Melinda had never really thought about babies before, but now she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
It didn’t help that half of Hensley was up the duff. What was the old saying — that when you were pregnant, you saw pregnant women everywhere? Obviously it was the same when you were trying to adopt. Melinda followed the curve of the river, enjoying the hard thud of the packed earth under her feet, the satisfying crunch of dry eucalyptus leaves. So far on her run, she’d passed numerous waddling basketball bellies, and three — three! — women with strollers, including one who was running almost as fast as Melinda. Melinda had dug in, put on some speed, left the woman back at the rail crossing. There was no way she was being beaten by someone in a maternity bra.
But. Trying to adopt. Melinda ducked to avoid being hit by a low branch. Was she? Really? She’d felt relieved when Claudia Lang had first mentioned the kind of waiting period they were looking at. Two, three years. At least. Visits and assessments and approvals and reports. Melinda’s application would be safely tied up in admin for the foreseeable future, with no danger of anyone presenting her with an actual live baby.
But at some point during their meeting, her feelings had changed. She’d wanted to beat the system. To make this happen. To get the damn baby already. Was that her natural competitiveness, or something else?
Two kilometres to go, and she could tick off her thirty for the week. Melinda ignored the cramping in her calf as both she and the river headed back into town. It didn’t really matter either way. She couldn’t lose. If this took forever, if it ultimately failed, at least she’d look good trying. And she wasn’t going to feel bad about capitalising on that. Melinda had put up with discrimination for years because of her childlessness. Constantly overlooked for Inspirational Women awards in favour of super-mums; people intimating that she somehow had it easy because she wasn’t juggling meetings with school runs. It wasn’t on a par with racism or anything, but it still wasn’t fair.
And if she didn’t fail, if she actually managed to adopt — well. There it was again, an unexpected excitement fluttering in her stomach, just below her navel. A gut feeling, as it were. Maybe she wasn’t as hard-boiled as everyone thought. Maybe, deep down, Melinda actually wanted to be a mother.
Either way, it proved she’d been right to go all tough love on Aimee. A small sick guilty feeling joined the happy flutter, but Melinda chose to ignore it as she picked up her pace on the home stretch. Because she needed to control the situation. Claudia Lang had virtually said so. The last thing you need is a scandal. Aimee thought Melinda was worried about her money, the company — and you are, let’s be honest — but it wasn’t only that. There was more at stake here.
And there was no way they’d caused that bloody accident.
Although Aimee seemed convinced.
And they all knew how Aimee could get when she was convinced about something.
You’re doing it for her own good, Melinda told herself as she turned off the river track. She’ll thank you when all this is over.
Melinda jogged down the road, slower now. Hensley High Street was almost deserted, shopkeepers shutting up for the day even though the sun was still high. ‘How does anyone make any bloody money?’ she’d exclaimed when she first moved back, but she’d secretly grown to love the early closing. The peace and quiet. There were a few tourists, window shopping; Melinda made a big show of swerving round them. She knew she should be on the side of progress, pushing the town to open up more. But she’d also spent hours stuck in long-weekend traffic in Echuca, crawling along behind a procession of jet skis and motor boats. If Hensley stayed an anachronistic throwback, if the ban on tourism lasted forever, she wouldn’t mind at all.
Melinda fumbled for her key in her shorts pocket — not that there was any real need to lock up out here, but she’d promised Clint. Insurance. All that stock on the premises. Blah blah blah. She leaned against her front door — deep glossy cream, to match the iron railings, a magnet for graffiti but totally worth the hassle — and promptly fell through it.
Because the door was already open.
Burglars. Arsonists. Rapists. Kidnappers. Melinda’s heartbeat thudded in her ears. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself, as she picked herself up off the spiky rattan mat. There hadn’t been a break-in in Hensley for nearly a decade. But beyond the whoomp-whoomping of her own pulse, she could hear muffled thumps above her, like furniture being moved. Televisions being taken. Melinda grabbed an umbrella from the stand and began creeping up the stairs.
The footsteps were man-sized, heavy and flat. They were coming from her stockroom. Of course they were. She crept up to the first-floor landing, back against the wall. The door to her mini-warehouse was ajar, the light on. Melinda paused. Maybe I should just call the police, she thought, but then the door was pulled open and Melinda, shocked, swung the old-fashioned wooden umbrella into the face of the only other person in Hensley who had a key to her flat.
‘Bloody hell, Melinda,’ Nick said, as his knees buckled. ‘Are you trying to kill me?’
No one at the newspaper had been surprised when Aimee quit. Everyone at home, however, was horrified.
‘But you love writing,’ said Melinda. ‘This is your dream job.’
‘And after you gave up your degree and everything,’ fretted her mum.
‘Won’t you miss the city?’ said her dad.
But Aimee didn’t want to go back to the city. She wanted to stay at home, where she felt safe. She took casual work picking grapes with the local grey army — no responsibility, no worry about messing anything up.
‘But of course you’ll go back to uni now,’ said the retirees, ex-teachers mainly.
‘Take a few months to clear your head and give it another bash,’ advised her dad.
‘Careful,’ said her mum. ‘You don’t want to get stuck in bloody Hensley.’
