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Later, she hovers with Sam on his front step. Tonight she wants more than just, I might see you at the station on Monday. But Tom’s there at the gate.
“Bill sent me to say, quote, ‘You better not be staying at Sam’s, because all he does is give you high blood pressure,’ unquote, and then Na
Sam makes a sound of disbelief. “They’re blaming me for your high blood pressure?”
“Let’s go.” Tom says it with force. He’s not leaving without her.
A moment later, Dominic jogs by. “At this time of the night?” she asks.
Tom takes Georgie’s hand and leads her away, but he turns back to Sam for a moment.
“I’m sorry about the packet of snakes I gave Callum,” he mumbles. “And the lime ice-block. And the Redskin.”
Georgie pinches him hard for lying to her, but as they walk back toward her house and she watches Dom do his fist thrusts in the distance, she can’t help laughing until she’s forced to stop because she can hardly walk.
“He’s OCD,” Tom says.
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s just a bit obsessive . . . in a compulsive sort of way.”
“Between my OCD father and you, I can’t understand why I’m not in the nuthouse.”
And she keeps on laughing until her stomach aches and her bladder feels weak. It’s the third time she’s laughed this week. But it feels better than crying.
Tom doesn’t realize until he wakes up on the morning of his mother’s birthday that he honestly believed his father would go to her. That he was counting on it. Praying for it subconsciously. Birthdays were big for his mum and every single year his father would come home feigning indifference and then spring something ridiculously extravagant on her.
“We can’t afford it,” she’d say.
“We can afford it. Tom and Anabel can just go without food for a week,” he’d say.
It was usually a fancy restaurant. His father was a foodie. Looked like a steak and chips guy. Yet another contradiction.
But this year, his father stays closed up in Georgie’s study and Tom feels it in his gut. That if Dominic doesn’t return to Jacinta Louise today, he never will.
He works alongside Ned, who’s complaining about five assignments and exams coming up and Francesca, who’s counting down the days before Trombal gets home. He finally rings his mother during his break while he’s having a smoke out back. Asks if she’s had a good day and he can hear her lie when she says yes. He tries to mumble I love you and Happy Birthday but Ned’s emptying the garbage beside him, listening to every word. Francesca doesn’t say much, but he feels her watching him with those big empathetic eyes and he even stays longer to scrub the stove until it sparkles so he doesn’t have to chat with them for their nightly postmortem on the pavement, which usually consists of Francesca believing that Stani’s going to let them play one Sunday afternoon if the old-timers call in sick. Or disappear. He’s worried that if the regular band members are mysteriously killed, he’ll have to point a finger at Justine and Francesca.
When he does leave, waving off Stani who always has that intense I’m-watching-you look on his face, Tom makes it as far as the end of the street before he realizes he’s being trailed.
“We’re going to Brisvegas,” Francesca says from the passenger window. “You coming?”
He can hardly see her in the dark. “You’re going to Brisbane?” he asks with disbelief, without stopping. He’s not in the mood for Francesca and her crap tonight. “What are you going on about?”
“We leave now and we’ll get there by eight in the morning, stay a couple of hours and then head back at lunchtime and get back here tomorrow night.”
He stops walking, well and truly pissed off.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You mean ridicolos,” Francesca says, imitating Stani. “We can drive through the Gold Coast. It’s a metropolis. I’ve been dying to get there for years.”
“The same Gold Coast you called a cesspit and boycotted for Schoolies? And we got stuck at Siobhan’s cousin’s flat at Engadine like the biggest losers around.”
“And I’ve regretted it ever since, so let’s drive through the Gold Coast.” The way Francesca can feign sincerity is amazing.
The car engine stops and he hears the door opening from the driver’s seat.
“Tom, get in the car,” Justine says firmly. “We’re going to Brisbane. I’m taking the first two hours, then Frankie, and then you and then Ned. Every two hours. Stop. Revive. Survive.”
“Ned? What the hell has he been telling you?”
“Get in the car. Now.”
They have a standoff. The two horsewomen of the apocalypse still win, despite their dwindling numbers.
He gets in and slams the door, glaring at Ned, who shrugs.
“Don’t you have five exams or something?” Tom accuses.
“Some people clean the fridge to avoid studying. I go to Brisbane.”
“I’ve got a plan so we don’t fight over the music,” Justine tells them. “Everyone gets their MP3s ready and they choose two songs each and we plug in when it’s our turn.”
“That’s fair,” Francesca says. She turns to face the back and nods. “Fair?”
“Frankie will choose the two shittiest songs each time, just to piss us off,” Tom mutters.
There’s a sound of disgust from the front seat. “What a thing to say, Tom. Since when have I been that petty, huh?” She turns to Justine. “Can you believe he said that? Can you?”
“Say you’re sorry, Tom,” Justine says.
He says he’s sorry and Francesca plays Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi.” She and Justine are killing themselves laughing because they know the rhyme will almost kill Ned and the tune will make Tom vomit. It’s a bit of death by music, really. Justine does the show tunes. It doesn’t get worse than “Jesus Christ Superstar” for Tom. Who would have thought to put music to a crucifixion? Worse still is the passion that Mary Magdalene and the good woman of Galilee in the front seat are putting into the singing. The girls know every single word and who gets to sing what. Ned is staring at Tom in horror. They haven’t even reached the north coast turn-off yet. “Pick something that will make them hurt,” Ned says. “Be vicious.” Tom thinks hard and can only come up with “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” and the caterwauling makes even him sick. Ned won’t be part of the bad-taste competition because he claims there’s only good-taste music in his MP3 player. He plays Sigur Rós, which Francesca explains is a form of government torture in some non-Icelandic nations. And that’s how they get to Brisbane.
When they reach the outskirts, early the next morning, Francesca stops by a roadside fruit vendor.
“Flowers, Tom.”
She looks at him through the rearview mirror.
“The tulips are great at this time of the year,” she says. “My mum loves them.”
And then he’s standing at her office door, looking at his mother for the first time in almost a year. His father would say she was all cornflower-blue eyes and attitude. Not feisty, because she didn’t lose her cool. Just attitude. Half the size of Dominic in his robust days, she always complained that she could get lost in the Amazonian world of the Finch and Mackees. Big people. Big personalities. “If your father ever wanted to prove I wasn’t the mother of his children, they’d just have to look at both of you and laugh me out of court,” she’d say. The last time Tom had seen her was when she came to pack up the house after his father disappeared. To beg Tom to come up north. He was stoned out of his brain that day, staring right through her the whole time. But he wasn’t stoned enough to forget the look on her face. He’ll take that look to his grave.