Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘It’s a cheque for ten thousand dollars and I want you to take it.’ Jo slid the envelope across the table until it nudged Suze’s fingers. ‘And before you say anything, it’s a loan, that’s all. Just to tide you over.’

  The Bay Café was on the border where the grungy inner suburbs met the leafy parks of the Eastern Suburbs and it was here, Jo calculated, that she’d have the most chance of convincing Suze to take her money. No chance of a scene in the cosy café on this drizzly, overcast morning. The busy comings and goings and unwrapping of scarves would muffle any indignation.

  Suze instantly withdrew her hand and thrust it into her lap. ‘No. No way,’ she said emphatically. Her fingers had touched that envelope and her first instinct had been to take it and shove it deep into her handbag. She would take the money, smile gratefully, thank Jo profusely and never pay it back. And she would never be able to see her best friend ever again. Jo might just as well have offered an alcoholic a bucket of vodka.

  ‘I can’t take it. I’m sorry for what I said. It’s not your fault. You don’t have to pay me guilt money.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Jo was once more trying to find the end of the string that might unravel Suze’s thoughts.

  ‘When I said that stuff the other day about you talking me into sending the girls to Darling Point, I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I know you didn’t. I’d be devastated if you really thought that. One day all the financial sacrifice to send the girls there will be worth it. You’ll see.’ Jo parroted a line she’d uttered many times before when parents came to her, embarrassed to be struggling with the fees and asking for time to pay. She hoped this would be true, but there were no guarantees. She’d seen young women who’d had a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of education lavished upon them end up as topless barmaids, or worse.

  This was hellish terrain to negotiate. Jo and Suze had never dwelled on the topic of their own finances and, Jo reflected, that was one of the most remarkable things about their friendship. Over the years Suze had never shown, in any way, that she was jealous of Jo’s big house and swimming pool, her smart car or JJ’s occasional episodes of extravagant hospitality. And for her part, Jo had been perfectly content to spend afternoons at Suze’s place, sharing a cardboard cask of wine set on a milk crate on the cracked concrete of the tiny backyard.

  If Jo met Suze at a restaurant, she was careful to book somewhere cheap and cheerful, and Suze had always paid her way. Their presents to each other were likewise mostly modest—calendars or notebooks, funny cards, scented candles. It was just understood between them, so Jo believed, that money was never an issue. And it hadn’t been. Until now. The money on offer wasn’t charity, Jo reasoned. It was just what any true friends would do for each other if they were able.

  They filled the awkwardness with ordering raisin toast to have with their coffee.

  ‘Strawberry jam too, please,’ said Suze.

  ‘And some of that organic Tasmanian leatherwood honey,’ said Jo.

  ‘Made by lesbian bees,’ Suze teased.

  The young waitress turned down her red lips at the quip, and when she clomped to the kitchen in her ugly wooden clogs they shared a rude laugh behind her back. That was a relief. They were back in step with each other.

  Jo swiped the offending envelope from the table and stuffed it in her pocket. ‘I didn’t think you’d take it, but you should,’ she said. ‘I know you’d do the same for me if you could. It’s only money, after all.’

  Only money. Suze wanted to laugh out loud. Only a person who had a lot of it could say that. Suze had watched Rob frantically turning over the cushions on the couch hunting for stray coins and then counting them out in his palm for petrol to get him to the casino. Money—stealing it, hiding it, saving it, paying it out—had occupied Suze’s every second thought for years.

  Faced with Suze’s silence, Jo realised what she’d just said. ‘Sorry, Suze, that was stupid. What I meant was that I’d never want money to come between us. So if you ever need a loan, just till the shop starts turning a profit, ask me. I’m happy to help and I know you’d pay me back. After all, you’re so good with money and—’

  ‘I wish you’d stop saying that. It was my job. That’s all.’

  ‘But it’s something you should be proud of.’

  Suze gulped at her coffee to quell the tide of nausea rising in her throat. It would all come out one day. But where and how? The thought shadowed her every step. To confess or be found out? Which would be worse? Sometimes she thought getting away with it would be worst of all.

