16
“All The Burning Bridges …”
Hardy fronted up that evening looking all keen and eager—blast! Sloane had known he would, but she could hardly break it off over the phone, it’d be too unkind. None of it was poor Hardy’s fault: he’d only been doing what came naturally.
“Um, no, don’t, Hardy,” she said weakly as he shoved the door shut behind him and tried to kiss her in the narrow passage, meanwhile pulling her strongly against him—well, against his erection, to be strictly accurate, he always did, as soon as he came in: it was one of the most exciting things about him. Unfortunately, because it made her knees go all weak and her tummy go all swoopy, which they were doing. “I didn’t ask you over for that.”
“Eh?” he said blankly.
Sloane swallowed hard. “Come into the lounge-room. I need to talk to you.”
Hardy followed her obediently, his good-looking face starting to look uncertain. “If it’s about coming over to Mum and Dad’s, you don’t need to be nervous—”
“No! Um, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. It’s not about that.” She sat down in an armchair, not taking the sofa because if she did he’d be sure to sit beside her, and— Yeah.
Hardy sank down slowly onto the sofa, looking more and more bewildered. “What’s up, then? Look,” he said, suddenly going red, “if you’re pregnant, Sloane, don’t worry, Mum and Dad’ll be thrilled, and we can get married straight—“
“No! For pity’s sake, stop pre-empting me!” cried Sloane wildly.
“What is the matter, then?”
“Um, it’s nothing like that. Um, it’s very kind of you to say that, but, um, I couldn’t. Um, I mean,” she gulped—this wasn’t at all what she’d planned to say, though at the same time as planning it all out very carefully she had recognised at the back of her mind that she’d never be able to say it, because when you were faced with the other person, you never could, could you? Well, maybe someone as hard as nails—blasted Kitten, for instance—could manage it, but she never could—“um, I like you but I don’t want to go on with it. I—I’m not in love with you, Hardy,” she ended painfully.
After a minute he said: “I thought it was all going good. I mean, we’re not a pair of kids, Sloane, after all! We’ve got lots of tastes in common, and we’re really compatible: I thought—well, I don’t want to rush you into anything, but I thought we could take it to the next level, at least! See how it goes.”
Somehow the trendy expressions “compatible” and “take it to the next level”—the latter something she’d never expected to hear in real life, as a matter of fact—made it much easier to reply firmly, even though she could see the poor guy was genuinely hurt: “No, it’d be a big mistake. I just can’t envisage living with you, Hardy.”
“But that’s what I mean!” he cried, leaning forward eagerly. “Give it a go, eh? Try it out! See how it suits us! Heck, I’m not suggesting buying a flat together or anything like that!”
Suddenly Sloane frowned. “Don’t prevaricate. That is what it’d lead on to. That or a flaming suburban box and the two point three kids or whatever it is these days—one point seven, probably—and the two-car garage and the ride-on lawnmower and—and superannuation and a lovely overseas trip and grandkids and—and suburban nullity!”
Poor Hardy went very red. “Nullity! Thanks very much! And when you come right down to it, isn’t making a life together—and grandkids as well, actually!—what life’s all about, for Pete’s sake?”
“The pointless acquisition of suburbanite consumables—yeah.” Sloane took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry, Hardy, I didn’t mean to put it like that. Or to lose my temper. It’s not your fault, you’ve only been nice to me. It’s me: I can’t do it. I could if I was really in love with you, but I’m not.”
It was the second time she’d said it. Hardy swiped his hand across his face. “All right, but I still think you’re making a mistake— Hang on. There’s someone else, that’s it, isn’t it?”
Sloane was very red. “No! Who’s been talking to you?”
“Nobody, but that proves it, doesn’t it?” he said grimly, getting to his feet.
She got up slowly. Maybe it’d be better for him if she did let him know he wasn’t the only bloke in her life? Then he’d feel he was well rid of her. “There isn’t anybody serious, but I have been seeing someone else, off and on. It was meaningless, it was just a fun thing, but the thing is, Hardy, even after we got together I didn’t really want to break it off.”
“I suppose that proves it,” he said sourly, going over to the door. “All right, Sloane, you don’t need to knock it in with a bludgeon: I’m not the right bloke for you.”
“I’m sorry. I only meant it to be fun, and—and I thought you did, too,” said Sloane in a tiny voice.
“Yeah. All right,” said Hardy, sighing. “See ya.” He went out on this conventional valediction, not seeming to realise that it was hardly suited to the occasion.
“Help,” said Sloane limply, suddenly sitting down again. “That went over like a bucket of lead. Oh, well, at least I’ve done it.”
After quite some time of just sitting she got up, and moving very slowly, went out to the kitchen and made herself a nice cup of tea. With milk and sugar.
