by Liz Byrski
‘I’ll remember that,’ Diane said, laughing. ‘If I do it.’
‘Is it really what you want to do?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose that’s the thing – apart from anything about that particular salon, I just don’t know. It makes sense but I’m not at all sure that it’s what I want.’
She looked around the café, the tables mostly occupied by women, and thought how pleasant and relaxing it was to be sitting here with Barbara, talking as though they were old friends. A few days earlier she’d sat here with Lorraine, wondering then why she had made that sudden decision to cut herself off from well-meaning people. She had brought her life to an embarrassing halt in response to Gerry’s desertion. If she’d really wanted to get back at him she should have been seen everywhere, looking her best, socialising, getting in his way, spending heaps of money. As it was, she’d wasted two whole years bristling with anger, determined to be a victim. Even Charlene had been desperate to escape from her when she got the chance to move in with Shaun.
‘I wish I knew what I wanted,’ she said now. ‘All I’ve managed so far is to know what I don’t want. And after all that drinking and then buggering off, now Gerry’s friendly and seems to want to help . . . well, to sort of manage me, I think. He thinks this is the right thing, not necessarily this salon, but having my own business.’
‘Does it matter what he thinks?’ Barbara asked. ‘It sounds rather as though things might be a bit dodgy with his new partner and he’s looking for someone to lean on.’
‘That had crossed my mind. But no, it doesn’t matter. It’s over for me, totally over, and the relief is enormous.’
‘You have plenty of time,’ Barbara said. ‘I think if you wait, if you’re patient, something will emerge and you’ll know because it’ll feel right. Ouch!’ she said, twisting on her chair. ‘I went bike riding with Adam and the children twice at the weekend and I’m really stiff. I’m a novice in training for China.’
‘Really?’ Diane said. ‘That sounds like fun. It’s ages since I rode my bike. Gerry and I used to ride together on Sunday mornings and then go for breakfast.’
‘Why don’t you get it out?’ Barbara said. ‘Bring it to Morpeth one Saturday, stay the night and on Sunday we’ll go riding and I’ll take you to breakfast at a nice café by the river. Stop worrying about what you’re going to do – it’ll all work out in the end, things always do. You should go and see Stefan’s garden. After all, he’s the role model for reinvention.’
Some weeks earlier, unable to sleep one night, Heather had sat up in the Potts Point bedroom, switched on the television, surfed the channels for something to watch and settled on an old black-and-white movie with James Mason as a ruthless, manipulative husband bent on his wife’s destruction. Her three sisters tried to warn her but she was determined to be a good wife and, as her mental and physical health broke down, the sisters attempted in vain to rescue her. Watching it, Heather wished that she had sisters, three at least; not that she needed warning or rescuing, but just so that she could talk things through with them. Ellis, of course, was not remotely like the Mason character any more than she was like the hopeless, cowering wife, but there was something that struck a chord; whatever happened the wife was always in the wrong. As the aircraft roared down the Ballina runway, Heather reflected on the fact that she had spent much of the weekend being in the wrong.
Admittedly she had started badly, biting Ellis’s head off just as he was about to cook the fish. But the candlelit dinner had restored the mood, and she had entered as fully into the romance of the occasion as she knew how, savouring the moment, the beautiful house, the warmth and stillness of the night air, the full moon reflected on the glassy surface of the water. But the whole romantic thing was a problem for her, something she tried to engage with for Ellis’s sake but which frequently eluded her. She knew that his coming back into her life like this was romantic, she even called it that, but romance was something for which she had no flair. She understood friendship, desire, lust and the longing for a deep, intimate connection and companionship with another person – this she felt was real love, the love she felt for Ellis. But romance seemed like artifice. She just didn’t get it.
