Chapter Twelve

January arrived with a heat that sat on the city like a punishment.

The air in Abbotsford hung heavy and still, refusing to move even when the trams rattled past. Mayfield Studios became a furnace, the kilns adding their own relentless fire to the afternoons. Clay dried too quickly on the tables, bowls cracked before trimming, and tempers shortened with the heat.

The Clay Soirée, however, was thriving.

The booking platform had done its job too well. Dates Sally thought would never sell — mid-January, school holidays, the weeks when Melbourne usually fled to the coast — filled within hours.

The dashboard blinked FULL night after night.

Guests arrived in linen shirts and sundresses carrying chilled prosecco and expensive enthusiasm. They fanned themselves with booking confirmations as though arriving at a gala rather than a warehouse with four pottery wheels and unreliable plumbing.

Finn embraced this energy immediately.

“This clay, darling, is your partner,” he announced one Friday evening, sleeves rolled up dramatically. “Treat it kindly, respect its boundaries, and it will open itself to you.”

He cradled the clay reverently.

Then slammed it onto the wheel so hard half of it flew across the room.

The guests howled with laughter.

Sally did not.

She was already reaching for towels and mentally counting how many clean aprons remained.

Ruth scowled from the kitchen corner while slicing cucumbers for yet another cheese platter.

“This isn’t catering,” she muttered. “It’s theatre. And not the good kind.”

William attempted to soothe everyone by carving tiny pine spoons from timber scraps and presenting them solemnly to guests as “special studio tools.”

People loved them.

Photos flooded Instagram.

Sally did not have time to look.

Ebony remained the studio’s dark gravitational force.

One moment she was nowhere. The next she appeared silently beside Sally holding fresh water buckets or newly pugged clay.

She rarely spoke during events except to issue blunt corrections.

“Wheel’s too wet.”

Or:

“That’ll collapse.”

Her expression never changed.

Once, a tipsy guest asked if she liked working there.

Ebony shrugged.

“What’s not to like?”

The guest laughed nervously.

Ebony did not.

The evenings blurred together: spinning wheels, wet hands, overheated guests and endless washing up.

Five-star reviews piled onto the platform.

“Best night out in Melbourne.”

“So much fun and so different.”

“Sally and her team made us feel like artists.”

The platform skimmed nearly a third of the revenue while congratulating them on their growth.

Still, they remained booked solid through March.

At home, Sally collapsed into bed too tired to eat and too wired to sleep.

Her husband muttered something about overcommitting before rolling away.

The teenagers barely registered her presence except to ask if there was food.

Her friends noticed more.

At a New Year’s barbecue in South Yarra, surrounded by women in immaculate linen and expensive casualness, Sally found herself cornered beside the drinks table.

“We saw your little soirée thing online!” one woman said brightly. “It looks so chic.”

Another smiled.

“Like Pilates, but with mud.”

“Such a fun project.”

Sally smiled the careful smile learned from school photos and legal functions.

None of them saw the BAS statements at 1am.

Or the fifty-kilo clay bags.

Or the panic.

They saw a charming side hustle.

“Yes,” she said evenly. “It’s been busy.”

The strange bridge between those two worlds was Marcus.

He had arrived just before Christmas via Claudia — one of Sally’s oldest friends — who described him vaguely as “between things” and “good with his hands.”

At the time Sally had been too desperate for staff to ask further questions.

Now he was everywhere.

Dragging trestle tables.

Scrubbing bathroom floors.

Stacking stools in perfect military lines.

Dependable, certainly.

But occasionally sharp.

“You’ll wreck your wrists wedging like that,” he told William one afternoon.

Another evening:

“This mop’s disgusting. You need proper cleaning supplies.”

The comments weren’t cruel.

Just pointed enough to make people defensive.

By mid-January, his focus shifted.

After one especially chaotic Soirée — guests drunk, aprons stained, Finn offended nobody applauded his demonstration — Sally collapsed beside the till counting crumpled receipts.

Marcus dried glasses nearby.

“You know,” he said carefully, “this is all a bit loose.”

Sally looked up.

“Loose?”

“Hours. Pay. Cash sometimes, transfers other times. No one really knows what they’re owed.”

He kept drying glasses.

“People talk.”

The words sat heavily in her chest long after he left.

Marcus began testing similar conversations with everyone.

“Do you get overtime?” he asked Ruth one evening.

Ruth snorted.

“Darling, I’m lucky if petrol gets covered.”

He tried Ebony next.

“Do you have a contract?”

Ebony continued feeding clay through the pugmill.

“Don’t care,” she said flatly. “Clay’s here. Clay needs doing.”

Finn waved him away theatrically.

“Oh Marcus,” he sighed, “don’t be dreary. We’re building dreams here, not balance sheets.”

But Marcus’s steadiness lingered after conversations ended.

At another barbecue hosted by Sally’s friends, Marcus accidentally became part of the evening after dropping off supplies and being persuaded to stay.

He stood awkwardly near the esky holding a paper plate while women in pearls attempted conversation.

“So Marcus,” one asked brightly, “do you just love working with clay?”

Marcus chewed slowly.

“It’s a job,” he said. “Better than being underpaid by corporate clowns quoting Dr Seuss at staff meetings.”

Then he wandered away toward the drinks.

The women laughed uncertainly.

Sally laughed too loudly to fill the silence.

Privately, she thought:

He’s not wrong.

The studio thrummed with contradiction.

Guests arrived glowing and left transformed, declaring it the highlight of their summer. Online reviews painted effortless joy.

Behind the scenes:

Ruth worried about invoices.

Finn demanded more wheels.

William wanted sturdier stools.

Ebony worked silently through impossible clay volumes.

And Marcus kept asking careful questions about permanence, contracts and cover.

The business was thriving.

That was becoming the problem.

It worked.

But Sally could already feel the strain lines forming underneath it all.