Nicola Moriarty is a novelist, copywriter and mum to two small (but remarkably strong-willed) daughters. In between various career changes, becoming a mum and studying at university, she began to write. Now, she can’t seem to stop.
Nicola lives in north-west Sydney and has four sisters and one brother. The Fifth Letter is her UK debut.
You can follow Nicola online:
www.nicolamoriarty.com.au
facebook.com/NicolaMoriartyAuthor
Twitter@NikkiM3
Writing this novel has been a wonderful roller coaster of an adventure with all sorts of people to thank along the way. To my astonishingly fabulous editors, Carrie Feron, Anna Valdinger, Maxine Hitchcock and Mary Rennie, along with every other person on the Australian, US and UK publishing teams: my heartfelt gratitude for all the hard work you put into this book to coax the final story out of the original manuscript.
To Pippa Masson, thank you for continuing to be such an extraordinary agent (and thank you also to Tara Wynne for stepping in while Pippa is otherwise engaged!). I’m also very grateful to Sheila Crowley and Kate Cooper for being equally wonderful agents across the ocean. To Diane and Bernie Moriarty, Madeleine and Arthur Menasse, Liane Moriarty, Jaci Moriarty, Kati Harrington and Fiona Ostric – I’m for ever grateful for all of the advice, the babysitting, the cappuccinos and goodies and, of course, an extra special thank you to those of you who were kind enough to read early drafts and offer invaluable feedback.
Several people helped me out with various content-related questions (including, but not limited to, horse-riding queries, medical advice and rock-climbing tips). Thank you Simone Monaghan, Kerry Lockwood, Colin Macdonald, Rowan Campbell and Bosco Tan. To Emilie Martin, thank you for allowing me to use your brilliant lasagne analogy, and to everyone on Facebook who answered my inane questions regarding names of bands and songs from the nineties, you’re all brilliant! I’m also extremely appreciative of all of the wonderful readers who kindly reach out and let me know when they enjoy my writing, along with all of the book bloggers and Facebook friends and Twitter followers I’ve connected with along the way.
A big thank you to Butter Stream Design for the beautiful, brand-new website. Steve Menasse, Kate Jaques and Maia Christou all did a fabulous job for an indecisive client! Youeni Café, thank you for allowing me to sit at your counter for several hours at a time while I was working on this book and for always remembering my coffee order.
Finally, a gigantic thank you to Steve, Maddie and Piper Menasse for being the best and most supportive family a Nicola could ever dream of.
‘Deborah! . . . Debbie! . . . Deb! . . . Aha!’
Joni took the concrete stairs two at a time to catch up with the tall girl in front of her. When she finally stopped and turned around, Joni grinned up at her. The two of them moved to the side to allow some senior students to push past and join the canteen line at the top of the stairs.
‘You like “Deb” best, then?’ Joni asked.
Deb glared back at her. ‘What do you want?’
‘Come and have lunch with me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, it’s like Mrs Gamble said, we have a connection.’
‘A connection? Are you high or something? I don’t even know you.’
‘I’m Joni! Joni Camilleri. I’m in your homeroom. Remember, this morning? We found out that we’re both Scorpios and we both have surnames starting with C.’
‘So?’
‘So . . . we’re supposed to . . .’ Joni’s voice faltered. She paused and then tilted forward onto her tiptoes so she could lean in closer to Deb. ‘I don’t have anyone to sit with,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know anyone at all at this school. No one from my primary school came here. Please, please, just sit with me?’
She pulled back and waited, hid her hand in her pocket and crossed her fingers. Joni could tell that Deb was the type of person who would easily make friends with the coolest people in the school if she chose to. She was gorgeous in a completely effortless and highly intimidating sort of way. She had a short spiky haircut, sharp, high cheekbones, no make-up and no jewellery. Somehow, her school uniform seemed to hang off her body in a trendy, carefree way.
This morning, when Mrs Gamble had gushed over the fact that four girls in their homeroom all had C surnames and were all Scorpios, Joni had known, right there and then, that this was her in. Her chance to form a new circle of friends.
Deborah Camden was the one she had to swing first, though. If she could win Deb over, then she could win anyone.
Deb was still staring at her, eyes narrowed, jaw set. Then Joni saw it happen. A minute twitch at the edges of Deb’s lips. She huffed noisily and said, ‘Oh okay, fine. But just for today.’
Joni immediately brightened and all traces of fear and loneliness that had been stamped across her face vanished. ‘Yay!’ she said happily. ‘Come with me, we’ll find the others first.’
‘The others?’ Deb asked as she followed Joni back down the steps and away from the canteen. ‘Um, excuse me, the others?’ she repeated when Joni didn’t reply.
‘Yes! The others,’ sang Joni.
They found Trina waiting on the side of the basketball court. She had a grim look of concentration on her face as she watched the girls play, her shiny black hair scraped back into a tight ponytail.
