Chapter 1
1
B eth put the box she’d sealed on top of all the others and straightened, releasing a slow, deliberate breath. It felt like she’d spent half her life moving. In the four years she’d been in Western Australia, she’d shifted house ten times. The first five moves were self-explanatory. She’d come to Perth as a professional housesitter, or whatever you wanted to call someone who checked strangers’ chimneys for dead birds in exchange for rent. The gig would end, and she and her new boyfriend, Byron, would pack up and move to the next place. But after reassembling her shoe rack for the umpteenth time, Byron suggested life might be easier if they got their own place. So, they’d leased an apartment along Tess Beach and finally bought a fridge and a couch. Yet, the ink had barely dried on their rental contract before it became clear the septic tank would overflow twice a week, flooding their laundry with wastewater.
“It’s easy to clean away,” the real estate agent trilled down the phone.
“Not as easy as it’ll be to get your licence revoked,” Byron had snapped. “We’ll get our deposit back, thanks.”
Beth had tried very hard not to be snide about the stability of taking out a lease on a place that turned out to be more toilet than home, but it was hard. Especially when Byron decided that the best way to solve their real estate woes was to get married and buy a house.
“I’m not marrying you,” she’d said as she scoured rental websites. “We haven’t been together long enough, and I don’t even know if I want to get married.”
“You do,” Byron said in that annoyingly succinct way of his. “You just don’t trust me enough to say yes.”
“Because you’re clearly trying to trap me?”
“Because you’re scared,” he’d said, his green eyes blazing like traffic lights. “This isn’t about me being younger, is it?”
No, this wasn’t about him being younger; it was about him being too handsome, with his superhero body and supermodel face. But she was tired of bringing that up and being told how beautiful she was, blah, blah, blah.
“Can’t we just be good friends?” she’d said, batting her lashes.
“We’ll fucking see,” Byron muttered, as though he was planning a siege or something.
They took out a much smaller apartment on the north side of town. It was in a massive complex with a slime-green pool and a laundry room everyone avoided as much as possible. She and Byron had adopted a cat named Benson and had sex that, in hindsight, everyone around them could hear.
“Why do people keep putting party hats on our mailbox?” Byron asked.
“Littering?” Beth suggested.
Beth would have been happy to stay put in that place for at least a year, but two months after unpacking their forks, Byron’s assistant coaching career took off.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” he’d said, on literal bended knee. “But I’ve got an offer, and I think we need to move to Coopers Rest.”
As a podcaster—a job she was still too embarrassed to put on airline forms—Beth had zero reason to object. Besides, it was always cute when Byron begged.
“Whatever,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “You’re paying for the moving van, though.”
“Fine. Marry me?”
“No.”
A series of promotions had sent them on a merry roundabout across the state, first to regional towns and then into the heart of Perth. One team after another offered Byron more money, better hours, increased responsibility, and fancier titles.
It became a running joke between them. Whenever Beth saw Byron coming through the door with flowers, she’d start pulling out cardboard boxes. And then he would suggest they get married, and she’d tell him to shut up. Until one day, he’d arrived holding not only flowers but a small velvet box and a cream-coloured envelope.
“Are you having an affair?” Beth joked, petrified of what she knew was about to happen.
Byron didn’t dignify that with a response. “We’re done having this conversation. Marry me.”
The box contained a sapphire engagement ring, and inside the envelope were two first-class plane tickets that would take them to Yellowstone Park, the location of Beth’s secret dream wedding. A fact she’d only ever told her best friend, Dolly. And Dolly was there a week later when she and Byron got married under the trees, surrounded by a small group of friends. Mara and Derek Hardiman. Willow and his wife, Eden. The ceremony was officiated by Byron’s non-binary sister, Sal, who made everyone cry their eyes out and only said “Yee-haw, Pardner” twice.
Looking down at her sparkling sapphire ring was still surreal to Beth. Like she’d been allowed to plan her dream life.
