‘Bye, nice to meet you,’ Vanessa called after her as Jess disappeared down the hall. ‘Bye Josh.’
He grunted a goodbye as Sam walked Vanessa to the door and followed her out onto the verandah.
‘They’re gorgeous, Sam,’ Vanessa gushed. ‘Josh is so tall and handsome, and Jessica’s a doll, with that long blonde hair.’
‘They take after their father.’
‘They’re coping with the move alright?’
‘So far, so good.’
Sam had to admit that things had gone incredibly smoothly, helped in no small way by the Suarez family next door. The two of them had happily boarded the bus this morning as though they did it every day. Josh had a newfound status as the older boy. Just as Jessica idolised Marco, Marco idolised Josh. All the Suarez boys thought he was some kind of god on his skateboard, and Joshua was lapping it up. He had even bestowed upon Marco one of his old skateboards, which had been received with reverence and awe by the younger boy.
‘You’re so lucky, Sam,’ said Vanessa wistfully.
Sam looked at her. ‘You have to talk to Dominic, you know that, don’t you?’
She nodded vaguely.
‘As soon as possible,’ Sam insisted. ‘You’re deceiving him, he’s within his rights to be upset. And the longer it goes on, the worse it will be.’
Sam noticed her lip trembling. ‘Vanessa, you’re his wife. In the end you mean more to him than anything, and your happiness will too.’
She wasn’t at all sure she believed that, and looking at Vanessa, Sam suspected she didn’t either.
‘You should try to remember what brought you together in the first place,’ she suggested, trying a different tack. ‘How did you two fall in love?’
Vanessa was thoughtful for what seemed like a long time. Sam was beginning to think she hadn’t heard her, then she cleared her throat.
‘I can’t remember.’
Sam wandered back into the house after waving Vanessa off. She couldn’t do anything for her at this stage. It was up to Vanessa now. Sam walked down the hall and tapped on Jessica’s door before opening it.
‘Can we talk?’
‘Soon as I’m finished, Mum,’ she said, covering the mouthpiece. ‘Won’t be long.
Sam sighed. ‘You can ring her back.’
‘But –’
‘Jessica, just give me five minutes, please. I have to go and pick up Ellie soon. I promise, you can ring Emma back then.’
Jess pulled a face, but she grudgingly told Emma she’d call back in five minutes. Sam half expected her to put on the kitchen timer when they walked out to join Josh, who was busy eating his way through the newly stocked pantry.
‘So, tell me how it went today,’ said Sam brightly.
Josh shrugged, his mouth full.
‘It was fine, Mum, I told you,’ said Jess impatiently. ‘Now, can I ring Emma back?’
‘Jess, five minutes, I said. It’s all I’m asking for, you two. Come on, you have to give me something,’ she pleaded.
Josh swallowed. ‘Mr Pritchard’s a dickhead.’
‘Josh, language!’
‘He is, he gave us homework the first night.’
‘I’ve got him for English,’ Jess exclaimed. ‘He gave us homework too!’
Sam listened as they bleated about the same stuff they always did their first day back. The only reference they made to the fact they had started at a new school was to say that they didn’t have to do any of that ‘dumb crap’ and introduce themselves in front of everyone. The school apparently had a buddy system in place for new students, and they were both assigned someone who sat with them in most of their classes. It appeared that rather than being shunned as newcomers, they instead had a bit of kudos, and it sat well with the pair of them.
‘Did I hear right? Are they really okay?’ Jeff said in disbelief when he phoned later. He’d asked Josh to put his mother on after he had spoken with them.
‘I know, I can hardly believe it either,’ Sam replied. ‘They seem fine. I just worry that it’s a little too calm, you know? I’m waiting for the storm to hit.’
She heard Jeff laugh gently. ‘You’ve always been a bit of a pessimist, haven’t you, Sam?
Had she? She hoped not. She had never thought of herself as a pessimist.
‘I barely slept a wink last night, worrying about them,’ Jeff was saying.
