After the Party Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CASSIE HAMER has a professional background in journalism and PR, but now much prefers the world of fiction over fact. In 2015, she completed a Masters in Creative Writing, and has since achieved success in numerous short story competitions. After the Party is her first novel. Cassie lives in Sydney with her terrific husband and three mostly terrific daughters, who still believe piñatas are a fun and effective method of lolly distribution. She is working on her second novel, but always has time to connect with other passionate readers via her website—CassieHamer.com—or through social media. You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

  After the Party

  Cassie Hamer

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  For Sam

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lisa Wheeldon yawned but kept her eyes shut. It was so cosy under the doona. So relaxing, and the semi-erotic dream she’d been having had left her with a warm, fuzzy feeling between her thighs.

  Under the doona, she reached for her husband’s leg and squeezed it. ‘This is nice, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ he murmured and placed his hand over hers.

  Usually they woke to a prod in the back from Ava or Jemima, or both. Their two daughters had rendered all alarm clocks utterly useless. Mostly, they were up well before the sun, except for today.

  Lisa stroked her husband’s thigh. ‘I was just having the hottest dream—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘About Max from Max’s Garage. He came to me with his receipts—’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘And they weren’t in the bag.’ At sixty-five, Max Ingall was her oldest client. Wizened as a sultana, his idea of bookkeeping involved chucking receipts into a plastic bag, and handing them over. It drove the order-loving Lisa insane.

  ‘No bag?’ Scott knew how much she hated the bag.

  ‘He came to me with folders.’ She paused. ‘Colour coded.’

  ‘Oh, god.’ Scott moaned appreciatively.

  ‘I know, right.’

  Lisa rolled onto her side and took a second to appreciate her adorable husband, with his smile lines and greying hair around the temples. Men were lucky in the way they slid so easily into middle age.

  Yep. My Scottie has still got it.

  With a speed she hadn’t mustered in years, Lisa launched herself onto her husband’s chest and kissed him full on the mouth. Encouraged by the equally rapid response of Scott’s groin, Lisa started kissing him down his chest.

  ‘Nice to see you so relaxed about the party,’ he murmured.

  The party.

  Oh goodness, the party.

  Lisa blinked madly and looked at the alarm clock.

  8.36 am.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She leapt off Scott and out of the bed, sending her pillow flying. Quickly, she grabbed it off the floor and threw it back onto the bed, accidentally hitting her husband in the head.

  ‘Ow.’

  Lisa wrenched open the doors of her cupboard. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘Because I was asleep.’ Scott rubbed his eyes while Lisa clutched at the first article of clothing she could find—an ancient white (now over-washed grey) T-shirt, and a tatty pair of light (intentionally) grey yoga pants, complete with faded bolognaise stains and a big hole in the knee from too much crawling on the floor with the girls.

  ‘Of all the days, of course today would be the one where they slept in,’ she muttered, roughly pushing her feet into ugg boots.

  ‘Get up,’ she hissed at her still-groggy husband, before skittering out the door and down the stairs. In less than ninety minutes—one hour, twenty-three minutes now, to be precise—there would be thirty-two children between the ages of four and six arriving on her doorstep for Ava’s fifth birthday party.

  Thirty. Two. Children.

  ‘You’ve managed accounts for hundred-million-dollar companies, you’ve got this,’ she whispered to herself, while trying to visualise the spreadsheet she’d drawn up yesterday on her laptop—with things already done in the green column, and those outstanding in the red. Spreadsheets made her feel so much better about life; Microsoft Excel was her yoga. But there was no time to fire-up the computer. From memory, she had to:

  -Make fairy bread (no crusts, gluten-free bread)

  -Cut fruit (star shapes, as per Ava’s request)

  -Collect sushi from shop

  -Blow up balloons (find balloon pump so as not to collapse from dizziness)

  -Put up streamers

  -Sweep the back deck for possum poo

  -Get the girls dressed

  -Clean the toilet (the girls treated the flush button like a bomb detonator—something to be feared and avoided at all costs, regardless of smell emanating from the bowl)

  -Decorate the cake (a princess castle, completely beyond Lisa’s abilities)

  -Set up tea cups and saucers for the adults

  -Heat up the frozen sausage rolls (homemade was now out of the question)

  At the bottom of the steps, Lisa stopped. On the couch in the lounge room, the girls were curled up shoulder-to-shoulder under a rug and watching Sunday morning cartoons. A familiar twinge went off in Lisa’s ovaries and despite the gargantuan nature of the to-do list in her head she couldn’t help gazing on the yawning space next to Ava and Jemima that seemed to cry out for an extra body.

  Two children was sensible, she and Scott had agreed. A third child would leave them outnumbered.

  Can you imagine? Three mini-Mussolinis screaming for cuddles and only two sets of hands to provide them?

  Still, Lisa couldn’t quite quell the feeling that her family wasn’t complete.

  ‘Mummy! It’s the party!’ Ava and Jemima squealed as Lisa startled from her momentary reverie and scooted past them towards the kitchen.

