The Ex Factor (19 page)

Frankie nods. ‘She couldn’t.’

‘So, she passed away naturally, right? Rama chose her time to go?’

She pauses for a moment that feels like an eternity. ‘No,’ she says finally. ‘I made the call. I chose.’

For the second time that morning, it feels as if the ground falls away beneath me. What’s left of my heart splinters in my chest.

Frankie sees my stricken expression. ‘You couldn’t have fixed this, Kitty,’ she says hurriedly. ‘Even if you’d been here. It wouldn’t have mattered.’

It wouldn’t have mattered.
My presence here, being able to say goodbye to Rama, might not have made a difference to Frankie. But it would have made a difference to me.

Suddenly, Adam’s stark office and the biting chemical smell of the clinic could be the hospital where my mother passed away; the anguish consuming me now feels as fresh as the day she died. Only that day I had Rama to comfort me.

Today I have nothing. And why? Because I was selfish and stupid and deluded enough to think someone like Mitchell Pyke could love me. Because I was too blinded by his ‘star quality’ to see the futility – the
insanity – 
of trying to exist in his world. And because that blindness led me to blithely entrust the care of my last connection to my mother to someone who can barely take care of herself.

I get unsteadily to my feet and reach for the handle of my wheeled suitcase.

‘What are you doing?’ Frankie says.

‘What does it look like?’

‘You can’t go, Kitty. You’re exhausted. And you hit your head when you fell – you might have a concussion.’ My sister wears a concerned expression. ‘Lie down. Please.’

She reaches for my elbow and tries to guide me back to the camp bed, but I shake her off. ‘Don’t pretend you care about me, Frankie,’ I hiss, rounding on her. ‘Don’t you
dare
.’

Frankie’s eyes widen in shock. ‘I’m not pretending anything.’ Her voice is small.

‘I can’t imagine how tough the last five weeks have been for you, burdened by Rama and the other dogs,’ I continue flatly. ‘What a hardship it must have been to act like you gave a toss about something besides yourself. It must have felt like an eternity.’

‘It wasn’t a burden, Kitty. You know I was happy to —’

‘Well, I’m back now. You never liked Rama, and now you don’t have to worry about her or the others. The Frankie Show rolls on. How convenient.’

Tears well in Frankie’s eyes, but she doesn’t respond. A voice from behind me does instead.

‘If you are suggesting that the decision to end Rama’s suffering was easily made, Kitty, you are very much mistaken. There was absolutely nothing convenient about the last few hours.’

I turn to see Adam filling the doorway, as tall and pale and lanky as ever. I feel a brief flicker of pleasure at the sight of my best friend, but it’s instantly extinguished. It feels like a hundred years since I last saw him that awful night at the restaurant. Can I still call him my best friend? If he’s really standing there defending my sister, justifying yet another example of Frankie shirking her responsibilities and putting herself first, then I guess I can’t.

Adam steps fully into his office. ‘I think you owe Frankie an apology,’ he says, looking down his nose at me like a reproving schoolteacher.

‘Do you, Adam? Do you think I’ve misjudged my sister? That I’m being unfair?’ I hold his gaze, daring him to respond. The gall of the guy, after the things he said to me during our last meeting.

At last, he looks away.
Coward.

I look at Adam a moment longer, then shift my gaze back to Frankie. She’s staring at the floor.

‘I’m going home. I don’t want to see either of you,’ I say, heading for the door.

‘Okay,’ Frankie says softly. ‘We’ll give you some time. I’ll be home later.’

I stop, take a deep breath. ‘No,’ I say without turning back. ‘I don’t want you there later. I don’t want you there
ever
. I just want to be left alone.’

And as I walk away I know that I mean it.

If it’s tough for a movie star like Mitchell to be publicly dumped, being left on the cutting room floor
by
a movie star is definitely no picnic either.

Okay, I guess Mitchell didn’t actually dump me. He may have been only playing the part of a man in love, but I suppose technically speaking it was me that ended it. But it hurts every bit as much as if he’d been the one to walk away.

