Spinning Around (23 page)

When we arrived in the kitchen, we found Nick stooped over the highchair, fiddling with its straps (which are a perpetual source of shame to me, they're so dirty, but how am I supposed to soak them in NapiSan when they're always urgently needed?). He straightened up as soon as we appeared.

‘Hello!' he beamed. ‘I just come in because this little feller was gonna come a cropper, eh mate? Weren't you? He was trying to get out.'

‘Oh dear.' Jonah has a tendency to wriggle free of his harness. I could see that he was red-faced and glowering, but interested in Nick's ministrations all the same. He loves builders. ‘Thanks, Nick. I'm sorry. I should never leave him by himself in this thing, he hates it, but I was just cleaning up in there, and I told Emily to watch him—'

‘Yeah, yeah. It's fine. No harm done.' With his usual innate courtesy, Nick turned to address Jim. He was always careful that no-one should be left out of a conversation. ‘You got to have eyes in the back of your head, when they're this age. My son, he's been to hospital three times. Never sits still. Always putting things in his mouth.'

Jim nodded enigmatically.

‘You got kids too?' Nick inquired, not the least disconcerted by Jim's secretive air.

‘One daughter,' Jim replied, in a measured fashion. ‘But she's in her teens.' (That surprised me. He must be older than he looks, I thought.) ‘When they reach their teens, you've got a whole new set of problems.'

‘Oh yeah!' Nick laughed. ‘I bet.' He launched into one of his long family anecdotes while I retreated into the living room, Jonah under one arm and my purse under the other. I had to dump them both on the floor before I could write out a cheque for Jim. My hands shook while I was doing it. Five hundred dollars would just about clear us out—though I was getting paid the next day, thank God. How would I explain the sudden shortfall to Matt? Perhaps I should take the initiative. Perhaps, before he exploded, I should demand that he explain himself to
me
.

‘Um—Jim!' I called, waving my slip of paper. ‘In here!' But it was Nick who stuck his head into the room.

‘Mind if I use the toilet, Mrs Muzzatti?' he inquired.

‘No, no. Go ahead.'

‘Mummy. Can I have my baby now?'

‘
No
.' Nick clumped past, scattering smiles and nods. Emily was hanging off my jeans again. Jonah was heading for the video machine, alas. Jim approached me on noiseless feet, like a cat. I couldn't concentrate—there were distractions everywhere.

‘Thanks,' said Jim, plucking the cheque from my hand. He spoke in a low voice. ‘I'll try and keep it quick, but I can't guarantee anything.'

‘No. Of course not. Jonah,
don't touch that video, please
.'

‘Personally, I think the news is going to be good. I think your friend's been putting it over on you for some reason, but we'll see.'

‘What about the phone calls, though? I don't know this Cleary person. I don't know who she is.'

‘Right. Sure. Well, we'll find out.' Dragging his notebook from his breast pocket, Jim explained quietly that he did most of his work for Comcare and the big insurance companies— hence the fact that he didn't carry receipt books around with him. But Stuart was a mate of his. And he didn't mind the odd little job like this one, just to keep his hand in.

‘You don't want any photographs?' he queried, pressing the scribbled receipt into my sweaty palm. I could hear the toilet flushing.

‘Oh no. No.'

‘Good. That's always a lot of work,' said Jim. ‘Can I send you an invoice? In the mail?'

‘Well—uh—'

‘To your work address, maybe.'

‘Oh. All right.'

‘Mummy, look what Jonah's doing!'

‘
Jonah, stop it !
' ‘I'll call you,' said Jim, heading for the front door. I followed him, with many a nervous backward glance. I believe I've mentioned before that Jonah isn't safe to leave—not even for a minute. But I had the same feeling about Jim McRae, for some reason. Perhaps I was slightly afraid that he would take the opportunity to poke around in my bedside cabinet.

‘Have you had a good look round?' he suddenly queried, upon reaching the front door. It was as if he'd read my mind. ‘Checked magazines and things? Pockets? His wallet?'

I rolled my eyes at the closed bathroom door, and put a finger to my lips. I didn't want Nick hearing all my personal problems. ‘No,' I whispered. ‘Why?'

