Lou lay staring at the cracks in the ceiling and tried to ignore the growing realisation that Melinda was probably right.
Not about everything. She was way out of line suggesting Lou had done anything wrong in the way she’d raised Tansy. Lou bunched pilled sheets in angry fists. She’d made every sacrifice asked of her, including some she was still too ashamed to tell anyone. Nor was Lou buying into the theory that Tansy had somehow been destined to get pregnant just because Lou had. Tansy had grown up with condoms in the bathroom drawer, offers to put her on the pill when she needed it. Lou had done everything right there as well.
And yet here she was, listening for clues — a toilet flush, a boiling jug — to figure out whether her daughter had even come home the night before.
Lou kicked at the bottom of the sheet, wriggling her feet free into the sticky warmth of her parents’ bedroom. Maybe she should have spoken to Tansy more about her own pregnancy, how much it had turned her life upside down. How bloody hard it was. Maybe she should have been a little more honest about the facts of her daughter’s conception. Lou hadn’t wanted Tansy to feel guilty, or that she was a burden. But maybe it would have made Tansy more responsible. Less . . . pregnant.
Regardless, it didn’t mean anyone got to criticise. Especially not Melinda, with her plush apartment, free from tantrum-throwing teenagers and subsidence. Lou stopped worrying about her own failings and turned to the more comfortable business of resenting her friends. Melinda, who was spending the weekend in a five-star hotel, surrounded by adoring groupies. Melinda of all people, who knew what it was like to work your arse off. Lou had thought Melinda understood; clearly not.
And Aimee didn’t get to look at her smugly either. Aimee, who’d moved straight from her parents’ house to her husband’s vineyard, who was able to sit around writing bloody poetry all day because she’d never had to worry about how she was going to pay the rent. No, neither of them got to judge.
But Melinda was also, annoyingly, onto something. Because Lou and Tansy were stuck in a cycle, of bad behaviour and pointless punishments. Lou tried to be strict; Tansy resented her. Lou tried to be understanding; Tansy took the piss. Lou tried to give her daughter space to make her own mistakes, and look where they were now. Lou smacked her pillow in frustration. Worst of all, she didn’t know how to make it stop.
Lou glared up at the flaking plaster, the same cracks her parents would have stared at. This whole bloody house was a cycle. At least she wasn’t lying in their actual bed. That had been the one change she’d made when she moved back in. The thought of sleeping on their ancient mattress, imprinted with pious late-night tossing and turning over Lou’s own bad behaviour, was a bridge too far, even on her budget. Lou had splurged on an IKEA special: marked down, due to shop-floor wear and tear, but at least it was new.
The rest of the room, though, was still exactly the same. Shiny shantung curtains, complete with pelmets and tie-backs. Spindly bedside tables, with thin gold handles that bit your palms. Textured wallpaper. Louvred wardrobes. A brown-tipped sheepskin rug at the foot of the bed that Lou had always thought looked like a run- over dog. Lou had just left it all, and so the entire house looked as though it had been pickled in 1978, down to the service-station calendar hanging in the toilet.
God, she hated it. Lou felt her neck muscles tighten every time she walked in the front door. And yet, inheriting this house had been one of the best things that had happened to her. The whole town had given her the silent treatment after the accident, aware that no peace had been made before poor Bev and Ken passed away. And for her to still take the house with all that bad blood, move in before they were even cold in the ground? Clearly she had no shame. That month had seemed never-ending. Lou had gone to the funeral but not spoken, sat dry-eyed at the front ignoring the whispers behind her. Melinda and Aimee stuck loyally close, popping round every five minutes in case Lou needed to share regrets about things not said. But Lou had no regrets. The Cold War had been her parents’ fault, and if they were too stupid to change their will, too bad. It had got her and Tans out of their nasty rental, put a much-needed two hundred and fifty dollars back in her bank account every fortnight. She’d thank them, but even dead, they weren’t on speaking terms.
Lou shrugged her way out of bed, pulled her T-shirt down over her undies. Tansy’s room was empty; no real surprise. Lou was almost beyond caring. Almost. She shuffled towards the kitchen, with its fugly orange tiles and brown linoleum. What had happened in the seventies to make people think clashing earth tones were a good idea? She placed the kitchen on a mental list of renovations that she’d never have the spare cash to tick off. We’ll get to it right after we install the home cinema, ha ha. She flicked the kettle on and fumbled in the bread bin for a loaf that wasn’t there. Just two ratty crusts. Typical. Everyone else got the soft and bouncy middle slices of life; Lou seemed destined for the hard edges.
Her phone beeped with an incoming message, but Lou didn’t bother reaching over to read it. Didn’t have to; she knew who it would be from and what it would say. Aimee, trying to smooth over Melinda’s comments. Making sure they were all still friends. There would be one from Melinda herself in about an hour, not apologising as such, but making an oblique reference to late nights and high emotions. Maybe suggesting a trip to the city, where she’d try to buy Lou something expensive which Lou would refuse. And then they’d all go back to normal: loving and supporting and gently insulting each other, for another thirty years. They were stuck in a cycle too.
Lou took a gulp of instant and made a face. Predictable was fine, as long as the future you could foresee didn’t make you want to stick your head in the oven. Although not this oven, the gas was dodgy. It’d cut out before Lou would come close to finishing herself off. She stirred the lumpy coffee with a finger, then dumped it in the sink. Melinda was going places; even Aimee, who never physically went places, had movement through her husband, her children, the vineyard. But Lou? Lou was circling round and round the plughole, a lukewarm cup of cheap granules and sour milk going slowly down the drain.
Lou rinsed out her cup — Royal Doulton with gold rims, the best china she was never allowed to use as a child, which she now shoved rebelliously in the dishwasher, not caring if it chipped. A face appeared at the mottled glass above the sink, then ducked away. Lou had the door open and was out on the steps before the figure could make it round the side of the house. ‘TANSY,’ she roared, not caring what the neighbours thought. ‘Get your arse in here.’
