‘Sam?’
She blinked a couple of times. The room was gloomy, but she could see daylight through a chink in the curtains. She looked up to see Max sitting on a chair beside the bed, holding a mug of tea.
‘Hi,’ Sam murmured sleepily.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, staring intently down at her.
Then Sam remembered what she was doing here. She felt an ache well up in her chest. ‘What am I going to do, Max?’
‘You’re going to have a nice hot shower. And then I’m taking you to the doctor’s.’
Sam frowned up at her. ‘Why?’
Max sighed. ‘Sam, you don’t know whether Stewart used anything last night. You’re going to have to take the morning-after pill.’
‘What?’
‘The morning-after pill. Haven’t you heard of it before?’
‘Sure,’ Sam nodded, sitting up. Her head was throbbing. ‘Do I have to, really? I’ve heard it makes you sick.’
‘Better that than the alternative, Sherl,’ said Max. ‘Here, I made you a cuppa.’
Sam took it from her, the ache in her chest welling up into her throat. ‘God, Max, what have I done?’
‘Sherl,’ Max said seriously. ‘You couldn’t remember much last night. Do you have any idea what happened?’
She stared into her cup. ‘He asked me to come for a drink after work. I was hanging around, feeling at a bit of a loose end. I didn’t want to go home to an empty house.’
‘You should have told me, Sam. I could have changed my plans.’
‘I didn’t realise it was going to bother me that much.’
‘So, what happened then?’
‘It’s all a bit of a blur. I remember being in his car, he was groping at me, slobbering all over me,’ Sam shuddered. ‘He said I could sleep it off at his place, but I don’t exactly remember going inside. Next thing I knew he was on top of me . . . God, how could I do that, Max?’
‘Sam! You haven’t done anything. It was done to you. Stewart targeted you, he knew exactly what he was doing. They call it date rape.’
‘I think that’s overstating it. I didn’t even put up a fight . . .’
‘Sam, you couldn’t put up a fight, you were virtually unconscious!’ Max exclaimed. ‘Would you ever have slept with him willingly?’
She shook her head weakly. ‘I’m so stupid.’
‘You’re not stupid, Sherl, I won’t hear you talk like that.’ Max patted her arm. ‘Naïve maybe, but not stupid.’
‘I should have known better than to go out with Stewart in the first place. I don’t even like the man.’
Max sighed. ‘People do strange things under duress. Things against their character. You’ve had a tough few weeks. Give yourself a break.’
‘I feel like I don’t know who I am any more.’ Her voice became a whisper as tears rose in her throat. ‘Everything was one way before. I knew what to do each day, what was expected of me. Who I was.’ She paused. ‘Now it’s all gone haywire.’ Her eyes were glassy as she raised them to look squarely at Max. ‘How am I going to get through this?’
Max sat on the bed next to Sam and put her arm around Sam’s shoulder. ‘You’ll be right, Sherl. It’s all part of your journey of self-discovery,’ she said sagely.
Sam sniffed, brushing a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘Oh don’t start your new age crap.’
‘It’s not crap, and it’s not even new age. As bad as things might get, you will find yourself through all this.’
‘I didn’t know I was lost.’
‘Don’t be trite.’
‘I’m not the one being trite.’
Max turned to face her. ‘Sam, this is an opportunity to spread your wings. Do what you want to do, be what you want to be.’
‘You’re not going to break into song are you?’ Sam looked at her dubiously. ‘Besides, aren’t you forgetting I’ve still got three kids to raise? And I’ll be doing it largely on my own from now on.’
‘You’ve been doing it largely on your own all along.’
Sam was thoughtful. ‘It feels different, though. I know Jeff wasn’t all that involved but he was there, like a silent partner or something. It gave me a sense of security, I suppose.’
‘He was your safety net,’ said Max.
There was something terribly safe in being married, Sam realised. Your position was defined. You were Mrs someone. You had a husband. You could say ‘my husband this’, ‘my husband that’. But now Sam only had an ‘ex’. And what’s more, she had become an ‘ex’ without any say in the matter. She had gone from a marriage with no life in it to a life with no marriage in it, and she wasn’t sure which was worse.
‘Come on,’ said Max. ‘We’d better get you to the doctor’s.’
Sam sighed deeply. There was no competition, this was by far the worse.
‘What are you doing today?’ Sam asked Max, pretending for a moment she was just a woman indulging in weekend brunch with her sister. Not a woman who had just been to a clinic because she had unprotected, unwanted sex with the office lech in a drunken stupor the previous evening.
Max glanced at her uncertainly. ‘Well, I have a date, but I’m going to cancel –’
‘Not on my account you’re not,’ Sam said firmly.
‘But you don’t want to go home alone . . .’
‘That was last night. I promise you I’m over that,’ she insisted. Sam was determined to put the whole mortifying experience behind her, from the sickening images of Stewart replaying in her head, to the intrusive, embarrassing questions asked by the doctor this morning. Did she look like someone who had multiple sexual partners, for godsakes?
They were sitting at an outdoor café in the sunshine. Sam had initially baulked at the idea of food, but Max ordered her scrambled eggs anyway. She had to admit, the warm food was comforting in her stomach, and she was starting to feel normal again. Almost.
‘So, who’s your date?’
‘You don’t know him, I met him the other day at an exhibition.’
‘Oh?’ Sam was justifiably suspicious about Max’s dates. ‘What exhibition?’
‘Well, he was the exhibition actually. He’s a performance artist.’ Max placed her cup in its saucer. ‘He does this kind of postmodern interpretative dance piece tracing the fall of communism across Europe, using kitchen appliances as a percussive underscore.’
Sam winced.
Max looked blankly at her. ‘What’s with the face, Sam? You look like Mum.’
‘Couldn’t you just go out with someone normal for a change?’
