Queentide

Chapter 1

Bodie Hughes had seen it all. Not because she’d reached a significant age. Time on earth didn’t equate to understanding it. There were plenty of folks with walking frames, but not a single clue. No. She had seen it all because she had looked behind the curtain. The one most people pretend isn’t there.

Sometime around 1965, Bodie decided there was more to life than pot roasts and white weddings and hitched a ride to San Francisco, which seemed back then to be the opposite of Idaho. She was escaping. Looking for freedom from her mother’s expectations and a life so small it would’ve crushed her in a matter of years. She stopped being Doris from Idaho and became Bodie from San Francisco, who smoked hash, hung out with musicians and could drink any man under the table. But all that freedom left a tooth-stripping saccharine taste in her mouth, warning her it was entirely artificial.

The miniskirts and drugs were a distraction from the pretty beaded curtain that hid the truth from hip women like Bodie. The terrifying truth. They were not liberated. Just like the Dorises from Idaho, someone was still chaining them to the kitchen sink. They were just too high on the hype to see the shackles.

When a colleague had to leave the office after getting married, Bodie took a peek behind that curtain. Then a friend died from a backyard abortion, and the curtain opened just a little more. Another got committed by a cheating husband because it was cheaper than divorcing her. It was then that Bodie tugged at the curtain until the damn thing fell. Until she was staring the dragon in the eye.

For sixty years since, she’d fought it with protests and doctorates and women’s collectives. She’d even chased it halfway across the world. But she had failed to defeat it on this new battlefield. In fact, since the last pandemic, its fiery breath seemed to have got hotter. It had come up with unpredictable ways to hurt women. To keep them scared and in their place.

But Bodie had a new tactic, one the dragon wouldn’t see coming. And that’s where Janet De Marco came in. Janet wasn’t as old as Bodie, but she knew the dragon just as well. As a female lawyer, even just to become a female lawyer, she’d had plenty of battles with it. Janet had even got some spears through its thickened hide. The occasional scorching she’d got in return had made her more determined to keep on fighting.

But she knew, just like Bodie, that they were losing. Women were losing in Australia. All over the world. Even though women like Janet De Marco were fighting for them. Swinging at the Australian Government when it kept its ‘temporary’ powers. Hammering the judges when droves of abusive men walked free because of the ‘unique mental pressure’ of the bushfires and multiple lockdowns. Janet didn’t like to lose. And recently, she’d been losing a lot. She was tired. They were all so damn tired. But Bodie was sure her idea would be like a hit of caffeine and sugar. Straight into the veins.

Bodie waited for Janet to finish reading, looking over the lawyer’s perfect bouffant with the glossy silver streaks. She ran a hand through her own messy spikes and wondered how two women who looked so different could think the same.

‘Jesus, Bodie.’ Janet De Marco moved her glasses to the end of her nose, removing the barrier between her eyes and Bodie’s. ‘Legally, yes, nothing can prevent you from doing this. Of course, we both know you didn’t need a lawyer to tell you that. But, practically, do you think this is possible?’

‘Yes.’ Bodie reminded herself to sound confident. Less tired. ‘I do.’

Janet raised her eyebrows. ‘You really think you can get the numbers?’

‘If I can expand the support base, get the other groups on board. If I can make them see we all win if Queentide wins, I mean, if the Women’s Party wins,’ Bodie scrunched her eyes and fists. It was hard not using the name of the movement she’d spent years establishing. ‘Then yes, I…’ Bodie corrected herself again. This was not about her, she reminded herself, ‘We. We can do this.’

Janet smiled. She knew Bodie struggled to find the right words to ask for help. It was a foreign language she hadn’t bothered to learn. She was feeding her the lines. ‘So, what do you want from me?’

Bodie breathed in, ‘Legal advice. Free. There are many people who will want us to fail.’

Janet nodded. A little too enthusiastically.

