VANESSA
‘Ah-choo! Ah-choo!’
Vanessa grabbed a tissue and blew her flaky nostrils. She was in the grip of a heavy cold, and it felt like there were tiny workmen jackhammering inside her head and laying sandpaper carpet in her throat. She must have picked it up from those tumbles in the snow a few days ago, but it was worth it to have spent the weekend with Marcus. ‘Was it? Really?’ the sensible little voice inside her asked. ‘Of course it was,’ she snapped back. It was just a shame she’d spent part of it with Charlotte too.
She pushed thoughts of Charlotte out of her mind and returned to her ironing in front of SBS World News. She liked the way SBS World News made her feel. Brainy. Informed. Engaged. Although it also made her uncomfortably aware that the world was going to hell in a handbasket.
She coughed so hoarsely that Daisy cocked her head sideways.
‘Sorry, Daise.’
Joy and Keith appeared from Joy’s room, and Joy put a small glass bottle on the ironing board. ‘Echinacea. Take plenty, Nessie.’ She pecked her daughter on the cheek. ‘We’re off to Keith’s place.’
‘No rest for us newsagents,’ Keith said genially. ‘Got to get to bed early.’
‘If you know what we mean.’ Joy winked. ‘Have you got any batteries?’
‘Mum! That’s way too much information.’
‘For Keith’s alarm clock!’ Joy laughed. ‘You’ve got to get your mind out of the gutter, Nessie.’
Keith chuckled.
‘I think there’s some in the bottom drawer in the kitchen. Ah-choo, ah-choo, ah-choo!’
‘You make sure you get to bed early, love,’ Keith said kindly as Joy rifled around in the drawer and unearthed a packet of batteries.
‘You heard Keith. The boys are at Craig’s place, so you’ve got no excuse not to rest. Off to bed early, or this thing might hang around all week.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I’ll sleep it off by the—’ But Vanessa got no further because she was gripped by a coughing fit.
Joy switched the iron off at the wall and pointed towards Vanessa’s room. ‘Bed. Now.’
After a cursory protest, Vanessa padded off with a box of tissues. She wondered if it would occur to Joy to put the ironing board away, but she knew that was a long shot. She fell against the pillows and inserted a Vicks nasal inhaler so she could free up one nostril for breathing. Slumber beckoned. But, unfortunately, her hopes of sleeping the cold off overnight proved wildly optimistic—by the next morning she felt even worse. She dragged herself out of bed just long enough to give Daisy her breakfast and force a slice of toast down. She called Kiri to let her know that she wouldn’t make it into work, and then she sat up in bed surrounded by cough lozenges and used tissues with Daisy curled up beside her, delighted to have her home for the day.
As Vanessa coughed into Daisy’s woolly head she felt grateful that colds couldn’t be transmitted from humans to canines. Which made her wonder if Marcus had picked this up too. Who knew? The poor man might be lying in bed coughing and sneezing just like her. She called him and he answered on the third ring—not that she was counting.
‘Morning, you.’ He sounded like he had a smile in his voice but nothing germ-related.
‘Borning, Barcus,’ Vanessa replied, surprised by how blocked up she sounded.
‘Vanessa! You poor baby, you sound terrible.’
She coughed loudly into the phone. ‘Sorry … I’m just glad that you haven’t got it. You sound okay—do you feel okay?’
‘I’m fine, but you’re obviously not. Is there anything I can do for you?’
Vanessa blew her nose, touched by his boyfriendly offer of help. ‘Actually, I don’t think I’m well enough to go out. Would you bind dropping in some bread and bilk?’
‘Some bread and bilk?’
‘No, bilk. For cereal and coffee.’
‘Oh, bilk.’
‘Yes, bilk.’
‘Of course. Anything else? Do you need buffins, or bargarine or barbalade?’
Vanessa chortled. ‘No, thanks, just the bilk will be fine.’
But then she had another coughing fit and had to get off the phone.
