Back at the apartment, I took off my make-up and evening attire and put on my sweats. I wasn’t tired, so I walked down the hill to see Dad at the nursing home. I told him about Mother going into hospital and her low white cell count. He nodded but remained silent on this. Then I told him about the dinner and the PM. I told him about Barney Viper and Scrutiny Australia and Becky Walton being there. He nodded at all this too and said: ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.’
It was close to 1 am when I left. Navigating the garden path, I saw a car I recognised pull into the facility. It was JC. I turned to go back and meet him, then I realised he was not alone.
From the passenger’s side stepped Becky Walton. JC walked around to take her hand. Then he leaned down and kissed her. It was a lover’s kiss. It may have had recent sex in it too. I took out my phone and photographed them. They walked towards the door hand in hand. I photographed that too. When he pressed the buzzer, they dropped hands, stepped apart, and a nurse came and let them in. By the time I had walked up the hill again, my rage at his deceit had settled into the pit of my stomach.
Viper knows, I thought, remembering how he had observed the two of them. We Tasmanians never fly far from the nest. Not in our hearts.
Did JC know he knew? I was enraged for Stephanie. I remembered Ben waiting by the kitchen table with a bag packed when I flew in late one night. Like some scene from Heartburn.
‘What’s this?’ I had asked him.
‘Astrid, there’s someone else. I need to be with her.’
I’d been calm at the time. I had been reasonable.
‘How long? How long has it been going on, Ben?’
‘Six months. I’m really hoping we could all be family together, somehow.’
‘Is she married?’
‘Divorced.’
‘Children?’
‘Two.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Thirty-four.’ That had stung a bit.
‘Why, Ben?’
‘You know, you stopped being fun a long time ago.’
‘Please leave.’
‘I am.’
I came home one day and he’d taken every wedding present we’d been given. When I’d asked him why, he said they’d come from his friends. We’d been married for so long, I didn’t remember things like that anymore. I thought of everything as ours.
I had requested we see a counsellor. She told him to stand up and imagine a circle around him. That’s your personal space, she said. Now imagine that Astrid has the same circle. So if you want to come into Astrid’s space, you need to ask. That means the family home now. That’s Astrid’s space.
It was after that he took the paintings. Tavvy rang me. ‘Mum, I just came home and there’s all this art missing off the walls.’ I changed the locks. Everyone should have to get divorced from the person they’re married to, just to see who that person really is.
All of that went through my mind, thinking of JC and Becky and Stephanie. Had it been going on all these years? Or had it started again recently?
I waited for JC to come home. I heard the car come up the driveway half an hour later. I heard the door shut quietly and his footsteps on the side path.
I said, ‘JC?’
‘Jesus, Ace, what are you doing awake?’
‘Come sit by the pool with me,’ I said.
‘Now?’ he said.
‘Now,’ I said.
It was a warm, moist, big sky night with a waxing moon, a week from full. The pool was scrotum-shaped with lights that changed colours from blue to purple to red to green to gold.
‘JC, I didn’t tell you this, but I’ve been going down to see Dad at night. If I’m restless, can’t sleep. I went tonight, after the dinner.’
‘I saw you with Becky. I saw you kissing Becky.’
‘Ace,’ he said.
‘Are you fucking mad?’
‘Jesus, Ace,’ he said.
‘JC, you’re the premier. You are going to get caught. It’s going to be everywhere. You think people don’t talk?’ I don’t know why that was my first concern, but it was.
‘We’re really careful. It’s only once or twice a year. I …’ So it wasn’t new. It was very old.
‘You’re a pig. You do not deserve your wife. You do not deserve your girls,’ I said.
‘Easy, Ace.’
‘She gave up her career for you. She keeps us together as a family. You have to stop this.’
‘You know how it is with me and Becky, Ace. It’s …’
‘Oh, yes, I remember. I remember when you were fifteen and seventeen—but you’re fifty-six and you’re married and you’re the premier of this state.’
‘Ace, I don’t know how to …’
‘Why the hell didn’t you marry Becky?’
‘Because she wouldn’t have me.’
‘What does that tell you?’
‘You can’t say anything, Ace. You can’t tell Steph.’
‘Who else knows, JC?’
He was silent.
‘Viper?’ I asked him.
He said nothing.
‘You stupid idiot. He’s got that over you?’
He said nothing, just sat there silhouetted against the pool lights, his big bulky frame with the lights behind him going blue, purple, red, green.
‘Has he called it in?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, so quietly.
‘Maybe?’ I was beyond furious by now.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He called it in.’
‘What did you have to do?’
He was silent. Then he stirred and stood up.
‘I had to get the bridge finished by election day,’ he said.