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  I ran a nail over the grain of Dad’s sofa and stared at the TV. I was already irritable because I had a head full of dye that was smearing all over my ear and the phone. I was going pink bob. Sharp pink bob with a fringe that I should have asked Sadie to cut.

  I couldn’t remember having my picture taken. Once ensconced in the high-end restaurant Mickiewicz took us to, things took a psychedelic turn with the introduction of a bottle of rum. There followed a medley of hazy moments: Mickiewicz’s biting refrain about John Villiers trading on his past glories; my trout arriving with its head still on; Rose’s chorus, ‘No, no, no . . . sorry about that, Mr Mickiewicz’; and something really important about Alannah that I made a note to remember, but didn’t. When Rose responded to Mickiewicz’s interlude about possible TV appearances with ‘We should send Nina to Brat Camp,’ things escalated a notch, building to a crescendo when someone knocked over the remainder of the rum. Outside, a blast of horns.

  ‘That’s not much of a retreat then, is it?’ I bickered. ‘If they’re letting you read the paper.’

  ‘Who was the old man?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Mickiewicz. He’s the head of Grandiose. He’s about your age.’

  ‘He had his arm around you.’

  ‘He had his arms around both of us, Helen,’ I frowned, fingering a blister on my heel. ‘It’s good for us—it shows we’re signed to his label.’

  ‘I see. Well, as long as your young man doesn’t mind.’

  Mickiewicz had refused to let me bring Hank to our bonding dinner in Surry Hills. ‘I’m paying and he’s not coming,’ he said with finality. ‘You’re new and exciting. Let people think you’re young, free and single for now.’

  I didn’t mind, as I always felt that Hank had the upper hand—to the point that I’d made a tally at the back of my lyrics pad to be sure: hand/no hand. Hank was five hands to my none, because I kept doing things like being the first to text, and then turning my message into a question to try to make him answer. Going to the Ivy without Hank would mean I had hand.

  I’d actually been pictured twice in a week. The following night, at Totty, the same photographer recognised me and snapped one of me and Hank leaving. Totty was the sort of place I wouldn’t be seen dead in ordinarily, but this was a strategic move known as ‘building your profile’. The caption referred to Hank as my ‘beau’, which I’d never even heard my nanna say. Gossip journalists always alternated ‘beau’ with ‘love rat’ depending on their mood. If they were in a cry-into-a-family-size-block-of-chocolate mood, it was ‘love rat’.

  ‘Well, I’m sure you know what you’re doing,’ Helen allowed. ‘And how’s herself?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Alannah.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘She’s been great, actually. She’s set up a meeting with a manager next week, so we’ll probably be leaving Sydney for good soon.’

  I was being mean, but I was also smarting that Helen had converted my bedroom into a reiki room; her latest fad on top of the novelist pretentions and bad poetry readings at open mic nights. At least when I lived at home all she did was mope in the kitchen and slam doors.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘I’m in the middle of doing my hair.’ ‘Wait, you’ve got a big birthday coming up,’ she said. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Eighteen’s not a big deal. I won’t be doing anything I haven’t already been doing for the past five years when you weren’t looking.’

  ‘No, well, I’d rather not know about that. But you should come over for a special dinner at least.’

  I sighed. ‘I’ll give you a call when I figure out what’s going on.’

  Right. Ready meals with Helen—I’d be sure to clear my diary. With Mickiewicz now on board, my life felt thrillingly full-tilt, and I didn’t have time to be maintaining dud relationships.

  10

  THE UTE MUSTER

  Around me, my peers were dropping like flies, expiring in bathtubs and venue toilets all down the Eastern seaboard. Beautiful young men and women, ridiculously talented—it was such a terrible waste. Heroin wasn’t for me. I preferred to set the fashion, not follow it.

  POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL (SABRE BOOKS)

  You need to get your facts straight on everything we had to deal with on July third before you judge us on why we’ve said the things we’ve said about Townsville and regional folk.

  The Woop Woop Ute Muster was Ian Essence’s last hurrah as manager of The Dolls, although he didn’t know that when he pestered the promoter to get us on the bill. It demonstrated his woeful lack of branding knowledge, that he would consider The Dolls a suitable match for a bunch of bogans doing donuts in souped-up utility vehicles in Far North Queensland.

