Claudia's Big Break Read online

  ‘Ain’t that the truth,’ agreed Tara. ‘Marriage is hard work. That’s why I ditched Anthony, remember?’

  ‘Poor Anthony,’ I said. ‘As a mild-mannered architect, he was woefully unprepared for someone like you to propel into his life.’

  ‘I wanted an easy life,’ mused Tara. ‘Turns out it wasn’t so easy after all.’

  Prior to marrying Anthony, Tara’s love had been Jules, a university girlfriend. But after that relationship soured and Tara declared her fling ‘nothing more than a one-off experiment’, she fell into the arms of Anthony. After a whirlwind romance, they married . . . and six drawn-out years later, divorced.

  Tara told him she needed to find herself. ‘But you’re not lost,’ Anthony had argued, bewildered. He was devastated. ‘I married for life, Tara. I assumed we were going to have children and raise a family.’

  ‘You will,’ Tara had assured him. ‘Just not with me.’

  ‘Tara,’ said Sophie, rolling her eyes. ‘Please don’t compare your marriage to my relationship with Alex.’

  Tara glared at her. ‘All I’m saying is that I know what it’s like. The sacrifices, the compromises, the heartache when it falls apart. I’ve been there.’ Tara took a breath before stuffing lettuce into her mouth.

  ‘You weren’t together that long!’

  ‘Are you kidding me? It felt like twenty years.’

  ‘We all know why you married, Tars,’ I said, sucking up a spaghetti strand. ‘So that forever more you can refer to yourself as a divorcee rather than a wretched spinster like me . . . and to get over your ill-fated experiment, to prove to yourself you weren’t —’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Tara chimed in before I could finish. ‘I was just young and stupid when I got married.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Well, now . . .’ Tara hesitated. ‘I feel much more in control of my life.’

  At least Sophie and Tara had marriages to bicker about. Here I was, the same age as they were, still feeling young and stupid, and without even an ex-husband to complain about.

  Right now, though, I didn’t much care. We were in paradise and we still had the ouzo to open.

  7

  I lay in bed thinking about my aimless existence and the similar lack of direction in my friends’ lives. Were Sophie and Tara seeing this holiday in the same way I was — as an opportunity to tackle some hard questions and query some of the life choices we’d made over the years? Because the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether any of us really knew where we were heading.

  Sophie seemed the most together of the three of us, which was saying something, considering her history. Back when Levi was three months old, Sophie left him with Alex under the guise of buying bananas. She did actually buy bananas at the local fruit shop, but then she drove to a nondescript café a hundred kilometres away, where she ordered a large skinny cappuccino and a double slice of chocolate cake.

  As soon as Alex realised Sophie was taking an extraordinarily long time fruit shopping, he phoned me. We both knew Sophie wasn’t coping with the switch from corporate high-flyer to full-time mother and Alex panicked she might have done something silly.

  Tara and I spent the day ringing friends and searching the suburbs, desperately trying to find her. When Sophie arrived home six hours later as if nothing had happened, Alex was frantic. Unfazed, she explained that the demands of looking after Levi had overwhelmed her. ‘I needed time to breathe,’ she said.

  ‘But you can’t just walk out like that,’ Alex shouted. ‘Anything could have happened to you. You could have been dead for all I knew.’

  ‘Sometimes I think I’d rather be dead than look after Levi,’ she said.

  After the café incident, I moved in with Sophie and Alex for a couple of weeks while they interviewed for a suitable nanny. (Over fifty, was Sophie’s only stipulation.) She seemed paralysed with fear and wouldn’t even hold Levi for fear of hurting him.

  ‘Not on purpose, Claud, but what if I accidentally drop him or tip steaming hot coffee over him? Besides, what kind of mother leaves her newborn son and husband and goes out for the day without telling anyone? A bad and desperate one,’ she answered before I could reply. ‘I don’t want this baby any more, I want my life back. I feel sexless. There’s nothing left of me.’