But Aimee refused to listen. She shook her head when Melinda suggested joining her in Europe, turned down the university when they offered her another place. Nick’s parents put a note up in the pub asking for help with the harvest. Aimee wore low-cut vests and short shorts, her figure shapely from all the manual labour, her cleavage brown. Melinda had never had breasts.
Aimee started hanging round the house at the end of the working day, having a few glasses and listening to Nick rant. ‘You don’t have to bugger off to London to be a success. You don’t have to have to go overseas to have a career. There’s lots you can achieve right here.’
Aimee refused to comment, saying she didn’t want to be disloyal, and began working on the reception desk at the local dentist.
‘All your potential,’ wailed her mother.
‘Straight As and you’re reminding people to floss?’ said her father.
But any woman Nick married would need to have a job. He spoke approvingly of other winemakers whose wives worked in town. Teachers, shop assistants. ‘A safe second income.’ Because he had so many dreams, about buying more land and planting new varieties. Turning his father’s hobby winery into something commercially viable. They’d need other money coming in. Aimee allowed herself to be poached by the local GP for a twenty-five per cent pay rise. A bit more responsibility than she was comfortable with, but it seemed worth it.
Yet by the time Nick finally asked Aimee out, the nervous checking had returned. Only small things: phoning patients to make sure she’d told them the right appointment time, repeating Dr Malcolm’s requests back to him. But with it came the worry that the whole circus would start up again. That her thoughts would start looping like a Ferris wheel and she wouldn’t be able to shut them down.
She downplayed it to Nick, said the job was making her a little anxious.
‘I’d hang in there,’ he said. ‘The money’s good. You won’t make that anywhere else in town.’
Aimee had said she’d try. They’d only been dating a few weeks; she didn’t want him to think she was a nutter.
‘Good girl,’ he said, and took her to Adelaide to celebrate the end of the vintage.
At the surgery, things got worse. Aimee began taking children’s temperatures in the waiting room, in case of undetected meningitis. She rubbed in sanitiser after every patient, to her elbows, so she didn’t accidentally pass something on.
‘You keep using that stuff, you’re going to have no skin left,’ Nick joked as he held her poor, chapped hand at the movies on their fifth date.
Dr Malcolm gave her a written warning after she turned up at a patient’s house to check they were taking their medication correctly.
‘I’m sorry, Aimee,’ he said, ‘but there’s a line.’
But it didn’t matter because by then there were actually two lines, blue, at the end of a stick. She was pregnant.
The frame was clearly her mother’s work. More puffy gingham — apple green this time — surrounded by white rickrack and hardened pearls of escaping glue. Lou picked up the photo and sat down heavily on Tansy’s bed. Are you enjoying this? she challenged the picture. My turn, to deal with the hard decisions and the wilful pregnant teenager? You’d say it served me right, if you were here. But the photo contained no secret messages. Just her exhausted, overwhelmed mother, looking improbably young. And baby Lou herself — red and angry, but perfect. The right number of chromosomes, all doing what they should.
Tansy had stuck a similar maternity-ward picture of herself and Lou up on her new bulletin board. Lou reached over and unpinned it, held it next to the yellowing seventies shot, comparing. Would Tansy’s baby have the same features? Would it even live long enough for them to take a photo like this?
‘Mum?’ Tansy appeared in the bedroom doorway, looking nothing like any of the Henderson women. Her eyes were slits from crying, her face blotched and puffy. Lou braced herself for the explosion — Get out of my room, stop going through my stuff — but it didn’t come.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Sorry, love. I can’t stop looking at it.’ Lou glanced down at the photo again, trying to figure out why it bothered her so much. Was it because her mother looked human for once? Scared, uncertain. Like Lou felt, but couldn’t let Tansy see.
‘Are you wondering what my baby will look like?’
Careful, Lou. ‘Well, of course I am. Everyone does.’
Tansy shuffled further into the room, arms wrapped protectively around her stomach. ‘I don’t want to have the test,’ she said.
‘Tansy —’
‘But I will, on one condition. Well, two conditions.’
Her chin was jutting forward — another family trait. Lou had a sudden flash of her own pregnant self, telling her parents what she would and wouldn’t do, her mother laughing in her face at the gall. Like you’re in any position to dictate terms. You’ve got two choices, Lou had been told. If it goes, you can stay. And if it stays, you have to go. ‘Tell me,’ she said, patting the doona beside her.
Tansy continued to stand. ‘If there’s anything wrong with the baby, we don’t tell anyone. Till it comes.’
Till it comes. Lou took a silent breath through her nose.
‘Not Aimee, not Melinda, no one.’
‘And?’
‘And you don’t try to talk me into getting rid of it. No matter what. You need to promise.’
‘Why don’t we wait and —’
‘I mean it. Or else I’m not doing the test.’
The second ultrasound had been inconclusive; the baby was still too tiny to give up any of its secrets on the screen.
‘Promise?’
Lou nodded.
‘Say it.’
As though Lou was one of her school friends. ‘I promise.’
‘And no googling. No freaking ourselves out.’
Lou had already used up half her phone data, finding out all she could about what they were facing. She pulled herself awkwardly up off Tansy’s bed. ‘No googling,’ she agreed. ‘Good idea. No need to drive ourselves any crazier than we already are.’
