Losing the Plot Read online

  Sender: [email protected] Subject: Lost and Found Heart

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Vanessa darted a look towards the door and steeled herself to keep reading, hardly daring to breathe:

  Dear Ms Rooney,

  Re: Lost and Found Heart by Mia Fontaine

  Thank you for submitting your manuscript Lost and Found Heart to Wax Publishing. Unfortunately, it is not suitable for us at this time, but we wish you all the best with your writing career.

  Regards,

  Amy Dunphy

  Commissioning Editor

  Oh …

  Vanessa sank onto Jackson’s bed. It was only with the hope suddenly sucked out of her that she realised how much she’d been holding inside. But had she seriously believed that Lost and Found Heart would be snapped up by a major publishing house? That her silly story would sell a million copies and she’d be the new Charlotte Lancaster? And as for J.K. Rowling, let’s not even go there. Amy Dunphy probably read the first paragraph and said to her colleagues, ‘Hey, get a load of this. For a novelist, “Mia Fontaine” makes a great dental assistant.’ And then they all sniggered. ‘No wonder she used a pseudonym—I wouldn’t cop to this crap either.’ Amy had probably tossed the manuscript over her shoulder—that’s if she’d even bothered to print it out. Or maybe she’d put it straight through the shredder? Vanessa wouldn’t blame her—that’s where it belonged. She’d been fooling herself all these years. And what did Mrs Flannery know, really? She was just a not particularly good English teacher at a not particularly good high school, whereas writing was Amy Dunphy’s business.

  Vanessa’s cheeks burned at her self-delusion, and before she could pull herself together, Craig and the boys appeared in the doorway.

  ‘G’day, Ness.’

  ‘Hi, Craig.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jackson. ‘You look weird.’

  ‘Nothing’s wro—’

  But Jackson had already grabbed her phone. Please God, don’t let him read that email aloud in front of Craig!

  ‘Dear Ms Rooney,’ he read aloud in front of Craig. ‘Thank you for submitting your manuscript Lost and Found Heart to Wax Publishing. Unfortunately, it is not suitable for us at this time … Bastards!’

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ Vanessa cried shrilly.

  ‘Arseholes!’

  ‘Wankers!’

  ‘Boys!’ Vanessa didn’t want Craig to think that standards had slipped since he left the house. ‘I appreciate your support, but there’s no need for that kind of language.’

  ‘Your mum’s right,’ agreed Craig, dripping with his newfound emotional wisdom. ‘She’s not swearing, and she’s the one who’s been rejected.’

  For someone who’d refused to wear patterns throughout their marriage, Craig now showed a fondness for paisley shirts. Mauve? Really?

  He smiled at Vanessa sympathetically. (His teeth looked whiter. Was he bleaching them?) ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Of course! I’m fine.’

  She grabbed her phone back and deleted the email from both her inbox and trash lest anyone feel tempted to read it aloud again.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  Jackson touched her arm awkwardly and she saw a glimmer of the sweet little boy who used to be so concerned for her feelings. He was still in there somewhere. She felt herself melt.

  ‘I’m sure, sweetheart.’

  ‘Those people at Wax are morons,’ he raged. ‘Just send it to another publisher—or you could publish it yourself online.’

  Vanessa knew she should consider those options, but she couldn’t quite face the thought right now. Her confidence had just plummeted, and she’d need a bucket with a very long rope to retrieve it.

  ‘I might leave things where they are for now.’ She tried to sound upbeat. ‘It was a fun experiment, but maybe I need to give writing some thought.’

  Craig nodded, and she noticed his broad shoulders straining under the paisley. He should have bought a size bigger, but then Natalie probably bought it for him. That must be how she spent her time when she wasn’t schooling him in the art of emotional support.

  ‘Good for you, Ness. A lot of people would just keep chasing that pipe dream and wasting their time, but you’re prepared to accept your limitations. I admire you.’

  Dickhid.

  DAVE

  Dave Rendall LLB was on the phone to a stroppy client in his office in High Street, Preston, next door to the two-dollar shop that was currently groaning with light-up bunny ears and ‘Hoppy Easter’ bunting. He was glad that Christos Pappas had called him instead of coming in—it had spared him the bloke’s world championship halitosis and body odour that suggested he hadn’t showered since the twentieth century. Dave would have been worried that Christos was living rough if it wasn’t for his pristine wife Maria, who must have had her olfactory receptor cells surgically removed.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ Christos was complaining sourly. ‘I just did the presettlement inspection and the place was a bloody disgrace.’

