The signature practice was paying dividends. Jeanie had graduated to several signatures. Beth Rhodes. Elizabeth Rhodes and ME Rhodes. The ‘M’ was the last thing to settle, mainly because it had to match Mindi’s signature. But it was coming and even now, most of the time, it looked good whichever way she signed her name. Her name. It still stuck in her craw.
Becoming familiar with the makeup came easier. She experimented with the colours in the makeup case, and true to Mindi’s judgment, the colours did suit Jeanie’s skin tones. The photograph showed Mindi wearing quite a lot of mascara and blue eye shadow. Good. Jeanette always used brown to make her eyes more deep-set. But the blue picked up the colour of her eyes just like it did Mindi’s. Especially when framed with the mascara.
Full makeup and the wig were quite a combination. Sophisticated even. Not really Mindi, certainly not Jeanie, but not Jeanette either. The underlying persistent knot in the pit of Jeanie’s stomach was ever so slightly allayed. She smiled into the mirror with a closed-mouth grin. Just that bit more like Mindi’s photo. Enough to keep her going.
Jeanie asked at the second hand shop where she could find a bigger shop with a wider selection. She needed some clothes not available in this one. The elderly woman directed her to a town about fifteen kilometres north, where they had another branch of the same charity shop. Jeanie walked across to the bus stop and found the schedule. If she cleaned the ablution block quickly the next day, she could make the trip.
The shop turned out to be quite a grand affaire, with rows of garments in a large concrete-floored industrial building. She had a good choice of corporate clothing, some of which were in her size. She settled on a beige lightweight trouser suit with a brown and blue top. The beige because she had first found a pair of court shoes that would do, moderately high heels and very corporate, in shades of brown. And a trouser suit primarily because Jeanette wasn’t allowed to wear trousers. Ever. And ‘Beth’ needed to be as unlike Jeanette as possible. She brought her selection to the desk and was paying the grand total of thirty dollars when the assistant asked if she wanted a handbag to match.
‘Thank you, I’d completely forgotten,’ Jeanie said fervently. ‘A handbag and a briefcase. Where should I look?’ Again, she had choice and she bought a plain brown handbag with a shoulder strap and a light nylon case that probably was designed to carry a laptop computer. Black, but all of them were. A good prop.
While she was in this larger town, she exchanged five hundred dollars into New Zealand money. That gave her over a thousand. Enough to get her started. The thought made her stomach clench. Was this really happening? Would she dare carry out this new Plan?
She would have to eventually exchange the rest of the Australian money for New Zealand cash once over there. Or Beth Rhodes could start a bank account with some of the Australian money. Another problem. How to get the money over there? Physically?
‘I’m about to go on holiday,’ she explained to the woman at the Bureau de Change. ‘How do I carry this cash safely?’
‘I usually carry most of it in one of those little pouches which hang down inside my clothes.’
‘Where do I buy one of those?’
‘Airports always have a good selection. But I think the chemist on the corner has some too.’
Sure enough, she had a choice, so she bought one which fastened at the waist and hung down over the abdomen and two more that were held onto the leg below the knee with a Velcro strap. Perfect for under her corporate trousers.
The next bus back was over an hour away and the day was hot. It occurred to her she had not been overly vigilant this trip. Just that scrap more relaxed. Hopefully her reaction to the Charlotte Latter episode was finally fading.
Jeanie sank onto the bench out of the sun and looked through her purchases. Satisfying. She leaned back against the seat, staring at the people walking along the street. Noticing what they were wearing – the shorts and jeans and casual tops, everything for comfort. An idea occurred to her. She checked her watch. Enough time for sure.
Five minutes later she was back in the second hand shop, this time looking through the jeans section. Jeans. She, actually both Jeanie after she married then Jeanette, hadn’t been allowed to wear jeans. Whereas when she was in her teens and as a student at university, Jeanie had thought of jeans as her trademark. Jeans! She tried on half a dozen pairs and selected two. Traditional navy coloured jeans made of heavy denim and a summer-weight pair in pale blue, both well worn and looking like she had owned them forever. At the last moment, she bought a pair of shorts made of denim too. She climbed into the air-conditioned bus for the ride back to her own little seaside town with a light heart. For the first time in over twenty-five years, she had bought some clothes for herself. For Jeanie.
That evening, Jeanie finished the final plucking of her eyebrows. She moved under the strong reading light at the other end of the caravan. Yes. The effect was right. Quite pleasing, all in all and pretty close to Mindi’s. A bit darker, but not noticeable in the photo. She assembled the rest of her kit. Not her kit, Beth’s kit. Wig and makeup case. Corporate trouser suit. Money carrying pouches. Court shoes. Handbag and separate computer case. Sunglasses. She started a list. ‘New sunglasses’. Raincoat? According to Mindi, New Zealand was supposed to have lots of rain. She added ‘raincoat’ to the list. And lastly, ‘tickets’.
