She found people-watching such a pleasant pastime, one that relaxed her surprisingly well, that she began to welcome thoughts of Lincoln rather than batting them away. She let the memories of their time together in the shop hover around her like a lovely dream, conveniently ignoring the way she’d treated him after the kiss, and just remembering the feel of his skin, and the intense way he’d looked at her.
When she felt ready, she set off on foot again. She took her time walking along the street to enter the archway of La Cour Carrée, the courtyard of the Louvre, though its open square surrounded by three storeys of Renaissance stonework felt more like standing inside castle grounds. She passed the fountains and the modern glass pyramid entrance to the former palace and kept going, glad she’d worn her most comfortable boots.
On the other side of the museum’s boundaries she found herself in the Tuileries—the vast royal gardens: expansive emerald-green lawns you weren’t allowed to walk on, interspersed with beds of purple and pink flowers; the towering white ferris wheel so tourists could take in the view from on high; the huge shade trees sheltering small tables and chairs beneath their protective limbs; and the seemingly endless supply of marble sculptures standing in the sunshine as though it was totally normal to populate a public garden with authentic historical artworks. As though, Hey, this is Paris, we have thousands of these things just lying around in the back of the wardrobe.
Christmas was relieved she’d decided not to go into the Louvre. Just taking in the grounds was a considerable undertaking. She didn’t know how large the area was in acres, but it certainly felt extensive. Like a decent-sized farm.
In fact, everything seemed big. If there was one thing she’d been feeling all morning, it was small. And provincial. She’d lived in Sydney, sure. But other than going to Peter’s funeral she hadn’t left the small isle of Tasmania for years. Her world had shrunk to the tiny village of Evandale and her chocolate shop. And other than on trips to Launceston and Hobart, she seldom saw a building over two storeys high. Paris was monumental. Surely no one in the world built structures this large anymore? It was grand. Opulent. Decadent in the most awe-inspiring way.
It was incredible to think that anyone could build something so large that would last so many hundreds of years. She doubted the skyscrapers of Sydney would still be there in five or more centuries. Everything in the world was getting smaller. The world’s largest species were disappearing—elephants, tigers, polar bears, whales. Technology was getting smaller all the time. The phones, computers and music systems of the past were shrinking to a single palm-sized device. Weapons of war could be shrunk to a single button, a virus or a change in DNA.
Paris was different. The city was full of giants.
And then there was the river. The mighty Seine with its green-grey water muscling along, a steady, unstoppable force. Open-topped tourist boats chugging white water. Wooden rowboats, their oars rising and falling like the large wings of birds. Stone bridges arched to allow the passage of vessels below. And the majestic Musée d’Orsay flanking the left bank opposite. The whole city seemed to be made of stone and marble and waiting for the arrival of royalty.
Mim was right about Paris. Elle est belle.
17
Emily was at the television station for a team meeting when a call came through to her mobile. She was bored. Most of the morning’s discussions of program ideas had nothing to do with her and had instigated a lot of macho hooting and revelry and scribbles on the whiteboard—car racing and triathlons or something equally dull. She was just doodling a picture of a cupcake on her notebook when she felt her handbag vibrate against her leg.
She cast a furtive glance at Rod and Eddie, who were all but ignoring the three women at the table, and at Alice and Rupna, who looked as bored as Emily felt. Alice was studying her chipped nails. Rupna was on her laptop, and from the movement of her eyes and the lazy tapping of her scroll key, Emily was pretty sure she was reading a blog post of some sort.
Certain no one would notice, she slid her hand down and slipped the phone out of the front pocket of her bag. She didn’t recognise the number. A mystery number was far more interesting than anything else going on in this room.
Rising, she waved her apologies, mouthed that she’d be back in a tick, and stepped out into the dank-smelling hallway.
‘Hello?’
‘Emily?’ The man’s voice was vaguely familiar, a little unsure of himself, but friendly nonetheless.
‘Yes,’ she said brightly. ‘How can I help?’
‘Hi, this is Lincoln. Lincoln van Luc. We met at the chocolate tasting at Green Hills Aged Care a couple of weeks ago.’
Emily stopped picking at the peeling paint on the wall next to her. ‘Oh, hi.’ She tried to sound casual and confident, the vocal equivalent of a saunter.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘Great! How are you?’
‘Good.’
She shouldn’t have said she was great. No one said great in answer to that obligatory, routine question. It made her sound hyperactive, bouncy, too keen. Or desperate.
Or snooty—like her being great was far superior to his being good. La, la, la, look at me; my life’s great! What about yours, sucker? How are you doing over there in your good life? You should try my great life. It’s GREAT!
Or one of those annoyingly positive people who saw the blessing in every tragedy and were so grateful for the lesson when their husband abandoned them, they broke their arm, their child contracted rabies and their house burned down while they were out shopping. It didn’t matter because it was a great lesson and they were so grateful for the experience! It was GREAT!
Oh, shit. He was still talking . . .
‘. . . so I was wondering if you wanted to catch up for a coffee?’
Coffee? As in a date? But what about Christmas? Christmas, who had sent her a lovely text to say how very lucky she was to have Emily as her friend?
