Not Bad People

by Brandy Scott

  ‘It’s just stress, coming out sideways. I know you guys are worried about money at the moment. Your brain is latching onto something. Don’t let it.’

  Aimee looked over at Lou, who was messaging on her phone.

  Lou nodded. ‘What she said.’

  ‘Promise me you’ll let it go. No reading the paper, no googling. Put it out of your mind.’ Melinda gave Aimee a squeeze. ‘It wasn’t us,’ she whispered. ‘This is all in your head.’

  Aimee felt the relief flow through her, better than any vintage. ‘I promise,’ she said. And meant it. ‘Thank you.’

  Hensley’s main street was the Australia that foreigners dreamed about. The town’s main artery was lined both sides with cafes and family-owned fruit shops, proper pubs and friendly butchers. The local council had decided decades ago that it wouldn’t bloody pander to weekend visitors from the city. It had seen what had happened to Kimerlee and Fenton, even Meadowcroft, as a result of chasing the tourist dollar. Main streets full of fancy kitchen gear and artisan cheese shops, and nowhere a man could get a decent drink. Gentrification had ruined half the towns in the valley, was the considered opinion of the Hensley Council: membership — seven; members who weren’t related to the mayor — zero. So the council had effectively banned tourism. Since 1993, every application to open a tourism-related business had been turned down on a trifling technicality. Those who tried to take complaints about the policy higher found themselves very unpopular in the sort of country town where popularity was everything.

  As a result of Hensley’s refusal to gussy itself up, the town had remained an anachronism, a genuine untouched piece of Australiana — and catnip to wealthy tourists looking to stay somewhere ‘real’. They flocked in for weekends and public holidays, exclaiming over the unspoilt authenticity of the place as they crowded the footpaths, congratulating themselves on their ability to blend in with the locals as they stood in the middle of the street taking photos of tin awnings and faded shop signs, stopping traffic and causing more than one minor accident.

  Melinda dodged a confusion of Japanese pensioners walking exquisitely slowly towards the rotunda as she ferried a carton of jewellery to the back of her building. Originally the town’s commercial hotel, it had been shut down three years earlier in a fit of pique and trumped-up fire-safety concerns after one too many rowdy backpacker parties. Melinda had pounced. Promising Mayor Rex and the rest of the council that she would never, ever let a tourist cross the doorstep, she’d let out the lower floor to small businesses — a mattress company, an Italian bakery, an accountancy firm — and converted the upper floor into a giant apartment for herself, complete with wraparound balcony and the best view in town. The commercial rent was slowly paying off her renovations as well as the mortgage, and Melinda had added the building to LoveLocked’s balance sheet on account of the fact she stored inventory there, a move that her Kiwi accountant tenant described as being ‘pretty legal’. It wasn’t quite the single-girl-in-the-city unit she’d planned to buy. And it certainly wasn’t the stylish-but-warm family home she’d always assumed she’d end up in. But on a summer night with a G&T and her girlfriends and enough mozzie spray, it was good enough.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Melinda shuffled the carton of charm bracelets from one arm to the other. It was too hot for this; the tops of her thighs were sticking together. ‘Coming through. Excuse me.’

  Elderly Japanese nodded politely and moved slowly. Too slowly. Sometimes, Melinda could see the council’s point. She dumped the box on top of the others and headed back to the Range Rover for another load.

  This was the problem with being single. You had to do everything, absolutely everything, yourself. She opened the boot and sat in it, momentarily overcome by heat and pissedoffness. Every bill, every decision, every heavy box, every spider, was yours to pay or make or carry or kill. And she could do it. Of course she could do it. It was just that sometimes, she didn’t want to.

  Melinda had no idea how she’d ended up on her own. She’d had boyfriends in her teens, twenties, thirties. Fewer in her thirties, to be fair, but she’d been busy. Boys and men had loved her, or at least had said they did. One had proposed. Two had — briefly — moved in.

