Bonkers

by Michelle Holman

  ‘Linda Brogan?’ Jill bristled. ‘That’s the woman who killed my daughter!’

  ‘Jill, you can’t keep saying things like that,’ Brian said wearily. ‘Sherry told you, Lisa never gave way at the roundabout.’

  Jill thrust a finger at Dan. ‘His wife never had a driver’s licence!’

  Dan’s scalp started to itch. Lisa had told him she hadn’t given way. She had as good as admitted she was the cause of the accident.

  ‘Oh God…’ Sherry groaned, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. She was due on the nightshift in a few hours and could really do without this.

  Dan was trying to think of a reason Lisa needed to see a doctor, and could only come up with two: either her leg was giving her problems or she was pregnant. Could he get that lucky? He ignored the tiny voice of reason telling him an unplanned pregnancy would be the worst possible way to get Lisa to come back to him, but he didn’t care. He’d take whatever cards fate dealt him if it meant getting her to come home again.

  Dan was jolted from his thoughts when Sherry suddenly took hold of his arm and, pressing her knee into the back of his knee, shoved him hard towards the open door. Jill and Brian Jackson jumped back as Dan stumbled past them.

  ‘Hold on a mo—’ he protested, before finding himself outside the front door.

  ‘I have three crazy people in my house which is one more than I can deal with at a time,’ Sherry snapped. ‘I’ll speak to Lisa when she calls and tell her you want to see her but until then, Brogan, go home and leave me alone. I need to talk to my parents.’

  She closed the door firmly in Dan’s shocked face.

  Sherry led her parents into her kitchen and pulled out a third chair from her kitchen table.

  ‘Better get comfortable,’ she advised them. ‘It’s a long story.’

  Contrary to his hopes, Dan’s visit only made him more surly and frustrated. His reaction to Lisa Jackson’s photo unnerved him, because on some elemental level Dan recognized her—a woman he had never met and who had been dead for over three months. Lisa might be pregnant. And if she was, why hadn’t she called him?

  Dan had used the distraction of the arrival of Sherry’s parents to slip the photo into his jacket pocket. When he got home he went to his study and sat at his desk with the photograph propped on the keyboard. He stared intently at the face of Lisa Jackson, stroking a finger across the matt surface of the print for a long time before his anger and frustration boiled over and he opened a full bottle of whiskey and proceeded to get blind drunk.

  The phone rang. Dan considered ignoring it but the faint chance it might be Lisa or Sherry Jackson with some news made him pick up.

  ‘What?’ he snarled.

  There was a prolonged silence.

  ‘Is anybody there? Because if you don’t speak up in the next five seconds I’m hanging up!’

  ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ his brother’s voice asked.

  Apart from Craig, Glenn was the only person whom Dan had told the entire bizarre story of what had happened since Linda had woken up at the hospital and become Lisa. After Lisa and Sherry, Glenn was the person Dan most wanted to speak to, although he hadn’t realized it until that exact moment. ‘Lisa’s left me,’ he said.

  There was a long exhalation. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  When Dan had finished, Glenn didn’t answer for such a long time that Dan thought the connection had been cut. ‘Glenn? Are you still there?’

  ‘Uh huh. Sorry, I’m stunned. You mean you hit the guy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dan muttered.

  ‘You really hit the guy?’ Glenn was having great difficulty reconciling his peace-loving, dedicated doctor brother with the lunatic who had just raved and ranted for the past ten minutes.

  ‘Yes! I fucking hit the guy!’

  ‘No shit?’ Glenn murmured. ‘Hell…I can hardly believe it.’

  ‘That’s rich coming from you,’ Dan complained. ‘You’ve spent most of your adult life beating guys up on the basketball court and you have the gall to be shocked when I deck a guy who, I might add, was sleeping with my wife.’

  ‘I thought you said Linda—I mean, Lisa—was fighting with him.’

  ‘She was!’ Dan rubbed his face irritably. ‘What I meant was, he’s slept with her—in the past.’

  ‘In the past,’ Glenn repeated.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But you didn’t want to beat his brains out when you saw him rubbing Linda’s tits by the pool, did you?’

