Just Business (7 page)

‘For a start, don't call him a schizo,' Niamh said quietly. ‘That's an offensive term – he's ill and he's on medication for that illness. The drugs work and it should be fine for him to have a client-facing role.'

‘How can you be so sure he won't go crazy in front of a customer some day?'

‘I'm not totally certain but he deserves a chance. If he's doing his job well then we have nothing to worry about. And if he doesn't do his job well, then we'll talk to him about it.'

‘Okay, let's see how it goes with him.' Bruce was guarded but willing. Despite his notorious ill temper, he was fundamentally a kind man. And, hell, did he know what it felt like to have personal problems.

Helen's apartment was a box but it was in the heart of the city. After a childhood and teenage years in the depths of the countryside, she loved being part of the urban action. The traffic on the freeway never stopped. The bars never closed. The tourists never went away.

Helen was a farm girl who had grown up two hundred kilometres outside Bourke. It was an isolated life on the sheep station and every Saturday morning the Barnes family would drive into town to stock up on groceries and social contact. Weather had dominated her family's life. The drought cycle brought dead animals, parched paddocks and hard times. The flood cycle brought grazing stock, healthy crops and celebratory drinks with the neighbouring farms. Winter or summer, the sun shone for over three hundred days a year and celebratory drinks were a rare occurrence.

Helen's first years of education were under her mother's supervision and the crackling of the radio. The Distance Education Centre ran three lessons a week over the radio and imparted homework that Helen devoured. There were no brothers, sisters or neighbouring children to distract her from her schoolwork. When she was twelve-years-old she left the farm for boarding school. Shy from only her mother and father's company, she soaked in the sense of community in the school. It took some
years before the shyness faded to be replaced by a quiet confidence. The clever farm girl was well liked and made some lifelong friends from her time at the school. She and her friends applied to Macquarie University and her parents almost burst with pride when she was accepted to do a Bachelor of Commerce. After her degree she secured a graduate position in a big company in Sydney and gradually, as the years passed, her trips back to Bourke became less frequent.

Losing her job had topped off a bad year for Helen. Her father had died in January. There was a huge turnout at the funeral despite the mercury hovering around forty-seven degrees. He was buried in the town where he had been born, educated and married: where he belonged. Helen knew less than half the people who shook her hand and offered their condolences.

Following the funeral, Helen's mother became suddenly petrified about living on the seventy thousand acres she had previously managed and co-owned. She wanted to sell and there was nothing that Helen could do to change her mind. The farm was put on the market. Within days a neighbouring farmer put in a decent offer and it was sold. It left a gaping hole in both Helen's and her mother's lives. It also left her mother homeless.

Of course her mother didn't want to live in Sydney. It would be too noisy, cluttered up with people and cars. And she didn't want to live in a retirement home. Those places were for people without any families, people who were queuing up to die. It took Helen a number of weeks to get through to her that it had to be one or the other. Sydney or a retirement home in Bourke. There were only two options. The day before she was due to move out of the farm her mother agreed, with great trepidation, to live in Sydney. With Helen.

Her mother had been living in the boxlike apartment for nine months now. Helen felt an increasing sense of failure with every passing month. She was in her early thirties and single. In fact, there had been no serious relationship in her life at all. She wasn't the flirtatious type and her sheer aptitude scared off many men. Now, with her mother as a flatmate, she felt even less likely to meet someone and settle down.

Old Mrs Barnes was conscious of the fact that her presence in the apartment was all the more uncomfortable now that Helen was at home all day. It really wasn't big enough for two people. The apartment had a tiny balcony and Helen spent a lot of time out there after she lost her job. She said she needed space to think. Some days dinner was the only time they talked. Mrs Barnes would cook and be inevitably disappointed when Helen would only pick at the food.

‘You need to eat. There's no point in starving yourself.'

‘I'm not hungry, Mum.'

Then there would be silence and Mrs Barnes would try to spark more conversation. ‘Have you talked to anyone at the company today?' she asked this evening.

‘No, not since last week.' Helen's features were tight with tension.

‘Right.' Mrs Barnes chewed a mouthful before saying, ‘When do you think they'll let you know what's happening?'

Helen sighed before giving a forced response. ‘I don't know. It's complicated. They've got to interview him – and probably Donna too.'

Mrs Barnes didn't know how to help her only daughter. Helen had never been in any trouble and neither mother nor daughter knew how to handle the current situation. Helen had lost her job, she had been retrenched. As far as Mrs Barnes knew,
‘retrenched' was a fancy word for being fired. Then there was the sexual harassment business. By Helen's boss, a senior executive and a married man. Mrs Barnes was a countrywoman who had lived all her life in Bourke; she had no experience of issues such as these. Life on the farm had been hard but simple.

‘Mmm …' Mrs Barnes took it all in as if it was the first time she was being given the information. ‘I suppose they'll retrench him once they've done the interviews.'

‘No, Mum,' Helen snapped, dropping her fork with a clatter. ‘They'll
fire
him. I keep telling you that retrenching someone is different to firing them. What's so hard to understand?'

She felt immediate guilt when she saw her mother's face cloud over.

‘I'm sorry, love. I'm just a silly old woman who only knows about animals and farms. I shouldn't be bothering you with all these questions when I'll never understand the answers.'

Helen abandoned the rest of her dinner and went out to the balcony. She stayed there until dusk turned into night and Darling Harbour was fully lit up. The Harbourside shopping mall was to her left, buzzing with tourists. The opulence of the casino was on the right, healthy crowds trawling in but still a few hours to go before its peak business. Inside, her mother was a ghostly figure as she cleared the table and washed the dishes. She was like a silent maid, cooking, washing up, dusting, all the while trying to fade into the background and not be an imposition on her single daughter's life. When there was no more housework to be done, the old lady settled in front of the TV.

Helen got up from her seat to stand at the railing. Two floors above there was a party with the crowd spilled onto the balcony. For a while she eavesdropped on the lively conversation and laughter. It made her feel lonely and she went back inside
herself, to her thoughts. Helen had a logical mind that was well accustomed to problem analysis. The balcony was the only place where she could think. The night of the phone call she had been distressed with the news of her retrenchment and mellowed by a few glasses of wine. It was difficult to piece the call back together and remember the exact sequence and words. But the caller was unquestionably out of line and Helen's hands were tied until she got her job back.
If
she got her job back. This waiting was so hard. She had always been bad at sitting things out, this latest tiff with her mother no exception. She checked her watch: it was nine-fifteen already, time to go inside.

‘What are you watching?' she asked the old lady.

‘Detective Frost. It's a good story tonight.'

Her mother loved crime and mystery. She was not daunted by gruesome corpses or body parts that had been separated from their owners.

‘Want a cup of tea before you turn in?'

‘I'd love one.'

Helen made the tea, feeling another wave of depression. Another night of having tea in front of the TV with her mother. Before Black Monday she'd had a respectable social life. Now, with the cloud of unemployment hanging overhead, she had lost the desire to go out. Phil Davis had attacked her self-esteem on all levels and she was determined he would pay the ultimate price for his actions.

It was late in the evening and Denis was tired. He had spent the day at home, bickering with Lily. There was nothing more futile or exhausting than arguing with his wife. She was in his face all day long – having so much time together was driving them both crazy.

‘Your solicitor's name is Paul Jacobsen. He's got a solid reputation but he's not too much of a high flyer. It's important this looks authentic.'

Denis didn't see the need to respond.

‘Are you listening to me?' the caller asked sharply.

‘Of course,' Denis responded with an equal abruptness.

‘We've also retained the services of a barrister – Steve Jones.'

‘I thought you wanted everything to look authentic,' Denis retorted. ‘I'm a mere software engineer – where does someone like me get the money for a barrister?'

There was a pause. The caller didn't like to be questioned. ‘The barrister shows that you are very serious. It should speed up the process considerably.'

‘Whatever you say.' Denis was deliberately vague as Lily passed him in the hallway on her way to bed. It was a relief to see the back of her as she stomped up the stairs.

‘You need to let them know that you won't fade away into the background,' the caller continued. ‘Make some noise. Call some people – call the CEO. Scare him with the legal costs, the damage to the company's reputation. Tell him there are journalists who want to run the story.'

‘Listen, you're wasting your time with all this,' said Denis, appealing for some logic. ‘Bruce doesn't like me. There's no way he'll allow me to come back.'

‘Bruce's opinion will be unimportant,' the caller said confidently. ‘The CEO will take the path of least resistance when he is faced with a massive lawsuit and bad publicity. He'll tell Bruce to take you back and Bruce will do as he is told.'

Denis's temper boiled over into his voice. ‘Haven't you thought about this? How can the CEO think that this is a
massive lawsuit
? They've already given me seven months' pay – that's
beyond the expiry date of my business visa. No judge will award more than that.'

‘I told you the last time – forget the business visa,' the caller ordered. ‘It's your application for permanent residency that matters now. There's big dollars involved when you try to deprive a family of the chance to live in Australia …'

The call ended and Denis hung up. He rested his head against the wall, feeling everything was spiralling out of his control. They wanted him to finish the installations and he was no match for their determination.

He knew from the reflected light on the landing that Lily was reading in bed. He was dead tired but didn't want to go up until she was asleep. In the meantime he would do as the caller instructed and contact the CEO.

The familiar nightmare terrified Niamh from her sleep. The black face hung from the ceiling of the dingy garage. The mouth gaped open but no words came out. The body beneath the face was limp, dead with no hope of resurrection.

The black face and the garage had lived in her subconscious for over twenty years, as vivid now as when she was a child. She lay in the dawn-lit room, wondering if they would ever go away.

As a child, she would refuse to go into the garage alone. Her dad would laugh at her and, taking her hand in his, he would open the rotting doors. There was a long narrow window at the back. Blackened with dirt, it didn't let in much light. A bulb dangled from the ceiling on a flimsy wire, yellowy and dim. Her dad was a tradesman and it was mostly his tools that were kept there. He also used it to store a few pieces of furniture that he called antiques and her mother called firewood. The chairs
and tables sat there for years, foolishly believing that one day they would be restored to their former glory.

Often, when he saw she was scared, her dad would tease her with his spookiest voice but was always disappointed that he couldn't secure the smallest smile from his youngest and most devoted daughter. Niamh was convinced that an evil witch lived in the darkness. Because the witch's face was black, she blended into the murky corners. The blackness of her face wasn't because of her race, she wasn't from Africa or anything like that. It was a bruised kind of black, there was white underneath.

The garage had regularly featured in her childhood nightmares before it became the stage for the destruction of all their lives. Her mother told her it was normal for kids to have recurring nightmares and to try not to think too much about it during the day. It would fade away from her dreams over time. Her mother was wrong.

It was an old-fashioned garage, standing separate from the house with no form of heating. It would have been cold in there, even in the height of summer. Her dad hated the cold. He often said that he must have Mediterranean blood rather than Irish. He lived for the fickle Irish summer, dragging them seventeen miles to Youghal Beach at the first sign of sun. He dreamed of leaving the miserable weather behind and making a new life in a place where the sun shone all year round. As a young child, Niamh had heard her parents talk seriously about emigrating to Australia. They always had the discussion in winter, when Dad was at his lowest. It was all forgotten by the time summer came around. Then her mother and Uncle Tom had stolen the idea for their own, leaving her dad with a dream he could never realise.