Truly Madly Guilty

Kim was in the middle of a nasty divorce.

Clementine wondered if she was at the beginning of a nasty divorce. Today, as Sam left for the ferry she'd said, 'Have a good day at work,' and she was sure she'd caught him rolling his eyes, as if he'd never heard anything so inane, or as if she was the last person in the world he wanted to wish him a good day at work. It had hurt, a sudden sharp sting, like a reprimand, like when her C string snapped this morning just as she'd bent her head and pinged her cheek. That had never happened to her before. She didn't even know it was possible. There was too much tension in her playing. Too much tension in her body. Too much tension in her home. The sting of the string had felt personal, and she'd sat there in the dark early morning and refused to let herself press her fingertips to her cheek.

She parked her car right near the entrance to the park. She was twenty minutes early because she'd still allowed a twenty-minute 'getting lost' buffer just in case. She yawned and studied the weather. The rain might hold off just long enough for the ceremony. If the bride was lucky.

She put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.

Today she had got up at five am and had worked with the metronome on the Beethoven excerpt. 'Feel the inner pulse,' Marianne used to say, although then she'd suddenly cry, 'Too choppy! Too choppy!'

Clementine massaged her aching shoulder. Her first cello teacher, Mr Winterbottom (her older brothers and her father all called him Mr Winter-Bum), used to say, 'Nobody plays pain-free,' if Clementine ever complained that something hurt. Clementine's mother hadn't liked that at all. Pam had researched the Alexander technique and in fact the exercises still helped when Clementine remembered to do them.

Mr Winterbottom u

sed to tap her knee with his bow and say, 'More practice, missy, you can't coast on your talent, because I can assure you, you don't have enough to spare,' and, 'It's hard for you to put the emotionality in your music because you're too young, you've never actually felt anything. You need to have your heart broken.' When she was sixteen he'd sent her to audition for the Sydney Youth Orchestra but told her that she had no hope of getting in, she simply wasn't good enough, though it would be good experience. There was no screen, just the audition panel, all smiling supportively, but after she sat down with her cello, she couldn't even put her bow to her strings because she was so stricken by unexpected terror. It was like a terrible illness had befallen her. She stood up and walked off the stage without playing a note. There just didn't seem to be any other option. Mr Winterbottom said he'd never been so ashamed of a student in all his teaching days, and he had a lot of students. Kids lugging cello cases came and went from his house all day long: a production line of cellists learning to self-loathe.

After the audition debacle her mother had found her a new teacher, and her beloved Marianne had said on the first day that auditions were unnatural and frightening and she herself had always hated them and that she would never send Clementine for an audition for which she wasn't properly prepared.

Why had cancer pointed its cruel, random finger at beautiful Marianne and not Mr Awful Winter-Bum, who was still alive and well and churning out neurotic musicians?

Clementine opened her eyes and sighed as a tiny spatter of raindrops fell upon the windscreen. It was the rain warming up before its big entrance. She turned on the radio and heard an announcer say: 'As Sydney's "Big Wet" continues, people have been warned to stay away from stormwater drains and creeks.'

Her phone rang on the seat next to her and she snatched it up to look at the screen. There was no name but she recognised that particular configuration of numbers.

Vid.

He'd called so many times since the barbeque she'd learned to recognise his number, but she never bothered to program his details into her phone, because he wasn't a friend, he was an acquaintance, a friend's neighbour, who she never wanted to see again. Erika had no right to give him her number. Vid and Tiffany should have passed on any messages through her. What did he want from her?

She held up the phone in front of her, staring at the screen, trying to imagine him holding the phone in his big hand. She remembered him saying, 'You and me, we are the feckless ones.' The feckless ones. She closed her eyes and her stomach cramped on cue. She wondered if she would eventually pay with a stomach ulcer. Was that what caused stomach ulcers? Regret-filled bile?

The phone stopped ringing and she waited for the text message to tell her that Vid had once again not left her a message. There had been only two occasions when he'd given in and left a clearly reluctant message: 'Clementine? This is Vid. How are you? I will call again.' He was one of those people who avoided leaving messages and just wanted you to pick up the damned phone. Her dad was the same.

Her phone rang again instantly. It would be Vid again, she thought, but it wasn't; she didn't recognise the number. He wouldn't try to trick her into answering by calling from a different number, would he? It wasn't Vid. It was Erika's IVF clinic. They were returning Clementine's call about setting up an appointment with the counsellor to discuss egg donation.

Erika had given her the number for the clinic this morning, irritably and impatiently, as if she hadn't really expected Clementine to go ahead and make the call.

Clementine took out her diary from her handbag and held it on her lap while she made the appointment for the day before her audition. The clinic was in the city. She would only just make it back in time for her lesson with the scarily talented little Wendy Chang (grade five at age nine). The lady making the appointment was lovely, she was being so nice to Clementine as she explained about an initial blood test she might like to do now or later, it was completely up to her, and it occurred to Clementine that the lady probably thought Clementine was a kind, altruistic person, doing this out of the goodness of her heart, not doing it to slither out from under the weight of an obligation.

She heard Erika's resigned voice on the phone that morning: 'Oh, Clementine, we both know that's a lie.' But then she'd immediately got down to business, giving her the number of the clinic, as if she didn't care that it was a lie. She didn't care about Clementine's motivations, she just wanted the eggs.

What had Clementine been expecting? Gratitude and joy? 'Oh, thank you, Clementine, what a wonderful friend you are!'

She jumped as someone thumped on the driver's window. It was Kim, her violin case in hand, standing under a giant umbrella and looking miserable.

Clementine wound down her window.

'Isn't this fun,' said Kim flatly.

*

The pop-up marquee didn't inspire confidence. It looked cheap, like they'd got it from a two-dollar shop.

'I don't think it's going to hold,' said Nancy, their viola player, scrutinising the flimsy-looking white fabric. It was already sagging in places with puddles of water. Clementine could see the dark shapes of leaves floating in the little ponds above their heads.

'It's completely dry so far,' said Kim worriedly. Their booking contract specified that they be fed and had to be able to keep their instruments dry. They had the right to pack up and leave in the case of wet weather but they'd never yet had to do it.

'I'm sure it will be fine,' said their second violinist, Indira, who always took on the role of optimist, as well as the role of making sure they were fed. She had been known to put down her violin in the middle of a piece to waylay a passing waiter if she saw something delicious, which was very embarrassing.

'How's the practice going?' asked Nancy as they tuned.