Roadside Sisters (6 page)

Despite what some people thought, however, she wasn’t fixed in her opinions. She could always be swayed by intelligent and rational argument. Actually, for some years Meredith’s favourite grey had been
slate
. She had abandoned the shade late last year for
granite
—a shade of flinty determination—and felt the better for it.

Fallow
was the hue she was entranced with now. She fingered the soft cotton of a pillowcase and rubbed it against her cheek. There was an honesty here—she could feel that. A rustic energy which demanded a genuine response. Meredith needed to know exactly what she was dealing with. She turned to her computer screen and consulted the dictionary.

‘Fal-low
adj
:
1. left unseeded for a period of time after ploughing in order to recover natural fertility; 2. currently inactive but with the possibility of activity or use in the future.’

Meredith was jolted by the description—it was exactly how she felt about her life. Not that Meredith could ever contemplate the idea of being inactive. But, looking past that negative connotation, she had to agree that, when her latest home renovations had finished, a cycle of intense and rewarding
productivity had come to an end. And now, with Donald gone, she had to imagine how the rest of her life might unfold.

Many women would have felt depressed about all this, but not Meredith. A friend had once described her as ‘indefatigable’—as if she would keep on going when others might fold or fail—so she was looking forward to her regeneration. She would pop up through the soil reborn, in a youthful shade of
pod
or
tendril
.

Next came the crockery and cutlery, all chosen from a new range of summer holiday wares she had imported from Finland. None of it was plastic, which Meredith could not bear to see set on any table, no matter how casual. ‘Honestly, Paul Bocuse himself could serve
la Mère Fillioux
—Bresse chicken in a bladder—but if it was on a plastic plate, it might as well be a Big Mac,’ Meredith had said more than once.

The china she had picked out was white and chunky, embossed with leaves and berries. These same motifs of plentiful summer bounty were repeated on the cutlery handles and, in a triumph of coordination (which Meredith knew only she would truly appreciate, but then she was used to that), she had discovered a Danish glassware setting for four etched with stalks of wheat.

Meredith turned down the dimmer switch on the store lighting. What could she take with her that might be suitable for her daughter Sigrid’s wedding present? She reflected that this, at least, was one benefit of travelling by road. She could bubble-wrap the most delicate, elaborate lamp-base, vase or glassware and feel confident it would arrive in one piece. But would Sigrid appreciate such a gift?

The last time Meredith had been in Sigrid’s living space, two years ago, it had been on the top floor of a 1950s block of red-brick flats in Balaclava. Among the jumble of tatty second-hand items—which Sigrid proudly declared she had retrieved from a council skip—there had been some reasons for hope. A lovely vintage embroidered gypsy shawl draped on a corner table; a genuine bamboo bar—from the sixties, by the look of it—set with attractive ruby glass tumblers (although Meredith had counted five glasses and thought one should be disposed of so the set made an even four); and, in the bathroom, a stack of white waffle-weave hand towels. Meredith had paused to arrange them in a pleasing fanned display just next to the duck-egg-blue handbasin. Putting the best complexion on it, Meredith hoped that in the time since she had last seen Sigrid, her daughter had discovered her nascent sense of style and become a Woman of Good Taste. After all, it was in the genes.

Eighteen months? Could it be that long since she had seen her daughter? When Sigrid had announced she was leaving Melbourne to travel north, there had been a fight. Meredith’s offer of a junior managerial position in her store, with the possibility of a full partnership in Flair after a couple of years, hadn’t appealed to Sigrid. That had been a blow. The time since Meredith had last seen Sigrid had flown by. Mother and recalcitrant daughter exchanged the odd phone call, and Sigrid emailed excuses at Christmas. But even though she was pleased to hear from her only daughter, Meredith just could not stop herself from asking: had Sigrid found a decent job yet? Did she want to come home? Maybe go to university and study? For
God’s sake, what was she planning to
do
? And now here they were with this ‘Charlie’ person wedged between them.

Meredith didn’t know if he was a banker or a butcher, a surfie or a used car salesman. The first time she’d heard of him was when the wedding invitation had arrived for a sunset beach ceremony on a
Tuesday
. She’s pregnant, was Meredith’s first thought. She had immediately rung and felt guilty relief when Sigrid had told her that, no, she wasn’t to be a grandmother just yet. But Sigrid had fobbed off her attempts at further interrogation with an airy: ‘Just come. You’ll see.’ Meredith had slammed the phone down and for the last three weeks had been plagued with curiosity and dread in equal measure. Should she go? Should she boycott the whole affair until Sigrid came to her senses? The thought that she had no-one she trusted to discuss this with, now that Donald had moved out, was also vaguely troubling.

Meredith found her reading glasses and peered at the invitation again. Printed on cheap paper and decorated with the ubiquitous yellow frangipani motifs, it didn’t hold much promise. Meredith had always imagined her only daughter would walk down the aisle at St Johns, Toorak, at 6 pm on a Friday, in an elegant slip of satin and lace. The invitation would be printed on a thick, gold-embossed card tucked in an envelope sealed with red wax and silk ribbons.

But that was all fantasy. The reality was that once Sigrid had married this ‘Charlie’ in Byron Bay, there would be no way back. And now she would be the one to shift the mountainous motorhome to visit Mohammed. How could it be almost a
quarter of a century ago that she had first held her baby girl in her arms? And Jarvis, away in London this past year—how long since she’d sat him on her knee? Meredith bent her head and sniffed the cover of a continental pillow as if she could somehow conjure the milky custard aroma of a baby’s head. Ironing aid—that’s all she could smell.

