Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  It was more money than she needed for the school fees, but Suze had taken the opportunity to give herself a little start in life. She’d always wanted to have her own business and where would she ever get the money to prove she could make a go of something? She was in her forties. It was now or never.

  Of course it hadn’t been a simple matter to arrange all this and keep it from Doug and the new fresh-faced junior accountant in the newly titled finance department. Suze had been meticulous with her deceptions over the years, but they were becoming increasingly onerous and nerve-wracking. Things were changing around Darling Point. With Doug McIntyre’s impending retirement, the college, one of the oldest and most exclusive in Sydney, was about to become acquainted with modern management practices.

  Suze had known her time haunting the lofty halls and labyrinth of corridors was almost at an end. Jo, her protector and benefactor, had been banished in horrendous circumstances and Suze’s power base had evaporated. She had dodged so many retraining courses and ‘team workshops’ that questions were beginning to be asked. But she knew all the computer passwords and always volunteered to stay back and finish up or come into the office on public holidays. That’s how obliging she was. How dedicated to the old dump.

  Suze suspected the new deputy head was keen to be rid of her, but couldn’t quite work out how to go about it. So, unlike Jo, Suze laid her plans for her departure carefully. Some of the four hundred and fifty thousand dollars was put aside for the twins’ school fees; some of it went to pay for her father’s funeral and some of it went in notes to Rob for...She didn’t want to know what for. By July last year Suze figured she had enough money left to set herself up in her florist shop, so she announced to the world that she had won three hundred grand in Oz Lotto and handed in her resignation.

  The staff had been astonished at her good fortune and sad to see her go. Suze was leaving! Wonderful Suze from the front office whose door was always open, the scent of burning incense wafting from the admin building and along the path to the library. Eccentric Suze who dressed in fluttering bright skirts, trailed long tie-dyed scarves and smelled of patchouli oil. Cheerful Suze who was so efficient and treated everyone equally. Even if some parents would have liked her to be rather more deferential, considering the amount of money they were shelling out.

  What to buy Mrs Reynolds for a farewell present had been the subject of much discussion in the staffroom. Not that it mattered. For her long and outstanding service Suze had already graciously awarded herself a pair of original watercolours she had located in the art department storage room. They now adorned the wall of her modest lounge room at 13 Middlemount Street.

  In the end, during a delightful farewell party hosted by Mrs Kelly on the lawns of Etheldreda House, she was presented with an ugly Wedgwood platter.

  ‘How will we find anything ever again without you?’ Patsy Kelly asked in her goodbye speech.

  And Suze hoped they never would find anything. That nothing would ever be unearthed and that the good folk of Darling Point Ladies’ College would forget she ever existed. Only with Jess and Bobby now in Year Eleven, that couldn’t happen just yet. By next November they would leave Darling Point and then Suze too would be free of the place she was coming to despise more with each passing day.

  Now the money was running out. She’d paid over the odds for the shop rental, then spent too much on fitting it out. She had twenty thousand dollars left, which would pay some of the girls’ fees for next year, and none coming in. So all she could do was pray. And she would beg to any merciful being that might hear her pleas. In front of her homemade shrine to Our Lady of Perpetual Cashflow above the sink in the workroom at the rear of Geraniums Red, Suze lit candles to ask for divine intervention. Perhaps she should petition for a win for Rob at Star City. She reckoned she’d have more luck in asking for the moon.

  If only she hadn’t met Jo that day and, against all her expectations, been hired for the payroll clerk’s job. If only Jo hadn’t been so kind and trusting and had been able to see the rottenness at the heart of her. If only she could tell Jo all this and find some forgiveness. If only her business could start to turn a profit and mother and daughters could live happily ever after in their bed of roses. If...only.

  With the flowers unloaded from the van, Suze turned the sign on the shop window to Open. She waved to the elderly Italian gentleman shuffling through a cloud of blue-black exhaust fumes on his way to his restaurant across the street. Mr Astrologo lifted his walking stick to her cheerily and Suze sighed, disappointed to see how well he looked. Between an Italian funeral and Indian wedding, Geraniums Red might just claw its way out of the post-Valentine’s-Day slump.