But Christmas was the very same friend who had explicitly told Emily that she wasn’t interested in Lincoln and not to waste a good man in Tasmania. And while her best friend might choose to find happiness by cutting things out of her life, Emily liked to bring new things in. So why shouldn’t she go out with him?
‘Yes,’ she said, returning to the sauntering pace. ‘That sounds good.’ But then a surge of excitement rushed through her body and she couldn’t help adding, ‘Really good.’
•
Lincoln couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d dated someone in Australia. When he was overseas, with other workers or travellers, people were different. There were fewer rules. There were fewer expectations of a future together, fewer people you were answerable to—like interfering mothers, nosy neighbours or ex-partners—and fewer social obligations. Everybody knew that impermanence and transience lay beneath all their decisions.
So he hadn’t expected his skin to prickle with heat beneath his jacket on such a cold day when he saw Emily walking towards him along the edge of the mangroves in front of Rosevears Tavern, dressed in tight jeans and some sort of knitted wrap, but that’s what happened.
And then she was in front of him and she went for the hug and he went for the kiss on the cheek and he kissed her arm instead and there was a flailing of limbs and apologies and flushed cheeks and snorts from her (who doesn’t like a girl who snorts?) and then she accidentally stood on his foot and her ankle rolled and she fell to the ground with her foot in the air and her face contorted and she yelped with pain and dropped her handbag and the contents spilled across the footpath and he swore over and over and tried to stop her lipstick from rolling into the gutter and patted her shoulder while she writhed and clutched at her calf to hold her foot up in the air and he went looking for his mobile phone but couldn’t find it and didn’t know who to call anyway until a man stepped across the road from the beer garden and said, ‘Can I help? I’m a doctor.’
•
Emily shifted her weight across the squeaking plastic-c
overed bed in the back room of the doctor’s surgery and sucked in her breath sharply through her teeth as Lincoln placed a fresh icepack on her ankle. Wordlessly, he took another pillow and gently raised her leg to elevate it a bit more. Then he passed her a plastic cup of water from the dispenser in the waiting room.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and sipped carefully on it. It was too cold. The air conditioning was too cold. She shivered.
‘I think I saw a pile of blankets in the room next door,’ Lincoln said, already rising again. He disappeared around the corner, leaving her to study the growth chart on the wall and the archaic-looking set of weight scales in the corner, the ones with the thingummybobs that slid from side to side.
He returned with a pale blue cotton blanket and covered her up. He sat down again in the chair by the bed.
‘You don’t have to wait here,’ she said for the hundredth time. ‘It’s truly okay. It’s no problem to catch a cab home. It’s just a sprain.’
‘I’ve already told you I’m not leaving you here,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. I feel awful.’
They’d been going round and round like this for the past hour, him apologising and self-flagellating, and her brushing it off and trying to send him home, when of course she didn’t really want him to leave but she didn’t want to seem needy either.
‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said, wedging her right arm under the mountain of pillows behind her head. She stared into his beautiful but worried eyes. ‘Why aren’t you married?’ She gave him a cheeky grin. ‘My brother thinks you must be a criminal. Or crazy. Or divorced.’
‘I like your brother. I think we should meet.’
‘So what should I tell him?’
‘Tell him he’s a very good brother. Older? Of course he is. And you can tell him I’m not most of those things.’
‘Most?’ she said.
‘But wait,’ he said. ‘You’re not married. Are you a criminal? Am I sitting here with a fugitive?’ He looked over his shoulder.
‘Touché. Okay. Let’s do this. You go first.’
‘I was married once.’
‘When?’
‘I was twenty-two. It was silly and it only lasted eight months. Her name was—still is—Benita. I met her at uni. It turned out she was more into her soccer-loving friend Giuseppe than me.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s okay. Now, your turn.’
‘Well, surely you’re aware there’s a man drought in Tasmania.’
‘What do you mean? Dr Birtle looks like a fine catch.’
Emily rippled with giggles while shushing him. Dr Birtle, who’d been half cut on rum and Coke when he crossed the road outside the pub to help her, had long greasy hair, wore thongs and reeked of cigarette smoke.
‘I’m still thinking you should get a second opinion on that, by the way,’ Lincoln said, pointing to her ankle. ‘I don’t know that you should take the word of someone who carries a hip flask.’
‘I think it’s fine. He seems to have bandaged it quite well. And he gave me Panadol.’
‘So, what else then, besides the man drought?’
‘Well, let’s see.’ She took a moment to think back on her failed relationships. There was the workaholic, the unemployed layabout, the one more into cyber people than real people, the one who used her as a rebound relationship, the one who used her for a one-night stand when she’d reasonably thought it was going to go further, the heartbreaking five-year relationship with a man who turned out to be just-not-that-into-her. ‘Gosh, this is rather depressing.’
‘In summary?’
‘I simply haven’t found Mr Right.’
‘Hmm.’
‘What?’
‘Well, it sounds perfectly reasonable,’ he said. ‘You’re attractive. Have a job. Only one head that I can see. You seem like a nice, normal person—shocking clumsiness and disastrous first dates aside.’
