But the blooms didn’t last. Inevitably they withered, browned, died and rotted. Without warning, the girls were alone again, fending for themselves.
That was why she was taking the boys to Cordelia-Aurora’s stupid party. For better or worse, she and the Arthurs were all the family her children had left. If anything ever happened to Krystal and her kids were orphaned – something that once upon a time she’d never have believed possible but now knew otherwise – well, at least the Arthur family was sober. At least the kids wouldn’t end up in foster care. If a minimum standard of care was the only option, the boys would be better off with the wealthy, snooty family of their father than with strangers. She hoped.
‘Krystal, come in,’ Cordelia-Aurora purred, opening the door wide. ‘Hello, boys!’
Krystal took a moment to take in her sister-in-law’s appearance. With her near-black hair rapidly greying – something the forty-year-old welcomed, as she felt it gave her more gravitas in the courtroom – her sharp cheekbones, wide jaw and heavily drawn-on eyebrows, the woman never failed to remind Krystal of Cruella de Vil. Adding to the impression, it wasn’t unusual for her to be draped in coats and wraps, some with faux-fur trims; at least, Krystal assumed they were faux fur. She wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if Cordelia-Aurora turned out to be the owner of a fur farm.
‘Hi, Aunty Cordy,’ Jasper said, clasping his Superman figurine to his chest. At his informal use of her name, Cordelia-Aurora stiffened noticeably and the fake smile on her face faltered.
‘Say hello,’ Krystal prompted Olly, who was holding her hand tightly and leaning into her leg.
‘Hello,’ he all but whispered.
Behind Cordelia-Aurora, people gathered in tight groups and classical music played from an invisible source.
Cordelia-Aurora lived on the forty-fifth floor of one of those appalling, snobby central Melbourne towers, with a depressing colour scheme that Krystal thought would have suited a prison – lots of greys, black and browns, nothing that could offer interest of any kind. It was the sort of apartment block that had a full-time concierge, a gymnasium, a heated swimming pool and a rooftop bar overlooking the city. It might have impressed Krystal, just a little, if it had views over the city centre, or over the botanic gardens and the river, but Cordelia-Aurora had lucked out and taken a south-facing apartment with views over bland grids of buildings sprawling out towards Port Phillip Bay. Either Cordelia-Aurora couldn’t afford the apartments with the truly great views, or she had simply missed out and not got the best – both possibilities made Krystal a teensy bit happy, she was somewhat ashamed to admit.
Inside the apartment, the decor was just as bad – silver-framed black-and-white sketches and bland furnishings, all in nothing colours that expressed zilch about the person who lived there. Photos on the wall? No. Brightly coloured cushions? No. The odd smiling Buddha or even a smidge of green in a miniature bamboo plant? Nope. Krystal was certain that one day, stylists would look back on this decade’s tastes and cringe at the depressing awfulness – Abandon all hope ye who enter here! – just as everyone now cringed at the oranges and browns of the 1970s. She imagined psychologists might probably blame the stark minimalism of the era for inducing crazed gunmen to commit mass killings.
They followed Cordelia-Aurora into the apartment and the door closed behind them with barely a whisper – there’d be no being woken up in the night by the neighbour’s front door thunking loudly into place and the chain being latched. There was no need for safety chains here. To the left, the sleek kitchen was bustling with caterers dressed in black waistcoats over long-sleeved white shirts, the women with their hair tightly pulled back into tiny buns. Krystal smiled at them, feeling more at home in their corner of the world than she would with anyone else here. But the caterers merely nodded solemnly at her and busied their hands. The dining table was set up as a bar, with a young bartender behind rows of silver ice buckets and shiny glasses, poised to take Krystal’s order. There was a young, stylishly dressed woman seated on the couch, feeding a bottle of formula to a baby in her arms. Krystal felt great relief; at least one other person in this room might talk to her, if only because they had children in common. But the woman didn’t return her smile.
‘Everyone’s already here,’ Cordelia-Aurora said. Krystal wasn’t sure if she was imagining the implied criticism that she was late. ‘Mum and Dad are out on the balcony, the waiters will bring around food and you simply ask for whatever you like at the bar and Malcolm here will help you,’ she said, motioning to the help with a wave of her hand.
