Those Other Women

by Nicola Moriarty

  ‘Well, definitely not if you were spending it in the pub every day.’ She couldn’t help herself. The sting of him telling her that her hair products were too expensive when he was off drinking in the pub all that time was too much.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t my plan. It’s not what I wanted to do. But I just felt like I needed the drink. Needed it to make me feel . . . less.’

  ‘Feel less what?’

  ‘No, I mean it made me feel less of anything. I didn’t want to feel.’

  Frankie sighed. ‘We both screwed up.’

  ‘Guess so,’ said Dom. They turned onto Military Road and hit traffic. Even though she knew the kids were supposedly safe, she was still itching to get to them. What if Paul got confused again, lost track of them?

  ‘Try the back streets,’ she suggested.

  Dom took the next turn off and weaved his way through the smaller streets. Frankie glanced sideways at him; he’d always had this amazing sense of direction. If she tried to turn off the main road to avoid traffic, she’d end up completely lost.

  But Dom drove with confidence, feeling his way. It was sexy.

  ‘No wonder I’ve got this gut,’ he mumbled. ‘Too many beers.’

  She reached across and jabbed at his belly. ‘You’re kidding, right? You look fine. You know what’s stupid? I thought you didn’t find me attractive anymore.’

  ‘Why would you ever think that?’

  ‘For one thing, you thought I was pregnant.’

  ‘I didn’t think you looked pregnant. You were acting so crazy when you said you had news and it was all I could think of. I was terrified of having another mouth to feed.’

  ‘And it didn’t occur to you that we hadn’t had sex for ages so being pregnant would be a tad impossible?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Good point.’

  ‘So you do still find me attractive?’

  ‘Of course I do! You’re my gorgeous wife. Everyone always tells me I’m punching above my weight with you. But it’s hard to be in the mood when you’re feeling so . . .’

  ‘Ashamed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t need to, you know? You have nothing to be ashamed of. People lose their jobs. It happens, it’s part of life. But what you’re supposed to do is lean on your partner and let them help you through it. Same as I should have done with all my work problems. I’m going to put an end to this rubbish with Paul and Linda, tell them I can’t keep this up. You know that bonus I told you I was getting? Linda reneged on it. I mean she told me I’ll still get it eventually, but not any time soon. And I’m starting to wonder if it’s ever going to happen, if they really are going to get this crap with the board in hand.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Dom said. ‘Because I can help you out more, take some of the pressure off at home so you can cope better at work.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure. But give me a week or two to make sure I’ve got a few things sorted for them before I tell them.’

  ‘Okay, no problem.’

  ‘And hey, listen, we’ll find you a new job together, okay? I’ll help you get your resume back in order. I’m betting you didn’t even bother to update it before you started sending it out.’

  Dom scratched at his chin. ‘I didn’t think it was so bad.’

  ‘Jeez,’ she said, ‘no wonder you’ve only had two interviews. I’ll have people begging to get you in the door.’

  When they finally arrived at Balmoral Beach and spotted Paul and the kids, Frankie had a hell of a time stopping the tears from starting up again. She wanted them to fly into her arms, shouting ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ like they used to when they were small, but of course Coby was far too cool for that these days and Hayley was too distracted by the sandcastle she was building. But it didn’t stop her from squeezing them tight.

  * * *

  As soon as Annalise entered her apartment, she leaned against the door, waited until she was sure Poppy’s steps had faded away upstairs, then turned straight back around and went out again.

  She couldn’t sit at home that night. She knew that if she remained alone, her own thoughts might drive her insane. She’d had enough of falling to pieces. She needed to keep moving, keep her hands busy, keep her body working, keep her brain on something – anything else. She caught a train into the city. She liked the idea of being surrounded by life. By people and noise and busyness – and she needed more than Parramatta could offer her.

  What if I did make today happen on purpose? Her inner thoughts questioned.

  Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

  What if a part of me was trying to get back at her, trying to make her pay for what she’d done?

  Just be quiet, just leave me in peace.

  She pulled her notebook out of her handbag and placed it on her lap. But she couldn’t find a pen. She leaned forward and tapped the girl who was sitting in front of her on the shoulder. The girl looked irritated as she pulled out her headphones and turned around to face Annalise.

  ‘Sorry, do you have a pen?’ Annalise asked.

  The girl stared back at her as though it was the most incomprehensible request of all time.

  ‘No,’ she said, and she turned back around and replaced her headphones.

  Annalise sat back. On another day she might have given that chick hell. Not today.

  ‘Hey,’ said a voice from across the aisle. Annalise turned. An older man smiled at her. ‘Here,’ he said, holding out a pen.

  Annalise reached across and took it with a smile. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  1 June continued

  Would you like to know something the world is obsessed with these days? The world is obsessed with tiny moments in time. Snippets of life that go viral. And the life cycle of these moments keeps getting shorter and shorter. Something new appears. It builds up and it builds up and then whack! It’s massive. The white and gold dress. Or blue and black if you’re insane. Planking. Bottle flipping. The ice bucket challenge. Dabbing. The two down-to-earth blokes from Queensland who videoed themselves stopping a guy who was trying to break in to Oporto’s. The mum at the races who got super drunk and stripped down for a nudie run.

