by Cate Kendall
My God, thought Monique, it must be serious for her best friend to have just told her such a bare-faced lie.
‘Oh God, look at that,’ Ellie suddenly said, inclining her head toward the monstrous brightly coloured adventure playground area.
‘What?’ asked Monique, staring blankly at the frenzied children swinging, running and sliding through the garishly coloured tubes and tunnels.
‘Oh good Lord, I see it,’ Mim sighed. ‘Look out, girls, first-time mother at three o’clock.’
Monique looked in the direction of Ellie’s subtly pointing pinkie (nicely varnished in Espresso, just the thing for a coffee morning).
A rare sight was being played out in the playground as an obviously enthusiastic and yet-to-be-jaded mother was climbing into the colourful slide with her toddler.
‘Only child!’ Ellie and Monique muttered in unison.
‘Oh, God,’ said Monique, shielding her eyes in mock horror, ‘she can barely squeeze into the tube; that is so not a good look. Do you think one of us should tell her?’
‘What? That she’s too fat to play?’ Mim asked, arching one finely plucked eyebrow, daring Monique to openly admit to her bitchy comment.
‘No, of course not,’ Monique nervously laughed. ‘No. I mean tell her that parents really don’t have to play here; I mean she’s making the rest of us look bad, isn’t she?’
‘The kid obviously loves it, though,’ said Mim, watching the mother-and-child moment. ‘He’s squealing with laughter.’ Mim was fed up with playing their usual criticism game, it just made her feel shallow and empty.
‘She’s just trying to show us all up,’ Monique moaned.
Some mothers at nearby tables had also noticed the ‘interactive’ mother and were nudging each other and whispering. A couple of them even, reluctantly, got up to pat their offsprings’ heads and whisper encouragement.
‘Oh, I can’t stand it a minute longer,’ said Monique, ‘I will not be shown up at a play centre, for God’s sake!’
The others stared. Jaws dropped. Monique was going to play? This was unprecedented.
Stalking briskly into the play area Monique found Prudie tying on Sienna’s tiny pink Nikes. ‘Prudie, darling, could you please take Sienna up for a slide on your lap?’
‘Muuuuuum,’ whined the affronted Sienna, ‘I’m six! I don’t need helping to get down the slide!’
‘Just do it for Mummy, darling, then you can have a skinny babycino and a choco-lo-fat muffin with me after!’
‘O-KAY!’ the child relented begrudgingly, and stomped off with her nanny in tow.
Monique returned triumphantly to her seat, mission accomplished. A few minutes later Sienna came to claim her promised reward and sat spooning babycino froth into her mouth and giggling with Paris and Chloe.
‘They all play so well,’ Mim smiled at the trio. ‘We really need to organise a girls’ night for them to sleep over together.’
‘That would be gorgeous,’ Monique agreed, ‘We could get that company, what’s it called – Fairy Facials I think – to come and do mini makeovers on them, how fun!’
‘Yeeess,’ agreed Mim, and continued sarcastically, ‘then we could throw them on the modelling circuit and have them pouting and strutting before they hit puberty.’ Mim was immediately hot-faced and shocked with herself for being so nasty.
Normally the idea of a home beauty salon for the little girls would have struck her as charming and fun too, but lately she’d been worrying that maybe all the attention to appearance might not be such a good thing and she hated to think of Chloe under constant pressure to look ‘right’ as she grew up. It had struck her recently that maybe she wasn’t providing a very good role model for her daughter. Monique shot Mim a shocked look, but decided she was probably just premenstrual and let the matter drop.
As the mothers around them began packing up children and paraphernalia, the Mothers’ Group girls also started making noises about leaving. Paris slurped up the last of her drink and Ursula started packing up her dolls and crayons.
‘Oh dear, it must be time to go.’ Ellie looked enquiringly at her nanny, who was bundling Paris into her Madeline-style coat. ‘Do we have to go?’ she gave a mock whine, ‘can’t I have one more latte?’
‘Sorry, Mrs Ashcombe, it’s Paris’s quiet time,’ Ursula answered smoothly.
