Lisa Heidke (18 page)

Day 48

W
e arrive at Sydney airport, weary and flat, at six-thirty in the morning.

‘Wonder what our house will look like,’ Sam says as we stand in the goods-to-declare line after having collected our luggage from the baggage carousel.

‘No idea,’ I say absentmindedly, cursing myself for buying several wooden picture frames and woven placemats I’ll probably never use. For that moment of impulse buying, I’ll be standing in this line for the foreseeable future.

‘It’ll be a mess,’ Bella says, shaking her head.

I silently agree with her. Without me cracking the whip I’m sure progress will have been minimal.

Along with extreme tiredness, we have only vague memories of swimming, ping-pong and sucking on crab claws with our fingers.

The kids are bored and bickering and I’m fast losing patience - reality hits hard. But I guess disowning them won’t help me much. I have to stay in line.

‘Would you two just be quiet?’

They look at me and giggle, then poke out their tongues at each other.

There’s a commotion up ahead in the line and everyone cranes their necks to see what the kafuffle is about. Drugs maybe? A minute or two goes by before a customs woman holding a grey megaphone stops beside me and begins shouting. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is against Australian law for anyone - adult or child - to bring in fruit or meat from foreign countries. Please check your luggage NOW. Rest assured that if you’re caught smuggling fruit - and you will be, mark my words - you will be fined . . . even if you
do
blame your child for bringing in a rogue bag of rambutans.’

A hunched couple and their screaming toddler are ushered into a small windowless room to the right of our line. People around me half-heartedly peer into their bags as maroon-jacketed quarantine beagles parade up and down the lines of people, tails high in the air as they sniff out trouble.

‘Neither of you have got a banana in your bag, have you?’ I hiss at the children.

Finally, we arrived at the head of the queue. A customs official unwraps our wooden photo frames, and whacks them on the table searching for bugs. Finding nothing, he hands them back and waves us through to the outside world.

We’re standing in another unbelievably long queue, this time for a taxi, when Gloria taps me on the shoulder.

‘What are you doing here?’ I say as I hug her, trying to keep any suspicion from my voice.

‘What? Can’t I pick up my best friend and her children from the airport?’ Gloria says, smoothing out the folds in her black sweater dress.

‘I guess.’

‘Tell me all about it. I want to hear everything.’

‘Okay, well -’

‘Excellent. Before you start,’ she says, taking the laden luggage trolley from me and wheeling it towards her car, ‘I’ve primed the media. They want to talk to you - television and radio, of course. Probably print -’

‘Gloria, I told you I didn’t want to do all that.’ So that’s why she’s at the airport. Witch!

‘But now that you’re back and you’ve had time to think -’

‘I really don’t want to talk about it. It was horrible . . . depressing . . . really sad.’

‘Yes, of course it was, darling,’ she says, wrapping her free arm around me. ‘I get it. But -’

‘No, I really don’t think you do get it,’ I say, shaking myself free. ‘That’s my point.’

Gloria hesitates, then turns her attention to the kids. ‘Love your hair, Bella, and the two of you are so tanned. Did you have fun?’

‘It was great,’ says Sam.

‘Awesome,’ says Bella, swinging her plaits from side to side.

On the drive home Gloria starts up again. ‘Lucy -’

‘No.’

‘Just hear me out. I’ve been hard at work for you, hitting the publicity trail to get you back in the public eye. As I said, I’ve alerted the media - told them you narrowly escaped the bombs, and feared for the safety of your children as they played at Jimbaran Bay, metres from where the bomb exploded.’

I turn to the back seat to make sure Bella and Sam are plugged into their new iPods and oblivious to our conversation. Then I glare at Gloria. ‘By the time the bombs went off we’d been back at the hotel a good couple of hours.’

‘The public don’t know that,’ Gloria says. ‘And, more’s the point, they don’t care. All they want to know is that you were in Bali and you survived. You’re a survivor, girlfriend.’

‘I’m not a survivor, and please don’t call me girlfriend. You know I hate it. I had nothing to survive and I’m not going to lie about it.’

Gloria sighs. ‘We’ve talked about lies before, and clearly this particular tale falls into the category of white lie. The truth is, you
were
in Bali, you
were
at Jimbaran the night of the explosion, and you
were
eating dinner barely twenty metres away from where the bomb blew up. No one need know the finer details.’

