Bonnie thought she was late. She’d had trouble parking and had run from the car park, up the escalators to the arrivals area, and reached the gate uncomfortably hot and breathless, to find that the flight was fifteen minutes late and was just landing. She breathed a huge sigh of relief and flopped down in a seat from where she would be able to see the aircraft taxiing towards the terminal. Slipping her fingers inside the polo neck of her black sweater she pulled the wool away from her skin. The airport, like most public buildings, was not designed with the comfort of constantly overheated middle-aged women in mind. Not only was she hot but her neck itched with the tiny hairs that had escaped the hairdresser’s neck brush.
She fidgeted slightly and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window glass. She thought she might look okay but who could tell when the image was so elusive, disappearing instantly as a blast of light emerged from behind some clouds and hit the window? Bonnie took a Wet One from the packet inside her bag and, holding out the polo neck, wiped the cloth around her neck and inspected the tiny hairs attached to it. Then, ignoring the stony gaze of a man sitting nearby, she tossed it in the bin. Maybe she looked a complete freak and that was why he was staring. She ran her hand over the remains of her hair and was struck by the thought that she might look like a prison escapee.
Two hours earlier, enveloped in a voluminous black nylon cape, Bonnie had sat staring in the mirror watching as the final strands of her dyed mahogany brown hair fluttered to her shoulders and then to the floor.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ Vincent, the stylist, had said, seeing the terror on her face. ‘Stay calm. Wait till it’s dry.’
‘It is a bit, a bit . . . short,’ Bonnie managed.
‘Yes, and it’s very cool, or it will be when I’ve finished. This was a good decision, very much of the moment.’
Bonnie stared on, wondering if she herself was sufficiently of the moment to be able to carry it off.
Vincent spread a little mousse across his palms, worked it lightly into her hair and picked up the dryer. Switching it to the strongest blast of warm air, he attacked her scalp with his fingers.
‘Scroggling,’ he said loudly over the noise of the dryer, smiling at her in the mirror. ‘That’s what I call it. Some people call it finger drying. I think scroggling is a much nicer word, don’t you?’
Bonnie nodded compliantly, unwilling to argue with him at such a crucial stage in the process of her dramatic transformation. Her spirits lifted a little as the short, flat, wet hair began to lift from her head.
‘You’ve got great hair for this sort of style,’ Vincent said. ‘And your head’s a good shape. You’ll love it because it’s so easy.’
Bonnie had lived with her greying parting for several weeks, torn between getting it redone and trying to let the grey grow through. Since she’d been back in Australia she’d been increasingly uncomfortable with the way she looked: hair, clothes, make-up, everything. The things that had worked in Switzerland seemed out of place here, unsuited to the life she was living. She needed a more casual style. And the hair, well, it just didn’t seem to work anymore. That morning, knowing she had to meet Will’s flight at twelve-thirty, she had called in desperation for an appointment and raced in hoping for a liveable-with solution to growing out the colour.
‘There is only one solution, really,’ Vincent had said. ‘We just cut it, like, really short.’ He picked up a strand of hair and slid his fingers down the shaft, stopping at the point where the grey began. ‘Like to here.’
Bonnie gulped. ‘That’s awfully short.’
He shrugged. ‘That’s your only option – that or waiting until the regrowth is longer.’ Bonnie’s stomach lurched. ‘A lot of women are having it really short these days,’ Vincent said. ‘I can show you pictures.’ He turned away and brought out a hair magazine called Short Cuts. ‘Look,’ he said, flicking through the pages, ‘cut well it can look great. See, here’s Emma Thompson. Hers is shorter than yours will be, and she looks great, and see – it says here that Emma loves her new style, feels it’s really liberating. Yours won’t be anywhere near as short as that. Hers looks like a number two, and yours is thick so it’ll have more volume.’
Bonnie took a deep breath, closed her eyes, exhaled and opened them again. ‘Okay,’ she said, sounding far more decisive than she felt. ‘Let’s do it.’
‘I think you look fabulous,’ Vincent had said forty-five minutes later as he removed the cape and brushed the hair from her neck. ‘I give you forty-eight hours by which time you’ll love it too,’ and he put his hands reassuringly on her shoulders. ‘If not, come back.’
