Truly Madly Guilty (6 page)

chapter seven

The day of the barbeque

‘Let’s just forget it,’ said Clementine.

It was nearly one o’clock, they were expected at Erika’s house for afternoon tea at three, and Sam and the girls still hadn’t managed to actually leave the house to give her the promised practice time. It wasn’t going to happen.

‘No,’ said Sam. ‘I will not be defeated by one small shoe.’

One of Ruby’s brand new, remarkably expensive, flashing-soled runners had gone missing and due to a recent growth spurt those were the only shoes that fit her at the moment.

‘What’s that poem?’ said Clementine. ‘
For the want of a nail the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe the horse was lost
… and then something, until the kingdom is lost.’

‘What?’ grunted Sam. He lay flat on his stomach on the floor, looking under the couch for the shoe.

‘For the want of a shoe my audition was lost,’ murmured Clementine as she pulled the cushions off the same couch to reveal crumbs, coins, pencils, hairclips, a sports bra, and no shoe.

‘
What
?’ said Sam again. He stretched out his arm. ‘I think I see it!’ He pulled out a dust-covered sock.

‘That’s a
sock
,’ said Holly.

Sam sneezed. ‘Yes, I know it’s a sock.’ He sat back on his haunches, massaging his shoulder. ‘We spend half our lives trying to
locate possessions.
We need better systems. Procedures. There must be an app for this. A “where’s our stuff?” app.’

‘Shoe! Where are you? Shoe!’ called out Ruby. She walked about lopsidedly wearing one shoe, stamping it occasionally to make the coloured lights flash.

‘Shoes do not have ears, Ruby,’ said Holly contemptuously.

‘Erika says we need a shoe rack by the door.’ Clementine replaced the cushions on top of all the detritus. ‘She says we should train the children to put their shoes there as soon as they come in.’

‘She’s right,’ said Sam. ‘That woman is always right.’

For someone who didn’t want children, Erika had a wealth of parenting expertise she felt obliged to share. You couldn’t say, ‘How would you
know?’ because she always cited her sources. ‘I read an article in
Psychology Today
,’ she would begin.

‘She sounds like one of those toxic friends,’ Clementine’s friend Ainsley had once said. ‘You should cull her.’

‘She’s not toxic,’ Clementine had said. ‘Don’t you have friends who annoy you?’ She thought everyone had friends who felt like obligations. There was a particular expression her mother got when she picked up the phone, a stoic ‘here we go’ look, which meant her friend Lois was calling.

‘Not the way that chick bugs you,’ said Ainsley.

Clementine could never, would never,
cull
Erika. She was Holly’s godmother. The moment, if there had ever been such a moment, where she could have ended their friendship was long gone. You couldn’t do that to a person. Were there even words for it? Erika would be devastated.

Anyway, over recent years, since Erika had met and married the lovely serious Oliver, their friendship had become much more manageable. Although Clementine had cringed at Ainsley’s use of the word, ‘toxic’ was actually an accurate description of the feelings Clementine had so often felt in Erika’s presence: the intense aggravation she had to work so hard to resist and conceal, the disappointment with herself, because Erika wasn’t evil or cruel or stupid, she was simply annoying, and Clementine’s response to her annoyingness was so completely disproportionate, it embarrassed and confounded her. Erika loved Clementine. She’d do anything for her. So why did she inflame Clementine so? It was like she was allergic to her. She’d learned over the years to limit the time they spent together. Like today, for example: when Erika had suggested lunch, Clementine had automatically said, ‘Let’s make it afternoon tea.’ Shorter. Less time to lose your mind.

‘Please can I have a cracker, Daddy?’ said Holly.

‘No,’ said Sam. ‘Help look for your sister’s shoe.’

‘You girls make sure you say please and thank you to Erika and Oliver at afternoon tea today, won’t you?’ said Clementine to the girls as she tried behind the curtains for the missing shoe. ‘In a nice, big loud voice?’

Holly was outraged. ‘I
do
say please and thank you! I just
said
please to Daddy.’

‘I know,’ said Clementine. ‘That’s what made me think of it. I thought, “What good manners!” ’

If Holly or Ruby were ever going to forget to say please or thank you, it would be with Erika, who had a habit of pointedly reminding the girls of their manners in a way that Clementine found to be kind of unmannerly. ‘Did I hear a thank you?’ Erika would say the moment she handed over a glass of water, cupping her hand around her ear, and Holly would answer, ‘No, you didn’t,’ which came across as precocious, even though she was just being her literal self.

