by Wendy Harmer
Jo sat and stared at the waves rolling in until it was time to get back to the bowling club for the ceremony.
Here and there guests stood in clumps picking at bowls of peanuts while small children skidded up and down the polished wooden dance floor. A few smokers sat outside at tables overlooking the carefully tended greens.
Jo was soon greeted by a cast of characters she’d lost touch with in the past twelve months. Teaching and administrative staff, groundsmen, cleaners, the car-park attendant—the hard-working retinue of the college.
Every which way she turned, her past rushed up to meet her with exclamations of welcome. As a glass of sparkling wine was joyfully passed from the bar to where she stood, Jo could see that in her year of self-imposed exile it was she who had abandoned her friends. They were all still there for her, completely without judgment. It came to mind that she would trade a hundred Carols and Didis for any one of them. With some shame Jo realised she could have found a great source of joy and comfort in these folk if only she’d reached out to them. Father Patrick had often told her so.
‘Hooray!’ The cheer went up for the first broken ‘good luck’ glass of the day.
The next hour passed in a blur. Jo exchanged pleasantries with dozens of people, or, more accurately, they were pleasant to her. She did little more than nod and make noises in the appropriate places.
Suze would have been gratified to know how many of her former colleagues asked after her. Of course it now made sense why she had begged off from the occasion, saying she had to visit her mother.
‘She’s fine, the shop’s doing very well,’ Jo recited to every inquiry. And then the rest of the conversation was lost as she tuned in to the anxious monologue in her head.
Jo was coming back from the ladies’ room when she was confronted with the back view of what looked to be an entire zebra. The sturdy figure in a print jacket was none other than Carol Holt.
Bloody hell! What was she doing here? Jo reeled back into the crowd and tried to catch her breath. And then she remembered that Doug and Senator Holt had struck up a friendship of sorts years ago. Around DPLC there had certainly been stranger bedfellows than the millionaire politician and the accountant. She slunk off and found refuge with the smokers outside.
Mercifully, Mrs Holt seemed to be dodging her too, and spent most of the night ensconced with Rev Pottharst at a corner table where they received a snaking queue of guests eager to meet and greet.
Jo felt nauseous. Then she received a tap on the shoulder that was the signal for her to perform. Half a sausage roll seemed to be stuck in her throat. She took the stage on numb legs.
She conducted the ceremony in the order she had in front of her but saw the whole event, at a distance, as some sort of unconvincing children’s Punch and Judy show, complete with wooden puppets and an audience of bright-eyed children.
Doug and Elaine read tributes to each other.
‘Forty years ago, I pledged my love to you, but it seems like only yesterday.’
‘I am so proud to continue life’s journey by your side.’
Jo was thinking about the horrifying prospect of having to confront Suze, when she suddenly registered that eighty people were staring at her with silent expectation.
Then she dropped her notebook, addressed Elaine as ‘Ellen’, knocked over a wine glass on the table by her elbow and bumped the microphone stand, which hit the deck with a hideous shriek that had everyone exclaim, ‘Oooh!’ and block their ears. And then, when she looked up, there was one face she focused on.
Mrs Carol Holt. Smiling widely, like the celebrated Cheshire Cat.
‘I’m sure it was fine,’ Patrick mumbled as he sat at Jo’s dining table perusing one sheet of figures, then another. ‘Meaningless carry-on, anyway. They’re either married or they’re not.’
‘I just wanted to disappear,’ Jo groaned, and finally thought to ease off her high heels. She rubbed at her pinched toes.
‘I don’t think I ever want to do it again. And I’ll never forget the look of satisfaction on that woman’s face. I hate her.’
Patrick put down his fluorescent yellow highlighting pen and reached for his coffee. ‘R. and J. Holdings. Does that company name mean anything?’
‘I’m sure that stands for Roberta and Jessica.’
Patrick gathered the scattered sheets of paper and put the cap on his pen. He yawned, rubbed his face with his hands. He’d been looking through the papers for two hours, it was getting on for 7 p.m., and from what he could see Doug McIntyre had been thorough in his investigation. Suze was as guilty as hell.