‘Trina!’ said Joni, nudging her with her elbow to get her attention. ‘Short for Katrina, right?’ she asked.
Trina glanced sideways at Joni. ‘Nope. Just Trina,’ she said, before turning her attention back to the game, her eyes trained on the ball. ‘That girl should have passed by now, total ball hog,’ she muttered under her breath.
‘Really?!’ continued Joni, ignoring Trina’s asides. ‘Just Trina. So like, it says Trina on your birth certificate and everything?’
Trina kept her attention fixed on the play. ‘Yep. My mum liked it that way.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘Uh, thanks.’
‘Anyway, Deb and I want you to come and sit with us.’
Trina took her eyes off the court once more. She glanced at Joni and then at Deb. Joni realized that Deb was kind of glaring back at Trina, so she tried to spread her welcoming smile even wider – although her cheeks were actually starting to hurt.
‘Uh . . . why?’ asked Trina.
‘Wasn’t anyone listening this morning in homeroom?’ asked Joni. ‘Your surname, Chan. Is that Chinese, by the way? Or Korean? Never mind, doesn’t matter. Anyway, the point is, it starts with a C.’
‘It’s Chinese,’ replied Trina. ‘But I’m Australian, I was born here in Australia,’ she added, sounding a little defensive. ‘But so what, it starts with a C, what does that have to do with anything?’
‘Your surname starts with a C and you’re a Scorpio! Same as Deb and me. So we’re supposed to be friends. You have to come sit with us.’
‘Oh, well, but I’m just waiting to get called on,’ said Trina, gesturing towards the court.
Joni could feel Deb’s patience being tested. She thought fast and then said firmly, ‘They won’t though, I heard two girls in the bathroom earlier. They were making fun of all the people who wait on the sideline hoping to play. They said they were going to leave them waiting there for ever, pretending like eventually they would call you on but never actually do it.’
‘Seriously?’ asked Trina.
‘Uh huh,’ said Joni.
At that moment the ball bounced towards them and then rolled to a stop at Trina’s feet. Joni and Deb watched as Trina reached down to pick it up and stared at it in her hands for a few seconds. ‘Screw them,’ she said, and then she hurled the ball towards the hoop before turning away to join Joni and Deb. Joni watched over Trina’s shoulder as the ball swished neatly through the net and hoped that Trina would forgive her if she ever found out the lie Joni had just told.
It wasn’t until the last five minutes of lunch that the three of them finally found Eden, wandering up and down the aisles of the library, examining the books with careful consideration, moving slowly, running her fingers along the spines. She was the shortest of the four of them, and her petite face looked almost comical under the large mess of frizzy blonde hair.
Joni was feeling exasperated when she spotted her. As though Eden ought to have known that they’d be looking for her. When Joni suggested that Eden leave the library and come and sit with them – all simply because her surname was Chester and her birthday was in early November – Eden shrugged and nodded, as though that made perfect sense.
The conversation between the four twelve-year-old girls was a bit stilted, despite Joni’s efforts – asking questions like she was an interviewer on a chat show. At the end of lunch, she instructed them all to meet back again tomorrow at recess at the same silver benches.
Eden complied happily. Deb offered a terse, ‘Maybe,’ and Trina gave a half-laugh before agreeing to join them.
Years later, Joni asked Eden whether or not she would have ever ventured out of that library had they not come and rescued her. ‘Oh no,’ Eden had replied, ‘my plan was to keep myself busy by trying to read every single book in the library by the time I finished high school. I was going to learn new languages, teach myself chemistry, learn how to play the saxophone. Stuff like that.’
‘I don’t know if you can really learn all that stuff from books alone. But you were glad, right? That we did find you?’
‘Well, I was a bit disappointed that I never did learn French. But yes, I was glad.’
In fact, I don’t even know why I have these thoughts.
‘What if we get arrested?’
‘By who?!’
‘The police.’
‘Why would the police turn up at the door out of the blue?’
‘I don’t know – because someone could smell it?’
‘How unlucky would that be for you? First time you’ve ever smoked weed and you get a knock at the door from the cops. Stop worrying, Joni, no one’s going to dob us in.’
Joni stopped pacing and flopped down on the rug in front of the open fireplace. She was relieved that they’d managed to get the fire going. Having the lights dimmed and the room lit by the flickering flames added some ambience and hid the cobwebbed corners, the mildewed walls and the tattered blinds.
The house wasn’t exactly what she’d been expecting based on the pictures she’d viewed on the happyhappyholidays.com website. For one thing, the supposed ocean view was obscured by several overgrown trees that obviously weren’t so out of control when the photos were first taken. And the interiors were a far cry from the description in the ad: ‘A flawless fusion of Hamptons style and exotic décor, this lavishly appointed two-level beachfront haven encapsulates the essence of luxury and tranquillity.’
