Just a quick drive-by, Aimee promised herself. She wouldn’t even stop. And if she did stop, she wouldn’t get out of the car. But she definitely wouldn’t speak to anyone. Aimee pulled over onto the grass alongside Maddocks Clearing. The plane was still there, a burnt-out sarcophagus rebuking her from its resting place at the foot of the ranges. Face your fears, her therapist used to tell her. Exposure therapy: if you continually place yourself in the path of what scares you, the panic will fade. Of course, the same woman had told her she had to resist the urge to keep checking, checking, checking, whenever she was worried about something. That it just fed the obsession. Aimee conveniently blanked out that piece of advice as she slid out of the driver’s seat.
Because she needed to know. That was all. Whether they’d found anything, or if it really was just an unfortunate accident like Melinda said. If she knew, then she could respond. Either get on with her life, or . . . or . . . actually, Aimee hadn’t quite decided what she’d do if it turned out they were responsible. She had two children; she couldn’t go to jail. But if she knew, then at least she’d feel more in control of the situation. Less in limbo. Her head didn’t like limbo.
Aimee fingered the police tape stretched across the entrance to the clearing, sealing it off as though it was some kind of crime scene. Would it be seen as a crime, what they’d done? It wasn’t as though they’d intentionally set out to hurt anyone. But maybe there were rules about where you could let those lanterns off. There were with drones, she knew, particularly around airports. Although they weren’t even close to the local airfield. But maybe you were supposed to inform people, like with fireworks. Aimee’s head swam with possibilities. She ducked under the tape, heart pounding. Took a few nervous steps into the clearing. Just so she could see.
‘Help you?’
The investigator was older, a burly man she didn’t recognise. Not from around here then.
‘I’m only looking,’ she said defensively.
‘You shouldn’t really be out here.’
‘I just wanted to know . . .’ What did she want to know?
‘Yes?’
‘If you need any help. Any volunteers.’ Yes. Yes. ‘I could search for clues, or keep the crowds back, or . . .’
He looked pointedly up and down the deserted road. ‘I think we’ve got it covered.’
‘But what about food? I bake. I could bring lunches, snacks. Muffins. I make great muffins.’
He shook his head. ‘That’s very kind. But we’re all good here.’
There was a man crawling across the ground in front of the plane, raking the grass with his fingers. Aimee stared, frozen, waiting for him to cry out, to stand up brandishing a tattered piece of lantern or a bent wire frame. Although they’d never know who let it off, would they? And a piece of lantern didn’t necessarily prove anything. Not unless it was stuck in an engine or a wrapped around a propeller or something. She’d watched enough television to know that. A piece of lantern wouldn’t hold up in court. If this kind of thing even went to court. Although what if there were witnesses? Someone might have seen the lanterns, watched them float away from Melinda’s balcony. It was a very distinctive balcony; the whole town knew who lived in the old hotel. And half of them hated her.
‘Anything else?’
‘What?’
‘Was there anything else?’
‘Oh. No. Not at all.’
He smiled patiently, waiting for her to leave.
‘Good luck,’ Aimee said pathetically. She backed away, tripping slightly over a patch of long grass.
‘You okay there?’ the investigator asked.
‘Fine. I’m fine. I’m sorry.’ And she turned and ran back to her car, aware of his eyes on her the whole way.
Melinda had been speaking for nearly two hours, but she barely noticed. There was so much energy in the room; with each round of applause, she felt herself getting higher. She took her time as she talked through the new collection, the key pieces that had already featured in magazines and newspaper editorials, guaranteeing demand. It was amazing how something so simple — charms, effectively, lockets of all shapes and sizes that could house photographs, love notes, locks of hair (drugs too, more than one commentator had pointed out, and Melinda had heard stories but chose not to listen) — could become so coveted just by slapping the words ‘limited edition’ on them. But they did. Women swapped lockets on Facebook, had bidding wars on eBay for discontinued pieces. And it was good quality, Melinda made sure of that. Each piece was hand-finished in-house, and Melinda did random inspections of stock.
It was this attention to detail that had won her a dedicated following among her curators and their customers. People felt comfortable giving a LoveLocked necklace for a birthday or christening, because they knew it would last a lifetime. And the curators felt comfortable ordering stock, because they knew it would sell, and in the rare instance that it didn’t, LoveLocked had a no-questions-asked return policy. It impacted the bottom line, but Melinda didn’t care. She wanted a company she could be proud of.