Sheer boredom had driven Vanessa out of the bedroom and she was lying on the couch watching Dr Phil. A mother and daughter who were dating the same man were listening intently as Dr Phil condensed their decades-long dysfunctional relationship into a three-word slogan. The slogan contained a germ of good sense, but still. That’s America, Vanessa thought, the only place in the world where you can make millions of bucks from stating the bleeding obvious. The doorbell rang and her spirits soared—that would be Marcus with the bread and milk.
Daisy started barking and jumping around in circles. ‘The door! Oh my God, there’s someone there! Come on, quick! Let’s see who it is! Hurry!’
‘Daisy, shhh!’ Vanessa croaked as she shuffled down the hall in her ugg boots. ‘Who is it?’ she called through the door.
‘It’s a burderer.’
Vanessa laughed but Daisy didn’t seem to appreciate the joke. When Vanessa threw the door open to reveal Marcus holding a huge bunch of exotic flowers, she growled.
‘Oh, Marcus, they’re beautiful. I love them. Ah-choo! Ah-choo!’ Vanessa cried, her eyes welling with emotion. ‘Daisy, shut up.’
Daisy finally fell silent and sat on the floor with her back legs splayed, eyeing Marcus warily.
‘Thank you so much,’ Vanessa said as she took the flowers, ‘but I won’t kiss you. I don’t want you to catch anything.’
Something flashed across Marcus’s face. Was it relief? She thought she saw him take a step backwards, but she’d probably imagined it. ‘I’ll store up all your kisses on credit and demand payment later,’ he said playfully. ‘With interest.’
Vanessa laughed but it mutated into a cough. A blade of spear grass was sticking up her nose, so she shifted the flowers.
Marcus hesitated. ‘I haven’t seen those before,’ he said, gesturing towards her pyjamas.
‘Oh these? They’re my old comfies.’ Vanessa felt bad that she’d forgotten to change out of her flannelette PJs into one of the silky thingies he’d bought her, but her head was so woolly she wasn’t thinking straight. ‘Why? Don’t you like them?’
‘I’m just jealous of them,’ he joked. ‘Wrapped around your body like that.’
Vanessa suddenly felt like a frump. She must be quite a sight with her watery eyes and her red flaky nose—and was all this coughing giving her bad breath? She discreetly put a hand over her mouth.
‘Come in,’ she repeated from behind her hand. ‘I’ll put the flowers in water.’
Marcus hesitated again. ‘I should let you rest.’
‘No, don’t be silly. I’ve been a bit bored.’
‘But I’ve got a case conference. I can’t get out of it.’
‘Oh.’ Vanessa wondered if he was lying but she quickly shooed the thought away. ‘Well, can you stay long enough for a cup of tea?’ She suddenly noticed that his hands were empty. ‘Where’s the bilk?’
‘Damn, I forgot. I’m sorry.’ He grimaced. ‘I spent so long choosing the flowers that it flew out of by bind. Would you like me to go and get it now?’
She was about to say yes, but she saw him glance at his TAG Heuer watch and checked herself. Marcus was a very busy barrister—if she demanded even more of his time she might come across like one of those divas with ridiculous riders in their contract. Mariah Rooney. ‘Where are my seventy-three bottles of Evian and my white Smarties?’ she imagined herself barking. Which made her smile.
‘What?’ Marcus said quizzically, but she was too tired to share the joke.
‘Oh, nothing. It’s fine. I’ll call Kiri about the bilk.’
He smiled. ‘That’s by girl. I’ll call you later.’ He blew her a kiss and left.
Vanessa spent the next twenty minutes sorting the washing, and by the time she’d finished, she felt exhausted. The couch called and she saw Joy’s copy of Nancy DuPont’s new romance, The Bedouin Bride, on the coffee table. Perfect! She lay back and started reading, but to her astonishment she had to put the book down after fifteen minutes because she wanted to punch the heroine in the head. And as for the hero—what a dickhid. It was unsettling—she’d never had that reaction to a romance before—but she was probably just irritable because she felt unwell.
