He smiled. ‘Thank you so much, Samantha. You’re too kind.’ He paused, seeming to search for words. ‘You have made such a difference to my life over the past year. I hope you know how much I appreciate it.’
‘I do know,’ she said, looking down at her teacup. She knew it was going to be hard to say goodbye – she couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever come back.
‘You have to promise me you’ll have the most wonderful time possible. They’re all so excited that you’re coming. I don’t think they’ll ever let you go.’
Ted reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘Do you think you’re going to get rid of me that easily?’
Sam arrived at the offices of Byron Promotional Services at ten to one. The company occupied the ground floor of what was a fairly nondescript brick building in Surry Hills. She walked into the reception area and gave her name to the very young woman at the desk.
‘Oh, sure, right, Andrew said you’d be coming today,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘You’re early.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Not a problem,’ she dismissed. ‘Come through and we’ll see who’s here.’
Sam followed her around the partition wall into a vast, open office area that appeared to be virtually deserted. Amongst the haphazard groupings of desks and cabinets, Sam could only see one woman working at a computer.
‘Where is everybody?’
‘Out,’ she answered simply. ‘As you can imagine, most of our work is on site.’
‘Of course,’ Sam nodded.
‘I’m April, by the way.’
‘Please, call me Sam.’
‘Okay, Sam,’ April smiled. ‘Andrew isn’t in, I think he told you that? But anyway, that’s his office over there,’ she said, pointing to one end of the floor. ‘And this is the conference room here,’ she said, walking to the opposite end. It was a large glassed-in room with windows to the outside, facing a small green courtyard. From the office area, the room looked like a light-filled prism, bright and inviting.
A young man appeared from around the corner, carrying a cup of coffee. It was the same young man she had met at Darling Harbour that day, Sam was certain.
‘Hello!’ he said brightly. ‘Sam, isn’t it?’
She was surprised that he remembered her name. ‘Brad?’
‘Got it in one.’
‘You two know each other?’ asked April.
‘Sam came to check us out at the Outdoor Living Expo, if I remember right.’
She nodded.
‘Then I’ll leave you to it,’ said April. ‘I’d best get back to the desk.’
‘Thanks,’ Sam said.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ Brad asked her.
‘Oh no, that’s okay.’
‘Don’t be shy,’ he said. ‘Come on, Denise is still ten minutes away, I might as well show you where everything is.’
He took her back around the corner to a small kitchen area where two young women were making coffee. It seemed everyone was young.
‘Rachel, Kate, this is Sam, or do you prefer Samantha?’ Brad asked her.
‘No, honestly, I always get Sam.’
‘You’re Andrew’s friend, aren’t you?’ asked Rachel.
‘Well, friend of a friend.’
They made coffee and carried it back around to the conference room. Sam felt self-conscious that she had been given a free pass in. She hoped it wasn’t going to cause resentment amongst the rest of the staff. She would have to work hard to earn their respect, to make them believe she was capable of the job. She just needed to convince herself first.
‘This is a lovely room,’ said Sam as they settled around the vast conference table.
‘Best spot in the building,’ Brad agreed. ‘North light, trees to look at. It’s a regular utopia.’
‘Bloody men!’ shrieked yet another young woman, charging through the door. Sam recognised her from the Outdoor Expo.
‘Stephanie,’ Brad said. ‘This is Sam. She’s just starting today.’
‘Oh, hi Sam, I think we met?’
Sam nodded. ‘At the exhibition centre.’
‘What happened?’ Kate asked Stephanie.
‘Bloody Ben,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I told him to get back with the car, I had a meeting at one. So what does he do? Calls me from somewhere out near Parramatta. At twelve-thirty! “Oh, sorry babe”,’ she said, affecting a dopey voice, ‘“I just looked at the time.” He’s such a moron.’
‘Guys just don’t have the same sense of responsibility. They think in a different way than we do.’
‘No, the problem is, they don’t think at all.’
‘Um, you guys,’ Brad said, clearing his throat.
‘You do actually remember I am a male, when you’re having these “all men are stupid” conversations?’
‘You don’t count, Brad,’ said Rachel dismissively.
Sam thought Brad was cute. He had the scruffy thing down pat – scruffy sandy hair, scruffy goatee, ditto shirt, jeans. Jess would think he was ‘hot’.
‘You know what I reckon would be excellent?’ Stephanie asked the group. ‘An all-female events company.’
‘Yeah!’
‘We should start one!’
‘Ah guys, what about me?’
‘Imagine, only women in the office –’
‘BORING!!’ Denise boomed, coming through the doorway. ‘With a capital B and all the other letters as well.’
‘Hi Denise,’ the group chorused.
‘God, I could think of nothing worse than a women-only workplace,’ she declared, walking briskly to the other end of the conference table. ‘Where’s the fun if you don’t have any men around? Hi Braddles. How are you, darling?’ she winked at him.
