Tiddas by Anita Heiss

novelists too,’ Izzy added.
    â€˜Actually,’ Ellen said, pulling a book out of her bag like a magician, ‘I know we’re doing crime right now, but can we dothis one in the next few months?’ She held up The Boundary ; there was a blood-red feather on the cover. ‘It’s set in West End.’ She raised her eyebrows and threw a nod of interesting, eh to Izzy.
    â€˜Then we should do it when we have book club at my place, that’d make sense,’ said Izzy.
    The tiddas all nodded in agreement.
    â€˜But what should we read for May?’
    Everyone looked at Veronica; she usually made the recommendations based on her being the one with time to suss out the bookshops.
    â€˜Leave it with me,’ she said, glassy-eyed and not really listening.

    At midnight the tiddas walked outside into the cool night air and said their goodbyes. Richard waited in the car for Nadine; both Cam and Brit were having sleepovers with school friends. Ellen and Izzy climbed into Izzy’s convertible, while Veronica slipped into the comfort of her Lexus and burst into tears. She felt a pang of guilt that she’d hated hearing Xanthe talk about her future with Spencer, planning a family and buying their house together. She could see the love they shared, a love she now accepted she had never experienced with Alex. And it was the same with Nadine and Richard. As tears blurred her vision, she tried hard to remember a time when Alex had waited for her anywhere. It was always she whohad waited, doted, sacrificed. Alex was emotionally absent even when he was physically there, taking only minor interest when the boys played football on weekends in winter. It was she who went to meetings with teachers and to kids’ birthday parties, often making excuses for a father who appeared to be disinterested, a husband who had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to his wife.
    â€˜Oh God,’ Veronica cried out, recalling the last time they’d even made love in a way that wasn’t simply about coming, with feeling, with any sense of desire. It had been years. And then it hit her that it had also been years since she’d felt wanted or even appreciated by the man she had devoted her life and her heart to. As rain began to fall, Veronica sobbed uncontrollably in the darkness. ‘Why, why, why?’ she moaned, blaming herself, as women often do, for loving an emotionally inept man who couldn’t love her back.
    Richard being there for Nadine on a daily basis was another painful reminder of the life she didn’t have with her ex; hers had only ever been a life of washing and cleaning and cooking and being mother and wife. It was a life she’d always been content with because she felt needed, loved, even wanted, by at least one of her sons at any given time. It never bothered her until she wasn’t needed or wanted anymore, by anyone. Since Alex and her eldest two sons had left the family home, all that she felt she had was low self-esteem and no sense of identity.
    Veronica hadn’t signed the divorce papers when the courier delivered them earlier in the day. Instead, she’d just collapsed against the wall and wept, feeling a sense of complete personaland matrimonial failure. She had convinced herself long ago the divorce would be her penance for getting pregnant to the first man she met and slept with and then had to marry. And although she loved him, and the children she and Alex had together, she still filled her head with a silent conversation that could only cause more harm to her already brutalised heart. As far as Veronica could tell, the other tiddas appeared to have anguish-free lives. They were happy and content; she was the loser of the group. She didn’t want to add to her own sense of helplessness by exposing herself in all her woe-is-me misery, but she didn’t know how much more sadness she could lug around with her either. Something had to give.
    Inside, Xanthe in her