Gail came into Sloane’s office and shut the door behind her, looking grim. “What in God’s name are you wearing?”
“Have you decided to appoint yourself as the fashion police, since Kitten’s overseas?” retorted her business partner crossly.
“Since you put it like that, yes. Why the Hell are you in that rag?” demanded Gail hotly.
It was a cool, blowy May day with a hint of rain in the air. The suit was black, with a longish skirt. That was about all that could politely be said of it. It was one of Kitten’s: one of the outfits she’d left with Sloane when she’d sub-let the pink nest. It had fitted Kitten’s curves rather well, and Ingrid had immediately spotted it as the Marilyn Monroe look—only needed the jaunty beret to complete the outfit. It hung loosely on Sloane, in fact the skirt positively bagged at the bum. It had originally been slit to just above the knee but Sloane had sewn all but the last six or so centimetres of the slit closed.
“I’m recycling it,” she said mutinously, scowling.
“It looks like it! I was under the impression that you had an appointment with Bill Bracchi from Bracchi, Jenks today?”
“Yes, at lunchtime. They’re expanding, and they need half a dozen office staff—general duties, inputting and so forth—“
“Then go home and CHANGE!” shouted Gail. “Half a dozen new contracts on the line and you’re dressed like Dracula’s mother? Are you out of your SKULL?”
“It’s a perfectly respectable—”
“Rats. It’s dreck. Why are you doing this to me, Sloane?” said Gail through her teeth.
Sloane’s jaw sagged. “I—I’m not doing anything to you, Gail.”
“On the contrary. You appear to be taking it out on the firm because your love-life’s down the tubes. Well, partner or not, I’m not having it. You’re not gonna represent RightSmart looking like that. If necessary, Fee and I will vote you out, Sloane, and don’t think we won’t do it.”
Sloane looked mutinous. “I thought you claimed dressing sexily was pandering to the male Establishment?”
“I don’t require you to dress sexily, merely like a normal human BEING!” replied Gail, starting off heavily patient but ending up very loud and flushed.
Sloane had to swallow. “Um, sorry, I wasn’t getting at you or RightSmart...”
Gail took a deep breath. “I think you were, Sloane, because if you’ve ditched the sexy Whatsisname, and told Mandy not to put through the other one’s calls, that only leaves work in your life, doesn’t it?”
“Mm, I suppose you’re right. Sorry. Only, I— Well, the suit does look awful, I s’pose, but it’s warm, and I just felt rotten this morning.”
Gail looked hard at her. “The absence of the usual discreet and expertly applied warpaint might be misleading me, here, but have you got your period, on top of everything else?”
“Um, yes,” she gulped.
“Cramps?” asked Gail clinically.
“Mm.”
Sighing, Gail said heavily: “Then go home, make yourself a nice hot drink—Fee’s mum’s recipe is hot gin and water with a bit of pink waved at it, but a nice cuppa’d do, if you don’t fancy it, though I can guarantee it’ll ease the cramps—and go to bed with a hottie.”
“But I’ve got a lot of work to do—and what about Bill Bracchi?”
“I’ll go; he can put up with me best navy pants suit,” said Gail with a leer.
Sloane smiled reluctantly. “It still looks good.”
“Yes, it was a really good buy, five years back,” said Gail with relish. “Go on, go.”
“Um, no, really, Gail—I mean, I’d be really grateful if you would do Bill, he always expects me to, um, sort of giggle and play up to him, um, well, you know, he’s harmless but he’s that sort of man, but I really don’t feel up to it, but I can do the other—”
Gail held the door wide. “Grab your handbag and go. And don’t come in tomorrow, even if you do feel better. Have a day in bed watching daytime TV.”
Smiling weakly, Sloane got up and grabbed her handbag. “I suppose that’s due punishment for wearing Kitten’s old suit. Well, okay, I might. Thanks, Gail.”
“You will,” replied Gail firmly. “And day after tomorrow you can wear that nice sort of tannish suit and wow the other Bill with it.”
“Um, who?” said Sloane feebly as Gail followed her out, firmly turning her office light off and shutting the door behind her.
“That idiot Bill Hardacre from Total Database Solutions: they’ve lost yet another Person Friday, plus and their trainer. I had a vague sort of recollection we had a couple of candidates on the books who were quite good with his software—well, not good enough to let them muck around with our databases,” admitted Gail with a grin: Bill Hardacre was their software supplier as well as a client—“but not bad. One of them might do, if he wants a temporary trainer. Could lead on to a fulltime position, ya never know.”
“If they like terrific pressure and Bill Hardacre expecting them to work all night as well as all day, yeah.”
“Exactly,” said Gail mildly, accompanying her out to reception and seeing her to the lift.
“I’m going,” said Sloane weakly as she then pressed the button for her.
“You said it.”
