by Brandy Scott
‘Course. Good-looking woman, great hair. Terrible driving. Who wouldn’t notice?’ He grinned. ‘Your left tail-light’s gone, by the way.’
Hang on. Was he flirting with her? ‘I don’t think . . . that’s not . . .’ Aimee drew herself up to her full five feet, which brought her nose about level with his neck. ‘I really don’t think that’s appropriate.’
His voice changed. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. You’re here because you’re worried about your friends, and I’m hitting on you. It’s very inappropriate.’ But he was still smiling. ‘Shall we start again?’ He held out a hand. ‘Damien Marshall, Australian Transport Safety Bureau.’
Oh bugger. ‘Aimee.’
He kept hold of her hand. ‘Do you have a last name, Aimee?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re not telling.’
‘No.’
He laughed. ‘Right. So then, Aimee Not Telling, how can I help you?’
Leave her alone. He could just leave her alone. Aimee yanked her hand back. All she’d wanted to do was explain herself, to make her actions seem less suspicious, and now this man, this official crash-site investigator, knew her name and her car and that she was effectively stalking the place.
And he was making fun of her.
‘Hey. Shit. Don’t cry.’ He stooped down so their faces were level. ‘I was only teasing.’
‘I’m just —’
‘Worried. You’re worried. Of course you are. Your mates are in hospital and some arsehole is flirting with you.’ He tipped his hat back again, wiped his forehead. ‘Last thing you need. Forgive me. I’m being a jerk.’
Aimee wiped her own cheeks. Her hands came away black with mascara. ‘Forget it.’
‘Nah, but seriously. How can I help?’
‘You can’t.’ No one could.
‘Well, I might be able to. You said you were worried the accident wasn’t being checked out properly. It is, but . . . shall I explain what we’re doing? So at least you feel like something’s being done?’
The offer shimmered in the hot air between them, almost tangible, as though Aimee could reach out and grab it. This was the moment, she knew — the jumping-off point. She’d had moments of clarity before, described them to her doctors even, when her brain gave her a lucid choice: to walk away, or dive further into the crazy. It was never an easy decision. Her brain craved reassurance like a six o’clock gin and tonic. But she also knew that if she stopped feeding the craving, then the merrygo-round in her head would eventually grind to a halt. She just needed to resist.
‘Aimee?’
She could resist.
‘Aimee?’
It was like an itch. If she gave in, she’d only need to scratch it again, and again.
‘Hello? Anyone home?’
She looked at him with genuine regret. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t even be here. Talking to you. I have to go.’ And once again, she turned and ran to her car.
They’d only been in the shop ten minutes, but Lou had already lost her sense of perspective. The televisions covered every surface, shiny screens all showing the same cricket match. Dozens of men in white leaped silently for a ball to the left. Thousands of fans jumped to their feet in mute celebration. Lou had stopped going into shops that sold things she couldn’t afford years ago; it was the best way she knew of saving money. In the interim, televisions seemed to have undergone some kind of revolution. She had no idea what any of the initials meant, whether HD was better than LCD, let alone why anyone would want a curved screen. Worse, she couldn’t even tell which televisions were big any more. Thirty-two inches sounded large, but compared to some of these wall-mounted monsters, it looked positively tiny.
‘You really don’t want anything under fifty inches,’ the salesman said. ‘Not if you want a comfortable viewing experience.’
‘We do,’ she heard herself saying back. ‘We want the most comfortable viewing experience going.’
‘What are you watching, Netflix? Foxtel? Movies?’
Aimee had Netflix, didn’t she? ‘That’s it.’
‘Then I know exactly what you need.’ He directed them to a television the width of her car. ‘Sixty-five inches, smart capabilities, Ultra HD 4K. Netflix and all the rest are already programmed in.’ He pushed a few buttons, and Gilmore Girls flicked up on the giant screen.
Over a thousand dollars for a television. It sounded obscene.
‘We can’t buy that,’ Tansy said quietly.
We shouldn’t, thought Lou, watching Lorelai drink coffee. These must be re-runs, surely. The show was older than Tansy. Lou had had a boxy TV for the first few years in their old flat, left behind by the previous tenant. Gilmore Girls had been one of her favourites, proof that you could do it alone.