Apparently the person who wrote that ad was working with a very loose definition of the words ‘lavish’ and ‘luxury’. The house had a very basic layout – the combined living, kitchen and dining areash upstairs were about the size of a small studio apartment, while the four shoebox-sized bedrooms downstairs were dark and musty. The ‘Hamptons style’ seemed to refer to a couple of faded blue-and-white striped beach chairs and an old wooden oar propped up in the corner, while the exotic décor was presumably represented by the oversized African mask that hung from the ceiling above the kitchen. It kept swaying and spinning because of the gusts of wind that were currently whistling their way through the gaps under the cracked and peeling doors, which meant Joni kept catching the movement out of the corner of her eye and feeling her stomach jolt each time. The remaining furniture looked like it was straight out of a seventies sitcom.
The location wasn’t really what you would call beachfront either. The beach was in fact a good twenty-minute walk down a steep, rocky pathway that wound its way through the bush – or you could take the long way around via the road and be at the beach in forty minutes instead.
The four of them had been doing this holiday almost every year since they’d turned twenty-one. Friends since that first day of high school when Joni had brought them all together, they’d seen each other through break-ups, bad perms and end-of-year exam panic attacks. They’d written letters to Eden every week for six months when her family moved to Adelaide in Year Ten. They’d hidden Deb from the teachers when she’d turned up to school blind drunk and sobered her up with a sausage roll, a can of Coke and a Frosty Fruit ice block from the canteen. She’d vomited in the agriculture plot and cried all afternoon. Later they found out her parents were getting divorced.
The first time they took this holiday, it was a joint birthday gift to themselves but they had so much fun that they all promised each other that they would make it an annual event. Joni was always the one who made it happen, though. The one who coordinated and cajoled until they had a date that suited everyone. The one who picked the destination, found and booked the accommodation, paid the deposit, arrived first and picked up the keys.
It was Eden who had found the marijuana plants in the bush behind the house, just past the perimeter of the backyard. They’d been exploring the holiday house, oversized glasses of wine already in hand, shielding their faces from the glare of the setting sun. She’d called the others over to take a look. ‘Is that . . . is that what I think it is?’
‘Nup,’ Trina had said immediately. ‘It’s just one of those plants that looks like pot – what’s it called, like a hibiscus or something?’
‘That’s no hibiscus,’ Deb had said.
And then they’d all leaned down to smell the leaves and their eyes had widened in mutual surprise.
First they’d argued about whether or not they were actually going to pick some of it (‘What if it belongs to some drug-lord who decides to come after us for messing with his crops!’), then they argued over whether or not they wanted to smoke it. And then they argued over whether it was even possible to use it fresh from the plant.
Trina had googled it (‘I’m just curious’) and announced that it was possible to dry it out in the oven if you didn’t have the four weeks to wait for it to dry out naturally.
Deb was immediately keen; she hadn’t had a joint since high school and she thought it would be a hilarious way to kick things off. She also made the very solid point that they’d all need to get high in order to ignore the fact that Joni had booked them into an absolute dump for five days, to which Joni had defended her choice by bringing up the original real estate photos on her phone and they were all forced to agree that it wasn’t her fault.
Trina was on board next. She’d only tried it once during university and all it had done was give her a bad headache, so she wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Then Eden gave in – ‘I guess it’s legal now in parts of America, right? So it can’t be that bad for you. Although I’ll need to call Ben first and check in on the kids.’
Joni was the only holdout. She’d always liked to think of herself as the rule-follower of the four friends. The sensible one. She was the one who always kept her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, as opposed to Deb who had started driving with two fingers on the bottom of the wheel the moment she passed her driving exam.
She was the one who never drank coffee after 11 a.m., because she was determined to be in bed by 10 p.m. at the latest, so she could jump up bright and early for the gym before work the next day.
And she was also the one who had been devastated when they hadn’t been able to organize a date for their annual holiday the previous year. ‘It’s an annual holiday! That means we’re supposed to do it every year!’
‘Things are different now,’ her friends had said. ‘We all have other stuff going on in our lives, it’s not so easy to drop everything and come away for five days.’ Each one of her three friends had stopped short of saying what Joni knew they’d all been thinking: You’re the only one that doesn’t have kids, so you don’t understand.
Joni did understand. She got it. Having kids complicated things, but it didn’t mean they had to sacrifice their friendship, did it?
At first it had seemed like they were all following the same path. Each of them settled into their chosen careers by the time they were twenty-five. Deb working in insurance fraud after completing a business and finance degree at university. Trina teaching sports at their old high school. Eden – who had skipped studying in favour of the steady paycheck that waitressing brought her – had been caught by her restaurant manager playing the piano after closing time one evening. He begged her to perform for the diners and she eventually gave in, and that led to her singing and playing piano at various restaurants around Sydney.
