by Fiona Greene
She’d been going to lie to him. Damn, his ex’s apple didn’t fall far from her tree. Was this something else he was going to have to lay down the law with Skye about?
Anger knifed through him and he made a conscious effort to push it aside. This wasn’t an adult lying and scheming. This was a child. His child.
She hadn’t thought it out in advance and prepared a lie. And as far as he could tell, she hadn’t even told him the lie. In the end, she’d made a good decision. The right decision.
He couldn’t be angry about that.
But clearly it was very much still his trigger point. Deception. He had no time for it.
Mark laid his laptop bag down and tried to run back through the morning. Usual breakfast. Usual prompts from him for Emma to load her dishes into the dishwasher, brush her teeth and get her gear.
He flicked another glance at the clock.
Why today, of all days?
Well, if the Council meeting wasn’t going to start on time because he was late, then so be it. This was more important.
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ He slid onto one of the stools at the island bench. ‘Tell me how you’d like to get home today?’
The fascinating spot on the school backpack remained fascinating.
His anger evaporated. He might not have been doing this full-time parenting gig for long, but this … This was not his Emma.
A thousand things, all horrible, raced through his mind. Bullying, inappropriate behaviour, someone hurting her. Things a good parent wouldn’t let happen to their little girl. Things that might never have occurred to him if he hadn’t been working at Rivervue.
It wasn’t just children that used the Rivervue complex. Half the town could be there on any given day. And that was only counting the volunteers.
Another thought knifed through him. Maybe she was developing some sort of performance anxiety or paralysing fear of failure, and instead of being a pleasurable experience, going to CJ’s was now torture? A bit like her mother’s failed foray into pageants with her.
Her silence was killing him.
‘Do you want to give CJ’s a miss this afternoon?’ Mentally he reviewed his schedule. ‘I could get off early. Maybe we could head into Nowra and grab a burger?’ Brachen didn’t have fast-food restaurants, but their bigger neighbour did.
Emma’s head snapped up. ‘No, I still want to go.’ She grazed her teeth over her lower lip and he saw a sheen of moisture in her eyes that hinted of tears. ‘I just don’t want you to pick me up.’
‘Why not?’ As the words left his mouth, his brain started to catch up, and he knew. ‘Because of the meeting about the revitalisation?’
Emma nodded, looking both scared and, to his mind, courageous at the same time.
‘Did someone say something to you about that?’ The anger was looking to build once more. Lexi was supposed to be providing a safe environment for the children. If someone wanted to bring a concern to the Council meeting, and raise it in an open forum, well that was part of his job to listen and to engage. But to do something that involved his child at her theatre group? That was low.
‘Not really.’ Emma squirmed. ‘It’s just, everyone at Rivervue is talking about it and there’s this new play that we’re planning, and they’re auditioning for the actors next week, and I just …’ She stopped. Looked down. Back up. ‘I’d really, really, really like the part.’
‘Three reallys worth of like, hey?’ Mark tried to lighten the mood. ‘Have you read the script, rehearsed it?’ He wasn’t exactly sure what it was someone did before auditioning to improve their chances. He made a mental note to try and confirm with the leader at CJ’s he’d met the other day. Orla someone.
Emma smiled, showing the dimples he loved so much. ‘Yep. Well, part of it. It’s a cool play called Larrikin and it’s about Ron de Vue. Lexi said we’re going to put it on for the anniversary celebrations.’
‘The bicentennial.’ Brachen’s bicentennial prep was everywhere. Townsfolk he’d never met were talking to him about it, volunteer groups were forming working bees. As Council CEO, it was all he was doing. Especially now with the secondment.
Towns around here turned two-hundred fairly regularly but a bicentennial was a chance to throw on a bunch of events that really focused attention on the district. And on the state. And much of his job was to bring attention to Brachen.
The good kind.
