Right before midnight, Brody said we could go home, even though there were still heaps of people there. He and the drinks guy were going to finish cleaning up.
I walked out with the other waitresses. They turned out not that bad. They were called Alyssa and Lauren and they were in Year Twelve. When we walked past the coffee van – like, a real coffee van but parked in the garden – these old guys in the queue for it said, ‘It’s the hard-working staff!’ and ‘Haven’t you young ladies been fantastic!’ and ‘You heading out on the town? Stay and have a dance before you go!’ and stuff like that. They were smashed as.
Alyssa said well could we all get a donut, and they laughed like she’d said something massively funny and started shouting at the man and lady in the van, ‘Doughnuts! Immediately! Urgent doughnuts required!’ and snorting their shiny bald heads off. One of them put his arm across my shoulders. ‘What’s your name?’ he said, and when I told him he said, ‘You look as if you need a donut, Steffy, and by God, a donut you shall have!’ You could tell the couple in the van were like, ‘Shut up, you pissed idiots,’ but they had to just smile and give us heaps of their donuts and coffee for free. Pretty good.
The street was quiet. Alyssa and Lauren said did I want to share an Uber, but then this guy came over. He had bare feet, so I thought, Dickhead. But he started talking, mainly to me. I could tell Alyssa and Lauren wanted him to talk to them, because they kept asking him stuff about surfing. He surfed a lot, he reckoned. I kept quiet. Sometimes I reckon that’s better.
He said he better go and did I want a lift, and I said all right. He didn’t offer one to the others. Maybe he doesn’t like real stuck-up girls like that, I thought. Good to know some guys aren’t all about the looks.
On the way home he started saying it’s not right, those doctors touching us like that. He said he was watching and they shouldn’t have been giving us donuts either. He reckoned it’s not allowed. He said maybe him and me could go to the movies. Before he dropped me off we did some stuff. He reckoned I was a good kisser.
I thought if he texted that’d be all right, and he did, the next morning.
After the movies, we went in his car to the beach. We did more kissing and he felt my tits a bit but nothing else. Then he started talking about the party. Said it pissed him off to see another man with his hands on me. He reckons doctors do whatever they want.
I told him how it cost two hundred bucks to go to a specialist. I didn’t say skin specialist, because how embarrassing.
‘That’s the kind of thing. They do what they want. We should complain.’
‘Yeah?’ I said.
‘They were only giving you donuts so they could put their hands all over you. Like you were hookers or something.’
‘Not like all over,’ I said.
‘I saw them.’ He was really cut. ‘One of them pinched your friend’s arse. One of them said he wanted a blow job.’
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘That’s no good.’
‘It’s practically like saying, if you want me to give you stuff, let me pinch your arse.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. I really just wanted to start kissing again.
‘You should take them down. That one, whose party it was, I know him, it happened right in his garden, you should just make sure he doesn’t let those guys do it to anyone else.’ He nearly started kissing me, but then he said, ‘Every time I touch you I think of their hands on you.’
He kept talking like that, so in the end I thought, well, all right, if it’s that big a deal to him.
*
‘Do it properly, Steffy,’ he said. ‘If you’re gonna complain, make sure you do it properly.’ This was a couple of days later. He said I should say about a blow job and a lap band. He said that’d be better. He said if I just complained about what happened, no one’d listen, and nothing would change.
I wasn’t sure, but he said, well if I wanted to be his girlfriend, I wasn’t going to be able to stand by and let strange men touch me however they wanted. I was going to have to step up.
He said he knew it was crazy hard. He said he’d help me. Which was nice, because I’m not much good with forms and Facebook and shit. He said someone from the government might ring me and he’d help me with that too, because we were a team. But when she rang I just quickly said I didn’t know anything about it and hung up. Didn’t tell him.
Anyway, he ghosted me after a bit, which was shit but in the end lucky, because some cops came and talked to me about him, and I had to sign a statement, and I’m not getting charged. But he was in the paper the other day, and looks like he went to jail. So I dodged a bullet there, I reckon.
