Spinning Around (5 page)

In other words, he did everything right. He even apologised, afterwards, for not cutting his hair. As for the tatts, he informed me that he had been drunk when the bet was made with his brother's friends . . . He'd won seven hundred dollars all up, having those tatts done. But it hadn't been a smart thing to do; they didn't usually make a good impression.

‘Next time,' he promised, ‘I'll get some new clothes. And a shirt—a proper one. Maybe some chinos.' Like a tourist from another planet, he had taken note of the outfits worn by Danielle's friends. ‘Maybe you can help me,' Matt added. ‘Maybe you can point me in the right direction, so next time I visit the ancestral home, I won't feel like something the cat dragged in.'

He was so sweet. When I heard him wondering aloud if my mother would approve of paisley prints, I realised suddenly that he was The One. There was no doubt about it. Only a man with a truly lovely nature would have breezed through that party, ignoring snubs and finding things to admire. He wasn't a moron; he knew that his appearance had caused some consternation. But with his generosity of spirit, he didn't realise that my parents were hoping desperately that he never
would
turn up again.

They couldn't fool me, though. I knew the signs. When my mother pressed a doggie bag of sponge cake on him before he left, it was a dead giveaway.

I was determined, however, to follow my heart. I was grown up and reasonably intelligent—I knew what was good for me. Matt thought I was wonderful. He was entranced by the fact that I could put up my hair without consulting a mirror. He got a kick out of the way I would cry at practically anything in a movie. (Perhaps he liked comforting me afterwards.) He was flattered by my interest in Italian culture—though, he said, he couldn't help me out much, since the closest thing his family ever got to culture was the old Botticelli calendar hanging in his mother's kitchen.

As for me, I adored every square centimetre of that man. I felt like a groupie. We would have such great laughs, together—that's something I remember
very
well, the way we heaved with laughter in the most peculiar places. At a municipal waste depot, once, after getting rid of the most disgusting couch in the world, Matt had looked around and declared, in a voice heavily larded with cockney: ‘Wot a bleedin' dump'. In a monumental traffic jam, when somebody had finally got out of their car and stepped behind a tree to piss, I had hummed the first few bars of ‘Everybody Hurts'; we were already almost hysterical after the endless wait, and that pushed us right over the edge. We had the same sense of humour. We both loved Italian food. We shared identical views when it came to films, books and television— though Matt had a taste for football which I couldn't share, and my admiration for certain musical performers left him cold. But his giggle filled me with rapture, and the sight of my feet in high heels drove him crazy. We had similar memories of kids' TV shows and past fashion fads. Our reactions to things like elections, sashimi and the nocturnal house at Taronga Zoo were so close that I started talking about soul mates—just to annoy him. He's got a fairly low tolerance for New Age lingo.

In the end, I forced my parents to acknowledge him. They didn't have a choice; we took them to lunch, we signed both our names on birthday cards, and I brought him along with me at Christmas. After a while, Mum and Dad came to realise how sweet he was. They came to recognise his good points. He was so lavish in his praise of me, and so frank in his confessions of a straitened childhood, that they couldn't help but be disarmed. Nevertheless, they still thought him unsuitable. Not because of his Italian heritage. Not because he had never gone to university. Not even because he refused to ‘waste money' on a bridge, to fill the gap in his mouth.

No—my parents simply thought that the difference in our respective backgrounds would be difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile. They didn't believe that our mutual delight in each other's company was a firm enough foundation on which to build a life together. Not that they said as much. They didn't have to; I could read the vibes. Anyway, they felt guilty about their opinions, because Matt was so nice. Only a complete arsehole could have failed to recognise his charm, and my parents aren't arseholes. They're a bit constipated, but they're not arseholes. No matter what I might have thought before the wedding.

