Three’s a Crowd

by Dianne Blacklock

  ‘Sure, I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve made a date for the barbecue. It’ll be fun!’

  Catherine did not have a call on the other line. She hung up the phone with a groan. That was not exactly the outcome she’d intended. She sat back in her chair, resting her head back and closing her eyes. She was tired already and it was barely mid-morning. She blamed Martin; ever since the merger had fallen through he exuded negative energy. He was morose and unmotivated, he didn’t even seem to have much interest in cooking. If Catherine said she wasn’t hungry, he didn’t argue. He’d just make himself a sandwich and go and watch television.

  Alice was not much better; she’d set up camp in her bedroom and rarely ventured out. She even took food up there. Catherine couldn’t be bothered arguing with her any more. The term was nearly over, it would be a relief when her grounding was up. The house felt like a mausoleum. There was no life, no energy. Catherine was beginning to hate going home.

  At least she wouldn’t have to tonight, she was heading straight to a Law Society cocktail party after work. She would have had time to call in home to change, but instead she brought some clothes with her – a dressier blouse, shoes and jewellery – and she could freshen up in the executive bathroom. It was just as easy.

  Of course she couldn’t help wondering if he’d be there, but she wasn’t going to get her hopes up. He hadn’t made any attempt to follow up on what had happened that night. The next morning there had been all the tired clichés – ‘This should never have happened . . . it will never happen again . . .’ But things had changed since then, and Catherine had exercised admirable restraint waiting for him to make the first move, which she felt was appropriate under the circumstances. But all for what? To be so roundly ignored? It had occurred to Catherine that his painful moral code applied to her as well, and although he was free now, he wouldn’t approach her while she was not. For the first time, she was seriously considering suggesting to Martin that they take a break, they were on the brink anyway. She just didn’t like to free-fall; she would prefer to have some indication that he was interested. If he was there tonight, it would give her a chance to finally confront him, though she would have to be careful and pick her moment. She couldn’t risk a public scene. But surely she was owed some kind of explanation?

  He wasn’t here. Although Catherine was not surprised, she was nonetheless disappointed. And she was bored. It was the same old faces, the same old tired anecdotes; the air of self-importance in the room seemed particularly stifling tonight. So Catherine did what one does at a boring cocktail party, she drank cocktails. She was standing in a group of fellow family-law practitioners discussing the ramifications of a recent piece of legislation, when someone came up behind her.

  ‘Catherine Rourke?’ a vaguely plummy voice enquired. It had such an incredulous note to it that Catherine was intrigued to find out who the voice belonged to. She turned around to see a heavy-set, middle-aged man with a round, pale face; his hair had receded almost as far as the eye could see. She couldn’t place him, though there was something familiar about him.

  ‘You look incredible, Catherine,’ he remarked in that faintly English accent. Had she met him at a conference overseas?

  ‘The years haven’t been as kind to me, I’m afraid,’ he went on.

  Those eyes. The voice was throwing her though.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ He gave her a sheepish smile. ‘I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I look like . . . this, and you don’t look much older than you did at seventeen.’

  It felt like all the air in the room had suddenly been sucked out and the walls were closing in on her.

  ‘James?’ she managed to say, her own voice barely able to project all the way out of her throat.

  He was nodding faintly, his eyes fixed on her. ‘It’s been a long time, Catherine.’

  She was trying to take in enough oxygen, but the air felt so thin, so insubstantial, it was making her dizzy.

  ‘I haven’t seen you at one of these before,’ she said finally, composing herself. ‘Have you been practising law all this time?’

  He nodded. ‘But in the UK. We came home just last month.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My wife and I, with our two boys,’ he explained. ‘What about you, Catherine? Are you married, any children?’

  She swallowed. He just assumed she’d had the abortion. Of course he would. ‘Yes, I’m married, we don’t have any children.’ That wasn’t a lie – she and Martin had not had children – not that she was overly concerned about lying to James. But she was certainly not going to tell him about Alice.

