Chapter Text
i.
The kids are only gone for a night, staying at her mother’s, but the house still feels hollowly empty when Janet comes home and they’re not there to greet her. She goes through the motions of putting her purse away and changing out of her suit, checks the fridge: most of a smoothie from yesterday; a week-old box of leftover Chinese that is emitting a questionable smell; three carrots, a wilting head of lettuce, and an onion. That’ll have to do. Serves her right for forgetting to stop at Coles on the way home from work.
She tosses the dodgy takeaway into the rubbish and makes a salad, drizzles yoghurt and lemon juice half-heartedly over the top of it when she finds she’s out of salad dressing, too. She eats it in front of the TV, watching in morbid fascination as someone squawks their way through a rendition of Grease Lightning whilst juggling oranges on Australia’s Got Talent. ‘No, it really doesn’t,’ she says to the screen, and turns it off.
Sad salad finished, Janet takes a look around her too-large, too-quiet house and decides she can’t stay here, not when her mind is elsewhere, rent down the middle between work and the kids, the kids and work. It’s still light outside, dusk just beginning to hint at its intention to smother the sky, and that has it settled: she’ll go for a run.
It’s been muggy all week, sweat gathered at her palms and her neck and the small of her back, and for the first two-hundred metres she feels like she’s jogging against a wet blanket, but once her muscles warm up it’s not so bad. She turns left at the main road and passes the sweet, strange girl with the dogs who lives a few houses down, but the rest of the people she sees she sees from a distance, watering their lawns – shit, Janet thinks, it’s Wednesday, she should really water her own – or sipping beer on their porches as traffic goes by. She keeps her eyes forward, doesn’t engage, doesn’t draw attention; she’s just a regular woman, running her regular route.
There’s a traffic jam at the lights, cars banked up as far as she can see them, so she makes a detour early and cuts through the park. It’s quieter, here; five or six students have set up camp on the gazebo, laughing and passing bottles between them; a family is still out playing Frisbee, making use of the last of the light; an older couple is walking hand-in-hand along the path where Janet runs, and the woman stares at her as she passes, stark recognition in her eyes, but says nothing. Janet follows the winding curve of the path around the man-made lake at its centre, then turns up to circle around the perimeter from the other direction – she figures that by the time she’s made it home, it will be dark and she’ll have managed about eight kilometres. She is just thinking how much she’s looking forward to getting back, to stripping out of her running gear and climbing into the shower, when she realises she is half a second from crashing into the woman running towards her. She has enough time to exclaim something nonsensical but not enough to steer herself off course, and they collide.
Janet manages to regain her balance before toppling over entirely, but her companion isn’t so lucky. ‘God, I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I don’t know where my head was when I—Bianca?’
‘Guilty as charged.’ Bianca grins up at her, brushes at the wayward bits of grass and gravel that have stuck to the calves of her gym pants. ‘Are you all right?’
Janet shakes her head on a laugh, extends a hand to help her up and Bianca takes it, her skin warm. ‘Don’t ask me that, I’m the one who just bowled you over on a gravel path. I’m sorry,’ she says again. ‘Are you scraped?’
‘No harm done,’ Bianca says easily. ‘I may have gone down, but at least I landed where I’ve got padding.’
Janet resists the sudden urge to check out said padding and settles for raising an eyebrow. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure. I’m tough.’ Bianca is smiling at her, gently teasing, and Janet feels herself flush; as though she senses it and wants to put Janet at ease, Bianca gestures wordlessly in the direction of the park bench nearby and they head there together. Janet sits, grateful for the break, but Bianca stays standing, stretching out her well-toned calves against the metal back of the bench; Janet looks away before she can find herself staring. She focuses her attention instead on a poodle across the lawn, watches it bounce around like a battery-operated toy as it chases leaves, jumps and falls, jumps and falls.