‘And they will have more resources than you. I get it.’ She waved her hand, the sunlight catching on the gold and gems on her fingers. ‘This firm is at your disposal. But you will need more than a room full of lawyers. You are going to need people that understand election processes. Not just the policy stuff. The backroom stuff. The backstabbing stuff. You know? You will need PR and marketing. A shitload.’ Janet paused, narrowing her eyes. ‘And I can’t imagine the media are going to lend you a megaphone. You are going to need someone loud enough without one. You’ll need to create your own media. I’ll put some feelers out. Leave the hiring to me.’

Bodie finally let go of the breath she’d been holding. ‘Thank you, Janet.’

The offer of help felt like drinking a shot of bourbon. Endorphins flooded her veins. The unfamiliar sensation, the relief, of someone taking some of her load had altered her balance. It made her feel not quite complete. Not in control. Drunk. Scared. Trying to regain her composure, Bodie focused on Janet’s face. The worry she found there instantly restoring the weight on her shoulder.

‘You know what you are getting into here, Bodie? What we are getting into, right? You know the discipline that is going to be needed to pull this off?’ It was a loaded question – a direct hit to Bodie’s heart.

‘If you are worrying about Insley, don’t.’ Bodie intended her voice to be a full stop on the conversation of her granddaughter. But Janet wasn’t one to be punctuated by someone else. Even Bodie Hughes. She aimed again.

‘I’m always worried about Insley. Where is she now?’

‘Doing what Insley does, saving the world one woman at a time.’ Bodie’s smile failed to land, crashing into a frown. ‘Single-handed.’

‘She can’t be making trouble once you start this Bodie. If you’ve any chance of succeeding, Queentide needs to come across as utterly respectable. Not a word anyone would use to describe Insley, not even you. You might hide Queentide on the ballot paper, calling it the Women’s Party, using some semi-defunct political party as a Trojan horse, but everyone will know you are the one on the inside, steering it through the gates of Canberra. We can’t have your family turn up in court for killing someone.’

That blow struck hard. Reaching too many nerves. Bruising a memory too close to the surface. Insley, still so small she needed a cushion to see the judge, calmly, too calmly, explaining what she had seen her father do. Bodie, still jetlagged, biting her lip, so she didn’t cry. Trying to be brave for her granddaughter, as she heard how Celeste, her daughter, had died. She decided that day to move to Sydney to take care of Insley. As well as you can take care of a wildflower.

‘We’ll have a meeting in a few days. I may need you to help convince the others of the change of direction. In the meantime, let me buy you lunch. It’s the least I can do.’ Bodie talked before Janet realised the damage she’d caused and scrambled to apologise. Or worse. Ask Bodie how long it had been now. Twenty years, almost? Bodie didn’t have an answer. When you lost a daughter, you didn’t count it in years or even days. You counted it in unmade memories. For Bodie, that was incalculable.

Oblivious or relieved, Janet shook her head. ‘Sorry, I’ve got a client now. A paying one. Hopefully.’ The obese emerald prevented her from fully crossing her fingers, and Bodie stopped feeling bad about the pro bono work. ‘But I’ll be at the meeting. Helen is going to hate this.’ Bodie let out a heavy sigh. Helen’s research had inspired Bodie to start Queentide, but her rigid opposition to politicising the movement was limiting it. Helen believed in playing fair, even in an unfair world. Bodie had too, but now time was running out.

‘You are going to need my help, or at least my moral support.’ Janet looked down at her rose-gold watch. A Rolex. ‘Jesus, is that the time? My client is probably already in reception. She sounded positively terrified about coming in. Poor girl. I’ll walk you out.’

Janet was already on her feet. Bodie took the hint and started stuffing the files and laptop back into her cavernous patchwork knapsack.

‘Is she in some kind of trouble, this new client?’ Bodie couldn’t stop herself from asking, even though she knew she couldn’t, shouldn’t, help. Not now.

‘All the people I meet are in some kind of trouble.’ Her eyebrows raised, and her glazed lips curled into a cynical smile. ‘She’s left her husband. I know little more than that.’ Janet scanned the office for anything out of place and found an offending crooked file. ‘Oh, except that he, the ex-husband, is Ben Henderson. You know that young politician? Minister for Bullshit.’

Bodie knew him well enough to grimace when she heard the name. The author of the Discrimination Bill, a policy that made it legal for women to be sacked for ‘morally offending’ Christian bosses, or any bosses, in fact.

