The Wildcard Read online

  Green looked at her in disbelief. Any time she was sure her mother had a moral principle, she went straight ahead and barrelled right through it. At this point, any normal mother should be bagging the guy out and asking her daughter what the hell was she thinking! And how would Claudia know Baldur was trustworthy - she’d only met him two days ago, for chrissakes!

  Claudia emerged onto the bridge. Four lanes of speeding traffic zoomed and honked their way past as she peered at the signs overhead. "Now which lane should I be in...it’s so confusing these days."

  Green sighed. "Mum, you’ve been driving in the city for years. Don’t you know where you’re going? "

  "Yes but it’s getting busier here every year- and there’s roadworks, and I’m sure they’ve changed something. Goodness gracious, look at that woman, what is she doing!"

  Green looked, and swore. Naina was walking down the centre of the lane towards them, in a lacy white halterneck that screamed Marilyn Monroe, her eyes locked on the two faces goggling from the windscreen. Claudia slammed on the brakes and the car squealed to a halt. The car behind swerved and honked, and the driver stuck up his finger in an unmistakeable salute of rage.

  "Mum, you can’t stop here. You’re going to cause a major accident!"

  Traffic weaved to either side of the car, while drivers honked and yelled abuse. Naina smiled winningly.

  "I can’t," wavered Claudia, fumbling towards the hazard lights, "she’s just standing there. What is she doing?"

  "You’re seeing things," said Green through gritted teeth "Just keep driving. Here, move over into the passenger seat and I’ll drive..." She flicked on the hazard lights and scrambled out of the car, jogging around to the driver’s door. If she had to run right over Naina, she would - with the greatest of pleasure. Not that it would damage her, unfortunately. "Can you move over, Mum? Here, I’ll help you..."

  Claudia’s hands released the steering wheel and went to her throat. "Oh my god, I can’t breathe," she said in a strange, strangled voice. "My pills...they’re in the handbag..."

  The siren of a police car wailed towards them as Green frantically dug through her mother’s handbag. Lipsticks, deodorants, old tissues, receipts and prescriptions - but no pills. There wasn’t time for this - Claudia was going a horrible shade of grey. She grabbed her mother’s mobile and called the emergency number. They'd be lucky if they weren't rear-ended. In the rear view mirror she could see the cop car pulling up behind them. Thank god - they’d know what to do. Green had no idea.

  Claudia’s hands clutched at the air. She whimpered, her eyes turning to Green with desperate appeal. A stain of urine spread over the seat. Oh no. Green held her mother’s hand and prayed to whatever god might be listening and didn’t hate her. Please don’t take my mother away. Please. She glanced out the window to where Naina had stood a minute earlier, but the road ahead was clear except for the honking, hurrying lines of traffic.

  Two bulky police officers hurried up to the driver’s window, their hand guns on a level with Green’s eyes.

  "Is this a break-down?" One of the officers, a middle-aged man with a tightly belted paunch and ginger buzz cut, peered inside. Claudia's eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was sprawled limply across the driver's seat.

  "She's having a heart attack, you've got to do something."

  "Ok, I see. Don’t panic, ma’am." He turned to the other officer, who was younger and trimmer. "This woman’s having a heart attack...put the cones out will you mate, while I start CPR?"

  The ginger haired policeman took charge, leaning the seat back as far as it would go and then alternately pumping his hands on Claudia’s chest and blowing in her mouth. He seemed to know what he was doing, but there was barely enough room for the operation. Green kept her eyes fixed on her mother’s face, afraid to look away, afraid to breathe. She would kill Naina. But that didn't matter now. Just as long as her mum was alright. Please let her be alright, she repeated to herself, like a mantra, in time with the officer's cramped CPR routine.

  In another ten minutes an ambulance came screaming into the blocked lane. Two burly ambos jumped out and took over from the puffing policeman, sliding Claudia out from the car and onto a stretcher. Green followed, tucking herself into the back of the ambulance, clutching Claudia's limp, clammy hand.

