The Near Miss (22 page)

Melody stared for a long time at the laptop. Grace waited beside her, fingers poised, sitting with one knee drawn beneath her. She looked from Melody's face to the computer screen, and back. The kitchen table was a mess. The laptop was a sleek, shiny island in an ocean of children's drawings, Star Wars figurines, dry-crusted porridge bowls and piles of folded washing. The scent of rising bread mixed with the smell of rising mould. Glass panes rattled in rotting window panes; the light flickered every now and then, probably rats in the ceiling chewing happily away at the wires. Grace tapped her fingers on the tabletop. ‘Well?'

Melody nodded carefully, her eyes narrowed. She looked so serious, so focused, she could have been drafting the national budget. Finally, she exhaled. ‘Sagittarius seems to have a pretty good outlook at the moment. It's moving into the seventh house. Which governs relationships.'

‘Excellent.' Grace frowned for a while into the corners of the ceiling, tapping the pen end on her teeth. She wrote:
Expect to meet new love, or shed an old one. Pay close attention to the people around you.

Melody read over her shoulder doubtfully. ‘Oh. That's a bit . . . I don't know.'

‘What? We all should pay close attention to the people around us. Anyway. All the time. It's good general advice. And you know; either you meet a new love or you shed an old one. That's sort of the story of relationships, isn't it?'

‘What about all the relationships that stay together? Where nothing happens?'

Grace stared down at the page. Yes, what about them? Damn them. Maybe her view was a little jaundiced. ‘Okay, how's this. You
farewell
an old one, instead of shed. That way you could be, you know, seeing them off at the station for work.'

‘Hmm . . .'

‘Anyway, moving on. What's in store for Capricorn?'

‘Shouldn't we do more on Sagittarius?'

Grace shook her head. ‘Relationships. Good outlook. Meet, farewell. I'll flesh it out later. Think about Capricorn.'

Melody stared at the computer again, clicking through incomprehensible charts. Grace put aside the pen and checked emails on her phone; the kindergarten needed parents to make sets for the kindy Christmas concert. Volunteers could contact Tom Ellison! Her Tom! Well! Mr Bloody Wonderful Kindy Dad, was he now? Mr Fucking Community. Bet those divorced mothers were getting all gooey over the wonderfulness of Tom Ellison; she could just imagine the coy emails now.
Hi Tom! Love to arrange some hay on set, let's meet and discuss?

‘Ah. Goodness me,' Melody said finally. Grace roused herself from silent fury and picked up the pen.

‘Jupiter is entering the house of Cancer,' Melody said, swinging around from the computer to eye Grace meaningfully.

‘Gosh. And . . .'

‘That's
huge
. That's like, I don't know, it's like the biggest event for Capricorns in about ninety years.'

Grace raised her eyebrows politely. ‘Really? How super. So that means . . .'

‘Cancer is the house of honours, achievement, fame. Jupiter brings good fortune to all he touches.'

‘Jupiter is a he?'

‘It's an amazingly lucky mixture of events. Historic.'

Grace nodded carefully, like someone humouring a child. So, what, one-twelfth of the
population would have their biggest thingummy in ninety years? How did she write that?

Melody made a
however
sort of face. ‘
However
, before all this good fortune can come, we need the new moon to sort of prod it into action.'

Luckily there's been one of those every month since creation, so they were in business. Grace bit her lip and wrote:
Cancer, Jupiter, good fortune, need new moon
.

‘And the new moon is when?'

Melody toggled screens. ‘On the eighth, when the moon moves house. Honestly, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Capricorns. Really. Do we know any Capricorns?'

‘Tom,' said Grace tonelessly. She wrote
8
^th
, new moon, cancer
. ‘So what does it mean for Tom? He'll find new love? Get a cheap divorce?'

Melody sighed and rubbed her eyes. Her fingers covered the top of her face for a few minutes, prodding and pushing her pale skin, until finally her eyes emerged again, open and deep blue, fringed with her long black lashes. Grace wondered what her hair would look like out of dreadlocks.

Melody murmured, ‘I'm so tired.'

Grace felt guilty. Reading horoscopes was probably a spiritually draining business, and here she was, sapping Melody with her cynicism. But she was Mel's agent, her manager, and she needed to have a spine for them both. ‘Well, we need to finish these horoscopes before lunch. Then we've got to take the kids to prep orientation. Then we'll set you up with Twitter and Facebook accounts.'

‘No? Really?'

‘If you're not interested, I'll run them for you. And at 3pm, we've got the phone interview. With the newspaper.'

‘No, I did that already. Yesterday.'

‘This is another one.'

‘Oh, please. I can't bear them. Can you do it?'

‘What? Pretend to be you?'

‘Why not? It's over the phone, they'll never know. It's not like I'm really being me anyway.'

‘Okay. If you trust me. Also, Anthea's asked for your bank details.'

Melody wriggled uncomfortably. ‘You're my manager. Can she pay your account, and you pay me?'

Grace frowned at her. ‘Have you
still
not set up a bank account?'

‘I keep meaning to.'

She hesitated. ‘Are you sure you want to give me this much— I don't know.' Power seemed like the wrong word. Nobody could have power over Melody. She slipped away from such things like she was coated in teflon.

‘Please. I would love you to. And we'll share the money. Fifty-fifty.'

Grace opened her mouth to argue, and then shut it. She had a lot to get done today. She simply did not have the time.

Grace was forced to go to her mother and ask for a loan.

