CHAPTER 36
We’ve scored every major Sunday front page. It’s a huge win but the war isn’t over yet. I’m power walking down to Double Bay for a coffee with my EarPods in, backgrounding journos as I go.
Exercise + work = the ultimate in efficiency.
I’m wearing all-black lycra and my ice-white sneakers are freshly bleached. I’m a media ninja out here.
The newspapers and online articles have been fairly neutral—just factual reporting at this stage, which is the best we can hope for. On Monday the shock jocks will have their say, which means everything hinges on the next twenty-four hours.
My phone pings with a text from Dad. Just reading the paper. Hope all is ok. Alex (woodwork Alex) did a stint in Iraq but reckons your job would be harder!
There’s a crack in the footpath and I skip over it like I’m doing an aerobics move.
Thanks Dad. It’ll be ok. Alex sounds like a legend! How’s the footstool?
A photo arrives in response. A selfie of a grinning Dad holding the stool. He’s wearing the shirt again, the one I got him for his birthday. Just finished! Going for beers with Alex tonight to celebrate.
You deserve it! Have fun!
Another text buzzes in from Bryan. Saw the headlines. If you need to vent, I’m here.
Thanks, I text back. But all good
I’m buoyed by the fact the producer at 2GB owes me a favour after I paid for her coat-check at the business conference.
I’m pretty sure I’ve got every major journalist on side, other than Archie of course, but he can go to hell.
In this moment, with the sun radiating off the harbour and my phone battery charged to one hundred per cent, I’m feeling confident.
Hopefully by Monday the radio brekkie presenters will be drinking the we’ve all stuffed up before Kool-Aid.
We’ll give it a few days, get Boss on Lush FM and feed him some lines about being caught in the eye of the storm, and then we’ll do a beautiful, styled shoot with his wife and son in the gardens of their family home.
It’ll be yesterday’s news in no time. Whenever I spy Boss’s face on fish-and-chips wrapping, I consider it tangible evidence of my skills.
I take a quick call from the ABC and wrap it up promising to send them the latest data on the literacy-improvement rankings, when my phone beeps with an incoming message. Seeing the name is like getting an injection of acid into my stomach.
Archie.
I take a deep breath, wipe my sweaty palms on my bike shorts and tap the message.
Interviewing Nancy on 60 Minutes tonight. She’s claiming Harcourt initiated it and it was a three-month affair. Thought you should know.
My legs come to a halt. The traffic roars beside me. I stare at the screen. THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!
I punch in Boss’s number and he answers instantly.
‘Mill, everything okay?’
‘No, disaster. Archie’s doing 60 Minutes tonight with Nancy. She’s going to say the affair went for three months and that you started it.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yes.’
‘What do we do?’
Argh! I have no idea. I normally always know, but I’ve never had to deal with this level of bullshit before. Plus, I’ve been on the phone to 60 Minutes three times today! That slot was supposed to be mine!
‘Did you lie to me?’ I demand.
Boss groans. ‘I thought it would be easier for you. I know you hate lying. I didn’t want you to have to lie for me.’
‘Boss!’ I cry. ‘This is not the time for you to be protecting me! You should have told me the whole truth.’
I’d thought Nancy had been eerily quiet since the story broke, but now it’s clear she’s been busy laying a trap.
The media love a binary, and what could be more tantalising than pitting Nancy Miller as the damsel in distress against Daniel Harcourt, the big bad wolf; the proxy for all that is wrong with politics and the patriarchy?
If Nancy does this interview, Boss won’t stand a chance on election day.
‘What about Archie?’ asks Boss. ‘Speak to him. You’re supposed to be keeping him close.’
‘I am,’ I snap. That’s the problem. I let him get too close and it distracted me. I missed all the signals. I thought I was rolling with the tide but it turned out there was a tsunami coming.
I’m suddenly furious with myself for going for a walk. I need my laptop. I need a keyboard. I need to spreadsheet this shit out!
‘Incoming call,’ I lie. I tell Boss I’ll call him back later.
Without a second thought, I find Archie’s name in my phone and press ‘call’.
‘Millsy,’ he answers.
‘Archie. Archibald. Archie.’ Fuck. I have no idea what to call him. I just need to convey hatred.
‘Millsy—’
‘No, you listen to me, Archie. You know Boss is a good guy and you know this 60 Minutes story could ruin his life. He could lose his wife, his son, his job, everything.’
‘This isn’t about you.’
Argh! I’m trying not to think about that night in the tent but I can’t help it. I want to scream at the oncoming traffic. I’m breathing so hard I’m about to hyperventilate. How did I let my guard down with this guy?!
‘Archie, you need to call off the interview.’
‘I’m not doing that.’
‘Archie!’
‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance! You wanted to be a journo, Millsy. If you had the opportunity to do this interview, you’d never call it off.’
ARGHHHHHHH! I can’t deal with this man! What a great time for him to remind me he has my dream job!
If he twisted the knife in any further it’d pop out the other side of me.
Tears of rage are welling in the corners of my eyes.
Blindly, I step onto a crossing and a giant SUV beeps at me. I jump back, startled.
‘Fuck!’
‘What?’
‘I almost got hit by a car.’
‘You okay?’
‘NO OF COURSE I’M NOT FUCKING OKAY!’ Innocent pedestrians walking their dogs are glancing at me, alarmed.
Mothers of small children are crossing the road to avoid me.
I’m a terrifying, raging ball of stress wrapped in overpriced Lululemon.
