Chapter 3 #2
She selected gold earrings and a clutch, her mind turning to the gala.
Thank God she didn’t have to make a speech.
What could she, a housewife, possibly have to say to Australia’s top oncologist and the former attorney-general?
But she hoped someone would mention the work she’d done, especially after those endless meetings with the staff committee.
She’d planned an elegant party with champagne, finger foods and light jazz, but the wheezy old staff committee had wanted to pile on a hundred years of tradition.
You might as well make everyone wear a ball and chain.
Katrina shoved her phone, lipstick, keys and Colville swipe pass into her clutch. People would ask her where Craig was, but she had an answer ready: Craig was away on business. Everyone went away on business, except for wives like her.
The red hand on her mental clock had reached zero. Time to go. Shoulders back, game face on. She flicked off the light.
In the sudden blackness, her phone buzzed and she pounced on it.
Craig.
Troy’s company has gone bust. Selling our house ASAP. Will send details of valuer and real-estate agent.
* * *
A blue-and-purple balloon arch spanned the gala entrance. Gazing up at the thing, which looked like a weird fungal outbreak, Michelle marvelled that someone had put time and money into something so pointless. It depressed her.
As she passed beneath the arch, Michelle braced herself.
She knew she was underdressed. Having decided a school gala must be comparable to an industry award ceremony, she’d donned her usual emerald silk shirt and black trousers.
But walking up the long, curling driveway to the auditorium, she’d noticed evening gowns.
Lots of them. All heading in the same direction. Clearly, this gala was a big deal.
She couldn’t remember the invitation mentioning black tie – but then again, she’d deleted it from her inbox.
Only after a fruitless two-week job search had she panicked and decided a bit of networking might be in order.
A trawl through the Colville Grammar Centenary Gala Facebook page had unearthed a hit list of likely prospects, so she’d rung the school and bought a ticket.
Then she’d made last-minute arrangements to have Shirley check in on her father that night.
‘It’s Colville’s hundred-year anniversary, Dad.
How can I miss it?’ She was confident he wouldn’t kick up a fuss.
He and her mother had almost bankrupted themselves paying for her six years at Colville Grammar, and they’d made other changes – bought a secondhand Mercedes, sent Michelle to elocution lessons, dropped the ‘Wu’ from her double-barrelled surname – just to ensure she would fit in.
Their dearest hope had been that she would make lots of rich friends and marry into money.
It hadn’t happened, partly because Michelle’s mother had scared off every one of Michelle’s prospective boyfriends, thanks to the mortifying interrogations they’d been subjected to.
Michelle had started to keep her romantic life a secret from her parents.
As a result, she’d suffered many years of, ‘Why don’t you bring anyone home to meet us? Are you gay?’
Waving goodbye to her that evening, Rolf might have envisaged her fond reunion with a prosperous, newly divorced classmate – maybe someone with a collection of vintage cars.
Setting her cap for an Old Boy was something he would approve of.
Michelle hadn’t told him about her redundancy, so he didn’t know she was looking for a job instead of a life partner.
Inside, the hall was a colonial fantasy of Gothic windows and carved rib vaults.
It jogged a lot of unwelcome memories: boring speeches, excruciating dance classes, musicals her mother never attended because Michelle was always backstage.
The stage hadn’t changed much – surely those weren’t the same curtains?
– but efforts had been made to brighten things up.
Everywhere she looked there were sprays of balloons, café chairs, wine tables and so many fragrant flowers that Michelle couldn’t make out if the building still smelled of antique sweat and mildew.
She spied potted palms and an over-the-top gilded bar.
Michelle headed straight for the bar because she needed a drink.
As she waited for her gin and tonic, she eyed the gallery wall opposite – an arrangement of old honour boards, some of them celebrating military service, others glorifying cricket, swimming, lacrosse, citizenship, debating, fencing, leadership.
There was even a board for Slavic languages.
The display wasn’t very well lit. Someone had either messed up or committed sabotage.
‘. . . absolutely gorgeous.’ An elderly woman close by was loudly admiring the bar. ‘Real Art Deco. The caterers imported it from France, apparently, and hire it out for events.’
Jesus. Michelle had forgotten what Colville felt like, the money in the air; she could practically smell it.
Taking out her phone, she scrolled through her hit list, studying the photos.
Then she looked up again and scanned the crowd.