Just when Krystal was wondering how long she actually needed to continue talking to Cordelia-Aurora, her sister-in-law left her, heading back to the balcony where the majority of guests were clustered, teetering in high heels or swathed in Armani suits, emitting an occasional burst of pretentious laughter. Coming back through the doors as Cordelia-Aurora left was Evan’s brother. He caught sight of Krystal and came over immediately.
‘Krystal, lovely to see you,’ Rupert said, striding to her and kissing her on the cheek. Oh, the sight of him – he looked so much like Evan. She was momentarily speechless. ‘How are you?’ he asked. He even sounded like Evan.
‘Yes, fine, thank you,’ she said, remembering to say fine and not good and thank you instead of thanks, then was annoyed at herself for trying to be anything other than her real self. Her stomach was a mound of knots and all she wanted to do was flee, but she was determined to play nice today, maybe exceed nice and land on congenial, for the sake of her boys.
‘Hello, lads,’ Rupert said, bending down to hold out his hand for them to shake. They both stared mutely at him.
‘How about a high five for Uncle Rupert?’ Krystal said, smiling at the boys to encourage them to go along with it.
Jasper suddenly grinned and jumped to slap at Rupert’s hand. Rupert feigned injury. ‘Wow! You’re stronger than Superman,’ he said, pointing to the figurine in Jasper’s hand.
‘No one’s stronger than Superman,’ Jasper said, shaking his head as though Rupert must be dense. ‘That’s why he’s Superman.’
‘Good point,’ Rupert conceded. ‘You’ll make a good lawyer one day.’
Krystal stiffened at the implication that her boys would go into the Arthur family business, rather than perhaps the hospitality industry that their father had enjoyed so much more, but told herself to let it go. Jasper didn’t know what a lawyer was and had lost interest anyway, wandering over to a waiter who was bending down to his height, holding out a plate of some kind of fancy-looking prawns on spoons.
‘Now, how about you, Oliver?’ Rupert said, holding up his hand again. Krystal managed to stop herself rolling her eyes in exasperation that Evan’s family insisted on calling her younger son Oliver even though he’d been nothing but Olly since the moment he was born. But Olly just clung silently to her leg, staring at Rupert, a tall man in a charcoal-coloured business suit with a glinting silver watch that Krystal suspected cost more than her car.
‘This weekend must be awful for you,’ Rupert said to Krystal, pressing his lips together just as Evan would do.
She swallowed hard. ‘It’s not much fun.’
‘No,’ he agreed.
‘Nor for you, I imagine,’ she said, acknowledging a moment too late that Evan’s family – as much as she disliked them – had lost a loved one too.
Rupert shrugged, noncommittal. ‘Come and have a drink.’ He motioned towards the temporary bar. ‘You’ll need one to face all of them out there.’ He flicked his eyes towards the balcony.
Krystal laughed. Had Rupert always been this nice?
‘Cabernet merlot, please,’ she said to the barman.
‘Same here,’ Rupert added.
Krystal realised that Olly had detached himself and gone off after his brother. They were meandering through dry-cleaned trouser legs, following waiters like dogs sniffing out food.
She turned to look at Rupert, to ask him about work and make polite conversation, and
that was when she noticed the gilt-framed black-and-white photograph of Evan perched on the corner of the dining table, a single tea-light candle flickering in front of it and a perfect white rose by its side. She froze. It was a shock to see his face. He was happy, relaxed, staring straight into the camera, the background blurred, though it looked like he was outdoors.
Krystal’s eyes connected with her husband’s and she stopped breathing, for how long she couldn’t say. But then oxygen flowed again, and following fast on the heels of the impact of seeing him was confusion, because this was a photo taken of Evan when he was younger. Much younger – before he met her.
‘Here you go,’ Rupert said, handing her the glass of red wine.
‘What?’ She snapped out of her daze. ‘Oh, thanks,’ she said, taking the glass.
