I'd been watching TV. She was making a lot of noise in the background. She came over, turned off the set and pointed her finger at me. She said, 'When are you going to get a proper job?'
Perhaps I heard it then first, the strange note. There was Lee, her hands on her hips, her hair fluffy around her face, her lower lip trembling. I decided to be reasonable. But when I started talking she shouted, 'You don't even own your own house!'
She said this, she shouted at me, after all the time I'd spent explaining to her about cashflow, about creditors, about money men and the hoops you had to jump through to deal with them. After I'd confided in her all year, told her my dreams, my vision for the future. We were going to make money, I'd told her — a lot of it. It just takes time. It takes faith. And then, after I'd bared my soul to her, she came out with something as dull-minded as 'When are you going to get a proper job?' I might as well have been talking to the wall.
She worked as a fitness instructor at a gym. She had clients and she talked about their 'physical issues', like she was a doctor. She pretended to know stuff about 'sports physiology'. It was all nonsense. She made enough money to pay her way, but she had no ideas beyond that. She wasn't a creative person. But I'd really believed she respected the entrepreneur in me.
I could have forgiven her. After all, it was her helplessness that made me fall for her, gave me the feeling she needed shielding from the world. But when she turned off the TV. When she stuck her finger in my face. Demanding answers. And then she made an even bigger mistake. I went outside to cool off, and she locked me out of my house.
When she was on the phone she let me hear her say, 'What if we had a baby? How could he provide for that?'
I suppose she had a plan. I know how these things work. No doubt she wanted to get pregnant, and had decided to throw her weight around, to get us both in shape for it. She was getting on for thirty. But the thought made something close over in me. My daughters were twelve and ten. They meant the world to me. I got on well with my ex-wives, Adele and Lynn. Lee didn't understand it: that part of my life was sacred to me. It was sealed. I saw my girls regularly and paid for them and was a good father. But sad things had happened and things had changed and we'd moved on, Adele and Lynn and the girls and I. I was sorry it hadn't worked out, but that was life. And now I was free to follow my dreams.
I knew Lee would be back. There would be endless dramas. But she'd gone too far. She would try all sorts of tricks, but I was ready. I was ready.
I was forty, and exceptionally fit. I jogged, swam, worked out. In my teens and twenties I'd had a successful sporting career. It was good while it lasted but sport is never going to carry you far beyond thirty, and for the past ten years I'd been doing what I'm good at: finding a business opportunity and taking it to its full potential. I'd had successes. You have to think laterally. My business partner, Russell, and I made money in textiles. We had a time in the hairdressing industry. Russell had a thing for franchises. We bought and sold property. That year I'd got my eye fixed on property development. With Russell's flair and my creative thinking we could go a long way. We were excited. Russell was a visionary — he saw angles others wouldn't notice. He was the kind of guy who's working on a plan every waking minute. I was feeling good; I was energised. There was only one problem, and it was in the financial sphere. We'd got into a bit of difficulty the year before, to do with a retail business and some creative loans.
Our lawyers, Ridge Sligo, were a great bunch of guys. Jon Sligo, a personal friend of mine, had done a piece of financial magic with a shelf company for us, and now, through no fault of his own, was getting bother about it from the Serious Fraud Office. It was a load of nonsense. There was nothing illegal. The way business gets stifled by this sort of thing is a scandal. We had confidence in the outcome, but we were stalled. It was frustrating. We couldn't move forward, yet we needed to move to make money. We were like sharks, Russell and I. Stop moving and we die.
I'd told Lee we were in a holding pattern, and how in business you have to take risks, and while the rewards can be great, it's often the creative people who get it in the neck when things go wrong. In the meantime, although Lee didn't know it, I'd borrowed money from my first ex-wife, Adele, who'd been unfortunately widowed after marrying her second husband, and who was well off. Adele was easy-going, and she understood about taking the long view. She hadn't aged very well, but I almost felt like re-marrying her when she gave me that money. After all the bad times and petty fights we'd had, she believed in me. She had faith in my vision. Contrast that with Lee.
