Girl in Between

by Anna Daniels

  ‘Ha!’ says Rosie absently.

  ‘I always quite fancied my hands. Remember Daisy Geraghty from uni? She told me once I could be a hand model.’

  ‘Did she?’ Rosie touches her throat. ‘I’m worried about my neck. I think it’s going to go next.’

  ‘Tell me about it—I turn thirty-three in a fortnight!’

  ‘I know! I’ll have to buy you some heavy-duty wrinkle cream … Actually, wasn’t there a range in the latest HomeHints catalogue?’

  ‘Yeah, I titled it: Firm Solutions for Thirty-Somethings!’

  When our giggles have subsided, I propose a toast to Rosie and her impending move to Darwin, and she proposes a toast to me and my move to the cockroach capital.

  ‘Are you sure Oscar and Helen don’t want any, love?’ Mum asks casually a few nights later as Rosie and I arrive home with takeaway Chinese.

  ‘No, Mum, he’s been over here almost as much as he’s been there,’ I reply. ‘Helen will want some time with him.’

  ‘Not sure what that means!’ Mum says archly, meeting my eyebrow raise with one of her own.

  ‘So tell us about Darwin, Rosie,’ says Dad, peering at her over his reading glasses. ‘When do you leave? They sink a lot of piss up there, you know,’ he adds.

  Rosie, who is fetching bowls from the cupboard, ignores this observation. ‘Ben and I head up next week from Sydney, after Cher.’

  ‘Cher! Bloody hell!’ says Dad, sitting up in his chair. ‘While I’ve got you both here, we need to talk strategy.’

  Rosie looks at me, bemused, and I shrug my shoulders.

  ‘Oh yes!’ Mum cries. ‘Now, hang on, let me get my list, Brian.’ She bustles off and returns with a clipboard.

  ‘Right, first of all, timing. The concert’s at seven, but of course you and I have got champagne and canapés with Cher first, Brian.’ She gives him a fond smile. ‘That’s at six.’

  ‘Right, six. So, let’s work back—we have to get from our hotel to the concert, avoid traffic, allow for any hiccups or delays …’ He pauses, thinking. ‘We’ll have to get there by two.’

  ‘Two!’ I exclaim. ‘Dad!’

  ‘Oh, Lucy, they’re all half mad down there,’ Dad explains. ‘Even two could be pushing it fine.’

  ‘Your father’s right,’ says Mum, nodding. ‘You know, you start off in Sydney and you think you’ve got all the time in the world, and before you know it, your taxi’s taken a wrong turn and suddenly you’re in bumper-to-bumper traffic going in the opposite direction. No thank you! Not when you’ve got a date with Cher! Oh, I’m almost in a cold sweat at the thought of missing it.’

  Rosie and I look at each other again and our shoulders shake with laughter.

  ‘Well, you and Dad are the chosen ones, you can go along at the crack of dawn,’ I say, still chuckling as I snap the lids off our Chinese. ‘I’ll Uber in with Rosie.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with your face,’ says the agent, looking across at me from her computer screen. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘Okay, still got a couple of years left,’ she says, glancing at me momentarily. ‘Can you sing or dance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mmm. Could be a problem.’

  I watch her massively long fake nails strike away at the keyboard and wonder whether she’s even hitting the right letters.

  ‘Now, about the way you sound …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you consider going to voice classes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see. Okay; well, lovely to meet you, Lucy.’

  ‘Yes, you too, Jessica,’ I say, and shake her outstretched hand. Then, because I can’t resist, and know that I’ll never see her again, I call out, ‘Hooray!’ in my broadest Aussie accent as I leave.

  I step out of the A1 Talent Agency office into Darlinghurst’s busy Oxford Street feeling flatter than a red-bellied black snake. I’d arrived in Sydney a few days earlier than the others to hang out with Oscar and start looking for work. He planned to return to Rocky with me after Cher’s concert to help me pack up, and then we would both drive down to Sydney in my car. I still hadn’t heard back from the Aussie publishers, and so I resolved to meet Sydney’s flashy lights with my plan B: get represented as a TV presenter and land a sweet role hosting documentaries about the unusual wildlife on exotic islands. The problem was that neither Jessica Moore from the A1 Talent Agency nor the several other production companies I met with had any interest in acquiring my services.