The lift opened to reveal a flushed and harried-looking Katie Watkins, who gasped: “Aw, hi, Sloane! Have ya got a minute? ’Cos I went for that interview at Thorpe, Radcliffe but—”
“I’ll look after it,” said Gail smoothly, shoving her associate bodily into the lift. “See you day after tomorrow,” she said threateningly as the lift doors closed on Sloane’s feeble smile. “Sloane’s feeling seedy,” she said firmly to Ms Watkins. “Come on, come into my office. –Mandy, I’m taking Sloane’s lunchtime appointment,” she added briefly, towing Ms Watkins away.
Loftily ignoring the avidly curious expressions on the faces of the two people in the waiting area, Rhonda Darling and Scott Connors, both of whom had been temping for RightSmart for some years and treated the entire staff rather like close family members, Mandy tapped busily at the office scheduler, transferring Sloane’s appointment to Gail’s calendar. She then sent a quick email to one, Lucille Sobiewski, best friend and matron of honour presumptive, reporting that she’d been right, Gail had sent Sloane home, and it was her bet she was planning to bust up with the Kendall guy as well, because she still wasn’t taking any of his calls, and incidentally adding that Mum had found the perfect florist to do the wreaths for Lucille’s flowergirls’ hair—but then, we were all human, weren’t we? And Gail didn’t object to the occasional personal email.
Breaking up with Kendall was easier than it had been with Hardy. Sloane was dreading it but it went fairly smoothly. She’d arranged to meet him at a bar in town—he’d tried to argue but she’d insisted it was all she could manage that evening. She thought out her appearance very carefully and got changed after work. True, Gail wandered into her office just as she was smoothing the suit over her hips and choked, gasping out something about: “Cross between Marlene Dietrich in anything but the gorilla suit and Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina?” but she squashed her by replying smoothly: “Actually it’s that black suit of Kitten’s that you hated. I’ve had it remodelled.”
“Remodelled who by?” she croaked. “Christian Dior?”
“By a dressmaker Ingrid found—well, actually, Ward’s sister Janice found her—it’s funny as a fight, she was totally prepared to loathe her because she’s so much younger than Ward, but actually they’re getting on like a house on fire.”
Gail looked dry “This’d be Janice Winterbotham, Clive Big-Bucks Winterbotham Q.C.’s wife, and Sydney socialite extraordinaire, would it? –I am aware of a few local issues,” she added mildly as Sloane nodded, looking staggered. “In that case I think you mean they’re getting on like a house on fire because Ingrid’s letting the woman tell her what to wear and where to shop.”
“Well, yes, and what charities’ committees to be on,” she admitted.
Gail went into a sniggering fit.
“At least someone’s doing some good with bloody KRP’s money,” said Sloane mildly.
“Yeah. –Does this terrifyingly smart outfit—cor, sequins as well?” she gasped as Sloane put the little hat on—“uh, does it mean it’s all on again with Kendall Gere?”
“Thought he was only a Gere clone? Nah, actually I’m gonna break it off,” replied Sloane indifferently, peering at herself in her little hand mirror.
“Oh, good,” she said limply.
“The outfit’s to help me feel sophisticated and firm about it,” Sloane admitted, suddenly smiling at her.
Gail nodded feebly. “Yeah, I think I got that. What’s the venue?”
“The Hyatt.”
Hah, hah, that shut her up! Though she did say as she followed her out to the lift: “Tell me, is the breaking off gonna take place before or after you’ve suckered him into paying for the meal?”
“Over drinks, I’m not that bad,” replied Sloane mildly, getting into the lift. “See ya!”
“Good luck,” replied Gail feebly. She tottered back to her office and rang Fiona’s direct line at work.
“Sloane’s breaking up with the Richard Gere clone tonight and she’s got up like a cross between Dietrich and Hepburn—Audrey, before you start—and if you don’t get round here in ten minutes and stay me with a very stiff whisky they won’t be the only ones break— Yeah. Thanks, Fee. See ya.” It took Fee and the Porsche—her ruddy building had basement parking, what else—twenty minutes in the Sydney traffic but Gail generously gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Sloane got to the Hyatt before Kendall did—she’d deliberately told him a bit later, because she wanted to be looking settled and coolly elegant when he arrived. She didn’t order a drink, she just smiled and told the hovering waiter she was waiting for someone. Unfortunately after a while it began to dawn that the scene, though very much more up-market, was horribly like the one where Hardy had first come on to her. Ooh, heck. She deliberately didn’t look round, just in case any of the shouting happy hourers infesting the place was unattached and interested—or at least, on the loose and interested.
“There you are!” beamed Kendall in some relief—after all the times she’d been too busy at work to take his calls he’d been afraid she might not turn up after all.
