‘Pig on the spit, eh?’ said Erika to Vid. She put her head on one side, coquettishly, the way Clementine would in a situation like this. She sometimes borrowed Clementine’s mannerisms for herself, although only when Clementine wasn’t there, in case they were recognised. ‘You mean to say you’ve got a spare pig just lying around waiting to be roasted?’
Vid grinned, pleased with her, winked and pointed his cigarette at her. The smoke drifted into the car, bringing in another world. ‘Don’t you worry about that, Erika.’ He put the emphasis on the second syllable. Erika. It made her name sound more exotic. ‘We’ll get it all sorted, you know. What time is your cellist friend coming over? Two? Three?’
‘Three,’ said Erika. She was already regretting the coquettishness. Oh, God. What had she done?
She looked past Vid and saw Harry, the old man who lived alone on the other side of Vid, in his front yard, standing next to his camellia bush with a pair of garden shears. Their eyes met, and she raised her hand to wave, but he immediately looked away and wandered off out of sight into the corner of the garden.
‘Our mate Harry lurking about?’ said Vid, without turning around.
‘Yes,’ said Erika. ‘He’s gone now.’
‘So three o’clock then?’ said Vid. He gave the side of her car a decisive rap with his knuckles. ‘We’ll see you then?’
‘All right,’ said Erika weakly.
She watched Oliver open their front door and step onto the front porch with a bag of rubbish. He was going to be furious with her.
‘Perfect. Outstanding!’ Vid straightened from the car and caught sight of Oliver, who smiled and waved.
‘Mate!’ bellowed Vid. ‘We’ll see you later today! Barbeque at our place!’
Oliver’s smile disappeared.
chapter four
Clementine drove out of the library car park in a mild panic, one hand on the steering wheel, the other fiddling with her demister because her windscreen had suddenly, cruelly, fogged over so that it was virtually opaque in places. She was twenty minutes later leaving than she’d planned to be.
After she’d finished her talk, to the usual hesitant, muted applause as if people weren’t sure if it was quite appropriate to clap, she’d kept getting caught in conversation as she tried to reach the door (so close but yet so far) through the small but impenetrable group of people now tucking into their complimentary, home-made morning tea. One woman wanted to hug her and pat her cheek. A man, who she later noticed had a barcode tattooed on the back of his neck, was keen to hear her thoughts on the council plans for the swimming pool redevelopment and didn’t seem to believe her when she said she wasn’t local and therefore really couldn’t comment. A tiny white-haired lady wanted her to try a piece of carrot cake wrapped in a pink paper napkin.
She ate the carrot cake. It was very good carrot cake. So there was that.
The windscreen cleared like a small gift and she turned left out of the car park, because left was always her default turn when she had no idea where she was going.
‘Start talking,’ she said to her GPS. ‘You’ve got one job. Do it.’
She needed the GPS to direct her home fast so she could pick up her cello, before rushing over to her friend Ainsley’s place, where she was going to play her pieces in front of Ainsley and her husband Hu. The audition was in two weeks’ time. ‘So you’re still going for this job?’ her mother had said last week, in a tone of surprise and possibly judgement, but Clementine heard judgement everywhere these days, so she might have imagined it.
‘Yes, I’m still going to audition,’ she’d said coldly, and her mother had said nothing further.
She drove slowly, waiting for instructions, but her GPS was silent, mulling things over.
‘Are you going to tell me where to go?’ she asked it.
Apparently not. She got to a set of lights and turned left. She couldn’t just keep turning left, because otherwise she’d be turning in a circle. Wouldn’t she? Once she would have gone home and told Sam about this and he would have laughed and teased and sympathised and offered to buy her a new GPS.
‘I hate you,’ Clementine told the silent GPS. ‘I hate and despise you.’
The GPS ignored her and Clementine peered out the window through the rain, looking for a sign. She could feel the beginnings of a headache because she was frowning so hard.
She shouldn’t be here, driving all the way to the other side of Sydney in the rain in this flat, grey, unfamiliar suburb. She should have been at home, practising. That’s what she would have been doing.
Wherever she went, whatever she did, part of her mind was always imagining a hypothetical life running parallel to her actual one, a life where, when Erika rang up and said, ‘Vid has invited us to a barbeque,’ Clementine answered, ‘No, thank you.’ Three simple words. Vid wouldn’t have cared. He barely knew them.