Foolishly, I imagined that leaving Mitchell and his ridiculous Hollywood existence in Hollywood meant I could scurry home to Australia and quietly resume my old life in my little house with my exasperating sister and my four-legged posse. I figured I’d make amends with Adam and revive my business. I thought that if there were a silver lining to the gut-wrenching failure of my relationship with Mitchell, it would be the return of my anonymity.

I was wrong.
Way
wrong.

I arrive home from Adam’s clinic, tear-stained and exhausted, to find my front lawn crawling with media. And, of course, Erin McInerny’s flaxen mane is front and centre. ‘Kitty,
so
sorry to hear about you and Mitchell,’ she says, not sounding sorry at all. ‘Would you care to make a comment?’

How does this woman always seem to know more about my love life than I do? If I wasn’t utterly astonished to see her there, I might ask her for some pointers.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say, standing dumbly on the kerb as I wait for the driver to retrieve my suitcase from the boot of the taxi.

I see Erin sweep a critical eye over my puffy face and dishevelled attire, and I know she’s mentally slapping a ‘devastated celebrity cast-off’ label on me. She probably thinks I’m gutted that my brief turn in the limelight is over. Well, fine. She can think what she likes. I’m not about to tell her that my tears are for my dead mother’s dead dog. I wouldn’t expect someone like Erin to understand that I’d be perfectly happy if the world had never heard my name; that I’m sorry I ever left my little dog’s side.

She wouldn’t understand that, at this moment, I wish I’d never met Mitchell Pyke.

‘Are you home for good?’ Erin says, and there’s a definite note of triumph in her tone. She lowers her voice and leans in close. ‘You were, uh,
overheard
on the aircraft.’

Apparently there are spies even at forty thousand feet. I refuse to believe kindly Laverne stepped off a fifteen-hour flight and promptly called the local news media. It must have been one of those sour-faced flight attendants.

I pay the taxi driver and make a beeline for my front door, pushing past Erin a little more assertively than is strictly necessary. I can hear Reggie, Carl and Dolly howling a welcome-home chorus inside the house. My battered spirits lift a little at the thought they still recognise my voice after five weeks away.

Erin is hot on my heels as I slot the key in the door. ‘Just a few words, Kitty. Please?’

I turn to face her. ‘It sounds like someone has already given you most of your story, Erin. Feel free to make up the rest. As if you need my permission.’

I step inside and am about to close the door – quietly, but only because I don’t want to give her a headline by slamming it in her pretty face – when she wraps her fingers around my wrist.

‘Look, Kitty,’ she says, speaking even more quietly now. ‘I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there, too.’

My eyes widen in horror. Is she actually telling me she’s been with Mitchell? Erin frowns, confused, as she registers my stricken expression. Then her own eyes grow to the size of saucers.

‘No! Oh, nononono! I don’t mean that literally.’ She throws her head back and laughs throatily. ‘I mean
generally
speaking. I’ve punched above my weight and been knocked flat on my backside. Haven’t we all?’ She cackles again. In Erin’s world, we’re just two unlucky-in-love gal pals, bemoaning love’s rocky road. A sudden wave of nausea washes over me.

‘But seriously,’ she continues, tightening her grip on my arm. ‘I know what it’s like to be dumped, and I know how hard it is being a woman in the public eye. If you ever —’

‘I’m only in the public eye because of people like
you
,’ I spit, my earlier resolution to take the high road instantly forgotten.
And I dumped
him, I want to scream.

Erin purses her lips and adopts a condescending expression. ‘Sweetie, you’re in the public eye because you were granted entrée to a world most of us can only dream of, and you’ll stay in the public eye because you’ve been thrown out of that world. That’s how it’s going to be, whether I’m on your front lawn or not.’

