Lisa Heidke

I tell people he’d left me over a toilet?
I ring Max’s phone again. Still off.
Another bottle of Grange bites the dust, but there’s still plenty of great wine in the cellar. I creep down to restock, making my way silently past the builders.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Patch sitting down, drinking a cup of coffee. He’s nice enough - pleasant temperament, easy laugh. Some might even call him charming. Tall and tanned, with fashionably messy caramel-coloured hair, he’s easy on the eye too. Unfortunately, he’s also titanically slack and his coffee breaks never seem to end.
Then there’s Jamaican Joel, Patch’s second-in-charge - a nuggetty fellow with long dark dreadlocks. He’s always lurking in the background, tapping his safety glasses. And the twins, Tom and Ted. When I first met them I thought I was going mad, or needed glasses. ‘We’re not that similar,’ said Tom or Ted. I beg to differ. They are identical.
‘I like snakes, all reptiles, in fact. But Tom doesn’t.’
‘I love being in the dark,’ said the other.
‘And you twitch when you’re angry.’
Their chat gives me headaches.
‘Make it easy on yourself,’ Patch advised. ‘Call them both “T” and be done with it.’
The others - there must be five at least, all interchangeable to me - mostly sit on their rather large bottoms smoking and swilling coffee. And, I suspect, urinating on my hydrangeas, which are looking very sad since the builders’ arrival.
I load several bottles of Henschke’s Hill of Grace into a green recyclable bag and carry it through the dirt pit that’s supposed to be my new parquetry kitchen floor. Patch calls out as I slink past but I pretend deafness, run up the stairs to my bedroom and close the door behind me. I don’t mean to slam it, but somehow the doorknob slips out of my hands. It’s so undignified having to sneak past builders in your own house.
I’m into my second Hill of Grace when the phone rings. Gloria again, in serious hounding mode. I listen to her bang on to the machine about a celebrity archery tournament and how I simply must let her put me forward as a participant.
What the hell am I doing with my life? Archery games? Half-empty wine bottles lying around?
In a burst of clarity and optimism, I realise I can’t hide in my bedroom forever. Bella and Sam are coming home tomorrow. Whether Max has left me or not, I have to get my act together.

Day 5
Easier said than done. Instead of cleaning the house, showering and shopping for groceries, I spend the majority of the day crying so that I’m puffy, bloated and red-faced when I pick up my hungry and exhausted kids.
‘Mum, you look really bad,’ says my daughter, Isabella, who’s far too switched-on for a ten-year-old. You’d never guess we were mother and daughter. For a start, she has dark brown hair while mine is reddish with blonde highlights. Bella has beautiful olive skin, gorgeous big eyes, rosebud lips and long skinny legs. My skin is fair, almost translucent, and it’s been a long time since any part of me could be described as skinny, or even slim. Shapely, certainly.
Now Sam, he definitely is my child with his fair skin, red hair and pale green eyes.
‘Where’s Dad?’ he asks after we arrive home. A typical eight-year-old, he never usually notices anything unless it’s right in front of his nose.
I return to my bedroom, and my bed.
‘Camp was great, Mum. Thanks for asking,’ says Bella, coming into my room after a while. ‘God, it’s filthy in here. I can hardly breathe for the dust. What’s with all the bottles?’
Sam joins her. ‘Why is the carpet all wet and red?’
‘There’s no food in the house.’
‘When are we going to have a kitchen again?’
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘The toilet’s broken.’
On and on they go, bombarding me with complaints and questions.
I look over at the photo beside the bed. It’s of the four of us - me, Max, Sam and Bella - taken five years ago on a beach holiday. We’re all smiles. It’s just a brief romanticised snapshot of our lives, though. Earlier in the day the children had been getting on Max’s nerves. And looking at my beaming self, I notice the hint of a double chin, and think how boring and conservative my blue sarong looked. No wonder Max left me.
‘Mum, we have to eat,’ says Sam, interrupting my reverie.
I briefly think about cooking a nutritious meal, then abandon the idea and ask Bella to dial Mitzi’s Chinese home delivery.


Day 6
‘Mum, when are you getting out of bed?’
Bloody kids. Why can’t I hibernate here in my darkened nest forever?
‘I’m sick, Bella,’ I groan, peering sleepily at the clock radio on the bedside table. ‘It’s Saturday morning. It’s nine o’clock. Go and watch cartoons.’
‘But we’ve been awake since six-thirty and there’s no food in the house, not even enough milk for Weetbix.’
The way Bella talks you’d think I was a completely hopeless mother, which is far from the truth. On school days I’m always up (reluctantly) at 6.40 am making sure the children are fed, watered and clothed before sending them off to school with a nutritious packed lunch. Okay, so sometimes it’s a Baker’s Delight bacon and cheese roll and an apple. Still.
‘Anyway, I called Nanna,’ Bella goes on.
‘What?’ I say, sitting up quickly.
My mother marches into my bedroom, yanks back the curtains and opens the windows. ‘For goodness sake, Lucy,’ she bellows, ‘I should report you for neglect. And it’s so stuffy in here.’
How is it my mother can still make me feel like a naughty seven-year-old?
‘I’m the one who’s neglected,’ I say, sniffing a little. ‘And sick. And bloody stressed.’
Mum gives me a withering look. She’s a big woman, not so much in girth as in stature (I inherited my height from her), and while I’m slightly taller, she has an imposing (some might say overbearing) nature. Her hair, like Bella’s, is cut in an immaculate bob, except