VANESSA
Vanessa closed Dave’s front door, shaken. She’d never seen him angry before, let alone been the object of his anger, and she was surprised by how distraught she felt to know that he thought poorly of her.
She hated to think Dave might be right. Had Jackson really been aping Marcus? Surely not? ‘Oh, give me a break,’ snapped the sensible little voice inside her head. ‘Of course he was.’ The realisation landed like lead. Jackson was a victim of her poor modelling. How could she have let him down so badly? As she stood there paralysed by guilt, the front door flew open and Dave strode out.
‘Dave?’
‘There’s been a robbery at the office. Some bastard threw a rock through the window.’
He was stalking past her and out the front gate, ignoring the Volvo in the driveway. In the flickering streetlight Vanessa noticed that underneath Wash me! someone else had now scratched: Please!!!
‘What are you doing? Aren’t you driving?’
‘The Volvo’s on the fritz. I’m going to hail a taxi on St Georges Road.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’ll take you.’
Dave hesitated for a moment and then he nodded. ‘Okay, thanks.’
And so they found themselves driving along in Vanessa’s car while Dave called his PA, Ms Thingie, and asked her to meet him at the office so they could give the police an inventory of what had been stolen. As Vanessa half listened to his conversation she found her mind drifting back to that cake. Who’d baked Dave a pineapple upside-down cake? It must have been a woman, surely, but what woman? Her mind was filling with pictures of a nubile young thing wearing nothing but an apron when she suddenly remembered his elderly clients. Of course, it would be one of Dave’s lovely old ladies. The thought relieved her more than it probably should have.
Meanwhile Dave was promising to pay Ms Thingie triple time with a three-hour minimum for inconveniencing her.
When he ended the call, Vanessa couldn’t resist commenting. ‘Triple time with a three-hour minimum?’
‘I know.’ Dave grimaced. ‘But she probably needs all the money she can get for counselling.’
‘Counselling? Why?’
‘I think she’s got PTSD from the Bosnian War.’
Vanessa felt a rush of sympathy. ‘Oh my goodness, that’s awful. Is that why she’s so … ?’
‘Horrible? I hope so.’ There was a nonplussed silence as they both realised that hadn’t come out quite right. ‘I mean I’d hate to think she was just born that way.’
Vanessa nodded politely. It occurred to her that they would have chortled together about this before, but now they’d become polite strangers.
A young cop was waiting outside Dave’s office while an emergency repair guy fixed the window. The cop was polishing off a kebab from Ali’s Kebabs across the road.
‘Place is a mess,’ he said, wiping garlic and yoghurt sauce from his mouth. ‘Youse might want to brace yourselves.’
Vanessa held her breath as they followed him into reception. Ms Thingie’s desk drawers were flung open with their contents strewn all over the floor, and the Seeing Eye Dog collection box was lying plaintively on its side with the slot at the top jimmied open. Vanessa saw the colour leach from Dave’s face and she wanted to wring the perpetrators’ necks—what kind of lowlife would violate his workplace like this? A sudden wild thought leaped into her head. Had Charlotte and Chip paid someone to ransack Dave’s office? It seemed far-fetched, but she still felt a lurch of dread. Were they about to find Dave’s filing cabinet jimmied open and all her evidence stolen?
‘We know who it was,’ the young cop said, knocking her conspiracy theory on the head. ‘There’s a bunch of young scrotes around here who’ve got form. They did over a couple of places on Murray Road tonight too.’
Oh, thought Vanessa, it was young ‘scrotes’. She felt relieved, but was that selfish? Dave’s office had still been pillaged.
‘I’ll be paying ’em a visit as soon as I’ve finished here,’ the young cop assured Dave. ‘I just need to know what I’m looking for.’
Dave nodded and led the cop into his office.
Vanessa lingered and propped the Seeing Eye Dog back upright, patting its head. ‘Poor thing … you’ll be okay.’
‘It’s not a real dog,’ someone said behind her, and she turned to see Ms Thingie regarding her with a smirk. ‘It’s an inanimate object. They don’t have feelings.’
‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ said Vanessa, even as she felt herself turn pink. No wonder Dave was prepared to pay Ms Thingie extra for counselling—clearly it couldn’t start soon enough. Vanessa wondered if she’d found a counsellor yet. She’d be happy to recommend Natalie!
She and Ms Thingie joined Dave and the cop in Dave’s office, where Dave and Ms Thingie compiled an inventory. Vanessa looked at Dave’s precious human rights books lying all over the floor—she would have liked to pick them up for him but she wasn’t allowed to because of fingerprints—and she wished that she could hug him in comfort. But imagine what Ms Thingie would make of that. Not to mention what Dave would make of it; she wasn’t exactly his favourite person right now.