‘It's probably worthwhile.' He had lowered his voice. ‘You never know.'

‘Okay.'

‘Might save us a lot of trouble. You got a photograph? Of your husband?' I must have blanched, because he murmured quickly: ‘So I'll know who to look for?'

‘Sure. Yes, of course. I'll—I'll just get one.'

I did, from the linen cupboard. Matt at a picnic. Grinning gap-toothed through his stubble, Jonah on his lap. It was the first shot that fell out of the first envelope.

‘Right,' said Jim. He took it. He studied it. And he was scribbling Matt's work address on the back of it when Nick emerged from the bathroom.

Nick raised his hand to Jim, who nodded and left. At which point Jonah came pounding down the hall, naked except for his nappy. He was dragging a plastic dog on a string.

‘Not in there, Jonah.
Not in there
. Not till I've cleaned up.'

‘I wanna go in.'

‘No. Wait.'

‘Nice feller,' Nick remarked, following me back into the living room.

‘Who? Jonah?'

‘No, I mean . . .' He gestured towards the sound of a car engine starting up outside.

‘Oh,
Jim
. I guess so. Emily, don't leave that spoon there, you know what I've said about spoons on the rug.'

‘Is he your brother?' Nick continued. ‘Your cousin, maybe?'

I blinked. ‘Who, Jim?' I said. ‘God, no! Why?'

‘Oh, I just thought you look . . . you know.' He traced a circle over his face with one finger. ‘Related.'

‘Really?' What an appalling thought that was. But perhaps all Anglos looked alike, in Nick's eyes. ‘No, no. He's just . . .' Just what? My wits had deserted me. ‘. . . a friend,' I finished. (How lame.) ‘An old friend.'

‘What's that?' Jonah suddenly demanded in outraged tones, pointing at the smears of ice-cream in Emily's discarded bowl. He never misses a trick, that boy.

‘It's nothing,' I said, picking the bowl up. ‘You watch the mermaid, Jonah. When I finish cleaning all the mess you made, you can get your toys out of the bedroom. No—you leave Nick alone, please. He's busy.'

‘When the wall's done outside, you can have a look, okay?' said Nick, addressing Jonah with a smile. ‘When you got your clothes on. Can't come outside with no clothes on.'

‘That's right,' I agreed. God, I was so exhausted. All I wanted to do was sit down and slowly absorb some of the stuff that had been thrown at me since lunchtime. But I couldn't. I was flat out. I had to soak Jonah's sheets, clean his cot, air his room, wash his hair, get him dressed and start his dinner, all the while blowing my nose and beating off Emily's repeated suggestion that I help her with the cotton-wool chicks. ‘I can't,' I kept saying. ‘I can't, Emily, I've got things to do. I'm busy.'

Busy trying to keep my life from shattering into a million tiny fragments. Busy coming to terms with this latest betrayal.

Or was it, in fact, the only one? Was it my husband fucking me over, or my best friend, or both? Talk about nowhere to turn. Talk about losing your faith in human nature. Talk about building your house on sand.

Scrubbing shit off Jonah's T-shirt with a nailbrush, I remember thinking to myself: Maybe Kerry was right. Maybe we
should
have checked the feng shui of this place before we bought it, after all.

And then the bloody phone rang again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Thursday

Needless to say, I was on the phone for most of yesterday evening. First I called Ronnie, who had been ringing to find out if I would be free for her engagement party. I told her that I would be, and that Jim had been ‘er . . . one of the builders'; she was as shocked as I had been, when she heard about Miriam. Then I called Vicki, Caroline and Lisa, all of whom had either met Miriam or knew about her. Then I called Mrs Coutts, but no-one answered. Then Matt came home, and I blurted out the whole story while he finished the chocolate ice-cream. It was such big news that there was no restraint or awkwardness in our conversation. I had practically forgotten that he'd walked out in a sulk that morning; too much had happened since.

‘It's got to be Giles,' I said. ‘Giles's influence. She's always had this terrible problem with lousy men—obviously it's happened again, but this time she's got sucked in, somehow.'

‘What does he do?' asked Matt. ‘He's a forensic accountant or something, isn't he?'

‘Is he? I thought he was a foreign exchange broker.'

