by Rose Hartley
‘That’s amazing.’
My mind went back to Monday night, and the moment when Rueben almost kissed me, and I decided to say something sexy.
‘Do you ever wonder who invented hairdryers?’ I asked.
He thought for a moment. ‘Nope.’
‘Me neither.’
Back at my desk, I did what had recently become a depressing routine: took out my wallet and examined every crevice, pouch and card slot in case I found a spare note tucked away in there. Nothing.
Nothing, except for a small cream card embossed with Mrs Fitz-Hammond’s details. I suddenly realised I had the best hope of saving the Nicholson Street Angels’ finances sitting right there in my hand.
‘What the hell,’ I muttered, and dialled her phone number.
Mrs Fitz-Hammond answered, which surprised me a little – I was half expecting a butler to pick up the phone.
‘Mrs Fitz-Hammond? It’s Maggie Cotton calling from the Nicholson Street Angels. I’m the one who was there that day you dropped off the Yves Saint Laurent.’
‘Ah yes, the one who taught me the phrase “camel toe”. Such a useful saying.’ She sounded like she was three brandies deep.
‘That’s the one. I’m just calling because we’re running a fundraising drive for the Angels at the moment. Both the shelters are in urgent need of maintenance and—’
‘How much do you want?’ she interrupted.
‘Ah . . .’ I coughed. ‘Well, that’s up to you, I suppose.’ I really should have practised my pitch before I picked up the phone.
‘Hmph.’ It sounded like a noise of irritation, as if I wasn’t being straightforward. ‘Why don’t you come around for afternoon tea? I had UberEats deliver doughnuts this morning from that delightful place in Brunswick East. I couldn’t choose between the flavours, so I ordered rather too many.’
For a moment I freaked out at the thought of knocking on the presumably giant door of her presumably giant house and asking for a donation. But then I thought of the doughnuts, and my stomach rumbled.
‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘When?’
‘Well, what are you doing now?’
I excused myself from work without telling Agnes or Rueben where I was going. If this gamble didn’t pay off, I didn’t want them knowing I’d annoyed our best source of designer clothing. I drove to the address on her card, which was in Toorak, of course. My fuel light had finally come on but I decided I could probably make it there and back without emptying the tank completely. The house was a large Victorian stone villa with an enormous garden packed with every type of dahlia that could possibly exist. I parked near the wrought-iron gates and trudged up the gravel path to the front door.
She seemed even smaller when she answered the door, and impossibly thin. If she wore sunglasses she could probably be mistaken for Joan Didion.
‘Hi Mrs Fitz-Hammond,’ I said.
She craned her neck to look behind me, then frowned. ‘You didn’t bring that handsome man?’
‘This is a Qing dynasty vase,’ Mrs Fitz-Hammond said, ‘though sadly not the rare kind. And this,’ she gestured to a man’s anguished portrait, painted in rather violent strokes of colour, ‘is a Sidney Nolan. My second husband chose it.’
I had a salted-caramel doughnut in my mouth, so I couldn’t utter much more than ‘Mmm’ at each of the expensive items she was showing me in her darkly furnished rooms.
She was taking me on a tour of the house, which was bigger on the inside that it had appeared from the street. Her walk was elegant but lacked the bounding quality she’d demonstrated in the Angels’ shop, which I attributed to her disappointment that Rueben hadn’t come. It seemed she only bounded for handsome men. If I’d known, I would have brought him, as I suspected she might have been freer with her chequebook.
‘My first husband left me. Men do that, you know.’ We were coming back towards the front sitting room, where she had shown me her collection of Danish mid-century glass vases. She settled on a sofa upholstered in blue and cream striped silk and crossed her spindly legs at the knees. She was wearing cropped orange and black trousers and a matching jacket with a popped collar. It was a fetching outfit.
‘Men leave,’ she reiterated. ‘Either they find someone younger, or they die. Just pop off. Pop!’ She flicked her fingers. ‘It’s a useful thing to learn early in life. Don’t get too attached to any of them.’
