Wife on the Run

by Fiona Higgins

  Fiona Higgins is the author of The Mothers’ Group (Allen & Unwin, 2012) and Love in the Age of Drought (Pan Macmillan, 2009). She lives in Bali with her husband and three children.

  www.fionahiggins.com.au

  www.facebook.com/fionahigginsauthor

  Also by Fiona Higgins

  The Mothers’ Group

  Non-fiction

  Love in the Age of Drought

  First published in 2014

  Copyright © Fiona Higgins 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright material. If you have any information concerning copyright material in this book please contact the publishers at the address below.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 026 7

  eISBN 978 1 74269 796 3

  Text design by Lisa White

  Typeset by Bookhouse, Sydney

  For Melissa and Amanda, the best of sisters

  De médico e de louco todo mundo tem um pouco

  Of doctors and madmen we all have a bit

  BRAZILIAN PROVERB

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgements

  1

  BLOW QUEENS

  Paula squinted at the words on the screen, emblazoned in red font across the top of the Facebook post. Worse still, the image beneath: an erect penis, with multiple lines of lipstick streaked along its shaft, like coloured quoits stacked on a wooden pin.

  Then, the shocking caption bearing her daughter’s name: Look what Caitlin McInnes and Amy Robertson got up to last weekend.

  ‘That’s . . . disgusting.’ A suffocating heat was rising in her chest and rampaging up her neck.

  The school principal turned the computer screen back towards him.

  ‘I wanted you to come in person, Mrs McInnes, for obvious reasons.’

  ‘Who . . . who did this?’ she stuttered.

  Mr Nelson pressed his lips into a terse line.

  ‘We can’t confirm that yet. The post appeared last night on Charlotte Kennedy’s Facebook page. Do you know her?’

  Everyone knew Charlotte Kennedy, a popular Year Eleven student widely predicted to be elected school captain next year.

  ‘The author of the post is James Addams,’ the principal continued, ‘but we don’t have a student of that name here. I’ve spoken to Charlotte and she’s never heard of him. We’ve lodged a formal complaint with Facebook, requesting the post be removed immediately, but more than a hundred students have already “liked” it. Mostly boys in their senior years, unfortunately.’

  ‘Oh, that’s horrible.’ Paula felt physically sick.

  Mr Nelson studied her for a moment. ‘Does Caitlin have a boyfriend, Mrs McInnes?’

  She shook her head, incredulous. ‘She’s fourteen. Catie’s more interested in soccer than boys.’ Her daughter was one of the school’s rising sport stars.

  Mr Nelson didn’t appear persuaded. ‘And has Caitlin been herself lately? Has she been fighting with any of her friends?’

  Paula’s mind spun, trying to recall anything unusual over the past few weeks. ‘No . . . she’s been her normal, happy self. If something was wrong, I’m sure she would’ve told me.’

  Her words didn’t seem to register with the principal.

  ‘We’ve seen cyber-bullying in senior years before,’ he said, ‘but never in Year Nine.’

  Cyber-bullying?

  Paula had only ever conceived of this happening to other people’s children. Not in middle-class suburban Melbourne. Not at Burwood Secondary College. And certainly not in her family.

  ‘But Caitlin doesn’t have any enemies.’

  ‘The thing is, Mrs McInnes,’ Mr Nelson interrupted, ‘we need to get to the bottom of why your daughter and Amy Robertson have been targeted. Presumably there’s a reason.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Caitlin yet?’ she asked, hugging her handbag to her chest. As if it were her teenage daughter, at risk of slipping out of her grasp.

  ‘Yes. She’s very upset, understandably.’

  ‘Where is she? I want to see her.’

  A protective surge propelled Paula out of her chair; she needed to take Caitlin in her arms and comfort her. The winsome child who’d shadowed her for years, clambering onto her lap and into her bed, tugging at her hands and heartstrings. An extension of Paula’s own body, before morphing into a lanky and enigmatic teenager—beautiful, confident and talented—almost overnight. And yet, more vulnerable than ever to all manner of threats that Paula couldn’t bear to contemplate. Drugs. Sex. Unwanted pregnancy. The unspeakable risk of so much potential being squandered before her young life had even really begun.

  ‘Caitlin’s with the school counsellor now, they’ll be finished after lunch.’ Mr Nelson stood up, as if to show Paula out. ‘You’re on canteen duty today, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not anymore,’ she said quietly. ‘Will you please call Caitlin now.’

  ‘I see.’ Mr Nelson reached for the telephone on his desk. ‘Then I’ll have to tell Leanne you’re not coming.’

  Leanne. It was almost a threat.

  The cantankerous canteen manager at Burwood Secondary College was a person with whom Paula would never ordinarily associate. But she’d endured her every Thursday lunchtime for the past nine months, as an act of goodwill towards the school.

  The principal spoke quietly into his telephone, then walked to his office door. ‘Take a seat out here, Mrs McInnes,’ he said, opening it for her. ‘I’ll let you know when Caitlin arrives.’