  I can’t presume to know what Sophie was going through emotionally but I gained some understanding of the physical demands of looking after a baby. Even though Alex and I were working together, it was exhausting — waking in the middle of the night, every night, sometimes half a dozen times to attend to Levi. I remember thinking that babies never slept. At least this one didn’t. I was beyond shell-shocked. I don’t think I’ve been that tired, ever.

  It was a great relief when Alex hired Patricia, a responsible live-in nanny (ex-nurse, fifty-three years old, seventy-eight kilos) and I could go home. But I still spoke to Sophie every day. She felt like a failure who didn’t deserve to be a mother. She spent most of her time in bed and her health rapidly deteriorated. It was a matter of weeks before she collapsed and was taken to hospital.

  ‘It’s a huge relief,’ Sophie admitted to me at the time. ‘Finally I have a reason to stop being a mother for a few days.’ She seemed at peace in hospital, despite being hooked up to tubes.

  During her hospitalisation, Sophie began seeing a counsellor and, once discharged, kept up regular appointments. Three years down the track, it wasn’t something she and I talked about any more. I tried bringing it up now and again, but Sophie didn’t want to discuss it, just explained it away by saying it was a hiccup. I knew things were still difficult but didn’t want to make an issue of it. Sophie knew I was there if she needed me. As for Alex, he didn’t talk about it either, at least not with me.

  Anyone could see that parenthood, while amazing and rewarding, had its downsides. I just felt sad that in those early months Sophie experienced more bumps and setbacks than she’d expected and it knocked her confidence. Still, it did make me wonder sometimes if it was better to remain unattached and childless.

  In some ways, Tara’s life was more complex. The question of why Tara married Anthony so soon after her affair with Jules had played on my mind for years.

  Tara’s relationship with Jules began when Jules kissed Tara one night after they’d been to see The Whitlams play at some dive in Fortitude Valley.

  ‘I’m sorry if I offended you,’ Jules said to Tara, the next day, ‘but it seemed like a good idea at the time.’ Tara wasn’t in the least offended — quite the opposite — and their relationship progressed rapidly, especially after Tara convinced her parents to let her move into a flat in St Lucia. ‘It would really help my grades if I lived closer to uni,’ she told them.

  Those naive Catholics! So, in a flat heavily subsidised by her devout parents, Tara got hot and heavy with Jules. All was perfect until ten months later on the morning of Tara’s twenty-first birthday.

  We’d been celebrating Tara’s coming of age at her flat the night before, drinking and dancing, dancing and drinking, until we could drink nor dance no more. Everyone gradually disappeared and crawled back to their rough student accommodation, all except Jules. Apparently she and Tara fell asleep on a rather comfortable rug on the living room floor. Naked.

  Early the next morning, a Sunday, in strolled Mr and Mrs Murphy, cake in hand, to surprise their gorgeous, studious daughter. There they stood in the middle of Tara’s lounge room, dressed in sober church attire, clutching a chocolate mud cake and staring at their daughter, who appeared to be buck naked and entwined with another girl. Horrified, Mrs Murphy mumbled something about ‘not wanting to interrupt’, fumbled to put the cake down and fled with her husband.

  Tara was beside herself with anguish when I caught up with her later that afternoon. ‘What the fuck am I going to do, Claud? I can never face them again.’

  ‘Where exactly was Jules’s tongue when they walked in?’

  ‘I’m serious. They’re going to kill me.’

&nb
sp; ‘It could have been worse.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ I said after some thought. ‘It probably doesn’t get more embarrassing than that.’

  ‘I can’t face them.’ Tara clapped her hands to her cheeks. ‘And to top it off, Jules isn’t speaking to me. She’s pissed off because I didn’t lock the front door.’

  ‘Well, yes, perhaps you should —’

  ‘I wasn’t exactly thinking about that at three in the morning when my girlfriend stripped and offered me my birthday present.’

  ‘Clearly,’ I replied. ‘Happy birthday, by the way.’

  It was a matter of days before her parents staged what could only be called an intervention, which involved repeating the rosary ad infinitum and praying to God for Tara’s salvation, as well as the usual tears and recriminations. It went on for weeks. ‘Why did you send her to an all-girls school, dear?’ was one of Mr Murphy’s often repeated but unanswered questions.

