Three’s a Crowd

by Dianne Blacklock

  Monday

  Catherine had decided to take a few days’ leave, perhaps even the whole week. She hadn’t had any time off in ages, and she wasn’t scheduled in court; there was nothing so urgent she couldn’t catch up on it later. Martin was in the guestroom when she made it home Saturday night, and he packed his bags Sunday and moved to a hotel. They exchanged not more than a few words, his to the effect that he’d have his lawyer get in touch with her in time. Catherine felt bad about the way it had happened, but it had to happen sometime. And strangely enough it felt good to be free. She’d always been accustomed to having a man in her life, but she and Martin had not been in sync for a very long time, and she hadn’t realised how draining that had become. And she certainly didn’t need Tom and all his complications; Rachel was welcome to him. Catherine had tried to call her yesterday to debrief, but she couldn’t get past the answering machine. After the dust had settled, the more she thought about Rachel and Tom together, the more it seemed absolutely right. Normal. Natural, even. Good luck to them. She could see why they’d kept it under wraps from the general public, sake of appearances and all that, but Catherine didn’t understand why Rachel would think she couldn’t confide in her, instead of making up that whole Matthew Harding fiasco.

  But she had more pressing concerns right now. Alice had locked herself in her room since Saturday night and refused to acknowledge or respond to Catherine whatsoever during her brief trips to the kitchen, or as she left the house this morning for school. In reality, Catherine should have been the one on her high horse, considering the debacle of the dance party; her own actions, involving another consenting adult more than six months ago, were none of Alice’s business.

  Except Catherine didn’t really believe that. She shouldn’t have blurted it out the way she did in front of Alice and Sophie; she wondered if Tom would ever be able to forgive her. But it was the heat of the moment, the shock, and she’d had a little too much to drink, which didn’t help. But that wasn’t her fault, the whole evening had been quite stressful . . . Still, Catherine felt a deep, nagging dread about the irretrievable impact this could have on her relationship with Alice. If she didn’t sort this out, she sensed she might lose her forever. She had to find a way to open a dialogue with Alice again, and it occurred to Catherine that this might be the right time to tell her about James. If she could demonstrate to Alice that she was prepared to be open and honest, perhaps they had a chance of rebuilding their relationship. Or even building a better one.

  As she’d thought over it all day, Catherine had gradually felt lighter; the stress of lying, suppressing and avoiding all these years had obviously been draining. So by the time she heard Alice at the front door, home from school, she was quite reconciled about what she had to do. She hurried up the hallway to meet her head-on.

  ‘I have to talk to you, Alice,’ she said.

  ‘Well I don’t have to talk to you,’ Alice replied airily, not making eye contact as she walked straight past her into the kitchen.

  ‘I think you’re going to want to,’ Catherine persisted, following her. ‘This is not about what happened on Saturday night, this is about something much more important.’

  ‘Says you,’ she retorted, slipping her backpack off her shoulders and dumping it on the floor before heading for the fridge.

  Catherine decided she was just going to have to come out with it. ‘I spoke to your father the other day.’

  Alice stepped back from the fridge door, turning her head towards Catherine but not actually making eye contact. ‘You don’t even know who my father is.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Catherine. ‘I haven’t had any contact with him for over eighteen years, until just recently. The thing is, I never told you the full truth about him.’

  ‘My, what a surprise,’ she said dryly. ‘So why are you bothering now?’

  The fridge started making that beeping noise like a truck reversing.

  ‘Could you please close the fridge door,’ said Catherine, ‘and pay attention to what I have to say?’

  Alice grabbed a bottle of water and closed the door, slumping onto a bar stool. Catherine could tell she wasn’t really taking her seriously yet; she was intrigued, but not convinced.

  ‘His name is James,’ she went on, ‘just as I always told you, and his surname is Barrett. He was my boyfriend at the time. I didn’t want to give you more details about him in the past because I was trying to protect you.’

  Alice pulled a face. ‘From what?’

  ‘I’ll get to that. Now that he’s turned up again, I want you to know the whole truth, so you can make a decision about what you want to do.’

