Chapter 3 #3
As a slightly dishevelled woman lurched towards them, Bianca grabbed her elbow and practically shoved her at Michelle, saying, ‘Nicola – you were in Michelle’s year. You really need to catch up.’
‘Hi, Bee! Hi, Michelle!’ Nicola was already over the limit, glassy-eyed, her diamante hairclip dangling from one wavy lock. ‘Are you the Michelle who broke her pelvis? Or the one who went out with Glenn Noakes?’
‘Neither,’ Michelle replied shortly.
Bianca had already stalked away, merging into a clot of regal, elderly women studded with brooches.
The rejection was a slap in the face; Michelle felt her cheeks burning.
But before she could shake off Nicola – and the lawyer, who had fixed her with a wry look – the orchestra ground to a halt and a man strode across the stage, stopping at a wobbly microphone stand.
‘Good evening,’ he said. From the way he spoke, Michelle immediately pegged him as a teacher. ‘For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Cameron Mayhew, principal of Colville Grammar School, and I want to welcome you to our Centenary Gala . . .’
Applause broke out. As Mayhew started rambling on about the great traditions of a ground-breaking educational experiment, Michelle scrutinised the faces around her, searching for more prospects.
She spotted a pair of bushy eyebrows, familiar from countless Financial Review articles.
They belonged to Bray Louk, who had recently bought a pharmacy chain.
Michelle didn’t remember Bray from school – he’d been two or three years younger – but she decided that a direct approach might work best. (‘Mr Louk? I’m Michelle Redlin, and I have a proposal . . .’)
First, though, she’d have to get close to him, and she couldn’t do that while everything was at a standstill. Mayhew was still talking. He’d started to thank the school archivist, who was also chair of the Gala Staff Committee.
‘That old bitch has a stick up her arse,’ Nicola muttered. ‘Those gross honour boards were all her fault.’
‘. . . and not to forget Katrina Webb,’ Mayhew went on, ‘our wonderful uniform-shop coordinator and chair of the Gala Parents’ Committee . . .’
More applause, directed at a tall, leggy blonde in a purple sheath.
The sight of this woman’s face, combined with the clapping and the curtains and the fidgety orchestra, flung Michelle back thirty-odd years, to the last performance of Grease.
All at once she was rushing up from the change rooms into the wings.
Danny Zuko was about to step on stage. Michelle was sweating in her black stagehand gear as she scooped up a lost shoe.
Then a strange noise reached her from behind a makeshift screen, set up for Katrina Quigley’s quick-change into Sandy’s sex-bomb outfit. Was it sobbing?
‘Katrina?’ Michelle whispered.
‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God.’ Yep, that was Katrina. ‘Look! Just look at this!’
Michelle stuck her head around the screen. All she could see was Katrina’s arse cheek, bulging out of her black lycra leggings.
‘She’s evil!’ Katrina sobbed. ‘She cut a hole in my costume!’
‘Who?’
‘Who do you think?’ Craning her neck, Katrina spotted Michelle’s blank expression and squawked, ‘Chloe Dalton! She’s jealous because of me and Nick! We’ve finally found each other and she’s trying to ruin everything!’
‘Nick?’ Michelle was puzzled. She didn’t mix in the same circles as Katrina, who was a popular type and sporty.
But Michelle did keep abreast of the latest gossip and was pretty sure that Chloe and Katrina belonged to the same laughing, sparkling, Coca-Cola-ad group of girls, all of whom dated the usual rota of sunny, confident, high-achieving boys. ‘I thought you were with Blake?’
Katrina dabbed at her smudged eyes with a tissue, sniffing and choking.
‘Blake and I were never right for each other. Not like me and Nick. We’re soulmates.
He’s so fragile under the front he puts on and he needs someone to nurture his soft side, instead of telling him to stop being so scared of rugby scrums.’ Katrina’s face, which had softened, became tortured again.
‘Blake isn’t sensitive. Not like Nick. I can have such fantastic, deep conversations with Nick.
He asks questions! Blake never does that. ’
‘Really?’ Michelle couldn’t see anyone not getting along with Blake, who was gorgeous: lean and chiselled, with long fingers and a spicy smile. But then again, Nick was pretty hot too.