Tansy slunk in, looking surprisingly fresh for someone who had stayed out all night.
‘I was at Chloe’s,’ she said pre-emptively, before Lou could start interrogating. ‘Her parents were there. They dropped me off. You can phone and check.’
Lou stared at her self-righteous mini-me. ‘It was my birthday,’ she said.
‘I bought you a present. And a card.’
‘You disappeared, during my birthday party.’ Lou searched her daughter’s face for any hint of remorse. ‘Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was?’
‘I was there for most of it,’ Tansy reasoned. ‘And they’re your friends anyway. You didn’t need me hanging around.’
‘You didn’t even say where you’d gone.’
‘I came back,’ said Tansy. ‘Later. And everyone had left. So technically, you bailed on me.’
‘I did not,’ said Lou. ‘I was at Melinda’s. And you text if you go somewhere. Or you call. You ask permission to stay over. You know the rules.’ She banged her fist on the kitchen table. ‘For fuck’s sake, Tansy.’
‘Don’t swear at me!’ shouted Tansy. ‘This is abuse. I should call Child Wise.’ She turned and ran out of the kitchen, short little legs pumping. Lou ran after her, their thumping feet making the watercolours lining the hallway jump and rattle. Lou caught the side of Tansy’s bedroom door as she flung it open, and held on tight so her daughter couldn’t slam it shut in her face.
‘Bugger off,’ shouted Tansy, as she tugged on her side of the door. ‘Leave me alone.’
Lou clung and pulled, but Tansy was stronger. ‘Tansy,’ she warned. ‘Let me in, or you’re grounded.’
‘I’m already grounded,’ Tansy yelled, as she gave a final yank on the door, forcing it closed. Lou’s fingers, still curled around the edge, were smashed against the doorjamb.
Holy. Fuck. Lou screamed as the door bounced back off her flesh. The walls swung and Lou buckled, falling into a crouch over her wounded hand.
‘Mum?’ Tansy dropped down beside her. ‘Oh God. Mum. Are you okay? Show me.’
Lou swallowed back vomit. Forget childbirth, this was pain. She rocked over her hand as the floor shifted, bright spots of light blinking and disappearing on the carpet.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tansy whimpered, as Lou pushed past her and stumbled towards the bathroom. She shoved her fingers under the lukewarm trickle that counted for cold water in summer.
‘Get some ice,’ she whispered. ‘Quickly.’
The compress provided a few seconds of relief, but the burning was soon back. ‘Oh my God,’ Lou breathed, rocking back onto the toilet seat. There was no blood coming through the tea towel, thank goodness. She inhaled deeply until the pain lost its white heat, settling into an aching throb.
Tansy hovered, uncertain, in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘No,’ said Lou wearily. ‘You never do.’
‘It was an accident,’ mumbled Tansy. She took a step closer. ‘Do you think they’re . . . broken?’
Lou peeled her hand painfully away from the towel-covered frozen veg. Her fingers were white, with ominous purple stripes, but they all wiggled when she forced herself to move.
‘Lucky,’ said Tansy.
‘Yes, you are.’ Lou stalked past her daughter and into the bedroom, hand curled protectively against her chest. There was an elastic bandage somewhere, from when she’d done her ankle at netball; that would probably work. She started rifling through her drawers with her good hand.
Tansy slunk in and perched nervously on the edge of the bed. Lou ignored her as she pawed through stretched-out bras, her six- pack Kmart undies. An optimistic lace nightie. The bandage was right at the bottom, with no sign of its little metal fastener, but she could probably tape it.
‘Let me help,’ pleaded Tansy, as Lou started winding the bandage around her hand, pulling it tight with her teeth. ‘I’ll do a better job than you will.’
Lou turned her back. ‘I don’t really want your help,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you just go out. That’s all you ever do anyway.’
There was a sniffle behind her. ‘I said I was sorry.’
‘Yeah, you’re always sorry.’ Lou didn’t bother turning around. ‘And then an hour later, you’re a nightmare again. Honestly, I can’t keep up with you. Yesterday you were really lovely, then you buggered off with no regard for me at all. And this morning, you’re screaming like a three-year-old and slamming my hand in the door.’
‘I’m a teenager,’ Tansy said, pathetically. ‘I’m supposed to be hormonal.’
Lou swung around. ‘You’re a pregnant teenager,’ she said. ‘And you need to start behaving like a grown-up, rather than a horrible little bitch.’
Tansy gasped.
‘Well, you do,’ said Lou. ‘You need to sort yourself out, and fast. Because you’ve got some big decisions to make, and possibly a baby to raise, and right now you’re not fit to do any of it.’
Tansy took a step back.
‘What, did you think we were never going to talk about it?’ Lou tucked her sore hand against her stomach. ‘Just ignore the whole situation until you were ready to pop?’
‘You did,’ whispered Tansy.
‘Shut up,’ said Lou.
‘Why should I?’ said Tansy, faux brave. ‘You can’t get mad at me for getting pregnant. You did exactly the same thing. I’m as much of a screw-up as you were.’
Lou felt her good hand twitching as it raised itself to chest height.
‘If you hit me, you’re just as bad as your parents,’ said Tansy, nervously eyeing the door.
She had no idea. Lou saw floating black dots in front of her eyes, felt the back of her neck grow hot. She bunched her good hand into a fist and swung.
‘Welcome to LoveFest!’ The woman manning the pop-up coffee shop snapped to attention as Melinda approached. ‘What can I get you this morning?’
‘Double espresso, please,’ said Melinda, glancing down at a flyer with her own face on it. ‘Actually — can you make it a triple? Is that even a thing?’