Tansy hugged her, hard. ‘Thank you.’
‘But, Tansy, you and I need to have a proper talk now. You have to tell me everything.’
The cut above Nick’s eyebrow wasn’t deep, but it was long — a good two centimetres where the tip of the umbrella had caught it, the skin had split over the bone. ‘I think you might need stitches,’ Melinda said, as she dabbed at it with a makeup-remover pad.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Nick. ‘It’ll be fine. Just stick a band-aid on it.’
‘Like I’m the type of person who has a first-aid kit.’ But she did, under the sink, bought in anticipation of inspection by Claudia Lang. It even had tiny butterfly plasters. ‘Hold still,’ Melinda said, as she doused the cut in isopropyl, careful not to get any on the furniture.
‘Fuck,’ muttered Nick. But he didn’t move as she carefully pulled the edges of the wound together, just breathed deeply as she worked the plaster up and over. His breath still smelled the same, of mint and carrots. Melinda moved her face so it wasn’t so close to his.
‘Nearly done,’ she promised, working as gently as she could. ‘There.’ She sat back on her calves, pleased with her own practicality. ‘Who says I’m not bloody maternal?’ The skin around the plaster was slowly turning purple, all the way to his hairline. ‘You’re going to have one hell of a bruise though.’
‘Bugger,’ said Nick, as he struggled to sit up on the sofa. Melinda pushed him back down, her palm on his chest. There was a dizzying sense of déjà vu with the gesture, a sense that it should be followed by her swinging a leg over him, straddling him on her Irish-linen couch, kicking the carefully coordinated neutral cushions to the floor. Melinda pushed herself back up onto her feet instead. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she said, as she made her way over to the sink.
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I came to sort out your store cupboard.’
‘Your boxes were all over the place,’ he’d claimed, as she helped him off the floor. ‘I noticed when Byron and I carried your stuff up the other day. I was scared one of them was going to fall on you.’
‘But why now?’ Melinda said, as she washed his blood off her hands. ‘Surely you should be home with Aimee, given everything this morning.’ She placed a beer on the coffee table next to him. ‘Careful, don’t knock that.’
‘I’m giving her a bit of space,’ he said. ‘Besides, I wanted to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘Oh, come on, Mel, what do you think? Aimee! What’s going on with her?’
Melinda wandered back into the safety of the kitchen. ‘You know, I’m not the one you should be —’
‘Because it’s not just today. She’s been really twitchy.’
‘Twitchy?’ Melinda pulled her head out of the cupboard. ‘Why, what’s she done?’
‘She’s edgy. Preoccupied. A bit like —’
‘Like what?’
‘Like she was before.’ Nick grabbed the bowl of nasty cheese puffs she held out. ‘Awesome, you still buy these.’
‘Yeah, I developed a taste for them.’
‘I’m worried it might be coming back. The panic stuff.’
‘She hasn’t said anything to you?’
‘About what?’
His fingers were yellow with fake cheese dust; she passed him a paper towel. ‘Get that on my sofa and I’ll kill you.’
‘Do you know?’ he said. ‘What’s going on? Has something happened?’
It was weird, discussing Aimee with Nick. Uncomfortable. Usually there were three of them, or four, or more. The protection of a crowd. These days, on the rare occasions Nick and Melinda were alone, they talked about safer subjects. Business. The economy. And back in that golden period when they were often alone, they sometimes didn’t bother to talk at all.
Melinda fiddled with a coaster. She didn’t want to be disloyal. But on the other hand —
‘She’s stopped taking her medication,’ she said finally.
Nick paused, cheese curl suspended in midair. ‘Shit.’
‘Yeah, I didn’t know either, till Lou mentioned it.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last year, I think. A good few months ago, anyway.’
‘So this could be about anything.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a habit Melinda had once found disgusting, but that now seemed raw and masculine. Her stomach flipped.
‘Anything or nothing.’ She stopped herself from reaching over, wiping a glowing smear of cheese dust from his cheek. ‘Anything and nothing. You remember.’
‘Bugger,’ he said, but softly. He shuffled forward on the sofa, his leg inches from where Melinda sat cross-legged on the floor. ‘What do I do?’
‘Talk to her?’ Don’t talk to her.
‘Do I make her go back on her medication? I mean, can I insist?’
Melinda leaned back, head resting on the sofa next to him. The day was just starting to lose its heat. Wine o’clock. Melinda had a sudden urge to get crazily, irresponsibly drunk. She took a swig of Nick’s beer, her lips cool on the glass where his had just been.
‘Easy, tiger,’ he said, as she took another. His old pet name for her. Her ginger curls. Or giraffe, as he also used to call her, because of her freckles; his giraffe. Nick was the first man to make her feel truly beautiful.
Melinda set the empty bottle down on the floor. ‘Shall I get us some more?’ she asked. Nick looked down at her, considering. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not?’
