Love and Punishment Read online

  Francie woke with her hands balled into two fists in her cleavage. Her heart was racing, she was breathing hard. She saw it all, in an instant. Nick and Poppy were now the rulers of her kingdom. Francie was no more significant than a mouse. Somewhere a wise owl was waiting to make a meal of her.

  But she wasn’t ready to be caught. No, not yet.

  Four

  ‘So, this is the kitchen. And here is the broom cupboard, vacuum cleaner, all that stuff. Although I don’t think Dave has discovered it yet,’ laughed Jessie.

  Francie dutifully inspected the broom cupboard. It was a very good broom cupboard and, amazingly, had a lofty ceiling, just like the kitchen. The kitchen itself, even more amazingly, had a working fireplace. There were alcoves in the wall on either side of it backed with leadlight panels. The ivy leaf design in the glass was echoed in the windows at the end of the adjoining dining room, which was furnished with a long old wooden table. It was a room of stately proportions and Francie had rarely seen a space quite as handsome.

  The house was originally Victorian but had been made over in the 1940s with an Art Nouveau-ish, Deco facade. The name Elysium was picked out in gloriously extravagant script on the pediment. Francie remembered that, according to Greek mythology, Elysium was the place you went to after death. She couldn’t think of a better name for the place she was moving to.

  Jessie turned and crossed the hallway. With a flourish she opened a pair of panelled wooden doors to reveal a huge sunny room. It was comfortably furnished with a squashy cream linen-covered sofa and two old armchairs with loose covers of faded pink floral cotton. A television sat in one corner, facing no-one. The bookshelves went from floor to ceiling and were jammed full. Piles of magazines reached the windowsills. There were purple irises in tall vases standing on the floor either side of another fireplace edged with tiles embossed with fern leaves. It was altogether comforting, loved, welcoming.

  The windows looked out onto blooming blue hydrangeas. In the rear wall another pair of French doors decorated with amber glass fanlights issued onto a wooden veranda. Jessie hit the stereo and the Rolling Stones blared from the speakers.

  ‘ONE OF THE BEST THINGS ABOUT HAVING A SOUND ENGINEER LIVING WITH YOU—SHIT HOT STEREO SYSTEM!’ she bellowed over the music.

  ‘LOOK! OUR LOUNGE ROOM HAS A SPRUNG FLOOR. WE’VE TESTED IT OUT!’

  Francie watched Jessie pogo across a red Persian rug.

  ‘ALTHOUGH . . .’ and Jessie hit the ‘off’ button, ‘don’t fuck with Robbie’s stuff or he’ll have a panic attack. Robbie’s a bit precious, but he’s brilliant to live with.’

  ‘So . . .’ Jessie folded her arms across her chest and regarded Francie with a pair of large, inquisitive hazel eyes. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here the other day when you came to check out the room. You should keep the key Gabby gave you. Now, what else can I tell you?’

  Jessie walked back to the kitchen. Francie followed and wondered where to begin. Perhaps with the question: ‘How come at the age of thirty-two I’m moving into a shared household in St Kilda with a trio of tragic singles when I should be in a two-bedroom brick veneer in Brighton with a baby on the way?’

  Instead she opted for something she thought Jessie could answer: ‘Um, who does most of the cooking?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jessie, peering into one of Francie’s cardboard boxes, ‘judging by the amount of kitchen utensils you’ve got in here, I would say it was you. In fact, you are the only person I’ve ever met, in my entire life, who has a melon baller, an ice cream scoop and . . .’ Jessie reached into the box and pulled out a small rubber-handled device and held it aloft. ‘What the hell is this?’

  ‘It’s a lemon zester. I do like to cook. Although I wouldn’t say I’m very good.’

  Jessie shook her head in amazement. ‘At least with you it’s a verb—“to cook”. Usually with us it’s a noun. Someone we can see through a glass wall while we’re drinking at the bar! Speaking of which, I think we need a drink. A welcome to the haunted mansion convivial.’ She took two glasses down from a shelf.

  ‘Haunted? You have ghosts here?’ It seemed possible in this rambling old place. It was the first time Francie had ever had a room in a house which had a cellar, a cloakroom, a vestibule and an attic. It was all much grander than she remembered.