Looking settled and coolly elegant, Sloane replied calmly: “Yes, here I am, Kendall. Sit down and get your breath. I haven’t ordered yet.”
Of course, though he did sit down, he immediately went into a flurry of waving at the waiter. The place was now very busy and it was some time before the man managed to make his way over to them, but Sloane didn’t offer any conversation, she just sat back looking settled and coolly elegant.
“This place isn’t bad—have a meal here, shall we?” said Kendall on a note that managed to be both eager and cosy, as the waiter took their orders and hurried off.
“No, thanks, I can’t manage it.”
“Um, look, Sloane, if you’re still wild with me because of what I said about you and that Saunders joker from KRP—”
“Not really, no. Though it certainly wasn’t any of your business.”
“Um, no. Sorry,” he muttered, gnawing on his lip. “Well, um, you know how I’m fixed.”
Well, yes! Once again, Sloane wondered wildly how any bloke, even one as conventional and unoriginal as Kendall Burgoyne, could possibly imagine that a reminder that she came very much third in his life after the job and the wedded respectability could ever be regarded as placatory by any female under the sun!
“Well, yes. But I’m not really all that interested,” she murmured in a very bored voice, looking idly at a group of large young men over by the bar, one of whom, in spite of her efforts not to notice anyone, had been trying to catch her eye for some time. He grinned and waved. Sloane looked away.
“Here are the drinks,” said Kendall with some relief. “Cheers!” he urged as Sloane picked up her margarita. –Well, why not? It probably wouldn’t come up to ruddy Kitten’s standards, and it’d undoubtedly be shockingly overpriced, but she might as well have a final treat! After this it’d be nose to the grindstone—and, she supposed drearily, if she really did intend to pull out of RightSmart—and she’d certainly lost interest in the work—think about what the Hell she wanted to do.
She waited until Kendall had got a good swallow of whisky inside him and then said calmly: “Kendall, I’m sorry, but I’ve decided to break it off.”
“Whuh-what?” he spluttered, turning puce.
“Yes. It was quite fun while it lasted, but I’d rather not go on with it.”
“It is that bloody Saunders, isn’t it?” he cried.
Sloane blinked. “No.” She took a fortifying sip of margarita and added calmly: “I’d be quite grateful if you wouldn’t make a fuss, Kendall. After all, you never made any promises, did you?”
“No, I— Look, the old bastard’ll sack me if I divorce Joyce!” he spluttered.
“Well, you could bring a case for unfair dismissal, but I see your point. It’s all right, Kendall, I never wanted anything more. But I really have had enough.”
He went on spluttering, raising objections and trying unsuccessfully to justify himself, so Sloane gave in and said what she’d thought she might have to, but hadn’t wanted to—after all, it wasn’t his fault that the family had lost Lallapinda, she’d been mad to want to take it out on him, and he had, within his lights, been quite up-front with her about his situation.
“Look, I’ve lost interest, frankly. Just go, would you?”
He did get up, to her relief, though he did also cry angrily: “Don’t tell me you haven’t got half a dozen other irons in the fire!”
Flattering, really. Not to say, highly metaphorical. Sloane didn’t answer—in fact a scene in which Kitten had advised her in no uncertain terms not to make the mistake of engaging in verbal sparring on their level, unless you wanted to lose the upper hand, came back to her with horrid clarity.
And Kendall, looking very dashed, took himself off.
Usually waiters in very busy bars, especially at happy hour, ignored you if you were a lone female deserted by the male of the species but surprisingly enough the waiter surfaced just as she was thinking it’d probably be safe to leave, he’d probably have pushed off home by now, so she ordered another margarita, why not? Even though it did mean paying for it herself.
She’d nearly finished the margarita when a large presence loomed in front of her and a cheerful voice said: “Gidday, Sloane! Thought it was you!”
Sloane looked up blankly at the huge, broad-shouldered young man who’d been leering at her from the bar earlier. He was very tanned, with light brown hair cut very short, but allowed to show a bit of curl on top, and ears that stuck out a bit and a very cheerful grin. Huge white choppers. Uh—those ears did look familiar, come to think of it, but...
“I’m sorry; have we met?” she said feebly.
“Eh? Yeah!” he said in astonishment. “I’m Damian!”
Damian Who, for Pete’s sake? She must have been looking as blank as she felt, because, now very red, he urged: “Damian West!”
Oh, good God, of course he was! Little Damian! “Sorry, Damian, um, you’ve got so tall, I didn’t recognise you,” said Sloane idiotically.
Grinning pleasedly, he sat down in Kendall’s vacated chair and said: “I’m not as short as I was when you used to babysit us, but that’s a fair while back, ya know! Still, I s’pose it is a while since you went flatting, eh?”
More like a whole lifetime. “Yes. I suppose you’d have been about ten or eleven,” said Sloane limply.
