She wasn’t going mad, and despite Jim’s constant nagging she didn’t need a counsellor to tell her that this was not perhaps the most constructive expression of grief and that she had to learn to trust that nothing bad was going to happen to Noah. No. She just needed to be with him at all times to make sure. What harm was there in that? She would get over it in time, and then she could think about going back to work. Not before.
‘And how are you going to live?’ Jim wanted to know, as though he had a perfect right.
‘I’ll manage,’ Helen replied, which was close to the truth. There had been a modest payout from David’s superannuation fund, and she was eligible for some government benefits. If she only had herself and Noah to worry about . . .
‘And what about your mother?’ Jim insisted.
There was the rub. David and Helen paid Marion’s fees in the nursing home in lieu of board for living in her house. It was David who had originally encouraged Helen to place her mother in care, out of nothing less than concern and regard for the both of them. Their courtship had been floundering; David was persistent, but Helen was always making excuses not to go out with him. She didn’t know how to tell him about her mother, and it was becoming more and more difficult to leave her alone. Helen had fought for the maximum respite care, but even that was paltry, and so she’d cut her hours at the hospital. But it wasn’t enough. Marion could no longer be trusted near the stove, having burned the base out of nearly every pot they owned, as well as the electric kettle after she’d put it to boil on the gas element. She had let the bath overflow twice, and another time Helen had come home from a late shift to find the hose on full bore in the backyard, thrashing about like an angry snake. And lately she had taken to wandering. It was not like the old days in Balmain, when everyone knew one another, the shopkeepers called you by name and neighbours looked out for the kids playing on the streets. A time when roaming Alzheimer’s sufferers would have been safe.
Marion was becoming a danger to herself and potentially to others, and Helen was out of ideas and overwhelmed. David had eventually wheedled the truth out of her and insisted on meeting Marion. They hit it off immediately. Helen wondered if he reminded her somehow of Tony, or if it was simply that she enjoyed the novelty of male company. There had certainly been a dearth of that for some time. Helen had lost most of her twenties looking after her mother, and she would have spent the next decade in much the same way if David had not come along. He said he didn’t mind whether they went out or not, he just wanted to be with her. He even sat with Marion some nights when Helen had to work. And gradually, respectfully, David began to point out the hopelessness of the situation. Marion needed round-the-clock supervision; sooner or later, she would have to go into care. And it was getting sooner by the day.
Helen had finally been persuaded by common sense, but insisted that if it had to be done, she was going to do it right. With David’s help, she set about thoroughly researching every facility within a reasonable distance: staffing, accommodation, programs, standard of care. They fronted up for inspections armed with checklists, grilled the staff, requested references. Helen would not allow her mother to languish in a substandard anteroom for people waiting to die. She was finally won over by the warmth of the staff at Brookhaven, the location, and the pretty aspect from most of the rooms. Marion would like that.
She just had to persuade Tony.
‘Are you absolutely sure she needs to be in a home?’ he asked on the phone from London.
Helen groaned inwardly. ‘No, maybe not, Tony, if you want to come out and look after her –’
‘Oh, and how do you propose I do that?’
‘Go to the airport and get on a plane to Australia. I hear Qantas is good.’
‘Very funny.’
Helen wasn’t trying to be funny. The unpalatable truth was that Tony seemed more worried about his inheritance than the plight of his mother. And finally that was enough to get him on a plane home in an attempt to sort it out. The issue was how they were going to pay for a facility of this standard. Helen was disinclined to sell the house, holding onto a vague, she knew irrational, hope that her mother might get better and be able to come home. At least it would be nice to be able to bring her home for special occasions. Whatever, it didn’t seem right to dispose of her mother’s property while she was alive. David proposed the solution that he and Helen remain in the house, which was mortgage-free, and in return cover the fees at the home. But Tony had argued that possession was nine-tenths of the law, and if they occupied the house till Marion’s eventual death, the legalities of the situation might become clouded. Although Helen tried to reassure him till she was blue in the face that neither she nor David had any intention of ripping him off, Tony remained unconvinced. Helen would never have expected this from her brother. They used to be close; she couldn’t understand why he was making things so difficult.
‘Then I guess we’ll have to sell up,’ Helen said, hurt and frustrated by the whole saga. Tony seemed particularly touchy about any input David had to offer, and Helen was tired of adjudicating between them. ‘We’ll put the money into a trust account to cover Mum’s costs.’
But Tony didn’t like that idea either. ‘The house is worth a small bloody fortune, Hel. You don’t just hand it over to a solicitor – it’ll all be gobbled up by management fees.’
Helen sighed. ‘Then what do you want me to do, Tony?’
He finally relented and agreed to have them stay in the house, though that didn’t stop him from having complex legal papers drawn up, clearly detailing right of succession and God only knew what else, and presenting them to Helen for her signature. David thought she should have her own solicitor look them over, but Helen was heartily sick of the whole business by then. Besides, it didn’t seem right to turn around and distrust her brother when she had been so upset that he had not trusted her. In the end Helen was just anxious to get her mother settled and make sure she was going to be all right in her new surroundings. She signed the papers, Tony went back to London, and Marion was finally moved to Brookhaven.
