The End of Cuthbert Close

by Cassie Hamer

  ‘I’d blame the parent for not supervising the child.’

  Alex groaned. ‘Why do you have to be so reasonable all the time? It’s annoying. Charlie Devine should have said sorry. That’s what neighbours do.’

  ‘How’d the boys take it?’

  ‘They were fine … A bit too fine. They sort of seemed to enjoy it.’

  The microwave pinged and James brought a steaming plate of lasagne to the kitchen table. ‘Good lesson in life and death for them, I guess.’

  Life and death. Perfect segue. Tell him about the baby, Alex told herself. But she couldn’t. Her mouth was watering so badly, the words couldn’t make their way past the saliva. Beth’s lasagnes were the perfect balance of rich tomato ragu and creamy, cheesy sauce. Even Alex’s fussy boys loved them. The first time Beth turned up on the doorstep with a casserole, Alex barely knew her at all but kissed her right on the spot. Having moved into Cuthbert Close just one week before her due date, she was still surrounded by packing boxes and the only room that had been properly sorted was the twins’ nursery. Neither she, nor James, had eaten a proper meal in weeks. Beth was a godsend, though she claimed to simply be doing the neighbourly thing and welcoming them to Cuthbert Close.

  As James tucked into the lasagne, Alex found her mouth moving in time with his. Nearly six years after that first casserole, Beth was still supplying the family with meals – two every week, for which Alex insisted on paying $30 to at least cover the ingredients. She had to put the money into Beth’s letterbox, as her neighbour found it too embarrassing to accept it in person.

  ‘Would you like a bit?’ James pushed the plate towards her.

  Alex took the outstretched fork. ‘I’m famished,’ she admitted.

  Tell him why you’re famished. Tell him.

  ‘But, actually,’ she held the fork in the air, ‘I need to tell you something first.’ She slid the plate back towards James, who quickly resumed eating, perhaps worried Alex would change her mind and want more. Beth’s meals were too good to share.

  ‘I … I think I’m pregnant.’

  James started coughing. The fork clattered out of his hand and he clutched his throat.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Alex leapt out of her chair and thumped her husband on the back as he struggled for breath.

  ‘Is this helping?’ She struck a few more blows between his shoulder blades. ‘More?’

  ‘Please,’ James croaked. ‘Stop hitting me.’ He cleared his throat a couple of times and took a large gulp of water. ‘What did you say?’ His eyes narrowed.

  ‘What? Before you started choking?’

  ‘I wasn’t choking. It just went down the wrong way, I think.’

  ‘Yes, probably, I mean, I’ve never heard of anyone choking on pasta, it’s so soft …’

  ‘Alex,’ James interrupted, his cheeks flushed and his hair now a little skew-whiff after the near-choking. ‘What did you just tell me?’

  She sat down again and clasped her hands in her lap. ‘Well, as you know, we got home this afternoon and found poor Henny, dead, and then I felt like I was going to throw up and—’

  James put his hand over his wife’s. ‘Are you pregnant?’

  She nodded slowly and whispered, ‘I think so.’

  He pushed himself away from the table. ‘But how? I don’t get it. I mean, the doctors told us it would never be possible, except with IVF again.’ He sat back and ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s a miracle. I can’t believe it. Another baby,’ he said in wonder.

  ‘Possibly another baby,’ said Alex.

  ‘What do you mean possibly?’ His eyes zeroed in on her.

  ‘The pregnancy test I used was out of date, so it might be a dodgy result.’ She stood and emptied the contents of the washing basket onto the bench.

  James drummed the table. ‘Not possible,’ he said confidently. ‘You can get false negatives from these things but false positives are pretty unheard of.’

  Alex blinked. She wasn’t surprised at his knowledge. Throughout the IVF process and the pregnancy, he’d read obsessively about anything related to conception and birth. Once, she’d caught him commenting on a post for InVitro-Mums, the go-to website for IVF mothers.

  ‘It’s meant for women, you know,’ Alex had pointed out.

  ‘It doesn’t say that anywhere,’ said James peering at the screen.