Half past six, and still no family. Aimee stared blankly out into the vineyard. At some point over the past few days, Nick had put the nets out; the vines were swathed in funeral-black mesh. A row of rosellas glared accusingly at her from a wooden fence: How dare you spoil our fun? But their high-pitched chatter was the only sound. Aimee pulled the window shut. Normally the nets reminded her of Halloween, cheap fun-fair spookiness that didn’t scare anyone. The kids used to play hide and seek among them; Aimee and Nick had had sex under them even, for a laugh. Not any more.
He could have asked her to help. It used to be a family activity — Nick slowly driving the tractor, her and the kids feeding the nets out of their old wool bales, pulling and straightening, shouting ‘stop, stop’ when things got tangled. It was good, therapeutic work. Rough on the hands, and you finished up a bit stiff. But there was a satisfaction in it, of knowing you could ease off after this. The berries had begun to change colour, the training and spraying had been done. All that was left was to keep them safe and watch them grow. Like pregnancy, after the all-clear scan. But Nick hadn’t even mentioned he was doing them. He clearly didn’t expect her to take an interest.
There was a warm softness at her ankles; the cat twined between them, meowing pitifully. ‘Oh, Oscar,’ said Aimee. ‘You’re the only one who cares. And you don’t even like me that much.’ She bent down to pick him up, but he slipped out of her way. ‘Come here, show me some love.’ Maybe she could curl up on the sofa with a good Netflix series and a glass of wine. Or something stronger. There was still half a bottle of vodka in the freezer. ‘Fancy it, Oscar? I’ll mince you some chicken livers.’ As she was supposed to be doing anyway, for the cat’s IBS. ‘I can tell you what the BS stands for,’ Nick had said when he heard the vet’s diagnosis, but Aimee was secretly fixing the special food anyway, or at least when she remembered, and it did seem to be helping. ‘Some of us just need a bit of extra care,’ she told the cat. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with that.’
Oscar lifted his tail and shat on the bottom of the curtain.
‘Oh, you’re kidding me.’ Not an accident in weeks, and now he decides to have diarrhoea?
The cat looked at her unapologetically, then scooted his bottom along the floor, leaving a pale brown trail on the wooden boards.
‘No!’ cried Aimee, as she chased him into the kitchen. ‘No, Oscar, outside.’ Another small torrent was released under the table, where the cat was trying vainly to hide. ‘Oscar! Outside!’ The phone rang as she shooed, trying not to get too close to the sticky mess that was Oscar’s backside. ‘Out!’ She nudged him with her bare foot as she grabbed the receiver. Oscar bit her toe in retaliation. ‘Ow! SHIT! What?’
‘Is that Aimee Verratti?’
A broom would do it. Oscar yelped as he was brushed onto the back porch. ‘Maybe. Yes. Unfortunately.’
‘It’s Damien. Damien Marshall.’
Aimee slammed the door shut behind her incontinent cat.
‘From the ATSB? We met a few days ago. At the accident site.’
A clatter as she dropped the broom. ‘How did you get my number?’
‘You guys are in the book.’
‘I didn’t think I’d told you my last name.’ She bloody hadn’t.
‘I asked the receptionist at the police station. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them about your tail-light.’
‘That’s quite an invasion of privacy, don’t you think?’
‘Is it? I didn’t mean to be creepy. I only wanted to say how sorry I was. And check that you were okay.’ He sounded genuinely concerned. ‘Are you? Okay?’
Aimee looked down at the trail of cat shit tracking across the kitchen floor. ‘Not really, no.’
‘No, I didn’t think you would be.’ His accent was broad. It made everything he said sound a bit like laughter. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
He was the only person who’d phoned to see how she was doing. No one else had called: not Lou, not Melinda. Aimee gave a little shudder at the thought of Melinda, who would be horrified by this conversation.
‘I could try and make you muffins in our crappy communal microwave,’ he said.
Melinda, who had virtually blackmailed her.
‘Or I could fix that dodgy tail-light. If no one else is going to do it for you.’
Aimee looked around her silent kitchen. ‘Could you meet me?’
‘Now?’ Flustered. So he didn’t mean it then. Was just enjoying the banter. Fair enough. ‘I can’t right now. We’ve got to get some preliminary notes together, now that the accident is . . . well.’
It was probably for the best. Nick wouldn’t love it either.
‘But I could see you tomorrow.’
Aimee felt her heart rate pick up, a familiar flutter of nervous energy in her chest. Warning signs. But someone had to do something.
‘How about lunch?’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you that muffin. Safer.’
Melinda was going to kill her. ‘Okay, but in Meadowcroft. Not here in town.’
‘Really?’ She could hear him breathing, his voice closer to her ear somehow. ‘Sure, we can do that. If that’s what you want.’
‘Thanks. It’s just off the —’
‘I know where Meadowcroft is. That’s where we’re staying. The Princess Royal Hotel? They do a good chicken parma. Why don’t I meet you there?’
Honesty, Lou told herself firmly, as she carried their mugs out onto the back step. It was the only way. She’d encourage Tansy to be honest with her, and then Lou would tell her the truth in return. As she should have years ago.
‘Ew, yuck,’ said Tansy, brushing off the concrete. ‘Someone’s been smoking and flicking their butts into our backyard.’
‘Gross,’ agreed Lou, as she got comfortable against the rough brick wall. ‘You need a cushion?’
