The Mummy Bloggers

by Holly Wainwright

  ‘Is that right?’ Bobby raised his eyebrows, gave a little nod.

  He’s impressed, thought Elle.

  ‘I’ll have a vodka and soda,’ she said. Just one. ‘And we can work out some family business, hey?’

  Bobby had just reached the bar when the pub door opened and another young woman walked in. Her all-black outfit and the fringe halfway up her forehead couldn’t have shouted ‘out-of-towner’ any louder than a sign around her neck. She had a laptop case under her arm. As she looked around, Elle scooted off her stool and sped over to the bar. ‘Bobby. We’re leaving. I’ll buy you a drink in the top pub.’

  • • •

  ‘Great,’ Adrian said, head in his hands at the kitchen bench. ‘So now we’re paying off your brothers, as well as your dad.’

  ‘They’re pretty cheap, babe, to be honest. No one here’s getting rich.’

  ‘The idea, Elle, behind all of this shit is that we are getting rich, remember? Not spending all our money on your family dramas.’

  Elle looked up at her husband. How dare he talk to her like that? He was clearly on the edge of losing it. ‘Adrian! Are you okay?’

  ‘I am, babe. I’m just… worried. So what happened with the TV crew?’

  • • •

  Agility. That was one of the key skills you needed to survive in a disrupted universe. The rules for almost everything were being rewritten, so why not be one of the people rewriting them, rather than one of the people moaning about what they used to be?

  Elle was explaining this to Cate, who was about to head off in the Toyota back to Swan Hill to track down some smart clothes, and a hair and make-up person they could trust.

  ‘But the Sunday Evening crew will bring wardrobe with them,’ Cate protested. She looked a little green. The night before, Elle had texted her and ordered her back to the main pub to stay up drinking with Bette, the SE researcher, while Elle and Bobby’s ‘family catch-up’ at the top pub had gone longer than planned.

  Now it was the day before the interview and plans had changed.

  ‘I know they will, Cate, but I need someone before that. My brother used to date this make-up artist, says she’s a sweetheart. And can you get into Lowes while you’re there, please, and grab a couple of the nicest men’s shirts you can find? XLs, please.’

  ‘So I’m driving this make-up girl back. A stranger?’ Cate looked stricken at the thought of having to talk to someone she didn’t know.

  ‘You’ll survive, Cate. Put some music on.’

  ‘It’s just not… what I was expecting.’

  ‘Well, no, me neither,’ said Elle. ‘But that’s what we’ve got. So. Agility!’

  Elle had to head over to Pam’s house. This time, she would make it in the door. This time, she had a plan. Her armour was in place. She was ready.

  Seeing her father was still a shock. He wasn’t an old man—not much older than Adrian, really, but he could have been from a completely different generation. Partly that was the illness, of course, which had diminished him, stripping the flesh from his bones and trapping him in an armchair. His hair was mostly gone, his teeth were brown and uneven. His T-shirt hung off him. His skin was yellowing, papery where Elle kissed him on the head. ‘So, Dad, I’m here. What do you think?’

  ‘You look gorgeous, love,’ he said. He was smiling at her, something she didn’t remember much from childhood. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Elle sat on one of the mismatched armchairs across from his. The TV was on mute. As requested, the boys weren’t in the house. Pam was making tea in the kitchen. Elle’s father lit a cigarette.

  ‘Should you be doing that, Dad?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Bit late now to be honest, love,’ he said, pulling hard.

  ‘So I’ve been thinking about what to do with this TV thing, now I know you’re so ill, Dad. You really should have told me, you know.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you myself. Face to face. Of course, Pam always knows best—’

  ‘You bet!’ Pam called from the kitchen.

  Elle nodded. ‘I know, Dad. I know—and, look, now I do know, it’s obvious you’re not up to the cameras. I’m going to cancel that interview. Don’t need to put you through that.’

  ‘But love,’ he wheezed, ‘I thought it was important to you?’

  ‘It is. But so are you, even though I’m not good at showing it.’ Elle put her hand on his knee. ‘And anyway, the boys have offered to help me.’

  ‘Your brothers? But—’

  ‘Dad, let it be, it’s done. Let’s just have a cup of tea and enjoy seeing each other, hey?’

