Page 98 of Special Delivery
Poppy sighed and unbuckled her daughter. As she trudged to the car park through an icy wind, pushing the pram with one hand and carrying Maeve in the other arm, she asked herself again:How do people have more than one child?
At the LandCruiser, she flipped the pram brakes on and used her spare hand to prise her keys from her pocket. Her fingers found her phone instead. She fumbled and her phone dropped to the bitumen with a glassy clang. Poppy winced. She’d half-expected James to appear while she was at thecommunity health centre, but that was stupid. He wasn’t going to, and nor should he. He was on shift. He wasn’t even really a friend at this point. Gingerly, she plucked her phone off the tarmac. Thankfully the screen was intact. It had landed right on thePARENTS WITH PRAMS ONLYsign.
I want to see him, she thought. It had been a vague, opaque feeling when she’d arrived, but now it was crystal clear. She missed him. She buckled Maeve into her car seat and walked around to the driver’s side, poking the thought like a bruise:I want to see him. She was used to floating through life, saying, ‘Yes, please,’ and, ‘No, thank you,’ like a good girl, accepting whatever came next, and now it was possible she was going to float on the breeze away from James. She’d have to run into him around town for another few months, which would be horribly painful and sad, and then he’d move to Melbourne, which would be even more painful and sad.
Before she knew it, she’d arrived at the Woolworths car park. The wind was still howling outside and the clouds were darkening. She parked next to a HiLux that could have been James’s, if not for the BO1TOY numberplate. A thunderclap cracked above her. The universe was tormenting her with terrible omens and terrible spelling.
Poppy strapped Maeve into the carrier on her chest and walked into the supermarket. It smelled like roast chicken and Maeve kicked her legs enthusiastically.I want to see him. She couldn’t unthink it now, but was it merely lust? Was she just a sex-starved single mum? Was this a completely rational response to having slept with a guy whose arms were the perfect balance of muscle and flesh?
A tall man with dark blond hair walked out of the milk aisle and Poppy’s heart skipped a beat before she realised he was her father’s age. She exhaled slowly, and Maeve squawked and pointed down aisle four. Poppy turned, thinking for a moment Maeve may have spotted him down there. She shook her head in exasperation with herself. Of course it was another false alarm.
The shopping list app on her phone had neat ticks in all but one of the boxes. Poppy steeled herself and turned into the aisle with the pasta sauce. She knew logically that he wouldn’t be there either but that didn’t stop her heart beating like a jackhammer. She selected a jar of passata and placed it in the trolley. A thought nagged her. Did she like James? Like,likeJames? She pulled a second jar from the shelf. The linoleum where the sauce had exploded all those months ago had been scrubbed clean without so much as a pinkish stain left behind.
She steered the trolley to the checkout. She couldn’t possiblylikeJames. She was a smart girl and liking James wouldnotbe the smart choice. Notwithstanding his uncanny knack for unleashing her most embarrassing confrontational tendencies, he was moving eight hundred kilometres away. Liking James would be super dumb.
The cashier with an eighties fringe asked if she had her own bags. Poppy handed over the tangled ball of reusable sacks and began placing groceries on the conveyor belt. There were two separate things happening here: first, she was a hormonal (i.e. horny) mess, and second, James—despite his capacity to push all her buttons (including the horny ones)—was a first-classperson. They were two completely unrelated facts: he was great at sex, and she liked hanging out with him. It would be ridiculous to confuse those two facts with having feelings for him. She was much smarter than that.
The passata jars clinked on the conveyor belt. There was something she was missing, the fuzzy outline of a thought she couldn’t grasp. The cashier scanned her passata and suddenly she remembered. Kate had mentioned that James had been accepted into CSU Orange. Had he decided to stay here? Was that why he’d come to her place after the races? To tell her?
‘Cash or card?’ inquired Eighties Fringe.
Poppy pulled out her phone to tap the EFTPOS machine. If James was staying in Orange, what would that mean? Would they hang out? Would they booty call? Would theydate? Her imagination scarpered ahead: visions of him on her couch, grinning as he pulled her to his lap and kissed her neck; the teasing bump of his hip against her waist; the touch of his lips against her bare shoulder; their pinky fingers linked on the couch; his ankle draped over hers in bed. A smile spread over her face and something warm and golden pulsed through her arteries. Her life was full of jobs and lists and duties and pressures, of bills and groceries and nappies and milk, of dreams and fears and laughter and tears, her brain was overwhelmed, her body was hardly hers—but there was a tiny keyhole within her that was empty. Maybe that’s where James could fit.
At the checkout, the EFTPOS machine beeped. ‘I think your phone is broken,’ announced the cashier, pointing at Poppy’s phone, where a giant black stripe now covered half the screen. ‘Do you have your wallet?’
Poppy patted where her jean pockets were hiding under the hip strap of the BabyBjörn. Of course she wasn’t carrying her wallet. She hadn’t seen it in weeks. ‘Can I leave an IOU?’ she asked.
Eighties Fringe frowned. ‘What do you think this is? The eighties?’
Poppy was too stressed to appreciate the tragicomic irony. She looked helplessly at the reusable bags already filled with sixty-seven dollars’ worth of crap that was completely essential to surviving the next twenty-four hours. She did a frantic mental inventory of her pantry contents. She could eat Weet-Bix for dinner and forgo laundry until tomorrow, the no-toilet-paper situation would be an issue, but she could—
‘I can help,’ said a quiet voice. A willowy brunette brushed past her and pointed her credit card at the EFTPOS machine. ‘There,’ she said, her voice like a wind chime as the machine beeped authoritatively. ‘Done.’ She smiled at Poppy, her tiny diamond nose ring glinting under the strip lighting. Her skin was so youthful and bright it almost glowed.
Poppy looked around frantically. ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ she spluttered. A queue was forming behind them. ‘Can you do a refund?’ She patted her back pockets uselessly. ‘That’s so generous,’ she said to the girl, ‘but I can’t accept.’
‘Ahem,’ grumbled Eighties Fringe.
The girl shrugged. ‘It’s done. And if you make her refund it, it’ll be awkward for all of us, and it’s a small town, so we’ll never forget.’
‘I, er …’ stammered Poppy.Was that a threat?
‘I’m kidding!’ the girl said, smiling. ‘I have nieces. Things get busy, phones get broken and sometimes the smugly child-free need to step up and help out. This is my time to pay it forward. Honestly, don’t give it a second thought.’
Poppy felt the prickle of tears at her eyelids. ‘Thank you,’ she said, wishing she wasn’t wearing Maeve so she could hug this nose-ringed angel. ‘Truly. This means more than you can imagine.’
CHAPTER 41
Poppy strode out into the sunlit cul-de-sac, the crisp spring air curling itself around her body while Maeve sat in the pram wearing a hat to shade her from the glare. After five months of bone-chilling purgatory, the mere act of switching from beanies to sun protection felt like a victory. Maeve nibbled a rusk and hiccupped contentedly. They’d survived their first Orange winter. It was something to celebrate.
Over the hedge, Mary’s perm bobbed up. ‘Off for a hot lap?’ (Poppy had once used this term in front of Mary, who had neatly injected it into her everyday lexicon.) ‘Fancy a cuppa when you get back?’
‘We’d love that,’ replied Poppy.
‘You watch out for those magpies, pet.’
‘I will,’ Poppy assured her.
‘You want some cable ties to poke through your hat? I’ve got some in the garage.’