The scrubby garden looked almost pretty in the fading light. Lou and Tansy had bought a picnic table to go with their new barbecue, strung tiny lights through the trees that came on with the dusk. ‘Solar,’ the salesman had said. ‘Commercial grade. Bit more expensive, but they’ll last for years.’ The little lights made the garden look like something out of a magazine, like somewhere life happened. Next weekend, thought Lou, we’ll invite everyone over, cook some sausages. Although whether anyone would want to come was another story. Maybe it would be easier to have Tansy’s mates around instead.
‘Who are your friends these days?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t seen Zarah for a while.’
Tansy shrugged. ‘Don’t have much to say to her.’
‘Does she know you’re pregnant?’
Tansy shook her head.
‘Have you told any of your friends?’
‘Nope.’
Lou shuffled closer. ‘Have you told the baby’s father?’
Tansy didn’t answer, just stared into her ginger tea.
‘It’s okay,’ said Lou. ‘It doesn’t matter who he is, it really doesn’t. I’m not going to get upset. But you do have to tell me. It’s important, especially now.’
‘Do you think maybe he passed something on to the baby?’
‘Not like a disease, no. But there might be something hereditary, in his genes, that we need to know about.’
‘So this might not be my fault.’
‘Tansy, if there’s something wrong with this baby, it’s no one’s fault.’
‘I think it might be, though.’ Tansy twisted her mug round in her hands. ‘I was drinking, when I went out. Heaps. Cider mainly, but we also nicked your brandy, and I drank most of that.’ Her voice got even quieter. ‘I was hoping it might . . . fix things.’
Lou put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders, for what felt like the hundredth time that day. She’d held her more in the last week than she had in the past year. Two years. Who’d have thought?
‘And I smoked a couple of joints. And sniffed some glue. Only once, but — what if that made the genes change? Mutate or something?’ Tansy’s voice rose and carried on the still night air.
‘That’s not how genes work. Nothing you’ve done could have caused this.’ Lou had spent the final weeks of her own pregnancy worrying about her former fondness for Southern Comfort, had cried with relief when the disturbingly purple Tansy was pronounced ‘absolutely perfect’. ‘But I imagine the doctor will have questions for him.’
Tansy fiddled with her tea bag.
‘And we’re going to need to speak to him about money. Well, his parents. You heard what the doctor said. This baby might need a lot of extra care, and it’s only fair they contribute.’ Lou squeezed her daughter. ‘You need to be brave and tell him.’
‘I can’t talk to him though.’
‘Tansy, you have to. I’ll come with you if you want.’
‘No, I mean I can’t talk to him at all.’ Tansy looked up from her tea, eyes miserable. ‘I can’t say anything to him, because he’s dead.’
Melinda leaned back against the sofa with the top button of her shorts undone and tried not to feel disloyal.
It wasn’t as though they were doing anything. They were only talking. But oh, the talking. She’d forgotten how easy Nick was to confide in. She rolled to one side, crushing a nacho into her mohair throw, and didn’t care. They were surrounded by food — delivery pizza, hot chips, more junk than Melinda had eaten in a decade, all scattered across the floor with no placemats, sticky bottle rings tattooing the blonde wood. If she was going to raise a baby, she’d have to learn to live with mess. Melinda rubbed her beer-bloated belly contentedly. Maybe she should take a photo and send it to Claudia Lang.
‘You could kick out the baker downstairs,’ said Nick. He sat among the crumbs and cushions next to her, legs outstretched. ‘He’s not local, so no one will care, and his cannoncini are rubbish. Then you’d have some decent space to store your boxes, rather than piling them up like a death trap.’
He was still worried about her hurting herself, even though he was the one with a goose egg on his forehead. Melinda gazed out her open balcony doors, blinking away unexpected tears. Not like her to get emotional. And a bit embarrassing, as Australia’s third most inspiring female, as voted by Women’s Weekly readers, to get sniffly because a man had gone all protective on her. She was supposed to be beyond that. But it was just so nice to be looked after, for a change. Someone had taken the time to drive over and rearrange her shelves because they cared what happened to her. Someone thought she was worth caring about. Melinda escaped to the bathroom so she could have a proper sob. This was why she never watched rom-coms — they reminded her of what she was missing. What everyone else had. A husband to sit on the floor and eat crap with, a partner to give you advice when you needed it. It was so bloody ordinary, and yet it felt like visiting a foreign country, one she’d never had a passport for.
Although she had, once. Nick had been hers first. And she’d given him away.
‘Well that was stupid,’ she muttered at the mirror. ‘Didn’t think that one through, did you?’
The face that stared sadly back at her was just starting to line. She’d be thirty-nine at the end of the year. Almost forty. Past the point where you could fool yourself that your love life might still be about to take off. This was her life; borrowing someone else’s husband for an evening, and drunkenly pretending it meant something.
‘It wouldn’t have worked anyway,’ Melinda reminded her mirror-self. She’d wanted to do things, and he hadn’t. She’d had ambition, and he didn’t. She probably wouldn’t have even started LoveLocked if she’d stayed there with Nick.
And it wasn’t really about him. Melinda carefully patted concealer under her eyes as she tried to convince herself. There was nothing special about Nick. He could be any guy. It was just the sheer male closeness that was making her a bit weepy, because she was lonely.
