‘You sound disappointed,’ the doctor said, his fingertips on the pulse in her wrist. “No, that heart rate feels nice and steady. Your blood pressure’s normal. ECG’s perfect.’
‘I would have to leave my job, if I’d had a heart attack, wouldn’t I?’
‘No, no, no! Goodness, we wouldn’t have an executive left in this city if that was the case. Every corporate board would be deserted.’
‘But ideally—’
‘You don’t need a heart attack to leave a job, you know. If you don’t like it you can just, you know, leave.’
‘Oh, I know that!’ Of course she knew that. What a stupid thing to say.
But who would leave a perfectly good job, just because they didn’t like it?
Chapter 7
The days cooled, the leaves fell, and Grace took out the cool-weather work clothes she had packed away last year. Like old friends from another time; the light wool cardigans, the leggings and boots that would turn summer clothes into autumn ones. She looked at her heavy coat and put it back. Not yet. She walked to work through the city’s parklands and breathed in the scent of autumnal trees, and crunched her boots through drifts of dry leaves along the path.
One day she arrived at the office to find anxious faces. An email had gone around: the chairman of the board would visit that afternoon to congratulate the team on their recent winning of the state Good Works grant, and to meet the people behind the ‘really impressive work on the Teenagers Attack Depression campaign’.
This was immediately interpreted as the announcement of pending redundancies. Josh pulled Grace into the kitchen.
‘Do you think it will be me?’
‘Not at all,’ lied Grace, deeply sympathetic. The lost federal grant had specifically funded project workers, and had underlined Josh’s existence in the place. Josh was the best project worker they had; the most efficient and compassionate, and it stood to reason that in an organisation run by the Bunny, good people like Josh would be the first to go.
‘I hope it is. I want a redundancy.’
Grace was shocked. ‘You want to lose your job?’
‘I want to get a payout. I’ve been here 12 years. It might be enough for me to take some time off, do things I’ve never been able to.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Pottery. Train for marathons.’
‘But what about money? To live?’
‘I’ve paid off the mortgage.’
Grace could not imagine such freedom. She trailed disconsolately back to her desk, where the Bunny was waiting to announce she had finally graduated from her PhD. This was in something or other — perpetuating mental illness in the workplace, or pathological vanity, Grace had hardly paid any attention. Until now.
‘My thesis was on modern day electro-convulsive therapy for manic depressives,’ the Bunny explained, flapping a piece of parchment. ‘And I’m prepared to offer myself for interview on this topic, and on the new research my team came up with.’
Grace was momentarily distracted by the idea of the Bunny offering herself up for ECT. ‘Oh! Interview. Right.’
‘With all three major metro daily newspapers.’
‘But—’
‘No buts, Grace! This is a sensational story we’re handing them on a plate. If you can’t put this exclusive yarn into their laps, then you can’t honestly call yourself a media manager, can you?’
Grace sighed. She had had a tough morning getting Lotte to kindy. Skip was home sick, and without Skip, kindy was pointless for Lotte. She had just received a text message from Miss Laura: Lotte says feels sick wants go home. It was not the day for the Bunny’s vanity to reach its Everestial peak. ‘We can’t give it to all three newspapers and call it an exclusive. Why not choose one newspaper, and try to get the most out of it?’ she pleaded.
Barbara narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Do you think?’
That’s what you pay me for, snapped Grace mentally. ‘Why don’t I ring Jen Craigson at The National Daily?’ she said calmly. ‘She writes some good features.’
‘I don’t want it buried in the health supplement. I think they could get a feature and a news piece out of it!’
‘Do you?’ Oh, Lord. Greece looked set to be thrown out of the EU and the Bunny thought it might make the news that she had finished her PhD.
‘And don’t forget to amend my name on any press release now to Doctor Barbara Boiler.’
‘I certainly won’t forget.’
‘But you don’t have to call me “Doctor”. I’m not that formal.’ The Bunny screwed up her nose in a way that was meant to be friendly, but which Grace found terrifying. In these pre-press release hours the Bunny always veered between being threatening and too friendly, as she might have done with her hairdresser, Grace reflected. Like me enough to give me good service, and if you don’t I’ll eat you.
