‘I’ve been walking all around Notting Hill and not once have I seen Hugh Grant,’ Steve-o said, while he frothed my milk. He looked mystified about Hugh’s reticence at hanging around Notting Hill for the benefit of Aussies on their two-year work visa, and I couldn’t tell if he was absolutely dry and hilarious or serious and very weird. ‘David Beckham nearly bumped into me on the street once,’ he said, looking dejected.
‘Most people would be excited to have David Beckham nearly bump into them.’
‘Nah, not into soccer. We play Aussie Rules back in Bondi. You know it?’
I shook my head then got stuck listening to the rules of a game that sounded like open caveman warfare in lycra tank tops.
I carried two terrible coffees into Lana’s office and two almond biscotti that Steve-o had made over the weekend. I had felt a weight off my shoulders having spoken to Dad on Friday, and so on Saturday, after chatting with Annabelle, we’d emailed Mum and Dad saying we were OK to go ahead with the party but that after that we would no longer be willing to lie; and whatever they decided, we’d be ready for it. Then that afternoon, after a mind-cleansing run followed by a quick skype with Jimmy and Flora, I’d called Lana to tell her I was ready to come back to work.
‘And you won’t talk about being roofied by your mother?’ Lana had checked.
‘I’ll save it for my day on Jeremy Kyle.’
‘Mmm, nasty,’ Lana said after testing her long black that looked more like tar soup. She pushed it to the side and broke off a piece of biscotti. ‘So you’re doing better?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Much better. You were right. I definitely needed the time off. I’m still working through everything but I’m much less wrath-y.’
Lana smiled, producing two crescent-shaped wrinkles at either side of her mouth. ‘That’s really good.’
It was good. After talking with Dad I had felt that I might just get through everything with the majority of my sanity intact. I still had times where I got a full range of emotions. I’d be trucking along thinking I’d finally reached an emotional status quo when suddenly out of nowhere another scenario would pop into my head. The song Dad used to sing to me at bedtime, for example; did he sing the same song to Maryna, altering Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ to feature Maryna instead of Jess? I’d become hot with rage, followed closely by grief for a lost reality. Then emotional numbness would arrive, then apathy, and finally I’d reach a state of fatalistic calm. ‘What can I do? Nothing. Must forge on with life.’ And I would. Until the next memory and the next cycle of emotions. But they were becoming less frequent and I was developing tactics to deal with them. Like drinking. Or looking at baby foxes on the internet. Or drinking and looking at baby foxes on the internet.
I rattled all of this off to Lana while she sat listening, nodding, smiling and making faces of commiseration in appropriate places.
‘And what about your parents? How are they doing?’ she said.
I told her that Dad had flown out to meet a client in Dubai but would be back in time for the party the next weekend. He hadn’t told his other family yet but would be doing that after the party; when hopefully he’d have made a decision about which family he would choose. The look Lana gave me when I’d said that had me swallowing thickly but I’d managed to fight off the tears. Mum was still going to her radio show every morning, except weekends, and spent her spare time feng shui-ing her garden shed or researching foods that healed frazzled emotions. She’d try them out and write her findings in a diet diary. So far we knew that tomatoes made her feel mad, cucumber made her feel pensive and onions caused her to pass wind with alarming frequency, which on an emotional level inspired both liberation and shame.
We knew this because Mum would call in on both Annabelle and me to update us with her food findings. If I ever asked her how she felt about the future she would suddenly remember something she had to do that was very important and nowhere near me. Or she’d tell me not to worry and bury her nose in a book on the herbal healings of Hippocrates. Sometimes we’d find her gazing off at nothing, tears dampening her soft cheeks. Often she didn’t even realise it was happening and upon trying to comfort her we were told it was nothing to worry about, she probably just had weak-celled tear ducts or needed more curcumin in her diet. Or she’d developed an allergy to marzipan. Never mind that none of us ever had any marzipan on our person.
‘And,’ I continued, ‘I’ve decided that although I love them both, I disagree with the decisions they’ve made, and just because they’ve had affairs and spent a lifetime lying to people they love, it does not mean I am headed for a relationship disaster future; even though I have just been in a spot of relationship bad luck with Pete the Cheat.’ I squared my shoulders. ‘My parents’ past will not determine my future.’
‘Very mature.’
‘I read it all on a support forum for second families. Plus there are other people with majorly fucked-up situations and it makes me feel heaps better.’
‘That is not.’
‘I don’t care.’
Lana and I grinned at each other.
‘And Pete?’ Lana said, nibbling on another piece of biscotti.
‘He’s called me a couple of times.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Yeah, he says it’s to check up on me but it always ends up that he can’t find his running socks, or favourite boxers, and wants me to search through Dave’s stuff.’