  ‘Jo...’ She opened her mouth not quite knowing what would come out of it. A confession or another lie? ‘It’s fine. Truly. I’ve just picked up a couple more big weddings in the past few days and I’m back on track. I love you for offering, but everything’s fine. I’ll be in the black by the end of the month.’

  So it was another lie. Another dead leaf had fallen this autumn morning onto a thick, dank carpet of deception, leaving Suze bare and windswept. She shivered and shrugged on her jacket hanging on the back of the chair.

  Their toast was deposited on the table with a rude clatter of crockery.

  ‘Definitely gay. She’s still pissed off,’ said Suze. ‘Anyway, I’m sick of talking about me.’ She picked up her slice of toast and gouged out a raisin with a chipped fingernail. ‘What’s more important is how you’re going to do this whole thing with JJ.’

  ‘He’s dodging me. When I rang his secretary on the way here, I was put on hold then I was told he’s still in China. Like she wouldn’t have known. That means he’s being a coward about it. I’m going to have to see a lawyer.’

  ‘You should have done that in the first place, Jo. He’s had a whole year to hide his assets from you.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d do that.’

  ‘Hah!’ The exclamation was loud and sharp enough to pierce the muttering ambience in the café. A woman at the next table turned to see who’d uttered it, frowned, and then went back to her newspaper.

  Jo dropped her voice. ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘That being trusting and only seeing the good in people can often bring out the worst in them.’ This was another hint from Suze that she didn’t deserve Jo’s admiration. She silently urged Jo to take it up. To wrangle an admission out of her right here and now over their coffee cups.

  ‘That’s a shocking thing to say!’ Jo protested. ‘I can’t go through life thinking like that. It’d kill me. I have to presume that people are good. If I was suspicious, would that make them any better? Anyway, it’s not up to me to judge. Karma will catch up with them. You, of all people, believe in karma, don’t you?’

  ‘I’d like to.’ Suze picked at her crust of toast. ‘But it doesn’t explain why some people get away with murder. For karma to work, people have to know the difference between right and wrong. Some people can steal, but rationalise that they’re doing it for the right reasons. Even mass murderers can go to their graves happy.’

  ‘But won’t karma get them in the end?’

  ‘Maybe not. Like heaven and hell, it might not even exist,’ said Suze and, on seeing Jo’s utter confusion, didn’t have the heart to go on with it. She made a joke of it instead, pointing to the crumbs on her plate. ‘You know how some women can eat all the raisin bread they want and not put on weight? That, to me, says there is no karma.’

  ‘That’s about genetics, you idiot!’ Jo laughed. ‘Not the cosmic order of the universe!’

  ‘Guilt and elasticised waistbands. Then we die.’

  ‘God, that’s a bit grim, Suze. Are you sure you’re alright?’ Jo reached for her friend’s arm and squeezed her reassurance.

  ‘Some more sugar should fix it. You want some of this Tassie lezzo honey?’ Suze was angling for another laugh, but saw Jo wasn’t paying attention. She was away, off on a tangent as usual.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said.

  ‘Uh-oh.’

  ‘Why don’t we
go into business together?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll have the settlement soon and God knows we’re just as smart as anyone around here. I mean, I’m good with people and you’re...’

  ‘Don’t say it.’

  ‘I was going to say organised, reliable and trustworthy.’

  Suze flinched as if Jo had pelted her with stones.

  ‘Like you said, between us we’ve got it covered. Hearts and flowers. Maybe we do some kind of wedding-planning thingo. Open a chapel with a garden. Somewhere with a view.’

  Suze couldn’t look Jo in the eye. ‘I’d love to work with you,’ she said. ‘But aren’t you forgetting? I already have a business. And I’d better get back there soon. I’ve left Juanita on her own.’

  Jo flapped her table napkin, signalling her embarrassment. ‘Of course you do. Sorry. And you’ll be into the black by April. You’re a genius! I’m going to walk home. So, I’ll call you, okay?’

