She wanted to kick herself when Lisa’s shoulders rose defensively and her mouth drooped. ‘What’s up with you and the good doctor, Lees?’ Sherry asked. ‘Mum said he was with you at the garden centre and was a big help when Dad got stung. How did he find out where you were? Did you tell him?’
Lisa concentrated on pleating the edge of the bedcover. ‘No. Esme’s sister Edie told him. She lives next door to him.’ She smiled faintly. ‘He was annoyed when he found out you knew where I was and hadn’t told him and he can’t figure out how you threw him out of your place.’
Sherry rolled her eyes. ‘Men! They’re so predictable. It’s not how big you are but how you handle yourself.’
Lisa moved on to folding the edge of the pillowcase. ‘You know why Dan came to see me, Sherry? To find out if I was pregnant.’ She looked up at the sound of Sherry’s indrawn breath. ‘It’s OK, I’m not.’
‘I knew there was something more to it when you told me you were leaving him because he wouldn’t believe you weren’t Linda,’ Sherry replied grimly. ‘He…didn’t force you, did he Lisa?’
‘Force me?’ Lisa’s eyes widened. ‘Sherry, I didn’t know sex like that existed. I couldn’t get enough of him. He was wonderful. No, he was amazing.’ She pulled a face. ‘I admit the first time I had my doubts about it being feasible because the guy is six feet five inches tall—’
‘I get the picture, Lisa,’ Sherry interrupted dryly.
Lisa turned pink.
‘So if you were getting royally laid by a handsome hunk, why did you leave?’
Lisa shrugged forlornly. ‘Because I was making love to Dan whereas Dan was having sex with his unfaithful wife, Linda.’
‘She was unfaithful to him?’
‘Yes,’ Lisa hesitated. ‘And pregnant to some guy called Jack Millar. She…no, I had a miscarriage in the hospital.’
Sherry looked stunned. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘Yeah,’ Lisa agreed. ‘Bloody hell.’ Her face crumpled. She buried it in her hands.
Sherry felt like crying, too. How much more emotional pain could Lisa withstand without breaking? She sat on the bed and gathered Lisa into her arms.
‘Mum doesn’t believe me!’ Lisa sobbed.
‘Neither did I at first, but you’ve convinced me,’ Sherry soothed. ‘And Mum is halfway to believing you or she wouldn’t have asked you to wait for her and Dad.’
‘You should have been…the ha-hardest one to convince because you’re such a cynical old bag and…and Mum and Dad and Be-hen should be the ones who believe me because they’re softer and gentler and not so ha-hard-boiled—’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Sherry said.
‘You-who know…what I mean!’ Lisa gulped. ‘Everything’s such a me-hess! Bugger George!’
‘George?’
‘The angel!’
‘Oh yeah…George.’ Sherry shook her head, unable to believe she was having this conversation. ‘So you’d rather be in heaven or wherever the hell—pardon—I mean, wherever you were and have missed out on all that great sex with Dan Brogan?’
Lisa gulped and considered. ‘No.’
‘I rest my case.’
‘You make it sound sordid.’ Lisa sniffled.
‘No, I don’t. If I’d got laid for the first time in three years by a man who was great in bed and hung like a hor—’
‘Sherry!’
‘What?’ Sherry asked innocently. ‘What did I say?’
To tell the truth, she really didn’t give a damn about the size of Dan Brogan’s dick, but it was a great way to refocus Lisa. Reaching across her, Sherry picked up the box of tissues from the nearby dressing table and held them out to Lisa.
Glowering, Lisa snagged a couple and blew her nose loudly.
‘So tell me, Lisa,’ Sherry said. ‘Is Dan an only child?’
‘No,’ she replied in a tear-clogged voice. ‘He’s got a younger brother called Glenn.’
‘Really?’ Sherry arched a brow. ‘And is Glenn married?’
Lisa gave her a gentle slap on the arm. ‘No. He used to be a professional basketball player, but now he coaches. Dan said he’s even taller than he is.’
‘He is? Hell,’ Sherry murmured, pressing a hand to her heart. ‘As soon as we have you back in the fold, so to speak, we’ll work on getting Dan Brogan straightened out about the differences between you and his slapper wife.’
‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up on that score, Sherry,’ Lisa said bleakly. ‘Believe me; I’ve been trying for the past three months to convince him without any success.’
‘I showed him a photo of you when he came to my place. He didn’t give it back.’
Lisa’s eyes rounded. ‘Dan took a photo of me?’
‘Yes, the little thief…or big thief,’ Sherry corrected herself.
Lisa’s expression lightened. ‘I wonder why he did that?’
‘Yeah,’ Sherry drawled. ‘I wonder why.’
When Jill and Brian returned from the hospital later that evening, Lisa was curled up asleep on her old bed. The sight of the stranger with the dark hair and beautiful face lying on her dead daughter’s bed upset Jill and made Brian smile.
Jill looked accusingly at Sherry. ‘You shouldn’t have let her go in there!’
‘What are you going to do, Mum? Kick her out?’ Sherry asked.
While Jill hovered in the lit hallway beside the open door to Lisa’s bedroom, Brian watched over her shoulder and smiled at the sight of the figure snuggled in the darkness beneath the bedcovers. For the first time in months, he felt peace in his heart.
‘And by the way,’ Sherry continued, ‘she’s got the pip.’
‘She’s got the pip?’ Jill hissed. ‘About what, might I ask?’
‘Fish. She’s really upset about Fish being gone.’
Jill closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her aching head. ‘This can’t be happening.’
Reaching around them both, Brian closed the bedroom door. ‘We’ll figure it out in the morning,’ he said. ‘Time for bed.’
Dan phoned the following morning to find out how Brian Jackson was, and was surprised when Brian answered the phone. After Brian had thanked Dan for his help at the garden centre the previous day and they’d exchanged stilted chitchat, Dan eventually asked if he knew how Lisa was.
‘I called Mrs Moody, but she said Lisa didn’t come home last night.’
‘No. Lisa stayed here last night and slept in her own bed.’
Brian couldn’t have made his feelings any plainer. The Jackson family appeared to have accepted her as their daughter.
Dan was so dazed and shaken that he couldn’t recall ending the conversation and hanging up the phone. The only thing he did remember was telling Brian that Lisa walked in her sleep.
‘Yes, I know,’ he replied gently. ‘She’s done it since she was a little girl.’
One thing was clear: Lisa didn’t need Dan any more. She was no longer his responsibility. She was back with her family, with the people who loved her.
He felt numb.
His wife was dead.
Linda was dead.
Going to her wardrobe, Dan opened the jewellery box and looked down at her platinum wedding band and the diamond engagement ring lying on the black velvet interior. He vividly recalled the day he’d given Linda the engagement ring and the day he’d put the wedding ring on her finger. He remembered how she had looked in the long, ivory-coloured dress he had bought for her with the tiny, white cap on the back of her inky black hair and the froth of white veil trailing down her back. She had been radiant and so beautiful that it had hurt to look at her.
Dan carefully placed the two rings in his pocket and drove down to Long Bay beach.
It was a cool, blustery winter’s day. Somehow that seemed symbolic to Dan as he walked the length of the beach, a lone figure on the deserted sand, his hands tucked into his jacket pockets, the rings pressing into his palm. The water was a metallic-grey topped by whitecaps. Across the channel, the dormant volcano of Ran
gitoto Island was cloaked in dirty clouds that threatened rain.
Dan thought about Linda’s childhood, imagining the sweet, bright little girl struggling to do her homework in her bedroom while her alcoholic, abusive mother entertained men in the room downstairs. He recalled the look on Linda’s face the day they went to the hospital to see Betty Mulholland, and watching all of Linda’s fragile confidence disintegrate within five minutes of being in her mother’s presence.
Dan stood on the beach and watched the waves toss and churn, and cried for the sweetness, tenderness and ability to trust that had been purged from Linda by her mother and the poverty and ignorance she had been born into. She hadn’t deserved to live the way she had. And she hadn’t deserved to die as she had either, miserable and frightened and lonely, convinced she was nothing more than a beautiful face and body. But Dan realized that his reasons for marrying Linda had not been entirely selfless; he had wanted to heal her, to make things better. He had believed he had the ability to make her whole. He finally acknowledged that he had played an equal part in the failure of their marriage and that it had died a long time before Linda had begun her affair with Jack Millar.
