The Couple Upstairs by Holly Wainwright

Author:Holly Wainwright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2022-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

31

November: Mel

‘Mum’s home!’ Mel had pushed the door open with her shoulder, arms full of bags.

It was Lori’s voice, as it so often was now. Signalling loudly for the children to stop what they were doing, and make a fuss of Mel.

Back in the office was a thing. After months and weeks of everybody doing their desk jobs just as well from the desks in their actual homes, it felt pointless, punishing, to waste two hours a day getting to and from a place where you sat down, took your computer out of your bag and did what you’d been doing at home the day before. Even the foyer’s posters, huge pop-art representations of health and vitality befitting a company that sold vitamins, felt oppressive, hanging above thin trickles of masked, resentful workers.

‘It’s bullshit,’ Mel had told Izzy, phone pressed to her ear on her walk back from the bus stop.

‘I thought you hated working from home,’ Izzy replied, not unreasonably.

‘I do not!’

‘You told me you miss people, and brainstorming, and lunch from the cafe downstairs. The kids are always around. You miss the separation of work and home. You miss the different identities you can adopt in each physical space.’

‘Izzy, am I not allowed to be complicated?’

‘You’re allowed to be insufferable. I’m just keeping receipts.’

‘Someone’s been listening to the way the kids talk,’ Mel huffed. ‘I just hate getting the bus. I forgot about standing up all the way home.’

‘You’re forty. Drive a car.’

‘That’s deeply stereotypical and offensive.’ Mel knew Izzy would pick her tone of mock outrage. Not something you could count on for everyone, anymore.

‘Okay,’ Izzy was almost yawning now. ‘Sounds to me like you just want to complain.’

‘What’s your point?’

Now Mel pushed open the door to her flat with the weight of the day on her back. The company she worked for was grappling with a sticky storm around their ‘wellness’ brand. Mel was paid to convince people to take supplements to improve their health. But in pandemic times, they were walking a fine line of separation from the anti-science brigade, the wellness warriors, the food-is-medicine people. It meant vigilance and caution around every message, every meeting, every piece of communication.

Until Eddie was born, if you’d asked Mel what she did for a living, she would have said, ‘I work in events’. Parties and launches and festivals and conferences – Mel was great at them. She knew how to listen to the ill-informed rambling of a C-suite manager who was certain they had the answer for how their company party, launch, conference should look, feel and taste.

She knew how to nod and smile and realise what was actually possible on a budget that was always, always tighter than the aspirations. She knew how to hit deadlines and plan schedules and find the right people to make the results of hours of negotiation and slog look easy, effortless, simple. Mel had no idea how she knew how to do all that, but Izzy did. Her sister’s theory

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