Tiddas (2 page)

Izzy took a few deep breaths as she drove to her brother Richard and Nadine's mansion in Upper Brookfield. Her sleek, fast, no-good-for-passengers silver convertible wasn't designed for a baby seat in the back. The convertible that she'd convinced herself she could have because she would
never
have to pay school fees. The convertible that had caused one or two Blackfellas to accuse her of selling out, becoming white, turning too flash for her own good. Her convertible: the most comfortable place after her bed and her red chair.

She parked the car and checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror. She needed an eyebrow wax and her chin lasered.
She wondered if the hormone changes during pregnancy would mean more facial hair. She hoped not. For the time being she was grateful that being in the public eye meant that all her beauty needs were tax deductible.

She looked down the length of Richard and Nadine's driveway and at their perfectly manicured front garden – full of roses, gardenias and camellias – and realised how different her brother's life was to hers in West End, and indeed, to her own personal life. Izzy could never imagine living on an acreage, but Nadine wanted the semi-rural life, and with the inheritance from her father's winery when he passed on, she and Richard had built an amazing, architect-designed house. It was on the top of a small mountain with 360-degree views, a lift, a chef's kitchen, five bedrooms all with built-ins and ensuites, and a beautiful outdoor spa perched on top of an adjacent ridge. It was extravagant by any measure, and especially by Black standards, but Izzy was pleased her older brother had married for love, a love that just coincidentally came with money. The property was worth around six million so none of the girls ever argued when Nadine offered to pay for dinner. If anyone could afford to shout them, it was her.

Although wealthy, Nadine was still thrifty; she always had been. She was completely unaffected by how much money she and Richard had in the bank. To her, money was a means to an end. She knew she was lucky, very lucky compared to most, and that her tiddas would pull her into line if she ever forgot it. Apart from living in the massive mansion with top-of-the-range everything, buying outrageously generous gifts for her tiddas come birthdays and Christmas, and having a private
Pilates instructor, she shipped an endless supply of wines and gourmet treats from Mudgee to her pantry – to support her home-town community, she'd tell Richard, because she didn't want to be one of those people who took money out of the region and never gave back. She might be a lush but she was a loyal one. Her generosity was only kept in check by her sometimes penny-pinching ways; she made Richard shop for the basics at Aldi in Ashgrove because Veronica swore they were the cheapest.

Upper Brookfield – or UB, as the girls called it – worked for Nadine, who saw herself an ‘eccentric writer' of sorts; she was often broody and people mistook that for creative genius at work. Life in UB worked for her family too. Her stay-at-home husband did all the maintenance around the house, grew all their vegetables and was the main caregiver for their two overindulged children – Brittany and Cameron – who went to the local independent school. Richard was a landscape architect by trade, and only needed to work on a few properties in the local area to make him feel he was doing something professional and at least making some coin. Hired by the wealthy to make their properties look even better, it was a job he loved and did with ease – and he didn't have to do much of it to feel useful. It was obvious to all who knew him that Richard continued to work when he didn't need to because he'd feel completely emasculated otherwise. What he and Nadine had never told a soul, not even Izzy because neither were ‘big-noters', as they joked to themselves, was that all his income was sent to his and Izzy's mother back in Mudgee, which meant that in her own circle she bought the
RSL lunches and threw the best morning teas. Richard paid it forward to his mum and then Trish paid it forward to her friends. It was the Wiradjuri way.

When they'd first looked at the property, Richard had met with the local native title body to find out who the traditional owners were and how he and Nadine might negotiate something that acknowledged and respected them as custodians. While Nadine had no problem with some formal recognition of land of the local Blackfellas, she was reluctant to do much more. She did, however, agree to pay a generous donation to the representative body as a form of ‘paying the rent' and they in turn set up a trust fund for educating their local mob. A local Elder smoked the house and site before they moved in. Together they named the property
Bumbar
– which was Turrbul for tree blossom or flower.

