17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Mid-winter hit. Life in Gold Hill became all about staying warm, Alison wrapping herself in her heavy woollen coat every time she left the house. Her house was filled with heat pumps, the split system moving warm air about, but she found herself abandoning them. Instead, she lugged in firewood and dealt with the mess and ridiculousness that was a second floor fireplace; it had only been built for the occasional weekend fire, for vibes only, not for daily heating.
It felt good though, the cosy glow of the fire warming her in ways that extended far past the physical. It was almost a meditative practice. Because that was something else that was happening in her life. Actual meditation. The hippies have got to you now, Hope had crowed with extra smugness and Alison had rolled her eyes accordingly. Because this meditation was prescribed.
She’d been out, alone, drinking a coffee at the aptly named Peace and Grace, her favourite Gold Hill cafe. It was something Harry had encouraged her to do: to leave her house, even if there wasn’t a reason. Just to get out. To be around humans and remember that humans were, for the most part, not actually out to get her.
“Alison!” The voice was excited. She looked up to see Prisha just before the woman swept down to hug her. “This is so great! Hope normally has coffee with me here when we finish work but she’s extended her clinic hours and now I’m lonely as fuck. Can you replace her? All you have to do is be wildly pretty - which, check, you’ve already got covered - and nod sympathetically as I tell you about my day.”
And that was how, somehow, she and Prisha had become friends, completely independently of the rest of the group. Because Prisha, though she played the role of the sweet ingenue of the friendship, was wildly smart and incredibly funny. The fact that she was obviously dying of horrible, unrequited love endeared Alison to her, deeply, because as it turned out she was learning a little bit about pining herself these days. They never spoke about it, but Alison felt it below the surface, like a little connecting thread between their lives.
The first time they’d had coffee together Prisha had snapped a selfie of them side by side in the cafe and sent it to Hope.
“Stealing your girl,” she spoke aloud as she typed the accompanying message and Alison shot her an aghast look that only made her giggle. “Oh come on, Hope loves it,” she said easily and now Alison had to deal with a world in which Hope talked about this with her friends. “Look how fast she’ll type back,” Prisha laughed as she held up her phone and sure enough, within seconds, three little dots appeared.
Cute
What is happening….?
Prisha cackled.
“Told you. I’m going to leave her on read and drive her crazy,” she announced, putting her phone down and looking pleased. “Now. What’s up with you?”
Prisha was easy to talk to. Alison found herself unburdening about all kinds of things, though she kept a hard limit on never talking about Hope. Prisha too, talked about everything in the world except the one topic Alison knew she probably needed to talk about the most. It was all such a delicate balance, this group friendship business.
One day though, Prisha made an announcement out of nowhere.
“I,” she said, “am going to introduce you to my mother.”
Rishima had the same warm energy as her daughter, but without the heightened intensity. She radiated calm, which might have had something to do with the fact that she was a long-term, highly qualified trauma therapist and Prisha had literally written Alison her own referral .
“For fuck’s sake,” Alison had muttered as Prisha blithely handed her the neatly typed up envelope and all but pushed her out the door at her parents’ house. Rishima was largely an academic these days, but she kept a small office at home to treat occasional clients and now, Alison was there - sometimes as frequently as every week - talking grumpily and then tearfully about her distant parents, her childhood and every single damn thing that had come after it, then following Rishima’s finger waving from side to side with her eyes like the world’s slowest hypnosis. And, also, now, meditating.
That wasn’t the end of it though. As winter slowly began to melt into spring, another one of Hope’s friends accosted her.
This time, it was a phone call.
“Hello?” Alison snapped warily into her mobile. She hated answering unknown numbers, but when you had a child - even an adult child in another city - you really had no choice.
“Hey,” came the gravelly voice. “It’s Magnus.”
“Oh,” Alison said. She tried again, this time without the rage. “Hello?”
She and Magnus had only had a handful of conversations over the past few months, but all of them were pretty superficial. Magnus was an architect. He worked long hours and, as he’d explained to her once before, he often felt like he had a limited amount of daily words in him, and by the end of his hours in his office, consulting with clients and liaising with colleagues, he’d frequently run out of them. She respected that. She didn’t know he had her phone number though.
“Is everything okay?” she asked him, after they’d gotten their initial pleasantries out of the way.
“Yeah,” he said. “Flynn’s real stressed though; he’s bumming me out.”
