The Chance of a Lifetime

by kendra Smith

  She changed tack. ‘It’s hot here. Really hot! Visiting a school today – and it’s incredibly sunny.’

  ‘You OK?’ asked Lucy, concern straining in her voice.

  ‘No, Lucy, I’m not.’

  ‘You’ll settle down, Katie, I’m sure you will. You’ll turn around in about a year and feel just fine.’

  ‘I DON’T WANT TO TURN AROUND AND FEEL JUST FINE!’

  She closed her eyes and could see bluey-purple swirls under her eyelids. God, she was exhausted already. ‘Sorry, Luce. I’m just completely out of sorts.’

  ‘It’s all right… um, Adam and I were looking at some photos of your summer party—’

  Oh, God. What was on them? Me leaning in too closely to Adam? She felt a horrid cocktail of guilt and homesickness well up. She wanted to reach down the phone and hug her; tears were welling up again.

  ‘Lucy, I have to go,’ sniffed Katie. ‘I’ll call again.’ I can’t chat because I can’t speak.

  ‘Katie, wait, we’ve been looking at flights,’ said Lucy suddenly. ‘We’re thinking of visiting!’

  This time, the very heady mixture of homesickness and nausea nearly floored Katie. Oh. My. God. I don’t want to see Adam again… It’s one of the reasons I agreed to move 10,000 miles away…

  *

  Tom pulled up on the road next to Yellowbank Public School and Katie stared out the car window at the scene before her. Some of it reminded her of English schools. The red brick, the odd lunchbox abandoned in the playground. Inside, she was comforted by the walls covered in a mass of brightly-coloured paintings; paper plate faces peering down with blue tissue-paper hair; the smell of cooked cabbage that seemed to unite all schools globally; and teachers clip-clopping past them in the corridor.

  But other bits could have been from Mars. A low fence around the school, she filed this thought in her head to think about later. There were structures in the school grounds that looked like Portakabins, with air-conditioning units poking out at the side.

  Their feet crunched through parched gum leaves on the dusty path. James and Andy ran on ahead. Tom was whistling. ‘Do they teach in there?’ Katie asked. ‘Or are they still finishing the building work around the school?’ She squinted in the harsh sun. The school secretary, who was showing them the grounds, spun around on her heels and gave her a peculiar look. She narrowed her eyes and leant in close. Katie was overwhelmed by musky cheap perfume.

  ‘You just got off the boat, didn’t you, darl?’ she said, arms folded across her chest. ‘Those are classrooms.’ As she spoke her intonation rose at the end.

  ‘Right, I see.’ What boat?

  Back in the headmaster’s office James played with a basket of toys while Andy searched through a box of yogurt-coated raisins looking for a black one, flicking all the yogurt ones out of the packet. The headmaster just smiled. It was all very relaxed, very unlike anything she’d ever seen, frankly. All I’ve ever wanted was a quiet life in the Home Counties, thought Katie, frowning, watching the little white blobs land on the floor. But OK, let’s give Australia a go, she thought determinedly, pushing her bangles up her arm. This is our challenge; the one Tom and I need. It will either put back the spark, or combust the whole thing. With this thought, she wiped some sweat building on her forehead with the back of her hand. But first, those fences. She turned to the headmaster, pulled her shoulders back.

  ‘Um, headmaster, sir, um, Mr Edmunds?’ She cleared her throat.

  ‘Yes, Katie – I’m the “principal” here – but call me Stu.’

  Stu?

  ‘Mr Edmunds, oh, yes, Stu.’ She crossed her legs and leant in. ‘I just wondered if I could ask you about the fences.’ She pointed to the window. Tom, tapping a cinnamon-brown brogue on the floor, looked over at her.

  ‘They seem rather low,’ she carried on.

  ‘Katie—’ The principal peered at her, took off his glasses. He was a round man, in his late fifties, wearing cream trousers and an open-neck shirt. He looked like he was about to play golf, not lead a school into academic excellence. His hair was greying and he was also wearing a long-suffering expression.

  He spoke to her in a soothing way, like he was addressing someone holding a hand grenade with the pin out. He said he hadn’t lost any children yet. He explained that this was not London; it was a fairly nice suburb in Sydney. He said that it wasn’t a private school. Katie swallowed hard, and looked at Tom who at that point pulled on his shirt cuffs and coughed. The headmaster then took off his glasses, cleaned them and smiled at them both. As he did this, images of men in balaclavas crouching in bushes around the playground filled her brain, and Katie let out a yelp.