‘She’s hardly living the high life. It’ll be the school fees and Rob’s gambling. I wonder how much she’s got left?’ Jo buried her head in her hands. ‘God, Patrick, what a mess.’
Patrick nodded in agreement. ‘Mind you, from what I’ve seen here she’d be a highly sought-after corporate executive. She’s drawn salaries for three phantom teaching staff, even paid their bloody taxes!’ He shook his head with both disbelief and admiration. ‘She’s been extremely creative. You always said she was good with—’
‘Don’t. I feel like an idiot.’ Jo rose from the couch, turned off the lamp and headed for the kitchen to rinse her teacup. Calpurnia sat up, blinking, her slumber rudely interrupted.
‘I just can’t believe it. If she was doing so badly, I don’t know why she couldn’t have asked me for help instead of praying to those damned goddesses, angels and demons of hers. She was always into that stupid feng shui, putting mirrors in corners and that three-legged moon frog at the door of her office. When all the time...’
‘Yep. She must have spent hours on it, poor cow. Unless the three-legged moon frog was conversant with modern accounting practices.’
‘And she told everyone in the whole place she’d won Oz Lotto. She lied to hundreds of people as well as me. I don’t think she’s even told Rob. How can she live with the guilt? She must be some kind of sociopath.’
‘Or just desperate. Like I said, you never know what people will be driven to do for money.’
‘I don’t know how I’m going to face her.’ Jo got up and went to the kitchen and automatically reached for a cleaning cloth.
Patrick folded his arms across his chest. ‘You’ll try to find the cash for her, I suppose? The settlement from JJ?’
‘I’ve seen a lawyer. I know I can get it pretty quickly.’ She started washing a small stack of bread-and-butter plates.
‘Jo Blanchard to the rescue! A lot of people wouldn’t bother. They’d just write her off,’ he said over the clinking of crockery in the sink.
‘Maybe if it was just her. She’s lied to me for...who knows how long? But it’s bigger than that, and I can’t help feeling like I’m implicated.’
‘In what way?’
Jo turned, wringing a damp tea towel in her hands. ‘It was me who encouraged her to send the girls to the college. I should have seen they couldn’t afford it.’
‘Well, that confirms my suspicions that no good deed goes unpunished. She has her own mind. You’re not her keeper.’
‘I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try.’
‘Just don’t expect her to be grateful for your help, that’s all.’
Patrick walked to the kitchen to kiss Jo goodbye. He had a wedding rehearsal to attend at St Bernadette’s in ten minutes.
‘You mean she might not want me to help her?’
‘She might and then not thank you for it—and you have to be prepared for that—or she might rather face the music. Take her punishment. The thought of being in debt to you might be more than she can handle.’
Jo hadn’t considered any of this.
‘If you want to help her with the money, it’s important that it’s not some charity event. There is something you might engage her with, though—the notion of “commutative justice”. She’ll have to do three things: admit her guilt, genuinely express her sorrow and regret, and make a firm purpose of amendment.’
‘Ame
ndment?’
‘She’ll have to pay you back.’
Chapter Thirty-one
They sat at the table in Suze’s kitchen staring in numb silence as if they had been called in to the mortuary to identify a recently deceased body.
The corpse of their friendship was lying on the slab in front of them, still flesh-coloured and tepid to the touch. Once it had been a living, laughing, hot-blooded thing. Then they’d opened it up and found it was, as they say, riddled with cancer.
Neither had the courage for the autopsy. Not yet. That would come. Perhaps there would even be a wake one day. But not now, because they were in awe of what had just happened. How could something so vital have become so lifeless?
Somewhere the siren of an ambulance wailed, its shrill keening echoing off factory roofs and concrete high-rises as the vehicle sped along city streets to an emergency. But there was no urgency here in Suze’s kitchen. Just an interlude. A waiting time in between one thing and the next.
Jo stood in the doorway. She would not sit down at the table. That would mean she’d accepted hospitality from Suze. That might put her in the position of having to return it.