  But now the periods of being single were growing longer, and the periods of seeing people were growing shorter, and becoming less enjoyable. A new pressure had arrived with her late thirties, as potential partners grilled each other in what felt more like job interviews than first dates. Was the person scooping taramasalata across the table sane, solvent, addicted, damaged goods, marriage material or desperately trying to have children before their ovaries stopped delivering? And there was less casual sex these days, less let’s-just-try-this-and-see, because the women didn’t have time to try it and see, and the men didn’t trust them. Single men viewed women in her age group with a suspicion usually reserved for financial advisors, scared they’d lull them into a false sense of security with reassuring chat about wanting to keep things casual, and then trap them into babies they couldn’t afford and marriages they didn’t want. Which was hysterical, when you thought about it. ‘I haven’t decided if I want you around for the weekend, let alone the rest of my life,’ Melinda had informed one would-be boyfriend who accused her of ‘rushing things’ when she suggested going halves on a friend’s birthday present. ‘Get over yourself.’

  But that was the other thing that had changed: the balance of power. It wasn’t politically correct to say it, but her value was definitely declining with age. Melinda had the status that the business gave her, but the right sort of man didn’t seem to care about that. Only the sort who hoped she’d take care of their debts. Her ex-boyfriends all seemed to go on to marry teachers and receptionists and yoga instructors. Younger, easier women. Women with fewer opinions, women who didn’t make enough of their own money to be threatening or enough of their own potential to be competition. What do they even have to talk about, Melinda wondered of the men who married these women, women who had no interest in politics or current affairs or what was happening to the economy. Don’t they get bored? I’d get fucking bored.

  She lugged another box down the street and dumped it on the kerb before the sticky tape on the bottom could give out. There was a hideous irony in the fact that guys she wouldn’t have even spoken to ten years ago now considered themselves out of her league. And it wasn’t like they were improving with age. As single women like Melinda got older, they started looking better: a bit of Botox, more money to spend on haircuts and highlights, more expensive clothes. The men didn’t make an effort; they didn’t bloody have to. Being single and heterosexual seemed to be enough.

  Melinda slammed the boot shut and kicked the final box along the footpath. And when you did finally meet someone nice and interesting and gainfully employed, they were married. Melinda didn’t believe in the phrase ‘it’s not fair’, was always the first person to say that life wasn’t meant to be fair, that no one had promised fairness. But really? Really? Surely she deserved a break.

  ‘Fuck,’ she muttered, as the box tipped over and velvet cases spilled onto the street. ‘Fucking fuck.’

  ‘Do you want a hand with that, Mel?’

  Nick leaned out of the window of his battered ute, son next to him in the front seat, dog in the back. Melinda straightened herself.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she called back. ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘I didn’t ask if you needed a hand,’ he said, climbing down into the road. ‘I asked if you wanted one.’

  The concern in his voice made her eyes blinky. ‘Please.’

  ‘Where are the rest?’

  ‘Round the back.’

  Nick stuck his head through the car window. ‘Byron,’ he said, ‘get out here and give Mel a hand.’

  He didn’t need to be told twice — good kid, that one — just put his phone down and clambered out, knees and elbows in all directions. He and Nick had the boxes upstairs and in her storeroom in a matter of minutes, ignoring her instructions to just leave
them on the landing.

  ‘It’s a bloody mess in here,’ called Nick. ‘Want us to sort it out?’

  Melinda shook her head. It was bad enough that someone else’s husband was coming to her rescue. As usual. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mel. Just be grateful it’s done.

  ‘Thanks, Nick,’ she said, as they both waited for Byron to finish in the bathroom.

  ‘No worries.’ He perched on the edge of her linen sofa, looking healthy and reliable and almost as handsome as he had when they were dating. Nick’s face was weathered, but in a way that added character. He looked like what he was — a decent guy. A little thought flickered through Melinda’s head: Lucky Aimee. Followed by another: Foolish Melinda. She walked quickly into the kitchen.

  ‘Tea?’ she called, from the safety of the sink. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Nah,’ he replied, as the toilet flushed. ‘We’d best get back. Aimee’s putting a roast on. I promised I’d rustle her up some veg.’

  ‘Right then.’ She busied herself at the sink, relieved but slightly disappointed. ‘Thanks for helping.’

