The Fifth Letter, page 7
“You’ll be all right,” said Eden. “Nate’s so cute, you won’t even be able to get mad at him.”
Trina laughed. “I hope you’re right,” she said. She gave Joni a funny look and then reached out for the letter that was still waiting in the middle of the table. “I guess we should get on with this now, shouldn’t we?” she asked.
What was that look for? Joni wondered. Was Trina changing the subject on her behalf? Was it really that obvious that Joni actually didn’t want to hear every little detail about their kids?
“Go for it, Trin,” said Deb.
Trina unfolded the paper and began to read.
Hello ladies!
Okay, I have several confessions to share with you all:
I’ve taken up smoking in secret. This probably seems a bit silly. I’m a grown woman, why would I need to smoke in secret? But with all the bloody information out there about how bad it is for your health, it seems sort of stupid to actually choose to smoke at this stage in your life—when you’re old enough to know better. I have to keep it hidden from my husband because he would be LIVID if he knew.
Sometimes I like to tell LIES on Facebook! I make up stuff to make my life seem more interesting. Once I downloaded a picture of a recipe and pretended that I’d cooked it for my dinner that night.
Every now and then when I go through the self-serve checkout at the supermarket, I steal one item. I “forget” to scan it.
I like watching porn.
I accidentally killed my pet budgie when I was nine. My parents think he died of natural causes, but I was trying to clean out his birdcage and it was taking forever to wipe it out . . . so I got the vacuum cleaner thinking it would be a quick way to suck up all the birdseed. I don’t even know how it happened—one second he was sitting on his perch, next second there was this phlerp noise and he’d vanished down into the vacuum pipe. I felt TERRIBLE. By the time I got the vacuum open and found him inside the bag, he was already dead. I still have nightmares about it.
I have a teeny tiny crush on the husband of someone else in this group. Don’t freak out, though. I promise I would never, ever, EVER try and act on it. And it’s not like I’m in love with him or anything like that. I promise I love my husband. It’s a minuscule crush, purely physical.
Okay, those are my “deepest, darkest” secrets!! Don’t judge me! And pleeeease don’t figure out who I am. I’ll be mortified if you do.
Lots of love
From
Mrs. XYZ
Trina had been shouting a bit as she read the letter out, in order to be heard above the noises of the pub, and Joni had been spending the entire time as she listened trying her best to keep her face composed. But it was bloody hard—hearing her own words yelled out in the middle of a pub—it took all of her self-control not to reach across the table and snatch the letter out of Trina’s hands, to yell, “Stop! Stop shouting my secrets out to the world!” Now that Trina was finally finished, Joni chanced a look around at the others, half expecting to find them all staring straight at her, waiting for her to own up to it. But instead, both Eden and Trina were staring at Deb, who had one hand across her mouth and looked like her face was turning red.
“What?” said Trina. “What’s wrong? Are you choking or something?”
“No.” Deb’s voice came out as a tiny squeak then she slapped a second hand across her mouth and starting rocking in her seat.
“Oh my God,” said Eden. “She’s laughing. She’s laughing at that terrible budgie story.”
Deb shook her head quickly but then she glanced over at Trina, who looked like she was trying hard to hide the edges of a smirk on her face, and all of a sudden it was clear Deb couldn’t hold on to it anymore. The laughter burst out and she said between wheezes, “I can’t . . . believe . . . she killed . . . her bird . . . with a vacuum . . . cleaner.”
“Stop!” cried Trina as she attempted to hold herself together and not fall apart along with Deb. “You can’t, you can’t laugh at something so horrific.”
Joni watched the two of them in horror. She couldn’t believe that she’d held that awful story about her pet budgie inside for so long, always harboring this horrendous guilt, and there were her friends, just laughing at her. At least Eden looked suitably horrified. Besides, she’d just confessed to having a crush on someone else’s husband! How was that not the first thing they all jumped on?
“You two are pure evil,” said Eden. “One hundred percent, pure evil.”
