Each Way Bet (3 page)

It had all started with the spiral staircase, which, as it was a display and didn’t actually go anywhere, had simply been asking for trouble. Matthew, who at seventeen felt that maturity was optional, started pretending to step off the top accidentally and break his neck. Unfortunately, his neck remained intact and the only thing that got broken was a mock oriental vase standing on a pedestal nearby. Meanwhile, Kate ‘accidentally’ tripped up her little sister, Cricket, who had been skipping down the staircase, and Cricket flew across the room straight into the tripod holding the camera. This caused the photographer to perform an admirable acrobatic leap across the crowded room and then a double-pike tuck and tumble as he caught his camera mid-air. Of course, this disturbed Megan, who was in a corner taking what was apparently a very important mobile phone call. She started yelling for quiet. Jack, who didn’t want to be there anyway, was yelling at Matt. Jill was yelling at Kate. The photographer was yelling at all of them, and Cricket was just yelling, period.

Yet, there they all were, preserved for eternity in black and
white and gilt, the children all sitting on different levels of the staircase with their parents leaning against the banisters and gazing over at them. Matt on the bottom stair with one leg bent and the other stretched out to its full extent, with Megan behind him, staring out with the warm-hearted openness that was her trademark. Only fourteen months apart in age, they appeared almost to be twins – both well-built teenagers with rounded dimensions and blond wavy hair and blue eyes. Next up was tiny, brown-eyed Kate, who looked so much like her Aunt Emily, but with her short, dark hair in gelled spikes to match her personality: brilliant, prickly, sensitive, and cynical far beyond her fourteen years. As if to demonstrate the gulf between her and her two sisters, there were quite a few stairs between her and Megan below, and quite a few more above to where redheaded Cricket was perched, peering out into the world with a cherubic smile of innocence on her almost four year old face, her nut-brown eyes still sparkling from the recent tears.

In the photo, Jack’s hand covered hers casually on the railing and they were both staring at their offspring with what looked like adoration but was, in reality, barely contained fury. In fact, Jill remembered, the effort of plastering a loving look on her face had made her jaw muscles ache. And all the while, a refrain ran through her head: ‘. . . soon, soon, soon this will all be over – soon, soon, soon . . .’

What would happen to the kids if she left? To be quite honest, she hadn’t thought that far, couldn’t get past visualising the conversation with Jack – and the look on his face when she told him. Jill sighed and then chewed her bottom lip in consternation. It was all so damn unfair, and it seemed that whichever way she turned she would be hurting someone – unless she stayed right where she was and just hurt herself. And that wasn’t a viable option because she knew, she simply
knew
, that she wouldn’t last.

Jill gave herself a shake and forced herself to her feet. Because it didn’t matter what was around the corner, or what the future was going to bring, for now she had a house to clean, dinner to prepare, and even a couple of plates of dessert to organise for the Melbourne Cup Day function tomorrow. And, at that thought, Jill collapsed back down on the chair and visibly shuddered. She was looking forward to the day like a hole in the head. In fact, a hole in the head would probably be a walk in the park in comparison – and at least she’d get a stay in hospital with a hole in the head. No cooking, no cleaning . . . and relatives in small doses only.

Melbourne Cup Day was traditionally a day Jill’s entire family spent at her eldest sister’s house. A house so flawless that half the time you weren’t even game to have something to eat for fear that a crumb might dare to mar the perfection of Corinne’s floor-coverings. And if this event did happen to occur – as it frequently did when Jill’s children were involved – Corinne would be straight over with her portable dust-buster hoovering away around the culprit’s ankles. Conversations throughout the day were constantly interrupted by varying levels of droning, depending on whether one crumb or several had fallen.

And Corinne took her Melbourne Cup Day duties very, very seriously. Over the years the day’s entertainment had evolved from an informal get-together to watch the race itself, to a precision-run series of events that were even detailed on several computer-printed sheets of paper titled ‘Schedule of Events’ and displayed around the house for anybody foolish enough to think any deviation would be tolerated. No, from the moment the first group of horses was released from the first set of barriers at ten thirty in the morning, there would be games, and sweeps, and quizzes, and morning tea at precisely ten forty-five and lunch precisely at one.

