chapter fifty-eight
The day of the barbeque
Tiffany drove towards Westmead Children’s Hospital as fast as she dared, while Clementine phoned her parents and in-laws. They were brief but terrible phone calls to hear. As soon as Clementine heard her mother’s voice she burst into tears. Tiffany could hear the poor woman shouting through the phone, ‘What is it? What happened? For the love of God, Clementine, stop crying and tell me!’
After the phone calls they drove in silence, while Clementine sniffed noisily, her phone in her lap and her face turned towards the window.
Finally Tiffany spoke. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she began.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Clementine. ‘It’s our fault. My fault.’
Tiffany was silent, her eyes on the road ahead. What if a little girl died because Tiffany still liked to be admired? Because she knew Vid liked it? Because she thought she was so freaking edgy?
‘I was distracting you,’ she said. She wanted it on the record before someone accused her.
‘I started it,’ said Clementine dully. She turned and looked out the window. ‘My child. My responsibility.’
Tiffany didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like arguing over a dinner bill. No, I insist! Let me take this one.
‘I was watching both girls all afternoon,’ said Clementine. ‘I knew exactly where they both were all the time. Except for then. Sam thinks I’m not as careful as him, but I was watching them. I was.’
‘Of course you were. I know you were,’ said Tiffany.
‘She must have been so scared,’ said Clementine. ‘When the water …’ Tiffany looked over and saw Clementine rocking, the seatbelt pulling tight against her chest, her fist pressed to her mouth. ‘She would have been swallowing all that water and panicking and …’
Tiffany strained to make out the words as she pulled up at a traffic light.
Clementine bent forward and rested her arms against the dashboard as if she were in the brace position for an airplane accident. Then she sat back again and pressed her hands hard against her lower abdomen and moaned, making Tiffany think of a woman in labour.
‘Deep breaths,’ said Tiffany. ‘In through the nose, out through the mouth. Make a “whoosh” sound, like this: Ha.’
Clementine obeyed.
‘I do yoga sometimes,’ said Tiffany. Distract her. That’s all she could do. ‘Do you do yoga?’
‘I keep meaning to,’ said Clementine.
‘I took Vid once,’ said Tiffany. ‘It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen.’
‘What’s that ahead?’ said Clementine. ‘Please tell me that’s not a traffic jam.’
‘I’m sure it’s not,’ said Tiffany. She looked at the line of twinkling red brakelights in front of her and her heart sank. ‘Not at this time of night. Surely not.’
*
Clementine couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was like the universe was playing with her, laughing at her, punishing her.
‘You’re kidding,’ she said as they pulled up behind a stopped car. She twisted around in her seat. There were cars pulling up behind them, one after another, all of them coming to a complete stop. The lane next to them came to a standstill too. They were trapped in a sea of metal.
‘If there’s a side street coming up’ – Tiffany jabbed her finger at the car’s in-built satellite navigator – ‘we could duck down and find a back way, but I can’t seem to see –’
‘I should have gone with Ruby,’ said Clementine.
She and Sam hadn’t even discussed it when the doctor had said only one parent could go in the helicopter. ‘I’ll go,’ Sam had said without even looking at Clementine. Surely it was normally the mother who went. Children needed their mothers when they were sick. Just because Sam took the girls for their injections didn’t give him first place in line during medical emergencies. They called out ‘Mummy!’ if they were sick in the night, and Clementine was the one who would go and sit and cuddle them while Sam went to measure out the medicine. Why had she just passively stood aside and let him go? She was the mother. Clementine should have gone. She loathed herself for not insisting. She loathed Sam for not giving her the option.
‘Oh God,’ she said out loud. Her stomach cramped violently. ‘We’re not moving at all.’
The brakelights on the car in front went off and Tiffany hunched hopefully over the steering wheel. They inched forward and stopped immediately. From behind them a car horn tooted and another one responded with a furious, ludicrous scream.
‘Oh, fuck it,’ moaned Clementine. ‘Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.’
She couldn’t sit still. She plucked at the diagonal strap of her seatbelt. It felt like she was being physically restrained from seeing Ruby. The need to be there with her right now was overwhelming. She wanted to scream with it. She could feel her arms straining with the desire to hold her.
‘She’s in good hands,’ said Tiffany. ‘My niece was in intensive care once at Westmead and my sister said they were amazing. She was so … um, impressed, and …’ She fell silent.
Clementine looked out the window and then opened it to let in some air. She imagined herself throwing open the door and running. No footpath. She’d just run along the highway, past all those stupid horrible metal cars, screaming, ‘Get out of my way!’
‘I’ll see if we can find a traffic report.’ Tiffany switched on the radio.
She pushed buttons, flicking past fragments of sound before finally settling on what sounded like a news report.
‘Come on,’ said Tiffany to the radio.
Finally they heard it. ‘A three car pile-up,’ said ‘Vince, the roving traffic reporter’ cheerily from his viewpoint in a helicopter. Someone else in a helicopter. ‘Traffic at a standstill. It’s unbelievable! This is not your average Sunday evening! It looks like a peak-hour gridlock on a Monday morning.’
