Heat and Light
there, the times when there were things to do, family business and drives down to the Tent Embassy in Canberra, Lena held things together.
    The paramedics pulled the women aside, the concern shifting. Both women were covered in dirt and blood. Lena had glass deep in her chin and pine needles in her hair. Janet’s clothes were torn. The paramedics talked to them and checked them out, gathered they both might have whiplash. Two additional neck braces were taken out of the ambulance.
    They all piled into the Ambulance together. They stared at the two damaged vehicles as they passed by.
    Confined, Lena and Janet faced one another, rocking, both with their backs to a wall, Charlie between them. In that moment, even though they didn’t yet know it, the women aligned themselves to a movement separate from Charlie. In the morning, a pick-up truck was sent to collect the motorcycle and the two vehicles. Insurance claims were settled.
    The two women met again, a few years later, at the university – Janet’s alma mater – in a research trial for whiplash patients. They started talking, and meeting after each session. Lena didn’t tell Charlie. By the completion of the trial, they’d become unlikely friends, and revved each other up – they didn’t want to waste their lives on a man who was conflicted.
    Charlie hadn’t made a decision between them in his heart, and he wasn’t about to. Lena said it was because he was a Libran. Janet called him a mummy’s boy. They continued to meet in secret, calling it book club, sometimes bringing the children along with them to sit in the corner of the cafe. Janet coaxed Lena to ask for a divorce. The twin twinge in their necks – Lena left, Janet right – would remind them in weak moments of the choices to be made.
    The two women developed a fondness and respect for each other. Janet was also thinking of getting out of her loveless marriage. She had pushed herself back into work, and had taken up kickboxing, to great effect on her core. Lena had got a better job at a cafe, found a rental property around the corner from it, and had reunited with relatives that had immigrated. Her daughter became playmates with Janet’s boys.
    When Charlie found out that his wife and Janet were friends, it was a terrifying predicament for him at first. By that time he was living on his own in a house in Brisbane. The dishes piled up in the sink and the counter was stacked with newspapers he no longer had the energy to read. He had Amy over on the weekends, and she was often quiet. His prized motorbike had been substituted with a lemon, a real poxy thing, handed down from his brother. He reckoned it embarrassed Amy. One afternoon, Amy’s teacher called him up at work. Amy had waited for her mother to pick her up from school but she hadn’t turned up. Charlie got Amy – she was waiting outside the school office – and they drove to Lena’s house, along the main road. There was an area blocked off, but he didn’t pay too much attention to it, turning into the street. He used the key under the mat to open the door to the stuffy house he hadn’t been in before. He scanned the table for a note, picked up the phone and listened to the messages. It all started to come together as he drove to the hospital. Lena had been hit by two cars while walking across the road to pick up Amy.
    At the hospital he rang Janet. She was there, in the room, when they shut down the machine. Janet cried beside the bed. Charlie held Amy, her head under his chin.
    He took Amy back to his house. Every night that month they drove the suburbs looking at the Christmas lights. Even if the weather was vicious and the water would leak in by their feet, he wouldn’t head home until she fell asleep against the window. He’d carry her up the stairs and she wouldn’t stir. The drives seemed to help her sleep better, chase the bad dreams away. On stormy nights they both dreamt intensely, violently – they often drowned. Charlie

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