‘It can be,’ said the barista, already working the grinder. ‘Everything is possible, right?’ She handed Lou a cup of pure caffeine. ‘Here you go, Ms Baker. And congratulations. It all looks really awesome.’
It did all look really awesome. Melinda wandered slowly through the atrium of the Sydney hotel, admiring five months of planning made flesh. The welcome signs and goody bags, in LoveLocked’s signature gold and white; the green juice and herbal tea stands, ready to refuel those who’d come straight from the airport, like Melinda. Ideally, she’d have flown in the night before, but she’d wanted to be there for Lou’s birthday. Although that hadn’t exactly gone to plan. Melinda took a sip of coffee. She’d send Lou a message later, smoothing things over. Maybe suggesting a spa day, just the two of them. Lou loved a massage. She’d text as soon as she was in her room.
Melinda continued through the hotel, rolling her carry-on past temporary manicure stations and blow-dry booths. She mentally added a haircut and colour to the spa day; Lou would look so much better without those Hensley highlights. Although she’d have to be subtle about that. Being subtle was not Melinda’s forte, she knew. Had she been too blunt with Lou last night? Probably. But it was just so frustrating, watching her carry on as though she had a giant red letter stuck to her chest. Lou’s parents might have punished her for getting pregnant, but Lou was the one who kept making herself pay. Denying herself anything nice, refusing to move on, make a fresh start. And what the hell was she thinking, moving into their house? Melinda had strong feelings about that as well. Yes, it saved on rent, but she could have sold the damn place, bought somewhere truly her own, rather than living in that mausoleum.
Melinda paused under a banner stretched across the entrance to the hotel ballroom. EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE, it declared — LoveLocked’s unofficial slogan. The problem was that Lou didn’t believe anything was possible when it came to her own life. Didn’t want to, because that would mean making a change. And Lou, no matter what she said, didn’t really want change. Melinda slugged back the rest of her mega-espresso. Lou didn’t need her friends to give her a passport; she could leave any time she liked. She just chose not to.
‘Good morning, Ms Baker!’
‘Welcome, Ms Baker!’
Melinda waved and smiled at the Pilates instructors and personal stylists jostling for her attention. Lou hadn’t even wanted to come to LoveFest, said it wasn’t her type of thing. And Aimee had pleaded off last night, claimed a headache after their fight and cancelled her ticket. So Melinda was alone, at the biggest event of her year. Even her dad had bowed out. ‘Think I’ll give it a miss, love. Couple’a hundred women selling jewellery to each other? Why don’t you just tell me about it later.’
Nearly a thousand, actually. Melinda sank into a gold sofa in what a little sign informed her was a REGROUPING ZONE and tried to get her head around the sheer size of the event taking shape in front of her. They’d had conferences before, but this was different. Nine hundred and sixty-three women were travelling from across Australia — across the Pacific some of them — to hear how the IPO was going to affect them. Melinda wanted to spoil them, to make sure they realised how important they were. Hence the gelato carts, the free massages. And the changes to the business structure. She hadn’t been sure about some of the new incentives, but Clint insisted they would reward those who’d been with LoveLocked from the beginning. ‘We’re putting them at the top of the ladder,’ he’d said. ‘It’s like promoting them, making them managers. Business owners, even.’
Well, Melinda was going to make sure all her curators felt special this weekend. She took a macaron from a large display next to the sofa, a gold-and-white sign urging her to ‘treat herself’ in LoveLocked’s patented font. Classy. She smiled approvingly at the hostesses arranging welcome snacks, all wearing LoveLocked jewellery, but in an understated way. The design team had really managed to reflect the LoveLocked ethos, what Clint called ‘dynamic elegance’. Women who were going places, but not shouting about it. Just gracefully moving on to bigger and better things.
Melinda debated a second macaron. She wouldn’t normally, but there was something fizzing in her today. She felt the same sense of giddy anticipation she’d had when she first started the company — the certain knowledge that she was on the cusp of something life-changing. Maybe it was better that her friends and father weren’t here; they didn’t really understand the scale of what was happening. And as for her mother! Melinda’s mum had somehow managed to react to the news of her public offering with condescension and sympathy. ‘I’m just glad you’re keeping yourself occupied,’ she’d said, with such a patronising look on her face that Melinda had to turn the Skype camera off. ‘I felt so bad for you when things with the Verratti boy didn’t work out. But there are other things in life than being married, aren’t there, darling? You’ve managed to make a different kind of life for yourself, haven’t you, sweetheart?’
Melinda crunched into a third macaron. There was no one she could really talk to about work any more. It was a strange sort of loneliness. She found herself filtering what she said to friends, downplaying things, even to Lou and Aimee. Because you could hardly run around saying to people, ‘Hey, my company’s about to raise millions. I’m going to have offices in London and New York, fly first-class everywhere. And I feel slightly weird about it, so would you mind listening to me talk about the pressures of being extraordinarily fortunate for a bit?’ Maybe there should be a support group: Success Anonymous.
‘There you are!’ Clint placed a document folder on the table in front of Melinda. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You need to sign these contracts before the delegates arrive.’
Melinda swallowed a sigh. Clint was supposed to be her IPO advisor, but he’d started weighing in on all aspects of LoveLocked’s business, from the sample sizes her curators received to what perfume Melinda wore at company events. ‘Investors are buying the whole package,’ he’d told her. ‘Everything needs to be classy as hell.’
Except Clint himself, it seemed. Melinda wasn’t sure why, but there was something slightly naff about him. He was well groomed, but it all seemed a bit try-hard. The swished-back hair. The monogrammed shirt. The signet ring which, as far as Melinda knew, signified nothing.