  Before she could reply, he’d closed the door after her.

  Feeling like a truant schoolgirl, Paula sat down on the green leather sofa.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ a kindly-faced secretary asked, looking up from her work.

  ‘That’d be nice, thanks,’ Paula replied, without knowing why. She really didn’t feel like anything at all.

  ‘How do you have it?’

  ‘Just white, please.’

  The secretary disappeared into a kitchenette, returning promptly with a steaming mug.

  ‘There now,’ she said, passing it to Paula. ‘Careful, it’s hot.’

  The secretary took her place behind the desk again and began to engage Paula in benign small talk. The senior
toilets had been repainted, the new shade-cloth over the bubblers was working well, and wasn’t the kitchen garden coming along nicely? Paula felt barely able to conceal her own turmoil, but tried to nod at appropriate intervals. Her mind was preoccupied by the grotesque Facebook post: how could her daughter be connected to it? With her friend Amy, too?

  Could it possibly be real?

  She screwed her eyes shut at the thought.

  During her earlier years of schooling, Caitlin had always been quiet and studious, with ‘exceptional athletic potential’ according to her teachers. She’d clearly inherited her father’s genes in that regard, because Paula herself had never been sporty. Caitlin was a natural at almost any athletic activity: captain of the Under 15s netball team, pitcher on the softball team, striker on the girls’ soccer team. And she’d fulfilled all these roles with an endearing modesty, up until three months ago, when she’d fallen in with a new peer group. These were the ‘cool’ girls, apparently, the popular and pretty ones, some of whom were on Caitlin’s netball team.

  Since then, Paula had detected a shift in her daughter’s attitude; she’d become a little more obstinate, more image-conscious, and more susceptible, somehow, to the influence of others. Her new friends spent entire weekends together at slumber parties, shopping at multi-level malls, or watching teen chick-flicks at the movies. When they weren’t together, they sent endless messages and tweets to each other, about banalities that could almost certainly wait until they met again at school.

  Paula didn’t particularly warm to any of them, except for Amy, the goalie on the soccer team, who seemed far more sensible than the rest. Caitlin and Amy had struck up a close friendship born of their mutual love of soccer, and regularly spent hours in the backyard playing striker and goalie. Amy was polite and down to earth—which only made the Facebook post all the more confounding. She simply wasn’t a trouble-maker, unlike some of Caitlin’s other friends. Always flicking their long hair over their shoulders, glossing their lips and pouting at the older boys.

  Was I like that once? Paula sometimes wondered. She couldn’t remember much about being fourteen; it was, after all, twenty-five years ago. What she could recall was an acute self-consciousness about her maturing body. Breasts and hips and buttocks straining against clothes suddenly grown too small. A stumpy-legged child one year, the object of male attention the next. She’d found the rapid transition confusing, and a little alarming. She wasn’t sure she wanted men to look at her that way, their eyes roaming across her body. But girls nowadays were different—or some of Catie’s peer group were, at least. Always coveting male attention, in their too-short skirts and long white socks pulled up over bronzed calves. Their ear and navel piercings, sleek manes of hair, fake tans and tattoos. Provocative girl-women, with the trappings of adulthood inscribed on a child’s body.

  But they’re just being teenage girls, her husband insisted. That’s what teenage girls do.

  As if you’d know, Paula was sometimes tempted to snap at Hamish. You, who grew up with no sisters and went to an all-boys school. Since when were you an expert on teenage girls?

  Hamish.

  Paula looked at the secretary, still nattering away.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, standing up from the sofa. ‘I need to make a call.’ Paula slipped out into the corridor and dialled Hamish’s number.

  It rang out, as it usually did.

  Hamish was rarely without his phone, but always too busy to answer it.

  It’s the middle of his working day, she thought. What was she hoping he’d do? Drop everything, bolt to his car and drive over to the school? He couldn’t get to most parent–teacher evenings, let alone an unscheduled meeting at the principal’s office.

  Paula stuffed her telephone into her handbag and stepped back into the waiting area. The secretary, she was relieved to note, was now busy with a telephone call.

  She resumed her seat and began composing a message to Hamish.

  Please call me ASAP. Issue at school.

  It wouldn’t necessarily raise him. Hamish was a willing slave to his job at Crossroads Cars, the biggest corporate-fleet rental company in the country. He’d joined as a mechanic more than ten years back, steadily working his way up from the shop floor into management. But his considerable professional success had come at a personal cost.

  A long time ago—it felt like forever, now—they’d done things together. Reading the weekend newspapers on a Saturday morning over a leisurely café brunch. Going to the cinema on cheap Tuesdays, then debating the critics’ ratings on the way home. Rambling along the beach at Brighton on a Sunday, doing fitness sessions on the sand. Hamish playing the personal trainer—tall, broad-shouldered, blond—to her curvy, brunette trainee. Enrolling in a host of adult-education courses at the local community college, just for the hell of it: ballroom dancing, wine appreciation, organic gardening. They’d especially loved the course called Plan Your Own Ultimate Adventure, creating a scrapbook of dream travel goals: hiking in the Andes, a safari in Kenya, a campervan tour around Australia. But they’d collapsed into hysterical laughter during the Yoga for Couples course, prompting the teachers—a long-haired pair who called themselves Yoni and Linga—to question whether they were ‘truly ready to trust’.

