Crazy, Busy, Guilty

by Lauren Sams

  I wrote a quick email to Meredith outlining the idea, bracing myself for a definitive no.

  I glanced at the photo of Pippa on my desk – at just two weeks old, she looked both supremely young and also as if she’d lived forever. Larval yet wrinkled. Newborn but wise. I’d set it up on my first day in the office, proud to display it where I could see Pip’s gurgling face, and where visitors might be able to glimpse her too. But slowly I’d been shifting the frame further towards me, where only I could see it. Nobody had said anything, of course, but I gradually realised there were no other photos of kids in the office.

  I deleted more emails, despite all those warnings from productivity experts to only check them once a day. There was one from Ellie, who was concerned that Lucas might have a lisp after mispronouncing The X Factor last night (she was also concerned about Simon letting him watch The X Factor, and noted that Simon only watched it for the Dannii Minogue factor), and one from my mum, who had apparently found a sleeping bag that Pippa would not be able to thrash her way out of sometime between 2.35 and 2.38 am, every single night.

  And one from Nina, apologising again for making me miss my date.

  I was furious with her. After a flurry of ‘Shit, I can’t believe it’s today’ messages, Nina had now emailed me with, ‘George, I’m sorry, but I’ve got something up my sleeve for you, OK? I’ll make it up to you and you can reschedule the date with Alex.’ I didn’t want to reschedule the date. I’d messaged Alex and told him what had happened, and he hadn’t replied. I didn’t blame him. There’s nothing sexy or romantic about the babysitter not showing up.

  ‘Morning, George!’

  I looked up and saw Neil walking into my office with Anna Cantwell-Hart. I sighed. Hadn’t Neil pushed my buttons enough for one day? And Anna. Ugh. The daughter of Robert and Helena Cantwell-Hart, both former state politicians turned art gallery board members, Anna wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she was born with the whole damn cutlery set. Splades and all. For someone who only grew up ten kays away from where we sat, her voice was plummier than Christmas cake.

  Anna was our junior features writer, which was a funny title for someone who did absolutely no writing. She couldn’t be trusted to write, of course, because she could barely string a sentence together. She got the job because her father had some complex arrangement with the paper’s CFO and as such, she was my cross to bear.

  ‘Neil, Anna. How are you?’ I kept my tone even, determined not to stoop to her level.

  Neil said nothing. Anna chirped along for both of them.

  ‘Yeah, great. Just finishing off some research for the upfront pages.’

  ‘Right.’ I smiled tightly. ‘Sounds like a lot of work.’

  Anna nodded knowingly, as if she had ever worked for more than fifteen consecutive minutes without checking Instagram.

  ‘Yeah. I’m snowed. So listen, Neil and I were just talking and . . . we need to sort something out with you. Meredith wants me to do the Free Chef profile, but –’ She sighed dramatically. I wondered how having two assignments in the one week would interfere with Anna’s two-hour lunch breaks and frequent eyelash extension appointments.

  Neil shook his head emphatically. ‘No. We shouldn’t be doing this at all. I told Anna we needed to talk it through with you.’ He looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Wait, I’ve never heard of this story. The Free Chef? It’s not on the flat plan.’

  Anna smiled sweetly, like, ‘Aren’t you an idiot?’

  ‘The Free Chef. George, you must know about her. She’s amazing. All my friends are, like, in love with her.’

  Neil rolled his eyes.

  I shook my head and turned back to my emails. ‘Never heard of her. And I’ve never heard of the story.’

  ‘She owns this restaurant in Bondi, where everything is free.’

  ‘Free? Completely free?’ I looked up.

  Anna nodded. ‘It’s amazing.’

  ‘It’s not,’ said Neil. I glanced at him. Maybe I liked Neil. Or at least this side of him, the side that gave Anna Cantwell-Hart what for.

  ‘How does she make money?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I flashed her my own ‘Aren’t you an idiot?’ look. ‘I mean, if nobody pays for their food, how does this woman make any money? How is she keeping her business afloat?’

  Neil smirked and crossed his arms against his chest.

  Anna stared at me. ‘No. You pay for your food, George. It’s a restaurant.’

