Lola's Secret (5 page)

Bett sighed deeply, hating herself for even thinking this way. When had she turned into this person? This tired, bitter, competitive creature? She’d hoped living close to Carrie again and having children at the same time would bring the two of them together. Instead, it had become a whole new battleground. A point-scoring battleground.

Why was she surprised? It had always been that way between them—even as children, Carrie had been the confident one, Bett more anxious, Carrie free with her opinions and advice, Bett uncertain. The tensions had built between them over the years, coming to a head seven years before, in a domino fall of events—Bett’s fiancé, Matthew, falling in love with Carrie at first sight, their engagement breaking up, sparking a feud between the three sisters that had lasted more than three years. Now, it seemed almost silly. She’d been fooling herself that she had ever been in love with Matthew. She knew what she now had with Daniel was the real thing. But at the time, it had seemed like the biggest betrayal in the world, with both her sisters taking sides against her. They hadn’t spoken for three years. Three whole years. If it hadn’t been for Lola forcing them back together, giving the three of them precious time together before Anna fell ill, it could have been much worse …

But had she and Carrie learned nothing from Anna’s death? Hadn’t they promised in the days, weeks, and months afterward to never let anything come between them again, to cherish each day, to keep reminding themselves how fragile life was, how important family was?

Those promises had faded into memory. Worst of all, Bett knew in her heart that she was the loser. She was the Bad Mother and Carrie was the Perfect Mother. If only Carrie would ring now and again to say she was at the end of her tether, that her three kids were driving her crazy, that she was tired, that she and Matthew hadn’t talked about anything but bottles and nappies for weeks, let alone kissed, let alone the rest of it. But that wasn’t Carrie’s life. All she ever told Bett was how perfect things were at home.

Bett and Daniel had started fighting about Carrie lately too. They’d had a row about her as recently as this week. She’d been telling him what Carrie had told her, that she and Matthew had hired someone to do her “big wash” once a week—the sheets, towels, and baby clothes. How much time it saved.

“That’s wonderful for Carrie and Matthew,” Daniel had said, in the mild tone she should have registered as a warning sign. “Perhaps when we have as much money as Carrie and Matthew we can hire a staff of helpers too. I’m working all the hours I can, Bett, but it’s a small paper and unfortunately it just doesn’t pay as much as a statewide vet business. Perhaps you should have married Matthew after all.”

She’d been too shocked to answer. In the five years they’d been together, Daniel had never referred to her past history with Matthew. She’d wanted to go to their bedroom and burst into tears, but then Yvette had woken and started crying and Zachary had followed suit. She and Daniel had taken a baby each and the conversation they might have had, the apology she might have made, the make-up sex they might have enjoyed didn’t happen. But the words, the accusations, were still in the house, festering. One more middle-of-the-night worry. Her marriage was in serious trouble.

It was another reason to get out of the house and go back to work. Wouldn’t that give her something more to talk to Daniel about? Turn her, even in a small way, back into the Bett he’d fallen in love with and married? Because she knew she wasn’t that person anymore. She’d completely understand if he did want to leave her. She hated herself at the moment too.

Another piece of helpful advice from Carrie flashed into her mind. “Make sure to have some you-time with Daniel, won’t you?” she’d said. She’d given Bett a head-to-toe look. “Even if you just change into something nice before he comes home each night, it’ll give you a lift too. I know it sounds all 1950s and
Stepford Wives
-ish,” she’d given that trilling laugh that set Bett’s teeth on edge, “but really, it works. If you pretend you’re happy and in control, sometimes it will really feel as though you are.”

If I pretend I’m driving an axe into your head, will it feel as if I really am? Bett had thought.

Stop it! she told herself now. Forget Carrie. Forget Daniel, even. The twins are safe with Jane. You’ve got the afternoon to yourself. Use it. Live in the moment, or whatever that saying was. Easier said than done. She took three deep breaths and told herself exactly where she was. In her car, in the main street of Clare, on a stinking hot day, wearing entirely the wrong clothes but at least they were clean, just ten minutes away from the meeting with her editor. Step One of her Save My Life plan.

It was far too hot and she was far too edgy to sit quietly in the car and compose herself, though she knew that was exactly what she should do. What she really needed was a dose of her grandmother. A good, soul-clearing, stress-relieving rant to Lola about Carrie in the first instance, and possibly even about Daniel too, if there was time. Starting the car again, she drove fifty meters down the street, easily finding a parking spot. She just hoped today was one of Lola’s days in the charity shop.