  Now, as I walk along the pavement, the weight of this unfamiliar city lying heavily upon my shoulders, I permit myself to engage in a fully fledged pity party.

  Sydney is too big! Yes, I know Oscar’s here, but I have no history in this town. These streets could swallow me up and no-one would know. Nobody loves me here, besides Oscar. I don’t know which side of the street to stand on to catch the bus I’m meant to take. I don’t even know which direction I should be heading. It takes too much effort to learn all of these things again. I’ve moved around too much. I’m too tired.

  I then look up and see the bus I’m supposed to catch arrive, and when I ask the driver if I’m heading in the right direction for Paddington, he says yes. I grin and take my seat, thinking how beautiful Sydney looks in the afternoon light.

  Later that evening, as I force Oscar to watch an episode of The Secret Life of Babies, my mobile pings with an email. I recognise the address as being from one of the Aussie publishers. I immediately hide my phone under a cushion and bury my head in Oscar’s lap.

  ‘I can’t face it,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asks and presses pause on his laptop.

  ‘One of the publishers has replied,’ I say, my voice muffled against his jeans.

  ‘Well, let’s see what they said.’ He reaches beneath the cushion for my phone and I slap his wrist and take my mobile into the kitchen.

  ‘Alright,’ I say to myself and take a deep breath. ‘Just get it over with.’

  I open the email from Alice Callaghan at Judge & James and quickly scan it.

  Then I place the phone on the bench and my hands on my head as tears of relief spring to my eyes.

  ‘She wants to read it!’ I call to Oscar. ‘My manuscript! She wants me to send the entire manuscript! There’s no “all the best!” There’s “hope to hear from you soon!”’

  Oscar is by my side in an instant. ‘Fucking brilliant! I’m so proud of you, Luce!’

  Almost immediately, my jubilation is replaced by anxiety. ‘Oh man, what if she doesn’t like it?’ I say.

  ‘Nup, cut it out,’ he says, putting his arms around me. ‘She’s going to love it. She’s going to fucking love it.’

  Three days after sending Alice Callaghan my manuscript, I receive an email from her saying that she really enjoyed reading Diamonds in the Dust and hopes that we can work together and turn it into an amazing novel. She says she thinks I have the talent to do so. I almost fall off my chair, then read that she’s free for about half an hour in two days’ time, and would I like to meet her for a coffee near their publishing house in Surry Hills?

  Oh my god, I think. A real-life publisher likes my manuscript and wants to meet me! I then google her and discover she’s a highly respected trailblazer in the publishing world, and has fostered the careers of many Australian writers. I read her email again and again, then print it out and stick it on the fridge, just to make sure that it exists.

  ‘But what does it all really mean?’ asks Dad, when I call home after returning from a celebratory dinner with Oscar.

  ‘I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know. But it has to be good that she’s written back to me.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, have that coffee with her before she leaves! She mightn’t even be in that job next week!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ I say. ‘I think Alice is genuine. I think she’s actually going to help me.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ he mutters. ‘Keep us
posted.’

  Alice greets me with a hug and her warm manner immediately puts me at ease. She asks me about the setting for Diamonds in the Dust and I tell her how I first became fascinated with the gemfields during a school trip in grade seven. She smiles and says she grew up around Bendigo and was impressed with my research and evocative characters.

  ‘You make us care about them all,’ she says. ‘And that’s not an easy thing to do.’ She then tells me that she thinks the manuscript is wonderful and she’d like to offer me a publishing deal.

  When we leave the café a little while later, I am proud of the dignified way in which I’ve handled the meeting; I didn’t get carried away and promise her my firstborn or even gush too much. As I hold out my hand to say goodbye, Alice hugs me instead, saying with a laugh that she’s never met anyone more subdued on being offered a contract.

  That does it. ‘You’re the best person ever, Alice!’ I gush. ‘I think you’re the absolute best!’

  A key part of Mum’s Cher strategy involves us all having a good breakfast the morning of the concert, and so Rosie and I now sit elbow to elbow with Mum and Dad around a table in the Westfield food court.

  ‘I wonder what she’ll be wearing?’ muses Rosie.

  ‘Hardly anything would be my guess!’ I reply.