‘Let’s look at some smaller ones,’ said Tansy. ‘Or I can find us something second-hand online.’
The old television had blown up one evening, the ancient tube finally giving out with a puff of actual smoke. The repairman Lou called had laughed. ‘Not worth fixing that, love,’ he’d said. ‘Cheaper to buy a new one.’ Lou, who hadn’t bought a new anything for three years, quietly paid his call-out fee and shoved the TV Week in the bin.
‘If cash flow is an issue, we can help with that,’ said the salesman.
‘We’re fine,’ said Tansy. ‘We don’t need it.’
‘We do actually,’ said Lou. ‘Tell me.’
There was an app, apparently. You entered the amount you wanted to borrow, and the purchase was either approved, or not. ‘Six months interest-free. Have you got something with your address on it?’ She did. They didn’t even need to go back to the counter.
‘But you hate debt,’ hissed Tansy.
Which was true. But where had that attitude got her? A house that her daughter didn’t want to hang out in, and that Lou didn’t want to either. On the oversize television, Lorelai and Rory hugged. Lou decided that was a good omen.
‘We’ll take it,’ she said. Because didn’t she have a PayPal account full of cash from the old furniture, and a steady job, and a mortgage-free house? ‘Show me how to download this thing.’
She had a plan, Aimee reminded herself, as she flew down River Road, darting across the one-way bridge when it wasn’t even her turn to go. She gave a wave of apology to a visibly startled Sharna as she passed. But Aimee had a plan, with numbered steps to follow, all logical and prescribed. Literally prescribed — it was in a booklet she’d been given by a clinical psychologist to prevent her brain from spinning. You could argue it was already in motion, but that didn’t mean Aimee couldn’t slow it down.
She didn’t bother to pull into the garage, just abandoned her car outside the house, blocking the ute but she’d worry about that later. Aimee strode down the hall to her study. The booklet was locked away at the bottom of her filing cabinet. She grabbed it and sat down at her desk.
‘Mum?’
‘Not now, Shelley.’
‘But, Mum —’
‘I’m writing!’ The kids knew her writing time was sacrosanct. And it wasn’t even a lie. Aimee turned to the first fresh page. WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN? it asked. She wrote the date in the top right-hand corner, as she had a dozen times before.
Thinking on paper. That’s how the psychologist described it. When the brain knows there’s a plan, a solution, it calms down. Pros-and-cons lists don’t work — a really obsessive mind will always manage to create an even score — but writing out a worst-case scenario forces the brain to acknowledge that everything is manageable. That the worst-case scenarios are, in fact, in your head.
It was a process Aimee believed in, because it had worked for her before. She turned her attention to the first column. THE SITUATION.
Well, that was easy. She wrote quickly, describing the accident.
MY FEARS.
Keep it simple, that was the key. That we caused the crash, Aimee wrote in tiny letters. That we put a man and his son in hospital. In intensive care. They said in town that Pete
had lost his sight. So they’d have blinded him as well, a widower, living alone, raising a teenager. Aimee gripped her pen.
WHAT’S THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO?
This bit was always the hardest. We get found out. Everyone hates us. No one ever speaks to me again. I go to jail. I get sued. We lose the vineyard. I never forgive myself. Nick never forgives me.
WHERE AM I BEING IRRATIONAL/FORTUNE-TELLING/CATASTROPHISING/EXAGGERATING/DISTORTING/JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS/USING MAGICAL THINKING/DOING OTHER PEOPLE’S THINKING FOR THEM?
Aimee couldn’t remember what magical thinking was, but it didn’t matter. There was enough here to get on with. She sucked the end of her pen. This was usually the eye-opening bit, where the flaws in her thinking became apparent. But she couldn’t see any here. She wasn’t being irrational. She wasn’t catastrophising, or imagining things. A plane had come down. That wasn’t in her head. And people who caused accidents, especially those who hid them, got into trouble. Fact. So she’d need a lawyer, and they couldn’t afford one. They didn’t even have enough money this year to fix the roof. Pete could sue them; that was a very real possibility. In which case they’d have to sell the vineyard. The land that had been in Nick’s family for generations. Nick would be heartbroken, and his parents would never speak to her again. Aimee stared miserably at the blank box in front of her. Obviously this technique worked better on abstract fears, rather than things that had actually happened. She drew a big question mark in the middle of the page.