  ‘You just said everything was free.’

  ‘Free of gluten. And dairy. And wheat. And sugar. And meat.’ Anna gave me an ‘I’m-being-very-patient-with-you-even-though-you’re-clearly-not-very-smart’ smile. Neil laughed.

  ‘Right. So what do you eat there?’

  ‘Mainly fruit salad. And dairy-free chia puddings. Like I said, my friends are so into it.’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, right. Look, I’m not running a feature on someone who cuts up kiwifruit and calls it lunch. Did Meredith tell you to do this?’

  Anna nodded. ‘Yep. Well, I told her about it, and she was really interested –’ pause for emphasis ‘– and I’ve done all the interviews, so we can run it soon.’

  ‘Let me say again,’ said Neil, quite emphatically, ‘we should not run this story.’

  ‘Yeah, listen, I think I’ll have to take Neil’s side on this one, Anna. It sounds silly. Too much of a fad. I’ll take a look at it, but . . . I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

  Neil smiled, pleased with himself.

  Anna pursed her lips and attempted a smile. ‘Well, I’m not sure I’ll have time to write the story if there’s no guarantee it’ll run –’

  ‘Fine. You just do what you can, Anna,’ I said, and turned back to my monitor. When I looked up again, Neil was still there. A cheeky smile played across his face. I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘What?’

  He shook his head. Then he started laughing. ‘I just love seeing you put Anna in her place. Nobody’s ever done it before. Could become a new hobby of mine, I think.’

  I furrowed my brow.

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t have time to sit here and listen to her bang on about stories that will never run.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, I liked it. It was . . . it was cool.’

  I furrowed my brow. ‘I think you must be confusing me with someone else. I’m not cool. I’m not even in the orbit of cool.’

  He smiled, and it seemed genuine. ‘Anyone who has the guts to shut Miss Eastern Suburbs down is cool. Meredith thinks the sun shines out of Anna’s arse, and Lee mostly went along with whatever Meredith wanted. It’s nice to find someone who’s not afraid to be Anna’s boss.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Right. Well. I have a lot to do. Why don’t you go work on the Pacojet brief?’

  He nodded, smiling. ‘Sure. You gonna send me to Sweden? Big ice-hockey game there soon.’

  I studied him. The smirk was back on his face. Who did this guy think he was?

  ‘Really? Big hockey fan, are you?’

  He nodded and smiled, like a kid at Christmas. ‘Yeah, I love ice hockey. Played a bit myself when I was younger. Buggered up my knees. Still love watching it, though.’

  ‘Is everything a joke to you?’

  He stopped smiling. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Is everything a joke? I’m your boss, Neil. When you pitch me a story, pitch a real story. Not an all-expenses-paid trip to watch an ice hockey game or a soccer match. I don’t have time for this.’

  He opened his mouth to speak, looking as contrite as his obnoxious face would allow.

  ‘That’ll be all,’ I said, turning to my emails, glancing up only briefly to watch him walk out the door.

  Chapter 8

  ‘Do you want sugar?’ I called out to Mum.

  No answer. The kettle finished boiling and I stuck my head around the corner of the kitchen so I could see out to the living-meets-dining-meets-everything-else room.

  To say ou
r flat was small was a little bit like saying Miley Cyrus was outgoing: both obvious and a huge understatement. While everything worked and there were no leaks or even any rising damp (a Sydney miracle), it was, to put it mildly, a tiny little shithole. The kitchen hadn’t seen a paint job since John Howard was prime minister – the first term – and it wore a shocking shade of green that didn’t exactly scream ‘let’s eat!’ There was only one window in the living room, which let in just enough light for, say, a mouse to read his tiny mouse-sized book by. And speaking of mice, I was pretty sure there was a whole family of them living in the walls, Stuart Little–style. It was near a busy intersection, which meant people walked past at all hours of the day, occasionally dropping fast-food wrappers or beer bottles over the fence, as if our entire balcony was a bin. But it was the cheapest place we’d been able to find that was also vaguely inhabitable, and one of the bedrooms had a walk-in closet – which I intended to use as Pippa’s bedroom. Bad mum.

