Lisa Heidke

minutes to her house. The meal is delicious, though I’m so tired and overwrought that I make terrible company.
‘Barry and I have been through tough times,’ Emma confides to me in the kitchen as she whips the cream for dessert. ‘But we’ve worked through it, you know? You and Max can too.’
I nod. Sure, let’s not think about the fact he’s off having the time of his middle-aged life with a teenager.
‘Get this,’ Emma says, shaking a wooden spoon in front of me. ‘Barry told me that my aggressive personality was rendering him impotent, said he needed to feel powerful, in control.’
I look at her for a minute, trying to imagine Barry saying those words. He’s at least six foot three and weighs a hundred kilos.
‘I know, I know. But men are such babies,’ she says. ‘We’ve come to a compromise - he’s stopped questioning me about the house and my cooking and, in return, I’ve stopped trying to micromanage his career, which he’s absolutely hopeless at, by the way. But life’s a compromise, isn’t it?’
She licks the spoon, shrugs her shoulders and pours me another glass of wine.
‘You have to do what you have to do,’ I say, recalling Nadia’s comment about the Subservient Wives Club.
‘Exactly.’
Because I know this line of conversation will lead to further discomfort - my own - I take the coward’s way out and get hideously drunk. Okay, not so drunk that I blather on about Max and how he and his stupid red surfboard have left me, but drunk enough to start singing ‘Billy Don’t Be a Hero’ and other choice hits of the seventies and eighties.
Eventually, Bella demands to be taken home.

Day 23
Last night was so embarrassing. I’ll have to send Emma and Barry a thankyou card and apologise for my behaviour. Perhaps they’ll think I drink two bottles of wine every Monday night. Which I don’t.
I jump from strategy to strategy, thought to thought. What happens when Max eventually comes home? If he comes home?
My first idea is to make him pay for what he’s done. If Max thinks that the worst I can do is give all of his clothes to charity, he’s got a huge reality check coming. Not that I’d sever his penis with a kitchen knife à la Lorena Bobbitt, or even replace his shampoo with Nair hair remover (great idea though, Lucy!), but I will drag him through the courts. By the time I’m finished with Max, he and Alana will be eating fish fingers and mashed potatoes for the rest of their lives.
But then I think, do I really want to go through a messy divorce? What about Bella and Sam? What if, when I see Max, he’s truly sorry for what he’s done?
Then I start to feel sorry for myself. What have I done to deserve this? Did I make him feel emasculated, ineffectual, weak, powerless and feeble? Did I stop him taking his rightful place as the almighty and powerful protector of his family? I consider that theory for a few moments before dismissing it as the bullshit it is.
But maybe we can work everything out - assuming he ditches the trollop. It’s a given that Bella and Sam would be happier having their dad living at home. And let’s face it: divorce would be difficult for all of us. No, Max and I should definitely tough it out, at least while Bella and Sam are at school. If he still feels the same way in ten years, then he can leave.
We’ll still be young(ish) and can live out our selfish fantasies then. I say ‘our’ but I actually mean ‘his’.
Shit! To hell with Max! What I need to do is take these renovations by the proverbial and get them finished! Except that Patch and his boys haven’t turned up. It’s a sunny winter’s day with not a rain cloud in sight, so I wonder what their excuse will be this time.
I ring Patch’s mobile and go straight through to his voicemail. ‘Just wondering what your movements are today, Patch,’ I say brightly into the phone, thinking, bloody well get over here and finish building my house, NOW.
I want my home back. I want a working kitchen. I want to cook food on a stovetop and have my fridge in the room where it’s supposed to be.
* * *
‘I tell you, Tuesdays come around just a little too quickly for my liking,’ I say to Gloria as we head to tennis. But at least I have a snazzy new outfit to prance around in.
At the coffee urn, I say hi to Reggie, a quiet young woman I vaguely know. She normally partners her mother, who isn’t here today.
‘Chatting with the prostitute?’ Gloria says after Reggie walks out to the court.
‘You’re going straight to hell, you know.’
‘What? Reggie and her mother manage a brothel in Darlinghurst. Maybe they don’t actually perform intimacies, but you know what they say: the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.’
‘You’re an idiot.’
‘I’m just saying, you never really know what’s going on in people’s lives until you get a private investigator involved.’
We head outside, and I trip over my feet and scuff my new racquet. Gloria is still in agent mode, trying to talk me into auditioning for a home renovation show, in two days’ time.
‘I don’t want to host a renovation program,’ I say, ‘it’s an overcrowded market.’
‘Settle. Think back to when they used Noni’s house as a guinea pig for Better Homes and Gardens.’
It turns out Gloria’s scammed a renovation audition for me only because she agreed I’d do Celebrity Blind Date, which is taping tomorrow.
‘Gloria, I can’t do that. I’m busy. It’s too soon. I’ve got nothing to wear.’
‘Please, do it as a favour to me. Catriona Rowntree bowed out. Turns out she’s married, pregnant, otherwise detained.’
‘But I’m married!’
‘By the time the show goes to air, you won’t be. Besides, there’s a free meal involved and, more importantly, it’s a great opportunity to meet a