Finally, Deb started to calm down. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry to whoever’s letter it was—it was just such a strange image . . . anyway, forget it, I didn’t mean to laugh.”
Trina coughed uncomfortably and nodded. “Yes, sorry, sorry. It’s dreadful, not funny at all. Besides, let’s focus on the important part of this letter. Who the hell has a crush on my husband?”
“Why do you assume it’s your husband that she has a crush on?” asked Deb.
“Because Josh is the hottest,” she replied.
Joni hoped Trina wouldn’t catch the look of distaste on her face. She could honestly say that she’d never found Josh to be attractive. Okay—so in the traditional sense he was handsome. But that personality, God, it turned you off and completely transformed his features the moment he spoke. And it was unlikely that any of the others would ever covet Trina’s husband either.
“Bullshit. Connor is way hotter,” said Deb.
“Disagree,” said Joni, thinking she should join in and pretend like she was just as interested in who it was that had this secret crush. “Kai is clearly the best-looking one.”
“He’s a redhead,” said Deb dismissively.
“So?”
“He has a beard!”
“So?!”
“Joni,” said Deb. “Look. We all know it—so I’m just going to come right out and say it. Your husband is a hipster.”
“He is not!”
“Yes, yes, he is.”
“Doesn’t it come down to personal preference?” Eden interrupted. “Surely we’re all attracted to different things? And besides, Ben has the sexy Latino vibe, so he’s obviously the hottest.”
“Ben’s Latino?” Trina asked. “That’s news to me. Is Benjamin a particularly Latino name? You do realize he’s blond and fairly pale, right?”
“It’s on his mother’s side,” said Eden defensively. “Do you think that means there’s trouble in whoever’s marriage it is?” she added.
“Nah, it’s just a crush—perfectly normal,” said Deb. “I don’t think she needs to worry that there’s any deeper meaning there. I used to have a bit of a thing for the guy who sold me my fresh juice and bagels every morning on the way to work in North Sydney, but that didn’t mean I wanted anything to actually happen with him.”
“So, we’re not worried?” Joni asked. “No one is freaking out about this?”
“Yeah actually, I agree with Deb,” said Trina. “It’s not that big of a deal, is it? I mean it says in the letter that she would never act on it. As long as that’s true—then it’s fine.”
Eden reached across the table for the paper. “Okay, what else was in this essay of a letter,” she said as she scanned the contents. “Right. The first thing she’s got is the smoking. Hmm, I would have thought we’d have noticed if one of us was smoking. Surely we’d smell it on them.”
“Check Deb’s handbag!” shouted Joni, partly in an effort to cover herself and partly because she really did want to know if Deb was hiding something in her bag. “When we ordered the first round of drinks tonight,” she continued, “I went to get her purse out of it and she snatched it back off me like I was mugging her!”
“It’s not my letter!” shouted Deb, grabbing her handbag and pulling it close.
“So why were you secretive about your bag, then, Deb?” Joni asked.
“I wasn’t! I just didn’t want you taking my money, thank you very much—it was supposed to be your shout.”
“Yeah, but you practically launched yourself at me! You were totally trying to stop me from seeing something in there . . . Tell us the truth!”
There was a brief pause and then Deb said crossly, “Okay. There might be something in my bag—but it’s not cigarettes. I’ll think about telling you. Let’s focus on this letter right now, though.”
“Should we search everyone else’s bags for cigarettes?” Trina asked thoughtfully.
“No!” shouted Eden.
“Ooh, she sounds guilty.”
“I do not! It’s just that we seem to have gotten off topic. We’re supposed to be helping, not doing an investigation.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot,” said Trina, looking disappointed.
“All right,” said Joni, “The first thing we need to figure out is why she’s started smoking.”
“Does it matter?” asked Eden. “Surely we should just convince her to quit.”
“Well, maybe we need to know why she started to help get to the root of the problem. Maybe she can’t quit without first dealing with what it was that caused her to start up?”
Yes, come on, thought Joni, tell me what’s wrong with me. Tell me why I’m doing this.