Holly took off her shoes, climbed on the couch, balanced on her socks on the side with her arms held out wide like a skydiver, and then let herself fall, face first onto the cushions.

‘Don’t do that, Holly,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve told you before. You could hurt yourself.’

‘Mummy lets me do it,’ pouted Holly.

‘Well, she shouldn’t,’ said Sam. He shot Clementine a look. ‘You could break your neck. You could hurt yourself very,
very
badly.’

‘Put your shoes back on, Holly,’ said Clementine. ‘Before they get lost too.’ Sometimes she wondered how Sam thought she managed to keep the children alive when he wasn’t there to point out all the perilous hazards. She let Holly do that face-first dive off the side of the couch all the time when he was at work. Mostly the girls were good at remembering the different rules that applied when Daddy was at home, not that those different sets of rules were ever actually acknowledged out loud. It was just an unspoken way of keeping the peace. She suspected different rules about vegetables and teeth-cleaning applied when Mummy wasn’t home.

Holly got down off the couch and slumped back. ‘I’m bored.
Why
can’t I have a cracker? I’m
starving.
’

‘Please don’t whine,’ said Clementine.

‘But I’m so hungry,’ said Holly, while Ruby wandered off into the hallway hollering, ‘SHOE! WHERE ARE YOU, MY DARLING SHOE?’

‘I actually really do need a cracker. Just
one
cracker,’ said Holly.

‘Quiet!’ shouted Clementine and Sam simultaneously.

‘You are both so mean!’ Holly turned on her heel to leave the room and kicked her toe on the leg of the couch, which Sam had dragged sideways looking for the shoe. She screamed in frustration.

‘Oh dear.’ Clementine automatically bent down to hug her, forgetting that Holly always needed a minute to process her rage at the universe before she accepted comfort. Holly threw back her head and gave Clementine a painful blow on the chin.

‘Ow!’ Clementine grabbed her chin. ‘
Holly
!’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Sam. He stomped out of the room.

Now Holly wanted a cuddle. She launched herself into Clementine’s arms, and Clementine hugged her, even though she wanted to shake her, because her chin really hurt. She murmured sympathetic words of comfort and rocked Holly back and forth while she stared longingly at her cello, sitting quiet and dignified up against her pretend audition chair. No one warned you that having children reduced you right down to some smaller, rudimentary, primitive version of yourself, where your talents and your education and your achievements meant nothing.

Clementine remembered when Erika, at the age of sixteen, had casually mentioned that she never wanted children, and Clementine had felt strangely put out by this; it had taken her a while to work out the reasons for her aggravation (all her life, there had always been so many varied, complex reasons why Erika aggravated her) and she’d eventually realised it was because
she wished she’d thought of saying it first.
Clementine
was meant to be the crazy, creative, bohemian one. Erika was the conservative one. The rule follower. The designated driver. Erika dreamed of getting enough marks to do a Bachelor of Business degree with a double major in accounting and finance. Erika dreamed of home ownership and a share portfolio and a job at one of the big six accounting firms with a fast track to partnership. Clementine’s dream was to study at the Conservatorium of Music, to play extraordinary music and experience extraordinary
passion
and then, sure, to settle down one day and have babies with a nice man, because didn’t everyone want that? Babies were cute. It had seemed to indicate a failure of the imagination that it had never occurred to Clementine that you could choose not to have children.

But that was the thing with Erika. She refused to be typecast. When they were seventeen, Erika had gone through a Goth stage.
Erika,
of all people. She’d dyed her hair black, worn black nail polish, black lipstick, studded wristbands and platform boots. ‘What?’ she’d said defensively, the first time Clementine saw her new look. Erika’s rock-star style got them into the cool clubs, where she stood at the back scowling, drinking mineral water and looking like she was thinking dark Gothic thoughts when she was probably just thinking about her homework, while Clementine got drunk and danced and kissed inappropriate boys and then cried all the way home, because, you know,
life
.