She looked out over the audience as her top curators started coming on stage to share their sales techniques. Gave a quick scan for her dad, in case he’d had a change of heart, bought a cheap ticket and flown in to surprise her. Melinda squinted towards the seats at the back. Or maybe Aimee had come after all, keen to make up. Or even Lou. Although that was unlikely; Melinda had sent a text before the conference started, and hadn’t heard back.
It didn’t matter. Up here, Melinda didn’t need anyone else to make her feel good. It was amazing, the buzz she got from simply achieving. Each time she strode into a meeting or gave a presentation, Melinda could feel herself becoming someone else, someone more like her true self. The words she said felt more genuine; her interest didn’t need to be faked. Unlike coffee with the local women, or the monthly Hensley Homeowners Association meetings. Melinda knew she didn’t belong in town. Never had. But it was important to remember where you came from. Her dad had taught her that. Look at him, one of Victoria’s top solicitors, and never tempted to abandon the town that needed him for lucrative city offers. ‘Bunch of wankers,’ he’d say in his Hensley drawl when Melinda spoke about meetings she’d had in Melbourne or Sydney. ‘Five minutes in the big smoke and they think they’re something special. I’d rather stay where people are real.’
The house lights rose, the signal that Melinda was to start her financial presentation. She slid her shoes back on and walked to a lectern that had appeared in the middle of the stage. ‘I need my notes for this bit,’ she joked. ‘Don’t want anyone to sue me if I get something wrong.’
The atmosphere in the room changed as women took notebooks out of handbags, slid on geek-chic spectacles. ‘The first thing I want to say is, don’t worry,’ said Melinda. ‘All of these changes are designed to make it easier for you to make money. Quite simply, the better you do, the better we do.’
Melinda started clicking through slides, explaining the new incentive schemes, the plan to increase rewards for those who sold the most. Click. The fact that they were also changing the way they set their targets, comparing curators to others within their region. ‘Nothing like a bit of healthy competition,’ Melinda said, grinning. Click. The social media training and product kits they’d created, all available at minimal cost. Click. The hefty discounts that would come with bigger orders. Click, click.
‘Now, we know a lot of you have brought other curators into the company, whether friends and family or satisfied customers. In the past, we haven’t rewarded you for that.’ Melinda was happy with the direct sales model, hadn’t wanted to stray into anything that smacked of multi-level marketing. ‘Your main source of revenue is still and will always be sales. I don’t want anyone to feel she has to sign up her neighbours in order to make money. But at the same time, if you’re bringing in new curators, you’re adding to our bottom line. So we’re going to reward that.’ There was an excited whisper. Good. This was the area Melinda had been least certain about.
‘That’s retroactive by the way. You can claim for any introductions you’ve made in the whole lifetime of LoveLocked.’ A couple of women whooped. Melinda smiled and carried on.
‘Finally, we’re going to clamp down on discounting,’ she said. ‘We’ll always give you your money back if you decide to leave LoveLocked, or if there are products you can’t shift. That will never change, IPO or no IPO. You have my word.’ Another cheer, led by the loyal old guard at the front. ‘So there’s no excuse to drop your prices. It only undercuts your fellow curators and devalues their stock. We’re going to start enforcing the small print on that one. But it’s going to be good for all of you. You don’t need to earn pocket money by holding online jumble sales. You’re better than that. We’re better than that. Aren’t we?’
The ballroom roared in agreement. Yes, they confirmed, with the odd high-five. Yes, they were.
Ceramic clowns. Lacquered side tables. A freestanding velvet lamp with an actual fringe. By midafternoon, the skip was so full of junk that Tansy had decreed too ugly for eBay, they had to call the guy who’d delivered it to swap it for a new one.
(‘This stuff doesn’t look very water damaged,’ he’d said, fingering a throw rug.
‘The rot’s on the inside,’ Lou had replied.)
‘It almost feels like a normal house now,’ said Tansy, spinning around the half-empty living room. The dining table and chairs had been pushed up against the wall, awaiting their new owner; someone had bought them online in less than an hour. That was three hundred dollars, right there. Lou was going to be able to do the house up — well, fill it with IKEA particleboard, at least — and it wasn’t going to cost her a thing.
