Not Bad People

by Brandy Scott

  Nothing bothered her today. Not the Hensley Festival go- kart race they’d got stuck behind leaving town, the buggies that had taken over the main street adding an extra half-hour to their journey. Not the growing stack of receipts in her wallet, as they charged everything from a dining room table to a barbecue on her magic app. A barbecue. Imagine. A flash one too, with infrared burners and a warming rack. She had images of Melinda and Aimee and the kids all hanging out in her backyard, Tansy walking around with a tray of steaks, Lou being the hostess for once, rather than the ever-grateful recipient of everyone else’s generosity.

  ‘What should we bring?’ they’d ask.

  ‘Nothing,’ she’d say. ‘Just bring yourselves.’

  Lou was beginning to realise that she hadn’t had to scrimp and save so much over the years. Other people bought stuff on credit. Other people let themselves have nice things. And a lot of them earned less than she did.

  Lou and Tansy wandered down Bourke Street, sipping their Starbucks like everyone else. Just one stop to go, then they’d call it a day. Lou’s feet were going to kill her later, but too bad. She ignored the blister forming on her right heel and enjoyed her five-dollar macchiato.

  The baby shop was an older one, its facade dated among the trendy clothes shops. There were newer chains they could have gone to, but this was the shop Lou had wandered through more than a decade before, belly distended, rubbing the handles of prams she couldn’t afford. Tansy’s pram had been a gift from an anonymous wellwisher, dropped off in the stairwell of her building during the night. It was black and grey and a bit ugly, but she didn’t care. She was just glad it hadn’t been nicked.

  The prams, however, had gone the way of the televisions: instead of two or three plasticky upright models, there was a veritable fleet of all-terrain vehicles. Some of them even had gears.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit early?’ whispered Tansy.

  Lou kissed the top of her head. ‘We don’t have to,’ she said. ‘But I thought you’d made up your mind.’

  ‘I have,’ said Tansy. ‘But it makes it all feel a bit . . . real.’

  ‘We can just look then. It’ll be fun to look.’

  And it was fun, the most they’d had in ages. Better than stripping the house even. Lou and Tansy fondled tiny bodysuits and miniature booties, Tansy asking Lou’s advice on fabrics and sizes as though Lou was a fount of knowledge, rather than a nuisance. Lou felt a brief flutter of excitement. This baby was her own flesh and blood, after all. We’ll just buy one, they agreed, picking out an adorable mint-green suit with a sleepy stegosaurus on the breast. Well, maybe two.

  ‘Aren’t these precious?’ said the saleswoman, as she wrapped up their pile. ‘And these are for —’ She looked uncertainly from Lou’s mid-thirties bloat to Tansy’s teenage flatness.

  Tansy stuck her chin out. ‘Me.’

  ‘My daughter,’ confirmed Lou. ‘I’m going to be a grandmother.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that exciting?’ said the woman.

  ‘Hugely,’ said Lou. ‘We’re over the moon.’

  And do you know what? she thought, as she carried their oversize bags back to the car. I think I’m even starting to mean it.

  Aimee pulled at the neck of her slippery shell top and tried not to feel like a complete idiot. It’s really only a T-shirt, she told herself. A bit of makeup. And a skirt. You’re not that dressed up. Melinda wears this kind of thing every day. So why did she feel like she was going to a wedding? Aimee wanted to turn the car around, drive back to the house and pull on her jeans. Instead, she smeared on another coat of lip gloss and took a quick swig from her water bottle. Right. Showtime. She forced herself out of the car.

  The muffins were warm against her shirt as Aimee trotted across the field, her wedges catching as she ducked under the flapping plastic police tape. They weren’t the ideal shoes but she’d wanted the extra height, and heels would have made her look ridiculous. If she didn’t already.

  Damien spotted her and waved, strode towards her smiling as he checked his phone. He wasn’t a bad-looking man. Probably ten years older than her and Nick, a bit florid in the face. She’d heard the accident team were putting in as many hours at the pub as they were on the crash site. His wedding ring caught the sun as he shoved the phone into his pocket. Harmless banter then, she told herself. For both of them.

  ‘I thought you might be back,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I had to deliver on my promise.’