Fresh tears prick my eyes. She’s right. I’m not so arrogant as to doubt I’ll be forgotten, but I’ve had a comprehensive enough crash course in the workings of the world’s tabloid media to know it won’t be any time soon.

There’s a telltale flash of unabashed glory in Erin’s eyes. She knows she has my attention.

‘Use it to your advantage, Kitty. That’s all I’m saying. You turned your life upside down for this guy. Why shouldn’t you get
something
out of everything you’ve been through?’

The other reporters still milling on the grass have noticed Erin’s and my tête-à-tête and are trying to look inconspicuous as they creep closer. That sick feeling in the pit of my stomach is growing more intense. I just want all these parasites away from me.

‘What are you saying, Erin?’

She casts a glance over her shoulder at her rivals. ‘If you thought your life had been picked apart when you and Mitchell were together, you’d better prepare yourself for what’s coming next,’ she says hurriedly. ‘Eventually you’re going to want to tell your side of the story, and when you do I promise I can make it worth your while. I imagine you’ve become accustomed to a certain
lifestyle
.’ Erin gives a theatrical wink.

Wait. Is she suggesting what I think she’s suggesting?

‘Are you implying I’m some kind of gold-digger?’

‘I don’t judge, Kitty. I just report the facts,’ she says, her pretty face the picture of innocence.

The facts. Right.

‘Anyway, call me when you want to talk.’ She presses her business card into my hand, then releases my wrist, pivots on her spike heels and strides away.

Finally, mercifully, I’m able to close my front door and I luxuriate in the cool, silent interior of my home for a full second before I’m felled by a rocket-propelled Reggie. Then Dolly’s tongue is in my ear and Carl is dancing elegant little circles around us. I leave them to it for a good few minutes and try to imagine this is just a regular day. A day when I’ve simply come home from work, and haven’t lost anyone or anything, and haven’t been away from the dogs for over a month. I luxuriate in their unbridled joy. I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt so at ease, so welcome, so
loved
. And besides, I’m too shattered to get up right now.

When their excitement has died down, I haul myself to my feet for as long as it takes to make it to the living room, then collapse onto the sofa. The dogs assemble on the floor by my feet. A stomach-churning mixture of exhaustion and grief makes my head spin and I close my eyes, willing sleep to engulf me. I’m just dozing off when Dolly lets out a soft, almost apologetic whine.

My eyes spring open, and instantly I’m weeping. Dolly, Reggie and Carl are curled up in the corner of the room, all with their heads resting on the overstuffed pillow that was Rama’s bed. It’s clear they know she isn’t coming back. They know I couldn’t save her. They’re wondering what happened, why a piece is missing. I’m wondering, too.

Dolly whines again, and this time Carl and Reggie join in. A moment later, they start to howl, and so do I. Their hearts are broken, just like mine. So I slide off the sofa, crawl across the floor and squeeze my head onto Rama’s pillow beside theirs.

I know I can’t banish Frankie from the house forever. It’s her home, too; Mum left it to both of us. And I’m sure whichever friend she’s crashing with has had enough of my sister’s slovenly ways by now. But aside from leaving a message yesterday to say she’d be collecting Rama’s ashes from the pet crematorium, she’s stayed away. I’m glad. I’ve been home for a week and my self-imposed solitude has given me plenty of time to think.

I know I was way out of line accusing Frankie of taking the easy way out. Ending Rama’s suffering was the right thing to do, and if I’d been in my right mind I would have said that to my sister instead of behaving like a madwoman. I owe Frankie an apology, but not yet. Seeing her means explaining why I’m back home with my tail between my legs, and I just can’t bring myself to rake it all up again. Not when Mitchell hasn’t even called.

Although, if Frankie has looked at virtually any news source or gossip website since my return, she’ll have figured out for herself why I hightailed it out of Hollywood.