‘Yeah? God.' Matt snorted. ‘Either way, he'd know how to play the system.'

‘And so would Miriam. Can you imagine? Can you imagine how much she knows about ripping people off? And if she was working with him—if it was a foreign exchange scam . . .'

‘Didn't they tell you?'

‘They didn't want to. You can imagine. They probably don't want to spread it around—bad for the bank's reputation.'

‘Unbelievable,' Matt sighed, shaking his head. ‘Unbelievable.'

‘Why would she do it?' I was still trying to grasp the extent of Miriam's betrayal. ‘She was always talking about the sort of people who commit fraud. They're always gamblers, or trying to impress some woman, or slightly loopy—'

‘Maybe she was trying to impress some man,' said Matt.

‘But she couldn't be that stupid.'

‘How do you know?' Carefully Matt scraped the bottom of the ice-cream bucket. ‘How do you know there isn't something wrong with her, if she's always had a terrible problem with lousy men?'

‘Oh, that's not true!'

‘You just said it was. You said she's always had a—'

‘Yes, but that doesn't mean she has something
wrong
with her! That doesn't mean it's her
fault
!'

Matt shrugged. ‘Well—I dunno,' he remarked. ‘
I
could never tell what she was thinkin'.'

Which was just as well, I decided. Miriam hadn't been entirely convinced by Matt. She had never really trusted him.

Trusted him. Jesus.

‘Maybe she's been thinking like a criminal for too long,' I suggested. ‘Maybe she tried to put herself in their shoes one too many times.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Maybe it's a risk that goes with the job. She should have branched out and tried something else for a while. Maybe she became
infected
.'

‘Maybe she saw how many people got away with it,' Matt observed. ‘Maybe she calculated her chances, and saw how good they were.'

‘Oh, Matt.'

‘Well, think about it. You just told me she was really gettin' into the designer labels. Out to dinner all the time. And she had that megabucks mortgage.'

‘She got a discount on that from the bank.'

‘Whatever. It still would have been big. And she didn't make that much, did she? It wasn't like she was a top honcho.'

‘No,' I admitted.

‘And this Giles was hot shit. Needed a lot of keepin' up with, didn't he? New cars. Mountain bikes. Club Med.'

‘And his last girlfriend was a model.'

‘And his last girlfriend was a model. That's what I mean. Maybe Miriam was trying to keep up.'

‘But he didn't seem like a crook. An arsehole, but not a crook. I mean, he was so
smart
.'

‘He can't have been that smart, or he wouldn't have got into debt.'

‘But he must have been, Matt. Miriam said he was. You know what she's like. She wouldn't have gone out with a drongo.'

‘How do you know? How do you know what goes on behind closed doors?'

That shut me up. It turned my thoughts down channels that promptly silenced me. We went to bed soon afterwards, and I slept well because I had dosed myself up with anti-histamines and cough medicines. I was drugged, in other words. Very relaxing.

I don't know why people have to use marijuana and heroin when they're stressed out. An anti-histamine and a swig of cough medicine works just as well. In fact I was almost grateful for my cold, because it allowed me to take all that medication, and not lie awake for hours fretting about Miriam and Matt and Jim McRae. (Had I made a big mistake, hiring Jim?)

In the morning, however, my gratitude promptly faded when I had to get out of bed. This was definitely The Worst Day. My virus had a stranglehold on my immune system, which was only just beginning to fight back. This was the day on which I was scheduled to hit rock bottom, before the inevitable long, slow haul back to good health. I knew it. I could feel it. My nose was taking on a reddened, slightly minced appearance, and my cough sounded as if it was coming out of a moose.

But I was due at work. I couldn't miss work. I had a conciliation conference booked for nine-thirty.

And of course it was raining. And of course I nearly walked off without my purse because Jonah was so upset by the fact that
Maisy
, his favourite show, had suddenly disappeared off the morning television line-up. Channel 2 had put on
Oakeydoke
instead, and even I could see that it wasn't an adequate substitute. But as I tried to explain to Jonah, there really wasn't anything we could do about it.

‘It'll come back,' I assured him, as he sobbed into my chest. Poor darling, he takes things so very much to heart. ‘And next time we go to the library, we'll look for a
Maisy
video. How about that?'