Each Way Bet (14 page)

‘Murderer!’

‘That’s enough.’ Jack walked carefully towards the dog, crunching through a few pieces of glass. ‘Kate, get your hand off the dog before you cut yourself.’

‘But, Dad –’

‘Just do it.’ Jack squatted down and, using his towel, removed the larger pieces of glass scattered over the comatose dog before brushing the remainder off. Then he picked up the
black carpet bowl, which was nestled in the crook of the dog’s neck like a spherical pillow, and, with a brief but telling glance at his son, tossed it away. Next he leant forward, put his hand gently on the dog’s chest and concentrated for a few minutes. He sighed unhappily.

‘He’s still alive.’

‘He
is
?’ Matt took a deep, relieved breath and beamed around at those still in the family room. ‘He’s alive! He’s alive!’

‘Oh, my word!’ Margaret Carstairs put her hand to her throat and then, as if this was all a bit too much for her, tottered backwards until she reached the lounge-room doorway where she stayed, well out of the way.

‘But what’s wrong with him?’ Kate gazed up at her father, and suddenly looked about ten years younger. ‘Dad? You
can
fix him, can’t you?’

‘No, I think he’s a –’ Jack paused as he looked at his daughter, sighed again, and then put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I think he needs to go to the vet. Come on, Kate, grab a blanket and we’ll put him in the car.’

Kate jumped up and ran around the corner, through the now permanently open sliding door, and disappeared down the passage. Emily turned to check that Cricket was still keeping away from the broken glass and then jumped when she realised that Charlotte had materialised next to her elbow. The girl was peering through the hole with more animation on her face than Emily had seen her display thus far that day. Emily looked over at Adam, caught his eye and gestured towards Charlotte, raising her eyebrows tellingly. He nodded in agreement and then turned back to Jack, giving him a sympathetic look.

‘You’re doing the right thing.’

‘I know.’ He groaned and looked from the broken window to the still unconscious dog and then back again. ‘Christ, Christ,
Christ
!’

‘It’s a bugger, it is,’ commented Cricket conversationally.

‘Good grief.’ Adam looked fastidiously at one of his hands, one that had been resting on the windowsill. ‘These windowsills are
filthy
!’

‘I’ll go with them,’ announced Sybil, picking up her handbag from behind the dining-table. ‘They’ll need a level head.’

‘What’s going on?’

They all turned to Megan, who had just entered the room with a chemist’s paper bag dangling from one hand. Seeing Emily’s eye automatically fall to the bag, Megan flushed and put it behind her back. Then she looked at the pile of broken glass and at her younger sister, who chose that moment to rush back through the family room with a huge angora blanket flying behind her. As Kate hurried past the sideboard, the blanket caught the ugly china cow and knocked it into mid-air, where it hung suspended for a split second before crashing to the floor. The salmon pink udder went one way, the body went another, and a singular teat rolled across the floor and settled itself against one of Sybil’s high-heeled sandals. She grimaced at it and moved her foot.

‘Your mother loves that damn cow,’ commented Jack crossly at Kate, who ignored him completely to rush to the dog’s side. ‘She’s going to notice it’s gone as soon as she comes in and she’ll be really upset.’

‘That was from me!’ Cricket folded her arms and glared. ‘I bought it for her!’

‘No worries, I’ll glue it up.’ Matt started gathering together the pieces.

‘Why?’ muttered Sybil, nudging the teat over towards him with the toe of her shoe.

‘What
is
going on?’ repeated Megan, looking even more confused.

‘Well,’ replied Adam helpfully, ‘it appears that when your
brother was playing carpet bowls he managed to throw one of the bowls through the window, which obviously broke.’ He paused to wave at the evidence. ‘And then it seems to have hit the dog.’

‘Not
Lassie
?’ Megan ran over to the window.

‘Yeah, ah – Lassie. Hey, are you kidding me?’ Adam paused and looked at Megan with disbelief. ‘You didn’t
really
name that thing Lassie?’

‘Why not?’

Adam raised his eyebrows at Emily, who was stifling a grin. ‘For starters, the real Lassie was an elegant collie who risked life and limb in a heroic sense,
not
by wandering past a window just in time to be hit in the head by a flying carpet bowl.’

‘We
love
Lathie.’

‘Of course you do,’ Adam nodded agreeably at Cricket, who was swinging her legs and regarding him dubiously. ‘Doesn’t matter. Where was I up to? Oh yes,
Lassie
is okay. Well, he’s alive, anyway. Your dad’s just taking him to the vet.’