Even I’m willing to admit a certain grudging admiration for just how creative these media people can be when it comes to putting a fresh spin on old news. The only concrete fact they have is that I’ve returned to Australia without Mitchell, but as Mum used to say, they’re not about to let the truth stand in the way of a good story. They spent the first few days after I came back breathlessly speculating on exactly what caused our split. Popular opinion, of course, is that Mitchell came to his senses and sent his shabby rebound fling packing. Not one so-called journalist has reported the truth – that it was me who walked away. They’re all certain Mitchell is still hung up on Vida, and that it’s just a matter of time before her foundering marriage sinks for good and she and Mitchell step out as an item once again. Vida has had paparazzi tailing her constantly since I left, which I’m sure she loves. Knowing my doomed relationship has given her more of the attention she craves is seriously rubbing salt in my wounds. It’s baffling to me how she ever lured Mitchell into believing she’s not hungry for fame.

Now that the TV talking heads are satisfied they’ve got to the bottom of why it all went wrong, their collective attention has turned to gravely reporting on my newly assumed hermit status, as if my not going out is proof a full-blown meltdown is imminent. It never seems to occur to anyone on television that other people might not want to be on television. Especially people whose hearts have been pulverised and who have been subsisting on cheese on toast and chocolate milk for seven days straight.

Seven days in which the only place I’ve heard Mitchell’s voice is in my head. He still hasn’t called, though I did find a trademark Post-it stuck to the inside of one of the cartons full of my stuff that he’d FedExed back to me. It bore another cryptic note – a line lifted from one of his movies, I’m guessing:
New life cannot flourish in a garden filled with ghosts.

Which I guess is his theatrical way of confessing what I already knew to be true – that there’s no room for me in a heart still possessed by Vida. Pity Mitchell felt the need to hide behind someone else’s words to say so, instead of picking up the damn telephone and using his own.

At least the media scrum has finally vacated my lawn. During a rare lucid moment, I called the police, who promptly turned up and threatened the salivating hacks with harassment charges if they didn’t get off my property. So they’ve relocated their encampment to the footpath on the opposite side of the street. I guess it’s better than nothing, although I imagine my neighbours wouldn’t agree.

I’ve started walking the dogs at midnight, after the final news bulletins have aired and the camera crews have gone home for the night, so as not to give them the opportunity to pontificate over pictures of me looking like something that’s been dragged through a hedge backwards. For a few days I tried sneaking out just before dawn, before they returned for their daily surveillance, even though I felt utterly ridiculous skulking around the dog park in a hat and sunglasses before the sun was even up. I persevered because I was hoping to see Adam, though I’m not quite sure why. But he never came, and someone must have spotted me and tipped off my stalkers, because one morning I arrived at the park to be ambushed by cretins from
Sunrise
and
Today
and that was the end of that little experiment
.

But walking the hounds under cover of darkness, combined with the lingering effects of jet lag, has wreaked havoc with my sleeping patterns. I’ve been staying up most of the night – which is prime bad-TV-and-ugly-crying time anyway – and sleeping well into the afternoon. Which is why I don’t hear Frankie enter the house until she’s standing at the foot of my bed, tapping my bottom with a rolled-up newspaper.

‘Kathryn Eleanor Hayden!’ she’s shouting. ‘Get your lazy arse out of bed this instant.’

I roll over and sit up, blinking sleep from my eyes. My head feels thick, sluggish, as if it’s filled with cotton wool. ‘Huh?’

‘I’ve given you a week. I was going to come home the day you stormed out of Adam’s clinic, but he said I had to give you
the space to lick your wounds unfettered
.’ My sister rolls her eyes and tosses the newspaper onto the bed next to me. ‘Which I think was his way of telling me to leave you the hell alone. And so I have. But enough is enough.’

Frankie plants one hand on her hip and taps her toes impatiently against my bedroom floorboards. She was lucky to find a sliver of floor not covered by clothes, toast crusts or wadded-up, sob-filled tissues. She raises her eyebrows and looks at me expectantly. Her resemblance to our mother at this moment is so uncanny it takes my breath away.

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ I retort when at last I regain the power of speech.