  ‘It’s not called InVitroDads.’ But James had continued to comment as LuvBubs007, in honour of his James Bond obsession.

  Alex picked up a random sock from the washing pile. ‘I guess I’m pregnant then.’

  ‘Shit. I mean, wow. I can’t believe it.’ James came around the table to take Alex in his arms. ‘Another baby.’

  The amazement in his voice made Alex drop the sock. She turned to hug him properly and buried her head in his shoulder.

  ‘I’m scared,’ she said quietly.

  ‘What? That you’ll miscarry? That’s normal, babe. You can’t do anything about that.’

  ‘It’s not that. I’m scared I won’t be able to cope.’

  James pulled back. ‘You’ve never not coped with anything in your life. We’ll cope together like we always do.’ He took her hands in his. ‘You said this about the twins, remember? That you didn’t know how you’d do it.’

  ‘Yes, but that was because I didn’t know what was coming. But now I do know what’s coming, and I’m even more frightened. I mean, look at me, still folding washing that’s been sitting at the bottom of the stairs for five days. I barely ever cook a meal and I can’t even remember the last time I read a book.’

  ‘Read a book?’ James raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s something I used to do all the time before we had the twins. Now, I’m lucky if I read a page before falling asleep.’

  ‘Book reading isn’t exactly essential though, is it?’

  Alex started flinging folded socks back into the basket. ‘It is to me,’ she said huffily. ‘You could barely get a book out of my hands as a kid and now the only time I really get to read is when I’m doing it to the kids and I’m sorry, but stories about dorks and farts and treehouses aren’t exactly my literary cup of tea.’

  James stood by her side and quietly started re-coupling the socks that Alex had been flinging. ‘You could quit your job, you know. Take a break for a year or two.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘Have the baby. Spend more time with the boys.’ He nudged her and smiled. ‘Read books.’

  ‘It’s a lovely idea.’ Alex sighed. ‘But there’s this thing called a mortgage and ours has a scary number of zeros in it.’

  ‘We could live on my wage for a while.’

  ‘How? By treating food and electricity as desirables rather than essentials?’ James looked hurt, and Alex patted his arm. ‘I appreciate the sentiment, babe, but given our debts, I just don’t see how it could work.’

  ‘It could if we moved out of the city. Maybe up north? It’d be closer to Mum and Dad.’

  Alex snorted. ‘I’d rather die than move up there. Actually, I probably would die … of boredom.’

  Every year, James, Alex and the boys made their annual pilgrimage four hours north, to visit James’s parents in their seaside retirement village. While it was fun to play half-court tennis and lawn bowls for the week, Alex was always more than pleased to see the gabled roofs of Cuthbert Close coming back into view. The perfect thing about where they lived was that it gave them the best of both worlds. If they wanted peace and tranquillity, they could stay home and laze about the backyard, but if they wanted a little culture or excitement, the citywas only twenty minutes away, and you could barely set foot outside the street without falling over a cute new restaurant or boutique.

  Or at least, that was the theory.

  The reality was that ever since the twins could walk, the backyard had been a war zone, and because of work, Alex never had the energy to attend a concert or even a dinner.

  Had they lost their reasons for being there? She paused
and fingered a hole in one of Noah’s school shirts. Why exactly were they running themselves so ragged? Slaves to a mortgage that never seemed to get any smaller?

  Maybe the pregnancy was a sign that something had to change?

  James had said nothing, and from the hunch of his shoulders, Alex could tell he was hurt by her disparaging comments about his parents’ hometown.

  She squeezed his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, babe. It’s not the worst idea.’

  ‘I know it’s not. The kids love Porpoise Point. They never want to come home.’

  But their idea of a good time is doing forty-five burps in a row. Alex resisted the urge to remind him.

  ‘I’m just not sure what we’d actually do there?’

  ‘I could set up a practice,’ said James. ‘The coast is crying out for health professionals.’

  Mostly because everyone who lives there is nearly dead.