  ‘Just be careful you don’t get hit by a bus,’ said Suze. ‘You’re such a good person that it would prove once and for all to me that there’s no such thing as karma.’

  ‘Well, I’d hate to think that my demise would stop you believing, my darling girl, because it’s the thing I love most about you. I’ll pay for the coffee.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Suze, ‘I’ll give you my half. I’m not a charity case yet.’ Although, she thought, if she did end up in jail, her two children would be.

  When Jo had left, Suze sighed and looked at the trail of breadcrumbs she had scattered. Surely Jo could follow it? Or had she just had coffee with the most trusting woman in the world?

  As Suze drove across town to Geraniums Red in her van,

  this morning stuffed with fragrant lilies, bright stems of snapdragons and pots of cyclamen, she followed the path back to the beginning.

  Embezzling from the Darling Point Ladies’ College had been easy enough. Suze had been interviewed by Jo in 2004 and won the payroll clerk’s job. She had been given a desk and a car space, and began pilfering stuff straight away. First she’d taken home a Barossa organic chicken or two from the tuckshop that had been thawed and, for reasons of hygiene, couldn’t be refrozen. Then it was a few bottles of gorgeous Margaret River red or white wine, opened at the meetings of the Council of Governors and not consumed. Shame to see it go to waste.

  There were pot plants that couldn’t be left to wither over the holidays. Boxes of magazines, textbooks and the contents of the lost-and-found cupboard that were otherwise destined for a rubbish skip. No-one seemed to notice the items were gone. In fact, the loss of a mobile phone was usually a happy occasion—the perfect excuse to buy a new one. Suze told herself she was doing the planet a favour by rescuing them from landfill as she loaded her car boot with forgotten odds and ends and took them home to the tiny weatherboard worker’s cottage in the inner-city suburb of Rosebery.

  The twins had been nine years old then, and when Suze inquired about the possibility of them attending DPLC, Jo was sure she could help. She did manage to wrangle scholarships for Jess and Bobby to attend Hilda, the junior school. Rob had protested that the local public primary school was good enough, but eventually he saw the sense of Suze taking them to school with her and having them under her watchful eyes. From there it was just a natural walk up the stone steps into the loving arms of Brigid, the senior school.

  The DPLC scholarship covered basic fees, but there were still so many expenses to meet. Suze’s wages and the meagre earnings from Rob’s labouring jobs were barely enough to pay the mortgage and household bills, let alone the almost daily requests for fees and equipment that came from the college. So, from unloved goods Suze had graduated to taking new textbooks Jess and Bobby required, perhaps a tie, a pair of gloves or a monogrammed schoolbag or shirt that needed replacing.

  The bursar, Doug McIntyre, was allegedly in charge of all the college accounts, but over the years he had come to rely on Suze to receive and pay for various goods. Doug was sixty-three, waiting out his time until he retired, and Suze cheerfully urged him to relax. She would look after this or that delivery.

  Like the afternoon Doug played in the fathers’ golf day fundraiser when the truck came from Di Martino Provedores. Suze had helped herself to imported jars of peppers, tapenades, chutneys, pasta sauces and tins of olive oil. She skilfully adjusted the receipts and payments as she entered them into the computerised accounts and no-one was any the wiser. Not one of the thirty boarders, who never noticed one less strand of spaghetti in their evening meals, nor any of the fifty staff, who never questioned the lack of marinated artichoke hearts in their Friday-afternoon antipasto platter.

  Cardboard boxes of supplies were driven daily through the gates and up the snowy quartz drive at Darling Point. Stationery, toilet rolls, paper towels, linen napkins, soap, detergent, shampoo, conditioner, towels, pillowcases, bed sheets and all manner of domestic items meant for the boarders found their way to Suze’s place. She even bought a used mini-van (on generous terms from Blanchard Motors), arguing that she needed space for the girls’ sporting equipment, and loaded her contraband on Saturday mornings when the staff and boarders were off playing netball or kayaking on the harbour.