She waved at a roaming hostess for another espresso and started signing. To be fair, Clint put in more hours than any of her staff, more hours than anyone other than Melinda. He’d been hinting lately that he’d like to come on full time, and she could see it made sense. He had a great track record. It was just that listening to him made her feel exhausted. Or maybe she was simply tired. In which case, having Clint as a second-in-command might take some of the strain off. Melinda squinted at him. He also made her want to wrap her company up in cotton wool and lock it in one of their display boxes. Although apparently that was natural. ‘No entrepreneur likes to hand their company over to investors,’ he’d told her. ‘Why would you? It’s your baby.’
‘You ready to go?’ he said now, bouncing on the balls of his feet. ‘Ready to wow them with the Melinda Magic?’
Actually, he was just bloody irritating. But he was good for LoveLocked, and Melinda could put her personal feelings aside if it meant a better deal for her company and her curators. She forced herself to smile. ‘Almost,’ she said. ‘Just one more coffee.’
Clint dropped onto the sofa beside her. ‘Hey,’ he said, gently taking the pen out of her hand. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Bit knackered,’ she said. ‘I had to get the six am flight. My alarm went off just after three.’
‘No, this isn’t tiredness. I can tell. What’s up?’
Irritating, but at least he cared. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘It’s not. What’s happened?’
Melinda shrugged. ‘I managed to fall out with both Lou and Aimee last night.’
‘What did they do?’ There was no love lost between Clint and her friends.
‘Nothing,’ Melinda admitted. ‘It was me mostly. I told them I was thinking about adopting, and it just turned into this big fight.’
‘But that’s great.’
‘What? No it’s not. My timing was terrible. They both walked out, and even Aimee’s pissed off.’
‘Ah, don’t worry, they’ll come round. They always do. But adopting — that’s brilliant news. I’m so excited for you.’ Clint grabbed Melinda by the shoulders and kissed her — actually kissed her — on the mouth.
Melinda resisted the urge to wipe her face. ‘It’s only an idea.’
‘But it’s a really great one.’ Clint wore the same look he got when he was talking about a new distribution centre, or a possible dual listing. ‘You’re at the perfect age and stage to do this. Building a family, sharing your wealth. Giving a child who needs one a real chance. Are you thinking an Australian baby, or one from somewhere else? China, the Philippines? Or what about Cambodia? That would be ideal, given the factories.’
‘Look, I’m not at all sure about it. I’m just trying the idea on for size.’ Melinda wished she hadn’t said anything.
‘But it would be so good for you. Give you something beyond work.’
‘It would be good for the brand, you mean. Give me a softer public image.’
‘Well, yes.’ Clint reddened beneath his fake tan. ‘I won’t lie, it would play really well with the press. But, Melinda,’ he said, squeezing her hand, ‘I’ve been working with you for over a year now. And you’re not happy. Not really. You need some love. You need a family. Adopting, raising a child — it’d make you a whole person.’
‘I am a whole person, thank you very much.’
‘I just mean it’s the only thing missing from your life. You’ve got everything else. So why not go for the full package?’ Clint picked up his folder; women were starting to stream into the conference hall. ‘Look, we’ll talk about it later. Just promise me you won’t dismiss the idea.’
‘And you promise me that you won’t mention it to anyone. Especially not a journalist.’ Clint had a bad habit of sneaking titbits to the press. ‘Do you hear me? Not a word.’ But he was gone, swallowed by the growing tide of LoveLocked curators surging towards their idol.
Aimee ripped a budding shoot from the ground and congratulated herself on taking action. Nick loved getting out among the vines, preferred to do a lot of the physical work by hand. For one thing, it allowed you to see what was going on with the grapes; you could spot an infection, a plant that wasn’t thriving, that you might not notice otherwise. But mainly, he said, it was meditative. This was where he came to get his peace.
Moving down the row, Aimee could see what he meant. It had been years since she’d done this, but she already felt better just being outdoors. She snipped off another lateral so the tractor would be able to get through. Her old doctor used to tell her to move whenever she could feel her head closing in. Trouble was, that was also the hardest time to make yourself do anything. But today she had. Aimee snipped off another vine tip in celebration. Well done her.
Grasshoppers sprung out of the way as Aimee worked her way along the vines, the long grass rustling as they landed. She waved her shears in the air to dislodge spiders’ webs, feeling slightly guilty as she did so. There was a pleasing repetitiveness to the work. January was all about maintenance: plucking and tucking, trimming and tidying. It was also a metaphor, she realised, as she reached over to snap off another sucker. You had to pull the new shoots out before they got established, like an obsessive thought. Stop them leaching energy from the rest of the vine. The universe was clearly trying to show her what she needed to do. Aimee tried not to put too much stock in signs — that way proper madness lay — but sometimes you had to take notice of the message that was right in front of you.
Because she’d scared herself last night, at Melinda’s. The compulsive need to keep asking for reassurance, to keep going over and over the same details; that was old behaviour. And she knew where it led. So here she was — rip, tug — making sure the thoughts didn’t take root. Weeding her brain, so she didn’t do anything stupid.
There were three grey kangaroos in the middle of the next row, lying in the shade of the leaves. Aimee moved slowly towards them, willing them not to scare and bounce off, but of course they did, staring at her reproachfully as if to ask what she was doing in their vineyard. My husband’s vineyard, Aimee wanted to tell them. And I’m the one who convinced him not to fence you out, so be grateful.
The day was starting to warm up; Aimee stopped to smear sunscreen on the back of her neck. Interesting how she still thought of it as Nick’s vineyard, not theirs. Even though she did all the admin. She knew the others didn’t think she really ‘worked’, because she didn’t deal with customers, didn’t go with Nick to Melbourne or Sydney to sell their wine to restaurants and professional buyers. But she kept the accounts and the family and the house all up and running, and wasn’t that just as important?
