The Undercurrent

by Paula Weston

  ‘Oh come on, even you have to admit Pax Fed isn’t the villain this time around.’

  Angie raises her eyebrows, dangerous. ‘Excuse me?’

  Most people blanch in the face of an Angie De Marchi eyeballing. Not Vee. She’s known her long enough to see through the snark. Some days Angie wishes she’d at least pretend to flinch.

  ‘Claws in, Ange. Do you honestly believe they’d blow up their own building to get at you? You haven’t written a word about them in two years.’

  ‘You know they’re behind the blackmail.’

  ‘I don’t have proof of that and neither do you. And let’s face it, if they’d seen that footage, they’d be interested in a lot more than keeping you quiet.’

  Angie scratches at the label on the wine bottle. ‘Either way they’ve won again, haven’t they? The media pack’s already bought the story that I’ve been plotting against Pax Fed and that I’d put Jules in danger to strike at them. And now they’re willing to believe I’d kill people to do it.’ The label shreds under her fingernail.

  ‘They have to believe it,’ Vee says, gentler now. ‘Otherwise they’ve dragged your name through the mud for no reason.’

  Angie rolls the label scraps into a ball between her thumb and forefinger and flicks it into the sink. Her so-called mates in the media bought the lie that she incited Jules to set fire to the Pax Fed school lab so a gas main would explode. It was totally believable that Angie had escalated her attacks from printed accusation to criminal activity. After all, wasn’t she the one leading the protests in the city every weekend? Calling the Paxton family to account for Mike’s death? Accusing the army of being accomplices for the loss of soldiers in the name of shareholder profit?

  Her career was dismantled in a single news cycle. Before the school fire she was a respected investigative journalist, founder of the Agitators and promoter of nonviolent resistance. Not to mention war widow. Afterwards she was a hypocrite and a criminal. A Bad Mother. No charges were laid against her but the damage was done. Her mates smeared her reputation and Pax Fed stepped in and blacklisted her around the country. Angie wore the lie then and she wears it now. It’s that, or risk Jules being exposed.

  ‘And here we are two years down the track and we’re right back where we started: Jules is in the news, the Agitators are being blamed for an attack on Pax Fed and I’m prime suspect for pulling the strings from a distance.’

  Jules flings the tea towel onto the bench. ‘None of this would be our problem if I’d listened to you.’

  Angie sits forward. Finally.

  ‘This isn’t your fault, Jules,’ Vee says.

  Jules simmers at Angie. ‘You told me not to go.’

  ‘Not because I thought that was going to happen. I knew they wouldn’t be able to see past your last name, that they’d use you to get information about me.’

  ‘And you were right as usual. You’re all Bradford Paxton talked about.’

  ‘You think I wanted that for you? I told you not to go because I didn’t want those arseholes having the power to make you feel the way you do right now.’

  Jules snatches back the tea towel from the bench and folds it down to a neat square. Angie spots a muscle twitch under her right eye the way it always does when Jules is smothering her anger and wishes she would just let it out. Angie wouldn’t care if Jules blew the power in the entire house—even set the microwave on fire again. The kid needs to vent. Angie’s convinced it’s what feeds the charge beneath Jules’ skin: year after year of repressed rage.

  ‘Just say it.’

  Angie raises her eyebrows. ‘Say what?’

  ‘That I’m a sell-out. I would’ve taken that job in a heartbeat if they’d offered it to me and you know it.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ Vee says, gently. ‘A job’s a job. No judgment here.’

  ‘That’s not what Mum thinks.’

  Angie bangs down her glass and wine sloshes up the side. ‘How do you think I feel that you had to even consider taking a job with them?’

  ‘We have to pay our rent and eat.’

  ‘I thought your Vet Affairs payments were going up?’ Vee says.

  ‘There’s another hold-up in the Senate. Too many war widows and disabled veterans these days, Vee. We’re a drain on the welfare budget.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me things were so tight? I’ll ask around the department, see if there’s any comms work we can outsource.’

  ‘Yeah, that’ll help your career.’

