Call Waiting Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Begin Reading

  Epilogue

  Gallery to Re-Open Under New Management

  Copyright

  To Diane Stubbings Murray

  Acknowledgments

  First thanks must go to Diane Stubbings, because I doubt I’d even be a writer without the influence she has had on my life. We started school together, went to university together and served our “apprenticeship” as writers together. Her encouragement and generosity toward me has been awesome. I am forever indebted to her.

  Thank you to my first readers, Dane, Sharon, Robyn, Lynda, Jenny, Desley, Ros, Anne and Dori. Do you know how hard it was for me to show my work to anyone? And do you have any idea how much your unreserved support meant to me? It was the only way I could ever bring myself to contact Pan Macmillan, where I am so grateful that Roxarne Burns found me in the slush pile and passed my submission on to Cate Paterson.

  Thank you to Cate for her generous mentorship and her brilliant editing. I feel very lucky indeed that for some reason she decided to give me a go. Thank you to everyone at Pan Macmillan and thanks to Julia Stiles for her painstaking copyediting.

  Also, heartfelt thanks to my American publisher, St. Martin’s Press, particularly to Tom Dunne for giving me this opportunity and to Carolyn Chu for looking after the details.

  Thank you, Mum and Dad, Deb, Bob, Brett, Brad and Ros, their spouses and children, for being a warm, funny and wonderful family.

  Thanks, Frances, for being you, and Danny, for being my number one fan.

  And most of all, thank you to my boys, Paul, Joel, Dane, Patrick and Zachary. How could I have done this without you?

  PROLOGUE

  “Are you listening to me, Ally?”

  She sighed, “Yes, Bryce.”

  “Okay, let me go through this one more time.”

  Terrific. Ally took the mobile phone from her ear and held it in front of her, still keeping one eye on the road. She could almost see the words flying out of the earpiece as Bryce’s voice became more histrionic. The word opportunity was getting quite a workout.

  “Opportunity of a lifetime … never have this opportunity again … throwing away a golden opportunity.”

  Ally sighed again. She had always hated the way Bryce lectured. She didn’t have to listen to this. In fact, she realized, breaking into a satisfied smile, she really didn’t have to listen to this anymore. Ever again.

  She glanced out the window. She was on the open freeway now and the atmosphere was quiet, almost surreal. Midafternoon on a weekday and she couldn’t see another car in her field of vision. She looked at the phone. She had always wanted to do it, imagined doing it. But she couldn’t. It was so impulsive, reckless. So wasteful.

  She wound down the window, still holding the phone. They were so light and small, these modern mobiles. Almost disposable, she thought with a grin. She was approaching a bridge that spanned a deep ravine, and she slowed the car down to a crawl. Ally considered the phone for another moment. She could still hear Bryce’s voice rabbiting on as she stuck her arm out the window and hurled the phone across the railing, watching as it sailed down and disappeared out of view.

  December, the previous year

  Ally closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead. She was tired. It couldn’t be much longer till bell time, she thought hopefully, glancing at her wrist where once again she had forgotten to place her watch.

  “When you’re finished, please stack your work carefully on the drying racks.”

  A primary school teacher had given her this idea, painting Aboriginal designs onto didgeridoos, and Ally thought it might work with her Year 8s.

  The results were, however, less than encouraging. And the constant tuneless foghorn she’d had to endure as twenty-three boys all tried out their instrument was driving her insane. It was the last week of the last term of the year. No one wanted to be here anymore, least of all Ally.

  In fact, most of these boys never wanted to be here. They loved the unit on photography, and sculpture, despite the god-awful glazed lumps they ended up with. But painting and its abstract theories were beyond them. The overwhelming majority had no interest in art, but they had to do one double period a week, and Ally had to fill in the time, one way or another. So the didgeridoo exercise had seemed a good way to cover pointillism and primitive art.

  One mention to Mark, the head teacher, and that was it. It was so exquisitely politically correct and would score big time with the parents. Mark had, unbelievably, located a didgeridoo supplier, of all things, and a load was duly delivered to the school. If she’d still been at Fairfield West, they would have been lucky to scrounge some discarded cardboard tubes from the paper factory up the road.

  “Damien, why is your didgeridoo painted plain brown?” Ally asked as she noticed him sneaking it onto the drying rack.

  “Well, Ms. Tasker, I’m ideologically opposed to copying Aboriginal artworks,” he explained importantly.

  Ally looked squarely at him, willing herself not to laugh. Ideologically opposed to any work, more like it.

  “Justin Mellor!” Ally exclaimed in her best teacher’s voice. “Stop this instant or you’re off to the Principal!”

  Justin froze, his didgeridoo just short of connecting with Cameron’s head.

  “Put it down!” He did so. She turned back to Damien. “What exactly are you ideologically opposed to?”

  “Stealing Aboriginal artworks, Ms. Tasker. People have been going into the Northern Territory over the last decade or so, since Aboriginal art became fashionable, and buying artwork for as little as a bottle of rum, then taking it overseas and selling it for a fortune.”

  Nice little speech, he must have seen it on Behind The News in history class.