“Yeah, that’d be about right: me an’ Mike Slater, we had those trolleys we made ourselves—well, your dad gave us bit of a hand, ’member?” he said happily. “Used to have races down the street, only then ole Ma Connolly, she went and reported us to the cops. ’Member the police car?” he grinned.
Sloane swallowed. She certainly remembered Mrs West doing her nut about the disgrace of having a police car pull up outside their house—yes.
“Mum went spare,” he said reminiscently. “Dad thought it was a big joke, mind you, but he hadda hide it in front of her, of course, poor ole joker.”
Dick had thought it was funny, too. Sloane swallowed again. “Mm. Dad thought it was a huge joke, too,” she admitted.
He beamed. “Too right! He took me an’ Mike to the stock cars to make up for Mum confiscating me trolley, only we hadda promise not to let on, we told her it was the flicks, see, and then when she went on about it ’cos we got back so late, we let on it was The Rocky Horror Show, and she was so busy doing her nut about that, that she never suspected a thing!” He laughed.
“Yuh—um, you don’t mean my dad took you and Mike to the stock cars?” she croaked.
“Yeah, too right! And Kym, of course! Derek didn’t wanna come, he reckoned he hadda swot for his exams.”
“Um—yes, he’d still have been at school,” said Sloane dazedly. She did remember that occasion, actually—in fact, Dad shouting at Derek that he needed to get his head out of his bloody books and start behaving like a human being, while Mum determinedly ignored the whole bit, was one of the things that had finally decided her to get on out of it and go flatting. But certainly, to her recollection, neither Dad nor Kym had ever breathed a word about little Damian and Mike tagging along! Well—male peer groups, presumably.
“Kitten wanted to come but your dad sent ’er off with a flea in ’er ear—told her females didn’t go to the stock cars!” added Damian happily.
Yes, well, no wonder she’d turned out like she had! “Dad always did treat her like a simpering little doll,” said Sloane on a grim note. “And look how she’s turned out!”
Damian grinned uneasily. “Well, Mum reckons she would of, in any case. She was always mad on boys, wasn’t she?”
“Possibly not at that stage, but however.”
“She was always having weddings with those Barbie dolls of hers,” he pointed out dubiously.
Sloane gave a startled laugh. “Ugh! I’d forgotten them! At one stage she didn’t have a Ken doll, that’s right—well, maybe it was before they came out, I can’t remember, or maybe her besotted Daddy hadn’t bought her one yet—anyway, she sacrificed one of the female Barbies, and cut all its hair off and gave it a moustache. It looked like a Barbie in drag, of course!”
He sniggered. “Too right! Um, hang on, though. Didn’t they all have tits?”
“Ooh, yes, that’s right! Well, plastic bumps, but yeah. No, hang on, I remember!”
“Surgery?” he said, grinning.
“No; she did ask Dad if he could sand them off and he said he could but the thing was moulded, and she’d end up with two big holes in its chest. So she kind of wrapped it up in sticking-plaster—that stretchy stuff, it was, that all you sporting types use for your sports injuries. Oh yes, that’s right, she was actually gonna use her pocket money and she went down the Precinct, but Ron the Scone’s dad got out of her what she wanted it for and gave her some for free!”
“That right? Trust her, eh?”
“Yes, she’s been conning freebies out of blokes ever since,” said Sloane with a little sigh. “Anyway, it did look almost like a chest when she’d finished. We made it a nice little dinner jacket. Um, actually,” she admitted, grinning feebly, “she had a go at it and then I had a go at it, but it didn’t turn out so good, so we gave in and got Grandma Andersen on the job, and then it was the spiffiest fake Ken in drag that you ever saw!”
“Yeah!” he gasped, shaking helplessly. “—Yeah, thought you’d gone to sleep, mate,” he said as the waiter finally surfaced at his elbow. “Come on, Sloane, what are you having?”
“No, really, Damian, you don’t have to spend your money on me,” said Sloane kindly, smiling at him.
“Come off it! Dad reckons me contract’s gonna set me up for life, so long as I don’t go barmy like half them mob and chuck it away on booze and flash cars and fancy dames!” he grinned. “Have what ya like! What was that, one of those margarita thingos? Have another!”
“Um, no; thanks, but it’s too much salt, really. Well, um, actually I wouldn't mind a Bundy and Coke, thanks, Damian,” Sloane admitted. –Kitten would condemn it as hopelessly downmarket or some such, and it was true she’d never ordered one when she was with Kendall—or Hardy, come to think of it—but Damian West, contract or not, wouldn’t think twice about it.
Sure enough, he beamed, and said: “That’s the ticket! –That’ll be a Bundy and Coke, then, mate, and you better make mine a light beer. A Foster’s’ll do, s’pose it can’t poison me, eh?”
