Truly Madly Guilty (15 page)

chapter twenty-two

The day of the barbeque

Erika watched Clementine try to rescue the Moët that was foaming and frothing from the bottle, while Vid stood in the middle of his gigantic kitchen, the champagne held aloft in both hands, grinning idiotically like a Formula One winner posing for a photo.

Clementine laughed as if it were all a great hoot, as if it didn’t matter that expensive champagne was being wasted. She shouldn’t have spent that much. It wasn’t necessary to turn up to a backyard barbeque with French champagne. She and Sam always lived beyond their means. The
mortgage
on their damp little trendy place! Erika and Oliver couldn’t believe it when they heard how much they’d borrowed, and
then
they’d taken the little girls off for a holiday in Italy last year! Fiscal madness. They’d put the trip on their credit card even though the children would have been just as happy with a one-hour drive to the Central Coast, but only Tuscany would do for Sam and Clementine.

That’s why Clementine really needed to get the full-time orchestra job. She always got herself worked up over auditions, suddenly doubting herself. Erika couldn’t imagine having a job where you doubted your ability to perform it. In Erika’s world you were either qualified for a job or you weren’t.

Perhaps Erika had misinterpreted the expression on Clementine’s face. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help them by donating her eggs; it was just that she had so much on her mind at the moment. They should have waited until after the audition to ask her. But that was months away. If she got it, she’d be starting a new job. If she didn’t get it, she’d be devastated. It was now or never.

Maybe it was never.

Was that tablet she’d taken affecting her balance? No, of course it wasn’t. She was fine.

‘Here you go!’ Clementine handed Erika a glass, not quite meeting her eyes.

‘I’ll have one of those too,’ said Oliver. His disappointment with the way their ‘meeting’ had turned out tugged at the corners of his mouth, so he looked like a sad clown. He’d been so hopeful about today. ‘Do you think she’ll say yes?’ he’d said suddenly last night as they watched TV, and Erika could hardly bear the yearning in his voice, and her fear made her snap, ‘How would I know?’

‘Yeah, I’ll have a drink too,’ said Sam. It was like everyone was dying of thirst. Erika
had
served sparkling mineral water at her place, with lemon. She took a big mouthful of champagne. She wasn’t that fond of it. Did everyone just pretend to like champagne?

‘Well, I know it’s not very classy of me, but I’m having a beer.’ Tiffany went to the giant stainless-steel refrigerator and stood with her hip jutted at an angle. She wore denim jeans faded to almost white with rips at the knees (they were plausible rips; Erika could almost forgive her for them) and a plain white T-shirt, and her long blonde hair had that just-off-the-beach look that movie stars favoured. Just looking at Tiffany made Erika think about sex, so God knew what she was doing to the men, although when she looked at her own husband she saw that Oliver was looking out the window, staring at nothing, dreaming of babies. The perfect husband. Just in need of a perfect wife.

‘Actually, I’ll have a beer,’ Sam put down his champagne glass on the island bench, ‘if one is going.’

‘I’ve got some
struklji
in the oven, just five more minutes,’ said Vid. He opened the oven and peered in. ‘It’s a savoury cheese strudel, very good, Slovenian, an old family recipe, no, not really, I got it from the internet!’ He roared with laughter. ‘My auntie used to make it, and I asked my mother for the recipe, and she said, “How would I know!” My mother, she’s no cook. Me, I’m a great cook.’

‘He
is
a great cook. Very humble too.’ Tiffany tipped back her head and took a long swig of her beer, her back arched, her chest thrust out, like a girl on a sexist football commercial. Erika couldn’t look away. Did she do it on
purpose
? It was extraordinary. Erika caught Clementine’s eye, and Clementine raised one eyebrow back at her, and Erika tried not to laugh, and everything Erika cherished about their friendship was encapsulated in that secret, just-for-her raised eyebrow.

‘I’d love a husband who cooked,’ said Clementine to Tiffany. ‘Where did you pick him up?’

‘That would be telling,’ said Tiffany sparkily.

See, this was the sort of conversation Erika didn’t get. Wasn’t that kind of inappropriate? Flirtatious? And Clementine and Tiffany were being so familiar with each other, as if Erika were the outsider and Clementine and Tiffany were the old friends.

‘Hey, I cook!’ Sam flicked Clementine’s shoulder.

‘Ow,’ said Clementine. She said to Tiffany and Vid, ‘The truth is, we share the cooking but neither of us is very good at it.’

‘What?’ said Sam with mock outrage. ‘What about my signature dish?’

‘Your shepherd’s pie. It’s amazing. Exquisite. You follow the instructions on that packet mix to the letter.’ Clementine put her arm around his waist.

