by C. J. Duggan
I avoided eye contact and looking at Sean in general. “Balcony’s that way.” I pointed at the open French door and then mentally slapped myself.
Where else would the balcony be, Captain Obvious?
If Sean had thought my stating the obvious was as dippy as I’d thought it was, he didn’t say anything.
He walked towards the open doors and stopped short of the hole in the floor.
I watched him hesitate. “I thought you said it was safe to walk on?” I asked, moving to stand beside Sean and peering out onto the balcony.
“It is,” he said.
“Then it’s okay to walk out there, right?” I asked.
When he didn’t answer, I took that as a yes, and stepped out onto the balcony, ensuring I gave that entire missing section a wide berth. I cocked my hip against the railing and looked out, down the hill at Lake Onslow, grateful that I could enjoy the view again.
I released a contented sigh. “Is there any place as pretty?” I turned, expecting to see Sean by my side, but he hadn’t moved from the apartment – not one step.
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said.
I frowned and hoisted myself up to sit on the ledge. Sean’s brow furrowed and it was almost as if the colour visibly drained from his face.
I hooked my arm around the beam for support. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you really have to sit up there?”
My eyes widened. “Why? Is it not safe?” I looked around.
“I don’t think sitting on the edge of a two-storey building is ever safe, no.” His expression was serious, all humour long gone. This was a side of Sean I didn’t expect.
Interesting.
“So, doing this would be a really bad idea then?” I pulled myself up to stand on the ledge, holding onto the pole, like I had done a thousand times before when Mum and Dad weren’t around.
Sean’s eyes widened in horror.
“Amy, get down,” he bit out. He tentatively stepped forward onto the balcony, before stopping on the threshold.
I half expected Sean to march over, rip me from the ledge, and carry me downstairs over his shoulder while spouting out a giant lecture. My stomach flipped at the very thought. But instead, Sean’s jaw clenched and he gritted his teeth. He wasn’t looking at me; his focus was on the hole in the balcony. His hand grasped the doorframe with a white-knuckled intensity.
It was then that it dawned on me. “Sean, are you afraid of heights?”
“Can you just get down from there?” he snapped.
“How can a builder be afraid of heights? It’s like a doctor being afraid of blood.”
“Amy,” his voice warned.
I should have enjoyed watching him suffer, but somehow, seeing Sean paralysed with fear like that was not in the least bit satisfying.
“All right, all right.” I jumped down from the ledge. “You okay?”
“You know those things that seem like a good idea at the time?”
“Yeah.”
He swallowed. “Well, this was one of them.”
Chapter Eleven
“Hi, love, how’s everything going?”
I cringed at the sound of my dad’s voice on the phone. I had been distracted mid-mop of the bar room floor when I answered my mobile without even looking at the screen.
“Oh, hey, Dad. Yeah, everything’s good.”
Aside from the hypochondriac bartender and the builder with vertigo, everything was just Jim-dandy.
“And how’s Matt going? He’s a top young bloke. If you need anything you just let him know and he’ll take care of it.”
I frowned at my phone. Was he talking about the same Matt?
“Uh, yeah, he’s good.” I tried to put the mop silently back into the bucket.
“Has it been busy?”
Oh God! Talk about asking tough questions.
“Oh, you know, it’s pretty steady, but I don’t think the summer crowd has kicked in yet.”
Lies, lies, lies.
“Well, when things pick up like it always does over summer, Matt says he has a few mates that can help out.”
Matt’s mates? I could just imagine.
“We’ll see how we go.”
“That a girl! I bet you’re too busy working on your tan anyway. You just leave the business side to Matt and enjoy yourself.”
I tried my best not to openly scoff.
“How’s Mum?”
“Well, that’s why I called.”
My heart clenched. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh yeah – of course – sorry to scare you. I just called to let you know that I’m surprising your mother with a trip away.”
My heart started hammering against my ribs again and I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I was holding. “Oh? What did you have in mind?”
“A trip down the coast, you know, like she often talks about?”
Actually, Mum mooned over Europe mostly, but I guess this was Dad’s compromise.
“Do you think she’ll like it?” His voice had a childlike hopefulness to it. Knowing how materialistic and superficial Mum was, I was in no doubt that she would love it.
“As long as it’s luxurious and not camping, I’m sure it’ll be right up her alley.”
“That’s what I thought.” He could barely contain his excitement. “I’m taking her out for dinner tonight, going to spring it on her with a gift voucher to a spa … on the coast.” He chuckled to himself, humoured by his genius plan.
It was hard to hold a grudge against him, hearing him so upbeat and excited. It was a side of Dad I had not grown up with, so this new midlife-crisis persona was really unusual.
“Well, good luck!” I said. “No doubt I’ll get an enthusiastic phone call from Mum later.”
“Here’s hoping, hey?”
An awkward silence settled over us, as the conversation dried up.
“Well, better let you go, you’re probably itching to get down lakeside with your friends.”
I looked at the mop bucket. “Yeah, sure am.”
