The arrivals hall was frantic. Throngs of people pressed against the barrier and waited for the automatic doors to open, presenting loved ones like game-show prizes.
Lisa stood at the back of the crowd near the café. Maybe she’d been living in the country too long, but there were too many people squeezed in too close for her liking. Her heart started doing a butterfly dance, the excitement at the prospect of seeing Portia again tempered by anxiety.
She ordered two takeaway coffees and passed one to Zack, who badly needed to pull his jeans up. The coffee trembled in its paper cup. Her hands were damp. Maybe she had a new phobia.
If she kept hovering at the back of the crowd, Portia would never see her so, breathing in, she plunged into the human stew.
Two hours later, Lisa’s phone vibrated with a text. ‘Where r u?’
‘At the barrier on the right as you come through the doors. Can’t wait! Where r u?’
‘Outside by taxi stand. Been here 4eva.’
Zack trailed after her towards the taxi rank, where a lofty Bedouin was leaning against a pole. The figure waved and clopped towards them, trailing scarves.
‘Darling girl!’ Lisa cried, kissing her daughter’s angular cheeks and drinking in a perfume that smelt like aftershave.
Portia didn’t seem surprised to be greeted by a cameraman. She flashed Zack a professional smile. In an uncharacteristic act of chivalry, Zack loaded her bags on a trolley and wheeled them to the car.
Lisa wasted no time starting her two-week fattening-up campaign. Halfway to Castlemaine she turned off to Macedon and pulled up at a café.
As always happened when she was out with Portia, a waiter was at their table in seconds and smiling beguilingly.
‘Mmmmm, the chocolate forest cake looks good,’ Lisa said, perusing the menu for calorie-laden fodder.
‘Yummy!’ Portia chimed in.
Portia listened ravenously while Lisa ordered cake with cream and ice cream on the side. Zack asked for a meat pie with tomato sauce.
‘And I’ll have a small green salad, no dressing,’ Portia added.
Lisa prickled with annoyance. ‘Aren’t we sharing the cake?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Portia said. ‘I’m just so hungry I’m having a main course as well.’
The waiter returned minutes later and placed the salad in front of Portia with a flourish. It was big enough to fill a grasshopper. Portia bedazzled him with a smile.
‘Sorry, guys,’ the waiter said, pulling himself together to look at Lisa and Zack. ‘I forgot what you ordered.’
After some time, he reappeared with the pie and a mountainous wedge of chocolate rising from a lake of cream. Two breasts of ice cream rested either side of the cake, along with three token strawberries. Though Lisa had asked for three spoons, Portia was engrossed with her bowl of leaves, psyching herself up to spear a spinach leaf. Zack made quick work of his pie. She was grateful he was there to help her plough through the cake.
‘So what are you wearing to the wedding?’ Lisa asked, casting about for neutral ground.
‘I found a fantastic dress in a charity shop,’ Portia said, jiggling her leg.
It was a new thing, the leg jiggling. Maybe she was short of magnesium.
‘Wouldn’t you rather wear a new outfit? We could go shopping together.’
Portia shot her a withering look. Lisa swallowed another lump of cake.
Portia sighed. ‘You don’t get it. The whole point of fashion right now is to look like you’ve just had sex.’
Zack scooped his spoon around the plate to collect the last vestiges of cream.
‘Really? In my day . . .’ Lisa stopped herself right there. ‘What about your hair?’
‘Same thing. Messed up is good.’
Lisa ordered a skinny cappuccino. Zack drained a mug of hot chocolate and four marshmallows before disappearing to the bathroom.
‘What happened to that nice boy you were seeing. Charlie, was it?’ Lisa asked quietly.
‘Charlie who?’
‘I thought you were serious for a while.’
Portia stabbed a tomato and jiggled her leg so violently Lisa wondered if she should say something about it. ‘We didn’t hold hands or anything.’ Portia’s tone was impatient.
Lisa was certain Portia had slept with Charlie several times.
‘I mean you can have sex with as many friends as you like,’ Portia continued. ‘But holding hands . . . that’s commitment.’ She raised a glass of mineral water. A scarlet Care Bear on the underside of her wrist flashed a menacing grin. Two weeks was beginning to look like the limit for both of them.
For the rest of the trip, Lisa was too hot with annoyance to bother with conversation. She let the countryside unravel under violent blue sky while Zack and Portia prattled about film school and the perils of Hollywood. Lisa had to bite her lip when they agreed they’d rather be famous than rich. She feared for the young’s obsession with celebrity. From her own experiences of a very minor version of recognition, she knew the concept was overrated.
Her thoughts drifted to Three Sisters: Emily. She hadn’t heard a word from her publisher, even though Vanessa surely had read the manuscript by now. Maybe something was wrong. Lisa pictured Vanessa in front of her computer piecing together a tactful email telling her it was rubbish. If the book was rejected her finances would be stuffed.