‘
Well
, what do you have to say for yourself?’

Suddenly, I understand. Frankie wants an apology. And clearly she’s not going to leave until she gets it.

‘I’m so sorry, Frankie,’ I say. ‘I know you did everything you could for Rama. Can you forgive me?’

‘Can I . . .? Oh,
Kitty
.’ Another exaggerated eye-roll. ‘You don’t have to apologise to me. I know you didn’t mean the things you said. You were sad. So was I. And besides,’ she goes on, ‘being sisters means never having to say you’re sorry.’

‘That’s love, Frank.
Love
means never having to say you’re sorry.’

She grins. ‘Same thing.’

I shake my head, trying to shift the last of the brain fog wrapped around my synapses. ‘So, if you’re not here for an apology, why are you here?’

‘Aside from the not-insignificant fact that this is my house?’

‘Aside from that fact.’

Frankie kicks off her shoes and climbs under the covers with me. ‘I’m here because you, lady, are not the Kitty I know,’ she says, wrapping both arms around me. ‘The Kitty I know doesn’t lock herself away for a week, moping over some dude. The Kitty I know doesn’t skulk around the dog park at midnight in a ridiculous hat and sunglasses. Sunglasses at
night
! We Haydens have standards, you know.’

I blink, surprised. ‘How do you know I’ve been going to the park at night?’

‘Adam and I have been on stakeout,’ she says, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. Suddenly, Frankie looks appalled. ‘You didn’t think I’d actually
listen
when you sent me away, did you?’

I shrug.

‘Um, my big sister had her heart broken. Did you miss that? It’s been all over the news. I may not have been allowed to
fetter
you, or whatever, but as if I was going to just leave you all alone. Who do you think’s been restocking the fridge with cheese every other day? The brie fairies?’

I’m so astonished that I can scarcely find the words to express my astonishment. When did my little sister – my irresponsible, self-absorbed, utterly incorrigible little sister – turn into this . . . this concerned, organised
adult
?

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Frankie says. ‘You’re thinking I’ve changed since you’ve been away. That I’ve grown up.’ So she’s an adult
and
a psychic. ‘But you’re wrong, Kitty.’

‘I am?’

Frankie nods. ‘I grew up a long time ago. Losing your mother in your teens tends to have that effect. And for the record, I never considered Rama a “burden”.’ She actually does finger quotes. ‘We might not always have been the best of friends, but I loved that dog – because Mum loved her.’

I take a deep breath, because if I try to speak right now I’m likely to start wailing. I don’t quite know what I expected when I awoke to find Frankie hovering over me – hostility, maybe. Swearing, probably. High drama, most definitely. But what I definitely did not expect from my sister was reason and generosity, and certainly not this cool-headed maturity.

‘I feel like I’ve let you down, Frankie,’ I manage to choke out at last.

‘How do you figure you’ve done that?’

‘You were only nineteen when we lost Mum. Still a kid, really. And I was so wrapped up in my own grief that I forgot that. I should have stepped up, been more of a mother figure to you. And then to just up and leave while I chased after
some dude . . .
’ Damn it; despite my best efforts, here come the tears.

With a sigh, Frankie sits up and looks at me gravely. ‘Kitty,’ she begins, then falters. She casts her gaze around my bedroom, as if hoping to find a script she can read from.

‘What is it?’ I prompt gently.

‘Kitty,’ she begins again. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful for everything you’ve done for me, for us, since Mum died. I mean, sorting out the house, forcing me to get off my arse and look for a proper job – that stuff is huge. You’ve been an amazing big sister.’

I sense a ‘but’ coming.

‘But – and I say this with love – you’re not my mother and you really,
really
need to stop trying to be.’ Frankie bites her bottom lip and fixes me with an apprehensive gaze. I wonder how long she’s been dying to get that off her chest, how long she’s resented me. My sister has had to muster all her courage to say those words; that much is obvious.

‘Wow,’ I say softly. ‘Am I that bad?’