And also this. She didn’t get this. How could they be teasing each other so fondly after all the tension at Erika’s place? Tension caused by Erika, but really, Clementine and Sam should have been on the same page about something as significant as whether or not they were going to have a third child. It should have been clarified, discussed. Clementine should not have been going around telling people she’d rather poke her eyes out so that people thought they could
rely
on that information, thank you very much.

Was all this lovable banter for the benefit of Vid and Tiffany? She and Oliver didn’t do married couple banter. Oliver spoke fondly but politely to Erika in public, as if she were a beloved aunt, perhaps, not his wife. People probably thought they had a terrible marriage.

‘Let me top you up there,’ said Tiffany to Erika, holding up the champagne bottle.

‘Oh, gosh, that went down fast.’ Erika looked at her empty glass, mystified.

‘I wonder if I should go and check on the kids,’ said Sam. He looked up at the ceiling. ‘It sounds suspiciously quiet up there.’

‘Ah, relax, don’t worry, they’re fine with Dakota,’ said Vid.

‘Sam is the worrier,’ said Clementine.

‘Yes, Clementine prefers the free-range parenting approach,’ said Sam. ‘No need to watch them at the shopping centre, a security guard will take care of them.’

‘Sam, that happened
once
,’ protested Clementine. ‘I turned my back on Holly for one second in JB Hi-Fi,’ she said to Vid and Tiffany, although Erika didn’t remember hearing this story before. ‘And she’d run off to find a Barbie DVD or something, and got disoriented and wandered out of the shop. It was terrifying.’

‘Yes, see, so that’s why you
can’t
turn your back,’ said Sam.

‘Yes, Mr Never-Made-a-Mistake-in-Your-Life.’ Clementine rolled her eyes.

‘Never made that sort of mistake,’ said Sam.

‘That’s nothing. I lost Dakota at the beach once,’ said Vid.

Erika and Oliver exchanged looks. Were these parents trying to outdo each other with just how incompetent and irresponsible they were? When Oliver and Erika had a child it would never be out of their sight. Never. They would risk-assess every situation. They would give their child all the attention they hadn’t got from their own parents. They would do everything right that their parents had got wrong.

‘I have never been so scared in my life as that day at the beach,’ said Tiffany. ‘I wanted to kill him. I thought to myself, if something has happened to Dakota, I will kill him, I will literally
kill
him, I will never forgive him.’

‘But look, I’m still alive! We found her. It all worked out fine,’ said Vid. ‘Kids get lost. It’s part of life.’

No it’s not, thought Erika.

‘Ah, no it’s not,’ said Tiffany, echoing Erika’s thoughts. ‘It’s not inevitable.’

‘Agreed.’ Sam clinked his beer bottle against Tiffany’s. ‘Jeez. These feckless partners of ours.’

‘You and me, we are the
feckless
ones,’ said Vid to Clementine, and he made ‘feckless’ sound like a delicious way to be.

‘We’re
relaxed
,’ said Clementine. ‘Anyway, it happened once
and now I watch them like a hawk.’

‘What about you two, eh?’ said Vid to Erika and Oliver, perhaps noticing that his neighbours were being left out of the conversation.

‘I watch Erika like a hawk,’ said Oliver unexpectedly. ‘I haven’t lost her once.’

Everyone laughed and Oliver looked triumphant. He couldn’t normally pull off a clever comeback. Don’t ruin it, my love, thought Erika as she saw Oliver’s mouth move in preparation to speak again. Stop there. Don’t try to say the same thing again in a different way to get a bigger laugh.

‘But what about kids, eh?’ said Vid. ‘Are you two planning to have children?’

There was a brief pause. A tightening, a constriction of the atmosphere as if people had stopped breathing.

‘Vid,’ said Tiffany. ‘You can’t ask people that. It’s personal.’

‘What? Why not? What’s personal about children?’ Vid looked nonplussed.

‘We’re hoping to have children,’ said Oliver. His face collapsed inward, like a popped balloon. Poor Oliver. So soon after his tiny social triumph.

‘One day,’ said Erika. Everyone seemed to be deliberately not looking at her, the way people did when you had food in your teeth and they didn’t want to tell you so they kept trying not to see. She used her fingernail to check her teeth for sesame seeds from the crackers. She’d meant to sound up-beat and positive. ‘One day soon.’

‘Yes, but you can’t wait too long,’ said Vid.

‘For God’s sake,
Vid
!’ said Tiffany.

There was a piercing yell from upstairs.

chapter twenty-three

‘It’s Clementine.’

The rain was so loud right now Erika could only just distinguish Clementine’s voice on the phone.

‘Speak up,’ she said.

‘Sorry. It’s Clementine. Good morning! How are you?’

‘Yeah, hi, how are you?’ Erika moved her mobile phone to the other ear and tucked it against her shoulder so she could continue taking things from the house through to the garage to pack in the car.