  ‘Festival promoters are gamblers,’ he told us admiringly, ‘and the hustle of being a gambler means you have to play with a firm hand. They know this will really open The Dolls up to a new audience.’

  Our tour manager, Brendan Williams, picked us up from the airport and drove us to 3YYY, a squat building around the back of a shopping precinct. The receptionist buzzed us in and the producer took us into the ‘Mornings With Lisa and Davo’ studio. The whole joint was done up in gleaming red and white and it gave me a bit of a headache the minute I walked in. I was still hung-over from the night before, when I attended a charity benefit at the Sydney Opera House, hosted by Hank. It was a big gig for him, and it was also a good opportunity to be papped.

  I had expected him to be pleased that his newly signed girlfriend had made the effort to dress up in sass & bide, but instead I sat in the front row with Sadie with my back very straight as he made a succession of jokes at my expense.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told a living soul,’ he told us, pacing the stage. ‘My girlfriend’s in a band. Yeah. True. They’ve just been signed.’

  He made quotation marks in the air. ‘A “punk” band.’ Hank exhaled malevolently into the mic, regarding the audience from under his brow. He’d stolen that shtick from Bill Hicks, but still people laughed.

  ‘I call them Alco Pops. Now that they’re sucking the corporate cock, you should be seeing them around a lot more. Like, in bargain basement bins: buy one, get one free.’ He mimicked a blowjob. ‘Or maybe they’ll just be marked down as sloppy seconds.’

  The audience made that ‘ooh’ sound the boys in school used to do, because they loved it. Ooh, you are awful. And he was awful. He didn’t mind The Dolls when I introduced him to famous Sydney bands he could name-drop. I looked over at Sadie and saw that her eyebrows were in her hairline. I stopped tweeting pictures of Hank, picked up my bag and we headed for the EXIT sign.

  I knew that Hank would protest as usual that it was all rock’n’roll, but I wished I’d never invited him to Woop Woop. Somewhere along the way, Hank and I had turned from a potential power couple into that couple—the one always brawling in public while everyone exchanged looks.

  I put on my sunglasses and sat silently in the corridor with Rose and Brendan. During a commercial break we were ushered into the studio and handed our headphones. We put them on like we were facing a firing squad. It was a few years before we’d learn to make journalists cry with our mind games. Carmel from Grandiose had warned us that we wouldn’t be on home turf, and so the hosts would have no emotional investment in us. The producer counted us in from behind her window.

  ‘Welcome back, and as promised we have The Dolls with us in the studio, two cousins all the way from Sydney, here for the Woop Woop Ute Muster. Welcome, Nina and Rose Dall,’ said Davo.

  ‘G’day,’ we chorused. Rose reached over and straightened my silk scarf. She was always adjusting me in public.

  ‘So, how are you feeling about your performance at one of our state’s finest bogan bashes?’ Davo asked, as Lisa let rip a you are awful laugh. ‘Everybody knows Queenslanders know how to party, so how are you planning to win over the crowd?’

  We hesitated. Davo was inviting us to agree with him that the crowd were feral roo-bother
ers, but that felt like a bit of a no-go area.

  ‘What about the Facebook page that’s been set up by Woop Woop fans?’ Lisa prompted, alarmed at the split-second of dead-air time. ‘There’s one here called “Let’s kill The Dolls at Woop Woop”.’

  ‘Oh my god, really?’ said Rose. ‘O-kay, well I guess we’ll have to take them on.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got a single coming out soon called “Fight Like a Girl”,’ said Davo, consulting the notes Brendan had given him. ‘Do you have any fighting tips?’

  ‘Girls fight best,’ Rose asserted. ‘They play dirty. Use your nails and go for the earrings, that’s my tip.’

  They both laughed, pleased. ‘And what about this rumoured million-dollar deal you’ve signed, Nina?’ Davo turned to me. ‘What are you going to spend all that on?’

  I ransacked my mind for Carmel’s tips, but all I could think of was: ‘How interesting. Can you explain what you mean a bit more?’