I feel the urgent need to swing a tennis racquet at something—someone—very hard.
Archie tries again. ‘Millsy, this is work. It has nothing to do with you. Us doing our jobs shouldn’t make things weird between us.’
‘What do you mean weird between “us”?! There is no us! The only reason I speak to you is because it’s my job!’
‘Oh, so we’re playing this game again?’
I am going to throttle him! I’m going to wrap my fingers around his neck and …
oh god, now I’m imagining him naked and, for god’s sake, I didn’t mean to do that!
Is this going to be the rest of my life?
Thinking about killing Archie, only for my traitorous brain to start replaying memories from the tent? What have I done to deserve this karma?
Before I’ve even finished the thought, I know: I do deserve this karma. I deserve this and more. This is the universe saying, You’ve been running so long, Mill, but we’ve finally caught you. You thought we’d forget? No way. We OWN you. Your secrets aren’t safe with us.
I inhale deeply but my breathing won’t steady. ‘Archie, we have another two weeks left in this election campaign. I’m under Boss’s orders to be civil to you until then.’
‘So you’ll only speak to me because of him?’
‘Why is that so hard to understand? He’s my boss!’
‘Millsy, how can you be so blind? He’s a prick! He manipulates you. You work yourself to the bone for him and he treats you like crap.’
‘He does not!’
‘For fuck’s sake, Millsy, I can’t do this anymore.’
‘Good! Perfect! Finally we agree on something. You can get out of my life, and I’ll get out of yours.’
‘Fine then. Block my number,’ spits Archie.
‘I already have.’
‘What?’
‘You thought I’d be glued to the phone waiting for you to text? Jesus Archie, you can be so arrogant.’
‘Millsy, you are in need of some severe therapy.’
‘Like you can talk! You’re so messed up, you fill your life with people you don’t even like.
Like what value are Chappo and all the Tinder girls adding to your life, Archie?
I’ll tell you: nothing! They’re nothing but band-aids to cover the fact you’re terrified people only hang out with you because you played one season for the Roosters.
You spent your whole life planning to be someone who you don’t want to be, and now you don’t know how to deal with it, because you have no idea if anyone will like the real you.
That’s why you work so hard: so you don’t have to think about the fact you’re scared shitless every day. ’
Archie is deathly quiet. Finally he speaks. ‘As opposed to you?’
The last remaining air in my lungs—the precious little I was saving to get oxygen to my brain—is knocked out of me. I’m trying to swallow but I’m a fish in an empty bowl gulping at nothing. My lips are parched, bone dry. He knows why I work so hard.
‘You think I’m scared?’ continues Archie.
‘Look in the mirror, Millsy. You don’t know how to feel your feelings, so you’re packing your life with work and it’s breaking you.
It’s tearing you away from everyone you love.
Have you even cried about your mum since she died?
Or have you blocked it out by working until you fall asleep every night so you don’t have to deal with the pain? ’
‘Don’t you dare talk about my mum!’ I shriek. ‘This is not a conversation about that.’
‘I don’t care, Millsy! Who else are you going to have this conversation with? You missed your own brother’s birthday to deal with a fucking TikTok campaign. Remi’s your best friend and you forgot when her engagement party was. The only person you make time for is me.’
‘And I hate you!’ I yell. I can’t help it. My voice cracks and a giant sob breaks free from my throat. I hate him! How dare he talk about my mum and my life like he knows what’s good for me? He doesn’t know me at all!
‘I don’t care what you say, Millsy. Someone needs to tell you the truth. You’ve spent so long rolling shit in glitter for your boss, you’ve done it for yourself too. You think your life is great, but it’s a fucking disaster.’
‘I’m allowed to work this hard. It’s my choice!’
‘You’re going to lose everyone you love, Millsy.’
‘Fuck you, Archie.’
His breathing is heavy on the other end of the line. ‘Next time you have a story, don’t call me,’ he says. His voice is eerily flat. The lilt I’m used to—the one that matches the twinkle in his eyes—is gone.
‘I won’t,’ I snap.
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
Archie beats me to hang up.
I have to stifle a violent impulse to throw my phone into oncoming traffic.
This is not the suburb to be making a scene.
The women have Paspaley pearl earrings and the men tie sweaters over their shoulders unironically.
There’s not an ounce of polyester in sight.
Everything the light touches is linen, cashmere, Egyptian cotton, gold.
I take a deep breath and blink away the tears that are threatening to spill down my cheeks.
I will not let him make me cry. I will not.
After Mum died, I resolved to do better, to be better.
I didn’t want to be the girl with a messy car anymore, so I booked my old Hyundai in for a professional clean as often as I could.
I worked late so I’d be organised for the days ahead.
I made plans and processes and boundaries, not just to protect myself, but to protect the people I love from my carelessness.
For six years my processes worked, until somehow I let myself get distracted by a journalist with knives in his eyes.
I ignored my routines and checklists for a tiny moment, and now Boss and his family are going to pay.
I hate myself so much I want to scream. I don’t want a coffee now.
I’m walking straight back home to my laptop.
In fact, I’m running. I need to channel this rage somewhere. I need cardio. I need punishment.
Everywhere I tread, tiny, bruised figs carpet the footpath, sticking to the rubber of my shoes like chewed-up gum.
The harbour is dotted with sailboats and kayaks.
On the grass, by the water’s edge, people lie on Turkish towels, their shoulders bare under the autumn sun.
Everywhere around me, people are enjoying their Sundays.
They probably don’t even realise they have to vote in two weeks.