‘I know, right?’ Lou gently manoeuvred a painting off the wall, careful not to put any pressure on her bad fingers. ‘I always found this place so claustrophobic growing up. I couldn’t breathe.’
Tansy took the painting off her. ‘That’s kind of why I stay out.’
‘Really?’ Lou tried not to feel hurt. ‘But I don’t make you feel claustrophobic, surely?’
It hadn’t just been the heavy curtains and dark wallpaper that had made her feel boxed in. It had been her parents’ whole attitude, the constant judgement and questions. Where were you? Why would you? Who was that?
‘It’s just not very . . . comfortable,’ Tansy said, putting the painting in one of their ‘sell’ piles. Horses galloping along a beach. Was there really a market for that kind of kitsch? Lou was truly out of touch.
‘Comfortable?’
‘At Zarah’s and Chloe’s you can veg out, lie on the sofa and eat toast. The furniture here just seems really . . . upright.’ She looked apologetic. ‘It’s not really a hanging-out sort of house.’
‘So that’s what you’re up to, when you don’t come home,’ said Lou. ‘Eating toast.’ Not wandering the streets with a bottle of Southern Comfort and a pack of Marlboro Lights.
‘Usually,’ said Tansy. ‘Watching TV. Messing about online. You know.’
Lou’s parents hadn’t owned a television. Lou had chosen not to buy one when they moved in, in the hope it might make Tansy more studious. But if that was all it took to keep her daughter in at night, she’d drive over to Meadowcroft right now and pick out the largest flatscreen she could find.
‘Plus you’re always so stressed out,’ said Tansy, peeling a price tag off the back of the picture. ‘So wound up.’
‘No I’m not!’
‘You kind of are,’ said Tansy. ‘And it’s fair enough. I know your job sucks.’ She bit her lip. ‘But it’s just not very . . .’
‘Comfortable?’
‘Yeah. Sorry.’
‘S’all right.’ Lou wandered off down the hallway so Tansy couldn’t see her face. She paused at an open door, collected herself. They hadn’t attacked Tansy’s bedroom yet, formerly the guest room, a mid-eighties nonsense of peach damask and iron bedframes. They hadn’t touched Lou’s old room either. Lou had given it a wide berth in the months since she’d moved back in. She peeked around the door now, breathing in the familiar scent of old wallpaper. Her mother had turned it into a craft room after Lou had gone, her sewing machine taking pride of place under the window where Lou’s bed had once been. Plastic bins of scrapbooking materials lined the walls. Lou took the lid off one: stickers. Another held craft glue, another stamps and mini inkpads. Lou tried to picture her sensible mother gaily stamping multicoloured frogs on fancy cardboard, and failed.
She opened the blinds; the room had a good view out onto the back garden and a rhododendron her dad had planted to celebrate Lou’s birth. Got good light as well. They could turn this into a nursery, if they needed to. Lou swallowed back the thought. The wardrobe still sported a few faded Bon Jovi stickers on the inside walls. The wardrobe had been a clash of civilisations once: the clothes her mother bought her on one side, the op-shop bargains Lou insisted on wearing on the other. Crushed black velvet and Cure T-shirts versus pure-wool knits and chambray skirts. God, the screaming matches over what she wore, her mother trying to dress her up for church and functions well into high school as though she was a child. ‘If you act like a child, then I’m going to treat you like one.’ While everyone else was in jeans and sweatshirts, their parents past caring what other people thought. None of Lou’s clothes on either side remained. Instead, the cupboard looked like an old-fashioned haberdashery — buttons and wool and trimmings neatly stacked. Her mother had finally imposed control over Lou’s wardrobe.
‘Mum?’
‘In here.’ Lou started pulling bags of fabric down from the wardrobe shelves. She caught her bad fingers under an old pattern book and winced. ‘Can you give me a hand? Last room, promise, then we’ll sort out dinner.’
Tansy sang to herself as she cleared, a hit Lou vaguely recognised, made famous by an underage singer who was all cleavage and feminism. Something about being the best you ever had, baby. Maybe she should have monitored what Tansy was listening to more closely. But pop music hadn’t got Tansy pregnant. And controlling teenagers just made them rebel; Lou knew that first-hand.