  Everything was stowed in Suze’s garage under a broken ping-pong table and she raided her pile of treasures, item by item, and brought them into the house after dark. She explained them away to Rob as being ‘surplus’ or stuff she had bought on generous staff discount.

  When the scholarship program was tightened and the fees continued to soar, it was no problem. They were easily paid through an adjustment here or there in the accounts. It was hard to keep up with all the twins needed, but Suze was determined her daughters wouldn’t be bullied or belittled for their lowly financial status. She knew just how cruel some of the spoilt madams of DPLC could be.

  So when Jess wanted to learn the clarinet and Bobby violin, Suze simply added the instruments to the order for the new piano and music stands for the music department. When the computer laboratory upgraded its equipment, there were a couple of new laptops that Suze took efficient delivery of in her office.

  Suze could still remember the day she had pocketed actual cash. It had been the last week in November, 2007. The twins were almost thirteen and she had received their dentist’s bill for eight hundred and five dollars. It must have been a sign from the heavens when she counted out the cash from the till at the bookshop and it had come to almost exactly the same amount. Eight hundred and five dollars (and thirty-five cents) in anonymous notes and coins—all emptied into her handbag.

  The entry into the computer was routine. She simply declared that the shop was closed that day. No sales made. Who was there to question her? No-one from the roster of parent volunteers would ever bother checking; nor would the university student who ran the bookshop part time and was studying for exams; and definitely not the bursar, who was on long-service leave and had left Suze in charge.

  She remembered taking the girls to Circular Quay that warm evening, treating them to oysters and garlic prawns at a café on the promenade and paying for it with a handful of notes. They had been thrilled to meet up with two classmates strolling by who would never have frequented the takeaway shops tucked between the factories in downtown Rosebery.

  Perched on her stool watching the ferries come and go, the late-afternoon sun turning the sails of the Opera House rosy pink, Suze had reached for her champagne glass and watched couples strolling by hand in hand. She kept an eye out for Rob, who was supposed to meet his family there. They had planned to go on and see a movie, but Suze knew he would ring and make excuses. He was at Star City Casino, gambling their lives away. Like he did most nights now.

  Right then she decided to raise the stakes even higher. Rob was sitting in front of the whirling lights of a clanging machine that whisked away his money and rarely gave him a win, but Suze was on a sure bet—if she played her cards right.

  She did play them cleverly, and that year her cash winnings—
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  siphoned from the canteen, gym complex, bookshop and various charity and excursion-money envelopes—had amounted to more than twenty thousand dollars. She had even ventured into the boutiques of Double Bay now and then for a spot of shopping, just to see how the other half lived, and had savoured the exquisite thrill of loitering in Cross Street with glossy tote bags sprouting tissue paper swinging from her arm.

  In the year 2009, DPLC was awash with money. Some five million dollars was allocated for new tennis courts, ten million for the refurbishment of the prep school and another twelve million for a new science laboratory. There was so much building activity planned that the college had recently advertised for a director of development. The money came from the state and federal governments, the Darling Old Girls, generous benefactors and, of course, from student fees—$26,000 per annum for day students with an extra $18,300 (including laundry) for boarders.

  And still Patsy Kelly, who resided in Etheldreda House—

  a comely sandstone cottage on site—campaigned tirelessly for increased funding. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald she was quoted as saying: ‘Don’t mention the “p” word to me! We are not a “private” school. We are an independent school. The independent school is a not-for-profit organisation and any surplus goes back into running the college. There is no financial benefit to third parties. And as for funding, we get the lowest level, per capita, of federal government funding. Given the outstanding quality of the young women we turn out, we deserve quite a lot more!’

  But that year there were financial benefits to third parties—although two of them were utterly unaware of their juicy windfalls. Using the employee codes of teachers who had left the college over the past few years, Suze paid some four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in ghost salaries into her own secret bank account. She’d even created an entirely fictitious part-time staff member for the science department, named him Mr Chips, and collected his wages as well. It had been quite entertaining to send Mr Chips off on regular breaks with generous holiday leave loading.