She decided to start writing her own new novel instead, about a gutsy young TV reporter who clashes with the owner of a media empire. She’d come up with the idea a while ago but hadn’t felt the need to write a romance because she was too busy living one. She opened her laptop and typed in her title: Love on the Air. And then she just sat and stared at the screen for what seemed like hours. She eventually managed a couple of paragraphs but found that she couldn’t rouse the enthusiasm to keep going. But that was normal, wasn’t it? She must have writer’s block. Plus, she was feeling crappy with this cold, and she was in the middle of a stressful breach of copyright case. It was no wonder she’d lost her spark.
She turned the TV back on, and she was watching Judge Judy decimate a gormless young guy who owed his former best friend ninety-three dollars when Jackson and Lachie arrived home from school in a flurry of noise and testosterone.
Then Kiri dropped off a packet of Strepsils with some extra tissues and bread and milk.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said when she saw Vanessa. ‘You look like shit.’
Kiri offered to buy takeaway but Vanessa knew that Anthony’s parents were visiting and Kiri and Anthony were planning a ‘date night’ while they had the free babysitting. So she assured Kiri that she’d be fine, and soon afterwards she was frying sausages. Her head still throbbed and there was a buzzing sound in her ears, but that turned out to be a blessing because it meant she could only half hear the bombs exploding in the living room.
She’d banished her daffodils to the top of the fridge so Marcus’s flowers could take pride of place on the kitchen table in her only crystal vase, a wedding present from her Aunty Julie. The vase hadn’t been used since the day that Craig had dropped his bombshell about Natalie, and presented Vanessa with a bunch of brightly coloured gerberas, ‘to cheer her up’. When Kiri heard she was incensed. She said that Vanessa should have told Craig to stick the gerberas up his arse—the stems were wired, it was doable—but Jackson and Lachie were in the vicinity, so what could Vanessa say but thank you? As she drank in Marcus’s exotic blooms, she felt grateful that these circumstances were so much happier. If only Kiri could understand that, but she still had a set against Marcus.
‘It’s easy to buy a bunch of flowers,’ she’d snorted. ‘But why isn’t he here helping you?’
Vanessa experienced a rare surge of annoyance. ‘Why won’t you give Marcus a chance? Shouldn’t you be glad that he’s making me happy?’
‘If that’s what he’s doing,’ Kiri replied tartly, but then she had the grace to look chastened. ‘You’re right. I’m being a shit frind.’
‘You’re never a shit frind. You’re the best frind anyone could wish for and I don’t know what I’d do without you, but can’t you just give him a break?’
Kiri turned into her serious self then. ‘Of course. I’m sorry, Niss,’ she said gravely. ‘I suppose I’m being too overprotective because I don’t want you to get hurt again, but you’re right. You’re a big girl and it’s your decision.’
Vanessa had hugged her gratefully.
The doorbell rang, startling her back to reality. Maybe this was Marcus returning to prove Kiri wrong? The thought cheered her, but she couldn’t leave the sausages.
‘Boys,’ she croaked, ‘can you get that? Jackson? Lachie? Can someone … ?’
But Jackson and Lachie couldn’t hear her over the rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire.
Vanessa shuffled past them and down the hall, cursing herself for not changing into a silk nightie just in case. But at least Daisy wouldn’t hassle Marcus again—she was in the backyard getting her head messed with by the neighbour’s cat Basil and clearly hadn’t heard the doorbell. Vanessa stifled a coughing fit and opened the door to see Dave.
‘Dave!’
She felt a rush of delight that slightly threw her. What did it mean? But did it have to mean anything? Dave was standing under the verandah light and the single hair that stuck out of his eyebrow was illuminated. Vanessa wondered why he’d never noticed it. Or maybe he had, and he just didn’t care?
‘Vanessa, hi,’ he said in his new polite-but-distant voice, and her heart went plop at the friendship they’d lost. ‘Just thought I’d drop in on my way home from work.’ He pulled out a manila envelope. ‘This is from Charlotte’s lawyers. After the injunction some stuff’s finally starting to trickle through—’ He stopped as she erupted into sneezes.