  ‘How long have you two been up?’ she shouted and started flinging open a variety of cupboard doors, not exactly sure what she was looking for but certain that if she opened enough doors it would come to her.

  ‘We’ve been up for ages, Mummy,’ said Ava, bouncing on the couch.

  ‘Since before the sun,’ added Jemima.

  ‘We were too excited.’ Ava clapped. ‘I’m having a party. I’m having a party,’ she chanted.

  ‘You’ve been up since dawn? Why didn’t you come and get me up?’ said Lisa, still wrestling with cupboard doors.

  ‘We did, but you just rolled over and said something about folders.’

  ‘But normally you poke me until I open my eyes.’

&n
bsp; Ava stuck her head up over the couch. ‘You’ve told us not to do that.’

  ‘Yes, but you never listen to me!’ Lisa banged some oven trays down on the bench and started lobbing sausage rolls onto them before quickly realising it would be faster if she upended the entire container onto the tray, which she did, and sent pastry crumbs flying everywhere. Now, in addition to all the food she had to prepare, the floor would also have to be vacuumed.

  ‘Aren’t you proud of us, Mummy? For not poking you?’ This time, it was Jemima’s worried face that peered up over the couch, like a soldier inching their head over the parapet.

  Lisa thought for a second. It was one of those trick parenting questions that always seemed to stump her. On the one hand, they had done exactly what they were told to do. On the other hand, they had done exactly what she did not want them to do. In her experience, young children did not understand nuances or semantics or double entendres and the frustration she felt in that moment would be better served by being hidden by a cloak of maternal pride.

  ‘Yes, my darlings. Of course I’m proud of you for letting me sleep. It’s just that Mummy has rather a lot to do today for Ava’s party, which begins in,’ she checked her watch, ‘approximately seventy-nine minutes.’ Dread made Lisa’s stomach drop. There was no way she could possibly get everything done.

  ‘Mummy, do I have to have breakfast, even though it’s my party?’ Ava turned back to the TV.

  Lisa poked her head out of the freezer from where she’d retrieved the bread. ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Then I want it now,’ demanded Ava.

  ‘Me too,’ added Jemima.

  Lisa dropped the loaf on the counter and slammed the sausage rolls in the oven, whizzing the temperature dial up to maximum. ‘Manners, girls.’

  ‘Pleeeeease,’ they said in unison.

  Where was Scott? There was some clumping going on upstairs, but it wasn’t what one would call speedy clumping. It was clumping of the regulation kind. Slow and plodding, as if it was just another ordinary Sunday morning.

  ‘Scott,’ Lisa shouted up the stairs. ‘Scott, the girls need their breakfast. Are you coming down?’ Like, today? she added mentally.

  ‘Coming, coming,’ said Scott, sauntering down the stairs and casually pulling a T-shirt over his bed-ruffled hair.

  ‘You make the girls’ breakfast. I’ll do the fairy bread.’

  Scott picked up the loaf of bread on the counter. ‘Gluten-free?’

  ‘Don’t touch that, it’s for the fairy bread.’

  ‘But this stuff tastes like cardboard, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it’ll have to do. One of the children has irritable bowel and can’t eat wheat.’

  ‘I thought only fifty-year-old women got that?’

  ‘No, Scott.’ She turned to him, wielding a large knife. ‘It can be a very serious and debilitating condition for a five-year-old, not to mention embarrassing.’ Lisa started slathering butter. ‘Hermione’s mother says it’s as serious as a nut allergy.’

  ‘Poor Hermione,’ Scott murmured, moving methodically about the kitchen to set up bowls and cereal for the girls.

  ‘Hey, don’t move that.’ She tapped Scott’s hand as he reached to move an empty plate on the bench. ‘That’s part of my assembly line.’

  ‘Are you making kids’ party food or a car?’

  ‘Very funny. But this is no time for jokes, Scott. This is an emergency.’

  The next seventy minutes were a whirlwind of fairy bread, balloons and vacuuming up crumbs. The food was ready. The house was ready. Everything was ready, except for the cake. The girls were outside helping Scott with the last of the decorations. At least he’d had time to shower and shave. Lisa was still dressed in her grey trackies.

  She wiped her hands with a tea towel, then mopped her brow with it and checked her watch: 9.55 am and already she was sweating in what she knew was an unattractive fashion. Long pants and ugg boots had been completely the wrong choice for a sticky, late-February day. But there was no time to change. She had five freaking minutes to build a castle that would make Walt Disney proud. She took a deep breath.

  You’ve got this.

  Everyone would be at least ten minutes late which gave her fifteen minutes to make Disney magic out of two rather pale, flabby and possibly crunchy (thanks, eggshell!) hunks of vanilla cake that she and the girls had made yesterday.

  Diving into the kitchen drawer she ripped open the new piping set, bought especially to create piped rosettes as per the pictures in the book. Inside the pack was a device with ten different nozzles and a plastic barrel that looked like a comedy syringe.