  ‘Die, you old bastard,’ Suze said aloud. ‘Drop dead over your spag bol and I’ll send you on your way to heaven with a million red rosebuds.’ If Suze was going to go to hell—and she told herself she was, over and over again—she might as well say it with flowers.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘The girls are waiting in the van. I can take them back with me if you’ve got something on...or...’ Rob’s question stuttered, faltered and died. Suze looked at the big, rumpled lump of him and snorted with derision. What did he imagine she might have on? It was 5 p.m. on a Wednesday night and the only thing waiting for her was a laundry piled with washing, and, if she could commandeer the television, a DVD and a cardboard cask of shiraz.

  Of course Rob had it all ahead of him. If he could find a pair of clean trousers and a shirt with a collar he could expect a glamorous night in front of a poker machine and the chance of winning a small fortune that might whisk his family off to...Wollongong?

  ‘I’ll take them,’ Suze muttered as she heaved her bag over her shoulder and looked about for the keys to the front door of Geraniums Red. ‘They’ve got a recital tomorrow and soccer training on Friday...if you can find the time.’ It was a calculated, bitchy remark. Rob was always on time to take his daughters to soccer and they worshipped their father. It would all have been so easy if he’d neglected that part of his life.

  Rob let the remark pass, as Suze knew he was bound to. As a husband no longer sharing a bed with his wife and unable to pay for the roof over his daughters’ heads, he had to endure every insult that came his way. ‘Uh, sure. That’ll be fine,’ he said as he shuffled over to a pot of cyclamen and bent to sniff the delicate magenta flags.

  ‘Don’t bother, Rob. They don’t smell of anything. They’re just for decoration.’ Just like you, she thought. A man for ‘decorative purposes only’ and, apart from that, entirely useless. Suze had said to Jo on Saturday that she still loved him, but she’d been thinking about that ever since. Her husband had stolen from her, lied and put his children’s future in jeopardy. What would it take for her to finally let him go?

  ‘Did you have a good day?’ he ventured. ‘Sell much?’

  Suze’s body became rigid. She would have rather been asked the question by a standover man from a Chinese triad. Would rather have considered her answer with a knife held to her neck. ‘There’s a hundred dollars there on the counter. Take it,’ she spat.

  ‘Suze...’ Rob jammed his fists into his pockets and spoke to the ceiling. ‘I’m not going to just piss it up against the wall. I—’

  ‘Take it!’ Suze spied her car keys, snatched them from the counter and walked towards the door.

  ‘It’s just that I need petrol money to get me to the meeting tonight.’

  The ‘meeting’. That would be a gathering of the good folk from Gamblers Anonymous, although Suze doubted that’s where he would end up. She turned to see Rob, his arms stretched towards her, palms turned up in a plea for understanding—a plea that, by now, should have fallen on deaf ears.

  She had been understanding and, by turns over the past four years, exasperated, furious, hopeful and despairing. There was hardly an emotion she hadn’t explored and now she was sinking to the depths of grim resignation. Rob would never be free of the grip of his addiction. Suze had visited the GA websi
te where it stated: Over any considerable period of time we get worse, never better.

  The answer, apparently, was to turn one’s life over to a greater power. To pray to God for the strength to overcome. But Rob had no time for anything religious or spiritual. Although he was standing there beseeching her to have mercy—like Jesus Christ himself—his two bare clay feet were firmly on the ground and he would never bend his knees to a Higher Power. Although Suze prayed for him endlessly, she had given up hoping that he ever did the same for either himself or his family. ‘Don’t lie to me, Rob. Lie to yourself all you like, but don’t lie to me anymore. I can’t take it.’

  ‘I’m not lying.’ He stepped forward to wrap his arms around his wife. For some reason—sheer exhaustion, Suze supposed—she didn’t object.

  ‘This time I mean it, babe,’ he whispered into her neck. ‘I’ve got a job interview with a construction company, doing gardens for a new development up on the North Shore. I’ll be earning good money. Good enough to move out of Mum’s and set up my own flat. And maybe after I’ve shown you I’m back on track...’