  ‘And which promise was that?’

  ‘The muffins.’ She held out the plastic container. Their hands brushed slightly as he took the box from her.

  ‘Homemade?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He cracked the lid. ‘Smells delicious. Banana?’

  ‘Carrot. Sorry.’

  ‘Even better.’ He grinned. ‘So what do you want in return?’

  Aimee hadn’t flirted with anyone since she was a teenager. ‘Reassurance that you’re not just out here chatting up the local women,’ she said, looking up through her lashes. ‘That you’re doing your important job properly, to protect everyone.’ God, she sounded like a bad Mills & Boon. ‘And I wanted the chance to see you again, of course.’ Actually, Mills & Boon had better lines.

  ‘Well, someone’s in a good mood. You must have heard the news.’ He grinned at her confusion. ‘What, you don’t know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Your mate’s son is awake. Hasn’t anyone told you?’

  Lincoln was awake? Aimee wobbled on her stupid shoes. She grabbed Damien’s forearm to steady herself.

  ‘Opened his eyes this morning. Not able to speak yet, but he’s conscious, and looking good.’ Aimee tightened her grip, not trusting herself to stand. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Careful. People will talk.’ But he was smiling.

  Awake. That was amazing. Aimee felt ten kilograms lighter, everything felt lighter: the sun, the heat, her head. Because if Pete’s son was awake, then none of this was as bad. She could live with what they’d done if they hadn’t killed anyone. Aimee took a breath of wonderfully fresh air and sent a silent thankyou upwards.

  ‘Made your day, haven’t I?’

  Aimee grinned. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘You won’t need me any more then, I guess.’ He squinted at her. ‘To tell you about the investigation. Remember? Or are you not bothered about that now?’

  Was she? Strangely, not as much. That all-encompassing need to know, the urge to check and ask and just be there, in case she could influence things, had dissolved in the shimmery heat of the January sky. If they found part of a lantern, well, what did that really prove? Anyone could have let them off. Aimee felt as though she’d been given a second chance.

  ‘Not that anything I could tell you matters that much anyway,’ Damien continued. ‘Not any more. Important thing now is going to be what the boy has to say. He’s the one who’ll be able to tell us what happened.’

  Melinda’s dad insisted on seeing her to her car.

  ‘You’re sure you’re okay?’ he said, as they strode across the lawn. ‘Don’t want you driving if you’re upset.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Melinda. ‘I need to get back and start dealing with emails.’

  ‘You don’t want to stay for tea?’

  ‘I really can’t.’

  ‘Well, make sure you put your shades on. You’ll have the sun in your eyes heading into town.’

  It was only twenty minutes to Melinda’s apartment, but her dad always behaved as though she was crossing the Nullarbor. They stood shoulder to shoulder staring out towards the hills, the sun starting to play peekaboo behind the purple ranges.

  ‘Never get tired of that view,’ he said. ‘You don’t get a view like that in the city.’

  Melinda nodded, mentally prioritising the work she had to do when she got in. It was all very well spending hours rolling around naked with her IPO advisor, but it would take her the week to catch up.

  ‘Terrible thing what’s happened to that boy, though,’ h
er father continued. ‘Poor old Pete. That’s got to be killing him.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’ Melinda placed her handbag on the passenger seat.

  ‘There’ll be some lawsuits with that one, mark my words.’

  Melinda straightened up. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Lawyer’s intuition.’ He tapped his forehead with a wrinkled finger. ‘You’ve got a competent, experienced pilot, ditching a plane for no reason? With his son strapped in next to him? I don’t think so. Something happened. Either with the plane, or with the fireworks. None of those vineyards will have had permission for a display. And I’d be surprised if that Cessna was being kept up to spec. Finances at the aero club have been tight for years.’ He shook his head. ‘Someone will be liable. Someone always is.’

  Lou slipped into Tansy’s room, pulling the door quietly shut behind her. Tansy still slept like she had as a toddler: on her back, arms flung sideways, hair sweat-stuck to her forehead. The sheet had been kicked free from the mattress she was using till the new furniture arrived. Lou rested her bum on the windowsill and watched her daughter breathe.

