‘Consider it the voice of experience.’
‘Get him to walk a straight line,’ Mark suggested.
‘I’m fine,’ Lucas insisted.
Moving swiftly, Bernard grabbed his wrist and snatched the keys from his hand.
Lucas tried to grab them back. ‘Come on …’ he pleaded.
‘Someone call a cab! I’m not having his blood on—’
Bernard was knocked off-balance as Lucas struggled to wrest the keys away. He gripped the jagged metal and attempted to get out from under the younger man. They continued for a minute until Lucas, realising the unlikelihood of prising the keys from an enclosed fist, changed tack. He released his hold on Bernard’s torso and twisted him into a headlock.
‘Enough,’ Bernard gurgled, his windpipe crushed into Lucas’s forearm.
‘Are you going to give me my keys back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hand them over and I’ll let you go.’
Bernard held out the arm with the keys. When Lucas released his chokehold, he tossed them through the air. ‘Somebody catch.’
Jim lunged for the missile. Stunned to have grasped it, he raised both hands into a human victory sign. ‘I’ve never caught anything in my life. I must be turning heterosexual!’
Bernard took out his wallet. ‘There’s a cab rank outside the theatre. How much do you need?’
‘Go fuck yourself.’ Lucas stalked to the door—his descent down the stairs sounded like a woodcutter felling an oak.
The group sat in hushed silence, pulling bewildered faces at one another. Bernard returned to his chair and emptied a bottle into his glass.
‘Oh, bugger!’ Mia yelped, springing to her feet. ‘He forgot to take the present.’
She trotted into the bedroom and came back carrying a wrapped parcel. ‘I spent half a day shopping for this.’ In her haste to get to Lucas in time, she forgot that she’d unbuckled her new silver sandals, and that she’d meant to towel off the stairs where water had dripped from a soggy-bottomed bouquet.
The thud resembled that of a bird hitting a windowpane. There were some in the room who didn’t notice, too busy unpicking the recent spectacle. Bernard met Terri’s questioning glance before thrusting himself off the couch and across the room.
The door was still ajar. He pushed it aside and released a moan.
The emergency room was relatively quiet for a Friday. There were the usual drunks and addicts, bleeding and quivering. A couple of children in dressing gowns with panicked parents, one parent per child, the other half manning the fort to ensure none of their other offspring met with harm. There was an old man on a respirator and an old woman watching TV, both seemingly there only for want of company.
Bernard flipped through a vintage National Geographic (deciding it was the least popular and hence least infectious choice of reading matter). He paused to admire the underwater images of dolphins. He flipped forward a few pages and landed on a shrivelled peasant in some Eastern Bloc country, walking with a pile of sticks upon their shoulders; on the adjoining page a scrawny boy in a woollen sweater hitched a ride upon a donkey—so predictable. The following article featured Colorado cowboys driving cattle through the Rockies. Bernard flipped through the pages looking for a puzzle or a crossword of some sort. He tossed the magazine back onto the pile, startling the drunk sitting across from him, who opened a bleary eye like a clamshell.
It was almost daybreak when a nurse shook him awake. ‘The doctor wants a word.’
Mia was recuperating in the ICU: a mild concussion and a broken hip. Due to the scope of the fall, the doctors wanted to monitor her brain activity for the next twenty-four hours. Bernard stood over his sleeping wife. She’d shrunk two sizes after the surgery. Her skin seemed looser. Bernard pictured it shedding and a newer, sleeker Mia rising up from the mattress.
A taxi stood waiting directly outside the hospital—an emergency room loiterer. Bernard opened the back door and folded himself inside. Stopped at a traffic light, they waited for nothing. Bernard looked through the window of a butcher’s shop on the corner: a blue light ran the length of an empty refrigerator cabinet. The meat had been put into cold storage for the night. A laughing pig’s head winked at him as they drove on. It took Bernard a second to comprehend that the image was a decal affixed to the glass.