  She frowned. ‘Did he ask after me?’

  Catherine hesitated. ‘Not exactly.’

  Alice rolled her eyes. ‘So I suppose if I say I want to see him, there’ll be some reason that I can’t.’

  ‘There are complications –’

  ‘No! Really?’ Alice scoffed. ‘Such as, you’re making this whole thing up?’

  ‘No, I’m not, Alice. I promise you, I wouldn’t do that about something like this.’

  She was shaking her head. ‘Well, if this is the truth, that means you made the other story up, so obviously you’ll make up whatever bowl of crapola suits you at the time.’

  ‘Well I’m not making this up,’ Catherine repeated. ‘And I’ll prove it to you.’

  Alice looked at her. ‘Okay. Call him up now, let me talk to my dear papa.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Oh and why do you think that is?’ she said, channelling Catherine at her sarcastic best. ‘Could it be that he doesn’t exist?’

  ‘No,’ Catherine sighed. ‘He just doesn’t know you exist.’

  Alice finally relented to hear her out. Catherine knew she had to tell her the whole story, she couldn’t edit anything out, even though she found it excruciating to have to mention that an abortion was ever on the table.

  But Alice just sat there, listening, not asking any questions, not making any comments.

  ‘So,’ Catherine said finally, ‘what are you thinking?’

  Alice shrugged. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Whatever’s on your mind. The truth.’

  ‘Okay. Then I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this now.’

  ‘Because, like I said, he’s back in the country and –’

  ‘But why now, why today?’ Alice persisted. ‘This totally feels like you’re trying to distract me from what happened the other night.’

  Catherine blinked. ‘That’s not what I’m doing, Alice. I thought this would be important to you, and I wanted to show you that I was prepared to tell you the truth, so that it could open a dialogue between us –’

  ‘Okay, dialogue opened,’ she cut her off. ‘Let’s start with what happened the other night.’

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ Catherine said calmly. ‘What happened between Tom and me was probably a mistake, like he said.’

  ‘I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about what happened the other night,’ she repeated, emphasising each word.

  Catherine wasn’t following her.

  ‘How could you blurt that out in front of Sophie?’ she demanded. ‘It just keeps going round and round in my head, and I don’t understand how you could do that. It was so mean.’

  Catherine wasn’t expecting that. She took a deep breath. ‘Things happen in the heat of the moment. I didn’t think it through, it just came out.’

  ‘Admit it, Mum, you were just so jealous of Rachel, that Tom chose her, and you had to find a way to ruin it.’

  ‘No, I just –’

  ‘What? What excuse could you possibly have for doing that? I keep thinking about poor Sophie, and everything she’s been through. She didn’t need to hear that as well.’

  Catherine sighed, but kept her composure. ‘You’re right. And I wish I could take it back,’ she said. ‘It was unforgivable.’

  Alice shook her head in frustratio
n. She got up and walked over to the window, staring out at the back garden.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Alice?’ Catherine asked. ‘I would apologise, but I don’t think they’re going to want to hear that from me.’

  ‘Probably not,’ she muttered without turning around.

  Catherine felt like this was just a distraction now. Of course she felt awful about what had happened, but there was nothing she could do about it now. This wasn’t turning out the way she’d planned, and it wasn’t getting them anywhere.

  ‘So,’ she said after a while, ‘do you have any thoughts about the other thing we were talking about? Do you think you might want to meet your father, or have anything to do with him?’

  Alice turned around slowly then, leaning back against the windowsill. ‘You know, Mum, right now it’s hard for me to see any great advantage in having another parent in my life. One’s bad enough.’

  ‘You want to throw insults at a single mother? Go right ahead,’ said Catherine.

  ‘I never thought worse of you because you were a single mother, or because you had me when you were a teenager,’ said Alice. ‘You were the one who seemed ashamed of that, and resentful that I ruined your life.’

  ‘No Alice, you didn’t ruin my life,’ Catherine insisted. ‘How could you think that?’

  ‘You’ve always been so disappointed in me.’