‘Now you sound like Mum as well.’
‘I’m just saying that if you want to settle down –’
‘Who says I want to settle down?’
‘What, you don’t want a home, a family?’
‘Sure, like that really worked out for you,’ Max said dubiously.
Sam stared at her cup.
‘Sorry,’ said Max.
She breathed out heavily. ‘Don’t worry, I know it’s true . . .’
‘But?’
‘I didn’t realise it was so bad. We were like most other couples. The wives complain about their husbands, the husbands complain about their wives. It’s what people do. You never think it’s serious. And then you hear one day that so-and-so are getting a divorce, or someone is having an affair, and you’re shocked, even though you haven’t heard them say a nice word to each other in years.’ Sam twirled a teaspoon around in her coffee.
‘Do you miss him?’ Max asked, watching her.
She shrugged. ‘It depends. Sometimes he’s so frigging smug I can’t wait to see the back of him. But then other times, he’s sensitive and apologetic, like he’s trying really hard to do the right thing.’ Sam thought for a moment. ‘That’s when I want to ask him why he couldn’t have put that effort in with us, instead of . . .’ She sighed. ‘But I already know the answer to that.’
‘What?’
She looked squarely at Max. ‘Whether we were happy or not, or had nothing in common any more, or whatever, is beside the point. Jeff stopped loving me. And that’s what hurts the most.’
It was one o’clock by the time Sam pulled into the garage at home. She’d caught a taxi from the café to Pennant Hills Station where her car was still parked from the day before. She was feeling okay, maybe a little seedy, but that was probably just the remnants of her hangover. The doctor said she was more likely to feel nauseous after the second lot of tablets, which she was due to take twelve hours after the first. In the meantime, she was going to get on with her chores as though it was a normal Saturday. Though on a normal Saturday she would have been in and out, ferrying the kids around, Jeff would have had the weekend newspaper spread across the family room floor . . . Sam felt a sharp stab in her chest. She didn’t even know what normal was any more.
As she walked into the kitchen, she was confronted by a pile of notes spread across the bench. There was a neatly written memo from Jeff with details of his new address and phone number. Just what she’d always wanted. Then a stack of notices from Josh’s school. Flicking through them, Sam realised they were all asking for money: upcoming excursions, levies for extra equipment, sports fees. He could have given these to his father, she thought wryly. There was a painting Ellie must have done at pre-school. It was of all three children, with a misshapen heart and the letters ‘MUMY’ scrawled across the top. And finally an urgent note from Jess insisting she phone ASAP. Sam glanced across at the answering machine. Christ, there were eleven messages! She pressed Play and Jessica’s voice filled the room.
‘Mum, where are you? Didn’t you get my message? Call me as soon as you get home . . . it’s Jess.’
The other ten would be the same, only progressively more hysterical no doubt. Sam decided to ring Jeff’s mobile. She didn’t want to risk Jodi answering the house phone.
‘Jeff Holmes.’
‘Hello, it’s me.’
‘Hi. Jess has been trying to reach you.’
‘So I gather.’
‘Your mobile was turned off. You’re always doing that. You should get into the habit of leaving it on, Sam.’
‘Then I forget about it, the battery runs out and it doesn’t work when I need it.’
‘But what’s the use of having a phone if you never turn it on?’
A lecture from Jeff was the last thing she needed right now.
‘Anyway,’ Sam said dismissively, ‘can you get Jess for me, please?’
‘I’ll put her on.’
‘Mu-umm! Where have you been?’ Jessica whined. ‘I’ve called you like, a thousand times! And I’ve left like, a million messages!’
‘Jess, I have my own life too,’ Sam returned. ‘Now what’s the big emergency?’
‘You have to tape Channel 22 at six o’clock.’
‘Please Mum,’ Sam added.
‘Please Mum!’ Jessica repeated, exasperated.
‘Why didn’t you just ask your father?’
‘They don’t have Pay TV, they don’t even have a DVD player!’ Jess dropped her voice. ‘It’s pretty third world around here, I mean Josh has to sleep on a sofa bed in the living room. But we’ll be okay. Don’t worry about us.’
Sam would do her best.
‘What am I taping?’
‘In Depth with Britney Spears.’
‘That’s a bit of an oxymoron.’
‘She’s not a moron,’ Jessica huffed. ‘I don’t make fun of your stupid, pathetic old people’s music.’
‘Is Ellie there?’ asked Sam, ignoring Jess while she didn’t make fun of stupid, pathetic old people’s music. ‘Could I speak to her?’
‘Okay, but don’t forget, will you, Mum? Channel –’
‘22 at six o’clock,’ Sam finished. ‘I won’t forget.’ She never did.
‘Thanks Mum. Here’s Ellie.’
‘Hi Mummy!’
‘Hello sweetheart. Are you having a nice time?’
‘Yes. But I miss you.’
‘I miss you too.’
Sam could hear Jeff coaxing in the background.
‘I have to go, Mummy, we’re going to the beach.’
‘Have fun. See you tomorrow.’
Sam waited until she heard Ellie hang up. Then she walked out to the family room, scanned the row of videotapes, neatly stacked and labelled, and found one that could be taped over. She checked the guide and programmed the VCR to start recording at six p.m. Sam and Josh were the only ones in the family who could program the VCR. Why people made such a fuss about it was beyond her. You simply read the manual and followed the steps.
She grabbed a basket from the laundry and walked upstairs. She gathered up Jess and Josh’s uniforms from where they had dropped them on the floor, plus other stray bits of clothing. She came downstairs again and started up the washing machine, measured out the powder and added it to the surging water. She separated the clothes into two piles, carefully shook out each item and placed them one at a time into the machine, watching as the water eddied and tossed them around, eventually sucking them under.
There is the woman whose husband left her. She needs to get a life.