Less Than Perfect

by Ber Carroll

  Matthew’s attention is totally fixed on me. If there’s something wrong, he always wants to know what it is; he never puts a TV show or anything else trivial first. He cares about me, really cares; it’s evident by how much he worries. He scolds me, gently but consistently, if I drink too much or eat too little, and for refusing to wear a diabetic identity bracelet. Having witnessed how I weave between cars and zoom through orange traffic lights when we’re cycling, he’s begged me to stick to bike-paths where my supposedly reckless riding is less likely to get me killed. I’m touched that he worries; it’s like having a warm blanket wrapped around me. And I worry about him too: affectionate, mild, normal worry – when I can manage to contain it.

  Tonight Matthew’s tiredness is showing around his eyes and I realise that his day wasn’t so great either.

  ‘You seem to be pretty quiet tonight as well.’

  ‘Ah, just a frustrating day at work. None of the kids will talk. It’s obvious they know who did it, but they’re too scared to say …’

  Matthew is still working on the same case. Other things have come and gone in the months in between – a sexual assault, a fatal car accident, a messy and protracted case of domestic abuse – but this case with the brain-damaged teenager is always there in the background, the injustice and unfairness niggling away at him.

  ‘I don’t want to wreck the lives of the kids who did it. I just want them to suffer some consequences, enough to make them stop and think if they’re ever in that situation again. If it was my kid, I’d rather he was caught and faced the music. I’d hate it if he got away with something so violent and unprovoked.’

  When I first met Matthew I spent many quiet moments wondering why he was single, why he hadn’t been snatched up and if he had a major flaw that had yet to reveal itself. I’ve since learned that he doesn’t have a flaw, at least not in himself. His job is his flaw: the unsociable hours, the unpredictability, the bad days which cause him to worry when he should be relaxing in front of the TV and to toss and turn in bed at night. It’s his job that turns women off, not Matthew himself.

  I snuggle closer to him. I’m more resilient than other women. I can work around the long hours and last-minute changes of plan. I can handle his bad days at work and he has already demonstrated many times that he can handle mine. He hugs me closer and I ignore the stab of fear that always follows any feelings of happiness or contentment: fear that this relationship won’t last; fear that fate, once more, has something terrible in store.

  Standing in the reception area, Nicola is juggling; she has apparently graduated from bean bags to balls and she’s demonstrating her proficiency to all those who care enough to watch, which is a surprising number of people.

  ‘Don’t you have any work to do?’ I ask a little sourly.

  ‘Yes,’ her eyes are cast upwards, ‘but I’m just taking a moment to de-stress.’

  ‘You’re showing off – stop passing it off as something else.’

  She allows the balls to fall into her hands. ‘Want to have a go?’ she asks provocatively.

  ‘Don’t make me swear at you!’

  She grins as though she’s won some imaginary battle.

  I haven’t seen much of Nicola socially in the past few months. She continues to keep her cards close to her chest on David but it’s clear they’re spending the majority of their free time together. I do manage to catch up with them both in the Mitre after work on Fridays and I’ve come to like David. He’s certainly overly conscious of his image, but he isn’t as shallow as first impressions suggest. He’s keenly intelligent, funny in his own droll way and surprisingly obliging; all Nicola has to do is raise one of her black eyebrows and David’s already at the bar buying a new round of drinks.

  ‘Is it a social visit to the training floor this morning?’ she asks.

  ‘Actually, I’m here to get the Telelink feedback surveys for Jarrod.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re Jarrod’s lackey now?’

  I shrug in reply. The Telelink implementation has been running for a week and I’m assisting in small ways, though staying firmly in the background. To be honest, I’m grateful to Jarrod for allowing me to be involved at any level. ‘I’ve been –’

  I stop short at the sight of a familiar figure making his way in our direction: Derek. He isn’t limping, at least not noticeably, and this brings me an instant measure of relief. I raise my head, poised to deliver a civilised greeting, one that will leave the way open for warmer exchanges in the future but won’t ask too much of this first meeting since the accident.

  He looks through me. ‘Nicola, we’re having technical issues in room three …’

  Nicola moves quickly and Derek follows without so much as a glance at me.