‘But women are better at this business,’ said Stephanie. ‘Men are not natural organisers –’
‘Of course they are,’ Denise scoffed, dropping a load of folders onto the table with a thud. ‘God, how do you think they run corporations and countries –’
‘And wars,’ Kate added.
‘Badly most of the time,’ muttered Stephanie.
‘And why can’t they remember to put the garbage out?’ said Rachel.
‘Because,’ said Denise, ‘they all have wives who run around doing everything for them to prove how indispensable they are. Until they get jack of it and then wonder why their blokes can’t close a drawer without being nagged.’
‘So it’s all our fault, Denise?’ said Stephanie drily.
‘I’m just saying there are men who are lazy and there are women who are lazy, men who are disorganised and women the same. And there are men who are perfectly capable, and women who are control freaks. Sam, hi, how are you?’ she said, without drawing a breath.
Sam was startled Denise had noticed her. ‘I’m fine, good thanks, Denise.’
‘Have you met everyone?’
She nodded.
‘Let’s get on with it then, shall we? First item on the agenda. The O-Mega launch.’
‘The computer company?’ asked Rachel.
Denise nodded, slapping an overhead sheet on the projector and switching it on. An image of a bright orange, round-edged computer monitor appeared on the screen.
‘They’re bringing out a range of decorator hardware, colours to match your décor, brighten your office and make your day,’ she said in a monotone, reading off a piece of paper.
‘Didn’t Macintosh do this, like years ago?’ Stephanie frowned.
‘That’s right,’ Denise said, passing brochures around the table. ‘Now everyone wants to get on the bandwagon. I’m just waiting for the first retro computer to come out. You know, like those bulky toasters and 1950s-style blenders? Next they’ll bring out big chunky beige monitors with tiny little screens, which take up twice as much desk space.’ She laughed at her own joke. ‘Okay, where do we start, good people? Who can tell Sam what’s the first, most important decision?’
‘Location, location,’ the group murmured au
tomatically.
‘A bit of enthusiasm, please!’ Denise exclaimed loudly. ‘And why is it important to decide on location before anything else?’
‘The location will dictate the style, size, atmosphere –’
‘Thank you Bradley, you will get a gold star in your workbook.’
‘Teacher’s pet,’ muttered Kate, grinning at him across the table.
‘Now everyone, look at the bumf I’ve handed around. Concentrate. See the launch in your mind.’
Silence descended upon the group. Sam flicked through the advertising material. She hoped Denise didn’t expect anything from her. Surely she was just an observer at this stage.
‘Well, there are the regular exhibition spaces, at Darling Harbour or Homebush,’ Rachel suggested.
‘Blurgh!’ Denise pulled a face. ‘Where’s your imagination, sunshine? And this is a launch, don’t forget, not an expo. It will be invitation-only, we don’t need a great big cavernous warehouse. It has to be more intimate than that, it has to be sexy.’
Sam stared at the pages. Brilliant, contemporary, works of art, cutting edge, sculptural, state of the art . . .
‘What about,’ she mused. Everyone lifted their heads at once to look at her. Shit. She swallowed. ‘Oh look, I’m probably way off beam here.’
‘Go ahead, Sam,’ Denise urged. ‘Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that sound crazy at first.’
She took a breath. ‘Well, it’s only because they’re making such a big deal about them being arty and contemporary and everything . . .’
They were all waiting.
‘What about the Museum of Contemporary Art?’
Denise smiled broadly. ‘Well, that doesn’t sound crazy at all!’
‘They have function rooms, don’t they?’ said Kate. ‘A friend of my sister’s had her wedding reception there.’
‘Yeah, but it might be better to mount it like an exhibition,’ Stephanie suggested.
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Sam.
‘Fabulous,’ declared Denise. ‘Okay, I’ll leave it with you, Sam. The launch is in two months, we’d better have it confirmed by next week.’
‘Sorry? What do you want me to do?’ Sam was gobsmacked.
‘Well, you’ll get in touch with the MCA, check out our options, run it by me . . .’ Denise was waiting for it to register with Sam.
‘Okay, sure,’ she said determinedly. ‘I’ll get right on to it.’
‘And well done you,’ Denise added. ‘It’s a truly stupendous idea.’
Sam felt herself blushing. She picked up her cup and took a gulp of coffee.
‘Invitations, anyone?’ Denise continued.
‘This will be for IT people?’ asked Brad.
Denise consulted one of the folders in front of her, scanning through a couple of pages. She handed them to Brad. ‘Looks like it. But there are retailers there, media of course, a bit of everything really.’
‘You want me and Kate to mock up some invitations?’ said Rachel.
‘Sure, show me something no later than next week, okay?’
‘If these are all techno types,’ Sam started, surprised to hear her own voice again. ‘Um, well, wouldn’t they communicate by email?’
