An extract from The Angry Wives Club by Gabbie Stroud

Read an extract from The Angry Wives Club by Gabbie Stroud.

Chapter 1

JOANY

Joany Maloney was pedalling with rage. It was a dazzling morning outside but she was in the cavernous depths of Shellwater Bay Gym thinking dark, motivating thoughts. And if she hadn’t been riding a stationary bike, she’d have been halfway around the world by now.

She hunched forward and squeezed the strange foamy bike handles that curved up to chest height like a Harley-Davidson hog. They moved violently back and forth as Joany pedalled; a workout for the arms as well as the legs.

She let her mind stalk around for another angry thought to spur her on. At seventy-two years of age, she had plenty of material but exhaustion was creeping in. She glanced at her wristwatch and that’s when the handles slipped away.

Joany was shot. Straight in the boobs.

‘Ooofff!’ She clutched her chest.

Doug, the instructor, with his comically long chin and overbearing deodorant, was leaning against a treadmill. Registering Joany’s distress, he peeled himself away and moved across the gym.

‘Is it your heart?’ He pressed a concerned hand on her shoulder.

‘My boobs,’ Joany moaned. Doug’s sweet young face appeared relieved but then grew confounded. Joany imagined he was well-versed in how to use the defibrillator, not so much in how to administer first aid to an old woman’s tits.

The gym’s timer sounded, indicating everyone should move to their next activity. Doug offered assistance as Joany clambered off the bike. ‘You all right?’ He smiled and a spidery cluster of lines bloomed at the edge of his eyes. Joany guessed he must be thirty-something.

She nodded.

‘Good girl.’ Doug patted her back and moved away. ‘Next activity, folks!’ he shouted over the music. ‘Let’s keep going.’ He clapped his hands and returned to lean against the treadmill.

Joany moved along, only to be confronted by an overhead frame with handles dangling down and something like a fan mounted at the base. She searched for the instruction card.

Ski erg, she read. Good grief!

Joany was new to Shellwater Bay and a debutante to the gym. She didn’t know what she was doing! She tried to remember the demonstration Doug had given earlier.

Nearby was a woman on a rowing machine, shooshing back and forth. She had long, lean limbs, a tan that couldn’t be natural and a face full of make-up.

‘Excuse me?’ Joany waved.

The over-tanned rowing woman slowed her pace. She had one of those faces that Joany saw everywhere now: plump lips and high cheeks, eyes like a cat and a forehead smooth as a blank page. Her eyebrows were unusually dark and awkwardly shaped like they’d been lying down and now they were trying to get up.

‘Could you please help me?’ Joany gestured at the equipment.

‘Like this.’ The woman stepped into the frame and took up the handles. She bent her knees and yanked her hands down, squatting then rising, swinging her arms and repeating the motion. ‘Like you’re skiing.’

The woman did the movement a few more times, her arse poking out like a pair of perfect rockmelons. She was wearing a tight little top and short shorts. There was lots of skin: belly and legs and cleavage. Joany had watched enough TikToks to know this woman was ‘giving sexy’.

‘You can adjust it,’ the woman explained, releasing the handles and letting them rattle back into position. She pressed a Frenchpolished fingernail against a lever at the machine’s base, clicking it further and further to the left, finding just the right setting for ‘completely incompetent’.

Joany watched the woman’s hands. They were telling all her secrets. Her nails were fake: sheeny and bulbous, almost like plastic. She was wearing an Apple Watch and half-a-dozen rings—diamonds and gems scattered across her fingers— but their styling was old. Neither retro nor on trend. Her skin whispered loudest. Dark spots, thickening veins and a slight hint of crepe. Late forties, Joany realised, much older than the twenty-something she was trying to appear.

The woman stepped away from the machine and indicated that Joany should take her turn.

‘You have lovely eyes,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen eyes that colour before.’

‘Thank you,’ Joany said. ‘And thanks for your help with this.’

‘That’s okay.’ The woman gave a tight smile. ‘I’m Heather, by the way.’

‘Joany.’

Heather slipped away, gliding on the rower as though she’d assisted Joany on a remote island and had to get back to the mainland.

Joany pulled at the ski erg’s handles, defying their resistance. It was hard work. She needed something to prod her along so she thought of Tony.

The machine made a zipper noise. Whoa, it seemed to say. Whoa. The timer sounded. Move on.