‘I thought you’d cry, at least,’ she said.
‘So did I,’ Suze replied. She reached for the wine bottle. ‘Want one?’
‘No.’
‘Forgive me if I get shit-faced.’
‘That’s hardly going to help.’
‘Yeah, but it can’t hurt either.’ Suze took the bottle and aimed for her empty glass.
Jo had once described Suze’s little wooden house as ‘shabby chic’, but tonight as she focused on the cracks in the wall and peeling paint illuminated by a single, shaded globe she saw that the kitchen was just plain worn out.
No wonder the girls never had their classmates to stay. Tonight they were sleeping over at friends’ places, probably under fine Egyptian four-hundred-thread-count sheets, as the twinkling harbour lights placed diadems on their sleeping heads. Their wealthy princess friends would never come to Rosebery to sleep in narrow beds lumpy with peas.
Her heart lurched as she thought of the twins. ‘I’m sorry, Suze,’ she said. And then she wondered what she was apologising for. Hadn’t she always had the girls’ best interests at heart? Hadn’t she nurtured Bobby in art class and made time to get to evening performances in Felicity Hall to hear Jess play, even when Suze couldn’t? What was it she was sorry for? Herself and her own dumb, trusting idiocy, that’s what. She was truly sorry for that.
‘Don’t be sorry. I’m not,’ said Suze. ‘If I was going to steal from anyone, I’m glad it was them. They can afford it.’ She was slurring her words. She had been half-drunk when Jo got there and was now intent on completely writing herself off.
‘Stealing is stealing,’ said Jo primly, and then wondered if she’d first uttered this as a child in Sunday school at St Luke’s.
‘That’s not really true.’ Suze pushed back from the table and plonked her bare feet on a basket of crumpled washing. She raised her plump arms and the sleeves of her faded pink kimono slid to her elbows. ‘That place is stuffed with money. No-one would have ever missed my small pickings. Doug didn’t, so bad luck for him. I took cash too, you know. Thousands of dollars that fell down the back of the couch. There was one time—’
‘You sound like you’re proud of yourself.’
‘Maybe I am. Got a bit of the old Ned Kelly in me. I stole from the rich and gave to the poor—me. A lot of people will see me as a hero. Ha!’
‘You’re just a thief. You’re not a hero, to anyone.’
‘Probably not.’ Suze groped for her glass. ‘Couldn’t give a shit either way.’
Jo stayed where she was in the doorway. Planted her feet firmly. She wouldn’t run away like she had from Darling Point. There was more to come and this time she’d have her say and deal with the reply. ‘We’ve got one chance,’ she said. ‘We can put the money back like Doug says and no-one will ever know.’
‘We? What do you mean “we”? What do think we’ve got in common?’ Suze flung her body forward in a great roaring guffaw and then flopped back again. ‘You don’t know the first thing about me. Did you ever stop and think—I mean really think—about how the hell I put the girls through school there? How I could afford to pay the car rego and the power bills and the mortgage and then find the money for two laptops, their uniforms, books and all the other shit?
‘Oh, Suze, you’re so good with money!’ She flapped her hands, squeaked and fiddled with her hair in a cruel imitation of Jo. ‘I’m shit with money! I had to rob a fucking bank! That’s what it took. So don’t bother making yourself feel good by rescuing me.’
Suze gripped the edge of the table and used it to haul herself upright. She lurched to the refrigerator to get another bottle. ‘I’ve done my research and I know what I can expect. There’s a woman who swindled a million bucks out of some private school down the road and she only got weekend detention. I’m a devoted mother with a gambling-addict husband. They won’t put me in jail.’
‘Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out then,’ said Jo.
Suze ignored her. ‘And even if I do get sentenced, Martha Stewart spent her time in jail sewing quilts and writing a book. She lost five kilos. That sounds okay to me. She reckons the only thing she missed was a cappuccino.’
Suze gave what she supposed was a cheerful grin, but under the unforgiving light Jo saw teeth bared in defiance. ‘You don’t mean that,’ Jo said.