‘Do we chuck this stuff or sell it?’ she asked. ‘Would anyone even want it? Some of this fabric is pretty dated.’
‘Donate it,’ said Tansy, after a pause. ‘Schools would use it. Kindergartens. I’ll make a special pile, in the hall.’
See, Lou thought. She hadn’t screwed up that badly. Tansy was helping her mum. Thinking of others. But would this kinder, softer version of her daughter stick around, or would they be back to screaming and door-slamming in the morning? Lou was almost afraid to hope.
‘Hey, check this out.’ Tansy handed Lou a photo album, saccharine pink with a gingham frill. A familiar toddler stared suspiciously out at her from a padded fabric frame on the front.
Lou moved over to the window. The ring-bound album was a good forty pages, each carefully themed with sticker slogans and matching cut-outs. A DAY AT THE BEACH! FUN WITH COUSINS! And marching across the coloured pages was Lou: toddler Lou, sleeping Lou, first-day-of-kindy Lou, sandy Lou, candle-blowing Lou, up through primary and into high school. It finished with an awkward family photo, the type taken in a studio in front of a pull-down background: Lou scowling, her parents smiling proudly.
When had her mother even made this?
‘It was in here.’ Tansy placed a cardboard box on the sewing table. Lou sucked her breath in as her daughter rifled through faded baby clothes, opened a balding velvet box to reveal the tiniest christening bracelet.
‘Guess they didn’t get rid of everything then,’ said Tansy. She pulled out a corn-haired doll with a plastic face. ‘And look. Jean whatsit.’
She must have put the album together after Lou had gone. Lou had never seen her mother scrapbooking; it was a post-daughter hobby. ‘Put the box back in the cupboard,’ she said.
‘But —’
‘I don’t want to look at it just now. Too tired.’
‘Riiight.’ Tansy folded the cardboard flaps back in, but left Jean Wilma propped dejectedly up against the sewing machine. ‘You know, if they kept all your baby stuff, then they must have —’
‘What say we go out and get something to eat,’ said Lou. ‘A reward for all our hard work.’ She marched out of the sewing room, grabbed her keys. ‘Come on. Last one in the car’s a rotten egg.’
Why had she run? Why the hell had she run? Aimee walked back and forth across the living room, watched by a suspicious Oscar. Running would only make her look guilty. Make the investigator remember her. Why had she even spoken to him at all?
Think, Aimee, think. There must be something she could do to make her behaviour seem more rational. Go back maybe, explain she was a friend of the family. That if she was acting a little odd, it was only because she was so upset. Or would that just make it worse? Give him more reason to remember her? Maybe she was overthinking. Maybe he’d forget she’d even been there. Maybe dozens of people visited the site every day. The good folk of Hensley were a nosy lot. But if she didn’t explain, and one of his superiors asked if anyone had been acting suspiciously, then —
‘Aimee, what are you doing?’
Nick stuck his head through the open window, dirty arms resting on the sill.
‘Just thinking.’ And thinking, and thinking, and thinking. ‘About Byron’s birthday. Whether we should do something, or if he’ll get all embarrassed if we make a fuss.’
‘But that’s not till September.’ He frowned. ‘Are you all right?’
No. ‘Yes.’
‘Only you seem preoccupied. Like your head’s somewhere else.’
‘I’m fine.’ She bent down and kissed him, hard and slow, to show how fine she was.
Nick grinned. ‘Should I come in? Wash some of this crap off? You could help.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I need to do the books. You’ll only distract me.’
‘Suit yourself.’ But he was smiling as he pulled his head back through the window.
Aimee narrowed her eyes at Oscar, who wasn’t falling for any of it. Maybe she should start taking her medication again, just in case. But she didn’t like the weight gain. Nick didn’t either, even though he claimed it didn’t bother him. That he liked her ‘cuddly’. And sane. He especially liked her sane. Aimee collapsed on the sofa, provoking a warning hiss from Oscar. What she really needed was to talk to someone, but Nick would only worry and Lou wasn’t picking up and Melinda was at her conference. Not that Melinda would listen anyway. Which was a shame; Melinda was the best at helping Aimee to see things clearly, at calming her right down. Aimee looked longingly at Nick’s twenty-year-old Scotch, remembered how calm she’d felt at Lou’s picnic with a stomach full of champagne.
