Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  ‘Last time I looked,’ Jo said, although she had to wonder why, if an old battered chair had been such a comfort, Linda had decided to furnish her office with ugly shop fittings.

  ‘I don’t get to as many of the college functions as I’d like to,’ said Linda as she reached for notepad and pen. Jo had a feeling that a chapter meeting of the Darling Old Girls was now in session. ‘Although we do have a sort of “ex officio” group and keep in touch. Some very useful contacts in the DOGs.’

  ‘The dogs.’ Jo remembered that this was the insult the Canonbury boys used to hurl at the DPLC girls back in the days when Jo was a boarder. She’d always hated it. ‘You don’t call yourselves “dogs”, do you?’ she asked with some distaste.

  ‘Oh, sure!’ Linda chortled. ‘Some are St Bernards—you know, mums with puppies who don’t mind the odd brandy. Some are dingoes.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘As in: “A dingo took my husband”!’

  Jo had to laugh. She now had a name for Carol: The Dingo Holt. Perfect.

  ‘Then there are the yappers—they’re in the media. The poodles. You can imagine who they are. They’re the pampered ladies with the jewelled collars and clipped toenails. And I’m a foxie. One of the businesswomen. A fox terrier. Love the chase, love digging around in burrows and dragging blinking bunnies into the daylight. And then—’ Linda smiled through glossy, blood-red lips ‘—savaging the buggers.’

  Jo blinked at Linda’s obvious relish of her dirty work.

  ‘So,’ she leaned across the desk and spoke in a conspiratorial tone, ‘you’ve come to exactly the right place. We women will prevail. We’re here to help each other. That’s what I learned at Darling Point. So, how may I help you, Mrs Blanchard?’

  Ms Priestley jotted notes with a silver fountain pen. As Jo told her story she couldn’t take her eyes off the huge onyx dress ring Linda wore on one hand and the massive marquise-cut diamond on the other.

  ‘You’ve been separated for a year,’ Linda noted. ‘So first, let’s get the divorce underway. All we need is his signature. That can happen as early as next week if you like. And while all that’s happening we should get started on identifying the property pool so we can make the settlement. Have you spoken to him about it?’

  Jo was embarrassed to say she hadn’t, except for one bullying phone call from JJ when she’d hung up on him.

  ‘That’s probably good. Most wives don’t have the balls for a face-to-face agreement. Luckily, I have balls for rent.’ She grinned. ‘Do you think he’s going to come quietly?’

  Jo hesitated. She’d never liked the expression ‘having balls’ applied to women; ‘courage’, ‘tenacity’, ‘nerve’, ‘audacity’ or even ‘guts’ was what women had. Did she have any of these? She wasn’t sure. Even if she did, the notion that JJ would meekly acquiesce to being led anywhere was far-fetched.

  ‘I’ll take that as a “no”.’ Linda scurried ahead. ‘Well, even if he thinks he can get away with hiding assets from you, it’s extremely difficult these days. If he doesn’t come clean we can ask for an examination order and get in a forensic accountant who’ll ferret out the truth. They’re fairly pricey, but they’re worth it. Or there are also private investigators...’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to—’

  ‘Drag him through the courts? You won’t have to, I promise. Only a handful of cases ever end up in court and if he doesn’t come clean he’ll end up in contempt and lose a lot more. And he won’t want that, not with his profile. I see he’s running for pre-selection in Double Bay.’

  That news was hard to miss. After parking her car this morning and then walking to the offices of Bligh & Bridge, Jo had spotted the Wentworth Courier abandoned on various outdoor café tables. JJ’s picture graced the front page and she’d stopped to read the story.

  The pre-selection panel that would choose the candidate

  for next year’s election was to be appointed in spring, its

  make-up based on the membership of each of the local branches. There were twenty-two such Liberal Party branches in the Double Bay electorate, the nation’s wealthiest and most celebrity-infested, according to the newspaper. The more members the branch registered, the more say it had in who would stand for next year’s election and then, in this part of town, surely win the seat and be on their way to the nation’s capital.