  Catherine took a deep breath. This wasn’t the time for platitudes and pretence, she had to be completely honest with her. ‘It’s true, but not in the way you think. You don’t disappoint me, Alice. You are beautiful, and funny, and smart, and I’ve just wanted you to be everything you can be, and so any disappointment I’ve expressed has to do with that.’

  ‘But don’t you know you can’t put that onto me?’ said Alice. ‘I don’t want the same things you do. I don’t want to be a lawyer.’

  ‘Well, I realise that, Alice,’ said Catherine. No surprises there. ‘But what do you want to do?’ she added tentatively.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘And that doesn’t mean I’m hopeless, Mum. Heaps of my friends don’t know what they want to do.’

  Catherine nodded. ‘I understand, but the HSC is getting close, you’ll have to put in your preferences for uni soon. You’re going to have to make some decisions.’

  ‘I’m thinking I might take a year off.’

  Catherine hated the whole trend towards ‘gap’ years. It was indulgent, and she’d seen too many bright, capable kids lose their focus entirely. It’s exactly what had happened to Rachel. But she knew she had to play this carefully. If she reacted too strongly, it would only make Alice all the more determined.

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ she said. ‘But you still have to apply for uni so that you can defer it for a year. That’s the way it works.’

  ‘But I don’t even know if I want to go to uni.’

  Catherine took a breath. ‘Look Alice, I’m trying to be understanding here, but I am entitled to some say if I’m going to be supporting you while you figure out what you want to do.’

  ‘Who said you’re going to be supporting me?’ Alice said squarely.

  Catherine was taken aback by that. ‘Who else is going to?’

  ‘I’ll support myself, get a job, then I can move out.’

  Catherine swallowed. This was getting worse, but she mustn’t take the bait. ‘But what if you decide to go to uni later, Alice, how will you manage then?’

  She shrugged. ‘If I work for a certain amount of time I’ll be considered independent, and then I can get student support from the government.’

  Catherine grimaced; she’d obviously looked into this. ‘I had to do that, Alice,’ though in her case it was the single parent pension, ‘because I didn’t have any choice. But there’s no need for you to live on welfare. Look, I’m going to sell this place, I can buy an apartment somewhere that suits you, maybe near the beach, wherever you want.’

  ‘Mum, don’t.’

  ‘I just don’t want you to make any rash decisions.’

  ‘I’m not going to,’ Alice insisted. ‘That’s the whole point. I don’t want to apply to uni when I don’t even know what I want to do. I don’t want to get stuck. I’m young, Mum, I have time, that’s one thing I do have. And I want to take my time. You’re just going to have to accept it, because you can’t make decisions for me any more once I turn eighteen.’

  Catherine sighed, dropping her head in her hands. So it had finally come to this. She looked up again after a while. ‘This has been my nightmare, you know,’ she said. ‘That you’ll walk away after your HSC and live your own life, and I’ll be lucky to get a phone call on my birthday.’

  ‘Mum,’ Alice groaned. ‘I’m doing this, well, for a lot of reasons, but only one of them is about getting away from you.’

  Catherine laughed then, she couldn’t help it. ‘That’s supposed to make me feel better?’

  Alice was smiling now as well. ‘And another is because I think we might have a much better chance of getting on if we don’t live together.’ She walked back over to the kitchen and picked up her school bag. ‘That’s about as much D and M as I can handle for one afternoon. And I’ve got homework.’

  Catherine watched her saunter off over to the stairs. ‘You still haven’t said what you want to do about your father.’

  Alice turned to look at her. ‘I don’t know yet. But I’ll figure it out myself. It’s my decision, Mum, and you’re going to have to respect that.’

  Bean East

  Rachel got off the bus at Coogee Beach and started up the street towards the café. When she’d called earlier, Scott had told her Lexie would be in around ten. Rachel had missed her on the home phone this morning; she gathered she was already on the school run. She had to talk to her, and she had to do it in person. She wasn’t sure how Lexie felt about the fallout on Saturday night, though she got some idea from her brief exchange with Scott. He was fine, very friendly, reassuring, which was a relief. But when she asked him to let Lexie know she was planning to call in this morning, he said, ‘I think it might be best if I don’t tell her in advance.’

