The Wrong Girl
Page 24
‘I thought you were moving there to get away from men?’
Simone sighed, this time with frustration.
‘Where’s that strong, powerful, earth-sister girl?’ asked Lily. ‘The one who blogs about always moving forward and making sure you’re happy and that you love yourself before you attempt to love others and don’t forget to eat wheatgrass, and teach people how they treat you and why not knit some socks for the homeless and the —’
‘I get it, I get it, stop!’ Simone laughed.
‘I want you to get better, Sim. He’s not right for you just now.’
‘There is one other thing, actually,’ Simone said, suddenly very interested in chipping some candle wax off the table runner.
‘Go on,’ Lily took a sip of her champagne.
‘I’m going to rent this place out. After Mum’s, I’m thinking of relocating to LA for a while. Remember my friend Kitty? She’s got this huge house there, and she’s said she can get me some meetings, and I’ve always wanted to try it, you know?’
‘We’re not going to be living here any more . . .’ The truth and sadness of this realisation hit Lily hard. Ups and down, ups and bloody downs; it was like this day had been on some of Simone’s pharmacueticals.
‘Are you mad at me? Please don’t be, and it’s only for now, you never know what will happen down the track, babe. I’ll miss you too much!’
Lily looked up quickly to stop the wetness pooling in her eyes. ‘No! No, it’s all good.’ And it was, Lily realised. She was thirty now; she should be living alone, like a grown-up. No more bumming off Simone any more.
She cleared her throat, hoping the large lump would go with it.
‘When would you need me out then?’ Lily prayed the answer was one that would make her life easier right now, not harder.
‘Um, well, I am actually showing two families through tomorrow morning . . .’
It was not.
‘Are you kidding? Am I going to be homeless by the weekend? Some five-year-old in my room when I get home from work on Monday?’
Simone laughed weakly. ‘Is two weeks okay?’
Well, it would bloody have to be, thought Lily, wondering if she had accidentally ‘manifested’ her way into this by dreaming of living alone a few months ago. Fucking wishful thinking, she thought. Just be less alarming for once.
‘Totally fine,’ she said, because deep down she knew it would be. She felt confident that this was all part of the Bigger Picture; new home, new job, new attitude, new Lily.
37
‘She ditched me, she ditched me, I can’t believe she ditched me, she chose them calves’ testicles, over music festivals —’
Alice was rapping disapproval at Lily’s career move, even though it had been almost a month since Lily had been at Iron Chef, and Alice seemed to care about her music festival about as much as cats cared about swimming.
‘That’s one tight jam, Jay-Z.’ Lily was busy trying to find some scissors in the third drawer of the kitchen bench, which, like so much of her new home, was an illogical mess of rushed unpacking and this-seems-like-the-right-spot-for-this-for-now.
Alice had been reading magazines on the floor as Lily pottered for the past hour but now came to life. ‘What is this?’ she said, holding up by her thumb and index finger a wet pair of undies that she’d found in the kitchen sink.
‘Relax, they’re clean. I needed a plug and I couldn’t find one.’
‘So you used undies.’
Lily turned to look at Alice, whose dark roots were angrily molesting her peroxide blonde. She seemed to prefer it that way.
‘Well, aren’t you just a tall glass of judgy water? I am pretty sure you’d do the exact same thing if it was the first item you could find, which it was, cos my washing was on the sofa, which if you squint, you can just see in my living room all the way over there.’
Alice laughed, the joke being that the lounge backed onto the bench in the kitchen, which acted as a partition between the two ‘rooms’.
‘This really is the smallest apartment in the world, Woodfart.’
‘The real estate agent called it a view with a room. At least he was honest.’
‘View is good. View is worth it.’ Alice walked over to the huge windows facing out to the sea and raised the blinds fully. She whistled in appreciation. It was a wet, wild, miserable day, but the angry dark waves with an ominous grey lid of sky were impressive.