Bodie remembered there was always a woman with him at press conferences. The wife. A polished prop for the cameras, proof the Bill wasn’t all that bad – how could it be if a woman was standing right next to him? The accessory didn’t talk. Or smile. Bodie remembered seeing her nearly cry once. She didn’t even know her name. How could she not know her name? How had Bodie Hughes let a woman become scenery?

She had to rectify this. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Er … Lilith?’ Janet picked up a legal pad. ‘Lilith Green. She’s already gone back to her maiden name. How d’you like that?’

Bodie liked it a great deal. She’d left a name behind in Idaho. It was too heavy with guilt to bring with her. She wondered what was weighing down Lilith’s old name.

The phone on Janet’s desk buzzed, slightly startling them both.

‘And she’s here.’ Janet looked around, exasperated to see things out of place, even though, to Bodie, it seemed just fine. Except Bodie’s mug, off the coaster, on Janet’s glass desk. Bodie picked it up, then saw the circle it had left behind, so put it down again. But Janet had already witnessed the crime and tutted at Bodie. ‘Come on, old woman,’ Janet said as she shooed Bodie out of the office. ‘Let me make some money so I can work for you for free.’

Bodie and Janet were still laughing as they emerged into the clinically clean reception. Bodie saw an out-of-place bundle of creases perched on the white leather sofa. The face and body as crumpled as the clothes, as though this woman had collapsed in on herself and didn’t have the strength, or inclination, to straighten herself back out. Their boisterous entrance had startled her. She jumped, her teacup sloshing its contents on the saucer.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, my dear. We are so loud. Can I help you?’ Bodie made her way towards the bundle, but Janet cut her off.

Gliding across the room, her two arms open, purposefully blocking Bodie. The bundle lifted her chin, quickly glancing at the door as if she were working out how long it would take to reach it. Then she locked two hesitant eyes on Bodie, giving her an intense but wary once-over. Bodie smiled in as friendly a manner as she could muster, then turned to busy herself with Ed, the amiable receptionist. Bodie had lived around nature long enough to know you don’t corner a wounded animal. It might die of shock. Or attack you. She couldn’t tell which way this one would go. She asked Ed about his weekend, giving one ear to his most recent dating antics and the other to Lilith Green.

‘Lilith. Lovely to put a face to a voice.’ Janet listened to the apologies. For spilt tea on the sofa. For her clumsiness. For bothering Janet. ‘Oh please, don’t worry about that. Ed will take that for you.’ She gathered up Lilith Green and, with an arm around the younger woman’s shoulder, swept her clean past Bodie. ‘Come on through.’

Bodie lingered and watched Janet settle her into a conference room, a place without Bodie’s coffee stains on the desk. Janet gave a quick dismissing wave and closed the heavy glass door behind them.

Bodie forced herself to leave. If she was going to pull this off – if they were going to pull this off – she was going to have to let others swing the sword. She just wasn’t strong enough to do it on her own anymore. Besides, she found out long ago, the hard way, that she couldn’t save them all. It was time to stop. There was a new plan.

Wearily leaving the office, Bodie considered the train. She realised she had no energy for dragon fighting that afternoon. The young women would have to deflect the words and hands themselves. Bodie couldn’t always be there. She wouldn’t always be there.

With a heart as heavy as her feet, Bodie took a taxi to the community. It was the place she shared with the women she had saved, back when she thought that would be enough. Enough reparations. Enough to halt the accumulation of unmade memories of her daughter.

But living with these women, these pseudo-daughters, was like swimming in an ocean of missed moments – an ocean whose currents got stronger every day. Exhausted in the backseat, she prayed that what she had planned would be enough to slow its movements.

To finally lay her daughter’s memory, and her own mind and body, to rest.

Chapter 2

‘So, Lilith. What are we doing here?’

It wasn’t unkind, but it was sudden, catching Lilith by surprise. Like a band-aid being ripped off by a well-intentioned parent. Lilith remembered how much per hour Janet De Marco cost and decided brevity felt good.

Lilith’s face felt raw from the scratch of the lawyer’s sharp eyes. She wondered what other women said to Janet the first time they came into her office.