The kids would be allowed to pick one horse in every race
with monetary gain for those fortunate enough to pick a winner, and the pitch of their screams would in no way indicate how close they were to achieving this goal. Rather, it sometimes seemed they started screaming in unison as soon as Corinne answered the front door and didn’t stop all day unless they were eating, and often not even then. And it wouldn’t take long for Jill’s head to start pulsating like a disco strobe light and she would feel like beating it against the nearest immaculate floor-covering just to make it stop.

Then the day would finish with crown and anchor or roulette, and Jack would start smiling for the first time since arriving and immediately get into a male-type pissing contest with Corinne’s husband, Will, and lose a fair bit more than he should. And Kate would do something to injure Cricket, and Megan would break something because she’d be trying so hard to be helpful, and Matt would also break something just because, well, Matt usually broke something. And Corinne’s daughter, Charlotte, would play something magnificently Mozart on the piano, and one of Jill’s children would play ‘Chopsticks’ – badly. And her brother, Adam, would ring up around mid-morning and apologise because something’s
just
come up. And her mother would sit in the corner smiling at nobody in particular while she crocheted as if her life depended on it, and her younger sister, Emily, would make an early getaway, usually with some gorgeous guy in tow. And head straight back to her wonderful city apartment to have fantastic sex with the gorgeous guy and congratulate herself on not having fallen into the same trap as her two sisters.

Jill lowered her head into her hands and felt like crying. Because she knew there was absolutely no way she would be able to get out of going to Corinne’s tomorrow. Apart from anything else – and despite the dust-buster bruised ankles, the fanatical organisation, and their cousin’s piano perfection – her
four children absolutely loved Melbourne Cup Day and looked forward to it with a collective eagerness that was only eclipsed by their expectations of Christmas. Jill groaned and lay her forehead against the cool wooden surface, stretching her arms out to embrace the table itself.

‘Why’re you kithing the table?’

Without raising her head, Jill turned to one side and watched her youngest daughter approach the table, looking at her mother warily. She mustered a half-hearted smile and lifted up one of her arms to pat Cricket on the shoulder reassuringly.

‘I’m not kissing the table. I was just having a rest, that’s all.’

‘What from?’ Cricket looked at her with astonishment.

‘You may well ask,’ Jill muttered wearily.

‘And someone’th broke my cow.’ Cricket pointed at the china cow with its deformed udder. ‘The one I gave you.’

‘I know, I think it’ll have to go into the bin this time because –’ Jill paused as she caught sight of Cricket’s horrified expression – ‘because . . . never mind, I’ll fix it.’

‘Good. And why’re your teef all black?’

‘Stress.’ Jill lifted her head up and then hoisted herself out of the chair with some effort. ‘So what are you up to, anyway?’

‘Oh, I’ve come to do a drawing. Can I thit where you were thitting?’

‘I wasn’t
th
itting there,’ said Jill, abandoning the table, ‘I was
s
itting. Remember what I told you about enunciating?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ mumbled Cricket, making herself comfortable as her mother moved over to the island bench and watched her daughter set herself up with a tin of pencils and a large pad of drawing paper. Three year old Cricket was probably the most attractive of Jill’s children, or at least the most striking. Clusters of deep red curls, gorgeous brown eyes, a dusting of freckles and a smile that could melt even the hardest of hearts.
Jill grinned despite herself and turned away to get the cream, a bowl and the Mix-master out of the cupboard. She might as well do something useful and get started on the dessert dishes for tomorrow. A few minutes later she was lethargically whipping cream and trying to decide what to turn it into once it was fully beaten.

‘
Mummy
! Someone took my red penthil! Look – gone!’

Jill obediently looked up from the island bench at Cricket, who, with an accusatory look on her face, was holding her tin of Derwent pencils up at an angle to show her mother the gap in the row. Unfortunately, the angle was slightly too acute and, after a few seconds, the remaining pencils tumbled out and scattered over the table, with some rolling over the edge and bouncing across the floor.

‘Bugger!’

‘Cricket! That’s it – now you get another cross.’ Jill turned off the mixer and moved over to the whiteboard on the fridge. Picking up the marker, she wrote a large black X at the end of a line of other large black X’s. ‘And look, now you’ve got ten of them and the month has hardly begun. This is getting ridiculous.’

‘Not my fault, Mummy,’ Cricket shook her head helplessly. ‘It’s my mouth – it knows all the rude words and just thpitth them out!’