—Eucalypt Press have decided not to pursue legal action. —I know. I got the letter.
—That’s some Christmas present. There’s word of a second series.
—Tell them I’m not interested.
—I’d say the feeling’s mutual. Good to see all your bad press swept under the rug.
—I promise to behave in future.
—You don’t have to be well behaved, just make sure no one finds out about the bad stuff. —Spoken like a true expert. —Spoken by a true expert. —Is that everything?
—Is Mia still doing Christmas? Those parties were amazing.
—She’s taking this year off. Was there anything else?
—I’m following a lead.
—Good, call me when you reach the end.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
In the morning, Izzy lay awake listening to the familiar singsong lilt of morning television voices, the syrupy off-key theme music and glib advertisements for washing powder and life insurance. It was like being at home with her mum. Ruby and Angela normally never watched television during the day. They were obviously still hung up on seeing the news. They must have been watching it all night. She poked her nose through a hole in her cocoon and saw Angela sitting front and centre before the screen. Ruby was at the sink washing up. Izzy’s breakfast sat waiting for her on the dinette. It looked lonely.
‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’ she called from her eyrie.
‘Come on down and eat your brekkie.’
‘No.’ Izzy yanked the doona back over her head. ‘Not hungry.’
‘You have to eat something.’
She and Angela were always saying that: ‘you have to eat something’. As though if you didn’t put food in your mouth at that moment, you would collapse and die right there on the spot. Izzy knew this wasn’t the case. You could go a whole day without eating and not get sick. She knew this for a fact because when she refused to eat at home, her mum said, ‘Suit yourself,’ and left her to it. Ruby and Angela never left her to it. When it came to eating vegetables and brushing teeth, Izzy wished they could have cared a little less.
‘I’m not getting up.’
‘Why not?’ Ruby asked.
‘Because you’re making me go home today.’
‘Damn straight,’ Angela declared.
Izzy kicked off her doona, swiping at the strands of hair over her eyes in order to glare at the naysayer. ‘Why do you hate me so much?’
‘I don’t hate you, Izzy. I hate the situation you’ve put us in.’
The two of them scowled at one another until Angela’s ears pricked at something being said on the telly. Ruby tried to coax Izzy down from her berth. There followed a brief futile game of doona tug-o-war.
Angela called, ‘Here we go again!’
Ruby released her grip on the doona. ‘Not now. She’s awake.’
‘Just a second—’
‘Angela. Switch it off.’
Izzy’s mum grimaced bleary-eyed from the television, looking like she’d just woken up. Izzy slid down from her perch. The reporter wanted to ask her mum some questions. Her mum seemed annoyed. She didn’t want to talk. Then the picture moved to someone down on all fours. They groped clumsily at their bottom, trying to get a handle on their undies, which had fallen to halfway down their bum.
Izzy chuckled. ‘It’s Trent.’
Ruby placed a hand on Izzy’s shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t watch this.’
On screen, Trent was on the move, scrambling around the bed. The television showed a picture of what he was holding.
‘That’s his bongo,’ Izzy told them.
They watched the pushy woman attempt to interview her
mum, who seemed determined to close the door on her. Her mother dropped something and a picture of it came up on the telly. It was one of the square bottles that Izzy liked—but her mum wouldn’t let her keep them because she said she’d look like a royal pisspot. Her mum came back on screen, and finally managed to slam the door in the woman’s face.
Angela said gladly, ‘So we didn’t miss much then.’
The shocked face of a female presenter filled the screen. Izzy recognised her from the Morning Show, which she quite liked because of all the super useful gadgets they were always selling, like tools to make vegetables curly or watches that counted your steps. ‘Goodness,’ the presenter exclaimed. ‘What are we to make of that?’
Her Ken doll co-host appeared to have the answer. ‘That does not look like a mother in fear of her daughter’s safety.’
She: shaking her head inanely. ‘No, it does not.’
He: ‘I think there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Did you see the guy in the background?’
