Frankie hopped off the bus at the next stop and called Dom. She kept her voice light and breezy. ‘Hey, babe, I know you’ve already done me this massive favour of leaving work early to get the kids and I was about to head home but . . . a few of the girls at work want me to have a quick drink with them tonight. Do you mind? You good with the kids?’
Before he could answer, Frankie gabbled on, ‘I wouldn’t ask, but you know how hard it’s been getting the women here onside, so I don’t want to turn them down now that they’ve finally asked.’
‘Of course.’ His deep voice with its thick Italian accent came back warm and reassuring. ‘I’m fine with the kids.’
Frankie closed her eyes, saw the picture of the three of them all grinning up at her and felt a hard pang of guilt at lying to him.
‘Hey, Frankie,’ Dom added, ‘just do me a favour and remember to use the St George card this time, would you, and uh . . . try not to put too much on it. The issue with the CBA card means that now the St George account is almost maxed out.’
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I won’t forget this time.’
Once she’d hung up, she ordered an Uber and within five minutes, she was heading back in the same direction the bus had brought her. Waste of money – it was a shame Linda couldn’t have texted a little earlier, before Frankie had got so far away from North Sydney. Linda wanted to meet at a coffee shop on MacArthur Avenue. She wouldn’t say in the message what it was about. But Frankie could guess, and there were butterflies dancing up a storm in her stomach as the Uber driver took an agonisingly slow route through the traffic to the city.
At the cafe she spotted Linda in a far corner, her dark hair pushed back by a pair of sunglasses, her fingers absent-mindedly tapping on the tabletop as she waited. She’d picked an isolated table, away from the rest of the patrons who were clustered nearer the front, enjoying the last of the sunshine. Frankie made her way through the cafe and took a seat opposite her.
The expression on Linda’s face confirmed her fears.
‘It’s got worse, hasn’t it?’ Frankie reached across the table to touch Linda’s hand.
Linda opened her mouth to speak but a waitress appeared next to them. ‘You need a menu, or is it just drinks?’ she asked, a friendly smile across her face.
‘I’ll take a flat white with one, please,’ said Linda.
‘Skim cap,’ Frankie said, eager for her to leave them be.
‘Anything to nibble on?’
‘Nope,’ Linda and Frankie said in unison.
Then Linda added quickly, ‘Thank you, though.’ She was always polite like that.
The waitress left and Frankie looked at Linda, willing her to talk.
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s this.’ She pushed her phone across the table and Frankie read the text message on her screen, in confusion at first.
Linda, I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this – but I’m an employee at Cormack and I think you need to know that your husband isn’t being faithful to you. Again, I’m really sorry.
Frankie was flabbergasted. ‘Paul is cheating on you?’
Linda gave her a pitying smile. ‘Frankie,’ she said, ‘no, darling, Paul’s not cheating . . . this text is about you. Someone thinks the two of you are having an affair.’
‘But . . .’ Frankie stopped for a second, trying to get her brain around it. It fell into place. ‘Oh my God, you’re right!’
There was a beat and then they both started laughing hysterically. They laughed for a good few minutes before they were able to regain their composure, and when the waitress put down their coffees, she gave them a quizzical, amused look.
‘I needed that,’ said Linda, stirring her coffee and smiling. ‘I really did. Sorry,’ she added, ‘I didn’t mean to be so mysterious with getting you here and everything, but I wanted to let you know straightaway. If there’s someone at Cormack who’s watching closely enough to start to think something’s going on – well, even though they’ve come to the wrong conclusion this time, they might come to the right conclusion next time.’
The amusement cleared from both of their faces and Frankie nodded. ‘I guess you’re right. It’s not good, is it?’
It was six months earlier that Linda had first called Frankie and asked to meet because she had something important to discuss. She’d cut straight to the point that day. ‘Paul’s been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s,’ she’d said. The bottom line was that Paul and Linda didn’t want anyone to know just yet. Only a year before that he’d floated the company on the stock exchange. Soon after there’d been a falling out between Paul and two members of the board. Paul had been trying ever since to claw back a majority shareholding of the company. But when the symptoms had begun to worsen, he’d realised he only had a short time frame in which to get the company back under his control before it was discovered that he was no longer capable. All he wanted was to have enough control that he could ensure the company remained intact. And Linda had wanted Frankie’s help. ‘Paul trusts you,’ she’d said. ‘So you’re the only one in the company that he’s comfortable with knowing the truth, at least until he gets these legal issues sorted out. Once it’s all fixed, he’ll make an announcement and relinquish the director’s position to someone else. But in the meantime, we need you to look out for him. Shelter him from difficult decisions or tough meetings wherever you can. Run interference, calm him down when he’s confused, whatever you can do to help hide our secret.’
At the same time, Linda would be working with lawyers, trying to find a loophole, a way to get back a majority shareholding. They’d been hopeful it wouldn’t take too long to sort out, and Linda was apologetic that she was asking so much of Frankie, expecting her to lie to everyone else in the company, as well as Dom.
‘The fewer people who know the better,’ Linda had explained, ‘and as Dom works for CT&T . . .’
She had a point. Cormack sometimes did business with CT&T. If Dom accidently let something slip over a beer with workmates one Friday night, it could get back to the wrong people.
Now, as they sipped their coffees, Frankie asked Linda if she was at all worried when she got the text. ‘Like, just for a second? Or did you put two and two together straightaway?’