‘Well, you’re going to have to start controlling your mouth because you know what Daddy and I said, don’t you?’ Jill put the marker down and looked at her daughter with her hands on her hips. ‘Each cross represents one of your television shows and if you get to thirty-five crosses, like you did last month, you can kiss TV goodbye altogether for another four weeks.’

‘Not my fault,’ muttered Cricket mulishly as she ducked under the table and started to gather up her pencils. ‘Bloody unfair.’

‘And that’s another cross.’ Jill picked up the marker again
and made the appropriate X on the whiteboard. ‘Thought I wouldn’t hear that, didn’t you? Perhaps you’d better just keep your mouth closed if you can’t control it.’

There was no audible answer to this, so Jill stored the marker on the little ledge under the whiteboard and returned to her cream-beating. As she flicked on the mixer again, she glanced over to where Cricket was sitting cross-legged under the table, repeatedly digging a pencil tip into her denim overalls and muttering darkly under her breath. Jill shook her head with bewilderment. None of the other kids had had such an obsession with obscenities at her age – or
any
age, for that matter. But, at age one, Cricket’s first word had been ‘bum’, and she had been adding to her vocabulary ever since. In the beginning it was quite amusing seeing an eighteen month old toddler staggering around saying ‘bugger’ whenever she landed on her well-padded bottom, but the entertainment value had soon worn off. Now it was just embarrassing, and Jill was dreading the teacher’s reaction when Cricket started kindergarten next year. She doubted being able to find an obscenity for each letter of the alphabet was part of the curriculum.

The fact Cricket was such an angelic looking child just made things worse. A much more attractive version of Little Orphan Annie who adults felt compelled to pat on the head. And, despite an ability to articulate perfectly, Cricket was even clinging stubbornly to her baby-talk. Meaning that when she let fly, with an unerring ability to pick the right expression for the right set of circumstances, the profanities were often spoken with an adorable little lisp that just made them seem so much more obscene.

And Jill had this horribly guilty feeling that it was all her fault. Because just over four and a half years ago, pre-Cricket, she had been at a really content phase of her life. Her three children were at school and past that stage where they needed
her full-on, and she had landed a point job teaching at the local TAFE for three days a week. And was loving it. In fact, she had just applied for a full-time position when, one night, as they were going to sleep, Jack had wrapped his arms around her and commented that her chest seemed a mite larger than usual. This thought obviously pleased him because he immediately went to sleep with a huge smile on his face. But Jill lay awake all night, trying to work out when she had last had her period and whether their life insurance would pay up if she suicided. The next day, pale and nervous, she fronted up at the doctor’s surgery and, on being told the good news, uttered every expletive she knew and a few more that she made up for good measure.

So Jill’s theory was that somehow her less than joyous reaction to the news had permeated the uterine wall and imprinted itself on the tiny, vulnerable life within. Because she had kept the flow up for the next couple of months too – it wasn’t until her ultrasound that she began to accept fully what had happened. On that day, with her bladder about to self-combust, she glanced over at the monitor and spied a small kidney-shaped bit of sludge that, while she was watching, raised a miniscule arm and waved. Nowadays, knowing Cricket the way she did, she suspected she had probably been giving her mother the finger, but at the time, she’d fallen in love. Instantly and irrevocably. And not even the fact that, from then on, the baby became increasingly active and kept her awake day and night could change things. That was where Cricket’s nickname had come from – her constant movement had felt much like holding a cricket in cupped hands and feeling it hopping from one side to the other with a fluttery sort of motion. And despite her having the perfectly good name of Sara Louise, the nickname had stuck and she was rarely called anything else.

Jill paused in her reminiscing and glanced over at the table
again. Cricket had collected her pencils and was now sitting at the table, swinging her legs and methodically replacing the pencils into their correct slots in the tin. After contemplating her daughter for a few seconds, Jill deliberately changed the focus of her eyes until Cricket and her pencils became blurred and she was able to superimpose over them a scene more to her liking. First the honey-oak table was transformed into circular cane with a glass top, then the family room itself was erased and replaced with blue skies and sunshine. To go with the sunshine, she added a creek, bubbling with clear, clean water that frothed over the few rocks in its path as it made its way past the cane setting, which was placed safely on the grassy verge. Lastly, with considerable effort, she morphed Cricket into a dark-haired, swarthy stranger and dressed him in casual slacks with his shirt half open to reveal an olive, but not too hairy chest. As an added touch she popped a boater on his head and a cigar in his hand.