Chapter 2
It misses her head by inches.
I wrench my car door open, fling myself inside, and lock it. I stare at the steering wheel, and then unbelievably, I start laughing.
I can’t go back to my sterile house with my sterile fiancé in Northton, or my once-a-month lunch friends.
They’re nice enough girls who work in the industry and understand the pressures, demands, and overtime, but after two years, we’ve never quite made the jump from “How’s work going?
” to “I think I want to leave my fiancé,” or “My doctor wants to up my Zoloft.”
I can’t go back to that hotel and stare at the walls again. I’m afraid one day I’ll look in the bathroom mirror and see my mum’s face instead of my own.
I glance at the double doors of the studio, but nobody has come for me. Yet.
I speed out of the parking lot as the sun begins to rise.
—
I crouch behind the neighbor’s privacy hedge, poking my head around the corner, looking up the street.
The diamond-shaped leaves tickle my cheek, and the hems of my culottes are wet with morning dew.
I parked two blocks away. Now I wait for my fiancé to leave for work, crouched behind a hedge like a madwoman.
The front door opens, and I reel back, breathless.
I wait until I hear an engine hum to life, and duck to the ground as his car rolls past. I catch a glimpse of the back of his blond head, and the cuffs of his shirt on the steering wheel.
My throat tightens as I scan the back seat of his Land Cruiser. But Jessie isn’t with him. Thank God.
I watch Oliver drive off to work, wondering how the hell it came to this. When his taillights are long gone, I run.
I sprint up the road, my house keys rattling in my pocket. I yank them out as I run up the driveway until I’m panting at the front door. Heart pounding, I shove my key in the lock, darting panicked glances behind me.
But the door doesn’t open. Stunned, I try it again and again, shoving the key in and jiggling it every way, swearing under my breath the whole time.
It won’t open.
I step back as the realization hits. He’s changed the locks.
I’ve been gone for two days, and he’s already locked me out.
I pay rent here—he can’t do that. But that’s how it is with him: crossing lines, while I stand there, pretending they aren’t broken.
Was, I tell myself. That’s how it was. Not anymore.
Jessie sticks her golden head through a gap in the blinds. Her eyes light up when she sees me. Her tail flaps back and forth so hard, it rattles the blinds. I crouch down in front of her and press my palms against the window.
“He’s locked me out,” I tell her breathlessly. “The bastard has locked me out.”
Her tail falters, caught mid-wag, as if the hope in her heart just shattered. I jump up and wrench the door handle again; when it doesn’t budge, I slam my shoulder against it.
Jessie whines again, softer this time. Don’t leave me here with him.
It’s like I’m seeing my nine-year-old self in her eyes. Mum, don’t leave Heath and me with Dad.
—
Quickly, I scramble over the side fence, landing hard on the cobbled white stones of our tiny back garden.
I dart around the side of the house until I come to the sliding glass door that leads to our dining room.
We always leave it open for Jessie while we’re out, so she can wander in and out of the yard until I get home.
The door’s closed. I grab for the handle. Locked. Jessie meets me at the sliding door, her eyes wide, wet and pleading.
The kitchen window…
I try to wrench it open, but it doesn’t budge. On top of the outdoor dining table is a god-ugly concrete vase housing a limp ficus. A gift from Oliver’s overbearing mother. Eerily calm, I scoop it up, stagger forward, and grunt, “Watch out, Jess!”
Obediently, she backs away. When I can no longer see her, I hurl it at the kitchen window, and it explodes in a hail of glass and sound.
I move quickly, ducking under the remains of the broken window, my suede boots crunching on the glass. Beneath the dining room table, Jessie’s golden head slowly emerges.
Jessie.
I half run to her, cramming her into my arms. She whines softly in excitement, spinning in her sweet golden dance, gently licking my face, my ears, my forehead. Thank God. I’ve got her. It’s going to be all right. It will.
“Let’s get the hell outta here.”
I hurry to our bedroom, Jess padding softly right behind.
I grab the sports bag in my side of the closet and rip my clothes from the hangers in my haste to get them inside the bag.
I don’t even know what else to take. What do you take when you’re fleeing your shitty fiancé?
I have no cash in the house, thankfully; that’s all locked away in my bank account.
I pause for one second. Oh my God. Mum. A memory flashes in my brain with a jolt.
My mum standing over me with desperate eyes.
Always have a bank account in your name only, she insisted. Promise me!
I was eight, maybe nine years old at the time. Too young to understand why her voice was high and insistent and why she grasped my hand so tight that it stung.
But I kept that promise. I’m leaving with my own money. Not much, but enough to live off for a few months. I’ll be all right. Unless Joy decides to sue me. Surely, there’s a payment plan for attacking someone live on the air. Laughter bubbles out my mouth. This is crazy. All of it. Go, go, go!
I rush to my bedside table. Under a pile of ankle-length socks is a single photograph lying face down. I flip it over and take a quick look, though I know this photo by heart.
The boy is ankle-deep in the water, tanned and barefoot and months overdue for a haircut.
His smile is huge, revealing two missing front teeth.
The happy little girl is in his arms, naked except for a nappy.
Hanging from her fists is the tail of a massive King George whiting, its tapering head bumping her ankle.
She can’t be more than a year old. Mum took that picture of Heath and me nearly thirty-five years ago.
I place it gently in the front bag pocket, dump my socks and undies in, and zip it up.
And then Jessie and I run. Out the bedroom, past the lounge room with its smoke-gray couch, and straight to the front door. I wrench it open, peer out, heart fluttering more with excitement than fear.
Coast is clear.
“Let’s go, Jess!”
And we’re off! Running wild down the street, my backpack slapping against my shoulder, Jessie bounding beside me. It hits me that she’s never left this house without a lead on. Funny how much I relate to that.
I yank the car doors open, throw my backpack in, and harness Jesse into the back seat.
Seeing her so excited, I pull her into my arms, holding on tight as the weight of everything crashes over me.
I know damn well that I’m fired. And homeless.
But it’s strange…because here, with my arms wrapped around my dog, I feel like I’ve gained more than I’ve lost.
I climb into the driver’s seat, shut the door, and speed off, flipping the house off as I drive away.
It’s barely 6:30 a.m., but Northton’s already bustling.
Cars doing illegal U-turns, wealthy millennials power walking to the office, lost in the success flex like Oliver.
His mum’s the senior editor of a gardening magazine, and his dad, a Qantas pilot.
Meanwhile, my mum worked at the general store on the weekends, and Dad ran a fishing charter.
Only I never told Oliver this. I never told him anything at all about my past. So he made one for me.
“From now on, your parents owned a dental practice, okay?”
I nodded, complicit as always, because when I left home at eighteen, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I was lost for years, drowning. And when I met Oliver, confident, assertive Oliver, I pulled myself aboard his life raft and let him steer.
Northton. I shake my head and flip it off, too. I don’t belong here. It’s time for me to scurry back to the dirty streets where I was born.
Goodbye, Northton, with your trendy terrace houses and lunchtime lip fillers. I always hated you.
Goodbye, my fiancé, who walks like the world owes him applause. Who doesn’t lead but dominates, because winning isn’t enough for him. He needs you to lose.
I glance in the overhead mirror, inspecting myself.
Goodbye, Melanie Holmes.