She realized when she tried on the shoes she really needed to practice wearing them. A corporate executive would stride forth in shoes like this, not mince along like she was doing. She hadn’t worn shoes with heels this high since she was Jeanette. Beth would certainly be able to stride with self confidence in her trouser suit and courts. She needed to practice walking. Late at night on the asphalt drive. No good walking in heeled woman’s shoes on the dusty paths around the campground.
She had caught Beau one day walking in her high heels. He would have been about three then. Such a funny little chap, happy and verbal. She only saw good things ahead of him. He tripped, that day in those silly shoes, and fell flat on his face. Jeanie had him in her arms in a moment, but a bright blue bruise darkened his forehead by the evening. Pete had a fit and had accused her of child abuse. Her! The next day, she sported a similarly coloured bruise on her left cheek. That was no problem with pancake makeup, but the swollen eye was not able to be camouflaged. Beau missed his nursery school for four days that week. By the time he returned, his bruise had faded and his mother was once more presentable.
She put the new jeans and shorts on the bed at the other end of the caravan with not a small degree of pleasure. Added the tops she had been wearing with her hippy skirts. They were fine with jeans, as she had thought. She collected her trainers from the bottom of the little closet. Mustn’t forget them. She also knew once she no longer had to be the hippy Rebecca, she would never wear the shapeless dresses again. They went in a separate pile. She realized she needed a suitcase. She added ‘suitcase – a good one’ onto a new list, a case big enough to fold her backpack in, an old friend.
Things were coming together. It wouldn’t and shouldn’t be long before she was ready. In a way, she was glad Mr Jensen and Mindi were now gone. She would not have wanted to say goodbye to them, or worse, not say goodbye to them. Which brought her to do some thinking about her exit.
Jeanie was required to give the hospice two weeks notice. Yet she really did not want people to know in advance she was going. She sighed. She would have to invent a sick relative. A son? No, better a daughter. Maybe a daughter whose pregnancy was going wrong? Needed her mother. Toxemia. Bedridden. A young child needing her grandmother? Jeanie would have loved to become a grandmother. She shut the thought of Beau from her mind. Concentrate. Use those famous powers of concentration. Yes, a daughter. Nicola? A bit old fashioned? No, lots of traditional names are held by young women. Look at the plethora of Sarahs, Ruths and Annes. Nicola White. No, her daughter would be married most likely, and she had only picked White for Rebecca’s last name because it was another colour . She had been born Barbara Jean Browne. Nicola … her mind was a blank. Nicola … she decided to reach into her library bag and the first author she came to would give Nicola a last name. Michael Ridpath, so Nicola Ridpath. Sounded fine. Nicola’s firstborn could be … she picked another book up. David Baldacci. Little David Ridpath. Lucky the books weren’t swapped around. Baldacci was a bit of a mouthful.
The local second-hand shop provided an old and battered but good quality suitcase, imminently suitable for a much travelled Beth Rhodes. She also bought an off-white raincoat there. Slightly big, but attractive. Sunglasses she found at the local chemist’s. The next step was the biggie. So far, she had only spent a pittance compared to what she would need to spend on the tickets. She walked past the travel agents. Two of them in there, both busy. Her heartbeat went up.
She walked to the beach and back, thinking calming thoughts. Still busy. One agent was with a customer, one on the telephone. She hesitated but caught the telephone user’s eye. That was enough. She felt committed and pushed open the door to air-conditioned comfort. She asked about a late-booking to New Zealand. She knew she couldn’t expect the best prices, but she could pay cash. Jeanie left the cool little office with her tickets arranged, to be picked up the next day. Painless. And her heart beat was normalizing.
That left the difficult business of telling the hospice.
‘I am dreadfully sorry, but there’s little I can do about it,’ she said to the nurse in charge, her heart beat way up once more. She hated hated, hated having to lie. ‘I have already booked my tickets for the first available flight out to Perth. Otherwise I would be gone already.’
‘But you don’t have to quit, Rebecca,’ the nurse said. ‘We’ll gladly hold your job open. In fact, I was going to recommend we offer you a fulltime position.’
‘Thank you. Yes, thank you,’ Jeanie said, wishing this conversation over, but flattered in spite of herself. ‘To be fair, I can’t tell when I’ll be back. Nicola needs me, as does my little grandson David. Then there’s the matter of the new baby.’
‘You’re leaving your husband here or is he going over?’ Curse curiosity.