“Before you go, love, your mother and I talked about it and thought, seeing as you’re going to be in Onslow for the summer, we’d pop some money into your account. You know, for incidentals and stuff for the hotel. I know you have your own money but just in case you need anything.”
My heart spiked in approval. “Uh, yeah, that would be great. Thanks, Dad.”
“No worries. If you need any more just let us know.”
“I’m sure it will be fine.”
***
Holy frack!
I stared wide-eyed at my ATM receipt. There were way more zeros than I had expected. “Incidentals.” I gathered, were for cleaning products and basically everything Matt didn’t seem to think it necessary to stock up on, like soap or toilet paper. At nineteen, I felt kind of guilty receiving any kind of allowance; it was kind of princessy, but it was also how our family worked. I had always been in a comfortably wealthy family and Dad provided for me and Mum and we didn’t question it. But now, I was questioning.
Where was it coming from? How was Dad affording to dish out money like it was growing off a tree when the Onslow was literally falling down around me? Obviously he had invested way too much trust in Matt the Rat, and Matt was no doubt feeding him utter falsehoods over how the business was running. Had to be, or else Dad would have done something.
I pocketed the receipt with the ludicrous figure on it and made the decision to leave it as emergency stash only. Even though the Onslow was one giant freakin’ emergency, I needed to think about what I was going to do. I couldn’t have the hotel closed forever and the balcony repair job was almost complete, which was great. It just left the rest of the hotel that needed drastic attention.
Matt graced me with his presence again on Friday, after having made what seemed like a miraculous recovery from his deathbed. He busied himself around, opening and closing the fridge doors in the takeaway section of the bar.
I sat propped on the bar
, flicking channels on the TV. “I stocked it yesterday,” I said, rather unenthusiastically.
“Ha! So I see. Seems like I’m out of a job.”
I should be so lucky.
I flicked off the TV. “Hey, Matt, can I ask a stupid question?”
Matt stilled from looking inside the fridge and appraised me with guarded uncertainty.
“Where are all the staff?”
“The staff?”
“Yeah, we’re just about in the peak season. Where are they? Surely there can’t just be you?”
Matt straightened and puffed out his chest. “Why not?”
“Have you worked here at the Onslow at summertime?”
“No.”
“Well, it gets busy – real busy. There are two bars and a restaurant. Although it seems patronage has dropped off a bit, I think we can get them back. We need more than just you.”
Matt looked unenthused.
“We have regular tourists that come back every year, Matt, and they will be coming again whether you’re prepared for them or not. Regardless of what has happened, I think we can get this place up and running, back to its full potential.”
“So does this mean the bar’s open?” Matt asked.
I took a deep breath and tried not to slap him upside the head. “It has to be. It may not be up to scratch yet, but we can’t make improvements if we don’t have money coming through the door.”
“So … what do you want from me?” Matt looked disgusted, as if everything I had said was a major buzzkill.
I sighed. “I want you to do your job!”
Heaven forbid he do anything more than that. I leapt off the bar.
“I think I will hire someone to come and mow the lawns and do some weeding,” I said.
Matt’s interest peaked. “Oh, yeah? Well if you need any extra sets of hands, I have a few mates.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got it sorted.” At least, I thought I had, because what I was about to do was an absolute last resort and it scared me to death.
***
I sat in a sunlit parlour. Floral-covered La-Z-Boys flanked a 1960s-style gas heater topped with an array of shiny porcelain cats. The living room was filled with doilies and knick-knacks, but not a speck of dust on any of it.
I expected no less from Melba Stewart. Melba, a robust, portly woman with a matron-style bun and a no-nonsense attitude waddled into the room with a tray of tea and biscuits. She had worked at the Onslow since I was born and had pretty much raised me when my parents were too busy.
Melba handed me a china teacup. “You don’t still have three sugars, do you?” she asked, a look of disapproval marking her face.
“Afraid so,” I said. “But, hey, it’s my one vice in life.”
She pursed her lips together, not buying my line for one second.
I smiled. “I’ve missed you, Melbs.”
Melba scoffed, brushing my words away, a clear sign that she was trying to fob me off before she became emotional.
I didn’t know where to begin. Did I strike now that her soft underbelly was exposed, or did I wait until a few more words were exchanged? I decided to go in for the kill.
“Been to the Onslow lately?” I asked, innocently, as I sipped on my tea.
“Ha! What on earth would possess me to do that?”
This wasn’t going to be easy.
“But you have at least seen it, haven’t you? You know, from a distance?”
“Just spit it out, Amy. What do you want?”
Oh, she knew me too well.
“I need your help, Melba.”
Her icy facade refused to thaw; her eyes were so dark, I was almost intimidated myself … almost. I’d seen that look a million times.
“Dad has put this bloke Matt in charge.”
“Oh, don’t even mention that buffoon’s name; what an utter idiot he is,” Melba cut me off.
I smiled. “Well, Melbs, it seems we’re in complete agreement there. I didn’t know where else to go. I got such a shock when I came home; it’s taken me days to get over the amount of work that’s in front of me just to get the place presentable again. It’s just all such a mess and I don’t even know where to start.” I poured it all out. The days of pent-up anger and sadness, everything I hadn’t dared admit or even acknowledge, just flowed from me.