And she didn’t really get what Ellis meant by it either, apart from that great gesture of coming to find her. What was it that made him describe himself as a great romantic? He insisted that forty years ago she had been a true romantic, and that all that was needed now was a leap of imagination on her part. But a leap into what? What would she actually have to do to be romantic? And wasn’t physical affection outside the bedroom part of romance? Words seemed inadequate proof of this magic ingredient. But that Friday night, she did appreciate the romance of the occasion and the setting, as well as her great good fortune in being there with the man she loved constantly declaring his love for her. She relished her meal, sipped her wine and ignored the niggling feeling that she needed to stay alert. After a long and particularly unpleasant week in parliament, a tiring day and several glasses of wine, her alert switch flipped to off.
‘So,’ Ellis had said as they stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, ‘tomorrow morning, a swim and a walk, coffee, and then you can give me your feedback on the plan and my first three chapters.’
‘You forgot a look around the town and a siesta on the balcony,’ said Heather, by now quite light-headed. ‘And then I’ll read the stuff and we can talk about it.’
Ellis slammed the salad bowl into the machine and straightened up. ‘You haven’t read it yet?’
Heather stopped short. She’d meant to read it on the flight but exhaustion beat her. She’d fallen asleep minutes after take-off and woke as they were landing at Ballina.
‘Whoops,’ she said, in a manner more cavalier than she would have adopted three glasses of wine ago. ‘Sorry, darling, no, actually, I haven’t. I know it’s bad of me but, honestly, I’ve been up to my ears in work. I intended to read it on the way here but it didn’t quite work out –’
‘Obviously,’ Ellis said.
He was standing with his back to her, putting unused cutlery into a drawer, and she went up behind him, slipped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against his shoulderblade. ‘I’m sooooo sorry, Ellis, really. You can’t imagine how hectic it’s been this week.’
‘How long would it have taken?’ he asked, not turning around. ‘An hour? Two at the most. And anyway, you’ve had the business plan for weeks.’
She lifted her face from his back. ‘I know, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? But that’s how it’s been, my headspace is overflowing, I couldn’t cram anything else in.’
‘It is ridiculous,’ he said, turning to her and removing her arms. ‘Totally ridiculous. You are ridiculous.’ And he walked past her, out on to the balcony to collect the empty wine bottle and snuff out the candles.
In other circumstances, Heather thought, she would have given him heaps for that last remark, but knowing he was hurt she let it go. It took well over an hour to defuse the situation and by the time they eventually got to bed they were both too tired to do anything but sleep.
She woke early next morning to the sound of cockatoos arguing outside the open window, Ellis’s hands exploring her breasts and his erect penis nudging her bottom. Heather had never enjoyed sex in the morning, her hormones simply weren’t on duty at that time of day, but even in the haze of waking she knew that refusal would be disastrous.
Later, sitting on the balcony with a cup of coffee while Ellis was in the shower, she reflected on the fake orgasm and felt it had been an admirable effort; it had certainly convinced Ellis. Years earlier when her last, albeit brief, relationship had ended, Heather had vowed that despite her proven skills she would never again fake an orgasm. But that was like taking a vow against wearing a lifejacket when you were on dry land – it was a different thing altogether when you were out at sea facing ten-metre waves. Early in the morning after the night they’d first made love, Heather had broken her vow and summoned the fake
orgasm back into service. Women were, she thought, damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. What was the point of adopting the moral high ground on fake orgasms when its alternatives were so unappealing? You either struggled to achieve a real one at a time when you’d rather have been sleeping or reading a good book, or you spent the rest of the day copping the fallout from a bruised ego. Orgasms were great, but how many does one woman need? Faking at least got it sorted and out of the way.
Ellis was a worry, though, because for a man of almost seventy he seemed to have very frequent erections. Heather thought that if he were, as she suspected, taking something, he might be exceeding the stated dose. Not for the first time she considered how strange it must be to live with a part of your anatomy that constantly demonstrated inappropriate behaviour and over which you had very little control. No wonder men could close their minds to the possibilities of orgasmic deception; it must make them feel that for a while at least they’d gained control and achieved a result. That was something else she’d never understood: so many men were focused on outcomes, when for women it was usually process that was more important.