In some ways, that wedding went very well. To begin with, Matt had just bagged himself a terrific job with the ABC: a sound engineer's job. The pay wasn't exactly stunning, but the benefits were good. What's more, the wedding preparations went off without a hitch. God, it was a beautiful wedding. Mum and Dad didn't stint, bless their hearts, so we were able to afford a seaside resort, with pool. The ceremony took place beside said pool, in front of a kind of classical portico thing that was wrapped around with garlands. I wore a Jean Fox Thai silk gown, and carried Madonna lilies. Danielle and Miriam, my bridesmaids, were dressed in fitted suits, very elegant, with saucy matching hats. There were seventy guests, most of them Matt's family—who seemed a bit taken aback by the delicate portions of lobster and quail served up to them for dinner (though the extensive dessert buffet made up for the nouvelle cuisine mains). A string quartet played until the sun went down, at which point glowing Chinese lanterns were lit, and a friend of Matt's took over the music selection.

I remember dancing with Matt, who looked almost indecently sexy in his tux. His brothers looked terrific too, all kitted out. There were toasts to the married couple's future happiness, and my sister burst into tears as she hugged me, smearing her mascara all over my neck. Even the cake was a triumph, with its feathery sugar flowers and silk ribbon. Poor Mum snapped off a high heel in a pool grating, and Matt's Nonna couldn't make the trip, but on the whole it was a fairytale event.

There was just one bad moment, and that didn't occur at the wedding. That happened the day before. I was frantically counting place cards, nagging florists, and directing pre-nuptial traffic when Mum decided to drop a hint. She murmured something about Matt's level of ‘commitment', and urged me to ‘think carefully' because I was about to make a ‘big decision'.

‘You mustn't worry about us, dear,' she said. ‘We don't mind how much money we pay—or lose—as long as we can be sure that you're happy.'

You can imagine how well that went down with me. I was furious. Of course I didn't tell Matt, but I stewed over it for months. Months and months. I castigated my parents privately, over and over again, for their unbearable North Shore conservatism, their stuffy prejudice, their
boorishness.

But I've been lying here thinking: what if they were right after all?

Matt came home at ten tonight. I was propped up in bed with a book, but I hadn't been reading; I'd been thinking. Thinking and thinking. I heard him come around the back (so as not to wake the children), fall over a pile of builder's rubbish, swear horribly, and slam into the kitchen. He usually eats dinner at work, but sometimes he has a plate of ice-cream or a glass of port in front of the TV before coming to bed.

Tonight, though, he was too tired even for that. He looked exhausted. Dark circles under his eyes, grey hairs glinting in his stubble. He staggered into the bedroom and threw himself onto the bed.

‘Augh,' he moaned, as the mattress bounced gently under his weight.

I didn't say anything, except ‘Hello'. I was watching him, you see, trying to work out if he'd changed. He didn't give the impression of someone nursing a salacious secret. He didn't seem particularly guilty and careworn, either—at least, not more than usual. I should explain that Matt has a bit of a CD addiction. He can't go a week without buying one, though I've pointed out several times that our budget won't stretch to it any more. So now he sometimes buys them surreptitiously, and hides them around the house like empty bottles of gin. I can always tell he's done it, even before I find them; he has a sheepish look that I can pick a mile off. Half the time, all I have to do is lift an eyebrow at him and he'll confess.

So how, I thought, could he be having an affair? How could he possibly keep such a big secret to himself?

‘What a fuckin' awful day,' he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘God.'

‘Busy?'

‘Flat out. We had inserts coming in at the last possible moment. What about you?'

‘Messy.'

‘Did the builders show up?'

‘No.'

‘For God's sake.'

‘You haven't seen that little blue horse of Emily's, have you?' I was going through the motions, my heart pounding, as I summoned up the courage to ask the real question. The important question. ‘I spent at least half an hour, this morning, looking for the damn thing . . . I don't know. She must have lost it.'

Matt took his hands away from his eyes, and blinked at the ceiling.

‘What blue horse?' he asked.

‘The one with the pink tail. About this big. Sort of squishy.'

‘Doesn't ring a bell.'

‘No. Well.' It didn't surprise me. ‘God knows what she's done with it.'

‘It's probably been given a Mafia burial. It's probably part of that cement slab out back.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Or that dog next door ate it.' Matt groaned again, rolled over, and sat up. He began to take off his shirt.