She tried a few explanations on to see if they fit. I’m scared of my ex-husband. His friend fired me when I fled my marriage. There are just no jobs. I’m using the last of my money to see you. I’m worried about my children. I have no one else to listen to me, just you, a stranger. Someone I’m paying. They all fit perfectly but were uncomfortably heavy. So she picked the lightest one to wear.

‘I suppose I just want this over with.’ The lawyer looked at her, a smile tickling the corner of her shiny oxblood lips. ‘Oh, the custody thing, I mean. Not this meeting.’ Both women knew Lilith meant the meeting.

Lilith’s heart was thumping so hard. She was sure Janet De Marco could hear it. The lawyer sat still. Silent. Like a fox hunting a rabbit. Waiting for the prey to come to her. The room was cavernous and empty. Nowhere to hide. Lilith’s skin prickled, those sharp eyes scraping over her again.

Lilith spoke, hoping to stop the lawyer’s painful gaze and to stop the sound of blood flooding her brain. ‘I need help. Your help.’ She tried to grab hold of the escaping words, but they were too panicked, struggling hard to be free. ‘He’s threatened to take the kids from me. He’s contending the next election. You know that, I guess.’ The words echoed off the bare walls and timber-slab table, confirming their existence. This was really happening. Lilith Green was really in a solicitor’s office, trying to divorce her husband. ‘He’s said if I don’t keep quiet, he will prove I’m an unfit parent.’

Janet seemed unmoved by the words that had left Lilith trembling. She just scribbled on a pad and asked, ‘Keep quiet about what?’

‘About our separation. Ben doesn’t want any controversy during the election.’ Lilith twisted the strap of her battered handbag around her fingers. The tips went white, but she didn’t release the pressure.

‘People get divorced all the time. He’s not seeking election in some conservative little village. He’s the member for Warringah, isn’t he? Northern Beaches? Half the population there are on second marriages. I can’t see divorce being an issue.’ Janet paused and put down her pen. She detected a new scent. She lowered her voice and her head, concentrating that gaze on Lilith again. ‘How bad was it? Police ever called?’

‘He never hit me.’ The words jumped out eagerly, almost before Janet finished speaking. Waiting for the familiar cue. Lilith turned her head to avoid Janet’s eyes, but not before she saw them flash with recognition. Or resignation.

‘Sure. Okay, so let’s say there was no violence. People don’t leave happy marriages. He cheated on you?’

‘Well, yes, but that’s not why I left. I mean, he didn’t leave me for someone else. There were just … others.’ Lilith lashed herself for betraying Ben, for proving his point. He couldn’t trust her. Too late. The lawyer had turned a key and cracked the door open. Enough to see the skeletons, smell the blood. Lilith didn’t want to stay locked in there with them any longer. ‘I was suffocating. He was suffocating me. He controlled everything. Money, the kids. Where I went, what I thought … it got terrible after the 2020 lockdowns, so much time together – you know how it was …’ Tears disobediently sprang up, Lilith wiped them away before they could reach the creases carved around her eyes.

The lawyer handed Lilith a tissue without even looking up. This was routine for Janet De Marco. Somehow that made Lilith feel better. This was just something to deal with, like removing a tick burrowing into your skin. The tears had dried before the tissue even reached her face.

‘So he’s a bastard, and he doesn’t want anyone to know. Would that be about right?’ Janet said.

Lilith nodded. If she didn’t speak, she could pretend, at least to herself, that she wasn’t betraying Ben. Lilith had done it for twenty years. She could do it for another hour.

‘And he is blackmailing you, with this idea of you being an unfit mother,’ Janet continued.

‘I wouldn’t say blackmail …’ Lilith offered.

‘You don’t have to. I’m saying it.’ Janet’s voice was as sharp as her eyes. ‘And what grounds does he have for suggesting you are unfit?’