  Suze pulled back and searched his eyes for a spark of...what? Determination? Willpower? Honesty? The only thing she could see there was dumb, hopeless love. And that, she knew, wasn’t enough to get them through.

  ‘I have to get going.’ Suze realised she was urgently rattling the front doorknob as if this would convince him it was time to leave. ‘The girls will be wondering—’

  ‘Can I come over tonight? After the meeting?’ he asked, standing his ground. ‘How about I bring over Indian takeaway later? I’ll ask Sarita to make that curry with the potato and spinach you love. I’ll get a DVD for the girls and you can have a long bath. Light that gardenia candle...’

  ‘Rob—’

  ‘And in the morning, you can have a “lady’s lie-in”. I’ll get up early with the girls, make breakfast and take them to school. Why don’t you go to the hairdresser? Or for a facial? You deserve it. Come in after lunch. Juanita can mind the shop and I’ll do the deliveries.’

  Suze was a goner. The chance for a facial? A shoulder massage? She hadn’t had one in months. At the thought of it the muscles in her shoulders set up an aching drumbeat.

  ‘At seven. On the dot,’ she muttered. ‘Not seven-thirty.’

  ‘I promise.’ Rob shuffled past, swiped the notes from the counter and pocketed them.

  ‘Actually, don’t order Indian, I’ll cook,’ she said. They both understood this was to save him the humiliation of having no money left to buy the takeaway after he had fed the cash into the pokies.

  ‘I’ll bring champagne then.’ He grinned at her.

  ‘Great!’ said Suze as tears prickled her eyes. There would be no champagne. And it didn’t matter. There was nothing to celebrate.

  He sauntered out the door, sure that the hundred dollars in his hand was the last money he’d ever ask for. Tonight he’d hit the jackpot and all their worries would be over.

  Suze stood on the footpath and turned the key in the lock, knowing that one day she would also have to fasten her heart against her husband.

  She looked up to see Bobby and Jess waving excitedly to her from beside the van. In their faces she found a scrap of forgiveness. Enough to keep going for another day, at least. Rob strolled up the street towards the bus stop. He turned, waved, blew her a kiss. Once Suze would have leaped to catch it. Tonight she let it flutter past her. It landed on the road and was run over by a passing truck.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next day Jo was entering her gate at about 5 p.m. after a leisurely stroll to the corner shop for milk and butter, and was just thinking she could never have done that in Lang Road, Centennial Park, when she saw her front door was wide open. She’d been robbed!

  Her heart thumped in an arrhythmic flurry. This was what happened when you lived in a tiny flat crowded in by high-rise apartments. You could hardly call it a ‘neighbourhood’. Jo had attempted to be ‘neighbourly’. She had nodded and smiled when she met her fellow residents at the letterboxes. Bent to pat small dogs. Offered umbrellas. But in return they’d scratched her car, nicked her newspaper and, now, broken into her unit. It would be teenagers looking for drug money.

  This would never have happened at Parklea. The security system there was state of the art—cameras with sensors, computerised keypads, alarms. Jo made a quick mental inventory of what might have been taken and was annoyed enough to disregard her personal safety and think she might catch them in the act of riffling through her bedroom drawers.

  She edged her way down the hall, clutching her groceries to her chest, and cautiously peered around the edge of the living-room doorway. Leaning over her kitchen counter with cups of coffee in hand were Tory and Simon.

  Damn Tory! She was like a ninja. She slipped in and out of the unit at odd hours with an ease and entitlement that was unnerving. Sometimes Jo found a just-used toothbrush lying on her vanity unit and a splatter of dried toothpaste on the mirror. Sometimes it was a washing machine full of damp clothes and an ashtray full of stinking butts by her computer. And now she was bringing Simon with her!

  Jo stomped across the room to announce her presence, and dumped her shopping on the bench. Tory jumped from her stool, her arms wide for a welcoming hug. Ignoring the invitation, Jo wrenched open the fridge and thrust butter and milk inside. ‘The front door’s wide open. I thought I’d been robbed by drug addicts!’