It was, Bonnie thought, a rather pointless offer – after all, the hair was so short there was nothing Vincent could do about it now except sell her a wig, and Emma Thompson would have a lot to answer for. But as she stood up brushing down her sweater and straightening the waistband of her jeans, she caught a glimpse of herself from another angle, and thought that maybe, just maybe, she might look all right. Jeans, sweater, very short silver hair – it was so unlike her, but perhaps that was just what she needed.
The first of the passengers began to straggle out into the lounge and as Bonnie stood up she caught sight of him almost immediately. His height helped, and his relaxed, confident manner always seemed to make him stand out from a crowd. Will had a commanding presence just like his elder brother, but in Jeff it had seemed perfectly natural, because he had the whole successful businessman look: greying hair, three-piece suits, confident gestures, authority oozing from every pore. Will, on the other hand, looked younger than his forty-three years, and his light brown hair, almost collar length, fell across his forehead. He was wearing jeans, a black t-shirt and a leather jacket, and looked more like a film director than a stockbroker.
He saw Bonnie immediately and headed towards her, a big grin on his face. It was the first time she’d seen him since Zurich, when he had stayed on after the funeral to help her sort out Jeff’s affairs. Bonnie felt the prick of grief-induced tears as Will put down his laptop bag and hugged her. To strangers the brothers had not looked a lot alike, but to anyone who knew them well the resemblance was strong, and more than skin deep. It hit her like a bolt of heat.
‘You look fabulous, Bon,’ he said, hugging her and then holding her at arm’s length to look at her. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you. So cool! I love the hair!’
She smiled, relaxing quite suddenly. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really, the hair, the clothes – the whole lot. You look younger, really cool and . . . you look like you’re coping.’
Bonnie said, ‘I’m coping. It’s hard going but yes I’m coping. And you look great, Will, I’m so glad to see you.’ She hugged him again. ‘How long are you here for?’
‘Just the two nights. I’ve got meetings all day tomorrow and then I’m off to Tokyo, and back to Hong Kong.’
Bonnie slipped her arm through his as they walked towards the baggage carousel. ‘And how come you haven’t got some gorgeous female in tow?’
He grinned. ‘I have now,’ he said, squeezing her arm against his side. ‘My favourite sister-in-law.’
‘Your only sister-in-law.’
‘Don’t quibble. Anyway, the last gorgeous female suddenly realised that I hadn’t been lying when I’d warned her that I wasn’t interested in settling down. It took her three months.’
‘Smart woman.’ Bonnie smiled again. ‘Some of the others have taken longer to catch on.’
Will grabbed his suitcase from the carousel and swung it onto the floor. ‘Jeff was the steady one in the family,’ he said with a grin. ‘It was up to me to be different, create a counterpoint. Here we are, there’s just this one bag. Let’s go.’
‘How about I take you to lunch somewhere nice before we go home,’ Bonnie said. ‘I’ve got a friend staying with me and I want to talk to you about something before we go back to the house.’
They sat at the same table she had booked for the first lunch with Fran and Sylvia. She liked the fact that even when the place was busy it was reasonably quiet. No distracting music, almost never any small children, an environment where noisy conversations were rare and when they did occur the carpets and soft furnishings soaked up the edge of the noise. Beyond the windows the river, steely grey, was ruffled by the wind, the sky overcast and threatening rain.
‘So,’ Will began, after they had both ordered, ‘are you really coping okay?’
‘Yes,’ Bonnie said with a nod. ‘I think I am now. The first weeks were a nightmare, but recently things have improved dramatically. I still miss him so much, Will, but I am starting to get my life together again.’
Will tasted the wine and nodded to the waiter to pour it. ‘So what made the difference? Just time?’
‘Partly. But I met up with a couple of old friends, my best friends from school, actually. We hadn’t seen each other for nearly forty years, but it’s changed everything.’ She paused. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about.’
‘You want to trust me with your women friends?’
Bonnie laughed. ‘No way! Look, this is all very vague but both these women are really terrific at what they do and I was feeling useless, not good at anything. Then a couple of weeks ago I realised . . . well, what I’m good at is what they both lack, business sense. I can really see their potential and I’ve got this germ of an idea that I’m playing with. I need to talk it through. I think it could really take off but . . .’
‘But what?’ Will asked, unfolding his serviette as the waiter began to unfold Bonnie’s. She waved him away, taking it herself and spreading it across her lap.
‘Jeff was always telling me I should have a business of my own; I never did, of course.’
‘But you were invaluable in his.’
‘So he always said. I know I helped him, but it was Jeff who did it. I was just a sounding board.’
