The Near Miss (6 page)

Romy came out of the bathroom and went to rummage for an earring. Her buxom figure was clad in a black dress which showed off her olive skin; the tops of her breasts.

‘God, you're gorgeous.'

‘Don't mess up my hair.'

‘I love these underpants!'

‘Eddy!' She wriggled her dress back down and kissed him maternally on the forehead. He fell back on the bed and smiled at the ceiling; velvet between his fingers. His future was in that body; that courageous spirit, the already-existing organism that was Eddy-and-Romy. His heart was so full he had to bite his tongue, hold back his ring-loaded hand. Just four hours and he would feel the bliss of depositing this impatient load.

‘So how long have you and Van been together?' Romy used her knife to nudge the last grains of rice onto her upturned fork, as she murmured the question to Melody. Van had sauntered outside to smoke. Melody hoped he was not rolling himself a joint. She really needed to make some friends for Skip, to start building a normal life.

‘We're not together.' Melody paired her knife and fork and laid them across the plate. She had answered this question before, in other situations, and was unsure why it made her internally wince. It felt even more uncomfortable when asked in Van's presence, although he only smiled at it. Was it simply the resistance to being put in an Married/Unmarried box, or the weird thought of being in a relationship with Van, or was it, worse, a flicker of guilt about this friendship, a sense that she should have cooled it a while back? ‘We're just friends.'

‘Really?' Romy looked towards the door where Van had exited, through which he could be expected to return. She was an attractive woman who had played to the table throughout this dinner; charming Tom with flattering questions about his invention, beseeching Melody for every detail of Lotte's rescue, crouching on the floor to talk to the children about their toys, although she quickly lost interest in that when the adults stopped watching. A woman who enjoyed attention, who had the enviable knack of being able to duck out of boring turns in conversations, who could steer the subject quickly back to herself. A lovely rich aura; maybe a deep, dark rose.

‘He was my sister's boyfriend.' Melody shrugged. She thought of the cat with the forked tail that used to hang around their family home that Van and her sister had adored. Eddy gazed at his girlfriend; he was a planet to her sun. He was in love with her, and the woman was in love with being loved. Melody had seen it before.

Grace and Tom's house had a comfortably messy look about it, as though one day, long ago, there had been a theme, an effort made at Understated Style, but in the manner of many with a young child this had been superseded by the theme of Just Surviving. The glass of shells in the window sill was coated in dust, and a fly had died amongst the sand dollars and baby's ears. Picture books were piled on a chair, in an attempt to clean up, she deduced, and in fact it was clear that someone with a propensity for grouping like objects rather than actually putting them away
had been placed in charge of cleaning duties. CDs were stacked on the player; one full washing basket was placed at a lean on another and tucked under a table; hair pins and spare change and miscellaneous small objects sat in their respective piles on the mantelpiece.

Melody surreptitiously checked her watch, and wondered whether she should suggest sitting outside, under the rays of the full moon. They were nice enough people, but the night had somehow, so far, not quite gelled, and she had given up hope that it would ever leave this realm of getting-to-know-you questions, punctuated with Romy's flirtation and Grace's teary gratitude for Melody's lifesaving act. Grace's husband, Tom, seemed heavy and quiet, as if he would really have preferred a night in bed with a takeaway and the cricket on telly over this high-pitched dinner party. He had used his wife's outbursts of thankfulness to nod mutely and slip off to the kitchen, from which the day's cricket highlights could be heard murmuring on the radio.

Grace herself had felt the urge to show Melody Lotte's birth and newborn baby pictures, as if in stopping the child from being killed, she was somehow in the same category as a mother who gave her life. Melody had quite enjoyed the pictures, she was always interested in births, but was privately dismayed by the arsenal of medical equipment Lotte had been plugged into upon entry to the world. Skip had been homebirthed on the commune, on a warm moonlit night like this, and it was one of Melody's sweetest memories.

‘I'll go check on Skip,' she said hopefully, rising from the table. ‘And Lotte.'

‘They're fine,' said Tom gloomily, having already unsuccessfully tried this excuse to gain respite. ‘You'll have trouble tearing them apart.'

‘Oh.' She sank reluctantly back into her chair.

Tom sighed, and attempted a smile. ‘What do you do?'

‘Now? Look after Skip.'

‘Ah . . .'

Money. She could see his brain ticking over, with city thoughts and calculations. ‘We always get by,' she said calmly. ‘I never worry about money.'

‘Really?' His mouth hung open. She suddenly had his full attention. He leaned towards her as if she had signaled she was about to make some great announcement. She felt compelled to make one.

‘The universe will provide. It always does.'

He fell back in his chair, his cheeks drained of colour, his eyes wide with shock.

It was all too weird. Melody excused herself and went to look for Skip.

‘Home time, Skip.'

‘Noooo!' Skip skittered under Lotte's bed like a crab. ‘I want to stay here.'

‘Aren't you getting tired?' She crouched and raised the blanket. The two children pressed themselves into the dark cavity, their heads together. She gave up, and straightened herself. ‘Well,
soon
, Skip. Five more minutes.'

