by Lauren Sams
‘Be quiet. You’re scaring Lucas.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘No, I’m not. He’s watching his girlfriend.’
It was true: Lucas was in love with Emma Wiggle. On our way here, as I attempted to keep my head upright, Lucas went on at length about how, when he and Emma got married, they’d live in the Wiggle House and walk Wags and Henry every night. I asked how they would walk Henry, being an octopus and all. He raised his eyebrows and said, ‘He’s got eight legs, Aunty Gawgee. I think he can walk.’
‘No, really, I think I am. Do you have a bag or something?’
Ellie huffed in disgust but rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a spare nappy bag. ‘Here. What did you do last night? For god’s sake, you reek. Did you have a shower?’
‘Yes! Of course. And . . . I honestly don’t remember. There were shots of Patron involved.’
‘I don’t even know what that is,’ Ellie said, eyes squarely on Simon Wiggle, like every other female in the place.
‘Keep it that way,’ I said.
The night was a blur. After the post-massage pep talk, Meredith whisked me to the nearest bar, where she promptly ordered a bottle of Veuve.
‘I’ll just have one glass,’ I warned Meredith. I had expressed that morning but I knew there was a chance I’d need to feed Pip later. That, and I would be presenting to a very important group of clients in just over sixty minutes.
She rolled her eyes. ‘We don’t have to drink all of it, George. Don’t be such a prude.’
But we did drink all of it. So by the time we got back to the hotel conference room, I was, on the drunk scale, somewhere between flirtatiously giggly and horrifyingly lecherous. Not ideal. Meredith, however, seemed completely sober, even though she’d had three glasses to my two.
I tried my best to speak like Obama. And also to speak like myself. And to use my hands more. And to pause less. And to be serious. But also funny. The result was that everyone thought I was sending them up, making fun of their stuffy corporate world, with my speech that was simultaneously imploring, speedy and full of Italian-nonna-style hand gestures. Deep down, I think they had no idea what was really going on, so they decided to assume it was funny. I breathed a deep sigh of relief in front of them all when it was over.
‘Right!’ said Guy, the lead on the team. ‘Off to the bar!’
I widened my eyes in surprise as everyone began to shuffle the presentation notes I’d given them and get out of their chairs. It’s over?
Meredith motioned for me to move.
‘Is it over?’ I whispered. She frowned.
‘Of course it’s over. You did great. Well done. Let’s go.’
‘But . . . what about the rest of it? The notes? The numbers we wanted to go over? The new cover mocks?’
Meredith shrugged. ‘They’re sold, George. Don’t question it. Now, we drink.’
So off to the bar we went. First the hotel bar, and then to the bar at the restaurant we were eating at that night. Then to the restaurant itself, where we wine-matched with our degustation, and then to the bar next to the restaurant. Then we found a club. I hadn’t drunk so much since my first year at uni.
At the hotel bar, I’d gently inquired as to whether my presence was really needed. After all, it seemed to be a giant piss-up, not actual work. The media buyers had barely listened to my presentation; the gig seemed to consist entirely of getting shit-faced together, after which they’d give us ad money. They didn’t care about the direction of the magazine or who we’d put on the cover or the campaigns I’d painstakingly orchestrated. They didn’t even really care about their own brands, the companies they were booking ads for. There didn’t seem to be any discernible reason I had to come to Melbourne to meet with these guys; a Skype date with a goon bag would have done the trick.
All I really wanted was to go upstairs and cuddle with Pip. Have our bath together, feed her and tuck her in. Watch her little chest heave gently up and down as she slept. I was exhausted. I needed to get out of my heels and drink a very strong cup of Earl Grey and lie down in one place for a decent amount of time. But more than being exhausted, I missed Pip. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be out drinking on a Saturday night. I wanted to be with her.
I tapped Meredith on the shoulder but she didn’t notice. She was busy regaling three of the guys with the hilarious story of how she’d discovered she was, clinically speaking, a psychopath. I had heard this one before.
‘So the researcher says to me, you’re at your mother’s funeral. Sad, right?’ The men nodded, entranced. Meredith had a particular power over men. She was tall and striking, but there was something more to it than that. I think they sensed her craziness, and I think they translated that into something like ‘absolute demon in the sack’.
She went on. ‘But you meet a man – you’ve never met him before – and right there, at the funeral, you fall in love. You with me?’ More nodding. ‘OK, so you fall in love with this guy, he’s your perfect match, whatever. But you forget to get his number! You don’t even know his name! You have no way of contacting him.’ Meredith, ever the storyteller, gave herself a little slap on the forehead for dramatic effect. ‘Two days later, you kill your sister. Why?’
The men stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘Um –’ one began, not sure where to start.
The other two furrowed their brows, as if deep in thought. Probably thinking how weird it was to be getting drunk with a business contact who’d posited a riddle about killing her sister.
‘Can you think of why I might do that?’ Meredith asked, a sly grin making her look even more sinister than usual. ‘Why would I kill her?’
‘Because . . . you’re so upset that you’ll never see this guy again.’
Meredith shook her head, her eyes shiny with the knowledge she held.