  There were the usual allegations of ‘branch-stacking’—the time-honoured political practice of bulking up the membership just before the vote. According to accusations from his two rivals, JJ Blanchard, who was staging his battle from the redoubtable Centennial branch, had signed up everyone who lived in the entire Eastern Suburbs who’d ever bought a car, driven a car, or just knew someone who did. Not that anyone had any illegalities to report. ‘But it’s just not cricket,’ one anonymous source was reported to have said.

  JJ’s response was predictably indignant: ‘All of the people that have joined the Centennial branch live in the area. All of them have paid their own membership fees, the vast majority are married couples and have been successful in life. Good, upstanding people. These are the very type of people that the Liberal Party should give its right arm to have as members. They’re the backbone of the community.’ Jo could imagine his shirt buttons about to pop with the affront. ‘I’m entitled to recruit support from wherever I choose.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Linda arched one elegant eyebrow after Jo had relayed the information. ‘We should be able to sort this out in no time.’

  Ms Priestley stepped out from behind her translucent desk to take Jo’s hand. This time she shook it and didn’t let go. ‘If you don’t mind me giving you some personal advice, Mrs Blanchard?’ Linda stepped closer. ‘Keep your emotions out of this. Even if he’s the best bloke in the world. Even if you left him or were glad to see him go. Even if he’s at death’s door. Don’t let your emotions get in the way. The emotion will be a lot worse when ten years down the track you’re living in a dump and the Dingo’s sitting pretty, believe me. Go after him. Get as much as you possibly can. Everything you’re entitled to.’

  ‘Yes, I’m starting to see that’s the best attitude,’ Jo agreed. She would have to toughen up.

  ‘I heard what happened when you left Darling Point.’

  Jo looked away, mortified.

  ‘And I don’t blame you! But this time, you have to act with your head, not your heart.’

  Jo nodded again; she could see that too.

  ‘One more thing,’ said Linda. ‘Do you have a dream? When you see yourself in five years, what are you doing?’

  Jo thought of the time when she was happiest. ‘I suppose I’m sitting painting Sydney Harbour,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, let’s get you a lovely terrace. The biggest, most gorgeous terrace we can. And while you’re sitting there painting, you can think about what you want to do next in life.’

  It was barely twenty minutes after Jo got back home and was sitting on her couch with Calpurnia on her lap and wondering what it was, precisely, that she wanted to do next, that there was a knock at her front door.

  It was Suze. She was standing with her best and brightest smile on and peering over a gigantic bunch of purple hydrangeas. Jo’s favourites.

  ‘They mean “Thank you for understanding” in the language of flowers,’ said Suze. ‘And I’ve also got a bunch of stephanotis and some snapdragons in the car which pretty much means “Gracious lady, can we have sex now, please?”, but I didn’t want to confuse you.’ She lowered the bunch to reveal her face. Expectant, clearly hoping for the salvation of a laugh.

  Good line, thought Jo. But she couldn’t respond in the way Suze wanted her to. She had stolen those paintings and then lied about it. A bunch of flowers could hardly make up for that. Jo had had time to think about giving her that cash and wondered if she wasn’t so much generous as gullible. And how did one tell the difference, exactly?

  Suze pushed the flowers towards Jo and then bent to retrieve the package against the wall. �
��It’s the paintings. I don’t think I’ve really told you how sorry I am and how idiotic I feel. It was so out of character for me to do something like that. And I also wanted to thank you for the loan. You don’t know how much it means. Can I come in?’

  Jo relented. Suze had come to her doorstep with gifts of gratitude. What more could she ask? She felt a guilty jab in the ribs for even doubting her friend was sincere in her apology. ‘Sure,’ she said. As Suze followed her down the hall, Jo asked: ‘Have you got time for a tea or coffee?’

  ‘All the time in the world; business is really slow early in the week. Give me an excuse not to go back this afternoon. Got wine in the fridge?’

  Jo had just poured Suze a glass when her phone rang. ‘It’s Linda Priestley here, Mrs Blanchard. I hope you don’t mind me interrupting you. I took the liberty of doing a preliminary search, free of charge, for services rendered at Darling Point, as it were. I thought there’s something you might be interested to see. How are you placed for a drive to Watsons Bay this gorgeous afternoon?’

  Jo hung up and said to Suze: ‘I have to go out. I have to drive to Watsons Bay to...’ and in the same instant could have kicked herself.