‘Gotcha,’ I said. ‘See, I don’t get good advice like this from my mother.’
‘Now.’ She folded her hands and I thought she was going to introduce her chequebook. ‘Why don’t you try another doughnut?’
It dawned on me then that she might be lonely. All at once it felt manipulative to mention the fundraiser, like I’d be one of those people who trawl old folks’ homes for affection-starved oldies and weasel themselves into their wills. I selected a strawberry doughnut and, instead of delivering the pitch I’d planned, leant back into the sofa. ‘How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Eighty-seven,’ she said promptly. ‘Why, do I look close to death? I plan to be cryogenically frozen when I die, in case they find a cure for death in the future.’
‘Not to be rude or anything, but did you have a lot of lovers? I mean, I saw that photo of you in the hallway – the one in the bikini – they must have been all over you.’
She smiled, beatific. ‘Oh, hundreds. I’ve outlived all the wimps I loved in the sixties, though.’ She waggled her finger at me. ‘Girls these days waste all their time on one lousy man. I want to shake them!’
She had a lot of opinions on modern relationships, and when she discovered I knew nothing about her other interest – theatre – she stuck to the topic at hand. When it got close to five-thirty, I stood up to leave. She tried to press another doughnut on me but I shook my head.
‘I’m going to my mother’s house for dinner,’ I said, trying to give the impression that I was a good daughter.
‘Well, come around again soon. And bring that nice man from the Nicholson Street Angels shop, if you like.’ She sighed at the memory of Rueben. ‘Men are like beautiful flowers. So fragile, in so many ways. My fourth husband . . .’ Her eyes moistened. ‘He was a good one. Such an ego, but ah, when he was in a good mood, he would light up a room. Come over next week and I’ll tell you about him.’
I knocked, then remembered that Mum was going to have trouble coming to the door.
‘Mum,’ I shouted through the letterbox flap in the front door, ‘don’t get out of bed, I’m coming through the window.’
No response.
After checking that no one was lurking in my darkened bedroom with a rolling pin, I slid up the window and eased myself in, then went to the front door to let Dot enter, since she was too haughty to climb in through windows and had simply sat down on the verandah to wait.
‘Mum?’ I called, creeping towards her bedroom.
‘In here.’ She was trussed up in blankets, one arm flung across her forehead like a fainting damsel from the Victorian era.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I don’t feel well.’
‘It’s the painkillers,’ I said. ‘I’ll make dinner.’
I made the Maggie Special, scrambled eggs on olive bread, and brought it to Mum in bed.
‘Ever considered adding something green to the food you eat?’ Mum said, eyeing the plate.
‘Sorry, Your Highness,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow night I’ll cook you up an Ottolenghi salad with freaking pomegranate seeds.’
Then it hit me: tomorrow night was Jen’s wedding rehearsal dinner. Mum noticed my face fall.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘I organised it and now I’m not even invited.’ I burst into tears and sat down hard on the bed. Mum put the plate aside to pat me on the shoulder.
‘There, there,’ she said. ‘If it’s any consolation, you’d look absolutely terrible in a dress with that black eye.’
The next morning, I
woke to the sound of my phone ringing, muffled because it was buried under some dirty socks on the floor. I rolled over, blinking in the morning light and debating whether to answer, but when I pushed the socks aside and saw Jen’s name on the screen I nearly fell out of bed in my haste to pick up the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey. Can you come over?’ Jen’s voice sounded weird.
‘Uh, isn’t Jono there?’
‘He . . . went out.’ She cleared her throat.
‘Sure. I’ll be there in a sec. I mean, I’m at Mum’s, I’ll be half an hour.’
‘What, you’re not in the caravan?’
‘Caravan’s stolen,’ I said.
‘Shit,’ Jen replied.
‘Tell me about it.’