‘Not a factor,’ she answered honestly. ‘We haven’t been living together for some months. To be truthful, this may give me another start in life.’
The nurse looked at her. ‘To be truthful back, I think you should go for a receptionist’s job or something that will use your abilities better once you’re looking for a new job, Rebecca. Maybe train in something?’
‘Thank you for the compliment,’ Jeanie said, and she found she meant it. The nurse was a good woman. ‘I promise I will think about it when I get settled.’ And she would. God, how she preferred to tell the truth.
Informing Ray she was leaving was easier. She paid for the week, and he just thanked her for her excellent work at the ablution block. Simple. Jeanie walked slowly back to the caravan. She had till ten tomorrow to get to the bus station. All she had to do was pack, carrying her Beth clothes and wig in a bag. And pick up her tickets.
Jeanie stood in her little caravan in a peculiar state of mind. The lack of sensation was virtually gone, the wariness much decreased and there were hints the old Jeanie was emerging. But this recovery was curiously incomplete. She folded back the table to get at the drawers. She removed her small collection of plain white underwear from the top drawer to the open suitcase. Her nightclothes followed, packed around the sides of the makeup case. Socks? The ones she wore as the tramper? And the boots themselves? Would she use them in New Zealand? More importantly, would Beth use them in New Zealand? That stopped her. How long would she have to use a name not her own?
She started to throw everything into the bag willy-nilly, leaving any decisions about inclusion or not dependent upon whether it became overly full. In no time, she was packed. There was no room for the boots. It was the boots or the old backpack. She looked around her little caravan, her sanctuary. A little pile of clothes, just what she would be wearing the next day and the pile of skirts and long dresses worn by Rebecca and the boots of the tramper. Those she had no compunction about ditching.
“Rebecca White” came to this town as a latter day hippy and she would leave as the same. “Beth Rhodes” would come into being in the woman’s loo at the Gold Coast airport. Suddenly, standing in the empty caravan with her packed suitcase, Jeanie developed a fit of the collywobbles. Could she pull it off? She had to do one more practice. Just to be doubly sure.
Makeup, wig. Trouser suit, shoes, handbag, computer case filled with three books for the trip, and her raincoat over her shoulders. She twirled in front of the mirror and doubts continued to plague her. She didn’t look like Mindi. No way. She pulled the fringe even lower over her eyebrows. They looked fine, she told herself. Very like Mindi’s, so show them. Quite identifying, and maybe took some attention away from the different shape of their eyes. She grinned, remembering to smile with her eyes and the Mindi photo-look came back a bit. It would have to do. She quelled the anxiety by repeating to herself she could do it. Over and over like a mantra. She fervently wished the numbness back, but the anxiety was firmly established. What if they had some way of knowing Mindi had died? What if she didn’t look enough like the photo? What if…. She was trembling from the tips of her fingers through her entire being. Enough. She sank back on the couch and brought to mind her special scene – the horses in the paddock, the sunshine warming her back, the smells and little sounds. It settled her, as always.
She filled the three travel money pouches with as much cash as she could, but her rolls of bills wouldn’t all fit without showing as a bulge under her clothes. Up went her anxiety levels again. So problem-solve, she told herself firmly. She put the New Zealand money into her purse in the zippered compartment. That would have to do. Next, she emptied the entire lot of her packing from the suitcase and pulled at the lining until a bit came away. She eased the hole wider until she could get her hand inside.
She froze. Was that a noise outside? Thoughts of being robbed welled up. She reminded herself to start breathing again, and the anxiety ebbed. She bent to her task once more, fanning out the bills from the remaining rolls of cash so they were distributed flatly over the bottom of the case. Fingers crossed, the case was just one of hundreds that were fed into the system. And got through customs. This time she packed carefully and there was room for the boots. Who knows? Maybe she’d find “her” paddock of horses somewhere in New Zealand where she could wear them. She went to bed with more excitement in her heart than apprehension.
Jeanie was ready well before time after waking early. She slowly dressed in her hippy gear with the corporate Beth clothes in the green supermarket bag. She put on the makeup but the wig joined the clothes ready to put on at the airport. She locked the caravan and slowly walked away without a backward glance. It had served its purpose. She dragged the suitcase on its little wheels down the path, everything else in the green bag. Rebecca White, ever the hippy.
It was early and the day was grey with just three people on the bus to the coach station. When she was settled on the coach, she permitted herself to relax a bit more, by removing her dark glasses and getting out her novel for the trip to the airport.