It was. Through the front window she could see the tall, erect figure of her white-haired grandmother standing behind the counter arranging a tray of jewelry. Thank God. Bett walked inside to the cool relief of the airconditioning and started talking even before the door shut behind her. “Carrie’s at it again, Lola. I swear, if she gives me one more bit of advice, I’ll—”

“Do what, darling?” Lola said with a welcoming smile. “And please speak clearly. I’d like my customers to hear, too.”

Bett looked around. There were two people browsing in the corner of the shop, both now obviously listening. Bett blushed and came up to the counter, mouthing a “Sorry” before leaning across and kissing her grandmother’s powdery cheek. “Hello, Lola,” she said, more quietly. “Sorry again, Lola.”

“Hello, Bett. Forgiven, Bett,” Lola whispered back. “But what will you do to Carrie? I’m dying to hear now.”

“I don’t know,” she said, whispering too. “Stuff Zachary and Yvette’s nappies down her—” She stopped there. “Except she’d take the opportunity to tell me that her talented trio were out of nappies in record time.” Bett sighed deeply, pushing her fingers through her curls. “How does Carrie do it, Lola? How does she manage to infuriate me so easily? Sometimes she doesn’t even have to speak, just a look does it.”

“Years of practice? Bett, if you and Carrie weren’t fighting about child-rearing, you’d be fighting about something else. You’ve been like that all your lives. Why you thought both of you having children would bring you closer together, I don’t know. Face facts, darling. She’s going to keep giving you advice you don’t want to hear, and you’re probably driving her crazy as well. That’s just the way it will always be. You need to get over it.”

Bett blinked. “Get over it?”

“That’s right. Offer it up. Stop complaining. And more importantly, stop annoying me in the middle of my working day.”

Bett started to smile. “It’s that consoling nature of yours that I love so much.”

Lola winked. “And it’s everything about you that I love so much. Except when you start having middle-of-the-day pity parties like today. What have you really got to be unhappy about? Hasn’t the worst thing happened to us already? Didn’t we all promise after Anna died to be happy and grateful for everything we had? Or did I dream that?”

“You didn’t dream it.” Bett was shocked to feel a sudden welling of tears. It only ever took a mention of her sister to feel the rush of grief again. “Anna wouldn’t have been like Carrie, would she, Lola? Wouldn’t have rung me up to tell me how much better a mother she was than I’ll ever manage to be?”

“Yes, probably. Or she’d have said you’re making too much of a fuss, you’ve had twins not sextuplets. And you’d complain to me about her as well. You know I’m right, so take that outraged expression off your face. What are you doing in town anyway? Have you left the twins at home alone? That’s it. I’m having you arrested for abandonment.” Lola frowned. “You haven’t, Bett, have you? Or left them in the car? It’s forty degrees out there.”

“Of course not. They’re home, safe, with my neighbor. I’ve got an appointment.” Bett wasn’t ready to confide all in Lola either yet. “A doctor’s thing, I mean. A check-up thing.”

“At what time?”

“Three.”

“In which case you’d better go or you’ll be late. As I will be if you don’t get out of my sight. You’re not the only one with an appointment today.” Lola checked her watch. “Starting in five minutes, in fact. And I’m not completely prepared so I need you to leave so I can have a moment to collect myself.”

“You’re eighty-four years old. Who could you have an appointment with?”

Lola raised a well-defined eyebrow. “My undertaker? Don’t look so shocked. I know that’s what you’re thinking. It’s a charity shop committee meeting, as it happens.”

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Believe me. It’s vicious.” She touched her granddaughter on the cheek. “Go, darling. And please, cheer up. Be grateful for what you have. And try not to hate your sister too much. Use your energy for something more fun.”

Outside in the heat again, Bett felt so much better she decided to walk to her meeting. Lola was right. She had been having a pity party. And she’d been overreacting about Carrie too. She was just a bit tired. A lot tired. All right, completely tired. Perhaps the real problem was she just wasn’t seeing enough of the outside world. Look how much even a brief conversation with Lola had cheered her up. She was being unfair to Daniel too, going behind his back and making meetings about possible part-time work. It wasn’t what they’d decided as a couple, as parents. Of course she couldn’t expect him to go part-time and share the childcare. And they certainly couldn’t afford a nursery or a nanny. And that wasn’t what they wanted, either. No, she had to live with things as they were. It wasn’t fair to ring Jane up at the last minute either, when she was busy with her own daughter. She’d cancel the meeting, and go right home now. Back to her babies. The babies she loved. And to the washing. And the ironing. And the cooking. And the cleaning …

She started to feel the tight sensation in her chest again.

