Lachlan in her arms!)

  ‘You’ve slept with someone?’ Kate’s voice took all the giggle out of Bec. ‘Once?’

  ‘No.’ Two visits to his house. More than two actual . . . what would you call it? Episodes? Intercourses? The man was twenty-seven, for heaven’s sake.

  ‘Bec, are you seriously telling me that you’re having an affair?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ Twenty-seven; seventh heaven.

  ‘With what fire-eater?’

  ‘From Stuart’s party? You thought he was sexy.’ Kate was so deeply and disapprovingly silent that Bec’s voice trailed off. Really, how did Kate do that?

  ‘Why? Bec. Are you and Stuart having, like, problems? Bec. Bec! Just what exactly do you expect me to say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bec said. ‘I want you to talk me out of it.’ But I didn’t know, Kate, she wanted to add. I didn’t know it could be like this. Did you know? Is this what it’s always been like for you?

  ‘Well, stop cheating and stop lying and stop . . . doing it.’ Kate’s voice reminded Bec of a smashed window. ‘How you could do this to the kids is absolutely beyond me.’

  ‘That’s the sort of thing! I know. I know. This is just what I’ve been needing you to tell me.’

  ‘What makes you think I won’t tell Stuart? God, Bec, the way you take your life for granted – it makes me . . . it is breathtaking.’

  ‘Please don’t tell him. Kate. You’re my sister.’

  ‘Oh, just shut up,’ said Kate. ‘You’re going to ruin everything. Did you think about that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bec. ‘It’s all I can think about. I know it’s terrible. Of course I do. I keep saying I’ll stop, and then I just – Kate, it’s just so – so—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, the fire-eater sex is great, I get it. No doubt he understands you more than anyone ever has.’ She sounded furious. ‘Who else knows? You told Mum?’

  ‘No one else knows,’ said Bec. Thank goodness she hadn’t mentioned the way Ryan seemed to get her almost completely. ‘I’ve been really careful. He’s never met the kids; we never go anywhere near our house.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Kate said again. Astonishingly, Kate looked as if she were about to cry. ‘You don’t get prizes for that, you know.’

  ‘I know.’ Of course, you didn’t. ‘I know.’

  ‘I had an affair once,’ said Kate, as if that was an extra reason Bec should be ashamed. ‘In London. And I barely thought about the wife. I barely considered her. Because I was twenty-two and a selfish little cow.’

  ‘What happened?’ How had Bec never known about this?

  ‘What do you think? Beautiful girl. Rich man. Fancy hotels. He seriously wanted me to go to Paris with him. Perfume. Lingerie. Boxes full of clichés.’

  ‘Who was he?’ Bec said.

  ‘Well, he didn’t have little kids,’ hissed Kate. ‘Even me, even at twenty-two, I wouldn’t have stooped that low. Go, Ashton Heights,’ she added, loudly. A girl with a headband had
scored a goal.

  Kate was very much more upset than Bec had anticipated, but Bec was also surprised – concerned, even – by how Kate’s words were just sliding off her. In fact, she was mainly wondering what would have been wrong with going to Paris.

  ‘What I’m saying is that – look at what you’ve got, Bec. Look at it. Really. It’s – I promise – it’s so not worth it.’

  ‘Did he stay with his wife, in the end?’

  ‘We are talking about you.’ Kate’s words sounded the way Lachy’s metronome would if it ever got angry. So paced and deliberate and unyielding.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Bec made her tone meek, but she was thinking that there was surely no need for quite this amount of distress. It wasn’t Kate’s marriage.

  ‘You can’t have both, Bec. You just cannot have every single thing you want.’

  ‘I know that.’ Of course she knew that. And maybe Kate shouldn’t be so bloody judgemental, all things considered.

  ‘Everyone wants both. You’re not special.’ Kate often talked as if she had a degree in Psychology, which she absolutely did not. ‘And Bec, sometimes you need to stop and think, think properly, about what the consequences are, before you just rush in. What you do, choices you make, they affect other people, you know.’

  ‘I realise that, Kate!’ For God’s sake. Her whole life was one long series of choices made with other people in mind. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. ‘But to be honest, this . . . whatever it is, with Ryan, it doesn’t seem to be something I’ve chosen.’ That was entirely true.

  ‘You must be insane,’ said Kate. ‘Just. Bec. You . . . Stuart. You have absolutely no idea.’

  The two women sipped their coffee. When Bec glanced over, she saw that there were tears on Kate’s face.

  *

  ‘Hi,’ said Ryan. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

  It was just before 9 a.m. the next Monday. Her car was parked around the corner. She’d pulled over on her way home from dropping the kids at school, as if she was nipping into the dry-cleaner. His front door clicked shut behind her; his arm was already like a band around her waist.