‘Because –’ another guy took a stab, ‘he was your sister’s husband.’
‘No! Remember, you don’t know him!’
The guys, one by one, began to shrug and shake their heads.
‘Give up?’ she asked. They nodded.
‘Because you wanted to see if he’d come to her funeral!’
Like ceramic clowns at the Easter Show, the men all formed perfect Os with their mouths. But instead of shaking their heads, they began to slowly nod, the riddle now making sense.
‘And I got it!’ said Meredith, practically shimmering with glee. ‘I knew the answer! Isn’t that amazing? Less than 2 per cent of people get it right.’
And they all went on to use their victims’ skin as cling wrap, I wanted to add.
The guys laughed nervously and she tottered away, keen as ever for another drink.
‘Meredith,’ I asked, tapping her on the shoulder as she leaned over the bar to order more champagne. ‘I think I’m going to call it a night.’ It was 4 pm. We were four bottles in.
She drew her head back in surprise, and for the first time I saw the tiniest hint of body fat, the vague development of a double chin. The chub looked so out of place on her otherwise fat-free body. If Meredith were a yoghurt, she’d be Frûche.
‘You want to leave?’ She didn’t look angry, just surprised. Maybe I’d be able to get out of this.
I nodded. ‘Yeah, I think I’ve probably had enough to drink. I’m not exactly match fit, you know? Pip’s only nine months, I haven’t had this much to drink in a long time. Probably best if I head off.’
She squinted.
‘And between you and me, my boobs are killing me. I really need to express.’
More squinting.
‘So . . . I’ll head out and I’ll see you at work on Monday. Thanks so much for today,’ I added, before I could stop myself. What was I thanking Meredith for? For confusing me? For borderline sexually harassing me? For coldly putting me in my place when I’d had the nerve to ask her what the hell her deal was? For getting me drunk before a big presentation? For dragging me across state lines for no good reason?
She laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Georg
e. This is part of your job. You can’t leave now.’ She turned back to the bar and clicked her fingers, summoning a waiter.
I stood there, open-mouthed, like a guppie. A drunk guppie.
‘Um . . . look, Meredith, I really do think I should go.’
She ignored me, picked up the bottle of champagne and walked back to the table, where she announced, ‘George wants to do shots!’ to rounds of boisterous cheers.
I’m not really clear on the details after that . . .
‘Can you stop swaying, please?’ Ellie hissed.
‘I’m doing “Rockabye Your Bear”,’ I replied.
‘That finished three minutes ago! They’re doing “Hot Potato”.’
‘Oh.’ So they were. I was still swaying. Maybe I was still drunk.
I had slept for four hours. Maybe. Once my head hit the pillow, at around 2 am, I was fast asleep. But Pip – who had slept through like such a little champion the previous night – had other plans. She woke up just as I was hitting the next REM cycle, so I pulled her into my bed to appease her. For the first time, despite my raging headache and the dread of the hangover I knew I’d have in the morning, I felt something other than annoyance that I had been woken in the middle of the night. I felt needed. I felt loved.
I felt my phone buzz inside my jacket just as ‘Hot Potato’ finished. I let it vibrate in my pocket, counting the number of rings. One. Two. Three. Four. Voicemail. I knew who it was. And I knew I didn’t want to talk to her. Not right now, anyway. Whatever it was, she could figure it out this time.
Chapter 14
When Pip and I arrived home that night, the house seemed much emptier than when we’d left it. All the posters and art had been Nina’s, so now the walls were bare – only a few stray globs of Blu-Tack remained. She’d taken her books, leaving the shelves gap-toothed. Her KitchenAid was gone, giving us back that precious bench real estate, but nonetheless leaving a hole. No more Nina.
Her room was empty. You could see from the indents in the carpet where the legs of her bed had been. But apart from that, there was no evidence anyone had lived there.
It could be Pip’s room now. But even the thought of moving her cot, her change table, all her tiny singlets and swaddles from one room to another was tiring. Not yet.
We went through the usual dinner-bath-book-bed motions and as I tucked Pip in I felt a wave of fatigue. It didn’t so much wash over me as crash into me. I was done. I was worked to the bone. I had not had a proper night’s sleep in months. I couldn’t remember the last time I had dreamed about something other than being afraid of running late.
The next round of ‘upfronts’ was in two weeks. This next one was a whole-day event, with lots of clients, at a fancy city hotel we’d booked for the occasion. Meredith had secured Anna Cantwell-Hart’s Free Chef to do the catering, presumably for a large sum of money. Meredith had left a voicemail telling me what a ‘fucking stunning’ job I’d done on Saturday night, even though the majority of what I’d done was get shitfaced. I wasn’t really sure what my job was anymore.
Wrapped up in bed, I scribbled my to-do list for the next day, which grew ever longer, as I never quite got time to cross off every item. I was finally ready to read 2.5 pages of my book, when my phone lit up with a message from a number I didn’t recognise.
You bailed on me.
Huh? The phone shone bright again.
Not to worry. Binge was crap.
Waste of the company’s money
and my time. But come to
Collard with me next week.
Neil! I texted back immediately.