  “And what has this got to do with painting Aboriginal designs on a factory manufactured didgeridoo in a high school art class, which I assure you no one will pay a fortune for?”

  Damien looked momentarily disarmed. At fourteen, it was obvious he was going to be a heartbreaker, when the braces came off and he grew another foot taller. He would be an excellent barrister one day—he could argue the leg off an iron pot, if he couldn’t charm it off first.

  The bell saved him. Ally called out instructions to collect up the paintbrushes and pots of paint and leave them in the sink, and after the boys scrambled out of the room, she saw that they had done this, in a fashion. She started rinsing out the pots and stacking them to drain. One advantage of working in a private school was that, strictly, Ally didn’t have to do this at all, it could be left to the cleaner. But she didn’t mind. The brushes had to be soaked at least, or else half of them would end up congealing and have to be thrown out. The rate they went through resources in this place alarmed Ally as it was, and she wasn’t about to add to it.

  Her last period was free on Thursdays, so she had plenty of time to clean up and still leave school early. Intent on trying to wash off the paint that always settled stubbornly in the crevices around her fingernails, Ally surveyed the state of her hands. She remembered an ad on the telly years ago, comparing a woman’s hands to a dried-up autumn leaf that could be restored to a new green leaf with the particular brand of cream they were touting. Ally’s hands were like the autumn leaf—dry, red and cracked. Bryce was always nagging her about
them, pointedly giving her gift vouchers for manicures. But she thought it was a waste of time and money when the next day they would be covered in clay or paint or charcoal. Still, she must remember to bring a pump pack of sorbolene in to work. She had been telling herself that every second day, and now the term was all but over. Oh well, next year.

  Next year. The idea filled Ally with dull despair. Working at St. Ambrose was a breeze compared to some of the places she’d worked in in the past. She supposed she shouldn’t complain. But sometimes she wondered what on earth she was doing here.

  At art college no one wanted to be a teacher, or if they did they certainly didn’t admit to it. It was so establishment. And it was as good as compulsory to despise the establishment. They worked hard at not conforming to society, and just as hard at conforming to each other’s notions of nonconformity.

  You would only become a teacher if you couldn’t succeed as an artist, and of course they were all going to succeed as artists. There was barely a handful of successful artists in Australia’s two hundred year history, what were the odds?

  Ally had always felt a bit of an imposter anyway. She hadn’t particularly wanted to be an artist; truth was, she hadn’t known what she wanted to be. She’d only known she wanted to get away from home. Fifteen years ago, it wasn’t so competitive to get into art college, and as it was literally the first offer that had arrived after her HSC, it was as good a place to escape to as any.

  She sometimes wondered how many had made it. David Blakely won the Archibald a couple of years ago, and she’d occasionally seen his exhibitions advertised. The rest she’d never heard of again.

  So eventually, with a diploma under her belt, and after a brief stint in the public service as a clerk, Ally had decided teaching might be a better option, at least for a while. And here she was, ten years later, having progressed no further than out of the public system and into the private.

  * * *

  Ally heaved the cardboard box of Year 7’s lino block prints into the back seat of her battered little Laser, along with her briefcase. She hadn’t recorded the marks onto the assessment sheets yet; she planned to do it tonight while Bryce was at racquetball. Thursday was his regular night, and Ally’s regular visit to Meg’s on the way home, for a Harrison fix.

  Meg and Ally had met at college. A few years older than Ally, Meg had worked first after she left school, to save money so that she could devote herself entirely to her studies.

  That was so Meg.

  She planned everything. She had studied her options and learned that computer graphics were going to be the next big thing. So she took night classes, learned computer skills and landed an amazing job in advertising. Of course, the rest of the class claimed she was just falling for the capitalist ethos, and went and applied for the dole.

  “Make yourself indispensable,” she’d told an uninterested Ally more than once. Meg had made herself indispensable. So after Harrison was born, she had the choice to work from home, reduce her hours, whatever she wanted. Imagine! would do anything to keep her. So she did work from home for a while, until she realized that one of the pay-offs for a working mother was to actually get a break from the child and the house. So she went back to the office two days a week, and after Harrison’s first birthday, three days. She had a delightful mother-in-law who adored her only grandson and couldn’t wait to be asked to care for him.

  So all in all, Meg had the perfect life. And no surprise. Of course Meg was a success: she planned, she set goals, she made lists. Ally never made lists. Occasionally she made lists, when Meg gave her a pep talk about getting her act together. She would write a list that started with the jobs she had already done. And then she would cross those items out straightaway. Meg said that was not really the idea. But Ally maintained there was nothing so satisfying as drawing a thick black line through a task, even if you had done it yesterday, or the day before. Very satisfying.

  Somehow they stayed friends. Meg, driven and ambitious, and Ally, drifting from one thing to another, with little idea of what to do next. Yet something held them together, perhaps their very differences.

  * * *

  Before they’d married, Meg and Chris had literally stalked Watsons Bay for two years in the hope of scoring one of the old fisherman’s cottages, just below the HMAS Watson reserve. And they had finally succeeded. It was an idyllic spot, in a tiny leafy lane, with glimpses of Camp Cove from the back deck. The only drawback was parking. Ally usually had to park at least a block away, and today was no exception.