Lily gave up on the scissors and attacked the stems of the flowers with a steak knife. Alice had brought them as her housewarming gift, along with a bottle of tequila and a multicoloured salad bowl. Satisfied, she jammed them into a jar that had been the home of some ready-made spaghetti sauce up until very recently and plumped them out. She really was so shit at this domestic stuff, she noted. Simone had been the perfect friend-mother for the past three years, and now Lily was being forced to know things about cleaning and cooking stuff. It was horrible.
‘So how’s the line-up for the festival?’
‘Oh, who gives a shit,’ Alice said and flopped down onto the sofa, which although Lily had spent $900 on it was far too stiff and small. She’d wanted one she could sleep on as she watched movies, or make out with boys on, but that required a three-seater, and her new home simply wouldn’t allow such indulgent use of space.
‘I’m thinking of going on tour with Jesus. Not in a groupie capacity, although Almost Famous is my all-time favourite movie and I would be an incredible fucking groupie, but as assistant stage manager. Can’t tell if it’s a great idea or a really shitty one. He’s pushing me to do it, which is cute, I s’pose. Did I tell you they’re playing Splendour in the Grass? Do you wanna come? We won’t even have to sleep in a tent this time, because the band has apartments . . . come on. You know Kai will make it worth your while.’
Lily shook her head.
‘I won’t be able to get time off. And I hated it last time. It rained, and Pete took mushrooms and went AWOL for two days. What a dick.’
‘Fine, don’t come. But do you plan on having sex ever again? Can you at least come to a gig with me once in a while?’
‘One day. Hey, do you want popcorn? I feel like popcorn.’ Lily set about putting a bag of microwave popcorn in the microwave and rinsing out Alice’s salad bowl to serve it in.
‘Kilos of butter, please,’ Alice said. A pause and then: ‘He’s still on your mind, isn’t he.’
Lily didn’t answer straight away.
‘I just need to get over him, and I am subconsciously trying to do that.’
‘But you said the other week that Simone basically said you should be together! Blessing! Open gates!’
Lily took the still-popping bag out of the microwave and shook it around a bit before pouring it into the bowl.
‘I think we are both conveniently forgetting that Jack hasn’t exactly been banging my door down.’
Lily was getting frustrated at Alice’s ineptitude to see the electric fence around the Jack situation. She came around and placed the popcorn on the small glass coffee table Mimi had said Lily could use until she found one she liked.
‘He hasn’t emailed? Called? Nothing, nada?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then email him, FFS!’ Alice said, as she jammed two fistfuls of popcorn in her mouth and wiped her hands onto her black high-waisted jeans.
‘I’m not from your school of Stalk Men Til They Fall in Love With You.’
‘One email,’ Alice said with a mouthful. ‘Ask him out for a mocha frappuccino.’
‘NO. If anything ever happens between us, and it really, really won’t, he will need to start things so I don’t forever live in guilt.’
‘And this is why you are eternally single.’ Alice checked her phone for the time and sat up, tucking some of her wispy hair behind one ear with nails that about two weeks ago had sported a fresh coat of blue nail polish.
‘My overpriced beach parking is up. I gotta go.’
She stood up and put her green Paddi
ngton coat on, buttoning it up slowly, like she’d just learned how to do it.
‘Stop being such a loser. Just email him and say hi. That’s not creepy, that’s normal and friendly.’ Alice slung her bag over her shoulder and took two handfuls of popcorn for the road.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Lily said, popping a few more pieces of popcorn into her mouth as she confirmed to herself she would do no such thing.
38
Lily took a deep breath and tried not to let panic tumble in. Sophie, one of her assistant producers, had failed to advise Takeo, Melbourne’s three-hat Japanese superstar and star of the show, that he would have to use the knives provided by the show’s sponsor, and would not be able to use his own, and now he was threatening to pull out. Lily understood that Japanese chefs, in fact all chefs, were incredibly particular about their knives, but she also knew Takeo was sponsored by a rival knife brand, and this was far more likely the reason.
And they started shooting next week. And they needed him. Bad.