  ‘Just shout if you need to take that stuff anywhere. Byron can cart it around for you. He’s not got anything better to do this summer.’

  ‘That’d be great.’

  Nick rubbed the fob of his keys against the doorframe. ‘I’m sorry about Dave,’ he said finally.

  Melinda flushed. ‘It’s okay.’ Just go now.

  ‘Nah, it’s not. He shouldn’t have done that.’

  Melinda shrugged.

  ‘You want to come to ours for dinner? There’ll be heaps.’

  ‘I’d rather be by myself, actually. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘Righty-oh.’ Downstairs, they heard the front door slam, then Byron talking to the dog. Nick stared at her, cleared his throat. ‘Mel —’

  ‘I really don’t want any sympathy right now. Honestly, it will just make me feel worse.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to give you any.’ She could see him searching for something reassuring to say. ‘Just . . . you’re looking good, Mel. Really good. Just wanted to say that.’

  She snorted.

  ‘Catch you later.’ She heard the latch turn, and then he too was gone.

  Melinda opened the fridge and assessed her options. Hummus. Smoked salmon. Rice crackers. The modern single woman’s equivalent of a supermarket ready-made meal for one. She shoved it all on a breadboard, added a handful of cherry tomatoes and made her way onto the balcony, returning for a half-bottle of white. Fuck the emails. She was taking the rest of the day off.

  Beneath her, Hensley moved happily into midafternoon, friends calling to one another as they headed to the pub for a cold one, tourists soaking up the sun on the town’s wooden benches, their legs stretched into the footpath with little regard for passing pedestrians. Melinda made herself comfortable in a deckchair and watched other people’s lives play out below. The mother snatching at a toddler about to walk into the road. The teenage couple wrapped around each other outside Larry’s Meats, tattoos blurring as they snogged and groped. Larry’s wife, Sandra, with her frosted up-do, shooing them away.

  A spectator. That’s what she’d become. Someone who watched from the sidelines as other people got on with life, getting married and setting up house and raising children and growing old and grumpy together. Melinda wasn’t sure she wanted all that, but it would be nice to have the option. To feel like you were part of the Game of Life, with its winding but sure pathway from the chapel to the grave. Not someone who got invited to be an extra in other people’s lives: to sit at their dinner tables, make small talk with their in-laws, come round for Christmas if you’re free. She was always free.

  Melinda didn’t believe in wallowing — she gave Lou stern lectures about the dangers of negative thinking, of becoming stuck in a self-defeating cycle — but sometimes it was strangely pleasurable. She licked hummus off a spoon and felt sorry for herself, alone on a balcony big enough for a footy team of friends and family. Tomorrow, she’d pick herself up and get back to business. The business of being Melinda. But today she was just going to sit there feeling like shit.

  And so she did, as the sun started to lose its power and the tourists headed indoors. Sat and ate and drank and watched and felt like shit, ignoring the vibration of her phone, the Meadowcroft number flashing up on its screen once, twice, followed by a message she deleted, unread. She might be lonely, but she wasn’t one of those women. The kind of woman who slept — knowingly at least — with other women’s husbands, who waited for them to leave their spouses, or didn’t even bother to pretend they would. At least she could take pride in that.

  CHAPTER 6

  ‘Hey, Lincoln.’ Pete felt nervously for a shoulder, not wanting to disturb any tubes or machines that might lie between them. ‘Lincoln, it’s me, Dad.’

  ‘It’s okay, you can hold his hand.’ The nurse took Pete’s good arm, guided it towards his son. ‘There you go.’

  Pete leaned over to where he imagined Lincoln’s head must be. ‘Check us out, eh?’ he said, for want of anything more intelligent. ‘Bloody great mess we’ve made of this one.’ He gave the fakest of laughs. ‘What would your mum say?’

  ‘That’s it.’ The nurse’s voice behind him was reassuring. ‘Just speak normally. He can hear you.’

  ‘How do you know?’ It came out harsher than Pete intended.

  ‘His eyelids are twitching.’ The nurse was unruffled. ‘Which is a great sign. His brain’s just having a bit of a rest, that’s all. There’s no real damage. He’ll wake up when he’s ready. You’ll see.’ She paused at the faux pas, then pressed ahead. ‘You’ve both been pretty lucky, by the sound of it.’