‘I fucking do! “Life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” that’s what Martha reckons. Life’s given me sour grapes, so I’ll make...what’s this crap I’m drinking?’ Suze poured the cheap red wine into her glass.
‘You’re not making sense. What about the girls?’
‘Who knows?’ Suze ran a hand through her shock of black hair and slumped back into her chair. ‘Maybe they’ll learn something. Maybe they’ll understand that the secret of life is “to be resigned to your position”. My dad told me that when I was a kid. He was a council worker all his life. I thought, “You’re kidding?! Are you telling me I have to give up? I can do better than you!” But he was right in the end. He died and left Mum nothing. I paid for his funeral out of money I took. The council workers carried the coffin in their overalls. He never made something of himself and he lived a good, honest life. So here’s to you, Dad!’ Suze raised her glass in a toast and wine slopped over the rim, splashed into a bowl of corn chips. ‘“Such is life,” that’s what Ned Kelly said. “Talis est vita.” Picked up a bit of Latin at Darling Point, so don’t say I didn’t learn something from my betters, Mrs Blanchard.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Yeah, and in the morning I’ll be sober and you’ll still be better than me. We should never have been friends in the first place. You know what? I always felt like one of your art projects. Like some lump of shit you were trying to make into a diamond.’
‘Don’t be disgusting,’ said Jo. She found by default the tone she used as a disapproving teacher. Suze spat it back at her.
‘Me? I’m disgusting? You’re the one who put Lady Holt’s rancid knickers in that bag and took it to lunch. You’re the one who made everyone feel embarrassed and dragged the college through the mud. That’s why they wanted me out of there. Because every time they looked at me they thought of you.’
The accusation took Jo’s breath away. She was haunted by what had happened that awful day. To think that all this time, Suze blamed her for what had happened.
‘I only took their money. They can handle that,’ Suze said with a sickening smile. ‘You took their self-respect.’
Jo’s heart pumped and blood surged up her throat and into her head. It thudded behind her eyes and in her ears. She had to get away. She fell back and felt for her coat in the darkened lounge room. Suze got to her feet and bumped her way along behind.
‘Go! Fuck off then!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t think I didn’t know that we only ever went to cheap restaurants and all the g
ifts you gave me cost less than thirty bucks so I didn’t feel bad. And wasn’t I always so grateful, Mrs Blanchard? Like some kid from a mud hut you were sponsoring through World Vision. Don’t worry, you’ll get your five grand back. I’ll go and get it now.’
‘Keep it. It’s never been about money with me.’ Jo choked out the words. She found the light switch and her coat and started for the front door.
Suze came after her. ‘Oh, really? Your life’s never been about money? Well, aren’t you the lucky one? I wish you’d never talked me into sending the girls to that place. If I’d just done what Rob said and taken them up the road to be with people like us,
I might still have a family.’
Suze stepped forward, her leg caught the edge of the sofa and she sprawled onto the carpet. She rolled over, black hair flopping over her face and bare breasts spilling from her open kimono.
Jo looked down at her lying there. ‘I always believed in you, because you had faith,’ she said. ‘You were always an inspiration to me that way.’
‘Look at me, on my big, fat arse! Ha ha! The joke is, I don’t believe in anything anymore.’
‘And I don’t believe in you.’ Jo found the doorknob and ran.
The clock on Jo’s beside table read 2 a.m. The shouts from Saturday-night revellers staggering up the street and stumbling into stairwells reverberated in the black canyons between tower blocks. It was the usual stupid, pointless slanging
match.
‘Hey, wait for me! You bastards!’
‘Shut up!’
‘Oi! Little kids are trying to sleep in here!’
‘I’m calling the police!’
‘Piss off!’
Most nights Jo would have grumbled, thrown back the covers and got up to secure the window against the din, but tonight the drunken oaths at least interrupted the anxious thoughts that were playing over and over in a loop. Loud and insistent like the thumping bass of a hip-hop track that blared from the open window of a passing car.