  “I need you to drive, mate, if that’s ok,” said one of the ambulance officers to the policeman who’d been directing traffic around the stopped vehicle. “Me and Brett’ll be in the back with the patient.”

  Once in the ambulance, one of the officers used the defibrillator pads on Claudia's chest, while the other administered adrenalin. The policeman climbed nervously into the driver’s seat, switching on the siren and lights. He was only a young bloke, and he’d never driven an ambulance before.

  "Is she going to be alright?" Green could hardly get the words out. Her throat felt as if it were clamped shut.

  The officer using the defibrillator – Brett? - looked up briefly and pushed back her blonde curls. "Perhaps, if you stay away from my husband."

  There was no mistaking that perfect, vicious face. Green screamed.

  "Put your seatbelt on, please, miss," said the other officer, Carl, in a loud voice. He didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.

  "Leave her alone," she said in a low, fierce voice, leaning protectively over Claudia, her teeth bared, "or god help me..."

  "But he’s not going to, is he." Naina gave her trill of a laugh, and melted away, the scent of jasmine mingling with car fumes. Brett glanced up from his work.

  "You’d better sit down and strap in, miss" he said kindly but without pausing. "We’ll get her to the hospital as soon as we can."

  What had just happened? Green didn't understand. But then, gods – and goddesses - could do whatever they liked, be wherever they chose, whenever they chose. The thought was chilling. Anywhere, at any time, one of these cold, murderous beings could tear her life apart. Nowhere was safe.

  There was nothing she could do about it but sit, and watch, and wait, while the ambulance sped through traffic, lights flashing and sirens blaring, on the way to St Vincent's Hospital. Green held Claudia’s cold, damp hand, and counted the seconds. As soon as the ambulance drew in to the bay, the emergency team hurried out and rushed the stretcher straight into intensive care. Green followed, almost running down the long pale green corridors with their bleached linoleum floors and double swing doors. But when the stretcher reached the last set of doors, a nurse held her back.

  “You’ll need to wait out here,” she said, gently but firmly, and pointed to a waiting room down the corridor. “We’ll do our best, and we’ll let you know as soon as possible.”

  White-faced, Green sat in the small waiting room, with its years-old copies of New Idea and Motoring Australia. If anything were to happen to Claudia – if she died – it would be her fault. She had brought this beautiful demon to her parents’ home – and then, when Baldur suggested they leave – she’d insisted on staying. But she hadn’t known Naina would go so far, so soon. The evil bitch. Was there anything she wouldn’t do?

  After an hour which seemed more like a tortured day, the same nurse poked her head into the waiting room and smiled with tired sympathy.

  “Your mother has regained consciousness – you can see her now.”

  Green got up and hurried to the room where her mother lay, looking small and flat under a starched white sheet and hospital blanket. Claudia’s transparent eyelids fluttered.

  "I’m here, mum. You’re going to be alright," Green said soothingly, stroking the damp grey hair back off Claudia’s forehead. She caught a shared glance between the staff. What did that mean? She was going to be alright, wasn't she? She was awake, she was conscious...

  Claudia’s voice whispered from the pillow, barely audible. "Darling…who was that woman?"

  "I don't know, Mum," Green lied. "Some girl on ice, probably. Don’t worry about her – the police took care of it, she’ll be fine." She wouldn't be if G
reen was ever in a position to do anything about it.

  Green forced herself to smile and seem calm, for Claudia's sake. Anyway, Naina was gone. She’d done what she meant to do - she’d made it clear that loving Baldur was a death sentence for anyone connected with Green. Ok, she got it. No love affair was worth her mother’s life. She’d let go. Hear that, Naina? You can have him, he’s yours. Just let my family alone.

  “Do you…know her?”

  “No – I’ve never seen her in my life before.” Green saw uncertainty in her mother’s eyes. Claudia didn’t quite believe her. But she was too weak to argue. She patted Claudia’s clammy hand. She would be alright. She was in hospital, everything possible was being done, all the equipment was beeping just like it should - there was no way she was going to die, not now. It was ok.