‘Ah-choo! Ah-choo! Ah-choo! Sorry.’ She blew her nose.
Dave regarded her sympathetically. ‘You sound terrible.’
‘Yeah, I know. Come in.’
Dave stepped inside and she suddenly felt self-conscious about her old pyjamas. ‘I’m sorry about these.’
Dave looked mystified. ‘Why? What’s wrong with them?’
Good question, she thought. She coughed again, and her face turned puce.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine …’ she rasped. ‘But can you give me one sec? I just have to check on the thingummies, and then I can talk …’
She led Dave down the hall and into the living room, and, astonishingly, the boys looked up and engaged with a non-screen-based situation.
‘Dave.’
‘Hey, Dave.’
‘Fellas.’ Dave waved to them over the warfare. ‘Not inflicting any collateral damage, I hope?’
He was so easy with the kids. Vanessa experienced a wave of relief. Did that mean she was glad he wasn’t Marcus? Oh, who the hell knew?
Jackson craned his neck to look behind Dave and she saw her son’s face colour beneath his freckles.
‘Um, is Nickie … ?’
Dave shook his head. ‘No, just me, mate.’
Jackson tried to feign indifference, but Vanessa could see he was crestfallen. She wanted to take him in her arms and say, ‘It’ll be okay, sweetheart, the first crush is always the hardest,’ but, of course, that would be a disaster. So instead she said, ‘How many times have I told you, Jackson? Take your filthy feet off the couch.’
Cough. Sneeze. Snot. Etc.
When she’d recovered, she remembered her manners. ‘Can I get you anything, Dave? Tea?’
But Dave was lifting his nose in the air and sniffing. ‘What’s … ? Is that … ?’
‘What?’ Vanessa’s nose was so blocked that she couldn’t smell a thing—but as Dave sprinted towards the kitchen she followed and saw to her horror that there were flames leaping up out of the pan. ‘Shit, the sausages!’
Quick as a flash Dave yanked Marcus’s flowers out of the vase and tossed them onto the floor. Then he tipped the water into the frypan, dousing the flames with a loud hiss. The sausages looked like wizened black sticks and smoke billowed from the pan and set off the smoke alarm. Vanessa winced at the discordant high-decibel sound, but Dave reached up and disabled it within seconds, without even having to climb on a chair. Vanessa was still in shock as she opened the windows to let the smoke out.
‘Oh my God … Thank you …’
She blinked at Marcus’s magnificent blooms, strewn like pick-up sticks all over the floor.
Daisy appeared, drawn back inside by all the commotion. After giving Dave a friendly lick, she started chewing the flowers.
‘I’ve heard of chargrilled, but this is ridiculous,’ Dave joked.
Vanessa half laughed, half cried. She wished she could hurl herself into his arms and say, ‘I need a hug,’ but you can’t always get what you want, as the Rolling Stones would say. Which was laughable, when you thought about it, because if Mick Jagger couldn’t always get what he wanted, then who could?
‘Thank you so much,’ she repeated in lieu of a hug. ‘I’ve got no sense of smell at the moment. The house could have burned down … Ah-choo!’
Dave stood looking down at her with his huge brown eyes. Her heart did a little springy thing as she watched his polite mask drop and he turned back into the warm Dave of old.
‘What were you thinking? You’re as sick as a dog. Get on that couch now.’
Vanessa tried to protest, but Dave led her back to the living room and flicked off the Xbox unannounced. Vanessa watched in awe as the boys barely made a whimper—if she did that she’d never hear the end of it.
‘Okay, fellas, off your backsides. Your mum’s sick, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
Jackson and Lachie obediently jumped up and Dave settled Vanessa onto the sofa. She knew she must be below par, because when he tucked a throw rug around her, emotion engulfed her and she wanted to cry.
‘Thank you, Dave.’
‘You just lie there and make the snot—we’ll make the dinner.’
Jackson and Lachie laughed and pulled faces.
‘Gross, Dave.’
‘Snot. That’s disgusting!’
Vanessa found herself doing a mental inventory of the pantry and fridge.