Grace slipped back out to her desk and rang Tom’s mobile. Disconnected, as usual. Why did they pay for a mobile, when the man never turned the thing on? She rang his desk phone, which was picked up by a colleague, someone Grace didn’t know.
‘Ah yes, the boy genius.’
Grace paused at the unmistakable sneering. ‘I’m just trying to track him down,’ she continued politely.
‘So is his boss. He never turned up today. He missed a meeting with a client. A big one.’
Big meeting? Big client? Grace gritted her teeth, and did not ask. In that sardonic, unknown voice on the phone she could hear exactly how it was at Tom’s workplace, without even setting foot in the building. If Tom got sacked, if he wriggled out of his working life down that passive-aggressive pathway . . . surely not. But right now, she had to get someone to pick up Lotte.
She rang Verity at home, the only person she really felt she could ask who wasn’t working. Verity was out playing tennis and said gaily that she wouldn’t be home for another two hours. No problem, said Grace grimly, envisioning a life of tennis and happy lunches. Deuce!
‘Qu’est-ce qu’il se passe?’ said Dr Bunny, jauntily. The Bunny liked to show off her French. She had changed into a T-shirt and leggings which hugged her large bottom. The toenails of her wrinkled bare feet were painted. She was off to the office yoga class.
Grace grimaced, the phone still to her ear, and waved at it to indicate she was talking. The Bunny gave her the thumbs-up and left, and Grace said a sheepish goodbye to the dial tone and hung up. She dialed and left a message for Jen Craigson.
Her phone rang as soon as she put it down, and she snatched it back up. Maybe it could be this easy, maybe it was a slow domestic news day, despite Greece, and Jen Craigson might gobble up an incendiary interview with Dr Bunny and Grace could race off early.
But it was Miss Laura from kindy.
‘Grace? Just wondering how you’re going there. Lotte’s temperature is up to 39 degrees and, well . . .’ Laura paused. ‘She’s complaining of a sore foot. The one she hurt in the crash.’
‘Oh dear, thanks for letting me know.’ Grace silently uttered every profane word she knew. ’Well, I guess I’ll come pick her up as soon as I can.’ She hung up.
Dammit, where was Tom? Grace would have to go, if she couldn’t find him. But maybe she could strike it lucky, and shop this story before she left, and handle the rest by phone. What the hell was the Bunny’s doctorate in again? Electro-convulsive therapy for wilful employees? For men who wanted to slink away from their jobs? Grace couldn’t read her own writing. She glanced over at the Bunny’s office. It was empty; she was at yoga. Should Grace interrupt her there? Oh God, the thought of having to sidle up to the Bunny in her leggings, doing down-face dog, was too much. And her newly minted PhD would be lying somewhere around there, in her office. Surely Grace could just find it herself in half a minute?
Inside the Bunny’s office, feeling slightly guilty to be there, she scanned two desks and a shelf, all bearing piles of varying heights of reports, envelopes and documents. The Bunny was not a neat worker, and Grace later reflected
that it was amazing that she had somehow focused through the chaos onto the one place that bore her own name: a fat yellow envelope. Labelled, Grace Ellison.
It looked so official! A pay rise, maybe, some commendation for good service? But then her blood froze. She crossed the room and turned the envelope over. Unsealed. She slid her fingers inside.
A letter of termination. Regrettable. No reflection on. Commendable work. A page of figures that were incomprehensible. It could not be. She was dreaming. She heard a noise and hastily slid the page back in the envelope and tossed it on the desk, her heart racing. An identical letter for Josh Papps. He would be pleased. Grace quickly returned to her desk, seized her pen and drew triangles all over her notepad, so deeply that the page tore in places. She breathed fast and hard, and kept drawing triangles until her vision cleared.
Finally, she packed the contents of her desk into a box, emailed all her personal files to herself, and checked her handbag one last time. Then she wrote an email.
Dear Dr Boiler,
My little girl is sick at her kindergarten and I have had to leave immediately.