Now Erika wore clothes you didn’t notice or remember: plain, sensible, comfortable clothes. She had her job at one of the big accounting firms (now one of the big four, not the big six) and her neat, probably mortgage-free three-bedroom house not far from where they both grew up. And now, of course, Clementine didn’t regret her decision to have children. She loved them senseless, of course she did, it was just that sometimes she regretted their timing. It would have made sense to put off kids until they’d paid off more of the house, until her career was better established.

Sam wanted a third child, which was ludicrous, impossible. She kept changing the subject every time he brought it up. A third child would be like sliding down a snake in a game of Snakes and Ladders. He couldn’t be serious. She was hoping that eventually he’d see sense.

Sam reappeared in the doorway and held out a packet of crackers towards Holly. Holly jumped off Clementine’s knee, magically cured, at the same time as Clementine’s phone, which was sitting on one of the bookshelves, began to ring.

‘It’s Erika,’ said Clementine to Sam as she picked it up.

‘Maybe she’s cancelling,’ said Sam hopefully.

‘She never cancels,’ said Clementine. She put the phone to her ear. ‘Hi, Erika.’

‘It’s Erika,’ said Erika in that querulous way, as if Clementine had already let her down.

‘I know,’ said Clementine. ‘This new-fangled technology is amazing, it –’

‘Yes, very funny,’ interrupted Erika. ‘Look. About today. I was on my way back from the shops and I ran into Vid. You remember Vid, from next door?’

‘Of course I do. How could I forget Vid from next door,’ said Clementine. ‘The big electrician. Like Tony Soprano. We love Vid from next door.’ Erika sometimes brought out this kind of frivolity in Clementine. ‘Married to the smoking-hot Tiffany.’ She drew out the word ‘Tiff-an-y’. ‘Sam just loves Tiffany from next door.’

She looked over at Sam to see if he recognised the name. Sam used his hands to indicate Tiffany’s spectacularly memorable figure and Clementine gave him a thumbs-up. They had met Erika’s neighbours just once, at an awkward drinks party at Erika’s place last Christmas. They were maybe a decade older than Clementine and Sam but they seemed younger. They’d saved the night as far as Sam and Clementine were concerned.

‘Well, anyway,’ said Erika. ‘I told Vid you were coming over today and he invited us all over for a barbeque. They’ve got a daughter, Dakota, who is about ten, and he seemed to think she’d like to play with your girls.’

‘Sounds great,’ said Clementine, aware of her spirits lifting, even soaring. She moved to the window and studied the brilliant blue sky. The day suddenly felt festive. A barbeque. No need to cook dinner tonight. She’d take along that bottle of champagne Ainsley had given her. She’d find time to practise tomorrow. She quite liked this aspect of her personality: the way her mood could change from melancholy to euphoric because of a breeze or a flavour or a beautiful chord progression. It meant she never had to feel too down about feeling down. ‘Man, you’re a strange girl, it’s like you’re on drugs,’ her brother Brian once said to her. She always remembered that comment. It made her feel proud. Yeah, I’m so
crazy
. Although probably that was evidence of her lack of craziness. Truly crazy people were too busy being crazy to think about it.

‘Vid sort of railroaded me into this barbeque,’ said Erika defensively, and oddly, because Clementine had never known Erika to be railroaded into anything.

‘We don’t mind,’ said Clementine. ‘We liked them. It will be fun.’ She smiled as she watched Holly waltz around the room with a cracker held ecstatically high like a trophy. Holly had inherited Clementine’s temperament, which was fine except for when their moods didn’t synchronise. Ruby was more like Sam, pragmatic and patient. Yesterday Clementine had walked into their bedroom to find Ruby sitting on the floor next to Holly, gently patting her shoulder while Holly lay flat on her stomach prostrate with grief because her drawing of a panda bear
didn’t look like a panda bear.
‘Twy again!’ Ruby said, with a perplexed expression on her face just like Sam’s, an expression that said: Why make life so hard for yourself?

‘Okay, well, good. Fun, yes,’ said Erika. She sounded disappointed, as if she hadn’t actually planned for the day to be
fun
. ‘It’s just that – Oliver is kind of cranky with me for accepting Vid’s invitation because, ah, as I mentioned, we’d love to discuss, this, ah, proposal we have, and he thinks we won’t have the chance now. I was thinking maybe after the barbeque you could come back to our place for coffee. If there is time.’

‘Of course,’ said Clementine. ‘Or even beforehand if you like. Whichever. It’s all very mysterious, Erika. Can you give me a hint?’