  Dan wished Glenn didn’t always have to be so graphic. ‘No.’

  ‘But seeing him arguing with Lisa sent you off like a rocket?’

  ‘When the little shitbag called her a bitch I nearly hit him again.’

  Silence.

  ‘Shit. She’s got you good,’ Glenn said quietly.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Dan snarled.

  ‘That’s two fucks in the space of one conversation. I haven’t heard you swear so much since high school.’

  ‘What the fuck is it to you?’ Dan fumed. ‘I don’t recall you ever being the pin-up boy for the morally correct and self-righteous.’ He waved his glass about and swore some more when whiskey splashed across his computer keyboard. ‘Got any advice on how to deal with a wife who thinks she’s been reincarnated?’

  Glenn grunted. ‘I’m probably the last person to advise you. Linda and I couldn’t stand to be in the room together.’

  ‘I know. When Linda answered a call from you she threw the receiver at me as if it was a live snake, and you treated her the same.’

  ‘This is all just too weird for me,’ Glenn said, remembering how different Lisa had sounded from Linda the one time he had spoken to her. She’d had the cutest accent and been so excited when she’d heard about Dan’s birthday. Glenn recalled he’d been offhand with her to the point of rudeness.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Dan agreed bitterly. ‘You wanna hear something really odd?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lisa likes you. You know why she likes you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I told her you didn’t like the way Linda used to treat me. She said that meant you must be a good brother.’

  Glenn didn’t know what to say.

  Dan took a sip of his whiskey and grimaced at the sour taste in his mouth.

  ‘There’s something else.’

  Glenn sighed.

  ‘I think she’s pregnant.’

  ‘You’ve knocked her up?’ He sounded shocked.

  ‘I can’t be certain, but I found out today she’s been to see a doctor. She might not be—it was only one time without a condom,’ Dan mumbled defensively.

  ‘That’s generally all it takes, brother,’ Glenn replied sarcastically. ‘I’m sure you got taught that in med school. Did you find out from the sister where Lisa is?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t know.’

  Glenn laughed humourlessly. ‘Trust me, she knows.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t,’ Dan protested. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because women always have a best friend or a sister or something and they always confide in them. Believe me, Shirley knows where Lisa is. Go back and get the truth. I’ve watched women fall for your knight-in-shining-armour, honest-guy shit like apples from a tree.’

  ‘Her name’s Sherry and believe me, she isn’t your average woman. She threw me out of her house!’

  Glenn made an impatient sound. ‘What you mean is you left—you’re too damned polite.’

  ‘No. I mean she manhandled me out the front door.’

  There was a prolonged silence.

  ‘How the fuck did she do that? What is she? Atilla the Hun?’

  ‘She’s at least six feet tall and looks like a supermodel.’

  ‘Really?’ Glenn inquired sharply. ‘Which supermodel are we talking about?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, get your brain out of your pants, Glenn!’ Dan snapped. ‘She’s a cop. That must be why she managed to shove me out the door.’

  �
��Or you’re getting soft in your old age.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, you’d better get off your sorry ass, find Lisa and find out if she’s pregnant. I’m not having my niece or nephew raised by some nutcase who thinks she’s been reincarnated.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Glenn,’ Dan said quietly. ‘Lisa is no nutcase.’

  He couldn’t recall much of the conversation after that, and woke the following morning with his head on the keyboard and small square indentations covering the right side of his face. He had the mother of all hangovers.

  It was Edie Cruickshank who told Dan where to find Lisa. He’d tried pumping her grandson for information but Slade had been tight-lipped and disapproving, and even though Dan outweighed him by more than a hundred pounds the younger man refused to give in.

  ‘You’ve really hurt her, you know,’ he told Dan.

  ‘I know I have Slade, that’s why I want to talk to her,’ Dan explained, struggling to remain patient.

  Slade sniffed. ‘I’ll tell her what you said.’

  Dan ground his teeth, clutched his head and considered following as Slade drove slowly away on his motorbike, but it was impossible to trail a vehicle that never went any faster than fifty kilometres an hour and not be arrested for holding up traffic.

