‘Okay,’ she said. ‘How about you drive it to your place, then we both go in my car?’
‘Oh you’re so sensible, Cressida,’ Helena said, falling against her in a damp-eyed hug.
‘Come on.’ Cressida pushed her gently into the driver’s seat of the Jag. ‘Wait here while I go get mine.’
The Porsche still pending, Cressida’s current car was a two-door Fiat she had bought after seeing it at a popup at Bondi Junction Westfield. Tiny, white and bubble-shaped, the creamy red upholstery and little red badge on the boot had beguiled her pen onto the papers before the salesperson had even had to wave the brochure. The air conditioning had gone on the blink after the last service though and only worked with the fan at full blast now, but Cressida had come to enjoy sitting in its arctic gale. She tossed the bag in the back, plugged her phone into the cigarette lighter, and turned the radio on. There was a bottle of water in the footwell and she reached for it, unscrewing the top and gulping half. Warm, but good. So-o-o good. Well I’m sure the Porsche dealership will understand if I don’t turn up for my appointment, she thought, wiping her lips. Then another thought arose and she nearly spat out the mouthful. Oh God. The prostitute. The hotel room. She’d forgotten to ring them. Surely this counted as Act of God or something for the purposes of any cancellation fee. As she tailed Helena down the curve of Military Road, the burn of disappointment at last night’s deferral of the vote took up residence again in her stomach. Thank God that, other than Pip and briefly Felipe, she hadn’t told anyone about her application.
Driving down Campbell Parade was like passing through the main street of a ghost town. The usual passage of early morning joggers was absent, the beach deserted. An enormous armoured personnel carrier dominated the square outside the chicken shop, its occupants in full army fatigues directing traffic at the intersection under lights that flashed amber. Nearby, police in white overalls picked their way across broken glass outside the convenience store. It was startling to see the soldiers, as if war had arrived overnight.
Her stomach was rumbling. How was she going to keep the juice diet up now, without power for the machine? Fruit, she thought. Surely there’ll be a fruit shop open. But all three vendors along Bondi Road were shuttered. At Bondi Junction the traffic slowed to a crawl as more gloved traffic police directed cars around intersections. The same service was on every frequency on the radio, as if there had been some kind of government appropriation because of the terrorist attack, and the bulletin about avoiding high-density areas was on repeat. Then came a news bulletin that the power was expected to be out for at least a week, and her heart sank. That meant no partnership vote for at least a week. Damn. With these things, momentum was so important. More delay meant more time since her most recent achievements, making them dim in their minds. Then as she slowed for the turnoff to Carrington Street it occurred to her that the power stations might even be owned by a Hannes Swartling client. If they were, she realised, it would be all hands on deck – and none of the Partners would be the least bit interested in her little application.
The road to Bondi Junction Westfield was blocked by enormous orange bollards, and further down, a phalanx of black-clothed officers lined the street down to the shopping centre. They wore hard hats and balaclavas, their bodies a bristle of artillery and communication devices. Ahead of her she watched Helena pick her way carefully through the traffic, her small head dwarfed by the matronly stretch of the back of the car. It had been her father’s car, before, and Cressida hated that Helena still drove it. On every road trip it broke down, and seemed to need its own rest stop and milkshake in the shade every two hours. But Helena said driving it made her feel closer to Leo. The car was in fact a lot like him, Cressida thought: big and showy, but, well, hopeless when it came to the most important things. Being there, for example. She had seen photos of herself in it as a child, a small serious face against its white bench seat under the crook of her mother’s arm, her mother a smiling blonde face behind the moulded steering wheel. They’d gone everywhere in it in those days. The good days, before the investigators arrived. To the beach, the drive-in, the seaside cafes her father had loved to frequent on his rare days off from the firm. In his little straw fedora he’d lope up from a swim in the ocean, his tasselled towel slung over one shoulder, and sit and talk to the old fellows in Greek while the four of them ate fish and chips spread on the table from the shop next door. Her stepmother would do the crossword in the paper. She, Jerome, Alessa and Helena. And before that, of course, her mother. Screw the crossword, Peggy would sit right on Leo’s lap as he drank his short black, laughing and making kind fun of her husband in the heavy, rich language Cressida couldn’t understand, that embarrassed as well as intrigued her.
Ahead of her, the Jag stalled at an intersection, making cars behind her honk and drive around them both. As Cressida swung into the driveway and parked under the smooth-barked apple tree, she decided she had to tell her stepmother once and for all that the Jag had to go. Those days were gone now, and so should everything that went with them. She watched Helena push the heavy car door shut with difficulty and walk round to the passenger side of the Fiat, dabbing her face with her scarf.
‘Ai,’ said Helena, angling herself into Cressida’s passsenger seat. ‘Did they have to kill our airconditioners on the hottest day of the year? An iced tea. That’s what I need. If only I could get an iced tea.’
‘You should get rid of that car you know, Helena. It’s a liability.’
‘What? Oh. Yes. I know, I stalled it back there,’ she said, taking off her sunglasses and wiping sweat from her eyelids with her leopard-print scarf.
‘It’s an expensive piece of junk. I mean, what’s the yearly petrol consumption on that thing? Enough to take you to Europe twice a year, I imagine.’
‘Oh Cressida,’ her stepmother said, giving her a sympathetic smile as she put her sunglasses back on. ‘You know why I keep it. Imagine how your father would feel, finally getting out of gaol to find we had sold it. It’s only in a few months, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. That was a whole other thing she didn’t want to think about.
Helena sighed. ‘You know Cressida, he really …’
The front door to the house opened and her sister Alessa stepped out, wearing a pair of Helena’s swimmers and a towel.
‘Oh thank God. What took you so long?’ she said, flapping a pale manicured hand. ‘What on earth is that on your head? Come on, come on – you’re letting all the heat in.’
Cressida’s hand went self-consciously to her scalp. Oh, the headband. Quickly she pulled it off and shook out her hair, immediately regretting it when she looked in the rearview mirror. Fluffy was an understatement.
‘We’re about to go and pick up Felipe,’ Helena was explaining. Then she turned, stricken by a sudden thought. ‘Cressida, hang on – you haven’t had breakfast.’
Cressida laughed. Mother to her core.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, putting the Fiat in reverse. ‘I’ll have something when I get back. Are you sure you don’t want to wait here? It’s so hot.’
‘Felipe can wait,’ Alessa called, declaratively. ‘The toilet’s flooded.’
‘Oh God,’ Helena groaned, putting her face in her hands.
‘Jesus,’ Cressida said, and turned off the car.
‘Plus I need Cressida’s laptop,’ her sister added.
Cressida sighed and hauled her bag from the back seat of the car, collected the vegetables and the backpack while Helena took the duffel, and mounted the steps to greet her sister.
‘Alessa,’ she said, leaning in to kiss the cheek held out to her. ‘Nice to see you.’
‘And you.’
With its high ceilings and tall windows cloaked in heavy curtains, the three-storey Federation was always an oasis of cool in hot weather. Helena had just had