Epilogue
Bec
Nowadays there was always feel-good music playing in the supermarket. Songs that made Bec think of the glitter-infused body lotion she used to wear to parties and of being squashed against her friends in the back of someone’s old car. Market research probably indicated that middle-aged people would spend more on household items if they were reminded of their youth. She sighed.
The kids had been late to school. Mondays were almost always the worst for Essie. Bec had wanted to call Kate, had composed a text to her even (Good time to chat? Hard morning!). Then she’d deleted the exclamation mark. Then the hard morning bit. Then the whole text.
Kate was coming down this weekend.
‘I think the kids need as much family around as possible,’ she’d said. But Bec knew she was just being kind.
She looked up. Coming towards her past the tinned fruit was Allie.
‘Hi!’ said Bec.
‘Hi,’ Allie kept walking, manoeuvring her half-full trolley past Bec.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Bec muttered.
To her surprise, Allie whipped her head around and said, very angrily, ‘I’m sorry?’ She had taken one hand off her trolley and put it on her hip. The other hand still rested elegantly on the trolley’s handle. It was as if Allie was starring in some sort of reality-television-meets-classical-ballet theatrical event.
‘I said, I’m fine. And thank you very much for asking,’ Bec said.
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Allie. She must have been able to see the hurt on Bec’s face but her gaze didn’t soften at all. With a contemptuous little exhalation, Allie turned away.
‘Guess I’ve found out who my friends are,’ said Bec. But she was speaking to the back of Allie’s immaculate powder-blue knitwear. Her words were not a retort. They were a plea for mercy.
Bec held onto her shopping trolley’s green plastic handle with both fists, and put her head down. She hoped it would look like she was just checking the label on her eggs. After a few moments, a terrified-looking young man asked her if she was OK.
‘Oh, fine! Thanks!’ she said. She didn’t make eye contact, but pushed her trolley onward, past the soy milk and around the corner. She looked at the clean, grey-flecked linoleum. She counted her breaths.
The next aisle was busier. A man was telling his daughter she needed to sit down or she’d have to get out of the trolley and walk. A young woman was contemplating her soy sauce options in a worried sort of way. And Allie was tinkling her tastefully gold-bangled arm up to the condensed coconut milk.
Bec kept her eyes down and walked at what she hoped was a normal pace. What did she even need in this aisle? Now Allie and her trolley were coming. Bec turned her face away, as if considering the taco kits. Allie walked with a straight-backed gait. She passed Bec without seeking eye contact, her trolley full of respectable married-woman things.
What even was a hard’n’soft taco? Bec wondered, brokenly. Was she supposed to magically know that too?
*
Forty minutes later Bec was unloading her bags into her car when her phone pinged. Now that the Aisle Confrontation Crisis was over, her head was a mixture of the cutting sort of lines she hadn’t been able to come up with at the time – Sorry my family’s not up to scratch. Silly me, I thought friends stood by each other – and Dalai-Lama-esque inspirational t
houghts: I release all blame. I can only control my own responses, not the behaviour of other people.
The amount of delight she felt at the sound of an incoming text was humiliating. She shielded her phone from the sun so she could read. The text was from Allie.
Hello, I have been wishing to contact you for some time. I realise you would still be going through a difficult time currently, and we sincerely feel sad for your family and especially for poor innocent Essie, and Mathilda, Lachlan and Stuart.
Bec let out a weak, incredulous ‘ha’. But Allie possibly wasn’t intending to be especially bitchy.
The reason why I have not been engaging with you in recent months is because I heard you and your sister making judgemental comments about me. At Stuart’s fortieth. I always knew you were so much smarter than me, but it is a real shame you had to be so nasty about it. You didn’t act like a friend, Bec. You hurt my feelings very much, and that is why I don’t want to spend time with you anymore. From, Allie Vincent.
Oh.
Bec shoved her phone in her back pocket and began heaving shopping bags. She seemed to have sudden, super-human strength. What, oh what, had they said? They’d been drinking. A tin of tomatoes rolled free, and she chucked it loose into the boot. Maybe she’d remarked on Allie’s tendency to make every comment about clothing sound as if she was reporting breaking news from a war zone. It must have been well after the speeches because Allie had embraced Bec as soon as they’d finished and said – eyes brimming – ‘You must be so very proud of your beautiful family and life! This is an amazing night!’
