Love: Classified (2 page)

     I felt her hand on the back of my neck, under my hair. She began plaiting it, the way she did when she wanted to cheer me up. I liked her playing with it.

     “You’re lonely, Ginny. It’s understandable. But this guy
really could turn out to be a serial killer.”

     “But given that there aren’t hordes of axe-murderers out there, it’s more likely he’d be a normal bloke, wouldn’t he?”

     “Yeah, I s’pose so,” she answered thoughtfully. “But what kind of weirdo would advertise for someone to go traveling with him?”

     “Someone lonely?”

     “And why would a normal guy, no matter how lonely, want to go on holiday with a random?”

     I laughed. “You sound like Bree.” Bree’s Peta’s daughter. A carbon copy of her mum without the diamonds.

     “I know,” she groaned. “I even use the word ‘like’ twenty times in a sentence these days, the way she does. But I admit to finding the term ‘random’ quite useful. Seriously, though, Ginny, you won’t do anything rash, will you? I don’t mind trawling the internet for some majorly brilliant holiday ideas for you.”

     She finished with my hair and came round the front to see the effect. “It suits you better down, the way you always have it,” she said. “A random style.”     

     
We both laughed and she sat at her desk again. She was sub-editing a piece of writing that one of our contributors had emailed, her glasses back on their perch on top of her head.

     “Don’t worry about looking for holidays for me, Pete,” I said. “One, I don’t want you spending your precious free time at the computer when you’re sitting at one all day at work. And two, the kind of holidays I’m interested in wouldn’t be on your radar. For me, a holiday has to be about food and wine. Not much else matters.”

     “Okay,” she said, putting on her glasses again to glace at me with that quizzical look, as if she could see inside me. “I know we’re different, Ginny. Just trying to help.”

     “I know. And I really appreciate it. Honestly. But let’s change the subject.”

     “Yes boss.”

      In the silence that followed,
I set about editing our regular house and garden pages. I wanted to do justice to Danny’s most recent photos. He’s a spotty kid of eighteen. Shy and awkward, but a genius with a camera. He’d taken close-ups of a new range of cushions and I could almost eat the glossy beads that looked like fruit gums and the sequins that could have been pastilles. He had a brilliant eye for colour and detail, focusing on small things that other photographers often don’t notice. A thread in a tassel that curled like a beckoning finger. A slight imperfection in embroidery that spoke of the human who’d held the needle. His work would give our readers a visual feast and promote local designers, artists and craftspeople. Danny was my special find and he made our online magazine stand out from the rest. I’d had a gut-feeling about him from the moment I first saw him. He’d been working for the Cottesloe council, tending the street verges near where I live. Under the massive Norfolk Island pines that line the avenues, prized native plants struggle for survival amidst choking weeds. He had a camera with him and as I walked past on my way to the deli I noticed the enthusiasm and care with which he captured a bee on a fringe lily. He would’ve been about sixteen then, a rare teenage boy to be interested in flowers. I asked him if he did much photography.

      “Yeah, a bit,”
he said, blushing.

      “Can I see the shot?”

     He handed me the cheap digital camera and I was blown away by just that little picture. The flower off-centre, the bee’s heart-shaped face looking straight at the camera, the pollen-bags on its legs almost full. It was technically brilliant but, more than that, it told a story.

     “It’s good,” I said, hoping he couldn’t see how I pitied him for his acne-stained skin.
  “So good I could offer you some work experience on a new magazine if you were interested.”

    
The rest, as they say, is history. He works for
You!
full-time and I’ve often thought that we probably made an odd couple, bulky old me and the kid with the ugly skin, but dammit, we were a good team. And transformed the magazine. Its circulation went through the roof thanks to his amazing shots.