  We get obsessed with these people or these trends. We post and we share and we comment. And then one day, it’s over. We’ve moved on. It’s forgotten. They’re forgotten.

  But what happens to them?

  And what if they went viral for all the wrong reasons? What about the person who goes viral for dressing up in black face for a party and maybe they didn’t know that it wasn’t okay? Maybe they didn’t mean any harm in it. Maybe they weren’t taught that basic fact of life: black face is WILDLY offensive – never, ever do it.

  And so they get torn to shreds on social media. They receive death threats. They lose their job. Two days later, we forget about them. We move on with our lives. But what happens to them? How do they move on with their life?

  How do I move on with my life?

  I made a mistake. A terrible mistake. But you already know that.

  * * *

  In the city, Annalise wandered aimlessly at first. She ended up in Darling Harbour, walked around the edge of the water to Cockle Bay Wharf, and discovered that the Sydney Aquarium was open late. She’d never been. Not as a child, not as a teenager. Not once in her life had she been to a zoo, an aquarium, a wildlife park or anything like that.

  She bought herself a ticket and started wandering through the dimly lit corridors. It was quiet; she only passed the odd person here and there. Not the crazy night life she’d originally intended on surrounding herself with. But the calmness of the setting soothed her heart and she found that the angry voices in her head quietened.

  She took a seat in a darkened viewing area in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling underwater glass windows. She couldn’t see much movement in the water at first. And then a large dark shape began to glide lazily towards her. As it came closer, it turned and began to drift back and forth in front of the window.

  ‘What are you?’
she asked quietly. The body shape was like a dolphin, but the nose was like a walrus or even a hippo. She stood up to read a caption on the wall with a description of the creature. A dugong, she learned.

  ‘What are you doing up so late?’ she asked the dugong. And she walked closer to touch her fingers to the glass. The creature swam down to meet her, brushed its nose against the glass. ‘Do you like it here? Or do you miss the ocean? Or were you bred here in captivity? Do you ever think about escaping?’

  She turned and rested her cheek against the glass. ‘I do.’

  CHAPTER 31

  Poppy had expected that Annalise might not turn up to work the next day. And then throughout the weekend, she understood why she continued to avoid her. But on Monday, Annalise still didn’t show up at work.

  Obviously, Poppy had been trying to check on her. Phone calls and text messages had all gone unanswered, until she’d knocked on her door on Sunday night – and then a message had appeared on her phone, which she suspected was simply sent to get her away from the door. And probably to stop her from kicking it down in case she thought Annalise was passed out drunk in there or hurt or something.

  Sorry, I’m fine. Just busy, can’t talk.

  On Monday afternoon, Poppy texted her again to ask when she would come back to work.

  I’m trying to cover for you, but people are wondering where you are!

  But Annalise ignored it.

  She tried once again:

  Guess I’ll see you at tonight’s game.

  She was confident she would see her there. Annalise didn’t skip soccer – she loved it too much. Even when they were fighting, or if she was having a bad game, she still loved playing.

  But she didn’t turn up to soccer either.

  ‘Where’s your mate?’ Elle asked as Poppy laced up her boots.

  Even though Annalise had been part of the team for several months now, Elle still referred to her as ‘Poppy’s mate’.

  ‘Umm, I’m not sure if she’s coming tonight.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She hasn’t . . . been well.’

  It was the best Poppy could do. How could she explain everything Annalise had been through of late? The arguments they’d had over NOP; being the cause of Frankie’s kids going missing; being interrogated by the person who was supposed to be her closest friend. Poppy had completely stuffed up at that brunch. Her plan had been to casually bring up stories from her past and then ask Annalise about her own history. Instead she’d panicked and blurted it out: Why did you lie to me? She shouldn’t have come on so strong, firing questions at her, demanding to know about her past.

  Poppy didn’t even care anymore that Annalise had lied to her; she just felt guilty for having invaded her privacy by reading the notebook. She wanted so badly to figure out how to get Annalise to open up to her in the same way she did when she wrote in those pages. There was such incredible pain in those written words, and the line about how she’d somehow betrayed Poppy didn’t even seem to matter anymore. Who knew what she meant by that, it could have been anything. Maybe she was simply referring to the fact that she’d lied about her schooling and past jobs – nothing more.

  Poppy couldn’t believe she’d ever suspected Annalise of somehow being the imposter within the group. And Annalise had looked so proud when she’d come to her and told her that she’d discovered that Frankie was Viv. Poppy supposed it was lucky that they had never ended up confronting Sophie and Wendy at the salon. Now that they knew Frankie was the imposter, she didn’t trust her word that she hadn’t been the one to write that article. Why else had she ever been a member? She accepted that she might never understand why Sophie had turned Wendy against her.

  Either way, it was clear when Annalise brought the information to Poppy that she was planning for it to bring the two of them closer together, and obvious that she desperately wanted to fix all the problems with NOP for Poppy.