‘Well, I don’t have a job now. I’d hung on to it through the recession, but then I left Ben. My boss was Ben’s friend. He told me he couldn’t keep me on after all. Now I’m running out of money. Fast. There are no jobs, at least not for someone like me. Ben’s still in the house. I had to leave. I’ve got somewhere, but it’s small. It’s not good enough for the girls, and I’m struggling even to pay rent there. He knows it will be hard for me to get another job – I don’t have a profession, I suppose. I’m only a secretary, you see. He knows I’m on antidepressants. He knows I find it difficult to cope … with life. But they are helping me. He says I drink too much. He’s right, I suppose, but I never do it in front of the kids. I …’

Decades of Ben’s words squalled around Lilith’s head like confused birds. She was useless. Hopeless with money. Disorganised. Annoying. Weak. Too shrill. Too quiet. Too emotional. Untrustworthy. She couldn’t tell now if these were her own words or memories of one-way wars with Ben. Unsure, she stopped speaking.

‘That’s not grounds. That is Ben’s opinion of you,’ Janet said decisively. ‘And that is only worth what you allow it to be.’ She tapped the side of her head with a long nail, matched to the colour of her lips. ‘If you don’t evict him from your head, he will trash it. He will make you unfit.’ She went back to her pad. ‘And him, how is he with the girls?’

‘He is a good dad,’ Lilith said.

‘That is not possible,’ Janet batted back.

‘No, he is.’ Lilith tried again. ‘He loves them.’

‘He loved you too, Lilith,’ Janet responded. ‘Some people react to love in dangerous ways. Like they have an allergy to it.’

Lilith contracted every muscle in her face. Determined not to give anything away to this fortune-teller in front of her. But Lilith knew it was no use. Janet had seen the clues before, on hundreds of other faces.

‘He’s a good dad. I mean, he wants to see the girls. More than I expected.’

‘How often does he see them?’

‘He has them about half of the time.’ Lilith tried to read the curling words on the pad to see if she was getting the answers right. ‘Maybe more. There’s nothing formal. He tells me when he wants them or when his mother will collect them.’ Lilith paused. ‘I suppose that’s why I’m here. I don’t think that’s good for the girls … not having a routine.’

Janet looked up from her pad. ‘It’s not great for you either. It must be unsettling.’

‘I’m only worried about the girls.’ Lilith tried to keep Janet on an easier path. She followed.

‘Okay. Let’s talk about the girls. They’re twins. Five, yes? Great age.’ The lawyer didn’t wait for the nod. She was used to being right. ‘So they are young, there are no plans in place and a threat of violence.’ The lawyer raised a hand to stop words coming out of Lilith’s open mouth. It worked. ‘They’re young enough for us to get this fast-tracked. If we get a decent judge, the interim hearing might be set for six months.’ Janet saw Lilith’s concerned face. ‘It’s the best we’ll get. Family Court is jammed. These changes they brought in have slowed everything right down.’

A rabbit ran through her veins. Lilith couldn’t hide the alarm in her voice. ‘I have to take him to court?’

Janet raised her eyebrows in response. Lilith felt stupid. What had she expected to happen?

‘No,’ she blurted. Lilith imagined Ben in a courtroom. The cameras waiting outside. How angry he would be with her. How much more difficult her life would become. ‘I can’t do that. It will ruin his career. Isn’t there another way? I just want someone to talk to him, to make him stop threatening to take the girls away.’

Janet stretched her short arms across the timber slab and placed both hands over Lilith’s outstretched palms. ‘This will not be easy, Lilith. Since the last royal commission, the courts assume you are lying. There were so many domestic violence orders sought after the pandemic, the commission decided it had to be because women were making it up to get custody. Taking advantage of the situation. It was a more comfortable assumption than facing up to all the domestic violence going on and then having to do something about it. They didn’t want to acknowledge the new epidemic the old one had created.

‘So, if we start this and lose, they will say you’ve lied and committed parental alienation. Ben will get full custody. So we must get evidence. Hospital reports, statements from friends, that sort of thing. We have to prove that you and the children are being subjected to domestic abuse.’

The words crashed into the room. Lilith didn’t want to see them. Raw, like grazed skin. Gory and pulsating. If he was an abuser, then that made her a victim. It meant she was putting her children in danger. An unfit parent, after all. Adrenalin soared through her limbs. Her pulse speeding up as the rabbit thumped