  She forced herself to relax. She was still holding Claudia’s hand when her mother’s grip tightened, then released. Claudia coughed and took a desperate, wheezing breath. The electro-cardiogram line began to jump wildly, forming a mountain range outline of peaks and troughs. Her hands convulsed, fingers opening and closing on nothing.

  The room went into action and Green backed against the wall, determined not to go back to the waiting room. Nobody paid her any attention. The emergency nurses applied the pads, again and again, while the green line jerked up, then flatlined, with a horrible, drawn-out beep that Green was only too familiar with. She'd watched those medical dramas – had never thought they’d have anything to do with her.

  "Clear."

  Nothing.

  "Clear."

  Again, nothing.

  With every try, hope faded. Green slumped, still holding her mother's hand in hers. She was going to die.

  A female doctor turned to Green and put a cool brown hand on her shoulder. She looked Indian, with dark brown eyes set in a tired, pouchy face and a mass of grey-black hair tucked under her hairnet. But her accent was pure Australian.

  "I’m really sorry, love" she said, giving Green’s shoulder a brief, preoccupied clasp before turning away. "She’s gone."

  Chapter 12

  "You were supposed to warn the girl off. Now you’ve killed her mother."

  "I did not mean to," said Naina sulkily. "How was I to know she was weak?"

  "You are Zeus-Ra’s daughter, it is your business to know," said Set, showing his irritation plainly. How this woman could be soul-daughter to the one-eyed old goat, he could not fathom. She was a fool. He thanked his stars he had been born to Hera and thus inherited his mother’s brains.

  Naina flicked her hair back defiantly and began licking her paw, a golden cat.

  "So the mother is dead - it will teach the slut to keep her hands off what is mine."

  Set’s cold eyes rested on her, flickered away like a snake’s tongue.

  "It will send the slut" he said in a dulcet tone, "straight back to the arms of her lover. Sometimes it is wise to know when to stop."

  Chapter 13

  Peter had lost a lot of weight in the week since Claudia had died. His plump cheeks had slackened to jowls, and grey folds of skin hung under his chin and on his forearms.

  "I wish I’d known how sick she was," Green said, shifting around on the hard wooden pew. "I would have...I don't know. Looked after her. Told how how much I loved her. You know."

  If she'd known her mother had serious heart disease, she'd never have let her drive that day. But then, Naina could have arranged an accident anywhere. She suppressed her impotent rage. There was no point telling Peter about Naina. It’d only upset him - if he even believed her, that is.

  "She didn’t want you to know how serious it was. She didn't want you to be worried," Peter whispered back, leaning in towards her. His hearing wasn't so good these days. They both looked at the coffin on its raised platform, covered with pink roses - Claudia’s favourite flowers - and festooned with the tee shirts Claudia had collected at rock concerts in the swinging sixties. Green’s fists clenched on her lap. Immortal or not, she would make Naina suffer - somehow. What was the use of having a mystic birthmark if you couldn’t do anything, to anyone.

  Peter got up to deliver his eulogy, and Green stared stonily ahead. He didn’t try to sanitise his wife's life - Claudia had her wild moments, and there’d been some tough times in their marriage. She wouldn’t have wanted them to remember her as some bland cardboard cut-out labelled ‘wife and mother’.

  Peter finished and returned to sit beside her, putting on his dark glasses to hide the tears. That was Green's cue to get up and make a speech. She’d thought long and hard about what she was going to say - but as she stepped to the platform in front of the coffin, the speech she’d prepared struck her as meaningless drivel. She'd been going to say what a great mother Claudia had been, what an interesting, unusual person in her own right, how much she'd loved her - even if she'd spent a lot of her adult life escaping from her in one way or another. But none of it reflected what she really felt, right now. Bitterness, anger, guilt, grief.