Alison knew for a fact that Flynn was miserable as hell, and that misery had a whole lot to do with how Magnus had joined a dating app and now had his first ever boyfriend, a rather pretty blonde guy named Isaac. Prior to transitioning he’d dated girls. But now, there was a boy, and Flynn was not remotely coping.
“He does seem to be struggling,” she agreed cautiously. Only that weekend, they’d all ended up at the pub and Isaac had come too. Flynn had been barely even monosyllabic before he got up abruptly and left early and still beautiful dreamy Magnus didn’t seem to twig that perhaps something was up.
“Do you reckon you could help him with something?” Magnus asked.
And that’s how Alison came to learn that Flynn did free legal consulting at the Neighbourhood Centre in Gold Hill on the side of his actual job as a lawyer in Ballarat. Magnus thought he was burned out; Flynn thought he should bury himself deeper in work .
Alison met with him in the tiny, dim, postage-stamp-sized room off to the side of the Neighbourhood Centre. The service was an all-stop shop, with the local food bank operating out the back, a Justice of the Peace notarising documents on Tuesdays, an English language tutoring session on Mondays, a social worker on Wednesdays and a legal service every Thursday afternoon.
“Fuck!” said Flynn when she walked in. “Oh my god.”
“What?” she asked, alarmed.
“Why didn’t I think of this? You’re perfect. You’re still a lawyer, right?”
“I didn’t get disbarred,” she agreed, trying to keep the pain from her voice.
“Family law is basically the main thing I get asked about. That and tenancy law. You’re a billion times more qualified than I am. Norah is going to wet herself.”
Norah was the one paid employee, the one person who kept the whole centre running. Her eyes went wide when Flynn explained he’d secured a senior family lawyer with a ton of free time on her hands. Alison looked around at the cheap panelled walls, the battered old desk, the cracked window with the view of the car park. For the first time in years, she had an office. She had to close the door so no one saw her cry, because god it felt good .
Service demand was high enough that Thursday afternoons became all day Thursday, and those days were busy. Gold Hill, she recognised quickly, might be known as a holiday destination, but the people who lived there didn’t get to escape hardship. The rates of family violence, of deprivation and petty cruelties, of women and children being trampled on, were just as high as anywhere else. And this time Alison could do something more than just throwing donations at the problem and representing women who could afford her fees. For once she didn’t wear suits and designer stilettos to work, though regular heels couldn’t hurt.
Harry loved it. On weekends when he came up, she consulted with him on her clients, the two of them pooling their networks and knowledge to find local colleagues who’d represent people pro bono.
“You, my love,” he told her, “look like a different woman.” He peered at her more closely. “Are you sure you’re not getting laid? You’re practically glowing.”
Alison laughed. She was not. Not exactly. Prisha though, perhaps in solidarity of all the pining, had presented her with a wrapped gift alongside her coffee a couple of weeks ago.
“Go on,” she’d encouraged her, “open it.”
Alison had opened it to find a neat package containing what looked like a small ornament in the shape of a red rose. She read the print on the box and immediately swept it off the table, onto her lap and out of view.
“Prisha! ”
Prisha died laughing.
“Oh my god, your face! So good. Anyone would think you’d never had a vibrator before.”
“Why would you give this to me in public?”
“Because you’re so uptight and respectable of course. Ugh, I wish I’d filmed that. Listen,” she said, “this thing is going to change your life. It’s not like other vibrators, at all . Camille bought all three of us these last Valentine’s Day. I swear, none of us have been the same ever since.” Her eyes went wide, her face entirely serious. Then she smiled. “I figured I’d share the love, because god knows you need it. Hope loves hers,” she said, her voice entirely innocent, but when Alison looked at her, she gave her a solid, extremely knowing wink.
So that was a thing.
Because not only was Prisha correct in that this sweet-looking rosebud was entirely life-shattering, but now she knew how Hope got off, grinding up against these same soft silicone petals, and half the time, that very thought was enough to make her come. So yes, great, thank you, Alison was never going to be the same again either .
She and Hope had been incredibly careful since the night of the fundraiser in Melbourne. It was almost as if they’d decided by mutual agreement that what happened in Melbourne, stayed in Melbourne. Instead Hope had returned from her night with Miles looking painfully rejuvenated and Alison had even found it in herself to tease her, just enough to show that everything was fine. And then they’d moved right on.
