Losing the Plot Read online

  Daisy put her head on Vanessa’s lap as if to cheer her on, and Vanessa’s heart overflowed. Daisy had been with her every step of the way, offering support from under the table at all times of night and day. Vanessa was planning to include her in the acknowledgements, but would readers think she was a bit odd for thanking her dog? Oh, who cared? Hadn’t Elizabeth Barrett Browning written a beautiful poem for her cocker spaniel? Vanessa was sixteen when she first read ‘To Flush, My Dog’ at Mrs Flannery’s suggestion, and it still made her sigh.

  But of thee it shall be said

  This dog watched beside a bed

  Day and night unweary,—

  Watched within a curtained room,

  Where no sunbeam brake the gloom

  Round the sick and dreary.

  Sublime.

  Unfortunately, Daisy chose that moment to emit a particularly malodorous fart. Vanessa winced. She was sure Flush wouldn’t have done that.

  It was 3 am, and Vanessa could feel her heart beating fast as her fingers flew towards the finish:

  And so the danger was over. ‘Thank you for saving Holly’s life,’ whispered Georgie. ‘When I think of what you’ve done for her …’

  Magnus smiled down at her with a slightly mocking air. ‘Silly girl. I saved your sister’s life for you.’

  Georgie gasped. A lock of hair fell free from her surgical cap, and Magnus wrapped it skilfully around his surgeon’s fingers. ‘I know you think you’re invisible but, to me, you’re the brightest star in the sky and the only sunshine I ever see.’

  Tears welled in Vanessa’s eyes, blurring her view of the screen. She dabbed them away with a Chux Super Wipe.

  Magnus drew her into his arms. He put his hand over her heart and gently lay her hand on his own. ‘You hear that?’ he said. ‘Two hearts beating as one.’

  Flouting convention, Vanessa typed The End. Then she let her tears fall. She’d actually done it. She couldn’t believe it.

  The clock ticked loudly in the empty kitchen.

  And then the back door flew open and her mum Joy entered in a flurry of joie de vivre and Beyoncé’s Midnight Heat perfume.

  Vanessa beamed at her. ‘Mum! I just finished the novel.’

  ‘Finished? Oh, Nessie!’ Joy clattered across the kitchen and threw her arms around her daughter. ‘I’m so proud of you!’

  ‘Thanks!’

  Joy squeezed her tight and Vanessa saw her mum’s fulsome underarms dimple. A crisp September night like this would have warranted sleeves for anyone else, and Vanessa thought that Joy’s ‘body contour’ cocktail frock could probably stand some rethinking—but so what? Why should her mum start dressing like a senior when she still had all her sexpot credentials? At sixty-three, Joy remained a heart-breaker, which was a bit of a worry for most of her boyfriends, who already had compromised cardiac function.

  Joy winked. ‘Charlotte Lancaster had better watch out, you’ll be pushing her off the bestseller lists.’

  ‘Oh, I reckon there’s room for both of us.’

  They laughed together, and Vanessa felt a rush of gratitude; she owed this achievement to her mum. When Joy moved in after Craig left—to help with the mortgage—she’d given Vanessa a copy of Charlotte Lancaster’s first novel, Intensive Caring, a love story between an orphaned intensive care nurse and an emotionally distant emergency physician. ‘You’ll love it, Nessie,’ Joy had promised, and Vanessa had loved it so much that she’d devoured the rest of Charlotte’s novels and felt inspired to finally repay Mrs Flannery’s faith in her and attempt one of her own.

  ‘Charlotte would never think of this heart transplant story,’ Joy declared with unabashed bias. ‘It’s awesome.’

  ‘Mum.’

  Vanessa stuck out her palm. She loathed the ubiquitous ‘awesome’ so much that she fined herself and her family if they used it.

  But Joy just laughed and pushed her hand away. ‘I’m not giving you a dollar when the context was so supportive.’

  Which was a fair point, Vanessa had to concede.

  Joy tossed her tote bag down on the table and kicked off her six-inch heels, and Vanessa felt a twinge of annoyance. Her mum was always leaving stuff lying around and she seemed to think that magic fairies flew in and picked it up. Vanessa wondered what would happen if she waited for Joy to retrieve those shoes, but every polar bear in the Arctic would be extinct by then.