  Lisa’s heart sank. Who was she kidding? This was the culinary equivalent of a Rubik’s Cube. This was no time for puzzles. She needed results! Impact! Bulk icing! Stat!

  She hauled the mixmaster out from under the bench, hurled icing sugar and butter into the bowl and set it to ‘high’. Had the girls been present for the resulting explosion of white powder into the atmosphere, they would no doubt have cheered at the impressive creation of fog, almost like snow! But in that moment, Lisa found it impossible to feel anything but devastation. Icing required icing sugar. Preferably in the bowl, not misted across the kitchen. She leant over the still-whirring beaters to inspect the fallout. Was there enough icing sugar in there? She peered more closely. Closer and closer …

  Suddenly her head was being pulled towards the beaters. Oh god! Her hair was caught and with each passing second more and more was becoming entangled. She felt around for the ‘off’ switch and pressed it. The beaters whirred to a standstill with her hair still firmly tangled in the beaters, and her face a matter of centimetres from the bowl.

  ‘Scott,’ she yelled. ‘Scott! Help me. I’m stuck.’

  Lisa could hear running footsteps but couldn’t yank her head far enough to turn it to see who they belonged to.

  ‘What the hell!’

  Scott. Thank goodness.

  ‘Mummy, why is your head in the bowl?’ Ava stood at the door, hopping from one foot to the other, while Jemima just stared, her three-year-old brain trying to process why Mummy had stuck her head in a mixer.

  ‘What happened?’ Scott leant over and started untangling Lisa’s hair.

  ‘I was just looking at the icing, and suddenly my hair caught. And now the icing is ruined!’

  With a final tug, Scott freed Lisa from her mixmaster-imposed imprisonment. ‘There. All done.’

  Lisa stood and surveyed the icing, which was now littered with her fine, brown, curly hairs. ‘Oh god, it’s ruined.’ She clutched the bowl as Scott peered into it.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay. We’ve still got time. Let’s start a new batch. I’ll help.’ He looked around the kitchen. ‘What do we need? Flour?’

  Oh god. He doesn’t even know the ingredients!

  The doorbell rang.

  Lisa felt her legs giving way, her lips trembling. ‘Oh no. They’re here.’

  Scott took her by the shoulders. ‘Hey, c’mon, Lise. It’s just a party. It’s not like anyone’s died.’

  She raised her eyebrows. Scott knew that at some point today, probably when the girls were asleep, she would let herself have a good cry. She did it every birthday, since Ava was born, for as joyous as the celebration was, it was always tinged by the absence of her parents. They would have adored their granddaughters, of that she was sure, and the girls would have adored them. They had all missed out.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Scott. ‘Poor choice of words. I know these days are hard for you.’ He kissed her on the forehead. ‘I’ll take all the kids down the side passage and out to the backyard. You keep working on the cake.’ He squeezed. ‘You can do this.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Her voice quavered.

  ‘You can,’ he called over his shoulder and strode towards the front door with Ava and Jemima in tow. ‘You have to.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  In two minutes, Lisa had the mixer going again with a fresh batch of icing, free of brown hairs thank goo
dness.

  Scott was right. She had no choice but to make this birthday cake work. This was what parenting was. One foot in front of the other. Just keep going. Children rendered choices impossible. There was only moving forward. No standing still. No going back to the life they had before children. Being a mum was showing up, every day, even in a crisis.

  Lisa stopped the mixer and started spooning huge, white pillows of icing onto the slabs of cake. As she spread it, a drip of sweat fell into the cake. Lisa stopped. Oh bugger bum.

  She didn’t have any infectious diseases, but still …

  Lisa looked around. No one watching. She started smoothing down the icing again and within a second, the extra liquid had dissolved.

  Salt is flavour after all.

  After five minutes, the cake resembled something akin to a castle, albeit a very cheap, very pre-fabbed one with lopsided turrets and a general Pisa-like lean. Lisa stood back and wiped sticky hands on her pants.

  Dreadful! Why is cooking such a dark art?

  This was why Lisa loved accounting. The order. The predictability. Sure, running her own bookkeeping business wasn’t quite as exciting as accounting for Lawson and Georges. But that was the choice she’d made when Ava was born.

  From outside, she heard Scott yelling at one of the kids. ‘Not in the face! Not the face! Legs. Legs. Nooooooo! Not like that.’

  He needed her, quickly. One adult versus thirty-two children was a disastrous equation. She needed to reach him quickly, or a child would get hurt, maybe worse. A child who wasn’t theirs, no less. She swivelled towards the backyard, and in so doing her hip caught the edge of the cake board.

  Splat.

  The cake landed at her feet like a pile of sludgy, cakey, crumby, melting snow and Lisa’s insides dropped to the floor alongside it.

  There was no saving the castle now. It was gone. A splattered, irretrievable mess. There would be no cake today.

  No cake? It’s a fifth birthday party. Cake is compulsory.

  Lisa couldn’t move. The destruction was mesmerising in its comprehensiveness. Frankie trotted to her side.

  ‘Oh, puppy, what have I done?’