Poker Protocol

By Anne Maria Nicholson

Life in a seaside suburb on Sydney Harbour appears idyllic from the outside, but cracks are appearing in the lives of five well-heeled, mismatched friends. Brought together by compassionate Kristen in her quest to help refugees, they share a passion for poker. Every month, they gather in each other's houses to gamble on cards and each other.
Affairs, fraud, betrayal and greed….their 'first world' problems are suddenly challenged when their lives collide with an embattled Afghani family trying to make it in a hard-arse Australia.
Smart, taut and sexy, the action in "Poker Protocol" unfolds over one year, putting the life of contemporary middle Australia under a microscope with humour and suspense.
Using journalistic skills honed over decades, Anne Maria Nicholson tells the story through the cleverly interwoven perspectives of five men and women craving love and friendship while coming to grips with a moral crisis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Aug 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685834524

Anne Maria Nicholson

Anne Maria Nicholson is a senior journalist with the ABC in Australia, where she is a national media figure, covering high-end arts stories and news and current affairs. She has employed her reporting skills to inject an authentic flavour into this compelling story. New Zealand born, this is her second book, a sequel to the bestselling novel about the Tangiwai disaster, Weeping Waters.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Kristen

When Kristen closed her eyes to catch her breath the way she did on her ocean swims, she could see clearly what needed to be done before her poker mates arrived in an hour’s time. The list was almost overwhelming. She sighed. Sometimes it felt like she never stopped.

She took a sip of wine and smiled ruefully at the memory of Tully teasingly describing her as a domestic goddess and miracle worker for lost souls. If only Tully could see her right now! She felt more godforsaken than goddess chopping carrots, chicken and other bits and pieces for her kids’ stir-fry.

Mum, where’re my tennis shorts? Alex called.

Clean laundry basket!

Alex was always losing his stuff, even though he was in Year 10! At home, at school, on buses, at friends’ houses, at the beach – there was no end to the locations his stuff was abandoned. As Kristen’s mother used to say, He’d lose his head if it wasn’t screwed on! Or, on her rarer, kinder days, If he says a prayer to Saint Anthony he might find them.

Kindness was something Kristen had plenty of, but her patience was in increasingly short supply at the moment. The dress she’d worn all day was clinging to her, and smelt vaguely of the sick and injured who’d piled into the surgery. Even though she, Kristen Sinclair, was the manager and able to keep her distance from the patients, or ‘clients’, as they were now called, the scent of eau de medical practice was still pungent.

Dice, slice, slurp of cool white wine.

Where’s my racket, Mum? called her daughter, Georgie. "Mum?"

Kristen rolled her eyes. Probably where you left it last week, Georgie.

Georgie didn’t outright lose stuff in the same way as Alex. Her malady was laziness not forgetfulness. If she could palm off a job to her mother or father or even, God forbid, Alex, to make her life easier, she would choose that.

Kristen brushed back a strand of runaway blond hair sticking to her damp cheek. All she wanted was to collapse on the sofa, watch the TV news, drink more of this lovely pinot gris and wait for her guests.

And hurry up! Dinner will be ready in ten, she bellowed at her teenagers.

A soft frangipani breeze blew open the French doors of the bungalow and into her kitchen, dicing the mugginess that soaked Sydney every February. It gave her a second wind.

Gas on. Wok on. Oil in. Garlic, ginger, chicken, sauces, soy and oyster, in. Kristen checked her phone in one hand and stirred with the other. Good, four new texts replying to hers. They were all coming tonight. She felt a rush of excitement, anticipating the card game when she could transform into her other self, cool and calm, taking risks, hoping for a win.

Add carrots. Add snow peas. Add a dash of water. Stir, stir. Cover and cook. Check the rice cooker. Perfect!

Kristen’s phone pinged and she frowned as she read Greg’s text.

Won’t be home till late. Too much work. Don’t worry about dinner.

It was the second time this week he’d done this. And he knew it was her poker night, the fourth Wednesday of the month. He was supposed to drive their kids to and from tennis.

Bowls out, three instead of the four. They were the family favourites, white with blue painted fish, she’d picked up in Chinatown years ago after eating yum cha at the Golden Fortune. The kids were young then and family excursions regular. Now it was increasingly rare to be together at the same time. Like the outings, the restaurant had disappeared and the bowls were mementos of a lost era.