‘I’m sorry, Linda. I’m sorry you were so sad,’ he said quietly as he watched the grey water flip and toss and heard the seagulls’ plaintive cries as they rode the air currents above its surface.
Taking the rings from his pocket, Dan looked at them one last time. He closed his fist, pressed his lips to the circle made by his thumb and index finger and, stretching his arm behind his head, flung the rings as far as he could out into the boiling sea.
The wind dried the tears on his cheeks.
His heartbeat gradually slowed.
Whilst the past few months had been extraordinarily difficult, he had glimpsed true happiness and for a brief moment had lived the kind of life he had always dreamed about.
It was time to forgive himself and move on.
He just hoped he hadn’t left it too late.
Lisa only spent one night in her old bed before returning to Esme’s.
Going home hadn’t been a joyous, positive experience for her. For a start, her mother had grilled her like a Gestapo commandant—all that was missing was a bright light shone into her eyes. She couldn’t really blame her mum; after all it wasn’t every day your dead daughter returned in the body of a total stranger.
Lisa sat patiently at the dining room table opposite Jill and answered each and every one of the questions fired at her, but despite getting everything right—and in several cases correcting her mother when she had forgotten certain details—Lisa thought Jill only got more stubborn and determined not to believe her. Lisa couldn’t decide what upset her more: her mother’s efforts to trip her up with a lie or the cigarettes and lighter that sat beside Jill’s elbow. Several times her mother reached for the packet, but each time something else occurred to her to ask Lisa and she took her hand away again.
‘Do you want to know what colour knickers I wore on my first day to school?’ Lisa finally snapped.
Jill bridled. ‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ She paused. ‘Why? Do you remember?’
Lisa flung her hands up in disgust. ‘Are you serious?’
Unfortunately, her mother clearly was.
‘I forgot to wear any knickers to school on my first day!’ Lisa shouted at her. ‘You had to come to school and bring me a pair!’
Hearing Lisa shout brought Brian running. He and Lisa watched in horror as Jill’s face crumpled. She fumbled for the cigarette packet.
Lisa decided she’d had enough. She snatched the cigarettes and lighter up and waved it threateningly in her mother’s face. ‘I did not smoke all those cigarettes for you to gas yourself, Mum! How dare you start smoking again!’
Marching to the front door, she wrenched it open and threw the items into the front garden—and straight into the startled face of her brother Ben, who was on his way up the steps.
Lisa was overjoyed to see him after so many months and launched herself at him. ‘Ben!’
Ben caught her arms and flung her away, his face a mask of fury. ‘Back off!’
Lisa stumbled back against her father, who had followed her to the door. Brian caught her by the elbows, feeling the trembling in her body. ‘Ben!’ he cried, shocked by the violence in his son’s eyes.
Jill pushed around Lisa and Brian. ‘I can’t believe what I just saw!’ she exclaimed. ‘You could have hurt Lisa!’
Ben stared at her in disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me she’s got you suckered, too?’ His gaze shifted between her and his father. ‘Aw, Dad…’ He groaned. ‘Not you, too?’ He glared at Lisa, who shrank back against her father. ‘How the hell do you do it, lady? First you get Sherry—Sherry, for God’s sake!—to believe your bullshit and now our parents. What kind of a person are you to do this to us?’
‘Ben, please don’t…’ Lisa implored. ‘Please believe me!’
But Ben wouldn’t listen.
‘Sherry said you stayed last night in Lisa’s bed. Do you get some sort of a kick out of pretending to be a dead woman? Do you?’ He took a step closer, his face twisted with grief and fury and pointed a finger over her head. ‘My sister is dead. She’s buried in a box at Schnapper Rock Road cemetery feeding the worms!’
Jill and Lisa moaned in distress.
‘Do you have to be so graphic, Ben?’ Lisa asked shakily.
‘That’s enough, Ben!’ Brian barked. ‘Go home. Come back again when you can keep a civil tongue in your head.’
Ben looked hurt. ‘Dad!’ he pleaded. ‘You can’t believe this!’
