Truly Madly Guilty (3 page)

‘I don’t know what you want me to say about that, Erika,’ said Oliver worriedly. He thought there was an actual correct response. An answer at the back of the book. He thought there was a secret set of relationship rules that she must know, because she was the woman, and she was deliberately withholding them. ‘Just … will you talk to Clementine?’ he said.

‘I’ll talk to Clementine,’ said Erika. ‘See you tonight.’

She turned her phone to silent and put it in her bag, at her feet. The taxi driver turned up the radio. He must have given up on asking her accounting advice now, probably thinking that judging from her personal life, her professional advice couldn’t be trusted.

Erika thought of Clementine, who would be finishing up her little speech at the library by now, presumably to polite applause from her audience. There would be no ‘bravos!’, no standing ovations, no bouquets backstage.

Poor Clementine, feeling she had to virtually
abase
herself in this way.

Oliver was right: the decision to go to the barbeque was of no relevance. It was a sunk cost. She put her head back against the seat, closed her eyes and remembered a silver car driving towards her, surrounded by a swirling funnel of autumn leaves.

chapter three

The day of the barbeque

Erika drove into her cul-de-sac and was greeted by a strange, almost beautiful sight: someone was finally driving the silver BMW that had been parked outside the Richardsons’ house for the last six months, and whoever was driving hadn’t bothered to brush away the layer of red and gold autumn leaves that had accumulated on the car’s bonnet and roof, so that as they drove (much too fast for a residential area) a whirling vortex of leaves was created, as if the car were being followed by a mini tornado.

As the leaves cleared, Erika saw her next-door neighbour, Vid, standing at the end of his driveway, watching the car drive away, while a single ray of sunlight bounced off his sunglasses, like the shimmer of a camera flash.

Erika braked next to him, opening her passenger-side window at the same time.

‘Good morning,’ she called out. ‘Someone finally moved that car!’

‘Yes, they must have finished their drug dealing, what do you reckon?’ Vid leaned down towards the car, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head of luxuriant grey hair. ‘Or maybe it was the Mafia, you know?’

‘Ha ha!’ Erika laughed unconvincingly because Vid looked kind of like a successful gangster himself.

‘It’s a cracker of a day, you know. Look! Am I right?!’ Vid made a satisfied gesture at the sky, as if he’d personally purchased the day and paid a premium price for it, and got the quality product he deserved.

‘It is a beautiful day,’ said Erika. ‘You off for a walk?’

Vid reacted with faint disgust to this suggestion.

‘Walk? Me? No.’ He indicated a lit cigarette between his fingers and the rolled-up, plastic-wrapped Sunday paper in the other hand. ‘I just came down to collect my paper, you know.’

Erika reminded herself not to count the number of times Vid said ‘you know’. Recording someone’s conversational tic bordered on obsessive-compulsive. (Vid’s current record: eleven times in a two-minute diatribe about the removal of the smoked pancetta pizza from the local pizzeria’s menu. Vid could not believe it, he just could not believe it, you know. The ‘you knows’ came thick and fast when he got excited.)

Erika was very aware that some of her behaviours could potentially be classified as obsessive-compulsive. ‘I wouldn’t get too caught up with labels, Erika,’ her psychologist had said with the constipated smile she tended to give when Erika ‘self-diagnosed’. (Erika had taken out a subscription to
Psychology Today
when she started therapy, just to educate herself a little about the process, and it was all so fascinating she’d recently begun working her way through the first-year reading list for a psychological and behavioural sciences undergraduate degree at Cambridge. Just for interest, she’d told her psychologist, who didn’t look threatened by this, but didn’t look exactly thrilled by it either.)

‘Bloody revhead kid hoons up the street and throws it from his car like he’s throwing a grenade in bloody Syria, you know.’ Vid made a grenade-throwing gesture with the rolled-up paper. ‘So what are you up to? Been grocery shopping?’

He looked at the little collection of plastic bags on Erika’s passenger seat, and drew deeply on his cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth.

‘Not exactly grocery shopping, just some, um, bits and bobs I needed.’

‘Bits and bobs,’ repeated Vid, trying out the phrase as if he’d never heard it before. Maybe he hadn’t. He looked at Erika in that searching, almost disappointed way he had, as if he’d been hoping for something more from her.

‘Yes. For afternoon tea. We’ve got Clementine and Sam coming over later for afternoon tea, with their little girls. My friends, Clementine and Sam? You met them at my place?’ She knew perfectly well that Vid remembered them. She was giving him Clementine to make herself more interesting. That’s all she had to offer Vid: Clementine.

Vid’s face lit up instantly.

‘Your friend, the cellist!’ said Vid delightedly. He virtually smacked his lips on the word ‘cellist’. ‘And her husband. Tone-deaf! What a waste, eh?’