Alex was the first to appear, sidling to the dining table, wearing the found tennis shorts on his gangly frame. Kristen was moved to give him an all-embracing hug, as she had all of his fourteen-year life. Of late, he towered over her, already as tall as Greg, and his body did not give into her as it once did.

Mum, stop it! I’m hungry!

That was the way of him these days. Kristen liked to call him and his friends boy-men, half grown up, their still-forming brains trying scatter-gun to keep up with their faster growing bodies.

Here it comes! She plopped an overflowing bowl in front of him, and smaller ones for herself and Georgie who had become an annoyingly fussy eater. Georgie slid in next to her brother, her tousled fair hair streaked with a ghastly purple she’d decided was the colour de jour.

Not stir fry again!

It felt like Georgie complained about everything these days. If it wasn’t Kristen’s cooking, it was her father’s daggy dress sense, or her teacher’s habit of giving her friend, Olivia, higher marks for her artworks. This particularly riled Georgie because she was majoring in visual arts for her final year at school and fancied herself a superior artist and intellect to Olivia.

"So what’re you planning to cook for us?" Kristen teased.

Well it won’t be icky stir fry! said Georgia. And besides, I’m too busy to make food. I’ve got more important things to do.

Kristen bit her lip. No time to debate the importance or otherwise of preparing meals. Poker taught her many life lessons and hiding her emotions in the face of unreasonable teenage behaviour, as she did at the gambling table, was a very useful one.

Can I have some more, Mum?

Help yourself Alex but quickly, Kristen said. Your dad’s running late and I have to drive you. I have my poker friends arriving soon and I can’t be late.

She ignored Georgia’s sneer. She’d tried to interest her in the game once or twice. She’d learnt it herself at her grandmother’s knee and it taught her to think differently and how to accept losing as well as winning. And God knows, there were a lot of losses in life these days! It would do Georgie good to think a bit more strategically with all the ups and downs in her own life. But her efforts were dismissed as ‘boring’. And there was nothing Kristen could do about it.

Thankfully the traffic had eased and the drive to the tennis courts was much quicker than Kirsten had expected A few players were already making their way onto the courts and a line of cars was pulling over to drop off latecomers.

Can you get a lift home with one of your friends’ parents tonight? Kristen pleaded.

No problem, said Georgie. Olivia’s mum’s coming tonight and she’ll bring us both back.

Kristen stared hard at Georgie, her sudden cooperativeness suspicious.

With daylight saving, the sun was still warm, lighting up a brilliant sky as she drove home. On the ridge, where the eucalypt-lined road led back to her place in Banksia Parade, she passed a couple of straw-haired cyclists, boards strapped to their bikes, eager anticipation written all over their salty faces. She looked ahead and saw why. The sea was at its best, rolling white tips spilling onto the cobalt blue expanse and, in the distance, beyond Manly Beach, she could see the break off Cabbage Tree Bay. The surfers called it the Bower and, in their parlance, it was ‘going off’. Kristen liked to think the waves emitted some sort of beat like tom toms, heard by every surfer in the ‘hood. Come what may, every time the waves started pumping, they arrived in droves.The view never failed to lift her spirits and she started humming an old Beach Boys surf song.

On the last stretch to her house, she braked slightly as her car phone screen lit up.

Hello, Rashid! How are you?

Kristen volunteered to help asylum seekers resettle in hard-arse Australia, and calls for assistance were pretty much a daily event. She particularly liked Rashid and his family who’d experienced more hardship over the past few years since fleeing Afghanistan than any human beings deserved in a lifetime.

I’m well thank you, Kristen. I am so sorry to bother you but Samira is very upset. Have you heard any news about the visa for her mother? The news from Kabul is so bad and Samira was desperately hoping Farzana could be here for Asman’s first birthday.

No news yet but we’re working on it. I’m actually catching up with my lawyer friend tonight about it. I’ll call you tomorrow? Okay?

Kristen hated to fob off Rashid. She knew he tried not to bother her. Samira must be beside herself. But until she talked to Max later on that night, there was nothing to say. Kristen’s work with refugees annoyed Greg, and some of her friends were divided about it too, given she had so much on her plate already. But Kristen was acutely aware of how fortunate she was. She’d come to believe that if she couldn’t help people in a humanitarian emergency she was failing herself.