Back home that evening I went through the ritual of shutting the hens in for the night once they’d wandered into the coop and found their regular perches. Then I lit the pair of tea-lights in the sparkly holder Bree gave me after a trip to Bali and poured myself a glass of wine. Most nights I’d sip and think about what I’d cook for dinner. No TV meals for me. Life’s too short to take short-cuts with important things like food. The newspaper with the ad was where I’d left it on the table and I promised myself not to look at it. Peta was probably right. He was a weirdo.

     I decided to do a spicy chicken breast with avocado sauce and was gathering together the coriander, cumin and paprika when there was a knock on the door. Peta and Bree.

     “I’m worried about you,” Peta said.

     “I bet you’re hungry too, both of you,” I chuckled. Peta ha
d a knack of turning up when I was about to cook, most often with Bree in tow. I’d have been disappointed if she didn’t and always had plenty in the fridge if there were unexpected guests.

     “Champers,” Peta said,
flourishing an expensive bottle of French bubbles.

     “And
gerberas,” Bree giggled, thrusting a bunch in my hand and snuggling up for a cuddle. She’s my god-daughter and I love her to bits.

     My house
was open-plan, which was great for when people came over because I could cook and talk at the same time. They flopped into the battered old cane furniture, Peta having poured Moet for her and me and a diet coke for Bree who’d turned on the TV and was watching it with the volume down low. I placed the flowers in a vase on the kitchen table and put the newspaper to one side. I told myself I should drop it in the recycling bin and plan a cooking class holiday in Bologna, Italy, like a sensible women, but I liked the
Lonely Planet
guy too much to stuff his ad in a bin just yet. I’d think about it in the cold light of morning and toss it away after that.

     “I’m really glad you’
ve decided to take a break,” Peta remarked. “Management will be too. They hate employees, even ones as brilliant as you, having too much leave owing. But I’ll miss you.”

     “I’ll miss you too,” I said, tossing three chicken
breasts into the sizzling olive oil. “I’ll miss my job. I don’t know how I’ll fill three whole months.”

     “You’ll be able to do a lot of reading. All those novels you’ve longed to get stuck into.”

     “Even I can’t read solidly all day, every day.”

     “How about the cupboards?  Seriously, I’d love a good few weeks to sort mine out.”

     “Yeah. Great,” I moaned. “Imagine it. ‘How was your holiday Ginny? Did you get up to anything exciting?’ ‘Ooh yes, I spent most of it on my hands and knees with my head in the linen cupboard.’ No, I’ll work something out.”

     We ate our meal
– for which I got lots of compliments and the ultimate endorsement of plates scraped clean – and afterwards Bree borrowed my laptop to go on Facebook. Peta helped me with the dishes and for a few minutes we were reflected in the kitchen window, her teenage-looking body and daring, bright clothes, my bulk in one of the shapeless black tents I always wore. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen us side by side in a mirror and the vision startled me so that my reaction surprised myself.

    “Look at me, Pete,” I said. Even I heard a note of despair in my voice and saw that she heard it too, because her mouth gaped and the diamond flashed in the window. “I look like the wrong end of a bus,” I
went on. “I don’t own any clothes except things like this. I have no friends except you and Bree and Danny and Jake and Josie. I don’t even have a family. And here I am, about to go on paid holiday leave and I have no idea what to do with myself. I’ll probably end up staying home and cooking myself into another level of obesity.”

     Peta threw down the tea-towel and grabbed me by both arms. “Now you listen,” she
blazed. “You’re the best mate I’ve ever had and I can’t put up with you feeling sorry for yourself for another minute. You’re brilliant at everything you do, you have a great sense of humour and…”

     “And there’s more?”

     “Yes there is. And you’re damn well going to listen to it. Okay?”

     “If I’m in for a long diatrib
e, can we sit down?” I asked. “And let’s open another bottle of wine.”

    
Once I’d raided the fridge for a bottle of chardonnay, Peta drew me to the wicker couch and sat next to me, clinking her glass against mine.

     “Now, where was I?” she
mused. “Ah yes, I was about to tell you that you have the most beautiful green eyes in the world, your hair could be in a shampoo commercial and Bree and I love you.”