As Meredith activated the alarms and locked Flair’s front doors, she also thought of her husband, Donald. Every time she imagined him, his image came to her in a flat brown frame. Not
bole
or
fallow
, just a sort of plain brown. It was frustrating that she could not name the exact shade.
Russet
?
Bistre
?
Sepia
?
Umber
?

Try as she might, she had never quite been able to identify the colour that framed him, but as she looked into the dark street outside the store window tonight it came to her at last. It was as bland as
moth
and as impenetrable as
mud
.

Annie made another call to Nina in the middle of the week. Nina knew it was a Wednesday because Anton and Marko had footy training and she had parked the Odyssey across from the oval to wait for them. She was supposed to be taking the dog for a walk, but instead Metro, the family mutt, was nosing his way through the bushes while Nina was plopped on a bench finishing her Marian Keyes novel and polishing off a packet of salted beer nuts. She checked the carbohydrate content on the back of the packet—3.5 per 100 grams. That was good. She was doing the high-protein, low-carb diet this week in preparation for getting into a bathing suit.

A couple of the school mums reckoned they’d lost three kilograms in five days! Nina had lost a kilo since Sunday. She was constipated and had bad breath, but it was a small price to pay. Only thing was, she was exhausted. She hadn’t slept well last night. In her dreams she was driving a baker’s van full of loaves and muffins. At 3 am she found herself standing in front of the bread bin in the kitchen, thinking of having just one half of a small dinner roll. She had put it back and walked purposefully upstairs. For the rest of the night—with Brad’s long legs intruding into her half of the bed—she dreamed she was tangled in spaghetti carbonara.

‘I’ve decided that I’ll come.’ It was a female voice.

‘Really?’ Nina held out her mobile phone and stared at it. As if she had picked up Jordy’s phone by mistake and his girlfriend Olivia was telling him she was coming over for an afternoon assignation in his bedroom.

‘Is that you, Annie? Are you saying you’ll come to Byron?’

‘Yep.’

‘Really, truly?’

‘That’s what I said,’ Annie replied evenly. It was disconcerting the way Nina swung between being a nagging mum and a wheedling little girl.

‘But what about work? You always seem so—’

‘Look, do you want me to come or not?’

‘Yes, yes I do. That’s brilliant, really brilliant!’ Nina jumped to her feet and beer nuts spilled onto the gravel path. ‘Oh, Annie, that’s great, it really is.’

‘But I’m telling you,
if it all goes wrong
. . .’

‘I know. It will be all my fault.’ As if, for the past fifteen years Nina had spent as a wife and mother, it had ever been anyone else’s.

Annie wasn’t exactly sure why she’d agreed to go to Byron in the ugly bus. Maybe it was as simple as
why not
? She stepped into her compact, shiny kitchen, slid an icy bottle of vodka from the freezer of her side-by-side giant refrigerator/freezer and looked for a clean glass. The shelves were bare. In the sink, slimy cold worms of noodles curled around plastic forks floating on the dull surface of the water. Somewhere under there were glasses.

She swigged from the bottle, lit a cigarette and picked her way through piles of clothes on the floor, back to the bedroom and her empty suitcase. She glanced at her BlackBerry lying dormant on the bed. The demanding little device was dead to the world. And with it switched off, Annie reflected, so was she. If she were to expire right this minute, how long would it be until anyone in her block of flats noticed she was missing? The only clue to her demise would be a letterbox stuffed with Freedom Furniture and Liquorland catalogues. Without the phone’s insistent, pitiful cry, there was nothing in particular holding her here.

Annie thought of Meredith’s offer of a discount on the price of her designer homewares. Where was home? A pair of standard lamps stood, still swathed in bubble-wrap, on her lounge room floor and she could scarcely recall what colour they were. Brown probably. To match the ultra suede three-seater couch that no-one
had sat on in six months. To complement the glass-topped dining table at which no-one had ever eaten a meal.

Perhaps the tipping point had come with the invitation to the five-day conference at Jupiter’s Casino on the Gold Coast. The thought of spending almost a week in the company of a couple of hundred other real estate agents from around the country had made Annie’s eyes glaze over. She knew exactly how it would go.

There would be the interminable presentations on how to succeed (Be yourself. Stand out from the crowd. Do something memorable for your customers!), how to understand Gen Y (They all want to be individuals. You must be an individual too!), and how to sell to international buyers (They’re all looking for a haven from the storm of global realities! Be a Safe Harbour!). There would be the forced jollity of cocktail evenings, fancy dress nights, sports afternoons and formal dinners. There would be an evening when she’d get legless. She would wake next morning to find a double-knit polo shirt and a pair of cargo pants crumpled on the floor of her hotel room and the anonymous, lumpy form of a delegate from Bundaberg snoring in the bed next to her.

It should have been a simple enough task to pack her bag for Byron—a fortnight of shorts, singlets and T-shirts, a good outfit for the wedding. How hard could it be? But Annie was finding it harder and harder to do even the simplest things. Bills were piled, unopened, on the coffee table. Her car was overdue for a service. There was nothing edible in the fridge. The kitchen
cupboards were empty. She badly needed her roots done. She hadn’t called home in a fortnight.