‘Oh.’
‘I say I’ll look but I never do. I’m not going into Dave’s room. I’ll catch jock itch or fleas or bump into a cousin that visited and couldn’t find their way out and now has a four-foot beard, jock itch and fleas.’
Lana, her elbows resting on her desk and her delicate chin resting on her clasped fingers, grinned and shook her head.
‘Of course I feel really sad that we broke up, and I think he’s a real arse-munch for cheating on me, but I think the fact that it all happened at the same time as finding out about my parents did make me go a bit . . .’ I spun my fingers around my temples and rolled my eyes like that freaky little girl in The Exorcist, making Lana laugh her tinkly, white-toothed laugh. ‘But I do see now that we were probably not right for each other.’
Lana gave a smiling nod of commendation.
‘And I’ve stopped Instagram-stalking Giselle every day, which I think is healthy,’ I said with pride.
‘Good,’ Lana said.
‘It was getting boring anyway. She keeps posting pictures of all these touristy London places with millions of hashtags and exclamation marks, and Pete grinning like he’s never stood under Marble Arch or sat at the foot of a Trafalgar Square lion before. Although yesterday they did the zombie experience in Greenwich. I can’t believe she got him to go! He would never have gone with me, and . . .’ I stopped at Lana’s singular raised eyebrow.
‘I’m getting a handle on it,’ I said, picking up my coffee. ‘I’m down to every second day and am intending to take that down incrementally week by week.’
Lana narrowed her eyes. ‘Glad you’ve got yourself a plan.’
I nodded and grimaced at the intense sweetness of my ‘no-sugar-thank-you’ almond milk flat white.
‘How’s Annabelle coping with everything?’
I smiled. ‘She’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her. Which is weird considering everything that’s been going on. She’s been seeing Marcus for eight months. Eight months, and Mum and I were pretty much there every day. I don’t know how she did it. He’s very sweet with her and the kids seem to adore him.’
‘Do you like him?’
‘He wears woollen vests. And not in a hipster way. In an “I-don’t-want-to-catch-a-chill” way,’ I said, as if that were all the explanation needed. ‘He’s made Annabelle and the kids happy, so I like him for that.’
‘And no more spiked smoothies?’
‘Nope. I take my own food to Annabelle’s now. Hermetically sealed.’
Lana laughed.
‘I don’t trust either of those drug pushers. They don’t even see that what they did was wrong! But I’m not talking about that any more.’ I pretended to lock my lips with an imaginary key.
‘It sounds like you are doing very well, all things considered.’
‘Well, between Pete’s cheating, Mum and Annabelle’s roofie-ing, and Mum and Dad’s life of lies, I’ve definitely got some trust issues but I’m trying to be distant from it. You know, view it from afar; observe and analyse without getting emotional. I’ve started reading articles and watching documentaries on cheating.’
‘And what have you learnt?’
‘A European beaver mates for life and remains monogamous but the male American beaver, who also chooses a mate for life, will cheat and father more babies while remaining in a relationship with their original mate. And a blue whale can have a cock up to eleven and a half feet. That’s two of Steve-o.’
‘What’s two of me?’ Steve-o said as he walked past Lana’s open door with a tray of empty cups.
‘A blue whale’s penis.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said with a slow nod like he’d been told he was half the size of a whale’s phallus many times before and now it was just getting boring. He tipped a finger to his head in a salute, grinned and disappeared.
‘What kind of documentary on cheating talks about whale penises?’
‘None. That was purely for entertainment. Did you know they have a penis museum in Iceland that has dried-out erect animal penises mounted on the wall like trophy heads?’
Lana shook her head, indicating we weren’t going deeper into that topic, even though I had sooo much more to say on the matter. ‘And what about Jimmy?’ she said, her over-forties crow’s feet creasing as she smiled.
I sighed like a corseted heroine in a romance novel. ‘He’s lovely.’
And I launched into a soliloquy about the wonder that was Jimmy; his father, gay support websites, Diego and Ian’s secret/maybe wedding plans, Flora and her butt-sniffing advice, Jimmy’s musical, Jimmy’s singing, Jimmy’s stubble, Jimmy’s abs, and when I’d reached the limit of my Jimmy knowledge many, many moments later, Lana handed me a pile of work, which included booking Steve-o in for another barista course, and we beamed at each other, happy to be getting back to normal.
‘Oh, Jess?’ Lana said just as I was about to leave her office.
I turned in the doorway. ‘Yes?’
‘Now that Annabelle seems to be doing OK, would you like to think about training for that producer role?’
I went back to my desk with the job description outline and a little seed of excitement.
