All This Could End (15 page)

‘Thanks. Good luck with that. The rest of the Addams family are in the living room.’ Spencer takes the packages from her and goes to the kitchen to collect plates. The dog won’t leave him alone.

‘Chance, this food is not for you. Go away.’ He is not good at being a dog’s master. Chance also needs to be washed. In the living room, his father is sitting on the couch, watching the news. Monica has given Bridie a heart.

‘
Let it be
? How very profound. These things quote the Beatles.’ Bridie shows the heart to Spencer, and then eats it. ‘And taste disgusting. My God, what are they made of?’

‘Sugar, corn starch and colouring,’ says Spencer. ‘I think they’re stale.’ He hands around plates, and opens the wrapping. There is an excessive amount of chips. He gives himself about a third of them.

‘I really love your style, Monica,’ says Bridie, settling on the arm of a chair. ‘This has opened my eyes. I feel like there are so many things you could use to communicate. Like a deck of tarot cards. Wouldn’t that be mysterious? Or just hand people fortune cookies. So random it’s brilliant.’

Monica nods, bites into a potato cake.

‘They should manufacture some
Thank you
Conversation Hearts,’ says Spencer. He gestures at Monica with a chip.

Bridie changes tack. ‘I will give you one thousand dollars if you speak right now.’

Monica gives Spencer a look.

‘She knows you’re bullshitting,’ he says.

‘Don’t swear, Spencer,’ says his dad indifferently. He doesn’t look up from his plate.

‘Are you guys able to talk to each other through your minds? Is she sending you messages?’ asks Bridie through a mouthful of chip.

‘Yes, we’re clairvoyants,’ says Spencer.

‘I don’t really have one thousand dollars at the moment,’ she says. ‘Speak now and I’ll pay you back later.’ Monica does not take her up on the offer.

‘The words they put on those are so lame.’ Spencer is fiddling with the packet of Conversation Hearts. ‘Like
I will
and
I’m sure
and
Cool
, not to mention all the
True love
ones. If I got to put words on lollies, I’d put decent words on. Like
Nebulous
, or
Ephemeral
, or
Halcyon
.’

‘People are just going to eat them,’ says Bridie. ‘There’s not much point. Plus if you’re using them to converse,
nebulous
doesn’t come in handy very often. What is going on in everyone’s lives, by the way?’ She looks at Spencer, who is frowning. ‘Was that a bad segue? I’m sorry.’

‘I’m being transferred to another bank. It’ll be a change of pace.’ announces his dad. ‘It’s a bit further away.’

This is the first Spencer has heard of it.

‘Congratulations John!’ says Bridie. ‘Is it a promotion?’

John shakes his head. ‘It’s a more regional bank.’

‘That sounds nice. Change of pace.’

‘How far away?’ asks Spencer.

‘About an hour. I’ll be getting home a bit later in the evenings. Not a big deal.’

‘And why are you getting transferred?’

‘No reason.’

Is it because he can’t handle the pressure anymore? Spencer wonders.

‘Now, do you kids mind if I head upstairs? I’ve got work to do.’

‘Not at all,’ says Bridie, with too much cheer.

Spencer finds it difficult to believe his father is really going to do any work. Most likely he’ll just sleep. John leaves, taking his loaded plate with him.

‘See what I mean about being awkward?’ Spencer says, once he’s gone.

‘I think that’s just fatherly, Spencer,’ Bridie replies. ‘The whole outdated men-shouldn’t-express-emotion thing? I should get my dad to invite your dad to golf. Have some man-time.’

‘Oh, Bridie, you make Dr Phil look like an amateur.’

‘I know, right? I ought to have my own talk show.’

PART THREE

December

Nina

When Nina wakes up on the morning of her last bank robbery, she sits upright and promptly smacks her head against the bunk above her.

She swears under her breath.

She remembers. She isn’t at home; she’s staying with her family at a motel half an hour away from the quaint brownstone bank her mother picked out earlier in the year. Tom is in the top bunk, as he always is when they go on these ‘holidays’.

The motel is painted salmon pink and looks incredibly tacky. They’re an hour or so south-west of the bank. The town must have a name, but it feels like an in-between place. A few houses, the motel, a cafe, a petrol station and a pub, and that’s all. They are surrounded by scrubland.