“Who cares?” said Deb. “We’re adults, if someone wants to smoke, it’s fine by me. I just don’t see any reason to sneak around doing it. Besides, you’re all big enough and ugly enough to know the risks. I’ll visit you when you’re in hospital with lung cancer and I’ll make fun of you when you have to speak through one of those voice thingamies ’cos your voice box is shot, and I’ll hug your kids when they’re devastated because their mum died before she got to watch them get married or meet her first grandchild.”
“Holy shit, Deb, way to manipulate with the reverse psychology,” said Trina.
“And way to bring the mood down,” added Joni.
“Okay, Deb, you’ve made your point. It’s bad for her, she should quit. Let’s move on to the next issue in the letter,” Trina said, double-checking the paper. “She lies on Facebook,” she read out.
“Who doesn’t?” said Deb. “Next.”
“Hang on,” said Eden. “I’m seeing a pattern. She’s lying about smoking. Now she’s making stuff up on Facie. Underlying issue here? She’s not happy with her life?” She took a sip of her vodka lemon lime and scrutinized the others from over the top of her glass. “Who’s feeling unhappy?” she whispered.
“Well, how are we supposed to deal with that without knowing more information?” asked Joni. “Why is she unhappy?” And for a moment she’d almost forgotten that she was analyzing her own actions rather than an anonymous friend.
Yes, why am I unhappy? she thought.
Ha. As if I don’t already know the answer to that.
“Because she has financial problems?” asked Deb.
“Why do you think that?” asked Joni, probably a little too quickly.
“Further down in the letter,” said Deb. “She says she steals stuff sometimes from the supermarket.”
“I don’t think that’s got anything to do with money,” said Eden. “It sounds more like rebelling. Same as the smoking.”
I’m rebelling, am I? Huh. Interesting, thought Joni.
“This would go a lot easier if we just knew whose letter it was,” said Trina.
“Well, we don’t know, so quit trying to make someone admit to it,” snapped Deb. “And by the way, on the fourth point, the fact that she likes porn. Honey, whichever one of you it is, that’s no biggie. This is the twenty-first century. You don’t have to keep that a secret just because you’re a woman. I like watching it with Connor.”
“You do?!” Eden sounded slightly scandalized.
“Oh, screw it,” said Deb, and she reached under the table for her handbag. “I may as well show you what’s in here as well.” She searched around through the contents inside and pulled something out and slammed it onto the table.
“Is that . . . is that a vibrator?” asked Trina.
The girls all squealed with laughter. “Please tell me it’s clean right now!” shouted Joni, delighted to have the distraction from her letter, and Trina spat out her drink with a fresh wave of laughter.
“Why is it in your handbag?” asked Eden.
“I like to keep it close at hand,” Deb replied. “In case I need a bit of stress relief.”
“So . . . what? You just duck away into the bathroom or something?” exclaimed Joni.
“What about the noise it makes?” asked Eden.
“It’s discreet,” she replied. “Very quiet, barely purrs.” That was too much for Trina, who laughed so hard that she almost fell out of the end of the booth.
“I so wouldn’t have picked you as the ‘sexual deviant’ of the group, Deb,” said Joni.
“It doesn’t make me a sexual deviant. It just means that I know what I want, what I need—and how to get it.”
“Do you think we’re being helpful enough with this letter?” asked Eden.
“Probably not,” said Deb. “Have we at least covered everything in it?”
“Let’s see,” said Trina, snatching the letter away from Eden. “There’s the bird thing. Very sad and all, but it was just an accident. I think she should forgive herself and move on.”
Joni chewed on her bottom lip. If it were that easy to just simply forgive herself, she would have done it already!
“So does that mean we’ve solved this person’s problems, then?” Deb asked. “Because if so, I’m going up to the bar to order another round of drinks.”
Joni dipped her head while she tried to hide her disappointment. Her issues were far from dealt with. For God’s sake, she had a crush on another man. Why didn’t they all think this was a major problem? And lately, her relationship with her husband was more like roommate and roommate than husband and wife. But she couldn’t argue with Deb without giving herself away. “I’ll have the same as Eden this time, please,” she said.
