‘Climb up the outside of a castle,’ she replied, immediately and with odd specificity.
Living where we do, in a country where people of castle-building origins only showed up around the time that castle-building was falling out of fashion, Freya’s not had a lot of exposure to real-life castles.
But we do live in a country where church-going types have been dying for over two hundred years now, and for a while back in the day it was very popular to build small monuments to the dead out of stone. The sort of monuments that could reasonably fool a three-year-old, who has only seen her architectural dreams in books, into thinking they are actual castles. And while real castles are generally unsafe for climbing by small children, stone obelisks are a fairly good height and have been unpopular for over a hundred years. This means they are often in parts of graveyards where people rarely venture, and their inhabitants died so long ago that you’re unlikely to have an irate relative happen upon you when you’re scaling them.
So I drove the girls to a rest park — a term I love for its honesty — and they passed a happy few hours scrambling up and down monuments to Captain R. Carlysle, Mr George E. Robinson, and the gloriously named Admiral Bertrand Beaverstock.
Those chaps resided in a corner of the graveyard almost entirely overgrown with ancient thorny roses and wildflowers, and the lesser graves — those marked with low stone walls and ordinary headstones — had all fallen into such staggering disrepair that it was clearly impossible for the council workers to get along the paths with their ride-on lawnmowers any more. It was just like a secret garden.
The whole morning we only saw two other people — a teenage girl and boy in the local high school’s uniform who stumbled, giggling, through the bushes, with all sorts of non-school-related business clearly in mind. They were very disappointed to find me there, working away on the laptop, while Freya and Lola squealed and threw rainbow handfuls of lantana flowers in each other’s hair.
We ate our sandwiches on top of the relatively unbroken grave of one Agatha Gordon. Well, Freya and I ate our sandwiches and Lola dutifully shovelled down some sort of quinoa-lentil business that Helen had packed in a stainless steel box for her. Afterwards we all shared a Kit-Kat, and the girls played more while I texted Suze to casually ask if there was now anything I could do to help with the Fun Run.
Annoyingly, she phoned me back. I don’t understand why people do that. There’s almost never any need to talk on the phone any more.
‘That is brilliant,’ she shrieked, as soon as I answered. ‘I knew you’d change your mind. No one wants to miss out on all the fun! Do you know, of the six mums from last year’s kindy who all helped out with the last Shorewood Public Fun Run and Have Fun Day, none of them has been able to help out this year? Can you believe that? It’s like they think they’ve done one thing for this school and that entitles them to a free ride for the next six years! I can tell you, the senior schools won’t be looking very fondly on that as a service record, come year six.’
‘No!’ I say. ‘Suze, that is shocking. Well I’ve had a few things move around so now I can help. Just give me a job.’
‘I have the perfect position for you,’ she says in a low voice, like I am a hot commodity and she doesn’t want any other committees to hear of my availability and head-hunt me to work in the canteen or the uniform shop. ‘You can be the new Head of the Prize Donations Subcommittee! Hana Ito and Gillian Phipps were co-heads until last week when they both had to resign because of sudden important work commitments. It was so sad.’
‘It sounds sad,’ I agree. ‘But awesome for me!’ I sound twelve, and very unconvincing. ‘I can’t wait to get started!’ All I want to know is what job Adam has, but if I ask Suze she’ll see right through me.
‘Right,’ she continues importantly, ‘I’ll email you all the details, and you can report back at the next meeting.’
Head of Donations. This is what I am reduced to. I am charged with going round the shops and begging the local small business owners to hand over vouchers for facials and free dinners. Being a scab, that’s what it was called when I was at school. I don’t even have anyone to do it with. What have I done?
I hope Suze won’t be too disappointed if every single prize this year is a bottle of Lord of the Juice’s most unpopular variety, Viscount Capsicum of Kale.
* * *
Only when my laptop ran out of power did we pack up and head home. They need more power outlets in graveyards.
All in all, we had a much happier day than we would have if Lola had been stuck in a classroom naming animals in French for an hour while I worked in the foyer and Freya played with a sticker book at my feet.