  ‘Mum, don’t be retarded. You’re more likely to meet drug addicts at the hairdresser’s in Double Bay,’ Tory growled. She grabbed at a pile of newsprint on the stool next to her. ‘Did you see the Courier this morning?’ She flapped a front page under Jo’s nose. The headline shouted: cocaine arrests up.

  Tory took it back and read: ‘“Cocaine is readily available in Sydney’s east with a ‘hidden user group’ that local police say is hard to identify.” Yeah, right!’ she scoffed. ‘That’s code for: the place is up to its eyeballs in the stuff, but they’re too chicken-shit to name names. Am I right, Simon?’

  Simon was squirming on his stool, looking mightily uncomfortable, and was about to greet Jo when Tory barged ahead of him. ‘Of course, they don’t commit crimes the local cops know about. They exploit Third World countries, cheat the stock market, sell stuff made on these hideous assembly lines in Korea and China and then use the money to buy cocaine and party hard. Not much of a party when your entire family is shot by Colombian drug lords.’

  ‘Tory, for God’s sake.’ Jo rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Tory was becoming a walking slogan. Her entire philosophy could be printed on a T-shirt: stop everything NOW!

  ‘What?’ she said, her mouth hanging open in a childish challenge.

  ‘I might remind you,’ said Jo, ‘that all the cars your father sells are made on assembly lines by workers with families to support and who are grateful for a job. The money he made put a roof over your head and put you through school.’

  Tory reached for her coffee. ‘I never asked him to rip people off. If he gets pre-selection and then he gets elected...Jesus! Imagine that. My father the fucking minister for trashing the planet!’

  Simon slipped from his seat in a brave attempt to run interference. ‘Hi, Jo.’ He offered a sympathetic smile.

  ‘Hello, Simon,’ she replied, and then made an exasperated face behind Tory’s back.

  ‘Anyway...’ Tory leaped back into the fray, waving a noxious cigarette. Jo looked about for her mandarin-and-bergamot aromatherapy candle. ‘How are you getting on with the property settlement with Dad? You’ve got to get in there before he wastes it on his election campaign.’ She blew a defiant cloud of smoke.

  Jo gave up on the candle, slid the courtyard doors open and considered shoving Tory outside too. Her divorce settlement wasn’t something she cared to discuss in front of visitors. ‘Get outside with that filthy cigarette! We’ll talk about this later,’ she said with a meaningful frown.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about Simon,’ Tory said airily. ‘We’ve
been talking about the wedding and stuff and then, because he’s a real estate agent, we got on to your property settlement. He’s got plenty of inside info. Tell Mum what you were just saying.’

  Simon was clearly reluctant to be dragged into such an intimate discussion of the family finances. He fiddled with the buttons of his shirt and looked uncertainly at Jo.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! Go on, tell her,’ Tory urged.

  ‘Well,’ Simon began cautiously, ‘I was just saying that I’ve seen it plenty of times where a husband tries to sell a house on the quiet without his wife knowing. I was trying to—’

  ‘Be careful, Mum! That’s what he’s telling you. Loud and clear. It’s over a year already and the longer you leave it, the harder it gets. I know Dad when it comes to money and—’

  Jo’s mobile rang and she lunged for it, relieved that Tory’s lecture and the whole awkward and unwelcome encounter could be put on hold.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Blanchard, it’s Michael Brigden speaking. I’m ringing to tell you that Gemma and Yoshi won’t be coming to their meeting with you tomorrow. I think it would be best if you and I met privately.’

  Jo’s stomach back-flipped. ‘Yes of course, absolutely, that would be lovely,’ she stammered.

  ‘I wonder if I might meet you here in the city at the bar in the Four Seasons Hotel. There’s a business dinner I’m supposed to attend here later tonight and it would really be convenient. Although I could certainly come to you...’

  ‘No, no, that’s fine, absolutely.’

  ‘Great. So I’ll see you here at seven in the bar. I look forward to it.’