‘Oh. Vera. You must be a nurse. How clever of you to know what I like. I suppose it’s written in my file.’
Vera smiled, despite the tug of pain she couldn’t help but feel. To be confused with her long-dead mother was bittersweet. To be confused with the nursing staff? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world, though, where residents of aged care facilities had their likes and dislikes documented in their files?Jill De Rossi, vascular dementia and cardiomyopathy, aged 63, prefers date scones over plain ones, won’t eat tuna sandwiches prepared with mayonnaise, enjoys classical music for an hour before dinner in the company of her favourite and only niece, Vera De Rossi.
‘Shall we go into the garden? You can hold onto my arm if you need to.’
‘I am quite all right to walk,’ said her aunt, ‘if only this carpet would stop making me dizzy.’
The carpet was grey and nondescript. Vera ran her eyes over Jill’s room but noticed nothing out of the ordinary that might have thrown her aunt out of sorts. ‘Give me your arm,’ she said, leading the way into the corridor. ‘The sun is shining and the sky is so blue today, Aunt Jill. I think you’ll love it outside.’
‘If you say so, dear.’
She settled her aunt into a wicker chair and plumped up the cushion behind her thin frame. ‘Comfortable?’
Her aunt’s chattiness had waned, so Vera decided to dive straight into the thoughts that had been troubling her for the drive down to Cooma. ‘Aunt Jill … I’ve been wanting to ask your advice about something.’ Lots of somethings, really, and who else did she have to ask for advice?
She’d moved here to the foothills of the Snowy Mountains to simplify her life: cook, save money, lick her wounds and hunker down while the tatters of her self-respect re-knit themselves into a shape she recognised.
It had been naive to think her troubles would let her go so easily. The court case, of course. That was the trouble with a capital T that hung like a spectre over every minute of every day.
But then there was the new bit of trouble—the spark that had been kindled in her cold, bitter heart in the dimly lit foyer of the Cody and Cody Vet Clinic.
She didn’t want the spark. Sparks were trouble, and she was so over being in trouble.
Her aunt’s face didn’t change, but Vera kept going. ‘You know the great hairy mess of things I made back home? The charges, the arraignment, those hideous articles in the newspaper? Well, I’ve been given a choice: take an easy way out so I can move on, sowecan move on, or dig my heels in and fight.’
Her aunt breathed in, and out, and her sparse grey lashes fluttered on a blink. Her earlier vim had sputtered out.
‘What would you do, Aunt Jill?’
Her aunt said nothing, but she didn’t need to. Vera knew damn well her aunt would have saidto hell with those drongos. Do what feels right.
She took a long breath in of mountain air. Okay, then, decision made. She’d put this phone call off long enough.
‘Sue?’ she said as the dial tone connected. ‘It’s Vera.’
‘Finally. What’s it to be?’
She took a breath. ‘I don’t believe I’m guilty.’
‘Vera, we talked about this. A section 10 dismissal isn’t about you being saintly and earnest and taking a Mary McKillop stance. It’s about wrangling through a legislative loophole and getting your life back.’
‘I know. But here’s the thing, Sue, I don’t want to wrangle through loopholes. I do not feel that what I did was wrong, and I am not going to be made to feel guilty for that on top of everything else.’
‘Vera—’
She was on a roll now, and even the thought of her lawyer’s money clock spinning ecstatically with every word she spoke wasn’t going to stop her.
‘If I were being charged with selfishness for placing my aunt in an aged care facility that I hadn’t thoroughly vetted beforehand, I’d plead guilty. If I were being charged with having lousy taste in men and being the biggest fool on the east coast of Australia, then lock me up. I’m guilty as charged and wearing all that guilt already; it’s wrapped around me so bloody tightly some days I can’t breathe.’
She took a moment to get some control over her voice. ‘That’s why, Sue,’ she muttered at last. ‘That’s why I amnotgoing to plead guilty to breaching the Surveillance Devices Act.’
She could hear her lawyer tapping on a keyboard.
‘Okay, Vera. Understood. We do this the hard way.’
‘Thank you, Sue. I’m sorry I’m not taking your advice.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I love doing it the hard way, it gives me a visceral thrill. You know how hard it is for a woman my age to feel a visceral thrill? Trust me … you’re doing me a favour. In terms of our legal stance on this, now we need to shift our mindset into offensive action rather than defensive reaction. We take these chargesdown. You ready for that, Vera? You’d better be.’