Adele was a big, frowsy woman. She took no interest in her appearance any more. Her favourite thing these days was to lie in bed, eating and reading. She had a degree in education and she'd been in teaching most of her life. She had a brain, and I respected her for it. She thought I was flashy and she teased me about my taste for 'bimbos and fast cars', but she knew I was as smart as she was. I'd had too many chances early on to bother with university, that was all.
Adele and I traded books a lot. Lee used to complain when I came home with a book Adele had lent me and read it all weekend. I told Lee she should nourish her mind. She said indignantly, 'I've got a book.' She showed it to me. It was called One Hundred Ways to Improve Your Breathing. I told Adele about it and we laughed. Lee's book. Dear oh dear.
Adele liked fiction. I preferred books about science and history. I had a craze for cosmology, and even though most of it was hard to understand I got a kick out of trying to explain things like M-theory to Adele and the girls. One day I went around while they were eating lunch. 'Guess what?' I said. 'The universe we live in is not the only one.'
'Really?' said the girls.
'Get this,' I said. 'The universe is a membrane. The Big Bang was caused by the collision of the membrane of our universe and a parallel universe.'
They listened.
'The very beginning of the Big Bang is called the singularity. Before membrane theory, physicists couldn't calculate back to the moment of the singularity. Now that they've realised there are parallel universes, they can.'
'The singularity,' my daughter said. She liked the mysterious sound of it.
'Also, gravity is weak — this is the latest theory — gravity is weak because it's leaking from our universe to a parallel one.'
'Gravity isn't weak,' Adele said.
'Yes it is. Think about it. You can beat it just by picking up a cup.'
Adele and the girls picked up their cups and put them down. They looked at me.
I told them, 'There could be infinite universes, each with their own laws of physics.'
Adele made a face.
'Girls, how many dimensions do you think there are?'
'Three?'
'No. Eleven!'
I enjoyed these talks we had, and when I went home to Lee and her chatter I used to feel bored and flat. But one night, when I'd been reading about quantum gravity, I had a terrible dream: there was a stuffed toy, a reindeer. I looked at it and it multiplied into infinite repetitions of the same toy, stretching as far as I could see. A voice droned, 'There are an infinite number of universes. And therefore you do not exist. You do not exist. You do not exist . . .'
I think it was a reaction to the abstract ideas I'd been amusing myself with. The subconscious part of my mind was appalled. I sat up, sweating. I woke Lee and tried to explain. She started doing breathing exercises, right there in the bed while I was talking to her.
It was for the best that she'd gone. Let her find some young guy she could have kids with. Better that I didn't spoil her chances of that.
Now I was in a rut. I wanted to be out in the world, launching myself into a new venture, but Russell and I went on being stalled. The Serious Fraud Office swooped in and seized some computers from Ridge Sligo. Those bureaucratic bastards had it in for Jon Sligo and his partner Rick Sheet, just because they were innovative and successful. We had nothing to hide, but all we could do was wait. I thought about selling my car, but t
he idea was depressing. I missed having Lee in bed. One evening I picked up a woman and had quite a good one-night stand. I had a short fling with my second ex-wife, Lynn, but it was a pretty desultory affair. You can't go back. Lee came around and we had some scenes. She found a hairclip of Lynn's by the side of the bed. She moved her stuff out. I felt directionless. One thing about Terry Carstone: I don't like waiting. I was looking round for something, anything, to get my teeth into.
One day I went up to court with Rick Sheet to watch their barrister argue about the Ridge Sligo computers. There was a dispute about what the SFO could get their hands on. I was sitting in the back with Rick and Russell and I had a feeling. This was good. There was order, there was drama, there was a bit of controlled aggression. There was a lot of complicated legal argument that I didn't understand. I borrowed a pen and paper and took notes. I went home afterwards and read them, and then I called Rick and talked to him. I had ideas I wanted him to run by the barrister. Rick talked about 'precedent' and 'relevance', and I knew he was telling me I didn't know anything. But the next week when we went up the barrister came out with one of the points I'd told Rick to tell him to make. That made me feel good. I started to take more interest, to pay attention to every word. I put my books on cosmology aside, and started dipping into a textbook on evidence I'd borrowed from Rick.