Nina gets up, wanders across the room and into the bathroom. The door creaks. The tiles are cold on her bare feet. She avoids the crack in the mirror and looks at her reflection. She can feel an egg already forming on her head. There are bags under her eyes and her chin-length, dyed red hair is tangled. Her grey eyes make her look washed out, like an overexposed photograph. Except for that flash of red hair.

Her parents are already up, preparing. There’s a rhythmic knock on the bathroom door.
Rat-a-tat-tat
.

‘Ready for breakfast?’ her dad calls.

No
, is what she’d like to say.
No, I feel sick. No, I can’t eat. No, I won’t do this.

But her jovial father would just reply, ‘Now, come on and eat. We’ve got a big day ahead of us!’ As if they’re just going sightseeing. Like a normal family on holidays, on a
National Lampoon
-style road trip—and not about to commit a crime.

She has to do this. This is the last time she will rob a bank. She is seven months away from being eighteen. She is old enough for her own life. They might be her parents, but once this is over, she is leaving them. She cannot stand it any longer.

‘I’ll just get dressed,’ she replies.

She brushes her teeth and puts in brown contact lenses. She pulls her hair into a bun and yanks on black jeans and a white shirt.

Right now, her parents will be putting their supplies in the car. Not their car, but one that’s unregistered, which they’ll be dumping in just a few hours’ time. Of all the cars they’ve dumped, how many have been found, and what do the police do with them afterwards? Do they sell them at auction?
A family of four used this as their getaway car, after they stole two million dollars…the car itself is unremarkable, but criminals drove it!
Or maybe they put them on display at a museum, like the cars of serial killers, Hitler, and Bonnie and Clyde. The Pretty family is not quite that famous. Maybe if they kill someone, this nondescript station wagon will end up in the Museum of Criminals’ Getaway Cars. If there is such a thing.

But of course they won’t kill someone. They never hurt anyone. Stealing and killing are separate things altogether.
The money’s insured, the money’s insured, the money’s insured
.

Nina tells herself these things so she can live with herself. If she ignores the reality of the situation, she can fool herself into thinking everything’s all right. She just has to survive today.

She grabs a fleece jacket from her bag and pulls up the hood as she steps outside into the early-morning chill. Tom rushes past her, in a hurry to get breakfast, runners crunching against the gravel of the car park. There’s no one around.

Sophia squeezes Nina’s shoulder and smiles at her, a kind smile, but it makes Nina feel uncomfortable. She walks faster, leaving her mum behind.

The motel is next door to a cafe that serves bacon and eggs and pancakes and not much else. Paul stays outside to have a cigarette and Nina joins Tom at a booth. Sophia sits across from her. The cafe is almost empty. The place smells like coffee and mothballs and maple syrup and desperation. The menu is a single laminated sheet, sticky with fingerprints. The vinyl on the seats squeaks every time they move.

A woman comes to take their order and smiles weakly at Sophia, as if she’s asleep on her feet.

Sophia beams back—that smile everyone loves, the one that makes babies giggle and people confide in her. That smile which, in different circumstances, reduces people to tears. ‘Three coffees—’

‘Four,’ interrupts Tom.

Sophia sighs. ‘Three will be fine. Tom really doesn’t need the caffeine,’ she jokes with the woman. Nina reads her name tag.
Joan
. She looks like a Joan. Nina doesn’t blame her for looking like she’s about to fall asleep. It’s too early on a Monday morning to be working.

‘I’ll have a short stack of pancakes,’ says Nina. ‘With maple syrup.’

‘A BLT sandwich,’ says Sophia. ‘You know, I love my BLTs. And poached eggs for Paul. With bacon on the side.’

‘I want waffles,’ says Tom. ‘Just waffles.’

Nina stares out the window. She can see her dad exhaling a cloud of smoke into the cold, early-morning air. She can’t figure out whether he looks defeated or just exhausted. The sun is just coming up, the sky tinged pink, and everything bathed in shadow. She likes this time of day, but she dreads what’s ahead. After this is over, she will tell her parents she’s going away. A life of her own. She feels ill at the thought of her mother’s response. She just has to get through this, then leave. The end is so close.

Joan disappears into the kitchen. Tom makes the salt-and-pepper shakers dance with each other. Sophia offers her hand to Nina across the table. Nina pretends she doesn’t see it and keeps her hands tucked in the sleeves of her jacket. That’s what Nina hates about it all: that her mother is so affectionate to her kids, kind to everyone she meets—and yet she still does the things she does.

