Roadside Sisters

by Roadside Sisters (epub)

  Just as Annie and Nina thought Meredith might as well have been wandering the aisles of Target back in Melbourne, they heard her swoon: ‘This is magnificent! Stunning!’ They found her standing transfixed in front of an oil painting of a shimmering watery scene. A woman floated on her back, silvery hair spreading like jellyfish tendrils.

  Everyone agreed that it was indeed ‘magnificent’, and would make a perfect wedding present for Sigrid. Meredith was convinced to have it when the gallery owner informed her it had been painted by a local artist from the hills back up behind Tilba, a ‘rising star’ who had recently been included in an exhibition in New York. Nina duly handed over a cheque for the artwork and it was bubble-wrapped with infinite care. It was only some way down the street that Meredith realised what she’d acquired . . . Another bloody mermaid.

  They were sitting at an outdoor table at Foxglove Spires under the vines—the van now parked across the road and stowed with their shopping—enjoying a coffee and a chocolate florentine after their organic pumpkin soup and ploughman’s platter, when Nina spluttered and showered the table with half-chewed biscuit. She stabbed her finger in the direction of the next table, where an elderly chap in a tweed cap was reading the Daily Telegraph. The front-page headline read: ‘CORINNE BONED!’ Underneath was a picture of the one and only Corinne Jacobsen, climbing into the driver’s seat of her silver Mercedes Sports. She looked distressed, in a fetchingly tabloid way. Her eyes were hidden by huge dark glasses, her mouth was a glossy petulant pout and one shapely leg ending in a patent stiletto was revealed from the folds of a slim black trench coat.

  ‘Shit!’ Annie exclaimed so loudly that the gentleman gave her a withering look, stood and—after collecting his startled good lady wife, plus their wisteria shrub and pottery platypus—left. The newspaper was abandoned on the table.

  Annie pounced. ‘Fuck! They’ve sacked her!’

  ‘Ner, ark!’ Nina coughed and gagged again. A raisin had gone down the wrong way.

  ‘I know, unbelievable! Listen: “After fifteen years fronting Channel 5’s Daylight, television’s veteran hostess Corinne Jacobsen has been axed.”’

  ‘Veteran? She’ll hate that!’ Meredith chirped happily.

  Annie shooshed her and kept reading: ‘“Insiders say she is set to be replaced by her younger rival, popular newsreader Candice Byrne. Channel 5 boss Desmond Hyde confirmed last night that he was seeking a ‘fresh direction’ for Daylight, which has been struggling in the ratings. He denied Jacobsen had been ‘axed’, but said the network would not be renewing her contract. The normally chatty Jacobsen was tight-lipped as she left the set of the show yesterday morning, but friends say she is ‘gutted’ by the decision.”’

  ‘That’s awful!’ Nina had finally regained the power of speech. ‘I mean, how old is she—forty-eight, forty-nine?’

  ‘She’ll be forty-seven next month! Fresh direction? It’s bullshit! You see these blokes on TV who look a hundred years old. Double chins, nose hair, bald, eye bags—and everyone says they’re “distinguished”. Corinne still looks amazing. And she’s a great interviewer as well . . .’

  Meredith, however, wasn’t buying it. ‘Honestly, it’s not that hard to get a reality show contestant to blab on . . . or some vacuous supermodel to prattle about her new skin-care range. And correct me if I’m wrong, but Corinne’s played the game for years, hasn’t she? With the Botox-brow, the collagen fish-lips. It’s finally caught up with her.’ She sat back and crossed her arms with satisfaction.

  ‘Like it catches up with most women in the media in this country, Meredith,’ Annie said tersely. ‘Corinne battled hard to get where she is. Show a bit of solidarity—you used to be good at that.’ Annie threw the newspaper on the table. ‘Let’s go! I’ll get this one and meet you out front.’

  Nina rushed to sandbag the horrifying silence. ‘Poor Corinne! She’ll be feeling awful. We really should go and see her in Sydney. We’ll be there tomorrow night.’

  Meredith grabbed her purse. ‘I don’t know why we’d bother. She’s probably jetting to the Bahamas as we speak.’

  Nina busied herself with gathering her handbag. She hated confrontation, but was determined to go on with it. ‘You know, Meredith, sometimes you can be so . . .’ She searched her mind for the word—bitchy? mean? callous? unfeeling? unsympathetic?—and finally settled on the term that would cause the least offence: ‘strong-minded.’

