Wife on the Run

by Fiona Higgins

  Her father studied her face. ‘I’ve got something for you, Paula.’

  He shifted in his seat and removed his wallet from his back pocket, checking through the compartments until he found what he was looking for.

  As the aeroplane touched down on the tarmac, their bodies lurched forward.

  He pushed a small white square of paper into her hand, but she couldn’t hear his words above the roaring of the reverse thrust.

  She unfolded the paper and read the message.

  Paula, look in the caravan freezer. Dad x

  She blinked. ‘What, where we keep the cash?’

  He nodded. ‘I stored it there for safekeeping. I was going to surprise you at Christmas. You can take a look when Clinton gets back to Melbourne. Something for a rainy day, just in case things don’t work out with Hamish.’

  ‘I cleared the money out of the freezer yesterday. Nothing else was in there.’

  ‘But you probably didn’t feel right up the back, did you?’

  She shook her head, mystified. ‘What’s in there?’

  Sid smiled. ‘Proof that everyone does things out of character, once in a while.’

  ‘Paula! Dad!’ Jamie rushed across the Arrivals hall, her arms outstretched. ‘My God! You look incredible. What on earth have you two been doing up north? Why are you back early? And where are the kids?’

  ‘They’re home already with Hamish.’ Paula laughed, hugging her sister. ‘Long story.’

  ‘It’ll take at least three beers,’ said Sid.

  ‘But you’re wearing a flippy dress, Paula!’ Jamie looked amazed. ‘That’s got to be a first.’

  Paula glanced down at her summery Darwin attire; a strapless red frock with white polka-dots. She pulled a black cardigan over her shoulders. ‘Is that more Melbourne now?’

  Jamie grinned. ‘Well, I can’t wait to hear your stories. Let’s get you home.’

  She stooped to help with their bags.

  They chatted all the way, with Paula doing her best to fill her sister in on everything that had transpired on the trip. When she reached the part involving Marcelo, Sid suddenly plugged in his iPhone and did his best impression of Lachie, humming and tapping his knees.

  As Jamie drove them back through the streets of Glen Waverley, Paula took in all the landmarks—the medical centre, the shopping plaza, the public school—with a sense of both relief and unease. The landscape of her former life, in all its blessed and tedious familiarity.

  Will I ever adjust to normal life again?

  As they parked outside the house, the curtains in the lounge room billowed.

  A moment later, Catie and Lachie came bounding down the front steps. Lachie, wearing his mother’s apron, smelled of bacon. Catie, still in her nightie—one they’d never had to argue about—looked like she’d just woken up.

  The children launched themselves at Paula as if it had been forty-eight days since they’d last seen her, not forty-eight hours.

  She pulled them to her, smiling at Hamish over their heads.

  ‘Welcome back,’ said Hamish, his voice a little husky. ‘Hello, Sid.’ He reached out to shake his father-in-law’s hand, then nodded at Jamie. ‘Thanks for picking them up. I would’ve done it myself if I’d known about it.’

  ‘No trouble,’ said Jamie brightly, as Hamish lifted the bags from the boot. ‘I won’t stay.’

  Paula extricated herself from the children and bent down to embrace her sister through the car window.

  ‘Thanks, Jamie,’ she whispered, casting a brief glance in Hamish’s direction. ‘We need to debrief more.’

  ‘When you’re ready.’ Jamie beamed at her. ‘It’s so good to have you back. And you’ve done a brilliant job of looking after Dad.’

  Jamie waved at the group. ‘See you Tuesday, everyone. Christmas dinner at mine, anytime from noon.’ She winked at Paula. ‘I figured you mightn’t be up to the cooking.’ She beeped her horn and accelerated away.

  Paula turned back to her family.

  ‘Come on up—Lachie’s just made a chorizo omelette for breakfast,’ said Hamish. He smiled at Paula. ‘How’d you manage to teach him that?’

  ‘Oh, he must take after you, Hamish,’ said Paula, catching Caitlin’s eye. ‘My cooking still sucks.’

  ‘Paula.’ Sid turned to her with mock sternness. ‘If you ever say that again, you’ll do five hundred metres up the front.’