‘Oh, Grace. Your life is terrible.' Dawn took her daughter's hand with her own bony one and stroked it. Grace in turn watched her mother, the way her hair had receded from her forehead in recent times, and how Dawn was still bothering to dye her frail wispy hair orange, as evidenced by the inch of white at the roots. Dawn was growing old, and one day she would die and leave
Grace all alone. Grace pulled her hand out from under her mother's, picked up Dawn's hand instead and kissed the thin skin on the back, feeling the frail metacarpals beneath her lips. How shocking, that within everyone you loved, there were bones.

‘Thanks, Mum. I know.' She took a deep breath and smiled bravely. This, this was the lowest point she could reach. She had hit rock bottom.

‘Well, I ran into Tom yesterday, in the IGA.'

Grace felt her heart clench. ‘And how was that?'

Dawn lowered her voice and looked around, as if they were not alone in the house. ‘He was with a woman.'

‘A woman.' Grace silently corrected herself: no
this
was now the lowest point she could reach.

‘A girl.' Dawn viewed any female younger than herself as a girl. ‘Tight pants,' she said meaningfully. ‘And my iPhone says it's Tom's birthday this weekend.'

So it was. Grace nodded dully. A girl in tight pants. Dawn leaned close.

‘Midlife crisis,' she pronounced. ‘And the girl is
very unattractive
. Not a patch on you.'

Grace shuffled her chair close and slid her arms around her mother's bony body, sank her head onto her shoulder and inhaled the scent which had not changed since Grace's childhood. A smell of spring days, of Trix dishwashing liquid and faintly of onions.
Unattractive. Not a patch on you. Midlife crisis.
The sheer
kindness
of her mother; the solidarity of women, across the generations. Like Melody, begging for Grace's help with the TV job. Not just dumping the childcaring on Grace, but drawing her in, calling her her agent, making Grace truly a part of it in these, the lowest, lowest days of her life. Grace was not totally fooled, much as she would have liked to have been. As if Melody had ever needed anybody's help, really. She slipped her fingers
under her mother's arm. It was enough to turn the hardest heart to marshmallow. It was enough to save you. She wept until her mother's apron grew damp and Dawn rubbed her back for a long time on the same spot, until Grace's tears dried and it felt like one more second of being rubbed on that same spot would make her scream.

But still, Grace did look after the children while Melody learned lines and spent long days in at the studio. It was Grace who packed kindy lunches, laid out clothes and arranged playdates. She bought a big day-at-a-page diary and mapped out Melody's time down to the last half-hour. Anthea Schulberg began to ring Grace, not Melody, to finalise details, and seemed quite relieved to have a practical intermediary for her dreamy new star. Grace carried the diary and phone with her everywhere. She had been known to stop in the kindy foyer to answer a call, maybe pushing aside Big Ted on the tiny table to open the diary and frown over her scrawls for the days ahead. ‘I can give you a half-hour for that interview on the Thursday, but it must be eleven, not ten, as I've told you before.' Melody did a half-hour of meditation every day at ten, and it was immovable. ‘And as for the fashion shoot, only if it's vegan clothing.'

It was Grace who took the children to prep orientation, because Melody had a week of voice training. Grace walked Lotte and Skip to the little school they would attend next year, every day, all on their own. Kindy would soon be over. In the school playground, a girl who would have been taller than Grace clasped hands with a shorter girl and spun around in a ray of sunshine. The girl had long hair, and small, new breasts rose beneath her shirt. She was almost a woman. Maybe the girl she played with was her little sister. They spun with their feet together, the girl's hair swinging down as she leaned back. The playground swarmed with children; it seemed the bulk of them were little boys, although the official statistics didn't reflect this at all, Grace knew. She
watched the tall girl; she looked way too old for the school, although she would be just twelve, maybe close to thirteen. Grade six, on the verge of the big world beyond, like a plane going down the runway. Her last weeks of primary school. Did her mother share Grace's half-nauseous mix of excitement and grief at the prospect? This girl must have once been a round-tummied, big-eyed four-year-old like Lotte, who had stretched like chewing gum into this long-boned, elegant girl, tucking locks of straight glossy hair behind her ears.

Grace left the children, feeling a little disconsolate and yet relieved to get some work time. She spread herself out in a nearby café, and was quickly immersed in paperwork; contracts, Melody's diary, costume sketches, an iPad on which she was fleshing out horoscopes.

Anna, Nina and Verity, whose children were also doing prep orientation, knocked on the window and crowded into the café, dragging clattery chairs up to her table and excitedly describing their children's responses to school.

‘And is it true Melody's got some job on the telly?' asked Verity.

Grace described it to them, and their faces froze into varying comic masks of shock.

‘An on-air job? On
Round Up
?'

‘Surely they'll cut her hair?'

‘They must be paying her a
fortune
.'

‘And you're her what . . .?'

‘I'm just helping her,' said Grace modestly. She picked up Verity's newspaper and scanned the front page headlines:
Cat and Pirate: Police closing in.
A close up of the masked bandits. She folded the paper in half and laid it aside.

‘Who did she sleep with to get that?'

‘She was headhunted. Spotted. She was on screen after the thing with Lotte and then they
realised she had that
thing
. That screen thing.' Grace couldn't help but feel a little proud.
Melody lit up the screen like a power station
, Anthea Schulberg had confided in her.
Some people are beautiful in real life, but they get on screen and their wattage sort of . . . dims. But Melody, oh Melody, she had the opposite. A sort of visual broadcast charisma unseen since Monroe. It was a freak of chemistry; money could not buy such a thing, nor could it be created.
Anthea's only fear was that
Round Up
wouldn't keep her, that she would be snatched up by talent scouts.