‘God, it’s all about the kids nowadays, isn’t it?’ Ellie moaned. ‘Sometimes I could really do with a break from motherhood you know.’ She stood and flung her wrap stylishly over her shoulders. ‘Anyhoo, ciao bellas – gorgeous to have some quality play-time with the kiddies. Speak soon.’ She blew them a group kiss and led her mini-entourage out to the car park.
Monique was getting herself organised to leave as Liz rushed in with Hubert.
‘So sorry to be late, girls – you’re not all going?’
‘Sorry, I have to, I’ve got to get these disgusting nails sorted,’ Monique moaned tapping her gleaming manicured fingers on the table.
‘I’m good,’ offered Mim. ‘Work is madness, I have thirty-two flyer options to pdf and email this evening, but I can’t do a thing till the cherubs are in bed so I can stay for another hour. We could have lunch.’
‘Fab!’ exclaimed Liz. She plopped onto a chair, sent Hubert off to play with Chloe and eagerly scooped up the menu with the standard ‘I shouldn’t but …’ as she scanned the menu choices. ‘You sound under the gun at the moment, darling,’ Liz said with concern. ‘Heaps on?’
‘Yes,’ groaned Mim, ‘I’m so busy!!! Working from home sounds great – you know work and mother at the same time and all that – but it’s really just a nightmare and I’m over the whole thing right now.’
‘Really?’ murmured Liz. ‘That’s no good, sweetheart.’
‘The concept of working for yourself is great: work your own hours, be available for coffee with the girls, school emergencies or sick children,’ Mim began, aware that Liz, with her indulgent lifestyle, would have no concept of the effort of juggling work and home.
‘It sounds ideal,’ agreed Liz.
‘But it’s hell, Liz, it really is!’ Mim said, panic creeping into her voice. ‘I already had two client calls before the others got here today. I had to rush out to the courtyard so the unprofessional background noise of screaming children couldn’t be overheard.’
‘Surely the client would understand?’ asked Mim.
‘Oh God no, not Taylor’s Tarts! And they are tarts, both of them: two sisters, no children, in their late twenties with high expectations and no clue of what I’m trying to juggle to keep up with their unrealistic demands.’ She paused. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she said with both hands over her eyes, ‘I sound like such a complainer. I should just give it up, right? It’s not like we need the money …’ Mim halted at this point and dropped her hands and her voice to a whisper as she looked at Liz. ‘It’s just that we do need the money, Liz, it’s all getting so tight at the moment.’ She paused.
‘Oh, Mim,’ said Liz with surprise, ‘I had no idea!’
‘It’s just so difficult to keep up, you know,’ Mim continued. ‘There’s Langholme’s winter soiree coming up; that’s a new outfit. I had to promise to cater a luncheon for the fund-raising committee – otherwise they’d be gossiping about me all year; then we’ve got the golf-club membership and racing club memberships due, and there’s a Gucci handbag on sale like Tiffany’s and you know the sort of pressure there is to be up-to-the-minute with everything. You’d think I’d be past peer-group pressure by now,’ she laughed uncertainly. ‘But somehow it’s an even bigger issue now, there just seems to be so much to prove …’ she trailed off.
Liz’s thoughts had wandered as the reality of Mim’s money woes became clear, but she looked up as she realised Mim had stopped talking, and gave what she hoped was an encouraging murmur.
‘Thanks,’ Mim sniffed to the waiter as he put down the smoked salmon and caper foccacia at her place and a blackberry muffin at Liz’s.
Mim nibbled the
edge of the foccacia and quickly made a face and dropped it back on to her plate in disgust. ‘For God’s sake, can’t this place get a simple meal right? I wouldn’t feed a street-kid this rubbish, the salmon’s dry on the edges.’
‘Mim!’ Liz cried. ‘What an incredibly spoilt brat you are sometimes!’
Mim’s face crumpled with hurt and confusion.
Liz sighed. It had been a brutal morning at the mission and sometimes stepping back into her other world was difficult. She was exhausted with the effort of keeping her two lives separate. But that was no excuse for speaking so harshly to Mim. It was time to come clean, she decided.