  ‘See that bloke over there?’ says Dad, gesturing not so subtly at a young man in a suit waiting for coffee. ‘He’d only have an apple in his briefcase. They’re all pretenders.’

  ‘What are you going to say to her, Denise?’

  ‘I will just be my sparkling self, Rosie,’ replies Mum with a grin.

  ‘Oh, come on, Ma. I know you’ve rehearsed what you’ll say to Cher.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. You know me too well, Lucy. I will simply say, “Cher—you’re an inspiration. Because of you, I often ask myself, Am I strong enough?, and because of you I can answer every time, Yes, Denise, you are.’

  ‘That’s beautiful, love,’ says Dad, patting her wrist.

  ‘Well,’ says Rosie, pushing aside her plate, ‘I’d just like to say, how bloody lucky are we? We’re sitting in the best fucking food court in Australia—sorry, Denise,’ she adds quickly. ‘Lucy’s just realised her lifelong dream and is going to be a published author, Ben and I are moving to paradise tomorrow and Denise is going to meet her pop idol tonight.’

  ‘What about me?’ asks Dad.

  ‘You, Brian, are a legend—for shouting us breakfast.’

  ‘Thank you, Rosie,’ says Mum. ‘That was lovely. Alright, Brian. Let’s get some nuts for the road. Plenty of water. How much cash have you got on you?’

  ‘God, it sounds like you’re heading off on safari!’ laughs Rosie.

  ‘Oh Ma, you should quote a Cher quote back to Cher!’ I say suddenly, snapping back into the conversation.

  ‘Which one?’ asks Rosie.

  ‘What about—“A girl can wait for the right man to come along but in the meantime that still doesn’t mean she can’t have a wonderful time with all the wrong ones!”’

  ‘What are the brothers up to today?’ asks Mum, ignoring me.

  ‘Oscar’s in at Bev’s Buffet HQ.’

  ‘Then he’s helping Ben move out of his unit,’ adds Rosie. ‘Boring!’

  After recommending I change out of my tight jeans and into my tighter ones, Rosie orders an Uber and we head to Allianz Stadium to join the thousands of Cher worshippers filing into their seats.

  ‘This is actually really exciting!’ I say, my hand on Rosie’s wrist.

  ‘You have no fucking idea how excited I am, Luce,’ she replies.

  ‘I can’t believe that at this very moment, Mum and Dad are having champers with Cher!’

  Rosie laughs. ‘Your dad with Cher—classic! Your parents have become pretty tight again after Denise’s scare, hey?’

  ‘Yeah, really tight.’ I nod, feeling a rush of gratitude—that Mum is okay, that she and Dad are closer than ever, that we are all here, now.

  On the dot of eight-thirty, the stadium descends into darkness and the only sound to be heard is the beating of a lone drum. Then the drumming picks up in pace and intensity, whipping the crowd into a frenzy of expectation, until Cher suddenly appears from above—suspended in sequined suspenders, floating on a cloud of crystals.

  Of course we’re all completely beside ourselves, crying and cheering and whistling, and as Cher welcomes everyone to her world tour and breaks into ‘Believe’, I can only imagine the state Mum’s in.

  Soon after, Cher does a costume change into Pocahontas Cher and has us all dancing in our seats to ‘Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves’, then belting out the words to ‘Just Like Jesse James’ while she straddles a flaming rocket ship onstage, before being launched ten feet in the air and donutting above the crowd.

  I feel my phone buzz in my pocket, and when I manage to tear my gaze away from Cher’s feathered headpiece to look at the screen, I see that it’s Dad. I answer just as the latest round of applause dies down.

  ‘Lucy!’ he says urgently. ‘You’ve got to come quickly—it’s Mum.’

  My heart leaps in my chest. ‘Mum? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Just come now, we’re right down the front, Row AA.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I say to Rosie. ‘There’s something wrong with Mum.’

  She squeezes my hand and I race down one of the centre aisles, the crowd going wild as Cher sings the first lines of ‘I Got You Babe’.

  Has it all been too much for Mum? I wonder, my stomach churning. Has she had a heart attack or something? Has the cancer recurred and they were waiting until tonight to tell me?

  ‘She’s backstage,’ says Dad sombrely when I finally reach him standing at the end of the row.

