Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  Jo couldn’t bear his vulgarities, but was determined, like Linda had said, to ‘grow a pair’. She’d never imagined she’d have to think like this. But watching JJ lurch between silky-voiced salesmanship and vile threats, she was confident she had him. He was losing it. Linda Priestley was itching to be let off the leash and if that happened, he would be ‘dead meat’. It was a term that Jo had never used, even to herself. She was beginning to feel stronger with every minute that passed.

  ‘It’s half mine. Everything. You know it.’

  ‘I have managed,’ he stood and boomed, ‘by the skin of my teeth, to hold on to the dealership and this house where your children live only because, while you were running around Darling Point with those dogs, I worked my tits off!’

  Jo was outraged. She leaped to her feet and shrieked.

  ‘I worked too! From morning to night, every day, when the children were little! I gave you two children and a home. You enjoyed everything Darling Point gave us...including your new bitch on heat, Carol!’ Jo instantly regretted the hideous insult and mentioning Carol’s name.

  JJ grinned, flattered no doubt to have two women fighting over him. ‘Oh, now it’s getting interesting. Why didn’t you say this was all about her and some sort of fucked-up revenge?’

  Then, as if Carol had been listening from the other side of the door, there was a loud rap and it opened a crack.

  A girlish voice issued from the echoing hallway. ‘Can I get you anything, JJ?’

  ‘Get out of here, Carol!’ JJ shouted. ‘I told you not to come in. This is none of your business!’ There was a yelp as if JJ had backed over a small dog in the Bentley, followed by a rapid click-clack of heels up the hallway. ‘Christ Almighty,’ he muttered as he got up and slammed the door.

  Then he paused. Jo noticed his shoulders drop, relax, and when he turned he was smiling. That was truly and utterly terrifying.

  ‘Anyway, you should save your lawyer, because your mate Suze is going to need him.’

  Jo swiped at the arms of her chair to keep from falling. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. Lovely party yesterday afternoon I hear, except that you screwed it up and made a damned fool of yourself. Everyone’s still laughing. But Doug and Carol had a lot to say to each other at the end of proceedings. He’s desperate, poor bastard.’

  Jo’s progress came to a sudden, shocking halt. As if she had fallen into a burrow hidden by clumps of grass, tripped and broken her leg.

  ‘Yeah, that’s made you think, hasn’t it?’ He resumed his seat, pushed a notepad across the desk, flourished a fountain pen in front of Jo’s wide eyes and started scribbling figures.

  He had her. He had run Jo down and had one mighty paw on her neck. From where she sat she could almost feel his hot, panting breath in her ear.

  ‘Here’s what we’ll do. You’ll take the four million. I’ll give you some shares. And let me be generous. I’ll cover the money your best friend Mrs Reynolds stole from Darling Point. Ten years inside, that’s the maximum for embezzlement, so I understand.’

  He smirked at Jo’s shocked silence. ‘Sorry? Did you think she was going to cop “community service” picking up litter? I can pick up the phone now and ring the police and ask. So sit down.’

  Jo did. ‘That’s blackmail,’ she said.

  ‘No it isn’t. I’m helping.’ He crooned with a sickening fake sincerity. ‘If I cover up the fraud with our friend Doug, I’ll be committing a crime too. Don’t forget that. We’ll all be accomplices. But I’m a compassionate person. I can’t help thinking how old her kids will be when she gets out.’

  Jo considered grabbing the heavy paperweight on his desk and smashing his skull with it. She wanted to kill him. The only reason he was trying to make a deal about Suze was to save himself money. Jo now knew that she was entitled to more. Much more. Only Linda Priestley would know how much more. Jo vowed then and there that she would never ask. Her dream of living in The Cape had been snuffed out as surely as if he’d applied two wet fingers to the wick of one of her aromatherapy candles.

  Jo was frantic. Even if she could have remembered how to count backwards from five, she couldn’t have done it. She started babbling: ‘If Carol knows, it will get out anyway. She’s the one with the big mouth. She won’t be able to help herself. She’ll tell Didi and then...’