Eventually Troy and Helen are going to figure out what’s happening, and they are really not going to be happy about it. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I’m slowly crawling out from under their spell and I rather like it. Not being in love with Troy is one of the nicest feelings I can remember.
After I’ve fed them, I bathe the kids, and carefully comb the lantana flowers out of Freya’s hair. They’re a bit withered, but she asks me to put them in water beside her bed, so I fill a soy-sauce dish and float them in it. She falls asleep smiling.
When I get into bed I text Adam.
Camping is go, and I’ve just been informed I am the head of donations subcommittee for Fun Run. Flowers and champagne acceptable as congrats for my appointment.
I spend ages scrolling through the emojis on my phone to find the one that best expresses self-deprecating humour but is also kind of cute.
I promise myself I won’t check the phone until it pings, and settle down with The Devil’s Heirs to see if Tilde has also found herself volunteering for a stupid Fun Run to try to impress a guy. She hasn’t. She has to fight her boss to stop him scaling back the search for another missing woman. We all have our struggles.
An hour later Adam replies with emojis of a tiny bunch of flowers, two champagne glasses clinking, and a thumbs-up.
Chapter Ten
In the morning, I take my time getting the girls to preschool after we drop off Tim. I would rather do pretty much anything else in the world than what I have to do afterwards. Suze Albion-Davies has emailed me a list of businesses in the area that I am supposed to approach for donations of raffle prizes. Quite why we’re having a raffle as part of a Fun Run, I don’t understand. Maybe there’s a minimum raffle requirement for any fundraising event. Sorry, no, it’s not a raffle, it’s a guessing competition. I think once upon a time you needed a permit for a raffle, but you didn’t if it was a guessing competition, so that’s what the school has always done. It means the tickets are all printed with the name of the event, missing most of the vowels. SH_R_W__D P_BL_C F_N R_N_ND H_VE F_N D_Y. It looks incomprehensible and no one ever fills the vowels in on their tickets anyway. The whole thing is a F_CKING W_STE_F T_ME, if you ask me.
But I think of Adam, who has no doubt been roped into something similarly mortifying, and I think of Philip, who saves the lives of women and children by giving them access to clean water. Come on, Emma, I tell myself. Step up. Be the change you want to see in the world. It takes a village. Think global, act local. Life, be in it.
The most annoying thing about begging for prizes for the guessing competition is that the local business owners I am being sent to today are all, to a person, parents at the school and thus probably also coming to the Fun Run and paying their entry fees, and buying sausages at the sausage sizzle and paying for their kids to go on the jumping castle and have their faces painted and so on and so forth. And these people are small business owners in an increasingly retail-hostile world. It hardly seems fair to hit them up for a fifty-dollar voucher for their business too.
But today that’s exactly what I’m going to do, because Suze is a terrifying person and I don’t dare show up to the meeting tonight not having done my homework. The bakery, the drycleaner, two cafes, the Thai takeaway, the pizzeria, the chemist, the butcher, the auto-repairer — all on
my list. The auto-repairer, seriously? What kind of a raffle prize is a voucher for fifty bucks off your next panel-beating, which expires in three months? It’s a prize some lucky winner will be getting, because I’m going there first.
Mechanics’ workshops are weird. They always seem unattended for the first five minutes. This one is no different. I wander in through the open garage doors at the front. It’s cavernous. There’s room for fours cars on the floor and a couple more are suspended in the air. The cars on the floor are in various states of disrepair, and one of the ones in mid-flight is practically a skeleton. It’s like a natural history museum exhibit, except with vehicles instead of prehistoric creatures.
I can’t see anyone. A radio is playing nineties George Michael, so I can’t hear anyone either. I shuffle around near a green Range Rover, trying to make my footsteps loud, but since I’m wearing sneakers that’s a bust. I move on to some light key-jangling, and venture a little cough. Gradually my eyes adjust and I catch some movement beneath the Subaru Forester behind the Range Rover. Then I see another overalled body, half inside the bonnet of another large four-wheel drive. Once I get my eye in, it’s like being in a jungle — I start to see grease monkeys everywhere. They’re just very well camouflaged. They know I’m here though.