  ‘We should catch up, have lunch sometime,’ he was saying.

  ‘Sure, sometime.’ She was beginning to feel a little woozy. She knew what was coming. ‘But if you’ll excuse me right now.’

  He opened his mouth to say something, but Catherine turned and headed for the exit. She walked quickly down the corridor and into the ladies’ room, relieved that no one was at the basins. She slipped into a cubicle and flushed the toilet to mask the sound of her throwing up. She heard another toilet flush, so she closed the lid of hers and sat down, waiting for them to leave. She heard the tap running, then stop, the hand dryer, and finally footsteps and the creak and whoosh of the door as it opened and closed again. Catherine stood up and walked out to the basins where she rinsed her mouth and splashed a little water on her face. She couldn’t go back out there. Fortunately she didn’t have to, she’d left her briefcase in the cloakroom.

  When she was safely back out on the street, Catherine took out her phone and scrolled through the numbers, finally pressing Call. ‘Hi it’s me,’ she said. ‘Are you alone? Are you expecting anyone, going anywhere?’ She sighed. ‘Can you spare me half an hour?’

  Rachel answered the door about twenty minutes later. Catherine had sounded weird on the phone, but she was working her first Saturday shift tomorrow, so she hoped this wasn’t going to turn into a big one. Well, it couldn’t. She was just going to have to be assertive.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked at the sight of Catherine’s harried expression.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this.’

  It was a shock all right, and it was a measure of just how much Catherine had been thrown by the encounter that she asked for a glass of water first before Rachel got her a drink.

  ‘You wouldn’t recognise him, Rachel,’ said Catherine, nursing her glass as she sat on the couch, her shoes kicked off and her feet drawn up underneath her. ‘He’s almost completely bald, and he’s fat.’

  ‘Really, how fat?’

  ‘You know, well padded, paunchy.’ She shook her head thinking about it. ‘He’s got so old.’

  ‘We’ve all gotten older, Catherine. You still have a mental picture of him as a seventeen year old, it was bound to be a shock seeing him in his mid-thirties.’

  ‘I’m telling you, he has not aged well. He said so himself.’ She paused to take a drink. ‘And he’s got this toffee accent because he’s been working in the UK. The whole thing was very strange.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ was all Rachel could offer.

  ‘He asked me if I had children, do you believe that?’ Catherine went on. ‘Not a hint of shame, awkwardness, of any emotion even. He absolutely assumed I went ahead as his father instructed. He didn’t even blink when I said I had no children.’

  ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘Rachel, do you think I was going to stand in that room, with all those people around, and say, “Yes, I have a daughter actually, she’s seventeen. You do the math.”’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Rachel agreed. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  Catherine looked up at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he’s back in the country, sounds like there’s a chance you might bump into him from time to time.’

  ‘I can keep out of his way,’ Catherine dismissed.

  ‘He could easily find out about Alice.’

  ‘How? He’d ha
ve to have some suspicions, and he certainly didn’t appear to.’

  ‘But he might find out accidentally,’ said Rachel. ‘If he moves in the same circles, it’s bound to come out eventually.’

  Catherine pressed her lips together, thinking about it.

  ‘What if he’s settling down in the eastern suburbs somewhere?’ Rachel went on. ‘You could run into him on the street, anywhere, with Alice right beside you. How would you explain her?’ She realised her mind was beginning to work in different ways since her life had become so steeped in subterfuge and secrecy. Agent 99 would be proud of her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Catherine said finally. ‘He suggested we get together for lunch sometime, catch up.’

  ‘Maybe you should,’ said Rachel. ‘You could get his side of the story, might put things in a different light.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a side,’ said Catherine. ‘He did what his father told him to do.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you expect of Alice?’ Rachel pointed out. ‘In fact, hasn’t she been grounded for the past couple of months for that very reason?’

  ‘I was having his baby, you think it’s a reasonable excuse that he didn’t want to risk being grounded?’

  ‘I think he was a seventeen-year-old kid.’

