Three’s a Crowd (2 page)

‘Maybe I should go ahead . . .' Rachel mused out loud.

‘Oh, please no!' Lexie cried urgently. ‘Then I'll have to walk in on my own and –'

‘Okay, calm down, Lex. What if I grab a taxi over to your place?'

‘But I virtually pass your place on the way. And what if Scott gets home while you're in transit? Then I'll have to end up waiting for you, when I could have been heading to your place, and that could add like, another ten minutes, which would totally defeat the purpose.'

She was right. Which meant the entire conversation was also pretty pointless at this juncture.

‘Listen, no one's actually late yet,' said Rachel. ‘Why don't you just keep getting ready, and if Scott isn't home in time, well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'

That was her preferred modus operandi. In fact, crossing bridges as she came to them was somewhat of a specialty of Rachel's, not that she would recommend it as the most effective game plan. Her lack of preparedness for life's little misadventures had landed her in some less than enviable situations over the years: dropping out of uni with no money and no idea what she was going to do with herself; stranded in more countries than she cared to remember with no money and no idea what she was going to do, and married to a man she didn't love, with no idea . . . Suffice to say there was a recurring theme. She had a feeling her epitaph would end up reading,
Here lies the girl who finally met a bridge she couldn't cross when she came to it
.

‘So back to my original question,' Lexie was saying, ‘what are you wearing?'

Rachel sniffed under her arm again. She smelled like the 361 bus. No, she wasn't going to get away with it. She stooped to pick up a top off the floor. ‘Something Annie would like, remember?' Something clean would do for Rachel.

‘Oh, yes, that's right,' Lexie chirped. ‘Hold on a sec, Rachel . . . Scottie!' she shrieked. ‘You're here, I love you! Scott's home,' she said breathlessly into the phone.

Rachel's ears were still ringing. ‘Yeah, got that. Crisis averted then.'

‘So I'll see you at ten to, or maybe quarter to?'

‘Sure,' said Rachel, knowing it was highly unlikely she'd see her any time before seven. ‘Prank me when you're on your way and I'll wait for you down on the street.'

Lexie hung up the phone and tossed it on the sofa as she rushed forwards and leaped up into her husband's arms, straddling him around the waist with her legs. She loved that he was such a big tall man, and he could hold her up in his arms like this with barely any effort.

‘Come on, Lex,' he groaned. ‘It's been a long day.'

‘Oh, poor baby,' she cooed. ‘How can I help?'

‘By getting down off me,' he said, giving her a quick kiss on the lips before depositing her back on her own two feet.

She pouted up at him.

‘I've been on my feet all day, hun,' he sighed, walking past her into the living area, where he threw himself onto the sofa. He frowned, lifting himself up slightly as he reached under his back and pulled out the phone. He placed it on the coffee table just as Mia came waddling out from the playroom. She let out an excited shriek when she spotted her dad, which alerted four-year-old Riley, who came flying through the doorway and launched himself across the room, easily overtaking his baby sister, to land with a thump on his father's chest. Mia squeaked ‘Up! Up!' and Scott scooped his arm around her to lift her into the fray.

‘Riley, Mia, take it easy, Daddy's had a hard day,' Lexie said in her mother's voice. She had been quite amazed how quickly she'd picked up that tone. She'd never been in a position of authority over anyone; she had always got by on being sweet and obliging. But that approach did not work on a recalcitrant toddler, and Lexie had heard herself quite unexpectedly one day using The Tone. And it worked, what's more. It was not the first thing about motherhood that had surprised her. Or delighted her. Lexie was in her element, she felt this was what she was born to do. She'd never said that to anyone, of course. Except Annie. Annie understood, she always understood. It had been a godsend having her next door when the babies were born. Lexie didn't know how she was going to get by without her there now.

She gazed down at her beautiful son and her beautiful daughter and her beautiful husband, as he tickled, and blew raspberries, and generally delighted his children, and Lexie counted her blessings.

‘Well, I know where I come in the scheme of things,' she declared, planting her hands on her hips.