  Lou hadn’t breastfed Tansy for long, hadn’t spent months gazing lovingly at her suckling child. Not because she didn’t want to. Tansy had turned her head away after the first couple of weeks, rejected anything that didn’t come in a bottle. Bloody-minded. Her mother’s daughter. So Lou was used to sneaking these quiet moments of adoration. She slid down the wall and sat hugging her knees on the floor. Secret adoration that Tansy would never countenance awake. Although Lou wasn’t the type of mother to engage in gratuitous child worship anyway. She’d never been a helicopter parent, hovering over her daughter in case of splinters or accidental nut ingestion. She’d never been one of the health Nazis, sending Tansy off to birthday parties with a printed list of what she wasn’t allowed to eat.

  No, Lou had been pretty laissez faire, making things up as she’d gone along. As if she’d had another choice. She leaned over and pushed Tansy’s damp hair away from her face. Would things have worked out differently if she’d given Tansy a father? Pointed a finger at someone in town and forced him to take responsibility? You heard so much about the importance of male role models. But Lou hadn’t wanted to lie. It didn’t seem fair.

  And they hadn’t done that badly, not really. Yes, Tansy was pregnant, and Lou looked fifty at thirty-five, but they were alive and healthy, and they didn’t steal or cheat or hurt others. Lou took stock of her sleeping daughter, better behaved in the past forty-eight hours than she had been in the last ten years. Maybe she could choose to look at this baby not as the end of everything, but as a fresh start. Lou knew she hadn’t made much of her life so far. But she could be a fantastic grandmother. Modern. Hip. She pictured Tansy and her taking a toddler on road trips, family holidays to Bali or Fiji. They could all get passports. It wasn’t quite the big European trip Lou had dreamed of, but it still sounded pretty good.

  The room lit up, the moon scanning the floor like a searchlight as it broke free of the scattered cloud. They’d pulled Tansy’s curtains down as well, even though they were an inoffensive beige; the curtain pulling had become a little addictive. Lou started to fold T-shirts now, to stack fashion magazines into neat piles on the floor. She leaned over to grab a dirty sock and accidentally knelt on Tansy’s hand.

  ‘Mum? What are you doing?’

  ‘Shhh. Go back to sleep.’

  Tansy squinted at her. ‘It’s night-time.’

  ‘I know. I’m just having a tidy. Shut your eyes.’

  Tansy obeyed. Lou kept sorting, the way she had when Tansy was a baby, grabbing random bursts of time for chores while her daughter slept. She started chucking dirty laundry towards the door.

  ‘Mum —’

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m going now.’ Lou leaned over and kissed Tansy on the forehead, breathing in sweat and skin and a hint of Allure, Lou’s only good perfume that had mysteriously disappeared a few months earlier. She said nothing, just snuck another kiss while she could. ‘Love you,’ she said.

  ‘Love you too,’ muttered Tansy, and Lou sat back on her heels in surprise. As she did, she knocked a photo off a stack of books next to the mattress. She moved to put it back, then paused. It was one of her dad’s seventies shots; Lou recognised the rounded corners, the yellow and brown tones, the Kodak branding on the back. She held the photo up to the moonlight. Her mother stared blankly back at her from a hospital bed. Her arms clutched a baby Lou, too tightly. She wasn’t smiling, but no wonder. The photo must’ve been taken straight after Lou was born; her hair was still damp, her face red. There were no flowers or congratulations cards yet. Just one exhausted new mother — Lou was a fifteen- hour labour, she’d continually been reminded — and a nervous young father, capturing the moment with his trusty Pentax.

  ‘Tansy,’ she whispered. This had to be the earliest photo of herself. So why hadn’t she seen it before? ‘Hey, Tansy, where did this come from?’

  ‘Mmhm?’ Tansy rolled over.

  ‘The picture. Where’d you get it?’

  Tansy opened one eye. ‘It was in the album. In an envelope.’ She smiled sleepily. ‘You look like me. Same nose.’

  Her mother probably hadn’t thought it was flattering, but Lou liked the photo. It looked real. It looked like what motherhood was: hard work.

  ‘Leave it,’ whispered Tansy. ‘I want it here next to me.’