‘Chloe was never right for Nick,’ Katrina said. ‘Nick needs to be free – I don’t pin him down, I let him do what he wants, he’s only with her because of her dad’s chalet in Charlotte Pass . . .’
A roar of laughter reached Michelle’s ears. It was the reaction Danny Zuko usually got when he strutted on stage in his letterman sweater. ‘We don’t have much time,’ she said. ‘We need to fix that hole in your pants.’
‘How?’ Katrina began to cry again. ‘I’m not even wearing undies.’
Michelle reached for her toolbelt. All the stagehands wore them.
Tucked into hers were a hammer, a walkie-talkie, a Stanley knife, a bunch of keys and a roll of black gaffer tape.
She grabbed the tape and yanked one end of it.
With a noise like fabric tearing, a taut strip unrolled from its spool.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ve got this. ’
A burst of applause snapped Michelle out of her reverie, yanking her back to the present. ‘And finally,’ Mayhew was saying, ‘I want to thank our wonderful school orchestra for the delightful music . . .’
More clapping. Beside Michelle, Nicola snorted.
Up on stage, a lavish bouquet was being presented to a sturdy woman with short, grey hair and a bulldog jaw.
Another bouquet was sitting forlornly on a lectern, unclaimed.
‘I wonder where Katrina’s got to?’ Nicola slurred, before draining her wine glass.
Michelle looked around for Katrina but saw Bray Louk instead.
As Mayhew wound up his speech with a ringing, ‘Eat, drink and be merry!’, Michelle made a beeline for Bray’s side of the hall.
Trouble was, everyone else seemed to be on the move too.
The crowd was breaking up, and she ran into one knot of revellers after another; she even had to duck behind a captain of the Rugby Firsts to escape Bianca Vargo.
When at last she reached the spot where Bray had been, he was no longer there. Frantically peering around, she spied him slipping out a door marked EXIT.
‘Shit,’ she muttered. Then she banged her glass down and raced after him, trying not to look as if she was in a hurry.
This time, she collided with a waiter. ‘Sorry!’ she yelped.
‘’Scuse me!’ Before any of the lawyers present could accuse her of reckless conduct endangering life, she’d ducked out of the hall.
So far, Colville had seemed mostly unchanged: the driveway, the oval, the chapel, Colville House, the auditorium.
But now, plunging into the mess of new buildings behind Colville’s heritage-listed main quad, Michelle was completely flummoxed.
Where had the old toilet block gone? The rock garden?
The breezeway? Now it was all ramps and doors, banks of windows, students’ major works.
A nearly full bottle of very expensive champagne had been left on a flat-topped sculpture and Michelle scooped it up.
No point wasting it. She could offer some to Bray.
Following the thud of distant footsteps, she soon found herself face to face with an international toilet symbol over the word ‘staff’.
Beneath that, an arrow pointed up a corridor.
Right, he’d gone to the loo. She could still make this work.
Obviously, people in the know used the fancy teachers’ toilets instead of the piss-soaked students’ latrines off the hall.
‘I see they’ve let you into Colville’s little secret,’ she would trill, as she pretended to exit the ladies’ at the same time Bray emerged from the men’s.
‘A bit of insider knowledge goes a long way, don’t you think? ’
The script would practically write itself.
But as she prepared to tackle the final prospect on her hit list, she heard a high-pitched wail that stopped her in her tracks.
Was it Bray? No. This was a woman’s voice, raw, desperate, chilling.
Not something Michelle could ignore. And it was coming from behind the door to her left, which stood slightly open.
She hesitated, because she didn’t want to miss her chance with Bray. Suppose this was his last pit stop before leaving? No one with half a brain would want to stay too long, in case the school orchestra made way for the drum corps.
But then another choked cry from the mystery woman made Michelle flinch. She’d never heard such despair. Someone was in terrible trouble - and judging from the faint smell of chlorine, that troubled soul was near a pool. She couldn’t, in good conscience, leave a traumatised person near a pool.
‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Are you all right?’ And she stepped into Colville’s aquatic centre.