‘I’m just asking you to help me understand, Sophie. This was one of the key points all the chefs needed to be told. How is it that he didn’t know until now?’
Sophie, reminiscent of a gleaming panther with her long black straight hair, heavy black eyeliner and black leather motorbike jacket, looked at Lily as though she had just asked her if she was a boy or girl. Discussions with her were always arduous, but when she was indignant they quickly escalated to infuriating. Sophie refused to take any responsibility for anything, ever. Lily had even heard her tell one of the other producers the cyclist she’d knocked over in her car recently ran into her.
‘I mean, he has all the notes, I definitely emailed them to his assistant, and it says it on them,’ she said, the incredulity ringing in her words.
‘That’s fine, Sophie, everyone got the notes, I know that. The fact is that each participating chef needed to be told very clearly about our sponsors for this very reason, and Takeo, who is one of your chefs, was not. And hence, I draw a conclusion that perhaps you failed to tell him.’
‘But he knew! I swear to God, if he and his manager read that document properly, he had to know about the knives.’ Sophie spoke to Lily as though she were a small, naughty child who could not understand why she wasn’t allowed cookies right before dinner. Lily tried not to put it down to her being twenty-two and grossly over-entitled, because Mackenzie was the same age and had been a dream. Also, now that Lily had reached a position of management, she needed to learn how to manage people, not just be pissed off with them and walk away calling them fuckstick under her breath.
‘Okay. What’s done is done. Now we need to fix it. Fast. Call his people, and very delicately apologise for not making this clear, and ask if there’s anyway we can make it work.’
‘His assistant already said he can’t do it now.’
‘Yes, but the amazing thing about being a producer, Sophie, even an assistant one, is that we never take no for an answer, and we always find a way. That’s our job. That’s what Evan needs, that’s what the show needs, that’s what the network needs: for us to make sure, no matter what, we get the talent and the content required.’
Sophie crossed her arms and looked to the right, her foot tapping almost imperceptibly on the ground in either fury or outrage or even inrage; who knew, she seemed to have a whole archive of rages ready to fire.
‘Fine, but I don’t like our chances. I don’t even know why we are bothering with Takeo; he is like, the most precious person I have ever dealt with in my life.’ And she clip-clopped off to her desk, swishing her mane as she went, a million reasons as to why she was better than this undoubtedly swirling through her mind.
Lily shook her head. She wondered if she had ever been like that. She had certainly felt like that back when Eliza was casually claiming credit for all of her ideas. Suddenly Lily wondered if she was at risk of being an Eliza, and that was why Sophie was being such a pain in the arse. She thought about how she spoke to her, and tried to help her, and assured herself that she wasn’t a terrible senior producer. But still, it was worth keeping an eye on.
Back at her desk, which was tucked away in the corner of an open-plan office that buzzed and hummed with people, laughter and far too many YouTube clips, Lily sighed and opened up her shiny new Apple laptop. She’d had to run off and buy one after work on her first day after discovering they weren’t provided – you were assumed and expected to have your own. No clunky, chunky desktop dinosaurs on Evan’s watch. Everyone had Macs, so she’d copied, pretending she’d always intended to pick up her new one that evening as her old one had exploded over the weekend.
As always, when she left her desk for more than half an hour, a stream of bold names had snuck into her inbox, most of them Evan’s. He was incredibly hands-on but thankfully in a funny exciting genius way, not an overbearing, interruptive way. She saw his most recent email – the copy in the subject line as was often his stream-of-conscious thinking – asking them to all work Saturday. Amazingly, Lily didn’t mind one bit. She felt so much more invested in this show, so much more passionate than she had been at The Daily.
Double-clicking her way through the emails at lightning pace, Lily suddenly saw the name Jack Winters pop up. Everything went completely still for a moment. All noise faded away.
To: Lily
From: Jack Winters
Subject: Hey stranger
How are you? How’s the new job going? Long time no speak. That’s my fault for being rude. I finished up at The Daily last week (long story) but Siobhan filled me in on your new gig before I left. Bet you’re enjoying working with all those real chefs instead of a guy who can’t caramelise sugar without burning the pan.