  ‘And fifty burpees,’ added Lachie.

  The children laughed.

  Hamish looked from one to another.

  ‘A joke from the road,’ Paula explained.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked momentarily put-out, then began lugging the bags up the stairs. Sid followed after Hamish, relieving him of one.

  Paula put her arms around Lachie and Catie.

  ‘It’s good to be home,’ she said. ‘Got any of that omelette left?’

  After breakfast, they moved out onto the back veranda for a cup of tea.

  Hamish nodded at the grassy square where the caravan usually stood. ‘Frank reckons he’ll deliver it just after New Year. In the meantime, we’ll make Sid a camp bed in the lounge room. I’ll sleep in my swag in the backyard.’

  ‘No, Hamish,’ Sid objected.

  Hamish held up a hand. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  He didn’t look at Paula, but she was grateful; Hamish obviously recognised that they couldn’t just resume their ordinary positions in the marital bed.

  ‘Let’s go, Lachie,’ he said. ‘You can show me where to set up my swag. You’ve got more experience than I have now. We’ll need to put a tarp over it, I reckon.’

  ‘I’ll help too,’ Sid volunteered.

  The three of them headed down the back stairs.

  Paula watched them go, then turned to her daughter. ‘Come and have a chat in the lounge room.’

  Catie followed her inside.

  Paula sat on the sofa. ‘Come,’ she said, patting her lap.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Give me a hug,’ said Paula. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  Catie looked a little wary, then lowered herself onto her mother’s lap.

  They sat in silence for a while, their arms wrapped around each other.

  As Caitlin relaxed, Paula rocked her back and forth.

  ‘This is what I used to do when you were a baby,’ she said. ‘You can’t remember it, but can you imagine it?’

  Catie smiled as Paula began to sing a lullaby, once her failsafe for putting her to sleep.

  ‘Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,

  Smiles awake you when you rise,

  Sleep, pretty Caitlin, do not cry,

  And I will sing a lullaby.’

  After a moment, Paula took her daughter’s hand. ‘I had a phone call from Mr Nelson,’ she said gently. ‘I know you created the Facebook post.’

  Caitlin’s eyes widened.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Amy?’ Paula asked. ‘We could have talked about what the boy at school saw, we could have planned a way to deal with it. But you went and did something false and risky and just plain . . . stupid.’

  Caitlin nodded through tears. ‘I know it was stupid.’

  ‘How long have you and Amy been . . . ?’ Paula didn’t quite know how to phrase it. Were Catie and Amy in a full-blown relationship, or just involved in one of those passionate platonic crushes so common with teenage girls?

  ‘I don’t really want to talk about it, Mum.’ Catie hung her head.

  Paula nodded, trying to be reasonable. ‘Okay, but we’ll have to soon. Whatever’s going on . . . I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed by how you’ve handled it. Thankfully Mr Nelson has decided to keep it quiet, or you mightn’t be going back to Burwood Secondary College next year. Honestly, Catie, I expected more from you.’

  Caitlin looked dejected. ‘I didn’t think you’d want to know about me and Amy.’ Her tone was wounded. ‘I didn’t think you’d be able to handle it. I mean, you get worked up about a nightie. And I knew Dad definitely woul
dn’t like it.’

  That his little angel was a lesbian? She’s dead right.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Paula, taking her daughter’s face in her hands. ‘When you’re ready to talk more about it, I’m ready to listen. Whatever’s going on for you, Catie, I always want to know. Sometimes it might take me a while to process it, but you’ve got to trust me: nothing will make me not love you. And honesty is always the best policy.’

  Caitlin looked at her mother, doubtfully. ‘But you’re not always honest. You were doing stuff with Marcelo that we didn’t know about.’ ‘Yes, but I wasn’t trying to mislead you.’ Paula closed her eyes, feeling embarrassed. ‘I’ve probably not been the best role model to you lately, have I?’ She opened her eyes again and looked directly at her daughter. ‘Turns out I’m human too. Everyone is in this family. We’ve all made mistakes, in one form or another. But we can forgive each other, can’t we?’

  Caitlin nodded, her eyes glistening.