‘Humph,’ said Jack from down in the yard, obviously not too thrilled about that part of the story. As they watched, he finished wrapping the dog and, with a rather unbecoming grunt, hoisted him up while Kate fussed around him, tucking in various hanging bits of the blanket.

‘I’m missing one teat,’ announced Matt as he stood up with his hands full of china cow. ‘Anyone seen a teat?’

‘Kate, grab my keys.’ Jack started to stagger off with the dog. ‘I’ll meet you out the front.’

‘No.’ Sybil joined them at the window. ‘We’ll take my car. No arguments. You can hold the dog and I’ll drive. You just need to show me where.’

‘Whatever,’ replied Jack. While he didn’t seem completely happy with this plan either, he lacked the strength to argue. ‘I’ll meet you in the driveway.’

‘It’s sort of a pinkish colour. Can everyone look for a teat?’

‘
I
can hold the dog,’ said Kate crossly as her father strode off, ‘while Dad drives.’

‘It’s all organised now.’ Sybil smiled at her sweetly. ‘Now hurry on, dear, or you’ll get left behind.’

‘Okay,’ said Adam with a clap of his hands as Sybil left the room, ‘now let
us
get organised! Matt, glue up the cow later – put it in your room so your mother won’t see it. For now, could you finish cleaning up the glass, and don’t forget to use the dustpan and brush. We don’t want any splinters left around. And I’ll get this sliding door back on its tracks while you’re doing it. Then we’ll put that sofa over there in front of the broken window to hide it. Now, Cricket, how about you get the carpet bowl from outside and pack it up with the rest. Be careful of the glass out there. Somehow, I don’t think we’ll be playing carpet bowls today. Charlotte – perhaps you could keep Mr and Mrs Carstairs and Nannie entertained? Megan, how about some more coffee?’

‘When did you get so damn bossy?’ asked Emily crossly. ‘
I’m
the one who swapped with Jill, so
I’m
the one who’s in charge.’

‘Okay,’ said Adam agreeably, ‘take charge, then.’

‘Fine.’ Emily hesitated and looked around as everybody waited expectantly. ‘Um, you can all do what he said. Except Megan. You can, ah, put your stuff away –’ she gave her niece a meaningful look – ‘while I make the coffee.’

‘Do you have a piano?’ asked Charlotte politely. ‘For me to entertain with?’

‘Sure we do,’ answered Matt quickly, ‘we love piano. But I can’t remember where Mum put it. Have a look around, it’ll be somewhere.’

Emily frowned at Matt fleetingly but didn’t bother to correct him. ‘Now c’mon, everybody – go! Hop to it!’

Megan left the room, looking a bit nervous, as Matt got to work cleaning up the glass and Adam, with much grunting and groaning, lifted the sliding door up and fitted it back onto the tracks. Cricket scrambled down from her stool at the island bench and ran through the sliding door before Adam closed it and then, two minutes later, ran back through with the killer carpet bowl nestled in both hands. She knelt down by the box and started to arrange the bowls within. Charlotte, who had gone back into the lounge-room, could be seen standing just inside the bi-folds, glancing around with a puzzled frown.

As the kettle reached the boil, Emily realised that the plunger was still in the lounge-room on the tray. She was also starting to wonder whether Megan needed not so much a
helping
hand, but perhaps a hand with the instructions. She turned the kettle off and glanced over at Adam, who was sliding the glass door backwards and forwards on its tracks with an air of accomplishment.

‘Adam?’

‘Yep?’

‘If you’ve finished there, could you take over making the coffee? I’ve got to do something. Important.’

‘Oh. Okay,’ Adam replied, less than enthusiastically. ‘If I must.’

‘Thanks! And the plunger’s in the lounge-room.’ Emily flashed him a grateful smile and headed out of the room in search of Megan. She found the girl sitting on the end of her bed, frowning as she read the label of a discreet pastel-coloured package. As Emily slid inside the room and shut the door behind her, Megan looked up guiltily and then sagged with relief when she realised it was her aunt.

‘Oh, I’m so glad you came! I can’t, like, understand this at
all
!’

‘Let me see.’ Emily sat down on the bed next to her niece
and took the package from her. It looked fairly standard – a boxed home pregnancy test with results in ten minutes. Actually, Emily double-checked the label,
two
boxed home pregnancy tests with results within ten minutes.