As she rounded the last corner, Kirsten saw her neighbour and friend, Eugenie, dashing through the narrow gate to her block of flats. Glancing over her shoulder at the sound of a car, she stopped when she saw it was Kristen pulling into the driveway next to her.

Hey, I got your text. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget. I’ll see you soon. Just have to get out of my active wear! called Eugenie, giving her the thumbs up.

Eugenie was the latest player to join the poker game, the timing perfect when Greg had announced he was too busy at work to continue.

Eugenie had knocked on their door one evening holding a large, unkempt ginger cat.

Sorry to bother you. Is this cat yours? She turned up at my flat next door. I’ve only just moved in so I didn’t know where she came from. I’m Eugenie, by the way, Eugenie Constable.

That’s Meggs. She’s a real scrounger. Belongs to the woman in number forty-two, Betty Corbett. She should be at home now and will be glad to get her back.

Meggs purred comfortably in the impossibly skinny young woman’s arms, making no attempt to escape.

Kristen was surprised to discover Eugenie was an IT expert when she‘d invited her over for a glass of wine a few weeks later. She dressed so oddly and had such a bohemian artist vibe that Kristen assumed she’d be a creative of some sort. She was pleased when Eugenie revealed that her head for numbers stretched to a passion for cards and was fuelled by the art of calculating the odds of winning. This was beyond Kristen’s limited grasp of mathematics. She gambled more on instinct than counting the numbers. She just needed a fifth player. As it turned out Eugenie had proved a superior player to Greg and a far better sport. And somehow the reversal of three men to two women around the table had improved the whole balance of the game.

Kristen stripped off her dress in the bathroom and stepped into the shower. The gushing warm water washed away images of the ailments and emergencies that had occupied her at the clinic that day. The doctors were the true miracle workers, though a couple of them had some rather questionable habits that Kristen was trying to get her head around. She’d called the ambulance herself for one of the injured, a poor boy about Alex’s age whose broken leg was so severe the ankle bone had been sticking out.

Running a dryer quickly over her hair she wondered what to wear and settled on a super comfy cotton maxi dress with a retro flower pattern. Putting it on, she felt a pang of nostalgia as she remembered the first time she’d worn it had been for her fortieth birthday champagne and candlelit dinner at the Sydney Opera House with Greg. Five years had flashed by in the interim and things between them had changed. Back then it had felt like they were on the same page, reacting as a team to whatever life threw at them. They’d laughed, uproariously, and spontaneously burst into song together.

Hearing the sound of the seven o’clock news jingle, Kristen bolted for the kitchen, wiped down the benches and shoved dishes in the dishwasher.

She squeezed books of raffle tickets into envelopes to sell to her poker friends at the end of the evening. She never missed an opportunity to put the hard word on the affluent, possessing a knack of making rich people feel guilty.

She placed a new pack of cards on the table, noticing how scratched and marked it had become – a teak tapestry from thousands of family meals she’d dished up since they’d moved here after Georgie’s birth seventeen years ago.

Just then, the doorbell rang. After checking her appearance in the hallway mirror, she opened the front door.

Chapter 2

Max

There was nothing Max Kohahn liked less than a funeral. If he hadn’t been having a beer with Stuart Evans the night of his heart attack he would never have come. But here he was in the old church off Philip Street favoured by the city’s legal fraternity for its womb-to-tomb rituals. Funerals were becoming more the norm than baptisms and weddings these days and, as was often the case with the premature death of someone, today the pews were packed.

It had been a rush to get here on time with pressure from his senior partners to finish a brief. He felt sweaty in his designer suit after a three-block dash through the hot and humid streets. But there was nothing new about his running against the clock. Deadlines, long hours, legal holdups and complications were Max’s daily bread. But hey, death didn’t pause for Stuart to finish any old legal brief! So on this, his last chance to say goodbye to his old friend, they’d bloody have to wait for it.