Will picked up his knife and fork and paused, looking up at her. ‘I think you’re underestimating yourself,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that’s how Jeff saw it, and it’s certainly not the way he talked about it. You’re a very smart woman with terrific business and financial sense. Because you didn’t take the final decisions doesn’t mean you couldn’t have done so. He always said that he would never have got his first two companies off the ground without you. In the end, when you wanted to wind things up you did take big decisions, decisions that would have had plenty of other people in a spin.’
‘You helped me.’
‘I was there. But you made the decisions on the shares, the property investments. You made sound decisions and you made them very quickly.’
‘Did I? It was such an awful time it’s all a bit of a blur.’ She looked down and took a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m thinking of starting a business now.’
‘With friends?’ he asked, a flicker of scepticism crossing his face. ‘Always risky.’
‘Maybe, but I think it’s all in the way it’s set up and that’s what I need to talk through with you. I want you to tell me what you think and whether it could work.’
It was a disappointment to Irene that Marjorie had turned out to be a snorer. She lay in the darkness listening to the aggressive rise and fall of the snores that turned the stillness into something resembling a motor vehicle workshop. Marjorie at night, Hamish by day – what an exhausting holiday this was turning out to be.
‘Shut up, Marjorie, you’re snoring, turn over,’ Irene hissed across the hotel bedroom, and Marjorie, with an affronted ‘Hhhrrrump’, turned on her side and promptly started snoring again, just as loudly but in a different tone. So much for all that rubbish about people only snoring when they lie on their backs, thought Irene, getting up and wandering to the window.
She drew back the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. The air was soft and still, filled with the scent of the pines and the hot residue of the day: sun lotion, unidentifiable but tempting foods, the briny smell of the sea and the dry and dusty heat itself. In front of her the sea stretched dark, fathomless, lit in the distance by the moon glinting off its surface. On the horizon the pinpoint lights of fishing boats barely moved on the still water.
Irene sat down on one of the banana lounges, musing whether it would be comfortable enough to sleep on. Unlikely, she thought, pondering the prospect of dragging her mattress out and putting it on the tiles. The idea appealed to her but she didn’t quite have the energy. She didn’t like this hotel as much as she’d liked the villa. There was something international and impersonal about it, but there was still a week of island travel ahead before they returned to the peace and comfort of the villa. Maybe when they got back there she would get a room to herself. There was plenty of space and she and Marjorie had only shared because that’s what they’d agreed back in Australia. Sometime during the course of the next week she would suggest it, but carefully – Marjorie could be touchy at times.
And Hamish, what was she to do about him? When Marjorie had first suggested that Hamish was flirting, Irene realised that she was right. Since then Hamish seemed to have shifted into top gear. Somehow he always managed to commandeer a seat beside her at meals or in the bus, and he was always in close proximity to take her arm as they picked their way over the rough unmade paths to the beach, or into the next ancient ruin or gallery. He had taken to putting his hand over hers on the table when he wanted her attention, and to calling her ‘my dear’ in an old worldly sort of way that was quite nice, but also disconcerting. It seemed like an attempt on his part to change the nature of a friendship that went back decades to when she’d met Dennis.
Hamish and Dennis had been at school and university together, and each had been best man at the other’s wedding. Hamish and Gilda, Dennis and Irene had often been a foursome, until Gilda left Hamish for another woman, something he’d found very hard to come to terms with. A few years later he’d married a rather mousy woman called Celia, whom neither Irene nor Dennis could stand, and so they’d seen less of each other.
After Dennis’s death, Irene had seen Hamish and Celia even more rarely and then, six years ago, when Celia died of some typically undefined, pale, wasting condition, Hamish had decided to take himself back to his Scottish roots for a few years. He had only returned to Australia in the last year, unable to tolerate the icy Highland winds and persistent rains that played havoc with his arthritis. Was it just the fact that they were on holiday, or was he seriously trying to change an old friendship into something else? She’d been alone for so long and liked it a lot – wouldn’t a man be an intrusion, an unnecessary complication? Having Bonnie fussing around her had been difficult enough to cope with, but to have a man who, knowing the nature of men, would probably want her to fuss around him was something she really didn’t need.