I was spending a bit of time at Adele's, and she and the girls seemed happy to have me. I'd drop in when I'd been walking the dog — the girls loved my old black Lab, even though he was on his last legs. Let's face it, Adele wasn't likely to have any men other than me about. She hadn't had a haircut for months, and she'd grown a bit of a moustache. It was summer and she wore shapeless, sleeveless dresses. But I liked her calm cheerful smile, the way she swung around the house with her graceful walk. She didn't spend all her time putting muck on her face and complaining about being 'bloated' or 'having a fat day' or 'cutting out carbohydrates'. Obviously you wouldn't want to go out with her, but she was a good woman, and I used to feel happy in her sitting room with the bookshelves and the pot plants, and the nice garden outside, and Adele in the kitchen making some high-fat dish and chatting away to the girls.
One day I was having a beer and looking through Adele's shelves when I found a book about a criminal case. I took it down, since anything about the law interested me now. A journalist had researched an Australian murder case and decided that the woman who'd been convicted was innocent. I looked through the photos: the crime scene, the victim, the woman accused, and so on. I took it in to Adele.
'You read this?'
She was eating salami. 'Yes. It's quite diverting.'
'Is it true?'
She tossed her hair back. 'It makes a convincing case,' she said vaguely.
I grabbed another beer. 'Can I borrow it, love?'
'Oh, what's mine is yours,' she said.
There was something in her tone.
I looked at her. 'What do you mean by that?'
'Nothing, Terry.'
I judged it was time to leave. I took the beer and the book, kissed the girls and went off to the gym. After that I sat by the pool at my place and started reading.
I liked the writer, a journalist who'd taken up the case of a woman accused of poisoning three people. The guy was tenacious. He didn't accept what people in authority told him. He dug deep and discovered evidence the police and the defence lawyers had been too sloppy to uncover. He hadn't succeeded completely, since the woman, as far as I could tell, was still mouldering away in an Australian prison. But the book was, as Adele had said, 'diverting'. It demonstrated something: that you can't trust people just because they're in positions of power. Police, lawyers, judges — are human. They make mistakes. Some are corrupt, some incompetent. (Look at our problems with the Serious Fraud Office.) I read the book pretty much in one sitting. I got energised and made a lot of notes. I wished I had someone to talk to.
I went back to Adele's. She was the only one who'd be interested in my ideas. When I opened the door I heard her say, 'My ex-husband.'
I strolled in and here was a bearded fat guy heaving himself out of his seat and coming to shake hands. I looked at him coolly.
'This is Willem,' Adele said.
'Hello, William.'
'Willem,' he corrected.
I turned; it was a reflex. I was about to go to the kitchen for a beer. I hesitated. The table was set with dishes and a fancy salad.
'You never eat salad,' I said.
Adele said, 'Terry.'
'You eat all that fatty shit.'
I couldn't help it. I was upset. I thought about sitting down and telling Adele and Willem about the case of the Australian poisoner. But Adele was moving me towards the door. Behind her, fat Willem coughed and shifted his bulk.
I faced Adele at the door. 'How do you have sex? How do you connect? Couple of billiard balls.' I said it aloud.
A look flashed across Adele's face. All that good-natured flab sharpened itself into such fury. Goodness me, I'll never forget it. She closed the door on me.
I got in the car. I thought, you never know about people. Sloppy old Adele. She was so slow and easy, so beyond (I'd thought) wanting a man. Something else I'd observed straight away: she'd waxed off her mo.
No doubt Willem was a gold-digger. I checked my mirrors. This was a new habit. Over the past month I'd got it into my head that those fools at the Serious Fraud Office were following me.