  ‘Yeah. Ghosts of relationships past. Spooky exes who ring the telephone, knock on the door, leave weird notes in the middle of the night. All very scary!’ Jessie rolled her eyes in mock horror.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Didn’t you see the sign over the door: ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER? Vodka and tonic OK?’

  She opened the freezer. Where Francie’s freezer had always been stocked with raspberry sorbet and frozen dim sum, this one was stacked with chilled vodka bottles.

  ‘Perfect, thanks. Exactly what does the sign mean?’

  ‘I put that up back in June when I was halfway through the “Great Drought of 2004”. Which, by the way, I hope will break before Christmas! It means that if you’re looking for a relationship, you’ve come to the wrong place. The people in this house are cursed to endure an endless string of crappy one-night stands and dead-end affairs.’ Jessie grimaced and offered a glass filled to the brim.

  ‘Well . . .’ Francie took her drink and sat at the dining room table. ‘That suits me. About the last thing I need right now is another relationship. Crappy one-night stands sound like where I’m up to at the moment.’

  Jessie opened a window, then sat opposite and lit a cigarette.

  ‘House rules. The boys hate cigarettes inside, but I sit here and have one as long as the window’s open. Want one?’

  ‘No thanks. Don’t smoke. How long have you all lived here?’

  Jessie exhaled towards the window. ‘It must be about three years now. I’m thirty-three, so yeah. I was like you, just out of the long relationship. I left. I guess we both wanted different things. I wanted a lover. He wanted a sister. End of story. As far as I’m concerned anyway. You’ll get to meet Henry. He’s one of the exes who haunts the place. So . . .’ said Jessie, holding up her glass, ‘here’s to the single life. Enjoy. And may it last not a moment longer than you want it to.’

  Francie gave her a friendly clink. On first impressions, she liked Jessie. Her face was, of course, familiar to Francie. She was the famous Jessie Pascoe, a stand-up comedian known for her sharp wit and acerbic views on life, love and men. She was one of the resident wits on the Friday night panel show Talkfest on Channel O. Everyone had heard of Jessie Pascoe! She was warmer, sweeter—and shorter—than she appeared on television. But both on screen and in person it seemed she’d tell you everything about herself in the first five minutes. Every detail of her life was offered up for a laugh.

  She was not a classic beauty, but her big hazel eyes set in a plump round face and her utterly winning smile made her someone you felt you could share secrets with. She was shorter than Francie. Curvy, energetic. Her hair was a dozen different colours and spiked with gel. Overall she reminded Francie of a big-eyed, plump tabby kitten which had been pulled, protesting and wriggling, from a basket.

  ‘But with you being on television, surely men chase you all the time?’ asked Francie.

  ‘Hah! I wish!’ Jessie took another deep drag of her ciggie. ‘When boys meet me they think three things. One: that whatever happens, their details are going to end up on national television—which they are! Two: that I earn more money than them—which I do! And three: that I am smarter than them—which I am! So, there you go. Who wants to take me out for breakfast when I’ve just had them for dinner in front of a million people? Well, maybe a million people is stretching it, but you know what I mean.’

  Francie did know what Jessie meant. If she was a male confronted with a woman who proudly confessed to being a rich, smart big-mouth right up front, she would have run for the hills too. But then again, Jessie was so bare-faced honest that Francie was mesmerised.

  She jumped closer, a rabbit caught in the headlights.
‘I never thought about it like that,’ murmured Francie, ‘I just assumed—’

  Jessie talked over the top of her. ‘All of which brings me to what we have to get straight, from the beginning.’

  This sounded ominous. Francie put her glass down and met Jessie’s eyes. She took another rabbit hop forward.

  ‘Now. You write the Seriously Single column in the newspaper—which is brilliant by the way—’ Francie squirmed with pleasure at the compliment—‘and I am a panellist on Talkfest on television. Are we going to use stories from each other’s lives and, for that matter, what happens in this house? Or, is it strictly hands off? Cos I’ll warn you right now, I’m a comedian and I just sort of suck stuff out of the air. Everything around me—although it’s heavily disguised to protect the innocent—everything ends up in a routine somewhere. It’s all fodder . . . material. I can’t help it. And, I suspect, you are exactly the same.’