     She took a gulp of wine and
continued: “So you don’t look like Miranda Otto in a swimsuit. Well, who does? I’ve got purple varicose veins from my bum to my ankles but I’m not too proud not to make a fool of myself at the beach with Bree. You might not have many friends outside the office, but you have Jake and Josie. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and get out into that big world and have the time of your life. But don’t on any account go and answer that ad.”

    
“I don’t deserve you Pete,” I said on the verge of tears for the second time that day.

     “You bloody well do!” she laughed. “How would I, as a single mum, have got through the last decade and a half without you? Who was there for me when Bree’s father, bloody Josh, took off? Who comforted me when Bree screamed all night with colic and I was so strung out I could hardly walk? When Bree broke her leg skateboarding, who took her to hospital and waited six hours for her leg to be plastered because I had the flu? When she’s behaving like a typical monstrous teenager, who do I come crying to? When there’s a new movie I want to see, who’d I rather see it with? I need you, Ginny. But I don’t want to see you for three whole months. OK? I want you to have so much fun you forget about your old life.”

     “I’ll try,” I whispered.

Next day, Monday, it turned out that management were so relieved I was finally taking a vacation they said I could start it that evening. It was a weird feeling to log off not knowing what Tuesday would bring. Peta and Danny organised a huge bouquet of flowers and a goodbye cake for me and we had a round of drinks after five o’clock. Almost everyone in the skyscraper seemed to be there, crammed into our board room. Peta made a speech saying how much weight they’d all lose because I wouldn’t be around to bring in home-made cakes for our weekly team meetings, and that they were determined not to let circulation fall while I was away. Once she finished talking, we tucked into delicious canapés – green mango salad on betel leaves, prawn laksa shots, duck in crisp wanton cups, camembert with pear compote on pumpernickel, chicken and port pâté on polenta crisps. The cake was almond and orange with a rhubarb and strawberry compote.

    
When it was over, I headed for the carpark, after a hug from Peta and Danny and the admonition that I wasn’t allowed to weaken and turn up in the office, not even for a coffee.

     “You go, girl!” Peta laughed as I went, borrowing another of Bree’s expressions.

     I lay the flowers on the back seat and sat behind the wheel for a few minutes before turning the key in the ignition.

     I had the feeling life was never going to be the same again.

At home,
there was another edition of the suburban news in my letter box. I longed to open it to see if the ad was in again this week but I didn’t want the flowers to wilt so I put Bree’s gerberas in my bedroom and filled all the rest of the vases I could find with the baby pink roses, gardenias and silver dollar sprays that comprised the bouquet. The house looked beautiful with blooms everywhere. Then I shut the chooks in for the evening and checked on the basil, which seemed to have grown half an inch since I last looked. I’d eaten so well at work that I didn’t want dinner and made myself a mug of Milo instead, curling up with it on the back verandah where the apricot-coloured light of the setting sun made a warm glow. The sea purred softly and it seemed the perfect time to open the fresh newspaper to see if the ad was there.

     I flipped through pages of stories about concerts at local schools
, fêtes at churches and local council goings-on to the back, under “Possibilities”, I could hardly believe it: the
Lonely Planet
guy was still there. The man who’d placed it before had obviously not had any takers and was still trying.

     I smiled to myself, remembering Peta’s horror of axe murderers. Perhaps he was one. But he could also just be a lonely guy dreading a lonely enforced holiday, couldn’t he?

     I warmed my hand on the mug, enjoying the thought that Mr
Lonely Planet
was probably eating his dinner right now and that before too long he’d fall asleep and dream of his travel companion and the places they’d visit. What did he look like? I tried to picture him, not as he appeared in my fantasies, but as he most probably really was. My active imagination painted a tall, weedy looking man with a balding pate, black-rimmed glasses, a shiny beak of a nose and a pleasant, shy voice. He had a whole lot of leave accrued and was wondering how – and where – on Earth he could fill the empty days.