  ‘I’m just not sure what I’d do there? I know I could spend more time with the kids, which would be fantastic. But I also know I’d need more.’

  ‘More than a new baby?’

  Alex nodded sadly. ‘I know myself. I’d go crazy. Even though our lives here aren’t exactly exciting, I think I’d feel trapped if we lived in such a small town.’

  ‘Don’t you feel trapped here? In your job?’

  Alex opened her mouth but no words came out. She sat down, suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion.

  Living in Cuthbert Close was supposedly about giving themselves freedom and options. But the mortgage made it a type of imprisonment, albeit one that came with charming federation houses and hundred-year-old fig trees.

  ‘Well, what if we asked your parents to come over from Perth for a while to help us out?’ James folded one of her bras, the elastic completely gone. It looked almost as tired and saggy as Alex felt.

  ‘Have you forgotten last time?’

  Alex’s own memories of the period were hazy. The twins had only been a few weeks old, after all. But she did remember her mum and dad, skulking about the house like cats around water. Her mum, too nervous to touch the convection stove, despite Alex’s repeated assurances that it would not burn her, and her dad, who, after inspecting James’s fridge full of craft beer, confessed that all he wanted was a VB.

  ‘You’ve got to get over this chip on your shoulder.’ James placed her bra on the pile.

  Alex stiffened. ‘You have no idea what it’s like.’

  If James’s and Alex’s childhoods were cuts of meat, hers was mince, and his was rump. She wasn’t ashamed, far from it. Who didn’t love a meatloaf? No, happiness hadn’t been the problem. Growing up, her parents had sacrificed everything for her education, and it had worked. They were the little rockets that could – propelling her into a privileged planet of university and a high-paying job, everything they’d all worked for, except now they lived on different sides of the universe and it was awkward. She’d offered to help, financially, to get them out of working in their corner store and into retirement – a little closer to Alex’s own privileged planet – but they wouldn’t hear of it. Just give those little boys everything you never had. That’s all we want.

  James kissed her head. ‘I know, I know. You’re scotch fillet, and they’re mince, and my parents are rump, and our kids are junior burgers.’ He smiled. ‘But we’re all cut from the same cow, aren’t we?’

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ said Alex affectionately.

  ‘Well, I’m a piece of meat, after all. But seriously, whatever we decide about this new little beef pattie, it doesn’t change the fact that I am absolutely over the moon and one hundred per cent there for you. Even if it turns out to not be a pregnancy at all.’ He whispered in her ear, ‘But I secretly think you’re a better miracle worker than you realise, and we’ll work something out … together.’ He rose, his arms full of neatly folded washing. ‘Now, I’m going to put this lot away. You just relax.’

  He closed the door softly and Alex felt tears beginning to pool in her eyes. Oh hell, she must be pregnant, crying at the drop of a hat over everything. But James! What a lovely, lovely man. She had absolutely won the lottery of husbands when she married him, to the point where she sometimes felt that the union was perhaps an unequal exchange. He always referred to her as the brains of the marriage, and proudly declared his status as a ‘kept man’ to anyone who’d listen.

  But Alex knew the truth.

  It was James who was the glue of the whole shebang. He was the one who got the boys off to school, and mostly picked them up from after-school care. Whatever he did it was seamless – no guinea pig funerals required. He made the lunches and kept across the school admin and was generally more patient with the boys than Alex could ever hope to be. In fact, he was so capable that she occasionally felt redundant in her own family. She was the main breadwinner, yes. But apart from the money, what did she actually contribute, apart from an extra layer of guilt?

  She wiped her eyes using a pair of Noah’s Spider-Man underpants that had gone unnoticed in James’ collection of the clean washing, and went into the kitchen to switch on the dishwasher. At the sink, she paused. The light in Cara’s shed was still on. She must be out there, working, which she often did after Poppy had gone to bed.

  Wiping her eyes, Alex suddenly felt very wide awake. Crying always did that to her. Maybe Cara would be up for a chat? Despite being younger than Alex by quite some years, she was always a source of calm and wisdom, probably because of everything she’d been through with her own husband. Grief had a habit of making people grow up very quickly.