I had a micro-shower and threw on a pair of jeans and a ratty T-shirt. Mum’s old Ford was sitting unused in the garage, since she couldn’t drive with a broken leg, so I borrowed it to avoid having to stop for petrol, which I couldn’t have paid for anyway. The Saturday morning traffic wasn’t too bad and I reached Jen’s house a little after ten. Collingwood’s birds were tweeting in force on this bright morning and my spirits lifted with them. Tonight was Jen’s rehearsal dinner. She’d finally cracked and realised she didn’t want to celebrate without me.
Her face when she opened the door was slack and pale. ‘Hey. Come in.’
There were no smells in her house; no morning coffee, no scent of bacon, no perfume or lingering shower gel. She shuffled down the hall in her trackies and slumped down at the kitchen table.
‘Shall I make coffee?’ I asked hesitantly. She nodded.
It was the first time in my life that I’d made coffee for Jen instead of the other way around. I couldn’t remember if she took milk or sugar so I surreptitiously placed them on the table for her to fix it how she liked. I watched her pour a splash of milk into the mug and ignore the sugar, and noted it for next time.
‘So what’s happened?’ I asked.
She cleared her throat, like she’d done on the phone. ‘Well, nothing really. I mean, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.’
‘Okay, what’s not a big deal?’
She sipped her coffee slowly, fiddled with the sugar bowl and looked away.
‘Jen, come on. What is it?’ I asked again.
‘Could you . . . do you know . . . anything about the previous owners of your caravan?’
Not a question I was expecting. ‘The previous owners? Of my caravan? Aside from the fact that they were called Shane and Sheila or something?’
‘Is it possible – I mean, did they look like the sort of people who . . .’
‘Who what? What is this about?’
She clenched her fists. ‘I have crabs.’
Silence. ‘Crabs. As in, the kind you eat?’
‘No, Maggie, not the kind you eat. Pubic lice.’
‘Whoa.’ Jen had never had an STI before, but, as a nurse, she’d seen them all. Me, I’d had a stint of chlamydia as a reckless twenty-three-year-old and had been vigilant about condoms ever since.
‘That piece of shit,’ I said. ‘I’m gonna kill him.’
‘Jono says it’s not him!’ she said desperately. ‘Says he doesn’t have any crabs. He stormed out this morning when I asked if he’d been with anyone else. That’s why I thought . . . maybe I caught them from your caravan. I rolled on the bed once. Have you been itchy at all?’
I shook my head slowly. ‘No, I haven’t been itchy. No crabs. It’s not the caravan.’
‘It must be.’
‘It’s Jono. He’s lying to you.’
She pressed two fingers to her forehead, as if to ward off the words.
‘The wedding rehearsal is tonight,’ she whispered.
‘What, you’re going ahead with it?’
‘I can’t call it off,’ she said. ‘I have to believe him. He says he didn’t cheat.’
‘Remember how he was avoiding sex with you for a while back there?’
She shook her head. ‘No, no, I trust him.’
I decided not to press the issue. ‘How do you get rid of crabs?’
She waved one hand, eyes closed, like she was too embarrassed to look at me. Tears shone on her cheeks. ‘It’s easy. There’s a shampoo. I’ll shave, too. I have to get all my sheets and blankets treated, and wash all my clothes in hot water. It’s the best STI to get, as STIs go. No long-term damage.’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m gonna go and tidy up.’
I looked around. The house was spotless, but I let her go. She shuffled into the bedroom. I wondered if now was an inappropriate time to look in her fridge for something to eat for breakfast. I could really go some bacon, I thought, and maybe a hash brown.
I had a pan of bacon sizzling and was about to crack an egg into it when Jen came rushing back into the kitchen, brandishing a purple and white bottle.
‘That bastard!’ she screamed. ‘Look what I found in his suitcase.’
It was a bottle of crab shampoo.
Chapter 24
‘I knew he was average,’ Jen said. ‘I knew he was just another lump of a man who did remedial maths and spent his time shuffling between the top of the rig and the bottom of his beer glass. That he dropped his dacks to dance to “Eagle Rock” and knew all the words to every song on every Hunters and Collectors album and went to titty bars with his mates and would die without ever having read a novel and thought that a good holiday was going to Bali and drinking in every bar in Kuta in his Bintang singlet.’