  When I get back to my desk, all I can do is sit and fume: I’m so furious I can’t pretend to work. Derek snubbed me. Derek, who I’ve wined and dined and danced attendance on for the last two years, has just treated me as though I’m some lowly employee he hasn’t even met.

  My phone rings. I swallow a lump of fury before picking it up. ‘Caitlin O’Reilly speaking.’

  ‘This is Harry Dixon,’ says the clipped voice at the end of the line. ‘So, it’s training facilities that you provide …’

  ‘Yes, yes it is.’ I try to collect myself, to put Derek out of my mind and focus on this very unexpected call. ‘We specialise –’

  ‘I read through the brochures you sent. You have some very high-profile clients.’

  ‘Yes, we do, across –’

  ‘And the case studies make interesting reading.’

  ‘Yes, I –’

  ‘What I need to know is if you can handle big numbers?’ he demands.

  ‘We have three thousand Telelink employees going through here at the moment.’ Finally I’m allowed to finish a sentence, and I get a satisfying sense of revenge from dropping Telelink’s name without Derek’s knowledge – it’s nice to use him, for a change.

  ‘You’d better come in and see me, then.’

  Smiling triumphantly, I put down the phone after arranging a time to meet. I promptly decide to channel all my thoughts and energy towards Harry Dixon, and to do my best to forget about Derek and the immature, vindictive manner in which he snubbed me.

  Matthew’s sister looks little like him. Sophie is small-boned with a delicate face, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Her eyes are blue, but softer, not as intense as Matthew’s. She wears jeans and a peasant-style top, her feet clad in silver thongs and her toenails painted with dark-purple varnish.

  I’ve been apprehensive about this meeting, making excuses to put it off until now. From Ben’s and Matthew’s descriptions, I expected someone older, sadder, but Sophie doesn’t look old enough to have a four-year-old son. She also seems genuinely pleased to see me.

  ‘It’s so nice to meet you at last.’ She smiles warmly, squeezing my hands in hers. ‘Come through. I thought we’d eat on the balcony – the kitchen is too tiny. Can I get you a drink, Caitlin? A glass of wine? Oh, I almost forgot – you have to be careful about what you drink, don’t you?’

  ‘I can eat or drink most things in moderation, I just have to adjust the insulin accordingly,’ I reply, trying to make my tone light and not display how awkward I find it to talk about my diabetes. ‘I’d love a glass of wine, thanks.’

  The whole apartment is tiny, not just the kitchen. It’s neat and well presented but the lack of space makes it feel constricting and a little dark. The living area, where we’re standing, has a small dining table, a two-seater sofa and a TV stand, the furniture plain and inexpensive.

  Ben tugs at my arm. ‘Come and see my bedroom.’

  I share a smile with Matthew before allowing Ben to pull me away.

  ‘So, this is where you hang out.’ I take in the single bed with the Spider-Man duvet, the bookshelf holding books and toys, and the grey, industrial-looking blinds on the window. ‘It’s very tidy in here – much tidier than my room when I was a kid. I shared with my sister, Maev
e, and she was very messy.’

  ‘Mum made me clean up because you were coming,’ he admits earnestly. ‘She’s been cleaning all morning. For you!’

  ‘Oh.’ I don’t know how to respond to such honesty.

  Thankfully, Ben’s thoughts have already moved elsewhere. ‘Do you want to play something?’

  ‘Err … what do you want to play?’

  ‘Car stunts … or meat-eating dinosaurs … or Lego.’

  Lego sounds the most harmless. Ben slides out a big tub from under his bed and up-ends it at my feet. Suddenly the room doesn’t look quite so tidy and I hope Sophie won’t be cross.

  ‘What will we build?’

  ‘Let’s build a city,’ I suggest, getting down on my knees.

  We spend a few quiet minutes constructing high-rise buildings on the Lego mat, before Matthew comes to the door with my glass of wine.

  ‘I see that you’ve been sucked in.’ He smirks.

  ‘Uncle Matt, can you make a police car for our city?’ Ben looks up with big, imploring eyes.

