Free Indelible Ink by Fiona McGregor

believe in it . Those agents got, what, two percent? Objectively, Marie could
imagine Hugh earnt his commissions but the thought of him pocketing tens of thousands of dollars from the sale of her house made her feel ill. The thought of Aftershave doing the same made her feel
suicidal. Anger rose in her like a hot geyser, and she drank down a large mouthful of Campari. She wasn’t going to let her daughter make her feel bad. She was going through one of the
greatest traumas of her life, and as far as she was concerned she had a right to do anything she liked. How stupid to worry about some little squiggles when there was a war going on, people were
being tortured, and children were dying of hunger.
    Marie knew she should make friends with the real-estate agents: partners in profit was the logical approach. But she couldn’t separate her soul from the place. So many years here, so many
memories, the shift was so much more than corporeal. And it seemed as well that the more valuable the body, the more evil its undertaker.
    ‘Where is Macquarie Fields anyway?’ she asked Blanche out of the blue.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Blanche said sulkily. ‘Why?’
    ‘I just wondered. And what are you working on now, Blanchie?’
    God help us, Blanche thought, she must be getting pissed. Never asks about my work otherwise. ‘Miele. Domestic appliances with industrial features.’
    ‘Oh yes?’
    ‘It’s fun. Loads of animation ... I don’t suppose you’d want a washing machine and dryer set would you? Can’t get rid of them. Everybody in the office has
one.’
    Blanche was looking at the cat on Marie’s lap with longing. Marie rubbed her hand over Mopoke’s face; Mopoke shut her eyes and returned the pressure.
    ‘Is she well?’ Blanche asked.
    ‘She’s picked up a bit, yes.’
    ‘What time does Aftershave get here?’
    Marie checked her phone. ‘He’s due right now.’
    ‘So. Are you going to give me your mobile number?’ Blanche spoke in a constricted voice, and looking into her daughter’s eyes Marie realised with shock that she had hurt
her.
    ‘Of course I am,’ she said light-heartedly, trying to make it all go away.
    ‘It’s a funky little phone.’
    ‘Really?’ Marie looked pleased. She tilted her glass to her mouth. Go away, she thought. Go away .
    Appearance was everything. Aftershave alighted from his Prussian blue Audi with a pip of the remote car lock, his violently white shirt screaming down the path at them. He entered the house with
topographical ease, as though all its dimensions from the one previous visit had been physically imprinted upon his senses. Marie introduced him to Blanche and he shook her hand with a
politician’s fervour.
    His trousers, Blanche noticed, were Armani. Or, more likely, a copy. She didn’t care about copies anymore. Let whatever charlatan who wanted to wear them wear them and be damned by their
own crassness. It was true you couldn’t necessarily tell these days without looking at the tag (though tags could be faked as well), so in a way it had become a question of conscience. Good.
The other problem was with people like Aftershave — legion — whose real suits may as well have been fake for the lack of style with which they wore them. Blanche hated that Australian
casualness — the entire country sometimes seemed a gross replica of her little nouveau riche family. She imagined with disapproval Aftershave’s suit jacket crumpled on the passenger
seat of his car. Sure it was a hot day, but why get an Armani (even a fake) when you weren’t prepared to wear the whole thing. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the man’s looks
— he was tall, broad-shouldered and evenly proportioned — but something about his soft, barely whiskered face or floppy blonde fringe belied authority. The cologne was Calvin Klein,
pure Oxford Street kitsch, an excess of cinnamon like a grandmother’s kitchen. His eyes were evasive, watery. In a minute Blanche took all