‘No. No, I’ll go.’ Lisa pulled herself from her father’s arms and hurried down the steps past Ben. ‘This was a mistake.’
‘Lisa.’
Lisa stopped and looked back over her shoulder at her mother. She looked at the three of them and, despite the horrible things Ben had said, her heart lifted. She loved them.
She loved them.
Ben sucked in a breath when she suddenly smiled at them the way Lisa used to smile, her entire face getting in on the act.
‘It’s OK, I’m only down the road,’ she said to her mother.
‘Remember to get your adrenaline kit replaced,’ she told her father.
Lisa looked at Ben.
‘Marrying Brenda is a really dumb idea, Ben.’
The look on Ben’s face made her bolt for the front gate. As she ran awkwardly along the pathway, Lisa heard her mother say in an ominous voice, ‘Ben! I want to talk to you.’
Ben Jackson knocked on Dan’s front door later that night.
Dan recognized him from the photo he had taken from Sherry’s house.
‘Are you Dan Brogan?’ Ben asked.
Dan nodded.
‘You don’t know me. I’m Ben Jackson and I really need to talk to you.’ Ben said, his calm tone belied by the seething anger in his eyes.
Dan opened the door wider. ‘You’d better come in.’
Ben refused the offer of a seat and a beer or coffee, preferring to conduct their conversation in the middle of the kitchen. ‘This isn’t a social visit,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’m here to ask you to get your wife to leave my family alone.’
On the few occasions Dan had allowed Lisa to talk about her family, she’d always portrayed her brother as a gentle, easy-going guy who had written music and played in bands in his spare time until he’d met his girlfriend, Brenda.
‘Then everything changed,’ Lisa had explained. ‘He stopped writing music, stopped playing in the band, and gave up sport to become a couch potato, put on weight and chase the almighty dollar for Brenda bloody Buckner.’
Dan looked at Lisa’s brother and said, ‘She isn’t my wife.’
Ben stared at him in frustrated silence. ‘I don’t believe this.’
Dan felt a pang of sympathy for him. He’d spent the past few months feeling the same way.
‘What you mean is,’ Ben snapped, ‘you can’t control your own wife!’
; ‘Damned right I can’t,’ Dan replied crisply. ‘What do you think she is, Jackson? A remote-controlled car? She’s a person and she isn’t my wife.’
Ben looked dazed. ‘You’ve all gone fucking nuts.’
Dan took pity on him.
Going to the refrigerator he took out two beers and placed them on the kitchen table before dragging out two of the chairs. ‘You might as well sit down and have a beer, because believe me you’re going to need one before I’m done.’
Just after midnight, Ben blearily surveyed the empty beer cans and bottles littering the surface of Dan Brogan’s kitchen table. ‘I still think it’s…a load of bullshit.’
Dan gazed morosely at the beer can he had braced on his belly, his long legs stretched out beneath the table, and gave it a clumsy shake to gauge if it felt half full or empty. ‘I wish.’
Although that wasn’t strictly true. If he had a chance, he would have kissed George the angel.
‘People don’t get…’ Ben twirled a finger in the air ‘…put back into other people’s bodies by fucking angels!’
Dan managed to focus on his face. ‘How d’you know? You ever died?’
Ben’s mouth open and closed several times. ‘You’re a fucking doctor, for God’s sake!’ he spluttered.
‘Will you stop saying that? I know about live people, not dead ones.’
Ben’s cellphone went off for what seemed like the hundredth time since he’d arrived.
‘You gonna answer that?’ Dan asked.
Ben shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘It’ll be Brenda wanting to know if I’m out spending money and having fun.’
‘Your fiancée?’
Ben nodded moodily.
Dan grunted. ‘Lisa said she was a pain in the ass.’ ‘Aww…she’s alright.’
‘And she said you always say “Aww, she’s alright” whenever anybody says Brenda’s a pain in the ass.’
‘Her and Sherry,’ Ben mumbled irritably. ‘They’ve always got too much to say for themselves.’
Dan nodded, ‘Uh huh.’ He tried to place his beer can on the table, missing it twice before the aluminium finally hit the wood. ‘Do you love her?’ he suddenly asked.
‘Who?’
‘Brenda, you dope.’
Bonkers Page 33