What had happened after the speeches? She could only remember walking Ryan to the door. Recalling any other specifics felt impossible, as if she was trying to lift a building. She banged her knee hard against the tow bar as she shoved a bag of potatoes to one side. The pain brought tears to her eyes.
And there it was, the memory, as intact and real as a coin in the bottom of a handbag. Bec put the last of the shopping into the boot, moving slowly now.
She and Kate had been in the butler’s pantry. It was nearly three in the morning and almost everyone had left. They’d been talking about nothing much. Kate said something about Stuart’s sister Phoebe. (‘She’s smart, but she’s so busy and tense she makes me feel as if I can’t breathe,’ Kate said.)
Then Kate brought up That Allie Woman. Kate said Allie was sweet, but then she added, ‘And what a beautiful life you lead, Bec dahling! It’s just . . . Gwyneth Paltrow-standard!’
And Bec imitated back, ‘Kate dahling, I’m so inspired by your statement life I could almost eat a trans-fat!’
‘Not the sharpest knife in the . . . knife-rack,’ said Kate.
‘I think you mean not the sharpest tool in the box. Poor old Absolutely Vacuous,’ said Bec, half-heartedly examining a dirty wine glass. ‘Please God let everyone have gone already. Want some chamomile or something before bed?’
But apparently not everyone had gone already.
Bec imagined Allie. Her Briarwood-bestie, the one who would stay till last. Allie must have been at the half-open door to the butler’s pantry, about to knock, or standing in the kitchen, waiting to gush her sweet, open thank yous and goodbyes. Bec imagined Allie’s face, the way she must have had to hold back tears as she found her husband – he would have been twitching about the living room, wondering whether the paintings were worth anything – and they saw themselves out. She wouldn’t have told Rich, Bec knew. Allie would have kept it all inside until she could get home, and into the shower, and cry.
Dear Allie, she texted back. I am very sorry for what we said. It was mean, untrue and inexcusable, and I don’t blame you for being angry. I really hope that Olivia, Henry and Rich, and you, are all going well. I am just so truly sorry. You were a wonderful friend, wonderful, and I really, really miss you. Sorry, again, for what it’s worth. Love, Bec Henderson.
Sometimes it seemed as if she would never get to stop being sorry.
*
‘Is Daddy coming today?’ asked Mathilda. It was the soccer presentation day.
‘He sure is,’ Bec said. ‘That’s exciting, isn’t it?’
‘Yes!’ said Mathilda, so enthusiastically that Bec wondered for a moment whether she was being facetious. But no. Mathilda was doing a little dance, making a clatter with her soccer boots on the kitchen floor.
‘And then, next weekend, you’ll go to his place.’ Bec corrected herself. ‘You know, you’ll go to your home at Daddy’s house.’ Obviously, she was very much on board with all the helping-your-children-come-to-terms-with-separation protocols.
‘OK,’ said Mathilda, as if she wasn’t really listening. Everyone was going to receive a medal, she was telling Bec. Last year they had been purple, did Bec think they would be today? Because she’d missed out last year, she added, informatively, as if Bec could possibly have forgotten. Last year, the soccer presentation had happened while Essie was starting to walk again.
An hour later, Bec unlatched the child-proof gate that led into the school yard, and all three children scudded off towards the bright yellow plastic hats on the school oval. A herd of kids and two of the sportier mums were doing dribbling drills. The air smelled of cheap, delicious sausages and cold, sticky mud. The three kids were all enrolled at Ashton Heights now, and there had been no further talk of them changing back to their private schools.
(‘Well, they seem fine,’ Stuart had said, six months back. ‘The principal’s been excellent really. And you’re the one who’s doing most of the school runs, so if you think . . .’ His casual deference had made tears come into her eyes. He’d tapped his phone on the edge of their open front door – she still thought of it as their front door – and said, ‘See you Saturday at ten.’ He’d moved away so briskly she knew he’d seen her wet eyes. He wouldn’t have wanted her to feel embarrassed, was the thing. Or maybe it hurt that he couldn’t hug her. Or maybe he just wanted to get on with his day.)
