Losing the plot, p.10
Losing the Plot, page 10
‘Better the devil you know,’ she’d say, and then, with a hopeful catch in her voice, ‘Do you think you might come for a visit soon?’
No.
But he comforted himself that at least he’d tried to make amends since his break-up. This was the third time he’d flown Shirley to Melbourne in the past several months. He watched her suck spaghetti up into her mouth like a retractable cord on a vacuum cleaner. She was the dearest, most decent person he knew, and he felt eternally grateful that she’d always put him and his brothers first. It was time to do the same for her—but he’d prefer to do it in private.
‘How was your big dinner last night?’
Marcus brought himself back into the moment. Last night he’d attended a Victorian Bar Association event feting Graham Goetze, a fellow IP silk and ‘frenemy’ from his uni days. Marcus had taken his new girlfriend, model and Instagram ‘influencer’ Ivy Jones, whose personality was proving less pleasing than her face.
‘It was terrific. I was so happy for Graham.’
Which was certainly true on some level. The Bar Association had honoured Graham with a humanitarian award for pro bono work he’d done defending some Papua New Guinean villagers against a multinational that had swooped in and stolen their primitive prototype for a water filter—Efoki Village vs Attwood Industries. Graham had won the villagers millions of dollars in compensation, which was now being put to good use in development and education projects.
Unlike himself, the years hadn’t been kind to Graham. He was short and stout with enormous ears, but as he’d made his acceptance speech, the respect in the room had been palpable. It was unsettling. Marcus was accustomed to admiration for his linguistic acrobatics, but this was different—Graham had earned his peers’ esteem for placing the greater good above the dollar. Their eyes met during the warm applause, and Graham’s humble expression read, ‘Yeah, suck this up, you shallow show pony.’ It rankled. Just because Marcus had made career choices that garnered him a profile, it didn’t make him a show pony. But the moment had only added to the general malaise Marcus had been feeling over the past several months—a malaise that even sleeping with a succession of stunning women couldn’t seem to lift. The only bright spot in proceedings was the envious glances he’d attracted when he crossed the room with Ivy. Take that, Graham!
Shirley was smiling at him proudly. ‘You should get an award too. It’s wonderful that he did that work for the villagers, but I bet he hasn’t represented a Home and Away star and a famous talkback radio host.’
Christ, he was shallow. Even at uni, Graham had been drawn to the underdog, but Marcus was different—he was drawn to winners. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with that, so why was he feeling like a moral vacuum? But then he remembered his newest client and he brightened. After all, who was Vanessa Rooney if not an underdog?
VANESSA
Vanessa gazed at Marcus’s animated face as he posed on the red carpet at the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival opening with his gorgeous girlfriend, Ivy Jones. He was throwing his head back in amusement as though someone had just said something funny, but it seemed pretty clear that Ivy hadn’t cracked the joke—she was posing with a sultry expression and her lips pouted in the ubiquitous ‘duck face’. Why did girls always feel compelled to stick out their lips like that? Did boys do it too? Vanessa had a mental image of Jackson and Lachie posting duck-face selfies and it disturbed her.
She felt a nudge in her ribs from Joy.
‘Now there’s a man who could drive his sports car straight to a woman’s G spot.’
Vanessa laughed. ‘Yeah.’
She zoomed in even closer, until Marcus’s face took up her whole laptop screen.
‘But, seriously, it’s positively eerie,’ Joy said. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t notice before, but it’s like looking at Dr Magnus Maddison made flesh.’
‘I know. It’s such a coincidence.’
Joy shook her head. ‘I’m with Oprah on this one, Nessie—I don’t believe in coincidences. This must be the universe’s doing.’
‘The universe?’
‘It’s kismet. That’s why you wrote Lost and Found Heart in the first place—so Charlotte would plagiarise you and then you and Marcus would meet and fall in love. I think the universe has been planning this all along.’
‘Mum, I think the universe has got better things to think about—and I haven’t got a hope in hell. He’s got a girlfriend.’