  She stood looking out at all the people who’d come to say their goodbyes to Claudia - and thought, they’ll all be gone soon anyway. None of them knew what was coming for them. And why were they having this funeral in a church? Claudia hated churches - and Green hated gods – two of them in particular. She drew a deep breath and said the first thing that came into her head.

  "Maybe Mum’s lucky."

  She thought of the times she’d despised Claudia for her dabbling with drugs, her loopy, vague approach to life, and the way she floated around in a haze, falling for any crap that crossed her path. But Claudia was just a human, with a human’s faults, and a human’s virtues. She loved her family, and she did the best she could for them. Unlike the 'gods', whose idea of family seemed to revolve around sex and power, and whose morality was non-existent. What right did they have to despise mankind?

  "She died a lot earlier than she should have done - she was only sixty three. She never believed in any kind of god, and she taught me not to, either. But since I’ve...grown up, I’ve come to realise that there are gods in this world. They don’t love us and want the best for us - actually, they don’t give a shit about us, any more than a laboratory scientist does about their experimental rats."

  Her voice choked over the microphone and she closed her eyes for a moment, trying to keep it together. The guests sat silent, polite and visibly uneasy about where this was going.

  "So in about twelve months from now, they’re going to shut us all down permanently. I suggest that you all take your money out of the bank and spend it on whatever you like best - because there is no tomorrow. If I’d had time, that’s what I would’ve told Mum. There is no future - for Mum, for me, for anyone."

  Peter stood up shakily and shambled towards her, intent on ushering her gently back to her seat. But before he could get to Green, still standing defiant beside Claudia’s rose-covered coffin, Baldur walked down the centre of the aisle. All heads turned to look. He ignored the stares and climbed the small platform to stand beside her. She glanced across at him, as surprised as everyone else. He was supposed to be in Iceland now - wasn't he?

  Baldur took the microphone gently away from her and set it back in its stand. Relieved, Peter sat down again.

  He didn’t need a microphone. He put his hand gently on Green's back and began to speak. "You do not know me, and I am sorry for arriving so late to this occasion. But I would like to say something about Claudia, before we all say our goodbyes - and I will be brief, if you permit me.

  As Green’s fiance, I only knew Claudia for a short time, so I cannot speak about her with the intimate knowledge of her daughter and husband. But for the short time I knew her, I respected her. She was unique and beautiful - as all humans are unique and beautiful - and she loved her daughter more than any other person on this earth. She told me that Green was the bravest, stubbornest, cleverest girl in the world - and she admired her more than anyone else she knew. And that is the truth, for so do I. I wish that I had the chanc
e to know her better, for I think she was a woman who had much courage and warmth. And so I wish to say my farewell."

  The eyes of everyone in the church followed Baldur as he helped Green gently back to her seat. Friends and distant relatives exchanged looks - who was this guy? Fiance, did he say? There was something very odd about him - almost alien - with that unusual hair colour. And so tall!

  Green began to shake uncontrollably as she sat down, but the warmth of Baldur's presence gradually penetrated, a soothing balm.

  "Why aren't you in Iceland already, with Hodr?" She forced the words.

  “I should have been there to protect you both," he said simply. "And in any case, I could not leave without you."

  Green shook her head in the negative, and leant on his shoulder. It wasn't his fault - or hers. She felt the rage leave her, gradually, while the sadness remained. She hunched down between her father and her lover and listened to the rest of the service as if it was so much white noise. As it ended, people began to file out, stopping to offer condolences. She noticed that they avoided meeting her eyes, giving their rehearsed, careful words to Peter instead. No wonder - she must have sounded like she’d gone completely crazy up there. Baldur held her hand firmly. She felt his strength seeping into her reluctant soul.

  When everyone had gone, and Peter had ducked into the rest room, she turned to Baldur and leaned into his chest, drained and wretched. "I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told them they’re all going to die. I made a fool of myself out there."

  "Nothing is inevitable," Baldur held her close, his palm slow-circling her back. "I should not have been so...high-handed. I have been thinking that there must be something that we can do. Much can happen in a year."