  ‘Not with what I know about the old senator’s business dealings. Your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘So you’re blackmailing her too? You really are a flint-hearted bastard. You’ll make a perfect politician.’

  ‘Now, now! Don’t be rude.’

  Jo could hear the amusement in his voice and hated him for it.

  ‘Carol and I have an understanding. Besides that, she loves me.’

  ‘How long had you been having sex with Carol while we were married?’

  ‘Whoa! Finally you ask the question! Good for you. What a pity you were too gutless to ask me and had to drag the whole of Darling Point, the whole frigging country, into our bedroom.’

  Jo pinched at her palms until they hurt. This was beyond anything she should ever have to endure from the man who was the father of her children. ‘I had to ask you? You could have told me. And it wasn’t “our” bedroom. By then you were spending most of your time in hers!’

  JJ smiled and spoke softly as if to a small child on the first day of pre-school who had to be apprised of the rules for little lunch. ‘Jo, Jo, Jo. Can’t you see? It could have been done in a civilised fashion behind closed doors. We could have worked everything out between ourselves. We always did.’

  There had been nothing civilised about his affair with Carol. Jo wanted to scream it at him.

  ‘But you can’t help yourself, can you? You’re a regular little Lady Di. Whining and bitching to the whole world when things don’t go your way.’ He paused again to square his pen against the side of his notepad and Jo sensed he wasn’t finished by half.

  ‘Maybe your new boyfriend, Brigden the town crier, would like to announce his new acquisition in his auction house.’

  Although she willed it not to, Jo’s heart urgently pumped blood into her pale cheeks.

  ‘Bingo! Your face is like a fucking tomato! I wondered if the bit in the paper was true.’

  Jo’s mouth fell open. In the paper? What the hell was he saying?

  ‘Here...’ He grabbed at the pile of newsprint on the desk and pushed it across to her. ‘Read.’ He stabbed at a paragraph with a thick, stubby finger.

  Jo took the paper and read: Guess Who? Don’t Sue! Going once, going twice! Which dashing auctioneer, flogger of the chattels of the rich and famous, has been appraising the used goods of an aspiring pollie in the blue-ribbon seat of Double Bay?

  Jo was hardly surprised—that would have been ridiculous. She’d predicted the whole of eastern Sydney would soon know she’d been out with Michael. Whether she was innocent or not hardly mattered to the vicious gossips who sat like vultures in every tree. And why JJ was so utterly furious with her was also now explained. It was the worst time she could have chosen to come and see him.

  ‘I realise you probably need a roll in the hay by now, but why that effete little prick, of all people?’

  Jo was too stunned to take the bait dangling in front of her. She moved to leave and was surprised to find her legs still worked. She knew the way out.

  ‘Why all the stupid negotiation? If you knew from the very beginning about Suze, what was the point?’

  ‘I wanted to see if you had any fight in you. You never did and you still haven’t. When we got married, I thought we had a contract. We were going places. I did. You didn’t. End of story.’

  The insult was like a punch to Jo’s solar plexus.

  ‘But almost five million?’ he grinned. ‘You’ve done well. Double what I thought you’d suck out of me. Congratulations. Now I’ll give you till...’ He checked the planner on his computer. ‘I’m away and won’t be back until the Wednesday af
ter Easter. That’s about ten days away. So, no pressure, but my recommendation would be to take my offer, save your friend and walk away.’

  Jo was about to do just that when he continued: ‘Looking forward to hearing your decision. I’ll need it soon so Doug will have enough time to get his house in order before this new audit. I’ll help him bury the body so it will never be found. That I can guarantee. I know my way around a set of books. Who knows? I might end up federal treasurer one day.’

  ‘God help us all if you ever do,’ Jo flung at him.

  JJ stepped from behind his desk and caught her upper arm in a bruising grip. ‘Don’t be like that. It’s just business. Nothing personal.’