‘Can I tell you something?’ Nick asked, as she walked hesitantly back into the living room.
‘Sure.’ She stayed behind the couch so he couldn’t see her red eyes, and so she couldn’t accidentally grab hold of him.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said.
Melinda clutched the back of the couch instead.
‘Just to yabber with. This has been really nice.’ He was a bit drunk, she could tell; he was bobbing his head around like a newborn calf, as he always did when he’d had a few. ‘I can’t really talk to Aimee any more,’ he said. ‘Even without the anxiety. We don’t really understand each other at the moment.’
‘Nick, I don’t think we should be having this conversation.’
‘Oh I don’t mean anything like that. I love her. She’s my wife. But when it comes to the vineyard, the business, we’re not on the same page.’
Melinda could talk business. Business was safe. She sat down among the congealing remains of their feast, but with a moat of cushions between them. ‘The cellar door?’
‘She won’t even talk about it. Won’t look at the plans I’ve had drawn up, nothing. She treats it like this big joke, but it’s important, Mel. It’s the only way we’re going to stop being just another hobby winery, the only way people’ll take us seriously. And I can’t do it on my own.’
‘Have you put a business plan together?’
‘Of course.’ He looked vaguely insulted. ‘We’d have to borrow a bit, but it works out.’
‘Are the banks going to lend to you?’ They’d had a tough year, Melinda knew.
‘Maybe. Maybe not. I’d kind of thought —’
‘You thought you’d ask me.’
‘Actually no. I thought we’d do some crowdfunding.’
Melinda leaned over her cushion barrier. ‘Do you have the plans? On your phone?’
There was an easy silence as she flicked through the architect’s drawings — tasteful, clever, expanding the old stables but keeping an authentic feel — and his preliminary costings.
‘This is really —’
‘I know.’
‘And the new labels —’
‘Neat, eh? I’ve taken the shapes from Grandad’s war medals. I thought we could display them in the cellar door.’
‘Which might make you eligible for some government money, a local history grant.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You could even do a proper museum up.’ There were whole albums of photos that Nick’s grandfather had taken in the war, Melinda knew, as well as uniforms, letters. ‘I bet there’s no end of old guys around here who’d lend you their stuff, who’d love to see it exhibited. And then you’ve got an instant drawcard for tourists, and you’d totally pull in the baby boomers. They’re the ones going on wine tours anyway.’
‘I knew you’d get it.’
‘This is really cool.’ Melinda flicked through the plans again. ‘So why doesn’t Aimee want to do it?’
He shrugged. ‘There’s a new reason every day. Time, stress, money.’
It would be so easy, to gently character-assassinate her friend. Point out the money they’d spent on Aimee’s healthcare over the years, the hours she found to put into community activities outside the vineyard. Melinda didn’t even need to say anything. She could just sit there agreeing with Nick, enthusing over his project. Being the one who got it. ‘I’m sure she’ll come round,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘She doesn’t want to do anything new. Says she likes everything the way it is. But I want more.’
‘That must be difficult.’
‘You’d have been up for it though, wouldn’t you, Mel?’ He leaned over and grabbed her wrist. ‘I wouldn’t have had to convince you. You’d have already lined up the shareholders.’ He laughed, a little bitterly. ‘Shame I didn’t wait a bit longer for you to come back.’
‘But you didn’t, and now you have a wife who adores you, and two gorgeous children and the world’s most expensive cat.’ Melinda shook herself free and started stacking plates decisively. ‘Everything’s worked out exactly as it was supposed to.’
‘You forgot the dog,’ Nick said, watching her with a funny look on his face.
Drunk. He was drunk. They both were. ‘Come on, soldier,’ she said, nudging him. ‘Time to go home.’
But he was staring over her shoulder. ‘Who’s the tie belong to?’
‘Oh that.’ Melinda had forgotten it was still out. She wound it around her fist, the shiny fabric padding her hand like a boxing glove.
‘You’re seeing someone.’
‘I am.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘Mmmm.’
That look again. ‘Lucky guy.’
Melinda examined the little misspelled label promising ‘100 per cent hand-stiched’ silk. This wasn’t at all what she’d imagined it would feel like, finally flaunting a partner in front of Nick. Watching the regret move across his face as he realised he’d made a mistake.
‘I’ll let myself out.’
And Melinda was left standing in the middle of her living room, clutching her fake boyfriend’s fake Prada tie, while the man she’d said she didn’t want, whom she’d told to marry someone else but didn’t expect to bloody well go off and do it, walked slowly backwards to the door. She didn’t need a mirror to know her face would look exactly the same as his.
‘Oh, Tansy,’ Lou said sadly. ‘I didn’t even think you knew him. You haven’t seen each other since you were toddlers.’
‘We met at a party,’ Tansy said, between sobs. ‘Well, a couple of parties. But it only happened once.’
‘It only takes one time,’ said Lou, her mother’s words slipping out her mouth before she could stop them. ‘Sorry. Not helpful.’ She searched her scrambled brain for something to say. ‘Did you like him? I mean, were you . . . close?’
‘I didn’t even really know him.’ Tansy was gulping now. ‘Oh God, that sounds so bad.’
