Unsuitable (37 page)

“I
don’t want to be.”

“No.
How fair is that? Everywhere I look there’s a pregnant woman and now you, and
you don’t want another baby.”

“Merry,
I can’t explain this, but I’m not pregnant.” Merrill was so angry she was
unlikely to listen even if Audrey could explain a miracle.

“You’re
tired all the time. You’re tits are huge for you. You’re eating like there’s a
food shortage. You’re buying ice cream. You had two pieces of cake. You slept
with Reece and you weren’t careful enough, you let this happen, and now you
have everything I want.”

“It’s
not the same as with Mia.”

“Who
says it has to be the same?”

They
stared at each other. Merrill was furious. Audrey felt sick. She made it to the
bathroom in time to get to her knees and throw up in the toilet.

What
if she was pregnant? How would she cope? This new job wasn’t designed around
the need for maternity leave or the stress of a baby, a second child. She was
on probation as far as the promotion was concerned. A new baby could trash her
career. Not to mention what it might do to her health. Of course she didn’t
have to have it. Women made the decision not to be pregnant all the time and
yet Merrill and Joe wanted nothing more than their own child. She gripped the
edge of the porcelain and threw up again. It was Reece’s child and she could never
harm something they’d created together.

“Mum
is sick.” Audrey put her arm out to stop Mia coming any closer.

Merrill
caught Mia by the shoulders turned her away from the bathroom. “Go and watch
Nemo. I’ll look after Mum.” She knelt behind Audrey and wrapped her arms around
her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it with you.”

Audrey
coughed into her hand to try to clear her throat. “How could you not.” Her face
was hot and her chest burned. The tiles were hard on her knees and she wanted
Reece’s arms around her, Reece’s words comforting her. There could be no
comfort from Merrill.

“I’ll
stand by you whatever happens, but I can’t pretend not to be jealous, not to wish
it was me.”

Audrey
let Merrill help her up. She washed her face and cleaned her teeth while
Merrill packed an overnight bag for Mia. She went to the kitchen. The blood
test she’d had would confirm if she was pregnant or not, and there was no point
getting upset or making plans until she knew for sure.

“You
need to tell him.”

Audrey
had made a second pot of tea. She poured for Merrill. “There’s nothing to tell
him.”

“That’s
not true, Aud, and it’s not fair.”

“What
am I going to say? Hey, remember me, your former employer, you know the one who
abused her position of authority and slept with you when she was half out of her
brain after nearly dying? And you know how we used protection and I wasn’t
ovulating? Surprise. I might be pregnant because I’m eating lots of ice cream
and I peed on a stick and it flashed a plus sign.”

“Yes,
tell him that. He’s entitled to know. This is not just about you.”

“He
would want me to keep it.”

Merrill
choked and turned away. But she had to have known that was an option. She
recovered to say, “And if he does and you don’t, what next?”

Audrey
sat on a kitchen stool. She had an appalling need to hug Mia, to take her and
go find Reece, to tell him she’d made a mistake, that their lives were worth less
living without him, but if she did that, and she was pregnant, she’d be
trapping him into fatherhood with a women who sent him away for doing
everything he could to love her.

It
was bad enough one of them was trapped. And for all she knew Reece had gotten
over her and moved on.

Merrill
was saying something and Mia was at the fridge. All Audrey could think about
was Reece, about the having to face him to give him this news, about how he’d
want to do the honourable thing. And how if she did this, had a new baby, she’d
want to do it alone because alone was her control point, her strength. She
could trust alone.

Merrill
had Mia’s bag in her hand. Mia had her giraffe and a penguin. Audrey hugged Mia
too hard and too long and Mia fought to get out of her arms.

Five
minutes later the house was empty and she was free to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t
come, maybe it was too much tea, maybe it was fear, loneliness. She should’ve
changed her mind about the sleepover and kept Mia home. She could drive over to
Merrill and Joe’s and pick Mia up again. She could call Reece, just to hear his
voice, just to feel it trill across her body and settle the angina in her
heart. But she couldn’t do that to him, it wasn’t fair, because that man loved
her and she’d thrown his love back at him as if it was unworthy, like a too
small fish, an unsuitable catch.

Audrey
lay on her bed and sobbed. She was pregnant with Reece’s baby. Her body knew
that truth, had been telling her all along. She didn’t need the blood test to
confirm it. She knew it as surely as she knew she’d lost the love of her life
when she sent Reece away.