Rupert turned to look where she’d been focused. He too stared at the photo for a moment. Some other guests came to the bar and Rupert took Krystal’s arm and guided her gently out of the way, stepping them closer to the photo. Still he said nothing. Krystal was vaguely aware that the children must have located their grandparents, because she could hear Ivy’s patrician voice making a fuss over the boys, telling them how tall and handsome they were, and Wyatt’s deep, stern voice warning them not to go too close to the edge of the balcony.
‘He was so happy then,’ Rupert said.
‘Happy?’ she repeated.
‘He’d won the Farner Seven case. It was huge. He’d been working on it for nearly two years.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said, annoyed at his assumption that Evan hadn’t shared with her this part of his life. Of course he’d told her about it. He had led the team of himself, Cordelia-Aurora and Wyatt for the defence of the giant chemical company Farner Seven, in a high-profile class action in which a community had tried to sue for damages, alleging that chemical contamination of their water supply had led to multiple cancers and other illnesses. But, Evan had told her, there was simply no proof that it was true. It wasn’t a popular outcome – everyone wanted the battlers to win over the giants – but the lawyer’s job was to ensure the right legal conclusion was reached. She knew he’d felt sympathy for the sick people, but the case had also garnered the Arthur family empire legendary status in the legal world. They were now top-tier corporate defence lawyers.
Despite the victory, it had also been the end of Evan’s legal career. He’d not enjoyed helping the giant company succeed and it had seriously damaged his relationship with Cordelia-Aurora. They’d fought the whole way through, he’d told Krystal. At the end, he wanted nothing more to do with the family firm.
It was also a time when he was engaged to another woman, someone with the sort of breeding and education and snootiness Krystal would expect to find here today. Evan had told her he’d wanted out of the relationship for a long time, but the pressure of the Farner Seven case meant he simply couldn’t afford any disruptions. Delaying the break-up wasn’t something he was proud of, yet this was how his family wanted to remember him – as a successful barrister engaged to the right woman. It wasn’t an accident they’d chosen to display that photo today.
They had no respect for the fact that he’d left their firm and decided to swim upstream and find his own way in life. Everything that came after the day that photo was taken – his bravery in leaving the family business, his leap of faith to follow his passion to be a sommelier, his love for Krystal and his two adored sons – didn’t even rate a mention with them. It never would.
‘He wasn’t happy because he’d won that case,’ she said, latent anger rising. A voice somewhere in her head told her to shut up, to just leave it alone and keep the peace, that she was here for the sake of her boys’ future and whatever these people thought of her didn’t matter any more. But it was too late, the dam had burst.
‘What do you mean?’ Rupert asked. His chin lifted just a touch, his shoulders setting.
‘The reason he was so happy when the case ended was because he knew it was his last day of that life,’ she hissed. The people who’d come to the bar for a drink were eavesdropping. She glared at them and they at least had the decency to stop staring at her, though she could tell they were still listening.
‘He couldn’t wait to get away from your family, to get out from under your father’s thumb, to leave the beautiful but emotionally spineless woman your mother had set him up with, to stop working in a career that was breaking him down.’
‘What is going on?’ Cordelia-Aurora was at Rupert’s side, speaking quietly but firmly, her jaw set and her eyes boring into Krystal’s.
‘Oh, don’t even try to pretend you didn’t know what you were doing with this photo,’ Krystal countered, waving her hand and slopping red wine onto the grey carpet. There was a collective shocked intake of breath.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you drunk?’ Cordelia-Aurora said, loudly enough to make sure everyone within earshot could hear.
Rupert took the glass from Krystal and placed it on the table, near Evan’s photo.
‘You’d like to just wipe me from history, wouldn’t you?’ Krystal said.
‘That’s ridiculous. You’re here, aren’t you?’
‘What on earth is the problem here?’ Ivy hissed, arriving swiftly to impose her matriarchal power to hush up the inconvenience in the corner. The woman was a Barbara Walters lookalike, wearing a suitably mother-of-the-dead navy pantsuit and pearls.