  ‘Kath-er-ine?’ Tom’s voice was remarkably restrained.

  ‘Sorry, yes.’ She looked up, put her hand to her mouth as her silver bracelets crashed into one another. Tom’s eyebrows were raised and he was staring at her.

  ‘I understand.’

  She looked over at James who was sitting next to Andy by the toy basket. ‘Darling, would you like to go to this lovely school? Next week maybe?’

  Her son stared at them all and twisted a ring of hair round his finger. Then he shrugged and went back to a basket of books.

  ‘What’s the uniform like?’ gushed Katie, to fill the silence. The headmaster seemed to prefer this to the last question. He explained they wore ties and bush hats. What on earth is a bush hat? she wondered.

  *

  Katie walked Tom to the main road. It was his first day in the office and he needed to be there by mid-morning. He gave her arm a squeeze. ‘Listen, sweetie, I’ll get a cab to work; you take care. Go have a rest. You know,’ he said, arm outstretched to hail the next cab, ‘I think we made the right choice about the move – and school,’ he quickly added as a yellow cab swerved into the side of the road. ‘Bye, boys!’

  Smile, just smile. She had so much going on in her head from low fences to infidelity. It was easier just to turn her mouth up at the ends and not think too hard. Move her lips to the required position and hold them there. A Stepford Wife smile.

  She held James and Andy’s hands and watched Tom get into the cab. She waved. Then she slowly walked towards her purple rented four-wheel drive jeep.

  ‘C’mon, boys! Last one to the car is a smelly—’

  ‘Sock!’ they chorused.

  When they got to the car she was quite out of breath. She stared at the huge shiny vehicle. It looked like an over-ripe aubergine. Fumbling for her keys in her bag she realised she hadn’t a clue how to get back to the rented house.

  A traffic warden was coming her way. Oh crumbs. Did they have to pay? She tripped over on the kerb, dropped her bag and steadied herself.

  ‘Morning, ma’m? Everything OK?’

  ‘Yes, yes, look I have the money, really I do, I just…’ Throw him off the scent. ‘Um, had a Very Important Breast Appointment and I wasn’t sure of the zone. I’m really sorry.’ She clutched her left breast and looked pleadingly at him. ‘Don’t give me a ticket…’ She scrabbled in her bag for change, dropping coins on the grass. She was terrified. She had accumulated a number of parking tickets in London, adding up to the cost of a small villa in the Dordogne.

  ‘You right?’

  As he said this, his voice went up at the end. Am I right? thought Katie. I really don’t know. Am I? Perhaps not in the head. But have I parked illegally?

  ‘Sorry I don’t understand. We only arrived last Wednesday…’

  ‘You haven’t parked illegally.’ He smiled at her.

  Must put ‘laid-back traffic cops’ on my ‘pro’ part of living in Australia list. Katie smiled back, relieved.

  ‘Thanks. Listen, I don’t know how to get home.’ She stared at the busy road, traffic whizzing past, clutched the boys’ hands tightly.

  She glanced at him and then looked down at his shorts.

  ‘Home? Where’s that, darl?’ he said, scratching his chin, squinting at her in the sun.

  ‘London.’

  4


  ‘We had fairy bread at school today. Talia’s mum brought it in,’ announced James. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Under the table, dear.’

  Katie always remembered too late not to serve couscous to her children. Her children who thought it was terribly funny to flick it at each other in a game, thinking she couldn’t see. She could not let it lie there on the floor. Today, she had tried to concoct Moroccan-inspired lamb with couscous leftovers, which now lay sprayed under the table.

  ‘What’s fairy bread, poppet? Ouch. Don’t kick me, Andy.’

  ‘Bread, with coloured hundreds and thousands on it,’ replied James, peering under the table. ‘Really yummy. It’s the Australian national dish. Can I have some sprinkles on my lamb chops?’

  No, you cannot. ‘We’ll see,’ she muttered as she crawled out from under the table, commando style, trying not to spill couscous from the dustpan holder.

  The phone was ringing.

