‘Of course not. Jesus Christ, Vanessa. That’s an appalling thing to suggest. Is this what you’re going to do? Try to destroy my reputation so you can walk away squeaky clean? It’s not going to be that easy. Two can play at that game.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Your audience wouldn’t be very impressed if they knew about your little pill problem, would they?’
She’d had a knee injury, five years earlier. There’d been a prescription for oxycodone, then another. Work had been challenging, her anxiety had been intense. There’d been another prescription, little blue pills that made everything a little bit easier. For a few months, she’d spiralled, heading in the wrong direction. Then she’d changed doctors. She’d tapered the pills down, then got rid of them completely. But of course, in the wrong hands, that story could be made to look like something ugly. Was this how things were going to be? Mudslinging of all kinds until her career was well and truly in the toilet?
‘I’ll call Henry and let him know. Lachy’s at the tennis club. I’ll go there now. Pick him up. I’ll tell him, if you’re okay with that. That I’ve decided to leave. I’ll take responsibility. Leaving... that’s on me. Lachy can decide who he wants to live with.’
‘I’m not leaving this house,’ Robert said. ‘I’ll fight you tooth and nail for this place.’
Vanessa took in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘You can have it, for now. Eventually, like everything else, it will have to go.’
There was more she could have said, but there were no words that would make anything better, or easier, or kinder.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wish it could be different.’ She turned and walked away, and the sound of her heels on the marble floor echoed in her wake.
Chapter Ten
Robert Walker woke up in his own bed on Friday morning, still dressed and with a raging hangover. After Vanessa had left, he’d felt that the situation required more than beer, so he’d moved on to whiskey. What time had he fallen asleep? It must have been after midnight. The last thing he remembered was watching an episode ofLaw & Orderwhere a male student falsely accused of rape went on to actually rape his accuser by the end of the episode. Robert had had to restrain himself from throwing the whiskey bottle at his very expensive ultra high definition TV screen, before climbing the stairs to bed.
And now he had a brutal headache and lurking nausea at the base of his stomach.
Robert got out of bed, moving slowly. He walked barefoot down the corridor to Lachy’s room, and pushed the door open. There was no one there. The bed was unmade, but Lachy’s bed was always unmade. That didn’t mean anything. Still, the room had an empty, abandoned feeling about it. Lachy hadn’t come home the night before. Vanessa must have taken him from the tennis club to wherever she was staying. A hotel? An apartment the studio had arranged for her?
Robert went downstairs to the kitchen, where the fucking dog was whining and scratching at the back door. Robert let him out. He checked his phone. He had no messages. Nothing from Henry or Lachy or any of his friends. Robert left his phone on the bench and went outside.
Christ. His head was killing him.
Milo was digging a hole in the middle of the pristine lawn. Robert ignored the dog and the hole, and stripped off at the side of the pool. He dived in. The shock of the cold water took his breath away. The pool heater had been turned off for the winter. He stayed in there anyway, swimming slow laps. The cold helped with his headache. It soothed his sore and tired body. It woke him up. When he climbed out twenty minutes later, he felt almost like his old self. He walked naked back into the house, leaving the dog to his exuberant digging. He got dressed, made coffee and ate, and then called his lawyer’s office. The bastard claimed to be unavailable. Robert had to beg, and in the end all he was offered was a twenty-minute Zoom call at eleven.
‘James has a hard out at eleven-twenty, Mr Walker,’ the secretary said, in a patronising tone that made Robert want to throw his phone at the wall.
‘You can remind James that I’m paying him twelve hundred dollars an hour,’ Robert said, then hung up.
He called Henry. The call rang out, unanswered. Robert tried again.
‘Dad,’ Henry sounded impatient. ‘I’m in a meeting. I’ve stepped out. What do you need?’
It was a continuing source of astonishment to Robert that you could raise a child from infancy, wipe their arse, change their nappies, feed them, clothe them, pay a quarter of a million for their private education and drive them around, and the moment they got a real job you became completely irrelevant. Maybe it was to Henry’s credit that as soon as he’d graduated he’d taken a good job with an investment bank and had not asked Vanessa or Robert for a dollar since. It was less admirable that he’d never said a word of thanks, that he never picked up the phone to say hello, that he never came to Melbourne or invited them to Sydney. It was also a pity that he was such a humourless prick.
‘Did your mother call you?’
Henry sighed. ‘Yes, she called me. Dad, look, this isn’t the time—’
‘What did she tell you?’
‘That you guys have split up. Look, I understand that—’
‘She didn’t tell you that I’m under attack? That I’ve been set up? That my entire professional life is under threat? She didn’t tell you that she walked out on me in the moment when I need her the most?’
There was a long pause, then, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘Dad, look—’
‘Don’t youlookme, Henry. Why didn’t you call me last night?’
‘I—’
‘You should have called me the moment you hung up on your mother.’