They’re quiet for several moments, the quiet of two tired people who spend their entire workdays in conversation, and then Bianca looks over at her. ‘Do you usually take this route?’
‘Not usually. I tend rather to go out towards Kingsgrove, just didn’t feel like it today.’
Bianca grins. ‘What, didn’t want to risk running into someone you work with?’
Janet glances up, has to smirk. ‘Something like that. How about you, you come here a lot?’
Bianca shakes out her legs and takes a seat beside Janet on the bench, leans back against it. ‘More and more, lately. I have a gym, as well, but it tends to be overrun by the AFP, the DPP, the ATO, DOCS… it’s a veritable alphabet soup of public servants.’
The wry truth of it surprises a laugh out of Janet, surprise that comes from the image she’s been holding of Bianca as an earnest, competent, impeccable-suit-wearing professional; those things are all still true, of course, but there’s more wit, more humour behind those eyes that she’d given her credit for. It’s a pleasant realisation, one that warms her with the confirmation that her instincts about Bianca have been right: it’s always a good sign when people in their line of work don’t take themselves too seriously.
She only realises she’s been studying Bianca this whole time when Bianca smiles, the quirk of her lips a question. Janet smiles back, flexes her toes. ‘We probably shouldn’t sit here so long that we cool down, should we?’
‘No,’ Bianca agrees. ‘I should go a little further before it gets dark.’
‘How much further?’
‘I’ve done about five so far, but I usually do ten to twelve.’ She is completely casual as she says this, a matter of fact and not pride; Janet likes that about her.
‘Ambitious,’ she says, nodding. ‘I’m impressed. How about we run back to my place together and then you head back from there? That should give you an extra six, and a bit of company.’
She isn’t sure she’s going to suggest it until she’s done it – it just happens, slips out of her mouth before she can think twice – and she registers the slight, well-covered surprise in the twitch of Bianca’s eyebrow before she smiles, almost shy, and says, ‘If you sure? That sounds nice.’
They have cooled down a little since they both stopped, so Janet stretches out her Achilles again, just to be safe, and they set out at a slightly slower pace. It’s almost dark, now, the pink of the city sunset giving way to a deeper blue as the sun disappears behind the skyscrapers surrounding them. There are mosquitos thickening the air, drawn out to play by the humidity of twilight, and the cicadas have already started their evening chorus in the trees lining the side of the road. Janet doesn’t usually exercise with other people present – she gets too competitive; they get offended; she ends up having to be conciliatory the next day and it’s boring – but after the first kilometre they settle into a pace that seems to suit both of them. Bianca doesn’t insist on talking, seems content with the sound of their breathing, the synchronised slap of their shoes against the pavement, and it’s comfortable. Nice. She likes that Bianca lets her breathe.
By the time they turn into her street, the stars are starting to wink out from behind the clouds and they’re using a combination of the streetlights and a sliver of moon to see. Outside the gates, Janet turns to Bianca and jokes, ‘Thanks for the escort.’
Bianca winks. ‘For you, any time.’
She’s hot from the run, Janet thinks; that’s all. Time for a shower. Belatedly, she asks, ‘Do you want to come up for a glass of water or something? Something to eat?’
But Bianca is already shaking her head. ‘I have water, thanks.’ She pats a little bottle clipped onto the band of her running pants. Janet finds herself watching the flex of Bianca’s forearms, the play of muscles as she fiddles with the bottle cap, and forces herself to look away. To think away. ‘You’ll be all right, then?’ she asks. ‘Getting home?’
‘Of course. Thanks. We could—’ Bianca stops, seems suddenly shier than Janet would ever have thought her. ‘We could do it again some time, if you’d like. Intentionally, I mean.’ But before Janet has time to digest the offer, to respond at all, Bianca has already started to jog away. She turns back and gives her a little wave. ‘Goodnight, Janet. See you tomorrow.’
‘Goodnight, Bianca,’ Janet calls back, but she’s already disappeared into the dark.