  Vee’s not long been in the job as Queensland State Manager for the Defence Department’s Science and Technology Group. Her long-standing friendship with Angie means she’s always working twice as hard as everyone else to prove her integrity.

  ‘I don’t care, Ange. I want to help.’

  Angie pushes back from the table and drags her fingers through her hair. ‘How did we get to this point? If it wasn’t for the VA payments and Jules’ shifts at the Souk, we’d be living on the bloody streets. I can barely scrounge enough underground freelance work to pay our rent. God, Mike would be appalled if he could see us.’

  Jules’ face crumples. She turns back to the stove, picks at a fleck of dried sauce on the stovetop. Wipes her cheek on her shoulder.

  Shit.

  Why did she drag Mike into the conversation? It never helps. It’s too raw, his absence in their lives too big. More damage. It’s all Angie ever seems to do.

  Vee catches Angie’s eye. She knows that look. They stare at each other for a full ten seconds before Vee gets up from the table and joins Jules.

  ‘How’s dinner?’ She leans over the pot and waves the aroma in her direction. ‘Smells delish.’

  ‘I’m fine, Vee.’

  ‘I know you are, sweets, but it’s okay not to be. You don’t always have to keep everything bottled up. Here.’ Vee reaches back for the third glass on the table and holds it for Angie to fill. ‘Have a drink with us.’

  Jules’ eyes slide to Angie. They haven’t worked out if alcohol dulls the charge or makes it harder for Jules to keep track of it. Angie shrugs. ‘Up to you.’

  Jules accepts the wine and takes a small, measured sip. Puts the glass back on the table. ‘Happy?’

  Vee tucks a hair behind Jules’ ear. Angie watches as Jules closes her eyes for a second. It needles her, reminds her of all the ways she’s failed as a mother.

  ‘Honey, I’ll be happy when you and your bad-tempered mother get to live a normal life.’

  Angie snorts. She has no idea what the future holds for her and Jules, but she’s confident ‘normal’ won’t be factoring into it.

  12

  Jules can’t sleep. The last three days have left her wrung out and incapable of relaxing. The undercurrent is muted but constant, humming away like an annoying kid in the back of the class.

  Her window is cracked open enough to let in the midnight air, and with it the promise of rain and a cooler day tomorrow. The afternoon cloud cover hasn’t lifted and there’s no hint of moon or stars. The only light comes from the TV in the lounge room. She rolls over and pulls the sheet up to her shoulder, burrows further into her pillow.

  Vee’s been gone for an hour but Angie’s stayed up. She’s out there watching the late night news, letting it flay her.

  Jules exhales, rubs at burning eyes. None of this is new. Angie used to get like this before Mike died but it’s worse now. For as long as Jules can remember, Angie’s been fighting someone or something. Occupational hazard, her dad used to say. The difference was that her dad knew how to snap Angie out of it. Whether it was the obsessive moods—when she’d be fixated for days at a time hunting down a story lead—or those moments of despondency when she’d vent about the destruction of society by fearmongering governments, soulless corporations and narcissistic technology.

  The whole planet is winding up, Mike. Can’t you feel it? Something has to give.

  Sometimes her dad would argue with Angie and sometimes he’d ignore her. Other times he’d crack a joke an
d distract her. He always knew which approach would bring her back. Jules is still figuring it out.

  It’s only in the dark that she lets herself miss him.

  She misses the sounds that were his alone. The laugh, those loud burps after every meal. His voice cracking a little when he talked about fallen soldiers; how he’d rage at the ref when the rugby was on TV. She misses his stubbled face and the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. Mostly, though, she misses the hugs.

  Her dad was built for endurance, for absorbing the recoil of high-powered weapons. Even after that first time she shocked him, when she discovered nobody else’s body hummed the way hers did, he barely flinched. He wanted to understand how it worked so he could help her live with it, as if it was a speech impediment she had to overcome. She failed miserably. She set fires and burned him but he held her tight anyway. Coaxing her past the fear to try again.

  She hadn’t realised how much she relied on those hugs until they were gone.

