Jo sat down opposite Justin. She was nervous, expecting him to ask for references or the names of past employers. She’d already decided she’d make an excuse for not having them — a stolen bag on the train. But Justin only asked her a few questions about her waitressing history. ‘Do you have a Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate?’
‘No, I’ve been working in a café and I didn’t serve alcohol,’ Jo lied, and wondered if she’d be allowed to work in a licensed restaurant without one. She did have an RSA — she’d completed the training earlier in the year — but she thought the police might have cancelled it and she didn’t want to take the risk.
‘It’s fine. You can help in the kitchen and serving the food. We’ll work around it. The barman usually looks after the drinks anyway. We’re so short-staffed at the moment, I need you. Fill in the employee details,’ he said, handing her the form. ‘If you can start tonight, that’d be great. I had to call one of the waitresses in and she’s struggling to find a sitter for her kids.’
‘Really? Tonight.’
‘Sure.’
‘I was expecting you’d want a CV, which I didn’t bring, and I lost my phone so I don’t have a phone number.’
‘It’s a waitressing job. If you drop plates on the customers’ laps we’ll have to let you go, otherwise no problem. But you will need a phone. You might be able to pick up a cheap one in Drysdale.’ He was grinning, taking pleasure in the moment, as if sitting talking to her were all he wanted to do, as if work were not stressful at all. Her shoulders dropped, the tension easing. Grandpa Tom as a young man might have looked like Justin: tanned and hair bleached blond from spending too much time in the sun. She couldn’t imagine Grandpa Tom wearing the bone earrings or leather strap bracelet around his wrist, but they suited Justin. ‘Come in at four, and I’ll show you around.’
On the way back to the hostel, Sue gave Jo a guided tour of the town centre, which wasn’t much more than the main shopping strip, made up mostly of cafés and restaurants. Jo said she needed a black skirt or pants and white shirt to wear to work and Sue took her to her favourite op shop, in a small garage that backed onto the car park at the rear of the shopping strip. The elderly woman behind the counter was leaning on a walker and chatting with a slightly younger woman, who was sorting through a box of recent book donations. Behind them, racks of clothes stretched the length of the shop. The women greeted Sue by name and she joined their conversation about the council proposal for controlling the jet-skiers over the summer.
Jo had spent her childhood in op-shop clothes, living with other children’s smells, their stains, their rips and tears. She hated it. As soon as she could afford to buy her own clothes, she refused to go into another op shop. But here, in a small change room, an old brown curtain drawn across, surrounded by the odours of other people’s lives — stale perfume and sweat — she could transform herself into a girl called Ashleigh, who worked in restaurant in a small country town by the sea, a world away from the girl who killed her best friend, the girl with an impending court case, who lived in a city where she was too scared to walk out the front door.
Chapter 22
It was ‘free-for-all’ night. That’s what the lawyers called the evening sessions they ran three nights a week. Anyone could come along and get free legal advice. They had three or four volunteers — law students and recent graduates — and one of the legal aid lawyers. There was a roster, as one of the permanent legal staff needed to be on the premises each night. For Sarah, that meant she was scheduled at least once a fortnight.
Sarah both hated and fought in defence of these nights. They were tough to organise, long and challenging, especially at the end of an already full work day. And they were busy. There was rarely time to reflect on anything. There were nights when the cases were straightforward — accumulated parking fines, shoplifting — but other times the cases were more complex, and on the same night they might give advice on a custody battle, a burglary conviction, what constitutes dangerous driving, whether a case of aggravated assault could result in jail time, and a dispute with a neighbour about a tree or a fence (there was always at least one of those). Solve what you can on the night was their motto. Those that couldn’t be dealt with became cases, and already the staff were overloaded with too many cases.
Tonight, a baby was crying in the waiting room, and the receptionist was trying to get Tanu, a regular, to take his cigarette outside.
‘It’s non-smoking in here,’ Sarah heard Helene say.
‘Nobody minds, do you?’ Tanu said. Sarah couldn’t see into the waiting room, but she knew Tanu was now swinging around, eyeballing everyone and daring them to object. Most people would turn away to avoid answering. The locals knew Tanu. He spent his days marching up and down the main street. Once he fixed his sights on someone, he was relentless.
‘Please, Tanu,’ Sarah heard Helene pleading, ‘you’ll get me into trouble.’
‘Okay, okay, for you, my lovely, because you asked me nice. Not many people are nice to me.’
Helene was in her mid-thirties, a local woman with two kids. Her husband ran the post office and coached the under-elevens footy team. Her mother volunteered at Vinnies Sunshine in Station Place. Her father, now dead, was a well-known trade unionist, active in the fight for compensation for the workers exposed to asbestos at the Wunderlich factory in Sunshine North. Everyone knew Helene and her family. She had a soft, childlike voice and a sweet smile, but she was a strong woman, and Sarah knew the pleading tone was a strategy. If she wanted to kick Tanu out, he would’ve already been on the street, and he knew it too.
Helene organised the bookings, and already she would have a queue at the counter.
‘I want to see the big woman lawyer.’ Big, fat, large: this is how clients described Sarah when they didn’t know her name. No one said obese. Most said big or large, unless they were angry with her, and then they called her fat — ‘Where’s that fat cow?’
She shouldn’t let it get to her. The clients who came into the office were usually facing some crisis. This was likely to be one of the worst times in their lives, and they were confronting prison or battling to keep their homes or their kids. And they described all of her colleagues by their physical failings — the bald guy, the guy with the scar — except, of course, for Lisa, who was the pretty one, and Alan, who was tall and, sometimes, tall and gorgeous. Unless he’d refused them something, and then he was a wanker or an up-himself wanker.
‘I want to see the woman, the big woman lawyer.’
‘Sarah.’
‘I don’t know her name, but you know who I mean.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she here?’
‘Yes, I’ll put your name down to see her. Have a seat.’
‘Hi, my name’s Sarah Cascade.’ Sarah held out her hand and the woman shook it. Her now sleeping baby was strapped to her with a halter.
‘My mate Jody said I should see you. She said, “Go down to legal aid and see the fucking big sheila…” Sorry, it’s what she said. She said you is an ace lawyer, though. She said, “She’ll make the fucker pay” — sorry for the language — “make him wish he wasn’t born.”’ She was a tall woman; her long brown hair was dyed with streaks of purple and green. She had several teeth missing and bruises on both her arms. Unable to stand still, she bounced from side to side.