  ‘Speaking of getting sucked in …’ Matthew puts my glass on the bookshelf and joins us down on the floor. He builds a police car and an ambulance, and I build an emergency services headquarters. All three of us are quite absorbed until Sophie calls out that lunch is ready.

  The balcony is a decent size and has a pleasant outlook on some nearby Victorian terraces. The pale winter sun is already at the back of the apartment block and it’s a little cold, but I imagine it would be lovely sitting out here in summer.

  ‘I hope the food is okay,’ Sophie frets, tucking an escaped wisp of dark hair behind her ear. ‘I didn’t know what you could eat, Caitlin, so I kept it light and simple.’

  ‘It’s perfect.’ I smile.

  Lunch is a salad – chicken, walnut and pear – with an accompanying bowl of chat potatoes. Sophie seems to have given a lot of thought to my dietary requirements as well as, it soon transpires, other aspects of my diabetes.

  ‘I’ve noticed that you don’t wear an identity bracelet or necklace,’ she comments during the meal. ‘If anything happened, how would people know that you’re diabetic?’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ Matthew interjects. ‘My concerns exactly.’

  I give him a fond look of exasperation before turning to Sophie. ‘As I keep pointing out to Matthew, the negatives of wearing that kind of jewellery far outweigh the benefits.’

  ‘Why?’ Ben enquires, as though he fully understands the conversation.

  ‘The main problem is work,’ I explain. ‘Every workplace wants fit, healthy employees and management gets nervous with illness or health issues of any kind. If my boss knew I was diabetic, he would notice every single sick day, every morning I was slightly late for work. He would worry about me checking my blood and disposing of needles in the bathroom, and he would be constantly on the watch for ways that the disease is affecting my work, when in fact it doesn’t affect it at all. In case of emergencies, I carry an ID card in my wallet.’

  I’m not used to discussing the everyday realities of diabetes, and the social and work challenges that come with the disease. I’m still uncomfortable even with Matthew, who’s quite determined to talk about it openly and frequently, and to fully understand its impact on my life. And it’s not just my diabetes he wants to understand, it’s everything about me: my work, my childhood, my family. I don’t always answer his questions.

  Thankfully, the conversation moves on after my little speech. Sophie and Matthew begin discussing their other siblings. They’re clearly a close-knit family, and I soon learn that meeting Sophie is not an end in itself but a first step.

  ‘Mum can’t wait to meet you, Caitlin.’ Sophie has a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘She’s instructed me to report back to her after lunch today.’

  Matthew shoots me a glance. ‘Hopefully we can get up there for a weekend sometime soon.’

  He’s mentioned the idea of going to Deniliquin a few times now but I’ve managed to sidestep the conversation whenever it comes up. I know I have to go at some stage; I just need to work my way up to it, like I did with meeting Sophie. I can’t help this reluctance, my instinctive resistance towards each level of involvement as it comes. I’m aware that my reluctance stems from a sense of self-protection, in case our relationship doesn’t last. But Matthew has no such reservations. He assumes that our relationship is permanent, that nothing can destroy it, that I will meet all of his family and he will eventually meet all of mine.

  It’s after five when we leave. I thank Sophie and Ben and promise that I will come again soon – and I mean it. I think.

  ‘You were right. I do like your sister,’ I tell Matthew as we walk down the stairs.

  He smiles over his shoulder. ‘I could say I told you so.’

  ‘She seemed really happy and upbeat. She’s obviously come to terms with things now.’

  ‘Not fully.’ Matthew opens the heavy door at the bottom of the stairs and stands back for me to go through first. ‘Sophie puts up a good front. She’s great most of the time. It’s just when she’s alone, or lets her guard down.’

  My thoughts jump to Steve, Sophie’s cheating ex-husband, the one who broke her heart, and Ben’s. ‘Don’t you feel furious at Steve for causing all this pain?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m angry with him. But at the end of the day he’s a good dad. He cares about Ben – he makes sure he has everything he needs.’

  ‘Doesn’t Ben need a father who’s there for him morning and night? Isn’t that the most fundamental need of all?’