To Alison’s intense amusement, Harry found himself equally sucked into the group on his weekend visits. He and Camille in particular were deeply enamoured with each other, their heads bent together talking art and giggling at their own mutual genius. It was a surprisingly natural sight, Harry’s grey head surrounded in young beautiful people; Alison felt all kinds of ways about it.
It was, in all honesty, completely overdue. She and Harry had been in their tiny bubble together for far too long. Filling their world up with new friends felt like fresh air rushing in. The two of them still spent time alone together, their gossip about the impossible circle now infused with deep tenderness as they considered the unexpected friends they’d made.
At the same time, Alison felt a trace of growing anxiety. She adored all these new people around her. She reflected on how alone she’d been, for far too long, and for the life of her she never wanted to go back. It was just… the heat she felt every time she got close to Hope wasn’t remotely dissipating. And now, Alison and Harry, Prisha and Camille, Magnus and Flynn… they were all wrapped up in one big parcel she didn’t want to lose. There was no way to step back from Hope, and everything to lose if Alison accidentally tumbled forward into the desire she couldn’t stop. It was all a deeply delicate balance.
And yet somehow weeks slowly turned into months, winter into spring, an empty life into a full one and Alison suddenly realised that she’d done it. She’d built a new life, away from the wreckage of her previous world, away from Melbourne. She had new friends, a kind of job - or a purpose at least - and maybe, just maybe, everything was finally going to be okay.
Tonight in Melbourne, a deadly gang shooting at a crowded shopping centre ends in tragedy.
Alison’s head jerked up. She was standing at the bar in The Barrow. The pub was as quiet as it ever was on a weekend, just before the dinner rush. The television was playing behind Josh as he poured them a pitcher of beer.
Two dead, including a security guard. That was the result of a terrifying rampage in which in-fighting amongst the notorious Grant Family criminal enterprise very nearly claimed multiple innocent lives.
Alison went cold. Her hands began to shake.
“What’s wrong?” Hope was beside her.
“Shh-” she hissed .
Police sources say that the Brunswick shootout started as a power struggle between two factions of the Grant Family and ended today in blood being spilled outside of a popular family restaurant in the middle of the afternoon.
“Oh fuck,” Hope whispered. She slipped her hand into Alison’s and squeezed her numb fingers.
One member of the family, Stephen Grant, aged forty-nine - the main challenger to the supremacy of notorious gang mastermind Mike Grant - was shot dead in full view of terrified shoppers. Multiple other bullets were fired and a twenty-three-year-old security guard was caught in the crossfire. Witnesses state he was hit as he attempted to bring down the shooter in an act of incredible heroism. He was transferred to the Royal Melbourne Hospital where he was pronounced dead. He has yet to be identified as police inform his next of kin.
Alison didn’t hear the rest, because all the sound seemed to have faded from the room.
“I’m okay!” she said impatiently, for the eightieth time as Harry flapped around her making concerned sounds. She was sitting on a slightly sticky leather couch in the back room of the pub. Hope was still holding her hand.
“Well you’ve got some colour back in your cheeks anyway,” Harry noted. “There we go, darling,” he handed her a double pour of whisky, with the brisk tone of a registered nurse .
“Is that necessary?” Hope protested.
“Of course it is,” Harry decreed. “Alcohol is wonderful for trauma, they’ve done studies on it.”
“Oh my god. ” Hope glared at him. “Studies on alcoholic lawyers in Melbourne?”
Alison ignored both of them and took a solid swig.
“I’ll call Mum,” announced Prisha, her phone already in her hand.
“I’m fine!” Alison raised her voice to be heard over all their concern. Everyone turned to look at her. “Seriously. This stuff happens,” she reminded them. “All the time. They’re a bunch of bad guys shooting bad guys. It’s incessant, that’s how they made six fucking seasons of television about them. It just got to me for a minute there. They killed-” she swallowed, “they killed a young man who had nothing to do with it.”
“Jac’s fine,” said three voices at once. Alison rolled her eyes, blinking back the tears again. Her phone had already rung, her son, seeing the news, knowing his mother, always trying to take care of her. Well that was great, now she was crying again . Her sweet boy. Someone else’s sweet boy.
“Fucking monsters,” she said, angrily wiping her eyes .
Hope still didn’t let go of her hand.
For a couple of nights, Alison couldn’t sleep. It felt too close, like a reminder. Even here, in the peace of Gold Hill, surrounded by people who cared for her, on a lovely sunny day in the countryside, it hovered. Simon’s mess. Her penance. And perhaps, one day, her fate.