‘Like the timing, and the fact that my kids were watching
Evan Almighty
and I was consoling myself with an outrageously expensive bottle of cheap Australian white wine when the bomb went off?’

‘Exactly. And not only are you a survivor, but you spent the whole day afterwards looking for your husband and his mistress.’

‘Shh.’ I glance back to the kids. Nothing, not even a flicker of the eyelids, suggests they hear us.

‘They were presumed dead,’ Gloria goes on.

‘Only by me.’

‘Again, Lucy, mere details. We can spin it - you searched, you found, you were reunited.’

‘This story doesn’t have a happy ending,’ I whisper. ‘Max was with Alana the whole time, in another hotel. I could have killed them both.’

‘Of course you could have, and no doubt you’d get widespread publicity and sympathy for your trouble, but it’s probably not an angle we should pursue, hey?’ Gloria pats my thigh. ‘Max is a fucker, always has been, so let’s just use him to your advantage and move on. What do you say?’

‘I’m not giving an interview, that’s what I say.’

‘You’ll regret it. The media’s desperate to talk about Bali. It’s your big opportunity . . .’

‘Funnily enough, I don’t feel like using Bali’s tragedy to advance my career.’

There’s silence for the next four minutes, which is somewhat of a record for Gloria. She has an insatiable need to speak. It must be killing her. So she’s pissed off.

She’ll come around. I’m not going to talk about Bali. End of story.

‘Thanks for the lift, you shouldn’t have,’ I say when she pulls up in our driveway. ‘You
really
shouldn’t have.’

‘I know that . . . now. There’s just one more tiny thing,’ she says, snapping back to her usual effervescent self.

‘Gloria -’

‘Hear me out. I know you don’t want to give any interviews -’

‘That’s right.’

‘Okay, but I’ve done something I think you’ll be really excited about.’

This is troubling. I’ve only been away eight days.

‘There’s this new show -
Celebrity Renovation Rescue
.’

‘Yeah. You’ve told me about it. No, thanks.’

‘But, Lucy, the most exciting opportunity has come up. Your house has been chosen out of hundreds for the first episode - the pilot. Isn’t it thrilling?’

Standing in my driveway, with exhausted kids and too much luggage, feeling jet-lagged and haggard, I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. ‘Please, I really don’t want to be involved,’ I say. ‘I just want to have a shower, unpack my bags and go to sleep.’

I’m also keen to see what progress, if any, has been made on the renovation in my absence.

‘Think about it,’ Gloria calls from her car before speeding off.

I don’t want to think about it. How many times have I told her: no reality programs! I’m an actress. Next she’ll be putting me up for
I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!
Besides, why would any network be interested in my luckless building work?

Speaking of which, the front yard is an absolute pit.

There’s an overflowing skip full of rubbish, half-empty pallets of bricks, lengths of wood with nails sticking out of them thrown against mangled hedges . . . Welcome home!

* * *

As soon as I’ve unlocked the front door, the kids bolt past me to their bedrooms.

‘I’ve missed you,’ I hear Sam telling his menagerie of stuffed animals.

It’s a relief to be home, despite the building debris outside. But I’ve barely had time to bring all the bags inside when the phone starts ringing.

‘Mum,’ says Bella, ‘some woman for you.’

‘Prue Hamilton from the
Daily Telegraph
, Ms Springer.

How are you?’

‘Fine . . . I think.’

‘Just wanting to talk about your escape from Bali. Do you have any comment?’

‘I’m sorry but we were nowhere near the explosions.’

‘You stayed on regardless, didn’t you? In Bali? Despite dozens of fatalities, you thought, bugger the dead. I’m on holidays enjoying myself. Isn’t that right?’

‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’ I slam the phone down.

Prue’s is the first of four calls from the media. Hers is the worst, though. I direct all their questions to Gloria, then wonder if that’s such a smart idea. Bloody Gloria. I’m going to kill her.

I quickly check my messages. There are calls from Nadia and Dom, as well as a couple of hang-ups.

Dom: ‘Hey, trust you to get caught up in disaster under the pretence of going on holiday! Between you and me, I was a little rattled when I heard about the bombs, but then I know you and knew you could handle it. You’re a trouper, Luce. I want to see you. Call me.’

