But not any more. Things could change in an instant, catastrophically, irreversibly. So Lexie did wish she could stop time and hold her family close to her, no matter how foolish that sounded, or how impossible.
November
‘Rachel.’
Lloyd’s voice behind her always sent chills. And not in a good way.
‘Lloyd.’ Rachel swivelled around in her chair to face her direct supervisor looming over her, a man for whom a little power was a disturbing thing. And for whom a little deodorant would not go astray. He really shouldn’t wear synthetic fibres.
‘You placed an order for twelve cases of Handy Pickers on Tuesday last, correct?’
‘If you say so.’
‘I don’t have to,’ he returned. ‘The paper trail confirms it.’
So why was he asking her?
‘I am therefore forced to wonder if you were aware that we currently have seven cases of Handy Pickers in stock, on hand as it were. And having said that, if you are conversant with the fact that Handy Pickers generally move at a rate of one case per calendar month, tops.’
He looked as though he was expecting an answer, but Rachel had lost track of the question.
‘At the same time, we are entirely out of Handy Grabbers, indeed we are waiting to process in excess of twenty back orders for the same.’ He paused to take a deep, meaningful breath, allowing Rachel time to consider the enormity of the problem. ‘I don’t think one needs to be a detective to work out that you have, in fact, confused Handy Pickers with Handy Grabbers.’
Rachel suppressed a yawn. ‘There’s a difference?’
He shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment to emphasise his disappointment. ‘Of course there’s a difference, Rachel. Your product knowledge leaves a great deal to be desired. Have you ever thought about taking the catalogue home to study over the weekend?’
‘You know, I haven’t.’ Which was the truth. She had never thought of doing that, it had never so much as crossed her mind.
‘Well, I think this calls for a training session in Monday’s staff meeting,’ he said, jotting a note to himself on the clipboard he carried officiously around with him everywhere. Why didn’t he get with the program and get himself a palm pilot like every other self-important middle manager?
Hold on, did he say ‘training session’? Rachel winced. She couldn’t be responsible for putting the staff through that.
‘Lloyd, you don’t need to cover it in the staff meeting. I’ll take the catalogue home, I’ll brush up on my pickers and grabbers, I promise.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll be all set to present it at the meeting.’
‘What?’ she gulped.
But he was already walking away, and Rachel did not fail to notice the spring in his step. Snide little man. Her phone started to ring and she swivelled her chair around again and reached for the receiver. ‘Handy Home Health Care,’ she said wearily.
‘Rachel?’
She frowned. She knew that voice . . . ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Tom.’
She went blank. And speechless.
‘Tom Macklin,’ he said after a moment.
Rachel roused herself. ‘Sorry, Tom, I just wasn’t expecting you to call me here at work.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘No,’ she dismissed. ‘Where are you calling from?’
‘My office.’
‘You’re back in Sydney?’
‘Yeah, Sophie had to sit her school certificate,’ he explained.
Life goes on. Unrelentingly. Next week it would be two months since Annie died, and Sophie was back sitting exams, and Tom was back sitting at his desk at work. But Annie wouldn’t be waiting for them when they came home this evening. What had Tom said, that nothing would be normal ever again?
‘How are you all doing?’ Rachel asked.
‘Oh, up and down,’ he said in a weary tone. He was probably sick of having to answer that question. ‘It’s been good to stay up the coast, away from it all. Mum’s been great, except she’s always trying to feed us. She thinks food is the solution to everything.’
Rachel smiled faintly. ‘It’s a pity you had to come back so soon.’
‘Well, it has been six weeks,’ said Tom. ‘Actually, I had intended staying put now till we go up again for Christmas, but Sophie wants to go straight back up there.’ Rachel heard him breathe out. ‘I’m not so sure it’s a good idea.’
‘Well, I don’t think they do all that much after their exams,’ she offered.
‘I’m not worried about that,’ said Tom. ‘But she’s going to miss her formal.’
