Husband Hunters (19 page)

Annabel resolved that she would be as openly adoring of Harry Barchester as possible.

She opened another message to him, typed in an ‘X’ and pressed send.

That afternoon she met Patrick for a stroll through the Botanic Gardens.

‘Just quietly, I’m pleased the Ealing Studio film isn’t screening today,’ he said coming towards Annabel with a broad smile.

He had a yellow-banded iris in his buttonhole, and produced a second, paler one, which he offered to her.

‘That flower is almost the same colour as you hair,’ he said.

She threaded it through a buttonhole in her Trelise Cooper silk shirt. ‘I hope the flowers don’t mind these clouds,’ she said, looking up at the overcast sky.

Patrick smiled. ‘Hopefully, we’ll see some sun. Now, what can I tell you about Eve’s Garden?’

‘Oh, Patrick, no. I haven’t come here just to pump you for information.’

‘I know. I don’t think you need my help, either. But I also know that you’ll be doing as much research on the company as possible. Consider me a resource.’

‘Like Wikipedia?’

‘Like a musty old library book.’

Annabel laughed. ‘How did you come to specialise in botany?’

‘I wanted to do medical research,’ he said. ‘I had great plans of leading expeditions into the Amazon where I would cut open the root of a well-hidden tree and discover the cure for cancer.’

‘How very noble,’ she said. ‘And do irises have any healing powers?’

‘Sadly, no. Irises are more of a personal passion than a professional pursuit. In the Middle Ages people used to use the juice of the root to cure dropsy. It was quite effective but—’

‘I’m sorry, what’s dropsy?’

‘Oh, it was a sort of swelling of limbs. From excess water.’

‘Okay, go on.’

As they climbed a small hill, the sun came out from behind a cloud.

‘Wealthy women would also apply it to their freckles as a sort of cosmetic to remove them.’

‘I used to do that with lemon juice,’ Annabel said.

Patrick stopped. ‘Here, let me look at you.’ He squinted, pretending to study her face like a specimen. ‘You know,’ he spoke. ‘You’ve got the sweetest freckle right between your eyes. I’ve never noticed it before.’

‘Oh, do I?’ Annabel’s hand went self-consciously to her face. ‘I suppose I wear quite a bit of make-up.’

‘It’s like a bullseye,’ he said. ‘Not a very nice thought. Steer clear of shooting ranges.’

He was holding her jaw gently as he gazed at her face. For the first time all day neither of them was speaking.

Priiing.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Annabel said, fumbling for her phone. The name on the screen was Harry. It went silent before she could answer.

‘Someone important?’ Patrick asked.

‘I can call back later.’

‘I’m glad the lemon juice you used wasn’t successful in erasing your freckle,’ Patrick said, walking on. ‘It’s very dear and … unique.’

‘So there’s no point in taking irises to a sick friend in hospital?’ Annabel said.

‘How could you say such a thing?’ Patrick’s hand went to his mouth. ‘They are the only choice of flower. They have no medical powers, but they are useful for all sorts of other things.’

‘Like decoration?’

‘Yes. They’re very beautiful. But that’s not why I love them. I like to look below the surface. But enough about flowers: tell me more about your ideas for Eve’s Garden.’

Mannaggia
. Daniela had been sitting in her car out the front of her flat for fifteen minutes. A taxi honked her. She leaned on her horn and honked back. She was double-parked, but it wasn’t her fault. Parked in the spot reserved for
her
Peugeot 407, with its five-star NCAP rating and diesel-powered fuel economy, was Liz’s tinnie little Barina, with its purple metallic paint and vanilla-scented car-freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror. A sticker on the bumper declared
Magic Happens!

Stupid car.

Dani weighed up her choices.

Option one: She could slink off and have dinner at her parents’ place and hope that the Barina was gone when she returned.

Option two: She could go in and be polite and act as though nothing had happened.

Option three: She could go in, brew some coffee and casually mention how much she had enjoyed the cunnilingus Simon had performed on her the other night.

Daniela sat and indulged in overblown fantasies that included setting fire to their house. It was true that she was in the wrong, sleeping with Liz’s boyfriend. But it wasn’t Liz Dani was mad at. It was Simon. Living together had become a nightmare, because he had refused to acknowledge what had happened. There was etiquette to deal with these things. His response was to treat Dani as though she had anthrax, shrinking away if she passed him in the hall and leaving a room if she entered it. It was late on Sunday evening and she had hardly seen him all week. On the Friday morning he had dashed through the lounge while she was making breakfast.

‘Simon, wait!’ she had called. Reluctantly he had stopped and turned from the door. Daniela could feel a discomfiting combination of guilt and resentment radiating from his direction.

‘Um, how have you been?’ She tried to ease into the conversation.

‘Good. Look, Dani, I’m running really late. I’ll see you another time.’

She had wanted to assure him that things didn’t have to be weird. She had wanted to ask for them to let things go back to the way they used to be. He slammed the door. Daniela figured he must have felt guilty, so she let it be. She had had to work a few hours on Saturday morning and so had called him from the office. He didn’t answer. The house was empty when she came home. His toolbox and wallet were sitting on the dining-room table. He wouldn’t get far without those; he would have to come home. Dani planted herself on the couch and turned on the television. She would confront Simon. They would talk, make awkward jokes about the mistake, and everything would be okay. At half past eleven, he still wasn’t home. As she had to be on site at six, she decided to give up and go to bed. She had just drifted off to sleep when she was woken by the click of the lock. She sat bolt upright and listened for footsteps.

She sent a text message to Simon:
I need to talk to you.

Through the wall she could hear the buzz as the phone received the message. A minute ticked by. He didn’t answer. Another minute passed. She wondered whether he realised she was in the house. Deciding to make her presence known, she walked down the hallway to the bathroom, taking slow and deliberate steps past his door. She ran the tap, flushed the toilet, then ran the tap again. On the way back she stomped loudly. Her phone remained obstinately silent. She didn’t hear from him the next day, either. And now this: the purple Barina invasion.

Dani shivered. A four-wheel drive wanted to pass. The driver wound down his window and gestured wildly for her to move.

‘Alright!’ she hollered.
Mannaggia.

She pulled into a driveway and checked her boot. There was an assortment of clothes and a bottle of Cetaphil cream. She made sure she had underwear and a work outfit, then sent Clementine an urgent text message explaining the situation and asking if she could spend the night. Clem wrote back immediately:
Of course!! Cooking for Dad 2nite. Spare key w/neighbr at 42. Chat tomrw? x

When Dani got to Clementine’s, she opened up her laptop and went to realestate.com. This was just the thing she needed to motivate her to start looking for a place to live.

5.47am. Daniela rolled to a stop in her parking space and pulled on the handbrake. Work had ground to a halt since the disaster with the re-positioning of the ventilation shaft, and the site had become a depressing place to be. The bones of the building looked like prison bars. The concrete cross-beams resembled a gallows.

Briggs was on her the moment she stepped onto the site.

‘Have you arranged another meeting with Dayton yet?’

‘I’m doing it,’ Dani waved her arm as if he was pesky summer fly.

‘And what about James? Have you told him he has to go, too?’

‘I will once the meeting is organised.’

‘Tell him now. He needs to be across the plans.’

Dani threw her hands in the air. ‘Why does he have to? It’s still my idea. I’m the one who’s going to be pitching it.’ She was tired and grumpy.

Briggs covered his face with his hands. ‘DeLuca, you know why. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. I don’t like it either.’

‘Fine,’ she muttered.

James was at the kitchen station mixing muddy black coffee. Dani hovered behind him, not wanting to ask him to come to the Dayton meeting.

She bit the inside of her cheek and prepared herself to ask. What came out was: ‘How are things with Abbey?’

Mannaggia.
She didn’t want to ask that either.

‘Dani,’ James looked up from his coffee. She realised she was holding her breath and hoping to be told that the date had gone terribly. ‘Abbey’s good. She’s coming in later to take a look at what we’ve done so far. She wants to get a feel for the environment.’

Dani sat on an upturned milk crate to drink her short black, and indulged in more overblown fantasies that included setting fire to the building site.

She went to her desk. It was too early to call Dayton, so she opened some real estate web-pages and started narrowing the field for potential homes.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to afford to keep living in Glebe, so she picked Balmain as a starting point. It was a little further out, and closer to Ma and Pa. She clicked on the box to include surrounding suburbs, set her price ceiling at $450,000, and pressed search. The verdict came back: no properties found. She tried Lilyfield. It wasn’t near the water, which should mean cheaper house prices. She increased her maximum price to $500,000 and hit search. The website came up with three possible properties, one of which was a car park in Pyrmont. The other two were studios. She searched for a little longer, each time trying suburbs a little further away from her two anchor-points — the CBD, where the company’s offices were located, and her parents’ place in Leichhardt.

She wanted to be near her ma and pa, and made a mental note to visit on the weekend. At dinner the previous week, Gia had been vague and a little pale. When Dani had asked what was wrong, she said it was nothing. But Vincenzo pulled Dani aside before she left and said that Gia had seemed very tired lately.

‘What are you saying?’ The sound of her name drew Gia from the kitchen. As she strode into the lounge room, she appeared a little off-balance. She steadied herself against the wall before sinking into an armchair.

‘Are you okay, Ma?’

‘It’s these shoes. Who makes shoes like this?’ she demanded of her orthotics.

In her office, Dani picked up her phone and dialled her mamma’s number. It rang out. She would pop in on Saturday after visiting the two one-bedroom flats she had found. Putting the addresses into her calendar, she then called Dayton and scheduled another meeting. They weren’t happy, but they made time for her.

Dani slammed her car door. 8.04pm. As she bounded up the concrete stairs she could already smell sizzling onions. She was very late.

She spied Annabel and Clementine, and raced to their table.

‘I’ve been looking forward to this,’ said Clementine, surveying the room. Their neighbour was a tall Greek man who was decapitating an onion.

‘But I know how to cook, sort of. So do you,’ Dani said.

‘Yes, and I’m excellent at ordering both restaurant food and takeaway,’ said Annabel.

‘But look how many single men are here,’ Clem whispered.

She was right. There were blue jeans and hairy knuckles as far as the eye could see. A recipe for beef bourguignon sat on the countertop. As part of the husband-hunting strategy, Clementine had enrolled them in a six-week cordon bleu night class.

‘So, Annabel,’ Daniela said quietly as she diced some celery, ‘how did the big dinner go?’

‘Yes,’ said Clementine. ‘What intelligence did you gather on Harry Barchester?’

Annabel frowned. ‘I really like him, but he’s still in love with Mirabella. He kept on bringing her up.’

‘He just needs some time,’ said Clementine.

‘And how about your dinner with the photographer?’ Dani asked Clem.

Clementine picked up a cleaver and started hacking up some rump. ‘He was very nice, but there’s something I haven’t told you.’

She proceeded to tell the full story of her and Jason and Amanda and the baby. It was like watching her unravel. The edges of her fingernails were ragged, her lips pale.

Thwack!
She brought the cleaver down on a piece of bone.

‘But are you sure?’ Annabel asked when she had finished.

Clementine nodded sadly.

‘He must have just found out,’ said Annabel.

‘His poor wife,’ said Clementine. ‘I’m so stupid—’

‘No you’re not.’ Annabel put her arm around Clementine’s shoulder and shook her, bracingly. ‘He’s an awful person. He told you he was getting a divorce. You did nothing once you found out he was married.’

‘It gets worse,’ Clementine’s voice cracked. ‘I’ve lost my mother’s—’ She held up her hand, unable to get the word out.

‘You haven’t lost that beautiful ring?’ Dani gasped.