‘We could buy him a car.’
‘What?’
Nick’s disembodied head squinted at her. ‘Byron. For his sixteenth. We could buy him a car.’
‘Oh. Okay. Sure.’
‘Aimee, are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Of course. Everything’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘If we can’t sell items we’ve bought at a bulk discount, can we still return them?’
Melinda swallowed a yawn. The question-and-answer session was entering its second hour. ‘Of course. There’s always a refund on undamaged stock.’
‘Even if it’s out of season?’
‘Well, no, it has to be in season. That’s always been the rule.’
‘But what if I order too much in order to get a discount and forget to return it in time?’
Christ on a bike. ‘It’s up to you to manage your inventory. We don’t encourage curators to buy stock they don’t have orders for, or a realistic chance of selling at pop-up shows or events.’ Melinda could see the shadowy forms of women sneaking out into the lobby, where there was — she knew — cold-brew coffee and freshly made Nutella biscuits. Her stomach growled. ‘Is there anyone else?’
A plump woman, in the second row: ‘What happens if we don’t hit our new targets? I’ve got two kids now, and I don’t have the same amount of free time as I did last year.’
Melinda smiled. ‘Nothing happens. You might not be eligible for discounts and other rewards, but you’ll still get your normal commission. We’re not going to punish you. The last thing I want for anyone who’s juggling bath times and school runs is to have to worry about LoveLocked as well. I know what it’s like to be overwhelmed. I want LoveLocked to relieve stress, not create it.’
‘How do you know what it’s like?’
The voice came from the middle of the ballroom. Melinda squinted out into the haze beyond the footlights. ‘Sorry?’
‘How do you know what it’s like, to struggle? I mean, this is all a bit condescending, isn’t it? You’ve been talking all day about women without qualifications, and women from tough backgrounds, and women struggling to pay the bills, and how you’re the answer to all their problems. But you’re an economics graduate, with a double degree from a good university and a wealthy family. You’ve never had to worry about money. How would you know what they need?’
There were low rumblings from Melinda’s front-row fans.
‘Don’t be so bloody rude,’ one of them called out.
‘That’s out of line,’ said another. ‘Who do you think you are?’
‘No, it’s okay. Everyone gets to have an opinion.’ Melinda turned to the control booth. ‘Can we have the lights up, please? So I can see?’
The room blinked into daylight. Standing in the middle was a familiar-looking journalist.
‘Stacey’ said Melinda, mentally digging up the woman’s name. ‘Are you stalking me?’
‘I live here,’ said Stacey, with a shrug. ‘And I’m not trying to be rude. I’m genuinely interested.’
Genuinely trying to manufacture a headline. Melinda poured herself a glass of water as she collected her thoughts. The room was two-thirds empty; she could hear a low buzz in the lobby where the majority of her curators had already signed off for the afternoon.
‘Okay,’ she said, deciding. ‘Okay. I’m going to tell you a story, about why I started LoveLocked. Why I really started it, not just because I’d been travelling and found this awesome jewellery, yada yada. Which is true, but it’s not the reason I set up as a direct sales company, rather than simply stocking in shops. Which would have been easier and more profitable, by the way.’
At the back of the room, Clint was making urgent ‘kill’ signs across his throat. But she couldn’t stop now. Melinda sipped at her water, wishing it was something stronger. ‘One of my best friends got pregnant while she was still at school,’ she said, feeling slightly treacherous, but Lou didn’t read Stacey’s paper. She’d never know. And Melinda wouldn’t use her name, just in case. ‘She chose to have the baby. And almost immediately, her life fell apart. The bloke did a runner, her parents disowned her, and she failed her exams as a result of all the stress. Because she didn’t have any qualifications, she couldn’t get a decent job, but even if she’d been able to, there was no childcare, and even if there had been childcare, it would have cancelled out anything she earned. It was a real Catch-22. And I just got so angry.’ At Lou, as well as the situation. There were childcare centres and better jobs in the city; why the hell didn’t she leave?
‘But it also got me thinking about what kind of job she could do, with a toddler, and what kind of company would need to exist to provide it. I was already planning to import the jewellery I’d found while I was overseas. So I came up with a structure that could help her, and other mums like her. That would fit in around them, without any ridiculous money-up-front or minimum-order policies. She was my sounding board, as well as my first curator.
