Page 77 of Power Moves
‘Please,’ I say quietly. ‘We need to forget this happened.’
Archie takes a step backwards and it feels as though the barometric pressure plummets. Before I can say anything, he yanks the door open and light streams into the room. In less than a second, the door slams behind him.
CHAPTER 34
The streets are quiet as the Uber glides me home from the studios, the windscreen beaded with droplets of rain that twinkle with the colours of the city in the afternoon. I lean back against the headrest, taking a deep breath as I close my eyes.
After they told us Mum’s cancer was terminal, I spent the next two years learning the art of compartmentalisation. If I wasn’t picking her up at Central to drive her to specialist appointments in the city, learning the difference between chemotherapy and immunotherapy, I was doing shots at the bar or skipping lectures to drink tea in Remi’s bed while we binge-watched old episodes ofGossip Girl.
My life oscillated between extreme pain and extreme numbness. By the time Mum was properly sick, and the doctor started talking in days, not months, my third-floor dorm room had been packed up into storage boxes that were lumped in the garage at home. I was drowning. We all were, butI was particularly low. Dad and Jessie and Maxy had jobs. They all had a structure to keep their lives moving and motivation to get up in the morning. I had nothing. No lectures, no social calendar. I no longer lived in the same building as my best friends. Instead, I was sharing a house with a swathe of medical equipment I couldn’t name.
A trolley bed had been rolled into the living room—an offering from the palliative care team—so Mum could look across the street to the tennis courts when she had the energy to open her eyes. An IV drip machine beeped next to the bookcase. Our coffee table was covered in pill bottles and the face washers that we used to wipe her mouth when she dribbled. I had nothing to do but hold Mum’s hand.
Everyone told me I was so lucky to get that time with her and I nodded, the guilt surging through my veins like toxic waste. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be far away. And I wanted my mum to be across the road, teaching a kid to swing a racquet with the sun on her face. I wanted the wrinkles around her eyes to scrunch with joy when she saw me. I didn’t want to sit next to this papery-skinned shell that didn’t know who I was. But I couldn’t leave. Because if I held her hand tight enough, maybe she’d come back to me. Sometimes she did. Sometimes she gave me instructions. ‘Millsy, remind Dad to sweep the patio.’ ‘Tell Jessie I was never mad about the blue scarf.’ Sometimes she squeezed back. That was how I got through it.
On the day that everything changed, Maxy was lighting the gas-heater on the deck. Dad and Jessie were rummaging through the fridge, trying to find the risotto that our neighbour had dropped off the day before. Our fridge was full of lasagne,sausages, pastas, curries. Everyone forgot about the accompaniments. There was no salad, no veggies. We ate lasagnes with a side of pasta bake. Risottos with cannelloni. Our friends were carb-loading us, preparing us for the marathon ahead.
I was sitting with Mum, and I saw it shift like a sunbeam refracting through a crystal glass. It was there—the flicker of a rainbow, a fleeting light across her face—and then it switched, the colours sucked back into the late-autumn air without a trace. From the kitchen, I heard the fridge door shut. On the deck, the flames crackled to life.
‘Mum,’ I whispered. Her hand was still warm. ‘Mum,’ I said, more urgently now. Her eyelids were soft like the skin of a newborn kitten.
I picked up her wrist—the wrist that had taught me to swing a racquet like I meant it—which was now the colour of age-spotted bark and as delicate as a dandelion stem. I lay my cheek against her hand and I knew that was it. From deep within me, a lion howled. My beautiful mum was gone.
?
That night, my tears refused to spill. It was as though I’d been wrung dry and there was no moisture left to cry. Instead, I opened Seek and indiscriminately hit ‘apply’, ‘apply’, ‘apply’.
Over the next few weeks, as we organised flowers and funeral readings, and stumbled over our words, trying to remember to say ‘was’ instead of ‘is’, my inbox sat empty. No one emailed, no one wanted to hire me. I’d received good marks at uni but I didn’t have enough experience, which even the entry-level jobs required.
It was months before I got the interview with Boss. I still remember the trepidation of waiting in the lobby, how the ceilings felt too high, how my new pinstriped skirt felt too tight. In the grey-walled interview room, Boss asked if I had any experience, and I said no, but that I was a hard worker—that I wasdesperateto work. Boss seemed bemused. He asked if I could write under pressure. I nodded. He wanted to know what school I went to, what my dad did for work. With my every answer (I went to the local high school; Dad works in insurance; No, he doesn’t own the business) Boss’s smile broadened.
Finally, he asked if I could keep secrets.
‘With my life,’ I replied.
Within twenty-four hours I’d signed a contract, and within weeks I was busier than I’d ever been before. Boss had gifted me a ticket to escape and I repaid him with unwavering loyalty. I wanted nothing more than to be the person he needed and to let everything else in my mind recede into a deep, echoing blackness.
By the time Archie strode back into my life, a few years after I’d first started working for Boss, I was a well-seasoned expert at avoiding conflict. I ignored the way Archie’s presence triggered something visceral in me. I didn’t ask him why he seemed so different, why he was suddenly so chatty. I endured his jokes and kept that memory of the night under the frangipani tree in a vault, along with everything else from back then. But now, as the Uber weaves through the afternoon traffic towards my apartment, it feels as though I may have found the missing link to a chain I didn’t know was broken.
My finger is floating over Archie’s name on my screen, and I’m about to press ‘call’ when the news alert buzzes in.
INSIDERSCONFIRMHARCOURT &MILLERHADTORRIDAFFAIR &DISASTROUSBREAKUP: THEPARTY’SELECTIONHOPESPLUMMET IN THEFALLOUT.Archie Cohen reports.
My phone tumbles from my fingers. My stomach bellyflops into an abyss. I remember his palms around my waist, his breath at my ear, his lips on my skin.
The sound that erupts from my throat isn’t even a hiss of rage. It’s so much worse than that. It’s a sob.
CHAPTER 35
Boss picks up on the first ring. I’m already in military-operation mode. I need coordinates and weapons, stat.
‘Boss, where are you?’
He makes a strangled whimpering noise, like the family labrador who’s copped its first whack on the nose. ‘Just do that thing where you distract them with a bunch of other stories. Like you did after the Lilac Beach thing.’ He sounds terrified.
‘Boss, if that was an incident, this is a seismic fucking air raid from UFOs. Buildings are being ripped in half and set on fire. Lava is flowing in the streets. Where are you?’ A sudden, stomach-churning thought occurs to me. ‘Oh god, are you with Nancy?’
‘Of course I’m not withNancy,’ Boss snaps. The way he says her name soothes me. So he still hates her. At least some things still make sense.