  Joy zeroed in on Vanessa’s manuscript and stopped in shock when she saw the cover page.

  ‘What’s this? Lost and Found Heart by Mia Fontaine?’

  Oops, thought Vanessa, here goes.

  ‘Who’s Mia Fontaine?’

  ‘I’ve decided to use a pseudonym. It’s got a ring to it, don’t you reckon?’

  Frankly Vanessa was surprised that a pseudonym hadn’t occurred to her all along. It was one thing to want her novel to be famous, but when she’d started thinking about herself being famous, raw panic had kicked in. She knew that probably made her a freak in this post-Kardashian, social media-obsessed world, where everyone was supposed to be chasing fame and shyness was seriously out of fashion, but if Elena Ferrante could choose anonymity, why not Vanessa?

  Joy looked appalled, and Vanessa found herself transfixed by the scarlet lipstick caught in the little spidery lines above her mum’s mouth.

  ‘But, Nessie, you’re hiding your light under a bushel.’

  Frankly, that’s where Vanessa preferred to keep it.

  ‘Mum, even Agatha Christie wrote romance novels under a pseudonym. The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott. Ring a bell?’

  Joy looked blank. It hadn’t rung a bell with Vanessa either, and she thought that was probably the whole point.

  She’d hated being the centre of attention for as long as she could remember, which was strange when you thought about it, because both her parents were the kind of people who hoovered up all the attention in any room they entered. But, then, maybe that was exactly why she shied away from too many eyes?

  She wondered how poor J.K. Rowling coped with life in the public gaze. The billions of dollars probably helped. Billions! Imagine that. What if ‘Mia Fontaine’ became the second author after J.K. Rowling to make a billion dollars? Somebody had to be second, surely? Vanessa imagined spending her Rowling-esque royalties. She’d give most of it away to worthy projects like Bill and Melinda Gates did—nobody needs a billion bucks—but she’d still be able to buy an amazing home (or three!) for herself and Joy, and give her boys the best education that money could buy. She had a sudden flash of Jackson making a graduation speech as school captain of Geelong Grammar. It would be so insightful it would go viral. She’d be in the front row wearing a fabulous dress, and her handsome husband would squeeze her hand and whisper, ‘This is your doing.’

  ‘But, Nessie,’ Joy intruded, ‘you deserve the accolades.’

  ‘Mum, you know I prefer to keep a low profile.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Joy as she adjusted the black lacy bra that was carefully positioned to peek out from her miniscule cocktail frock. ‘But sometimes attention comes with the territory.’

  Before the Mia Fontaine issue could escalate, Vanessa changed the subject.

  ‘How was your night with Barry?’

  Joy stretched luxuriantly, and Vanessa heard a succession of cracking sounds.

  ‘Fabulous. He’s a master at dancing his fingers over a clitoris—I think it’s because he plays the piano.’

  ‘I’m glad he doesn’t play bongos, then.’

  ‘Oh, Nessie!’

  They both cracked up, but then a shadow fell over Joy’s face, erasing her twinkle.

  ‘Of course, he wasn’t a patch on your daddy.’

  And there it was, exposed like an open wound in the kitchen: the gaping hole in Joy Spriggs’s heart. Everything still began and ended with Vanessa’s father, Jack Spriggs, whom they’d both adored. Vanessa could still remember her mum launching herself into Jack’s arms the second he arrived home from one of his frequent work trips. T
hey’d disappear into their bedroom, and young Vanessa would hear the urgent rhythm of mattress springs and her mum giggling for what seemed like hours. And, afterwards, her daddy would always find the time to make her feel special too. Even now she felt a pull in the pit of her tummy as she recalled Jack holding a tiny teapot in his manly hands while the two of them took morning tea in her ‘palace’, which was actually one of those little kids’ tents from Kmart.

  ‘May I pour you more tea, Your Highness?’ he’d ask.

  ‘Yes, you may.’

  And Jack would wink because they both knew something Joy didn’t—there was Coke in the teapot! (After years of managing dental practices Joy had banned Coke from the house.) They’d drink their contraband together and then Jack would tickle her toes while Vanessa giggled her head off.