Grace
Out at the taxi rank, her heart raced. She felt the city sharp and new around her, as if a fog had lifted from her vision. A woman in a skirt, sunglasses and bike helmet, directly over the road from her, leaned her thighs into a parked bicycle and wriggled her fingers into gloves. A labourer pushed a wheelbarrow into a construction site, making his way through city workers in expensive suits. How old a tool was the wheelbarrow, this ancient device? A stiff-legged man on a mobile phone marched back and forth across the pavement, while a woman on a phone nearby stood still and smiled, a waterfall of curves, the phone raised to her ear like a cup. A weathered woman with purple hair stared at Grace and held out her hand.
‘Gotta dollar?’
Grace carefully counted out three, as a taxi pulled up beside her. She put them into the woman’s claw, and then she climbed into the back seat. She wasn’t sure she had enough to reach the kindy now, and she may regret her generosity at the other end. And the woman hadn’t even said thank you. But somehow Grace needed at this moment to believe— what was it Melody had said? — that the universe would provide.
Eddy felt the tears sliding down his face and let them fall. Who cared if he was on a peak-hour train, with weary commuters in shades of grey filing on all around him, setting off from Flinders Street. No one was looking at him anyway; he was just another nondescript middle-aged man, holding a briefcase. There were dozens of him everywhere; he was a clone, except for the tears. No one would ever look at him again for the rest of his life. He looked over the shoulder of a mature woman with a tortured perm, who had opened her briefcase and was scribbling down a list. Washing x 3. Tell kids: no Wii til homework done. Cake for fête. Call Tracy re: breast cancer, how is??? Flowers. Tape Farmer Meets Wife. Mum: call re dr 5pm Friday. Set mouse traps!! (This last underlined angrily.) Call Geoff, tell him—
Eddy waited, his tears drying on his cheeks as he gazed absently around the carriage at people taking out newspapers, jabbing fingers at phones. Tell Geoff what? Still nothing. Another woman pulled a tangle of headphones out of her handbag, accidentally dragging a lipstick lid and a receipt and a tampon out as she did, grabbing at the receipt with a look of shock and swearing under her breath at it. A nearby man inserted two fingers into his chest jacket pocket and slid out a circular box. He opened it to reveal earphones perfectly coiled around a pair of pegs custom-designed for the purpose. He unwound the thin white cord slowly, with no tangles, and then planted the clean ear buds in his hairless ears. Eddy sighed, a little comforted by such homage to order and hygiene. Everywhere, people were inserting headphones. One man held his iPhone face-up, and ran his forefinger around the surface like he was drawing lines in sand. Eddy waited a couple of minutes and then risked another glance down at his neighbour’s list. Call Geoff, tell him—
Tell him what?
The woman gazed out of the window now, her fingers slack around the pen. She stared unseeingly out at the city buildings; rows of rectangles stacked up on their sides, cars snaking between them all below. Then suddenly they were in a tunnel and the window went black and Eddy’s reflection, a man in a suit, stared back at him, and the air rushed out of him at how ordinary he was, how boring, just one of a million amoebas crawling the Earth. No wonder Romy had fled. How long had she been dreaming of doing so? He wanted to flee from himself, too.
The train stopped and a seat became vacant. He glanced at the bulbous belly of a pregnant woman swaying near him. He gestured towards his seat.
‘Please. Before it goes.’
The woman sank into the seat and smiled gratefully, but he could do nothing to acknowledge her. He would never smile again. He maneuvered awkwardly through the commuters to get away from her, before she too realised how boring and awful he was. Someone plucked at his sleeve and he turned.
‘Eddy!’
‘Tom.’
‘You’ve left the house.’
‘Dentist.’ Even in his grief, Eddy could not miss his six-monthly check-up. The receptionist had called three days earlier to remind him, and like a robot he was obeying the call. He had put on a suit because that was what he always wore to the city. It had been weeks since anyone had asked him to go anywhere, except for his parents.
‘Watching the game Saturday night?’ In Tom’s recent visits the two men had discovered a shared love of rugby union, which could divert the conversation from unwelcome topics. They could talk about the new team lineup, and who was favoured to win the Bledisloe Cup, and then they could slide into the past, to great moments like Stirling Mortlock’s legendary try of the England Australia World Cup of 2002, when the great man streaked up the field and did the impossible. Not unlike Melody’s magical rescue of all those months ago, he sometimes reflected.
‘If I can get out to a pub.’
Eddy mused. ‘Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get pay TV.’ Romy had been opposed to it, seen it as fodder for bogans, but hey. She had not been seen for three months, except in the media wearing a cat mask. If that counted.