‘And I’ve kept her front of mind ever since. Obviously all sorts of women, and men, are curators now. We’ve got students, retirees, people with day jobs. But that’s my litmus test, with any initiative. Would this have helped Lou — my friend, I mean? And if the answer is no, we don’t do it.’
Melinda let her eyes well up. ‘I wouldn’t even have a company if it wasn’t for her. She made me realise that I needed to think beyond myself, to create a business that actually helped women, not made money off the back of them. Her struggle might not have been mine, but I witnessed it, and it taught me the values that have made LoveLocked a success.’
There was scattered but earnest applause from the women who were left. Melinda congratulated herself on having dodged a bullet.
‘It’s still not the same as going through it yourself,’ Stacey persisted. ‘You don’t really know what it’s like to be a working mum, to not even have the time to take a shower on your own.’
And something small inside Melinda snapped. ‘But I’m going to,’ she said. ‘If everything goes to plan.’
Several women in the front row gasped; Melinda grinned at them. ‘No, I’m not pregnant. That’s just too much dim sum.’ She ignored the warning bells going off in her head and smiled dangerously at Stacey. Don’t you dare try and make me look bad, suggest I’m out of touch because I don’t have children. ‘This is not for publication,’ she continued, ‘but I’m trying to adopt. So I will know what it’s like to cope with a baby, on my own. Or at least, I hope so.’
They decided on McDonald’s, Tansy’s childhood treat. Lou’s too; it was where her parents used to take her after church. For ten-year-old Lou, the reward for sixty minutes of earnest worship was never a shot at everlasting life, it was skinny fries and a small chocolate milkshake.
‘But you’re going to have to drive,’ she said, tossing Tansy the keys.
‘Really?’ Tansy only had her learner’s permit. Melinda was the one who took her out for practice, and never in Lou’s car. Lou was far too worried about insurance premiums.
‘Can’t drive with these.’ Lou held up her bandaged fingers. ‘Plus, I’ve had a few.’ The Cointreau had been followed by a large glass of white when she’d discovered her old diaries tossed in a pile of ancient magazines in the shed.
‘Okay.’ Tansy glowed with trust, or maybe it was just the late afternoon sun. ‘I’ll be really careful.’
And she was, ferrying them gingerly to Meadowcroft as though there was a newborn in the back. Bang on the speed limit, using mirrors, indicating at every turn. Lou murmured encouragingly. Maybe she could rethink her not-my-car policy. It would be useful, Tansy able to get about under her own steam. Regardless of what happened next.
‘You can have whatever you want,’ she told her daughter, as they stood in front of the giant menu.
‘I’m really hungry, though,’ said Tans.
‘Me too,’ said Lou. ‘But don’t worry about it. Let’s just go nuts.’
They carried the paper bag reeking of fat and good times over to the park and got comfortable on top of a picnic bench. Tansy fussed about with napkins and straws, but Lou just sank her face into a Big Mac. God, that was good. Better than alcohol, almost. Better than fags. Lou realised she hadn’t had a cigarette all day. Hadn’t needed to. She smiled over at Tansy, who was demolishing some kind of special chicken burger that didn’t look any different from the regular chicken burgers, despite costing a dollar fifty more.
‘Do you remember when I used to take you down here?’
Tansy nodded, cheeks bulging.
It was one of the places they’d go after kindy, in that golden period when Lou thought she’d finally got it all figured out. Tansy had come out of her terrible tantrum phase and started talking properly, developing a quirky little personality Lou couldn’t get enough of. And she was working, finally, only part time and minimum wage but it felt like they had a bit of money, even if really they were sliding deeper into debt. She’d finish just after lunch, pick up Tansy and take them off on adventures. The park, with its friendly duck families, was a favourite. They’d run and swing and slide then head home exhausted, Tansy earnestly telling her mother all about the afternoon they’d just had as though she was an interested third party. Lou would fall asleep happy in the living room of her crappy flat, Tansy unconscious in the only bedroom.
Tansy stuck her hand in the bag for another burger. ‘You didn’t want this, did you?’ she said. ‘I feel like I didn’t even eat that first one.’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Lou. ‘I put on fifteen kilograms with you.’