In the centre of town later that day, a couple of Ellis’s acquaintances wandered into the coffee shop and joined them at the table.
‘You mean you’ve never been here before?’ Leah asked while her husband, James, talked investments with Ellis. ‘Then I have to take you through the arcade and show you this wonderful little shop. Come on, it won’t take long.’ She got up, gesturing to Heather to follow her.
‘Where are you two off to?’ James asked, glancing up.
‘Just want to show Heather something,’ Leah said.
Heather stood up and patted Ellis’s shoulder. ‘Won’t be long, darling,’ she said, and followed Leah down through the narrow arcade to a tiny shop full of beads, sarongs and sequinned cushions, feeling a stab of regret that it was so long since she’d last been shopping with a woman friend. On impulse she bought a turquoise sarong for herself, another in shades of yellow and burnt orange for Jill, and some wooden beads for Barbara.
‘What exactly was all that about?’ Ellis asked tight-lipped as they walked back to his car.
‘What?’
‘Since when do you abandon the person you’re with and disappear for hours?’
‘Hours?’ Heather said, laughing. ‘It was about ten minutes, and I didn’t abandon you. You knew where we were.’
‘But you’re supposed to be with me.’
‘I was, I am. For heaven’s sake, Ellis, you were having a conversation exclusively with James and you were still engrossed in it when we got back. You don’t need me to be an audience.’
Ellis’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t respond.
The trouble, she realised, was that she was simply too accustomed to being single and liking it. She must try to think of herself as part of a couple in future and this afternoon she absolutely had to read his Head to Heart stuff and make a real effort to get involved.
‘Straight after lunch,’ she promised him as she laid the table. ‘And it’s much better reading it here where I can really concentrate without distractions.’ And an hour or so later they were both ensconced in the deep cane armchairs on the balcony, Ellis with the weekend papers, and Heather with the business plan and the draft chapters, four of them now, on her lap. Although Ellis had talked her through it the day he’d collected it from Luke Scriven, she’d promptly forgotten most of it.
Now, as she opened the glossy document, its cover and first pages scattered with aphorisms, Heather felt her chest and bowels tighten. She loathed the whole concept of lifestyle and the associated marketing. Lifestyle! Now everyone had to have a lifestyle. Wasn’t it enough to simply have a life anymore? Heather had inherited a taste for moderation from her mother and Barbara, and it led her to resist glossy magazines featuring exotic locations, luxury watches or promises of youth and beauty. And she had no time at all for anything with a scent of New Age.
‘But you’ve done yoga, meditation and naturopathy, Heather,’ Kirsty had said one day after returning from something called deep crystal rebalancing.
‘They are ancient wisdom,’ Heather replied. ‘It’s all this hippie-hyped stuff that infuriates me.’
Before Ellis’s unexpected arrival she’d viewed life-coaching as something which combined the worst of consumer-driven lifestyle rubbish and New Age psychobabble. Why people would need someone to coach them in how to live their lives was a mystery to her. But Ellis was a highly intelligent man, accustomed to sifting evidence and flushing out charlatans, so presumably he knew what he was talking about, and she was therefore prepared to revise her judgment.
‘It was that time with Nirvana that set me on this new course,’ Ellis had told her during their first days together. ‘An experience like that changes you, takes you to a level from which you can only look down in dismay at the place you’ve come from. It makes you want to take others with you along the same track.’
And Heather, enchanted as she was by the unexpected gift of this second chance at love and its promise of escape from the aftermath of the shooting, wanted to believe him.
The business plan was written in contemporary business and management jargon spiced with New Age and lifestyle language. And it was obviously aimed at people with more money than sense. The budget took her breath away. Scriven’s fee for the plan alone ran into thousands and she could hardly bear to look at the extraordinary figures for management of the marketing and promotion. And the suggested scale of charges for consultations was mindblowing. But it was the idea of Ellis as life-coach and counsellor that triggered an increase in Heather’s heart rate. She felt physically sick at the prospect of having to provide the long-awaited feedback.