‘Mim, I’m so sorry, that was a terrible thing for me to say,’ Liz began. ‘It’s just that, well, I haven’t been entirely honest with you girls, and I think it’s time I started being more truthful.’
Mim pushed her dry salmon foccacia away and stared wide-eyed at her friend. ‘What is it?’
‘I got upset with what you said just now about street-kids because since 6 a.m. I’ve been at a mission in St Kilda serving up scrambled eggs to homeless teenagers,’ Liz told her with a serious look on her face. ‘I’m not normally rostered on for breakfast, but they were desperate.’
‘Normally rostered on? Is this, like, a regular thing then?’ Mim asked in disbelief.
‘Yes, it is. I’ve been doing it since Roman was two years old.’
Liz told Mim her story. She held back the personal details, of course, but her volunteer work at the St Kilda Angels was revealed, and Liz felt incredibly relieved to finally share this part of her life.
Mim drove home, astounded after the long talk with Liz. Who would have thought that Liz, of all people – with all her money – would be leading such a giving, selfless double life. And, more importantly, why was she doing it?
Everybody in their social set attended money-raising functions for various causes: children, whales, rainforests – they donated by buying tickets to fabulous do’s and winning expensive items at charity auctions, and therefore felt truly benevolent because they were ‘giving to the poor’. But to actually be hands-on – well, it just wasn’t done!
‘What on earth is in it for her?’ Mim found herself thinking, and then abruptly realised the selfishness of the thought.
Oh God, no wonder she sounded like a spoilt brat – or princess, as James would say.
She thought hard for a few minutes. What did she actually do for anyone else?
Nothing, she realised, her face hot with shame. Somehow labels, the right invitations, fashion and keeping up with the Smith-Kline-Joneses had become the causes closest to her heart.
Shit, I think maybe I am a Private School Princess, she thought. Maybe it’s time for a change?
Ellie drove the Porsche through the Langholme Grammar circular drive and picked up Rupert, who was wrestling with another Grade Two boy on the lawn.
‘Hi, possum, hop in,’ she called from the window of the car. ‘Oh shit,’ she said under her breath as Rupert’s teacher strode toward the car, ‘it’s Mrs Creighton. Quick, darling.’ Rupert chucked his bag on the back seat and Ellie pressed the accelerator to escape the unwelcome onslaught.
‘So, how was school?’ She glanced over at her first-born as he gazed out the window.
‘All right,’ was the unenthusiastic reply.
‘What was the best bit?’
‘Lunchtime, but there wasn’t enough food. Can I’ve two packets of chips tomorrow?’ he whined.
‘We’ll see. And the worst bit?’
‘Art.’
‘How could you not like art? It’s meant to be fun,’ Ellie said.
‘It’s so boring. He makes us all do the same thing and I got in trouble for punching Tarquin. But he started it. He called me Fatty Boombatty.’
‘Oh, sweetie,’ she stroked his chubby little cheek, ‘he doesn’t understand you’ve got a gland problem.’ At least Ellie now knew the reason Mrs Creighton had wanted to bail her up.
With the Porsche double-parked outside TJs, Ellie rushed in and grabbed Paris. She really wanted to have a minute to talk to Miss Haughton about Paris’s social skills (or lack thereof ) but the parking situation forced her to grab and run. Next time, she promised herself.
Pulling up into their four-car garage, the children jumped out and ran for the house, leaving Ellie carrying the bags and following the trail of discarded items they left in their wake.
Stepping over socks, shoes, jumpers, school notices, craft and an unidentifiable pink bit of goop with beads stuck onto it, which she skirted as if it was radioactive, Ellie made her way to their Italian marble kitchen. ‘Rupert, sweetie, out of the cupboard. Paris, what happened to your beautiful new stockings?’ She eyed the huge hole torn in the stockings lying on the floor.
‘George happened,’ Paris replied. ‘I HATE him,’ and she stomped off to the TV room.
With the children snacked-up and in front of the television, Ellie went upstairs to pack. She opened her overnight bag and threw in jeans, runners, windcheater and T-shirt, and a tracksuit to sleep in. It gets cold there, she thought. She momentarily picked up her silk robe, and lay it back on the bed. No, she thought, that’s inappropriate.