‘Be with you shortly, love,’ comes a voice from somewhere.
‘Thanks!’ I call back. ‘No rush.’
Five minutes later, an older man in a blue jumpsuit scoots himself out from under a car on a giant skateboard. He gets up and, giving his hands a cursory wipe on a grease-blackened rag, ambles over to me.
‘What can I do you for?’
‘Are you Murray?’ I ask.
‘Depends who’s asking.’
‘Hi Murray, I’m Emma. I’m collecting donations for the school fundraising raffle,’ I tell him, sticking to the script Suze has given me. ‘Since you gave so generously last year, we were hoping you might be able to do it again?’
‘Yep. No worries. Voucher for fifty bucks off panel-beating do you again?’
‘Whatever you can spare. Only, and I realise how cheeky it is to ask when you’re being so generous, but is there any way it could have an expiration date longer than three months? It’s just, panel-beating isn’t one of those regular expenses people generally have and the last couple of years the people who’ve won them actually didn’t get to use them before they were out of date. Sorry.’
He looks at me with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Only the last two years they’ve said that, eh? I’ve been donating these every year for — geez, it’d be fifteen or so years now, since my kids were at the school — and I’ve never had one of these vouchers redeemed.’
‘Really?’
‘Really, so between you and me, this costs me nothing and I look like a top bloke. I think I’ll leave the expiry at three months.’
Well, clearly that’s the way to run a small business. I thank him, collect the voucher that will never be used, and head off on my begging tour.
Everyone gives what they can. A twenty-five dollar voucher from the bakery and two kilos of thin sausages from the butcher. A few free pizzas. A very decent voucher for dinner for two from the Thai place. The chemist promises to put together a hamper of luxury skincare — ‘Only it’ll be the sort of hamper they’ll want to use pretty sharpish,’ she advises. ‘We’ll be sailing close to some expiry dates.’ That seems a common theme.
By lunchtime I’ve finished my list. Suze said I was to supplement her list with my own ideas for potential donors, but no. I’m done. I’m not asking anyone else. I’ll ask Troy, but no. Then tonight at the committee meeting, where I’ll hopefully get to see Adam again, I can hand over the vouchers I’ve collected and then have nothing more to do with the wretched Fun Run until the day itself, when I will be running . . . if I ever go for another practice jog. So far I’m still on week one of the Couch to Five K program, and the race is in three weeks.
* * *
For the second week in a row I’m back at school at night. The Fun Run committee meeting starts at eight o’clock, which is later than ideal, but Suze has another committee meeting before it, and that finished at seven forty-five. Listening to Suze talk about how she manages to be on so many committees is like watching a very accomplished juggler: it stops being interesting when she gets past three or four.
At one minute past eight, Suze looks brightly around the staffroom at the five of us who have assembled. Adam’s not here. I don’t know any of the others well, but I recognise in them the look of people who were too slow, either physically or mentally, to get away from Suze in time. We are all sitting on Department of Education-issue, vinyl-covered foam easy chairs in assorted shades of turquoise, brown and orange. The floor is covered in the same rough square carpet tiles that I remember from schools in my childhood.
I read the passive-aggressive notes on the fridge and signs Blu-Tacked upon the cupboard doors, reminding people to clean the toasted-sandwich maker and to respect other people’s yoghurt. It’s really just every office kitchen I’ve ever been in, but with better grammar and correct use of apostrophes.
‘Shall we get started?’ says Suze. ‘I’m sure there are some others coming but they must have been held up, certainly for very good reasons, I’m sure.’
She carefully opens a giant ring-binder to a yellow tab.
‘Let’s start with sponsors. How are we going with sponsors? Well, as Head of the Sponsorship Subcommittee, I think I can speak to that. We are going very well. Geoff Lang is back on board as our major sponsor.’