Some time after the loss of Dennis, Irene, then in her early sixties, had occasionally been on what could loosely be called dates, with men her own age. They had gone out for lunch or dinner, sometimes to the opera or a concert, and sometimes to formal functions that required a partner, but she had always ended up listening politely to tedious monologues that seemed to replace real conversation. Occasionally, she found herself sitting in a restaurant or café virtually comatose while a man droned on about the latest letter he’d written to the newspaper, or how he’d fix everything if he was in charge. So she started refusing the invitations without offering an excuse or reason, and the men accordingly drifted away, turning their attentions to less prickly women.
But Hamish was different. He certainly wasn’t boring; he had cultivated the art of listening as well as talking, which made him positively unusual. Irene would be happy to have him as a friend, a companion, she thought, but anything else? What else was there at their age? Love? Sex? Surely not! She’d almost forgotten how to do it and the prospect of relearning all that stuff didn’t seem very inviting – in fact, she thought it might be faintly ridiculous and embarrassing. She would have liked to talk to Bonnie about it but it would be difficult over the phone. On the other hand, of course, it wasn’t night time in Melbourne; perhaps she could just mention it in passing.
Irene crept back into the bedroom and retrieved the mobile phone Bonnie had bought for her the week before she left. ‘Much easier than messing about with hotel phones,’ she had said, keying in the house phone number and handing it to her. ‘All you have to do is press this button and you’ll dial straight through to here.’
Marjorie had stopped snoring, and was so quiet that Irene wondered briefly if she had actually stopped breathing. But as she made her way cautiously back to the sliding door there was another blast like a motorbike revving up, and Irene fled to the balcony, closing the door behind her.
Bonnie, to her surprise, had some difficulty getting tickets to the Wine Club dinner where Fran was to speak. She’d assumed it would be a small affair and that she could just call nearer the time and book two tickets, but Will’s visit knocked the subject out of her head and by the time he left, the dinner was just two days away.
‘Members and guests only, I’m afraid,’ the club secretary told her in a rather snotty voice. ‘This is our peak event, three clubs are combining for the dinner, and I’m afraid it’s not open to outsiders. We are mindful of security these days.’
Bonnie restrained herself from pointing out that she was a friend of the guest speaker and wasn’t planning a terrorist attack. She had been away for a long time but she knew Melbourne well enough to understand the snobbery of some of its subcultures. She was sitting at the kitchen benchtop tapping the end of her pen against her teeth, trying to remember who she knew who might be a member, when the phone rang. Bonnie was surprised to hear her mother’s voice and shocked to realise that it was over a week since they’d spoken.
‘Anyway, dear,’ Irene was saying as Bonnie tried to focus on the conversation, ‘it’s beautiful out here on the balcony and I daresay I shall survive the snoring but I really rang to talk to you about Hamish.’
‘Hamish? What’s he been up to?’ Bonnie asked distractedly. ‘I thought he was in Scotland.’
‘No, he came back to Melbourne a year or so ago. He’s with us on the trip. The thing is, he’s being rather strange.’
‘What sort of strange?’
‘Well . . . I don’t know, really,’ Irene said vaguely. ‘Oh, this must sound so silly, but he seems to be – Marjorie says he’s flirting with me.’
‘How nice,’ Bonnie said with a smile. ‘Make the most of it.’
There was a pause before Irene said, ‘It’s just that – Bonnie, what do you think he wants?’
Bonnie’s mind was a blank. Irene almost never asked her for advice and she certainly had nothing useful to say on this subject. ‘Probably he’s just enjoying your company,’ she said with a slight shrug. ‘You’re not worried about it, are you? I mean, he’s not making a nuisance of himself?’
‘Oh no, not at all, it’s just that . . .’
‘What?’
‘Oh dear, I don’t know, this is silly of me, sorry to bother you with it. How’s everything at home?’
‘Fine,’ Bonnie said, pleased to escape the topic of Hamish. ‘Lots happening – lots to tell you when you get back. Will was here for a couple of nights. He sent his love. By the way, Mum, do you know anyone who’s in any of the wine clubs?’
A couple of hours later, Bonnie had organised the tickets through an old colleague of her father’s who was more than delighted to book for them, and would keep a couple of places at his table. She wrote the cheque for three hundred dollars, tucked it into an envelope and sat drumming her fingers on the benchtop in annoyance. People were coughing up one hundred and fifty dollars a head for dinner and wine and Fran, the star attraction, wasn’t even being paid.