‘Really?’ she said, not able to hide the surprise in her voice.
‘You think you have the monopoly on worrying about the kids, Sam?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t mean that –’
‘It’s okay,’ Jeff sighed. ‘Fact is, I have always left the worrying to you.’ He paused. ‘But this felt like it was on my head. They only had to change schools because of . . . what I did. You don’t know how guilty I’ve been feeling.’
That was a huge admission. Which strangely gave Sam no satisfaction whatsoever.
‘Guilt never did anybody any good,’ she told him, and she actually meant it. ‘I think it’s time to move on. Seems to be what the kids are doing.’
‘Sure,’ he said, clearly stunned.
Neither of them spoke for the next few moments. Their lives were moving further apart with every day that passed. Common property had been dispersed or liquidated. They lived at different postcodes. Pretty soon there’d be nothing remaining of the life they once shared. Except the kids. There’d always be the kids.
‘I have to go,’ said Sam, breaking the reverie.
‘Of course, I didn’t mean to keep you.’
‘Bye.’
November
Sam could not understand why the car had stopped, or why it wouldn’t start up again. It just seemed to run out of puff. It had coughed and spluttered a couple of times before gliding to a complete halt.
She looked at the time. There was no way she would make it home for the kids now. She’d been cutting it pretty fine anyway. Sam tried the ignition again. Nothing. She sighed heavily, frowning at the little petrol bowser illuminated on the dash. It couldn’t be that she’d run out of petrol, surely? She had never paid that much attention to the little bowser on the four-wheel drive, because of the auxiliary tank. Jeff filled the car every weekend, it was the one thing he did take care of. So Sam made sure she filled this car weekly as well. But she had done a lot of driving this week, an unusual amount in fact.
Sheila had recently passed on another client and Sam had been grateful to pick up some more hours, with Christmas on the way. But now she was not so sure that Mrs Patricia Bowen was worth the trouble. Never had Sam felt more like an indentured servant. Mrs Bowen was obviously under the assumption that Sam had no other clients, no family of her own, no life. Either that or she didn’t care either way, which was probably closer to the truth. She was undertaking some minor renovations to her home, apparently for no other reason than it gave her the opportunity to harass people whom she wouldn’t normally meet in the course of her daily life, namely building contractors. And Sam. None of the renovations were essential, or even much of an improvement on what was already an overwrought, pseudo-Tuscan mansion of the worst possible pretentious kind. But Mrs Bowen wanted a slightly larger window here, a new set of French doors there, all six toilet suites (Sam had never heard them called that before) replaced, and new door handles throughout. And she expected Sam to search the metropolitan area far and wide for exactly what she wanted, seeming displeased if she found it too easily, and so changing her mind, yet again. Sam wondered how long she could put up with the woman’s sheer effrontery.
But now she had her own problems. She sat in the car going nowhere, considering her options. Josh and Jess caught the school bus and they both had a key in case they beat Sam home. She had promised them she would never be far away without letting them know. Then there was Ellie. She didn’t like to leave her at pre-school past four o’clock if she didn’t have to, it was a long enough day. She might make it, but it depended on how long it was going to take to get the car going.
> Sam had a sudden fright. She grabbed her wallet from her bag and started searching frantically through all the pockets for her MRA membership card. She found it eventually and scanned it for details. Damn! She’d forgotten to change the membership over when she bought this car. Surely they would understand? She was trying to remember the policy. There would possibly be a charge involved but that didn’t bother her. Sam studied the card again and her heart sank. It was out of date. Her membership had lapsed in September, the month of the move; she must have missed it in all the confusion. She stared disconsolately out the window as the sign on a telegraph pole nearest her came into focus. This was apparently a clearway zone from three-thirty. Sam checked her watch. It was after three already.
She felt panic rising up inside her, but she had to stay calm and think this through. Someone had to pick up Ellie. If she arranged that, then she could concentrate on the car.