  ‘I’m going to learn to drive,’ I blurted, heart thumping again. ‘Can you recommend any good cars?’

  Rose’s eyes widened, but Lisa and Davo good-humouredly tossed up a few options. A Diddy-style Hummer, perhaps, or a Volkswagen Bug. ‘Well, let’s not forget they’re only just eighteen,’ Lisa clucked to Davo. ‘We mustn’t encourage too much excessive behaviour at this point. They’ve got to pace themselves.’

  •

  Although the interview wasn’t a disaster—not even the a cappella rendition of ‘Fight Like a Girl’ we were put on the spot to do—it did feel like a minefield, and we were rattled by both that and by the news of the Facebook hate page. It was times like these we tended to take things out on each other.

  On the drive out to Woop Woop, we just phased Brendan’s presence out of the van so we could talk without censoring ourselves—it was something we had to learn to do all the time on tour, because we were never alone. Ommmmm: you’re gone.

  When she was done reading out comments about us being killed at Woop Woop, Rose brought up Jimmy’s Facebook page to look for traces of his ex-girlfriend. She’d already deleted Clara’s number from his phone and made him remove any pictures of her from his photo albums.

  ‘I’m going to text her and say that Jimmy needs to concentrate on his family now,’ she said, gnawing a thumbnail. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Why does he?’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ she huffed, ‘but then she’ll think I’m pregnant. But I won’t have actually said I’m pregnant, so if she asks him he’ll just say I must have meant his mum and dad.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What? Wouldn’t you do that?’ she said sharply.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I wouldn’t want to look like a crazy bitch.’

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh! Now we have it. Come on, Nina, why don’t you say what you really mean?’

  ‘You can’t just text his ex-girlfriend.’

  ‘Why not? You nag Hank about girls all the time, he’s sick of it.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I know you better than you know yourself. Imagine what I have to put up with; you’re always embarrassing me.’ Her voice was getting thin and reedy, and I was fighting like a ninja to control mine. This was already worse than the fight we had over which promo photo to go with.

  ‘Have you taken your pills today, dear?’ I asked.

  Rose shoved me. ‘What do you think it’s like for me, having to be the one representing us all the time, while you sit and stare at people like a retard?’

  I shoved her back twice as hard and her sunglasses fell between her feet. We’d been warned by Carmel to drop words like ‘retard’ from our vocabulary.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Brendan.

  ‘You’re our driver, so just drive,’ Rose said tightly, cheeks burning, and he shut up after that.

  Rose and I brooded in silence and I mentally flipped through my notebook of grudges. Actually, they were all in a Word doc on my laptop.

  TOP 10 GRUDGES AGAINST ROSE

  1. Has to give a running commentary on everything.

  2. Doesn’t brush her teeth till after her second cup of coffee.

  3. Is rude to waitstaff and other underlings.

  4. Reads her runes in hotel bathrooms with the door shut.

  5. Does everyone else’s tarot but never mine.

  6. Starts most sentences with ‘Um . . .’ or ‘Ouch’ or ‘For your information . . .’

  7. Lip balm.

  8. Turns up ten minutes late to every single lobby call.

  9. Has never admitted to ripping my Topshop dress.

  10. Doesn’t respect me.

  I was more than a hundred per cent certain that Rose was keeping a similar document on me. Hers would probably say:

  TOP 10 GRUDGES AGAINST NINA

  1. Makes me work twice as hard at winning people over.

  2. Poor personal hygiene when going through a phase.

  3. Sleeps with everybody, rarely conveniently.

  4. Looks better in jeans than I do.

  5. Thinks she invented suffering.

  6. Always has to try and act mysterious. Is not, though.

  7. Creeps out my friends.

  8. Snoops around.

  9. Eats instant noodles out of the packet.

  10. Probably read my diary that time.

  As Brendan escorted me to the beer tent at the site, I felt my mood gathering like storm clouds. A sea of muddy cowboy boots parted in front of me as I kept my head down, my eyes hidden behind mirror shades.