‘No, I wasn’t worried. Wouldn’t matter if he was completely lucid, Paul could never cheat on me. He always joked that he didn’t understand how adulterers coped with more than one woman. Plus, I should have expected it. The amount of time you have to spend in his office, one on one, settling him down and reassuring him, it’s amazing no one’s come to this conclusion sooner.’
‘Yeah, that’s true. I was in there for hours today, actually. He came over all paranoid. He wanted me to look up all this random stuff about one of our competitors on his computer for him, and he wanted the door locked and the blinds drawn. It must have looked suspicious from the outside.’
Linda hesitated. ‘So you think he’s getting worse, Frankie?’
‘Oh, um, I don’t know.’
‘It was the first thing you said when you got here. You thought that was why I needed to see you. Tell me honestly – are we running out of time to get this company stuff under control?’
Frankie reached for Linda’s hand again. ‘Maybe,’ she said softly. ‘Hey, what if he takes some leave? Pretend the two of you are off on some tropical holiday for a few weeks and in reality, you just stay home, see if you can get it sorted once and for all. I mean, Jesus, how much bloody money have you already spent on those lawyers? Surely they must be ready to make a move – they’re bleeding you dry.’
‘It’s not a bad idea, to get him out of there,’ said Linda. ‘But my worry is that once he’s not there, not in his normal routine . . . I don’t know, I just think that maybe he’ll deteriorate faster than ever. Sometimes I think it’s the act of getting up at the same time each day, getting ready for work, eating the same breakfast, catching the same train . . . all of that is what steadies him. On the other hand, some days I’m terrified he’s going to step onto the wrong train and end up somewhere up the Blue Mountains or something like that, that he’ll get confused, forget who he is, where he lives and I’ll never see him again. I have this dream – this nightmare – where he’s wandering lost through the bush and he’s calling out my name and I can’t get to him, and it makes me feel sick. Sometimes I even follow him to the station, watch to see that he heads to the right platform, gets onto the right train. But he’d be so offended, so embarrassed if he ever knew.’
‘I wish there was more I could do,’ Frankie said. ‘I’ve got a day off coming up later this week for the kids’ sports carnival. Should I skip it?’
‘Don’t be silly, you’re already going above and beyond for us. And you have a young family. I hate that we’re putting all this extra stress and pressure on you. But anyway, that’s not the point today, we need to figure out what we’re going to do about this “good Samaritan” who thinks Paul and you are cheating. Do you have any idea who at the office would be likely to want to dob you in to me?’
The answer came to Frankie immediately and she couldn’t believe it wasn’t the first name she’d thought of when Linda had showed her the message. Poppy. And goddamnit, she should have seen this coming. Poppy had posted in NOP just the other day asking for everyone’s advice on whether or not she should dob someone in who was cheating. But it had never occurred to Frankie that Poppy could have been referring to her and Paul. Even worse, Frankie had commented on that post! I’d want to know, had been her advice.
But before she could answer Linda’s question, Linda’s hands suddenly flung up to her face. ‘Oh shit, Frankie,’ she gasped, ‘I just realised – what if this person texted Dom as well?’
The skin on Frankie’s arms prickled and she rubbed them roughly. Linda was right. What if Poppy had? Dom had been acting so unusual today. So much nicer than normal. Was it because he was trying to play it cool? Did he think he could catch her out by making her relax?
And even worse than that, the thing was – she really had lied to him. It might not have been as bad as having an affair, but still. She wasn’t being honest with her husband. Her deception suddenly felt all the more wrong.
‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘I have to get home and find out.’
Linda nodded. ‘I’m so sorry, Frankie, if this ends up making your life even harder. I feel awful. Go. Call me when you can and let me know how it goes with Dom. I’ll figure this out.’
* * *
Frankie wasted yet more money on another Uber back home – she didn’t want to wait for the bus. She climbed out of the car and faced their neat, blue-and-white townhouse, then hesitated at the front gate. How should she handle this? Obviously, it would be weird if she asked him straight out whether or not he’d received a random message from an employee at Cormack today. She guessed she just had to act normal and see if Dom showed any signs that he’d been contacted.
She let herself in the front door and Dom stuck his head around from the kitchen. ‘You’re home earlier than I expected.’
‘Yeah, it didn’t end up being such a big deal after all. One or two drinks and everyone was already calling it a night.’
‘Where did you go?’
Frankie had the answer ready to go. ‘Top Deck bar, not far from work.’
‘Much to drink?’
‘Nah, just a cocktail.’
‘Cocktail? Those things are such a rip-off. Why don’t you just drink beer?’
Well, at least that was sounding more like the Dom of late, worrying about her spending too much instead of encouraging her to go out.
‘I didn’t feel like a beer,’ she replied.
His phone dinged and he pulled it out of his pocket to look at it. Frankie’s body went rigid – was that Poppy texting him right now? But then he looked up at her and said, ‘Did you catch an Uber there and back again?’
‘Yep,’ Frankie said. They shared the same account, which was why he was seeing the notification of the bill on his phone.
‘Why didn’t you take the bus?’ he asked.
‘I’d only just missed one coming home and the cocktail was sitting a bit funny in my stomach so I didn’t feel like waiting around. Actually, I’m still feeling a bit off. I’m going to take a shower.’
Frankie ran upstairs before he could say anything else, the guilt weighing heavily on her shoulders as she went.