Those Pleasant Girls

by Lia Weston

  Downstairs, Bublé had been swapped for the Grease soundtrack. Evie was officially in hell.

  ‘Nice frock.’

  Evie looked up to find Amy Wei exhaling a stream of smoke in her direction. The tailoring on her outfit was so sharp you’d get a paper cut if you hugged her.

  ‘Are you hiding or just exploring?’ said Amy.

  ‘Both,’ admitted Evie. ‘Can you believe all this?’ She gestured at the walls. ‘The whole house is white except this room. It’s like the jam centre in a giant cream bun.’

  Amy took another drag of her cigarette. ‘It’s Joy. I wouldn’t expect restrained decor. I wouldn’t expect restrained anything. Did you know she used to be a gameshow hostess? Very good at turning letters and smiling, apparently.’

  ‘Probably explains the sequins,’ said Evie.

  ‘And the shoulder pads. Spring roll?’ Amy offered a plate with several tired-looking canapés on it.

  Evie took one out of politeness. True to every spring roll in history, it had the internal temperature of lava. Evie stifled a swearword as a glot of vermicelli glued itself to her lip.

  Amy watched her with no visible change in expression. ‘Enjoying the party?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Evie, attempting to look sincere. ‘Everything’s very . . . um . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ Amy, who was not fooled, raised one eyebrow. ‘The games are about to start. You’ll probably want to stay up here.’

  ‘What kind of games?’ Evie tried to envision Joy playing Connect 4.

  ‘If the last four parties are anything to go by, there’ll be some version of pin the tail on the donkey where you substitute “donkey” for “nude male”, the handbag game, which is always tiresome, and then karaoke, just to finish everybody off.’

  ‘Why would we be –’ Evie blanched. ‘Oh my God. Is this a hen’s party?’

  A smile cracked the lacquered veneer of Amy’s face. ‘She didn’t tell you? There’s a cake shaped like a penis in the kitchen. I would have thought that would tip you off. Pardon the pun.’

  ‘I didn’t see it. And I didn’t bring a gift,’ said Evie, pressing her empty glass to her forehead. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry. Most people don’t bother any more.’

  ‘Wait – you said “four”, didn’t you? Four hen’s parties?’

  Amy held up the requisite number of fingers. ‘Four parties so far, not including this one, three husbands so far, also not including this one.’

  ‘When’s the wedding?’

  ‘May.’

  ‘Does she normally have the hen’s night this far in advance?’

  ‘There’s a lot to organise between now and the big day,’ said Amy. ‘You know how it goes. Cake, music, dress, find a back-up husband.’

  ‘So what happened to the fourth one?’

  ‘He chewed off the manacles and escaped. She had the party anyway. Karaoke was rather more tearful than usual. If I never hear “Total Eclipse of the Heart” again, I’ll die happy.’

  Evie couldn’t tell which emotion was the most overwhelming – disappointment that Nathan would not be making an appearance, or disbelief that there were five men who had, at one point or another in their lives, wanted to marry Joy.

  Joy Piece.

  Of Piece Real Estate.

  ‘It boggles the mind,’ said Amy, who was clearly telepathic. She pulled a monogrammed flask out of her tiny Chanel handbag.

  The doorbell rang. There was an answering flurry of shrieks from downstairs and the sound of ripping velcro.

  ‘Should we go and be sociable?’ said Evie, dreading what would greet them at the bottom of the staircase.

  Amy poured a slug from the flask into Evie’s glass. ‘No.’

  The white trellis running up to the roof was less sturdy than it had originally seemed, but by this point in the day Mary was willing to take the chance of falling to her death. Reaching the balcony, she hooked a leg over and hoisted herself to safety, cocktail umbrella clenched between her teeth. The plastic monkey was a tiny blue shard on the ground below, glinting in the sun against the strip of fake green grass. Mary spat the umbrella over the side and sincerely hoped someone would step on it.

  The action-motivated air freshener in the hallway squirted a cloud of artificial vanilla as soon as she walked by. Mary passed room after room on quicksand-thick ivory carpet. The hallway ended in a giant white staircase that swept back down to the party. Downstairs, someone had started singing ‘Sweet Caroline’. ‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’ There were cheers.