‘Why on earth did you get two?’

‘Oh, you know, it was cheaper.’

‘
Two
tests were cheaper than
one
test?’

‘Well, not exactly cheaper,’ Megan explained, ‘but more economical.’

‘More economical,’ Emily repeated with disbelief, ‘but . . .’

‘And Mum always says to, like, check the prices,’ continued Megan seriously. ‘It’s often cheaper in the long run to buy in bulk, you know.’

‘Megan, when in hell do you expect to use . . .’ Emily paused as she looked at her niece’s attentive face. ‘Oh, never mind.’

‘But I
can’t
work out what it wants me to do!’

‘I’d say at a guess it’s pretty straightforward,’ Emily mused, turning the package over and skimming the instructions. ‘You just have to pee on it.’

‘
What
?’

‘Pee on it,’ repeated Emily, looking up and registering the horror on Megan’s face. ‘What did you expect?’

‘Not
that
!’

‘Well, Megan,’ Emily tried to be patient, ‘how did you think it’d be able to work out if you’re pregnant or not? ESP?’

‘Like,
no
, of course not. But nobody said anything about . . . well,
you
know.’

‘For god’s sake, if it has to be done, you just do it.’

‘I’m not doing
that
.’

‘Of course you are.’

‘I’m totally not.’

‘That’s it!’ Emily’s patience snapped and she looked at her
niece with no attempt to disguise her irritation. ‘Grow
up
! You want to act like an adult but you won’t take the consequences, is that it? You have no problems having bloody sex without precautions, risking pregnancy and who knows what types of bloody awful diseases, but you draw the line at peeing on a little stick? Well,
fine
, the alternative is a frigging huge needle so the doctor can check your blood, okay? And you’ll
still
have to pee on the damn stick down the track, anyway. It’s a rite of bloody passage.’

‘You’re mean,’ Megan said in a little voice, her eyes welling up again.

Emily gazed at her in frustration.
She
was mean? All she was doing was trying to be practical because
someone
had to be. She had listened to the girl, mopped her tears, advised her, and was even sitting here totally prepared to help her do it. And it wasn’t like she was the girl’s mother, either. No,
that
particular person appeared to have done a runner, leaving Emily to cope with deserted husbands, odd relatives, broken windows, dead dogs, pregnant teenagers and god knows what else, given that it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. Emily took a deep breath and then suddenly, like a flash of psychic transferral, she realised what the problem was. Why the girl was digging her heels in, being obstinate and totally unreasonable. Megan was scared. Scared quite literally out of her wits. But before Emily could act on this insight, there was a polite knock on the door followed, immediately, by it opening to reveal Charlotte, looking slightly irritated.

‘Hello? Could you tell me if the piano’s in here?’ Charlotte caught sight of Megan’s face and her eyes widened with interest. ‘Megan! Are you crying?’

‘She’s just had a little accident,’ Emily said quickly, getting up to usher a reluctant Charlotte back through the doorway, ‘and, do you know, I think I might have seen a piano in one of the other rooms.’

‘But I’ve already searched –’

‘Great,’ said Emily, shutting the door firmly on her niece. She sat back down on the bed and took one of Megan’s hands within her own. ‘Look, I’m sorry about before. I really am. I’m just worried for you, that’s all.’

‘I know,’ Megan sniffled, and then wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand. ‘And I’m sorry too. For acting so, you know, stupid.’

‘So you’ll do it?’

‘If I have to.’

‘You have to.’ Emily patted Megan’s hand and then released it. ‘If you want to find out for certain, anyway.’

‘So what do I have to do? Like apart from
that
bit.’

‘Simple.’ Emily stripped the cellophane off the package and freed two identical boxes. She opened one and, with a little manoeuvring, slid out the clear insert. Then she removed the pregnancy test applicator itself, which was a narrow piece of white plastic about fifteen centimetres long and half a centimetre thick. One end was slightly narrower than the other and there was a small, clear window about a quarter of the way up. Emily lifted it by the thicker end with a finger and thumb and showed Megan. ‘This is it. You need to hold this end and pee on the other end.’

‘Gross,’ said Megan, playing with her bangles nervously.

‘Yep, gross – but necessary. Then you wait for ten minutes to see if a line appears there –’ Emily gestured at the little window slot. ‘You can come back here and I’ll wait with you if you like, or you can wait in the bathroom.’