She sat for a while, making some notes about marketing Fran and her work, and it was almost an hour later when she got around to thinking about her brief conversation with Irene and wondered if she had been too distracted. The old anxiety returned with sudden force and she picked up the phone and dialled the mobile number, but she was greeted by her own voice on the message she had set up for Irene. Presumably Marjorie had stopped snoring and Irene had switched off the phone and gone back to bed. She’d call her in the morning. Meanwhile, she had quite a lot of work to do. It was years since she’d written a business plan, but talking to Will had helped. He was due back in Melbourne again in a couple of weeks and she had definite goals to meet before they discussed things again in greater detail.
Bonnie felt a surge of excitement at the prospect; an engine that had been idling within her had fired up again. The really hard part would be convincing the others. She would have to be very careful how she handled it. Will had been right, friendship and business could be a risky combination and the first risk lay in the way she put it to them. She would have to do a lot of work on that and make sure she got it absolutely right if she was not to risk losing the friendships that had become so vital to her.
Sandwiched between two club presidents on the top table, Fran stared enviously across to where Sylvia and Bonnie were deep in conversation with a small group at the far side of the room. This was the part of the evening she hated most. She could cope with interviews because they had an obvious direction and purpose, but making conversation with strangers over dinner was always a source of anxiety. Tonight the president on her right was a real estate agent who fancied himself as something of a gourmet cook and was keen to tell Fran about a recipe for a rabbit casserole he always used. The president on her left was a retired lawyer who had begun the evening by enquiring whether she had professional liability insurance. She hadn’t, and by the time he had finished describing the hideous case of a food writer in the US who had been sued by someone who had followed her advice and subsequently poisoned himself, Fran was not only bored but suffering terminal anxiety. She picked at the grilled barramundi, which was not as fresh as the menu claimed, and prayed for the evening to be over.
Speaking engagements were a pain but the paper liked her to do them and there were always spin-offs, small commercial writing jobs that helped to pay the bills, and those jobs generally paid better than the newspapers and magazines. When it came to speaking, Fran knew she could deliver something entertaining and interesting as the diners, with several glasses of wine already under their belts, tucked into their dessert and coffee. But tonight she was nervous, and it wasn’t just the insurance scare.
‘I’m sure you’ll be terrific,’ Sylvia had said earlier as they waited for Bonnie to get back from parking the car. ‘And you look wonderful.’
‘Thanks to you,’ Fran said. ‘The only other time in my life that I went somewhere feeling confident about my clothes was the day I got married.’
Sylvia brushed a speck of dust from the shoulder of the velvet jacket and gave her a quick up and down glance. ‘I admit it does look good,’ she grinned. ‘And I so enjoyed making it.’
Fran tucked her arm through Sylvia’s. ‘I’m feeling really nervous. Bonnie’s wearing her business hat tonight. She’s going to be sizing me up for marketability.’
‘Exactly right,’ Bonnie said, coming up behind them and taking them by surprise.‘ You’re a mere product to me now, Fran, but a very well-dressed one, I must say.’
As the main course was cleared away, the presidents exchanged nods and Fran watched as a rich chocolate mousse swirled into tall glasses was delivered to the tables. The introduction was tedious and as she eventually rose to her feet to a round of applause, she was sure she had completely forgotten what she was going to say.
‘Thank you so much for inviting me, I’m delighted to be here with you this evening,’ she said, adjusting the microphone, taking her time to allow herself to calm down. The sea of faces looked up at her expectantly, half-smiles of anticipation, a few stares from eyes already glazed by a surfeit of fine wine. ‘Tonight I want to talk to you about food and wine, not just the delights of both but what they mean – what we make them mean in our lives, our rituals, duties and celebrations. I want to talk about food and love and the messages we send each other as we prepare, present, eat and share food and pour the perfect wine to accompany it.’ She paused, knowing now that she was okay, she could pace herself, play the audience. There was an almost imperceptible ripple around the room as the audience settled back to be entertained.
Bonnie breathed a sigh of satisfaction; she had sat through enough after-dinner speakers to recognise the magical combination of well-prepared content and stylish presentation. Fran had invited them on a journey and now she was carrying them along, not just with ideas and information but with literary and historical anecdotes and quotations, finely tuned jokes and references to popular culture, all perfectly suited to the occasion. She seemed to be gaining confidence each minute and she looked every inch the professional.
Bonnie sipped her wine and looked from Fran across to where Sylvia was leaning forward in rapt attention. Her idea would work, she was sure of that, it would work for the three of them. All she had to do now was finish the business plan, run it past Will and then convince them. A couple more weeks and it would be ready to go.