7
Wayne Crabbe had tried singles clubs and got lucky a few times, but he found it was a lot of work to get to the action in the end. The women were more careful these days, and would usually expect to be taken out a few times before you got to meet their kids. Then they'd be watchful for a while, and before you knew it you were spending half your life with a fat, ugly hag waiting for moments that might never come. And the longer you were with these bitches, the more they could learn about you. He hated the waiting. He wanted to be in and out. Minimum of fuss. No harm done.
Wayne had come up with the job offer idea while with a western suburbs troll who had a beautiful nine- year-old boy. She'd desperately wanted a job and all she ever did was whine about how hard it was to find one. When he met another mum one morning in a doctor's surgery, scanning the job ads, he came up with the plan on the spot.
'Excuse me,' he smiled at Rose Deloso, a dark-haired woman wearing a neat tracksuit. 'You're not looking for a job, are you?'
The woman looked him over, her brow furrowed, and said nothing. He nodded at the columns in the paper she was poring over.
'It's just that I'm having trouble filling a job.' He smiled reassuringly, trying hard not to look at the boy playing with Lego at her feet. 'You're not by any chance interested in casual work at a cafe, are you?'
'Really? Are you serious?' She was smiling now too. 'I mean, yeah, I'm looking for work. Are you for real?'
'Yep. You wouldn't believe how hard it's been getting someone to work the hours we need.'
'Well, I'm only looking for school-hours work.' She looked at him doubtfully, 'I've got to pick the kids up at three. Well, except for Fridays, when their dad's got them.'
'It's hard, isn't it, when you're on your own?' Wayne tried for empathy. 'I've just got one son. Me and his mum thought it would be best to have him a week each. It's working out pretty well, but only because my mother can drop him at school. I'm right to pick him up. You don't have anyone to help you out?'
'Nope. My parents still work themselves. It's just me, I'm afraid.'
Bingo.
Wayne smiled again, warm, but professional. 'Well, I can't promise you the job now, but we actually need someone ten till two, for the lunchtime crowd. Monday to Friday. If that suits, we could both be happy.'
'Oh my God, I can't believe this,' she laughed. 'This is the last thing I thought would happen here.' She self- consciously smoothed her ponytail, sat straighter, and shushed her delicious five-year-old boy, who was playing with the germ-infested clinic toys. 'Well, what should we do? How can I apply? Should I give you my mobile number?'
As easy as that.
'Look,' he said, thinking fast. 'You should have a look at the place first.' He gave her the location of a Burwood cafe he frequented. It was next to the railway station and was popular with the after-school rush.
'Listen though,' he added, leaning forward slightly, 'I'm the owner, not the manager, and the manageress is a bit, well, territorial. She likes to do the hiring and firing.' He smiled with chagrin, shrugged his shoulders. 'Would you mind not saying anything about the job when you have a look? Save me any conflict with Cath? I'll speak to her and call you in for a formal interview if she hasn't found anyone. What do you think?'
'Yeah, okay. Sure. I'll go have a look. And you'll call about an interview?' Rose was standing now, hurrying her son. Her name had been announced by the receptionist; it was her turn to see the doctor.
'I'll call you tomorrow,' he said, tucking her number into his pocket. Now to get into her house. Wayne called Rose the next morning. Could she come in for an interview? Eleven tomorrow? Great.
Another call that afternoon. So sorry. A last-minute appointment in Brisbane had come up. He'd call her on his return.
Wayne's tone was polite but friendly when he called Rose the third time.
'Rose, I've spoken to Cath and she'd like to meet you. It's busy at work, though, and it'd be easiest for her if we stopped in at your house for a coffee after work tomorrow. Do you think that's okay? She knocks off at six. We could drop 'round at 6.30, and be gone by seven. What do you think?'
Rose seemed hesitant, somewhat puzzled, but was eventually won over. She wanted the job, and when Wayne arrived, alone and apologetic, bearing chocolate mud cake with Rohypnol-laced icing, she let him in.
Wayne made sure she had the biggest slice, and fifteen minutes later, with Mummy sound asleep with her face in the cake, he went to play birthday parties with the five-year-old.
8
Carole Dean had finally hung up. Standing at the base of her winding gravel driveway, still in her pyjamas, Mercy dropped the phone handset into her dressing-gown pocket. She should've let the call go to the answering machine. When she'd realised it was Carole on the line, she'd resignedly taken the phone and her cigarettes out the front door. At least she could distract herself with the sky and trees as she reassured Carole that she was fine.
Mercy had been proud of her saccharine chatter throughout the call. She'd worked with this woman for years, and knew that Carole would never back off if Mercy couldn't convince her that yesterday had been an anomaly, that she just needed a good rest.
Wrapping her gown closer around her body, Mercy went back inside and looked around guardedly, almost as though she expected to see something unusual there. As it happened, this was not an ordinary house. Perched on the precipice of a cliff dropping to a deep ravine in the Blue Mountains, almost the entire back wall of the split- level house was glass. The effect was of living in the sky above a vast bush canyon; indeed, at the moment, clouds on the balcony whorled insistently as though indignant at being denied entry. Two galahs scratched at the jarrah decking, calling occasionally for more seed to be scattered.
It was always at least ten degrees cooler at Mercy's home than anywhere else in Sydney, and she shivered slightly as she stepped down to her sunken lounge, reaching automatically for the remote to play some music. She nudged the volume lower and the Japanese harps soothed her somewhat.
What the hell was happening to her? She stared down at her bandaged hand, fascinated by the white gauze marked by the bloom of red blood.
Her clinical supervisor, Dr Noah Griffen, had been warning her for months that she was taking on too many abuse cases, that she was at risk of burning out. She'd listened impatiently, resentful at having to spend more time at the hospital to attend these sessions. Regular clinical supervision was a requirement of her employment, though, and if she missed more than six of the weekly sessions in a year she had to answer to the Clinical Director.
She had been attending supervision with Griffen for ten years now, and had, in fact, decided to consult at the Sisters of Charity Hospital because of her mentor's practice there, but she'd grown increasingly intolerant of his admonitions to reduce her caseload. It wasn't like he wasn't doing the same kind of work.
Mercy's expertise with survivors of childhood sexual abuse had led to a lengthy waiting list for her services, and she felt unable to turn down the individuals who sought her help. But as the years had passed working with this population, she found herself in tears more often than not as they told their stories. She was increasingly unable to stop her imagination from conjuring images of the abuse they had endured, which would vie for space with memories of the beatings from her own childhood. A flame of hatred for the offenders was stoked with each new tale of suffering.
One sleepless night, after speaking with an eighteen-yearold girl slowly dying of anorexia nervosa, she had realised that this patient's file was still in her bag. Snapping on her bedside light, she had pulled the thick hospital folder onto her bed, hoping to find something within its contents that could help her with this young woman.
The girl had been repeatedly hospitalised since she was twelve, when she had tried to kill herself by taking
