The Favour

by Rebecca Freeborn

  Quinn’s eyes lit up as Hannah put on the CD and a polyester wave of eighties pop poured from the stereo. ‘Oh, I love this song!’

  ‘I’ll go get my clothes and we can get changed in here,’ Hannah said. ‘Janet and Rami won’t be home for hours yet.’

  When she returned with her halter dress over her arm and fuck-me boots in one hand, Quinn was off the couch and dancing around the room, glass in one hand tipping at a precarious angle. Hannah paused in the doorway to watch her, until Quinn noticed and came to an abrupt halt, her face flushing pink.

  ‘No, don’t stop,’ Hannah said. ‘You looked so happy.’

  ‘I love dancing,’ Quinn said. ‘Just not when anyone’s watching me.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be dancing with me tonight,’ Hannah said.

  Quinn shook her head ruefully. ‘I wish, but there’s no amount of booze that can get me on a dance floor.’

  ‘Lucky for you,’ Hannah said, fishing the little bag of pills out of her back pocket and shaking it, ‘I’ve got just the thing to change your mind.’

  Quinn looked startled. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve never taken drugs before.’

  ‘Oh god, Quinn, you’ll feel so good,’ Hannah said dreamily. ‘You will literally not be able to stop dancing.’

  ‘But what if something goes wrong?’

  ‘It’s obviously totally up to you,’ Hannah put her hands on Quinn’s shoulders, ‘but you can trust me, Quinn. I’ll look after you, OK?’

  Quinn’s mouth twisted with indecision. ‘Let me think about it while we get ready.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Hannah threw her dress down on the stained couch, pulled her T-shirt off and removed her jeans. She could feel Quinn’s eyes on her as she took a few twirls around the room in her bra and undies. It felt good to be watched by Quinn in a way that Hannah had never felt with any of the men she’d slept with. It was simple, unthreatening, pure. Probably because they weren’t actually sleeping together. She picked up the bottle of cheap bubbly and raised it to her lips, laughing as the over-carbonated fizz prickled on her tongue.

  When they were dressed they crammed into the bathroom to do their make-up. They’d finished the bottle, along with a few vodkas, and the last vestiges of awkwardness between them had dissolved. Quinn was about to put on her lipstick when Hannah dug around in one of the drawers and produced a tube of red lipstick. ‘Try this one.’

  Quinn drew on a bright red mouth, pouted and laughed. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Perfect,’ Hannah announced. ‘Actually, just one more thing.’

  She pulled out the elastic hair tie from Quinn’s ponytail and arranged her hair around her face in a dark cloud.

  ‘I can’t wear it down,’ Quinn said. ‘I look ridiculous.’

  ‘You look like a wild thing.’ Hannah stroked her hair. ‘I’d kill for hair like this. Mine just …’ she lifted a chunk of her hair and let it drop back, lifeless, over her shoulder, ‘… does nothing.’

  Quinn gave her a bemused smile. ‘Don’t you know how beautiful you are?’

  Hannah laughed. ‘Don’t you know how drunk you are?’

  ‘Not that drunk,’ Quinn said, packing her make-up back in its bag. ‘When’s the bus again? We should probably go.’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Hannah said. ‘But there’s one more thing we’ve gotta do first.’

  ‘What?’

  Hannah opened the plastic sandwich bag, retrieved the two pills and held them out on the palm of her hand. They were small and pink, with a ‘K’ etched into their centres.

  Quinn looked worried. ‘You go ahead, I think I’ll sit this one out.’

  ‘I got them for both of us, Quinn. Trust me, you’ll feel amazing.’ Hannah shook her hair. ‘You’ll feel invincible.’

  She threw one of the pills into her mouth and bent over the sink to swallow it with a mouthful of water. Then she held out the remaining pill between her forefinger and thumb.

  Quinn grimaced. ‘Fuck it.’

  She opened her mouth and Hannah placed the pill on the centre of her pink tongue.

  QUINN

  The ecstasy kicked in just as they got off the bus on Grenfell Street, like a dragon, buzzing fire in her brain. Quinn clutched onto Hannah for support.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Hannah said, one hand on her back.

  ‘I don’t think so, no. I don’t like this.’

