Truly Madly Guilty

Erika turned pointedly in her seat to look over her shoulder towards the kids. 'So does your daughter -?' she said to Tiffany.

'Dakota knows I was a dancer.' Tiffany lifted her chin. Don't you freaking well question my parenting choices. 'I'll wait till she's older to give her more details than that.'

Vid's older daughters and ex-wife didn't know either. Oh God, the judgement that would come her way from his daughters, who dressed like Kardashians but behaved around Tiffany as if they had the moral high ground normally reserved for nuns. If they ever found out they would leap on that secret like rabid dogs.

'Right,' said Erika. 'Of course. Right.'

Clementine lifted her head and ran her fingertips beneath her eyes. Her voice still trembled with laughter. 'So, forgive me, because I guess I've led a very, you know, vanilla life,' she said.

'I don't know about that,' said Sam. 'What are you implying? I read Fifty Shades of Grey. I studied it. I tried to set up the study as the Red Room of Pain.'

Clementine elbowed him. 'I'm just fascinated. Did you find it ... well, I don't know, where to start! Weren't the men watching you kind of ... sleazy?'

'Of course some of them were, but most of them were just ordinary blokes.'

'I wasn't sleazy,' said Vid. 'Ah, well, maybe I was a little bit sleazy. In a good way sleazy!'

'So did you go to those places often?' Clementine asked him, and Tiffany could hear the effort she was making to keep her tone clear of judgement.

This was what Vid never understood and Tiffany always forgot: people had such complicated feelings when they heard that she'd been a dancer. It was all mixed up with their feelings about sex, which sadly for most people were always inextricably linked with shame and class and morality (some people thought she was confessing to an illegal act), and for the women there were issues relating to body image and jealousy and insecurity, and the men didn't want to look too interested, even though they were generally very interested, and some men got that angry, defensive look as if she were trying to trick them into revealing a weakness, and most people, men and women, wanted to giggle like teenagers but didn't know if they should. It was a freaking minefield. Never again, Vid, never again.

'Sure, I went lots!' said Vid easily. 'When my marriage broke up my friends wanted to take me out, and, you know, my friends didn't go to symphonies or whatever, you know, they went to clubs. And when I saw this woman dance, well, she blew my mind. She just blew my mind.' He put a pretend gun to his head, pulled a pretend trigger and made his fingertips explode. 'That's why I recognised her straight away at that auction. Even though she had her clothes on.'

Vid slapped his knee and roared with laughter. Clementine and Sam chuckled in a kind of horrified way, while Erika frowned and poor Oliver blushed.

'Anyway,' said Tiffany. 'That's probably enough of that.'

There was a sudden discordant shriek: 'Mummy!'

chapter thirty-six

It was raining so hard Clementine didn't hear the front door open. She jumped when she saw Sam materialise in the doorway to Holly's room, his blue and white pinstriped shirt so wet it was transparent.

'You scared the life out of me!' she said, her hand to her chest. 'Why are you home so early?' She knew it sounded like an accusation. She should have said, maybe, 'This is a nice surprise!' and then said, conversationally, gently, 'Why so early, honey?'

She'd never called him 'honey' in her life.

Sam plucked at the saturated fabric of his shirt.

'What are you doing?' he said.

'Looking for something,' she said. 'As usual.' She was sitting on Holly's bed with a pile of clothes in front of her, searching for Holly's 'strawberry top', a white long-sleeved top with a giant strawberry on the front that Holly needed right now if she was to ever feel happiness again, and which, of course, was nowhere to be found.

She felt strangely self-conscious. Would she normally have jumped to her feet at the sight of Sam, and kissed him hello? She couldn't remember. It was so strange that she would even consider this: the correct etiquette for greeting her husband.

She didn't particularly want to hug him when he was once again soaked. Nobody in Sydney could be surprised by rain anymore. You were an idiot if you found yourself caught in the rain. It was all anyone could talk about. Umbrella sales had gone up by forty per cent. But ever since the rain had started, Sam left every day for the ferry without an umbrella or raincoat. She watched him each morning from the kitchen window, bolting along the footpath through the rain, his briefcase held over his head, and the sight of his bobbing body disappearing into the distance made her want to laugh and cry. Maybe it was a form of masochism. He thought he didn't deserve an umbrella. He probably thought she didn't deserve one either.

'Why are you home so early?' she said again.

'Well, I got your message.' Sam's face was a mask of anxiety with a hint of aggressive defensiveness. 'So I left work early.'

'My message that said Holly was perfectly fine?' said Clementine. 'My message that said there was nothing to worry about?'

'This is the second time she's had this stomach thing,' said Sam.

'I assume you saw her in the living room,' said Clementine. 'Happily playing on the iPad without a care in the world.'

'I think we need to get her checked out. It could be her appendix or something. It could come and go.'