‘Wow!’ Portia said, as they approached the manor’s blackened gates. ‘That’s some barbecue you had.’
As they turned into the driveway, a tall stepladder reared over the windscreen. Lisa spun the wheel, narrowly avoiding crashing into the ladder. Ron waved at her from his perilous position on the second to top rung. On the ground beneath him, Ted was holding what appeared to be a sheet.
Portia leapt out of the back seat into her brother’s arms. Seeing her two children together again, Lisa felt momentarily complete.
‘What do you reckon?’ Ted asked, flourishing the sheet. Decorating the driveway with bed linen was beyond fanciful, but it was his wedding.
Ted bundled Portia back into the car. As they rounded the bend, Lisa saw two figures sitting on the veranda. Kiwi was perched on the balustrade, presiding like Judge Judy over the short bald man and the giant in work boots.
Mojo was wedged between the men with his pompom head on Scott’s lap. The cat opened his eye, offered a welcome squeak, and closed it again. Lisa was relieved Scott’s shorts finished halfway down his thighs and his T-shirt was devoid of sci-fi creatures.
Portia was too stoned with jet lag to take in much of her surroundings, anyway. Climbing the steps, she offered a cheek to her father. ‘Thanks for the upgrade, Dad. Economy looked like a zoo.’ Then, flashing the dismissive smile reserved for anyone over thirty, Portia, disappeared inside.
The men rose politely, but Zack insisted on carrying her bags. The young man seemed to have suddenly developed biceps.
‘Second on the left upstairs,’ Lisa called after them.
Jake leaned back in the sofa and put his hands behind his head, revealing damp shadows under his arms. ‘Scott here’s been telling me about life in the outback,’ he said with the ease of a prince who’d been passing the morning with a peasant.
‘This is hardly the outback,’ Lisa said. ‘Has Belle recovered from last night?’
She knew Belle had survived the animal invasion from the state of the bathroom. The vanity was awash with cosmetics derived at legendary expense from the foetuses of endangered sea mammals.
‘She’s gone into town for a facial, or whatever they do Down Under. Guess she’ll be having a clay-painting ceremony with the natives.’
‘Sounds more like the Peninsula Spa in New York.’ Lisa was aware her defensiveness was a sign of insecurity.
Scott cleared his throat and spread his legs further apart than necessary. ‘Young Jake here’s interested in doing a spot of rock climbing. Thought we might head over to the Grampians.’
Mojo flopped to the floor and sashayed inside with a swish of his tail.
Jake hadn’t climbed a boulder in his life, not even the Rockefeller Centre with the aid of an elevator. Besides, if he took off with Scott on a suicide mission to the Grampians she’d be stranded overnight with Miss Husband Stealer. ‘What about Belle?’
‘Oh, she wants to have a girls’ day out with Portia,’ Jake replied. ‘Shopping in the city.’
Lisa fumed. ‘But I hardly ever see Portia! We’re here for her brother’s wedding . . . not some extreme shopping orgy.’
Scott stood up and brushed imaginary crumbs off his thighs. ‘Look, I’m not that into abseiling,’ he said, stroking the cockatoo’s head. ‘I’ve only done it a couple of times. I’ve got some beer in the ute. Want one, mate?’
Jake nodded. As Scott sauntered off, Jake patted the sofa, inviting Lisa to sit next to him. ‘I’ve been wanting to have a word with you,’ Jake said in a confessional tone. ‘Belle feels you treat her like a dumb blonde . . .’
‘I do?’
‘She has got an MBA, you know.’
‘I’m not surprised. She’s far smarter than me.’
‘Her family came from Russia with crumbs in their pockets. They had to fight for everything.’
‘Like other people’s husbands?’
Jake shook his head, as if she’d just cursed over his mother’s grave.
Scott trudged back up the path carrying a slab of gold cans.
Jake cleared his throat. ‘Scottie’s done a great job here. I’m getting him to do some plans for a roof garden for me.’
‘Yeah, but my printer’s stuffed,’ Scott said, opening a can with a hiss and passing it to Jake.
Jake accepted the offering and bowed, as if taking part in a native ritual. He took a tentative sip.
Scott tore open a can for himself. It glinted in the sun as he raised it to his lips. Either Scott was being uncharacteristically sensitive or . . . ‘By the way, I’ve drawn up some thoughts for your driveway,’ he said to Lisa. ‘Nothing elaborate, but we’d need to get on with it if you want it done before the wedding.’
‘That’d be great,’ she lied. The truth was, she’d have to call a halt to Scott’s grand designs, at least until she had the thumbs-up from Vanessa.
‘If you come over to my place tomorrow evening I can make any changes you want onscreen.’
‘Yes, but . . .’ The wedding was only a week away and the house was overflowing with high-maintenance guests.
‘Bring your daughter along.’
The cockatoo ran her beak over Scott’s hand, tickling him with her grey tongue.
Well, it would be a change of scenery. And a chance to tell Scott to put the brakes on.