  ‘Come over here for a sec.’ Hannah led her to a nearby building and together they leant against the wall.

  Quinn tried to breathe, but she was panicking, sliding sideways, losing control. This was not what she’d expected, but she knew there was no stopping it now. She’d committed, and there would be hours, literally hours, of this headlong rush into oblivion. Hannah rubbed her back, but her own breath had shortened and Quinn could tell she was peaking too.

  ‘Oh god,’ Hannah breathed, a smile wreathing her face. ‘That’s intense, isn’t it?’

  Quinn felt for Hannah’s hand and squeezed tight. ‘I’m freaking out.’

  ‘Stay with me.’ Hannah’s eyes levelled with Quinn’s. Her pupils had dilated to fill her almond irises. Quinn couldn’t stop staring at them. ‘It’ll smooth out in a minute. Just stay with me.’

  They held each other’s gazes, and sure enough, the buzzing in Quinn’s brain began to subside and euphoria began to spread through her limbs.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Hannah linked arms with Quinn. ‘Come on. Let’s find somewhere we can dance.’

  Hannah led them down Grenfell Street and through to Rundle, then up a narrow staircase to a nightclub that thudded with steely bass. Quinn found her body moving to the beat, beyond her control. Hannah’s teeth flashed white in her face as she pulled Quinn onto the dance floor.

  They danced for what felt like hours – probably was hours, but Quinn had lost all sense of time. She couldn’t wipe the smile from her face. Finally, Hannah beckoned her over to a table in the corner, waited until she’d sat down on one of the black metal chairs, then went over to the bar. Quinn watched as she struck up a conversation with a guy. After a few minutes, she came over to Quinn with two pint glasses of water and a lit cigarette. ‘Drink all of this,’ she instructed, handing Quinn a glass. ‘It’s important you stay hydrated.’

  Nothing and everything felt important to Quinn. She felt larger than life. Invincible, as Hannah had told her she would. At the same time, she wanted to hug everyone in the room. She leant back against the couch, sipping the crystal water, enjoying the silvery feeling of it spreading through her body. Her eyes found Hannah. Her friend looked like a supermodel, her hair slipping over her shoulders like silk, her fringe that always seemed to be just about in her eyes but somehow never looked too long, her slim fingers as she gesticulated, the way she dragged on the cigarette like she was making love to it. Only Hannah could make smoking look cool. She was so vital, so full of life, so intrinsically Hannah. And everything Quinn wished she could be.

  Then Hannah said, ‘What time are you supposed to be meeting up with Travis?’ and the tranquillity inside Quinn shattered. She loved Travis – she was going to marry Travis, after they’d finished uni and travelled through Europe and established their careers – but right now all she wanted was to be with Hannah, to talk to Hannah, to watch Hannah, to be the cigarette between Hannah’s red lips.

  ‘Eleven,’ she said. She glanced at her watch, tried not to become fixated on the way the lights flashed over the brassy hands. ‘Crap, it’s already ten o’clock.’

  ‘We could always go to the Austral and tell him we want to stay out longer?’ Hannah suggested. ‘We could come back here, or find somewhere else to go. Whatever you want.’

  Quinn stood up. ‘Yes. Let’s go now.’

  The pavement felt bouncy under Quinn’s feet as they walked up the footpath. The streetlights seemed bigger, brighter, more beautiful than she’d ever noticed before. Happy chatter washed over her in waves as groups of people passed by. An enormous, bo
undless energy possessed her. She felt simultaneously restless and deeply content. The sensation was frustrating and invigorating.

  Groups of people were clustered around the small tables outside the Austral Hotel; their combined conversations and laughter a wall of sound that Quinn was suddenly reluctant to penetrate. Now they were here, she didn’t want to leave the Hannah–Quinn bubble. But there were Travis’s mates sitting at the table on the end, and maybe it would be nice to see Travis for a bit, to find out what it was like to kiss him when she was E-ing off her scone, before she and Hannah went back to dance some more.

  ‘Hey, guys!’ Quinn ran up to the table and draped her arms around the two other guys’ necks. The fabric of their shirts was intensely interesting, and she had to restrain herself from stroking them like cats.

  ‘Oh, hey Quinn,’ one of them said, surprise crossing his face. ‘You’re here early.’