  Catherine stared at her.

  ‘You’ve been living a lie for a very long time, Catherine,’ said Rachel, aware of the whiff of hypocrisy in what she was saying. ‘To be brutally honest with you, I think Alice deserves to know the truth.’

  Catherine swallowed. ‘But what if he . . . I can’t risk her getting hurt.’

  ‘Maybe this has all happened for a reason,’ Rachel suggested. She felt like she was channelling Annie. ‘Maybe it’s finally the right time to do the right thing.’

  The following day

  ‘You did good, girl,’ said Mel. ‘You got through your very first Saturday with flying colours.’

  They had closed to customers twenty minutes ago and now they were cleaning up. The sixteen-year-old casual, Minxie – her actual name, Mel and Rachel decided her parents should be shot – had fled on the dot of closing, and although Rachel’s shift had officially ended she wanted to make a good impression. Besides, she had nothing to rush home to. And she’d enjoyed herself today; she’d actually even had fun at times, and she hadn’t had fun at work in a very long while. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed dealing face to face with people, regular happy people, down at the beach, wanting nothing more serious than a fruit juice or a smoothie. Though it had to be said that some of the customers took their selections very seriously, and Rachel had no doubt such customers would irritate over time. Along with the ones who just couldn’t make up their minds, faced with such an overwhelming choice. Still, it beat answering phones at Handy Home Health Care, and Mel was the absolute diametric opposite to Lloyd, thank goodness. Rachel had amused herself from time to time, trying to imagine Lloyd dealing with the orders, his officious clipboard at the ready. ‘No Rachel, it’s Banana Berry Blast, not Berry Banana. Your product knowledge leaves much to be desired.’

  ‘So how about a celebratory drink?’ said Mel.

  Rachel was up to her elbows in sudsy water at the sink. She handed Mel a juicer bowl. ‘You’re not talking about something involving fruit, are you?’

  ‘Only the fermented grape kind,’ she winked, wiping the bowl with a tea towel.

  ‘In that case, I’d love to.’

  Mel considered her. ‘What about your Mr Wonderful? You won’t be missed on a Saturday night?’

  ‘He’s got kids, he’s with them tonight.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘What, are you allergic to the little darlings?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Rachel shook her head. ‘It’s . . . a long story.’

  ‘Can’t wait to hear it,’ Mel said with a glint in her eye.

  They finished up and headed for the local pub. Coming straight from work they were hardly dressed to go anywhere more upmarket, not that Rachel would have wanted to. Laidback was definitely her preference. Mel bought the first round and sat down opposite Rachel at a table outside in the beer garden. It was a gorgeous, clear autumn evening; the air was heavy with the scent of sea salt. It occurred to Rachel that she really didn’t get out enough, and that sitting at home in case Tom dropped in had its limitations.

  ‘So, out with it,’ said Mel. ‘I want to hear the curious tale of Mr Wonderful. And don’t leave anything out.’

  Rachel smiled. ‘His name’s Tom, actually.’ She took a breath. This felt like confession, but in a good way. ‘And up until last spring, he was married to one of my best friends. Then she died.’

  Rachel waited while Mel picked her jaw up off the table. And then she proceeded to relate the whole tale, from woe to go, without leaving out anything. It was liberating, it was a relief, and it was complicated, to say the least. Mel had to stop her at one point to go and get them more drinks.

  ‘That’s quite a story,’ said Mel when Rachel had finally brought her up to date. ‘And you seem so normal.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  ‘As you should,’ said Mel. ‘What I want to know is, is Mr Wonderful wonderful enough that you want to take on this whole palaver?’

  Rachel took a moment, sipping her wine. ‘Yeah, he is.’

  ‘Well, here’s cheers to you,’ she said, raising her glass.

  They toasted. ‘So what about you. Is there a Mr Wonderful in your life?’ Rachel asked her.

  Mel grunted. ‘Not so much. I’m having what they call a dry spell.’