No, she was right to be having this meeting. She
had
to change something before she went mad. Before one day the worst thing happened, that she got so overwhelmed she made a serious mistake with her babies, had an accident with them, hurt them in some way. Or she started crying and couldn’t stop. Or she—

Her mobile phone rang, breaking into her thoughts. How long had she been standing here? Had she been talking to herself, in public, on the main street? Had it come to that?

“Earth calling Quinlan?” It was her editor Rebecca on the phone. Bett looked across the road. Rebecca was standing in front of the
Valley Times
office, smoking a cigarette and waving across. “Are you going to stand there all day or come and see me? Time’s money and I’m short of both.”

Even the sound of her familiar voice, her familiar joking made Bett feel good.
This
she could handle—the banter, the teasing. She knew how to be a journalist, too. She knew how to interview people, write stories, meet deadlines. It was being a mother, even an incompetent mother, that was so difficult.

B
ACK IN THE SHOP
, Lola wished she had been joking to Bett. But it
was
vicious in the charity shop committee meetings these days. In years gone by, they had been fun. Lately, it was as if there had been a hostile takeover. These things came in cycles, she knew that, people moving into town, getting involved in sudden rushes of community enthusiasm, ruffling feathers and upsetting everyone before moving on to greener charitable pastures. She’d seen people come and go on the committee, some helping, some hindering, and had mostly let it wash around her. Lately, though, her patience had been growing thin. Thinner by the day.

Was that another symptom of old age that nobody mentioned? There was the public face of being old: the wrinkles, the deafness, the fading eyesight. The obsession with health problems and doctor’s visits. The sudden close relationship with one’s local pharmacist. What Lola was noticing lately, however, was a change in her own personality. It wasn’t fear of death looming closer, though heaven knew she didn’t want it to come any day soon. It was impatience mixed with exasperation. An urge to act, and act now! Quickly, before it was too late.

She wished sometimes she had friends in Clare who’d known her all her life, who would answer truthfully if she was to ask them whether she had always been this way. Jim had, of course, known her for the longest, for his whole life, literally, but she would never ask him. She didn’t need to. She knew he loved her, and he knew she loved him. Theirs was the simplest of relationships. She wouldn’t change a bone in his body, and she felt sure he wouldn’t change a bone in hers.

Geraldine was another matter. Geraldine would cheerfully have her deboned in the blink of an eye. She knew Geraldine saw her as the mother-in-law from hell, interfering, bossy, meddling, overbearing. A whole thesaurus entry, in fact. And very possibly, just perhaps, some of those words might be accurate descriptions of how things had been in the time they’d known each other. But Lola only ever behaved that way if she genuinely felt she had to, if she saw something drift, or a problem start to form that she could avert through action. Was that being overbearing or being proactive? Proactive, of course. Sensible. Practical. Otherwise what would happen around her? Chaos? Mayhem? Yes, Lola thought. Perhaps that had always been her main personality trait. She was a Fixer.

She had a dim memory of her teachers in Ireland scolding her, using words like incorrigible and unmanageable. And certainly, she and her husband had shared a fiery, if thankfully brief, relationship, before she had left him as quickly as possible, preferring the difficult life of a single mother to the even more difficult life of being shackled to a bully, a weakling, and a drunk. But if she hadn’t had that desire to change things, to make her life better, to make Jim’s life better, the best it could be, then where would she be today? Beaten down? Dead even, from exhaustion and sorrow? She’d had to act, and act now!

Hmm, perhaps this impatience trait wasn’t a sudden thing after all, she thought. More memories floated in, backing this new, slightly alarming theory. All right, perhaps it had been a tiny bit annoying for Geraldine sometimes to see her mother-in-law not so much “fixing” as “interfering in” some of their family situations. The ridiculous feud between Anna, Bett, and Carrie of a few years back, for example. But if it hadn’t been for Lola’s plotting and plan-hatching, the three girls might never have talked to each other again. How much more of a tragedy would that have been, if Anna had fallen ill while they were still estranged? Not that Geraldine had ever thanked her. Nor had Jim, but he was her son. He didn’t need to thank her.

The difference in this personality trait of hers now was the depth and scope of her feeling. Previously, she’d been happy to confine her fix-it-ing to her own family and perhaps one or two close friends. These days, she was feeling an urge to fix the whole town and everyone in it. The state. The country. The world. Was it normal? Was it a rush to get things done before the Grim Reaper came a-reaping?