***
Ridge Sligo's case dragged on. The computers were unavailable while the firm tried to get them back and the Serious Fraud people applied to examine them. I went to court each time there was a hearing and soon I had a file of notes on the case. In the end, Ridge Sligo got the computers back. Russell and I were free to move ahead, and we started putting together ideas in the property sphere. I went back to Adele and borrowed a bit more cash. I didn't need to do much persuading. She'd never cared about money. I think she managed to snare her rich old second husband because she didn't give a single thought to his inherited wealth. I borrowed $10,000 from her — spending money while Russell and Jon Sligo and I set up some deals. Possibly she thought it was a good way to get rid of me. When I was busy I didn't get bored and come visiting all the time.
We had a frantic winter and by the time summer came around again things were going well. Russell and I made a lot of money very quickly, on some sidelines. I was playing the field, living the high life. I had no trouble attracting women, although none of them interested me. I wanted a woman I could talk to, but all I met in bars and clubs were empty-headed types. There was one woman I fancied who worked in an upmarket club, The Land of Opportunity. The Land was one of those high-class places where successful players like Russell and myself ended up after we'd had too much champagne. They had gorgeous hostesses and expensive drinks, and rooms where you could have 'conversation' with the girls. It was basically lap-dancing out the back — they took off their clothes and had a chat, and you told them your sorrows. Like I said, it was a classy place. I never went into those back rooms, but Russell did, the old playboy.
The woman I liked, Claudine Zambucka, worked on the reception at The Land, and the first time I saw her I was knocked over by her eyes. They were pure, pale blue and steady. They made me think of words like 'tundra', 'ice floe' and 'glacier', of beautiful, remote, silent places. I was persistent, and in the end I persuaded her to go out with me. Claudine was cool. She was clever. She kept my interest up. She was working in The Land temporarily because her stepmother owned the place. The only problem was Russell. He liked a simpler type of lady. Claudine made him nervous. He really disliked her.
You could tell Claudine anything. She listened, usually without comment, but when you tested her you found she knew exactly what you were saying. Just like Adele. Only Claudine was beautiful. You didn't feel the kind of need in her that you felt with ladies like Lee. There was no hidden agenda. It unnerved me every now and then, the way Claudine didn't conform to the normal patterns. But I was cra
zy about her.
One night Jon Sligo and Russell and myself were at The Land and Jon told me about a lawyer friend of his, Murray Ray, who acted for criminals. Ray had a client, Andrew Newgate, who'd been convicted of murdering his piano teacher. There were questions about the case. Ray wanted to take an appeal to the Privy Council in London but the family had run out of funds. This interested me, because my craze for legal things was still strong. I got Jon to tell me about it.
Newgate, who was about twenty when he was arrested, had had a long association with his piano teacher, a gay guy who lived alone. The teacher had been found strangled in the back garden of his house. After a long investigation the police had fixed on Newgate, and then, as Jon put it, they'd manufactured a case to fit around their theory. They decided that Newgate and the teacher had been having an affair, and that Newgate had flown into a rage when the teacher had a relationship with someone else. The family, who were respectable, middleclass people, insisted that Newgate wasn't gay. He had girlfriends. They said he'd been fond of the teacher and was upset by his death. Now Newgate had been convicted and spent his time in jail playing on an old keyboard — there was no piano inside — composing music, and hoping that the real criminal would be caught.
'Jesus. That's terrible.' I was struck by the thought of him in his cell, alone, making up tunes in his head. Praying for someone to help him.
'Jon,' I said, 'there's something in this.'
All the rest of the weekend I was thinking about the case. I'd been aware of it, had read about it in the papers on and off. I knew it was a case people argued about and spoke of as a possible miscarriage of justice. On Monday I rang up Murray Ray. I told him that our mutual friend, Jon Sligo, had told me about the case. Ray sounded a bit cautious but he agreed to meet me.
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