Other People’s Diaries (8 page)

‘H
ello?' Alice spoke into the phone, a bundle of dirty sheets under one arm.

‘Hi – it's me.'

Alice felt a jolt of happiness. Andrew must have thought about what happened this morning and realised he'd been unfair. Maybe he was ringing to apologise.

‘Just a quick call,' his voice was brisk, businesslike. ‘I wanted to tell you that I'm probably not going to Jakarta this week.'

Right. Clearly no apology.

Alice gave him a moment to say more, knowing now he wouldn't.

‘Okay then,' she said finally. ‘Thanks for letting me know. I'll see you tonight.'

Alice replaced the phone on the handset and looked around her. Of course he hadn't apologised. Andrew never apologised.

She looked down at the urine-soaked sheets she had stripped from Alex's bed and released her grip. They flopped onto the polished floorboards and she stared at them for a moment.

This morning's fight seemed to have blown up out of nowhere.

Ellen had woken up grumpy and had proceeded to irritate Andrew and her brothers in quick succession.

Andrew had chosen to take his favourite position in times
of family crisis. Keeping his toes safely out of humdrum family issues, he pronounced a dour judgement on the children's and Alice's behaviour.

By the time Andrew had left for work, he and Alice had been silently fuming at each other, Alice for his total inability to provide any form of assistance, Andrew for the unacceptable way in which he believed his wife and children were acting.

It wasn't so much the arguments any more as the silences. Their disagreements went down well-worn paths. They'd look at each other and know what the other was thinking and what they were about to say. Then they'd look away, Alice to the sink full of dishes, Andrew to the pile of papers he was stuffing into his briefcase. Even without words, the air vibrated with their silent vitriol.

Alice had always assumed a long-term relationship would have its issues blown away by early fights. But she had been totally wrong. She knew couples who had been married for fifty years and were still bickering over the same things as when they first met. It was the same with her and Andrew. Child rearing had added a whole extra dimension to the arguments, but they were essentially over the same issues.

Two of Alice's grandmother's mantras were that the sun should never set on an argument and that husband and wife should never sleep in separate beds. During the many nights that Alice and Andrew seethed with spoken or silent words, Alice's only solace was the bed in the spare room. The clean white space around her allowed her the sleep which Andrew's proximity chased away.

She wondered sometimes if it was the truncated fights that were the problem. Maybe a full-throttle screaming match would blast the cobwebs from their relationship and let in a fresh breeze of change. But somehow it never seemed the right time to really thrash something out. Inevitably the children were around, they were both too tired, or it seemed churlish to ruin what otherwise was a rare moment of peace. So things continued as they were.

Alice walked through to the study. Sitting on the desk were three large envelopes, their tops ragged where she'd opened them earlier.

For some reason Alice had put their post-office box address
on the red folders. She realised that was rather ridiculous, given that if anything she was the one acting suspiciously.

It was not normal behaviour to gather a group of perfect strangers, promising to fix their lives for them.

‘Physician heal thyself …' The words jumped into Alice's head. There was no point in dwelling on the fact that she couldn't even sort her own life out. That's what this whole idea was about – figuring out what was important and getting rid of the crap. She was trying. That had to be enough for now.

Andrew's company sold natural health remedies and he spent a lot of time at the factories in Asia which produced them. In the eighties anything other than vitamin C was considered the province of hippies. The early nineties had seen natural medicines become mainstream, but the new millennium had brought a boom, which had exceeded even Andrew's expectations.

Andrew liked to tell people he was the world's worst plumber. He'd left Australia the day after he finished his apprenticeship and ended up working in a bar in London. While there he'd picked up both Alice and his idea for a business. Two years later he had returned to Brisbane, with Alice following him. They'd started a small company, both of them trailing around the suburbs trying to convince health food stores and chemists to stock their products. One of the smaller chemist chains began buying from them and they bought a fax machine in celebration. Six months later they started their own brand, sticking on the labels and packaging them up themselves.

Alice had returned to England when her grandmother was ill, living with her for the three months before her death. She'd begun writing her book as soon as she returned. Andrew had hired staff and the business soon bore no resemblance to the one born from a business plan drafted over two bottles of red wine. Now there was an office, a warehouse near the airport and twenty employees. But they rarely discussed the business these days and Alice's involvement was limited to organising the annual Christmas party.

The thing about having three children and a business was that you didn't have to discuss much at all.

For the last twelve years the children had absorbed most of Alice's energy. When they were very young Andrew had rarely been home before they went to bed. She'd clean the kitchen and then summon the energy to cook a second meal for the two of them. They'd talk about their day. Alice would try to dredge some nugget of interest from a day like any other, while Andrew said very little, clearly craving silence after hours of dealing with customers and suppliers.

Weekends were usually better. Andrew adored Ellen and would kick balls with the boys for hours. The evenings would mean a quiet meal and a bottle of wine, or occasionally a night with friends.

Alice had spent a long time trying to figure out when the special connection between them had disappeared. The sense that Andrew was the person who knew her better than anyone and cared the most.

They were a good partnership – the division of responsibility was clear, each normally respectful of the other's role. Their mutual love for the children bound them together and they laughed or worried together about whatever was going on with them. But they no longer knew what the other was feeling. Alice would often recognise signs of Andrew's hidden irritation or anger, but she no longer cared enough to try to fix what was wrong. Andrew would ask after Alice's day, but not listen to her reply.