  Dave made a mental note to be too busy if Christos ever needed conveyancing again. As a rule, he tried to prioritise Preston’s Greek, Italian, Chinese and Vietnamese residents, who were under increasing threat from Anglo hipsters with their micro-breweries and turmeric lattes but, for Christos, he was willing to make an exception.

  ‘What, have they left rubbish lying around?’

  ‘No, but they haven’t polished the skirting boards.’

  ‘Polished the skirting boards?’

  Christos snorted. ‘They must live like pigs.’

  Dave thought this was a bit rich coming from a bloke whose stench could wilt a geranium at twenty paces.

  ‘I’m not going to settle unless they pay for a professional cleaner.’

  ‘They’ve already paid for a cleaner as per the contract. If you want it cleaned again, you’ll have to do that at your own expense.’

  ‘I’m not paying for their filth!’

  As Christos ranted, Dave’s eyes roamed around his office, a fetching shade of seventies grey, and came to rest on his twelve-year-old daughter Nickie, who was pretending to do her homework while covertly Snapchatting under his desk. He felt a perverse pride at her subterfuge skills, although he supposed they couldn’t be that great if he’d noticed.

  Christos coughed into the phone and Dave symbolically reeled from the stench.

  ‘I’m advising you as your solicitor that this is an unreasonable request.’

  ‘I’m the client—I know how it works. You have to follow my instructions.’

  ‘Okay, no problem. I’ll ring the vendor’s solicitor and make the latest in a series of capricious and unwarranted demands then, shall I?’

  ‘Yeah, you do that, smartarse.’ Christos hung up.

  ‘Love you too,’ Dave cooed.

  Nickie giggled. She clicked out of Snapchat and slipped her phone into her pocket, probably feeling as proud of her subterfuge skills as Dave did.

  ‘Dad! Did he hear you?’

  ‘The point is, did you? If you’ve overheard a confidential solicitor/client conference, I’ll have to kill you.’ Dave grabbed a couple of weapons from his desk. ‘Death by stapler or bulldog clip?’

  Nickie graced him with a long-suffering smile and rolled her eyes for good measure. He wanted to spray something on her so she’d stay like this, a little girl who thought she was grown up, as opposed to an actual grown-up. Not that Nickie was little in a technical sense—she was a tall and skinny string bean, all gangly limbs, just like her dad. Dave had always been delighted that she was swimming in his gene pool, but he wasn’t dumb enough to assume that Nickie felt the same. He was sure she’d much rather take after her knockout mum Evanthe, but what girl wouldn’t?

  Dave could still remember the first time he’d met Evanthe, when she’d brought her yiayia in on a probate matter. He thought she was the most glorious, exotic creature he’d ever laid eyes on, and it seemed she saw something in him too, because within weeks they were making the kind of passionate love that made his past encounters seem merely polite. The next thing he knew he was the ecstatic groom at his own big fat Greek wedding. And then Nickie came along and his heart exploded with a primal love that he’d never known existed. He’d die for this kid—even when she was trying to con him.

  ‘How’s the homework going?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Dad! Where’s the trust?’

  Dave snatched up her exercise book and scanned it. ‘This page is looking a bit bare. Are you certain you haven’t had any phone-related distractions?’

  ‘Well, since you’re asking, it is pretty hard to concentrate when you’re yelling at some client over the phone.’

  Dave hid a smile. She was good. Maybe she’d follow him into law?

  His office door abruptly opened and he felt himself tense. Ms Izetbegovic appeared. She looked irritated, but considering that irritation was her default mode, he would have been more surprised if she didn’t.

  ‘Yes, Ms Izetbegovic?’

  Ms Izetbegovic had been Dave’s PA for fifteen incredibly long years. She’d migrated to Australia soon after the Bosnian War—which surely couldn’t be a coincidence? Not that she’d ever alluded to the war; she never alluded to anything much. She was his sole employee, yet Dave felt like he didn’t know her any better now than he had fifteen years ago. He sometimes wondered if he’d doomed their relationship on that very first morning, when he’d struggled to pronounce her surname properly. Anxious not to offend, he’d asked if he could address her by her Christian name instead, but when that turned out to be Trklja, it had only compounded the problem. So, while she was on her first lunchbreak, he called the Croatian consula
te.