  ‘Tell me about these grandsons of mine, Ellen. Show me some pictures.’

  Elle had allowed exactly twenty minutes for this catch-up. Then she was meeting Bobby at one of his mate’s houses in town, along with Kai (Bobby had been tasked with filling him in). Bette the researcher would meet the three of them at the house. It was a perfect location. Humble but clean. Modest but respectable. Its back deck would have the perfect light in the afternoon for a TV interview that signalled ‘Aussie outback’—and the perfect view, from one angle, of an old-fashioned iron windmill.

  Elle knew all this because she’d met Bobby there first thing that morning, to check out the place and iron out a few more details.

  The next day, she would be sitting in that house, flanked by her brothers wearing their new, respectable shirts, their neck tattoos disguised with industrial-strength foundation. The three of them would be talking to the camera about how it had felt to be brought up poor by a proud father in country Australia.

  About their beloved mum and how she had never wanted to leave them.

  And about their heroic dad, who had raised them single-handedly before losing his own battle with cancer just a few months before.

  They were orphans now.

  • • •

  ‘And is that what you said in the interview?’ asked Adrian.

  ‘Yes, it went off without a hitch. We kept Bette busy from the day she got there until the cameras turned on.’

  ‘So you’re going to be telling Australia that your dad is dead?’

  ‘Yes. Already have.’

  ‘But, Elle…’ Adrian looked astounded. ‘Why?’

  ‘It was so messy, Adrian. There was no way Dad was up to that interview. And I knew it would really confuse the #cancerwife narrative to have another family member dying of cancer.’

  ‘I didn’t think I was dying—’

  ‘You know what I mean. Suffering,’ Elle couldn’t see why Adrian wasn’t congratulating her on her quick-thinking. ‘It was tricky, babe. Like, why wouldn’t I have raised it before now, you know? A bit weird. A bit off-putting.’

  ‘A bit off-putting? Jesus, Elle. What did your dad think of this? Of having to pretend that he’s dead?’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t know.’ Elle went and put her arms around Adrian’s neck, stood on her tip-toes to kiss him just below his ear. ‘He doesn’t leave that house. He won’t watch the interview. He was just happy to see me, I think. We had a good chat.’

  ‘And Pam?’ Adrian pulled away, just a little.

  ‘Oh, I told her. The boys and I sat her down, made a new deal. She was fine with it, really—she’s not the type for a media fuss.’

  ‘And the money? How many people are we paying off now?’

  ‘Well, I just transferred the money from my dad’s account to the boys’ account. Gave a bit to Pam, too, of course.’

  ‘All that money you gave to your dad, you just took it back?’

  ‘Not all of it.’ Elle looked up at Adrian, smiled. ‘Most of it. I’m not a monster, you know.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ABI

  ‘That is a high-risk strategy,’ Abi told Zoe, guiltily shoving the plastic pie wrapper into the side compartment of the car. ‘I mean, she’s basically faked your father’s death.’

  Abi had picked Zoe up at the train station and was driving her back to Daylesfo
rd. Zoe was moving in—and she was sharing.

  ‘Her whole life is a high-risk strategy,’ Zoe said through a mouthful of pie and chips in the passenger seat. Abi could tell this kid was going to be a bad dietary influence on her macrobiotic household.

  ‘But that seems particularly crazy. She needed the whole family’s buy-in. What happens—and I don’t mean to be insensitive—but what happens when your dad does… pass away?’

  ‘Who’s looking at what happens in a little shitty town in the middle of nowhere? It’s hardly going to make the nightly news.’

  ‘Wow.’ Abi, despite herself, was impressed by Elle’s nerve. She had seriously underestimated her ex-husband’s hot wife. ‘And I thought she was just a pretty face.’

  Zoe laughed out loud. ‘Oh, that’s funny. But anyway, she didn’t get the whole family’s buy-in. She didn’t ask me. Or Liam.’

  ‘There are more of you?’

  ‘One more. Liam, the oldest. Haven’t seen him for years, but if—wherever the fuck he is—he flicks on the TV in a couple of Sundays and hears that Dad is dead, he might just turn up somewhere.’

  ‘God, it’s like a soap opera. And I thought my life was complicated.’

  • • •

  Grace had finally agreed to Zoe coming to stay under one condition—no more drama.