  ‘Hey, Katie, it’s Ann. Just calling to see if you did need any spare uniforms?’

  Katie had met Ann on the boys’ first day at Yellowbank Public School. She remembered how she’d run in, lunchbox under her arm, late, and crashed straight into a woman in a purple halter-neck dress.

  ‘Sorry!’ she’d gasped, picking up the contents of the lunch from the ground.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Ann had smiled. ‘We were late on our first day too!’

  That was a few weeks ago – it took some time to graduate from arching eyebrows in an I-recognise-you-from-the-playground-way, to smiling, then a little wave, then finally on to chatting in the playground about life, the universe and what a bush hat was (hat with a very large brim). Growing roots in new soil took time.

  ‘You there?’

  ‘Yes, hi, sorry – bit distracted,’ said Katie. ‘What’s fairy bread, Ann? Is it your national dish?’

  There was a snort down the phone and Katie smiled. I think I’m going to like her. She pushed some wayward curls out of her eye and switched the phone to her other ear.

  ‘Very funny! No, fairy bread is kids’ paradise, honey,’ explained Ann laughing. ‘It’s white bread, buttered thickly and covered in hundreds and thousands. It is not a national dish, sweetie. It has no nutritional value whatsoever! See you tomorrow around morning tea – I’ll drop off the stuff.’

  ‘Oh great, thanks for the tip. See you then. Bye.’ What time?

  Morning tea? Surely she means morning coffee, thought Katie, going towards the computer to google ‘Australian Idioms’. She was distracted by a Skype alert from Lucy; her heart did a little lurch as she realised how much she missed her. Lovely Lucy. My mother would have skipped on the spot if Lucy had been her daughter instead of me. Katie smiled to herself. Lucy knew how to propagate any plant you showed her in the garden; she was nearly always the first to clear the table and lend a hand.

  Lucy followed in her mother’s footsteps – even looked quite like her mother, pearls and all. Lucy wanted the rural life, the two point four kids, the tradition, the Family Home. Lucy’s first husband Mark, on the other hand, used to unhappily go on a few country retreats with Katie and Tom for the weekend but he was always edgy – glad to get back to grimy London, to breathe in the pollution particles again. The country air just used to aggravate his hay fever. He wasn’t the country type.

  Turns out, he wasn’t the monogamous type either. Lucy woke one day to find him gone. He’d had an affair with his dental nurse. Seduced by her pearly whites, obviously. He then decided he wanted to find himself – and the meaning of life – by going on a six-month spiritual study tour to Bali.

  I’m part of a new breed, thought Katie, sighing. A breed who ‘cut corners, my darling’ as her mum would have said. But there was some common domestic ground between Lucy and Katie: Adam. Katie stared at the icon that told her Lucy was waiting for her to reply. What was she thinking? Adam was Lucy’s second chance, her new beginning after her cheating, lying first husband… It was only a kiss… She clicked on the mouse.

  And suddenly there she was, smiling and waving at Katie from the computer. Skype was an amazing thing. Lucy was going in and out of focus as she moved the little camera on her computer.

  ‘Hi, darling, how are you?’ Lucy was grinning at her, wearing baggy red and white checked pyjamas. Her cheeks were rosy like she’d just come in from a run, her wispy blonde hair scraped back in her trademark Alice band. She had about a hundred hair bands. This one was red gingham too.

  ‘Fine, yes! Great. Hot!’

  ‘Really? What time of day is it over there? How’s Tom?’

  ‘Fine, fine, in Jakarta, went yesterday…’

  ‘You must miss him.’

  Katie scratched her head, leant forward towards the camera and nodded automatically.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Fabby, thanks. Adam’s been house-hunting! Leaving grotty London!’

  ‘I used to say that, Luce, and looked what happened to me!’

  ‘Well, that’s why I wanted to Skype you – we’ve booked our flights!’

  Katie held on to the desk where the computer sat, leaned back in her chair, hoped she had a ‘Gosh how great’ face on. ‘Wonderful!’ came out of her mouth as her smile froze. She was glad she was on Skype and that Lucy wouldn’t notice the twitch in her eye. The rest of the conversation went in a blur about things like the time difference, what to bring, how hot it would be. Katie walked away from the conversation in a trance.