  ‘And that’s a bad thing?’ Meredith challenged.

  Nina wanted to say yes, it was a bad thing. That it was no wonder that Sigrid had escaped as soon as she could, and never rang her mother. That it was perfectly understandable that Jarvis had moved a hemisphere away from her critical eye, and that Donald had probably taken up with another woman for exactly the same reason. If Meredith had been sitting in the hot seat on Dr Phil, they could have all lined up and told her. Dr Phil would probably have said something like: ‘Y’all have legitimate concerns with this lady’s behaviour as a wife, mother and friend. There’s prob’ly been only one perfect child on the face of the earth and that was the baby Jesus. He grew up to “confound the elders”. Meredith, what makes you so confounded certain about every darned thing?’ But Nina wasn’t Dr Phil.

  ‘Well, only in that it can be hard for the rest of us,’ she cautiously replied.

  Meredith had heard this criticism before. ‘Am I supposed to unlearn everything I know, not be who I am, not tell the truth, so that everyone around me can “keep up”?’

  Before Nina could find the courage to answer, Meredith stalked off around the side of the restaurant towards the main road.

  Annie was standing at the cash register, still tapping her foot furiously, when she powered her BlackBerry. There were eighty emails demanding her attention. Quickly scrolling down the screen she saw that they were mostly work related. One from a dreary country cousin who’d hit Melbourne and was looking for her; one from a boutique owner telling her the coat she’d ordered was in; a couple from male drinking buddies at the conference. As she suspected, her social life wasn’t exactly in full swing.

  She tried Corinne’s number. It was, not surprisingly, switched off. She left a message. ‘Hi, honey, it’s Annie from Melbourne. I am so sorry. I can’t believe those bastards! I’m going to be in Sydney tomorrow night. In a bloody campervan, would you believe?! Don’t ask. Long story. Call me and we can catch up.’

  She bent to collect her bag and then, out of the corner of her eye, saw the silhouette of a Toyota LandCruiser towing a tinnie drive past the front window. She knew parts of that outboard motor intimately. She fell out the front door onto the street. ‘Quick, quick! Get the keys! Let’s go!’

  Meredith and Nina, standing by the kerb, had already spotted the procession. In fact, Zoran had leaned out the window and waved ‘G’day’, and Nina had enthusiastically waved back until Meredith grabbed her arm. As the tail-lights of the trailer disappeared over a rise in the road, Meredith stalled: ‘We’re going already? I was thinking of having another wander around the nursery.’

  ‘But I just saw them—those two blokes from Lakes Entrance. Didn’t you say they were looking for me?’ Annie tried to remain calm. She could hardly run up the street after them, screeching like some demented banshee. And, in truth, she didn’t know what she would say if she caught up with them. ‘Maybe they’ve found my sunglasses . . . my good ones . . . they cost me—’

  ‘We know,’ Nina interrupted. She couldn’t stand the suspense. Why had Matty asked after Annie? Maybe he’d found her sunglasses, or maybe she’d been cast in a fairytale romance and this was true love. If this was a fairytale, Nina was the huntsman who had been ordered to take Snow White into the forest and couldn’t find the heart to kill her. ‘Come on,’ she blurted. ‘Let’s go! Except . . .’ she scrabbled in her handbag, ‘I can’t find the keys to the van.’

  ‘They’re in your hand,’ Meredith pointed out. Nina jiggled the bunch of keys and took off across the road. The chase was on.

  After they�
��d driven up and down the main street of Central Tilba three times, surveying the Dromedary Hotel car park and various side streets, Meredith finally called off the emu parade. ‘They’re not here. And let’s face it, they’re hardly likely to stop off for a string of handcrafted beads or a poster of the Dalai Lama,’ she said as they drove past the Windhorse Buddhist Emporium . . . again.

  As much as Annie didn’t want to admit it, Meredith was right. The trail had gone cold. There was nothing for it but to push on. Her fate was fluttering in the breeze like the string of Tibetan prayer flags on the front veranda.

  ‘Why don’t we spend the night in the Murramarang National Park?’ said Nina casually. She had to smile to herself. She’d kept this secret well. Little did Annie and Meredith know there was a surprise sunset cocktail party in the offing at . . . what was the name of that beach again?