A month earlier Alice had mentioned to Andrew that she had thought about writing again. He'd been reading the sports section of the weekend newspaper.

‘That's good, sweetheart,' he'd murmured, not even looking at her.

Alice had left the room, shut herself in the bathroom and cried. Then she'd splashed water on her face, walked back into the kitchen and scribbled a first draft of the Red Folder questionnaire.

The night at the bar had been during one of Andrew's business trips. Alice had always intended to tell him what she was doing, but the time had never been right before he'd left. She wasn't sure whether it was his opposition or indifference
which would have hurt the most. Now it seemed too late to tell him.

Alice twisted her hair loosely onto her head and looped it in place with an elastic band.

She'd become so used to Andrew's frequent travelling that she now found it far more relaxing being alone. When he was home, she felt like she had to make an effort. She couldn't skip dinner, or eat scrambled eggs on toast every night for a week.

Alice had left it until this morning, over a week since the night in the bar, to check the post-office box. She'd prepared herself to receive nothing. But amongst the white envelopes with cellophane windows had been three bulky envelopes addressed by hand.

Claire, Kerry and Rebecca.

Alice was astonished at the frankness of their answers. At least she assumed they were being frank … Maybe they were just taking her for a ride, planning on having a good laugh at her emails.

Somehow though, she didn't think so. Under the heading
Worries and Fears
, Claire had listed ten items. A lot of her fears were pretty common, such as public speaking and sharks, but some were much more intimate, such as her fear of her husband leaving her for someone more interesting.

But it was Rebecca and Kerry who had surprised her the most.

Rebecca had sat in the bar the entire time Alice had been talking, looking seriously scary and contemptuous of the whole idea. Alice had been sure she'd never hear from her again.

Even Rebecca's scrawled handwriting gave the impression she had a million other things she needed to be doing.

What could she possibly offer this woman?

And yet Alice had been surprised by some of Rebecca's answers. Under the heading
What do you see as your greatest success?
, she'd written, ‘Still having a great sex life despite the chaos that is my world'. Under
Greatest Failures
was, ‘Raising my sixteen year old daughter'. Asked to name a weakness she'd supplied, ‘Having lost the ability to relax'.

Sure they were throwaway lines, written without much
thought, but still, there was an honesty there she hadn't expected.

Alice had been astounded when she'd seen Kerry's name scrawled on the back of one of the envelopes. Apart from being male, he was vibrant and outgoing, seemingly having no need for what she was suggesting.

After reading his questionnaire, though, she wasn't so surprised. Kerry had been divorced for two years and yet references to his ex-wife and daughter were dotted throughout what he'd written.

Alice looked at the pile of books beside her. Pulled at random from the spirituality and self-help sections of the local library, they weren't providing the inspiration she had hoped for. She opened a pocket-sized one with a teal cover entitled
Road Map to Happiness
.

‘Smile at a stranger,' it exhorted. ‘Pretend today is the last day of your life.'

She dropped the book on the sofa. If she emailed that to anyone, this project would be over before it had started and there wouldn't even be one diary entry.

After Alice had decided that she would ask the members of the group to write their diaries online, she'd remembered oldtimes.com. The website had been her idea. Online sales, based more on the appeal of old-fashioned remedies than alternative medicines. It had been her last foray into the business just before Alex was born.

It hadn't worked.

Mainly because she had lost focus amongst the chaos of three small children. Andrew had never really been interested and it had been quietly forgotten about. Without much hope Alice had pulled up the site, expecting the domain registration to have been dropped years ago. But it was still there and thankfully she'd used her own name as the password to access the site administration. Even she couldn't forget that.

After dropping the kids at school one morning, she'd sat down with some internet books from the library. Her plan had been to redesign the site, to create something inspirational for the group.
Five hours later she'd still been sitting there. After almost destroying the entire site, she'd abandoned any attempt to do something major. Finally she'd figured out a way to amend the text which appeared on a password-secured page. If she gave the password to everyone, they should be able to post their diary entries there. It was the best she could do.

Now Alice stood up and walked across to the bookshelf, pulling out a copy of
Her Life, My Life
. She stopped, looking at the green vinyl tape case beside it.

During Edith's final illness, Alice had convinced her to make some tapes recording her memories. Alice had listened to them while she had been writing
Her Life, My Life
but had then put them away once she'd finished the manuscript. She hadn't listened to them in years.

It was extraordinary how quickly technology changed. They didn't even have a tape player in the house any more. Stumped momentarily, Alice remembered an old walkman of Ellen's she'd noticed discarded in a toy box.

It had no batteries so she pulled a newish set out of a remote-control car lying in the corner.

Alice chose a tape at random, its spool halfway wound through. Finally, she sat back at her desk, the familiar voice filling her ears.

‘I didn't really meet your grandfather at the pictures you know – that was just a story we made up for the family.'
Even on the old tape recording Alice could hear the smile in her grandmother's voice.

‘He stole my bike.'

There was a silence as the spools went around.

‘My father owned a billiards hall near Victoria Station – back before they had pool tables in hotels. I had been working there for a couple of months and then one day your grandfather came in. I used to tell him I'd been watching him but I hadn't – I just told him that to make him feel good.'