Page 70 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘What’s wrong?’ she says as he sits on the side of the bed and rubs the back of his head.
‘Ah …’ He puts his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands, which makes Lorraine feel alarmed. She’s never seen him like this before. Not even when Terry fell off his bike and broke his arm when Mike was meant to be watching him.
She puts a hand on his shoulder blade and pats. ‘Mike?’
She rubs circles, like she did with the kids when they were little. They always liked that right before they fell asleep.
‘Are you okay?’ she says softly.
He inhales noisily and sits up straight, then turns himself around so he’s facing her. His eyes are bloodshot, almost as if he’s been crying.
Nah, that isn’t possible. She’s never seen Mike cry.
‘Mike? What is it?’
‘You know what happened on Tuesday?’ he says, not looking her in the eye.
‘Tuesday?’ She tries to think what happened on Tuesday. The kids went to school, she banked some cheques and did some shopping, took Cora to the dentist in Noosa Junction, cooked a … what did she cook for dinner?
‘The stock market crash,’ he says.
‘The …’ Now she remembers watching the news and how they were calling it Black Monday even though it was Tuesday here, and everyone was saying it was the end of the world or something, but she didn’t see how it would affect her because she doesn’t have stocks, she just has some money tucked away in a savings account and not much of it at that, but she saves what she can. So it was bad news for people on Wall Street, but not for Lorraine with a Commonwealth Bank savings account earning hardly any interest.
‘What about it?’ she says.
He squeezes his eyes shut then takes her hand, kneading it hard, and she winces.
‘Ow,’ she says, and she’s starting to worry because she’s never seen Mike like this, not even when the doctor said his father had only a few weeks to live. He was upset then, sure, but he knew he had to be strong for his dad so he held it together. Whatever’s going on now has to be something bigger and harder than his father dying, which can only mean something’s happened to one of the kids … Except she checked on them not that long ago and they were asleep. Yes, she still checks on Terry, because even though he’s a teenager he’ll always be her baby and she likes to check. But he’s fine. Simon’s fine. So …
‘I invested money,’ Mike says, almost choking on the words.
‘What money?’
She knows he’s been working so hard because they need extra cash to cover all the expenses. Or that’s what he told her. He looks after their joint account and she looks after the business account.
‘Some money.’ Now he won’t look her in the eye again.
‘What money?We don’t have any extra.’
‘I, uh … I took out a mortgage on the house.’
Her mind starts trying to work it out. The house is in Mike’s name because he told her he could get the loan more easily that way – he went to school with the bank manager. But he also told her they’d pretty much paid it off.
‘This house?’ she says, because maybe Cora has a property she doesn’t know about.
‘Yes.’
He takes her hand again but she yanks it back, feeling her body become cold, with shock or fear or maybe both.
‘This house I live in, your children live in and your mother lives in?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’
‘It’s my house!’ he yells and now her spine goes rigid.
She doesn’t recognise this man. Mike has never yelled at her. They have spats but they don’t yell.