She came across him as she moved from the pinot into the shiraz. Collar up, hat down, the little pager that alerted him to bushfire and accidents clipped firmly to his shorts. The veins in Nick’s forearms danced as he moved his hands over the vines.
‘Hey,’ Aimee said, but softly, so as not to startle him while he was wielding clippers.
‘Hello,’ said Nick, surprised but pleased. ‘What brings you out here?’
‘Missed you,’ she said, popping a grape into her mouth. ‘And I was bored. Mostly bored.’
‘I thought you were going to Melinda’s thing.’
Aimee shrugged. ‘Didn’t feel like it,’ she said. ‘Too many people. Too much noise.’
‘But I thought she wanted you there?’
Me, thought Aimee. You’re supposed to worry about what I want. ‘She said she’d be too busy to hang out. I didn’t think it was worth the ticket.’ Even though Melinda was paying. ‘I thought I could be more useful here.’
He didn’t press it, just tipped his hat back and surveyed the row. ‘We’ll probably be able to get all this done by lunch then, if you’re staying out.’
‘I’ll take the left, you take the right?’
‘Just remember to leave the foliage a bit thicker on your side.’ He gave her a quick peck. ‘Don’t want too much sun on them. I reckon the shiraz has real potential this year.’
Potential, thought Aimee, as they both worked their way down the row, Nick quickly leaving her behind. Aimee had had potential. Top marks, better then Melinda even, grades that had won her a scholarship to university. Uni hadn’t suited her — too much pressure — but then she’d won a cadetship with a national newspaper, the only cadet to be taken on without a degree. Although that hadn’t quite worked out either. ‘It doesn’t sit right with me,’ she’d explained to Nick. ‘Intruding into other people’s lives.’ The university offered to take her back, make an exception as long as she repeated her first year — people were always making exceptions for Aimee, because of her potential — but by then she and Nick had other plans. ‘We’ll build the vineyard up,’ he’d said, ‘Open a restaurant, create a proper label.’ Which wasn’t exactly how things had turned out. The kids had arrived, so quickly, one after the other, before Aimee was even out of her maternity clothes. And now she had her community obligations, her poetry. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t working — Aimee snipped off a blind bud with a little more force than necessary — or that the vineyard wasn’t doing fine, just as it was. Not everyone needed to be CEO. Not every business had to be a world leader. What was wrong with staying small? Why did everyone always want to rush onto the next stage?
At least Lou didn’t. Aimee reached above her head, trimmed back a vine that was getting carried away with itself. Nick sometimes questioned why Lou was still part of their tight little threesome. ‘She’s still the same as she was in high school,’ he’d say after a few drinks. ‘While you two have clearly moved on.’ But that’s what Aimee appreciated about Lou. She wasn’t obsessed with growth and goals. Aimee secretly admired Lou for not giving in to Melinda’s efforts to change her — and for not trying to change Aimee either. There were no gentle suggestions that Aimee might like to look at a career now the children were older, no questions about what she was going to do next. And Lou would never suggest that Aimee had banged on too long about something. Aimee decimated a cobweb with one heavy swipe of her secateurs. Lou let her talk for as long as she needed. Lou was steady. Reliable. You knew where you were with Lou, and for that Aimee loved her.
She would not hit her daughter. She would not hit her daughter. Lou unclenched her fist mid-swing and grabbed hold of her mother’s silk curtains instead. She tugged and yanked until the entire right side of the scalloped pavlova came crashing to the ground.
Tansy stared at her, wide-eyed. ‘What are you doing?
Lou didn’t answer. Instead, she grabbed the remaining curtain with her good hand and pulled, hooks popping out of casings like tiny firecrackers, until that too lay puddled at her feet. Another few rips and the prissy nets followed. Light flooded unfettered into the bedroom for the first time in decades. Lou let out a whoop. She should have done that months ago. She swept her arm across the glass top of her mother’s dresser, and a flock of china sheep jumped from their doily fields to certain death.
‘Mum?’
‘Fucking yes!’ Lou picked up a china shepherdess and lobbed her at the wall. The shepherdess fell to the floor with a crack, her separated head staring at Lou pityingly. ‘Fuck, I hate Lladro!’
‘Mum, what’s going on?’
Lou swung around, a crystal clock in her hand. ‘I am breaking a cycle,’ she declared, pitching the clock at a bevelled mirror with a fierce underarm. Glittering shards rained down on the carpet; not bad, for her left. ‘I am shattering illusions.’ She collapsed against the dresser, laughing at her own joke.
‘I’m going to call Aimee,’ said Tansy, inching backwards towards the door.
‘Don’t step in that,’ Lou said automatically. ‘You’ll cut yourself.’ She turned around slowly, looking for something else to destroy. God, that bloody rug. Lou tried to pick the sheepskin up with one hand, but it was too unwieldy. ‘Oh come on, Tansy, don’t be so boring. Help me throw this thing out the window.’
Tansy shook her head. ‘You’ve gone mad.’
‘No I haven’t,’ said Lou, wrestling with the window catch, rug tucked awkwardly under one arm. ‘I am having a paradigm shift.’ A Melinda phrase; she laughed again, slightly hysterically. ‘All this time, I’ve been trying to be different from my parents, while living their same bloody life.’ She rested against the cool glass. ‘You and I, Tansy, are in a self-perpetuating cycle, and I am going to damn well break us out of it.’ The window catch seemed to have been painted shut; Lou pulled back, then rammed her hip against it. ‘Help me get this open, will you?’
‘If you throw that out on the grass it’ll rot,’ said Tansy.
‘So?’
‘But it will be ruined.’
‘Good!’ Lou stared at her daughter. ‘Come on, Tans. You hate this place as much as I do. Let’s trash it.’
Tansy took the sheepskin off her mother. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’
‘It’s a bloody great idea. Get rid of all this old shit.’ Lou kicked at a flimsy bedside table; it toppled instantly. ‘All of it, gone. Just imagine!’