She
knew it as truly as she knew he’d do the right thing even if he no longer loved
her, and that she loved him too much to let him make that call.

She
hadn’t been protecting Mia from his aggression. She didn’t think he was violent
or too young, or the stages of their lives couldn’t mesh together. It wasn’t
that she didn’t want to be his family and have him as hers.

She
was simply afraid.

Afraid
Reece was too good to be true; a man whose interests and skills were the exact
complement to hers and who wasn’t threatened by their differences. Afraid to
choose to move from lover to husband when family had always let her down. Because
what would happen to her if Reece stopped loving her? Like her father had, like
her mother struggled to. Like Reece’s father never had. She might want to die
from that, a plant denied enough sunlight. She’d wither slowly, lose her colour
and gloss and fail to thrive, and she’d stunt Mia and the new baby with her own
inability to flourish.

She
couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t afford to fail, and if she called Reece
now, like she’d wanted to call him every day for the last two months, she would
fail. She would collapse into his easy generosity, into his readiness to take
charge, and his boundless forgiveness. And she didn’t deserve that from him.

And
he deserved more from her.

Now,
more than ever, she needed to be strong and focused. She needed to have plans
in place for every contingency. She wiped her face with her sleeve like Mia
did. These were the last tears she’d cry this year. This was the last moment
she’d feel sorry for herself.

She
went to the kitchen and made herself a snack. She gave her body what it needed.
Her heart would have to wait. She opened her laptop and checked her calendar. She
made a list of all the things she needed to do and starting now she did them.

25:     Loveless

Reece
had taken to coming to the old garden centre site. Polly’s crew had reduced the
rubble to a clean slate. There was nothing left but soil, the odd weed and
litter that blew in from the street. He liked to imagine what it would look
like when they built on it. They’d need shade for the outdoor area that doubled
as shelter from the rain. They’d need the inside made with easy care, non-toxic
materials, plenty of light but a way to make it dark for nap times. For the
second floor, a big wide balcony would give them views to the beach if they got
the design right.

He
must look off his rocker, standing here in the middle of nothing, daydreaming. Especially
as he often appeared worse for wear.

It
had only taken a month to realise his drinking had gotten out of hand. Not that
he was drunk all the time, that was the problem. He could drink and drink and
barely feel the effects, and that was special kind of peril and failed to
deliver the numbness he’d been looking for.

The
third time he’d walked from the pub to stand outside Audrey’s place in the
pitch of night, like a trained guard dog told to stay and too stupid loyal to
know he was in danger and bolt, was the night he gave up drinking again. But
he’d needed something else to take the craving away, to deaden the loss that
pounded inside his body and made it hard to sleep.

He
went back to bricklaying. It was the fastest way to get working again and they
needed to show they were employed for the loan, even with Pollidore’s going
guarantor and construction costs lower than mate’s rates, they were borrowing a
bomb. On top of that, his heart wasn’t in it to commit to another nanny job. Whoever
the kid was, they wouldn’t be Mia, and he missed her too much to replace her. The
replacement he was working on was the new thing that stopped him sleeping.

He’d
never run a business before. He was cramming books on small business as well as
struggling through the paperwork to apply for a licence to run a pre-school. Charlie
helped, and he could’ve asked Les, but by unspoken agreement they weren’t
talking about this in front of Les. Reece guessed Polly didn’t want to ask her
not to tell Audrey. He didn’t much care if Audrey knew or not. It’s not like it
would change anything between them. Audrey would likely be happy he’d found a
new focus.

But
even with all that going on, he still needed something to help him forget. For
a while Sky tried to convince him she was the something, but she was
half-hearted and that was never Sky, so it was more about the idea of them than
the real thing. They were buddies though, and he liked that she was still in
his life. He’d run into Carrie again, but she’d treated him as if he was
fifteen and in need of mothering and that was better than being propositioned
and having to turn her down. The look in her eyes when they met told him she
knew that already.

He
found the something in an unexpected place. He was back in the ring. And that’s
why anyone who saw him pacing around the vacant lot might think he was trouble.
He looked like it. He usually went there from the gym a block away. He was wet
through and so ragged tired he could barely pick his feet up after a day on a
building site and an evening learning to box within the rules and in his weight
class.