  James was badgering her to let him play on the computer, which she gave in to without a fuss. Anything to allow her to gather her thoughts. Adam. Here? He was the last person she wanted to see. Yet, on the other hand…

  Suddenly James broke her concentration. ‘Look, Mummy! These spiders! They can kill you!’ She walked back to the computer and stared, open-mouthed. She started to read about one of Australia’s deadliest spiders…

  The redback spider (Latrodectus hasselti) is a potentially dangerous spider native to Australia. Children and the elderly… are at much higher risk of severe side effects and death resulting from a bite.

  She reread the last bit. Death?

  Bites from redback spiders produce a syndrome known as latrodectism. The syndrome is generally characterised by extreme pain and severe sweating. Within an hour, victims generally develop pain, swelling and redness, which spreads proximally from the site. Systemic envenoming is heralded by swollen or tender regional lymph nodes; associated features include malaise, nausea, vomiting, abdominal or chest pain, generalised sweating, headache, fever, hypertension and tremor…

  What the bejesus was ‘systemic envenoming’? Katie froze. Then, suddenly, there was a noise. Turning around from the computer, she looked at Andy. He had tipped his bowl of couscous on his head. White specks of couscous and a smattering of pine nuts covered the floor – next to a lamb chop bone. James was trying not to snigger.

  ‘Mummy, what’s sexual cann-I-balism?’ James was tugging on her apron.

  ‘What?’ Clutching the tub of sprinkles, she spun back around to the computer screen.

  The redback spider is one of a few animals that display sexual cannibalism while mating…

  She felt completely sick. Sick from speaking to Lucy, sick about Adam coming over, sick with homesickness, and sick because of these blasted spiders.

  *

  Tom had now been gone a week. Katie was sitting cross-legged, on the floor, picking up pieces of Lego. She bottom shuffled towards each stray Lego piece. Around her lay sprinkles, wooden pieces of train track, several Yu-Gi-Oh cards, sand, and a small puddle in the corner (dear God, no) as she watched James and Andy run around the house with lightsabres. They were from the stopover at Singapore airport. It had been too hard to say no – especially as James had threatened to show the Chinese shop assistant his ‘two willies’ (‘See, Mum,’ he’d said, in the airport toilet pulling back his foreskin, ‘one willy is hiding under the other one!’) if they did not buy t
hem.

  ‘Mummy, look!’ James shoved a book at her. They were finally sitting quietly at the table. ‘We have to do a My Country’s History book covering for my history book,’ said James, proudly opening the first page as cut-out pictures fell out: there was the Australian flag, kangaroos and a funny-looking yellow flower – like someone had stuck golden pom-poms to the leaves.

  Thinking for a moment, Katie got up and then came back with some UK magazines that were still in the side pocket of her suitcase in the hall cupboard. ‘Right, pass it here.’ James obliged and watched as his mother cut out pictures of William and Kate’s wedding, a corgi, Big Ben, Maypole dancers and the St George’s cross.

  ‘Voila!’ she said, as she stuck them all down with a flourish on the front of the book.

  ‘But, Mum, Miss Perkins said we should have stuff like koalas, Aznac day or something, Captain Cook, Lam-ing-tins – Mum? What’s a Lam-ing-tin? – and RSLs pictures.’

  ‘It’s ANzac, darling.’ What’s an RSL?

  ‘Never mind all that, James. This should do nicely! This is YOUR country.’ She tapped her fingernail on a smiling Kate in her wedding dress and looked up. James had vanished. Suddenly she felt a bit sweaty and teary. ‘Boys!’ she screamed.

  ‘Mum! I was just about to kill Demon Darth Andy!’ howled James, lightsabre aloft.

  There was more galloping, screeching along the corridor. They were being about as quiet as a girls’ dorm on the last night of term. She headed to the kitchen to swallow two Nurofen Extra. She hadn’t slept well the night before after speaking to Lucy. She’d been awake several times, had a terrifying dream about a spider with a face like Adam trying to have sex with her. She had woken up with a start, breathing heavily, reached for Tom and remembered that he wasn’t there.

  She’d thought a lot about Tom last night, remembered how, all those years ago, he’d been her dashing prince in a red convertible MG. And where was he now? His new job was taking him overseas quite a lot. So let’s all go to Australia, but when I get there I shall leave you and the kids to fend off deadly redback spiders using half-price lightsabres.