‘Yeah. I’d come watch it.’
‘How’s the job going?’
‘Great,’ said Tom. ‘I work with morons. I do moronic work. I get paid my super by morons. I catch the train in and out, with—’ A man nearby glared and Tom lowered his voice. ‘It was a mistake to let myself get sucked back into it. I’m really getting somewhere with the solar roof. But I need time to iron out the glitches. I just wish Grace would be a little more supportive.’
Eddy nodded. He had heard the story before. It looked to him like Tom had it all whatever he did; lovely wife, sweet child, house, maybe even another little baby along the way one day. ‘Bummer,’ he offered.
‘My mate, who’s been working on his tree-lopping robot for ten years, he got a huge contract yesterday. Eleven point five million dollars.’ Tom stared at Eddy, who blinked.
‘Really?’
Tom nodded. ‘Max doesn’t have a family. So he’s been able to get it over the line. Bastard. While I have to go be a wage slave.’
‘But it’s been Grace who’s been the wage slave, hasn’t it?’
Tom shrugged and leaned towards the taller man, helped by the swaying of the train as it journeyed through the inner suburbs. ‘Anyway, guess what? I’ve written my letter of resignation. I left it on the boss’s desk tonight. They’ll try and make me stay. Throw more money at me. But I won’t take it. I’ll tell Grace tonight. She’ll have to give me another year.’
‘You’ve resigned? Without telling Grace?’
‘Yup.’ The train stopped and people poured out. Tom and Eddy sat down, freed now to peer out the windows at the spread of suburbia, the far-off Macedon Ranges, the city skyline in the other direction growing larger.
‘Well, that will surprise her.’ Someone’s phone was ringing. People started patting their pockets.
‘Sometimes you’ve got to do these things. Fortu
ne favours the bold, and all that. Put the bit between your teeth and—. Hang on, is that my phone? Ooh, bet it’s my boss. Here we go! Game on! Hello? Tom Ellison, here . . .Oh, it’s you.’
From Tom’s disappointed tone, Eddy guessed it was Grace. Tom peered unseeingly out the window while his phone chattered away tinnily at him. Grace was in full flight about something, and Tom companionably rolled his eyes at Eddy and momentarily held the phone away from his ear, in the universal signal of mad spouse, before resuming the conversation.
‘She finished her what? Oh, she’s such a cow . . . Oh I don’t know how you put up with her . . . And then what did you say?’
His eyes widened and his voice turned to ice.
‘Sorry, did you say . . . Gosh I thought you said redundant then!’ He laughed breathlessly. ‘Redundant . . . You did say redundant? Oh Jesus. Are you serious?’
More squeaking. Two commuters sitting in his sightlines edged away from him.
‘Oh shit, Grace. That’s terrible . . . No, it’s terrible. More terrible than you can imagine . . . My job . . . lucky we’ve got . . . Ah yes. Lucky we’ve got my job. I heard you that time. Sorry, you’re cutting out now . . . tunnel . . . breaking up . . .’
A long silence, and then the angry chirping on the phone broke out anew and reached a crescendo of noise. Tom lowered the phone, grimaced at it and then very carefully, with the precision of a surgeon, used the tip of his forefinger to touch the hang-up key. The sound abruptly halted. Tom slumped back in his seat, pale and breathing fast. The train had stopped and he stared out the window, his breathing shallow, his face distorted in distress.
‘Well, that’s it,’ he said finally. ‘She can’t argue any longer. We will have to sell the house.’
Chapter 8
Grace would marvel later that splitting up with Tom had begun with something so small. Sure, there had been the unfortunate conjunction of her redundancy and his ill-considered resignation, which his firm seemed only too delighted to accept; in fact, they refused to reverse it 24 hours later. These were not small things, and these were the things their friends and family used to explain the breakup. ‘She was made redundant and on the very same day his work told him they were letting him go! Or he resigned! Or something! Just a bad coincidence! Who would believe it? And then . . .’ And then burble burble burble, the narrator would finish with something like ‘. . . financial pressures, fighting, all just fell apart . . .’ The punchline was always: ‘Then the marriage broke up.’
The Near Miss Page 9