  ‘I know you guys think you’re Woodward and Bernstein,’ she said, ‘uncovering the truth and everything, but just keep a lid on it. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. Find out if Adrian’s okay, talk to him about it, move on. No more trolling, no more inciting your followers. That’s not the way to win.’

  Sometimes, Grace’s inner school teacher reared her head and roared.

  ‘We’re probably more like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys,’ Abi said with a laugh, hugging Grace. ‘Thank you. You know, you’ll like Zoe. She’s got a lot of guts. Came from absolutely nothing. She has the kind of initiative and drive I’d love our kids to end up with.’

  ‘Be careful, baby.’ Grace hugged Abi back. ‘You sound kind of normal—suburban, even.’

  ‘That’s me. Just a normal, suburban hippie these days,’ Abi said into Grace’s hair.

  • • •

  Zoe’s room was just a space in the podshed with a pull-out bed, a little desk, a TV. But she seemed beyond grateful, telling Abi that she loved the energy of the farm, the kids running around, the chickens, the space. ‘So this is what living in the country is like if you’re not broke,’ she said, exclaiming over the plumbed-in outdoor bath, the veggie patch, the wood-fire oven, the daybed that was in exactly the right spot for stargazing.

  Grace gave Zoe the house rules. ‘No smoking around the kids. No drinking at all, ever. No bitching. No music videos. No negativity. No gluten.’

  ‘We feel more strongly about gluten than crack cocaine around here,’ Abi whispered to her.

  ‘Good to know,’ Zoe said, grinning.

  She was full of ideas about how Abi could extend the appeal of The Green Diva.

  ‘I know we’ve only got a few more weeks to go, but I reckon there’s a case for a big follower push to the end. We need some relatable posts, some great images. And you need to lay off the crazy. Just a little.’

  ‘Crazy, me?’ Abi chuckled. ‘Surely fucking not.’

  ‘Your followers are passionate, which is a big plus. But the flipside to that adoration is the army of people who hate you.’

  ‘Well, I have trolls… There are armies of people who hate me?’

  ‘There are whole Facebook groups dedicated only to hating you, Abi. Elle and Leisel have those too, but neither of them has a record of being so… combative. It makes the Blog-ahh people itchy.’

  ‘Well, fuck them.’

  ‘NOT the attitude, Abi. Let’s give the people something they can relate to.’

  ‘Like… ?’

  ‘Like pie.’

  Abi’s first Zoe-sanctioned Facebook post got more than ten thousand Likes:

  It’s hard to be holy.

  Forgive me, GDs, for I have sinned. Today I ate a meat pie—from a SERVICE STATION. Yes, one of those pies that has an expiry date somewhere in the next, next century. One of those pies chock-full of mystery meat and gristle that would be inedible if it wasn’t all doused in that goopy, fatty, salty gravy.

  That’s not all. It had TOMATO SAUCE ON IT. Yes, that fake red slop that’s got more sugar in it than fairy floss.

  I don’t know about the rest of you, but since you’re on this page, I’m going to hazard a guess you understand where I’m coming from—I don’t usually eat processed foods, sugary foods, fake foods. I don’t usually eat food that hasn’t come from the paddock or the veggie patch. Food whose ingredients are just a list of numbers and letters and a collection of euphemisms. Food that could live on a servo shelf for two years without growing a single culture is not a normal part of my diet.

  Usually, I would look right through that pie and not even consider it food.

  But today, I was tired, I was hungry, I was a little bit emotional and I stopped at the servo at exactly the moment those emotions collided. So I bought the damn pie, and I ate it in the car like a fugitive shovelling down the first bread roll they’ve seen in a week.

  You know what? It was GLORIOUS.

  I try to live a mindful life, to eat mindfully, and act mindfully and parent mindfully, but seriously, some days, it’s TOO FUCKING HARD and you just want to eat the damn pie.

  So, forgive me, my beautiful GDs, and if you have a food sin you’d like to get off your chest, go for it right here.

  Remember, there are no ‘bad’ foods, only bad people.

  JOKING.

  Never apologise for being imperfect. #eatthedamnpie

  It was accompanied by a picture of the pie—complete with tomato sauce pool—that Zoe had selflessly recreated with a pie of her own.