He knew quite a few of the lawyers in the church from around town. He nodded at some he’d worked side by side with, others he’d encountered on opposing sides of nasty tax brawls in court, and several he drank with in the city bars. As the organ struck up a familiar hymn, everyone stood and he joined in the lacklustre singing of infrequent churchgoers struggling with the lyrics. But he fancied himself as a singer, a true performer, and his own sweet baritone voice soared above those beside him.

"Oh God our Help in Ages Past, Our Hope for Years to Come," he sang. Max was following the words in the order of service brochure with a photo of a beaming Stuart on the cover when he glanced around and met the eye of a former lover, a junior associate of a rival law film he’d jilted.

"Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away," he sang. But the words were sticking in his throat as he caught the glare of the woman he’d bedded then ditched called Annabelle, or Mary-Lou or…. Shit, Max, concentrate!

"They fly forgotten, as a dream, Dies at the opening day…"

As the music ended, he sat heavily, grateful to be out of sight, as the farewell to Stuart began in earnest.

Max had met Stuart at Redfern Legal Centre just after graduating, learning from him how to help the queue of all-comers with little money and big problems; tenants thrown out by landlords, over-stayers on visas trying their luck, and a seemingly endless stream of women and kids, bruised and beaten, looking for protection and anything else they could get to keep going.

Stuart was only a little older than Max but Max had felt so much his junior and looked up to him as a brother, his own having pretty much ignored him. Fresh out of law school, Max would have floundered if Stuart hadn’t been there to catch him. He’d no idea how to talk to a woman who’d come in with a smashed jaw yet still wanted to return to her abuser. Stuart was there for him from day one, gently guiding him through the minefield of domestic violence. Max still recalled the panic he’d felt when Stuart told him he was moving on to more lucrative pastures, prompted by the birth of his first child and increasing financial demands.

Working in law had never even vaguely been part of Max’s life plan. From the day he saw his first movie he’d dreamed of being in show business. He loved everything about cinema and the stage – anything that led his mind to a fantasyland a thousand miles away from his suburban reality.

The minister was eulogising Stuart from the pulpit, engaging the congregation with his oratory and, for a second Max pictured himself as a man of the cloth. It was laughable really! His ancestors were a mix of Jewish and Presbyterian and Max was a lazy atheist, not often thinking or caring about morality, let alone religion. It was the minister’s theatrical purple and black garb, somewhat Shakespearean, his raised position on a miniature marble stage, that appealed. He was going on about this service not being a celebration of Stuart’s life but a chance to mourn him. Well that was a turn up for the books! People were forever trying to deny death and the sorrow it wrought on the survivors.

Max’s mind kept drifting away from the sermon and Stuart’s truly sorry predicament to his own lesser one; his exit from the stage. If Max had to pinpoint his unquenchable thirst for applause, he would blame it on a few plum roles he’d scored in school productions. They’d unleashed in him this desire that some might call a curse! The teachers at NIDA, the top acting school in the country, had seen his talent and offered him a rare place as a recent school graduate. Max’s parents wouldn’t consider for a moment that this could be a career option. They’d pressured him to turn it down and go into the professions and get a real job. Apart from christening their kids the three Ms, Moira, Marvin and Max, they never did see the funny, lighter, uplifting side of life.

Their relentless badgering paid off though, and study law he did. Truth be told, Max had never forgiven them or himself for caving in.

Max had found the legal aid work satisfying enough, although working with people at the bottom of the social heap exhausted him. And if he wasn’t able to fulfill his desire to perform, he’d decided that if he was going to be a lawyer, he wanted to be a rich one.

Stuart had reached this same conclusion first and was already ensconced in a commercial law firm where he moved up through the ranks, becoming a partner at just forty-one. The promotions had come with a price – gruellingly long days stretching into extended nights in the glass office towers.

The last time Max had seen Stuart alive was in the Marble Bar at the Hilton and he’d scarcely recognised him. Just forty-five, he’d lost his hair, gained a paunch, a sallow complexion and drooping bags under his eyes. He’d mentioned his beautiful weekender in one of the posher parts of the Central Coast and invited Max to join him there for a weekend to meet his family, and go for a spin on his cruiser. He complained he’d been feeling a bit off lately, what with all the long hours, the stress, the big mortgage and so on.

And now Max was staring at Stuart’s shiny mahogany coffin, adorned with arum lilies, resting in front of the altar. The church’s old sandstone walls, hewn by the sweat of convict labour, seemed to groan under the grief. He felt sick to the stomach.