It didn’t bring in a lot of money, though, so she supplemented it by selling Nutrimetics or Tupperware or Jamberry or whatever the latest craze was, and that suited her perfectly – even though her friends had started to become suspicious every time she invited them around to her place for a ‘girls’ night’.
And Joni, somehow, had fallen into a job as a staff writer for liveliferight.com– a women’s lifestyle website – after an internship that she’d applied for on a whim. (A whim that had quite possibly been spurred on by the fact that she had no clue what she wanted to do with her life. What she did know was that she didn’t want to be left behind by her friends, who all seemed so perfectly suited to their jobs.) So she stuck with it, churning out story after story, meeting briefs, pitching ideas, researching new pubs, clubs, fad diets and skin care products – any and every topic that was thrown her way. Including the more recent subject matter that she’d been tasked with basing articles on. She was keeping that to herself for now, though.
They had all been on the same track. Earning money, building careers, meeting cute boys when they got together for drinks every Friday night at the wine bar downstairs from Deb’s office. (It was always the wine bar near Deb’s office, because Deb somehow convinced them all that her job was the most demanding and she couldn’t possibly get herself out of the city and over to the pub near Trina’s school or even across the bridge to North Sydney to any of the bars near Joni’s office. Eden’s work had her floating all over Sydney anyway, so she never minded where they met up.)
And then Eden met Ben. A tall, muscly builder who – apart from the matching blond hair – seemed like petite, artistic Eden’s complete opposite. Joni loved the story of how they met. He was having dinner at one of the restaurants where Eden played and after skipping the desserts and sending his date home in a cab, he doubled back to wait until Eden finished her set so he could ask her out. They had a barefoot beach wedding with champagne and carrot cake and Joni had been embarrassingly weak at the knees when she’d seen Ben in his open-necked shirt, his eyes shining as he watched Eden walk up the makeshift aisle on the sand. ‘Why doesn’t this guy have a couple of brothers for us?’ she’d groaned to Trina after one too many drinks at the reception. Just six months later, Eden was pregnant.
But that was okay. Nothing needed to change. Deb and Trina were still single like Joni. Plus, Eden was totally relaxed as a first-time mum. She was the epitome of the easy-going earth mother. Leif came with her everywhere in a baby sling and was the poster-child for newborns. He would breastfeed and fall asleep against her chest while Eden carried on a conversation as though becoming a mum was the easiest, most natural progression in the world.
Deb was next. She married Connor – a civil engineer whom she met when the company he worked for was under investigation for insurance fraud. Deb had flirted with him in order to get him to help her investigation. After the case was over, Joni convinced Deb that she should take him out for dinner to apologize for all that fake flirting. But somewhere between the mains and the desserts, Deb worked out that the flirting hadn’t been as fake as she’d imagined. And then she became pregnant with her daughter, Ruby, around the same time as Eden announced she was having her second.
So Joni and Trina were the last two standing. And Joni was confident Trina wasn’t going to be getting married let alone having babies any time soon because they were all certain that the guy she was dating at the time, a good-looking but arrogant stockbroker named Josh, was going to be cut loose any day now.
That’s why it was such a shock when Trina rang around to tell them all she was engaged. Even more so when the wedding was rushed through only four weeks later. Deb was not happy about being crammed into a bridesmaid’s dress at eight months pregnant while Eden was let off the hook because Maisie was only two weeks old. She spent most of the ceremony pacing at the back of the church, trying to get Maisie to stop wailing while two-year-old Leif clung to her skirt. That was Joni’s first clue that Eden’s dream run with baby Leif was the exception rather than the rule.
At the reception, Deb had bet Joni fifty bucks that Trina’s rushed wedding was because she was knocked up.
‘No way,’ Joni had argued. ‘She would have told us – there’d be no reason for her to keep something like that from us.’
‘Just wait,’ Deb had replied serenely.
Seven months later, Trina gave birth to Nate and Joni had to hand fifty bucks over to Deb.
That’s when everything started to go wrong with Joni’s ‘plan to stick together for ever’ with her best friends. Suddenly all three of them had families. Families that kept them busy. Babies who wouldn’t take the bottle. Husbands who had to work late. Toddlers who went through annoying clingy stages meaning Joni’s best friends would rush off the phone after a terse, ‘No, I can’t come and see the new Hunger Games movie with you tonight, are you kidding me? You need to give me notice!’
So Joni was left behind, still heading out to drinks on a Friday night, but now without the company of her three best friends.