She’d raised the subject with her friends and fellow charity shop ladies recently. They already had so much in common, and not just the fact they were all widows. She’d come at it in a circuitous way, asking whether they felt they had changed at all mentally as they got older. And not in a forgetful way that might hint at Alzheimer’s or anything similar. Purely from a personality point of view. A sudden urge to Get Things Done.

Margaret—a gray-haired sixty-seven-year-old—had given it some thought. No, she’d decided. If anything, she’d become more relaxed. “All the hard work’s done. I’m coasting down the hill now,” she’d said. Patricia, a beautifully groomed fifty-seven, had dismissed the idea immediately, too. In her opinion, her personality was now set in stone and she liked it that way. “I don’t like physically aging, but there’s no way I’d go back to all the angst-ridden thoughts of my thirties or forties. It’s a miracle I’ve got this far, when I think of all the things that could have happened to me. I might have been hit by a bus. Or fallen out of a plane. Even got run over by a train.”

“I hadn’t realized you’d been starring in silent movies,” Lola said.

“You know what I mean. People die in odd accidents every day. Electrocution by toaster. Drowning in paddling pools. Spider bites in toilets. I’ve made it this far. I plan to take it easy to the end now too. No point tempting fate or putting myself at risk.”

“You don’t have the urge to try something new? Use what time you have to do something, I don’t know, spectacular? Important? Life-changing?”

“Like what? Skydiving?” Patricia laughed. “Win a poker tournament? Of course. I just do it all online.”

The conversation had immediately turned to their various online activities. Lola was left vaguely dissatisfied. She’d wanted to be told that the way she was feeling was normal. But it seemed she was on her own.

She sighed now. Once upon a time, she might have brought up the subject with Bett. Of her three granddaughters, she’d always been closest to her middle one. But Bett had moved into that chaotic land known as Parenthood, and while Lola knew she would have tried hard, listened as best she could, perhaps even made suggestions, only a percentage of her would have been paying attention.

Lola knew from her own experience with Jim, and then the girls themselves, that one’s mind was never truly one’s own once children came along. Yes, on the surface, conversations took place, opinions were offered and listened to, but underneath it, at all times, there was a constant soundtrack of maternal worries, organizational lists being made, scenarios being played out. Parenthood was exhaustion mixed with elation, anxiety with contentment. It was why mothers naturally gravitated to other mothers. There was a shorthand language, a mutual understanding.

But if Lola did ask for Bett’s opinion, she knew Bett would encourage her. “I’m sure there’s nothing you couldn’t do if you set your mind to it, Lola.” The same advice Lola had spent many years giving her three granddaughters, and now, even Ellen and the other great-grandchildren too.

But what was there for people her age to set their minds to? Those who weren’t ready to play bowls, or be admitted into old folks’ homes? Who didn’t only want to reminisce, but also wanted to look forward, to plan, to hope? She ran through a mental roll call of famous people her age who were still active, still filled with energy. Clint Eastwood. The Queen. Rupert Murdoch. Marvelous. All she had to do was direct a few films, become a monarch, and run a global media empire and she’d sleep easy at night.

A sudden call from Margaret broke into her thoughts. “She’s here!”

Drat, Lola thought. She’d hoped they might have had a last-minute reprieve, a call to say her car had broken down or her drains needed fixing. Sadly not. “Coming,” Lola said, with a sigh.

“She” was Mrs. Kernaghan. Her first name was believed to be Barbara, but from her first appearance at the charity shop three months earlier, she’d made it clear she wasn’t to be treated as “one of them.” She’d introduced herself as Mrs. Kernaghan and Mrs. Kernaghan she’d remained at all subsequent fortnightly meetings.

Lola had had her measure from the moment Mrs. Kernaghan stepped into the shop. Lola had moved so many times herself over the years that she recognized the key types of new arrivals. The ones seeking a sea change. Those searching for a fresh start in a country town. The city ones making a show of bringing their expertise to their simple country cousins. What people forgot was that the town had got on perfectly well before their arrival and would continue to prosper after they left.

Mrs. Kernaghan was clearly a fierce combination of all the types. She also managed to get under Lola’s skin in the first minutes of their meeting. Their committee of five had been sitting around the table in the back of the shop. Patricia was unofficial chairwoman, introducing everyone to the new arrival. Mrs. Kernaghan acknowledged each name with a regal nod. When it was Lola’s turn, the nod changed into an even more condescending smile, as she made a show of taking in Lola’s outfit from head to toe. “Good heavens,” she said, eyebrows raised. “Are you on your way to a fancy dress party?”