‘There’s no more sausages,’ she said hoarsely, ‘but there’s some lasagne in the freezer and some leftover shepherd’s pie in the fridge and there’s some mince in the meat drawer and a packet of peas and—’
‘Hey, shut up,’ said Dave. ‘I’ll work it out. Just leave everything in my culpable hands.’
She laughed at his little joke.
‘Okay, fellas, into the breach.’
The boys happily followed him into the trenches.
Vanessa drank some water with a Strepsil chaser and sank back into the cushions, feeling she could almost weep with relief. She turned on SBS World News, but she barely registered the day’s horrors—she was too distracted by the sounds of Dave and the boys clattering around in the kitchen and laughing.
But then her eyes fell on Dave’s briefcase, and she remembered the documents from Charlotte’s lawyers. She tensed. What now? Was the case about to get even more combative? She opened the briefcase to grab the manila envelope and discovered two novels, Passion at Pasadena Ranch and The Handmaiden’s Revenge. Her lips twitched. Dave was reading romance? How funny! As she pulled the books out of the briefcase, Dave reappeared from the kitchen.
‘Lachie reckons he’s allowed to skip peas. Is that true?’ He stopped when he saw the novels. ‘Oh, those.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘I’m in a book club.’
Vanessa smiled. ‘But they’re romance. I thought you hated romance?’
Dave shrugged. ‘I’ve always wanted to learn a new language. Same difference, I guess.’
She met his eyes and there was a weird moment in which neither of them seemed to know what to say. But then the oven alarm rang.
‘The pie’s ready,’ said Dave, sounding relieved. ‘But what about the peas?’
‘The peas? Oh, Lachie. Okay, he can skip them.’
Dave nodded and headed back to the kitchen.
When dinner was over and the boys had been dispatched to their bedrooms, Dave joined Vanessa on the couch and reached for his briefcase.
‘Right.’
He’d removed his jacket and she noticed that his shirt was badly ironed. She found that endearing, but she wasn’t sure why.
‘Ah-choo!’
‘Bless you.’
‘Thank you.’
He pulled out the manila envelope and she felt her innards twist into a nervous knot. ‘Okay, hit me with it. What’s the story?’
‘Well, let’s start with the bad news … Wax’s computer system was upgraded a few months ago, and Amy Dunphy reckons her old computer was destroyed at the time and the records weren’t brought forward.’
Vanessa felt a stab of dismay. ‘But that can’t be right, can it? Surely they’d bring her old records forward?’
‘Of course they would,’ Dave said, ‘so I’m going to compel her to provide a statement to that effect under oath. Then she’ll be tied to the story and she can’t resile from it later when we prove her wrong.’
Vanessa felt herself relax. Dave was obviously on top of things, and he was sounding way more confident these days. He pulled a couple of pages out and handed them to her. ‘Charlotte’s lawyers reckon these are the initial story ideas she scribbled down—they tell me her more formal drafts are following.’
Vanessa scanned the pages covered in handwritten scribbles: Love Transplant? Nurse discovers heart belongs to her fiancé mid-surgery? Faints and arrogant surgeon misinterprets? Both pages were titled: Initial Ideas for New Novel, April 2017.
Vanessa freaked. ‘April 2017. But that’s before I sent Lost and Found Heart to Wax.’
‘Yeah, I know, but she could have scribbled this yesterday and written any date on top,’ Dave reminded her. ‘This doesn’t prove a thing—unlike that USB at my office that proves you finished Lost and Found Heart in September 2017.’
Vanessa felt awash with relief. ‘You’re right. I just panicked for a sec.’
‘She can give us as many phony handwritten drafts as she likes and date them accordingly, but it proves nothing. And I was doing some digging around and I saw an interview she did at the Wheeler Centre last December, three months after those so-called ‘Initial Notes’ were written, and she said she never writes anything in longhand, not even sketchy ideas. So she’s on the record.’
‘You’re right. I’ve heard her say that too.’
‘Mike Schwartz must be just as aware of all this as us, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a settlement offer soon.’