And then Joni met Kai. The sweet red-headed IT guy she’d seen at the noisy German-themed pub on the corner four Fridays in a row before one of her workmates finally made something happen between the two of them. The colleague paid for a drink for Joni on the sly, and told the bartender to pretend it had been sent to her from the red-headed bloke at the end of the bar. It was enough to get the two of them chatting. And enough for Joni to discover that the low rumble of his laughter made a warm glow spread through her body. And that the self-conscious way he would tug at his left ear when he was unsure about something made her want to take hold of his hand and kiss it gently while she told him it was fine that he didn’t know who the premier of New South Wales was at the moment, because she didn’t know either.
So Joni started to catch up. She and Kai had been married now for two years. And she was happy with him, absolutely she was. But sometimes it felt they were leading such separate lives. The two of them so focused on their respective careers – Kai often working late, Joni up early for the gym. Their arriage just seemed so . . . different from everyone else’s. And she knew that shouldn’t matter. She knew she shouldn’t be so worried about her friends, knew that she shouldn’t be making these sorts of comparisons. But knowing you shouldn’t be feeling a certain way and not feeling that way were two very different things.
That was why now, as one by one the roughly rolled joint was passed around the table after dinner (Thai takeaway from the small strip of shops down by the beach) and several more drinks (Coronas for Deb and Trina, red wine for Joni and Eden), Joni had given in. Because why should there be yet another thing that separated her from the others? Besides, it was one night. One time. A bit of fun. Not really that different from progressing to a few vodka-sodas after wine. All three of the others had ended up calling their respective husbands before they lit it up though, Eden making kissing noises into the phone at her two kids, Trina insisting on singing a lullaby down the line to Nate, and Deb offering a terse, ‘Yes, yes, love you too,’ before hanging up fairly quickly.
Joni hadn’t felt the need to call Kai. She’d only seen him that bloody morning.
As the joint had dwindled down to a small, charred stump, the girls had migrated from the dining table across to the rug in front of the fire, leaving the empty food containers littering the table but bringing the drinks along with them. That was when Joni’s paranoia had set in – hence the pacing – but Deb’s reassurance had helped calm her down. Now, as she sat cross-legged on the floor and looked around at her friends, she asked thoughtfully, ‘You get the feeling we don’t talk like we used to?’ It was the music that was causing her to feel nostalgic. Someone had plugged their iPod into the stereo and put on a playlist of nineties grunge and rock music. The song that had just come on, ‘Good Riddance’ by Green Day, had taken her straight back to high school – to the weeks leading up to their final exams in Year Twelve to be exact.
‘Yes!’ exclaimed Trina. ‘I was thinking the exact same thing today on the way up here. We don’t. We definitely don’t.’ Trina was lying on her stomach, her oversized jumper swamping her slim frame and her chin resting on her hands. Her skinny legs were kicked up behind her and she was absent-mindedly chewing on the end of her long, dark ponytail – the way she used to when she was thirteen, back when they used to have sleepovers and giggle and chatter all night until the parents of whoever’s house it was would stomp in and shout at them all to go to sleep. The excessive passion in her voice gave away how stoned she was.
Deb let out a small groan. She was sitting with her back resting against the couch and her knees tucked up in front of her. ‘Do we have to get into a serious DnM right now? Can’t we just sit quietly and enjoy the buzz?’
‘No but she’s right, Deb,’ insisted Trina. ‘Like, what’s actually going on in your life right now? I don’t even know. I mean, tell me, what did you have for breakfast yesterday?’
Eden giggled. She was lying on her back with her long, white-blonde hair spread out around her, making her look like an ethereal angel. ‘I had crumpets,’ she said. ‘Do you feel closer to me now?’
‘It depends,’ interjected Joni. ‘What was on the crumpets, Vegemite or honey?’
‘Jam. Didn’t see that coming, did you?’
Joni noticed that Eden’s voice was sounding slurred and melodious around the edges.
‘What do you want to know – I mean, apart from breakfast? Seriously, ask away, I’m an open book,’ said Deb.
The other three erupted with laughter. ‘Sure you are, Deb, that’s exactly how I’d describe you,’ Joni giggled.
‘What are you talking about – I’m the most honest one here.’
‘Yes, you’re honest – and outspoken – but only on topics that you want to be honest and outspoken about,’ Joni explained firmly.
‘What does that even mean?’ Deb muttered crossly, shifting her position and picking up her drink to take a long, noisy gulp.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Trina, rolling over onto her back and holding her hands out in front of her to examine her fingernails. ‘I watched a Dove promo video the other day that made me cry. They blindfolded kids and got them to pick their mums out of a line-up based on how they felt and smelled.’
‘Aw,’ said Eden, ‘that’s so beautiful.’
‘No!’ said Trina. ‘It fucking wasn’t beautiful.’ She stayed on her back, resolutely avoiding eye contact with the others. ‘You know why? ’Cause what if you were the mum whose kid didn’t recognize you? What if your kid hugged some other mum thinking it was his, and then they take off the blindfold and he realizes he’s got the wrong mum and it’s all awkward for the mum whose kid couldn’t pick her out and the kid probably knows his mistake is kind of monumental and the other mums are all superior because their kids found them without any trouble and then for the rest of your life, there’s this disconnect between you and your kid, all because Dove wanted to sell some fucking moisturizer.’