  Knocking on Meg’s front door, Ally could hear Harrison crying from inside the house. Meg opened the door looking harassed and fed up.

  “Thank God,” she declared at the sight of Ally on her doorstep. “Harrison! Look who’s here, Ya-Yee!”

  There was no break to the screaming.

  “Come on, he’s so wound up he’s not even listening. He’ll only stop when he actually sees you.”

  “Is he alright?” Ally asked, following Meg down the hall to the kitchen.

  “He just got up on the wrong side of the cot after his nap. It happens.”

  Harrison was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, red-faced, tears streaming down his cheeks, clenching his chunky little fists tight.

  “Harrison!” Ally cooed, but loud enough to be heard over the din.

  His shoulders jumped at the sound of her voice, and he twisted around to look at her. His face broke into a broad grin.

  “Ya-Yee!” he squealed, scrambling to his feet and toddling a little unsteadily over to her outstretched arms.

  Ally stood up, hoisting him into her arms. Harrison leaned his head on her shoulder and let out one of those shuddering half-sigh, half-sobs that signaled an end to the tears.

  “I don’t know what magic you possess,” said Meg, pulling a chair out for Ally.

  “I’m the fairy godmother, while you are just the regular mother. Not nearly as diverting.”

  “I don’t care what it is or why, but move in with us.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Chris would just love that,” Ally grinned dubiously.

  “He’d put up with it if I wanted it.”

  True enough. Chris Lynch would do anything for Meg. They had met while they both studied for their MBAs, and had fallen hard and fast and completely. He was a great big bear of a man, with a crooked nose and a crooked smile, and sandy brown hair that always sat skewiff. But he had the kindest eyes Ally had ever seen on a man, and he was constantly in awe of the fact that a woman like Meg had consented to be his wife. Ally envied their relationship.

  “Glass of wine?”

  “I’ve got work to do tonight.”

  “Oh, have at least half a glass,” Meg persisted, already pouring the wine. “Then I won’t have to tick the box in the Cleo quiz that will push me over into the ‘you have a drinking problem’ category. As long as I don’t drink alone, I’m still in the ‘you could develop a drinking problem’ category.”

  Ally shook her head. “You still read that crap? It’s so … last century!”

  Meg rolled her eyes.

  “In this brave new millennium women have far more important concerns than whether eyeliner is in or out, or how to have multiple orgasms.”

  “You think there’s something more important than that?” Meg winked, handing her a glass.

  Ally laughed. She had a point. Meg plonked herself down opposite Ally and swung her long legs onto another chair. She was tall and lean, with flawless skin and glossy dark hair cut into a perfect bob. Meg was one of those people who always looked elegant, even in shorts and a singlet top. Ally was not one of those people. She was, she felt, quite ordinary. Her mop of unruly curls ensured that she would never be called elegant. Of an indeterminate color, her hair could most favorably be described as “amber” or “honey” but was, in all honesty, just mousy.

  “Haven’t you read that copy of The Beauty Myth I loaned you yet?” Ally continued. “It’ll open your eyes to all that nonsense.”
<
br />   “Ally, you need a brain to read that stuff, and I only have half one now, since Harrison was born.”

  Ally kissed his soft, blond head. “How can you say that?”

  “It’s true. Women lose half their brain to each child. So after your first, you’re about even with the baby. But of course their brain develops. Yours is past that. If you have anymore children, you go into serious intellectual depletion.”

  “That’s garbage.”

  “Not at all. I figure I can have one more baby, tops. After that I’ll have the mental capacity of a head of lettuce.”

  “So how do you explain women with three or four children?”

  “I rest my case!” Meg raised her glass toward Ally in a kind of a toast.

  Ally shook her head. “Well, if I had a baby as beautiful as Harrison, I’d want a dozen more.”

  “So I keep hearing. And yet, strangely, it never happens!” Meg said with mock disbelief.

  “You know why I haven’t had a baby yet.”

  “No actually, I don’t know why that man has not seen fit to give you your dearest wish, or to make an honest woman out of you.”

  Meg often referred to Bryce as “that man,” despite the fact that she’d known him now for five years, as long as Ally had.

  “He’s not ready for fatherhood yet. At least he takes the idea seriously; I’m not going to push him.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Ally, he’s thirty-eight years old. At this rate he’ll be a grandfather before he’s ready to be a father.”

  Ally pondered the logistics of that for a moment before retorting, “Well, lucky I’m patient.”

  “No, not patient, immobilized. You’re just stuck in a dead-end relationship which you can’t leave because that would involve making a decision.” She took a good mouthful of wine and looked defiantly back at Ally.

  Meg’s bluntness was one of her least attractive qualities, Ally thought, mostly because she usually struck a particularly raw nerve.

  “So,” Ally started, breaking the uncomfortable silence. Well, Meg didn’t look uncomfortable at all, but Ally was. “… what was on Oprah today—‘Women who love too much,’ or ‘All men are bastards?’”