‘Yeah. Kenzie and Lexi are working on it day and night, and they’ve got a new volunteer in props who has a dog called Phantom and Kenzie said he’s going to star as Ron’s dog. A real dog! Bruce said it’s a new play and it doesn’t have anyone’s name on the front. Bruce said he thought that was because Lexi was writing it herself. She’s really smart like that. He wanted to know what he had to build, because he needs to get some jobs done at home and he can’t be faffing around waiting for her muse to kick it up a gear. Even if she is the boss.’
‘Okay.’ He knew Bruce to look at—the hulking bloke of a man with a shock of red hair who was the local handyman/carpenter—but they still hadn’t formally met. For a second, he wondered if Bruce knew his words were being parroted by a tween who probably didn’t even know what the word faffing was a placeholder for. ‘Isn’t that how theatres work though? Nothing set in stone, lots of creativity. Big deadlines and big drama.’ Which was completely off topic for tonight’s logistics plan. He tried to get back on track. ‘So why don’t you need a lift home afterwards?’
Emma’s face clouded, the light of excitement extinguished. ‘I just thought it would be better,’ she hedged.
‘Better how?’
‘Some of the people aren’t very happy about that meeting. About that revitalisation.’
This kid should be writing for the local paper. She hadn’t written or read any twenty-page briefing notes or seen the litany of email complaints or tripped over Lexi Spencer’s three-box petition. She hadn’t been involved in the heated water-cooler and coffee-shop debates, and yet she’d focused in on one of his biggest challenges at the Brachen Council thus far.
Some of the people aren’t very happy about the meeting about that revitalisation.
‘Proposed revitalisation,’ he corrected. It was becoming automatic now, having done it every time it was mentioned in his presence in the last six months.
A lot of people weren’t happy about the ‘proposed’ revitalisation.
And now, a different group of people weren’t happy about the meeting to discuss the ‘proposed’ revitalisation. Not that Forsdyke had promoted that meeting particularly publicly. On purpose.
Welcome to Council.
If he had a dollar for every time he’d inserted the word proposed into the discussion, or corrected the journalists at the local paper, or even edited the mayor’s own press releases, he wouldn’t still be working for Council.
He’d have bought himself a beach house and he’d be surfing.
He snuck another quick glance at the clock.
Damn. If he didn’t get out of the house soon, he might not be working for Council.
The meeting was due to start in fifteen minutes. And as important as it was, he needed Emma to know she could talk to him about anything. She could trust him with anything.
‘You know what I think would be better for today?’ Mark smiled across the kitchen island at his daughter.
‘What?’
‘If you go to CJ’s after school like you always do, work on whatever they give you for the audition next week, and when you’re done, you can message me. I’ll meet you on the town side of the bridge. You can walk over, then we’ll go and get the car. If you’re hungry, we could still drive over to Nowra for that burger. I can tell you about what happened today at the meeting, but I don’t want you to worry about it while you’re at CJ’s. Today, you need to prepare for the audition. Ask Lexi and Orla about what you need to do.’
Emma wasn’t convinced. ‘Someone said you’re going to close the theatre down.’
Th
ere it was again. His anger. He forced it down big time. ‘I’m not closing anything down. Council is looking at some options for the best way to make Brachen a great town, and one of those options involves the theatre building. Nothing’s going to happen with that proposal for months yet, even years. Today’s meeting won’t affect your audition next week. If they decide to change anything, it’ll take months. I promise.’ He attempted to smile, but his face was tight, his jaw tense. This was not a conversation any father should have to be having with his ten-year-old daughter. ‘So, you’ll go this afternoon and I can pick you up after?’
Emma’s worried frown morphed into a small smile. ‘Okay, I guess.’
That was probably as good as it was going to get today. ‘Great.’ As Emma grabbed her pack from the counter, Mark reached for his laptop bag. ‘Right, let’s get this show on the road.’ Then he shepherded his still troubled daughter out to the car.
***
One of the best things about living in the small riverside town of Brachen was the commute. Trading his one-hour-and-fifteen stop-start daily grind heading into North Sydney for the six-minute scenic drive with complementary car-parking made him smile every single time he did it, and today was no different.