She grabbed her overnight Louis Vuitton case and headed back downstairs to check on the children, greeting Ursula in the kitchen. What a little treasure. She was already starting dinner and had the children up at the bench eating a second snack of carrot sticks and dip.
‘Oh, hello Ursula, thanks so much for getting the dry-cleaning.’
‘No problem, Mrs Ashcombe, it’s my pleasure.’ Ursula smiled at Ellie while simultaneously removing a dip-coated carrot stick from Rupert who was threatening to stick it into Paris’s hair.
Ellie went into the office to make a couple of phone calls and then ducked back upstairs to get changed into black wool pants, a cream turtleneck and flat black ankle boots. Grabbing her quilted cream jacket, overnight case and black Prada sac, she headed to the car.
‘Bye kids,’ she said, kissing them on the way past. ‘You behave for Ursula now, see you tomorrow.’
And she was out the door.
As Ellie zoomed down the highway, heavy clouds that had been threatening all day finally unleashed their fury and the Porsche wipers were going full pelt. She was anxious to be there, yet apprehensive, and wished she didn’t have to go at all.
She started reflecting on who she was about to visit and the past they shared. Ellie’s past was not exactly as she made it out to be. She felt dreadfully guilty misleading most of her friends, but, she justified to herself, they loved her, the today-Ellie, not the twenty years ago Ellie. That Ellie was a very different person.
Ellie had been a normal girl, who thought, like all little girls, she was probably a princess. But, as she looked out of the only skinny window letting grimy light into her cell-sized room, she thought, how could a princess live here? Unless, of course, it’s a princess who has been locked in a tower by a wicked stepmother and is guarded by a dragon.
Only it wasn’t a stepmother, it was her real mother, who was being chased by demons of her own. Addictive, terrible demons.
Every night Ellie walked her sister home from school to their three-room workman’s cottage. The front door was barely a metre from the street, joined at each side to other cottages so close that the fights and shouts of desperate and often dangerous inhabitants permeated the lathe and plaster day and night. The cottage was on the edge of the city, years before the edge of the city became trendy and started pumping out litres of latte and mountains of foccacia. This was a suburb originally built in the 1800s for the working-class poor, and it had gone steadily downhill since. The first architects to discover the wonders of ‘warehouse space’ and ‘urban living’ were years away from Ellie’s little patch.
She had been a very quiet girl. She had discovered early on in life that if you stay as quiet as possible, you won’t draw attention to yourself. She had become a master at making herself invisible. She made lunch for h
erself and her little sister Sarah every day and then the girls walked to the local state primary school, and years later to the high school across the road.
Ellie loved her sister and would help her with her homework each night, talk to her about her friends and problems, and make her dinner. Ellie tried really hard to keep her own grades up, but found it very difficult. She had little time after maintaining their household, as pathetic as it was.
Often her mother would party long into the night with the strangers she brought home. On those nights the girls would shut the bedroom door and lie in bed together in fear as they remembered the terrible night when one of the ‘guests’ had come into their room with probing fingers and an evil laugh.
Returning abruptly to the present, Ellie shook her head. She didn’t want to go there. She didn’t want to think about that right now. She left the freeway and before long was on the quiet road she knew so well. Great tall ghost gums lined the driveway as the Porsche made its left-hand turn and crunched up the gravel towards the big, old house.
The porch light was on and a figure waited in the doorway. Another blonde, long-haired beauty with legs that went on forever stood with the light shining out around her, making her glow like an apparition. With her arms folded, blocking out the cold, she hugged the woolly cable-knit cardigan around her. The baggy cords and ugg boots did nothing to belie her angelic appearance.
Ellie parked the car and, grabbing her bag and case, strode across. The women were of equal height when they embraced.
‘You’re here,’ said the woman.
‘Thank God,’ Ellie replied.
Ellie’s feet echoed on the ancient floorboards in the draughty hall. Dozens of memories – some sad, some joyful – flooded back as she breathed in the familiar smells of the house. She dropped her bags at the foot of the imposing timber staircase and looked around for anything new, but it was all as it had been for decades.