  It was a big question. Francie had never thought of herself as using her private life for profit. But she did, obviously.

  ‘Before you say anything, I promise that I will never compromise your reputation. But the last thing I need is for you to tell anyone the details of the passing parade of losers through my life. And if you can promise me that, I’m basically happy. Because if I was a journalist and I met me, I know that the temptation to tell everyone that Jessie Pascoe, who comes over on telly as this worldly wise, smart-arsed chick, is in reality a fucking emotional basket case . . . well, the temptation would be hard to resist. Whaddya say?’

  It may have been Jessie’s expertise as a stage performer which sucked Francie in, but she felt as if she had found an ally and confidant. Francie also knew she was so unbalanced that she’d lost her ability to judge. In the end, she wanted to trust Jessie, so she did.

  ‘Listen, Jessie, I feel the same. I’m trying to hold down a job as an agony aunt giving advice to the brokenhearted. If my readers knew that I was actually the one in agony, that I’ve just gone into therapy because I can’t handle my life by myself . . . well, let’s just say you’ve got a deal.’

  Jessie sat back in her chair, stubbed out her cigarette and extended her hand. ‘Good girl! Let’s agree, it’s open season on the “stuff”, with no names, no pack drill.’

  ‘That sounds fine to me.’ Francie beamed and they shook on it.

  ‘Welcome to the Last Chance Café,’ Jessie added. ‘You’ve trekked across an arid wasteland to get here, but it’s friendly and we have frozen vodka.’

  Francie laughed, but somewhere deep inside another warning bell was clanging. Again, she’d had just enough to drink to take no notice.

  Over the next two hours, as the sun moved off the windows and the corners of the old house retreated into shadow, Francie and Jessie unpacked Francie’s boxes and found homes for every plate, glass and serving platter. Jessie expressed her delight and excitement as she unwrapped dozens of newspaper parcels. She was like a kid on Christmas morning.

  ‘A lettuce dryer? They actually make such a thing? You’re kidding!

  ‘Wine bottle stoppers? You mean there are people who actually only drink half the bottle and save the rest? What for?

  ‘A whole cookbook just on tomatoes? And another one just for garlic? If you’ve got a fucking pea cookbook in here, I give up.

  ‘Jeez, Francie. Even my mother hasn’t got this much crap and she’s been married forty years!’

  Francie was beginning to be embarrassed by it all. She thought of her own mother in the family house in Blackburn. A single woman living in a house packed to the gunnels with thousands of knick-knacks—doilies, ceramic ornaments, canisters, crystal vases, painted teacups, silver cake forks, gravy boats. Had Francie really collected all this stuff in the short time she lived with Nick? She was turning into her mother. She shuddered at the thought.

  And then she recalled that both Nick and, twenty-two years earlier, her father had walked out the door with a few books, their shaving gear and the clothes they stood up in. In the end the domestic detritus had probably come to be a suffocating burden. She’d been collecting vintage embroidered table napkins while Nick was dreaming of escape.

  ‘Francie? Sorry, I didn’t mean it as an insult.’ Jessie touched her arm. ‘I just meant that I think you are incredible. The sewing basket, the tablecloths, the handpainted spice rack . . .’

  Francie stood knee-deep in scrunched-up newspaper with her arms full of Tupperware containers and looked at it all. Jessie was right. It was a pile of crap.

  ‘I know, I know. What you mean is that I’m some sort of 1950s Doris Day throwback. It’s so dumb. As though, if you make a perfect home, a man will come and live in it. Like a polar bear enclosure at the zoo. It’s utterly pathetic.’

  She dropped the pile of pastel plastic on the floor and slumped into a chair. Jessie handed her another drink.

  ‘Gabby told me all about it,’ Jessie said in a soothing tone. ‘I’m sorry. The way it happened really sucks. All this must be hard for you.’

  There it was again. Everyone knew about her break-up.

  ‘Gabby’s a great chick to have on your side, believe me. She’s a really good hater and that helps in a situation like yours.

  ‘I first met her about five years ago, back when she came to interview me. We met up after one of my shows at the Comedy Festival and about a million martinis later we were mates. She’s amazing, isn’t she?’