WHAT WOULD I DO?
And this was the part that was supposed to make her feel better. Where she wrote a practical answer to her worst-case scenario. I’d move into an apartment with the children. I’d fly to Adelaide and nurse Mum until she died. All answers she’d given to her fearful What If? situations in the past. Aimee stared at the little notebook. But there were no answers for this one. No Plan B to reassure her. Because this problem was real, so clever psychology questions to stop her head making things up didn’t work.
There were only two questions that mattered, and neither of them was printed on this sheet of paper. Aimee tore the double page from the booklet and started ripping it into tiny strips. One: Did they cause the accident? And two: If so, did anyone know? Those were the questions she needed answers to, and she needed a new strategy to get them.
It was amazing how just walking through the door of your childhood home stripped years off you in a way the fanciest face creams never could. Melinda twisted her watch, the first really expensive thing she’d ever bought, to remind herself she was an adult as she vied with the cricket for her dad’s attention.
‘Two more minutes, Mellie, I want to see if — YES! YES! Oh, well done!’
A successful adult. Melinda let out a small sigh, loud enough to be heard but not to be reprimanded for.
‘Why don’t you come into the kitchen with me,’ whispered Polly. ‘We can have a glass of wine and a gossip, leave him to it.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Melinda, slouching further into the sofa. She had no desire to hang out with her father’s latest girlfriend, a chirping parakeet of a woman who’d be replaced in a few months anyway. ‘I’ve only got a few minutes.’
‘Hold your horses,’ said her father. ‘They’ll be done in a — oh YES! Nice one!’
Melinda scrolled through her emails as her dad slapped the side of the armchair. She should have called instead. But she’d been driving past, and in such a good (post-orgasm) mood that she’d thought, Why not? She stared at the back of her father’s bushy grey head. This was why not.
The last wicket fell and the crowd erupted. Melinda’s dad nodded appreciatively. ‘So what can we do for you today then, Miss Mellie?’ he asked as he searched for the remote control.
‘I was on my way back from the airport. I came to tell you how well it went.’
‘How what went?’ He jabbed at the mute button.
‘The conference. LoveFest.’
‘Right, right.’ The batteries in the remote were clearly dead. Her dad got stiffly to his feet and started rummaging around the TV console. ‘Well, go on then, tell me.’
Melinda tried to recapture some of her former excitement. ‘It was fantastic,’ she said, the words sounding hollow to her own ears. She’d been so looking forward to describing the packed ballroom, the cheering crowds, the positive news coverage — ‘television too. It’s still online if you want to watch.’
‘Mh-hm.’
‘I’ve emailed you the links. There was a particularly flattering segment on Weekend Breakfast.’ Australia’s Jo Malone, they’d called her. ‘I’ve had two more offers to buy me out.’
Her dad nodded, distracted. ‘Polly, where are the batteries? I’m sure I bought more.’
It was like being twelve again. Melinda followed him into the kitchen. ‘We’re already looking at spaces for our first American conference. New York probably, or maybe LA. We might even have to hold two.’
Her dad nodded again, forehead wrinkling as he scanned a supermarket receipt. ‘America, eh? Fancy.’
‘And I’m going to be on the cover of Forbes.’
The email had been sitting in her inbox when she landed. Melinda had actually hugged a flight attendant, then apologised in case it was harassment. ‘No worries, Ms Baker,’ the woman had said, fingering her ‘eternity ring’ locket. ‘We all find you such an inspiration.’ Melinda had promised to send her the matching earrings.
‘Mh-hmm. See, Polly, I did buy them, three packs it says here. Where’ve you put them?’
‘Dad!’ Melinda could hear the whine in her own voice. ‘Did you hear me?’