  ‘To...?’

  ‘To see a house.’

  ‘Brilliant! Fab day for a drive. Haven’t been there forever. Can I come too?’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Suze threw her huge handbag onto the floor of Jo’s Mercedes and squeezed herself into the passenger seat. She squirmed and fidgeted, wrangling with the seatbelt, untangling it from her long beads and trailing scarf. ‘Jeez, Jo. Why haven’t you got one of those armour-plated monster trucks they all drive?’

  Now Jo laughed. The DPLC car park was a cul-de-sac in their shared history and something they’d often joked about. The tiny ladies of Darling Point had an ongoing love affair with gigantic, expensive lumps of gleaming metal. They were like small, blonde toddlers who’d somehow found the keys to M1A1 Abrams tanks. Jo and Suze suspected some of them had to bring throw cushions to sit on just so their lollipop heads could see over the steering wheel.

  Morning and night, as Suze observed, it was always a ‘shit-fight’. Fiona in the Toyota LandCruiser screeched at Caroline in the Range Rover. Prue in the Porsche Cayenne threatened Deborah in the Volvo XC90. Council rangers skulked around the perimeter of the herd, culling the weak and exasperated.

  They were all frazzled and hassled and strung-out and stressed. They all had places to be. People to see and...

  ‘WHAT’S YOUR DAMNED PROBLEM? I NEED TO PARK HERE...NOW!’

  Then, weirdly, as soon as their tinted electric windows were lowered or they climbed down from behind the wheels of their lumbering gas-guzzlers, the mothers were all perfectly civil. They greeted each other with extravagant air kisses and milled about as if a cocktail and a tray of canapés might be on offer.

  ‘Fiiiii! You’re back! Missed you. How was Whistler, darling?’

  ‘Don’t talk about it! The whole of bloody Vaucluse was there! Might as well have taken a run up to the chalet at Perisher.’

  ‘Tell me again. What are we going to see, exactly, and why?’ asked Suze as Jo expertly zipped in and out of the traffic on Old South Head Road.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. I have an address. Apparently it’s one of JJ’s properties. Which means it’s half mine, although he never mentioned it. Linda sounded excited, so I’m keen to check it out. As for why? It’s all part of getting everything sorted before the settlement.’

  Suze considered the extraordinary concept of being unaware that she was half-owner of a house in the millionaire’s row of Watsons Bay. Right now she had a small stake in a two-bedroom wooden dump in an industrial suburb and a lease on a dilapidated shop in the suburb next door. The bank and the landlord owned most of her life and maybe soon would take the lot. Did Jo appreciate what a charmed life she led?

  Jo swung her car into Cliff Street, Watsons Bay. One side of the road offered a view back across the glittering waters towards Tinsel Town and the other the trail to Sydney’s most notorious suicide spot, The Gap.

  For a moment Suze contemplated standing on the weathered sandstone ledge and then leaping into the roaring Pacific Ocean eighty metres below. It would be a quick solution to her problems.

  ‘They say drowning is a peaceful way to die.’ She gave voice to her thoughts.

  ‘It might be,’ replied Jo, ‘if you’re in the bath at home. But jumping off there, you wouldn’t even make the water. You’d hit the rocks and break every bone in your body. It would be an awful way to go.’

  ‘They reckon fifty people a year jump from The Gap. They come from all over Australia apparently.’

  ‘It’s horrifying,’ said Jo. ‘The council’s got a plan for high fences, cameras and telephones. The sooner it’s done, the better.’ Jo had been to one funeral for a DPLC staff member who had committed suicide. Instead of expressions of sorrow there had been only anger, bewilderment and a deep sense of failure. She’d never forgotten that terrible day.

  ‘But if a person’s determined...’ Suze thought aloud.

  Behind the almost dreamy musing, Jo caught a dark and disturbing shadow. She was sure Suze meant for her to catch it. ‘You don’t ever think about suicide, do you?’

  ‘Everyone does sometimes, don’t they?’

  A tourist bus, the blue Bondi Explorer hop-on, hop-off, made a sudden U-turn in front of Jo and almost sideswiped her car.