  Nina looked at her map and calculated they had roughly a hundred and twenty k’s to drive. As soon as they cleared the town speed limits, she put the foot down.

  It was late afternoon by the time the van rocked down the Durras Discovery Trail into the Murramarang National Park. Meredith was really getting into the rhythm of life on the road now. It was simple. You parked, set up camp, ate, slept, woke, ate, took down camp, drove and . . . did it all again. She hadn’t checked her mobile phone for three days and reassured herself that Caroline would cope with the store. She’d have to. Meredith had barely looked in a mirror, and was in the same outfit she’d worn yesterday. She could finally understand those women who took to the desert with a water bottle and a string of camels.

  Annie had one eye out the window for the tail-lights of a trailer with a tinnie. It was a hopeless mission. There was a string of national parks up the coast to Sydney—they could be in any one of them. But then, she reasoned, she knew where Matty worked and could always call him back in Melbourne. Except she wanted to see him again with bare legs, his hair smelling of salt—not sitting behind a desk in a collar and tie. She remembered holiday romances from the past and the bare-chested boys she had watched swing from the riverbank on ropes hanging from the branches of peppercorn trees. They were mythical creatures—tanned, heroic—all worthy of endless romantic fantasies.

  When she later saw them in the schoolyard in drab grey and navy blue uniform, clod-hopping shoes and hair slicked straight, it was as if they had fallen to earth. The spell had been broken.

  Nina jammed on the brakes and everyone lurched forward. She peered at the map—Pebbly Beach, Pretty Beach, Merry Beach . . . For the life of her she couldn’t remember which one was the venue for the surprise sunset cocktail party. Bugger! This was not like her—she had an almost photographic memory. It drove her family mad.

  ‘I want to see the surfing kangaroos,’ declared Annie, who had been reading the brochures again and become unofficial tour guide. ‘They’re at Pebbly Beach, so let’s go there.’

  Pebbly Beach? Hmm . . . that seemed to ring a bell with Nina.

  ‘Surfing kangaroos? Surely not,’ scoffed Meredith.

  ‘That’s what it says here,’ Annie responded, shoving the brochure at her.

  By late afternoon they were indeed marvelling at a mob of eastern grey roos grazing only metres from the shoreline at a wide and lovely beach. Only it didn’t look like any of them were about to hit the surf any time soon. And it didn’t look like Matty and Zoran would be joining them. The campground was full now and they weren’t anywhere Nina could see. She was cursing herself. Maybe they were at Pretty Beach . . . or was it Merry? It was like trying to remember the names of the Seven Dwarves. Oh well, Nina sighed, Snow White would just have to wait a while longer for her prince.

  After walking across the rocks and poking at various starfish and crabs in tidal pools, they returned to the van and set up camp. Meredith and Nina were both at the toilet block taking a shower and Annie was wrestling with the annexe when the phone call came from Corinne: ‘Annie! You’ve called at exactly the right time! There’s no-one in this whole Sydney rat’s nest I trust anymore. I’ve got paparazzi camped outside the front door. I’ve had to take the phone off the hook. Malcolm’s away in Europe. I’d love to see you. But you’ll have to come here. No matter where I go, I’ll be followed.’

  The plan was simple. Nina would drive the RoadMaster to Corinne’s place at Double Bay and go in the back gate; they would have dinner and park there for the night. ‘I can’t promise you much to eat. I can’t seem to drag my sorry arse out of bed,’ Corinne moaned.

  Annie reassured her that the three of them would come and commandeer the kitchen. ‘That’d be fab,’ she sniffed. ‘And it’ll be good to see Nina . . . and Meredith. It’s time we forgot about all that stuff in the past. Anyway, I need a bit of TLC from old friends. Maybe we can all get blind and sing a few gospel songs in honour of my demise.’ Annie rang off and wondered how she’d break the news to Meredith.

  After another five minutes of wrangling the stupid . . . fucking . . . ridiculous . . . annexe, Annie heard a nasty metallic snap and the ping of a bolt hitting aluminium. Now she would also have to break the news to Nina that she’d busted the annexe. Which one of her companions was going to be more pissed off with her was hard to gauge.