  ‘Mum?’

  Sitting on the lounge, Mum held Pippa on her lap and appeared to be talking to her. Quite intently, in fact. About what, I had no clue. But Pip was chewing on Mum’s bracelet, entranced by the jangling of its charms.

  ‘Mum!’

  She looked over to me. ‘What’s up, darling?’

  ‘She’s chewing on your bracelet.’

  ‘Oh, she’s fine. I don’t mind.’

  ‘She could choke.’

  Mum shot me an exasperated look. ‘Darling, she doesn’t have any teeth. She’s hardly going to chew through my bracelet.’

  ‘What if one of the charms falls off and she chokes? Just take it off her, please.’

  She shot me a look and tut-tutted under her breath. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do. Thank you. Do you want sugar in your tea?’

  She shook her head, eyes still on Pippa. ‘No, darling, sugar is so bad for you. Don’t you know that? You shouldn’t have it in the house.’

  ‘Why? Will it come and attack me when I’m sleeping?’

  ‘No . . . Don’t be silly, Georgina. But it’s rusting your insides. And you know it’s in everything, don’t you? You should have seen Kevin’s face when I told him how many tablespoons of sugar were in a bottle of tomato sauce! He near died.’ She paused. ‘Which is what will happen, I don’t doubt, if he doesn’t stop eating so much sugar.’

  ‘Mum, Kevin is almost seventy. Let him have his tomato sauce,’ I called from the kitchen, adding half a sugar to my Earl Grey for the hell of it.

  I took the mugs and joined Mum and Pip on the lounge. Pip, who seemed to have grown about five centimetres overnight – actually, she seemed to do that every night – was staring up at Mum, smirking adorably.

  ‘She is the most beautiful baby in the world. She truly is.’ Mum beamed.

  ‘She’s pretty special,’ I agreed.

  She was. When she wasn’t screaming in my face or vomiting, Exorcist-style, she was my beautiful little girl. She had a tuft of Jase’s dark hair right in the middle of her head. It was forever sticking up or out, or to her head in a sort of baby comb-over effect. It was hilariously endearing and I was already ruing the day it grew long enough to behave itself and sit down properly. She had pale blue eyes that I’d been told by approximately one million strangers would change colour as she got older, because ‘all babies are born with blue eyes’, by which I assumed they meant all white babies. She had doll-like features – a nose that turned up slightly at the tip, eyes shaped large and round, a little cleft in her chin.

  But the best part was that she was so deliciously chubby. Her fat rolls had fat rolls. Her legs looked like croissants. She had a quadruple chin. Her arm fat ended in neat little bracelets, as if someone had put a rubber band around her wrists. Her belly was delightfully distended. Harriet once joked that my boobs delivered cream, not milk. I worried about everything else in Pip’s life – how much sleep she was getting, how many books we should be reading each day, whether I was setting her up for a lifetime of abandonment issues by sending her to daycare so early – but I did not worry about her fading away. The kid could go on a three-year hunger strike and she’d be fine.

  ‘Where’s Nina?’ asked Mum, momentarily pulling her focus away from Pip.

  ‘I’m not sure, actually. I haven’t seen her this morning.’ Or any morning for the past week, I wanted to add. But Mum loved Nina. I didn’t want to tell her what was happening. And by now, I was used to not seeing Nina. The only evidence she lived here was the occasional bill that arrived bearing her name. Sometimes I’d get downstairs in the morning and there’d be a half-drunk mug of coffee in the kitchen, waiting for some sort of magical fairy – me? – to wash it up.

  ‘How is she? I’ve been thinking of her. This must be very tough on her.’

  I suppressed a laugh. Tough? Nina was having the time of her life.

  ‘No, she’s fine. I wouldn’t worry too much.’

  Mum looked surprised. ‘Really? Gosh, darling . . . I would have thought that –’ She gestured around the living room. ‘All this. You and Pippa. No more Matthew. Trying to make sense of everything. I would have thought it would be very, very hard on her. And all without her mum.’ Mum paused with a heavy sigh. ‘And that father of hers . . . he’s no use. Neither’s the sister. And don’t get me started on Leanne.’ Mum shook her head with a disappointed glare.