‘No it doesn’t,’ said Lou, stroking her back. Because who was she to judge?
‘But he seemed really nice, you know? He’s not one of those guys who hassles you to send dodgy pics or anything. He’s really respectful.’
Lou winced. ‘So when was this?’
‘Angela’s birthday.’ More tears. ‘It just kind of happened.’
All that worrying about her daughter roaming the streets, about inappropriate friends and older guys, and Tansy gets pregnant at the local GP’s house. Lou leaned her head back against the rough brickwork.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Tansy. ‘I’ve made a big mess of things, haven’t I?’
‘No more than the rest of us,’ said Lou, her heart breaking for her daughter.
‘But we don’t have to tell them do we? Lincoln’s parents? It’ll only make things worse for them.’
Lou had told the boy’s parents, seventeen years ago. And yes, it had only made things worse.
‘We could just not say anything. Keep it a secret. Make something up. Please?’
Lou had made something up, in the end. A French backpacker, in the days before email and mobile phones. A summer romance. A man no one could question, a story no one could disprove.
‘We don’t need their money. We’ll be fine.’
Lou had taken the money, in the end. Let them buy her silence. Do you really want this to go to court? For everyone you’ve slept with to be made public? Because you don’t really know whose baby this is, do you? You’re just going after the family you think is wealthiest.
But she’d known.
At least, she thought she’d known.
A small icy doubt slid down into Lou’s stomach. Chromosomes. Extra genetic material. Oh God. She reached over and grabbed Tansy’s shoulder. ‘Are you sure? Absolutely sure? That this baby is Lincoln’s?’
Tansy twisted away. ‘I told you.’
You’ve got no idea. You’ve slept with everyone in town, and now you’re trying to pin it on my son.
‘He was the only one!’
Lou had screamed the same words at her parents. She’d been lying. She was still lying. And now, as her mother had promised, it looked like her chickens might be coming home to roost.
The stars seemed very far away, much further than usual. Aimee lay on the trampoline beneath the vast southern sky and tried to feel insignificant. In the grand scheme of things, she reminded herself, my little thoughts and actions don’t even register. Cicadas hummed their agreement from the trees. When you consider the size of the universe, one of her counsellors used to say, we’re really not that important. Look at the order, look at the science. Do you really think you have the power to disrupt it? Are you actually telling me you can control the cosmos, just by checking?
Jeff had been her favourite counsellor. Not a proper psychologist or psychiatrist, just a trainee who ran the group sessions, he was the one person who could make her laugh at herself. Yes, it was probably unlikely that she’d poisoned a group of senior citizens by leaving a container of biryani out overnight. (Although reheated rice was the perfect vehicle for bacteria.) Yes, it was slightly ridiculous to take notes when she watched the evening news, just in case there was an accident she might have been involved in.
Yes, there was a small chance she hadn’t set fire to a light aircraft, even though she’d let off a lantern with an open flame in a residential area on the same night the plane crashed with an experienced pilot at the helm in an unexplained accident the police were treating as suspicious, barely ten minutes from her house.
But only a very small chance.
A shooting star fizzed across the sky, and Aimee’s heart gave a thump. Once upon a time she’d have taken that as a sign, that what she was thinking was true. But she was better now. Wasn’t she? Yes, she told herself firmly, as a plane — a real, unexploded, safe-in-the-sky plane — blinked red and white above her, and she ignored that sign as well. Much better.
‘Mind if I join you?’
The trampoline rolled beneath her as Nick climbed onto the mat. A wave of beer fumes followed him.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘The pub.’
‘What about the kids?’
‘Claire’s. She promised fish and chips and a sleepover in a tent. They thought it sounded cool.’
Nick’s sister was a forty-five-year-old orthodontist; the kids didn’t think anything she did was cool. He’d got rid of them so they could talk. Aimee held onto the thick edge of the matting, body as tense as the springs supporting her.
‘So what happened?’ he asked.
‘Oscar had another episode, all over the kitchen. I really think we should take him back to the vet, maybe get a second opinion.’
‘Aimee —’
She had to be honest with him. He was her husband. He wasn’t going to tar and feather her. He’d promised to love and protect her. And who knew, it might even make things better. ‘I’m a bit worried,’ she said finally, stating the obvious.
Nick reached over and took her hand, his skin warm against the cool webbing. ‘What about?’ he asked, squeezing gently, and she remembered all the reasons why she chose him.
‘I think I might be responsible for Pete Kasprowicz’s accident.’
Aimee felt rather than saw him nod.
‘We should never have let them off,’ she said miserably, staring at the little pinpricks of light above, lights that weren’t exploding into balls of flame and killing innocent children. ‘I should have known better.’
‘I thought that might be it. I wondered if you were blaming yourself.’
A wave of relief washed over Aimee. ‘You did? How?’
‘Aims, I live here. You’ve been a wreck since New Year’s Eve. You’ve rearranged the pantry three times.’
‘Don’t joke.’ She pulled her hand away. ‘I’m serious. There’s a very good chance I caused that boy’s death.’
‘That’s not possible.’
She opened her mouth to tell him just how possible it was, but he kept talking.