  ‘There’s no time to fix it before dark,’ said Nina as, hands on hips, she surveyed the limp awning.

  ‘A bolt snapped off. I heard it,’ said Annie.

  ‘Let’s just roll the thing up for now and I’ll ring Brad. This time I have to. We can’t let it just hang there like that. I want to say goodnight to Jordy anyway.’ Nina climbed in through the passenger door, found her phone and dialled.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice on the other end of the phone was young, tentative . . . and female. Nina heard a brief muffled conversation.

  ‘Hello? Brad? Are you there?’ she asked. The call was terminated.

  Nina stared at her phone. She must have dialled the wrong number. She tried again. No answer. This did not make sense. She immediately dialled Jordan’s number: ‘Hello, Jordy, it’s Mum.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How are you, sweetie?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Is Dad there?’

  ‘He’s gone away.’

  ‘What? Where’s he gone?’

  ‘I dunno. Some chick was at our place crying. Dad went out with her.’

  ‘What “chick”? Where’d he go? You’re not making sense, Jordan.’

  ‘I told you, I dunno. Talk to Baba Kostiuk.’

  ‘She’s there? What’s she doing there?’

  ‘Hello? Nina?’

  ‘Mum . . . what are you doing there? Where’s Brad?’

  ‘Ah, Nina, you call at last. Brad had to go away for few days.’

  ‘A few days?’ Nina’s voice had risen in her throat. It was the strangled squeak of a cartoon mouse.

  ‘That’s right. I have come here to be with Jordy. I will sleep in Anton’s bed. You having a good time away from your family?’

  Nina groped for some logic in her mother’s words and, after speaking with Wanda for another five minutes, found none. A screech of frustration and a kicking of cupboard doors surprised Meredith and Annie, who were standing on the grass catching their breath after their exhausting grapple with the annexe. They were inside in an instant.

  The next hour was spent in intense interrogation around the table, as if Nina was in a police interview room.

  ‘You could have dialled a wrong number,’ said Meredith. ‘It could have been any woman who picked up his mobile from a table somewhere.’

  Nina was unconvinced. ‘But what was he doing out the other night, leaving the boys by themselves? And Jordan said there was some girl at the house . . . crying. He left with her and now he’s away for . . . days . . .’ The thought of it sent her scrabbling for a tissue.

  ‘Has it occurred to you that the two facts might not even be related?’ Annie was doing her best CSI impersonation. ‘The girl at your place could have been some kid from down the street who fell off her bike. And, like
Meredith said, the woman on the phone could have been . . . anyone. You’re mounting this case against him without any real evidence, as far as I can see.’

  With a lack of facts to be going on with, and the liberal application of spinach gnocchi whipped up by Meredith, Nina was finally coaxed off her windswept ledge. When the second bottle of chardonnay was opened, the cross-examination resumed. There were no grounds that anyone could discover for Nina’s assumption that her husband was having an affair—no unexplained absences, no change in his personal habits, no odd phone calls. As Nina told it, their marriage was right on schedule on the same old track.

  And then Annie put the big one on the table: ‘How’s your sex life?’

  Nina paused, whimpered and wiped her nose. ‘Well, you know. Fine. For people who have been married as long as we have and have three teenage boys in the house.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Annie.

  ‘That Brad’s always up for it. But I’m so tired from everything, and it’s hard to find time. And the boys’ rooms are right next door, so . . .’

  ‘So what?’ Again, Annie didn’t get it.

  ‘They’d think we were gross! If Brad even kisses me in front of them, they pull faces.’ Nina mimed hurling into the cheese platter Meredith had slid in front of her. ‘If they heard us actually having sex? Erk. Boys! Maybe it would have been easier if we’d had girls.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself!’ Meredith snorted. ‘If I’d had even the slightest notion that Edith and Bernie were going at it on the Axminster carpet, I would have killed myself. In fact, even thinking about it now makes me feel nauseous. Count yourself lucky you didn’t have girls.’

  ‘Everyone says that,’ Nina replied.

  ‘Everyone’s right.’ Meredith picked at a piece of camembert. ‘I can talk to Jarvis about everything—I always could. But Sigrid? She’s a mystery to me. I think she resented me going out to work. She never wanted to talk about herself—who she was with, what she was doing. And at twenty-two she was gone. Moved to Byron.’