‘Well, he likes to say he’s tone-deaf,’ said Erika. ‘I think technically he’s –’

‘Top bloke! He was a, what do you call it, a
marketing manager
for an
F-M-C-G company
and that stands for a fast-moving … don’t tell me, don’t tell me … a
fast-moving consumer good
. Whatever the hell that means. But how’s that? Good memory, eh? I’ve got a mind like a steel trap, that’s what I tell my wife.’

‘Well, he’s actually changed jobs, now he’s at an energy drink company.’

‘What? Energy drinks? Drinks that give you energy? Anyway, Sam and Clementine, they’re good people, great people, you know! You should all come over to our place, for a barbeque, you know! Yes, we’ll do a barbeque! Enjoy this amazing weather, you know! I insist. You must!’

‘Oh,’ said Erika. ‘It’s nice of you to offer.’ She should say no. She was perfectly capable of saying no. She had no problem saying no to people; in fact, she took pride in her ability to refuse, and Oliver wouldn’t want her to change the plans for today. It was too important. Today was crucial. Today was potentially life-changing.

‘I’ll roast a pig on the spit! The Slovenian way. Well, it’s not really the Slovenian way, it’s my way, but it’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted before. Your friend. Clementine. I remember. She’s a foodie, you know. Like me.’ He patted his stomach.

‘Well,’ said Erika. She looked again at the plastic bags on her passenger seat. All the way home from the shops she’d kept glancing over at her purchases, worried that she’d somehow not got it quite right. She should have bought more. What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she bought a
feast
?

Also the crackers she’d chosen had sesame seeds on them, and there was some significance to sesame seeds. Did Clementine love sesame seeds or hate them?

‘What do you say?’ said Vid. ‘Tiffany would love to see you.’

‘Would she?’ said Erika. Most wives wouldn’t appreciate an unplanned barbeque, but Vid’s wife did appear to be almost as sociable as Vid. Erika thought of the first time she’d introduced her closest friends to her extroverted next-door neighbours, when she and Oliver had hosted Christmas drinks at their place last year in a fit of mutual ‘let’s pretend we’re the sort of people who entertain and enjoy it’ madness. She and Oliver had both hated every moment. Entertaining was always fraught for Erika, because she had no experience of it, and because part of her would always believe that visitors were to be feared and despised.

‘And they’ve got two little girls, right?’ continued Vid. ‘Our Dakota would love to play with them.’

‘Yes. Although, remember, they’re much younger than Dakota.’

‘Even better! Dakota loves playing with little girls, you know, pretending she’s the big sister, you know. Plaiting their hair, painting their nails, you know, fun for all of them!’

Erika ran her hands around the steering wheel. She looked at her house. The low hedge lining the path to the front door was freshly trimmed with perfect, startling symmetry. The blinds were open. The windows were clean and streak-free. Nothing to hide. From the street you could see their red Veronese table lamp. That’s all.
Only
the lamp. An exquisite lamp. Just seeing that lamp from the street when she drove home gave Erika a sense of pride and peace. Oliver was inside now vacuuming. Erika had vacuumed yesterday, so it was overkill. Excessive vacuuming. Embarrassing.

When Erika first left home, one of the many procedural things that worried her about domestic life was trying to work out how often normal people vacuumed. It was Clementine’s mother who’d given her a definitive answer: Once a week, Erika, every Sunday afternoon, for example. You pick a regular time that suits you, make it a habit. Erika had religiously followed Pam’s rules for living, whereas Clementine wilfully ignored them. ‘Sam and I always forget that vacuuming is even a
thing
,’ she’d once told Erika. ‘We always feel better, though, once it’s done and then we say: Let’s vacuum more often! It’s kind of like when we remember to have sex.’

Erika had been astonished, both by the vacuuming and the sex. She knew that she and Oliver were more formal with each other in public than other couples, they didn’t really tease each other (they liked things to be clear, not open to misinterpretation) but gosh, they’d never
forget to have sex
.

A vacuumed house wasn’t going to make a difference to the outcome of today’s meeting, any more than sesame seeds were.

‘Pig on the spit, eh?’ said Erika to Vid. She put her head on one side, coquettishly, the way Clementine would in a situation like this. She sometimes borrowed Clementine’s mannerisms for herself, although only when Clementine wasn’t there, in case they were recognised. ‘You mean to say you’ve got a spare pig just lying around waiting to be roasted?’

Vid grinned, pleased with her, winked and pointed his cigarette at her. The smoke drifted into the car, bringing in another world. ‘Don’t you worry about that, Erika.’ He put the emphasis on the second syllable. Er
ik
a. It made her name sound more exotic. ‘We’ll get it all sorted, you know. What time is your cellist friend coming over? Two? Three?’