Jeff. He was Ellie’s father. It was a reasonable thing to ask, a reasonable thing to expect him to do. She dialled his office number on her mobile and his assistant answered.
‘Hello, it’s Samantha Holmes, could I speak to Jeff please?’
‘Sorry, Ms Holmes. He’s in a meeting.’
‘Well, this is important. It’s an emergency actually.’
‘Of course. Then you should probably try him on his mobile.’
‘Oh?’
‘He’s over at the St Leonard’s office.’
‘Oh,’ Sam repeated flatly. He’d never make it in time anyway. ‘Never mind then.’
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘No, thanks, I’ll have to make some other arrangement. Don’t worry.’
‘I’ll tell him you called.’
Sam hung up and dialled Max’s mobile, praying she’d be contactable and not in a lecture or something. It was hard to remember her schedule, erratic as it was.
She answered.
‘Oh, thank God, where are you?’ Sam blurted.
‘I’m at uni, Sam, what’s up?’
‘Are you in the middle of anything important?’
‘Well, it depends –’
‘I need you to pick up Ellie, if it’s no trouble, well, even if it is trouble . . . Max? Max?’
Damn! The line had dropped out. Sam looked at her phone. The battery was low. She had probably one more chance to get through to Max before it went dead altogether. She pressed redial and Max answered immediately.
‘What happened?’
‘My battery’s low, so if it drops out again, try ringing me instead.’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ve broken down.’
‘Oh no, Sam. Do you know what’s wrong?’
‘Well, actually, I think I may have run out of petrol.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘Okay, okay,’ Sam could hear the snigger in Max’s voice. ‘You can make fun of me later. In the meantime, I need you to pick up Ellie and go back to the house and wait with the kids. I’ll pay you for the taxi when I get there.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Actually I was just offered a lift home, I’m sure it won’t be a problem to detour. But what are you going to do? Have you called the MRA yet?’
Sam sighed. ‘My membership has lapsed,’ she said in a small voice.
‘What!’ Max shrieked.
‘Look, don’t carry on. There’s nothing I can do about it now.’
‘But what will you do? Are you near any petrol stations?’
Sam looked up the broad sweep of road ahead of her. ‘Not that I can see, but I don’t want to leave the car to go looking. I’m on a clearway, I think it may even be a tow-away zone.’
‘Shit, Sam!’ Max exclaimed. ‘Tell me where you are, exactly.’
‘Well, I’m on Parramatta Road, um, maybe near Annandale, I’m not sure. I’m not at Leichhardt yet, I know that much.’
‘So you’re heading west?’
‘I suppose so, or south maybe. Anyway, I’m on the left-hand side of the road.’
Max laughed. ‘God you’re a dolt sometimes. You’d always be on the left-hand side of the road, Sherl! Don’t move, okay? I’ll organise something. And don’t worry about –’
But the phone had gone dead. Completely this time. Sam sighed heavily and tossed it into her bag. She supposed she would have to trust Max. She didn’t really have a choice.
The next twenty minutes passed more quickly than Sam had anticipated, and more quickly than she would have liked. From the dot of three-thirty, she was steadily assailed by cars whizzing up the outside lane and sounding their horns insistently when they realised she wasn’t moving. She had searched everywhere for the hazard lights, but she had never used them before on this car and she couldn’t find the switch. A couple of times she thought a car was going to end up in her boot, it came up so fast. None of this was helping to ease her anxiety. There wasn’t a thing she could do now. If she had any hope of finding a service station, she should have started looking as soon as she broke down. She had walked back a little way up the road after speaking to Max, but she hadn’t seen anything that way either. The area was still unfamiliar to her, she would have ended up on the proverbial wild goose chase if she had gone searching. So she was better off staying put.
Another car roared up behind her, bimping loudly. As the driver swerved past, he stuck his middle finger up at her. God, what did he think, she was doing this just to annoy people? That she got her kicks from parking in clearway zones on a hot day with her engine off and no airconditioning? It occurred to Sam that lifting the bonnet would at least signal to the approaching traffic that she had in fact broken down. She released the lever under the dash and stepped out of the hot car into the even hotter sun.