‘Oh, you can get rid of her.’
‘As if! Look at Ivy Jones and look at me.’
Joy focused on the laptop screen and then turned back to regard Vanessa. ‘You’ve got something she hasn’t—a beautiful heart.’
‘She might have a beautiful heart.’
‘No, she’s got a beautiful arse, but not a beautiful heart.’ They chuckled, but Joy soon grew earnest again. ‘Nessie, if you believe it, you can make it happen. You just have to visualise Marcus in your bed and he’ll come—in more ways than one.’ She winked and Vanessa cringed.
‘Mum!’
‘I’m just saying, I want you to have the once-in-a-lifetime love that I had with your daddy.’
‘I know.’ Vanessa patted her mother’s arm. She could already feel the mood shifting. Jack’s birthday was only a few days away, and it was always a difficult time for Joy. Her mum’s smile was starting to wobble.
‘He would have been sixty-seven on Thursday. Can you believe it?’
Yes. No. I don’t know.
Vanessa’s mind flew back to that muggy night in January 1995, when her Aunty Julie had gently shaken her awake. Why was Aunty Julie here? Why was she crying? Dazed with sleep but filled with dread, Vanessa followed Aunty Julie out to the living room and found her mum catatonic on the couch. Joy reached for Vanessa but couldn’t speak, and it was left to Aunty Julie to tell her that Jack had been killed in a car crash. Vanessa yelled at her aunty and called her a liar—shoving past her to pace around the room as if she could somehow outrun the news. But then her legs buckled beneath her and Aunty Julie had to break her fall. Vanessa crumpled onto the couch beside Joy and sobbed in a ball.
Even lost in the wilds of her own grief, her mum had been so protective. Joy banned Vanessa from watching the news or reading the paper or listening to the radio—the internet was still a few years away. A sense of awful secrecy had shrouded the accident, and Joy’s friends would stop mid-whisper when Vanessa entered the room. It made her wonder what they thought she couldn’t bear? Had her father’s death been even worse than a ‘routine’ car crash? Had he been decapitated? Incinerated? Had his legs been ripped from his body? Had he been dragged along the road by another car, screaming and keening in agony? For years afterwards, Vanessa had nightmares about her father in each of these states and worse, and she’d wake up sobbing. But she didn’t ask Joy about it because she sensed that, in protecting her, Joy was protecting herself too.
Eventually the nightmares went away, but never the questions. And now, twenty-four years later, she heard herself asking, ‘Mum, what happened to Dad on the night he died?’ She saw Joy flinch, but there was no turning back. ‘I’m a grown-up now. I can take it.’
Joy was silent for a moment, then said, ‘You know what happened. Your father’s car hit a tree and he was … killed.’
The last word said with a quiver.
‘But how?’ The question was so hard to ask. ‘Was he … decapitated?’
‘Decapitated? Dear God, no!’ Joy wrapped her arms around her daughter, and Vanessa caught a whiff of her freshly applied fake tan. ‘My poor Nessie. Why would you think a thing like that?’
‘I don’t know. I just always felt like there was something even more terrible you were protecting me from. Was there?’
‘No, of course not.’
Vanessa breathed decades of relief.
‘My darling girl, I’m sorry you’ve been thinking such awful thoughts.’ Joy dabbed at her teary eyes. ‘Now I’m going to have streaks in my tan.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Vanessa said.
‘Don’t be silly. But let’s talk about something happier, like you and Marcus.’ Joy turned back to the laptop. ‘I’ll do another google search.’
‘Mum, there is no me and Marcus.’
But in spite of her protests, dreams of Marcus intruded. Vanessa imagined him making love to her all night and then making pancakes for the boys at breakfast. As he skilfully flipped the pancakes the boys would say, ‘You’re wicked, Marcus!’ And he’d say, ‘Your mum’s the wicked one,’ and he’d give her a secret smile that said, ‘Everything I did to you last night, I’m going to do again tonight.’ And while they were eating their pancakes Daisy would run off with his barrister’s wig, but Marcus would just laugh fondly and scratch Daisy’s woolly head before popping the wig back into his briefcase and giving Vanessa a lingering goodbye kiss. Vanessa completely lost herself in the fantasy. She was composing a love note to slip into Marcus’s lunchbox when her worst fears suddenly came to pass.