  She stopped to get her bearings. The door to her left leached coconut oil. Mary’s nostrils twitched. Her fingers only paused for a second before turning the doorknob.

  She found herself facing a thousand Thereses. Every wall and vertical surface was plastered in a familiar face, pouting from trees, posing on cars, parading down corridors, neon-coloured, black and white, sepia-toned and tinted, wearing bikinis which would give Mr Mond heart failure. It was less a bedroom than a shrine.

  Mary understood why boys liked Therese, as boys were visual creatures and generally stupid, but she couldn’t explain why girls did. Therese never seemed to giggle or gossip, never cooed when someone paraded a new haircut or handbag or pair of shoes. She didn’t shriek at the boys or wrestle with them or shout things at them out of cars. When she was with Zach, she seemed to do very little except give half-lidded looks and apply lip gloss. When they had sex – at least, Mary presumed they did – what did she do? Just lie there? Text? Apply more gloss?

  In fact, Mary realised that she had never heard Therese speak. Ever. Maybe it was part of her mystique.

  Then again, maybe she had a voice like David Beckham.

  Mary walked into the forest of images. By the window, the king-sized mattress held so many cushions it would take ten minutes to actually go to bed. The time-saving alternative, thought Mary, would be to sleep on top of them, like the carving on a sarcophagus. Theresankhamun in denim cut-offs.

  The walk-in wardrobe was coordinated by graduating shades. A rainbow of dresses spectrumed one wall. Dozens of jeans, all seemingly identical, were neatly stacked and folded. Above the clothes were rows of shoeboxes, each with a photograph and tag, a tiny morgue of high-heel corpses.

  On the back of the wardrobe door was a photo of Zach, shaking his hair back. Underneath Zach’s perfect hair were a couple of casual shots of Therese and another girl in matching leopard-print bikinis. Was this another Piece sister? She had to be mid-twenties at the most. In one picture, an older man stood between them, furry blond torso rising above his towel, a meaty hand wrapped around each tiny waist. Therese’s dad, maybe. Mary pulled the picture off the wall and looked at the back. Dad & Amber’s honeymoon. She wondered if Amber was the same age as Sabine. From the bedroom walls, the Therese army stared at her, defiant.

  ‘Onyx Gleam,’ said someone in the doorway.

  Mary’s heart stopped. She shrank back between the indigo and purple dresses and looked through the crack in the door. Ebony was at Therese’s dressing table, flicking through the myriad lipstick cases, which were also lined up according to colour.

  ‘Onyx Gleam,’ Ebony murmured, picking up a lipstick to scrutinise the label on the bottom. The case rejoined the others with a clack. ‘Got you.’ Ebony picked out another lipstick and stood, staring at it. She was tightly muscled like a gymnast. Her flesh-coloured dress didn’t suit her at all; she looked like a Shetland pony wearing a condom.

  Ebony looked up at the pictures around the dressing table mirror. Mary could see the knuckles going white as she clutched the lipstick case.

  ‘EBONY!’

  Both girls jumped. Ebony hurried out of the room, lipstick in hand.

  Mary counted to twenty before emerging from the wardrobe. She smelled her arm. Ugh. Between the vanilla air freshener, coconut oil and Therese’s perfumed clothes, it was as if she’d been rubbing herself with a scented candle. She’d have to scrub all over when she got home.

  The dressing table held
three boxes of necklaces, bracelets, anklets and earrings. A white-gold chain, gossamer-thin, slid through Mary’s fingers and pooled in her palm.

  More self-portraits of Therese and her girlfriends, all fake-tanned boobs-under-chin pictures, surrounded the mirror. Among them, Mary’s reflection looked rough and bloodless.

  Two old ladies pedalled down Main Street on matching bicycles. Evie waved as the Mini overtook them. The rest of the street was empty except for the man in front of the chicken shop who was sitting on a stool and finishing his cigarette. Mary noticed that Evie didn’t bother waving to him.

  ‘Why don’t we have a girls’ night one night? Just the two of us?’ said Evie.

  ‘It’s only ever the two of us,’ said Mary. ‘We have nothing but girls’ nights.’

  ‘I mean, let’s have fun. Do facials, make popcorn, watch something awful.’

  ‘Can I invite Mini D and Travis?’

  ‘Well, it’s supposed to be girly . . .’