  ‘Why, so she’s not tempted to hide when I get there?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Rachel sighed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he’d assured her. ‘You know what a softie she is. She’ll be fine once she sees you.’

  Rachel walked up to the café, past the tables on the footpath, and stepped inside. It was not terribly busy, there was only a smattering of patrons, so at least she didn’t feel she was getting in the way. Scott was first to spot her; he was so tall he easily saw over the dividing wall to the kitchen.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, not announcing her name. ‘Come on through, Lexie’s up the end there. Lex, you have a visitor,’ he called.

  Rachel went to the gap in the counter as Scott walked up to her, wiping his hands on a tea towel. Lexie was sitting on a stool in a corner at the far end of the galley kitchen. She had a pile of papers on the bench in front of her and the telephone in her hand, though not to her ear. She must have been about to make a call. When she turned around and saw Rachel, she hung the handset back in its cradle on the wall. ‘Hi,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Hi Lexie,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you two to it,’ Scott said with an affectionate pat on Rachel’s shoulder as he retreated to the other end of the kitchen again.

  ‘Would you like a coffee or something?’ Lexie asked.

  ‘If you’re having one.’

  ‘Sure, why don’t you go find us a table and I’ll bring them out.’

  She was being polite, but reserved, which was fair enough. Rachel walked over to a booth at the back of the café where they could have some privacy, and soon Lexie appeared carrying two cups of coffee. She set them down on the table and slid into the booth opposite Rachel.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. She took a sip of her coffee and set the cup back in its saucer. ‘Okay Lexie, I might as well get straight to the point.
I came here to apologise for the scene on Saturday night, to begin with.’

  ‘You didn’t create the scene, Rachel,’ she said.

  ‘Still, I feel partly responsible.’

  ‘Tom’s already been in to apologise.’

  ‘Oh, he has?’

  She nodded. ‘He and Sophie.’

  ‘Right,’ Rachel nodded. He wouldn’t have brought up everything in front of Sophie, it would have been all about the girls’ misdemeanours. ‘Well, I guess I just wanted to see if everything was okay, with us, you know, considering . . .’

  ‘. . . you’ve been sleeping with one of our best friend’s husbands?’

  Well, that was certainly giving it to her straight.

  ‘Tom was one of my best friends, before Annie came along. Just so you know,’ said Rachel. ‘And the other thing you should know is that we’re not going to see each other any more.’ She felt a thickening in her throat as she said that.

  ‘Why not?’ Lexie asked.

  ‘We just decided that it’s not the right time. Tom needs to establish a new life for himself with the girls. I’d only get in the way.’

  Lexie shook her head faintly. ‘That seems a shame.’

  Rachel sighed. ‘Wow, Lex, I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘Pleased?’

  ‘Well, you obviously didn’t approve. I guess you felt betrayed on some level.’

  Lexie sighed heavily. ‘You know, Rachel, I probably felt most betrayed because you didn’t think you could tell me.’

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ Rachel assured her. ‘Catherine didn’t know either.’

  ‘What has she had to say about all this?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her, haven’t spoken to her. And I’m not planning to.’

  Lexie frowned. ‘Really?’

  Something had shifted irrevocably. From her messages Rachel construed that Catherine didn’t get that at all, she thought it was business as usual. Which only made Rachel more resolved. She’d had enough. Every moment she’d ever spent feeling guilty about Tom was obliterated by the cold hard fact of Catherine’s premeditated betrayal. Rachel wasn’t excusing Tom’s part in it, but Catherine had deliberately seduced a close friend, who was married to another close friend, when he was down and vulnerable. What had she hoped to achieve? Quite obviously she had no qualms tearing their marriage apart so that yet again she had a man waiting in the wings once she was ready to leave Martin. While that was never going to happen with Tom, of course, what it said about Catherine was beyond what Rachel could tolerate any longer.