They were sitting at an outdoor table at Foxglove Spires under the vines—the van now parked across the road and stowed with their shopping—enjoying a coffee and a chocolate florentine after their organic pumpkin soup and ploughman’s platter, when Nina spluttered and showered the table with half-chewed biscuit. She stabbed her finger in the direction of the next table, where an elderly chap in a tweed cap was reading the Daily Telegraph. The front-page headline read: ‘CORINNE BONED!’ Underneath was a picture of the one and only Corinne Jacobsen, climbing into the driver’s seat of her silver Mercedes Sports. She looked distressed, in a fetchingly tabloid way. Her eyes were hidden by huge dark glasses, her mouth was a glossy petulant pout and one shapely leg ending in a patent stiletto was revealed from the folds of a slim black trench coat.
‘Shit!’ Annie exclaimed so loudly that the gentleman gave her a withering look, stood and—after collecting his startled good lady wife, plus their wisteria shrub and pottery platypus—left. The newspaper was abandoned on the table.
Annie pounced. ‘Fuck! They’ve sacked her!’
‘Ner, ark!’ Nina coughed and gagged again. A raisin had gone down the wrong way.
‘I know, unbelievable! Listen: “After fifteen years fronting Channel 5’s Daylight, television’s veteran hostess Corinne Jacobsen has been axed.”’
‘Veteran? She’ll hate that!’ Meredith chirped happily.
Annie shooshed her and kept reading: ‘“Insiders say she is set to be replaced by her younger rival, popular newsreader Candice Byrne. Channel 5 boss Desmond Hyde confirmed last night that he was seeking a ‘fresh direction’ for Daylight, which has been struggling in the ratings. He denied Jacobsen had been ‘axed’, but said the network would not be renewing her contract. The normally chatty Jacobsen was tight-lipped as she left the set of the show yesterday morning, but friends say she is ‘gutted’ by the decision.”’
‘That’s awful!’ Nina had finally regained the power of speech. ‘I mean, how old is she—forty-eight, forty-nine?’
‘She’ll be forty-seven next month! Fresh direction? It’s bullshit! You see these blokes on TV who look a hundred years old. Double chins, nose hair, bald, eye bags—and everyone says they’re “distinguished”. Corinne still looks amazing. And she’s a great interviewer as well . . .’
Meredith, however, wasn’t buying it. ‘Honestly, it’s not that hard to get a reality show contestant to blab on . . . or some vacuous supermodel to prattle about her new skin-care range. And correct me if I’m wrong, but Corinne’s played the game for years, hasn’t she? With the Botox-brow, the collagen fish-lips. It’s finally caught up with her.’ She sat back and crossed her arms with satisfaction.
‘Like it catches up with most women in the media in this country, Meredith,’ Annie said tersely. ‘Corinne battled hard to get where she is. Show a bit of solidarity—you used to be good at that.’ Annie threw the newspaper on the table. ‘Let’s go! I’ll get this one and meet you out front.’
Nina rushed to sandbag the horrifying silence. ‘Poor Corinne! She’ll be feeling awful. We really should go and see her in Sydney. We’ll be there tomorrow night.’
Meredith grabbed her purse. ‘I don’t know why we’d bother. She’s probably jetting to the Bahamas as we speak.’
Nina busied herself with gathering her handbag. She hated confrontation, but was determined to go on with it. ‘You know, Meredith, sometimes you can be so . . .’ She searched her mind for the word—bitchy? mean? callous? unfeeling? unsympathetic?—and finally settled on the term that would cause the least offence: ‘strong-minded.’
‘And that’s a bad thing?’ Meredith challenged.
Nina wanted to say yes, it was a bad thing. That it was no wonder that Sigrid had escaped as soon as she could, and never rang her mother. That it was perfectly understandable that Jarvis had moved a hemisphere away from her critical eye, and that Donald had probably taken up with another woman for exactly the same reason. If Meredith had been sitting in the hot seat on Dr Phil, they could have all lined up and told her. Dr Phil would probably have said something like: ‘Y’all have legitimate concerns with this lady’s behaviour as a wife, mother and friend. There’s prob’ly been only one perfect child on the face of the earth and that was the baby Jesus. He grew up to “confound the elders”. Meredith, what makes you so confounded certain about every darned thing?’ But Nina wasn’t Dr Phil.
‘Well, only in that it can be hard for the rest of us,’ she cautiously