Brookfield didn't have the cafés, bars and groovy shops that Boundary Street in West End was famous for, so when Nadine needed a decent caffeine fix or just something more than grass to look at, Richard would drive his unlicensed wife to the Brookfield General Store, where she would drink the surprisingly good coffee and write for hours. With her laptop or pages from her latest manuscript in front of her, she would sit editing, re-drafting, thinking up new plots and characters, and trying not to get drawn into conversations with any of the locals.

Nadine had celebrity status but she loathed it. She hated how strangers sometimes thought they knew her simply because they'd bought her books, or heard her on the radio, or seen her on the telly. She hated that she had to be nice
all the time, even when she was feeling down or, as she was most days, hungover. If the General Store served alcohol Nadine would have spent even more time there. Instead, she had to wait for Richard to pick her up after he dropped the kids home from school and then have her own happy hour at
Bumbar
. On Fridays, while Richard did the grocery shopping, she'd sit in the Kenmore Tavern for a couple of hours. Then they'd both have the ‘12 at 12' luncheon special – Nadine at her thrifty best.

As Izzy walked up the drive she saw Xanthe's and Veronica's cars already lined up perfectly as if they'd been valeted. Nadine had so much money Izzy hadn't been surprised when she'd hired valets to park cars at a New Year's Eve party they'd hosted. Izzy was proud of her sister-in-law and her success as a novelist, and glad Nadine had married her brother, who'd never read a book cover to cover until his wife made the bestseller list. Now at least he read his wife's books, and occasionally the books the women read for book club. Izzy wasn't a crime fanatic but she had read all of Nadine's works, secretly searching for a character based on her. There never was one. She hadn't seen any trace of the other tiddas in them either. In fact, there were no Blackfellas in any of Nadine's books, which hadn't gone unnoticed by the media worker and self-appointed lit critic.

‘I'd either have to make you the murdered or the murderer,' Nadine had once said to Izzy, explaining why she never wrote about any of her friends or family in her crime novels. ‘And I don't want to think of any of you that way.'

Izzy rang the doorbell as she walked in the front door. It always amazed her that the house was often left completely
unlocked, unlike her own chained and deadlocked West End door – a true sign of living in the city. As her phone rang for the third time that day with Tracey's name flashing, she sent it to voicemail again.

‘Darling,' Nadine said, approaching her half-sloshed and yet looking far healthier than Izzy had felt all week.

‘Hi there, lovey,' Izzy said, kissing her sister-in-law on the cheek and handing over a bottle of sauv blanc, knowing that any gift of alcohol would be appreciated. She wanted to drown her sorrows but was determined not to drink a drop. Just in case.

‘Ooh, you know I love this, thanks. The girls are on the veranda, books in hands, bottles at the ready. What can I get you?' Nadine was the perfect hostess, and at least usually
appeared
to be happy and upbeat, depending on how many drinks she'd had.

‘Nothing just yet,' Izzy said. At least tomorrow she wouldn't have a hangover.

‘Don't be silly, we
always
have a bevy on book club night.'

Nadine raised a wine glass the size of a small ice bucket in the air. They did always have a bevy on book club night because it was the one guaranteed night a month they all got together – using a book as an excuse – to catch up on each other's lives. Izzy knew of other book clubs that functioned in the same way. She also knew women who used their book club as an excuse to get away from their husband or partner or kids for a few hours each month, to drink, goss and have a laugh. She didn't want to become one of those women, though; she
had
a life, and didn't need any excuse to get away
from people she was supposed to love. A pang of panic struck her, but with Nadine busy opening another bottle, the flash of horror on her face went unnoticed.

‘Hello!' Izzy said with some effort, attempting to be cheery as she walked outside onto the veranda.

The sun was setting; citronella coils were burning to ward off the mozzies. It was still steaming hot weather for March and with no breeze Izzy desperately wanted to be inside under a blast of air-conditioning.