In the airport loo, Rebecca ceased to be and Beth Rhodes was born. Jeanie felt taller and more confident as Beth. She checked her image one last time in the broad mirror over the sinks. Blonde hair, fashionably curly, lush fringe just skimming those neat eyebrows. Blue eye shadow emphasizing even bluer eyes framed with mascaraed eyelashes. A bit of brown shading to narrow her nose and lipstick thinning her lips fractionally. She grinned without opening her mouth. Quite Mindi after all. Jeanie shoved the green bag containing hippy-dress and flip-flops into the rubbish. She picked up her handbag and put it over one shoulder and took up the computer bag in one hand, gripping the suitcase handle with the other. One last glimpse of this confident and attractive businesswoman. Yes. She’d do. As long as no one could hear her heart beat.
Jeanie headed for the check-in queue with long confident strides, the heels of her shoes sounding sharply against the tiled floor. She held her head high and focused on her destination, gripping the bags tightly. Just a small regret she hadn’t kept some of Jeanette’s Valium when she left all those months ago.
By the time she made her way to the head of the queue, her knees were knocking. She had the required bits in her hands but their trembling was so obvious she knew anyone looking would realize she was horribly nervous. She placed the passport heavily onto the counter and shoved both it and the ticket towards the airline staff member and removed her hands out of sight fast. The woman flicked open the passport and only glanced briefly to check the photo was of the same person.
‘Smithson? To Auckland?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Are you alright?’ the woman asked, frowning, but a smile in place.
Jeanie swallowed. ‘A little frightened of flying,’ she said, the thought coming to her as she spoke. ‘Silly I know.’
‘You’re in good company,’ the woman said. ‘You won’t be the only one. Just try to relax. It’s safer than crossing a busy road.’
Jeanie smiled at her. The closed-mouth smile of the passport photo. ‘I’ll try.’
Within two minutes, she had the boarding pass, her bags were checked and she was proceeding towards security and passport control. She didn’t have an electronic passport, thank goodness, but a mere human to check her through. She put on the close-mouthed smile for that official as well. Again, he glanced quickly at the passport, then up to her face. Jeanie maintained the closed-mouth smile until he glanced down, her heart beat accelerating. But he just smiled back and handed her the passport. He was already turning towards the next person as she gathered it up before walking towards her gate. Her heart was hammering and she badly wanted to use the loo even though she knew it was only nerves.
Jeanie had known to avoid coffee that day. Anxiety is always worse with caffeine, but she longed for a cup. She used the loo, a clean and fragrant place the cleaner in her noted, found a café and ordered a decaf. The place was buzzing. Her scalp itched and she patted the wig lightly. How could people wear these things? She sipped the coffee and surreptitiously glanced around. No one was noticing her. She could relax. Try anyway. The first hurdles were over. Just one to go. The big one, when entering New Zealand.
Jeanie’s last minute booking had her in the middle section of the plane. She found her seat and buckled up as requested, watching the other passengers coming in, finding their seats and getting settled. She was perhaps more formally dressed than most and she was surprised how many women were in casual shorts. An attendant was making her way back through the people clogging the aisles. She stopped at Jeanie’s row and leaned over another passenger to speak to her. Jeanie’s adrenalin shot upwards again. What now?
‘Ms Smithson?’
‘Yes,’ Jeanie croaked out. Hard to speak when your heart is thumping and your desert-dry tongue is glued to the top of your mouth.
‘I understand you’re a little nervous of flying. We don’t have a full flight today so I’ll just keep an eye out for an aisle seat for you. That would allow you better access to wander around, wouldn’t it? Not so confining.’
Relief flooded through her. Her comment to the check-in woman. Amazing. ‘Yes, I’d appreciate it.’
‘Here,’ said the man on the aisle. ‘I’ll trade. Doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to snooze my way across the Tasman.’
Shortly thereafter, she was seated on the aisle. The stewardess was smiling and the man was ensconced in Jeanie’s seat. Wonderful. She stretched out her legs and rolled her shoulders. Playing a role was not easy, in spite of her many years of practice. She opened the David Baldacci and let herself get immersed in fantasy.
The customs officer in New Zealand was chatty. ‘Coming home, I see,’ he said. ‘How long are you staying?’ His eyes were fixed on her face. Her heart was thrashing about inside her chest and the beige suit was confining and hot, to say nothing about the wig.
‘Back to stay,’ Jeanie responded.
‘You been away long?’
‘Years. But you can have Australia.’
He looked intently at Mindi’s photo. Jeanie put on her closed-mouth smile. Everything was for this moment. The wig, the makeup, the smile. Everything. The moment lasted forever.
‘Welcome home,’ he said as he snapped the passport shut and handed it back to her. She remembered not to sigh in relief. Just picked it up and headed towards the agriculture control section. Hey, she was here! She had made it! In New Zealand! Thank you, Mindi. Thank you, thank you, thank you.