by Jaye Ford
Max glanced at Rennie. Her body was rigid, braced, as though sudden movement might scare the beast into action. Then he saw her face. In the five years he’d known her, she’d only hinted at the ugly fragments of her past. He’d never asked more than she wanted to tell, just understood she was trying to put it behind her. Now he wondered if it was the kid or the memories that had rooted her to the spot. Either way, he wanted to do something to erase the fear in her eyes. It shouldn’t be there, not while he was with her.
‘Keep walking, Renée,’ he told her quietly.
As she turned away, he started towards the driver’s side, adrenaline flooding his muscles. It was a long time since he’d thrown a punch. But that’s what the kid was after so he was going to call him on it. He was young but Max had age and bulk and experience.
An arm appeared out of the driver’s window, flipping the bird over and over. There was yelling, too. Max couldn’t hear the words but it didn’t matter. He had the gist of it.
It was Rennie’s voice that pulled him up. She was standing in front of the windows, squinting in the glare, mobile phone in her hand.
‘I’m calling the cops. I’ve got your number plate.’ She called out the letters and numbers like she was reading a vision test to a live audience. Not unnerved anymore. Cool, determined, in control. She didn’t wait for a response, just hustled to the shop, threw open a door, waved her arms around and shouted, ‘That kid out there, he’s threatening us with his car.’
Heads turned, the guy behind the counter looked at her then out into the driveway.
It was too much for the coward behind the wheel. He gave a final, pissed-off rev of his engine and reversed out, a little squelch of rubber as he headed for the street. Max stood in the lane and watched him all the way, proud of Rennie, a bit ashamed he’d gone for the smack-in-the-head option.
She was checking the racks of red wine by the time he found her. No one had made a dash for the driveway. No heroes in here, either.
‘You okay?’ he asked her.
She dodged the arm he tried to put around her, kept her eyes on the wine. ‘What do you want to drink?’
‘What? I don’t know. Rennie?’
She ignored him.
‘Renée?’
She swung around. ‘What, Max? What the hell were you doing out there?’
‘You’re mad at me?’
‘Yeah.’ She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. ‘No.’
‘Nothing happened, Rennie. He’s gone.’ He put a hand on her arm, high up near the shoulder and felt a faint tremble inside her. ‘We’re buying wine. We’re going to a party.’
‘Shit.’
He wasn’t sure if it was directed at him or the kid or something else. ‘Okay?’ he said, meaning both ‘You’re okay’ and ‘Let’s forget about it, okay?’
She crossed her arms, took a breath, turned back to the rack. ‘Red or white?’
*
The crowd in Skiffs had generated enough heat to remind Rennie how late they were. Pav would be desperate.
‘Rennie! Max!’ If Trish noticed, she didn’t care. Her arms were wide, a flute of champagne in one hand, no apron, no work-issue black, no busy face. Good for her.
‘Happy birthday!’ Rennie waited until she was wrapped up in Trish’s arms. ‘Sorry we’re late.’
‘No timesheets tonight, sweetie. And Eliza’s here, already working off her birthday present.’ When Trish and Pav had been going over the guest list, worried about the cost and trying to rationalise that they didn’t need so many people to celebrate her fiftieth, the staff had announced their joint gift. They were donating a few hours each to help in the kitchen and front of house so all that Trish and Pav had to cover was the food. Trish had shed a few tears. She’d probably shed a few more by the end of the night, Rennie guessed. But for the moment, she stretched her neck up to receive a kiss on the cheek from Max, then raised suggestive eyebrows at them both. ‘I hope it was something fun that held you up.’
Rennie exchanged a brief, deadpan glance with Max. It started out that way a couple of hours ago. ‘Not exactly.’
‘A kid just tried to run us down in the car park,’ Max said.
‘Oh my God. Are you okay?’
‘Just shaken up,’ Rennie told her, answering the question in Max’s eyes at the same time. She figured that was how she looked.
‘Well, come and get a drink and forget about it. You’re having a good time tonight. On me.’
