Jessica bent down next to the intercom and spoke too loudly. ‘We’re here to check in.’ It was cute, like Ben’s grandma on the phone. ‘The name is Chandler, Jessica and Ben –’
There was a burst of static from the intercom and the gates began to creak open. Jessica straightened, tucked her hair behind her ear, worried as always about her dignity. She never used to take herself so seriously.
‘I promise you I pressed that code correctly, or I thought I did!’ said Frances, as she buckled her seatbelt and revved her tappety little engine. She gave them a little wave. ‘I’ll see you in there! Don’t try to race me with your fancy-schmancy Ferrari.’
‘It’s a Lamborghini!’ protested Ben.
Frances winked at him, as if she knew that perfectly well, and drove off, faster than he would have expected, or recommended, on this road.
As they walked back towards the car, Jessica said, ‘We’re not telling anybody, right? That’s the deal. If anyone asks, just say the car isn’t even yours. Say it belongs to a friend.’
‘Yeah, but I’m not as good a liar as you,’ he said. He meant it as a joke or even a compliment, but he was leaving the interpretation up to her.
‘Fuck you,’ she said, though without much heat.
So maybe they were okay. But sometimes the embers of a dying argument sparked without warning. You never knew. He would stay alert.
‘She seemed nice,’ said Ben. ‘The lady. Frances.’ That was safe. Frances was old. There could be no possibility of jealousy. The jealousy was a fun new development in their relationship. The more Jessica changed her face and body, the less secure she got.
‘I think I recognised her,’ said Jessica.
‘Really?’
‘I’m pretty sure she’s Frances Welty, the writer. I used to be crazy about her books.’
‘What sort of books does she write?’ asked Ben. He opened his car door.
She said something he didn’t catch. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘Romance.’ Jessica slammed the passenger door so hard he winced.
chapter six
Frances
That’s more like it, thought Frances when she got her first look at the Victorian mansion emerging majestically in the distance. The road was sealed now, thankfully, and the bushland became progressively greener and softer. Tranquillum House was sandstone, three storeys, with a red corrugated-iron roof and a princess tower. Frances had the delightful sensation of time-travelling to the late nineteenth century, although the sensation was somewhat spoiled by the yellow Lamborghini purring along behind her.
How could those kids afford that car? Drug dealers? Trust-fund kids? Drug dealing seemed more likely than trust fund; neither of them had that creamy entitled look of old money.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror again. From here, with her hair blowing in the wind, Jessica looked like the pretty girl she was meant to be. You couldn’t see all the procedures she’d had done to her young face. The thick layer of make-up was bad enough, but oh goodness me, the blinding white teeth, the enormous puffy lips and the work, it was such bad work. Frances was not opposed to cosmetic procedures – in fact she was very fond of them – but there was something so sad and garish about this sweet child’s plumped-up, smoothed-out face.
Surely all that jewellery she was wearing couldn’t be real, could it? Those massive sapphires in her ears would be worth . . . what? Frances had no idea. A lot. The car was obviously real, though, so maybe the jewellery was real too.
Up-and-coming mobsters? YouTube stars?
The boy, Jessica’s ‘husband’ (they seemed too young for such grown-up terms), was cute as a button. Frances would try not to flirt with him. The joke might wear thin after ten days. Possibly even bordering on . . . sleazy? Possibly bordering on paedophilia, darling, Alain would say. It was awful to think of lovely Ben shuddering over Frances the way Frances had once shuddered over the behaviour of older male authors at publishing parties.
They used to be particularly hideous if they’d recently won a literary prize. Their dialogue was so powerful and impenetrable it didn’t require punctuation! So naturally they didn’t require permission to slip-slide their hairy hands over the body of a young writer of genre fiction. In their minds, Frances virtually owed them sex in return for her unseemly mass-market sales of ‘airport trash’.
Stop it. Don’t think about the review, Frances.
She’d marched in the Women’s March! She was not ‘a blight on feminism’ just because she described the colour of her hero’s eyes. How could you fall in love with someone if you didn’t know the colour of his eyes? And she was obliged to tie everything up at the end with a ‘giant bow’. Those were the rules. If Frances left her endings ambiguous, her readers would come after her with pitchforks.
Do not think about the review. Do not think about the review.
She dragged her mind back to Ben and Jessica. So, yes, she would remember to be age-appropriate with Ben. She would pretend they were related. She’d behave like his aunt. She certainly wouldn’t touch him. My God, she hadn’t touched him already, had she? The review was making her doubt everything about herself. Her hands tightened around the steering wheel. She had a habit of touching people on the arm to make a point, or when they said something that made her laugh, or when she felt in any way fondly towards them.
At least talking with Ben and Jessica had calmed her down. She’d scared herself for a moment there. Loss of self, indeed. What a drama queen.
The road circled up towards the house. Ben politely kept his powerful car at a respectable distance behind Frances, even though he probably longed to floor it on the curves.
She drove up a stately driveway lined with towering pine trees.
‘Not too shabby,’ she murmured.
She’d prepared herself for a seedier reality than the website pictures, but up close Tranquillum House was beautiful. The lacy white balconies glowed in the sunlight. The garden was lush and green in the summer heat, with a sign helpfully proclaiming this property uses rainwater so no-one could criticise the lushness.
Two white-uniformed staff members, with the floaty, straight-backed postures of the spiritually advanced, emerged unhurriedly from the house onto the wide veranda to greet them. Perhaps they’d been off meditating while she was stuck outside the gate trying to ring them. Frances had barely come to a complete stop when her car door was opened by the man. He was young, of course, like everyone, Asian, with a hipster beard and a man bun, bright-eyed and smooth-skinned. A delightful man-kid.
‘Namaste.’ The man-kid pressed his palms together and bowed. ‘A very warm welcome to Tranquillum House.’
He spoke with a tiny . . . measured . . . pause between each word.
‘I’m Yao,’ he said. ‘Your personal wellness consultant.’
‘Hello, Yao. I’m Frances Welty. Your new victim.’
She undid her seatbelt and smiled up at him. She told herself she would not laugh, or attempt to imitate his yogic voice, or let it drive her mad.
‘We’ll take care of everything from here,’ said Yao. ‘How many bags do you have?’
‘Just the one,’ said Frances. She indicated the back seat. ‘I can carry it. It’s quite light.’ She didn’t want to let the bag out of her sight because she’d packed a few banned items, like coffee, tea, chocolate (dark chocolate – antioxidants!) and just one bottle of a good red (also antioxidants!).
‘Leave your bag right there, Frances, and your keys in the ignition,’ said Yao firmly.
Damn it. Oh well. Her slight embarrassment over her contraband, even though there was no way he could tell just by looking at the bag (she was normally such a good girl when it came to rules), caused her to hop out of the car awkwardly and too fast, forgetting her new fragility.
‘Ooof,’ she said. She straightened slowly and met Yao’s eyes. ‘Back pain.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Yao. ‘I’m going to arrange an urgent massage at the spa for you.’ He took a small notepad and pencil out of his pocket and made a note.