  Matthew fires me a look: he’s obviously guessed that I’m drawing parallels with my own father. ‘Ideally, yes. But in the absence of the ideal scenario where both parents live together, a father can still be there for his child. As long as the child knows he’s cared for, that he’s loved, and if anything goes wrong, Dad will try to fix it … Given the domestic situations I see every day at work, that counts for a lot.’ He leans down to seal his point of view with a kiss. ‘By the way, you were great with Ben.’

  ‘So were you.’

  ‘Well, I’m his uncle – it’s part of my job description!’ He kisses me again, his lips lingering this time.

  ‘Should we go to yours?’ I murmur.

  ‘Pete and Phil are having a few people over. Can we go to yours instead?’

  ‘Let me just ring Jeanie to see what time she’s coming home.’ I break away from his embrace to locate my phone.

  ‘Does it make a difference if she’s there?’ His tone has a slight edge to it.

  ‘It’s nicer to have the place to ourselves.’ I dial Jeanie’s number. ‘Hey, it’s me. What time are you getting in tonight?’

  ‘Who is this?’ asks a strange voice.

  ‘It’s Caitlin. Who’s this?’

  ‘Kim.’

  ‘Sorry, I was looking for Jeanie –’ The dial tone cuts me off. ‘I just rang Jeanie’s old number by mistake,’ I explain to Matthew as I check my phone for the new number. ‘Someone called Kim has the number now. I’ll just try her again.’

  This time I’m successful. Jeanie’s killing time in an airport lounge in Adelaide. She’ll arrive in Melbourne at seven, provided her flight is called soon and there are no other delays. It doesn’t leave enough time.

  ‘Let’s just go to yours,’ I say to Matthew as I tuck my phone back in my bag. ‘Otherwise Jeanie might walk in on us.’

  ‘Am I ever going to meet this elusive flatmate of yours?’

  ‘Of course you are.’ I laugh uneasily and hook my arm through his.

  Chapter 23

  Net Banc’s headquarters are located in one of the most prestigious buildings in the city, the décor in the foyer ultra-modern, red leather couches, black and white patterned ottomans and large colourful pieces of art set against stark white walls. Harry Dixon’s office is equally modern and the man himself younger and less stern than I’d envisaged. He shakes my hand briskly and we both sit down on retro-style armchairs, positioned near the window
to maximise the spectacular view of the city. I sneak a quick glimpse down at the grid of streets, splashes of greenery and the Yarra River splitting the view in two, before I take his file from my briefcase and rest it on my knees.

  ‘Thanks for seeing me, Harry. I can only imagine how busy you are at the moment.’

  He nods, his hands clasped as he stares steadily across at me. He doesn’t offer any information and, from the brief silence, I assume he wants me to take the lead.

  ‘How many extra staff do you have coming in through the merger?’

  ‘Two thousand. Approximately fifteen hundred in operations and the remainder in corporate services.’

  I go to write down the details on my form and suddenly, in a moment of horror, notice what’s written after Harry’s name: VERY CRANKY BASTARD. As discreetly as possible, I scratch over the damning, deal-breaking words with my pen.

  ‘And what’s the most immediate training challenge?’ I ask, hoping he hasn’t noticed anything untoward.

  ‘To train the new operations staff in our computer system.’

  ‘Do you already have training materials for the system?’

  ‘Yes. We had an upgrade a few months back and all the material is current.’

  ‘Great. And do you have experienced trainers in-house?’

  ‘Yes, but perhaps not enough of them.’

  ‘Is there a plan for how and when you might run the training?’

  ‘We’re building a plan and a budget at the moment.’

  ‘And what’s your decision-making process when the plan’s complete?’

  ‘You’re looking at it: me.’ He looks slightly amused. ‘I’m the decision-maker here!’

  Though most deals involve a protracted fact-finding stage before pricing is as much as mentioned, my instincts are telling me to jump in now and not let this exceptional opportunity pass me by.

  ‘I can do some preliminary pricing based on the number of employees,’ I offer, looking up from my notes. ‘And I would really like you to come and visit our premises, Harry, so you can see our state-of-the-art facilities first-hand.’