  Her throat closes and the first hot tear slips out. Jules fights the second. If Angie hears her crying it’s only going to make things worse. The last thing she needs is her mother depressed. Or worse: angry. That’s when she starts sending abusive messages to her old journo mates, ripping the scabs off those wounds too.

  Jules lets out her breath and wipes her cheek on the pillow. Convinces herself she’s in control, at least of herself. She rolls onto her back, squeezes her eyes shut and tries to will herself to sleep. No; her brain isn’t interested. It’s too busy picking over tonight’s conversation.

  The shooters must have been coming for her. If not, why were they there? They didn’t hurt anyone and they didn’t take hostages. Nobody’s taken credit for the attack: not for the ram raid and explosion, not for the masked intruders. The one thing she does know is that Ryan was there because she was. He told her that much himself. How did she not notice it when she stepped into that lift? The way he reacted, the nervous spike in his energy. The fact he looked nothing like other Pax Fed employees. He had a knife in his boot for God’s sake.

  What was it he said to her?

  You make people nervous.

  She sees him on his knees in front of her, waiting to give her a boost out of the elevator car. Remembers the way he went still when she hiked up her skirt, his lips so close she could feel his breath on her thigh—

  The charge buzzes and intensifies. Jules throws back the sheet and sits up, embarrassed by the flare of heat between her legs.

  Get a grip.

  She shakes the tension from her wrists and pushes hair from her eyes. The charge settles but doesn’t completely subside. Jules swings her legs over the side of the bed, waits for the coolness of the floorboards to seep into her bare feet. Her reaction isn’t a surprise, not really. She’s had sex—once—with a cute gamer from school with dimples and low-slung jeans who asked her out every day for a month. They went to the movies twice before she took him home one Friday afternoon when Angie was out with Vee. He was gentle and grateful and it meant she could get ‘it’ out of the way without too much pressure.

  Then there was a boy she really liked in the year above her, who asked her to the school formal. Total disaster. She hadn’t meant to hurt Kyle. She quite liked it when his hand slipped under her dress while they kissed in a shadowy corner of the school hall—a little too much as it turned out. At least Kyle was so drunk that when she accidentally shocked him he thought it was static electricity. She hasn’t come close to an intimate connection since.

  Still.

  There are more important things for her to think about than how Ryan’s lips might feel on her thighs. Like, who sent him into that building? And what would he have done if she’d had less self-control and hurt him? Both are far bigger questions. And yet here she is sitting in the dark flushed with wanting.

  Is this what it’s like for everyone at eighteen? Or is it more intense for her because of the current? Jules blows out her breath. This is what happens when you don’t have a life. One of these days she’s going to have to find the courage to get one. Right now she’ll settle for a drink of water.

  She treads quietly on the way to the kitchen, hoping Angie has fallen asleep on the couch. But no, there she is propped up with cushions, fixated on the TV. Her face dances in the light of an ad showing a clutch of emaciated South Sudanese children.

  ‘Mum, go to bed.’

  ‘Wait for it,’ Angie says, not turning her head.

  Tom Paxton appears onscreen, waist-high in a field of golden wheat. Jules sighs and fills her glass from the tap. She’s seen this ad a hundred times, heard her mother’s response to it a hundred and one.

  Angie points at the screen on cue.

  ‘How does he think Third World countries are going to pay for all the GMO grain he wants to force our farmers to grow? Most famine is the result of corrupt regimes, not lack of opportunity or know-how to grow crops. Fix that, and half the world won’t be starving.’ Angie’s in full flight, hands going. ‘You know the Paxtons are going to get their legislation through, right? They’re going to turn our farmers into fast-food producers or drive them off their land. Force them to buy their seed every year, not save any from the previous crop like farmers have been doing for thousands of years. And don’t get me started on those fucking mutant sheep.’

  It could be worse, it could be the ad for Bradford Paxton’s greenhouse experiment in Pakistan. The one reliant on water from the desalination plant her dad died protecting.

