The Near Miss (9 page)

           
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Eddy's eyes moved on to another article below it, about giant feral cats that had been sighted in some national park; maybe this was what Tom had meant him to read? But then Tom's finger jabbed the robber picture again, making Eddy jump. ‘You see it?'

‘See what?' Eddy felt shaky and irritable. He wanted to be alone. He hardly knew this man, Tom. But then his eyes, drifting over the page, suddenly locked on the female thief.

Tom said, ‘The crims.'

The woman rose from the page at Eddy, even while remaining flat. The picture was impressionistic, made from the giant pixels of a poor-quality camera, but even so you could make out the cartoon cat expression on the mask, which curled around the side of her face. Oh God. It couldn't be. The robber's hair was not short, as he had first thought, but tied up at the back — you could make out one long tendril, falling over her shoulder. Like the pirate, she held a very large gun, a fact which made him momentarily check his rising horror — but then he looked at the way her shoulders were raised. Romy always did that when she was nervous — and the way her jeans flared over her shoes, and the way she leaned her head, cat mask and all, on one side. But, oh, it was more than all these things, it was a certain shiver in the air around her, a displacement of the pixels that he recognised.

‘Look familiar?' said Tom.

‘No.'

Tom nodded, watching him. He half-grinned, as if it might be funny, but he was hedging his bets in case it wasn't.

Eddy breathed fast and deeply. He could not believe this. What a ridiculous thought. ‘Fuck,' he said. ‘Fucking hell.' His head hurt.

Tom stopped smiling. ‘Are you—' But then his mobile rang. He took it out, looked at it and swore, before he answered. ‘Hi, darl! Yeah, working, just out getting some supplies. Some transmitters. Then back to a three-hour meeting. Tricky client . . . I did? Oh, I did, that's right. Miss Laura rang me from kindy. Some issue about Lotte she wanted to talk to us about . . . Can you? That would be great. I'm just hectic all this week.'

And he hung up and twisted off another bottle top. Eddy's breathing finally slowed, although he kept staring at the newspaper picture. Tom talked a bit about robotics and asked him things about risk analysis, which seemed like a far-off life now to Eddy, although he surprised himself by managing to find the words to talk about it, and by sustaining a possibly normal-sounding conversation. They talked about footy. Eddy didn't ask Tom why he was lying to his wife about being at work, and Tom didn't ask Eddy how he felt about his crazy girlfriend who had become a robber. Finally the conversation fell silent, and just as Eddy was feeling that it had been an uncomfortably long period without a word, he looked over at Tom and saw that he had fallen asleep in his chair. Relieved, Eddy relaxed back into his own chair and watched until his neighbour ran past on his way home from work, his tie still flapping. Finally, Tom woke, alarmed at the time, and Eddy pointed out the grassy mud chunks that were still inexplicably on Tom's pants, although now redistributing themselves onto Eddy's carpet, and Tom brushed more of them off onto the carpet without apologising, and left to go home.

Eddy sat in the gathering dark with his newspaper and his disbelief, until finally he came to with a start of anger and hunger, and ordered a delivery pizza. The girl on the phone recognised his voice, or his phone number, and asked if he wanted the usual — gluten-free, thin-based vegetarian delight with extra rocket — and he reflected for a moment and told her that, actually, he really, really did not. He would have a meatlovers with the lot, thick wheat base, and he didn't want to see
a shred of anything green.

‘They what?' spluttered Grace. She had been surprised to find Melody also waiting to see Miss Laura at kindy, and then dismayed when the teacher ushered both mothers into her office. God, can I never get away from this woman? Grace had wondered, trying not to meet Melody's calm blue eyes. The kindy teacher had sat them down and made it clear: There Was A Problem.

‘They are very good friends,' said Miss Laura. She was attractive in a wholesome sort of way: thick eyebrows and rosy cheeks and generous breasts and hips. Her eyes crinkled from long days of smiling down at children.

‘But?' demanded Grace.

‘They are excluding other children from their games.'

‘Are there that many who want to play with them?' Skipper was new, after all. And Grace's understanding from three-year-old kinder the year before was that Lotte had repelled most of the other children by now, and was generally left to her regal solitude.

‘Well, there's little boys who want to play with . . .' Miss Laura trailed off and glanced at Melody. Ah. It was clear now. There were little boys who wanted to play with Skipper. Of course. Her dysfunctional daughter was holding back the hippy child's social chances.

Melody blinked. ‘Does it matter?' she said, coolly.

‘Well, it's more than that actually.' Miss Laura smiled down at the floor and was still for a moment, as if remembering something, before she jerked back to life. ‘I keep catching them in the toilet together.'