She shrugged off a shroud of sadness and focused. Apparently, things weren’t as bad as they looked, so that was some consolation. Apart from the Seeing Eye Dog money, the ‘scrotes’ had only got away with sixty-one dollars in petty cash, Dave’s laptop, a World’s Greatest Dad mug and three tea cosies. Vanessa wondered aloud what they’d want with Dave’s mug and the tea cosies and the young cop said they probably pinched them as gifts for their parents.
‘Oh, how sweet,’ Vanessa said with mock emotion.
‘Now wouldn’t you be proud of a kid like that?’ Dave joked humourlessly.
Vanessa watched as he unlocked his filing cabinet.
‘I’m glad this is all under lock and key, but we might make some more back-up copies regardless.’ He flipped through the Vanessa Rooney vs Charlotte Lancaster and Wax Publishing Pty Ltd file and suddenly stopped. Vanessa saw his brow furrow. ‘Ms Izetbegovic, where’s the USB with the second back-up copy of Vanessa’s novel?’
Vanessa felt a twinge of alarm.
Ms Thingie looked back at Dave with a ‘what are you talking about?’ expression.
‘Remember I asked you to make a second back-up of Vanessa’s novel?’
Suddenly she looked a bit shifty. ‘It’s not there? It must have been stolen too.’
‘But why would they steal a USB?’
‘Do I look psychic?’
Vanessa studied Ms Thingie’s flat impassive face. She was sure the woman was lying and she’d never actually made the copy. Why was Dave letting his PA take advantage of him? Well, because of Bosnia of course, but that was hardly his fault—it’s not like Dave had personally mobilised forces in Herzegovina. Ms Izetbegovic was frightening, there was no denying it, but Vanessa felt something had to be said.
‘Did you really copy it?’ she asked.
Ms Thingie shrugged defiantly. ‘I can’t remember.’
Dave snapped to attention. ‘Does that mean you didn’t?’
‘I personally heard Dave ask you to copy it,’ Vanessa persisted.
‘I asked you several times. Why didn’t you do it?’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Doing what, exactly?’ Vanessa demanded.
Ms Thingie pulled a face at the young cop as if to say, ‘She’s a loony.’
‘I’ll get back to the station and write this up,’ the young cop said, clearly reluctant to get involved in some kind of quasi-domestic.
‘Thank you, Constable,’ said Dave.
‘I’ll see you out,’ Ms Thingie offered with uncharacteristic courtesy.
As Dave’s PA made her escape with the young cop, Vanessa felt panic take hold. ‘We need that USB.’
‘Not technically,’ Dave reassured her. ‘Don’t forget, your book’s still stored in the Cloud—but I’ll make another USB copy myself right now.’
Phew, thought Vanessa. She followed him out to reception and once again marvelled at his height. There was something about a man who could touch the ceiling without even standing on tippytoes. She wasn’t sure what that something was, but she liked it.
Dave sat down at Ms Thingie’s desk as Ms Thingie closed the front door behind the cop. She turned and registered Dave’s presence with annoyance. ‘What are you doing at my desk?’
‘I’m going to make another USB copy from the Cloud.’
‘It’s not in the Cloud.’
‘What?!’
‘Pooff! It’s gone from the Cloud. I needed extra storage.’
#$@&%#?>*!
Vanessa freaked. Dear God, please let Ms Pain-in-the-Bum be joking. But, of course, she wasn’t joking—you needed a sense of humour for that.
‘So you deleted vital evidence?’ Dave yelled.
Ms Thingie winced. ‘You drag me down here in the dead of night and then you scream at me for being efficient?’
‘Efficient?!’ Vanessa cried. ‘What have you done?’
She felt like someone was wringing her insides dry. Thanks to Ms Thingie they’d just lost all the evidence that proved she’d written Lost and Found Heart and had submitted it to Wax before Charlotte wrote Love Transplant. Not to put too fine a point on it, she was rooted. Her mind raced with catastrophic thoughts. She’d have to withdraw from the case and sell the house to pay for Charlotte’s legal fees. She and the boys would end up begging on the streets with Daisy sitting on a threadbare blanket beside them like some kind of forlorn drawcard. But were dogs allowed in homeless shelters? They couldn’t leave Daisy alone on the street at night … but wait, Ms Thingie was talking to her.
‘You should think of this as a blessing.’
‘A blessing?’