Joni didn’t know what to say. As the only childless one in the group, she had no idea how to react. And both Deb and Eden were remaining awkwardly quiet. See, thought Joni – this is what I mean, we never talk properly any more. Nobody even knows what the hell to say right now to poor Trina! But then Eden rolled over and crawled across the rug to Trina, stopping when her face was right above hers. ‘Trina,’ she said, ‘I’m sure that Nate would recognize you in a line-up.’
‘You really think so?’ she said, sounding teary now.
‘Yes,’ said Eden, ‘I absolutely think so.’
They all fell quiet while Trina gave Eden a watery smile and the sound of a low rumble of thunder along with the growing wind from outside filled the room, undercutting the music.
‘Oh hey,’ said Joni, keen to move the topic of conversation away from children and maybe re-connect with her friends over some old-school common ground. ‘I have a secret for you three.’
‘Really? Something good?’ asked Eden, moving back away from Trina and facing Joni with eager eyes.
‘Yeah,’ said Trina, sitting up and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Is it something super juicy?’
Joni paused for dramatic effect . . . ‘I had a crush on Luke Berry in high school.’
She waited for them to react with amazement but instead they laughed at her. ‘Joni, we all knew that,’ said Trina.
‘You did not!’ Joni argued without conviction.
‘Uh, yeah we did, it was obvious,’ Deb agreed. ‘Although I could never quite understand why,’ she added. ‘He and Joseph absolutely tortured us almost every day throughout high school. Remember how they nicknamed us the “C-word girls”? Mrs Gamble really regretted pointing out our surnames after they started calling us that, didn’t she?’
Trina sighed. ‘Why do girls do that?’ she asked. ‘Why do we go for the guys who torture us?’
‘Excuse me? Not all girls do that. I never had a crush on anyone who was an arsehole to me,’ said Deb.
‘Yeah, but you’re an anomaly, Deb. You were always so confident in high school. Right from day one.’
‘Confident? Or terrifying?’ asked Eden.
‘Okay,’ said Joni. ‘You knew I had a crush on him. But did you know I actually ended up kissing him at a party at the end of Year Twelve?’
‘Seriously?’ asked Trina. ‘You kissed that fucker? Why?’
‘I knew,’ said Eden. ‘I never said it ’cause I knew you were trying to keep it a secret, but I saw you two making out around the side of . . . whose house was it?’
‘It was Kelly Cropley’s house,’ provided Joni.
‘Hey! Kelly had a C surname, how come she wasn’t in our group?’ Deb teased.
‘Wasn’t a Scorpio though, was she?’ Joni replied smoothly.
‘Was that the formal after-party?’ asked Trina.
‘No, that was the party after muck-up day. Her parents were in Europe or something. I think her house actually got trashed.’
‘People got carried away after toilet-papering and egging the school all day,’ agreed Trina, a wistful look on her face. ‘So how in the hell did you end up kissing Luke?’ she added.
‘I don’t know. We started talking. He even apologized for being such a jerk all through school, said he was just going along with Joseph, and then we went outside for a ciggie and next thing he had his hands on my waist and then . . . we were kissing.’
They fell quiet again and Joni wondered if the others were all doing the same thing that she was, thinking back to first kisses, first boyfriends, first times.
Trina had been the one in their circle of friends to lose her virginity first. And she’d been so excited that she’d made the others all sneak out to meet her in the park in the middle of the night, just so she could tell them it had happened. They’d taken it in turns pushing one another on the swings while Trina had tried to unsuccessfully convey to the others how extraordinary the whole experience had been. Deb was envious; she’d been hoping to have sex before everyone else. Eden looked slightly frightened by the whole idea of it, but Joni remembered feeling in awe of Trina’s bravery as the four of them breathed puffs of mist into the night as they chatted, the chains of the swings ice-cold beneath their fingers.
‘Think the rain’s started,’ murmured Eden now.
‘Love the sound of the pouring rain on the roof when you’re all rugged up inside,’ said Joni.
‘Hey, guess what I did the other day?’ said Trina. ‘I joined a basketball team.’
‘Don’t you already play netball?’ Deb asked.
‘Yeah, but I’ve always missed basketball. And I’ve always regretted not playing it in high school. Remember how those girls on the court were so mean to me when we started Year Seven?’
Joni’s eyes connected with Deb’s. Shit! she mouthed, I thought she knew!
‘Oy!’ said Trina. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, waving her hands between Deb and Joni to break their eye contact. ‘What’s happening here?’