A week after she and Byron got home from their honeymoon, she’d gotten her IUD taken out. Simon had been conceived the week after that. Apparently, her body wasn’t taking any chances that she’d change her mind. It had been an easy pregnancy for the most part. She’d worked, producing two other podcasts in addition to her fortnightly show with Dolly. She’d cooked, cleaned and gone to the gym. Had even helped Mara organise a kinky anniversary surprise for Derek. Her only doubt was the little voice whispering that she’d betrayed the woman she’d once been. The one who felt inadequate for not having a husband and a baby. The one who’d wanted to fight for women to be more than the expectations that cut through their lives like glass.
Beth hadn’t posted any social media photos of her wedding, but when Sal had—with permission—her inbox was flooded with congratulations. She hadn’t informed anyone she was pregnant, but when Dolly mentioned it in passing on the podcast, they received so many demands to talk about it that Beth caved. It was the most listened-to episode they’d ever recorded.
She’d achieved so much in her life; winning podcasting awards, doing voiceovers for national radio commercials, successfully getting Benson down from a massive tree when Byron was in Sydney for work—and she hadn’t received a fraction of the validation for any of those things that she’d gotten for marrying a man and carrying a kid.
“That’s life,” Sal told her. “People are stupid. But it’s, like, don’t let that stop you from doing what you want, hey?”
Sal, as usual, had a point.
And then Beth had had Simon. In the lead-up to giving birth, she’d been so stiff that she could barely move. Could barely look at her naked body in the mirror either. The thought that it would soon be over, and she had a prayer of going back to normal afterward, was all that got her through.
“You’re beautiful,” Byron had said as he drove her to the hospital. “I’m in awe of you.”
“Don’t look me in the eyes! This is all your fucking fault, you stupid fucking penis-having fuck!”
“I love you, Beth.”
“Oh my fucking God, shut up! I’m dying! ”
Thanks to her amazing midwives—and copious amounts of drugs—the birth was okay, but she had a few hours of existential pain before finally meeting her son. Her bright glowing star.
Then, it was all a haze of faces and congealed congratulations.
Her parents had flown to Perth from Auckland, and when her mother had leaned over, crushing Beth’s milk-filled boob and demanding to know why she wasn’t invited to the wedding, Byron had taken her mum by the elbow and quietly asked her to go get a coffee. At that moment, Beth had never felt so full of love for Byron and her baby boy. But that was her last happy moment for a long time.
She’d thought post-natal depression slammed into a mother like a cinderblock, but that wasn’t how it happened with her. It crept up in the days and weeks after she took Simon home. Her sadness was bone deep but hard to pin down. It made time blur, and small things appeared huger than hills. She might have worked through her pregnancy, but afterwards, she could barely write a text, let alone a script. The podcast’s hiatus grew longer as she got worse. She cared for Simon, but that was about all she could do. Not watch TV or exercise or laugh, just keep her baby alive. Her body felt like a bomb site, and as much as Byron told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world, the fact that he hadn’t changed one little bit post-Simon while she’d been decimated fucking sucked. He was still shredded like a cheese grater, and so handsome men and women alike did double takes on the street.
She’d never considered herself stunning, but she’d always been toned and fit and had that wholesome ginger thing going on. After giving birth, her auburn hair started falling out in clumps, and her skin looked like someone had poured red jelly over a bag of loose bones. Her belly was covered in angry stripes, and she hated herself for hating them. Body positivity was supposed to free everyone, but as far as Beth could see, the only effect was compounded guilt.
“Maybe you should go see someone?” Byron suggested over and over.
“Maybe you’re already seeing someone,” Beth screeched. “Maybe that twenty-three-year-old from work you think is so qualified to be a statistician!”
It was a low blow. Byron wasn’t a cheater. Her brooding, occasionally emotionally detached husband had found it hard to open up to women, even back when he was single. He’d set himself on fire before he had an affair. Still, the depression had its claws in Beth’s throat and was shaking her like a monkey with a coconut. Byron tried his best to support her, but it was finals season, and he was flying all over the state for games, often as sleep-deprived and disoriented as she was.