‘The problem is that you always wanted me gone,’ Krystal growled at Cordelia-Aurora. ‘You always thought Evan belonged to you and he couldn’t possibly make any decisions for himself. The problem is that you forced me to sign those organ donation papers. You butchered him.’
Several eavesdroppers gasped at that. Ivy’s hand rose to the pearls at her throat.
Then the boys were back at Krystal’s side. ‘Mummy, what’s wrong?’ Jasper asked. She took a breath and held it a second, willing herself to calm down. But the memory of that night was too much for her to handle, especially here, in the lion’s den.
‘You were there, Krystal,’ Cordelia-Aurora said. ‘You had the legal authority to sign those papers, no one else.’
‘And you hated that, didn’t you? Finally, I had power over Evan’s future that your family couldn’t touch and you just couldn’t accept that, so you took advantage of me at my most desperate moment, my weakest, most vulnerable moment. You bullied me and coerced me into signing those papers even though you knew I didn’t want to, knew that I was totally against it, because you couldn’t possibly believe that I knew Evan better than you did.’
‘That’s enough.’ Wyatt was in the fray now, tall, white-haired, big-nosed.
Cordelia-Aurora narrowed her eyes. ‘Krystal, I am cautioning you to consider what you are saying very carefully. You are in a public space, in front of no fewer than ten lawyers. If you’re not careful, you might find yourself being sued for defamation.’
‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ Krystal rolled her eyes at her sister-in-law, gathered her boys to her side and stalked from the apartment to the elevator. Jasper pushed the call button for her, then silently took her hand in his. Olly leaned against her leg as the softly lit capsule zoomed them down to the ground floor and away from the icy hell above.
9
The kids were back at school for the first day of the last term of the year and Gabby was still reeling from Cam’s bombshell that he was taking a break from his children. She hadn’t told them yet, not able to bear the thought of what it would do to them, instead firing off an angry text message to Cam this morning telling him he needed to deal with his drug habit and return to the world of functioning adulthood. He’d ignored that, of course, and it had only made her stroppier. To cheer herself up a little, she’d brought her big vase of perfumed lilies into the cafe, placing them on the counter where they drew endless comments of appreciation from customers, many of whom looked as though they could use a bit of cheering too as they kicked off a new work week. She’d also brought
Sally in, wearing her special red coat that identified her as a service dog.
She moved to the room behind the glass wall, telling Sally she could lie down and have a nap beneath the cupping bench, and prepared herself for the session with Luciano, checking they had everything they needed. To join him in a cupping session was really laying her professional cards on the table: she wanted to prove her abilities and gain his respect. She only hoped she’d be able to pull it off.
Next week, The Tin Man would start offering free cupping events to customers on Sunday mornings. It was a fantastic way to spread the word about the cafe, leading to ongoing media opportunities, and Pippa was working on a sharable poster for the sessions. Teaching consumers about coffee profiles and the differences in taste would strengthen their commitment to buying the high-quality products The Tin Man sold. Ultimately, it would drive interest, word-of-mouth, customers through the door, and sales.
The Tin Man sourced beans from El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Ethiopia and India. From these, Luciano made three different blends, which Gabby had named following the Wizard of Oz theme – Moody Munchkins, Vanishing Wizards and Flying Monkeys. They also offered single-origin beans in-house for real enthusiasts to taste.
The Ethiopian and El Salvadoran beans were quite different and caused a lot of chatter at the counter, though generally customers preferred a blend over a single origin. There was nothing more dismaying than a customer who came in and decided to be brave or adventurous (or sometimes just pretentious), ordered a single-origin coffee, didn’t understand the flavour profile, disliked it and walked away unhappy.
Luciano, looking his usual slightly rugged but handsome self – and today with a red-and-white neckerchief that added colour to his outfit – was helping Ed at present, a sudden rush of customers creating a long line of yellow order tickets. Gabby laid out three white cups on the wide multi-purpose wooden bench, her boots making small thuds as she moved about, her gypsy bells tinkling pleasantly. She was nervous. This was a chance for her to find a real connection with Luciano. Regular cupping was crucial for them to know the quality of the beans they had bought, and today Gabby could show him just how good she was at this.
The Gift of Life Page 8
