The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead

Robert Hewett

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781921429170
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Drama

An adulterous husband, a meddlesome neighbour and a dropped ice-cream cone are among the circumstances that combine to shatter the life of suburban housewife Rhonda Russell.Everyone has their own story to tell about the day that Rhonda went beserk in the shopping mall. And who's to know where the truth lies? With the best friend who might have egged her on? With the husband who denies responsibility? Or with the victim's family whose lives were changed forever? And then there's the story of the vengeful redhead herself, but she's probably the least likely to know what really happened.

ACT ONE

Rhonda’s story

The mournful sound of a woman keening.

A door slams shut.

Rhonda Russell enters. Over forty, red hair, wearing a raincoat.

She frantically searches her pockets, but comes up empty-handed.

She searches her handbag and pulls out several items, before replacing them, not having found what she’s looking for.

Rhonda What is happening?

You weren’t going to say anything, Rhonda.

You weren’t even going to go there!

Think, Rhonda, think.

Was it Lynette’s idea?

Lynette’s been the best neighbour a girl could want. Especially in times of crisis. A real ‘friend indeed’. So how… how?!

Rhonda addresses the audience.

You see, it was Lynette who saw them this afternoon. Down at North Course Plaza.

Outside McDonald’s. I mean, Graham rarely eats McDonald’s. The only time in living memory that I can remember Graham eating fast food was after we’d been to Bob and Gay Thornycroft’s reaffirmation of their wedding vows.

The food at Bob and Gay’s was so bloody awful, Graham made me pull over on the way home and he threw up out the car window.

Then he asked me to pull into a McDonald’s so he could line his stomach before heading to footy practice.

Graham loves his footy. He’s the oldest member of the team. Some weekends he spends more time on the bench than on the field.

But he usually gets a kick in the last ten minutes. Especially if they’re losing by a big margin. No harm done then. And he does love it.

Anyway, my neighbour Lynette saw Graham, and this blonde, down at North Course Plaza this afternoon.

I mean, he moved out two months ago. Got a flat.

Graham wouldn’t tell me where. Hardly said a word, really. When I sit down and think about it, which I do, often, well to be honest, I find no real reason for the breakdown of our marriage.

The whole episode’s been a bit surreal. That’s how I’d sum it up, anyway. No real screaming match. Nothing like that. Not really Graham’s style. He just shuts up. You know, closes off.

When Graham’s in a mood like that it’s like trying to have a conversation with a block of wood.

‘How was work today, Graham?’

‘All right.’

And that’s all I get out of him for the next fifteen minutes.

Well, this night he walks in the door and I say, ‘Hello, Graham’.

No verbal response, just a nod.

‘You want to go over to Lynette and Dennis’s tonight?’

‘Why?’

That’s all. Not hello, how’s your father, nothing but ‘why?’

And Graham’s walking out the kitchen door, down the hall, out of sight into our bedroom.

Well, the phone rings, doesn’t it?

Lynette, of course. On the phone quicker than Flash Gordon.

She’s seen Graham’s car pull into the driveway and wants to know if we’re coming over after dinner.

And I lie, and say, ‘Be there straight after, don’t go to any trouble though, Lynette’.

I hate lying to a friend like that.

Anyway, one morning I get this phone call from Graham.

He’s at work, and he says he’s moved out.

Moved out?

I mean, when someone, when your husband, in this case Graham, my partner who’s been living under the same roof for the past seventeen and half years, says something like that to you, well, you don’t necessarily jump straight in with the right questions.

Well, not me anyway.

Am I stupid or something? I don’t believe I am.

I was in IT before I met Graham.

On the ground floor in Research and Development.

Had quite a few colleagues in Silicone Valley.

Oh yes, I had those opportunities, but when you marry, you have to make choices.

And for me, having a family was utmost.

Our first and our second pregnancies… well, I lost both.

And then we had Damien.

Life-changing event. Wonderful.

Made everything worthwhile.

Once Damien was at school, I tried to get back in, but technology was so advanced… The dogs may still be barking, but the caravan had moved on. Well and truly.

Originally, I was very successful in IT, perhaps not so good at marriage.

You see, I thought Graham meant he’d moved out. You know, into another office at work.

Not moved out of our home.

That concept just didn’t connect. Not in this head.

But that, in fact, is just what he was talking about.

Graham was talking about our home.

Our marriage. My life.

Him and me.

Graham Russell and Rhonda Russell.

And Graham Russell was telling Rhonda Russell, me, that he’d moved out of my life.

That is how my brain began to compute the information.

In blocks.

Until I finally put all the blocks together and the picture became clear.

‘Out where, for God’s sake?’

Graham didn’t have anywhere to move out to.

You do need a little more than your briefcase and your lunch to move into a place by yourself.

But it was in that instant, the microchips were working a little faster now, that another thought occurred to me.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it might be that… that, I’d almost successfully blocked the thought, but it was now oozing—well gushing, really—through the cracks in the old brain.

Perhaps Graham wasn’t moving into a place by himself.

Whoawh!

Hold your horses!

All right, Rhonda. Allow your grey matter time to compute.

Step back.

Acknowledge, but don’t necessarily accept.

This is dangerous territory.

Wheels are already in motion.

That’s what this phone call is about.

Think, Rhonda, think!

I’m flying blind in my own kitchen!

Think, brain! Help me, for God’s sake!

Graham’s leaving, or rather has left our home. And he isn’t necessarily moving into a place by himself!

Right. This, of course, was hindsight.

I was still coming to terms with the first words he’d uttered.

‘I’m moving out.’

It’s not the sort of phone call I’d ever had at nine-forty on a Wednesday morning. I was barely in the back door, from dropping Damien at school, picking up some dry-cleaning and getting some worming tablets for the cat. That’s where my head was at.

What’s more, I ducked into a No Parking spot outside the vet’s, because there’s never a park, and got a bloody ticket!

Bastard.

So I‘ve just walked in the door—parking ticket, dry-cleaning and worming tablets—and the phone rings and it’s Graham.

And my life has changed irrevocably.

Rhonda bends her head, covers her face with her hands. She fights back tears. She pulls a handkerchief from her sleeve, goes to wipe her nose, then sees that the handkerchief is covered in blood. She screws it up in her hand and conceals it in her pocket.

You know what I did after I hung up?

I moved about our house, almost as if I was not inside my body. I watched myself ever so calmly hang the dry-cleaning in the wardrobe.

Opened Graham’s side to see, yes, there did seem to be odd bits and pieces missing. Could be in t...