They were okay for money, but without the podcast, Beth barely had an income. She couldn’t buy a latte without feeling like she was robbing Simon’s future. Then her baby boy got colic, and then a cold, and then a fever and Beth’s sleep schedule went from a few hours a night to a few minutes. She found herself nodding off while she was walking, eating, even when she was holding her son. She stopped driving because she was so scared she’d crash the car. She became so scared of herself that she could hardly look at Byron, horrified that she’d explode and make him leave her.
“Please go see someone,” he begged her, with tears in his eyes. “Please, Beth?”
Some part of her knew he was right, but another force was moving through her by then, powered and sustained by itself. It said that if she saw a psychologist, they would, after five minutes, determine her an unfit mother, lock her in a psych ward and take her baby away. She needed to get better before she could get better. She was lying in bed, crying between twenty and twenty-four hours a day, when Mara Hardiman arrived, Mary Poppins-style, on her doorstep.
She’d walked into Beth’s musty bedroom, turned on the light and let out an audible gasp. Then, she’d started making calls. Forty minutes later, Simon was chilling with a night nanny—even though it was daytime—and Beth was getting her hair done in an upscale salon.
“I can’t be here,” she kept wailing as the technician painted copper highlights into her bedraggled mane. “I can’t afford it!”
“I can,” Mara had told her. As she was a multimillionaire with more money than God, it was probably true, but that didn’t make Beth feel better.
“I don’t want you to pay for me!”
Mara waited until the technician left to mix up more red dye, then leaned over and said calmly but firmly. “This isn’t a fucking joke, Beth. You need help.”
Mara was the gentlest, most mild-mannered person Beth knew. Soft-spoken, well-dressed and accommodating. She never raised her voice and never, ever swore. But those nine words slashed at Beth like a razor. She suddenly understood why Derek Hardiman—one of Australia’s all-time bad-tempered assholes—worshipped the ground Mara walked on. He was probably scared of her .
Beth sat through the rest of her hairdressing appointment without complaint, even accepting a bag of mega-expensive shampoos and leave-in conditioners. But when Mara booked her in for five upkeep appointments and paid for them on the spot, she almost keeled over.
“Mara, you can’t?—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Mara said frostily as they walked toward her rented Merc. “Shopping, then lunch.”
They didn’t go to a mall. Mara took her to a tiny boutique where expensive dresses, jeans, shoes and underwear had already been picked out in colours that suited Beth’s red hair and Casper-pale complexion.
She’d been rotating through the same six pairs of post-partum leggings without interruption, and she was terrified of trying on new clothes. But the lighting in the airy stalls was so flattering Beth found she could squint at her body. Everything was a perfect fit, even if she didn’t think she was a perfect fit.
“I haven’t lost all my baby weight,” she wailed to Mara. “Maybe I shouldn’t?—”
“We’ll take everything,” Mara told the nearby sales assistant. “Thank you very much.”
The two of them ate crab at a waterfront seafood place that had prices exceeding the national debt. Beth picked at her food, feeling lost without Simon nearby.
“Thanks, M,” she said for the thousandth time. “I think I just needed a break.”
When she’d previously gushed those words, Mara had just smiled. But now she leaned across the table, all business. “You need a lot more than one break. Which is why, starting tomorrow, a nanny will come over for three hours on weekdays.”
“What the fuck?—”
“Those hours are flexible. You might want to pool them together and get more time to yourself on weekends, but Byron said?—”
“B-B-Byron? What the hell does he?—”
“I’ve booked you in to see that psychologist you were looking at,” Mara continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “Your first session’s tomorrow at eleven. I’ll look after Simon while you’re there.”
“No!”
“After that, a trainer is coming over. You won’t have to do anything; it’s just an assessment. But Senda specialises in post-partum fitness, so it should be a good fit.”
“How?” Beth gasped. “I don’t want a fucking personal trainer!”