  Francie wondered in what way she was ‘amazing’ . . . specifically.

  ‘One of those chicks whose fingernails and toenails are always painted the same colour. Can you believe the amount of energy and concentration it must take to pull that off?’

  Francie smiled and regarded her own fingernails. She hadn’t polished them for months. What on earth must Gabby think of her?

  Jessie went on: ‘And her handbag always matches her shoes. Fuck! I’d need a month off and a forklift to transfer all the stuff that’s in mine!’

  Francie laughed. Jessie was going to be a fun housemate. Or should that be mansionmate? Which made her wonder: ‘How did you find such an incredible place?’

  ‘Just lucky. After I broke up with Henry I wanted to have my own place and I just stumbled across it. One of the last grand houses in St Kilda. The old gal who owns it is about ninety-two and the rent’s cheap enough if we do the garden—by the way, your turn to dead-head the roses this week.

  ‘Then I rang Dave, who brought Robbie. They’ve known each other since uni. My girlfriend Anna used to have your room. She’s living in London. And now you’re here. God, we’ve had some great bashes . . .’

  Francie sat and listened to Jessie tell tales of ghosts of parties past. They put their feet up on the empty cardboard boxes and proceeded to drink half a bottle of vodka and a four-pack of tonic. Eventually the details of Francie’s heartache with Nick and the ‘passing parade of no-hopers’ in Jessie’s life were tabled for discussion. The two women reached the inevitable conclusion: Shit Happens, You’re Worth More Than This, Men Are Fucked and Happiness Is Just Around The Corner.

  Francie felt more content than she had in a long time. For a start she had been able to tell a brand new person all about her troubles. Finding a person who didn’t know all the details of the Nick and Poppy thing had been a celebration in itself. Jessie’s reaction had been comfortingly bitchy.

  ‘Yeah. That’s what men mean when they say: “I want to be by myself”. Translation—“Well, we can’t both sleep with my new girlfriend, can we?”’

  Jessie also offered wise counsel on her own ex, Henry. ‘He’s always saying: “I’d still like to be friends”. But what that means is: “I’d like to hang around long enough to ruin your next relationship”. I mean, at least you know your boy is with someone else,’ Jessie sighed. ‘Every time it looks like I might have a chance at someone new, there’s Henry.

  ‘I remember the last time I got involved, with this boy, Mario—he was really, really cute, a definite perhaps—Henry started ringing me here every night at
eleven o’clock, just as he figured we were getting into bed. After two weeks of these bloody phone calls, which were about absolutely nothing, Mario packed it in. Round eighteen to Henry. He just will not give up on me. I mean, you could see that as flattering. But mostly it’s weird.’

  In the end, and it might have been the vodka thinking for her, Francie was starting to see that Nick taking up with another woman, as painful as that might be, was some sort of blessing. Had Francie given up on Nick? Yes—no . . . perhaps . . . Whatever, the move into a new house where his absence wasn’t a living, breathing presence was a good start. She felt she could begin to get some perspective on what her true feelings were.

  Francie and Jessie were just at the point of concocting an elaborate revenge—‘Someone told me you can put battery acid in a water pistol and write messages on the furniture or the carpet and then, weeks later, the message will slowly appear,’ Jessie was saying—when there was a presence at the dining room door.

  ‘Afternoon, ladies. Do I detect the whiff of saltpetre in the air? Powdered eye of newt, anthrax in an envelope?’

  ‘Dave! Hi!’ Jessie jumped to her feet and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘This is Francie. She’s in the Red Room. Say hello to our new inductee.’

  Dave immediately dropped his briefcase and stepped forward with his hand outstretched. He was an impressive package. Medium height, dark hair cut close to his head. Dark green eyes and a wide, white smile. Francie immediately found him attractive. Was it his regular, finely made features? Or was it the cloud of intense feeling behind the eyes which reminded her of Nick?

  For God’s sake! Get over him.

  Dave was wearing what looked to be an expensive black suit, white open-necked shirt, even more expensive shiny black loafers. Francie wished she was wearing something more elegant than old jeans, T-shirt and blue rubber sandals. And—damn! She also wished she hadn’t knocked her drink over as she jumped to her feet.