Instead of saying something appropriately servile, the waiter responded: “You playing tomorrow?”
“Barring injuries, yeah!” replied Damian with his cheerful laugh.
“Then you better make it a light-beer, yeah: I’ve got a tenner on the game,” he replied sourly, vanishing.
“Of course: Nikki did mention you were playing football professionally now,” said Sloane on a weak note.
Damian eyed her tolerantly. “Yeah, somethink like that. Like I was saying, Dad reckons it could set me up for life. Don’t wanna stay in it for too long, mind you: Dad reckons it’s a mug’s game, you end up broke with your knees gone and no qualifications for anythink.”
“No, um, don’t some of them go into coaching, though?”
He sniffed slightly. “Point one percent—yeah. That’s a mug’s game, too. You’re at the mercy of the moneymen, see? –Blokes that run the club. Fat cats,” he explained with another sniff. “Them or the media. No, make that them and the media combined, ’cos either they’ve got them in their ruddy pockets or they own the bloody media as well! Well heck, look at poor ole—” He plunged into it. The narrative lasted well into the drinks. He didn’t seem to notice that she understood about one word in twenty and wasn’t actually rivetted by the saga, but as on the whole it was quite restful, Sloane just relaxed and let it flow over her.
“Um, yes—sorry: what, Damian?” she said, coming to with a jump.
“I said, you look a bit tired. Fancy some nosh? Perk you up a bit, eh?” he said kindly.
Oh, good grief! Little Damian West was kindly treating her like an elderly aunt! Her and her sophisticated black suit and expensive little sequinned killer of a hat. “I am a bit tired, actually,” Sloane admitted. “I wish I hadn’t worn this stupid hat, every ruddy sequin on it’s digging into my head, and it’s got elastic round it, it’s torture.”
“Take it off,” he advised comfortably.
In the Hyatt? “Not here. When you get to my age, appearance seems to matter more than comfort,” she explained wryly.
“I’d of said any age, judging by Nikki and ’er barmy mates. Well, it’s your funeral. So do ya fancy a meal?”
“Uh—yes, but not here, Damian, for Pete’s sake, contract or not! It’d cost the earth! Well, I’ve never eaten here, but Kitten has, and from her description it’s one of those fancy places that give you really mingy helpings in tiny little piles. Added to which each ruddy course takes on average three-quarters of an hour to arrive.”
“All right, somewhere else,” he said comfortably.
Sloane took a deep breath. “Only if we go Dutch. –Yes,” she said firmly, looking him in the eye.
“All right, then,” he agreed mildly. “Any suggestions?”
“Well, um, somewhere with good steaks?”
Damian got up. “Yeah. There’s a really good steakhouse not far from St Vincent’s. Went there with some mates after we’d been to see ole Steve-o Stephenson after he’d done his knee in. Okay, come on!”
Limply Sloane tottered in his wake as his substantial form forced a way through the bellowing throng to the door. Over at the bar several of his ruddy mates were sniggering and nudging each other and trying to give him significant looks to but to his credit, little Damian West completely ignored them.
The steaks were really great—huge, of course, but she felt she needed the iron and the protein, actually, after burning her bridges with both Hardy and Kendall. Damian told her a lot more she didn’t want to know about his footy team in particular and the tactics of the game in general, but since Sloane had taken her hat off in the taxi on the way she felt much better and just smiled kindly at him and made encouraging murmuring noises from time to time if he paused in his flow. He drank mineral water with his giant steak but by now she wasn’t actually surprised. Two little boys who were dining with their parents at a nearby table, after much pointing, nudging and whispering, eventually plucked up the courage to come and ask for his autograph. They didn’t have anything for him to write on so Damian amiably produced a pocket diary and tore out a couple of pages of that for them. Reverently breathing the predictable “Hey! Tha-anks, Damian!” the two pink-cheeked little boys retreated.
Sloane smiled at him. “Sweet,” she said.
He grinned tolerantly. “Yeah, well, s’pose we all been through that stage.”
“Mm. –Some of us avoid this stage, however,” she noted as, having visibly plucked up courage from the little boys’ example, two huge louts from the other side of the room who'd been looking over at them ever since they sat down, with much nudging and whispering, got up and shambled over to them.
“Gidday, you are Damian West, eh? Hey, whaddabout that goal last Fridee?” Vivid imitation of, presumably, the goal, within the limits of the somewhat crowded steakhouse. After more exchanges of this sort, together with a lot of body contact—between the pair of them, they didn’t dare to approach their idol that closely—they finally plucked up the courage to ask for the autographs. One wanted it on his bare forearm—he’d’ve clocked anyone that dared to point out he had a crush on the guy, of course—and the other on a page of the newspaper he was clutching. Under the picture—right. Presumably he was gonna go home and stick it in his scrapbook?