Sirens from Hoddle Street floated into the kitchen, while shards of porcelain crunched gently under Jen’s boots and turned to dust. They were the remnants of a bowl painted with dainty roses that had been an engagement present from her Aunt Jennifer, who Jen was named after. Jen had thrown the bowl to the ground in anguish three minutes beforehand.
‘But he was my average guy,’ she said, ‘and I loved him. Because I’m average, too. I like yoga and my job and watching dating shows, and if the Starbucks near work hadn’t closed down I’d probably drink pumpkin spice lattes with every other basic white girl and I wouldn’t even be embarrassed about it. I didn’t care how he voted or whether he pronounced my father’s name correctly or whether he cared about climate change. All I asked was that he behave like a halfway decent person, and not screw somebody else and – give – me – crabs.’ She selected a glass jug from the engagement presents she’d lined up on the table and was about to toss it to the ground to join the remains of the bowl on the tiles when I stopped her.
‘You’re not average,’ I told her.
‘You’re the only one who thinks I’m special.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Everything I thought I was going to have has just vanished.’
I knew how she felt. Her whole future was spiralling away into a distant galaxy. All the dots on her timeline – cutting the cake on the dance floor, giving birth for the first time, celebrating wedding anniversaries – were spinning off to become stars that lit up someone else’s planet; whoever was unfortunate enough to end up being the future Mrs Jono instead of Jen. I opened my arms and she crumpled into them, the warm, shuddering friend I loved more than anyone else.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said into my shoulder. ‘You knew he was no good, and I didn’t want to hear it.’
‘I shouldn’t have been such an arse about it,’ I said. ‘I should have been more sensitive.’
She straightened up, shoulders back like her mother always instructed her, and then knelt to pick up the shards of the rose-painted bowl. ‘You’ll become sensitive when the Pope turns Protestant. But there was an obvious solution to the problem that I ignored the entire time I was with Jono.’
‘What’s that?’ The air was thick with the smell of salt, regret, and just a hint of next door’s homegrown weed.
‘I should have listened to your reasons for hating him,’ she said quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have written off your opinion just because you’re crap at relationships. Because you’re not a bad judge of character.’
‘And you were right.’ She dumped the broken porcelain into the bin.
‘Jen, slow down.’ I hurried after her, tripping over a mattress that someone had dumped on the street.
The sun was setting over Collingwood’s former factories, and Jen was stalking by them in a tight white lace minidress. She strode ahead of me, Miss Havisham bent on revenge, and I scurried to keep up, adjusting my dress.
After we had cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, I’d run her a bath and set up a small speaker on the edge of the vanity to play heartbreak songs, then left her to cry because she’d said she wanted to vent and wallow in sadness. When she emerged an hour and a half later, pink in the face and red in the eyes, I timidly asked if she wanted me to start calling people to cancel the rehearsal dinner. She shook her head and instead motioned for me to follow her into the bedroom, where she rummaged through her closet and pulled out a black silk dress.
‘Get dressed. Act normal,’ she commanded.
As usual, the clothes she lent me were excellent but didn’t fit properly. I was in a low-cut minidress that was loose in the bust and tight in the hips, and black satin-covered Karen Millen spike heels. I kept rolling my ankles trying to keep up with Jen.
‘Are you . . . are you going to do something vengeful?’ I asked, breathless.
‘I’m going to scoop out his eye with a sharp spoon,’ she said.
‘Wow.’ I rolled my ankle for the fourth time on the uneven asphalt. ‘I think I should call my mother. She loves revenge missions.’
‘Valerie’s coming,’ Jen said. ‘I already invited her.’
‘You know, you can still cancel tonight. I’ll make the phone call. I can say it’s my fault – I didn’t book the restaurant or something. You won’t have to explain anything, just quietly call off the wedding this week.’
Jen ignored me. Her mobile rang and she slowed down to look at it. ‘It’s Jono.’