‘I think you should stop.’
‘I don’t.’ Lou kicked the table again, harder this time. Its front leg splintered. ‘I won’t. It’s all going. All of it.’
‘But what will we do for furniture?’
‘Buy some. Steal some. Sleep on the bloody floor, I don’t know. I just want things to be different.’
‘But you can’t chuck everything out the window. It’ll look even worse.’
She had a point. ‘We’ll rent a skip then.’
‘You’re serious.’
‘Deadly.’
Tansy frowned. ‘Don’t you have to order them in advance?’
‘That would probably be the only perk of eight years working for the Hensley Council.’ Lou strode into the kitchen and grabbed her mobile. Tansy followed nervously, still hugging the dead-dog rug. ‘Tom? It’s Lou. I need a skip. No, at my house. It’s an emergency. Burst pipe. Yeah, exactly. Water everywhere. Oh, and I won’t be finishing the accounts any time soon. Place is in ruins. Can you let Rex know? Cheers, Tom.’ She flicked the phone onto silent. ‘Right then. Let’s get to it.’
Tansy didn’t move, just clutched the rug to her chest like the old Barbie beach towel she used to cart everywhere. Lou put an arm around her daughter.
‘C’mon, Tans,’ she said quietly. ‘Let’s go crazy. It’ll be fun. And God knows, you and I could use a fresh start.’
Tansy considered the proposal. ‘Can we get rid of Grandad’s birds?’
‘Hell yes.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Where do we start?’
Lou looked around the kitchen, a homage to formica. ‘In here,’ she decided, dragging a rubbish bin into the centre of the room. ‘Everything ugly, everything we hate, goes in the bin until the skip turns up.’ She grabbed a couple of black plastic bags and thrust them at Tansy. ‘Here you go, fill your boots.’
‘Are you ready to hear from the woman behind it all? The woman who made LoveLocked possible?’
Backstage, Melinda winced. The warm-up act was trying desperately to whip the audience into a frenzy, but they were Australian, not American. They didn’t do frenzies. ‘This is just embarrassing,’ she hissed at Clint.
‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘They’re loving it. Listen.’
There was a faint whooping amid the polite applause. Melinda peeked out from behind the curtain; most of the ballroom was seated, but the front row, her top sellers, were on their feet and cheering obediently.
‘Here.’ Clint poked her with something. ‘Take this with you.’
It was a coffee mug. ‘Is it vodka?’ She turned it round; BOSSBABE was printed on the other side, in gold letters. ‘Oh no, I don’t do that sort of shit. You know that.’
‘But your curators do. In fact, one of them sent you this.’ He consulted his iPad. ‘Christie, from Adelaide.’
Melinda shook her head, but kept hold of the mug.
‘Five seconds,’ the stage manager whispered, as the warm-up act begged the audience to make some noise. ‘Three. Two. Melinda, you’re on.’
The curtains rose, and Melinda strode out onto the stage in a puff of smoke and glitter. Really? Just for a moment, she missed the days when they used to hold their annual meeting in Starbucks, free refills for all. Then she was hit by the pure adrenaline of the lights, the thumping Beyoncé, the women who were now standing and cheering, jumping some of them — God bless millennials — and the intoxicating knowledge that she had built this. This was hers.
‘Hello, LoveLocked!’ she bellowed. ‘Welcome to Sydney!’
The room roared back, nine hundred and something women who loved her jewellery so much they had travelled from across the Pacific to hear what she had to say. Melinda kicked off her heels and walked to the edge of the stage, sat down on the side so she was as close to her people as possible. ‘I’m so stoked you could all make it,’ she told them, hugging a few of the more eager curators who bounced up from their seats. ‘All this way, from Perth, from Darwin, from Adelaide — Thank you, Christie!’ Melinda waved her mug — ‘from Auckland, from Wellington, from Fiji. And for those of you who live in Sydney, how lucky are you, right? Such a great city!’ Wild applause. ‘I’m going to try to make sure I speak to every single one of you over the next two days so I can hear first-hand how LoveLocked is working in your life — good and bad. Especially the bad, because anything that’s not working, I want to fix.’
There was more applause. Clint had warned her not to start with a negative, but Melinda knew her curators, and she knew what they wanted to hear. ‘Please,’ she continued, ‘if we haven’t spoken before the conference ends, grab one of the organising team, grab me, follow me into the bathroom, whatever. Because nothing, and I mean nothing, is more important to me than your opinion.’
Someone rolled a bottle of water along the stage; Melinda grabbed it and topped up. ‘We’ve got loads to get through over the next forty-eight hours. There’s going to be a lot of learning, and a lot of fun as well. Most importantly, I’m going to tell you how we’re reshaping LoveLocked to help you make more money. Because we’re changing, and it’s for the better.’
Half past ten. Aimee could feel a pleasant ache in her back muscles, a welcome weariness in her arms. Her mind was beginning to quiet as well, the way it always did when she did the things she was supposed to. ‘Are you looking after yourself properly?’ Melinda had demanded, on her high horse in her designer kitchen. ‘Because you don’t seem right.’ Aimee had taken umbrage at that. Because she was doing all the self-care stuff, exercising and meditating and checking in with her doctor. Okay, the exercise had become walking one fat labrador, and the meditation had dwindled to mindfully stacking the dishwasher. And she’d ditched the medication, because it made her fat. But she was busy not doing the things that triggered her, and that was just as important.
Which included not dwelling on the past. ‘I think you need to take a look at yourself, Aimee, because this feels an awful lot like last time,’ Melinda had said. But that was exactly what Aimee didn’t need. There was a drawer at the bottom of her filing cabinet that she never opened, which contained all the writing she’d done during that dreadful year. Aimee couldn’t bring herself to throw it out, but she couldn’t bear to read it either. Just kept it locked away so the kids wouldn’t accidentally discover it.