  Pete gave a snort.

  ‘Seriously. I’ve seen people in worse shape after a night out.’

  It was probably true. He tried to return the joke. ‘I suppose we’re like the blind leading the . . . Never mind.’

  A warm hand rested lightly on his shoulder. ‘Just talk to him. It will help.’

  Pete nodded and searched for a subject that wasn’t his son lying in intensive care. ‘So Cam’s coming back for a bit,’ he said finally. ‘That’s great, eh? Be good to see him again. He called last night from Vanuatu, said he’s over there working. Not quite sure what he’s up to, but . . .’ Pete paused. ‘Good to see him making an honest go of it anyway.’ The hand in his was clammy, despite the cool, dry room. ‘He’s an odd one, Cam. Not like you. Straight as a fence you are, just like your mum.’ He squeezed the hand. ‘She’d be proud of you, you know. Really proud.’ Bloody hell. What was this rubbish he was coming out with? Pete swiped his eyes against his good arm.

  ‘That’s it, keep going.’ The voice was in the corner of the room now, still encouraging.

  ‘I sound like something from a bad episode of Neighbours.’

  The nurse chuckled. ‘It’s hard not to, in here.’ There was a liquid sound, like tea or water pouring. ‘Just tell him what you’ve been doing.’

  Which bit? The endless staring into the dark, the panicking that Lincoln would never wake up? The nightmares in which Julia screamed at him for nearly killing their son?

  ‘So my face looks like a horror movie apparently, all smashed bones and bruising. Shame it’s not Halloween, I wouldn’t need a costume. The arm’s a bit bung, but it’ll come right. I’m in a wheelchair for the moment, just for a few days, although I can’t see where I’m going anyway, so . . .’ Pete faltered. Surely the point of this was to be cheerful?

  ‘Keep going.’

  ‘Anyway, they might be sticking us in the same room tomorrow.’ Can’t see why not, the doctor had said, when Pete asked. Probably good for you both. ‘Fingers crossed. We can keep each other company. Tell jokes. Cause trouble for the nurses.’

  ‘Oi!’

  ‘It’s all going to be okay, Lincoln.’ He hoped so, anyway. ‘We’ll be back to normal in no time.’ As normal as they’d ever been without Julia.

  There were footsteps in the doorway, then a low cough.<
br />
  ‘Doctor?’ Pete turned towards the noise.

  ‘Police, actually.’ The voice was apologetic. ‘But I can wait outside. Come back later, if that’s easier.’

  ‘No, no.’ Pete gave Lincoln’s hand another gentle squeeze. ‘You’re fine. They’re moving me in with him anyway. We’ll be sick of each other by the end of the week.’ He pushed his chair carefully back from the bed. ‘But I’ve already given a statement.’

  ‘I know, sir.’ The policeman sounded young, younger than him anyway. ‘But we need to go over it one more time. Make sure we haven’t missed anything.’

  CHAPTER 7

  ‘We’re not going to see very much at this stage,’ the ultrasound technician warned, as she rubbed the gleaming aqua gel across Tansy’s ridiculously flat stomach. ‘But we should get a heartbeat, at least. And it will help us determine when baby’s due.’

  Lou flinched, both at the twee use of the word, and at the word itself being used anywhere near her daughter, with her protruding hipbones and white cotton underwear. Today’s pair had strawberries printed on them. Lou nodded at the technician. ‘Great,’ she said.

  Tansy watched the probe rolling over her stomach with polite disinterest. ‘It’s cold, Mum,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ said Lou. Although she’d only had one ultrasound with Tansy, when her parents were trying to convince her to change her mind. She’d told them at fourteen weeks, when she couldn’t hide the situation any longer; her waistline had disappeared, and even with the convenient dress-over-jeans trend, she was starting to look pregnant rather than just fat. She’d also figured it was too late for them to do anything about it. She was wrong.

  ‘We’ve still got a bit of time to take care of it,’ her mother had said grimly, too righteous to use the word abortion, but not to suggest that her daughter had one.