It
was the combination of sobriety and the structure of a legal fight that were doing
him in, along with the realisation he didn’t like getting smacked by blokes who
been boxing longer and knew the score. His body hurt, his brain was spinning. He’d
packed his life with new ambition and direction and he should’ve been too busy
to miss what he’d lost, but it would sneak up on him, a stealth attack, a
rabbit punch that rattled his senses and left him disoriented.

He
loved Audrey and he’d lost her and he didn’t know how to get her back; now, two
months on, he knew he never would. Once he’d shown her the violence in him,
he’d wrecked his chances. She’d looked at him with fear in her eyes and that
was the death of everything he’d meant to her. And he had meant something to
her, and to Mia.

Audrey
wasn’t playing office politics when she crossed her own professional line and
let him make love to her. She wasn’t negotiating with him when she said she
loved him.

She’d
struggled to come to terms with how she felt, the surprise of it, the intrusion
on her carefully constructed life. It was as much a power play for her to give up
that knowledge to him as it was for her to fight for her status at work.

He
thought they’d won. Thought they’d found a compromise between Audrey’s need for
independence and his need for her. It was shitty to be so wrong. 

Audrey
and Mia, separately and together, had put him in a clinch and immobilised him
in gratitude and happiness, made him punch drunk with the possibilities of a
life with them. But in matters of the heart, as well as the boxing ring, he was
an untutored brawler and he was down on the mat. In the darkest part of night
he wondered if he’d ever get up.

He
stood on the site as the sun set and thought about filling it with the noise of
a dozen Mia’s. Sticking their surrealist painting up, hearing their squeals of
laughter, watching their crazy dancing. The crazy dancing should be mandatory. He
wanted every kid to dance and sing and feel safe to learn and grow. He wanted
every parent comfortable their kid was happy and well cared for, and if it
meant a website and cameras then he’d get over the way the idea of being
recorded made him itch. He’d go take it out on the canvas, wearing gloves, playing
by the rules, against an opponent who wasn’t hyped up on drugs, trying to mark
him, crush him anyway he could; because although he was a carer by nature and a
child care worker by choice, he was also a fighter, and he’d spent too long
denying that part of himself for fear he’d lose control.

He
hadn’t, in all these years, but still nothing could be worse than where he
found himself now, a carer without his loved ones to care for, a fighter
without a family to protect.

Polly
had freaked out the first night he’d come home sporting bruises and learned a
heavyweight pro-boxer had made him boogie to avoid the sting. He settled when
he copped to Reece being sober, gloved, helmeted, and paying for the privilege
of the punishment under supervision. Even Gino approved.

And
the surprise in the mix—Charlie. She came to watch an exhibition bout. She sat
with the other mothers, wives, girlfriends and kids. Hid behind her hands the
whole time, but she was there, and she approved. Told him she’d fight for his
right to have his sport and his career simultaneously, but she’d castrate him in
his sleep with a knife borrowed from a chef at work if he ever thought of turning
pro or took a wager.

He’d
cooked for her and the girls that night and he’d do it again tonight because
Polly wanted the flat to himself. He had a special night with Les planned. He
took his weary body back to Polly’s for a quick shower and while he was
dressing Polly appeared.

“I
don’t know what I’m doing, mate.”

Reece
pulled a t-shirt over his head. It was tight. All this manual labour and
training had bulked him up and he hadn’t exactly been soft. He’d need a couple
of new shirts.

“What
are you supposed to be doing?” He checked the bedside clock; he had ten minutes
to clear out before Les was due.

“Do
I just blurt it out, like in the moment?”

He
studied Polly. Guy was a stress-head. “I need more data, dude. What?”

“I’ve
never told a chick I loved her before.”

“Hoo.”
Reece sat on the bed to lace his shoes. “Never? Not even when you didn’t, to
get her in bed?”

Polly’s
brows jumped. “You did that?”

Reece
laughed. “Nah, man, but I thought you might’ve.”

“I
got enough tail without resorting to that. Jesus, that’s scummy. And it’s not
helping. I love, Les. I mean, she’s this smart, girly lawyer chick and I’m a
brawl fixer—”

“Property
developer. You should’ve told her about that.”

“—Builder’s
labourer.”

“Building
company foreman.”

Polly
fiddled with the plug in his ear. “What the heck does she see in me? I keep
thinking she’ll drop me for some suit-wearing kingpin. But I love her and I
don’t want to be without her.”

Reece
bent forward to tie a lace. “Say that?”

“I
love you and I don’t want to be without you.” Polly near swallowed his tongue
at the utterance. “Fuck.”