Grace reeled. ‘Doing
what
?'

Miss Laura shrugged. ‘Number ones. Twos. But they are insisting on being with each other when they do it. Or, well, Lotte—'

‘Oh God,' snapped Grace. ‘Can't you just stop them?'

‘We can, of course. But you are their parents. It's right you should know. Maybe you can say something.'

As they left the kindergarten shortly after, Grace's face burning, Melody put her hand on her arm. ‘I don't see anything wrong with it. They're four years old, for God's sake. They're just curious.'

‘Of course!' Grace nodded, tearful with relief. ‘Well, I'm off to do some shopping.'

‘Can Lotte come to the park for a play on Saturday?'

‘Yes!'

Grace watched Melody go, and then she furtively crossed the street and entered a coffee shop. She settled herself at a table with three other women, mothers from the local kindy. She knew Verity Genoise, a stay-at-home-mother, from mothers' group. There was Nina, an elfin-looking lawyer, whom she knew from three-year-old kinder, and Anna Trapper, Grace's mother-of-four neighbour down the road with the wannabe actor/director husband.

‘How is Lotte's leg?' Verity had been appalled by the accident, and couldn't seem to stop talking about it.

‘Getting better,' Grace said crisply, and she hoped, discouragingly. She knew it was all her fault. A failure of the parent on duty. Any other job, you'd be sacked.

‘Will there be any lasting effect?' Did Verity sound hungry, hopeful, or was that Grace's imagination?

‘She looks just fine to me,' said Anna smoothly, sipping the froth off a coffee.

‘But will—'

‘She does seem fine, doesn't she?' Grace hastily agreed, nodding at Anna. ‘And Damien: how did his job interview go?' An unfair ruse, she knew, to swing Verity's attention away from Grace's misfortune to Anna's. Both the antisocial four-year-old and the unemployed husband were favoured targets of Verity's sympathy.

But Anna was calm. ‘Just a chat about a possible movie later this year.'

Damien Trapper wanted to direct movies, and had spent the past two years not working, and trying to get film projects up and running. Anna did both waitressing and telephone sales shifts so the family could meet the rent and eat. Grace was secretly horrified by Damien, all the more during the year that her own husband had started to resemble him, tinkering away on his own personal R2-D2 out the back while the margin they had built on the mortgage shrank.

‘And how do you think he went?' Nina asked politely. The three of them had discussed this situation in Anna's absence.
She works so hard! Such an unselfish person! And him, so useless!

Anna looked resigned. ‘No luck. And Tom's still working, I see? I mean, last we heard he wanted to leave his job and take another year off to do his inventing thing. Gosh, he enjoyed that last time.'

Grace nodded. ‘Yes! Not leaving. We'll both work for a while to save some money, and then I'll take maternity leave and we'll have another baby.'

‘How lovely.' Anna smiled at her. ‘Well, if we can help with picking up Lotte at all, just say. Clare would love to have a play with her anytime.'

Grace could not miss the generosity of this; the even-tempered and popular Clare had little patience for Lotte's princess-like tantrums and could have expressed no such wishes about her neighbour. ‘Thank you.'

‘No, really. Since my sister left her husband, we don't see as much of the cousins. Clare's
missing them.'

‘How is your sister? The property settlement done yet?' Nina was always keen to learn all the details on people's divorces. ‘Such a brave thing to do!'

‘Lotte really seems to have hit it off with the new boy,' Verity interjected eagerly. ‘You know, the one whose mother saved Lotte in the accident.'

This dogged return to the accident would have irritated Grace, except that she, too, was baffled by the strength of her daughter's attachment to Skip. Lotte had not really had a friend before. She had had competitors for toys, people to dominate, obstacles to her will, but not someone you would call friend. Playing with Lotte was not something other children clamoured to do. Nor had she ever been very interested in other children, until now. But Skipper! Lotte drew pictures of them together, she talked about him, she ran to him when they arrived at kindy. Lord above, she apparently defecated with him. Could it get any more intimate, at age four?

‘She does seem to have found a kindred spirit,' she said.

‘And the going to the toilet together! How funny!' Verity whispered. Great, so the whole kindy knew about it already. ‘I had a friend whose daughter did that. With her neighbour's kid. Would hold on until he was around.'

‘Oh?' Maybe it was normal.

‘Not anymore, though. Child psychologist helped.' Ah, apparently not normal.

‘Oh, that's overkill,' said Anna. ‘They're kids, for God's sake. Lucky Grace isn't the type to stress over something so perfectly natural.'

Grace checked her phone in the hope of some reprieve. ‘Of course not.'

‘He's a sweet little boy,' said Verity.

