Page 25 of Anxious Hearts

Chapter Twenty-two

Kelly hadn’t slept. At all.

She had lain in bed, desperately exhausted but unable to stop her mind. Over and over and over. Finn, Ashley, Eli. Over and over and over.

She had finally given up at six a.m. and gone for a walk, something she couldn’t remember ever doing.

Who has time to go for a walk? But she couldn’t focus sufficiently to study and in the empty loneliness of her apartment, she didn’t know what else to do.

So she walked briskly enough to work up a sweat and was appalled at how soon she was out of breath.

Too soon for a woman in her late twenties.

Her own health was just one more thing she was failing at.

When she returned home, it was a little after seven, so she was surprised when her doorbell rang.

Even more surprised when it rang again before she could reach the intercom.

Surely only Finn would come over this early on a Sunday morning?

Easter Sunday at that. He must be in the throes of a panic attack.

The thought was a sliver of light in her darkness. A sliver that made her simultaneously thankful and guilty. He needed her. But she shouldn’t be happy about his pain.

Kelly picked up the receiver and the screen came into focus.

It wasn’t Finn. It was the possibly insane hospital communi-cations adviser.

Kelly’s stomach became an empty wasteland. ‘Juliana?’ she said.

‘Let me in.’

Kelly hit the button to open the door to the building. Moments later, Juliana was knocking on her door. Then she was striding into Kelly’s apartment, huffing and puffing. Literally huffing and puffing. Pacing back and forth in front of her couch. Not making eye contact.

‘What’s happened?’ Kelly said, barely able to ask the question, but unable to stand the tension.

Juliana stopped. Drew a deep breath. Stared at Kelly with cold, hard eyes. ‘You fucked up.’

All the energy, power and adrenalin drained from Kelly’s body as though a plug had been pulled. It rushed out of her with such ferocious intent that she closed her eyes, swaying on her feet. Juliana’s firm hand clasped her elbow and led her to the couch.

Kelly sat down. Opened her eyes. ‘What have I done now?’ she whispered.

Juliana tilted her head, her expression softening. She brushed a stray piece of hair from Kelly’s face and tucked it behind her ear as though she were her mother. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘You look like you’re one piece of bad news away from a complete mental breakdown.’

Kelly’s throat closed over and her eyes betrayed her, tears welling. Her bottom lip quivered uncontrollably, her face searing with an unfamiliar, prickly heat.

Juliana reached out with both arms and Kelly fell into them as everything broke. The unstoppable tears. The shuddering spasms of her chest. The gasping for air. The humiliating moans. She couldn’t hold any of it back.

Juliana gently stroked her back and made soft, soothing sounds that were totally incongruent with her usual woman-of-steel demeanour. Kelly burrowed into Juliana’s soft bosom, searching for comfort and safety, reduced to barely more than a terrified infant following its most primal instincts.

She seemed to be there for a long, long time before the shuddering slowed, the crushing grip on her chest faded to a blunt ache and her tears finally dried up. When she lifted her head from Juliana’s lilac shirt, there was a broad, dark stain across the woman’s breasts.

Kelly sniffed loudly, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and motioned at Juliana’s shirt. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said, surprised she still had a voice.

Juliana looked down at the stain. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time somebody has wept at the sight of my breasts,’ she said. ‘They are a work of perfection, after all.’

What a wholly outrageous and inappropriate comment. What a perfect thing to say. ‘You might be even more messed up than me,’ Kelly said.

Juliana waved her finger in a circle around Kelly’s face. ‘You haven’t seen all this yet.’

They laughed.

Kelly took a deep breath in and slowly exhaled. ‘What have I done?’

Juliana took out her phone, swiped, tapped and held it in front of Kelly.

At first, she wasn’t sure what she was watching. It looked like the video from a phone. Unsteady. Echoey sound. Erratic movements. Kelly narrowed her eyes.

Then she recognised herself. And her voice. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered.

It was the supermarket. Whoever was filming had zoomed in on her exchange with the man who had made her wait and then asked her about buying tampons.

Although it was her in the video, Kelly watched in horror at the woman screaming and then throwing eggs at the man.

She willed it to end. Willed her past self to stop. To walk away.

Instead, the woman on the screen slammed her palms against the man, watched the egg yolk run down his shirt and charged out of the store.