Staring at his broad, white back, I said, ‘So how was lunch?'

‘Huh?'

‘With Ray? How was it?'

I could feel the pulse in my throat as I waited for a response. When it finally came, I couldn't believe my ears.

‘Okay,' Matt said. ‘It was good.'

‘So what's the latest?' I'm amazed that I could even talk coherently. It was as if a heavy stone had landed on my gut. ‘Any new girlfriends I should know about?'

Normally, Matt can't spend half an hour in Ray's company without picking up at least two really good stories. When they worked together, he was always coming home with tales about what Ray had said in a planning meeting, or what Ray had done with a ‘grab of John Howard actuality'. (Don't ask me what the lingo means—I've never been able to sort it out.) Even after Ray's move to post-production, his infrequent lunchtime meetings with Matt always resulted in something worth passing on. Especially since Ray was always getting involved with the most monstrous women.

Not this time, however.

‘No new girlfriends,' said Matt.

‘No funny stories?'

‘Not really.' His shoes hit the floor. Thud, thud. ‘He sent me a funny e-mail though. This afternoon. I've got it in my bag. Hang on while I get it, okay? It's off the Internet.'

Was he trying to escape? I don't know. I don't know anything. I'm lying here, and he's asleep beside me, now, and I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do.

Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow morning, and realise that this has all been nothing but a nightmare.

Please God.

CHAPTER TWO

Saturday

You won't believe this, but I didn't say a word to Matthew about the Girl With Purple Hair today.

Not that I had much of a chance, mind you. He works a full day shift on Saturdays—nine to five, more or less— so he was gone pretty early this morning. I was still shuffling around in my most revolting dressing-gown, mashing banana, while he was gathering up his keys and his wallet, smelling of aftershave. Give him his due, though, he did change Jonah's nappy.
And
wipe the seat of the highchair. He even examined Emily's mozzie bite, with grave attention, before pronouncing it ‘very nasty' though not life-threatening.

‘But it's itchy!' Emily wailed.

‘I know. Poor Em.'

‘I wanna bandaid!'

‘What's the magic word?'

‘Please!'

‘Do you want a Wiggles bandaid or a Winnie-the-Pooh bandaid?'

‘Ummm . . .'

‘What about Winnie the Pooh?'

‘No, Wiggles!'

‘This one?'

‘No, Dorothy!'

‘This one?'

‘No, the
other
Dorothy!'

‘I don't think there
is
another Dorothy, Em.'

‘You're thinking about the dinosaur bandaids, sweetie.'

‘I wanna dinosaur bandaid!'

Somehow it didn't seem like the right moment to raise the subject of the Girl With Purple Hair.

It wasn't the right moment this evening, either. Oh lord— why not admit it? I'm scared. I'm scared to ask him. Sure, a simple question might have cleared up the whole problem. But what if it hadn't? What if he had said, ‘Yes, I've found my soul mate?' What if he had
walked out of the house for good
, like the husband of a girl I know at work? This poor girl, her name's Jenny, and she found out that her husband had been seeing someone else for
three years
. So she confronted him with the evidence (a telephone bill for a mobile that she'd never even known about) and he calmly packed his bags and left. Just like that. And she had an eleven-month-old baby, at the time.

You think to yourself: how could that happen? It couldn't happen to me. Jenny must have married a prick. She must be a bit slow, not to have worked it out. Not to have spotted the signs.

But it can happen. It does happen. And I don't
want
it to happen, that's the thing. If it's true—and it probably isn't—but if it's true that Matt's seeing someone else, and I ask him about it, what if I'm opening a huge can of worms? What if he wants a divorce? What if he
asks for a divorce
? I don't know what I'd do. I think I'd have a nervous breakdown. I'm practically having a nervous breakdown just thinking about it—about what it would do to Emily, for a start. She wouldn't understand. Jonah wouldn't understand. Surely Matt would never do something like that to the kids? He might do it to me, but not to them. He must know it would break their hearts. How could he bear it, knowing that Emily was falling asleep every night with tears on her cheeks?
I
couldn't.