‘Um,’ said Joni. ‘Well . . . it’s just that—’
‘Trina,’ interrupted Deb, ‘surely you knew that Joni made that up. Like, it was obvious, wasn’t it?’
‘Wait, what? What do you mean?’ Trina looked back at Joni. ‘You made what up?’
Joni twisted her hands together and gave Trina an imploring look. ‘I always thought you knew! I just wanted you to come and be our friend. So I made up the story about the players not letting anyone else on the court.’
‘But . . . but . . . but . . . Oh shit! I stole Kendra Williams’s boyfriend in Year Eight just to get back at her over that!’
Eden spat out her mouthful of wine with a huge guffaw of laughter. ‘That’s why you went out with Hamish! I always wondered.’
‘I knew,’ whispered Joni. ‘And he had such bad skin, didn’t he? I’m so sorry, Trina!’
Trina shook her head but she was smiling. ‘Oh my God, Joni Camilleri. You are so manipulative. I believed you completely. I guess it was all worth it though because I got to become friends with you three losers.’
‘Excuse me? Loser? Moi?’ said Deb, and she reached behind her to grab a cushion off the couch and hurl it across at Trina.
‘Hey! Watch the drinks, woman,’ Joni warned.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Deb.
‘Nah, it’s okay, it didn’t spill,’ Trina reassured them.
‘No, no. Not that. I think we might have a problem. I’m pretty sure I just felt a drop of rain on my head.’
‘What? How? What do you mean?’ asked Joni, tipping her head back to squint confusedly up at the ceiling above them.
‘I mean the roof is leaking, you big dork.’
‘No it’s not, you’re imagining it.’
The three of them all crawled across the rug to where Deb was sitting and held their hands out to feel for the drops themselves. And then, when they had to concede that Deb was right and they got to their feet and started dashing about looking for a bucket to position under the steadily increasing drip, drip, dripping, Trina and Eden each discovered two more leaks.
‘Okay!’ shouted Deb as she leaned down and shoved the heavy brown couch back far enough so that she could place one of the buckets they’d found in the laundry room in the right spot. ‘I’m calling it. This place is officially the worst one we’ve stayed at. Even worse than the house where the air conditioner sounded like a fighter jet.’
‘What about the one that had a view straight into the apartment next door where that dude was always vacuuming naked,’ Eden said from the kitchen, where she was climbing up onto the bench so that she could position a large serving bowl above a high cupboard to catch yet another leak.
‘You didn’t like that view?!’ Joni called from the other side of the room where she was on her knees pressing a towel against the carpet to soak up some of the water. ‘I thought it was especially entertaining when he straddled the vacuum cleaner and pretended he was being bucked off a horse.’ Trina appeared at the top of the staircase from downstairs carrying a couple more buckets she’d found. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘are we talking about the worst places we’ve stayed? I always thought the country town that had NO liquor store took the cake.’
‘Yes!’ agreed all three girls in unison and then they started laughing. ‘Come on,’ said Joni, abandoning the carpet and grabbing one of the buckets off Trina to position under the last intrusive trickle of rain. ‘Let’s have a quick nightcap while we wait and see if any of our buckets overflow.’
Thirty minutes later and the quick nightcap had somehow turned into several. The joint from earlier might have worn off but now they were all completely plastered. Someone had turned the music up and Eden and Trina were dancing together to ‘Come on, Eileen’, while Joni was searching through the kitchen in a futile attempt to find chocolate she was hoping might have been left behind by a previous guest. Every time she sprang across the kitchen from one cupboard to the next, she would forget about the hanging mask and bang her forehead against it with a look of complete surprise.
‘Even if you did find anything, you’d have no way of knowing how long it’s been there,’ Deb called out from the couch, while simultaneously using her foot to steady one of the buckets that Trina had just knocked as Eden spun her around.
‘That kind of negativity will get you nowhere,’ Joni replied, stopping the search and hoisting herself up onto the bench top to watch the others. Trina and Eden were both always such fun drunks. And Deb – well, she just remained cool. No matter how plastered she was, she never got messy, apart from that one time in Year Nine, but that was different, special circumstances. So what kind of a drunk am I? Joni wondered. She liked to think of herself as passionate. She was passionate in her search for chocolate. She was passionate in her assertion that they needed to continue this annual holiday regardless of how many children they all had. Or didn’t have. When she drank too much, she generally turned into an even more persistent version of herself. Maybe she really was manipulative, like Trina had said earlier. But only when it was important and for the benefit of others, right? Like when she talked Deb into taking Connor out – she’d said it was because Deb ought to apologize, but truthfully, she’d been able to tell from the way Deb spoke about Connor that she had a huge crush on the guy. Joni wondered if she used to sound just as enraptured about Kai back when she’d first met him.