  ‘Backstage?’ I echo, but before I can say anything else, Dad pushes me towards a security guard, who takes me by the hand and leads me out a side door, up some stairs and into one of the wings of the main stage. In a daze, I then turn to see Mum off to one side, grinning at me with a microphone in her hand.

  ‘Mum,’ I begin, dumbfounded, ‘what—?’ But before I can manage to finish my sentence, a crew member pins a lapel microphone to my t-shirt, and in the next second Cher alights from her rocket ship and says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to take a little pause now and introduce one very special lady. She is a survivor, a lioness and a warrior for every goddamn gorgeous woman in this stadium tonight. She’s on a mission here in Sydney. She is … Denise Crighton!’

  Mum then steps from the shadows into the spotlight and, as the crowd roars, takes a bow onstage.

  ‘Thank you, Cher,’ she says, as I attempt to pick my jaw up from the floor. ‘Does anyone out there have a lighter? It’s time to put your lighters up, people.’

  The crowd erupt in delighted laughter and immediately obey Mum’s command, illuminating the stadium with thousands of flickering flames.

  ‘Oh, isn’t that stunning, Cher,’ remarks Mum, then continues, ‘Look, Cher, you’re a busy woman and the show must go on, so I’ll make this quick.’ In a stern voice she says, ‘Lucy, come out here, please.’ Then, when I don’t move, she adds, ‘Now!’

  Sheepishly, I step onto the stage and blink into the floodlights.

  ‘Oh,’ gasps Cher, ‘she’s beautiful!’

  I then realise, over thunderous applause and wolf-whistles, that I’m being projected onto a thirty-metre-high screen to forty-five thousand people.

  ‘Um, hello, Cher,’ I say. ‘I like your quotes.’ I look at my feet, embarrassed to hear my every word amplified.

  ‘See!’ Mum appeals to the crowd. ‘See what we’re dealing with?’

  The stadium is filled with fits of laughter, and it occurs to me that I don’t know what’s more ridiculous—the fact that I’m standing on stage at a Cher concert, or that Mum’s working the room.

  ‘Mum, what are you doing up here?’ I ask, foolishly thinking that by whispering I won’t be heard.

  ‘Moral support!’ she yells, addressing not me but her
adoring audience, and receiving an appreciative ovation in return. ‘Cher, quite frankly, this daughter of mine might be a journalist, but sometimes she can’t communicate!’

  ‘Can’t you, babe?’ asks Cher, who has surreptitiously changed into Catwoman Cher and now slinks across the stage to join me and Mum. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asks playfully as I look at her, stupefied. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  There is a chorus of hysterical laughter, and I grin hopelessly at Cher’s glossy leather torso, realising I could soon be subject to Australia’s greatest-ever heckling.

  ‘She’s fucking unreal!’ I then hear Rosie yell from the crowd, and I break into a big smile.

  ‘That’s more like it, honey,’ says Cher, giving my backside a friendly flick with her whip. ‘Could we have a spotlight on Mr Simpson?’

  Oh, fuck me! I think as Oscar’s face suddenly fills the screen.

  ‘Whoo!’ exclaims Cher, fanning herself. ‘I’ve already won an Oscar, but I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that one!’

  I watch Oscar’s cheeks redden, and recognise a corner of Ben’s head as he tries to get in the frame.

  I stare at Mum in horror, as all the pennies drop, fully aware now of what she’s up to, and plead with her silently to make it stop.

  Mum, though, appears to be picking up steam, calling on the crowd to be quiet.

  I look out at the ocean of darkness, which has now become so deathly silent that you could hear a pin drop, and watch as the giant screen splits in two, revealing live pictures of both Oscar and me.

  ‘Lucy,’ he says, ‘I know there are things about me which annoy you. I sleep with the fan on, even when it’s cold, because I like the noise. I go for Manly, and I don’t agree it’s normal that you spoon your kelpie. But I love you, and if you can put up with me, Lucy Crighton, will you marry me?’

  The atmosphere is electric with tension, and I briefly consider bolting, but then Cher sashays closer to me and says softly, so that only I can hear, ‘Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.’ She then adds, with a wink, ‘Think carefully, babe—words are like weapons, they wound sometimes.’