  ‘Look out!’ Jo shouted. ‘Bloody idiot! He didn’t even see me.’

  ‘Now we know why they all drive those army tanks.’ Suze lowered her window. ‘Arsehole!’ she yelled, but by then Jo had driven into a narrow street and the hurled insult whizzed past the head of an elderly woman watering her front garden.

  ‘Thanks, Suze. You’re really being a great help.’

  Jo nosed her car into a tiny parking space on the steep, narrow slope of Pacific Street. The dwellings were a mismatched jumble. Some were quaint wooden cottages dating from the late 1700s when Watsons Bay had been settled, first by the mariners steering ships through the Heads into Sydney Harbour and then as a fishermen’s village to serve the burgeoning colony; others were interlopers from decades of haphazard development. It was a corner of the Eastern Suburbs she’d always found intriguing.

  Suze was still extricating herself from the front seat of the car as Jo attempted to peer over the high rendered-brick wall that was the front of number thirty-four. Two quaint dormer windows jutted from the second-storey pitched grey corrugated-iron roof.

  ‘I love it here.’ Suze was by her side. ‘I’d give anything to live here.’

  ‘It looks like the front yard goes right down to the harbour.’ Jo peered through a small gap in the wooden paling gate.

  Suze pointed to a sign hanging beside the garage roller door. ‘My God! Look at this. It’s a development approval notice. The place is going to be demolished, it says, for the development of four luxury townhouses.’

  ‘What?’ said Jo as she stepped back and surveyed the street. Did she have the right number? She looked again at the piece of paper in her hand. Number thirty-four. That’s what Linda had told her. That’s what she’d written. She noticed a familiar figure locking the gate of the property over the road. It was Simon Riley, newly married real estate agent.

  ‘Jo! What are you doing here?’ he called and skipped across the street. This afternoon he was gleaming with the patina of Eastern Suburbs success in an elegantly cut charcoal suit and peacock-blue silk tie.

  ‘I should ask you the same question,’ said Jo. ‘Why aren’t you off on your honeymoon?’

  He waved away Jo’s inquiry. ‘Huh! Don’t mention it. Kim says they’re for heteros and bogans. I’m still working on him.

  I think I’ll eventually get him there if I just call it a “holiday” and not a “honeymoon”.’ He grimaced. ‘Anyway, we’ve both got a lot of work on. I don’t usually look after this part of town—I’m mostly in Bondi and Coogee—but we’ve got someone o
ff sick, so I’m helping out. It’s fine.’

  Jo thought he wasn’t perhaps as sanguine as he made out. They’d spent some hours discussing honeymoon destinations and Simon had been keen to head off to Tahiti and one of those romantic thatched huts over the water. She hoped it wasn’t a sign of some deeper disagreement with Kim and couldn’t help wondering again if she’d done the right thing in not telling Simon about the incident on Oxford Street. But she pushed the thought away; she knew she would never have summoned the courage.

  Jo made the introductions to Suze and caught a sideways glance and raised eyebrows that said something like: ‘Ooh, he’s cute, what a waste!’ Jo hoped she wouldn’t say it out loud.

  Then Simon turned his attention to the graceful roofline of number thirty-four. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it? It’ll be a tragedy to see it demolished. Just like Villa Porto Rosa. That was an extraordinary place.’ He pointed up the street to an expanse of green shadecloth stretched across a cavernous construction site. It was an ugly bandage on a gaping wound. ‘This house is a landmark here. I just can’t understand what sort of person would want to knock it down. It was on the market for a while. I heard there were bids of ten million plus before it was suddenly taken off. It was on the market one minute and then slated for redevelopment the next. Everyone around here’s just starting to realise what’s happened. Too late, I think.’

  Ten million dollars? That couldn’t possibly be right. Jo must have misheard. ‘Pardon?’ she said.

  ‘I know, prices around Watsons Bay are extraordinary. Going gangbusters. “The Cape” is a fabulous place. Built in 1888. It was last on the market back in 2006 and it went for seven mill then.’

  ‘My husband owns this place,’ said Jo.

  ‘He does? Really?’ Simon was, Jo could see, stunned. Perhaps he was remembering his warning about husbands who sold houses behind their wives’ backs.