At first Helen didn’t know what to do with herself. She spent so much time at Brookhaven that the staff joked they were going to have to give her her own parking space. Caring for her mother had been the focus of her life for so long, she’d forgotten what else there was to do. Her father had died when Helen was a teenager, and though clearly grief-stricken by her loss, Marion had seemed all right for a while, slowly coming to terms with living without her beloved Anthony. But when Tony left for overseas, things began to go awry. Helen had to be with her more and more. She had had no other life till David came along. And then the two of them had cocooned themselves snugly against the world. Helen wasn’t sure why. David did find socialising a bit frivolous; he wasn’t into sport or popular culture, he said he preferred to spend his time with intelligent people discussing important, or at the very least interesting, issues. But they didn’t really do much of that either. Between work and Marion, and eventually Noah, there had been little time for socialising anyway. And no need, it had seemed. They had each other.
But now he was gone, and Helen had never felt so alone. She had no one to talk to, no old friends, no work colleagues, no one, it seemed. She felt isolated and adrift in the world. David had been her compass, and without him she’d lost direction.
Helen blinked back tears. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself. It didn’t achieve anything; it certainly wouldn’t solve her problems.
What would David do? What would he advise her to do?
He would assess the facts of the situation in a calm, rational manner, because that’s how David did things, calmly and rationally. And the facts were that Helen could not afford to pay the fees at Brookhaven indefinitely, but neither could she give up the house. Not now, not right now. David would definitely have felt it was important for Noah to have continuity and to feel secure; but that was only the half of it. Helen had no idea where to go to from here, so staying put was the
safest option.
The Ship Inn
‘You didn’t really expect to be able to waltz right back in to your old job, did you, Gem?’
She wouldn’t have knocked it back.
‘No, of course I didn’t, Lauren,’ Gemma dismissed the idea. ‘I’m just putting the feelers out. I thought there might be something going, and you know what they say, better the devil you know.’
‘I don’t know if that’ll work both ways,’ Lauren said dubiously. ‘You pissed off more than a few people, the way you upped and left like that.’
Gemma grimaced. She didn’t have to be told she’d pissed people off; she was well aware of that. She had walked out of Bailey’s on a Friday afternoon and not showed up for work on the Monday, or ever again – no call, no explanation. She and Luke had made a spontaneous decision over the weekend to take off. It was too exciting, too romantic, too wild. And it was the weekend – who was she going to call anyway?
That was why she didn’t want to call anyone from her old team now, and certainly not Charlie, not till she knew the lie of the land. So she’d got in touch with Lauren instead, whom she could absolutely count on knowing the lie of the land. Lauren knew everything that went on within the halls and offices and boardrooms at Bailey + Partners, and Lauren told it like it was. She could be a right pain in the arse, her honesty bordering on plain rude sometimes. They had worked together when Gemma first started at Bailey’s as an admin assistant, and Lauren was still in admin to this day – her comfort zone, as she liked to call it.
She had agreed to meet for a drink, though of course Gemma wasn’t drinking. That was nearly the worst bloody part of this whole thing. She couldn’t even get drunk that first night when she realised Luke had left her. The mere smell of alcohol made her queasy these days. Pregnancy was like an enforced good behaviour bond. Wasn’t having a baby punishment enough? So Gemma insisted on buying their drinks, and Lauren had no idea that her friend’s bourbon and dry had no bourbon in it. For as long as her body would oblige, Gemma intended to keep the pregnancy to herself. It would close too many doors, and she didn’t have that many open to her in the first place.
She had worked at Bailey’s for three years prior to her fateful meeting with Luke. It was the longest Gemma had ever stayed in one job, the first time she hadn’t become bored. She’d never thought of advertising as a career option; truth be told, she’d never thought in terms of a career at all. She’d been doing waitressing and bar work on and off for years, and frankly she just got tired of working when her friends were partying. She wanted a day job. So she registered with a temp agency and went out on various typical admin gigs, answering phones, typing, filing, general dogsbody stuff. It was hardly stimulating, but Gemma didn’t care. She didn’t have to be on her feet all day, the carpet didn’t smell of stale beer, and she could knock off work in time to meet her friends any night she pleased. And the weekends were totally, blissfully, to herself. It was a pity she seemed to spend them either inebriated or hungover.
Then she’d landed at Bailey’s. It was a big, sexy advertising agency located smack in the centre of the city in vast modern offices of steel and glass, peopled by designer-label executives and uber-cool creative dudes. At first Gemma was immune to its particular charms, delighting in taking the piss out of the place when she was with her friends. But, despite herself, she began to become fascinated with the whole process. She found herself working harder than she had ever bothered before, staying late, showing initiative, offering ideas, being noticed. She became their temp of choice, her contract was renewed again and again as she was moved out of admin and around to virtually every team. Before long she was made permanent and became assistant to one of the production coordinators. Gemma loved it. It was dynamic and fast and fun; she was using her brain in ways she never had before and discovering skills she hadn’t known she possessed. She had never imagined work could be like this. She was pushing thirty and for the first time in her life she had a real job that she wanted to stick at.