  They’d had fun together, before the kids arrived, and for a few years afterwards. And then, incrementally, their interests as a couple had taken a back seat. As the children had grown and changed, they’d demanded more—not less—of Paula’s time, while Hamish’s work responsibilities had expanded. Gradually their focus had shifted from enjoying life together to dividing and conquering it instead. It made sense for Hamish to prioritise money-making, and for Paula to cultivate their home life. But spontaneity had been sacrificed along the way.

  For months, Paula had wanted to talk it over with Hamish. To propose that they reinstate Saturday date nights and once-a-month movies. To suggest taking a community-college course together again or, now that the kids were older, even begin planning a trip to one of their dream destinations. But her best intentions had been derailed—primarily by Hamish’s long working hours, which encroached on their weeknights and weekends. Not to mention her sneaking suspicion that Hamish wouldn’t be all that receptive anymore. She could anticipate his responses already.

  Other people would kill to have our life.

  It’s just a busy phase.

  Someone’s got to make the money.

  ‘Mrs McInnes?’

  The secretary’s voice startled Paula.

  ‘Mr Nelson will see you now,’ she said, motioning towards the principal’s door. ‘Caitlin will be along soon.’

  Paula took a seat at the polished teak desk, noticing that Mr Nelson’s face was slightly pink.

  ‘Mrs McInnes, this is a very unfortunate matter,’ he began. ‘I’ve given it some thought and may I suggest that Caitlin takes some time off school? Just while we investigate, at least until Facebook removes the post. All of next week, and probably the week after.’

  It wasn’t really a suggestion, it was a directive.

  Paula blanched. ‘So, let me get this clear. Someone—we don’t know who—puts a photo of uncertain origin on Facebook with Caitlin’s name on it.’ Her voice wavered a little. ‘And on the basis of that, you’re going to suspend my daughter for a fortnight while you investigate? That doesn’t seem very fair on Caitlin.’

  The principal pulled his chair closer to the desk. ‘I’m not suspending her, Mrs McInnes. I understand you’re upset, but I’m trying to make things easier for Caitlin. The image has been circulated through the senior and junior years.’

  Paula glared at Mr Nelson’s poker face. ‘But Caitlin is the victim here.’

  There was a knock at the door—a timid, apologetic sort of tap—and the door opened.

  The principal looked relieved. ‘Mrs Papadopolous.’

  The counsellor’s thick hair, grey and wiry at the temples, was pinned in a loose bun on top of her head. She nodded at Paula over torto
iseshell spectacles, then turned to Caitlin, who stood behind her as if cowering.

  ‘Are you alright, dear?’ she asked.

  Caitlin’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. She looked at Mr Nelson fearfully, before catching sight of her mother. Instantly she ran across the office, throwing herself into Paula’s lap like a much younger child.

  ‘Oh, Caitlin,’ Paula whispered, pulling her daughter close. She smoothed Caitlin’s long blonde ponytail beneath her fingers. My beautiful little girl.

  ‘Sit down please, Caitlin.’ Mr Nelson nodded at the empty chair next to Paula.

  Caitlin reluctantly moved onto the seat.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Papadopolous.’ He dismissed the counsellor with a nod, before fixing his gaze on Caitlin.

  ‘Was it helpful talking to Mrs Papadopolous?’

  Caitlin shrugged.

  Mr Nelson waited, then, when it was clear Caitlin had no intention of speaking, prompted, ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?’

  ‘No, Mr Nelson.’ Tears welled in her blue eyes.

  The principal passed Caitlin a box of tissues.

  She took one. ‘I haven’t done . . . anything to anyone. Amy hasn’t either.’

  Mr Nelson leaned back in his chair. ‘Caitlin, we’ve reported the photo to Facebook, but I’m not sure how long it’s going to take for them to act.’ He turned a pen over in his hands. ‘I think you’ll probably agree, it’s best for you to stay home for a while. I’ve asked Amy to do the same.’

  Caitlin looked up at her mother. ‘Yes, it’s so embarrassing.’ She hid her face in her hands.

  Paula put an arm around Caitlin’s shoulders, feeling outraged and overwhelmed. Who on earth would do this to her daughter?

  Mr Nelson stood up. ‘Mrs McInnes, I’ll contact you when we have more information. In the meantime, you might like to consider some extra counselling for Caitlin. Mrs Papadopolous is available if you need her.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Paula helped Caitlin up.

  ‘Do you have all your things, Caitlin?’ he asked. ‘Nothing left in your locker?’