  And now, all these years later, she realised with a sudden start that she’d modelled Dr Magnus Maddison’s looks on Jack: tall and charismatic, his thick dark hair spiked with silver, and the kind of smile that made you feel like everyone else was invisible. Wow. It showed how vivid her dad still was in her subconscious, even though he’d died a long time ago. Killed in a car crash one hot January night in 1995 and, decades on, Joy was still searching for a Grand Passion to fill the void he’d left behind.

  ‘Your daddy was my knight in shining armour.’

  ‘Oh, Mum …’

  Vanessa hugged her. In some ways, she knew how Joy felt. After a year spent intimately entwined with Dr Magnus Maddison, she doubted she’d ever find a man who could live up to him, but at least her dad had once existed.

  They clung to each other as the clock ticked, and then Joy wiped her eyes. She smiled through her tears and Vanessa watched as her mum’s natural effervescence fizzed back up to her surface.

  ‘But enough about me. Are you going to send your book off now?’ ‘Now? At three in the morning?’ (As if that hadn’t occurred to her already.)

  ‘Why not? There’s no time like the present.’ Patience had never been Joy’s strong suit. ‘Get your opus out there, Nessie. You just need to dash off a covering letter.’

  As it happened, Vanessa had done that a month ago. Patience wasn’t her strong suit either. She brought the draft email up on her screen.

  ‘Here’s one that I prepared earlier.’

  Joy laughed, and Vanessa felt alight with excitement. This was so surreal; she was about to send her very own novel to Charlotte Lancaster’s publishers, Wax! She did a quick check for typos—she’d already proofed everything she’d written up to yesterday—and after making a couple of minor corrections, she attached the manuscript to her email. The moment felt epic.

  ‘Wait, I want to take a photo.’

  Joy began searching for her phone, chucking the contents of her tote bag all over the table. Vanessa made a mental note to pick up the ‘Spicy Nights Enhance Her Pleasure’ oil before the boys saw it. She suspended her finger over the trackpad as Joy finally unearthed her phone and put it in camera mode.

  ‘Ready? Smile!’

  If there was ever a redundant exhortation! Vanessa was smiling so widely that she thought her face might explode. Joy snapped a pic as Vanessa clicked on send, and Lost and Found Heart winged its way through cyberspace to Wax.

  Vanessa was officially an author!

  She was still in a haze of happiness the next morning when she drove to her job at the Smile Clinic in Reservoir, a neighbouring suburb to Preston’s north. Vanessa caught the train most days to avoid emitting greenhouse gases, but today she was doing the grocery shopping after work so she needed the convenience of her Corolla. Luckily, it was a quick trip—she was travelling against most of the traffic that was heading into the city.

  As she walked into the clinic, she was greeted with cheers from her best friend Kiri Naawaina, a strapping Maori beauty.

  ‘It’s Vanissa Rooney, world-famous novelist!’

  Vanessa was touched by this act of support from Kiri, who made no secret of the fact that she found romantic fiction ‘complete crep’. Kiri’s husband, mild-mannered dentist Anthony Altieri, who was at least half a head shorter than his wife, appeared and whistled through his teeth. Vanessa took a playful bow. Even though she was a bit over dental nursing—let’s face it, there are only so many times you can sterilise a periodontal pocket probe before you want to stab yourself with it—she loved working at this cosy little clinic with Kiri and Anthony, who’d become family friends. Anthony and Craig had bonded over their mutual love of the Collingwood Magpies footy club, and Kiri and Anthony’s son Sam was even in Jackson’s soccer team, the Redbacks. It was all so idyllic, a happy foursome (or eightsome, if you counted the kids). But after Craig left, Kiri declared that she’d always thought he was a bit of a dickhid. And, clearly, she still did.

  ‘Craig can get stuffed,’ she said, just before she admitted the first patient. ‘I bet that dickhid’s never written so much as a postcard.’

  ‘I saw him write a shopping list once.’

  Kiri snorted with laughter. As a fresh dumpee, it had been empowering to know that Kiri thought Craig was a dickhid, but now it almost didn’t matter, because dickhid or not, Craig couldn’t hold a candle to Vanessa’s fictional hero. She was on cloud nine as she settled the first patient into the chair.

  It was only later, when she was polishing some orthodontic pliers, that the emptiness hit. Dr Magnus Maddison was gone, and she missed him already.

