Each Way Bet (5 page)

‘And d’you know,
I’ve
been wandering around today thinking how lucky you are?’ Emily continued, ignoring her sister’s slight on nature. ‘House in the suburbs, big family, lots of company, full life – I mean, you’re really
important
to people. See, you might think what I do sounds pretty romantic but, you know, no-one really
needs
me. Not like they need you.’

‘But that’s just it,’ Jill wailed miserably. ‘That’s
exactly
it! I don’t
want
to be needed anymore. Do you have
any
idea what it’s like to be needed like that for nearly twenty years? I’ve had enough! I just want to be me – no-one’s wife, or mother, or anything. Just. Me.’

‘But to be needed like that! Jilly, that sounds so
rewarding
,’ said Emily eagerly. ‘I mean, it must be so fulfilling!’

‘You reckon?’ Jill’s voice rang with bitterness. ‘How about, if
you
want it so much,
you
have it. C’mon, I’ll swap – you can have the lot. And you can drown yourself in the rewards and the damn fulfilment.’

‘Okay.’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘No, I’m serious,’ Emily replied earnestly, thinking quickly as she spoke. ‘You need a break, I need some action.
Boy
, do I need some action. So we’ll swap – right now.’

‘I wish.’

‘And voila!’ Emily swung an imaginary fairy-wand with her free hand. ‘Your wish has been granted! C’mon, Jilly, two seconds ago you were whining about having my life – here it is. You drive in here right now and, when you get here, I’ll grab your car and go back out to your place. Then I’ll get all the Melbourne Cup stuff together and play mothers and fathers.’

‘Mothers and fathers?’ repeated Jill slowly. ‘What exactly do you mean by mothers and fathers?’

‘Get real,’ Emily said derisively. ‘Nice guy, but . . .’

‘Anyway, he’s not home yet so how can I leave the kids?’

‘God, Jill. As if Matt and Megan aren’t old enough to babysit for an hour and a half!’

‘True, but –’

‘No buts!’ yelled Emily, getting annoyed. ‘Do you want a break or not? You’re the one who’s been saying swap, swap, swap, so here I am offering you an evening of solitude and you’re coming up with all these excuses! You come here and wallow in your damn peace, and I’ll go there and take over! What’s the problem?’

‘Well, Jack for starters. I mean, what’s he going to think when he comes home and finds me gone?’

‘Jill, you’re about to leave the man forever!’ Emily said with exasperation. ‘What’s he going to think
then
?’

Jill went silent for a moment, obviously thinking. While she
waited, Emily became conscious of a steady, drumming noise coming from Jill’s end of the phone. As it got louder and louder, she frowned and tried to place it with no success.

‘What the hell’s that noise?’

‘That,’ said Jill with conviction, ‘is what’s called a deciding factor. And you asked for it, so, in a couple of hours, it’ll be all yours. Listen to this.’

As Jill held the phone out, the drumming noise increased in intensity and was joined by several shrill voices, all of which appeared to be shrieking variations of the word ‘mother’.

‘My god,’ Emily said with concern, ‘what’s happened? Is someone hurt?’

‘Oh no,’ replied their obviously unconcerned parent, ‘just needy.’

‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t. But you will,’ Jill said smugly. ‘And I’ve got a proposition. Sort of an extension of your plan. Seeing as you’ll be going to all the effort of preparing for Melbourne Cup Day, why don’t you host it as well? After all, I’d hate to get all the credit when you do all the work. So you can have my house, my kids, my stove – and I’ll have the day off.’

‘But what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. Anything. Everything. Probably nothing.’

‘Hmm . . .’ Emily held out her spare hand and examined her fingernails. ‘I’ve got a better idea. I host Melbourne Cup Day and play mums and dads, but you still come. Just come as a guest. Sit around, enjoy – be waited on, for a change. Every time the kids pester you, I’ll leap up and take over.’

‘I think I like my anything, everything, nothing idea better.’

‘I bet you do – but that’s pushing it. After all, it
is
supposed to be a family do.’

‘True.’ Jill mused over the idea for a minute while loud thumps began to punctuate the drumming noise in the
background. ‘Okay – it’s a deal. Give me half an hour to grab some stuff and leave a note for Jack, then I’ll come in and you can bring the car back. Hang on! How am I going to get here tomorrow?’

