34

Next morning, there was still no email from Tina Galang. Brad hadn’t been through the phone book either. It was a busy day in the shop. With everyone demanding sweet-potato wedges, I didn’t get a chance to check the phone book myself.

Finally, at ten o’clock, the queue died down. I closed the shop and headed out the back into the house. My phone buzzed. Another message from Dean. Have you called a lawyer? Bugger off, Dean. Three missed calls from Leo. And a text from him: Whatever I said, I’m sorry. I just want to help. If you’re ever in trouble, please—call me.

There were too many people I didn’t want to talk to at the moment.

‘Brad?’ I sang out.

No answer.

‘You still up?’

I headed down the hallway to the kitchen.

‘There’s no wholemeal rice, Mum.’ Brad stood, looking forlorn, by the pantry.

‘Listen, have you taken a look at the phone book yet?’

‘I’ll do it later, I’m busy right now.’ He filled a saucepan with water.

‘With what?’

‘I’ve got to write a submission.’

‘Is this a uni thing?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Yes or no, Bradley.’

‘No. Look, if you have to know, it’s about fracking. I promised Zac I’d do it.’

‘Zac?’

‘You know, Jessie’s dad. He’s campaigning over there in Perth. He’s pretty much all the energy behind No Fracking Way.’

‘Jessie’s dad?’ As in Claire?

‘Yeah, Zac’s a bloke with principles.’ He put the saucepan on the stove.

‘Surely a bloke with any principles would be here helping Claire raise their child.’

‘Give him a break. He would, but Claire…well, she can’t help it if she doesn’t love him. She got involved with him when she was on the rebound.’

Claire’s never really mentioned Jessie’s father to me. I understood the concept of rebound-based decisions, though. Can be surprisingly significant, decisions made in that state. My life might have taken a very different direction if I’d headed off with Leo, as we’d planned. If I hadn’t listened to Ernie. If I hadn’t met Piero that night. If, if, if.

Yeah, I’d be saddled with a bloody crook with several Congolese wives, that’s what would have happened.

More interestingly, I sometimes wonder what life might have been like if I’d done what Claire did, post-Leo, post-Piero’s burst of fertility. There’s any number of places I could have turned up with my own overnight bag and baby bump. I could have travelled around Australia, maybe searched for my dad.

But then I would have missed out on all the joys of Brad. I gave him a smile.

‘Don’t know what you’ve got to smile about, Mum. Now listen, I’ve got a proposal for you.’ He stretched his long limbs. ‘It’s high time you adopted Meatfree Mondays. I’ll help you organise that.’

‘Monday’s my day off, Brad. Shop’s closed.’

‘Bloody typical. Well, eventually you’ll run out of excuses to join the twenty-first century.’ He stamped off to his room.

I turned off the saucepan he’d obviously forgotten.

I flopped into a chair. You know, there are times when I wouldn’t mind all that much if the whole world decided to buzz off. They could nick right off with all their needs: their impossible investigations, unfathomable life crises, cries for me to run my shop the way they’d run it (that is, if they were at all interested in running a shop).

Sometimes I have this little dream where everyone’s forgotten I exist. I’m invisible and they’re just sorting out everything on their own. I’m relaxed in a comfy chair, sipping a cup of tea, watching them get on with it. And I don’t even need any Panadol.

Later that evening, I got on with some top-quality mouldering into the ground. I slipped into my flannelette PJs and went to bed early with a spot of Phryne Fisher. But at 3am I’d finished Death at Victoria Dock and still wasn’t sleepy.

I put down the book. Tried not to think about Leo. I hadn’t phoned him back, of course. In fact, maybe tomorrow I’d find a moment to go scrape off that headstone. Nothing can take your memory away.

I groaned. I wished there was something that would take the bloody memory away. Not every single memory of Leo Stone; I wasn’t after an early-onset dementia kind of cleansing.

If only I could wipe out that memory, though: the night of Leo and Irene’s engagement do. It had all started out so well. I’d whizzed around all those happy people with my big platters of flash finger food. My first ever catering event. Piero had left me to it—he was off in WA at the time, on one of his so-called nature photography jaunts. Ha—I found out too late what that was all about.

I’ll admit I should probably never have had that glass of wine. But it wasn’t my fault Leo asked me to dance. Or that the DJ put on ‘Heaven’ by Bryan Adams. Our damn song. Leo strode over, took the platter out of my hands and set it down on the table. He took my hand and led me out onto the floor.