Joni slowly became aware of the fact that the music had switched to ‘Linger’ by The Cranberries and that Trina and Eden were now slow-dancing romantically around the lounge. It was nice to see them both relaxing a bit. So far tonight, each time there had been a lull in the conversation, Joni had worried that it was a sign the four of them were drifting apart – that they didn’t have as many common topics to chat about any more. But now it was starting to feel more like the old days – more like the holidays they took before husbands and kids – back when minimal planning was required and no one needed to check in on home and the conversation flowed, much like the wine.
She lay down on the kitchen counter, her head resting on the sink’s draining board, and wondered if she was in danger of passing out. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this far gone. And it had definitely been a while since the four of them had been this drunk together. The last time they’d even seen one another was at a barbecue at Eden’s place almost two months back and everyone had stuck to a respectable one or two drinks. An entire gathering of responsible designated drivers. Boring. No one had had a proper conversation either because each and every sentence was punctuated by ‘Ruby! Share!’ or ‘Leif! Gentle!’ Kai had bugged her that day as well – she could tell that he was keen to get back home and keep coding a website he’d been working on.
Kai was always bringing his work home lately. Laptop on his knees in front of the television most evenings. Up late into the night so, by the time he came to bed, Joni was fast asleep. She wouldn’t mind climbing into bed with Kai right about now, actually. That joint had left her feeling turned on. She had an unexpected flashback to being in the back of his black Holden Commodore when they’d first started sleeping together, the windows all fogged up with their hot breath. Sweaty skin and awkward thrusting and fingers fumbling with the condom wrapper. So ridiculous, two grown adults having sex in a car because they couldn’t agree on whose apartment they should head back to after the movie.
Although then again, being this drunk, if he was here right now, she’d take for ever to come.
Not that he’d be up for it anyway. He was never up for it lately. Even on the odd occasion that she was still awake when he came to bed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her iPhone. Was it weird that she was the only one not to call her significant other earlier this evening? She checked her Facebook notifications and her text messages – but there was nothing there from Kai. Obviously he wasn’t worried about the fact that he hadn’t heard from her. She considered sending him a dirty text as a bit of a joke. But then what if he ignored it? The same way he’d ignored her suggestive hints the last time he’d walked into the bathroom to brush his teeth while she was having a shower. She always felt at her sexiest when she was in the shower. The room all filled with steam. Her brown curly hair slicked back. Hot, wet skin. It was humiliating when he’d shoved the toothbrush in his mouth without bothering to respond to her purred request for him to join her. What kind of man turns down a wet, naked woman in the shower?
The music changed again and Joni heard Trina whoop and Eden laugh; from the corner of her eye she could tell that Trina had started spinning Eden around the room. ‘What’s this song?’ Joni murmured to herself. ‘So familiar . . .’
Suddenly she sat bolt upright and leaped off the counter to run over to the others. ‘This song!’ she shouted triumphantly, bouncing up and down on her toes in front of Trina and Eden. ‘Listen, Eden! It’s your song!’
Eden stared back at Joni, swaying dangerously on the spot. She paused then said, ‘ ‘‘What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes. Okay . . . how is that my song?’
‘Because! It’s the song you were singing when we first all found out about your voice!’
‘Oh,’ said Eden, a look of comprehension crossing her face. ‘It is too.’
Joni could remember that day in Year Eleven so clearly. Eden had been singing to herself in one of the music rooms when Joni had overheard her and rushed off to find the others. Five minutes later, the three of them had burst through the door and demanded to know why Eden had never told them she could sing.
Joni liked to call it Eden’s ‘aha moment’ because she’d been so genuinely surprised. She’d argued with them that there was nothing all that special about her voice, but then next thing, Joni had dragged the music teacher in to listen to her as well, then he was begging her to take up music classes the following year and finally, the ‘aha’ crossed Eden’s face.
Aha, that’s what I can do.
Aha, that’s who I’m meant to be.
‘Hey,’ said Trina, ‘do you still sing at Pete’s restaurant these days?’
Eden’s face flushed. ‘Yes,’ she said, sitting down on the couch next to Deb. ‘Fortnightly.’
‘Who’s Pete?’ asked Deb.
‘The head chef at Bellacinos,’ Joni supplied immediately. ‘Don’t you remember? He was Eden’s first serious boyfriend.’ Joni shoved Eden aside so she could squeeze onto the couch between her and Deb. ‘Was Pete the first guy you slept with?’ she added, looking sideways at Eden with interest.
Eden’s hands flew up to her mouth and her cheeks bulged. ‘Oh, shit!’ said Deb and she reached down to grab a bucket and pass it over to Eden.
They all waited, watching Eden with a mix of fascination and revulsion. A second later she took her hand away from her mouth.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I think I’ve had too much to drink.’
‘You gonna chuck?’ Trina asked.
Eden shook her head. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, ‘I swallowed it back down.’
‘Eww!’ chorused Trina, Deb and Joni all at once and then they laughed.