No traffic lights, and one roundabout. Even the school drop-and-go flowed under the watchful eye of Mrs Beckingham, the crossing supervisor.
Emma seemed happy enough as she hopped out, throwing him a little wave as she shouldered her pack and joined the stream of kids filing through the front gate.
The Council chambers sat at the southern end of the main commercial block, almost directly across the river from the Rivervue complex. He pulled around the back to his reserved spot. The public car park was fuller than normal, but that might not have been for the meeting.
He threw a wistful glance at Milk’n’Honey, grabbed his laptop bag then took the stairs to the chambers and headed straight into the main meeting room. A double shot vanilla latte would have gone down a treat this morning, but it wasn’t to be.
‘Sorry,’ he mouthed to Jo Jenkins, the shire clerk and meeting moderator, as he slid into his seat.
‘And so, I would like to protest moving the theatre company and redeveloping the complex.’
Not old Angus Bertwhistle again. Now he desperately wanted that coffee.
A retired dairy farmer, old Gus spent his days escaping from the confines of the ‘assisted living’ wing of the aged-care home on the Old Nowra Road and tootling all over town on a mobility scooter decked out with an Australian flag and bunting made from ribbons won by his prize-winning jersey cows at the local show. At nearly ninety, he couldn’t always remember how to function from day to day, but he could recount the genetic lineage of the myriad Daisys, Buttercups, Marigolds and Violets that had shared his farm out along the Brachen River his entire adult life.
Mark pulled his laptop out and turned it on, thankful that at least this time, in addition to the chair provided for the speaker, someone had thought to put out an extra sturdy chair, its backrest within Gus’s reach.
Gus treated the scooter, and the cane that decorated the scooter’s shopping basket, as optional. The last Council meeting had ended abruptly when the combination of Gus’s new blood-pressure medicine and his passion triggered a dizzy turn. Gus had fought hard, but once the wobble set in, the result was inevitable. Mark still felt sick, thinking about the entire room reacting a millisecond too late, their responses unfolding in slow motion as they tried to catch him before he went down.
And failed.
Gus’s passion for Rivervue was admirable, but hopefully he wouldn’t be returning to the home with ten stitches in his forehead after this meeting.
‘What is the reason for your objection?’ Jo asked.
‘That building,’ Gus said, letting go of the chair he was clutching to gesture upriver and tottering so alarmingly that the entire meeting held their breath, ‘is a butter factory. B-U-T-T-E-R. Dairying is the heart of this shire. Or it was until the hippies invaded Brachen.’
Mark, along with most of the meeting, winced. Political correctness was not old Gus’s forte.
‘And the only thing keeping that theatre alive, with that pretty little Lexi in charge,’ Mark felt another collective wince go through the meeting, ‘is those tofu-loving vegan-atarians.’
‘Vegans,’ the twins from The Dusky Rose, the new cruelty-free fashion outlet in town, stage-whispered from off to his right.
‘Eh?’ Gus let go of the chair and swayed as he turned. ‘Speak up!’
‘Vegans.’ Megan or Teagan, Mark could never tell who was who, whispered again.
‘And ye can’t put vegan-atarians in a butter factory to watch theatre. They just won’t go. Cause there’ll be nothing for ’em to eat, ’cause them vegan-atarians don’t eat butter. None of them will run the cafe out at the factory ’cause the whole place still smells like butter.’ He waved his hand around. ‘And the theatre’ll go broke. And the eating houses’ll go broke, ’cause no-one’s coming to town. And the bottle-o’ll go broke ’cause none of them fancy pants will buy BYO wine to have with dinners they’re not having. And the hippy markets’ll close down. And …’
‘So,’ Jo interrupted smoothly, ‘you feel there will be a negative impact financially on the town if the theatre moves?’
Gus eyed her belligerently. ‘That’s what I said.’
‘And it won’t just be the theatre, it’ll be other businesses.’
‘And tourism,’ Megan, or Teagan, interjected.