  Vanessa knew it could be months before she heard back from Wax, but in the six weeks since she’d submitted her manuscript she’d still found herself checking her email at least once every half-hour. Even if she subtracted eight hours a day for sleeping (if only!) that still added up to checking her email 1344 times. Frankly, it was doing her head in, so last week she’d tried to distract herself by going to a Melbourne Cup party with Kiri. She’d bought a fascinator and even indulged in a spray tan, which looked fabulous until it rained, and she and Kiri were reduced to fits of giggles by the brown stripes running down her legs. The bubbles flowed freely and Vanessa was having so much fun that she almost forgot about the race, but she bought sweep tickets in the nick of time and scored second prize. She arrived home sixty-eight dollars richer and high on life—until Lachie revealed that he’d left her laptop on the tram.

  #$@&%#?>*!

  Her blood still ran cold at the memory.

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘Please tell me you didn’t.’

  ‘It was Jackson’s fault.’

  ‘I wasn’t even on the tram!’

  Jackson thumped Lachie and Vanessa felt like joining in. This couldn’t be happening! Her novel was on that laptop—a whole year’s worth of blood, sweat and tears, and a whole lifetime’s worth of dreams. But she comforted herself with the fact that she could retrieve her manuscript from her sent box—except it turned out that she couldn’t, because Jackson had tried to spare her from spam by reprogramming her email and trash to empty itself every week. So all was lost. She didn’t even have a back-up copy of her novel, because ten days ago Joy had accidentally put her back-up drive out with the rubbish.

  #$@&%#?>*!

  It was so typical. Her mum dumped OK and Who magazines all over the house without a thought, and then once in a blue moon she made a performance out of picking them up and dumping them in the recycling bin. Bravo, Joy. But how about checking to see if anything was caught inside them? Argh! Vanessa suspected that her mum was secretly relieved about Lachie losing the laptop, because it took the heat off her.

  ‘It’s all right, Nessie,’ Joy said soothingly. ‘We’ll ring lost property at the tram depot. I’m sure they’ll have it.’

  But they didn’t. Vanessa rang twice a day for a week, but no one had handed in the laptop. In desperation, she made a flyer and stuck it up at every stop on the number 11 West Preston tram route—Great Sentimental Value, Reward Offered—although God knows where the reward money would come from. But that didn’t matter in the end, because her only response was a couple of cringe-worthy call
s from creeps—the laptop resolutely refused to be found. Vanessa was disconsolate.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Joy said, in an attempt to gee her up. ‘Wax has still got a copy, and they’ll be in contact soon.’

  But when?

  With the boys leaving for the weekend with Craig at any minute, Vanessa was anticipating another forty-eight hours of relentlessly checking her email, which was bound to be fruitless because, let’s face it, Wax wouldn’t get back to her on the weekend. She wished her mum was at home to distract her, but Joy had just left for a romantic getaway with her latest squeeze, Gordon.

  As Vanessa flung the boys’ clothes into their backpacks she heard the front door open and Craig’s deep voice call out a greeting. Kiri thought that Vanessa should demand Craig’s key back or, at the very least, change the locks, but Vanessa wasn’t prepared to treat him like a common criminal, as much as she might fantasise about it sometimes. Craig was Jackson and Lachie’s dad, after all. She heard the boys greet him, but at least there was blessed silence from Daisy, who didn’t even bother getting up off the floor for Craig anymore. Vanessa couldn’t help feeling victorious about that, and it made her adore Daisy even more.

  Craig’s voice rumbled something indistinct and Jackson and Lachie mumbled back. In spite of herself, Vanessa patted down her recalcitrant hair. There was a fine line between curls and frizz, and as far as she was concerned, hers crossed it way too often. Natalie’s hair was glossy and lustrous and worthy of a shampoo commercial. Vanessa had spent a lot of time trying not to imagine how it must look splayed over a pillow. Craig probably buried his face in it. And then her mind flew unbidden back to a time when Craig used to playfully pull at her reddish-blonde waves and call her his ‘curly girlie’. Her heart seized. So much water under the bridge since she was that twenty-one-year-old dental assistant shyly affixing a bib to Craig, a cheeky chippie of twenty-three who’d just presented for a wisdom tooth extraction … She grabbed her iPhone to distract herself, and suddenly there it was in her inbox: