Prettier if She Smiled More

by Toni Jordan

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Siblings; Humorous Fiction

Synopsis

'Jordan is a kind of Australian Marian Keyes, combining overdrive pace and throwaway humour with a razor intelligence and a deft, illuminating touch on darker subjects and themes . . . A sharp-eyed, engaging, endearing and ultimately optimistic story' Sydney Morning Herald

'Taps into the humour and pathos of ordinary life in a way that has you nodding with recognition . . . while at the same time laughing out loud' PIP WILLIAMS

'I just loved this very smart, very funny and at times moving novel' SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM

One perfect life. One disastrous week. The brand-new novel from bestselling, acclaimed and beloved author Toni Jordan

As the eldest child in a single-parent family, Kylie's always had more important things on her mind than smiling for random strangers. Controlling her job, her home, her romantic life and - most importantly - her family takes all her concentration. She's always succeeded, though, because that's just who Kylie is.

When her fiercely independent mother breaks an ankle and needs help, it's up to Kylie, as usual, to fix things. She reluctantly packs her bags and moves in, but back in her childhood home, things start to unravel. Could it be that Kylie's carefully curated life is not so perfect after all?

Prettier if She Smiled More will make you laugh and make you cry. Is it too late to start over?

Praise for Dinner with the Schnabels:

'I loved every page of this funny, warm, delightful novel!' LIANE MORIARTY

'Told with great humour and pathos. It is a tonic and a delight' PIP WILLIAMS

'A smart, funny novel about love, marriage and family' Weekend Australian

'A contemporary comic masterpiece. Practically every page boasts lines redolent of humour, wit and sarcasm that will make you snigger if not laugh out loud' ArtsHub

Release date: March 29, 2023

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 400

Sample

You know how it feels to hit the snooze button and pull up the covers and nestle back into the pillow and snuggle down for ten more minutes?

Kylie Schnabel didn’t.

Look at her now – awake before the alarm, straight and stiff under the doona in her sensible pyjamas with her hands folded on her chest like a dead Egyptian queen. She didn’t need to check the app on her phone, connected by invisible waves to the Fitbit on her wrist, to know last night’s sleep score. She felt rested. Relatively speaking. Yet no matter how poorly she slept – and some nights she tossed and turned doggedly, repeatedly, as though training for the World Nocturnal Tossing and Turning Championships – she always dragged her creaking limbs upright on time. She never succumbed to the snooze button.

This was because she was practised at the art of not sleeping. Her bed hadn’t been a place of comfort since she was twelve, so what difference would ten more minutes make? Oh, some nights were fine. For a long while, her sleep seemed to be getting better.

Over the last year though, sleep had become harder and harder for Kylie to reach, a floating balloon bobbing overhead with a dangling string. And what had she done about it? Absolutely nothing. As a pharmacist, Kylie had any number of effective and safe over-the-counter insomnia remedies at her disposal that she recommended to customers suffering from her exact problem, but she refused to resort to pills herself. They were fine for other people, but for her they seemed like a crutch, like a moral failing.

Kylie was a woman of science with no time for either superstition or folk wisdom. She did not avoid ladders or black cats, she did not knock on wood. Picking up a coin in the street was lucky in itself but would not change the trajectory of her day.

She certainly did not believe that bad things come in threes.

If Kylie had known what was coming that week, she might have broken the habit of a lifetime and stayed in bed. Instead she swung her feet to the floor. She showered, ate her porridge, made her bed, packed her lunch and dressed in her usual work clothes of business-appropriate blouse (white) and pants (navy) and jacket (navy) and flight-attendant block heels (black).

Unfortunately for Kylie, today would enter into Schnabel family folklore as The Monday of the Week of the Three Disasters. (Or as Nick sometimes called it, The Week of the Two Disasters and One Mild Annoyance.)

On the subject of bad things and their frequency, Kylie was about to be proved wrong.

As Kylie drove to work that Monday morning, she had no inkling of the three disasters that were already in train, unstoppable, racing towards her. So she behaved normally and phoned her sister, Tansy, from the car.

Kylie spoke to her family – Tansy, their brother, Nick, and mother, Gloria, and half-sister, Monica – often. They spoke on the phone and over dinner and over coffee and while going for a walk individually or together, as though they were trapped in an Austen novel and walking was a social event. What the Schnabels found so much to talk about all the time was mysterious to non-Schnabels like Kylie’s boyfriend, Colin, and Tansy’s husband, Simon. Kylie didn’t always know herself.

This week was school holidays so Kylie spoke briefly to her niece and nephew, then Tansy talked about her news, then they touched on random current affairs and neighbourhood happenings and reviewed their weekends before ringing off when Kylie arrived at work. She parked in the side street around the corner from the pharmacy, which was roughly in the middle of an old-style suburban shopping strip surrounded by houses in a leafy suburb.

When Kylie first started work at the pharmacy straight out of university, neighbourhood strips like these were dying. The shops were either empty, with sad, sun-faded For Lease signs permanently in the window, or open, but run-down and neglected. Not so long ago, the wide footpath was dotted with potholes marked with witches hats as warnings to the non-existent pedestrians or, more likely, to provide the council with some defence in case it was sued for a broken ankle. Shoppers didn’t come to places like these, not if they could avoid it. Instead they drove to huge booming mega malls, hulking with gleaming intensity like alien cities.

Over the last few years though, things had begun to change – because of the pandemic perhaps, when fresher air and fewer crowds were preferable, or merely due to a cyclical rediscovery of the pleasures of shopping where everyone knew your name and you didn’t have to park half a mile away from a coffee. Street beautification schemes saw the shoddy footpath paved and trees and park benches installed. The coin laundry on the far end of the strip had been transformed into a specialty pie boutique run by a team of woman with geometric tattoos, and at the other end, the tax accountants with the front window almost blocked by lever-arch files had blossomed into a florist that specialised in banksia. The pizzeria with the fly-blown tables and the kind of unappetising menu and improbable hours that made Kylie suspect that their customers ordered their pizza with an additional, off-menu extra – meth – was now a sparkling Indian restaurant.

It was unnerving.

The sole remaining hold-out from the earlier era, other than the pharmacy itself, was the drycleaners directly next door. Its faded lino and heavy chemical air had been unchanged for decades. Kylie found it reassuring that even in these most uncertain of times, some things were as solid as stone.

This morning, as Kylie passed the drycleaners, she stopped. The door was closed and there was a butcher’s paper sign stuck to the inside of the window with blue electrical tape. Dear Valued Customers, it read in black sharpie. Thank you for supporting our business over the last eighteen years. Et cetera, et cetera. On the floor inside, a dusty array of clear-windowed envelopes and flyers were splayed across the checked lino and sad, forgotten clothes, still in their plastic shrouds, hung like ghosts behind the counter.

The drycleaners – that beacon of stability, that anchor in a world adrift – had closed down.

It had been a tough few years for drycleaners, Kylie knew. No one needed spotless suits to eat Pizza Shapes out of the box balanced on your stomach while lying on the couch streaming cash-strapped Koreans playing children’s games to the death. You could do that in your underpants. This particular drycleaners was double-fronted with extra space in the back to house equipment, storage and an automated rail that whizzed around like a miniature chairlift at a theme park for the decapitated. Once emptied and renovated and de-toxified, it would make a fantastic retail space.

When did the drycleaners close down? She’d parked in the other side street for most of last week – the sign in the window might have been there for days. Did Tim know? Why had he not mentioned it to her? And where would she take her dry-cleaning from now on?

‘They take away every useful thing,’ said a voice beside her.

It was Mrs Lee on her way to the supermarket, pulling her floral trolley, her toothpick arms dotted with bandaids.

Kylie shook her head at the sign. ‘Why can’t people just leave things alone?’

‘It’s young people, changing everything. Always texting, doing their tweets.’ Mrs Lee grasped Kylie’s arm with her papery hand. ‘Not you, Kylie, love. You’re a very steady, sensible girl. We might get something good, who knows. Maybe a fried chicken shop.’

‘Fried chicken is bad for your cholesterol,’ Kylie said. ‘We discussed this, remember?’

Mrs Lee’s gaze darted sideways. ‘We did?’

‘Fried foods are only for special occasions. Cakes, too.’

Mrs Lee laughed and pulled her knobbly fingers through her hair. The veins on the back of her hand stuck out like blue worms. ‘When you’re my age, darling,’ she said, ‘every day is a special occasion.’

Kylie often organised medications in blister packs so her older customers wouldn’t miss any doses, as well as hanging onto repeat prescriptions so they didn’t lose them, but motivating eighty-year-olds to follow dietary advice wasn’t always successful. Today, Mrs Lee’s hair was matted on one side and a new purple bruise bloomed above her elbow. How long had it been since Kylie reviewed her medication? Before Mrs Lee continued to the supermarket, Kylie made her promise to come in later in the week for a chat, and to have her blood pressure checked.

‘You take such good care of me, Kylie,’ Mrs Lee said. ‘Don’t you ever go anywhere!’

Not likely. There were people, Kylie knew, who thrived on the fresh and the new – as good as a holiday, that’s what they said. But these people were wrong. This is what change is: it’s when you’ve finally steadied yourself in the surf with your feet buried in the sand on what you think are two strong legs and you feel secure at last and out of nowhere, an enormous wave appears and dumps you headfirst and salt water goes up your nose. Change is going off to school secure in the knowledge that your family has a particular shape, then coming home to find it’s now completely different.

That’s why Kylie was still working here after all these years, and why she’d been saving instead of squandering money on frivolous trips and pointless consumer goods and wasteful nights out. She intended to buy the pharmacy from Tim when he finally retired – then her life could be like this forever. Okay, she would make some changes when it was hers. Carpet from this century and new chairs for waiting customers, but Kylie had already organised everything exactly as she liked it. The only real difference when she was the owner would be the knowledge that the pharmacy was hers: her own queendom, in which she was officially the boss.

But all that was years away. Mrs Lee was right. Kylie was only forty-three, which was practically a girl. She had lots of time.

The closing down of the drycleaners was not Disaster Number One. Kylie was rigid, but not that rigid.

She pushed open the door to the pharmacy. The bell jingled. Inside the air was still and quiet and smelled foreign and artificial.

‘Tim?’ she called out. ‘Do you know about the drycleaners?’

There was no reply. She came around one of the tall shelving units to see Tim, Sandy and another person at the back of the store, gathered around the dispensing counter. As Kylie came closer, she saw an array of cosmetics on the counter in front of them: glossy boxes and gleaming trays of lipsticks and eyeshadows, glass perfume bottles in a range of colours and shapes, and white paper testing strips splayed like fans. Kylie knew almost nothing about the beauty shelves but even she could see that these weren’t the brands they currently stocked, which Tim had chosen back in the 1980s and which stood mostly untouched in their fading, warping wall units. They were brands from another time. They had a blue-eyeshadow-for-a-maiden-aunt-who-loves-murder-mysteries-set-in-a-quaint-English-village vibe about them.

The person in front of Tim and Sandy was a middle-aged woman with a halo of curly red hair and red glasses perched on her head. She was standing in a position of some authority, facing them as though she were mid-lecture.

At the sight of Kylie, Sandy coughed. Tim ran his fingers around the inside of his collar, then opened a plastic palette of eyeshadow and closed it with a click. He held it in his hands as if he couldn’t bring himself to set it down.

Kylie didn’t wear make-up at all, because anything more than a tinted lip gloss was a slippery slope to consumerist frippery and budgetary blowouts, but even she understood the appeal, theoretically. The samples, she noticed, were from European brands, or at least brands pretending to be European, and there was something addictively compelling about those shimmery, clicking cases and weighty tubes and pots in black and burnished gold, filled with the promise of mythical transformation. If only you could find the perfect shade of red lipstick, the products seemed to say, you would become a better woman. Someone similar to you, but thinner, and French.

‘Kylie. You’re here,’ Tim said.

‘Tim,’ Kylie said. ‘What’s going on?’

There was an uncomfortable pause. Tim took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. Sandy – who, as pharmacy assistant, was primarily responsible for all the beauty products – ran her hands over the perfume bottles, which in the dim light looked like mystical treasures recovered from a tomb. The air was heavy with florals and orientals and floral orientals, but there was an even more pervasive essence that Kylie could detect.

That essence was guilt.

It radiated from Tim, like he’d stepped in something nasty that was stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

The red-haired woman cleared her throat.

‘This is Gail Osborne, from Pharmacy King,’ Tim said weakly.

Pharmacy King, the nationwide behemoth. Monarch of medicines, or so the jingle went. Sovereign of savings. Whatever you needed, night or day, Pharmacy King sold it. They were the Bunnings of the high street, except for drugs instead of hardware. Pharmacy King had a beauty club, photo printing, Covid shots, makeovers, you name it. You could pop in for a bandaid and came out with a dozen rolls of toilet paper, a box of chocolate weight-loss shakes and a tube of plumping lip gloss, chilli-flavoured.

‘I wasn’t expecting Gail so early,’ Tim said. ‘I thought I’d have a chance to talk to you first.’

‘I was up early!’ Gail chuckled. ‘My youngest just moved out! I’m an empty-nester! I don’t know what to do with myself!’

Gail’s face was round and smooth and her expression was amused and warm and welcoming – she might have been a preschool teacher delighted by a toddler tying her own shoes. She seemed to Kylie like the kind of woman who said Bless! at the end of her sentences.

Tim, on the other hand, looked like a man nursing a hangover.

‘I was planning to tell you, Kylie, but it never seemed the right time,’ he said. ‘You know how you can get.’

Seconds passed. The pharmacy didn’t have a grandfather clock but if it did, it would have been atmospherically ticking.

‘How can I get, exactly, Tim?’ Kylie said.

Sandy coughed.

‘Hear me out,’ Tim said. ‘Nothing stays the same forever.’

‘Why not? Why can’t it?’ said Kylie.

Gail beamed at her. ‘What Tim means is that, going forward, every ending brings with it a new beginning.’

Kylie narrowed her eyes. ‘A new beginning? As opposed to an old beginning?’

‘They’ve been after me for months,’ said Tim. ‘Pharmacy King. With a very generous offer on the table.’

‘And now at last he’s said yes!’ Gail’s teeth were a kind of white that did not occur in nature. ‘Hallelujah! At the end of the day, to take it to the next level, we need to expand, obviously. That’s why we snapped up the drycleaners next door.’

‘Right,’ said Kylie.

‘Kylie,’ said Tim.

‘Tim certainly made us wait for it! He’s quite the wily negotiator. Bless!’ continued Gail Osborne from Pharmacy King. ‘But that’s all behind us now. It’s a win-win because Tim and Chris can finally relax and enjoy their retirement without a care in the world. The sale will be finalised in a matter of weeks.’

Sale? Kylie knew what the word meant, of course. But sales were things that occurred in the pharmacy. The word sale didn’t apply in this context. Not when they were talking about the pharmacy itself, which would eventually be sold to her, as she’d always planned.

Gail kept talking, as if everything was making sense. ‘At Pharmacy King, we look at sales per square metre, yes, but EBIT as well. A gross profit of, say, close to forty per cent, makes everything easier for everyone. Once we take out that wall’ – she gestured towards the drycleaners – ‘this will be our flagship store in the northern suburbs. The location is perfect! We’re putting in new floors, fuller shelves organised by SKU sales frequency, new products. A revamped waiting area. Consulting rooms at the back. A drop-off window, so we’re not taken by surprise by another pandemic! A herbal dispensary manned by a qualified naturopath. We’re sparing no expense.’

‘Right.’ Kylie’s face was becoming hot and tingly. She pressed her tongue between her teeth.

‘He didn’t tell me either,’ said Sandy, flicking her pink, emerald-tipped hair. Today she wore jeans and a silver jumper dotted with sequins and her nose ring was a gold snake with diamanté eyes. She picked up one of the perfume testers, a squat, purple glass bottle, and squirted it into the air.

Kylie was hit by a wave of what smelled to her like vanilla fridge cleaner mixed with blue cheese. She blinked involuntarily.

‘Believe me, Kylie, when I say this,’ Gail said, ‘Tim has spoken very highly of you, and we definitely want to keep you. There are procedures that must be followed!’ She giggled. ‘Otherwise, anarchy! So we’re advertising your position. But your application will be favourably considered, I promise you that!’

‘You want me to … apply for my own job?’ Kylie said.

‘It’s a formality, really,’ said Tim.

Gail slapped the counter. ‘Exactly! A formality. Anyway, that’s your actionable. Sandy will reapply also.’

Sandy raised one eyebrow at Kylie and wiped the orange shimmer from the corner of her lips. ‘Or not.’

‘And should you be successful …’ Gail continued.

‘At applying for my own job, which I’ve been doing for twenty years?’

‘You got it! Once you’re one of us, I mean, no promises, but you could work your way up to deputy assistant pharmacist-in-charge. I’ll give you a tip – volunteer for a regional posting, that really zooms you up the ladder. And after that, who knows? Deputy assistant territory retail manager wouldn’t be out of the question, if all goes well. Or – and I’m not promising anything – but how does supply chain logistics assistant manager sound?’

‘Unbelievable,’ said Kylie. The perfume that Sandy had sprayed seemed cloying now and the air felt thick and soupy. Kylie breathed faster. Her armpits were damp and her underwire was itchy. Dark patches were likely blooming on her blouse.

‘What else can I tell you? Oh, we have a yearly conference that everyone loves. Things can get pretty crazy! In a HR-approved manner, of course! We even have company-wide games, which are so much fun. And also compulsory.’

Kylie looked at Tim. Tim looked at the floor.

‘And we’re not as’ – Gail scanned Kylie and her navy suit from top to toe – ‘corporate as you might expect. Uniforms’ – she pinched her own pastel blue polo shirt with Pharmacy King embroidered in cursive on the upper left breast – ‘are less intimidating for customers and give us a feeling of solidarity. And we have a generous staff discount program for make-up, which has been a godsend since my divorce, believe me! The dating world isn’t what it used to be! You have to know how to contour.’ Gail squinted at Kylie’s face. ‘I’m sure one of our makeover specialists would be happy to give you a little … zhuzh.’

‘Oh boy,’ said Tim.

Kylie realised her arms were stiff against her body, elbows locked. She massaged the one bicep with her other hand, then swapped. ‘I don’t need zhuzhing and I’d rather watch cats than wear a uniform,’ she said.

‘Everyone would rather watch cats,’ said Sandy. ‘I’d rather watch cats all day than do anything else.’

‘Not actual cats. Cats, the movie,’ said Kylie.

‘Oh,’ said Sandy.

‘At Pharmacy King, we pride ourselves on being approachable. We’re very equal-opportunity and diverse, if that matters,’ she said. ‘Very diverse. Not saying it would matter. Just so you know. We put a rainbow flag on our Facebook page at least once a year.’

‘Kylie’s not gay,’ said Sandy.

‘But if she were, it’d be fine with us,’ said Gail. ‘We’re one big happy family. Also if she were, it’d look great on our annual diversity spreadsheet.’

Kylie opened her mouth.

‘Kylie,’ said Tim.

She closed it again.

‘We’re deciding on the new make-up brands collaboratively right now,’ said Gail Osborne. ‘Because that’s the way we do things at Pharmacy King. Just because we have hundreds of pharmacies nationwide and return substantial earnings to our shareholders doesn’t mean we don’t care about the little people. We love little people.’

‘Gail is really interested in your opinions,’ said Tim.

‘I really am!’ Gail chuckled. ‘My door is always open. I want to hear what you think.’

‘You really don’t, trust me,’ said Kylie.

‘But I do! It’s in our mission statement,’ said Gail ‘Whenever one of our staff volunteers their thoughts, we’re obligated to listen.’

‘I don’t have any thoughts about make-up,’ said Kylie.

‘But you can get some, right?’ said Gail. ‘Because maybe “volunteers” isn’t exactly the right word. We expect you to bring your whole self to work.’

‘Kylie, I can’t keep going forever,’ said Tim. ‘I’m seventy. Chris has already retired. He wants to drive up the coast of Western Australia and swim with whale sharks. Please understand. Nothing stays the same forever.’

‘Why not? Why can’t it?’ Kylie said.

‘I’ve told Gail and her team how wonderful you are,’ said Tim. ‘Indispensable. You’re the manager, if we were big enough to have one. You do the ordering, keep the records, deal with the local medical centres, look after the staff. You wrote all the SOPs, half of which I can’t even follow! I’m not sure why you’re still here, to be honest. I feel like I’ve been holding you back.’

Who would guess that Kylie worked at a community pharmacy if they saw her in the street or in a bar after work? No one, that’s who. She was a little too sleek and pressed, a little too corporate. Tim’s pharmacy was neither sleek nor corporate. It was cluttered with dump bins that were battered and faded and at the front, a set of glass shelves held last-minute gifts: cosmetic bags and soap sets for overlooked birthdays and cheering up the ill, if the ill had very low expectations. Too much floor space was devoted to orthopaedic sandals and podiatrist-approved ins. . .