‘It’s hit the press!’ Joy exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘You’re in Buzzfeed.’
What?! Vanessa’s tummy twisted with panic. Dave had only issued the writ today. Surely the media couldn’t have got hold of it already? But there it was in the Buzzfeed newsfeed:
WRITING WRONGS?
Celebrity author Charlotte Lancaster has been slapped with a breach of copyright suit by a suburban dental nurse. Vanessa Clooney, 49, claims that Ms Lancaster’s latest bestselling novel, Love Transplant, was plagiarised from her own unpublished work, Lost and Found Heart …
Vanessa was utterly horrified. ‘I’m not forty-nine!’
‘And Vanessa Clooney. We wish. Now there’s one of the very few men who could hold a candle to your daddy or Marcus Stafford.’
‘Mum, can’t you see how awful this is? What if it goes viral?’
But Joy waved her concerns away. ‘Oh, Nessie. It’s the last item—you have to scroll down to even see it.’
Vanessa didn’t feel comforted. She’d never been one to stick her head above the parapet, and now she felt like she was dancing on the parapet naked.
Joy patted her knee. ‘These sites get refreshed all the time; this will be chip wrapping by tomorrow morning, in a digital sense. And don’t forget that Charlotte’s the famous one—it’s her they’ll be chasing.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. Phew.’
Vanessa started to relax. Then her mobile rang and she jumped.
‘Who’s going to ring me at eleven o’clock?’ She checked the screen. ‘No Caller ID. Kiri says if it’s No Caller ID—’
But Joy had already grabbed the phone. ‘Hello?’ she said in her husky phone voice. ‘Vanessa Rooney’s line … Oh, really?’ She suddenly perked up. ‘Of course, she’s right here. I’ll put her on.’ She held out the phone and whispered, ‘Now, Nessie, everything’s going to be fine.’
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s A Current Affair.’
Lachie turned his back on the swing and folded his arms in defiance. ‘I’m not doing it,’ he said, glowering.
They were in All Nations Park in Northcote on a day that had started out unseasonably warm for May but now, in typical Melbourne fashion, was turning Arctic.
Vanessa cringed with embarrassment as A Current Affair reporter Zac Woollcot put a matey hand on Lachie’s shoulder.
‘Buddy, it’s TV, we need some action—you get that, right?’
Zac was a blandly good-looking guy in his twenties who seemed to have majored in insincerity at journalism school. Vanessa was surprised by how short he was. Someone had once told her that most of the men on TV were diminutive, and she found herself wondering if it was ‘small man syndrome’ that compelled them to want to be larger than life. Zac was certainly not backward in coming forward.
‘So how about it, eh, mate? You’re a smart kid, you know what we need.’
‘I said no.’
Lachie had dug in his heels and Vanessa knew there’d be no wriggle room.
‘Couldn’t we just walk around the park with Daisy?’ she suggested.
‘I need colour and movement.’
‘We could walk fast.’
Vanessa detected a tic of impatience behind Zac’s empty eyes. Nearby a sloppy cameraman was checking Facebook and a boom operator yawned, revealing a mouthful of blueberry muffin.
Oh God, what was she doing here? She forced herself to remember Marcus’s wise counsel over the phone.
‘I can understand why you don’t like the idea,’ he’d said in his deep, sexy voice, ‘but there’s nothing the Australian public loves more than an underdog. And a high-profile interview like this could well prompt Charlotte to make a settlement offer.’
It was a compelling argument made by a particularly compelling man, so Vanessa caved, but she did make one request. ‘Could we have our faces pixilated?’
Marcus laughed, and she wasn’t sure whether to be thrilled or embarrassed.