Aimee continued to chop at the excess growth as she moved into the last row of shiraz. There was still a small buzzing in her head, the nagging thought that it might be a good idea to drive back out to the accident site and see for herself what was going on. Put her mind at rest that there wasn’t some kind of federal manhunt taking place on the other side of the river. But no. Aimee put the idea firmly out of her head and forced herself to think of things to be grateful for instead.
It was an easy list to make. Aimee mentally scrolled through the usual suspects. She was grateful for her understanding husband, her lovely easy daughter. The fact Byron wasn’t busy getting his heart broken by some careless lothario. Aimee genuinely didn’t have an issue with her son’s sexuality, but she did worry for him because of it. Australia had changed, but had it changed enough? She couldn’t bear the thought of him being bullied, or beaten up, just for being who he was. Or being taken advantage of. Or catching something. Heaven forbid.
Nearly there. Aimee began snipping with gusto as she saw open sky at the end of the row. She was grateful for her friends, even if Melinda was impossible sometimes. Her pubes hadn’t gone grey. The cat hadn’t thrown up in weeks. None of her family were ill, Aimee included. No matter what Melinda bloody implied. She kept moving forward, snapping haphazardly, until her house came into view. Aimee dropped the secateurs on the grass. Now there was something she was truly grateful for.
Aimee liked to joke that she’d married Nick for his house. Well, his parents’ house technically, but they’d already found a condo on the Gold Coast, had plans to take his dad’s arthritis to a more hospitable climate. Aimee kicked her boots off and climbed up onto the porch. Nick’s parents had moved within two months of the wedding, surprisingly eager to pass responsibility for the vineyard and its beautiful, impractical homestead on to the next generation. And Aimee had become the happy mistress of an early Victorian gold rush villa, an ornate wooden cake of a house, with elegant chimneys and iron filigree, wide sash windows and a deep wraparound veranda. Aimee lay contentedly on her stomach, staring out over the vines to the green-grey hills and bright sky, the kind of view that belonged on a postcard. The sheep that were supposed to keep the grass down ignored her from the shade of a cedar a previous Verratti had planted. Some of their trees were more than a hundred years old.
‘Just think,’ said Nick’s voice behind her. ‘We could have a dozen tables out there, full of people paying to watch our sheep poo.’
Aimee rolled over. ‘Buses full of Chinese tourists tearing up the grass,’ she said. ‘We wouldn’t even need the sheep.’
He dropped down beside her on the cool stone. ‘A cellar door would open us up to a whole new segment of drinker,’ he said. ‘A generation looking to discover their own wines rather than just buy what’s in the shop.’
‘A new generation demanding to taste everything with no intention of buying,’ said Aimee, falling into their familiar banter. ‘Asking us to pop the cork on a seventy-five-dollar bottle of shiraz, then deciding nah, they’ll take the cute miniature prosecco after all.’
‘Extra revenue streams,’ murmured Nick. ‘Food, coffee.’
‘People knocking on the door at all hours, expecting to be fed.’
‘An insight into new trends, what people really want.’ He slung an arm over her.
‘A reputation for not being serious, just a tourist winery.’ She rolled into him.
‘More money for university and holidays.’
‘More debt.’
‘Word of mouth, viral marketing.’
‘People putting nasty reviews on Trip Advisor because we didn’t tell them the quiche wasn’t gluten-free.’
‘Expansion,’ he whispered, biting her earlobe.
‘Exhaustion,’ she countered, opening her neck up to be nuzzled.
‘Inevitable,’ he stated, pushing his hand beneath her singlet, where the fat rolls had accumulated a charming coating of damp sweat.
‘Inconceivable,’ said Aimee, gently pushing the hand away. But smiling. They’d had this argument for years, and would have it for a dozen more. She sat up, pulling her top down over her flabby tummy. ‘Coke?’ she asked. ‘I’m having one.’
Lou started with the cupboards above the sink — the hated Royal Doulton. Saucers, teacups, milk jugs, it all went in the bin. The sugar bowl still had actual sugar cubes in it, perfectly square. Just like her parents. ‘Think how much room we’re going to have,’ she said. ‘God, I can’t believe we didn’t do this earlier.’
Tansy was still standing in the middle of the kitchen, contemplating the rubbish bin. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Let’s not chuck it all away.’ She fished out a tea cup. ‘This is still good.’
‘Don’t care,’ said Lou.
‘Nah, but we could sell it.’ Tansy closed her hands around a stack of gilded plates before Lou could let them fall. ‘Stick it online. Some of this stuff is probably worth heaps.’
Lou paused. ‘Tansy, you’re brilliant.’ She set the plates down on the kitchen table, gave her daughter’s cheek a peck that Tansy didn’t duck away from. ‘Do you know how to do that?’
Tansy gave her a look. Lou chose not to wonder how many of her own possessions had already found their way into cyberspace.
‘You stack and sort, I’ll photograph and upload,’ said Tansy, ducking into the hallway. She came back with her laptop. ‘I’ve already got an eBay account.’
Of course she did. ‘But can I still chuck the stuff that’s really gross?’ Lou had found the smashing cathartic.
Tansy smiled at her indulgently. ‘Yes, you may,’ she said. ‘But check with me first.’
They worked surprisingly well as a team, through the rest of the morning and past lunch. Lou’s damaged hand meant they were moving at roughly the same pace, as she slowly cleared cupboards and drawers, keeping only the very basics to tide them over. A couple of knives and forks. A few of the less offensive plates. Next to Tansy, well-used kitchen gear piled up: CorningWare and Tupperware and Pyrex, dappled with the tide marks of a thousand shepherd’s pies. ‘Corningware is huge, Mum, you have no idea. People will give us thirty-five bucks a dish. Do we have the boxes?’