Melba sat across from me, motionless, still like a statue, and studied me intently. I was about to ask if she had heard anything I had just said when she breathed in deeply.
“And what makes any of these things your problem?”
I paused.
“Because it’s my home. And I can’t for the life of me believe that it has just been let go.”
“Well, ya father doesn’t seem to care all that much.” Melba pronounced ‘ya father’ with such venom I knew I had hit a nerve in coming here.
It had been late last year when I’d overheard Dad say that Melba had left the Onslow. I had been in such shock I had wanted to go straight back to Onslow and beg her to come back. Melba was such an integral part of the Onslow. Sure, she was mean and bitter and pedantic, but she ran the restaurant and the kitchen like a well-oiled machine. Dad basically had nothing to worry about when it came to that part of the business because Melba ran the show, and ran it well. But now, without her …
The fact that she had left made no sense at all, and any time I asked about it Dad always brushed it off or shut down. But as I sat across from Melba now, I knew she still cared about the Onslow; I read it in her deep, troubled sigh as I told her how bad things really were. If Melba had been around, there was no way the Onslow would be in this state. Any time Dad had left whatever bartender in charge in the past, Melba was always the go-to person. She secretly ran the show.
“Yeah, well, Dad’s on a bit of a ‘journey of self-discovery’ at the moment.” I tried not to cringe.
“Ha! Just like a man, they can never multi-task.”
“Yeah, well, he’s lost all this weight, and just upped and came to woo Mum back. And it worked. It’s embarrassing. They’re like a couple of teenagers.” I shook my head, half expecting Melba to mirror my horror. So the fact that she was smiling made no sense at all.
“What?”
“So he does listen after all, the old fool.”
Melba must have read my confused frown and silence.
“Oh, I suppose he wouldn’t have told you, would he?”
“Told me what?”
“Twelve months ago, your father was a different man. I’m not talking about the man you see today or the man you knew before. He was someone else, unhealthy, and miserable, in an absolute rut of self-pity, and I was sick to death of watching him slowly kill himself. He would stay in bed for days at a time; he stopped sponsoring the cricket club and hosting functions. He wasn’t doing anything except dwelling in his own misery. He hired that Matt, thinking he would be the saviour, but all he did was add to his troubles.”
It was hard to hear what Melba was saying, to envision Dad living that way. Mum and I had been living it up in the city. I hadn’t given too much thought to what Dad was up to. I had just naturally assumed he was living the dream; I mean, what grown man wouldn’t want to own a pub, and drink, smoke and socialise all day long? But in reality, it seemed, it hadn’t been working at all. It had all been a lie. How had I not seen it?
“So what changed?” I asked.
“I left. I wasn’t there to see how it changed. After your mother gave him an ultimatum, something I’m sure he was just going to let go, I gave him my own ultimatum.”
My eyes widened. “And that’s why you left?”
“Ha! Not before having a humdinger of a fight with that stubborn mule.”
I winced.
“I called him every name under the sun, and you know how I feel about such language, but I was furious.”
“And then you left.”
“No, Chook, that’s when he asked me to leave … and never come back.”
Chapter Twelv
e
That was not exactly how I expected the story to go.
“Well, regardless of what was said, he obviously listened to you, Melba. By the sounds of it, your tough love saved Dad’s life.”
Melba didn’t seem appeased by this; she just sat back in her La-Z-Boy and rocked gently.
“He saved one area of his life but let another go,” said Melba.
“But that’s it, he can’t let it go, and he can’t do it all by himself. Melba, there are NO staff. No one. Just me and Matt the Rat and that’s not enough. I need help. I need you.”
Melba’s shoulders sagged sadly; her icy exterior was thawing.
My heart clenched in hope.
“I’m sorry, Chook. But when your father told me to leave and never come back, I said on my oath that I would never come back. And unless Eric invites me himself, I cannot in good faith walk back in that door.”
Melba and her bloody moral high ground. I wanted to scream, to kick, to cry, but my heart sank far too low to fight for it.
I nodded. “That’s a shame, because regardless of what’s gone on between you and Dad I’m the one that needs your help, I’m the one that’s drowning.”
“It’s not your fight, Chook.”
“Isn’t it? If you think about it, the ultimatum you gave Dad wasn’t your fight, either.”
Melba stopped rocking; her eyes cut into me and I knew I’d gone too far and it was time to leave. I stood and hooked my bag over my shoulder.
“Thanks for the tea; no one makes it better than you.”
And before she could reply, I made my own way out the door.
***
By the time I got back to the Onslow, I was so immersed in self-pity that I almost didn’t notice that the scaffolding had been taken down. It was only a voice from nowhere that abruptly stopped me from pushing my way through the door.
“See? Told you it would be finished.”
Sean was perched on a picnic table, sipping a cold beer. He pointed above my head with a broad smile. I followed his eyes to see that the hole was completely patched and a new support beam in place. I smiled.