  She checked her watch. Nearly 9:30 pm. Normally at this time, she’d be getting into her pyjamas and removing her make-up. But not now. Now she felt wired and in need of conversation. She needed to talk this through and find a solution. Cara would be a perfect sounding board.

  She scribbled out a note to James and left it where he would see.

  Popped over to Cara’s for a bit. Back by 10. Xx

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cara squinted at the computer screen, her eyes burning with fatigue. Her search had yielded no results. Probably because she didn’t quite know what she was searching for. Money, essentially, and that meant extra work. But in her industry, jobs weren’t advertised like they were for accountants or lawyers. Styling work came through word of mouth or a nebulous thing called ‘exposure’ – the number of followers and ‘likes’ you had. She’d scoured through her social networks, looking for any clues regarding opportunities, new food sites or magazines. She’d even reached out to a couple of former clients who she hadn’t heard from in a while.

  Nothing.

  She scrolled through emails, quickly glancing through the latest Primal Guy newsletter. Oh, dear. The chicken bars sounded disgusting. Who would buy such a thing?

  There was a minor crackle on the baby monitor and Cara turned up the volume to make sure it wasn’t Poppy, or a robber.

  Nothing. All quiet.

  Usually, the hours after her daughter went to bed were her creative time in the she-cave that Pete had built for her – mini photographic studio at one end with a couple of lights and a white wall, and a mini-kitchen at the other with sink, microwave, a small oven and double-gas burner. She called it ‘moodling’ – making things, doodling, playing around, basically. Failures went in the bin, successes went up on her Instagram account ‘Sweet Alchemy’. To Cara, that’s what baking was – a form of transformational magic. Last night she’d concocted a dessert ‘burger’ with a disc of candied beetroot, a firm chocolate mousse as the patty, a square of yellow jelly as the cheese, and all of it sandwiched in a sweet brioche bun. The photo had attracted three thousand ‘likes’ – not that Cara was particularly driven by the adulation, but she could see its use in terms of reaching potential clients. The magazines she worked for certainly loved it and made much of her ‘reach’.

  She replied to a couple of comments on the burger, then returned to the flashing cursor in her search engine.

  Jobs that make you a lot
of money quickly

  She clicked and held her breath. When the results came up she exhaled. No suggestions of drug dealing, thank goodness, or any other illegal activity. She clicked through to an article titled ‘Fifteen Jobs that Could Make You an Instant Millionaire’. The list was fairly predictable – doctor, surgeon, investment banker, software architect – all things that required specific skills that a food stylist simply didn’t have. Then there were the ones that required a huge dose of luck, like writing a bestselling novel, or becoming a YouTube star or blogger.

  ‘Yes, because it’s so easy to make yourself go viral,’ Cara commented to herself.

  On the last page she stopped.

  ‘Entrepreneur, inventor, online seller, create multiple streams of income,’ she murmured, and leant back from the screen.

  She was creative. She was inventive. Not in a gadget type of way, but over the years, through countless food shoots, she’d learnt that she saw things in a different way to other people. She had a knack of composing objects and patterns so that they seemed fresh and surprising, but totally right. Didn’t everyone see the world like that? Wasn’t it obvious there was a right and a wrong way to make a group of objects look their best? Apparently not, given the way people oohed and aahed over her culinary compositions and told her they’d never thought to do it like that.

  But Cara didn’t know any other way. It was simply what she felt. Instinctive. In recent years, her work had taken a darker turn that had only served to make it even more popular.

  Surely that could be translated into a new line of work?

  At the tap on the window, Cara startled. Poppy? A bad dream perhaps? But she would have heard her on the monitor, if that was the case.

  Cara hurried to the shed door and scraped it back to find her pale and frowning neighbour standing behind it.

  Beth.

  ‘What’s wrong? Are the kids all right?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, they’re fine. Everyone’s fine.’ She touched Cara’s arm. ‘I know I shouldn’t have bothered you, and it’s nothing. I’ll come back in the morning.’ She turned to leave.