‘In case I was a baddie? Or . . .’
‘Just.’ He shrugged in a way that indicated he wasn’t going to say anything more. ‘In case.’
‘Oh.’ I stood silent for a moment.
‘Wanna walk?’ he said. I nodded. I felt as if I’d just drunk about ten caffeine-containing energy drinks. We fell into rather brisk step. ‘Morning,’ he remarked, jauntily, to a middle-aged couple in matching spray jackets. He sounded for all the world as if the two of us had just been discussing our new patio furniture.
‘Did you not trust me?’ I said.
‘At first I couldn’t tell you. And then, when we – when it became obvious that I needed to tell you – I was concerned for your safety and also about compromising the operation I was involved in. With the data-analyst thing – I do actually analyse a lot of data. It’s a thing we say, sometimes. My colleagues and I. To keep what we do on the down low.’
I nodded. I was speechless for quite a few seconds. (Rare event.)
‘Believe me, Kate, when I tell you that the people I spend my days thinking about are the dregs of humanity. Just horrific human beings. I was very, very mindful of your safety.’ He shot me an imploring look and said, ‘Melbourne’s really not that big a place. When we met, I was in the middle of a big op, it was crap timing, actually, and it was just better if you knew nothing, not even that I was involved in a police matter.’
‘What were you doing on Tinder, then?’ I said, a bit indignantly.
He made an I-am-merely-a-hopeless-red-blooded-man-so-what-do-you-reckon-I-was-doing? gesture with his hands. We laughed a little bit.
‘But like I said. I took a gun to that first dinner.’ He looked at me, very seriously. ‘Probably just as well you changed your mind about me coming upstairs with you.’
It was nice. That he knew that, and that he remembered.
I thought of something else. ‘So, what was all that photographer stuff?’
‘Just what I said. Honestly. We’d been taking photos that day. And, you know, when you asked me, I – Jesus, Kate, you were there.’ He was smiling. ‘You know how it was. I just misspoke.’
I said that really made me worry about community safety, and he said fair enough, but that he was very rarely as overwhelmed as he had been that evening. Of course, that made me start smiling too.
‘Kate.’ He’d stopped smiling. ‘I was in an impossible position. That last night – when you chucked me out – I so nearly told you then. But you were really angry, understandably, and I was concerned you might lose it and . . . I don’t know, send a tweet saying, “Look at this prick I’m dating who reckons he’s a detective in the middle of a major op” and a photo of me with your windows in the background. Or something. You know?’
‘I would never have done that.’
‘Well, maybe not exactly that. But you threw me out before I could tell you, anyway. And then I thought, what am I doing? And I’ve been trying. You wouldn’t answer my calls. Which was fair enough.’
‘And you’re telling me now because?’
‘If I want to be with you, then you have to know. And I want to be with you, Kate. So here I am.’
‘Right.’
I hugged his words into me, as if they were my lost kittens or children or something.
‘Look, that night. At Bec’s? One of the targets moved. We hadn’t planned on it. I was kicking myself for being out of the state. I shouldn’t have been. That’s why I had to take that call.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’
‘What I said.’
‘All right.’ But I had to laugh again. It sounded so dramatic. There was a man up ahead with his butt crack showing as he tried to restrain his labradoodle, for heaven’s sake.
‘Kate, I have to go back tomorrow. You have to keep this to yourself. You have to use the data-analyst line; you have to be very circumspect when you’re communicating about me, and I will never be able to tell you anything – nothing – about what I do. That kind of thing – the target moving – it’s exactly what I’m talking about. I shouldn’t even have said that much.’
‘I understand,’ I said, soberly. The whole thing was quite exciting, to be honest. And, oh my God, so very much sexier than data analysis, even if I couldn’t tell anyone.
‘So, are you an agent?’ I said. ‘Like, undercover?’
He laughed. ‘Only the AFP call themselves agents.’ From his tone, I could tell he thought the Australian Federal Police were a bunch of dills. ‘And nah. Not undercover. This is me. My only mates are work mates. I genuinely have no life apart from my job and my family and, you know, you.’