Hey, love to pick your brain on something . . . wondering if you’re around the next few days if you have time to grab a coffee?
Jack
Both unsure of and unwilling to heed the protocol regarding aloofness when it came to response times and general keenness, Lily hit reply and started thumping out a response as fast as she could. Oh, she’d missed him! She’d missed him so much. And the joy she felt seeing his name in her inbox again and reading what he’d written was stark and irrefutable proof of just how much. She missed him as a workmate and she missed him as a friend, but she also missed him as the guy who made her take in a sharp little hit of air every time he entered the room.
To: Jack Winters
From: Lily Woodward
Subject: Re: Hey stranger
You LEFT! Let me guess, Nikkii asked you to do the segment topless and it was the final straw? Can’t wait to hear all the juicy details.
New job is amazing. Challenging too, which I’m loving. Not quite the slap-dash affair The Daily was, put it that way. There are all these international-format rules in place, most which drive me mental, but it’s a good learning curve.
Funny you should mention our chefs, as the EP actually threw your name up in the early days. (I told him to contact your management. And also that you were always burning pans.)
I could catch up Friday afternoon for a coffee? At about three? Tell me where and I’m there.
Lily
Before she could analyse her tone and exact word choice to the point of crippling indecision, she hit send. She was a friend, she was just being a friend, and a friend wouldn’t overthink it, she told herself as she calmly checked that it had been sent, so that he wouldn’t not get her response and think she was rude, and also, so she wouldn’t miss out on this magical coffee date come Friday.
She propped her elbows on the desk and leaned her chin into the palms of her hand for a moment, smiling widely, her pulse still racing. He’d emailed and he wanted to see her. Even if it was just nothingy work chat, she was going to see him, and that was all that counted, really.
Friday morning presented Lily with a spectacular vacuum of sartorial choices. She had bought a few new clothes for the job, but it was a workplace that approved of flats – practically demanded them – so she was back into he
r habit of ballet flats and jeans. She’d kept the blazers though, and under the tutelage of one of the other senior producers, Katie, who was fast becoming a good friend, she was now experimenting a little more with necklaces and bright little jumpers with collared shirts underneath. Casual but polished, and most crucially, comfortable for the long hours. It wasn’t sexy, though, not that she wanted to look ‘sexy’ per se for Jack, but she wanted to look a bit cuter than he was used to.
She settled on a little cherry-red sweater that always earned her compliments with a white shirt underneath, and black jeans that stopped just above the ankle. Her hair was growing so quickly, it was down to her collarbones, but it softened the look a bit, she decided. A bit of eye make-up, some tinted lip balm and she was good to go. Remember, Lily, she warned herself. This is not a date. This is just a catch up with a friend.
Her phone buzzed with a text. It was Simone. Lily blinked with the coincidence and creepiness of the timing. Was it a sign that she was doing the wrong thing? Was she doing the wrong thing catching up with Jack? No, surely not . . .
Hi babe! Just a lil hi and I miss you xx I will send a full email soon but Mum has banned me from the web for a while, prob a good thing!! I hope job is great and can’t wait to see your apartment soon as I’m back down xoxo
Lily could only shake her head in amazement. Crazy timing. Too much. Too, too much. She punched out a reply quickly.
Miss you too. How are you?? You’ll be shocked to know I haven’t eaten a single leaf of kale since you left. New job is so amazing, apartment is cute, roughly the size of our old bathroom. I’ll buzz you over weekend for a catch-up. xx
Lily wondered if it was deceptive to not tell her she was catching up with Jack, but then pushed the thought out of her mind because they were just friends.
A response buzzed quickly.
I feel great, totally clean 4 weeks now. Started teaching the local mums yoga, which is hilar . . . LA is a no-go. I might be moving back to Syd soon . . . Most likely with Michael. He’s been living up here with us. He’s changed so much. NEW man. New me. New everything, babes! Life is good. xoxo