‘Three,’ said Erika. She was already regretting the coquettishness. Oh, God. What had she done?

She looked past Vid and saw Harry, the old man who lived alone on the other side of Vid, in his front yard, standing next to his camellia bush with a pair of garden shears. Their eyes met, and she raised her hand to wave, but he immediately looked away and wandered off out of sight into the corner of the garden.

‘Our mate Harry lurking about?’ said Vid, without turning around.

‘Yes,’ said Erika. ‘He’s gone now.’

‘So three o’clock then?’ said Vid. He gave the side of her car a decisive rap with his knuckles. ‘We’ll see you then?’

‘All right,’ said Erika weakly.

She watched Oliver open their front door and step onto the front porch with a bag of rubbish. He was going to be furious with her.

‘Perfect. Outstanding!’ Vid straightened from the car and caught sight of Oliver, who smiled and waved.

‘Mate!’ bellowed Vid. ‘We’ll see you later today! Barbeque at our place!’

Oliver’s smile disappeared.

chapter four

Clementine drove out of the library car park in a mild panic, one hand on the steering wheel, the other fiddling with her demister because her windscreen had suddenly, cruelly, fogged over so that it was virtually opaque in places. She was twenty minutes later leaving than she’d planned to be.

After she’d finished her talk, to the usual hesitant, muted applause as if people weren’t sure if it was quite appropriate to clap, she’d kept getting caught in conversation as she tried to reach the door (so close but yet so far) through the small but impenetrable group of people now tucking into their complimentary, home-made morning tea. One woman wanted to hug her and pat her cheek. A man, who she later noticed had a barcode tattooed on the back of his neck, was keen to hear her thoughts on the council plans for the swimming pool redevelopment and didn’t seem to believe her when she said she wasn’t local and therefore really couldn’t comment. A tiny white-haired lady wanted her to try a piece of carrot cake wrapped in a pink paper napkin.

She ate the carrot cake. It was very good carrot cake. So there was that.

The windscreen cleared like a small gift and she turned left out of the car park, because left was always her default turn when she had no idea where she was going.

‘Start talking,’ she said to her GPS. ‘You’ve got one job. Do it.’

She needed the GPS to direct her home fast so she could pick up her cello, before rushing over to her friend Ainsley’s place, where she was going to play her pieces in front of Ainsley and her husband Hu. The audition was in two weeks’ time. ‘So you’re still going for this job?’ her mother had said last week, in a tone of surprise and possibly judgement, but Clementine heard judgement everywhere these days, so she might have imagined it.

‘Yes, I’m still going to audition,’ she’d said coldly, and her mother had said nothing further.

She drove slowly, waiting for instructions, but her GPS was silent, mulling things over.

‘Are you going to tell me where to go?’ she asked it.

Apparently not. She got to a set of lights and turned left. She couldn’t just
keep
turning left, because otherwise she’d be turning in a circle. Wouldn’t she? Once she would have gone home and told Sam about this and he would have laughed and teased and sympathised and offered to buy her a new GPS.

‘I hate you,’ Clementine told the silent GPS. ‘I hate and despise you.’

The GPS ignored her and Clementine peered out the window through the rain, looking for a sign. She could feel the beginnings of a headache because she was frowning so hard.

She shouldn’t be here, driving all the way to the other side of Sydney in the rain in this flat, grey, unfamiliar suburb. She should have been at home, practising. That’s what she
would
have been doing.

Wherever she went, whatever she did, part of her mind was always imagining a hypothetical life running parallel to her actual one, a life where, when Erika rang up and said, ‘Vid has invited us to a barbeque,’ Clementine answered, ‘No, thank you.’ Three simple words. Vid wouldn’t have cared. He barely knew them.

It was not Vid at the symphony last night. It was her mind playing cruel tricks, placing that big head smack-bang in the middle of a sea of faces.

At least she’d been prepared to see Erika today in the audience, although her stomach had still lurched when she’d first caught sight of her, sitting so rigidly in the back row, like she was at a funeral, a flicker of a smile when she’d caught Clementine’s eye. Why had she asked to come? It was weird. Did she think it was like seeing Clementine perform? Even if she did think that, it was still out of character for Erika to take time out of her workday to drive all the way out here from North Sydney to hear Clementine share a story she already knew. And then she’d got up and left halfway through! She’d texted to say there was a problem at work, but that seemed unlikely. Surely there was no accounting problem that couldn’t wait twenty minutes.