She dragged her feet back to the dining table. There they all were, in varying stages of social torture. It was like an Oscar Wilde play gone wrong; it was the most boring dinner she had attended in her life. On weary examination, she found that her seat had been taken, with Romy leaning on one arm to chat to Van, who sat in a cloud of marijuana smoke. Romy tilted her head, and continually played with her long hair. Melody stood behind her chair and crouched for her bag, pretending to look for something inside it.

‘Oh, I've taken your chair!!' Romy giggled mischievously, and wrinkled her nose at Van, as though they had done it together. Across the table, Eddy was distractedly involved in a conversation with Grace about teaching standards. He was pale and thin-lipped, and answering
Grace's earnest queries with sing-song generalities. ‘I guess there never would be enough money in the system to make people happy, would there?' His eyes drifted back to Romy. He laughed loudly at a comment Van had made, seeking to thrust himself into their conversation, but Grace, by his side, was insistent.

‘This government needs to really examine its policies, and it needs to get the people on board. For example, they need to transfer control of kindergartens to the Department of Education. What's it doing in the Department of Human Services, alongside aged care and immunisations? Everyone these days knows — everyone — that the first few years are when you lay down the foundations for a human being's life . . .'

‘Oh, precisely.' Eddy sounded faint. ‘Let me educate the boy and I will give you back the man . . . Romy, who is it we know who always says that?'

Melody couldn't get out of this place quickly enough. She cleared her throat. ‘We should probably think about . . .'

‘Would you like your chair back?' Romy broke off her whispering with Van and smiled up at Melody, at the same time lowering her chest to the table as though to suction-cup herself to it.

‘No, no, I'll sit here.' Melody crossly took the chair beside Eddy.

‘I've never done it!' Romy breathed at Van. Melody tried to catch Van's eye, so she could roll her own heavenward at this silly woman, but he would not look at her. He was idle, and stoned, and therefore dangerous. She should not have brought him, should not have tried to mix the old world and the new. He sat back in his chair and regarded his new friend with what Melody recognised as curiosity, the same emotion with which he might have inspected an interesting beetle. He was not a man any woman should trust. He had never fully recovered from Esme's death, and had a sliver of ice in his heart. He had taken off his leather jacket, and he wore a red
T-shirt with a Chinese symbol on the front, and his muscular arms rested on the table. A small silver earring twinkled in his ear and his face was unshaven. Despite everything, he appeared to be the social success story of the evening, while Grace and Tom's effusive speeches of gratitude to Melody had nervously withered away an hour ago in the face of her own lack of interest.

‘We could do it right now.' Van leaned forward, his elbows on the table and his muscles twitched, smiling down at Romy. The silly woman widened her eyes, squeezed her hands together and breathed ‘Yes!' Everyone listened, although other conversations limped along as people tried not to look at the only two people enjoying themselves.

‘We all know how important kindergarten teachers are, and yet they get paid less than primary teachers!' Grace orated, determined. ‘About twenty per cent less, according to the last Education Union surveys. I bet most people aren't even aware of that. Did
you
know kindergarten teachers get paid twenty per cent less?'

‘We could!' Romy's face was alight. She pushed back her chair and stopped, as if waiting for Van to do something.

‘Well.' He stood and put on his jacket, and strode to the door, stopping to cock an eyebrow at Romy as if daring her. She practically ran after him.

‘What are you guys up to?' Eddy tried to make a joke of it.

‘Just taking Romy here for a spin.'

‘Van!' Melody said. He could not do this: take this woman off for a motorbike ride and leave her partner ashen-faced. Why had she brought him?

‘You're
what
?'

‘Does she have a helmet?'

‘She can use yours.'

Eddy stood. ‘Where are you going?'

‘Little ride,' Romy threw back over her shoulder, already out the front door.

Eddy followed them out. ‘Great machine, Fan. I'd be interested to check out the engine when you get back. I have a small bit of knowledge about motors, nothing really extensive, but . . .' His trailing words could be heard through the open window, the warm night.

The chainsaw roar of a motorbike sliced through his words, and a picture fell from the wall of the lounge room. The glass cracked.

Eddy stood out on the verandah and peered into the night. They had been gone over an hour. He stared and stared, but it was pointless; he would hear the motorbike returning from two suburbs away if it came, the ugly damn thing was so loud. Did it have any safety features, or were there no such things for motorbikes? The velvet box in his pocket had been rubbed and rolled, over and over, until the nap, once comforting and thrilling, had become a sensation linked with sickening dread, and its touch only heightened the toxicity of his panic. He hated this place now, these people who had witnessed his humiliation, this dusty verandah with its pile of uncared-for bikes leaning against the weatherboard, a child seat on the back of one. The orange foot of the seat had dropped off onto the ground, a while ago judging by the cobwebs nested within. He checked his watch, again, and peered into the darkness, again. The biker's friend appeared beside him, shaking her head.

‘She wants to call the police.' Melody gestured her head in at the front door.

‘Well of course she should!' Eddy strode back towards the door, his rage at Romy only too keen to be expelled upon a less-deserving subject. ‘And why not? Does that man have something to hide? Oh, God. Oh please God, don't let him crash.'

‘Van's a good rider.' Melody's voice was calm.