‘Pretty tragic, really, aren’t you?’ I said. But in a friendly way.
We walked on a bit, in an elated sort of silence. After a while, he gave me a little look. Long look. Sweet look. I started to worry we might trip over a small dog or something. Then, looking ahead again, he said, very softly, ‘Lovely Kate.’ We walked a bit further, until he said, ‘I know you probably need time to process all this.’
‘Nah. I don’t.’ I didn’t need any time at all to ‘process’ anything. My biggest concern was the fact he’d just used the word ‘process’ to refer to thinking things over. Next minute there’d be talk of getting into the zone, learnings or stepping up. But other than that, I was exuberantly happy. I was thrilled and disbelieving, and to be honest, all I could think of was how very much I wanted to be alone with him. I felt like I wanted to see and touch and kiss all his skin, all of this Adam, who was, miraculously, the Adam I loved.
I stopped walking, and he stopped too. ‘Can we please go somewhere?’ I said. ‘You do have, like, a hotel, or something, right?’
He smiled his smile – and can I also say, that when some men, such as health food store attendants or naturopaths, get the tiny beginnings of tears in their eyes, it is beyond repulsive, but when Adam does, it’s absolutely gorgeous – and then he nodded.
I said, ‘Because I’m just so really glad it’s you.’ The sentence didn’t even make any sense, and I started crying a tiny bit at the end of it. Only in an eye-welling, romantic-heroine sort of way, though. There was no snot, which I suppose made a nice change, especially for Adam.
*
It was the best feeling in the world.
Outside was grey and rainy, and I was alone with Adam, in his lovely bed, in his lovely hotel room, with his lovely hands in my hair, and both of us naked and intertwined and warm and drowsy. And, I have to say, satiated. It was a very, very good feeling.
‘You were pretty confident.’ I indicated the large bed and fancy room. ‘What would you have done with all this if I’d turned you down?’
‘Seduced someone else.’ Impossible to tell if he was serious.
‘Really?’
He made a funny, wincey face. ‘Maybe.’ Bit of a sigh. ‘But you know. Those drunk and horrible things. Only enjoyable for about fifty seconds.’ He obviously felt that full disclosure of all non-work-related aspects of life was required. ‘Not even fifty, really.’
‘Adam? You can just exercise a normal level of truthfulness, in general, you know.’
He grinned as he ran his hand down my side, then brought it back up and rested it on my cheek. ‘Jesus, Kate. It’s so good to see you again.’
We lay there a bit longer, and I managed to extract that he was the head of a drug-lord-fighting task force, that his ‘squad’ had eight men and no women (drug-lord fighting is still very male-dominated, apparently) and that there was such a thing as the Organised Crime Management Committee, the name of which I obviously found very amusing.
I filled him in on Bec and Stuart and the fire-eater and the kids and my PhD proposal. I asked if his family knew what he did, and he said they knew a bit, and that when it came to talking about his work situation to my family, I should be extremely discreet, use my own judgement, and check with him if I needed. I could see that it was a very big deal for him, and I promised to be sensible, even though I was of course most disappoint
ed that I couldn’t tell every single person I knew that Adam went on stake-outs.
After all that, we decided it would be excellent fun to have hot drinks for afternoon tea. It took some time to disentangle ourselves, but eventually he got up and pulled on garments and started working out how to fill the teeny-tiny kettle. I put on his T-shirt, and leaned back on two of the many very comfortable pillows.
‘Did you bring Milo?’ I’d only just noticed it, standing near the mini bar.
‘Yep.’
‘Way over-confident.’
‘I wouldn’t get too big for your boots,’ he said, not looking around from the cups. But he said it in such a way that it was obvious he was delighted we were both there.
‘Adam?’ I said, to his back. ‘Just, you know, just confirming . . . you know. You know that night we had the fight, and you said you hadn’t been seeing anyone else? That . . . was that – is that still true? Because, I just, you know, I know what I said, about you could see other people, but I was furious, as you know, and actually the thought of you, you know, dating anyone else, it upsets me.’ I possibly deserved an award for using the phrase ‘you know’ the most times ever in a single speech, at least in the over-35s category.