She spotted a cummerbund, a bow-tie, a velvet blazer.
A blotchy-looking woman in mud colours was picking through a tray of finger food as if scared of being poisoned.
A school jazz band noodled away on stage.
A group of hunky athletes laughed together, looking great in their dress shirts.
Then she saw him: Noel Kelloway. Red-faced, rotund, with a white moustache and an outdated Old Boy’s tie. Kelloway was on the board of Ablac, which manufactured Drenphine, Parcanox and other internationally renowned drugs.
As Kelloway moved through an open door on the western side of the hall, Michelle strolled after him.
She couldn’t understand why he’d wandered into the storeroom – until she realised it wasn’t a storeroom anymore.
All the gym mats and orange plastic chairs of her youth were long gone, replaced by display cabinets full of mannequins in uniforms. First Colville uniform, 1926.
First girls’ uniform, 1956. Each one uglier than the last.
Kelloway stopped to gaze, misty-eyed, at a cabinet full of cricket trophies.
He carried a glass of wine in one hand and a parmesan twist in the other.
Michelle assessed her options, then began to circle the room, shuffling along on a course that would eventually collide with Kelloway’s.
She pretended to peer at antique signage, attendance books, an inkwell, a leather strap, the pistol of an Old Boy who’d died in World War Two.
When at last she reached Kelloway, she found herself staring at a 1930s school first-aid kit, full of murky medicines and alarming tongue depressors.
She made a shocked noise and Kelloway glanced at her.
‘God. How barbaric.’ She pointed at a bottle of cough syrup that contained cannabis and chloroform. ‘Good job the drugs these days aren’t like that!’
Kelloway grunted.
‘Mind you, the way some people carry on, you’d swear we were still pumping cocaine into babies.
’ Michelle offered him an apologetic smile.
‘I worked for Stott and Speyer, and the fuss we used to cop about PMU! Not that SS have been very smart when it comes to hot buttons like obesity drugs. If you’ll pardon me for saying, Ablac really has its act together. Proactive management, I guess.’
Kelloway nodded thoughtfully. He sipped his wine and opened his mouth.
But before he could speak, a huge voice boomed, ‘Dobbsy, you do-gooder!’
Michelle spun around, nearly dropping her drink. Behind her was another Old Boy, a wizened whippet with an outsized personality.
‘Rollo!’ Kelloway exclaimed, beaming at the other man. They slapped each other’s backs. Next thing, they were laughing about leg spins and googlies as if Michelle wasn’t there.
She slunk away.
Back in the hall, the jazz band had been kicked offstage by the school orchestra. Michelle winced at a sudden swoop of brass.
‘Oh, Christ.’ A voice rose from the cluster of middle-aged couples to her left. ‘Is that Seussical?’
Then Michelle spied Bianca Vargo, number two on her hit list. Bianca, scion of the Vargo Discount Electronics family, owned recruitment firm Candless Consulting.
(Carey Candless had been her second husband.) Tall, slim and dark-haired, she wore navy taffeta with diamond earrings and was talking to a neat, pinched man who sounded like a lawyer.
When he paused to sip his champagne, Michelle took a deep breath and stepped in.
‘Bianca! Hi!’ she said. ‘You probably don’t remember me. Michelle Redlin? I was four years above you.’
Bianca turned her head. ‘Oh. Yes.’
‘Even though you were younger than me, you were a real role model. I used to admire you when you were my assistant stagehand for Grease. You always had such great ideas, and you never worried about speaking your mind.’ As the spoiled youngest granddaughter of a multimillionaire, Bianca had, in fact, been an insufferable little despot, blissfully unaware of the accepted hierarchy as she fired off commands.
If she hadn’t liked something, she’d said so and then expected everyone else to fall into line.
‘You always had such a strong belief in yourself and your future,’ Michelle improvised.
‘It was really inspiring. I’ve tried to follow your example, though perhaps not as successfully.
But I’m still plugging away, thanks to you.
’ She paused, waiting for the obvious response: What did you end up doing?
It was the segue she needed. Even the lawyer looked expectantly at Bianca – whose eyes narrowed.
‘Really? You were inspired?’ Bianca said evenly. ‘Because I seem to remember you started that awful nickname everyone called me: Pest-o.’
Michelle cringed. She’d forgotten that. Oops.