  I might have been angry with Nina, but even I could admit that Mum was right: Nina’s family were hopeless. Her sister, Jill, who had moved to London years ago and rarely visited, was the kind of person who thought it was cute to sing ‘I Touch Myself’ at office karaoke.

  ‘I know, they’re not the most supportive.’

  When Nina moved out of the house she’d shared with Matt, her Dad hadn’t even offered to help her move. In fact, he hadn’t called at all.

  Mum raised her eyebrows in solidarity. ‘They’re hopeless. All of them, but especially her father. Jan did everything for him, and when she passed away, he never learnt to pick himself up and get on with life. He just got another wife and expected her to do it all. Happens all the time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Mum nodded in that self-satisfied way that mothers of a certain age have down pat, bouncing Pippa, now safely charm-free, gently on her knee. ‘I’ve seen it many times before, Georgie. Men lose their wives and they can barely cook themselves dinner, but instead of learning to do it themselves – like a woman would – they just find someone else to cook and clean and iron their shirts. Look at Glen Hastings, when Francine died – he married that awful Geraldine six months later!’ Mum looked cross now, the way she does when she finds out she’s missed the sale at Katies. ‘And we all know what Geraldine is like.’

  I didn’t, actually, because I hadn’t met her. Mum made sweeping statements about her circle of friends all the time, as if I was intimately acquainted with Geraldine and Glen and Hildy and Jack and Grace and Robert. But I had a hunch Geraldine wasn’t keen on playing couples golf or going to the club for badge draw night – two highly criminal offences in Mum’s eyes.

  She was right about Nina’s dad, though. He’d remarried just eighteen months after Jan died, and I knew, even though she would never admit it, that it had nearly broken Nina’s heart. It was one of the reasons she’d fled to Europe as soon as she finished high school – she couldn’t wait to be out of there.

  My phone pinged. Meredith.

  Richie loved column idea!!!!!!!

  Wants to see first three on desk

  by Monday. Go George! MP xxx

  My heart jumped a little. He liked my idea. Richie liked my idea!

  ‘Who’s MP?’ Mum asked, peering over my shoulder.

  ‘My boss, Meredith.’

  ‘Why is she calling you on the weekend?’

  ‘She’s not calling me, it’s just a message.’

  ‘It hardly matters. It’s your day off.’

  I thought about explaining that Meredith did not take days off, and that she didn’t really
believe anyone else should, either. But Mum wouldn’t understand. She’d never had a job, let alone a career.

  ‘It’s one message. I’ll just reply quickly.’

  I tapped out a message in reply.

  Great! Looking forward to

  writing them. Monday is

  absolute latest deadline?

  Also, did you approve a profile

  of someone called the Free

  Chef? With Anna C-H? GH.

  I put my phone down.

  Ping!

  ‘What’s that?’ Mum asked, her eyes sharpening.

  ‘Nothing. Just a message.’

  Yes. Free Chef very cool.

  And she’s gorgeous, pics

  will be great. Re: column –

  yes. Richie planning to run

  first one next week.

  Ugh. I loved The Weekend and I knew that Meredith was great at what she did. But she increasingly asked me to include celebrities and features that had about as much substance as cat memes. I got that she wanted to broaden the appeal of the mag, but, well . . . did it have to be quite so broad?

  ‘Do you want to go out for lunch?’ Mum asked, doing ‘Round and Round the Garden’ on Pip’s palm. ‘I noticed a new cafe down on the corner. They’re selling something called quinoa.’ She pronounced it kwin-oh-ah and I suddenly had a glimpse of what it must be like to be Neil. Neil, who had knocked on my door yesterday afternoon and delivered a cold glass of wine.

  ‘Hey,’ he’d said, placing the wine on my desk.

  ‘Hey yourself,’ I said, wondering immediately if I sounded too flirtatious. I didn’t want to be any level of flirtatious with Neil. If the Alex/Tinder debacle had taught me anything, it was that I wasn’t ready for a relationship. At this stage, I couldn’t see myself dating before Kanye became president, at the very least.