‘Does she realise that?’
‘She says she doesn’t care.’
Rachel didn’t know what to say, and she certainly didn’t know why Tom was telling her this.
‘I’m a bit worried about her, Rach,’ he said. ‘And I was wondering . . .’
He paused. He paused for so long Rachel was beginning to think the phone had dropped out. ‘Tom?’
‘Sorry, I’m still here.’
‘What were you wondering?’ she prompted.
‘Well . . .’ he hesitated, ‘would you mind talking to her?’
‘Pardon?’ Rachel wasn’t expecting that.
‘Would you mind talking to Sophie?’
‘About what?’
‘About why she doesn’t want to go to the formal.’
‘But didn’t she tell you she just doesn’t care?’
Tom sighed. ‘Yeah, but I think there’s more to it.’
Rachel didn’t doubt that. ‘Why do you think she’ll tell me?’
‘You’re a woman . . . you know about this stuff.’
‘But I’m not a parent, Tom.’
‘You know more about girls than I do.’
‘Why? I don’t have any of my own.’
‘But you are one.’
‘I guess.’
‘No, you are,’ said Tom. ‘I can tell the difference.’
Rachel smiled then.
‘Look, Rach,’ he went on, ‘you get on really well with the girls, they love you.’
‘Laying it on a bit thick,’ she muttered.
‘Is it working?’
She sighed. What was she doing? Tom was asking for help. There was only one answer. ‘Sure, I’ll talk to her, Tom.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, clearly relieved. ‘Do you want me to come and pick you up?’
‘When?’
‘Tonight.’
She blinked. ‘You want to do this tonight?’
‘Why, are you busy?’
‘No, I’m free . . .’ Just not prepared.
‘Sophie’s really pushing for us to leave as soon as possible,’ Tom explained. ‘I don’t think I can put her off for much longer without a reason.’ He paused. ‘Please Rachel?’
She roused herself. So now she was making him beg? ‘Of course, Tom, tonight’s fine.’
Rachel made her own way to Tom and Annie’s – strike that – Tom’s. That didn’t sound right either. Tom and Sophie and Hannah’s? Rather a mouthful. Tom and the girls’? Might have to do for now. This was going to be strange. Rachel was fairly certain she’d never been to their house when Annie wasn’t there. Until the wake at least, and then it didn’t even feel like their house.
And now Rachel was coming over to talk to Sophie. It felt like such an intrusion. Annie was so close to her girls, so good with them. They had a wonderful relationship, she’d never needed help from anyone else.
But Annie was gone. When was that going to sink in?
Tom met her at the door in bare feet, a T-shirt and board shorts. She was relieved to see that he looked a lot better than he had at the funeral; the time away had clearly done him good. He seemed refreshed, his skin was lightly tanned and his hair had grown out a little; Rachel could see a faint echo of his younger self.
‘Is this how lawyers are dressing these days?’ she remarked.
He glanced down at himself. ‘I’m still in
Crescent Head mode,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t wait to get out of that suit and tie today, it felt like a straitjacket.’ He stood back to let her in. ‘Sophie’s up in her room, alone. Hannah’s at a friend’s, she’ll be home for dinner. So, you might as well go straight up, unless you want a drink or something first?’
‘No, I’m right.’ Rachel frowned, looking ominously up the stairs. ‘Does she know I’m coming?’
Tom shook his head. ‘I didn’t want it to seem like it was a set-up.’
‘I think she’s going to pick up on that when I ask her why she doesn’t want to go to the formal.’
Tom shrugged sheepishly, before giving her an encouraging pat on the back. ‘I’m sure you’ll know how to handle it.’
Rachel looked at him sideways, passed him her bag and headed up the stairs. She knocked lightly when she reached Sophie’s door. ‘Hi Sophie, it’s Rachel.’