“Honestly! Puerile!” said Sloane when at last they’d shambled off with the ritual farewells relating to the game and killing them and putting the boot in, etcetera. “Talk about bread and circuses!”
Damian ate his last piece of baked potato skin up hungrily. “Dad reckons they got nothink else in their lives, that sort of joker, see, and it’s not just a question of not putting off the fans, it doesn’t hurt to be decent to them.”
Sloane had now turned a glowing red. “No! I mean, of course it doesn’t, poor things!” she gasped.
“Yeah. –You want the rest of that potato?”
“What? Oh! No, you have it, Damian,” she smiled, passing him her plate.
Happily Damian took the remains of her enormous baked potato.
“Um, it sounds as if you get on really well with your dad, Damian,” she ventured.
Damian nodded hard round a huge mouthful of the potato. “Yeah,” he said, swallowing. “He’s an okay joker. Knows a thing or two.” He eyed her tolerantly. “You don’t wanna take too much notice of Mum and Nikki, ya know. Well, he lets her rule the roost at home, not claiming he doesn’t, but see, that’s what she thinks marriage is. She never had a Year Twelve, ya know—left school soon as she turned sixteen.”
Sloane wouldn’t have said, judging by the thousands of idiots that went off and got roaring drunk at Schoolies’ Week to celebrate having completed Year Twelve, that that was a qualification for anything, let alone brains or an education, but she nodded feebly.
“He lets her think it’s her that decides stuff, but most of the time it isn’t. He’s pretty cluey, the ole joker. Like that time she wanted to sell the house and buy one of those townhouses like Aunty Norah’s. Jerry-built,” he explained with a sniff. “Mind you, could of resold after two or three years, made a fast buck, only she wanted him to retire there. Maybe that was after you left home—yeah, it would of been,” he said to her blank face. “Anyway, Dad let her get all fired up and drag ’im out to look at them—not just Aunty Norah’s development, there was a couple of others she fancied as well—and then he sort of—well, tell ya the truth,” he admitted, grinning, “I dunno how the Hell he done it, but somehow the idea of them two-storeyed places being ruddy daft when you’re getting on a bit started to get bandied about and pretty soon she was telling us about the shocking price of them personal lift thingos—you know, they go up the staircase—and how jerry-built them townhouses all are, and what it’d cost to run the air-con nine months of the year upstairs because of all them fancy windows that don’t open and there’s no shade over them, you either have to have fancy outdoor blinds installed for megabucks or shell out for the air-con, and half them new developments, they got strata-title agreements, see, you’re often not allowed to stick blinds on the outside of yer dinky townhouse. And then it was ‘Too cramped, really,’ she didn’t know how Aunty Norah and Uncle Bob managed, you’d be fallink all over each other, and that was a recipe for disaster once your hubby had retired,”—he winked at her—“’cos look at Carol and Barney Coster and poor ole Jack Jenkins—you know, Terry and Rosalie’s dad—he dropped off the twig three months to the day after she made ’im give up ’is shed and move into one of them townhouses; and Bob’s yer uncle! She told Dad it was a barmy idea and it was just like him to rush into somethink like that without thinking it all out first and the ole joker just sat back and took it, cool as a cucumber!”
Sloane had to laugh, but it was a pretty horrifying picture of Sydney suburban marriage, all the same! Not that she wasn’t glad to hear that Mr West wasn’t the complete doormat she’d always assumed he was.
She drank some of the glass of red that Damian, overriding her reminder about going Dutch, had insisted on paying for, and said cautiously: “I hope you don’t think that’s what’s marriage has gotta be, Damian.”
“No, ’course not! It’s their generation, isn’t it? Well, dying out even with their mob, really, look at your parents! Different from Mum and Dad as chalk and cheese, eh?”
“Not really,” said Sloane with a sigh. “Dad lets Mum rule the roost most of the time, too.”
“I can see they’ve got their faults,” he said thoughtfully, “but at least your mum’s got a decent job, there’s more in her life than just the house and the kids and the grandkids.”
“Mm, that’s true! And if it’s a big decision I s’pose they do try to talk things out.”
“There you are, then,” he said comfortably. “Lot more modern, aren’t they?”
“Ye-es. I wouldn’t take them as a rôle model,” said Sloane uneasily.
“Wasn’t gunnoo! Well, for one thing, I haven’t got Dick’s brains, no-one as bright as your mum’d look twice at me!” replied Damian cheerfully. “But these days a bloke doesn’t have to sit back and let the wife make all the decisions about the house and kids, does ’e?”
“No,” said Sloane faintly. That conversation with Cal on horribly similar lines had suddenly come back to her.
Damian eyed her uncertainly. “Anythink up? I didn’t mean to be rude about Dick and Karen.”
