Free Pants on Fire by Maggie Alderson Page B

casual sex. Was everybody totally shitfaced at the party?”
    â€œYes. Totally blasted. I’ve never seen such an orgy of drink and drugs. Why do they do that?”
    Liinda shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. It’s just the way Sydney is. We all live in paradise and most of us can’t wait to get out of it as soon as possible. Me included. If I hadn’t woken up one morning in bed with two bikers I’d never seen before, in a room full of sawn-off shotguns, I’d still be behaving like that myself. Except I’d probably be dead.”
    I stopped with my chopsticks halfway to my mouth. The noodles fell back into the bowl with a plop.
    â€œWhen did that happen?”
    â€œSeven years ago. Just before I started at Glow. Maxine knows all about it. She saved my life, really. She might seem like a queen bitch but she has a really good heart. Her father was an alcoholic, like mine. I actually met her at Al Anon—it’s for adult children of alcoholics. She sponsored me and she gave me a job. I owe her a lot—that’s why I put up with her verbal abuse. That’s why I try so hard to give her the best possible coverlines and why I haven’t left Glow even though I’ve been offered lots of other jobs.”
    I paused to take it all in, giving up on the noodles and just sipping the delicious broth. Liinda pushed her plate away.
    â€œBut why is Maxine so awful to Debbie?” I asked. “She had a terrible thing happen to her and Maxine was giving her such a hard time at the meeting this morning. I was really embarrassed.”
    â€œMaxine does it deliberately. She’s known Debbie all her life. They went to school together. Maxine’s family used to be even wealthier than Debbie’s but her pisspot father gambled and drank it all away and then killed himself. When she was twelve, Princess Maxine went from living in a huge house in Bellevue Hill to a two-bedroom unit in Bondi Junction. She could only stay on at her swanky girls’ school because she had a scholarship.”
    Liinda paused for dramatic effect.
    â€œHer genteel mother had to take in ironing. That’s why she comes over so tough and that’s why she hates seeing Debbie, who still has all her money and privilege, ruining herself over Drew’s death rather than working her way through it. I think Maxine’s hoping to shock Debbie into doing something about it. And then, of course, she’s fantastically jealous of Debbie’s beauty and money. It’s a mixture of both, I guess.”
    â€œBlimey,” I said. “I feel like I’ve walked onto the set of The Young and the Restless or whatever it’s called.”
    â€œOh, that’s nothing. We’ve only just scratched the surface of what goes on in that place.”
    I used the spoon to slurp up a few noodles. Liinda took a couple more deep drags on her cigarette and then ashed it in her chicken. I had to ask her, I couldn’t help myself—it was that journalist’s curiosity again:
    â€œLiinda, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how did you become a . . . er . . . junkie?” I hoped she wasn’t going to say it started with a white plate and a little fingerful of hoochy coochy, as Antony called it.
    â€œDo you really want to know?”
    â€œYes, but only if you want to tell me.”
    â€œIt’s not a pretty story, but I’ve told it so many times at meetings I don’t mind who I tell it to anymore. It might put you off your noodles, though.”
    I shrugged.
    â€œMy father was an alcoholic,” she began. “He beat my mother. He beat my brother. He beat me. Then he left us, which broke our hearts. He wasn’t a bad man, but after they moved here from Croatia it never worked for him. He never learned to speak the language properly and felt frustrated and shut out. He thought he’d failed us, so he beat us. But he was still my daddy, you know?”
    I