She said it loud enough that people at the nearby tables turned and stared, but Mara just ignored them. “Did you not tell Byron you missed exercising? Did you not tell him you wish you could have some time to sit down and think of ideas for the podcast without Simon screaming for you?”
“That’s not… I don’t… You can’t just do this! ”
“Watch me.” Mara raised her hand, and a waiter rushed over. “Could I please have another glass of champagne?”
“Of course, Mrs?—”
“You’re not allowed to pay for all this stuff!” Beth interrupted.
The waiter scurried away, and Mara returned her glare with interest. “You helped me with Derek.”
At first, Beth had no idea what she was talking about, but then she remembered the fake kidnapping that drove Derek utterly berserk with sex lust. The memory was so jarring, Beth laughed. “M, that was a game! How is it fair for you to pay for me?—”
“To have a happy life?”
“I have a happy life.”
Mara gave her a hard look. “Does that feel true? Or is that just what you think you have to say because you’re a mum now?”
All the air rushed out of Beth’s lungs as effectively as if she’d been pushed underwater. The truth, reflected in Mara’s gaze, was that her happiness was far more theoretical than real. And that was half the weight dragging her down. Who was she to be sad when she had a healthy child and a loving partner? Who was she to be so selfish and low and mean? Her mum? The woman who’d always made her feel inadequate just for existing?
“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “It feels true.”
“No, it doesn’t.” For the first time, Mara looked like she was about to cry. “We’re losing you, Beth. Byron’s scared, and now that I’ve seen you, so am I.”
“But—”
“You don’t get to decide anymore. You don’t get to drown in post-natal depression because you’re too stubborn to admit you need the help that you’d give anyone else without asking.”
“I won’t take your money.”
Mara leaned forward with the air of someone laying down their final card. “Okay. As much as I want you to get better for yourself, here it is. If you don’t start trying to improve, Simon won’t get to meet the woman his mother was before he was born. And I want him to meet that woman because she’s fucking incredible. You need to fight for her, Beth. You’re the only one who can.”
Beth broke then. Broke like a shattered glass, but she agreed, through sobs and snorts and general batshit behaviour, that she would try.
The first week after Mara arrived was hell, and the disruption to Beth’s routines was even more destabilising than isolation. But true to her word, Beth stuck with it. It was hard to pinpoint when things actually started to get better. Some stuff, like her sleep, improved right away, but mostly, it went in fits and starts. One day, she and Byron had time to go for a walk on the beach by themselves and talk about things that weren’t Simon. Another day, she wrote for a whole fifteen minutes before sobbing.
Senda, the personal trainer, was friendly but no-nonsense. She made Beth hold planks and do bridges until she was no longer in danger of pissing herself at Target. Her body began to feel like hers again. She booked a voiceover job. She, Byron and Simon went camping for a weekend. Then, what had once seemed impossible—recording full episodes of Sober Bitches, going to Byron’s football games, reaching for him in the middle of the night—became par for the course.
“I love you so much,” Byron said. “I’m sorry I checked out. I just got to feeling that everything I tried didn’t work, and you kept getting worse, and I felt so fucking helpless.”
Beth didn’t blame her husband for what had happened. Byron had been taking cues from her, and she’d been taking cues from the voice in her head that said she needed to handle everything alone, or she was a useless sack of shit. It was a small wonder they’d both gotten lost.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “We didn’t know what we were up against, but now we do.”
In an effort to help anyone who was in her old position, Beth and Dolly recorded a three-hour conversation about new motherhood and post-partum depression. It went viral after Mara and Sal posted about it on Instagram, reaching almost five million downloads. The initial hype didn’t last, but it was like the white pool ball had been tapped in just the right place to send it spinning into a corner pocket. She and Dolly netted a hoard of new sponsors and talk show offers. Beth’s income—which had always been at least a third of what Byron made—shot up until they were almost equals. And so, with pride—and no small amount of fear—she called Mara and asked to pay for her own therapy and to join a Pilates gym instead of getting personal training. Byron was already covering the cost of the nanny service.