  He bent to kiss her cheek and Jo turned her head. He came away from the clinch with a mouthful of hair. She got a rough scrape from his unshaven chin.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  She was lying face down on the couch, her black hair in a tangle, when Rob found her on Sunday afternoon. For one heart-seizing moment he thought she’d killed herself and that, if she had, it would be his fault. Then she groaned and rolled over, blinking at the afternoon sun menacing the gap in the calico blinds.

  He collected the empty wine bottles and silver-foil chocolate wrappers on the coffee table. One glass. She’d drunk almost two bottles by herself by the look of things, but he forgave her.

  In the kitchen, curtains were drawn, the air stale with cigarette smoke. There was another empty bottle on the table,

  a bowl of soggy corn chips and another glass. So she’d had company last night. It was unlikely to have been a man. Judging by the dishevelled state of her she’d passed out on the couch alone. He was relieved, but knew that if she had found another lover, that would be his fault too. He would forgive her.

  All his failings, all his joys, were on display in this little house where his girls lived. It was just like the shrine Suze had in the workroom at Geraniums Red. Only here the votives were wedding and baby photos, sports trophies, the basket of washing on the floor and dirty dishes in the sink.

  He shrugged off his jacket, opened the window, found an apron and was filling the sink with soapy water when he heard her shuffle into the room. Her hair was pulled back to reveal a pale, puffy face. She’d drawn her pink kimono around her.

  ‘I’ve just been to church,’ he said, ‘over at St Bernadette’s.’ He paused for a reaction from his wife, but she was silent. ‘The girls are still away. I thought you might like to go out for yum cha with me.’

  Suze bolted for the bathroom and was violently ill. While she was on her knees heaving sourness into the toilet bowl, she wondered if what was making her vomit her insides out was last night’s wine, the thought of braised chicken feet, the revelation that Rob had been to church or the fact that she would have to tell him what she’d done.

  She felt so wretched she wanted to die. When her stomach was empty and she was down to bitter bile she considered hunting through the cupboards for a razor blade to finish the job. All she had was a three-bladed Gillette Venus Divine shaver with lubricating strips. It wasn’t up to the task.

  By the time she got back to the lounge room, Rob had cleared away the evidence of her binge and had produced a pot of peppermint tea. She retreated into the cushions on the couch and he pressed a steaming cup into her hands.

  ‘You went to church?’ Her voice emanated from a fragile, hollow vessel that used to be filled to the brim.

  Rob took his cup and sat on the coffee table in front of her. ‘I haven’t been since I was a kid and went to communion with Mum. Father Patrick did the service and he must have written his speech just for me, Suze, because it was about my life. In the Bible it says Peter went to Jesus and asked him how often he had to forgive someone. Jesus said not seven times, but seventy times seven.’

  The hot cup began to burn Suze’s fingers. She set it down on the floor by her bare feet.

  ‘If I can forgive myself and everyone else, then I can get my life back. I want to do that, Suze. I want to practise forgiveness and get my life back.’

  Suze forgave herself for thinking she must have flaked out, dead drunk, and woken up in the middle of an episode of Days of Our Lives. She stared at Rob, expecting him to burst out laughing at the prank he’d played and then ask her for money. Instead, she was looking at the top of his head as he studiously inspected the carpet. He must be serious.

  Pity that she had to ruin his conversion on the road to Damascus by pushing him into a holy pothole. ‘Well, if Jesus says you have to forgive seventy times seven, maybe he’ll give you the strength to forgive seventy times eight.’

  They woke up in bed together at dusk. Their sunset was second-hand, reflecting from nearby factory glass and through the open window into their room, but no less lovely for that. The light spread the bed with a peachy coverlet. Suze remembered that this same, soft light had suffused the room on the afternoon she was sure they had conceived the twins in a golden lull between one life and the next.

  ‘I dreamed about us,’ said Rob. He lifted his arm to rest his head on it and Suze, her nose nudging his armpit, inhaled the tangy, comforting smell of his sweat. It was how her father had smelled after a morning pruning the lemon tree in the backyard of their brick house in Canterbury. ‘I dreamed we were on a boat, sailing towards the sun, and the girls were riding on these dolphins, showing us the way.’