Stuart’s widow, Helen, was sitting in the front pew with two young boys, maybe seven and ten, dressed immaculately in formal private school uniforms. Max saw Helen’s face stiffen as the head partner in Stuart’s firm described his brilliant legal career. And he saw her weep as Stuart’s older brother talked about them growing up free and untamed on their sheep property in the central tablelands near Bathurst, which he referred to as Wiradjuri country. This had become a thing now. Everyone in public life was doing it. Making up for lost time and returning at least a pinch of the indigenous history subsumed by colonial expansion across the great southern land.  Max certainly approved.

Max was planning to go to Stuart’s wake in the law firm’s conference room on the eighty-third floor. But suddenly he changed his mind. Seeing Stuart’s two sons clinging to their mother’s hands as they followed the coffin out of the church was too much. And if he was truthful, it reminded him of the loss of his own marriage and lack of children in his life. Playing the field of single or otherwise Sydney women was not giving him the thrill it used to. Stuart’s dropping dead just like that, also frightened the hell out of him. Regret was starting to plague him and was one reason he’d put his hand up to make a return to acting. Just on the side, a bit of fun in amateur theatre, to see what it felt like again. If the thought of cavorting centre stage again secretly terrified him, he was careful to bury it.

His overwhelming desire now was to put the funeral, Stuart and the weekend that never eventuated, out of his mind. He figured he had the ideal excuse not to return to the office and instead take an early mark to return to Manly for a surf, then pump some iron. The perfect escape! Just then his phone pinged.

"Don’t forget poker at mine tonight. K x"

Chapter 3

Tully

Tully Malone’s day seemed never-ending. Since clocking on for the early shift at six, the vision and scripts flowing in from the foreign correspondents was relentless. Now the newsroom was throbbing with people as the day peaked for the major stories to be readied for the night’s main bulletins. She was desperate to leave but until the nightshift producer arrived to relieve her, she was stuck.

Cut that there. Take out all the close-ups of the bodies, Tully said to the digital editor as they viewed pictures of the aftermath of an horrific car bombing in Kabul.

Don’t show the kids. Any of them.

She sipped on her water bottle, the scenes of the destroyed marketplace making her feel dizzy. After years in the job, she still hadn’t gained immunity to the bloody horror of such sights. Hell, she’d seen enough of them in real life during her own time as a Middle East correspondent.

And that shot Angela. The one of the dog sitting next to the pool of blood. Must have been its owner. Use it. Tully inhaled the musty air of the newsroom and felt light-headed. That poor bloody animal with its huge sad brown eyes!

Okay, Angela. That’s looking good. Keep it to one minute and send it through as soon as you’re done so we can run it on the five o’clock.

Tully was happy to be running the international desk with early starts and finishes. Since moving to the beach she loved nothing more than an evening walk to banish the intensity of a day at work.

But for now, she could feel the tension really ratcheting up in the newsroom as the countdown to the five o’clock bulletin approached. And bloody Bernie was half an hour late, delaying her escape.

She needed to calm down. Seeing human wreckage in Afghanistan day after day was getting to her, reminding her of her own experiences in Iraq. And today was the anniversary of Keith’s death, and that never went well. And then there was Harry. Still very much alive, still causing her grief.

She grabbed her cup and a tea bag from her desk. The staff kitchen was tiny and, as usual, littered with takeaway containers and dirty dishes. Journalists could be such grubs when they were chasing stories!

The hot ginger tea soothed her a little. The trouble was she’d slept badly the night before, on the eve of the anniversary. And the images from Kabul were provoking terrible memories, of how she and Keith could once support and comfort each other.

The memory of him collapsing in front of her in the street alongside Baghdad’s Tayaran Square remained vivid. They‘d been covering the arrival of Australian soldiers in the Iraqi capital, Tully reporting and Keith producing. At first she’d thought it was a bullet yet she could see no blood. Her husband had lain on the dirty road writhing in pain. But when she desperately scrabbled at him she could see no wound. She held him close until he passed out. People had run over from the nearby market to help her, kind citizens of this wretched city. One of them had called an ambulance and by the time it arrived Keith had regained consciousness.