‘No! You’re not
bad
at all. I didn’t—
ugh
!’ Frankie hides her face in her hands. ‘Can we just forget I said anything?’

I’d like that, I really would. I don’t know if I can bear another ‘let’s examine all Kitty’s faults’ expedition just now. But I haven’t exactly been doing myself any favours lately; maybe I could use a bit of self-reflection. And I also know how rare it is for Frankie to want to talk about her feelings, so the desperate pseudo-parent in me – the one she’s apparently so sick of – wants to pull up a psychiatrist’s couch and start taking notes.

‘Come on, Frank,’ I say, steeling myself. ‘We’ve come this far. You might as well let me have it.’

Frankie’s blue eyes peep out from behind her fingers. ‘You won’t be mad?’

‘Of course I won’t be mad. Being sisters means never having to say you’re sorry, right?’

I see a flicker of a smile. Frankie takes a breath and folds her hands neatly in her lap. ‘Okay, I’m just going to say it.’

‘Hit me.’

‘You have a “fixing” thing.’

‘I have a what?’

‘A fixing thing. What was it Mum used to call it . . . dead-duck syndrome?’

I smile in spite of the heavy shroud of apprehension draped around my shoulders. ‘I think you mean
lame-
duck syndrome.’

‘Right, that. You collect things that are broken or damaged because you want to fix them. No, you
need
to fix them.’

‘Like what?’ I can hear the defensive note in my tone.

‘Like your motley pack of reject dogs, for a start.’ Frankie holds up her hands to silence the protestation she knows is coming. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Kitty. They’re great dogs. But you have to admit they’re all, uh,
special
cases.’

She watches me closely for a response. Eventually, I shrug. She has a point, obviously. Reggie’s deaf, Dolly’s ancient and infirm, and Carl is apathetic about life to the point of rigor mortis. The fact that Rama lived as long as she did with her litany of health problems and neuroses is practically a medical miracle. But what’s so wrong with having a soft spot for life’s underdogs – both the literal ones and the figurative variety?

‘Then there’s this house,’ Frankie goes on. ‘Anyone else would have knocked this drafty old place down and sold the land for a small fortune, but you nearly drove yourself mad trying to fix it up. You just have this compulsion to help. To repair stuff.’

‘And that’s a bad thing?’ I say, my voice small. My insides ache. I feel deeply wounded by Frankie’s sermon, though I can tell she’s trying to deliver it as gently as possible.

‘It’s not a bad thing in itself,’ Frankie replies, and her voice is calm and steady now. This is a woman who has courage in her convictions. ‘But you run into problems when you try to fix things that
aren’t
broken. Like Adam. You’ve really got to stop setting him up with such awful women.’

I laugh, but it sounds flat and hollow. I recall Adam’s and my explosive dinner all those weeks ago, when he’d told me how selfish I am – the exact opposite of the compulsively self
less
lunatic Frankie’s describing. What was it Adam had said?
You’ll tell yourself anything if it justifies what you want to do.
Have I somehow convinced myself I’ve been putting myself last, when in fact my own agenda always comes first? Do I need to be needed that badly?

I take a deep breath and push thoughts of Adam to the furthest recesses of my mind. I simply don’t have the energy to begin to consider how he fits into this emotional quagmire.

‘And like me,’ Frankie goes on. ‘I’m not broken either.’

Now it’s my turn to sit up. ‘I’ve never thought of you as broken, Frankie.’ I hope she can feel how desperately I want her to believe me.

She nods sadly. ‘Yes, you have,’ she says with a rueful smile. ‘When Mum died you put me in a “little girl lost” box, and you haven’t let me out of it. I kept wondering why I was always disappointing you, but I’ve finally figured it out. It’s because you want to mother me, and I don’t need to be mothered. I miss Mum every day, Kitty, but I’m not ruined just because I lost a parent. You don’t need to spend the rest of your life trying to compensate for that loss.’