  ‘So how did you come to be running a juice bar?’ asked Rachel. ‘Did you break up with a boyfriend?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘You asked me the same question when I applied for the job.’

  ‘So I did,’ Mel nodded. ‘But no, it wasn’t a broken heart that led me to this, it was a broken spirit. I used to work at the top end of town for an investment bank, in the days when that still held some cachet.’

  ‘I remember those days,’ Rachel nodded.

  ‘Yeah, well they weren’t all bad. I bought my own apartment, a very nice one, right here in Bondi. And I bought myself a hybrid car, because despite being a loathsome investment banking type, I had my principles.’

  ‘Good for you.’ They toasted again.

  ‘Of course that meant I hated my job for the most part,’ she went on. ‘So I plotted my escape. I bought my little piece of the franchise, but I kept on the existing manager and the staff. Then when I could smell the crash coming, I bailed. I cashed in my share options while they were still worth something and I paid off my apartment and gave my manager notice. With a glowing reference, I might add, so he walked straight into another managerial position. I made sure of that.’ She took a long, slow drink of her wine. ‘Some of the people I worked with were not so lucky. I know of three guys who worked for the bank who committed suicide when the crash finally came.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Rachel quietly. ‘That’s rough.’

  Mel nodded, staring down at the table. Rachel wasn’t sure if she should draw her out, ask her about it, if she’d known any of them personally.

  ‘Another round?’ said Mel, moving to get up. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it.

  ‘Don’t you dare, it’s my shout,’ said Rachel.

  By the time she returned to the table, Mel’s mood had picked up. ‘So, what shall we drink to?’ she said. ‘Love in all its manifestations?’

  ‘I guess,’ said Rachel, raising her glass to Mel’s. ‘But I reckon you still owe me a story.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got nothing on yours,’ she said.

  ‘Come on,’ Rachel urged.

  ‘I’ve had the odd “prospect” over the years,’ Mel assured her. ‘But after a while, the flaws always float to the surface. And I’m not a hard bitch, I’m not just talking about the guy only, I’m talking about the inherent flaws in every relationship.’ She paused to take a drink. ‘You don’t see eye to eye on thi
s and that, he doesn’t listen, you don’t squeeze the toothpaste tube the right way, then there’s the whole minefield over the toilet seat,’ she groaned. ‘It’s all stupid stuff, but you end up breaking up over it.’

  Rachel was trying to remember what used to bother her about Tom when they were living together . . . Surely there was something . . . Maybe because they weren’t actually a couple that kind of stuff just didn’t get to her in the same way.

  ‘Anyway,’ Mel continued, ‘I don’t know whether it’s because I’m getting older, or what it is, but nowadays I just feel less and less inclined to try, because it seems like no matter how great things are at the start, it’s bound to come down to that screaming match over the toilet seat.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘Though just between you and me, I worry that I’m making excuses, that I’m just intrinsically relationship averse.’

  Rachel thought about it. ‘I don’t know. My friend, Catherine, she said that my problem with relationships is that I’m risk averse.’

  ‘What?’ said Mel. ‘You’re currently in the relationship equivalent of midair acrobatics without a safety net.’

  Rachel grinned. ‘Let me qualify. Up until Tom, I’ve been risk averse, according to Catherine. That’s why she thinks he could be the real thing.’

  ‘I thought your friends didn’t know about you two?’ she frowned.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Catherine doesn’t know it’s Tom. I had to make up an alias.’

  Mel winced. ‘That’s quite a tangled web you’re busy weaving there.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Have you thought about how you’re going to unravel it?’

  ‘Well, the plan is to take it gradually,’ said Rachel. ‘Tom reckons that we should start to spend more time together, quite openly, but innocently, or platonically, I guess you’d say. And then we’re kind of hoping that people will come to the obvious conclusion and start making mention of it themselves. You know the kind of thing – “Oh, you’re seeing a lot of Tom” . . . “Is there something going on with you and Tom?” . . . “You and Tom are becoming quite an item.”’ She looked directly at Mel. ‘What do you think?’