  Abi’s followers erupted, some with laughter:

  I was meant to have cauliflower rice for dinner, again. Sod it. I went the hot chips. #humanafterall

  Life’s too short not to #eatthedamnpie @greendiva, just go for it

  One meat pie does not a traitor make #eatthedamnpie

  Some with shock:

  I thought this was a genuine macrobiotic community. That you could even consider eating that processed mush is horrific. #notfood #donoteatthedamnpie

  Do I need to tell you that you just ate camel muscle and sheep tendons? #disgrace

  And some were just incredulous that this was a thing:

  When a blogger goes viral for eating a pie, things are out of hand. #eatthedamnpie

  Meet Abi Black, the woman who’s gone viral for eating a damn pie. #hilarious

  ‘See?’ said Zoe. ‘The people are responding to you being less than the untouchable Green Diva. Let’s build on that. Advertisers might like it, too.’

  Zoe also started posting pleasing shots of the farm on Instagram.

  ‘Don’t make me look like some rustic picture-perfect fuckwit,’ Abi warned. ‘That’s too far for me.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Zoe said. ‘This place is a mess. But it’s an aspirational mess.’

  Scheduled to run: Faceless snaps of Otto and Sol feeding the chickens at sunset. Silhouette of Abi in the outside bath against a starry sky. Wildflowers in a jam jar next to the podcast sound-recording panel in the shed.

  ‘Wildflowers in a fucking jam jar?’ Abi asked, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Zoe.

  Likes were up. The trolls were quiet. Grace’s drama-meter was resting.

  Alex and Arden were also delighted to have Zoe on the farm, not least because they sensed that she might have some dirt on their stepmother.

  Abi overheard some of their questions:

  ‘So what was Elle like a teenager?’

  ‘Are those really her boobs?’

  ‘Does she secretly hate our dad?’

  ‘No comment, girls,’ was Zoe’s standard answer, in light of Grace’s ‘no negativity’ rule, and she distracted them wi
th YouTube eyeliner tutorials.

  • • •

  When they got a chance, Abi and Zoe hung out in the podshed, plotting how to find out for sure what was going on with Adrian’s health.

  ‘I should just confront him,’ Abi suggested. ‘I don’t know if he could lie to my face, even after everything. I could always tell when he was lying.’

  ‘Um, wasn’t he sleeping with my sister under your nose for months?’ Zoe had a way of cutting to the chase.

  ‘Well, yes. But, you know, I wasn’t really paying attention.’

  Finally, they decided on a two-fold strategy: a good old-fashioned stake-out, and an attempt to flip a source closer to the heart of the story.

  Zoe’s theory about Adrian being perfectly healthy had started with Cate.

  ‘I was still in Thalwyn when Elle came to town,’ Zoe told Abi. ‘She thought I’d gone, but I stayed with an old mate. And I kept an ear out for what was happening at the motel.’

  ‘Jesus, this whole thing is like deep throat. You were spying on your sister?’

  ‘Isn’t deep throat a porno? Well, you know what, when we spoke on the phone, I just knew she was up to something. And I thought that when she found out about Dad, there was a chance she might be upset and call me, and… well, I wanted to be close by.’

  ‘But that never happened.’

  ‘No. I went over to see Dad and Pam on the day she’d visited, and Pam told me that she’d told Elle about the cancer and she’d just driven away. Not even said hello to Dad or the boys.’

  ‘Well, she could have been upset. It must be a lot, coming back to your family home for the first time in ten years, and then finding that out.’

  ‘Whose fucking side are you on?’

  ‘You’re right, what’s wrong with me? What a bitch.’ Abi grinned. A part of her—a part much bigger than she’d like to admit—was thoroughly enjoying all this drama. Grace could see it in her: that was why she hadn’t joined in this plotting session.

  ‘Anyway, like I’ve said before, Pam’s house is not our family home. We don’t have a family home. We’re just… wherever we are.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  ‘So Elle and this girl Cate had rooms at the motel. I was talking to my friend Deb about it—her family runs the place. Cate didn’t leave the motel unless she was with Elle. I was watching Elle’s social accounts, and you could see the Adrian posts rolling up, as if it was happening that minute, but neither of them was anywhere near Melbourne or Adrian.’