‘Red hair really suits you, Nina,’ says Sophia. ‘Very
chic
.’

‘
Ooh-la-la
,’ says Tom. He sticks his tongue out at Nina. She ignores him.

Paul comes inside and slides into the booth beside Nina. He stinks of cigarettes. ‘Have we been talking about much?’ he asks.

‘We’re not so chatty this morning,’ remarks Sophia.

‘Fair enough,’ Paul says.

‘Early bird catches the worm,’ says Sophia.

Paul smiles and the creases around his eyes deepen.

Joan brings the food to the table, and everyone digs in. Nina’s pancakes are thick and doughy, but they taste fine drenched in maple syrup. Think about food, not about breaking the law. Tom pulls a bit of pancake from her plate. Paul mumbles about the coffee being too weak.

‘The BLT is okay,’ Sophia says. ‘I’d give it six and a half out of ten.’

Tom laughs. ‘You’re too picky, Mum.’

How ordinary they must seem, how ordinary they could be. How they must fool everyone into thinking are an average family. How she can almost fool herself: she can pretend that they are like any other family, just enjoying breakfast at a cafe.

If only they weren’t going to be robbing a bank in a few hours’ time. If only.

Spencer

Monica is twelve years and eight months old, and she has not spoken for one hundred and nineteen days. Conversation Hearts are such a limited means of communication. Two-word messages like
Be mine
and
True love
are fairly meaningless in their particular domestic arrangement.

Spencer is still not exactly sure why she took a vow of silence, nor when it will end, if ever. Protest must be part of it. Monica’s teacher, Ms Stanthorpe, calls the Jack residence repeatedly in an attempt to organise a meeting. Every time she calls, the phone goes to message. She has left seven messages over the last month.

On her eighth call, the first Monday of the December school holidays, Spencer answers the phone. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello. This is Julia Stanthorpe. Am I speaking to Mr Jack? Or is Mrs Jack about?’ she asks.

Spencer isn’t about to tell Ms Stanthorpe that Mrs Jack has bailed to Fiji with a boyfriend half her age and is unlikely to return. Why would she want to renounce Pina Coladas and an endless summer holiday to look after a banker and two insubordinate children? And he can’t tell her that his father does nothing except go to and from work, moving like a zombie (and not the fast kind), and when he comes home he does nothing but lie in bed, staring at the TV, not really watching it. Which is where he is right now.

He can’t tell Ms Stanthorpe that his family fell apart when his mother left four months ago, and that his sister hasn’t spoken a word since. Spencer doesn’t want anybody’s pity. Pity gets you nowhere. He’d much rather no one knew what was going on. It’s better that way.

‘Yes, this is Mr Jack,’ says Spencer.

‘I’m concerned,’ says Ms Stanthorpe. ‘Monica refuses to speak in class. She sits in the library by herself during lunch breaks, and does all her work in silence. It is very out of character.’

‘So she’s a model student?’ Spencer replies. He’s trying to do his homework and warm creamed rice in a pan at the same time.

Now that he’s the only one cooking, cleaning or doing anything domestic, he’s also been the only one shopping. The three of them have been living off a very unique food pyramid, made up of two-minute noodles, creamed rice, fruit roll-ups, instant porridge and hot chips. It’s not particularly nutritious, but as long as everyone is eating, he figures everything will be all right. And anyway, if you cook an egg with two-minute noodles, it’s a hearty meal. Monica sometimes attempts a recipe she’s seen on TV, but her attempts are not always successful and she’s not a big fan of sharing.

Ms Stanthorpe makes a
hmph
sound. ‘She is this close—’ he visualises her holding her thumb and forefinger an inch apart ‘—from being suspended.’

‘For doing what? It seems ridiculous that Monica would be suspended for being quiet. Don’t you usually want the class to be quiet? And shouldn’t you be on holidays, Ms Stanthorpe?’

‘I have an extra-curricula day. We’re preparing for next year. Monica has refused to speak when spoken to. I’m sure you can see how this would be problematic. Is there anything going on at home?’

‘She’s just going through a phase.’ A
phase induced by a ridiculous family situation, but hopefully just a phase.
‘That happens quite often to girls of her age.’ He’s a child psychologist now.

‘We’re quite concerned,’ repeats Ms Stanthorpe. ‘We want her to be ready for Year Seven. Perhaps she should be seeing someone?’