‘Sure, if you want to look shifty. Disguising your identity implies that you’ve got something to hide, which is the opposite of what we’re aiming for.’ He was right, of course; he was always right. ‘Think of it as short-term pain for long-term gain.’
He sounded so confident, so masterful and totally beautiful, that Vanessa would have walked into fire. And so here she was in the park, which felt about as comfortable as a fire would have. Zac Woollcot was now looking at his watch, and she wondered if he wanted to say, ‘Hurry up, I’ve got other people to exploit today.’ She felt her pulse quicken with the pressure and turned back to Lachie. ‘Please, sweetheart? The sooner we do this, the sooner we’ll get it over with.’
‘I said no!’
‘But, Lachie …’
‘No!’
‘I’ll do it,’ Jackson mumbled.
Vanessa was astonished and a little alarmed. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart, you don’t have to—’
‘That’s the way, mate,’ Zac cut across her. ‘Hop on, eh?’
‘But Jackson’s almost thirteen.’
‘Get on the one behind your mum, the background looks better.’
Jackson hurled himself down on the swing, his freckled face puce with mortification.
Vanessa cringed. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ she told him.
‘Can we just get it over with?’ he snarled.
‘The kid’s making sense. And, Mum, why don’t you give him a push?’
A bridge too far. ‘Push him? Are you kidding?’
Zac’s laugh had a jagged edge. ‘I’d love to stay here all day and argue, but we need to get this story to air tonight.’
‘But I don’t want Jackson to look—’
‘Mum! Just do it.’
‘Yeah, just do it, Mum!’ Lachie yelled, and she could have cheerfully throttled him.
‘Oh, all right.’
Vanessa reluctantly stood behind Jackson and started pushing him on the swing. He was a lot heavier than the last time she’d pushed him, but so was she, probably. They both looked like idiots and they both knew it.
‘That’s great, Mum. Now, Larry—’
‘It’s Lachie.’
‘Yeah, Lachie. You play with the dog behind them.’
Lachie and Daisy started frolicking.
Jackson looked pained. ‘Can I get off now?’
‘We’re not shooting yet. I want you all to relax and have a laugh—you know, like you’re enjoying a fun family day at the park.’ Vanessa and Jackson tried to oblige, but who were they kidding? Some passers-by stopped to watch and openly snickered. Vanessa couldn’t see Jackson’s face, but the back of his head looked like it wanted to die.
‘Can I get off yet?’ he begged again.
‘No, we’ll need to do a few takes.’
Zac positioned himself in front of Jackson. The cameraman started filming and Zac launched into his patronising on-air patter. As Vanessa pushed Jackson like a twit she reminded herself that this was a necessary evil. Marcus was right: the people of Australia loved an underdog, and Charlotte would be shamed into settling. She felt her spirits lift. It was a brilliant tactical move, when you thought about it.
What could possibly go wrong?
‘I’m just saying,’ said Craig, who’d turned up unannounced soon after A Current Affair finished, ‘that I feel it’s misleading for you to call yourself a struggling single mum when I live up to my full responsibilities as a father and I never miss any maintenance payments.’
He sounded like he’d learned his speech off by heart. No doubt Natalie had devised the most non-threatening phrasing so Craig could make his displeasure felt without putting Vanessa on the defensive. But of course, that was Natalie’s field of expertise. Along with stealing other people’s husbands.
Craig paused for effect and Vanessa caught a waft of aftershave, something he used to abhor. She wasn’t sure she was up to this right now. The story was already going viral. Joy had three hundred and seventeen new Facebook comments and the phone hadn’t stopped ringing. It seemed like the whole world wanted to talk to her, but she just wanted to run away. Thank goodness she could draw some comfort from Daisy, whose warm woolly body was pressed up against her leg.
‘You’ve maligned me,’ Craig continued self-righteously. ‘I’m concerned that my reputation has been damaged with my friends, my colleagues and the wider community.’ And then he improvised, ‘And what the fuck was Jackson doing on that swing?’