‘Yes, there is that.’ He was flirting with her! While she was in bandages on a doctor’s bed! Well, this was all very General Hospital.
‘So I see no reason why we shouldn’t do this again,’ he said definitively.
She couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face.
‘But maybe we should meet sitting down next time,’ he added.
‘Or on horseback,’ she said, and clasped her hands together melodramatically.
Lincoln squinted. ‘Horses. Yes. They seem like sane, rational and safe animals. It seems completely sensible and statistically sound to balance on top of a half-tonne animal that can gallop at, what, a hundred kilometres an hour?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Then we should do that.’
‘Okay.’
‘It’s a date.’
•
Lulu Divine was wearing a red and black woollen poncho and matching knitted beret and sat at the tiny table in Elsa’s bungalow looking for all the world like some sort of dangerous animal. A red-bellied black snake perhaps. No, that was too harsh. But perhaps a wasp. Yes. One that was sharpening its stinging tail right now.
‘What’s in it for me?’ she said.
Rita wheezed through the oxygen mask on her face, the little rolling trolley standing by her side. It was unnerving, the mask. And it was only because she’d had a cough for a while and the weather had turned very cold, a thick layer of snow descending over much of Tasmania in the past two days, and the nurses had decided to give her lungs a bit of support. But the sight of it made Elsa uneasy, as though it were the hand of death clamped down over Rita’s nose and mouth to snuff her out. She shuddered. This was crazy. Where were all these morbid thoughts coming from? This wasn’t like her at all.
‘Have you n-no heart?’ Rita ticced and wheezed, her hand shaking in what was probably a Parkinson’s movement but did look a little like she was threatening with her fist.
‘I gave up on heart a long time ago,’ Lulu said quietly. ‘I never found it to be a reliable companion.’
‘That must be a lonely way to live,’ Elsa said.
‘I get by.’
‘Love is the gr-greatest gift you can give someone else,’ Rita said. ‘It is a huge honour and privilege to match a couple and wat-t-t-ch them grow through life. I’ve successfully matched four couples in my time. Four weddings. Thirteen children.’ Her voice filled with pride.
‘So why do you need me?’ Lulu asked.
Elsa stretched her stiff knee. ‘We’ve hit a stumbling block. Christmas has turned Lincoln down.’
‘So?’
‘I thought of you, with your great success in competitions. I thought you might have some advice.’
‘Elsa,’ Rita ventured, ‘are you positive that Lincoln should be with Christmas? There was no light.’
‘I know,’ Elsa said, ‘but I think something was wrong. I believe Christmas is the one.’
‘What light?’ Lulu asked, narrowing her eyes and folding her hands in her lap.
Elsa gestured to Rita to explain the theory of the light, and she wheezily complied. ‘Unfortunately, the light was not there between Lin-Lincoln and Christmas,’ she finished. ‘It was with Emily.’
Lulu thought about this. ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ she said finally.
Elsa’s mouth watered, hungry for another opinion to match her own. ‘Go on.’
‘All that means is that Emily is the show queen, someone who can turn it on when she needs to. Someone who can use her charm to influence the judges.’
‘You sound as though you’ve done this yourself,’ Elsa said.
‘I’ve had my time in the spotlight. But not everyone can sustain that brightness. I could. And I did. I was at the top of my game for as long as the competitions kept rolling round. But not everyone’s like me.’
‘No, they’re not,’ Elsa agreed.
‘Most people are shooting stars. They flare and then fizzle. Like reality television identities. They start strong, confident, arrogant even. They can fake it well. But they get the wobbles. It
’s just a matter of time. True champions are rare.’
Elsa suddenly felt something like affection for Lulu, and reached for the pot of tea, adjusted the bright yellow cosy, and topped up her teacup for her.
‘In my experience, you can always see it,’ Rita said, as forcefully as the oxygen mask would allow. ‘You walk a dangerous line thinking you know better than the light.’
‘So what do we do?’ Elsa said, ignoring Rita.
Lulu scoffed. Elsa recoiled, surprised.
‘It’s not all about her. To win a buckjumping competition you need a horse as well as the rider. The first thing you need to know is whether your grandson is a shooting star or a true champion.’
Rita remained silent, though Elsa was sure she felt a wave of smugness shoot from her—retribution for being ignored and replaced by this younger ring-in from the bungalow next door.
‘What do you mean? Lincoln’s wonderful.’
‘Then why hasn’t he settled down yet?’ Lulu asked, a small smirk tugging at one corner of her sun-spotted lips. ‘Why is he still galloping the world on a whim?’
Elsa felt her hackles prickle against her thermal underwear. ‘Didn’t you do that too?’ she shot back.
‘Exactly.’ Lulu smiled thinly and Elsa wondered if there was some regret in the acknowledgement. ‘I never wanted to be tamed. Perhaps Lincoln is the same. From where I sit, it looks like he has no intention of settling down at all. I think you need to face up to the fact that you’re wasting your time.’
•
To: Lincoln van Luc
From: Barney Jones
The Chocolate Promise Page 19