  ‘This is my friend, Hannah,’ Quinn said, helping herself to one of the empty seats and gesturing for Hannah to take the other one. ‘Where’s Trav?’

  Ryan and Lachlan exchanged glances. There was something about their expressions that was a little strange to Quinn, but now she was fascinated by the mosaic tiles on the table.

  ‘Gone to take a slash, I think,’ Ryan said. ‘What have you girls been up to?’

  Quinn tipped her head back and gazed up at the underside of the umbrella that towered over the table. ‘We’ve been out dancing. I feel …’ she spread her arms out wide, ‘amazing.’

  The two guys laughed nervously. Quinn tried to make conversation with them for a few minutes, but they were oddly awkward with her. Hannah drew closer to her, put a hand on her arm. There was something wrong; she could feel it, but it was just out of her reach. ‘Where the hell is that boyfriend of mine?’ she joked, but both of the blokes looked away from her, took long gulps from their beers.

  Hannah’s fingers tightened on Quinn’s arm. ‘Hey, Quinn, maybe we should go?’

  ‘What do you mean? I want to see Travis first.’

  ‘We can tell him you stopped by,’ Ryan said.

  ‘A hundred per cent,’ Lachlan supplied.

  Quinn stood up, her blood beating hot around her body. ‘I’m going to look for him.’

  She heard the scrape of Hannah’s chair behind her, but she was inside the pub now, eyes sliding over the people standing at the bar, sitting at the tables, talking, laughing, drinking, their teeth flashing impossibly white against the mint green of the walls. He wasn’t in here. She kept going, through the front bar, into the dining area where more groups sat, tapping their cigarettes into glass ashtrays. Not in here either. She checked the corridor leading to the toilets. A straggling line of girls waited to get into the women’s toilet, forming the kind of temporary bond that came from having nothing in common but a full bladder. She pushed open the door to the men’s toilets and peered inside, but none of the backs at the urinal were Travis’s.

  ‘Quinn,’ came Hannah’s voice from behind her. ‘Come on, Quinn, let’s just go.’

  She ignored her, doubling back to the side bar. Maybe he’d gone home? But the looks on Ryan’s and Lachlan’s faces had suggested something else, something Quinn’s brain refused to let in. She went out the side door and onto Bent Street. Looked left towards Rundle Street. Looked right. Saw him. Saw them. The other girl was up against the wall, clutching him, kissing him drunkenly, his tongue in her mouth, his hands up her shirt. Quinn felt Hannah come to stand beside her, the bare skin of her arm touching hers.

  She watched them: watched her boyfriend kissing another girl, watched him touching her, right there in public, for anyone to see. She tried to feel something, but her whole body was numb. Then the girl looked over at the two of them standing there. She scowled. ‘Do you mind?’

  Travis looked up and his eyes connected with Quinn’s. She waited for the guilt to cross his face, for him to break away from the girl, to fall on his knees before her, to beg for forgiveness. But he just gave her a bland smile, then lowered his face to the girl’s again.

  ‘I’m not hallucinating, am I?’ Quinn said to Hannah.

  ‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘Come on.’

  She took Quinn’s hand and tugged at it, and Quinn allowed Hannah to lead her away like a placid cow.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Hannah asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘What an arsehole,’ Hannah went on. ‘What a fucking arsehole. I can’t believe he didn’t even say anything to you. I mean, I never liked him, but I didn’t think he’d be that shameless.’

  ‘You didn’t like him?’ Quinn asked with mild interest.

  Hannah hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t say anything. In case you …’

  Quinn gave a rough laugh. ‘We won’t be getting back together, Hannah.’

  ‘Well, he always seemed a bit sleazy to me.’

  Quinn laughed again. ‘Guess you were right.’

  ‘Do you want to go home?’

  ‘No. I just want to feel good again.’

  They went to a different nightclub, where the music was sharper, more penetrating, loud enough to fill Quinn’s head, her whole body, to drown out the image of Travis’s hand up that girl’s shirt. They danced for hours, until Quinn’s dress clung to her wet body and her limbs buzzed.

  ‘Sit down for a minute,’ Hannah urged, pressing a glass of water into her hand.