Trish was already having a good time, apparently. She took Rennie’s hand, did a little sashay as she swung under it then led her towards the counter, where several bottles of bubbly were sitting in ice buckets. ‘Help yourselves, lovelies.’
‘Lovelies?’ Rennie chuckled.
‘You won’t live that one down in the morning,’ Max said.
‘It’s my party and I’ll lovely if I want to,’ Trish sang, waltzing off to someone new.
As Max poured, Rennie scanned the crowd. Lots of familiar faces. Customers, friends. Trish and Pav didn’t differentiate much.
Max held a flute out to her. ‘Here, have a drink.’ He said it like it’d have to do until he could find her a sedative.
‘I’m fine,’ she snapped. He thought the kid in the 4x4 had scared her. She had been scared but not for the reason he thought. In that moment in the driveway, with the car idling at their calves, the ghost of her past had walked right through her. Five seconds of heart-pounding dread and urgent, fast-tracked decision-making – then it was over and she was telling herself it wasn’t time and this was Haven Bay and when had she got so slow? And now, fifteen minutes later, the trail of anger and recrimination that had followed was still working its way through her system. It was everything and nothing to do with Max but she was mad and he was treating her like she might faint.
She took the champagne from him, sipping as though she needed nothing more than a taste, and looked for Pav’s head – big and bald on top of pick handle shoulders. He was always easy to find but he wasn’t out there and she felt a twinge of guilt. ‘I’m going to help Pav in the kitchen.’
‘I’m going to check the car,’ Max said.
‘What?’ Rennie grabbed his elbow as he turned to go. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That kid’s probably still out there.’
‘Yeah and he might do a job on the car. You heard what he said.’
‘You’ve got insurance. Better the car than you.’
‘Bloody smart-arse kid. He deserves . . .’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Max.’ It was intended for Max’s ears only but at the other end of the counter, Trish glanced over with a grin. It fell when she caught sight of Rennie’s face.
For a moment, Max did nothing but look affronted. ‘What, Rennie? Is it what just happened or what happened before?’
The ‘before’ had made her wonder if he’d been a participant in any previous conversation or whether he’d spent five years just nodding and pretending to agree and thinking about soccer or work or . . . who the hell knew? ‘I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘So it’s before?’
She shook her head in frustration. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Come on, Rennie, give me a break here.’
‘Now you want to talk about it? In the middle of Trish’s party? When I’m meant to be helping Pav.’
‘No. You’re right. Let’s not talk about it. Let’s just file it with all the other stuff you haven’t told me.’
She pulled in a breath as though she’d been winded. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘Nowhere. Forget it. Forget the lot. Go help Pav.’ He took a champagne bottle from its ice bucket and walked into the crowd.
3
‘Rennie, Rennie. My best girl!’ Pav called across the kitchen from the workbench. Not sounding too desperate.
The small sp
ace smelled of fresh coriander and mint and the heady aroma of garlic in the marinated beef skewers cooking on the grill.
‘I’m not your girl.’ Rennie waved at Toby, the seventeen-year-old dishwasher and dogsbody, and stood at the workbench opposite Pav, a half-filled platter of rice paper rolls between them. ‘I’m your manager, chief waitress, stand-by barista and free party staff. Anything ready to go out?’
‘Two minutes. Hey, you’re shaking. Have some bread.’ Both of his hands were busy arranging the platter so he used his head to point at the baskets of Turkish bread behind her.
‘I’m not hungry; it’s adrenaline. A kid tailgated us to the car park and tried to run us down with a four-wheel drive.’
‘Then drink, drink.’ He touched the tip of his tongs to the base of her champagne flute, pushed it towards her mouth and made throaty sounds that could have been ‘up, up’ or something else entirely in Polish. Or maybe some other language he’d picked up between Warsaw and Haven Bay. She gulped, felt the alcohol hit its mark and was disappointed she needed it more than she’d expected.
‘So road rage comes to sleepy Haven Bay, huh?’ Pav said.
‘Who would’ve thought?’