  ‘Could you please tell me how to pronounce I-Z-E-T-B-E-G-O-V-I-C?’ But he must have left it too late, because Ms Izetbegovic had seemed unmoved by his perfect pronunciation. To this day her manner towards him was curt, and she was lackadaisical about her duties, to say the least. Dave suspected her poor work performance was probably due to traumas she’d suffered at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic. ‘Would you find office files important if you’d endured the siege of Sarajevo?’ he used to counter when Evanthe insisted that Ms Izetbegovic was ‘having a lend’. She urged Dave to sack her, but he worried that Ms Izetbegovic wouldn’t find another employer who’d make allowances for her post-traumatic stress disorder. Not that she’d ever told him she had PTSD, but Dave knew from painful experience what war zones could do to people.

  When he was tiny, his father Graham had returned from Vietnam shell-shocked and withdrawn. He could still picture Graham in his brown leather chair with a rip on the arm, staring at Cheers and laughing in the places he was supposed to laugh, but half a second too late. Dave always suspected that if they took the laugh track away, his dad wouldn’t know when to laugh at all. Graham was sacked by a series of employers who didn’t understand PTSD—not that anyone really did back then—and Dave refused to make that same mistake. He wasn’t an idiot; of course, it had occurred to him that Ms Izetbegovic might just be a horrible human being, but he didn’t feel comfortable making that call. She was always so immaculately presented. What horrors was she trying to paint out of her past when she applied her eye shadow so perfectly?

  ‘The old lady’s here,’ she announced now with conspicuous apathy.

  Dave drew a blank. ‘Which old lady?’

  ‘Mrs Legsley.’

  ‘Mrs Legsley? I don’t know a Mrs Legsley.’

  Ms Izetbegovic looked at him like he was a flea buzzing around her face.

  ‘Yes, you do. Little. Stupid. Mrs Legsley.’

  ‘You mean Mrs Hipsley?’

  ‘Yes. Hipsley, Legsley.’ Ms Izetbegovic exhaled impatiently, already bored by the conversation.

  ‘But I wasn’t expecting her until tomorrow.’

  If Ms Izetbegovic’s eyes could talk, they would have said: ‘And I care because?’

  Dave sighed. This wasn’t what he’d planned for his afternoon, but Mrs Hipsley must have got her days confused, and he could catch up on his other work tonight.

  ‘All right, send her in.’

  Mrs Izetbegovic nodded dismissively, but before retreating her gaze shifted to Nickie, and her features softened.

  ‘Nickie, mijelnik, are you hungry? Thirsty? Would you like some biscuits? Hot chocolate? Tea, maybe?’

  Not for the first time, Dave was struck by Ms Izetbegovic’s transformation around his daughter. It was like all her hard edges melted. Was it because she didn’t have kids of her own? Or had she lost a child—or more than one—to the war? Dear God. Dave had a sudden flash of Ms Izetbegovic in a headscarf faced with a Sophie’s Choice situation.

  Meanwhile, Nickie was smiling politely. ‘No, thank you, Ms Izet … Iz … I’m fine.’

  Mrs Izetbegovic regarded her fondly. ‘Well, you let me know if you change your mind.’

  Nickie nodded. Mrs Izetbegovic gave her another beatific smile and turned to go. Dave seized his chance.

  ‘Ms Izetbegovic? I’m sure Mrs Hipsley would like a cup of tea.’

  She tsked in irritation and Dave quickly retracted his request. ‘You’re busy. I’ll do it.’

  And so, five minutes later, Dave presented Mrs Hipsley with a cup of Earl Grey and two Scotch Finger biscuits. ‘There you go.’

  ‘Thank you, David,’ Mrs Hipsley said in the little birdlike voice that matched her little birdlike body. She was perched on his couch in front of a half-constructed Tudor-style doll’s house on the coffee table. Dave stepped around a pile of Amnesty International magazines displaced to the floor and took The Atlas of Human Rights by Andrew Fagan off the couch so he could sit beside her. He glanced back at Nickie, who finally had her nose buried in her books. He’d confiscated her mobile phone and she’d been forced to forgo Snapchat for improper fractions. Poor kid. Maybe he’d buy her an ice cream later. Or a bottle of Scotch. Just kidding.

  Dave turned his attention back to Mrs Hipsley. ‘Now, where were we?’