‘God, really?’
‘Eating was the only thing that stopped me feeling nauseous,’ said Lou, remembering her toast marathons. ‘And I had bad fluid.’
Tansy flicked the gherkin onto the grass. ‘I suppose putting on weight is normal,’ she said. ‘I’ll just have to make sure I’m really good afterwards.’
Lou held her breath.
‘I don’t want to be one of those women who never shifts it, you know? Who looks pregnant forever? But if you didn’t have a problem, then I should be fine.’
Lou set her Coke down. ‘So are we keeping this baby then?’ she asked, trying for casual.
The traffic stopped humming, the ducks quacking, waiting for Tansy’s answer.
‘I don’t know,’ Tansy said finally. ‘What do you think I should do?’ She turned to Lou with big eyes, looking so much younger than she was, which really wasn’t very old at all. Too young to vote or buy alcohol or get married. To make this decision. But Lou was determined to do things differently.
‘Oh no. Tansy, this isn’t up to me. This is your call.’
‘But what do you think?’
‘Well.’ Lou chose her words carefully. ‘I think it’s a big decision. And it’s still quite early, so you don’t actually need to make it yet. You can sleep on it. Not for long, but another week or two is okay.’
‘But what do you think about me having the baby?’
Lou had never asked her parents’ opinion, but they’d given it anyway. And not just an opinion — a pronouncement.
‘Well, of course you’re not having it,’ her mother had exclaimed, the Archangel Gabriel in reverse.
‘Well, I can’t not,’ Lou had retorted. ‘It would be a sin.’
‘Sin is relative,’ hissed her mother, perm twitching. ‘Throwing away all the opportunities your father and I have worked so hard to give you is also a sin, but that doesn’t seem to bother you.’
‘Having a baby doesn’t have to mean the end of my life. I can still do stuff.’
Lou’s mother had laughed, a particularly joyless sound. ‘Louise Marie Henderson, if you have this baby you will never go anywhere or do anything interesting, believe me. You’ll ruin both your lives.’
Her prediction hadn’t entirely come true. Lou had been to Sydney, and Tasmania, spent a whole week once in Hobart. She was admin manager now at the council. Her own designated parking spot and all the staples she could pilfer.
Lou swept aside the McCrap and shuffled closer to her daughter. ‘I think it’s a big responsibility,’ she said, aiming for a middle ground between condemnation and anything that could be wrongly interpreted as encouragement. ‘A life-changing responsibility. And it’s not really about having a baby, it’s having a child. For the rest of your life.’ Lou squeezed Tansy’s shoulder. ‘I don’t want you to feel like you’ve missed out on anything. I don’t want you to have any regrets.’
‘Do you regret having me?’
Oh God. ‘Tansy, of course not.’
‘But do you feel like you having a baby — not me, necessarily, but just, you know, a baby — was the wrong choice?’
They didn’t prepare you for this at the jolly post-natal checkups. ‘Not wrong, as such,’ Lou said carefully. ‘But I’m not going to lie — there were moments when it felt like I’d made a mistake. I had no idea what I was doing, and everyone else was heading off to uni and starting these big exciting lives. And I was stuck here, exhausted and out of my depth.’
Lou took a deep breath. ‘Look, babies aren’t fun, or cute, most of the time. They’re screaming, crying, pooping, vomiting, round-the-clock energy suckers. I didn’t spend my days lying on a picnic blanket gazing lovingly at you like some kind of mummy blogger. I was busy sponging diarrhoea off the couch.’ Was she laying it on too thick? ‘And doing it on your own is bloody difficult. There’s a reason it takes two people to make a baby. It’s a two-person job to raise one. And pay for it.’ Wait, had her mother said that? ‘Look, I’m just saying being a single mum is hard. You know that. And it affects everything. We don’t have a nice big house like Aimee, and I don’t have a proper career like Melinda. Although,’ quickly, ‘I still think I made the right choice. Obviously.’
‘And you’ve made it work.’
Had she? ‘I’m not sure I have.’
‘Of course you have. And no one’s life is perfect. You’re always telling me that. Aimee can be really mental, and Melinda’s lonely, I reckon.’
‘She’s thinking of adopting.’
‘Melinda?’
‘I know.’