He put down whatever bit of the coffee-and-tea making facilities he was using, and turned right around to face me. He was standing a few feet from the foot of the bed.
‘Well. Yeah. I’d certainly hope so.’ He looked down at the doona and said, quietly, ‘Of course that was true, Kate. I’m – I am so much in love with you.’ Then he looked at me.
‘Oh.’
‘I assumed you knew that,’ he said.
I shook my head. I’d thought it was only me, the poor, sex-starved, Tudor-fixating, lingerie-obsessed amputee. Fully aware I sounded like someone with lamentably low self-esteem, but unable to resist, I said, ‘Why?’
‘’Cos you’ve got really nice breasts.’ We both laughed, perhaps a bit more than was strictly necessary, but when we stopped, he could tell from my face that I wanted a proper answer.
‘Look, being honest, it was—’ He rubbed his hands over his scalp as if he was giving himself a quick head massage, and then flopped his palms onto the bench behind him. ‘It was pretty much one of those at-first-sight things.’ He was looking at me properly now. ‘Never happened to me before.’
I made some sort of sound, a bit like, ‘Oh,’ except not quite.
‘Kate. That first dinner. After all the pasta and chocolate stuff, you didn’t hold in your tummy. It stuck out a little bit, and you let it. You didn’t press me about what I did.’ He did a little nod – an admiring nod – and his quick smile. ‘And when I walked you home you were so poised. Gentle.’ He was looking down at the bedclothes again. ‘Then when I somehow managed to get myself through your door, and I complimented your place, you were so excited when you said how much you loved it. It was really nice. And obviously . . . when we’re together it’s just very, very good indeed.’ He cleared his throat and looked at me. ‘You’re really, of course, smart and, you know, funny, and we have, I think, similar values, very family-oriented, I’d say, and, and, a good work ethic and, um. And obviously your beauty can’t not come into it, but I’ve been with a lot of really very pretty women over the years—’ a horrified all-right-what-the fuckety-fuck-am-I-even-saying-now? look crossed his face ‘and, anyway, what I mean is that it’s always been completely different with you, and not just because of your beauty. Right from that first night at the restaurant, you looked up at me and you didn’t really smile, and then you said you were giving very serious consideration to the gnocchi, and you were so . . . well, you were the only person in the place, Kate. I’ve been totally, totally gone, ever since.’
‘Well, I’ve got to say, I hope you’re more concise and, frankly, a bit more diplomatic when you present things to your Crime Committee.’
‘Yes. Me too. Fuck.’ Smiling.
‘Apart from that, that’s all really nice, Adam,’ I said. ‘Lovely, in fact.’ Of course, it was all so very, very lovely and wonderful that I couldn’t even begin to compose a proper reply. I also couldn’t look at him. But I heard him smile before he went back to the kettle.
‘Adam?’ I said.
Because if we didn’t talk about it now, then would we ever? Because what about when the glorious sex and the nice hotels and the let’s-lie-around-chatting-because-I-want-to-know-every-single-thing-about-you wore off? When my only wrist got sore, yet again, and I cried, or when it was forty degrees and I didn’t want to go to the beach because I just couldn’t face it that particular time? Did he know that one evening some man in a restaurant would look at him with a certain sort of scornful pity and then, the next day, or the next week, or the next month, a pretty, ordinary girl in a café or at work or at the gym would smile at him, and he’d feel, at the very least, a pang of something that would make him hate himself? Had he considered any or all of that?
He turned to face me. I couldn’t say anything, but I held up my stump. It was a part wave, part challenge, part plea.
He met my eyes, properly. He nodded in a resolute, discreet way, like a movie US president. Then he put down the teaspoon and sat on the side of the bed. Not compassionately, though. Not like I was sick. Just as if he wanted to be close to me. We stayed silent, and I watched his face, as all the responses he’d already considered and discarded flitted again through his mind.