Hope flooded Vanessa’s veins. ‘You reckon?’
‘Yeah, I reckon.’
They smiled at each other and things were in danger of getting a bit weird again, but Vanessa was gripped by a coughing fit.
Dave leaped to his feet. ‘I’ll get you some water.’
He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a chipped glass.
‘Thank you,’ she croaked when she’d downed the water.
‘All part of the service.’
His eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled. Vanessa realised she was feeling all warm and calm and relaxed. It was a revelation—she just wasn’t quite sure what it revealed.
‘And thank you again for cooking dinner with the boys. It was really special.’
‘Special? I’m not sure it deserves that accolade. We just reheated a pie and bunged some peas in the microwave.’
‘Still, you saved my bacon. And you’re so good with the boys.’
‘They’re good kids.’
‘For you, maybe.’ Vanessa laughed croakily. ‘Nickie’s a lucky girl to have a dad like you.’ Dave’s face flushed in response and she found herself biting back the words, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so cute I could eat you.’ Wow, where did that come from? Best change the subject. ‘Jackson told me she’s going to Paris with her mum. She must be excited.’
‘She’s jumping out of her skin. Only nine more sleeps.’
But Vanessa could hear sadness behind his smile.
‘I guess you would have liked to take her yourself?’
‘Nah, stuff her.’
Vanessa laughed, but Dave’s mirth quickly evaporated.
‘Christmas in Merimbula’s going to feel like a bit of a letdown after Paris.’
‘She won’t care where she is as long she’s with you.’
Dave looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know, I feel like boring old Dad sometimes. Evanthe’s constantly jetting off to exotic locations and bringing back expensive presents. It’s a bit hard to compete with that. Not that it’s a competition—even though we all know it is.’
He was grinning, but for Vanessa the topic suddenly felt deadly serious.
‘You know what? Having your dad around all the time is so much better than stupid presents,’ she heard herself say. She was suddenly assailed by feelings clamouring to be freed—it was like a floodgate was swinging open that she’d never known was closed. ‘My dad travelled a lot for work. When he was at home, he was so much fun that I kind of forgot that most of the time he wasn’t there. But when I think about it now, he missed my birthdays, my first day of school, speech nights, all the important things …’ She trailed off. Why had it taken her twenty-five years to admit that to herself, let alone to somebody else?
‘That’s tough,’ Dave said sympathetically. ‘Poor guy.’
‘Poor guy?’
‘Well, poor you too, of course, but he’s the one who really missed out. He never got to see what a sensational woman you’ve become.’
Vanessa caught her breath. ‘I’m not a sensational woman.’
‘Yes, you are.’
Their gazes locked and she lost herself in his liquid brown eyes and realised how much they reminded her of a beloved and long-gone puppy, Boris.
‘You’re a beautiful mother, a caring friend and a talented author. And in spite of the fact that conflict terrifies you, you’ve got the courage to stand up for your rights in the public arena. I reckon that makes you pretty sensational.’
Vanessa’s heart forgot its job. She tried to form words but they wouldn’t come, and she wanted to look away but Dave’s gaze had somehow become magnetic. He started moving his face towards hers and she felt her own face moving to meet it. Their lips were just millimetres apart when her mobile rang with its new sci-fi ringtone (courtesy of Lachie). They leaped apart. Vanessa checked her screen. It was Marcus.
‘Oh, um … I’d better …’ She pressed accept. ‘Marcus? Hi …’
Why did she do that? A shutter slammed down over Dave’s face, and she watched helplessly as he jumped to his feet.
‘I’ll see you later.’
Vanessa wanted to yell, ‘No, wait,’ but she nodded, feeling fuddled and horrible. Why hadn’t she let Marcus’s call go through to voicemail?
‘Vanessa? Are you there? How are you feeling?’ Marcus asked.
I don’t know how I’m feeling—that’s the whole problem, she thought.
‘Oh, um, I’m feeling a bit better.’ She watched Dave disappear down the hall. ‘Ah-choo!’