‘I — I’ve lost so much weight lately. It — it’s been loose.’ Clementine sounded lost herself. ‘Now I can’t remember when I last had it.’

‘Oh, Clem, that’s terrible,’ Annabel said. ‘But it can’t be gone forever. Maybe it’s in your office somewhere? I’ll call all the bars and restaurants we’ve been to recently. We’ll find it.’

‘I can’t bear to think about it,’ Clem said. ‘Can we talk about something else?’

‘I guess it’s my turn.’

Dani confessed what had happened with Simon. ‘And now I have to deal with Simon at home and James at work. It’s a nightmare. If there was a Ten Commandments of Dating, thou shalt not sleep with thy colleague and thou shalt not sleep with thy housemate would be numbers one and two. No wonder I am in Dating Hell.’

Clementine cleared away the off-cuts. ‘Let’s focus on the positives. Harry. How’s it going?’

Annabel shrugged. ‘He’s perfect. I never truly believed in the husband-hunting venture,’ she confessed, ‘but I want to try it. I want to make him see that we would be a perfect pair.’

Dani knew how she felt. In the desolation of unrequited love you became desperate for any sort of system you could follow, any set of rules that would help you to convince the object of your affection what
good sense
being together made.

‘What about you, Dani?’ said Clem. ‘Do you like this Simon character?’

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I’m just frustrated. I tried to smooth over this blip, but to him our friendship isn’t even worth the twenty-one cents it costs to send a text message. Argh.’ She threw her hands up. ‘Men! They’re so insensible. You try to explain to them why you’re upset, but it’s like yelling at a dog that has just chewed up your runners. You can scream and shout, but he’ll just sit there smiling and panting. Later he might try to hump your leg.’

‘If only we could have them neutered,’ said Annabel.

‘Come on,’ said Clementine. ‘Just because a company has a bad quarter that doesn’t mean it rolls over and dies. We need to make aggressive, market-driven moves.’

‘What you two need is some new prospects,’ Annabel said. ‘When our workflow is drying up, I hit the networking circuit and form new connections.’ She drove her knife into the chopping board.

‘
Mademoiselle!
’ the teacher shouted. He picked up his knife, pointed to the tip and shook his head.

Annabel sniggered. ‘Not him. But look around. There must be someone for one of you here.’

‘I can’t see anyone I like the look of,’ Dani said.

‘This is part of our problem,’ said Clementine. ‘We’re too picky. We’re not supposed to be looking for perfect men — we’re supposed to be looking for sturdy, reliable men. The Volvos of the species.’

‘It’s hard to settle for a Volvo when you’ve driven a Ferrari,’ Daniela said.

‘Daniela, you really can be quite masculine,’ said Clem.

Dani was shocked. ‘Why did you say that?’

‘Well, you speak like a man sometimes, you dress in baggy jeans and those awful steel-capped boots, and you have daggy taste in music.’

‘I can’t believe you don’t like my music.’

‘I’m sorry, but I think we need some de-affirmations. There’s a perfectly good, slightly pumpkin-headed man over there looking at you who might make you happy. It’s important to remember that you’re not perfect either.’

‘Yes, but we know we’re not perfect,’ said Annabel.

‘Do we?’ Clementine was on a roll. ‘Annabel, you’re beautiful but you’re very vain. How much money do you spend on clothes each month? Imagine if a man frittered away the same amount on his car. And your cooking skills should be classified as a threat to national security. I’m just glad ASIO didn’t find out about your dinner party with Harry.’

Annabel pouted. ‘It was
your
recipe.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m getting to me. I’m the worst of the lot of us. I’m completely untrustworthy and immoral. I steal other women’s husbands, even though I see first-hand every day how hard marriage breakups are’ — she was getting worked up — ‘I’m a hypocrite, my career is a disappointing mess, I’m unethical, I treat men like they’re objects and I have just insulted my two best friends to their faces.’ Tears were glistening in her eyes.