She scanned the school ground. There he was. He was standing with his back to her, watching the field. He was wearing a new down jacket and Essie already had both her hands around one of his. Bec could see that the two of them were talking; Stuart’s head was angled down; Essie was craning her face towards him as if her plait was being pulled backwards towards the ground.
Stuart’s other hand was resting on Amelia-the-Architect’s neck. Bec’d read somewhere that if you could just wait thirty seconds then most feelings would diminish. God. She decided to go and see if she could help on the sausage sizzle.
‘Oh thanks, Bec, but I think we’re pretty right,’ said Fiona. (Fiona was Maddie in Grade Three Yellow’s mum). Maybe she sensed Bec’s desperation, because she added, ‘But Nat needs help with the second-hand boots.’ Fiona’s voice rose to a bellow. ‘NAT!’
A grey-haired woman on the main hall veranda looked up.
Nat, it turned out, was younger than she looked from a distance. She was standing behind a trestle table that held muddy garbage bags and a row of old soccer boots. She introduced herself as the mother of Cooper in Grade Two Blue. ‘I’m doing this to get away from him for a while. Although really, this has to be the worst job ever made. Would you smell those!’ She thrust a pair of child-size orange boots towards Bec.
Bec said she was going to have to stay and sort out soccer boots all day because her ex-husband was around somewhere with his newish girlfriend.
‘Ugh. Desperate,’ said Nat. She grinned. ‘Worse than my Cooper.’
‘Well,’ Bec said. ‘I pretty much brought it on myself.’
‘I did kind of hear about it,’ said Nat. Her voice was very sympathetic, or maybe it was just that everything sounded that way when said in an Irish accent. ‘And it’s not my business, but I wouldn’t be thinking you brought that on yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ Bec said. ‘That’s what my psychologist says.’ The sentence – especially uttered to a virtual stranger – was so odd that she gave a small, genuine laugh.
After a while, Nat offered
to make them both coffees in the staff room – ‘I’ve done so much parent help; I do as I like around here’ – and Bec sat down cross-legged on the cold concrete. She was frowning over a particularly savage set of knots when a voice said, ‘Hi there, Bec.’ Stuart was standing in front of the table.
‘Hi!’ She stood up much too rapidly. The worst part was that he knew her so well, he’d be able to tell she was flustered. And that she was trying to hide it. The whole thing was just impossible.
‘So you drew the short straw today?’ He indicated the boot in her hand.
‘Yes. Sort of.’ She could hardly say she’d been desperate to volunteer because scraping dried mud off pre-loved footwear was a million times better than standing watching him charm the children, their friends and a pretty part-Danish (for fuck’s actual sake) architect.
‘Can I help?’ he said. ‘Mathilda sent me over.’
If she said no, then it’d sound as if she didn’t want to ‘develop an amicable co-parenting relationship’. That was the first dot point he’d put on his ‘Suggested Aims For Our Kids This Year’ email. He’d sent it on the first of January. (The second dot point was that the children should have minimum upheaval, and that he thought they should leave the house off the market ‘for the foreseeable future’ and that the children and Bec should stay in it on ‘an ongoing basis’. He could manage somewhere ‘low-key’ for himself, he said. When Bec read that email, she stood up and walked around the dining table twice. Then she sat back down and read it again and – since the children were very fortunately all in the lounge room rearranging the furniture and pretending to be the servants at Downton Abbey – cried with relief.)
So, it would be churlish to say no.
But if she said yes, then she’d have to be near him. She’d have to see the way the lines around his eyes were infinitesimally deeper, and how he was leaving his hair the tiniest bit longer, and that his hands were still so effective and somehow both conscious and casual. She’d have to smell him and smile at him and keep her voice steady, and the whole time she’d know that she’d remember every little gesture he made and every single word he said, and that, ‘for the foreseeable future’, she’d lie in her bed and examine them all for the smallest sign that he still, miraculously, loved her.
The Mistake Page 33