‘I was in a road rage thing once. Some guy pulled a knife on me.’
‘No shit. A knife?’ Toby called from the sink.
Nausea did a quick roll in Rennie’s stomach. She’d wondered why the kid had stayed in the car. Wondered if the taunting was to get one of them close enough to use a weapon. Christ, and Max had been walking right up to him. She shook it off. This was Haven Bay. ‘Let me guess. Berlin.’
‘No, Kings Cross, Sydney. This guy got worked up about a parking spot, started yelling at me and whipped out the knife.’
‘What kind of knife?’ Toby asked.
‘Some little pocket blade.’ Pav picked up a long, wide chopping blade from the workbench and grinned. ‘Nothing like a real tool.’
‘What did you do?’ Toby asked.
‘I showed him where the fillet knife got me.’ He turned his left palm face-up. He was wearing gloves but Rennie knew the old, jagged scar that ran from the inside of his thumb to the veins on his wrist like a lifeline – a warning for kitchen hands working with slippery dead animals. ‘Told him I was ex-KGB, trained in hand-to-hand combat, and I could crush his face before he could get close enough to cut me.’
‘Good one,’ Toby laughed.
Rennie’s grin was half amusement, half disbelief. ‘Seriously?’
He shrugged. ‘He was a moron. Wanted to know if I’d met Gorbachev. I let him shout me drinks while I bullshitted all about it. Here, this one’s ready.’ He slid the platter towards her, the rice paper rolls teamed with bite-sized Thai fish cakes. ‘A favourite dish at the Kremlin, you know.’
She took the platter, not sure how much Pav was bullshitting tonight. He definitely wasn’t ex-KGB but he wasn’t a monk, either. He’d left home at fifteen, had lived all over the world, worked in all sorts of kitchens and other places he didn’t talk about. If half of what he said was true, she empathised with why he’d stayed here. Nothing ever happened in Haven Bay. It was the safest place on earth. One of the reasons she was still here.
Rennie grabbed a pile of napkins on the way out and swapped small talk for finger food as she made a circuit around the cafe. Customers introduced their partners, a few people laughed that they hadn’t recognised her without her usual black, some joked that they’d like a flat white and a skim cap.
Naomi waved her over to one of the tables that hadn’t been stacked in the courtyard out the back. She took a couple of seconds to get to her feet and Rennie shifted the platter to one hip so she could hug her without squashing the pregnant belly.
‘I swear you’re bigger than you were two days ago,’ Rennie said.
‘And I swear this baby is ready to come out.’ Naomi laughed.
‘You look gorgeous tonight,’ Rennie said. Even eight and a half months gone, a little puffy around the face and not sleeping enough, she looked gorgeous. And it wasn’t the silky dark hair and perfect skin. It was an inner thing with Naomi, something lovely on the inside that made her shine on the outside, perhaps brighter by the fact she didn’t know it. ‘That colour really suits you.’
‘Aw, thanks. Can you please come and live in my bathroom and keep saying stuff like that until I’ve shrunk back to normal size?’ She picked up a satay stick in each hand. ‘It could take a while.’
‘Sure, no problem, but James might have an issue with it.’ She stood on tiptoe and did a quick once around the room, not seeing the taller, bigger version of Max. ‘Where is he?’
She pulled a face. ‘Working. He probably wouldn’t notice if you were living in the bathroom. He’s been putting in really long hours. I’ve hardly seen him. Is Max the same?’
Max and James were cousins, and James and Naomi were married, which Naomi claimed made her and Rennie family. De facto cousins-in-law or something. It was a stretch and Rennie had no desire to be part of another family but it was nice that someone like Naomi wanted to include her. Max and James were also business partners. They owned a franchised branch of MineLease, an equipment hire company that provided massive machines to the coalmines around the Hunter Valley.
‘He was holed up in the study after dinner all week,’ Rennie said. She didn’t add he was preoccupied and a tad tetchy. More than a tad.
‘Only this week? Well, at least he comes home. James’s been working late for a month or more. Says he can’t get anything done with me around so he stays at the office.’