Someone—Kay, perhaps—had gasped. Margaret leapt to her defense. “It’s not fancy dress. Lola always dresses up like that.”

She did. That day’s outfit hadn’t been out of the ordinary by any means, either—pink culottes, silver strappy sandals, an electric-blue tunic topped with a shimmering silver lamé bolero. A flower in her hair. Three strands of colored glass beads and large plastic daisy clip-on earrings. Lola had always enjoyed dressing the way she did. It cheered her up and she knew it cheered up others too. Amused them as well, she suspected. But she’d never been publicly criticized before.

Mrs. Kernaghan’s rude remark and mocking expression had instantly reminded Lola of other soul-sapping people she’d met in her life: bullies at school, her husband with his constant drip-drip-drip of low-level insults, government officials when she had been trying to find her feet as a single mother and a businesswoman. The sneerers. The pessimists. People throughout her life who’d told her again and again, in many different ways, “You can’t do that,” “That’s not how things are done,” “Who do you think you are?” She’d made a point of being polite and then completely ignoring them. That evening, and in subsequent meetings, she tried to do the same thing with Mrs. Kernaghan.

It proved difficult, unfortunately. Mrs. Kernaghan was soon a regular fixture at the shop, sweeping in unannounced, issuing decrees, and then sweeping out again. She prefaced everything with her business, fashion, and artistic credentials—for twenty-five years she and her late husband had, among their many other business interests, owned a number of high-end fashion boutiques in leafy, wealthy suburbs of Adelaide and Melbourne, as well as upmarket art galleries in Sydney and on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. If Lola, and her friends Patricia, Margaret, Joan, and Kay, happened to be rostered on during Mrs. Kernaghan’s visits, they would listen to her commands and then do nothing about them, except perhaps laugh and roll their eyes afterward. Some of the volunteers, however, found her impossible to ignore. There was a chaotic week when she bullied two of the more elderly volunteers into rearranging the shop’s contents by size, rather than color. She apparently helped with the first rack, before pleading an urgent appointment and only returning at the end of the day to ensure she was happy with their work.

“This place is still a mess and we’ve a long way to go, but it’s a start at least,” she’d apparently said.

If she was happy, no one else was—their customers in particular.

“Where’s the fun in going to your own size rack?” one said loudly.

“I already know I’m size sixteen and above,” another said, “I don’t need anyone else in the shop to see me at that rack.”

“It was so much more restful in here when it was arranged by colors,” yet another said, sighing.

Lola had worked until nine
P
.
M
. the following night, personally moving everything back. Two days after that, there was a showdown of sorts with Mrs. Kernaghan.

“It took me hours to organize it properly into sizes,” she said to Lola, voice raised and hands on hips. “I have more than twenty-five years’ retail experience and I know what I’m talking about.”

“It took our oldest volunteers,
not
you, those hours, and then it took me even more hours to return it to the way it was,” Lola said calmly. “Thank you for taking such a keen interest but we prefer it this way.”

“You’re all wrong, then.”

There was a peaceful fortnight when she stayed away from the shop, but Lola had heard from two impeccable sources (Kay and Margaret) that Mrs. Kernaghan had phoned to confirm she’d be attending today’s meeting.

Sure enough, it was Mrs. Kernaghan arriving now, all fuss and bustle. Lola greeted her cheerfully, then greeted the three other volunteers who came in behind her even more cheerfully and far more sincerely. Five minutes later, with tea poured and biscuits offered, the meeting got underway. The subject was a vote on whether the shop should participate in the Main Street Traders’ Christmas Window competition. A recent initiative, it was growing more popular each year. This year, for the first time, a prize was on offer: $500 for the best display.

“What do you think, everyone?” Kay asked. “Shall we give it a go?”

Mrs. Kernaghan answered first. “We hold a prime real estate position in the town. Of course we should.”

We? She’d only been in the town for three months. Lola dug her nails into the palms of her hands to stop herself from answering back. Hadn’t she just been thinking that she needed to tone down her personality? Was now the time to start? Even if sitting here saying nothing was a kind of torture?

Mrs. Kernaghan continued. “I’ve already given this a great deal of thought, based on my own extensive retail and artistic experience, and I’d like to propose a modern approach to our window display. I’ve done a preliminary sketch. Here, there’s a copy for each of you.”