‘Apparently the mother lives on a commune,' Nina said. ‘And the father? Separated?'

‘Lives on a commune?'

‘I think that's what they said on the TV show, isn't it? When they screened the accident?'

‘Yes,' confirmed Nina. ‘Commune.'

‘But . . . no.' Grace felt the unease she generally did when talking about Melody. ‘She's in one of those one-bedroom apartments on Chawton Street, the crappy brown brick ones. She
used
to live on a commune, up north. The TV show got it wrong.'

‘So are you guys good friends now, too?' Nina was undoubtedly asking permission to talk in a negative way about the new mother, but just feeling her way.

‘Noo, although we did have her for dinner. To say thank you. But not really. We're very different.' Grace, labouring under her unwelcome burden of gratitude to Melody, found herself eager to hear Nina's thoughts on the new mother, hopeful they may somehow lessen her debt.

‘
Very
different!' Nina rolled her eyes meaningfully, and Verity and she cackled in a way that indicated that this conversation, about to be rolled out for further consumption right now, had begun in private elsewhere. ‘She's—'

‘No, I think they're very similar,' said Anna, gathering up her bag. The statement was so astounding that everyone stared at her.

‘Who?' said Verity.

‘Grace and Melody, of course. Very alike. Gotta grab some groceries before kindy, I'll see you at pick-up.'

Grace turned back to the other two, eager to hear their opinions on Melody, but they had been derailed by Anna's departure and were now remembering errands they also had to run before pick-up. Grace found herself suddenly alone with their empty coffee cups, the froth hardened on the edges in a thousand expired milk bubbles, and the dregs of an abandoned conversation. What
on earth did she have in common with a hippy single mother?

Melody meditated. She knew people who envisioned white lights, who recited chants. She, however, just tried to empty her mind. Every time a thought passed through her, she sponged it away with those very words: empty your mind. Those kindy mums who had gone for a coffee without her, glimpsed through the plate-glass window of Café Romanos? Empty Your Mind. Including Grace, who she had thought might become a friend, especially after the dinner-party bonding? Empty Your Mind. Even though Melody had saved her child's life, and Skipper and the child seemed to have hit it off, oh Grace was all gratitude one minute and then the next all pretending she was off to go shopping when she was sneaking out with the other mums . . . Empty Your Mind! Shut up Already!

This beautiful world. A basket of sun-dried, folded washing. A loaf of freshly baked bread. The smell of her son's hair. She breathed out, and relaxed. She felt the backs of her hands resting lightly on her inner thighs, her legs crossed. She heard a far-off bird, and a train. She was a daughter of the universe, and the universe would provide. It always did.

The doorbell rang and she opened her eyes. Who was that? An hour until she was due back at kindy to collect Skip. She needed to get on the laptop and look for jobs. She already had an interview lined up for a job putting letterbox numbers into packaging, about which she was hopeful, in a reluctant sort of way. There was no way around it, she could be thrown off the single mother's benefit any day now. She needed work.

Melody ran down the stairs and opened the door. It was Van.

She peered around him; he was alone. He didn't look good. His face was flushed, his jaw covered in stubble, and the whites of his eyes were red. He glanced furtively behind himself. She
led him in and made him a cup of coffee.

‘So, how's your new girlfriend?'

He didn't meet her eyes. ‘We're staying at a friend's. Just for tonight, and then we're heading up to a party in the Talna Valley.'

‘And Romy's there?'

He shrugged. ‘Maybe.'

‘Has she rung her fella?'

‘How would I know?'

He smelled stale. She was glad Skipper wasn't here to see him like this. ‘So, what brings you here?'

‘Wanted to give you something.'

She softened, curious. ‘Oh! Well.' And watched as he brought out a fat white envelope. Her smile faded. ‘What's this?'

‘Some cash to get you by.'

She took it, and pressed it between her thumb and forefinger. About two centimetres thick. She could smell it; ink and paper and the sweaty hands of commerce; the residue of a thousand different cash registers. Grace had shown her the newspaper picture, and she thought of it now. The blurry figure holding the gun, his posture so familiar, his face hidden. The female form beside him.

‘Lucky you didn't shoot the checkout boy.'

He laughed without smiling, and surveyed her for a moment. He looked exhausted. ‘It wasn't
luck
. I'm not that much of an arsehole.'

‘Poor kid's had to quit his job and get counselling. Post-traumatic stress disorder. His
parents are completely freaked out, can't sleep. His little sister's stopped going to school, scared of men with guns.'

He snorted. ‘How would you know that?'

She shrugged coolly. She had made it up. ‘Read it in the paper.'

‘Well, it
must
be true then.'