  But then Frankie’s kids were missing and Annalise was devastated that she hadn’t passed on that message. Poppy believed her when she said it wasn’t intentional.

  When Poppy had driven them both back to the apartment block after the children were found, she’d tried over and over to find the right way to reach Annalise, to help her to open up and to reassure her that they were still close friends. That secrets and lies could be forgiven. But Annalise didn’t want to chat and Poppy couldn’t force it.

  ‘It’s not like her,’ Elle said as she helped one of the other players tape up her ankle ready for the game. ‘At the beginning of the season she played with bronchitis. You couldn’t get her off the pitch if you tried. She wouldn’t even take a break when she copped an elbow to the skull and you could tell she was seeing stars. She must be really sick.’

  Poppy avoided answering and slipped her shin pads into her socks. ‘I guess,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Yeah well, next time tell her to let me know before the game if she’s not going to show, would you?’ said Elle, her moment of concern vanishing as quickly as it appeared.

  There was another game going on next to them, but it wasn’t Jack’s team. Poppy felt a pang of regret at having declined his invitation to dinner. She did like him. Quite a lot actually. And she wanted to see him again, wanted to know if there might be something between them. But at the same time, she wasn’t ready – she was too afraid, which meant dating wouldn’t be fair on either of them. So far, he hadn’t pushed for a raincheck.

  She told herself she didn’t care. Told herself she didn’t want to see him.

  Told herself it wouldn’t matter if she never ran into him ever again.

  But she knew these were all lies.

  CHAPTER 32

  5 June

  There’s a lesson I want to share with you: There is more value in a mirror than most people realise. Taking the time to stare at your own reflection is an opportunity to look into your soul. I’m not even kidding. I know it sounds ridiculous. But let me explain. If you step out of the shower, slick back your hair, wipe the steam from the glass and then stop still and simply look, you know what you’ll see? You.

  Your face at its rawest. Your eyes, your nose, your lips, your ears, your cheeks, your forehead, your chin. You can explore it to its greatest depths. Every wrinkle. Every freckle, every blemish. The flecks of colour in your irises. The dryness of your skin. The way your nostrils flare when you breathe in sharply. The way one eyebrow reaches up higher than the other when you yawn.

  There are parts of you that you’ll love. Parts that you know so well. The curve of your petite ears. Your eyelashes. Their length. Their colour.

  There are parts that you’ll hate. The jut of your chin. The length of your neck.

  But beyond that, you’ll see yourself. You stare long enough at yourself in a mirror and you’ll stop seeing the physical features. You’ll see your personality. Your history. Your mistakes. You’ll see the flaws inside. Again, there’ll be parts you’ll love and there’ll be parts you’ll hate. You’ll dig up memories. Memories that make you ashamed. Memories that make you proud.

  You’ll see the moment you picked up the bird with the broken wing from the side of the dirt driveway. Tucked it inside your jacket. Took it back with you, hid it from everyone. Placed it in a shoebox with a soft tea towel for comfort. Tried to nurse it back to health.

  You’ll see the moment you stole a pair of sunglasses from the corner store while the woman behind the counter gave you a friendly smile. You’ll feel the frame of the glasses pressed against your skin, hidden up the sleeve of your jumper.

  But then again, you won’t get to experience any of those things, will you?

  * * *

  It didn’t take that long for Annalise to pack up the essentials. She’d rented the apartment fully furnished, so there wasn’t really that much in the place that belonged to her. Everything she owned could usually be condensed down to one backpack if needed.

  Although she admitted she had settled quite a bit there. She’d started to acquire a
few new extra things that she normally wouldn’t bother with. Most of that would end up in the dumpster behind the building.

  She didn’t make the decision straightaway. There were a few days of lying in bed all day until the sun set. Getting up, making it as far as the lounge and lying there until it was time to return to bed. She was hardly eating because she wasn’t hungry.

  But once she’d decided what she was going to do, she found some energy. Enough to shower. Enough to start gathering her stuff together.

  She avoided Poppy, ignored most of her messages, shooting back the odd reply only when she knew she needed to in order to get her off her back.

  When there was a knock at the door on Wednesday night, she assumed it was Poppy. She stood still in the middle of the lounge room, trying to decide what to do. She hadn’t planned on saying goodbye. She’d intended on just leaving the following morning. But did she at least owe her the courtesy of knowing?

  The knocking was insistent, so she gave in and opened the door.

  It wasn’t Poppy. It was Elle. Annalise was taken aback. Seeing her out of context threw her. She was dressed in tight jeans and a low-cut black top. Annalise had only ever seen her in footy shorts or tracksuit pants and a jersey. Her hair was out as well, instead of tucked away under a baseball cap. It was long and ringlety and a lighter shade of red than Annalise’s own hair, a sort of golden auburn.

  ‘Elle!’ she said, stunned. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Came to check on you,’ she said. She pushed past her and came inside without waiting for an invitation. She looked around the apartment and her eyes swept seamlessly across the backpack, which was leaning against the lounge. She didn’t react. ‘First you were off your game for a couple of matches and then a no-show Monday night. Not like you.’