‘What?' said Scott, looking up at her.

‘Couldn't wait to offload me, and you let the kids clamber all over you.'

‘Come and join us,' he invited expansively. ‘Clamber all you want. I just had to get off my feet, Lex.'

She softened. ‘Do you want me to take off your boots for you?'

‘You don't have to do that.'

‘But I want to.'

She pulled off his elastic-sided boots, and his socks, remembering
how her brother used to tease her, chasing after her and waving his smelly socks in her face, how she hated smelly boys. But nothing about Scott was smelly. Oh, sometimes he smelled a bit strongly of the kitchen, depending on the special of the day at the café. But mostly Lexie loved the smell of him, loved everything about him. She gave his feet a quick rub. ‘Better?'

‘Thanks love.' He looked up at her. ‘What time have you got to leave?'

She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh God, I better hurry!'

‘Where you going, Mummy?' Riley called after her as she dashed for the stairs.

‘Mummy's abandoning us to go out with the girls,' Scott told him.

Lexie frowned, taking a step back. ‘Don't say it like that,' she admonished him. ‘Riley, sweetheart, you're having a special night with Daddy, and Mummy's having a grown-up night with the girls.'

‘Borr
ingg
!' Riley declared, clutching his stomach as though he was in pain.

‘Exactly,' said Lexie. ‘Now I have to get ready, and I don't even know what I'm going to wear!' she trilled, taking the stairs two at a time.

Twenty minutes and as many outfits, or at least variations, later, Lexie came downstairs in a simple flowered shift and strappy sandals. The more times she'd changed clothes, the hotter and more flustered she'd become, and in the end she settled for the lightest, coolest thing in her wardrobe. She only hoped she didn't look like she was going to the beach.

‘How do I look?' she said, walking over to the kitchen where Scott was arranging vegetable crudités on a plate.

‘Great,' he said, without raising his head.

‘Scott Anthony Dingle! You didn't even look at me then!'

He glanced across at her, poker-faced. ‘I don't need to, because you always look beautiful.'

She raised an eyebrow as she sidled over to him, snatching a carrot stick.

‘Why do you care anyway?' asked Scott. ‘You're only going out with the girls. Or is that just a cover and you're really going out to pick up?'

‘Yep, that's it, you sprung me,' she quipped, crunching into the carrot.

‘Just try it,' he said, stooping to plant a kiss on her neck. ‘You smell good.' He straightened again, considering her. ‘And you look good enough to eat, really.' Scott's biggest compliment.

‘Not too casual?' Lexie persisted. ‘I don't want to look like I'm going to the beach.'

He frowned. ‘What does it matter? It's just the girls, loosen up.'

Lexie shrugged, avoiding his eyes.

Scott shook his head. ‘It's Catherine the Great, isn't it? I don't know why you girls put up with her.'

‘Don't say that,' said Lexie. ‘I know she can be a little . . . prickly, but she means well . . . and she has a good heart.'

‘Why do people always say that about someone who's a real –'

‘She's had a hard life,' Lexie interrupted him. ‘You know she started with nothing.'

‘Yeah, yeah, teenage mum, did it all on her own, I've heard it before,' said Scott. ‘Doesn't give her the right to be a bitch.'

‘Honey,' she chided in a low voice, glancing across at the children, but they were absorbed in something on the TV. Scott just didn't like Catherine and nothing Lexie could say was going to change his mind. So she decided to change the subject instead. ‘I put the fans on up in the kids' room. It was so hot up there. I don't know how we're going to get by without aircon this summer if it's this hot already.'

He looked at her sideways. ‘We'll get by just the same as we always have, Lex.'

‘I'm only thinking of the kids.'

‘We got by when we were kids, even you, Miss Richie Rich,' he added. ‘No one had airconditioning in their houses back then, and everyone wasn't dying of heat exhaustion.'

‘I know,' she agreed begrudgingly.

‘We either believe in global warming or we don't, Lexie. And if we do, then we have to take personal responsibility, even when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable.'