Of course they had the boxes. Her mother never threw anything away. Lou started to hum.
Cake stands, cruet sets, biscuit tins. Loaf pans, tablecloths, napkin rings. Laminate coasters, depicting a pastoral Britain none of them had ever visited. A heavy crystal decanter — ‘Mum, put it down’ — and a set of sherry glasses so tiny Lou wondered how anyone in the house had ever got drunk. Tansy assessed it all with an auctioneer’s eye, rescuing items that Lou had binned — ‘That’s not junk, that’s vintage’ — and occasionally intervening to place bits and pieces back in drawers. ‘We still need to cook, Mum. We’re getting rid of the memories, not starving ourselves out.’
There was something almost decadent about throwing things away after years of having to mend and make do. Even when Lou’s old neighbours had left money at Christmas, on her birthday, a fifty-dollar note tucked inside an anonymous card, she’d never bought anything nice or new. She just taped the broken blender back together and put the money in her savings account.
The skip arrived as they started on the living room, the scene of three generations’ worth of misunderstanding. Lou watched the giant container being backed into the driveway from behind heavy velvet curtains. She could have used one of those seventeen years ago. Or a couple of bin liners. Her parents hadn’t left her so much as a plastic supermarket bag to cart her stuff away in. The driver set the skip down in the middle of the lawn, directed by Tansy. The same lawn that had once — briefly — housed everything she owned. Déjà vu, Lou thought, as she dragged the first black bag of kitchen rejects down the drive. Except now she had the keys, and it was their possessions she was getting rid of.
‘Can we do the birds now?’ asked Tansy, when they were back inside. She sat cross-legged on the floor, having convinced the truck driver to help them throw the olive velour sofa and both its matching armchairs in the skip. (‘That couch is beyond recycling,’ Tansy had decreed, and even the truck driver had nodded.)
‘Sorry?’ said Lou, eyes drifting back to the lawn. At least all her parents’ stuff was dry. She might turn the hose on it though, just to complete the circle.
‘They’ve creeped me out since we got here,’ said Tansy. She tapped at her laptop, frowning. ‘Although I’m not sure you’re allowed to sell taxidermy on eBay.’
Lou eyed a green-winged duck that had been sentenced to twenty-five years in her father’s trophy cabinet, no parole. ‘Did I ever tell you about the day I moved out?’ she said. Although moved out was a euphemism.
‘My bad, you can,’ said Tansy, frowning at the screen. ‘Although I don’t really want to. The idea of taking money for dead stuff makes me feel kind of gross.’
‘We can give them to Gary at the pub,’ said Lou. ‘He likes that sort of thing.’ She wandered over to the drinks cabinet, fished out the ancient bottle of Cointreau that Tansy and her friends had overlooked. ‘I was just over five months pregnant with you,’ she said, sloshing a decent measure into one of her father’s whisky glasses. ‘It was a Monday. First day back at school after the holidays.’
Tansy eyed the glass. ‘They kicked you out,’ she said. ‘I know. You told me.’
‘They hadn’t wanted me to go back to school,’ said Lou. ‘Because they didn’t want anyone to know I was pregnant, and it was pretty obvious. But I insisted. Because I wanted my VCE.’
‘Right.’
Lou held the amber liquid up to the light. ‘And when I came home that afternoon, I found everything I owned in a pile in the middle of the lawn.’
Tansy stopped typing. ‘You never told me that.’
‘Everything. Every piece of clothing, every book, every CD. It must have taken them all day. Toiletries, shoes. They’d even been up in the roof space and fished out my old toys.’
‘So what did you do? Did Mel and Aimee come and pick you up?’
‘Melinda was already off at university,’ said Lou, bristling slightly at the suggestion that her friends had always had to rescue her. ‘And Aimee was in Year Twelve, like me. Neither of us had our own cars.’ She took a comforting sip of Cointreau. ‘I called a taxi,’ she continued. ‘From the neighbours’ house; Mum and Dad wouldn’t even let me in to use the phone.’ She laughed, sort of. ‘And while I was waiting, it started to rain.’
‘All over everything.’
‘All over everything,’ Lou agreed. ‘And not a little bit of rain either. It absolutely pissed down. And the taxi driver came, but instead of helping, he sat in the car with the meter running while I tried to stuff my things into the back seat.’ Lou took another drink. ‘My parents just stood in the window, right there, watching.’
‘Mum, that’s awful.’
‘I managed about four armfuls of clothes and then gave up. He wouldn’t even flip the boot.’
‘Who was the taxi driver? Not old Albert.’
‘Not Albert. It doesn’t matter, the man’s dead now. Lung cancer, six months later.’
‘Good.’
‘Well. Anyway, I had to leave most of it. Childhood stuff mainly, silly things, like this Cabbage Patch doll I’d absolutely adored growing up. Jean Wilma. I was going to give her to you, if you were a girl.’
Tansy’s eyes were sad. ‘And then what? Where did you go?’
Lou took a swallow of Cointreau. ‘I didn’t want to bother anyone. So I took the taxi to the Commercial Hotel — where Melinda lives now, ironically — and asked for their cheapest room, except I didn’t have enough money to pay for it.’ Another swallow, bigger. ‘And the owner suggested I could give him a blow job instead. Since I was obviously a pregnant little tart.’ A proper slug, this time. ‘And I did, because I didn’t know what else to do. And then in the morning I wagged school and walked back over with a big suitcase the hotel owner’s wife had given me to get the rest of my things. Except there was nothing there. It had all gone. They’d got rid of it, every last trace of me.’ Lou drained the rest of the Cointreau and dropped the glass on the floor. ‘Right then. Shall we rip these curtains down? I’ve always hated them.’