She, mouth open wide in Muppet stupor: ‘I know! What was that about?’
He, obviously regarding himself as something of an expert: ‘And did you happen to get a look at what he was holding?’
She, baby-faced guile: ‘No, what was that?’
He, holding up both palms in a smarmy pretence of unaccountability: ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m no expert, but I think that might have been a bong.’
‘A bongo,’ Izzy scoffed.
She, whooping hysterically: ‘You’re no expert. Really, Joel, what are we going to do with you?’
He: ‘But seriously now.’ He turned his droopy eyes upon the viewers. ‘This is no laughing matter. A little girl’s well-being is at stake here. We’ve called in our resident behavioural expert to help us interpret what I consider to be that startling piece of footage we’ve just seen.’
At which point, Ruby decided Izzy had seen more than enough for one day.
‘But I want to watch it.’ Angela protested. Her eyes were still fastened on the blank screen, waiting for it to light up again.
‘Me too,’ Izzy echoed. ‘There’s this thing that braids your hair and puts little beads into it.’
‘I can’t stand morning television,’ Ruby said tightly, as though the program and not the repeated footage was to blame. She was torn between two objectives: stressing to Angela why the news might be upsetting for Izzy, and making sure her granddaughter didn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary in seeing one’s intoxicated mother made a mockery of on national television.
Angela was the more bellicose of the two. ‘I want to listen to what the expert has to say.’
Ruby assured her it would have been nothing but drivel: ‘White coat drivel, the worst possible kind.’
Angela grudgingly conceded. She turned her gaze to the source of the fiasco. ‘That must have been something of an eye-opener?’
Izzy stood limply in her nightgown, her feet crossed over one another. She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Was that because of me?’
‘Well, she didn’t just win an Oscar.’
Ruby ushered Izzy away, told her to put on some clothes. While the girl was occupied selecting a new outfit, Angela sidled up to her friend and said in a tight Bogart mumble, ‘We’re going to the cops. The sooner, the better, if you ask me.’
‘After that performance—you must be kidding me.’
‘Well, she has to go back.’
Ruby took Angela by the arm and thrust her through the Winnebago’s door. ‘Breakfast is on the table,’ she sang over her shoulder. ‘We’ll be right outside if you need us.’
Izzy listened to the two women bickering as she ate her bread and jam.
‘Just where do you see this leading?’ Angela demanded. ‘Is there an expiry date on this shambles? Or do you intend keeping her forever?’
‘Well, I can’t take her home again. Not to a mother like that.’
‘You had your time. You raised Carol as best you could—now it’s her time. She’s the mother.’
‘But I’m ready now. That’s the bugger of it all—I’m ready now and she’s not …’
The price tag on Izzy’s pinafore scratched annoyingly at her neck. She’d taken her time in dressing, trying to think what might make her look the cutest—an adorable orphan hoping to be the chosen one.
Ruby and Angela returned, bristling with animosity. Angela made straight for the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Ruby scooched into the dinette beside Izzy. Noticing the unremoved tag, she leant over and severed the plastic tie with her teeth. ‘My choppers are old and worn out already,’ she reasoned, glancing at the price and humphing irritably.
She attempted to paint their predicament in a way that wouldn’t sound too alarming. Midway through her explanation, Angela emerged from the bathroom and began skulking around the confines of the Winnebago like a baleful cat.
‘We might have to lay low for a while,’ Izzy suggested.
Ruby was curious to know where she’d come by the expression.
Izzy thought of her mum, hanging up the phone after speaking to her school principal or trying to dodge the landlord. For her mum, laying low was pretty much business as usual, insofar as it involved mooching around the house. ‘Dunno,’ she fibbed.
But Ruby’s attention had drifted and was now directed at Angela, who was hovering in front of the television, clutching her elbows.
Sensing she was being appraised, Angela announced, ‘I’m watching it in mute, if that’s all right with Your Ladyship.’
Ruby pointed out they all had to share the space today and wouldn’t it be best if—
Angela interjected, ‘My godfathers, they’re playing it again.’