  Jules wipes the sink and heads for the couch. She lifts Angie’s feet so she can sit down and rest them on her knees. Not for the first time she wishes she had something to offer other than a shock of electricity: why couldn’t her freak ability be something that soothed people?

  Angie is staring at Tom Paxton as the old man crushes a head of wheat between his palms and lets the breeze carry the husks away.

  ‘When was the last time he appeared in public?’

  Jules frowns. ‘Isn’t he supposed to be sick?’

  ‘He didn’t even make an appearance this week. He sent out the pitbull instead.’ Angie means Peta Paxton, Tom’s daughter. She’s been the public face of the company for more than a year, although her push has been more towards military investment than the agricultural side of the business. News reports say Peta and Bradford are competing for control of the Pax Fed board, adding weight to rumours about Tom Paxton’s declining health.

  ‘Let’s hope the old bastard is dying a slow and agonising death.’

  ‘God, Mum, that’s a terrible thing to say. You don’t mean that.’

  They’ve been gouged too deeply by death for her mother to wish that on anyone. Even Tom Paxton. Angie must be a little pissy—or at least pissy enough for the full measure of her bitterness to bubble up.

  Angie sees her distaste and slumps back against the armrest. ‘I’m sure Papa Paxton is fine. It’s not like he can’t afford the best medical treatment in the world.’

  More emaciated children on the screen. This time it’s a campaign for UNICEF. Jules squeezes Angie’s shin.

  ‘Come on, time for bed.’

  Angie throws her head back and stares at the ceiling. ‘I didn’t tell you what happened down the plaza earlier this week,’ she says.

  Jules braces. Who’d she abuse this time?

  ‘I’d come out of the supermarket and one of the UNICEF guys saw me. Somali kid, grew up in a refugee camp. Anyway, he’s showing me the photos of the camps and telling me how “even the smallest contribution can help”, so I get out my purse and scratch together what I can. Ten bucks—pathetic, right? But it’s everything I had on me. And the kid apologises and gives me the usual spiel about how they can’t take cash but I can give a monthly donation. Direct debit app. So I have to explain that I can’t afford to commit to a donation every month because I can’t guarantee we’ll have it, even ten bucks.’

  ‘Mum…’

  ‘So I’m standing there in my clean clothes with my trolley half-full of grocerie
s, looking at photos of emaciated babies, telling this guy I can’t afford to help him. And next thing I’m frigging crying, so he starts apologising. How fucked up is that, Jules? He’s apologising to me?’

  ‘Yeah, Mum, it’s totally fucked up.’

  Angie lets her repeat the f-bomb, so Jules knows she’s caught up in her story. Jules also knows she has to redirect the conversation right now because the image of her bulletproof mother crying in the middle of the plaza inexplicably terrifies her.

  ‘Mum, who was the guy in the van?’

  Her mother blinks and changes gears. Gathers herself into a more recognisable shape. ‘No idea.’

  ‘You knew him.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t know where from.’

  ‘Where could it be from?’

  ‘I’m forty-four, Jules. Do you know how many people I’ve met in my life?’

  ‘Did you ever work with him? Was he a contact?’

  Angie shakes her head. ‘No.’

  ‘What about the army?’

  Her mother pulls back her legs and sits up, crossing her ankles. ‘What makes you say that?’

  A shrug. ‘He spoke like Dad, like he’s used to people doing what he says.’

  They watch each other for a moment. Jules swallows, keeps the emotion in check.

  ‘No,’ Angie says finally. ‘Your dad was wary of letting me loose on anyone connected with the military. I only ever met soldiers who served with him and that guy wasn’t one of them.’

  ‘But he used your middle name and he said it like he knew you.’

  She blows out her breath. ‘I know.’

  ‘What about guys…before Dad?’

  Angie’s eyebrows go up, dangerous. ‘You think I wouldn’t remember someone I’ve slept with? You think there were that many?’

  ‘No, I’m saying it was a long time ago.’

  ‘Back in the days before your dad I spent more time in a holding cell than I did in nightclubs, so—’ Her eyes go wide.

  ‘What?’

  She sits up straight, the anger dropping away. ‘I know who he is.’

  13