Tiffany switched off the radio.
‘So that confirms we’re in a traffic jam,’ she said.
They sat in silence.
The car in front of them moved and then stopped almost immediately.
‘I can’t … I have to …’ Clementine undid her seatbelt. The roof of the car was so close to her head. ‘I have to get out of here, I can’t just sit here.’
‘There’s nowhere to go.’ Tiffany looked panicky. ‘We’re moving. Look! We’re moving. It will clear.’
‘Did you see how white she was?’ said Clementine. ‘Her face was so white. She normally has these pink little cheeks.’ She could feel her self-control slipping, like a foot sliding on gravel. She looked at Tiffany. ‘Talk to me about something else. Anything else.’
‘Okay,’ said Tiffany. ‘Um.’
Clementine couldn’t bear it.
‘I’ve got an audition coming up. A very important audition. It was the biggest thing in my life this morning. Did you have to audition to be a dancer?’ She pressed her hands over her face and spoke through her fingers. ‘What if she stops breathing again?’
‘I don’t think she can stop breathing, because she’s intubated,’ said Tiffany. ‘To help her breathe.’
The line of traffic moved again. Stopped.
‘Fuuuuuck this!’ Clementine slammed her closed fist on the dashboard.
‘I did have to audition,’ said Tiffany quickly. ‘For my job at the club. I went with my friend Erin. Otherwise I might have chickened out.’
She stopped.
‘Go on,’ said Clementine. ‘Keep talking. Please keep talking.’
‘So we turned up at the club, and I thought we might have trouble taking it seriously, but there was this woman in charge of the auditions. Her name was Emerald Blaze. I know. It sounds comical, but honestly, she was formidable. As soon as we saw her we took it dead seriously. She was an amazing dancer. She moved in slow motion. It made me think of silk. Slippery silk. Almost too sexy. Like you were seeing something you shouldn’t see. She said, “Girls, it’s not about fancy pole tricks. It’s about the tease.” That advice earned me a lot of money. So the first thing we had to do was just walk up onstage, walk around the pole and walk off. It doesn’t sound like much but it was terrifying, knowing all the girls were watching and judging you, and of course we weren’t used to the high heels yet – I thought I was going to fall – and what else? I remember Emerald had this whole thing about not being yourself. You had to come up with a stage name and invent your own backstory. Should I stop?’
‘What?’ Clementine kneaded her stomach with her fists. The traffic inched forward. ‘No. Please don’t stop. Keep talking. What was your stage name?’
‘Barbie. Kind of embarrassing. I used to love my Barbie dolls.’
‘Please keep talking,’ she said.
And so Tiffany talked.
She talked about the deep bass beat of the music and the haze of cigarette smoke and the drugs and the girls and the rules and how she got pretty good on the pole, she could do lots of spinning tricks, and hold herself out perpendicular to the pole, although it hurt her shoulders afterwards, but she’d done gymnastics at a competitive level as a kid, so …
Clementine thought of Holly’s gymnastic classes. Maybe it was time for her to learn the violin instead.
The car inched forward.
‘Go on,’ she said.
Tiffany went on.
She talked about the one time she had to push the panic button doing a private show, but that was honestly the only time she didn’t feel safe, and the barrister who wanted to just sit there and tenderly hold her feet, and how she saw him a few weeks later, being interviewed about a case on TV, and the scruffy-looking guy in a faded polo shirt who turned out to be mega-rich and handed over stacks of tipping dollars, not like the bankers in expensive suits who teased you with a single token, it was worth two dollars for God’s sake, and the young country boys who kept on going back to the ATM for more cash and booking her again until finally she said, ‘Fellas, this is it. I’ve got nothing more to show you,’ and the B-grade celebrity who used to book her and Erin for shower shows and say ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ as if he were at the opera.
‘Or the symphony.’ Tiffany looked sideways at Clementine.
‘Shower shows?’ said Clementine.
‘Yes, so you’d have a shower while your customer sat on a couch and watched you loofah up – or soap each other up, if there were two of you. I liked the shower shows. The club got really hot and sticky. It was a relief to cool off.’
‘Right,’ said Clementine. God Almighty. Shower shows. She wondered if she was going to be sick. There was a very good chance she was going to be sick.
‘Should I stop talking now?’ said Tiffany.
‘No,’ said Clementine. She closed her eyes, saw Ruby and opened them again. ‘Keep talking!’ she said in a louder voice.
And so for the next twenty surreal minutes, while Clementine fixed her eyes on the brakelights of the car in front and willed them to vanish, Tiffany talked and talked, and the words flowed over Clementine and she kept losing track, hearing only fragments: the podiums in the private rooms were really hard so you carried this small fluffy rug … some girls needed to drink to work but I … competitive, this one night I thought to hell with it …
Until finally they came to the traffic cones, and the bright white flashing lights, and a tow truck slowly lifting a small mangled red car up by its bumper bar at an unnatural angle and a policeman waving them on and Tiffany said, in a suddenly very different tone of voice, ‘Right then,’ and put her foot down hard on the accelerator, and neither of them said another word until they drove into the hospital car park.