‘It’s time somebody told you the truth,’ Ms Thingie continued, and her face took on an unfamiliar expression that Vanessa could almost have sworn was sympathy. ‘Nobody else is going to tell you, but you’re making a fool of yourself. Your story is rubbish. You can’t write. You need to stick with dental nursing.’
Vanessa felt like she’d just been kicked in the teeth by Ms Thingie’s pointy ankle boots.
‘Ms Izetbegovic!’ Dave barked. ‘That’s enough! You owe Vanessa an apology.’
‘All right, I’m sorry,’ she said tartly. ‘I’m sorry that you’re a laughing-stock.’
And with that she took her handbag and swept out of the office, leaving Vanessa feeling like a little girl who’d just been bullied at a birthday party. Was Ms Thingie right about Lost and Found Heart? Was she a laughing-stock?
‘That’s bullshit,’ Dave said. Vanessa could tell that he was mortified, but bloody hell, he ought to be. ‘Since when is she a literary critic? Would one of the genre’s most successful authors really copy your work if it was crap?’
Vanessa felt slightly cheered, but the point was moot seeing as all her evidence had gone up in smoke.
‘And don’t forget, this isn’t a total disaster. You’ve still got a USB copy at home, remember?’
Actually, Vanessa had forgotten. She sagged with relief.
Vanessa’s whole body went rigid with horror. ‘What did you say?’
Lachie was standing before her and Dave, wearing his Antman pyjamas and an expression that read, ‘Oh, shit.’
‘Just tell us exactly what happened, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘You’re not in trouble.’
Vanessa threw Dave a dread-filled look as Lachie fidgeted and stared at the floor.
‘The Xbox hard drive wouldn’t save my progress on CoD,’ he mumbled, ‘so I needed a USB. And by the time I realised it had your story on it, the Xbox had already reformatted it and the story was gone.’
Vanessa seriously contemplated fainting, and poor Dave looked like someone had just sucked all his blood out with a vacuum cleaner.
‘Mate, please say that didn’t happen,’ he said.
Lachie burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry.’
On autopilot, Vanessa reached out and patted his shoulder. ‘It’s okay, sweetheart.’
But it wasn’t. Nothing was okay right now—not this, not her mum’s lies about her dad, and especially not Jackson forcing himself on poor Nickie because Vanessa had set such an appalling example. But at least that crisis was resolvable—or so she fervently hoped. After Dave had made his shell-shocked retreat, she headed into Jackson’s room. Jackson was pretending to read Libby Gleeson’s Refuge, a novel about a brother and sister’s plan to shelter an illegal East Timorese immigrant, but Vanessa could see Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man Volume 1 poking out from under his Magpies doona.
She sat down on the edge of his bed and felt guilt gnaw at her like fangs. ‘Jackson, sweetheart, I owe you an apology.’
He looked up at her in surprise. ‘Huh?’
‘I’m sorry I let you see Marcus grabbing me and kissing me without my permission. It was selfish and thoughtless—I couldn’t expect you to understand the context. It’s my fault that you didn’t know how to behave with Nickie, not yours.’
Her eyes welled. She tried to blink back the tears, but dismay was already clouding Jackson’s face. He patted her arm awkwardly.
‘It’s okay, Mum. Don’t get upset. It wasn’t because of you and Marcus. I thought of it all by myself.’
Vanessa would have loved to believe him, but she knew he was trying to console her because, just like her, he couldn’t bear to see his mum in distress. ‘It’s kind of you to say that—’
But now Jackson was looking over her shoulder. ‘Hey, Nan.’
Vanessa turned to see Joy in the doorway. In the past few days her mum’s effervescence seemed to have ebbed away, and Vanessa felt another tug at her heart. For a moment it seemed that Joy was going to join them, but then she just said, ‘Well, goodnight,’ and disappeared down the hall. Vanessa suspected she should still be angry with her mum, but Joy was so much more fragile than she pretended that all Vanessa could feel was love. She adored her houseful of flawed humans—and Daisy, who’d yet to reveal any flaws.
She turned back to Jackson. ‘I’m not sure I believe it was your idea but, regardless, Marcus and I shouldn’t have been carrying on like that.’
‘I never noticed,’ Jackson lied.
‘Oh, sweetheart, give me a cuddle.’
Before he could object she pulled him into her arms, and time stood still as she breathed in his pubescent boy scent of hormones and acne and heartache. In that moment, Vanessa resigned herself to losing the house. It wouldn’t be so bad. It was only bricks and mortar after all, and she knew they wouldn’t really end up homeless. She and Joy could rent something cheap, and as long as they were all together, who cared about the rest? She’d done her best to fight the honourable fight and now she was going to show the boys how to lose honourably.