To her relief, a panel van pulled into the driveway and Ellis left the balcony to help unload some rocks and a pump for his proposed water garden. Breathing space. Heather turned in desperation to his first draft chapter – perhaps there was something in his own work that she could latch on to. But it was not to be; try as she might she could see nothing but vacuity masquerading as wisdom, fatuousness as integrity, and the slick contemporary superficiality that promised redemption and rebirth through reorganising everything from the linen press to faith. Heather closed her eyes and rested her head on the chair back. Did he really believe all this? If he did, or indeed if he didn’t, what did it say about him? And any minute now he would be settling back in the chair alongside her waiting for her feedback.
Questions, she reminded herself. Questions were the weapons of choice when asked for an opinion on the impossible or unreasonable. Ask questions, and in the travail of analysis and interpretation the cracks would appear without her having to pass an unpalatable opinion. She had done it often, and had had it done to her. Grabbing a pencil she jotted down some questions for Ellis. It was risky. This was how lawyers worked, and he would know what she was doing. She would have to phrase her questions in the spirit of genuine enquiry, to appear constructive rather than critical. She would stall him with questions, force him to rethink, leave him something to grapple with and then, when he could see it all more clearly, perhaps help him to find another way to channel his desire to help others. Ellis had fallen into a black New Age hole, and rescuing him before he made a fool of himself was not going to be easy. There might have to be a few more fake orgasms before the weekend was over.
But now that it was over, and she was bound once again for Sydney, Heather wasn’t entirely sure that even fake orgasms and legal-style interrogations were going to prove sufficient to steer Ellis from his chosen path.
SEVENTEEN
Alex Roussos ducked under the crime-scene tape, walked up the path to the house and nodded a greeting to the uniformed officer on duty at the front door.
‘Contamination, Alex!’ a voice called from within, and a plastic bag containing shoe covers and sterile white overalls flew out of the door and hit him in the chest.
‘Shit,’ he said, blinking. ‘Manners, Andy
, manners,’ and he picked the bag up off the ground.
‘Sorry, mate, but uniform have already had a party in here,’ Andy Weaver, the forensic pathologist, said. ‘We don’t need anything else to confuse us.’
Alex struggled into the overalls, covered his shoes, pulled on thin latex gloves and stepped through the hallway into a large, expensively furnished room from which a wall of glass overlooked a swimming pool. In the centre of the room, Weaver was crouched over the body of man who lay face down, his blood spattered across the beige carpet and onto the pale green fabric of the nearby sofa.
‘Okay,’ Alex said, ‘what’ve we got?’
‘Male, thirtyish, shot three times, presumably with the gun over there but I can’t confirm that yet,’ Weaver said.
‘And one male witness, shot once in the pelvic region and scared shitless,’ said Vince, appearing from a door at the end of the room. ‘He’s in an ambulance on his way to emergency right now.’
‘Any ID?’
‘For him, yes,’ Vince said, handing him the witness’s wallet and a mobile phone in an evidence bag. ‘For this guy, not yet. Can’t get into his pockets until Andy lets me turn him over.’
‘Who owns the house?’
‘I’ve got someone finding out right now.’
Alex stood up, took a slow look around the room and then turned back to the body on the floor. ‘This guy looks vaguely familiar,’ he said, ‘but the hole in his head might be confusing me. How long before we can have a look at him?’
‘Patience, my son,’ Weaver said, picking up a bloodstained fibre and dropping it into a bag. ‘We’ll get to that in a minute. Give a bloke a bit of space, can’t you?’
‘I thought I might join you if that’s okay,’ George said, as Barbara wheeled her bike down the path. She had taken a ride at the same time each morning for the two weeks since that first outing with Adam and the children. George was standing at her gate, wearing a bike helmet and holding an impressive looking red mountain bike with black trim.