  ‘What’s that, David?’

  She’d forgotten to turn on her hearing aids again.

  ‘I said, what were we up to?’ he shouted.

  ‘The window in the downstairs bedroom.’

  ‘Right …’

  Dave slipped on his glasses and spread out the elaborate instructions. He was helping Mrs Hipsley construct the doll’s house for her next-door neighbour, a young Sudanese woman called Zafeera, whom Mrs Hipsley had apparently taken under her wing. According to Mrs Hipsley, Zafeera had twin daughters who were ‘the sweetest little poppets you could ever see’. Dave was dubious about the relevance of a Tudor-style doll’s house to Sudanese kids, but Mrs Hipsley’s heart was nowhere if not in the right place.

  Obviously, he should say no to stuff like this. He was flat-out with his conveyancing and probate matters and his weekly volunteering gig on an after-hours legal advice line, but he couldn’t seem to turn away the elderly locals who came to him with miniscule matters on a miniscule budget. He’d first met Mrs Hipsley when someone stole her wheelie bin. Earth-shattering stuff. But she was a retired factory worker and you’d need to be a NASA engineer to understand these doll’s house instructions. He frowned at the indecipherable diagrams.

  ‘No, I think this window’s for the other bedroom … No, wait. Is it?’

  Mrs Hipsley just smiled at him trustingly. She had complete faith that he would conquer this task, and Dave found that oddly touching.

  ‘It might take us a while,’ he shouted, ‘but it’s going to be awesome.’

  Mrs Hipsley smiled, then she turned to Nickie with a grandmotherly twinkle. ‘Maybe your daddy will get you one, Nickie?’

  ‘I hope so!’ Nickie yelled politely.

  Dave felt a rush of pride. What a sweet kid—a doll’s house was the last thing she’d ever covet. ‘Actually,’ he shouted, ‘Nickie’s not really into doll’s houses. She’s always been more sporty, haven’t you, sweetie?’

  Mrs Hipsley winked at Nickie. ‘Oh, all children are naughty.’

  ‘No, sporty. Nickie’s a bit of a soccer star.’

  ‘D-a-a-a-a-d.’

  ‘Well, you are,’ Dave boomed. ‘She’s just started in a new team, and there are only three girls.’

  ‘Well, that’s marvellous.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re really proud.’

  ‘Dad’s the coach,’ Nickie screamed.

  ‘Yeah, the other bloke left and I put my hand up. The truth is, I couldn’t coach a budgie out of its cage, but it seemed like a good opportunity to follow Nickie around and annoy her.’

  Nickie gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘We’re called the Redbacks,’ she told Mrs Hipsley.

  ‘The Get Backs?’

  ‘No, the Redbacks,’ Dave yelled. ‘Like the spider.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Hipsley smiled at Nickie. ‘You like spiders? Well, that probably goes with being sporty. No wonder your daddy’s so proud of you.’

  VANESSA

  Anthony’s four-wheel drive pulled up across the road from Readings, the iconic bookstore in Carlton, a suburb nudging the CBD that was home to Melbourne Uni, umpteen Italian restaurants and at least one infamous gangland killing (although the less said about that the better). Readings usually attracted the so-called ‘inner-city elite’, but today there was a broader sub-section of the community gathering—and Vanessa couldn’t wait to join it. Anthony’s car had barely stopped when she unclicked her seatbelt.

  ‘I have to wee. I’ll meet you on the line in two minutes, Kiri. Thanks for the lift, Anthony.’

  ‘No worries,’ said Anthony, who always switched from boss into buddy at 6 pm. He flicked some fluff off his dentist’s uniform. ‘Have fun.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll get us a good spot,’ Kiri promised.

  Vanessa sprinted off, weaving her way through studiously scruffy outdoor diners and past Cinema Nova, pausing only to buy a Big Issue. She could never walk past a Big Issue seller—she’d even been known to buy the same issue two or three times, which made her feel good about her compassionate nature but not her financial management. As she slipped the magazine into her bag and hurried onwards towards the ladies’ toilets in Lygon Court, her heart was racing so fast that she wondered if it would get there before her. Charlotte Lancaster was right across the road in Readings and, frankly, her timing couldn’t be better. Events of the past five months had squashed Vanessa’s dreams to a pulp, and she was counting on Charlotte to re-ignite her inspiration.