Page 88 of Special Delivery
It was like Poppy was watching herself move through petroleum jelly. Everything was slow and blurry, everything was slipping from her grasp. ‘Mum, wait,’ she mumbled. ‘You haven’t drunk your coffee.’
Her mother spun around to face her, the lines around her eyes etched with sadness. ‘Poppy, I didn’t come for the coffee. I never come for the coffee.’ She bent over and kissed Maeve on the head, hoisted her handbag onto her shoulder and quietly left the cafe.
As her larger-than-life mother returned to her brilliantly parked car, Poppy realised with a bone-shuddering certainty that she had reached a new level of rock bottom.
CHAPTER 37
A week had passed since the races and Poppy was an island. Not a tropical island with all-inclusive pina coladas; she was a solitary Nigel-no-friends island in a giant ocean of shame and anxiety. She was down to her last packet of pasta, and, in a town where every supermarket trip was a potential minefield, she was terrified to go shopping.
Poppy pushed the pram past an abandoned warehouse in Orange’s industrial backstreets. The sharp smell of petrol filled her nostrils. Avoiding the leafy golf course loop felt like penance.
She’d tried her dad a couple of times, hoping he’d take a Switzerland-like approach to the whole thing, but even he was screening her calls. The only person she’d actually spoken to in the last five days was the comms manager from Region Building Australia, whom she’d cold-called in sheer desperation for human contact. It turned out they’d already filled the advertised role, but it didn’t matter because Comms Managerwas a human—and someone left on this planet who would still speak to her. They nerded out on marketing case studies, their discussion dipping and rising in all the right places with the light and shade of a Caravaggio masterpiece—but when Poppy concluded a hilarious story about doubling digital sales through a strategicBetoota Advocatepartnership and Comms Manager had chortled, ‘With that kind of ROI, I think Poppy McKellar will put Sarah Jones out of a job,’ Poppy had realised Comms Manager wasn’t called Comms Manager at all; she was called Sarah Jones. She was a real person with a real job. Poppy was leading this woman on too. She was pretending she was a competent adult who was ready for work but it was all lies. She didn’t even have child care sorted.
As they passed a derelict building site, Maeve let out a mournful yelp from the pram. The blueness of the sky was doing nothing to soothe Poppy’s soul. The loneliness was corrosive.
A week of introspection had confirmed, unsurprisingly, that she was a conflict-averse coward, and that all the crap in her life had one common denominator: her. Pretty much everyone important to her hated her right now, and she hated to be hated. She needed to start apologising. She just didn’t know how to begin.
Henry was one of her oldest friends, and even though she was still furious with him, she knew he needed her right now if he wanted to win Willa back, because he was clearly bloody clueless when it came to understanding women.
James was … well, whatever he was, he was special. The James compartment in her brain had a big red label that saidHandle With Care.
The breeze whipped at the thin cotton covering her ankles. She dolefully recalled her mother’s recommendation she buy thicker socks. Chrissie’s silence had been deafening. She was either extremely angry or extremely disappointed, or both. Gardening tiffs aside, her mother was generally known for her obnoxiously glass-half-full approach to life. She was the kind of person who’d start telling you about her flat tyre and end in raptures about the helpfulness of the NRMA man. She even enjoyed going to the dentist. (When else did she get to read theReader’s Digest?) For Chrissie to dip below anything but mild annoyance for more than thirty seconds was rare, hence Poppy’s current state of paralysis. How would she come back from this?
Without being conscious of where she was going, Poppy turned a corner and realised she was at the rugby field. Hundreds of cars were parked on the grass, most of which would stay there all weekend. Maeve’s ears pricked up at the clack-clack-clack of football boots on bitumen. It was the sound of Poppy’s childhood.
The old men at the gate waved her through cheerfully and Poppy pushed the pram towards the clubhouse. The stands were full of puffer-jacketed supporters, bracing themselves against the wind. On the field, players heaved themselves into each other and the mud. A whistle sounded and a sea of voices jeered at the ref. Poppy had no idea why. She’d been watching rugby her whole life and still couldn’t understand the rules.
He was sitting in the grandstand. She spotted him immediately. If he wasn’t going to take her calls, she’d have to ambush him.
She parked the pram next to the canteen. The place smelled of damp earth and frying sausages. Hoisting Maeve onto her hip, she slowly climbed the concrete stairs. He didn’t turn when she sat down, his eyes following the action on the field, a paper program folded in his hands.
‘Dad.’
‘Poppy,’ he replied, eyes still on the game.
‘I tried to call you.’
‘I saw that.’
‘You didn’t want to call back?’
‘I figured you didn’t really want to chat to me.’
‘No?’
‘I thought you might be trying to get hold of your mother.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes.’ He turned and smiled at his granddaughter, who reached out to grab his finger. ‘She’s quite upset. I think she’d appreciate a call.’
Poppy felt her eyes well up. ‘I didn’t know if she’d want to talk to me.’
‘Oh, Poppy.’ Her dad smiled sadly. ‘Don’t be daft. She’s been moping around like a cat without her cream. She’s desperate to hear from you. She just didn’t want to—what was the word she used?—ah yes, she didn’t want tointerfere.’
An ulcer of guilt burst in Poppy’s stomach. ‘I never meant to …’ she began, her voice cracking.
‘I know, Pops,’ he said gently.