  ‘And we’re going to have to pick the right time to tell Dad about you and Amy,’ Paula said. ‘After Christmas, at least.’

  ‘He’ll go ballistic,’ whispered Catie.

  ‘Probably.’ Paula pressed her forehead against her daughter’s. ‘But all I want is for you to be happy, Catie, whoever you love.’

  Caitlin smiled at her. ‘Me too. For you, I mean, Mum.’

  Paula blinked, a little startled by this insight.

  They sat like that, their foreheads pressed together, until the men of their family returned to the room.

  On the first Friday afternoon of the New Year, Paula returned home from work to find everyone at their usual posts.

  Assume the position, she thought. Sid was gardening, Lachie was playing on his new games console, Caitlin was listening to her iPod and Hamish was busy behind his laptop.

  Their trip around Australia now felt like a surreal blip on the otherwise blank radar of her existence. Reinstated as queen of her suburban life, Paula had slipped back into the routines of work and school holidays again, as though none of it had ever really happened.

  Except that it did happen, she often thought, as she hung the washing or made the beds. And I’ve got the pubic stubble to prove it.

  ‘How was your day?’ Hamish asked, standing up to greet her. He’d been utterly attentive since her return.

  ‘Alright,’ she said, placing her handbag on the kitchen bench. Her part-time job as a social worker at Bella Vista had been waiting for her, just as she’d hoped. They’d been unable to fill her position, even temporarily; few people were interested in award-wage work at an aged-care facility.

  ‘One of the residents is dying,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘He’ll probably pass away tonight with some extra morphine.’

  A feverish finale to eighty-seven years of love and pain, aspiration and boredom, triumph and failure. The inexorable end that awaits us all, sooner or later.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Hamish asked, in a consoling tone.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He began fixing her a lime and soda, their new drink of choice at home.

  ‘Want to go for a run after this?’ he asked. ‘You look stressed.’

  He was trying so hard to prioritise her needs. Still sleeping in his swag under a tarpaulin in the backyard, cooking the evening meals whenever the children didn’t, even trying to bond with Sid in the garden.

  She watched him crack the ice cubes out of the tray.

  So I don’t feel anything yet. But Hamish is my husband of seventeen years. And his affair was online; mine was real.

  The children had obviously told their father what they’d seen in Darwin—their mother wearing Marcelo’s clothes—but, quite uncharacteristically, Hamish hadn’t raised the matter with her.

  Bygones are bygones, he’d said to Paula on her first night back at home. We’ve both made our fair share of mistakes. He’d obviously been reading the stash of personal-psychology books now piled under the coffee table. Perhaps they’d helped him grapple, too, with Paula’s revelation about Caitlin’s sexuality. Instead of reacting in the way Paula feared he might—shock, rage, or stony silence—Hamish had simply sat alone for several minutes, before nodding with acquiescence. Then he’d quietly initiated another father–daughter chat with Caitlin. Only this time I’m leaving my judgments at the door, he’d said to Paula with a wry smile. I don’t want to push her out onto her bike, ever again.

  It was this, more than anything else, which finally persuaded Paula that Hamish’s own process of self-discovery—the lessons he’d learned as he’d pursued them around Australia—might lead to lasting change. While Paula herself was still finding it difficult to talk with Caitlin about her sexuality, Hamish had handled it elegantly.

  She really had to give Hamish credit, Paula thought.

  He did deserve a second chance.

  22

  ‘Look who’s here, Mum!’

  Lachie and Catie ran to the lounge-room window and peered at a semi-trailer parked outside, bearing the words ‘Top End Transporters’.

  ‘Ah!’ said Sid from the sofa, sounding genuinely pleased. ‘Our old friends, Hillary and Clinton.’

  ‘But you’re not sleeping in Clinton, Sid,’ said Hamish. ‘That’s my job for the next few weeks. You can stay in the lounge room. I’ll upgrade from swag to caravan.’

  ‘Only if it’s not too much trouble.’ Sid looked between Paula and Hamish. ‘I can go back to Greenleaves.’

  ‘No way,’ said Hamish, clapping a hand on Sid’s shoulder. ‘It’ll be my pleasure.’