‘I know, I know,' she surrendered, holding up her hands. ‘You can stop the lecture.'

They couldn't afford airconditioning anyway. Lexie adored
their pretty little house, tucked away in a pretty little street in Clovelly. She'd had so much fun decorating it when they first got married. They didn't have much money then either, but Scott's dad and a couple of his brothers had all the trades covered, so they were able to do a cheap but effective makeover of the kitchen and bathroom. The rest was achieved with lots of spak filler and paint and elbow grease. Her parents had kept wanting to pay for this or that, but Lexie refused. Scott would never have accepted it anyway. Instead she pored over her mother's interior design magazines and scoured the wholesale outlets and created a home that was chic and comfortable for a fraction of what it could have cost.

When Riley came along the house worked beautifully, at least while he was only crawling. But with the addition of Mia things were getting, well, cramped. The children had to share a smallish bedroom; there was no longer space for the charming rocking chair Lexie had found at a garage sale, or the display unit housing all their baby mementoes and special books. The room had become very utilitarian: Riley's bed, Mia's cot, storage for their clothes. They had even had to resort to one of those padded mats on top of the chest of drawers as a change table. Worse was the impact downstairs; Lexie finally had to surrender the dining space she had created off the kitchen, where sliding doors opened up onto a courtyard draped with fairy lights. The setting of so many fun dinner parties became instead a playroom, and the dining table was moved into the living area, making everything just that bit tighter, and entirely ruining the illusion of space Lexie had worked so hard to achieve.

It didn't matter, not really, only that Lexie had a little secret. She'd only ever told Annie, because as usual Annie was the only person she knew would understand, but she desperately wanted more children, at least one, maybe two. She didn't think Scott would be against the idea in theory – he loved kids and he'd come from a big family himself – but there was no way they could fit another child into this house, nor could they afford a bigger house, not if they wanted to stay in the eastern suburbs. And they really didn't have a choice about that, with Scott's café smack bang in the centre of Coogee. Scott was already sensitive about being able to provide for his family. Lexie remembered the
first time he came to her house to meet her parents. He had been gobsmacked, to put it mildly. ‘Look at this place! I knew your dad was a doctor, but Jesus, Lexie, you guys are seriously rich.'

She'd denied it at the time; she knew people who were ‘seriously rich' and they weren't in that league. She watched him desperately trying to impress her parents, telling them the café was just the first step on the way to owning his own restaurant. ‘You never told me that,' Lexie said later. He merely shrugged. ‘Every chef dreams of having his own restaurant.'

As nothing had ever come of it, Lexie assumed he'd only said it to impress her parents. It didn't bother her, Scott could stay in the café forever, if that's what he wanted. But she wondered if they would ever be able to afford a bigger house, nothing fancy, just something big enough to fit a couple more kids . . .

She leaned against the bench now, watching him. Lexie knew she couldn't broach the subject with him yet. Not until she figured out a way to make it work. ‘So, you're right for the kids' dinner?' she asked, sneaking another carrot stick. ‘There's some of that pasta leftover that Mia loves.'

‘I think I can look after the food part, hun,' he said. ‘And aren't you supposed to be going out for yours?'

Lexie roused herself, turning to check the clock. ‘Oh my God, look at the time!'

It was exactly one minute to seven as Catherine stepped through the door of the restaurant.

‘There should be a booking under Halliday,' she said crisply to the waitress who came forwards to greet her. She hoped Rachel had remembered, Catherine always felt better when she made the arrangements herself.

The waitress glanced at the reservations list and nodded. ‘This way, please.'

Catherine followed her through the still half-empty restaurant to a table set for four with a view out across Bondi Beach to the ocean. As she took her seat, she glanced at her watch. Seven o'clock on the dot. Her punctuality was a great source of pride to Catherine. The same could not be said of her friends, unfortunately.

‘Can I get you anything while you're waiting?' the waitress asked her.

She probably had a minimum of ten minutes before they turned up, that's if they were anywhere in the vicinity of their definition of ‘on time'.

‘Do you have a Margaret River sauvignon by the glass?'