  Tara’s parents were beyond upset. They couldn’t have been more disappointed had she confessed to being a serial killer.

  Three months later Tara was engaged to Anthony, and six months after that they married. Although it was all over by the time Tara was twenty-five, they didn’t divorce until several years later. Tara didn’t want to upset her parents, but inevitably when she told them there were the by now familiar tears, accusations and prayers.

  Years later, Tara’s parents still brought up the fact that she was a divorcee. Not that she saw them often. After her divorce, Tara grew weary of her parents and their values, their perceptions about how she should be living her life. She wasn’t exactly estranged but she didn’t head over there every Sunday afternoon for a family barbecue either.

  Thinking about Tara’s romantic entanglements got me thinking about my own disastrous love-life. George was a doozie and my affair with Marcus was doomed from the start, but I’d had plenty of messed-up encounters prior to those — like with Eric, my first true love.

  Eric and I crossed paths in my early twenties, and at the time I thought I loved him. We had been dating — oh, about forty-two days — before the ‘Mustang Sally’ incident put an end to that sweet romance. There were other contributing factors but really I put it all down to ‘Mustang Sally’.

  After a few vodka and oranges at the Goondiwindi B&S, with ‘easy on the eye’ Eric, I’d decided I could sing as well as, if not better than, the lead singer of the covers band. So, foolishly — hindsight is a valuable tool — I jumped onstage and sang the chorus to ‘Mustang Sally’.

  The lead singer, who, I believed, had taken a shine to me because I had a good voice and an open heart (big breasts had nothing to do with it), invited me to New York to be a rock star with him. And after seven vodkas I agreed. As you would, if you were a young Ancient History major and relatively unattached.

  I decided the lead singer was a better choice of partner than Eric. The lead singer was going places, New York for one, and I was going with him. That night after I told Eric the facts, he dumped me. Me! Even though I was on the brink of stardom and well on my way to becoming the next Madonna! You’d think he would have clung to me for dear life. Instead, he stormed off and out of my life.

  The next day, sporting a killer hangover, I was more than a little mortified to recall I’d sung out of tune in front of fifteen hundred people. Not only that, but no amount of begging would stop Eric driving back to Brisbane in his red Daihatsu without me.

  That was one weekend adventure I’d have rather never happened. (I never saw the lead singer again. And I certainly haven’t been back to Goondiwindi.)

  As for my career, I should have stuck to my original plan, back when I was at high school. Right up until the frog debacle, I wanted to be a vet. The frog thing was a turning point for me because I didn’t have a solid plan B — apart from working part-time at Myer, Carindale, to get the ten percent staff discount.

  Truth be told, I don’t think my not becoming a vet was solely due to my inability to dissect amphibians. I’ll admit fainting at the sight of intestines wasn’t a good look for a wannabe vet, but my inability to commit might also have had something to do with not excelling at maths or, in fact, any of the sciences.

  Career highlights thus far? After university, I dabbled as an administration assistant for a less than scintillating hardware company. I moved on to selling media space for an advertising firm, which was definitely a step up. And then I landed a job as an event coordinator for Riesling Renaissance, a Brisbane food and wine management company. Jackpot!

  I loved it. There was always something new to organise, from wine tastings to celebrity chef demonstrations and country cook-offs. Yes, there was the occasional disaster, à la the well-known chef who, absolutely plastered, attempted a live cooking demonstration in front of two hundred eager suburban housewives. The front row definitely got more than they bargained for when his hand got caught in the electric mixer and he was carted off in an ambulance, sirens blaring. We were front page news!

  It was a vibrant and exciting time and I had visions of one day starting my own consultancy. When the company went belly-up, I was devastated. But I’d met Marcus at several events and when he offered me the job as his office manager I grabbed it with both hands. I promised myself I’d look for something more suitable but I was already in love with George by that stage and was thinking about having a baby. Then George left me in debt, I had an affair with Marcus . . . and here I was. I turned my mind the ‘what ifs’ of my life. What if I had never met George? What if I had never met Marcus? I liked to think I would have started my own company. I certainly wouldn’t be in the mess I was now.