She glanced down the stairs to where Tom was standing, clutching her handbag to his chest as he stared back up at her with an anxious frown. She shooed him away as Sophie opened the door.
‘Hi Rachel,’ she said, a slight edge to her voice. She was suspicious. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, your dad called, said you were back in town. I thought I’d drop in . . . say hi.’
Sophie just stood there, not saying anything. She’d always looked like her mother, but now it was a little uncanny. She had a level of composure quite beyond her years. Rachel had heard it said that when someone loses a parent, they shift up into that generation. Sophie was too young to become the woman of the house, but there was a world-weary look in her eyes that was disconcerting.
‘So am I interrupting something?’ Rachel tried next. She was running out of openers.
Sophie finally released a groan. ‘I’m just catching up on Facebook. The internet connection is so-o-o slow at Grandma’s.’ She turned around and sauntered back over to her desk. ‘She still has dial-up, would you believe?’ she threw over her shoulder at Rachel. ‘I didn’t think that even existed any more. It’s like, totally ancient.’
Rachel was relieved to see some semblance of a teenage girl surface again. She ventured a step or two into the room as Sophie plonked down on her chair and grabbed the mouse, clicking it in rapid succession to close or hide whatever was on the desktop. It wouldn’t have mattered, Rachel couldn’t make out anything from where she was standing anyway.
Sophie swivelled her chair around and swung her feet up to rest on the bed. ‘Take a seat, if you can find a spot,’ she said.
The bed was covered in various stacks of folded clothes, neat little piles of string bikinis and underwear, and a couple of tops and shorts laid out flat like she was working out what went with what. ‘Packing?’ Rachel commented rather superfluously as she perched on the edge of the bed.
Sophie nodded. ‘We’re leaving in the next day or two, I hope so anyway. Dad’s got stuff to sort out at work.’
‘Yeah, he said you wanted to go straight back up the coast again. All that time without broadband, how will you survive?’
She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter, I think I’m going to close down my Facebook page anyway.’
‘Oh?’
‘It just seems like such a waste of time. I had heaps of messages, some of them were kind of nice, but most of them were just requests to join some stupid group or do a quiz, like which Twilight character am I? I mean, who cares?’
Obviously not Sophie any more.
‘How did the school certificate go?’ Rachel asked, in an attempt to move on to something she did care about.
‘It was okay,’ said Sophie. ‘It was only three days. I didn’t have to do any of the internal exams, they gave me “special consideration”,’ she added wryly, using her fingers for quotation marks.
‘So,’ Rachel hesitated, desperately searching for a segue, ‘what now that it’s all over? Are you going to celebrate?’ God, was that the best she could come up with?
Sophie looked her straight in the eye. ‘Dad told you I don’t want to go to the formal, didn’t he?’
‘Oh, he might have mentioned it . . .’
Sophie gave her a small, sly smile then. ‘You’re so totally obvious, Rachel.’
She sighed, leaning back against the bedhead. ‘I know, I’ve never been good at subterfuge. I’d make a really hopeless spy. And I so wanted to be 99 out of Get Smart when I grew up.’
Sophie was frowning. ‘Is that the one Anne Hathaway played?’
‘Oh, in the movie, yeah.’ Sophie was going to think she was a bit tragic. ‘I was talking about the TV show, I was just a kid . . . never mind.’ Back to the subject. She looked directly at Sophie. ‘You know your dad’s just worried about you.’
‘He shouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘He’s making such a big deal about this, like it’s some major rite of passage that I’m going to totally miss if I don’t go. But it’s just a stupid party.’
‘Well, it’s a little more than that,’ Rachel suggested. ‘You don’t think it might be fun?’
She sighed, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know what it was like in your day, Rachel –’
Ouch, she was old enough for a teenager to refer to ‘her’ day?
‘– but it’s so over the top now. Everyone thinks they’re on the red carpet or something. I don’t want to spend all that money on a dress I’m never going to wear again, just so I can boast about where I bought it.’