  A stupid, improbable dream. Typical Rob Reynolds fantasy. Suze flopped back on the pillow. Its stuffing was leaking, just like hers. ‘We can’t leave,’ Suze reminded him. ‘We went through all that. Your parents, my mum, the girls. We’re stuck.’

  ‘I know. It was a good dream though.’

  His dreamy contemplation was irritating and pathetic. They weren’t together on a sunset cruise. They were sailing into darkness towards rocks where they would be smashed, broken and drowned. Mighty, wet waves hove up from the depths, irresistible and overwhelming. Suze’s chest shuddered. Rob reached out and steadied her until the tide receded. ‘There’s five thousand dollars in cash in the red cushion in the lounge room. Jo gave it to me,’ she said into his chest.

  He rolled away across the mattress. ‘No. We can’t take it.’

  She sat up and pulled the sheets up to her chin. ‘Take it down to Star City. You might win enough for us to pay it back and all our worries would be over. You might even get enough so we could take that trip on a sailing boat and—’

  ‘I said, NO!’ Rob sat up, threw off the covers and leaped from the bed. He bent over her, his palms clutching his naked thighs, accusing. ‘Why the hell would you say that?’

  ‘Because I need to know what you’re saying is true. You’ve said it before.’ She shielded her eyes with her forearm. She couldn’t let Rob’s fanciful dreams or the last, sweet apricot glow of the day fool her. When she opened her eyes, he was kneeling on the floor by her side of the bed, his hands clasped. Suze had thought he would never kneel, for anyone, or anything. The light from the window haloed his dirty-blond hair.

  ‘No more, Suze,’ he whispered. ‘I promise. I forgive myself. I forgive you. I know God’s forgiven me. I need you to forgive me too. I’ve never stopped loving you, baby. I’ve been sick. I’ll get better. Just forgive me.’

  Suze offered one limp hand and he took it, kissed her open palm. Her other hand balled the crumpled sheet and squeezed it hard. ‘I can’t yet. And I won’t pray with you, either. I’m not a believer anymore. The universe won’t provide. It was never going to. Not in a church or a casino. They’ll take the business, the house...’

  ‘I don’t know what we’ll do. But I know it will work out.

  I feel like God will help us.’

  ‘Were we on the Sea of Galilee on that boat, Rob? Was your friend Jesus himself hoisting the sail?’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t talk to me like that.’ Rob shifted uneasily. His knees were hurting. ‘Like I said, I can feel it this time. I’m different.’

  Suze turned her head to see him. He didn’t look any different. He was
wearing the same hangdog expression of misery and contrition she’d seen a hundred times. ‘You come in here talking about “Jesus”. You say you “forgive” me. What for? For trying to make up for your sins? I’ve given you everything I can think of. I’ve got nothing left. You think a peppermint tea and a fuck is enough to convince me that you’ve changed?’

  He stayed calm. It was the only way he could show her he had changed. ‘I know you’re angry. I know you’ve got no reason to trust me.’

  ‘We can’t trust each other, so you should go,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t. Mum’s thrown me out. I haven’t got anywhere to go.’

  The sunset dropped off the edge of a windowpane across the laneway and the room fell into dingy disarray. Rob climbed back into bed and they lay there until it was dark.

  In the middle of the night Suze woke to see that he had gone. She groped her way through the house to the girls’ room, putting her hand to familiar surfaces of wall and furniture in the blackness, and when she switched on the light was terrified to see they weren’t in their beds. Then she remembered in a sudden, sobering moment that her girls were away for the weekend. She wouldn’t see their faces until after they came home from college tomorrow afternoon. The day’s events came back to her in a rush. Her confession. Secrets that should never have been told.

  ‘Jesus. God. No...’ she said aloud. She ran to the lounge room and by dim, yellow streetlight saw the cushions piled on the couch. She snatched at the scarlet one with the button trim. Unzipped it and began clawing at the stuffing.

  ‘I just went for a piss,’ he said from the doorway. ‘The money’s all still there. I counted it and put it back.’