Joany clumsied her way through boxing, push-ups and skipping. She was suffering through crunches when she saw a sudden flurry around a young woman nearby who had been holding a static squat— back against the wall, an imagined chair beneath her. Two small children had landed on the woman’s lap like pigeons on a park bench. There was a boy, maybe four years old, and a smaller girl, maybe two, probably three. The young woman smiled at each of them, her messy bun of brown hair flopping about as she did.

A man with a baby on his hip followed the children. He was a tradie: cargo shorts, paint-stained shirt and chunky boots. He was trying to tap out a message on his phone. The woman turned her face toward them and the baby smiled around its dummy, then scrambled off the man and onto her like a little chimp clambering from a tree.

The baby had fine blonde hair that was flat on her head and delicate features: a tiny snub nose, strawberry cheeks and silvery eyebrows framing bright blue eyes.

Joany aligned that face with another small face she remembered. She slid the images over one another, like she was holding old negatives up to the light. The baby laughed, dummy dropping from her mouth into her mother’s ready hand, and Joany felt memories falling away, her mind tipping back to the present.

She struggled through a few more crunches, but she was distracted by the conversation between the young couple.

‘I can’t mind the kids, Steph. Concrete’s being poured at the Wilson job.’

‘I just need half an hour.’

Joany heaved herself upward and pretended she couldn’t hear them.

‘Yeah, nah, I gotta go,’ the man said.

Across the room, Joany spied Claude, a big sweaty man, abandoning his bicep curls and approaching the couple. Claude was probably in his sixties. He was prone to perving and the repulsive habit of slogging back his snot like a giant child. Joany had made a point of exchanging names with him earlier when he’d addressed her as ‘young lady’.

‘G’day, Harry.’ Claude sniffed. ‘Gotta get to work?’

‘Yeah. Foundation’s being poured.’

‘Kids’ll be right.’ Claude planted his feet and folded his arms, like he was making a public decree. ‘Steph can manage. Get going, mate.’ He gave the man— Harry— a slap on the back. Problem solved. Joany wanted to reach out as Claude lumbered past and pull his shoelace loose.

Steph was still covered in children and looking up at Harry. ‘I’ll skip the stretches,’ she bargained. ‘Twenty minutes? Please?’

Harry just kept on with his phone and Steph’s face became set, eyes fixed straight ahead, a resigned acceptance of everything. Like a closed sign flipped over the door of a shop.

The buzzer sounded and Joany got to her feet, feeling woolly-headed.

Harry was moving across the gym, abandoning Steph with the children, until his path was blocked.

It was Seely— a woman you could not help but notice. Early twenties with a supermodel body and a cover-girl face. Joany had learnt her name because everyone said it. How ya going, Seely? See ya tomorrow, Seely? She was a Hollywood starlet walking the red carpet and she had stopped Harry dead in his tracks.

‘Are you the dad?’ Seely asked, body sparkling with sweat and boxing gloves on.

‘Yeah.’ Harry turned on a smile.

‘If they’re your kids, you’re not minding them.’ Seely used her teeth to rip at the Velcro around her wrist then dropped a glove at his boot. ‘Dads don’t babysit or provide a supervision service. You’re their father. They’re your responsibility.’

Harry reeled like he’d been punched. ‘But I’ve gotta go to work.’

‘I understand that.’ Seely ripped at the Velcro on the other glove. ‘But this is a gym and we’re all doing a class. It’s not appropriate for you to walk in and dump the kids. This’— she waved a hand at the children— ‘is a problem you need to solve for yourself.’

The second glove fell at Harry’s feet.

Joany’s hand curled into a triumphant fist at her side. Everyone had stopped and was watching the scene unfold as though it was a thrilling preview of a new show on Netflix.

Harry looked to Steph. His face was screaming, What the fuck?

But Steph had seen her opportunity and she rushed forward, tilting the baby toward Harry so it could scramble back onto him.

‘Half an hour, promise.’

‘Righto.’ Harry’s voice was all business. ‘Come on, kids. Your mum’s too busy for you.’ He herded them together. ‘Guess I’ll take you to Mum’s.’

‘Give her a ring first,’ Seely called. ‘Check she’s available.’

‘Jeeeesus!’ Harry said, almost under his breath.

‘Jesus!’ the little boy chirped. He followed his father out of the gym and his sister skipped behind them.

The baby turned back, blue eyes peeking over Harry’s shoulder. Joany offered a wave and the tiny thing waved back.

Extracted from The Angry Wives Club by Gabbie Stroud, out March 31.

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The Angry Wives Club

by Gabbie Stroud

Domestic noir with a chick-lit twist: a story of laughter, sisterhood, and women daring to do things differently.

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