No surprise there. As one of the two local real estate agents, Geoff Lang is never far from a community event.
The door opens and Adam’s there, late, smiling, and forgiven by Suze before he even sits down.
‘Adam, hello! Everyone, this is Adam. He’s a kindy father and a new member of the school community, having just moved back from the Netherlands, or Holland, as it’s sometimes known.’
Oh Suze. Be cool.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ says Adam, and he sits beside me and gives me a quick eyebrow raise.
I catch Suze narrowing her eyes at us, just for an instant, before she collects herself again. ‘That’s absolutely fine, Adam, I was just saying that our major sponsor this year is once again the terrific Geoff Lang. He’s a real estate agent and just a stalwart of the community.
‘And this year we have a new sponsor, who is also a father at the school! The Lord of the Juice, aka Troy Lawson, has kindly come on board and will be donating a bottle of juice to each and every competitor who finishes the race.’
Shit. Then he’s probably not also going to donate heaps of raffle prizes. I should have thought of that. There goes my slightly-more-than-the-bare-minimum effort.
‘Related to that, though not strictly concerning sponsorship so perhaps I should wait until we get to the “running order of the day” point in the meeting — No, no, I’ll tell you now: Troy’s lovely wife, Helen, who owns Studio H Pilates, will be running a warm-up session for us before the run begins. Do you all know Helen? She’s absolutely gorgeous and so personable. Well, obviously Emma knows her. Isn’t she divine, Emma? Will you tell them how divine she is?’
‘She’s . . . just great,’ I say, with moderate enthusiasm.
Suze waits, still looking at me.
‘She’s divine!’ I say. ‘Divine.’
Adam stifles a laugh, the other three people in the room have the good grace to look extremely uncomfortable, and Suze is happy now to continue the meeting.
‘Now,’ she says, breathlessly, ‘Adam has come to our rescue and has taken over the organisation of the sausage sizzle, which is such a relief, I can’t tell you.’ She pauses, and smiles beatifically at Adam, like he’s come from heaven to post a sign-up sheet on a noticeboard so parents can volunteer to cook sausages and bacon and egg rolls on race day. He looks embarrassed when she requests a round of applause for him.
After that, Suze goes back to her agenda and starts working thro
ugh her binder, which has many coloured tabs. Each committee head reports on their work, and Suze behaves as if each of them has taken the organising back a step or two, steps that she’ll personally have to make up.
I tune out after the first one, and instead let my mind wander in Adam’s direction. Maybe by the time the Fun Run comes around he will have fallen in love with me, properly and forsaking all others. I picture him gazing at me, unable to peel his eyes from my loveliness, even when Helen is prancing around in front of the crowd in tights and a crop top, showing them all how to stretch out their hip flexors before the run. Where Adam’s wife is in this fantasy is anyone’s guess. I wish I knew what the story was there. I wish he knew. She’s quite a fly in the ointment and I do my best not to think about her when I’m picturing spending the rest of my life with her husband.
It’s nine o’clock by the time it’s my turn. Suze is very unimpressed with my efforts. ‘Three months again, for the car repair voucher, Emma, really?’ She shakes her head as if I personally donated this.
‘Suze, I tried, but Murray was very firm.’
‘Murray is a swindler,’ she tells me. ‘The amount of time that man allegedly took to install the DVD players in the back seat of my car, well . . . let’s just say I was very tempted to make a report to consumer affairs.’
‘At least we have a voucher.’
‘I suppose,’ she says.
When the meeting finally wraps up, Adam and I are the first out the door.
In the cool night air I shiver and it feels, for the first time in ages, like my life contains possibility.
Adam seems to feel it too. ‘Right, it’s Friday night! Shall we kick on to the pub?’ he suggests. ‘Maybe cab into town, hit up a few clubs?’
‘Oh definitely,’ I say. ‘Let’s buy loads of drugs and get completely smashed.’
‘Would you even know where to go these days?’ he asks.
‘Nope. Not a clue. And I wouldn’t know how to buy drugs either.’
How to Be Second Best Page 15
