CHAPTER 36
Poppy squinted into the mirror. It wasn’t her imagination. Her skin was as grey and saggy as a baby elephant’s. Maybe she was anaemic? Could that be the cause of all her woes? She made a mental note to defrost the mince just in case.
She hadn’t heard from Dani since she’d reversed out of Poppy’s driveway twenty-four hours ago and the silence between them was nuclear. It was a gloopy, radioactive, horrible mess and it was going to drown her. She’d sent four unanswered texts, including a gif of Ryan Gosling saying, Sorry, I Love You , which she immediately regretted. Apart from her lanky husband, Dani liked big beefy dreadlocked dudes with calf muscles the size of human skulls. Dani wasn’t a Ryan Gosling girl; she was a Jason Momoa girl. What the hell had Poppy been thinking?! Now she had no idea what her next move should be. Did Dani want more space, or was she pissed off Poppy hadn’t called already? Poppy was terrified of getting it wrong. She kept finding herself on the verge of calling Dani to ask her what she thought she should do before remembering she couldn’t. She missed Dani so much already, she couldn’t bear the thought of making it worse.
Making it worse in a financial sense was the handyman who’d arrived that morning to install the dryer. Since the shelf was still off-kilter, he’d cheerfully informed her he’d be charging an extra two hundred and fifty dollars to fix that too, and then had the gall to confess it was an easy job that she could have done herself.
Realising she was hovering around the handyman like a neurotic blowfly and suffering from a combination of irrational rage and self-induced claustrophobia, she’d invited her mum to coffee that afternoon. She couldn’t show her face in The Bustle, obviously, so they’d agreed to meet at Coffee Bucks.
Looking around when she arrived, no-one seemed even vaguely familiar, which was perfect. The divide between the cafes of Orange was alarmingly wide. She pulled a plastic highchair from the corner and placed Maeve inside. Next to her, two old ladies with blue rinses were poking at a factory-made carrot cake and trying to catch her eye. Poppy knew their type. They were hankering to say something highly unoriginal like, ‘Wait till you have the next one! Har har har!’ Poppy stared resolutely at her phone. She felt only marginally better than yesterday, which is to say she felt like shit. Her skin was grey, her hair was unwashed and her mind was playing a pitiless reel of James–Henry–James–Henry lowlights, sending her ever deeper into two-day-hangover oblivion. She’d only decided to meet up with her mum in the hope it would distract her from this spiral of despair. If anyone could be absurdly distracting, it was Chrissie McKellar.
‘My darlings, hello!’ bellowed her mother as she swooped towards the table, wearing a violet rollneck and matching scarf. She placed her giant magenta handbag on the spare seat and uncoiled her scarf in an expansive looping motion while updating Poppy on her brilliant reverse park. (‘Just outside! Better than valet!’) People at tables across the room all turned to look at them. Her mother had that effect.
‘Tell me all about the races,’ she said as she sat down. ‘What did you wear? Did you see anyone fun? Anyone I know?’
Mercifully, Poppy’s dad had dropped Maeve back home yesterday so she hadn’t had to endure this interrogation at the peak of her hangover. Poppy’s dad had only wanted to know which horses won. When Poppy confessed she had no idea, he nodded as though he’d expected as much and said nothing more.
‘I haven’t been to the races in ages, darling. Tell me all about it!’
Poppy coughed, a burning sensation building in her throat. ‘It was … cold.’
‘Yes, of course it was cold, darling. It is Orange. I hope you wore stockings.’
Poppy let her eyes lose focus as her mother launched into a monologue on the merits of wool versus man-made fibres and where to shop for the best-value thermals. (Her vote was the merino wool range at Best let’s not talk about it.’
‘Unlikely, Poppy,’ scoffed her mother. ‘Tell me right now: what happened?’
‘It was …’ What was it? Weird? Upsetting? The universe playing a giant, soul-destroying prank? ‘He, um … well, I think Willa left him, and I think he—’
‘—wanted to make himself feel better by trying it on with you. Yes, I understand.’
For someone who seemed to exist in a permanent orbit of crazy, her mother could be remarkably astute sometimes.
‘What did you do?’ Chrissie asked.
‘I pushed him off. Screamed at him.’
‘Good girl.’ Her mother chewed a piece of her slice thoughtfully. ‘How did he react to that?’
Poppy winced at the memory. ‘He got angry, accused me of—’
‘—leading him on?’
There was that uncanny shrewdness again.
Poppy nodded and felt her eyes well up in shame. It had been a low blow from Henry—and the fact there was a tiny, mortifying kernel of truth there made her feel all the more wretched. Her hand shook, sending a glob of puree off the teaspoon and onto the vinyl floor. Maeve looked at it, dejected, then she slapped the table again to demand a replacement.
‘Can’t say I’m surprised,’ sniffed Chrissie.
‘What?!’ cried Poppy.
‘It was bound to happen.’ Her mum dabbed the corners of her mouth with a serviette. ‘You two were trying to pretend you were eighteen again, spending all that time together, living in each other’s pockets.’
‘We were not!’
‘Coffee every day, darling? Two people with very limited spare time and you just happen to spend it together? You can’t pretend you did that innocently. Why do you think his parents and I were so keen to organise this dinner? We needed to get you both in a room with Willa, so you would stop pretending.’
Poppy felt a firestorm of shame and rage engulf her.
‘What the hell? I’m an adult, for god’s sake. Henry and I are—were—friends. That’s it, Mum! You have no idea! You have no idea what’s going on in my life, and if you did, you’d know that never, not once, did I lead Henry on. What do you think I am, some scarlet vixen preying on the men of Orange? What a misogynistic view of the world, making Henry the victim and me the big, bad slut.’
Another spoonful of puree fell off the teaspoon and Maeve’s lips began to tremble.
‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ Poppy snapped as Maeve began to wail. She stood up and tried to pull her daughter out of the highchair, but her daughter’s thighs were stuck in the plastic leg holes.
Her mum stood up too. ‘I’ll do it,’ said Chrissie, trying to move Maeve’s feet so her legs could slide out.
‘I can do it myself!’ cried Poppy, feeling the tears about to explode. ‘Stop interfering! You’re always telling me what to wear, who to hang out with, how to parent Maeve. Stop trying to run my life!’
Her mum reared back like she’d heard a gunshot. Poppy dimly registered the hurt in her eyes but she was so angry and humiliated and frustrated with this stupid fucking highchair that she didn’t care. She finally managed to pull Maeve out and hugged her daughter to her chest, trying to absorb the goodness from her tiny innocent body.
Her mum flitted at the edge of the table like a bird with a broken wing, her expression wounded and her breathing unsteady. Poppy couldn’t summon the courage or grace to apologise. How dare her mother accuse her of leading Henry on?!
You accused yourself too , said a voice in her head, and Poppy scrunched her eyes shut. She wanted to hold her daughter against her beating heart, and every other sound and feeling and accusation could fuck right off.
Her mother spoke quietly as she picked up her magenta handbag. ‘I think it’s best if I go.’
To their left, the ladies with the blue rinses averted their eyes.
It was like Poppy was watching herself move through petroleum jelly. Everything was slow and blurry, everything was slipping from her grasp. ‘Mum, wait,’ she mumbled. ‘You haven’t drunk your coffee.’
Her mother spun around to face her, the lines around her eyes etched with sadness. ‘Poppy, I didn’t come for the coffee. I never come for the coffee.’ She bent over and kissed Maeve on the head, hoisted her handbag onto her shoulder and quietly left the cafe.
As her larger-than-life mother returned to her brilliantly parked car, Poppy realised with a bone-shuddering certainty that she had reached a new level of rock bottom.