‘No problem,’ Emily said airily. ‘I was getting a lift with this guy, Tim. I’ll just ring him and tell him he’s picking you up instead. You’ll like him – he’s lovely.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Jill replied, sounding rather dubious again, ‘but I don’t know if –’

‘So we’re all settled!’ Emily sprang up from the chair. ‘And no backing out now! Just think – you’ll get a taste of what you’re hankering after, and I’ll get a taste of what I’m missing. And then tomorrow, you can sleep in and wear white, and heels, and make-up. And have that bath with the door open, and do whatever it is you wanted in the toilet, and then mosey on out there later and put your feet up while you watch me slave away for the day! Meanwhile, I’ll get to pretend that I don’t have to work and all I have is a family to look after – this is going to be fun! I can’t wait!’

When Jill closed Emily’s door behind her, she took the first deep breath she had had time for since she had spoken to her sister an hour and a half earlier. Because, straight up, she had panicked about the plan and had tried to ring back – but Emily wasn’t answering. Then, while waiting to try again, she had suddenly thought: why not? Why the hell not? So a frenetic thirty minutes had followed in which she had thrown clothing and toiletries into an overnight bag, written a note to Jack, explained to Matt why he wasn’t allowed to go see some
rally-driving event that evening with a friend who had got his licence yesterday, rang and left yet another message on the dishwasher repairman’s answering machine, defrosted some minced meat for tea, tripped over Cricket, who was shadowing her suspiciously, consoled Cricket about her injuries, super-glued together the china cow’s udder while she listened to Kate’s lines for the end-of-year school play, used nail polish remover to remove the super-glue adhering three of Cricket’s fingers together, thrown the cat outside, taken Megan’s temperature because she was looking pale, washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen quickly, and finally unearthed and packed the expensive teeth-whitening powder that she had bought last year and never got around to using. All the while she had fended off questions from her offspring about what she was doing, when she was doing it and why she was doing it.

Then she spent the trip into the city with her knuckles clenched whitely around the steering-wheel as she dodged trams, and suicidal pedestrians, and manic drivers – and wondered all the while what she was doing. But everything became clear the moment that door closed. Because it was a whole other world. One of peace, and quiet, and Tuscan yellow calm. Of inner contentment and outer harmony. Of creative energy and magical silence. A world, perhaps most importantly, with everything in its place – and everything likely to stay that way.

Jill took a deep breath of the intoxicating stillness and then, picking up her overnight bag, walked up the two shallow steps into Emily’s living area. Music was playing somewhere in the background and Jill smiled as she compared the relaxing melody with the ongoing war between rap and heavy metal that was waged daily back at her house. She walked to the couch and, dropping her bag on the floor, kicked her runners off and threw herself onto it. Then she put her hands under
her head, closed her eyes and let the music wash over her. Five minutes later, and with considerable effort, Jill pulled herself back from the brink of sleep. She sat up quickly and shook her head to clear it, because there was no way she was going to waste this precious evening sleeping. There was much too much else to enjoy.

First, she took a slow and appreciative tour of the apartment, checking out any changes Emily might have made since she was last here. She spent some considerable time on the mezzanine level, wandering past the bookshelf and running her hand along the spines. Occasionally she found a book whose title she recognised, but more often they were ones that she had never heard of – all exotic, and modern, and full of tantalising tales of other lives and places being experienced whilst she had been stuck in stultifying suburbia. Twice, when she slipped a book out from the shelf and flicked it open, she found Emily’s name amongst the acknowledgements, followed by effusive thanks from the author. By the time she was finished she was pea-green with envy and all the more convinced that somewhere, somehow, she had taken a wrong turn in her life. This should have been her. Encased in fingerprint-less Tuscan yellow and surrounded by books that were all autographed with implements other than multicoloured crayons.