  ‘You want me to be more sociable.’

  ‘Well, yes, but . . .’

  ‘And you said that friends were important.’

  ‘Well, yes, but . . .’

  ‘Great.’

  Evie lapsed into silence as they swung into Cherry Orchard Way. The jacaranda blooms were long gone now, the leaves slowly tinting into yellow gold.

  There was something sitting on their front doorstep. Evie jumped out of the car, her ruby dress crumpled from the drive.

  ‘Irises! Oh!’

  Mary unfolded from the passenger seat.

  Evie waved the bouquet at her. ‘Look! How gorgeous.’

  The bunched stems and purple blooms were tied together with a green ribbon shot through with black. Mary smoothed her fingers over it. ‘Well, your secret admirer is either a thief or the guy on Plowers Avenue with the southern cross flag in his window.’

  The smile dropped off Evie’s face. ‘What?’

  ‘They’re from his garden. He’s the only person in Sweet Meadow who has this variety. And they’re not from the Rose Apothecary,’ Mary plucked the keys from Evie’s fingers and unlocked the front door, ‘because they’re alive.’

  Evie trotted down the hallway behind her. ‘Are you sure they’re stolen?’

  ‘Trust me.’ Mary picked a vase off the mantelpiece and dashed water inside it, holding her hand out for the flowers. ‘Iris histrioides. Native to Turkey.’

  ‘There’s a card,’ said Evie, picking a small folded cardboard square out from the stems. ‘I missed you today.’

  Mary deftly arranged the flowers, standing back to tweak a couple of slim green leaves into place. ‘Who’s it from?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Evie, examining the card, smiling slightly.

  ‘One day strange men will leave me anonymous gifts. Hey, what if it’s from a woman?’ Mary swung herself up on the bench, booted heel leaving a mark on the cupboard door.

  ‘This is Sweet Meadow. I doubt there’s a large gay community.’

  ‘Those old women in the cardies, they’re a couple.’

  ‘They’re sisters.’

  ‘I’ve seen them holding hands.’

  ‘A lesbian is not sending me anonymous gifts,’ snapped Evie. She plonked the vase on the mantelpiece. ‘Who knows, maybe they’re from Nathan.’

  ‘He’s a priest,’ said Mary, playing with the ribbon. ‘He wouldn’t steal flowers.’

  ‘He used to pinch stuff all the time – old habits die hard,’ said Evie. ‘Anyway, did you have a nice time at the party?’

  Mary rolled her head towards her mother and let her expression do the talking.

  ‘Did you meet some of the other girls?’

  ‘I already met them at school.’

  ‘Oh. Did you talk to them?’

  ‘Nope,’ Mary said flatly.

  ‘Oh.’ Evie hesitated. ‘Did you try?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Did you do the karaoke?’

  Mary crossed her arms. ‘I did not do karaoke. I did not do Jello shots with Jonas. Also, unlike the other girls, I did not pretend to give the penis cake a blow job.’

  ‘I . . .’ Evie’s mouth opened and then stayed that way. Mary could almost hear her brain go blank.

  ‘Still want me to be friends with these people?’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Another clump of weeds went flying past the French windows. Evie added a slice of lime to the glass on her tray and nudged the back door open with her toes.

  The creeping fig, patchy and straggly when they moved in, had now spread across the back wall, blanketing the bricks with soft green leaves. In front of the fig, purple and bronze chrysanthemums were dusting themselves down now that the choking clouds of dandelions and nettles had been ripped out. Other flowers that Evie couldn’t name were slowly unfurling in the unaccustomed space, tentatively stretching out buds and leaves. Mary had cut the passionfruit vine off the elm tree it had been attempting to strangle. In revenge, the passionfruit was now taking over the shed, which looked as if it was being eaten alive. Mummified in eight layers of clothing, Mary had even braved the shed’s umpteen generations of spiders, living happily in the beer bottles and piñatas, to strip it clean. Tools, fertilisers, pots and pruners were reinstalled in soldier-neat racks and rows.

  The conqueror of spiders and weeds was now removing all of the debris from Thomasina’s long-neglected vegetable beds. Her hair was stuck to her neck with sweat.

  Evie held up the tray with sandwiches oozing Gruyere cheese. ‘Lunchtime.’