It had been a relief when she left. It had been disconcerting trying to speak with that small intense face pulling her attention like a magnet. At one point the irrelevant, distracting thought had crossed her mind that Erika’s fair hair was cut in an identical style to Clementine’s mother’s. A no-nonsense symmetrical shoulder-length style with a long fringe cut dead straight just above the eyebrows. Erika idolised Clementine’s mother. It was either a deliberate or a subconscious imitation, but surely not a coincidence.

She saw a sign pointing towards the city and quickly changed lanes just as the GPS woke up and directed her to ‘turn right ahead’ in a plummy female English accent.

‘Yes, I worked it out myself, thanks anyway,’ she said.

The rain started again and she flicked on the wipers.

A piece of rubber on one of the wipers had made its way free and on every third swipe it made a high-pitched screech, like a door slowly opening in a horror movie.

Scre-eech. Two. Three. Scre-eech. Two. Three.
It made her think of zombies in a lumbering waltz.

She would call Erika today. Or tomorrow morning. Erika was owed an answer. Enough time had passed. There was only one answer, of course, but Clementine had been waiting for the appropriate time.

Don’t think about that now. Think only about the audition. She needed to
compartmentalise
,
as the Facebook articles suggested. Men were supposedly good at compartmentalising; they gave their full attention to whatever they were doing, although in fact Sam had never had a problem ‘multi-tasking’. He could make a risotto while unpacking the dishwasher and simultaneously playing some good-for-their-brains game with the girls.
Clementine
was the one who wandered off, picked up her cello and then forgot she had something in the oven.
She
was the one who had once (mortifyingly) forgotten to pick Holly up from a birthday party, something Sam would never do. ‘Your mother walks around in a permanent daze,’ Sam used to say to the girls, but he said it fondly, or she thought he had. Maybe she’d imagined the fondness. She could no longer be sure what anyone truly thought of her: Her mother. Her husband. Her friend. Anything seemed possible.

She thought again of her mother’s comment: ‘So you’re still going for this job?’ She’d never put in this many practice hours for an audition, even before the children were born. All that self-indulgent whining she used to do
: I’m a working mother with two small children! Woe is me! There just aren’t enough hours in my day!
In fact there were plenty more hours in the day if you just slept less. Now she went to bed at midnight instead of ten pm, and got up at five instead of seven.

Living on less sleep gave her a not unpleasant, mildly sedated feeling. She felt detached from all aspects of her life. She had no time anymore to
feel
. All that time she used to waste
feeling
, and
analysing her feelings, as if they were a matter of national significance.
Clementine feels extremely nervous about her upcoming audition! Clementine doesn’t know if she’s good enough.
Well, hooly-dooly, stop the presses, let’s research audition nerves, let’s talk earnestly with musician friends, let’s get constant reassurance.

Stop it. The endless self-mockery of the person she used to be was not especially productive either. Spend your time focusing on questions of technique. She searched her mind for a distracting technical problem – for example, the fingering for the opening arpeggio of the Beethoven. She kept changing her mind. The trickier option could pay off with a better musical result, but the risk was that she’d make a mistake when she was under pressure.

Was that a traffic jam ahead? She must not be late. Her friends were giving up their time to do this for her. There was nothing in it for them. Pure altruism. She looked at the stopped traffic, and once again she was in Tiffany’s car, trapped in a sea of red brakelights, the seatbelt like a restraint pulled tight against her neck.

The traffic kept moving. It was fine. She heard herself exhale, although she hadn’t been aware she was holding her breath.

She would ask Sam tonight when they were out for dinner if his mind kept getting stuck in the same pointless ‘what if’ groove as hers. Maybe it would open up a conversation. A ‘healing conversation’. That was the sort of phrase her mother would use.

They were going out tonight on a ‘date night’. Another modern term her mother had picked up. ‘What you kids need is a date night!’ She and Sam both abhorred the term ‘date night’ but they were going on one, to a restaurant suggested by Clementine’s mother. Her mother was babysitting and had even made the booking.

‘Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. I think it was Gandhi who said that,’ her mother told her. Her mother’s refrigerator door was covered with inspirational quotes scrawled on little pieces of paper held up by fridge magnets. The fridge magnets had quotes on them too.

Maybe tonight would be okay. Maybe it would even be fun. She was trying to be positive. One of them had to be. Her car drifted close to the gutter and a gigantic wave of water whooshed up the side of her car. She swore, far more viciously than was warranted.

It felt like it had been raining ever since the day of the barbeque, although she knew this wasn’t true. When she thought of her life before the barbeque it was suffused with golden sunlight. Blue skies. Soft breezes. As if it had never rained before.

‘Turn left ahead,’ said the GPS.

‘What? Here?’ said Clementine. ‘Are you sure? Or do you mean the next one? I think you mean the next one.’

She kept driving.

‘Turn around when possible,’ said the GPS with the hint of a sigh.

‘Sorry,’ said Clementine humbly.