‘Babe, I’d be lying if I told you I never noticed,’ he finally said. ‘Or even if I said I hadn’t thought much about it. But . . .’ And he reached out his hand and laid it on my stump. Held it. It was the first time anyone had done that. He looked at my eyes and gave a what-are-you-gonna-do? shrug. I did a weird gulp thing, and he lifted his hand to my face.
There was a moment, and he leaned forward and kissed my mouth. It started off extremely tender and sweet, but, after not very long at all, turned into something else entirely.
‘Jesus, Kate,’ he said. The side of his thumb was right near my lips, and his other hand was moving along my waist in a slow and purposeful skate. ‘Felt like so long away from you.’
‘No drinks.’
‘Really, babe?’ Firmer pressure on my waist, leaning on top of me, gently pushing me backwards. ‘No tea? Milo? Maybe just a peppermint or something?’
I didn’t even answer. We kissed for quite a long time before anything else happened, and oh, the weight of him. The pressure of his hands, and the feeling of his skin under mine, and the way I could make his breath change, and the short, murmured words. All that.
Afterwards, I wondered if I was meant to say, ‘I love you, Adam,’ or ‘I’m in love with you, as well,’ or something like that, and I did want to, but surprisingly, I couldn’t quite find the words.
*
At some point that evening, we checked our phones. Adam showed me a photo of him, his parents (now looking older, but still beaming), his sister (younger than him, cool clothes, also beaming) and a number of others, at Nonna’s ninety-second birthday (in a depressing nursing-home room, but with a cake and candles). Then he spent a bit of time firing off texts (presumably about sexy detective stuff).
I had two texts from Bec wondering where I was (oops), a text from Juliet asking whether I thought gluten-free tiramisu would be passable, and a missed call from Stuart.
I sent a text to Bec saying that I was just spending a bit of time with non-effing Adam and would explain later, and to Juliet saying of course not, that should be obvious. Then I rang Stuart.
‘It’s Kate Leicester returning your call,’ I said. It hurt to say my surname. I was the first person Stuart called when Lachlan was born, before his parents, even. But it had occurred to me that he might have accidentally rung me while in the process of deleting my number from his phone.
‘Madam Kate,’ he said, actually sounding almost normal. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ (Obviously, I could have said, ‘Oh my God, my boyfriend is the Sexy Head of a Drug-Lord-Fighting Task
Force, we totally misjudged him, especially you, and now I’m the one in a great relationship hahahaha.’ But, I didn’t.) ‘How are you?’
An uncharacteristic pause. I had never known Stuart to spend any time choosing his words.
‘Have you met this man Bec’s seeing?’ he said.
‘At your fortieth.’ My voice was very small.
Stuart didn’t react. He just said, as if the question was being dragged out of him, ‘How do you think she is?’
‘I think she’s . . .’ I wanted to say: ‘I think she’s sad, but also all loved-up, because almost anyone would be if they were sleeping with that man, and the no-doubt-amazing sex is clouding her judgement.’ ‘To be honest, Stuart, I reckon she’ll eventually come around.’
‘Huh. What about my kids?’
‘Well, the main thing I’d be concerned about is just, you know, the impact of the separation, and keeping things as civil as you can.’ I was having none of this don’t-involve-yourself-in-other-people’s-relationships malarkey. Who even made that up?
‘Yeah.’ Very, very drily.
‘You and Bec, you need to find a way to be nice to each other. And I’ve said that to her as well.’ I had, a number of times.
‘Yeah.’ Even drier. Then, not drily at all, but sadly, ‘Yeah.’
‘Stuart?’
‘Kate?’
‘You all right?’
‘Yeah. Thanks. Can you – Kate, I’m sorry to ask, but can you keep me posted? With . . . things? The kids? I’m seeing them, twice a week, but I’m losing sleep. It’s affecting my work, even.’
‘Of course I can. I saw them all this morning, and, you know, they were doing fine.’ I didn’t add, ‘Children are very resilient,’ because I am sick of hearing it, and who really knows if they are or not?
He said he hadn’t ‘appreciated’ that I was still in Hobart, and that maybe we could meet the next morning. I said what about the day after, and Stuart said no he’d be working, which was supposed to be my cue to reshuffle my own plans.
The Mistake Page 26