  They found a vacant couch at the edge of the dance floor and sat on it, their legs pressed together. Quinn was drained, empty, but her mind was still racing and racing. She felt as though she might never be able to sleep again.

  ‘If I wasn’t so uptight all the time, maybe I would’ve been enough for him,’ she said.

  ‘Quinn, no.’ Hannah put her hand on Quinn’s shoulders, forced her to face her. ‘You deserve better than him. He’s a wanker. You’re a goddess.’

  She kissed Quinn on the forehead, cupped her cheek with her hand. For a second, Quinn imagined what it might be like to kiss Hannah, how her lips would feel against hers, how she would taste of strawberries and liberty. It was a beautiful, silken dream, but it wasn’t real. Reality was that the glowing feeling inside her was chemical, not emotional. Reality would come tomorrow with the realisation that she wouldn’t be marrying Travis in five years, that she was alone in the world. Reality would be the awkwardness between her and Hannah if they crossed a line they couldn’t come back from. Travis wasn’t worth ruining her friendship with Hannah with a foolish impulse.

  Nevertheless, she needed to do something to quiet the screaming inside her body. Something physical, something she could walk away from afterwards. Her eyes scanned the room and came to rest on a guy standing a short way from them. He was watching them, no doubt hoping they’d fulfil his lesbian fantasy right in front of his eyes. Normally Quinn would be repulsed by this, but that was irrelevant now. He was a tool of revenge, a means to seize back some semblance of control.

  She turned to Hannah and touched her shining hair. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HANNAH

  The shopping centre was teeming with Christmas shoppers as Hannah wandered around aimlessly. Her mother had offered to look after the kids for a few hours while she finished off the Christmas shopping, but the brief taste of freedom she’d felt walking out of the house twisted into a bitter curl of resentment at the rampant consumerism all around her.

  Every year, Hannah felt increasingly uncomfortable about the throwaway nature of Christmas, particularly when it came to kids. All this energy spent, all the money, only to culminate in mountains of plastic rubble that ended up in op shops, or worse, recycle bins across the nation. She was determined to only buy things the kids would use, and so far she’d managed to get most of their presents from small businesses, but there were some things that could only be found in places like this. She’d been scouring second-hand bookshops to complete Sam’s Harry Potter collection, but she hadn’t been able to find the one she was looking for anywhere. It was way too
hard to find the time to travel all over the countryside when the kids were on school holidays, so here she was, participating in the consumer machine.

  She checked the one independent bookshop in the centre, but it had sold out of the book too, so finally she turned towards the chaotic discount department store with a sigh. She didn’t like to buy things from here as a general rule, but she was way past ready to jump off the Christmas carousel and get to the part that mattered: spending time with her family.

  There was one solitary copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince left on the shelf, and Hannah snatched it up with relief. It was the second-to-last book in the series, and Sam was very focused on things being in the right order. If she hadn’t been able to find this book, she couldn’t have given him the final book either or he would’ve spiralled into anxiety about the hole in his collection. She used to worry that she was spoiling him by pandering to these idiosyncrasies, but she’d learnt to let go of these fears. Over the course of his life he’d experience enough signals that being different in a neurotypical world was somehow unacceptable. There was no controlling that, but one thing she could do was provide a home life that embraced who he was rather than trying to force him to conform to the majority.

  She picked up a colouring book for Grace and a couple of rolls of wrapping paper, then headed to the checkout. There was a woman in front of her in the queue who was speaking on the phone, and there was something about her voice that stirred Hannah’s memory. Her hair was steel grey, tied in a low ponytail, and she wore a crisp white shirt over navy linen pants. From behind, there was nothing familiar about her, but Hannah was sure she’d heard that voice somewhere before.

  Then the woman turned around slightly, the phone still held up to her ear, and shock bolted through Hannah. She stepped back, bumped into the customer behind her and dropped everything she was holding onto the floor. Mumbling an apology, she bent to pick it all up, her heart fluttering against her rib cage. One of the rolls of wrapping paper had disappeared under the shelves of lollies and toothbrushes and magazines and other impulse purchases, and as Hannah stuck her hand under to reach it, her handbag turned upside down and all its contents spilt out onto the floor. ‘Shit!’