Rachel thought that sounded eminently sensible. But what if she was just making excuses? Maybe it was because she had no one to go shopping with . . . Tom would be pretty useless.
‘You know, Soph, if you need someone to go shopping with you . . .’ Rachel hesitated, what was she saying? ‘Well, to be honest, I’d be the worst person. But . . .’ She thought about it. ‘Lexie! Lexie’d be great, and she would love to go with you.’
‘It doesn’t stop with the dress, Rachel,’ said Sophie. ‘There’s the shoes, the bag, the jewellery . . . you have to get your hair done, makeup, nails, fake tan –’
‘Fake tan?’ Rachel frowned. ‘That’s crazy.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘You’re all fifteen, sixteen, right?’ said Rachel. ‘Why the hell are you trussing yourselves up like turkeys at Christmas? The people who do all that stuff are desperately trying to recapture the way they looked when they were your age. You guys are gorgeous without all the trimmings.’
‘That’s exactly what Mum would say,’ said Sophie. ‘Would have said,’ she corrected herself.
Rachel’s stomach lurched. Was that good or bad? She wasn’t actually arguing Tom’s case. Not that he had a case. What was she doing here again?
‘Mum would never have approved,’ Sophie added.
Rachel hesitated. ‘I don’t know that that’s entirely true, Soph,’ she said carefully. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted you to miss out on one of the highlights of your school years.’
‘Well, she did.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Mum didn’t go to her formal,’ said Sophie. ‘She thought it was a waste of time as well.’
Rachel knew there was a little more to it than that. Annie’s family belonged to some fringe sect of an otherwise mainstream religion, and by all accounts she had a pretty austere upbringing. Rachel was quite sure she would never have been allowed to go to anything as potentially debauched as a school formal, whether she wanted to or not. So of course when she came home pregnant after a year of new-found freedom at university, her parents simply and quite thoroughly disowned her. Although they lived on the north-west outskirts of Sydney, Annie had never seen them again; they had never laid eyes on Sophie, or Hannah.
Rachel thought for a moment. ‘Look, whatever choices your mum made, I know she would always have encouraged you to make the decision that was right for you.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to do,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s just not important to me, Rachel. It seems . . .’
She was struggling to find the word, but Ra
chel knew what she was getting at. ‘Insignificant in the scheme of things?’ she offered.
Sophie let out a sigh. ‘Yeah,’ she said quietly. ‘Insignificant, and shallow, and frivolous.’
And adolescent, Rachel wanted to say. It was the one time in life when shallowness and frivolity were acceptable, even expected. And Sophie was going to miss it.
‘Look, I get it, Soph, I really do,’ Rachel said kindly. ‘I know that’s how it must seem to you right now. But think really hard, if you don’t go, do you honestly think you might not regret it down the track?’
Sophie looked at her directly. ‘Nope.’
‘You seem so certain,’ said Rachel. ‘All I’m saying is you might kick yourself once the photos are up on Facebook and MySpace, and there’s nothing you can do about it then. It’ll be too late to change your mind.’
While she was talking, Sophie got up off her chair and walked across to a corkboard on the wall. She removed something and turned around, coming over to stand in front of Rachel. She held out a violet-coloured card, the invitation to the formal. ‘Here, you tell me if you think I’ll regret not going.’
Rachel frowned, taking it from Sophie’s hand. She scanned down the flowery script until her eyes landed squarely on the real reason Sophie did not want to go to the formal.
‘You are such a giant doofus, Tom!’ Rachel declared when she came back down the stairs and he ushered her into the kitchen.
‘Why? What have I done?’ he said, clearly baffled.
She thrust the invitation into his hands and folded her arms as he read it, his brow all furrowed in concentration. He looked up after a while and shook his head helplessly. ‘I don’t understand.’
Rachel sighed loudly. ‘Look at the date.’
Three’s a Crowd Page 9