  He was standing in the Cruickshanks’ driveway staring down the road after Slade when Edie shuffled out to her letterbox to collect her morning paper. ‘Morning, Dan.’

  ‘Morning, Edie,’ he replied dispiritedly before climbing into his car to make the journey across the Harbour Bridge to the hospital.

  Dan had not long been home later that night, and was already contemplating another night in the company of a bottle of spirits, when Edie suddenly arrived in his living room with a look of disapproval reminiscent of her grandson’s earlier in the day.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Dan jumped and nearly dropped the bottle of vodka, which was all he could find in his rapidly shrinking supply of booze. He hated vodka.

  ‘Edie! How the hell did you get in here?’

  She fixed him with a beady stare. ‘I don’t appreciate being sworn at, Dan.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Dan wondered why he was apologizing when Edie had waltzed into his house uninvited. He noticed she was looking about at the layer of dust coating the living-room furniture and the cups and plates littering the side tables.

  ‘Look at this place,’ she tutted. ‘Lisa would be disgusted if she could see it.’

  The mention of her name hurt so much that Dan forgot all his manners.

  ‘Is that so?’ he hissed. ‘Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, Lisa doesn’t live here any more.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Edie replied tartly. ‘It’s a pigsty.’ Dan glared at her. ‘Listen lady—’

  Edie gave a bark of laughter. ‘I’m no lady, son! And don’t think you can frighten me by looking mean and towering over me.’ She sniffed. ‘I never took you for a wallower.’

  ‘A…a what?’ Dan spluttered.

  ‘A wallower, somebody who wallows in self-pity because things haven’t gone their way.’ Edie shook her head. ‘After all you’ve been through with that wife of yours—I mean the first one, not Lisa—and then with Lisa. I thought you had balls. But obviously I was wrong.’

  Dan went slack-jawed with astonishment. She was talking about his balls. And speaking about Lisa as if she had nothing to do with Linda.

  ‘If you miss her so much, do something about it, but don’t wallow—I can’t stand wallowers.’

  ‘How can I do something about it when I don’t know where the hell she is?’ Dan roared.

  Edie looked surprised. ‘I’m not deaf, you know. Why didn’t you come and ask if you didn’t know?’

  Dan stared at her. ‘You know where Lisa is?’

  ‘Of course I do. She’s staying with my sister.’

  ‘Staying with…staying with your…’ Dan couldn’t get the words out.

  Shaking her head, Edie turned to leave. ‘Leave your door key under the mat by our front door and I’ll come in and clean up tomorrow.’

  ‘Edie!’ Dan stalked grimly after her. ‘I want your sister’s address and telephone number!’

  ‘In the morning,’ she tossed over her shoulder as she marched in the direction of the garage. Dan realized how she’d managed to get inside in the first place; he’d left the garage door up. ‘I’ll give it to you in the morning after you’ve tidied yourself up. The sight of you at the moment would probably send the poor girl screaming for the hills.’

  ‘But—’

  Edie paused on the concrete driveway and fixed Dan with a hard look. ‘In the morning, Daniel.’

  ‘You promise?’

  She smiled kindly at him. ‘Promise.’

  28

  She’d been right under his nose all the time.

  Smack bang in the middle of Browns Bay in the house with all the gnomes.

  The little old lady who opened the front door didn’t look anything like a serial killer and nothing like Edie Cruickshank, unless you counted the disapproving way she looked Dan up and down.

  ‘I s’pose you must be Lisa’s husband?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Dan admitted, struggling against the urge to bend his knees as he looked down into Esmeralda Moody’s small, wizened face.

  Esme sighed. ‘Edie told me you’d be turning up. I hope you’re not going to upset Lisa, she’s not been well.’

  ‘She hasn’t?’ Dan queried sharply. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  Esme pressed her lips together. ‘That’s Lisa’s business.’

  Dan’s heart soared.

  Lisa was pregnant.

  He beamed at Esme. ‘The last thing I want to do is upset her, Mrs Moody.’

  ‘Looking like you do, it’s a foregone conclusion.’