Deb extricated herself from the booth and then Trina jumped up to follow her, saying with a resolute sigh, “Ah, I suppose someone should come and give you a hand.”
For instance, when we were eating the Thai takeaway—you made this comment that, to be honest, was thoughtless and totally egotistical. I was right in the middle of cutting up my spring roll and I just about threw my knife at you!
Chapter 8
Joni was wishing that the glass in front of her was full. She’d been left on her own at the table with Eden while the others had gone to order the fresh round of drinks. She tried to swallow but the top of her mouth felt like it had been encrusted with the barnacles she’d seen on the wall of the cave that morning.
Eden slid over a little closer in the booth and lowered her voice. “How long have you been smoking, Joni?” she asked.
Joni’s neck made a horrible creaking noise as her head snapped up to look at Eden. “How did you—” she began. But then she stopped.
Ben.
That’s how Eden knew.
Eden’s husband, Ben, had sold Joni out. She thought back to that day outside the gym, when she’d been caught smoking.
She’d always taken such pleasure in lighting up her cigarette right underneath the sign outside her gym: we don’t smoke butts; we tone them, said the witty Virgin Active sign. All of their signage was like that. Quirky jokes—usually some sort of a play on words. Inside, several of the staff members matched their signage. Bright, bubbly people, full of helpful advice, with quirky hairstyles and accents, bulging muscles and taut skin stretched over rock-hard abs.
She knew it was a contradiction to spend ninety minutes working out, to follow it up with a healthy shake and a coconut and cacao protein ball, and then step outside and fill her lungs with nicotine. But she couldn’t help it. It was her secret defiance. Her secret defiance against who? Against what? The current society that had become so obsessed with health?
“Look at you, you rebel.” The voice had come from her left and Joni had turned, expecting to see one of the male gym junkie staff members making fun of her. She’d been startled when she realized it was Eden’s husband, Ben, walking toward her from the car park.
“Ben! You don’t come to this gym.”
She’d instantly dropped the cigarette to the ground and stomped on it.
“Don’t feel like you need to do that on my account.” Ben had laughed. “I was just joking around because of the sign.”
“No, no, I was done with it anyway,” she’d said, even though she’d barely had one drag.
“I joined the other week,” Ben had continued. “Eden said you always rave about this place and I’ve been meaning to find somewhere to start working out again. Funny I ran into you so soon.”
“Ha,” Joni had said, as though she didn’t find it funny at all. She’d felt uncomfortable asking but she’d said it anyway: “Um, Ben. Listen, no one actually knows that I smoke. In fact, I don’t really smoke properly anyway. It’s just a once-in-a-while sort of a thing. So, I’d appreciate it if maybe you wouldn’t . . .”
“It’s all good,” Ben had said. “Promise I won’t say a word.”
“Even to Eden?”
“Cross my heart,” he’d replied, crisscrossing a finger across a broad chest under a tight-fitting T-shirt.
Now Joni stared at Eden, feeling a strange mix of annoyance and guilt. “I can’t believe he told you!”
“What?”
“Ben! Ben told you that I’ve been smoking.”
“Uh, no. I just knew it was your letter. From the way it was written—it just sounded to me like your voice. I doubt the others will guess, though—you’re the least likely one of us to be a smoker, especially considering how you were with that joint the other night. And I assume you’re just having the occasional cigarette, it’s not like a pack a day, right? Anyway, what do you mean Ben told me, how would he know?”
“Oh, sorry. I just thought . . . he goes to my gym. A little while back he saw me having a cigarette out the front and I asked him to keep it a secret.”
“I promise, he never mentioned it. I mean, he said that he’d seen you at the gym, that you’d worked out together once or twice, but that’s all. So . . . Do you want to talk about it a bit, about your letter, before Deb and Trina come back? Like . . . why are you doing all these self-destructive things? Smoking and stealing and lying and stuff?”