I panic and delete the message. My life’s complicated enough without adding Clark Kent to the mix.

Nadia says she’ll pop in tomorrow with scones. I assume she’s joking about the scones.

By early afternoon, Bella, Sam and I are so tired we’re almost delirious. I can hardly speak. It doesn’t help that Mum and Dad have been here for two hours forcing me to go over the holiday in minute detail.

‘We’d given you up for dead,’ Mum says, the second she’s in the front door.

‘Stop being dramatic. You spoke to me straightaway.’

‘But the shock . . . I knew no good could come of you going there,’ she replies with a dramatic flurry of arm movements.

‘A monkey bit me, Nanna,’ says Sam.

‘Dear God! Did you see a doctor? Where did it bite you? You’ll get rabies. Oh, Sam, you’ll die!’

I glance over to Sam and raise my eyebrows. ‘Your little joke backfired, didn’t it, Sammy?’

Sam squirms uncomfortably. ‘I was joking, Nan,’ he says quietly.

‘Idiot,’ Bella says, and sneezes.

‘Bird flu,’ Mum shrieks. ‘My poor Bella’s got bird flu!’

I laugh.

Mum glares at me. ‘It’s not funny.’

‘At least the builders got stuck into the place while you were away,’ Dad says, after he’s inspected the house.

He’s right. The gyprocking appears to be entirely finished, the painters have primed and undercoated the walls, and the electrics are close to being completed. The halogen down lights in the new extension work, and all of the new windows have been fitted. There’s still only a concrete floor but once the timber’s laid, the family room will be functional. Sort of.

‘Do you really want parquetry?’ Mum says, sighing. ‘It looks so busy. What’s wrong with good old-fashioned linoleum - especially with the kids and the swimming pool?

It’s so easy to keep clean, and quiet as well. No clomping like with timber floors.’

‘I hear bamboo’s the way to go these days,’ Dad says, throwing in his two cents’ worth. ‘Apparently it’s termite-and fire-resistant.’

‘You’re right, Frank. Environmentally friendly as well, not like hardwood.’

‘What’s happening with the hole in the wall over here?’ Dad asks, inspecting the huge cavity in the middle of the family room feature wall.

‘Gas fireplace,’ I say, making a mental note
never
to invite my parents over to my house again. Blast it - they invited themselves.

I wander to the other end of the extension. No sign of the bi-fold doors. The opening to the outside terrace is still blocked by several sheets of timber, and no sandstone paving’s been laid outside either. I guess I shouldn’t expect miracles. But the whole place seems a lot cleaner, at least on the inside. Most of the mess has been cleared (even if it has been tossed into the front garden). I have to say, Patch has pulled it together. It looks good, almost great.

Dad disappears into the bathroom. ‘I remember when bathrooms used to be the smallest room in the house,’ he says. ‘This one’s bigger than most bedrooms.’

‘I guess,’ I reply. ‘Max wanted luxury.’

‘Well,’ Mum snorts, ‘you’ve certainly got that. There are six showerheads - not at all environmentally friendly!’

‘There’s even piped music,’ Dad says in wonder. ‘You could live in here.’ He’s clearly angling for an invitation to move in. ‘You won’t know yourself once the stairs are up.’

‘Well, we were using a ramp till we left for Bali,’ I say, looking at the ladder leading to the first floor. ‘The stairs should be here soon.’

‘I don’t see any smoke alarms,’ Mum comments.

No sooner have I pushed my parents out the door than Trish rings. I’ve been home six hours. It feels like four months. I’m ready to fly back to Bali and disappear into the rice paddies.

‘I thought you were bringing my girl home,’ Trish wails.

‘I don’t have any control over Alana, Trish. Besides, she looked happy enough last time I saw her.’

‘But what about the bombs? She’s so fragile.’

I want to scream. If Alana is fragile then I believe in Santa Claus. Alana is no more fragile than cement, but she seems to have convinced both Max and Trish otherwise.

‘Fragile or not, I think Alana can look after herself,’ I say, trying to be reasonable. ‘She is an adult, in an adult relationship -’

‘You don’t care. My poor, poor Alana.’

‘Max told me she’d called you,’ I say, restraining myself from letting loose with my real thoughts about her dear Alana.

Remember, I tell myself, I’m happy for them. Max and I have run our course. We all need to move on with our lives.