So sorry. You got my
email though, right?
Between the throb of my hangover and the lure of sleep, I still found enough energy to be excited about a text from Neil.
I did. Went with
Anna instead.
Ugh. Right. So Neil was that guy. The one who complained about women like Anna – self-absorbed, snooty private-school girls with swishy ponytails – but then, when it came to the crunch, went right ahead and married them. Right.
Just kidding. I think Anna
would be more interested
in going to Purge. Anyway,
Binge was super-hipster. You
wouldn’t have liked it. Kinda
glad you bailed, actually.
Oh. So they weren’t not getting married. Right.
I think it’s binge. Lower case b.
Ping!
It’s b*nge.
This was fun. I fired back:
Mmm, pretty sure it’s #b*nge.
Nothing. Hmm. I returned to my book, wondering if I would ever finish it. Whose grand idea had it been to start The Goldfinch two weeks into motherhood? Nine months later, I still hadn’t made a crack in the spine.
Stupid punctuation
aside . . . will you come on
a date with me?
I stared at the screen as I felt the excitement of having a crush hit me. I had a crush. I was thirty-five years old, and I had a crush. Where was Dolly Doctor when you needed her?
Yep. Let’s find the most
hipster place possible.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the lovely anticipation of a date. It had been a long time since I’d felt those little flutters. The truth was, I didn’t know a lot about Neil. But I knew more about him than I had about Alex. Or even Jase, when we’d first met. I knew that he wanted to date me. And I wanted to date him. And for now, that was enough.
*
The weeks after Nina left were both easier and harder than the ones that had come before. Easier because I no longer worried about where she was or if she and Jed might come home at 2 am and wake us all up. Easier because I didn’t have to tiptoe around her early mid-life crisis anymore, trying not to comment on her sudden and urgent desire to adopt a French bulldog or learn how to make choux pastry or recite daily affirmations to herself. Easier because I could just Get On With It, because the equation had been simplified.
But it was harder because it was lonelier. Instead of the tantalising promise – even the barest, thinnest thread of one – of someone to talk to at the end of the day, someone to recount Meredith’s latest episode to, someone to eat a tub of ice-cream with, there was nothing. Nina was not coming home. I was hit, one night, while eating that tub of ice-cream, with the thought that perhaps this was what divorce felt like. And an ironic stab of guilt twisted in my guts.
At work, I continued to award myself high-fives if I made it through a stand-up meeting without rolling my eyes (especially the time when Meredith started shouting excitedly about an interview Anna Cantwell-Hart had done with the creators of an app that summarised the plot of any book, TV show or movie in less than ten seconds. Romeo and Juliet: two kids fall in love, die. War and Peace: there’s a war then there’s not then there is. Lost: .)
I wondered whether to mention my brief textual flirtation with Neil to Meredith. Was it the professional thing to do, or would it only invite more trouble? Who could tell with Meredith? She’d either clap her hands, pop a bottle of champagne and start planning our wedding, or she’d slam her fist down on the desk, Tony Soprano–style, and demand Neil’s head on a stick. Or mine. Or both.
In the end, I didn’t have to decide.
‘I’ve noticed you and Neil,’ she said, not looking up from her phone.
‘Neil?’ I asked, as if there were several Neils on the team and Meredith could have been referring to any one of them.
‘Don’t let anything happen there, alright?’
‘Uh . . .’ I said, caught off-guard.
Meredith didn’t look up. ‘I mean it. Flirting is fine; we all flirt. But don’t act on it. Understood?’
‘Oh, um . . . I think you have the wrong idea, Meredith –’ I said, trying to regain my footing.
‘I don’t,’ she snapped. ‘I know what I saw. Keep it to low-level flirtation, OK?’
‘Um . . . sure. But –’
‘Just listen to me, OK, Geor
ge? Don’t let anything happen.’
She walked away, phone still in her hand. She hadn’t looked up once.
Later, she called me into her office, and apparently the whole thing was forgotten.
‘So!’ she said, clapping her hands together like an excited seal, ‘I have some great news. Media Alert wants to profile you.’
‘Oh! That is good news. Cool.’
‘Good news for the brand, George. Not for you. It’s not a chance to show off, you know.’
‘Uh –’ There she went again, pulling the rug out from underneath me. ‘Yes, of course –’
‘Anyway,’ she said, beaming once more. ‘The writer is coming in tomorrow. It’s very exciting. It’ll be a good chance to mention all the new directions the brand is taking – the podcast, the redesign, the new strategy, our new contributors.’
I tried to look animated but I was wary of walking into another of Meredith’s traps. Meredith existed on a spectrum: there was fun, upbeat Meredith, the Meredith who was buzzing with ideas and creativity and most likely, some sort of over-the-counter narcotic. And then there was sour Meredith, dark Meredith, the one who’d walk right by you if you saw her outside of work, the one who’d stare at you blankly as you explained you needed an hour off work to fill a prescription for your sick child.
‘Great! Yes, it’ll be a really good chance to talk about all of that. It’s such an exciting time for the brand,’ I said, repeating the words that Meredith recited at least six times a day.