  Mary ate without really paying attention to her food. Evie could see her mentally planning out the beds, rearranging plants back and forth.

  ‘One day you’ll be a famous florist and I’ll have to line up to get roses from you.’

  Mary pulled herself out of her imaginary garden and wound some cheese around her finger. ‘People don’t line up at a florist’s shop.’

  ‘I’m sure they do somewhere. There’s probably a teeny-tiny Parisian boutique with people camping out the front.’

  ‘What is ze passworrd?’ said Mary in a bad French accent.

  ‘You must pay wiz Papillion puppies.’ Evie’s accent was equally bad.

  ‘Besides,’ said Mary in her normal voice, ‘I’m thinking of studying horticulture. I might not go into floriculture.’

  ‘I thought horticulture was trees.’

  ‘That’s arboriculture.’ Mary pulled a piece of bacon out of her sandwich and pointed to the elm.

  Evie resisted the urge to make a ‘boring culture’ pun. ‘I can’t believe we’re going to have our own oranges.’ The orange tree, formerly no more than a neglected stick, had suddenly put on a growth spurt after Mary freed it from several wheelbarrows’ worth of weeds. Little oranges, still green, had started baubling its branches. ‘Your gran would be so proud of you, honey.’

  Mary glanced at Evie, and then quickly looked away again. ‘Thanks,’ she said, picking at the edge of her plate. ‘You could make a Christmas cake this year.’

  ‘And a Christmas pudding.’

  ‘Really?’ Mary loved pudding.

  ‘I promise,’ said Evie.

  With her dirt-streaked grin and torn T-shirt, Mary suddenly looked like a little kid again, and Evie felt a strange pang that this long-limbed girl would soon outgrow her.

  Mary rubbed her nose. ‘Dad said there was a horticulture joke but wouldn’t tell me what it was.’

  Not like Gabe to miss a whore-related gag, thought Evie. ‘Have another sandwich,’ she said.

  Thank you for your application for the position of Administrative Assistant. Unfortunately, on this occasion your claims for the position were not as strong as other candidates’ . . . We wish you well in your future employment endeavours . . .

  There was a knock at the door. Evie binned the letter before heading down the hallway.

  ‘You left this at Joy’s.’ Amy held out Evie’s plate. She was wearing a cape with red lining, which would have looked ridiculous on anyone else.
/>   ‘Oh, the brownies. I totally forgot. Can I make you a coffee?’

  Amy pivoted in the centre of the kitchen, the cape belling around her. ‘Nice. Good workspace.’

  A clump of thistles went flying past the window.

  ‘Do you have a dog?’

  ‘No, that’s Mary. She’s weeding. She’s in her element. She keeps telling me all the ways the tenants damaged the ph of our soil while I pretend to know what she’s talking about.’

  ‘I never knew a teenager who liked gardening. How odd.’

  ‘Her grandmother’s influence,’ said Evie, crumbling pistachios over a chocolate flan. ‘She started taking Mary on garden excursions when she was a toddler, and it just went from there.’

  ‘She didn’t take you with them?’

  ‘No,’ said Evie.

  Amy clearly decided not to press the point, and picked up an envelope. ‘Weitweg Winery?’

  Evie jammed her thumb into the button on the coffee machine. ‘They advertised for an administrative assistant.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were looking for work.’

  ‘Not successfully. An Arts degree just says you can string a sentence together. I really only need something until my settlement comes through. Unfortunately, my ex-husband has decided to be . . .’

  ‘Obstructive?’

  ‘Basically.’ Evie could have put a few more words there, but didn’t.

  Amy removed her cape. It fell in perfect folds over the back of the kitchen chair. ‘I sometimes have girlfriends who need medical typing done. It pays well. I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ said Evie. Amy was so matter-of-fact that it didn’t sound like charity.

  Over flan and coffee the committee gossip started emerging.

  ‘For a religious organisation, there’s a lot of arguing,’ said Evie.

  ‘For a religious organisation, there’s not a great deal of religion,’ said Amy. ‘I’m there because it gets me out of the house. Joy’s there because she never met a committee she didn’t like. David’s there because he thinks it looks good on his social CV. Rosemary’s there because David’s there. Quentin’s there because he has no friends, and Louise and Rachel were born there, I think.’