‘Playing what?’ Izzy asked.
Angela looked at the girl flatly. She exhaled a forbearing sigh, and switched the television off. She couldn’t abide another moment in the tin can and wedged her feet into her mules. ‘I’m going out for a while.’
Grandmother and granddaughter stared back at her from the dinette, as though waiting on the maître d’ to come and take their order. The tableau made an outsider of Angela—reinforcing her impression that, given the current state of emergency, she was well within her rights to abandon ship.
Ruby gave Angela a lift back to their block of units in order to collect her car. Izzy was made to stay seated at the dinette, hidden from view, as thought they were smuggling contraband across the border. Angela unfastened her seatbelt and leaned over to give the driver a kiss. She felt as if something had come to an end—something full of promise but ultimately unsuccessful, like a failed space mission. Ruby neglected to kiss her in return. Angela knew her friend was angry; she believed she was being treacherous by leaving. But Ruby could hardly force her to continue to take part in something so unlawful.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Angela parked beside the lake. She reached into her bag and fished out her phone, punching in numbers before she could reconsider. When Bernard responded, she straightaway asked why he hadn’t answered any of her messages. Some families were convenient like that; you could slide in and out of contact with less information than it took to renew your electricity account.
Bernard was confused. ‘Didn’t you get my emojis?’
Angela told him she meant her recorded messages. ‘I stopped sending you texts, just like you demanded.’
Bernard apologised if he’d been overly brusque, and no, he hadn’t received any other messages from her. He’d gotten in the habit of deleting all his voicemail unheard.
Angela said she was sorry for his troubles, and then, because she was his big sister, added, ‘You’re lucky it was only a tree and not a person you struck.’
‘Is this going to be a lecture?’
‘No. But really, drink driving—it’s just so reckless and irresponsible.’
‘So it is a lecture …’
‘Not at all. But I hear Uber is very handy. I don’t use it myself. I don’t go out drinking like I used to.
I would have thought we were a bit past that.’
Bernard sighed, struggling to be patient. ‘Is this what the messages were about—the ones I missed?’
The call wasn’t going at all how Angela had hoped. ‘Don’t get your back up. I wanted to check that you were okay.’ She ignored Bernard’s dubious cough, suggesting he didn’t hold much by her concern. ‘Then I left a message last night asking for your advice. And then another one asking for your help.’
There was a pause on the other end. Then came the scrape of a chair being pulled out—Bernard feeling the conversation necessitated sitting down. ‘What did you want my help with?’
Angela let out a voluble huff. ‘You might at least have listened to the messages before you deleted them. It was quite detailed.’
‘Well, I’m all ears now.’
Angela narrated the string of misunderstandings that had led to her and Ruby becoming unsuspecting kidnappers. She came to the end, only to find the line had gone quiet.
‘Bernard? You still there? Bernard?’
‘I’m here. I’m just trying to process it all. Have you told the police this?’
‘No, that’s just it—Ruby’s decided that Carol is unfit to be a mother. Now she actually wants to keep Izzy for good.’
‘How did you think I might help?’
‘I wanted your advice. I thought I might go to the press—explain everything. It doesn’t sound so bad, does it?’
‘Whatever you do, do not approach the media. Do not go public with this in any way. As far as other people are concerned, you have no story. Events are only what people presume them to be. There’s no truth anymore. Only opinions, upon opinions, upon opinions—’
‘Maybe you could do it? That was part of my last message—maybe you’d talk to the press on our behalf.’
‘Angela, I’m practically topping Australia’s most wanted list. My reputation has been tarnished beyond repair. There’s no way I can stick my neck out again. If you and your friend were stupid enough to keep a little girl without telling her mother, then you have to face the music yourselves.’
It was Bernard’s turn to come up against silence. ‘Angela …? Angela? I’m sorry if that sounded harsh. It’s been quite an ordeal. If there’s anything else I can do to help?’
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