  Dan couldn’t decide if he’d been insulted or complimented, but frankly he didn’t care. He wanted to punch the air in jubilation. Impulsively, he bent down and kissed Esme on her powdery cheek. ‘Thank you for looking after her.’

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped, touching her fingers to her cheek and blushing like a teenager. It was a long time since a handsome man had kissed her, and this tall American was definitely handsome. Esme’s romantic heart beat faster in her skinny chest. At the same time she reminded herself that Lisa wouldn’t have walked out without a good reason. Edie had said it was OK to tell him where to find Lisa, so she reluctantly gave Dan directions to the café.

  Once again Dan wanted to kick himself when he discovered that Lisa was working at the café at the garden centre. Why on earth had it never occurred to him to look there? God knows she’d spent enough time at the place rescuing the neighbourhood plants.

  ‘I’ll be keeping my eye on you,’ Esme quavered, wishing she were as brave as Edie. ‘So no funny business.’

  ‘Absolutely not, Mrs Moody,’ Dan promised with a smile, trying to imagine how she planned to extract retribution. Perhaps she’d attack him with her walking frame?

  Leaving his car in the road outside Esme’s, he loped the short distance to the garden centre, the smile gradually leaving his face as he wondered why Lisa hadn’t contacted him.

  Lisa was depressed and worried. She was depressed because her period had started. It was good news, a relief—or so the logical part of her brain tried to tell her. But the logical part hadn’t been able to stop her from crying herself into an exhausted sleep again last night. She really was sick of crying all the time.

  But Dan’s baby would have been something Lisa would have had of him. It would have been a reason to let her feet follow her heart back up the coastal road to the house on the cliff and tell him he was going to be a father. Dan would want to know about his child and she would never dream of keeping it from him. What progress they could have made with the insurmountable problem of his refusal to accept that she wasn’t Linda was something Lisa didn’t have an answer for, but a child would have been enough of a reason to try to work thi
ngs out. Dan might not want her, but she knew he would want his son or daughter.

  So she was depressed.

  She was worried because her father hadn’t turned up for work that day. The only time Lisa could recall Brian taking time off was when he’d had an operation on his varicose veins two years before, and even then he had defied doctor’s orders by returning to work a couple of days after being discharged from the hospital and hobbling around in elastic support stockings. Jill had been furious.

  By mid-morning Lisa was anxious enough to consider walking down to her old house and knocking on the door to demand an explanation of his whereabouts, but instead she called Sherry’s cellphone and was frustrated to get her voicemail.

  ‘Do you know if Brian from the garden centre is sick?’ she asked Anton and Starr.

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Why?’ Starr asked. ‘Did somebody tell you he was?’

  ‘No.’ Lisa shook her head distractedly. ‘But he hasn’t arrived for work today.’

  Starr exchanged puzzled looks with Anton. ‘So? He’s the manager; he might have gone to see a supplier or something.’ ‘No,’ Lisa insisted. ‘He always does that in the afternoon.’ Starr’s brows rose in consternation.

  Lisa popped her head into the garden shop to ask Kaylene and Lianne if they knew where Brian was.

  ‘He phoned in this morning to say he would be coming in late today. Why did you want to see him?’ Kaylene asked. ‘If it’s another one of your rescue plants, I could have a look at it for you.’

  ‘No.’ Lisa forced a smile. ‘But thanks for the offer.’

  She was taking an order at one of the tables inside the café when she sensed something was different. The people sitting at the table she was serving had both turned their heads and were staring curiously at the doorway. Lisa’s skin prickled, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing up as if she had been stroked by an unseen hand. She looked up and saw Dan standing just inside the doorway to the café and her knees almost buckled. She grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself.

  He looked tired and heart-stoppingly gorgeous in khaki chinos that needed ironing, and a caramel-coloured shirt beneath a dark-brown jacket. Lisa felt dowdy in her shapeless black skirt and T-shirt. She couldn’t afford a trip to the hair salon, so her nice new haircut was scraped back again into two scrawny pigtails that stuck out at right-angles above her ears.