‘I did. Forbes. Very nice.’
‘It’s the Asia issue, not the international one obviously, but that’s actually perfect because we’ve earmarked Singapore and Hong Kong for expansion. And the magazine is really well respected, lots of people in the finance industry read it —’
‘I do know what Forbes is, Melinda.’
‘You don’t seem very excited.’
‘Don’t be silly, of course I am.’
Polly smiled nervously. ‘Your dad’s super proud of you, Melinda. He talks about you all the time.’
For fuck’s sake. Polly was what, ten years older than she was?
‘It’s a sign that we’re being taken seriously,’ said Melinda. ‘That we’ll get a strong reception if we go for a secondary listing.’
‘That all sounds great, Mellie. Really.’ Her dad rubbed his hands together, made a little clapping sound. ‘So what else have you been up to?’
Other than preparing to expand my company in seven countries across three continents while raising ten million dollars? ‘Not much, funnily enough. That’s about it.’
‘Being in the paper will be exciting,’ said Polly.
‘It’s a magazine, actually.’
‘Hey,’ her dad said mildly. ‘Don’t be rude.’
‘Sorry.’ Melinda dug her nails into her palm. Adult, she reminded herself. ‘But enough about me,’ she said. ‘What have you guys been doing?’
‘Oh, we’ve got lots going on,’ said her dad, coming to life again. ‘Polly’s all go with the shop, aren’t you?’
Melinda searched her brain to remember what kind of shop Polly ran. A florist? A dress shop?
‘And the firm’s flat out. I keep talking about taking a week off, finally getting a bit of a holiday, but the clients keep knocking on the door. Harrisons’ have a girl suing them for wrongful dismissal, got pregnant in her probation period. Silly mare.’
Melinda said nothing and hated herself for it.
‘And we’ve got Matthew coming down from the Gold Coast, which’ll be great, won’t it, Polly? Don’t see enough of him. Sounds like this new DJing gig of his is going well. Very well. Going to be a nice little earner that one, I reckon.’
Melinda had a cheque for Matt in her handbag, the second she’d written in three months.
‘Just need him to meet someone nice now, settle down and give me some grandchildren.�
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‘Actually, I’m thinking of adopting a baby.’
‘There was one girl he was dating, we got all hopeful, didn’t we, Pol, but she didn’t seem to last long.’
‘Dad, did you hear me?’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘I’m thinking of adopting a baby.’
Melinda’s dad stared at her for a few seconds then roared with laughter. ‘What, you?’
Polly glanced at her boyfriend then started to titter as well.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Come off it, Melinda. That’s hardly your sort of thing. You’re not going to fit a breast pump in that now, are you.’ He waved a hand at her Prada saddle bag. ‘Express your milk between conference calls.’ He started laughing again.
‘I said adopt one, not have one.’ Melinda walked quickly over to the sliding door and stared out into the safety of the garden. She didn’t really believe in crying. Just like she didn’t believe in blaming your parents for anything after the age of eighteen, or allowing other people to dictate your emotional state. Her father was still chuckling, Polly giggling. Melinda focused hard on a blurry row of silverbeet. She wouldn’t normally care what they thought. She was just tired, with all the late nights recently. And maybe a little hormonal. She went for a subtle eye-swipe with the top of her index finger as her father pulled her into his side.
‘Ah now, love, don’t cry. We’re just having a laugh.’
‘I’m not crying,’ she mumbled.
He leaned down, wrapped her in a surprisingly bony hug. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a knot.’ He patted her hair. ‘We’re just a bit surprised, that’s all. You’re not the kind of woman who wants a baby.’ He said the word slightly incredulously, as though she’d expressed a desire to start an alpaca farm.
‘I might be.’
‘No you’re not, Mellie.’ He gave her another squeeze. ‘Don’t be silly. That’s not you at all.’
They’d bought a houseful of furniture, but Lou didn’t mind. Not even when they veered away from the IKEA plan and ended up in Freedom Furniture. Or when they upgraded from Freedom, and found themselves buying a posh department-store sofa, large and deep and soft. The type of sofa you could you collapse into. Comfortable.