‘I wondered if you wanted to meet up for a drink after work,’ said Clementine. ‘Today. Or another day.’

‘I’m not going to work,’ said Erika. ‘I’m taking the day off. I have to go to my mother’s house.’

When she’d called the office she had told her secretary to tell anyone who asked that she’d taken the day off because her mother was ill, which was technically true.

There was a pause. ‘Oh,’ said Clementine, and her tone changed as it always did when they talked about Erika’s mother. She became tentative and gentle, as if she were talking to someone with a terminal disease. ‘Mum did mention that she called you last night.’

‘Yes,’ said Erika. She felt a tiny eruption of fury at the thought of Clementine and her mother talking cosily about her, poor, poor Erika, as they must have done since she was a child.

She said to Clementine, ‘How was dinner?’

‘Great,’ said Clementine, which meant that it wasn’t, because otherwise she would have rhapsodised about the amazing flavours of the such-and-such.

Don’t tell me about it then, Clementine. I don’t care if your marriage is falling apart, if your perfect life is not so perfect these days. See how the rest of us live.

‘So you’re going to your mother’s place,’ said Clementine. ‘To, uh, help her clean.’

‘As much as I can.’ Erika picked up the three-litre container of disinfectant and put it down again. It was too hard to carry while she tried to talk on the phone. She picked up the two mops instead and walked through the connecting door to the garage, switching on the light as she did. Their garage was spotless. Like a showroom for their spotless blue Statesman.

‘Has Oliver taken the day off work too?’ Clementine knew that Oliver always went with her. Erika remembered when she’d told Clementine about the first time Oliver had helped with her mother’s house and how wonderful he’d been, just getting the job done, never a word of complaint, and how Clementine had got such a soft, teary look on her face when she heard this, and for some reason that soft, teary look made Erika feel angry, because she already
knew
how lucky she was to have Oliver’s help, she already felt grateful and cherished, but Clementine’s reaction made her feel ashamed, as if Erika didn’t deserve it, as if he were doing more than anyone could expect of a husband.

‘Oliver is home from work but he’s sick,’ said Erika. She opened the boot of her car and slid in the mops.

‘Oh. Well, do you want me to come with you today?’ said Clementine. ‘I could come. I’m playing at a wedding this morning, but then I’m free until school pick-up time.’

Erika closed her eyes. She could hear notes of both hope and fear in Clementine’s voice. She remembered Clementine as a child, the day she’d discovered the way Erika lived: sweet little Clementine, with her porcelain skin, her clear blue eyes and her clean, lovely life, standing at Erika’s front door, her round eyes even rounder still.

‘You’d get bitten,’ Erika told her bluntly. ‘There are fleas.’ Clementine’s porcelain skin always got the first mosquito bite. She looked so juicy.

‘I’d wear repellent!’ said Clementine enthusiastically. It was almost like she wanted to come.

‘No,’ said Erika. ‘No. I’m fine. Thank you. You should be practising for your audition.’

‘Yes,’ said Clementine with a sound like a sigh. ‘You’re right, I guess.’

‘Who has a wedding on a Wednesday morning?’ said Erika, mostly to change the subject but also because part of her didn’t want to hear what she could sense was coming. ‘Don’t all the guests have to take time off work?’

‘People who want to save money,’ said Clementine vaguely. ‘And it’s outdoors, and they didn’t have a wet-weather plan, of course. Anyway, listen, I didn’t want to do this over the phone, but …’

Here it came. The offer. It had only been a matter of time. Erika walked back inside and studied the huge bottle of disinfectant.

‘I know you probably haven’t wanted to bring it up again since the barbeque,’ said Clementine. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come back to you.’

She sounded incongruously formal.

‘But I didn’t want you to think it was just because …’ Her voice wavered. ‘And obviously, Sam and I, we haven’t been thinking straight …’

‘Clementine,’ said Erika. ‘You don’t have –’

‘So I want to do it,’ said Clementine. ‘Donate my eggs, that is. I want to help you have a baby. I’d love to help. I’m ready to, you know, get the ball rolling.’ She cleared her throat self-consciously, as if the words ‘get the ball rolling’ were in a foreign language she was only just learning. ‘I feel good about it.’

Erika didn’t say anything. She managed to heft the bottle of disinfectant up onto her hip, like an obese toddler. She staggered back out to the garage.

‘I want you to know that my decision has got nothing to do with what happened,’ said Clementine. ‘I would have said yes anyway.’

Erika grunted as she opened the passenger door of her car and dropped the disinfectant onto the seat.

‘Oh, Clementine,’ she said, and she was conscious of the sudden candidness of her tone, as if she’d been speaking falsely up until now. This was her true voice. It echoed around the garage. This was the voice she used with Oliver in the middle of the night when they shared the most shameful secrets of their shameful childhoods. ‘We both know that’s a lie.’