Sloane tried to pull herself together. “No, you weren’t. It was just, um, I was suddenly reminded of someone that—that said something pretty similar to me about modern marriage. Um, sorry, Damian, I am pretty tired, been overdoing it at work, I guess. And, um, well, to tell you the truth I've just dumped two boyfriends and I suppose it’s come all over me that I’m thirty with an expensive dinky townhouse, talking of which, on my hands, that I’m gonna have to spend the rest of my life paying off. I mean, Ingrid and Ward have put money into it but I’ve got to pay them back.”
“Yeah, ’course. Well, sell it, get a cheaper place? Whereabouts is it?”
Limply Sloane told him.
“Aw, yeah, I know! You’ll get a really good price for it, anything in that area’s skyrocketed over the last six months!” he said happily. “—Want dessert?”
“Uh—no, I’ll just have a coffee, thanks, Damian.”
“S’pose I better, too—training!” he said, grinning. “Wouldn’t rather have an Irish coffee, wouldja? Or if you like Bundy, a Jamaican coffee’s really nice!” He beamed hopefully at her. “On me,” he added quickly.
Oh, dear, he was sweet, wasn’t he? If only she’d looked twice at Cal Wainwright back when she was stupid and nineteen—make that stupider—they could have had a little boy that was about the age of those two little pink-cheeked fans by now, in fact about the age she always thought of Damian West as, tennish and pink-cheeked with pea-stick legs and ears that stuck out... “Thanks, Damian,” said Sloane shakily, getting her hanky out and blowing her nose. “That’d be lovely.”
When she was sipping the Jamaican coffee cautiously—it was laden with whipped cream—no doubt out of a spray can, but never mind, Kitten wasn’t here to condemn it, and on the other hand she’d seen her lap the bloody things up—he said: “Ya know, if you are thinking of selling your place, I might be interested.”
“Uh—thought you weren’t gonna sling your contract dough away on a trendy lifestyle?”
“No, it’d be an investment,” he replied, grinning. “Sell up in a couple of years, see? Before the block’s had time to start looking tired.”
“Well, uh—well, yes, Damian,” said Sloane slowly. “It’s costing me far too much, I should never have let the girls talk me into it in the first place.”
“Their idea, was it? That explains it,” said Damian simply.
Mm. Something like that.
She let Damian take her home in a taxi and have a look over the unit. He was really cluey about it, he didn’t just gape round inanely like the usual bloke looking at a place, he checked out all the cupboard space and the type of heating and everything. Down to noting that the fabric on the walls in the front room and the emerald wallpaper in the dining-room wouldn't be a selling point if she did put the place on the market, and not everyone’d go for that old-fashioned window frame she’d had put in, either. He even inspected the drying area and made quite sure that the prevailing wind wouldn’t blow in under the carport and nullify the whole notion of drying.
He then accepted a cup of tea, told her rapidly a lot about the Sydney housing market while he drank it, admitted that he was pretty keen to go into real estate, actually, and Dad reckoned it could be the way to go and a bloke didn’t need an academic qualification, maybe, no, but he better have a pretty good grasp of bookkeeping and small business practice if he wanted to go into that sort of thing, it wasn’t just yer mug in the ads that ran a business, further admitted he was doing a couple of night-school courses, and finally slung his hook with a parting injunction to her to pop into bed, she looked all in, and a reminder that him and his dad’d be round on Saturday to take another look at the place.
Sloane just sat down again and looked limply at the empty mugs on the coffee table for a while. Then she got up, switched the downstairs lights off, and dragged herself upstairs to bed. Little Damian West! Good grief! She felt about a hundred. No, make that a hundred and two. And unless her arithmetic was way out, the boy was all of twenty-two! Well, there certainly must be a lot more to Mr West than met the eye, that was for sure.
She was so drained that she fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, though she’d been sure she wouldn’t sleep at all.
Somehow, though she was blowed if she could see why, in the morning she seemed to have made her mind up. She would sell the bloody townhouse; she’d move back home for a bit while she thought out her options a bit more clearly. And she would sell out of RightSmart, it was pointless trying to kid herself that she merely needed a holiday. She’d had enough of it. And Gail was more than capable of running the whole shebang by herself, she didn’t need a partner at all, really. Well, someone to put money into the business, yes. But not to help run it. She’d be much better off taking on a couple of junior consultants, actually. Young enough so’s she could train them up to do things her way.
None of this was actually going to get her a cute little boy with pea-stick legs, sticking-out ears and pink cheeks, of course—nor, indeed, the hubby to help produce him. Sloane could see this quite clearly. But never mind whatever obscure motives might be buried deep in her psyche: she knew she wasn’t going to change her mind.
Next chapter:
https://thelallapindarevenge.blogspot.com/2022/11/kitten-on-trail.html
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