‘Look, I was worried as well, if I’m honest. I didn’t think it was a brilliant idea, but I didn’t say anything. I knew you were trying to do something nice for everyone. But I had my eye on my pager the whole time. I thought they were going to burn the bloody riverfront down, rain or no rain. And instead — well, the only small consolation is that the fuel from the crash didn’t set the bush alight. Can you imagine?’
The fireworks. He thought she was talking about the fireworks.
‘But you didn’t bring that plane down. Look, I had a quiet word with Arthur. Pete was flying at a completely different height. And he was a good pilot. He wouldn’t have flown into a bunch of fireworks.’
‘But what if someone let something else off? Their own stuff? Thought it was safe, because we’d got approval?’
‘Yeah, there were a few unauthorised displays. Arthur’s going to have a word. But again, fireworks wouldn’t have hurt the plane.’
‘But what if it was something bigger? A sky lantern or something?’
‘A what?’
She gripped the edge of the matting. ‘Like we had at our wedding. You know, the paper balloons, with the candles inside them.’
‘But those lanterns are illegal now. You can’t buy them. No one would even have them.’
Aimee’s heart stopped. ‘They might,’ she whispered. ‘There were some here. In the cupboard. Left over.’
Nick sat up. ‘What, you think Shelley or Byron got into them? Aimee, come on now. You’re just making up scenarios.’
‘But —’
‘Neither of them would be that bloody stupid. We’ve raised them better than that. They know the risks.’
‘But what if —’
‘You know what I’m worried about?’ Nick ran his hands through his hair — a warning sign that his patience was fading. His wedding ring shone in the darkness. ‘I’m worried about you. What’s going on in your head. This all sounds a bit familiar.’
Aimee scrambled to sit up as well. ‘It’s not in my head,’ she said, but quietly, because she didn’t want to admit to being that bloody stupid.
Nick sighed, and more beer fumes puffed out from him. ‘You didn’t cause the accident,’ he said, but this time it sounded admonishing, rather than reassuring. ‘Look, I know you’ve stopped taking your medication. I think you need to start again.’
‘How —’ Melinda. It could only be Melinda. Nick never really spoke to Lou, and besides, she wouldn’t be that much of a bitch.
‘It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is we get you sorted.’
But it didn’t sound like a ‘we’ type of statement. It sounded like a ‘you’ type of statement. You get yourself sorted. Aimee hugged her knees into her chest. ‘You know from Melinda,’ she said. ‘The same way she knows we might remortgage.’
‘Oh for fuck’s — yeah, if I run into her, I talk to her, okay? You know that. No different than I’d talk to anyone. She and I are friends, you and her are friends. Best friends, remember?’
Not any more. Aimee held herself tighter. The universe might be big and vast and powerful, but at the end of the day, you were all alone in it. No matter who you married, no matter how much you tried to build a safe and happy life for yourself. You could never truly ward off disaster.
‘Aimee, what are you not saying?’
Where to start. Where were you the night after you checked me into hospital? How do you know where the plates in Melinda’s house are kept? She turned towards him, and — ‘Oh my God, what have you done to your face?’
‘It’s nothing. I slipped on the pub steps. Someone spilled a drink.’
‘But — Nick, you’re bleeding.’
‘I said it’s nothing. Just leave it.’ He pushed her hand away. ‘Look, it’s late. I’m going to bed.’ He started crawling towards the edge of the trampoline.
Aimee put her hand out to steady herself. ‘Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want something to eat?’
‘I ate at the pub.’ And he disappeared into the dark.
Lou slid out into the warm night, moving quietly so as not to wake Tansy. She held her breath as she pushed open the rusty garage door, but the only sound she could hear was their voices. Are you sure, Louise? I don’t think you really know, do you? You’re just trying to pin it on my son.
‘I do know,’ Lou whispered into the dark. ‘I am sure.’ But here she was, on her knees, digging through ancient copies of the Woman’s Weekly, searching desperately for confirmation. Because the statistics didn’t feel very much in her favour. A chromosome disorder. A lip-biting coincidence. We know you’ve slept with other men.
Lou tried not to think about snakes and spiders as she gingerly pulled books and magazines from the pile. They’d tried to gaslight her, read out a list of names. But Lou had been insistent. Her diaries were right at the bottom, where she’d spotted them in their clear-out. Lou reached for the most recent. She’d never really hoped for much for her life. Just the chance to escape it. But right now, she wished more than anything that she’d got her dates right.
The moon was bright as Lou carried the fabric-covered notebook over to their nice new outdoor table. The cheap lock gave easily as she pulled it apart. You’ve not exactly discriminated. How could you possibly know who the father is? She flicked through pages dotted with initials, until she found an entry with PK circled at the top. Then another. And another. And then, gloriously, two weeks later, page after page marked with tiny red stars.
Lou looked up at the dark country sky and thanked a God she didn’t believe in. She knew. She knew. It wasn’t Bob Farrier, who dropped off the firewood, and it wasn’t Larry the butcher’s apprentice, now Larry the butcher. Or Andrew Simons, or Cooper Murphy. And it wasn’t Peter Kasprowicz, even though she’d managed to convince herself, for one long horrible moment, that her mother was right and Lou was, finally, being punished.