The lights went down low.

‘A dance with the world’s most beautiful woman.’ Leo whispered into my ear.

‘Yes, Irene’s looking very lovely. And that colour suits her.’

‘Nope.’ He looked at me, serious-faced for once.

‘You don’t like Navajo white on her?’

‘It’s not Irene.’

‘Right. Anyway, I should go get onto those prawn cocktails. Don’t want them drying out.’

‘In a minute.’ He held me closer. Enfolded me against his entire body. ‘One last dance,’ he whispered. ‘And then I’ll have you out of my system. I will, honest.’

‘Actually, I reckon those prawns probably need me right now.’ My voice was muffled against his neck. My breasts pressed firmly against his chest. A chest that was warm, broad, muscled, under his white shirt, under that loosened tie. I’d never really had the chance to actually see those muscles. Muscles that would probably be perfect for chopping firewood, carrying the shopping, gripping a woman hard and tight on her bed. My nipples hardened.

Focus, Cass. Prawn cocktails.

There are some things a person can have difficulty moving on from, no matter how hard she tries to think about canapés. My hands moved down his back.

My focus slipped away, far away, from the prawn cocktails. Leo’s cheek against mine, his lips on my hair, my ear, my neck. I caught my breath.

The lights suddenly went back up, white-bright. Tina Turner came on.

‘Right. Must get back to it,’ I said, somewhat breathless.

I wrenched myself away and marched over to my platter. I could feel Irene’s Navajo-white folded-arms glare behind me.

Really, it was that damn dance that was the beginning of it all. And before you start up, don’t go asking why he wanted to dance with me at his own engagement do. I mean, OK, I was a woman he had once been sort-of involved with. And, yes, OK, a woman who he’d repeatedly asked, since his return from Rockhampton, Cass, leave Piero and come travel the world with me?

To which I’d said no. Well, of course I did. I wasn’t going to desert my baby—Dean was only six months old. And I could hardly take him off around the world, a million miles from his father.

Irene looked a bit hurt, as you might imagine. And not that I saw her after the do, but Ernie told me later that Irene wasn’t real flaming pleased when Glenda told her that after that song she’d discovered Leo in a sort-of compromised vicinity. In the kitchen.

Well, prawn cocktails can be quite fiddly. It’s all about the sauce, of course. And for the rookie caterer, it’s important to snap up assistance if it’s offered.

I thumped my pillow, trying to get comfortable.

Of course, what made the whole thing worse, much worse, was that I actually did some serious thinking after I got home that night. I ended up packing a suitcase. Slipped out with the case and Dean, early the next morning, and drove to Leo’s place. Got out of my car and crunched my way up his gravel drive. I had a plan. A good plan, not a perfect one, after all, nothing in life is perfect, but it was workable.

I’d leave Piero. Me and Leo, we’d live together, with Dean. Might as well, since it seemed Leo and I had Buckley’s of moving on from each other. We’d stay in Rusty Bore, of course, so Dean could see his father.

Except Leo wasn’t there. He’d buggered off already. Moved on very fast to life as a gun dealer, as it turned out.

Well, Sophia could go on all she liked about my last chance at love. In my autumn—ha! If I wanted to make it into my winter, it was probably best if I didn’t hook up with any arms smugglers. Thinking about Leo made me ache. Move on, Cass, move on.

I sensed some three-in-the-morning sorry-for-myself coming on. We should all be thankful for three in the morning: the perfect time to realise you’ve made a few wrong turns in your life.

A tear slipped out. Harden up, I told myself. You’re just suffering from a straightforward case of sexual anorexia. I wiped my eyes and lay there listening to the wind: its fractious mewing sounds. Huh, I refused to lie awake all night feeling terrible. I bet Leo wasn’t feeling terrible. He’d be too busy arranging a new brand of gun to smuggle, or having breathless Skype-sex with one of those Congolese wives. Or breathless actual sex with Serena. Actually, I didn’t want to think about what Leo was up to.

Such is the mature woman’s lot, as my Nanna was fond of saying. She’d never have lain here blubbing over some stupid bloke. No, she’d have got up, bustled into the kitchen and found something to pound: a big heap of meat, most probably. Yeah, Nanna would have told Brad precisely where he could go with his Meatless Mondays.

Eventually the wind eased off; it seemed like it had run out of things to blow. Silence, finally. I wrestled a little longer with Leo-related memories and then, eventually, I fell asleep.