  As an office manager, more often than not I was reconciling accounts. And I was hopeless at it. The figures never added up. It always looked like the company was losing money. But whenever I talked to Marcus about it, he just shook his head, laughed and told me his accountants would take care of everything.

  I had to face the cold hard facts. Although my job was boring, at least it was a job I was being paid for. Still, a couple of things worried me about going back to the office: a) I didn’t want to fall back into old habits — ie resume my liaison with Marcus, even though the sex was thrilling; b) I liked Marcus as a person. What if he ignored me? Or worse, treated me like any other employee?

  Eventually I fell asleep, but it was a disturbing night punctuated by dreams of boyfriends past, croaking frogs and several faceless people having sex on my favourite navy leather sofa (the one trapped in storage). Throughout the night, though, one face kept popping in and out of my dreams: Jack Harper’s. Bloody hell!

  8

  The next morning when I woke up and peered out the window, the sky was a brilliant blue. It was the Santorini postcards promised, and very quickly all of my concerns disappeared into the dazzling sunlight.

  ‘Greetings,’ I said, walking out onto the patio where Levi was eating a local version of Weet-Bix and Sophie was drinking green tea. I quickly noticed that all the outdoor furniture was upright and perfectly placed in the glittering morning sunshine. Bending over, I kissed Levi. He looked up from his bowl and raised his favourite dinosaur to me. After ruffling his hair, I sat down next to Sophie.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ Sophie said, looking across the ocean. ‘So serene. Cruise ships sail in, cruise ships sail out. And all the time, the water remains calm, a gorgeous azure blue. Hear that?’

  ‘No. What am I listening to?’

  ‘Bouzouki music.’ She lifted her head towards a distant church. ‘Over there. Sorry about last night. Just venting. Jet lag and all.’

  ‘Let it go. Don’t be so hard on yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’ She looked at Levi.

  ‘He’s fine.’ I watched as he dribbled milk and Weet-Bix down his blue Yo Gabba Gabba! T-shirt. ‘How about I make you some toast?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Yogurt and honey?’

  ‘Really, Claudia,’ Sophie sa
id, her voice rising. ‘I’m not hungry. Besides if I’m going to wear swimmers and inflict my flab on unsuspecting beach-goers, I’d better not get any fatter than I already am.’

  I was about to bark at her when Tara appeared.

  ‘Blimey!’ she croaked as she staggered out onto the terrace, shielding her eyes from the blinding sunshine with her left arm.

  ‘Breathtaking, isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘How’d you know? It’s so glary.’ Tara picked up a glass of water from the table and took a sip, before sitting down beside me and helping herself to yogurt and cherries. ‘So, what’re we doing today?’

  ‘We could explore that volcano,’ said Sophie, looking towards Nea Kameni.

  ‘What? That thing over there?’ Tara replied, spitting out seeds and pointing across the ocean to the tiny island a couple of kilometres away. ‘Looks exhausting.’

  We took the scenic route to Fira, along cobbled pathways and trellised gardens, and watched as every couple of metres another tourist posed to have their photo taken in front of a postcard-perfect blue door framed by whitewashed houses splashed with hot pink bougainvillea. So far, we’d resisted temptation.

  ‘Hey you,’ said a strong male voice, and I felt someone tap me on the shoulder.

  I swung around.

  ‘Wow!’ I said. ‘Some coincidence. First Athens and now Santorini.’

  ‘Small world. Nice sunnies, by the way.’ Jack was minus the Akubra today. Good decision. He had a fine head of thick dark hair and was broader than I remembered. And those forearms! Hooley dooley. Tanned, with shaggy growth on his chin and cheeks, Jack obviously hadn’t shaved since stepping off the plane.

  I’d heard stories about people constantly bumping into the same people on holidays. I guess it really did happen. I mentally gave myself the once-over and was relieved to remember I’d made an effort this morning to brush my hair and clean my teeth.