But her envy was quickly supplanted by pure wonder as she entered Emily’s bedroom and was transfixed by the sight of the setting sun through the huge semicircular window. It was spectacular. The refractive lozenges glowed with an array of intense colours that reflected shimmering droplets of light across the room and over the bedroom walls. Jill bit her bottom lip in awe and walked slowly into the centre of the room. There, she raised her arms to interrupt the beam and make some of the glistening droplets dance crazily across the walls. And suddenly she was part of the light show herself. She turned, slowly at first
with her arms still up, and then faster and faster, conducting the display with her hands, and with patches of red and green and yellow skipping frenetically across her body.

She only stopped when she was exhausted, by which time the colours had begun to fade as the sun disappeared from view. She threw herself on the bed and clambered over to the window, kneeling up to peer out at the setting sun. For a moment, while watching the glow seep into the rooftops of Melbourne, she felt a shaft of regret that Jack and the kids weren’t there to experience it – and then she laughed at herself for the thought.

Flopping back onto the bed, she leaned over and pulled open Emily’s top drawer to investigate. A tumble of lacy knickers, a few extremely non-supportive bras and a black suspender belt edged with fine, spidery lace. Jill folded and replaced them neatly. The next drawer yielded pantihose, sports socks and a variety of packaged condoms. Small, medium, large and frighteningly extra-large. Ribbed, coloured and all guaranteed to heighten sensation.

Jill read the blurbs on the multi-patterned packages with an increased sense of admiration for her sister’s nefarious exploits. After adding the information regarding how best to fit a noduled condom to her store of knowledge, she shoved the packages back into the drawer and covered them with the socks and hosiery. Then she hefted herself off the bed and padded downstairs to find something to eat.

This proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated. Emily’s fridge yielded nothing more appetising than a tub of hommus, a container full of something that looked unidentifiably foreign, and a can of pressure-packed whipped cream which, after discovering the extent of Emily’s condom collection, Jill vaguely suspected had never been used for decorating dessert. In the strictest sense of the word, anyway.

Reluctantly, Jill decided that she would have no choice but to leave her temporary haven in search of sustenance. Accordingly, she slipped her runners back on and grabbed her handbag but, before she left, quickly chose a dusty bottle of white from Emily’s wine rack and put it into the freezer to cool. Then she hesitated at the front door when she realised that Emily hadn’t left her with a key, but soon solved this dilemma by latching the front door and just clicking it closed, rather than locking it. Once again, the feeling of entering another world was profound.

By now it was well past six o’clock and the street was thronged with like-minded souls in search of supper. Most of them were still dressed in their work clothes, which appeared to be, especially in the case of the women, predominantly black. Black skirts, black slacks, black shirts, black shoes. Almost like a twilight zone inhabited by a sea of trainee undertakers. In her navy tracksuit pants, lemon hooded-windcheater and runners, Jill stood out like the usurper she was. Self-consciously, she smoothed down the windcheater and arranged the shoulder strap of her handbag over the peanut butter smear on her left breast. Then she shrugged resignedly – after all, it wasn’t as if she were likely to run into any of these people again. Instead she looked up and down the street in search of a supermarket where she would be able to buy the makings of a meal as well as some snacks and some cereal for breakfast. But, amazingly enough, there didn’t seem to be such a place around. With some annoyance, Jill decided not to go in search of one. With the way her luck was running lately, someone would break into Emily’s latched apartment while she was gone and make merry. So instead it would have to be whatever was in sight, as long as the apartment was also in sight.

Jill joined the surge of black dodging the traffic across the street and arrived at the opposite side out of breath. Then she
ducked into a French patisserie and bought an elaborate meringue and cream confection for later tonight and a coffee scroll for the morning. Next was a brief visit to a café cum general store next door, where she purchased some milk and a large block of fruit and nut chocolate from a woman with so much hair on her chin that in a previous age she would have had a lucrative career in the circus. Then Jill came back out onto the footpath with her purchases and turned her mind to tea. She could see several restaurants clustered around a large and seemingly very popular pub nearby so she headed in that direction and hoped for inspiration. After first dismissing a Thai bistro on the grounds that she didn’t recognise a single dish on the menu, and then a rather seedy looking Moroccan place on the grounds that it was rather seedy looking, Jill turned the corner past the pub and saw, to her delight, a KFC. At least, she reasoned happily, you knew what you were getting with KFC.