  Brendan spotted Hank at the bar and gave me the word. I looked up to see him with a short girl who had a shaved head. Hank had a shaved head, too.

  ‘Herro!’ he chirruped as I glided up blackly like Darth Vader. ‘This is Marni; she wanted to see what the Woop Woop Ute Muster would be like.’

  ‘Hello,’ the girl said, sticking out a hand awkwardly, then dropping it. I was looking at his hair, or lack thereof.

  Marni cringed. ‘I did ask him if his girlfriend would mind another girl shaving his head.’

  Ignoring her, I opened my handbag and moved stuff around as I made a mental list of all my grievances about Hank:

  Always smelled of dirty scalp.

  Never bought a round.

  Always bagged out my male friends.

  Never said hello to everybody, the way Jimmy did.

  Always kept his phone in his pocket; never on the table like a man with nothing to hide.

  Turned up to my shows with weird hairless women.

  First and foremost on Hank’s to-do list at Woop Woop was to ride backstage in one of the golf buggies that festivals used for transport. He threaded his AAA laminate through his belt loop—so that it looked cooler than it did hanging around his neck in an obvious fashion—and flagged down a buggy. He jumped in the front next to the driver while Marni perched gingerly in the back with Brendan and me as we trundled the short cut to the dressing room, and when I lapsed into silence they made awkward conversation.

  •

  ‘We’re very humbled to be asked to play here today,’ Rose announced into her mic when we took to the stage amid jeers. Mainly men jeering, I noticed. Maybe the female countryfolk secretly wanted to hear some cosmopolitan punk-rock direct from Sydney. They must buy magazines out here, surely?

  Rose sounded confident, but I could see her skinny legs trembling atop the gigantic cowboy boots she’d bought for the occasion, along with a denim dress. It was from the same shop I’d got my nudie shirt. I chanced a look out at the crowd and saw a flare of blue singlets, akubra hats and folded arms. Already a girl was on a bloke’s shoulders and we hadn’t played a note. I focused on her and smiled.

  We’d flatly turned down the promoter’s request to open with a punked-up ‘Advance Australia Fair’, preferring to unleash ‘Fight Like a Girl’. The band cranked it up behind us and I started to move. They say a moving target is harder to hit.

  Glass was banned at Woop Woop, so it was
plastic bottles of piss that rained down on us from the first note. Plastic bottles with the lids taken off. Harrowing doesn’t come close to describing the next twenty-five minutes, but Donny and our new guitarist, Glen, shielded us from any actual blows. They didn’t exactly sign up for this—we just chose to keep crisscrossing the stage behind them, skipping in our weighted boots. Between belting out my lines I pulled the mic away from my mouth and let out little whimpers.

  By the time we were halfway through the set, the assault had dropped off and I finally started to enjoy myself. There was a feeling of disconnect between us and the audience across the four-foot jump that was the photographers’ pit, so I opted to counter it by putting my foot up on the monitor so that my denim skirt rode up. This got an easy cheer.

  I was leaning the mic stand over the edge of the stage and stroking my thigh when I noticed Rose using the middle-eight to dance over. She’d be pissed off that I wasn’t writhing up against the speaker cab in sync with her as discussed. For a moment, her hasty slink stage-left was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, and I fluffed my words trying to keep from exploding. Ever the multi-tasker, she belted out my line, ‘Go on and hurt me’, while slipping a hand in mine. To the layman punter, staring at us from the field behind his plastic schooner glass, it was just the usual girl-on-girl tease. Only I could feel Rose’s nails digging into the web of my thumb. While she was over on my side of the stage, she tugged my skirt down at the back to cover my arse, in true Rose style.

  ‘Goodnight, Woop Woop!’ Rose screamed at the end of ‘Blame’. It was force of habit—in actual fact the sun was only beginning to set. I ran to the back of the stage and hurled myself into Brian’s drum kit, diving for it the way I used to bomb onto my bed in my bedroom. I sent everything flying, but I was on such a high I didn’t feel it.

  Backstage, we decompressed and examined the footage on Brendan’s phone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I yelled across at Mark, our guitarist, who was packing away his new digital effects pod. ‘I totally dicked up my part in “Chica”.’