Tully had reported on many ambulance emergencies as a journalist, but she’d felt bewildered, sitting inside of one as a victim, comforting Keith. The paramedics had attached an oxygen mask and injected him with some sort of painkiller. But they too seemed confused about the cause of his collapse. The days that followed marked the beginning of their personal journey to hell. Keith’s diagnosis had been catastrophic. Pancreatic cancer. A big smoker and drinker, it wasn’t until later she’d remembered his appetite decreasing and his weight plummeting. Within a week the network had brought them back to Sydney and life was never the same again.

Ensconced in a house near the beach, they’d faced down this new reality, relying on the best of medical science, the healing powers of the ocean and each other. Keith was onboard a medical bandwagon.

Tully was lucky to get a desk job so she could help him. Eventually he’d opted to give up chemo, finding it unbearable and relied on increasing morphine doses to reduce the pain. An end to this half-life became inevitable. The worst thing was she’d felt so darned relieved when that end came and he didn’t have to deal with the pain anymore.

She ran a hand through her hair to quell the tension. It felt unbelievable that seven years had passed since she’d become a widow.

She heard Bernie before she saw him. He was one of those hail-fellow-well-met sort of characters who everyone liked to chat to. As with Keith and her, Bernie had earned his journalism stripes in the field and lost the sight in one eye for his efforts. Tully watched him making his way towards her, his eye-patch distinctive in the fluoro-lit offices, greeting reporters and producers on his way.

Gidday Red, sorry I’m a touch late. He grinned at her. Had to see an optometrist about an eye.

As annoyed as she was, he always knew exactly how to disarm her. It was such an old and corny joke, and he used it on purpose. He was the only person in the world she would let get away with calling her Red, a habit he maintained since they‘d first met many moons ago and he’d remarked on her auburn hair.

Bernie gave her arm a squeeze and whispered.

I haven’t forgotten. The bastard would have been the big five-oh now.

Tears sprang to Tully’s eyes, touched that Bernie had remembered.

The two of them ticked off the stories and scripts yet to be filed for the evening bulletins and syndicated throughout Australia.

How’s Harry, by the way? Have you heard from him today? Bernie asked her.

Yeah. He’s sending the story from Baghdad soon. Should make it in time for the seven o’clock bulletin. Includes an interview he shot with the Aussie general.

Bernie’s eyes met Tully’s. The coincidence of the timing of this story, the same angle and the same place where Tully and Keith filed from seven years earlier, didn’t escape either of them.

Harry had called Tully an hour earlier in a bit of a state. Things had turned romantic between them the previous year when he’d been in Sydney for a holiday. Tully hadn’t been sure how a long-distance affair would go and there was, of course, protocol.

In theory, she was his boss, although it was laughable how anyone could contain characters like him! An extremely talented and fearless cameraman, Harry came with a mix of volatility and vulnerability that manifested unpredictably.

Tully had become both his lover and his sounding board. It was natural enough, especially with her insight into the city of Baghdad. It was no place for the faint-hearted! But today she was worried he was losing perspective. Unusually, he had got lost trying to find the Australian command post so was late for the key interview and it had rattled him.

Tully kept their relationship to herself. But Bernie was no fool and although he never mentioned it, they both knew he knew.

Just then her phone pinged. It was Kristen, reliable as ever. Despite being so busy with her family, running a busy medical practice and volunteering with refugees, she still managed to be on top of everything else. They’d met two years earlier when Tully had gone to her house with a television crew to interview her as a spokeswoman for refugee advocates. At the time, Tully had been pissed off with the reporter who’d lined up the interview and rung in sick. Now she was grateful.

Tully hadn’t forgotten poker night. Her time in the field with lots of male war correspondents had given her a love of the game. She counted herself lucky to find both another woman who was as thrilled by poker as she was, and a true friend. A spot of gambling, lots of banter and a glass or six of wine was just the tonic she needed!

Chapter 4

Leo

Floorboards good enough. Only the ones in the hallway need a sand and polish. First impressions and all. A quick coat of Lexicon Quarter. Then let you work your magic Dimi! We should be able to add a few hundred thousand to the price!

Leo Leventis strode whistling from one end of the empty cottage to the other, mentally adding up how much he would earn from the sale. He’d seduced