Her anxiety was hitting an all-time high. She had never broken down before. Actually that was not quite true. Jeff’s old Valiant station wagon had broken down once on their way back from the beach. She recalled it was a fanbelt or some such thing. They had walked to a phone booth – it was in the days when phone booths were everywhere – and called Jeff’s dad, who’d come to collect them. It was no great drama. Filling in time with your boyfriend when you were seventeen was hardly an ordeal anyway.
Sam lifted the bonnet and propped the arm into position. When she stepped up onto the kerb, she saw that a police car had pulled up behind her. She immediately froze, feeling sick inside. She felt like a criminal, even though she had done nothing wrong, really. Just something stupid. How long did they put you away for that?
‘Afternoon, ma’am,’ said the policeman as he approached, shadowed by his female partner, who nodded in Sam’s direction. ‘Having car trouble?’
‘Yes,’ Sam said, trying to control the waver in her voice.
‘Have you called for help?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘My sister . . .’ she was about to say ‘will be here soon’, but she didn’t know what Max was organising.
The policeman was looking at her quizzically. ‘Your sister? She knows about cars?’
‘No,’ Sam smiled weakly. ‘She was going to get help. The battery on my mobile went flat.’
‘So, she called the MRA for you?’
‘Well, no, actually, I’m not a member any more. My membership lapsed, well, it must have come due just as I was moving house, and to be honest, I don’t even remember getting the renewal in the mail. Not that I’m blaming the MRA, I’m sure it wasn’t their fault. I used to work for them actually.
They’re very efficient. I must have just missed it because of the move.’ Sam took a breath. She realised she was trembling and the police were staring at her, not a little bemused.
‘Anyway, I don’t really need the MRA. Because I know what’s wrong. I’m pretty sure I’ve just run out of petrol.’
The policeman considered the car, frowning. ‘I would have thought this model had an indicator light on the instrument panel. You know, it looks like a petrol bowser.’
Sam sighed. ‘It does. It’s just that I used to have a four-wheel d
rive and it had an auxiliary tank, so I didn’t really have to think about running out of petrol . . .’ She noticed they were both suppressing smiles. ‘Look, I’m not usually disorganised. As a matter of fact, I take care of this kind of thing for other people. I’m a lifestyle manager.’
They were now miserably failing the battle to suppress those smiles.
‘Whatever you say, ma’am,’ said the policeman. ‘But I’m afraid this is a tow-away zone and unless you can indicate to me that you’ll be on your way shortly, then I’ll have to make the call.’
Sam bit the edge of her thumb. She didn’t know what else to say. She had the feeling she’d said enough to hang herself already.
‘Here’s someone,’ said the policewoman.
They all looked around as a car pulled up in front of the Magna.
‘Anyone you know?’
Sam nodded weakly.
‘Looks like your knight in shining armour has arrived.’
The boot flipped open as Hal appeared out of the car, smiling broadly. Sam dashed forward to meet him, out of earshot of the police.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.
‘Max phoned me.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘I guess because she thought I might be able to help.’
Sam sighed, exasperated. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this. It’s not . . . appropriate.’
Now Hal sighed.
She didn’t know why it bothered her that he’d shown up, but it did. She was embarrassed about her email brush-off. They hadn’t spoken since then and now he was here, rescuing her. ‘You’re always helping me out. I’m supposed to do this kind of thing for you.’
‘Well, next time I run out of gas and I’m stranded on the side of the road, I promise I’ll call you.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the policeman, interrupting them. ‘You’ve brought petrol with you?’
‘Absolutely, officer,’ said Hal, tapping the can in the boot of his car.
‘I think we can leave you and your wife to sort this out between you,’ he smiled. ‘But if you could get the car moving as soon as possible . . .’
Sam went to say something, but Hal placed his arm around her shoulder. ‘Thanks officer. Thank the officer, honey.’
Wife for Hire Page 32