And then she met Luke.
He was a friend of a friend of a friend in her old crowd. Gemma hadn’t been out with them in ages, she protested she was too busy, but they all knew she was drifting away. She finally made one too many excuses and they were beginning to feel slighted. So she vowed absolutely to make it to their next soiree, and Luke was there. She spotted him immediately. He had that offhand, effortless charisma that was sexy as all get-out. Gemma found herself completely entranced, and she found herself in his bed that same night, which was fast going even for her. As they became entangled, work became mundane again. Luke made her think about what she was doing – selling people stuff they didn’t need, helping to turn the cogs in the capitalist wheel, whoring herself at the altar of crass commercialism – for what? To work her guts out for someone else for the rest of her life?
Luke made her question, he made her doubt, he made her pack it all in and follow him up to Queensland.
And then he dumped her there.
‘Personally, I could never understand what you saw in him,’ said Lauren, after Gemma had recounted her sorry tale, albeit a tightly edited version. ‘He was a bit of a drop-kick if you ask me.’
Gemma sat glumly, sucking her dry ginger ale through a straw. Of course he was a drop-kick. She’d never had good taste in men. The light of her infatuation tended to blind her temporarily and it was only when it faded that she could see them for what they really were. Unfortunately, it had taken a little longer to fade than usual with Luke.
What had she been thinking? Leaving a good job to follow him and go back to being a waitress? It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe she had known on some level that it would be her last chance to be foolish and free and do something totally on a whim.
And so life decided to bite back and teach her a lesson in being responsible. And what a lesson. No wonder Luke had done a runner. She would have run given the chance. But of course she was left holding the baby; if she ran, it came right along with her.
‘So Lauren, do you know if there’s an opening at Bailey’s?’ Gemma asked, returning to the reason she was here. If she thought too much about how she had got here, it was just depressing. ‘Anything at all that might be coming up?’
Lauren thought about it. ‘There might be something, but it’s not on a team.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she dismissed. ‘I just need a job at the moment.’
‘Okay, well, the MD’s assistant is about seven months’ pregnant –’
‘Hold on,’ Gemma said, frowning. ‘Liz is pregnant? I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone. And since when did you start calling Jonesy the “MD”?’
Lauren blinked at her. ‘Oh, jeez, I forgot. You must have left just before it all happened.’
‘Before all what happened?’
‘Jonesy was dumped.’
‘What?’ Gemma was shocked. Jonesy was the heart of Bailey’s, the soul, the life of the party. His motto was that it wasn’t worth doing if you weren’t having fun. ‘When . . . how . . . why?’
‘Like I said, it must have been just after you left,’ said Lauren. ‘He totally stuffed up this major account, didn’t meet the deadline, the budget blew out. The clients went ballistic and wanted his head, so the board presented it to them on a platter.’
‘They made Jonesy the scapegoat?’
‘Nuh,’ Lauren shook her head, ‘he deserved it. Turns out he’d been working over budget for ages. The business was in a mess and they were talking about cutting staff, even consolidating into one headquarters in Melbourne, which meant heaps of people would have lost their jobs. In the end they brought in this management whiz from the Melbourne office to clean up the mess. Now the reins have never been tighter, believe you me.’
Gemma was still taking it all in. ‘What happened to Liz?’
‘She didn’t want to work for the new guy, so she left. Then he interviewed about seven hundred girls to find a replacement, finally hired one, and a month later she
tells him she’s pregnant. She reckons she didn’t know when she went for the job. Anyway, he was going to sack her on the spot, but she pleaded with him that she needed the money, so he gave her a stay of execution. That was a few months ago. Kelly was only telling me the other day he had asked HR to start advertising again.’ Lauren paused, thinking. ‘You were friendly with Kel; why don’t you give her a call? I reckon if she put in a good word for you, the MD would probably be glad not to have to go through all that rigmarole all over again.’
‘I don’t know . . .’ Gemma’s head was spinning. Opportunity was right in front of her, there for the taking, she could almost touch it, but she would never get away with it. Would she? What was going to happen in a few months’ time when she turned around and had to tell whatshisname she was also having a baby? What was this guy’s name anyway?
‘Why do you keep calling him the MD?’ Gemma asked. ‘Are things that formal now?’
‘Not really,’ Lauren said. ‘His initials are MD as well, so that’s what everyone started calling him, and it stuck.’
‘What does the MD stand for?’
‘Something Davenport,’ Lauren was thinking. ‘Malcolm or Myles or Marcus, something poncy . . . sounds like the captain of the rowing team at a private school.’
Gemma’s heart was sinking so low she suspected her toes would register a pulse. ‘So I take it he’s not winning any popularity contests?’
False Advertising Page 5