The camera began to follow her, panning wildly between the swearing man and Kelly’s retreating figure but a store assistant appeared on screen.

His hand filled the vision. ‘Please stop filming!’ he yelled.

And then the video ended.

Kelly began to compute the possible outcomes. She ran scenarios in her head about the damage this could cause. The impact on her career, her exams, her job at the hospital. But she didn’t know enough.

‘How bad is it?’ she asked.

Juliana put her phone away. ‘It was uploaded to YouTube an hour ago. It’ll hit mainstream media by lunchtime. With the attention you’ve had from the article, your socials and the Care for our Kids Appeal, it’ll get significant coverage.’

Kelly stood up as her anger surged. ‘I told you all that putting me up as your poster girl was a terrible idea. Now, look at what’s happened. This is my fucking career, Juliana!’

Juliana stood too and fixed Kelly with an intense and defiant stare. ‘It wasn’t raising your profile that was a bad idea. It was assaulting a member of the public. You’re a walking time bomb, Kelly. You need to get your shit together.’

Kelly knew Juliana was right. She stared at her for a long moment, deciding whether to fight and continue to shift the blame or enlist her help. She realised she had no choice.

‘What do we do now?’

‘I’ve already contacted Stephen.’

Kelly’s mind was blank.

‘The Society’s Director of Corporate Affairs,’ Juliana ex-plained. ‘He was there when we first met.’

Oh, right . ‘I remember.’

‘He’s going to convene an emergency meeting of the Society Board’s crisis sub-committee, first thing Tuesday morning.

In the meantime, I’ll write a statement for you that we’ll release to the media.

It’ll have to go right up to the Chair of the Board for approval, though.

They’ll all have an interest in you now. ’

Kelly felt as though her tiny patients must when they find out how truly sick they are: helpless, buffeted, confused. ‘What will it say?’

‘You’ll apologise unreservedly. We’ll talk about stress and overwork. Hint at your mental health issues but we can’t blame them. People won’t cop that.’

‘What mental health issues?’

Juliana raised her eyebrows. ‘The ones that make you completely fucking crazy.’

Kelly bit her tongue. She didn’t have mental health issues, but she wasn’t exactly stable. She could admit that, at least.

‘The most important thing to do is keep you away from the media. No interviews. You’re going through a crisis, respect your privacy, yada, yada, yada.’

Kelly stopped herself from denying she was in a crisis. This was absolutely a fucking crisis.

‘You can’t stay here. Those weasel journalists will be camped outside your apartment hoping to goad you into an explosive response the moment you walk through the lobby doors.’

‘How will they know where I live?’

Juliana waved her hand dismissively. ‘ Please .’

Kelly didn’t know what that meant but Juliana moved on quickly.

‘Have you got somewhere you can stay for a few days until this all blows over?’

Finn came immediately to mind. Her room was always there.

But then she thought of Ashley and Finn. She’d had no word from him on how their date night went, which meant there was every chance Ashley had stayed the night. Kelly couldn’t go there. Finn would never turn her away, but she couldn’t share his apartment with another woman.

‘I’m having Easter lunch with my parents today. I can stay there a few nights.’

‘Good, you need to be gone from here in half an hour.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because if I go over this early, they’ll make me go to church with them.’

Juliana tapped her foot and bit her lip. ‘Well, is there anyone who can shield you for a while?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Anyone who’s not an instantly recognisable, attention-drawing soap star?’

Kelly wanted nothing more than to see Finn.

But there was also someone else.

***

Toula was a living, breathing stereotype of the chic new mum.

Dressed head to toe in skintight active wear, she pushed her designer pram as though it was a fashion accessory.

Her six-month-old son, Jackson, slept soundly, oblivious to his mother’s wild gesticulations and unnecessarily loud voice.

That same voice Kelly had loved for decades.

Toula was recounting a story about an altercation she’d had with one of the mums in her mothers’ group.

‘So she said to me, “We’ve decided to adopt inclusive language in the group. Can you please refer to it as chest feeding?” This is immediately after I’d been complaining about the torture of enduring Jackson’s first tooth on my already raw nipples. ’

A man walking in the opposite direction crossed their path at that very moment. The words ‘already raw nipples’ made him blush like he’d walked in on Toula giving birth. He scampered quickly away.