“Swap
the swear for her name and you’re there.”

“Just
like that? You think I should do it just like that? That’s not pretty. Shouldn’t
it be memorable? How do I make it epic?”

“Pick
your moment.” He tied the other lace.

“Like
after she’s come screaming my name. Or is it better before, make it sweeter?”

Reece
scrubbed his face and couldn’t stop his laughter. “Why are you so frayed about
this?” He stood up, ready to go.

“It’s
a big fucking deal for me, Mary Poppins. And I’ve seen what it did to you. I’m
nowhere near as smooth as you. As far as I know, I’m Les’ bit of rough trade,
some fun on the side before she picks a husband who’s had the same education
and speaks the Queen’s fucking English.”

“Husband?”

While
he’d been busy trying to lose himself, Polly had gotten deadly serious about
Les. And while they’d been talking Les had arrived. She stood behind Polly and
shushed him. Reece didn’t know how much she’d heard. It was a warm night, he’d
left the front door open, they hadn’t heard her come in.

“I’d
marry her tomorrow if she’d have me. But I’m that much,” Polly flicked the
bedroom light on and off, “removed from Neanderthal to know I can’t go from, I
like hanging with you, wanna hit another game of Bio-shock, let’s screw, do you
wanna be on top, to marry me and not expect tears.” He thumped his chest. “Mine
I’m talking about.”

“Yes.”

It
was a shocked whisper but they both heard Les.

Polly
smacked his head into the doorjamb and said rude things about mothers. “How long
have you been there?”

Reece
needed to get out, but it meant shoving past both of them, and he was arguably
as tense as Polly. Best thing he could do was stand still, shut up and think
invisible.

“Yes,
I want to be on top, but I like it on the bottom too, and from behind and
sideways and just about any way you care to give it to me, Pol.”

“Holy
fuck, Les.”

“Yes,
I want another hit of Bio-shock, but I want to play Halo and Half-Life too. I
like hanging with you, and yes, you can be a Neanderthal, but I’d marry you tomorrow
if you’d have me.”

“Holy
fuck, Les.”

“I
heard you the first time.”

Polly
turned to Les. His shoulders were high. Reece didn’t need to see his face to
know his distress. “I wanted this to be epic.”

“It’s
epic, trust me.”

“I
wanted to tell you I loved you first. I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“You
don’t have to tell me, I know you do. You showed me a hundred different ways.”

Polly
reached for Les, his hands to her arms. “I did?” You could add bewildered to
distressed.

“I’m
the fat girl no guy wanted, I’m the smart girl who intimidates men and you never
once made me feel bad, even when I was half crazy waiting for you to. You make
me laugh and you make me feel beautiful. I love you, Marcus Pollidore.”

“I
have to fuck you now, Les. Get out Reece, don’t want to see your ugly mug, you’re
on Charlie’s sofa tonight.”

Reece
had to clear his throat. He chucked random stuff in a bag and stepped past
Polly, slapping him on the back. Les had tears in her eyes.
Shit
, he
almost did too. He hadn’t figured on this. It’d worn stealth clothing and snuck
about the place and he’d been too hooked on his own feelings to see it lurking.

He
caught Les’ hand and squeezed it as he went past, she squeezed back. He bent,
kissed her cheek and whispered, “Give him hell,” and then nicked into the
bathroom for his toothbrush.

When
he came out they hadn’t moved, they were eye to eye, staring, as if they were each
the other’s
Blair Witch Project
, sucked in by the horror, the mystery, the
fear, and the gut wrenching inability to want anything else.

He
told the story, a cleaned up version, at the dinner table and the girls loved
it.

“That’s
sooo romantic,” said Gin. “Like in a movie.”

Flip
ate Etta’s leftover mash potato. “It’s like Cinderella.” She was that much
taller every time he saw her, and always hungry.

“Where’s
the glass slipper in that story?” said Neev.

“Polly’s
not a prince,” said Etta.

“That’s
the way it was with your father, girls.”

Everyone
looked at Charlie. Flip had her fork in her mouth and her mouth open. Like Reece,
she’d never met her father, Bruce. Reece’s memory of Bruce was tangled up in BBQs
and building skateboard ramps, Wrestlemania, and keeping the kids quiet when
Bruce was sick. In hearing Charlie cry when he was gone. In not being able to
get her out of bed and missing school because someone had to take care of the
twins.