‘And tourism.’ Jo made another note. ‘Anything else, Mr Bertwhistle?’
Gus scratched his head, and looked over at the twins, who smiled back. ‘No, I don’t think there is. Although,’ he thought a moment, ‘if the Council supported the dairy farmers, we could make butter again. Perfectly good butter factory out there. Brachen Butter. From one hundred per cent Jersey cream.’
‘We can’t talk about that today, but I’ll make a note of your suggestion, and ensure that it’s reviewed.’
Gus turned a baleful stare on Jo and eventually said thank you.
Mark marvelled once again at the magic that was Jo Jenkins. Right at the start of his contract they’d worked together on ways to make Council more efficient. Initially she’d been stand-offish to the new bloke from the big smoke, but they’d quickly got to know one another and formed a great working relationship. Jo’s artfully applied blend of common sense and local knowledge made the day-to-day running of Council so much smoother. He’d bet his pay cheque she’d sourced that high-backed chair specifically, knowing Gus was likely to attend today.
A commotion at the door drew his focus away from watching Gus take his seat in the scooter and attempt to drive away.
Mayor Forsdyke.
Who else? The recent Council election had delivered Forsdyke the narrowest of margins, ousting the long-time mayor who’d been popular with all the locals.
Scott Forsdyke was anything but that.
Still, what did you expect when you arrived at all your official functions preceded by a massive aura of superiority. A former lawyer in nearby Nowra, Scott had scaled back his legal practice and moved into Brachen when he won the election, and now he had way too much time on his hands. Enough time that he seemed to enjoy rethinking all of the decisions that had already passed through Council.
‘Would anyone else like to speak?’
‘Lexi Spencer.’
Mark’s focus honed in on the slender brunette as she rose from her chair in the front row, moving with ease along the row toward the microphone. When Rivervue’s creative director was in a room, she drew every eye.
He’d heard of the magic of old-time Hollywood, that combination of glamour and presence that made the stars of the day iconic not only in their heyday, but still today.
He hadn’t believed it was real.
Until he’d laid eyes on Lexi Spencer.
1940s glamour.
That was the description his addled brain had come up with wh
en he’d tried to analyse why looking at her always punched him in the chest.
She was Ava Gardner, Gene Tierney, Joan Crawford.
Today, her slender frame was wrapped in a black-and-white polka-dot dress that covered way more flesh than it revealed, and yet it was the sexiest thing he’d seen her in yet. She’d cinched it in at the waist with a pencil-thin, fire-engine-red belt, matched to her heels and a miniscule shoulder purse. Her lips were coated in the exact same shade and glossed.
She rounded the end of the row of chairs, and as she walked purposefully across the room, his mind conjured up visions of those old black-and-white movies showing young women practising deportment with books atop their heads.
He tore his eyes away and realised he wasn’t the only one so afflicted. Every eye was on her. Even the mayor’s.
As she crossed the room, he caught a glimpse of her legs and the room disappeared.
Seamed stockings.
Lexi Spencer was wearing seamed stockings.
To a Council meeting.
He reached for his coffee, desperate to ease his suddenly dry mouth. Searched by feel, without shifting his gaze.
Where the devil was it?
Damn. He didn’t have a coffee.
Focus, man.
What was it about Lexi Spencer that made him forget, well, everything?
He picked up his pen and started to fidget.
‘Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. As creative director for Rivervue Theatre Company, I’d like to tell you about our program, and also highlight some of the economic benefits of retaining the theatre within the CBD. To finish, I’d like to give the meeting an exclusive—a brief overview of a new and innovative show, Larrikin, which will be staged during the bicentennial celebrations, and will focus on the contribution of Ron de Vue to the town of Brachen.’
A murmur rippled through the crowded meeting room.
Mark watched the reactions from the townsfolk carefully. Until now, the new show had been kept tightly under wraps. Lexi sure knew how to work an audience.
His chest tightened as he thought back to Emma’s wobbly lip, sheen of unshed tears, ‘must get the part’ that morning. What a bad spot he’d landed his kid in.