  Lou rested her hand on top of her daughter’s damp head. Her daughter, who had all that hard work to come. ‘I’ll get you a frame,’ she promised.

  The December sales figures were better than forecast. And what perfect timing, just ahead of their investor roadshow. Melinda poured herself a glass of wine to celebrate and tried to appreciate the numbers parading proudly in front of her. Except that she didn’t feel like celebrating. She felt like crying. No, she felt like howling. Throwing herself onto her 1800-thread-count white Egyptian cotton sheets face first, mascara be damned.

  Beyond her balcony Hensley was coma-still; the town had already tucked itself into bed. Melinda tried to focus on her spreadsheets, but the house was too silent to concentrate. The peace that she usually loved — double doors flung open to the summer night, the only noise the gentle rustling of her curtains, the chirp of distant cicadas — was suddenly too much. Her beautiful, sparse apartment felt as empty as she did.

  Post-event comedown, that’s what this flatness was. Melinda took a slug of wine. She’d had three days surrounded by noise and excitement, everyone treating her like some kind of guru. It was only natural to feel a bit low. She picked up her phone. Nearly twelve. Too late to speak to Aimee or Lou. And there was no way in hell she was phoning Clint. You didn’t booty call someone on your payroll, even if they had licked prosecco from your vagina. Hensley prosecco, of course. Even drunk and horny, Melinda was loyal to her friends.

  Outside the building, a car alarm went off; inside, Melinda logged on to Instagram. She felt her shoulders loosen as she began to scroll through dozens of photos of herself. Melinda speaking, Melinda laughing, Melinda dancing with her dress hitched up around the top of her thighs. God, she didn’t remember that. On and on she scrolled, switching to Facebook when the feed ran dry. Her curators had wasted no time and no emoticons in letting the world know just how awesome LoveFest had been. She smiled at the images of herself, a more relaxed version than usual, hugging her curators, posing for selfies. There were more than a few photos with Clint; they looked good together. Natural. She poured a little more wine, unsure if the warmth and relaxation she was finally feeling was coming from the bottle, or the memory of how happy she’d been in Sydney. Part of the stream of life, rather than merely an observer. Could you tell in the pictures she was having sex? Yes — there was absolutely a glow.

  There was also an adoption conversation. Melinda clicked on the comments under one photo, captioned ‘Sexy Mama — yes, really!’ Her curators were discussing her ‘announcement’. Well, Clint had warned her. She leaned back, trying to
decide if that was a good thing. Or more importantly, whether other people felt it was a good thing.

  Melinda had thought carefully about this, on the short drive into town. It didn’t matter whether her family felt she was capable of raising a baby or not. (Matthew had left a charming voice message while she was in the shower, hooting about the whole adoption idea and calling her Melinda Jolie.) But it did matter what the public thought. Potential investors, fund managers, analysts. Her defensive blurt about adopting might well put them off. Who wanted to invest in a company where the CEO had other priorities?

  Melinda opened a fresh browser and searched for ‘Melinda Baker’ and ‘baby’. Then ‘Melinda Baker’ and ‘adoption.’ Unsurprisingly, the story had leaked. She pulled the laptop closer, back in work mode now. Beyond the curator gossip, a couple of investor forums were discussing the idea. A few users — male, by the looks of it — had questioned her commitment, but they’d quickly been eaten alive. Interesting. Several Women in Business blogs were supportive to the point of being giddy, but you’d expect that. Only one mainstream newspaper had picked up the story. There was a sidebar in the paper’s Investor Notebook. Melinda clicked through.

  Melinda Feels the Love, it stated, running quickly through the statistics from LoveFest, the new incentive structure. And then at the end:

  It seems LoveLocked may not be Ms Baker’s only baby for long.

  In an emotional speech, the popular entrepreneur revealed that she was infertile, and looking to adopt. AustraStock analyst Phil Shepherd said the news didn’t alter his buy recommendation for her upcoming IPO. ‘If anything, the opposite,’ he told Investor Notebook. ‘This brings Melinda much closer to her sales and customer demographic and might make her more relatable to her core constituency. And if there is one woman who can juggle both a multimillion-dollar business and motherhood, it’s Melinda Baker.’