‘Hey,' the women all chorused, and hugs and kisses followed.

Izzy pulled up a wooden chair and put this month's novel on the table, hoping no-one would notice anything different about her. She was convinced she
looked
pregnant, but wasn't quite sure how that could be; by her calculations she was only about a month. She thought back to the moment she realised she was late; going to the toilet in the middle of the night for the third day running was something out of the ordinary and kept her awake long after she'd finished peeing. On the third night she decided to do some work, cracked open her diary and while flicking pages realised her bleed was overdue. The tenderness in her breasts she thought was related to her period was in fact not. She was frightened that night, and she was frightened now that Veronica and Xanthe, who were obsessed with children and having children, would notice something, and she wasn't ready to dissect it.

‘Where's Richard and the kids?' Ellen asked Nadine, as she carried a platter of food to the table.

The mere thought of eating dolmades or blue vein cheese turned Izzy's stomach, let alone the smell of them.

‘There's something on at the school tonight, they're all there,' Nadine said matter-of-factly.

‘Shouldn't
you
be there?' Xanthe sounded mortified. ‘We could've changed our night.'

‘Shouldn't
I
be there too?' Izzy exclaimed, embarrassed that she hadn't enquired first about her own family.

‘God no, Richard always does the school thing, not me. I hate that school; they let the kids run amok, do whatever they want. Cam wants to paint, they let him paint. These fancy independent schools shit me. It's nothing like when we went to Mudgee Public where all the families were working class, parents pitched in and did working bees, and we were all disciplined. No, at this school everyone's uppity. We just get a bill for whatever needs doing at the school and the kids pretty much run their own race. A “worldy” approach – ' Nadine made quote signs in the air with her fingers – ‘to getting the kids to be grown up, apparently.' Her tone was noticeably sarcastic. ‘I get in an argument every time I go there, so it's best I don't go.'

Nadine set about making small plates for each of the girls, loving her role as hostess. Book club was the only real social life she had outside of book tours and talks, which she increasingly resented.

‘Why do you send them to that school then, if you don't like going there?' Veronica asked. ‘I was
always
at the school where my boys went. I did tuckshop, P & C, was a voluntary reader in the classroom. Not for my boys, though; they were brilliant readers, of course. Did I tell you that John was writing publishable short stories in 6th class?'

‘Yes,' the others answered in unison.

Veronica – mostly referred to by her tiddas as ‘Vee' – was so proud of her boys they could never do wrong. And even though they'd all finished school and only one still lived at home, Veronica's sole identity remained that of being mother to Jonathan, Neil and Marcus. Her conversation nearly always focused on her sons.

‘Anyway,' Nadine said, ‘the suburb was
my
choice and the school was Richard's. He's quite happy running the house day to day and looking after the kids.'

Izzy wasn't convinced her brother was completely happy keeping the household on an even keel while his wife was earning most of the money, but they seemed to be content so she never said anything; it wasn't her place to anyway. The other tiddas thought Nadine was the luckiest woman on the planet having her man do the domestics, chase after the kids and, as Ellen had always put it, look drop dead gorgeous to boot.

‘I trust his judgement completely on the schooling front,' Nadine said seriously. ‘It's not like it was when we were kids where you had no choice but to go to Mudgee Public if you lived west, north or east of the train line, and to Cudgegong Valley if you lived south. And it was just lucky that we all went to Mudgee High, and school and home were almost the same. Remember? We were hardly ever separated and
never
inside on weekends.' Nadine smiled at the women she'd had sleepovers with as a teenager, recalling weekends together down by the river learning to smoke, school dances where they'd snuck some moselle behind the hall and how in
summer they could be at the local pool from daylight until dark. ‘I worry teen life won't be the same for Cam and Brit. Everything is about technology these days.' They all thought back to how it had been in Mudgee, with boundaries always dictating who went where. ‘As for me and school, let's face it, I'm not the best person to be advising on education, not having finished school myself.'