‘Maybe he’s trying to clear his diary before the baby comes.’
‘Maybe. Are they working on the same project?’
Rennie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t asked. I’ve been painting a lot.’ Max was already in bed when she came in from the studio every night this week.
‘Oh, I meant to say,’ Naomi turned and swept her arms wide like an orchestra conductor, ‘I love it. Not as much as I love the mural you did for the nursery but it’s fabulous.’
Rennie eyed the huge canvas on the wall. She’d given it to Trish yesterday – her actual birthday. She and Pav must have hung it for the party. That in itself felt like a gift, when it was meant to be the other way around. ‘Thank you.’
‘Are you happy with it?’
As far as Rennie could see, there wasn’t anything to be unhappy about. She wouldn’t be painting if it wasn’t for Trish and Pav, and spending the time and sweat on a piece for either of them always felt like gratitude. ‘It’s not me that counts. But it’s hanging on their wall so it must’ve got a thumbs up.’
‘More than that. Trish was showing it to everyone who walked through the door when I got here.’ Naomi pulled a face, pushed a fist into the small of her back. ‘I need to sit down for a bit. Come back and say hi sometime.’
Rennie finished her circuit and went back to the kitchen. A couple of the other waitresses had turned up and she sent them out with platters, ordered Pav to go and mingle with his wife then pulled on an apron. She wasn’t a chef but she could handle a cafe kitchen. Pav had done most of the work; she just had to keep the food moving on the grill, through the oven and in and out of the fridges.
It wasn’t all work, though. She made occasional forays into the party, collecting empties and scraps as she caught up with guests. When the speeches were made, she toasted Trish with a tall, fast glass of champagne and relaxed a little more. Max was over by the gift table, surrounded by other guests. She had no idea where the red wine was that they’d bought, just hoped he was using it to soften up his sharp edges. Whatever was up with him, she seemed to be making it worse.
It was after eleven when Trish declared, ‘Enough!’ and marched Rennie out of the kitchen. She sat her down in a circle of late-stayers and thrust more bubbly at her.
Well, if she insisted. Rennie slid down on her chair
until she was almost horizontal, crossed her legs at the ankles and looked around at the remains of the evening. Naomi was beside her, looking exhausted and rubbing circles on the mound of her belly. Eliza had stayed and was sipping champagne and grinning at Trish, who was still talking up a storm. She’d have a killer headache in the morning. There was another small group on the other side of the room, women with their heels off, picking at the last of the dessert trays. Actually, there were only women inside – and from the baritone laughter coming from the footpath beyond the doors, Rennie guessed the remaining men had set up camp outside. Typical.
She tipped her head back to look through the door into the street. All she could see was Pav propped against a two-hour parking sign and chuckling at something out of view. She imagined Max doing the same further down the footpath, surrounded by whoever else was out there – there had to be at least eight of them if their partners inside were going home with them. Rennie was tempted to shift her chair to watch him. She figured he would have had a few drinks, forgotten their earlier thing and settled into his usual chilled-out Maxness. The easiness that drew people to him. That had drawn her and made her stay longer than she’d planned.
Pav wandered in a while later, collecting glasses on his way, raising his eyebrows when he saw her. ‘I thought you’d gone.’
‘Not when there’s bubbly to be finished.’ She held up her half-full glass.
‘How are you getting home?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Has Max had too much to drink?’ He was meant to be driving tonight. It didn’t matter – they could walk. Give them a chance to make up before they did it properly at home.
‘No idea. Where is he?’ Pav asked.
‘I thought he was outside with you.’
‘No.’
Rennie looked out the door, as though Pav had it wrong. Terry Bickson, one of the regular breakfast customers, had taken his place against the two-hour sign. Rennie hauled herself out of the chair, walked the few steps to the entry and stuck her head out. There were six of them gathered around the signpost, two leaning on a car, the rest standing with legs splayed and arms crossed like they were playing Simon says. James was among them; it was the first time she’d seen him all night. Max wasn’t there.
