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 most of its six-bedroom expanse repainted in Santorini colours, all Mediterranean blue and blinding white, but in the lounge off the entranceway, everything was still her mother’s: the pale walls and muted grey carpet, the metal and porcelain fittings and accessories, the Gauguin print over the couch. It made Cressida feel serene just being near the things Peggy had chosen. Even Alessa wasn’t going to make her feel tense today, she decided. That was the game they always played with each other anyway – who could be the more offhand, the more detached, the more smoothly critical of the other, while affecting a demeanour of total innocence. To date it was a game that Alessa always seemed to win.
Looking in at the marble ground-floor bathroom though, Cressida felt anything but serene. Thankfully there was no actual physical contents in the toilet bowl, but the water was up to the rim. Did plumbing fail during a blackout?
‘I’ll deal with that when I get back,’ she said. ‘Helena, it’s really better if I go get Felipe on my own. Alessa, how was your flight?’
‘It was a flight,’ said Alessa with flat humour, subsiding into the white reproduction Eames chair next to the kitchen. The lushly upholstered fifties icon with its moulded plywood framework and matching Ottoman, on which her sister’s mauve painted toenails currently reclined, had been her father’s favourite, and Cressida was surprised to feel a fizz of resentment to see her sister sitting in it. It didn’t help that the chair’s curved white headrest was reminiscent of the fancy Partner chair Cressida had seen in Alessa’s office when she’d videocalled her at work in Singapore.
‘They even had a decent wine list,’ Alessa was saying, scrolling distractedly through her phone. ‘Of course you never know with Qantas. I always fly Emirates, but they’ve cut their direct to Sydney. Not a big enough market in Australia apparently.’
‘How tiresome for you,’ Cressida said, finding two glasses in the cupboard. ‘You know I’d turn that off if you want it charged when you need it. Helena, sit down and I’ll make you a drink. Oh. Does anyone realise there’s a pond around the refrigerator?’
‘Oh!’
