Bleeding Hearts. Lindy Cameron
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Kit lied.
"There's a truly amazing thing that probably goes with that mildly interesting revelation," Paula Bracken noted sullenly. The woman had been quiet for most of the lunch, due to the residual hangover she'd owned up to on arrival.
"What's that, oh grumpy one?" Dee asked.
Paula curled her lip at her friend and then looked at Kit. "It probably means that, until today, Katherine was the only person in the country who couldn't have picked RJ out of a line-up."
Kit feigned puzzlement as she briefly searched Paula's angular face and brown eyes for a sign that her statement carried any more animosity than a slightly envious tone. It didn't seem to, so she glanced around the table, as if it took her a moment to recall which of the other women was Rebecca. She flashed her a wide-eyed apologetic smile. "She's right. Sorry."
"I find it refreshing," Rebecca stated, trying not to laugh.
"Speaking of refreshing, where's Tori with that bloody champagne?" Miranda demanded.
"I'll go see if she needs any help," Kit offered, struggling up from her chair on the huge shaded patio at the side of the house, where they had adjourned for lunch. She wandered inside, calling out Tori's name so she'd have some idea of which direction to head.
"Last door on the left," Tori called back.
Kit glanced back at the seven laughing women and wondered what a reunion of her schoolmates would be like. She hadn't attended the function that marked her 10th anniversary of leaving school, because it was the same year that her best friend Hannah had been killed by a drunk driver. And birthday cards were the only contact she still kept with her other three closest school friends, as they'd all left the state. Jane now lived in Hobart with her husband and three kids, Karen had gone feral in Byron Bay, and Ruth was playing the hotshot lawyer in Adelaide.
Kit's closest friends now were people she'd met as an adult and, while they were without doubt the most precious things in her life, she wondered what it would be like to be still attached, in some way, to someone you'd known all your life. It made her feel strangely disjointed to think that she possibly already knew more about the women she'd spent the last two hours with than she did about Jane, Karen or Ruth; and that she wouldn't even recognise half the girls she'd gone to school with.
Tori and her mates, on the other hand, had such a long history they would no doubt survive all the things that are regularly sent by the mean and spiteful Muck-up Troll to test the friendship concept; including, perhaps, a really good reason for one of them to be sending a batch of poison pen letters and maybe, at a pinch, even FredAndGinger.
OK, she thought, shaking her head to switch off the gooey Big Chill scenario that was trying to influence her judgement of this group of women. She had observed something oddly askew about their interactions, as if they either had a reason for wanting to forget an aspect of their shared past, or they hadn't always been such an intimate group.
Kit found Tori in the cavernous and stainless steel kitchen where she was defying the laws of physics by flinging biscuits and pieces of fruit and cheese willy-nilly onto a huge platter and having them land in an artistically appetising configuration.
"That is a talent I'd kill for," Kit stated.
"What?"
"The elegant art of the food toss."
"Nothing to it," Tori claimed, licking her fingers.
"There is when your own kitchen has a vendetta against you," Kit pronounced.
"The secret," Tori laughed, "is don't ever let it think it's got the upper hand."
"Too late, I'm afraid," Kit said. "My kitchen appliances have formed their own street gang."
"Oh dear, in that case you need an exorcist." Tori opened a jar of sundried tomatoes and scooped some out for the platter. "Speaking of the occult," she continued, "what do you think about the old witches gathered around my cauldron? Do you suspect any one of them of sending the you-know-whats?"
Kit shrugged. "I doubt it Tori. But until we know why the whats are being sent, it really could be anyone. Can I ask a couple of personals before Miranda sends FredAndGinger to hunt us down and bring us back with the champagne?"
"Fire away."
"Do the seven of you have some deep dark secret that you would kill to protect, or that you could be threatened or blackmailed over?"
"What?"
"You know, did you all have an affair with your English Lit mistress or accidentally kill your Drama teacher, or steal the principal's bra and put it on the vicar while he was asleep? Anything like that?"
"Not that I can recall, no," Tori replied, with bemusement. "Where the hell did you go to school?"
Kit waved a hand in dismissal. "It's a cliché, Tori. In the movies, whenever you have a mystery that involves someone who is about to, or has just been to, or is at a reunion of school friends, you know that when the weird things start to happen it's because of something diabolical in their past; something that happened at school, that they've all kept hidden for years."
"The movies, huh? What about real life?" Tori asked.
"It doesn't happen in real life," Kit assured her. "Except maybe on this occasion," she grinned.
"Well, as far as I know, the worst thing any of us did together was get suspended for two weeks for smoking."
"OK, observation time," Kit continued. "You didn't all go all the way through school together did you?"
"How the hell did you figure that out?"
"It's my job," Kit grinned again.
"So it is," Tori said. "OK, let me get the sequence right. Rebecca and I have been friends since I started school at Griffith Hall in Grade Four; Miranda and Carmel, like Rebecca, went all the way through from the Prep Grade to Form Six, but they weren't our friends until Form Two; and Dee and Paula didn't start until our final year but they joined our little group straight away."
"I thought so. I had a feeling they were latecomers." Kit popped a piece of cheese in her mouth. "They talk more about what they're doing now, than what you all did then," she explained in response to Tori's questioning half-shrug. "What about Grace? She seems, ah, how shall I put it? She seems aloof."
"Grace sort of floated. She was one of those popular people who never tied themselves to any group. Good at sport and quite smart. You know the type?" Tori handed Kit the platter, picked up three bottles of champagne and headed towards the door. Kit followed her out into the hall.
"We were friendly on and off over the years," Tori continued, "but RJ and Grace hated each other at school. When we had our 15 year reunion though, they couldn't remember why."
"And now they're the best of friends?" Kit queried. "Really?"
"Yeah." Tori stopped and turned to face Kit. "Really."
Rebecca leapt up from her chair when she saw Kit and Tori approaching the patio. "Ladies," she said with a sweeping gesture as she held the door open for them.
"I ain't no lady," Kit smiled.
"Me neither RJ, and you of all people should know that," Tori stated, as if she was seriously insulted. "They tried and tried, all those lady-making people, and this is the best they could do." She punctuated her statement with a loud burp.
Kit placed the platter on the table, took one of the bottles from Tori and popped the cork.
"Has our return interrupted your soapbox slander of the local council, Dee?" Tori asked.
"No. I finished my rave ages ago, thank you very much," Dee stated, feigning miffedness.
"Thank god," Grace exclaimed, poking her tongue at Dee. "Since then we've done the 'skinny model whinge', followed by the 'collective outrage number' at what that prick Carter Walsh said about women pollies, and now we're onto whether or not we should keep our ex-shit's surname."