“Of course,” Mara said, a trace of humour in her voice. “But if I find out you’re neglecting my friend, you’ll go straight back to trainer jail.”
That was two months ago. Things had started to feel not just stable but enjoyable, and then Byron came to her, flowers in hand. This new job offer was a doozy. He’d been headhunted for an assistant coach position with the Hammerhead Sharks—the team he’d played for before a hamstring injury had ended his career.
“It means moving to Melbourne as soon as possible,” he said, so nervous he could barely look at her. “But the pay’s almost triple what I’m on now, and we can finally buy a house, and it’s… It’s my dream.”
Dream or not, if Byron had approached Beth in the months after Simon was born, she would have been hard-pressed not to scream at the thought of packing up their lives and moving again. This time interstate. But therapy, exercise, time, and support had done its work. Pride shone foremost in Beth’s heart as she threw her arms around Byron’s neck and screamed. “Let’s do it! Let’s fucking gooooooo! ”
Luck was on their side for once. They flew to Victoria and found a picture-perfect house that weekend—a cute three-bedroom in Fairfield. The plan was to stay in Melbourne for at least five years or possibly forever. Beth would miss the beaches of Western Australia, but Mara was less than twenty minutes away from her new place, and so were Sal and Eden and Cheryl and her old mate, Lara. And as much as he could barely admit to having feelings, she knew Byron missed his home city. He had roots there. Now, so would Simon.
Looking around at the boxes cramming the hallway of what was hopefully her last rental house, Beth smiled to herself. It had been a long road from that first housesitting gig, but it had been worth the wait. Packing was different when you knew your next stop was a permanent one.
She headed back to her and Byron’s old bedroom and picked up her final box of books. Byron had helped her pack, but the moving van was coming this afternoon, and her husband wouldn’t be home until later. He’d flown to Melbourne yesterday for a conference and was sending regular grumpy texts about traffic and missing her too much.
Returning to the hallway, Beth put the last box by the door with a strange sense of unreality.
Perth hadn’t been her home for very long in the scheme of things. Had she imagined how bad things had gotten before Mara showed up? Had she really needed all the help? Maybe things had never really been that bad? Maybe she was just a pussy and a terrible mother?
Panic clawed at her stomach, but as its cold nails dug in, Beth felt herself move upwards as though to a higher seat of internal visibility.
Looking down, she saw the old thought patterns working to protect the person they still saw as a helpless child. Denial, trying to memory-hole her pain because they were scared it couldn’t be processed. Blame, insisting she take full responsibility for her depression so she’d never feel it again. Fear demanded she be hypervigilant lest she become miserable forever this time. A tag team of juvenile survival instincts trying to run the same cowboy operation they always had.
She closed her eyes and inhaled.
“I see you,” she told the usual suspects. “Thanks for trying to protect me, but I’m a grown-up now. It’s okay.”
She went to the kitchen and got herself a fresh bottle of lemon soda water, and when she caught sight of herself in the window, she smiled. Maybe she wasn’t exactly the same as she’d been before Simon, but she was still a hot redhead with big tits, and right now, that seemed a fine thing to be.
A thought that had been nudging at the corners of her mind for a couple of weeks prodded her hard. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was almost midday. The movers were due in an hour, but Simon was napping, and his favourite nanny, Wendy, would be coming over soon. She could ask Wendy to answer the door for the moving guys. It wasn’t childcare, but it wasn’t a huge deal either. Especially since Wendy said she was happy to help with things like that.
But what if it was rude?
Beth had mostly gotten used to working while she had help, but did she have the strength not to write, clean or pack? Could she take advantage of the nanny being here to go out and do something frivolous?
Again, she pulled herself upward and stared down at the guilt that said she needed to spend her whole life working or she was a selfish cunt.
“Thanks for trying to protect me,” she whispered. “But I think I’m going to go out. I’ve done enough work for today. It’ll be nice to have some fun.”