They sat in silence, Tansy throwing fries to the ducks waddling hopefully around their picnic bench.
‘But just because it was the right choice for me, doesn’t mean that it’s the right choice for you.’ Lou had been practising: an argument that was persuasive, but that wouldn’t make Tansy feel pressured or manipulated in any way. Although Lou was bloody well going to manipulate her. ‘Our circumstances are very different. You’ve grown up with a lot more freedom, and a bigger sense of what’s out there in the world. We barely had the internet when I was your age. I think it would hit you harder, being stuck at home with a crying baby. And you’re younger than I was. That makes a difference.’
‘A year.’
‘Nearly two, and I was a lot more self-sufficient. And Tansy, even though I don’t regret having you, at all, I do feel that you should think very, very hard before deciding whether to have this baby. Because it will be difficult, and unrewarding, and bloody lonely, for a long time. I don’t want to make you feel bad, but I struggled, a lot.’
‘That’s kind of why I think I should have it, though.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Because you had me. Even though it was hard, and your parents kicked you out, and you’ve been stuck in that shit job forever because the hours are good for school. I mean, sorry, Mum, but Rex is a bit of a dick.’
‘Tansy.’
‘Well, he is. Anyway. You still had me, regardless. And if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t exist at all. So I don’t feel like I can get rid of it. Because how can I get rid of a baby, when you gave me a chance?’
‘That’s not . . . You can’t really . . . Tansy, it’s not the same thing.’
‘It’s exactly the same thing.’
‘But —’
‘It would be like killing myself.’
‘Oh, Tans.’
‘Imagine if you’d never had me.’
Lou had, often. Fantasised about a life of hotel rooms and wine bars, sexy men she met on business trips and tiny, sporty cars. But then she wouldn’t have this headstrong, stroppy creature making her argument with the same stubborn stupidity Lou had made hers, down to the jutting chin. She closed her eyes. ‘Look, abortion isn’t the only option. If you feel that strongly, you could have the baby and put it up for adoption.’
‘Give it to someone like Melinda?’
‘Not exactly like Melinda, no.’
‘What does Melinda think? Aimee? I’m guessing you’ve told them.’
‘They think I should tell you what to do. Push you into a decision.’
‘But you won’t.’ Tansy wriggled around so they were facing each other. ‘Because you’re not like your parents.’
Lou sighed. ‘Oh, I kind of am.’
‘No, you’re not. You wouldn’t kick me out. You wouldn’t throw all my stuff on the drive.’
Lou rubbed her face. This conversation was exhausting, and not going at all as she’d planned. ‘But I’m trying to talk you out of having it,’ she admitted.
‘I know.’
‘And I was totally my mother in driving you over to Fenton to see someone. That was pure Beverly, behaving as though getting pregnant was something to be ashamed of.’ Another cycle that needed to be broken. Lou gripped Tansy’s shoulder. ‘I’m not ashamed of you, Tans. You know that, don’t you? This is nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘But I’ve let you down.’
‘Tansy, half your class is probably having sex. You were just unlucky to get caught. Come here.’ Lou wrapped an arm around her daughter. ‘I’m only saying all this because I’m scared for you. I want you to have more opportunities than I’ve had.’
Tansy snuggled in. ‘It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, does it? Having a baby? Maybe it could be better for me than it was for you.’
Lou frowned. ‘Maybe. But it would still be a massive sacrifice on your part. Of your freedom. And Tansy, you love your freedom. That’s half the problem.’
‘But I could still have a life. I could still finish school, go to university. There are childcare centres and things. And I wouldn’t be doing it completely on my own. I’d have you. Wouldn’t I?’
Lou watched the ducks waddling towards the lake, not a duckling in sight because they’d all left home, like they were supposed to. Not brought their own chicks back to the mummy ducks to raise. But then the mummy ducks had probably been in stable relationships, not got their duck-selves pregnant in a messy situation that meant they couldn’t even admit who the father was, denying their ducklings a solid male role model and the generous financial support of grandparents on either side.
You mustn’t blame yourself, Melinda had said, but Lou knew deep down she had to. Because that was the thing about being a single parent — there was no one else to blame.
Lou squeezed Tansy tighter. ‘Of course you would,’ she said, trying not to sigh. ‘You’d have me. I’m not going anywhere.’