  Paula wondered whether it really was such a sacrifice for Hamish. The lounge room was less comfortable than the caravan, and certainly less private. And was it a good idea for Hamish to camp overnight in Clinton? All alone, except for his laptop?

  Bygones are bygones, she told herself.

  Hamish joined the children at the window. ‘Hang on, who’s that?’ He began to smile. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’

  He strode to the front door and opened it. ‘Frank!’ he called, beaming. ‘What are you doing here? Talk about personal service. Tell the driver to bring ’em up into the back yard, mate.’

  Paula watched as the driver expertly manoeuvred the ute and caravan off the semi-trailer and up their steep driveway, with Frank’s assistance.

  ‘Hey, Mum, remember your jackknife on the first day?’ Lachie taunted.

  Paula poked her tongue out at him.

  ‘You didn’t?’ Hamish repressed a smirk. ‘Okay, I won’t say a word. I’ll go get Frank.’

  He disappeared down the front stairs.

  A few minutes later, they returned.

  ‘Frank, meet the kids,’ said Hamish. ‘Catie and Lachie.’

  They waved at him.

  ‘You know everyone else?’

  ‘G’day,’ said Frank, removing his cap and nodding around the room.

  ‘What brings you to Melbourne?’ Paula asked. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, thanks. Just doin’ my job, ma’am.’

  He seemed different, Paula thought.

  Frank reached into the blue backpack he was carrying. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  He pulled out a white envelope and placed it on the dining-room table. ‘There’s the one-and-a-half grand I owe you.’

  Everyone stared at the envelope.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Hamish asked.

  ‘You two paid me a couple of times. Hamish out of Freo, Paula in Darwin.’

  ‘But you earned that, mate,’ said Hamish. ‘And there’s another grand here for this job too.’ Hamish opened his wallet.

  Frank shook his head. ‘Give it to the driver out the front. I’ve been working on another job of my own. A bit like trying to trap a pack of dingos. Watch the seven o’clock news.’ He zipped up his bag. ‘I’ll be back in touch. We’re going to be seeing a bit more of each other.’

  Frank pulled his cap back onto his head and walked towards the rear stairs.

  Hamish followed hi
m. ‘What are you talking about, mate?’

  Frank turned. ‘Just watch tonight’s news.’ Then he walked back to Paula and lowered his voice so that no one could hear. ‘And you should check out the freezer in the caravan.’

  Frank strode past Hamish and down the stairs.

  ‘Which channel?’ Lachie called after him.

  ‘Any one you like,’ came the reply.

  Paula watched through the lounge-room window as Frank jogged down the driveway, then climbed into a navy Commodore parked outside their house. She couldn’t see the driver behind the car’s tinted windows. The car drove off.

  Hamish looked around the room. ‘Does anyone know what the hell that was about?’

  No one said a word.

  ‘I guess we’ll just have to wait for the news,’ said Caitlin, slightly breathless. ‘It’s on in fifteen minutes.’

  They sat, the five of them, mute and unmoving on the sofa.

  It was the second item of the evening, after a story on Melbourne’s planned Olympic bid for 2024. Behind the newsreader, an image of Marcelo appeared; Paula read the caption, open-mouthed. Record drug haul.

  The newsreader’s eyes followed the autocue.

  ‘A single phone call provided an important breakthrough in a joint police investigation that netted one of Australia’s largest-recorded cocaine seizures—two hundred and fifty kilograms, worth an estimated two hundred million dollars.

  ‘The deputy commissioner of the Australian Federal Police told a news conference today that ‘Operation Dingo’ had been conducting surveillance into trans-Nullarbor narcotics movements across three states and territories for more than six months. But it was a simple tip-off from a concerned member of the public that ultimately led to the arrest of a seventeen-member international drug syndicate.’

  The camera cut to a news conference, where three uniformed officers sat in front of a pack of reporters. The central figure, identified as the deputy commissioner, leaned into his microphone.

  ‘A Belgian backpacker identified a suspicious individual at an Adelaide budget hostel in November and contacted police. That individual was tracked across several sites of interest along the Nullarbor Plain trucking route, and ultimately led police to an alleged ringleader. One phone call allowed us to unravel a syndicate that will be stopped forever.’