‘Yeah,’ said Brad. ‘But so much email goes around, they’re likely to take it as junk and just trash it.’
‘I was trying to get someone’s attention once,’ Sam continued. ‘And I finally sent a series of probably half a dozen emails, so that the subject lines all read as one sentence when they appeared in the inbox.’
‘Do you understand what she’s talking about, Brad?’ Denise asked.
‘Yeah, sounds cool,’ he said. ‘Is it foolproof?’
Sam nodded. ‘If you know the trick.’
‘Alright, you two work on that together,’ Denise resumed. ‘Rachel and Kate do the hard copy invitations. Next . . .’
‘Did it work?’ Brad muttered under his breath.
‘Sorry?’
‘Did you get the someone’s attention?’
‘Oh, yes, I did.’ Sam felt the pang in her chest that always accompanied thoughts of Hal. She worked very hard at suppressing such thoughts. She pushed them so far down that instead they surfaced in her dreams. Vivid, sometimes erotic, but always heart-wrenching dreams, so real she’d wake up in a sweat. Like the one she had all the time, where she asked him to kiss her and he walked away.
‘That’s it, ladies and gentleman,’ Denise said finally, about an hour later. ‘Now run along, there’s a lot of work to be done.’
Sam stood up as the others filed out of the room. She hesitated, watching Denise pack up her folders. She cleared her throat. ‘Um, Denise?’
‘Yeah?’ she said, not looking up.
‘Well, um, I’m just a bit concerned that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I’m untried in this industry, maybe I’ll stuff up . . .’
‘Maybe the sky will fall in, too.’
‘What did you say?’
Denise stopped to look at her. ‘You haven’t heard that expression before?’
‘No, it’s not that. Just a lot of people have been saying that to me lately.’
‘And rightly so, by the sounds of it,’ Denise remarked. ‘God help us and save us, Sam, if you never try, how will you know whether you can do it? Imagine if Thomas Edison had thought he couldn’t do it? Or . . .’ She clicked her fingers in the air. ‘Oh, I dunno, I can never think of examples when I want them. And then tonight in the bath it’ll suddenly come to me.’ She stared at Sam. ‘What were we saying? Oh yes! Worrying never got anyone anywhere.’ She picked up the stack of folders. ‘Besides, you do have some experience, I recall. Where were you working before . . . Girls for Rent?’
Sam suppressed a grin. ‘No, Wife for Hire.’
‘That’s it. You have to go for it, Sam. Let’s see what you’re made of. Don’t forget, you have us, you’re not on your own. If you slip up, we’ll be there to make sure the whole thing doesn’t fall into a crashing heap.’
‘Like a safety net?’ Sam suggested.
‘A safety net,’ Denise nodded. ‘Good analogy. Now, come along, we’d best find you a desk.’
Two months later
The door opened just as Sam pushed the key into the lock.
‘Sam!’ Max exclaimed. ‘Do you realise what time it is?’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Max, I didn’t mean to keep you this long.’
‘It’s not me I’m worried about,’ said Max, following Sam into the living room. ‘It’s almost ten o’clock. You can’t keep working these hours.’
Sam threw herself onto the sofa. ‘I won’t have to after tomorrow. The launch will be over. Besides, all the hard work is done. Denise said a well-organised function runs itself.’
‘And what about the next one? You can’t keep up at this pace!’
Sam was lying flat on her back, a cushion over her eyes. ‘We’ve switched places,’ she remarked.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re doing the impersonations of Mum now.’
‘Oh, she called by the way.’
‘What did she want?’
‘Nothing. Only to wish you all the best tomorrow.’
‘What do you know,’ Sam murmured.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Mm? Somebody handed me a muffin at some stage. I think I ate it.’
‘Do you want me to fix you something?’
‘No, I’m too exhausted to eat.’ She sighed heavily. ‘And that bloody dog has been keeping me up at night with his crying. They all begged me to get him, but do you think they hear him at night?’
‘Of course not. They’re kids. Their antennae aren’t tuned to night crying,’ said Max. ‘Why don’t you just bring him inside?’
‘I do! I put his basket right near my bed. But he’s only happy if I actually hold him.’
‘You should have got Jeff to take him while he’s a puppy. Give him some practice.’
Sam grunted f
rom under the cushion.
‘Was that a snore?’
‘Almost.’
‘Well, I have to get going,’ Max declared. ‘I’ve got an early start tomorrow. Dan wants to go for a run on the beach in the morning.’
Sam lifted the cushion to stare at her sister. ‘You go running?’
‘Get real!’ Max exclaimed, horrified. ‘I lie on the beach and doze, and then we go and have brekkie at a café together.’
Sam looked at her wistfully, tucking the cushion under her head. ‘That sounds nice.’
Max considered her for a moment. ‘Do you miss him?’
Sam was about to say ‘who’, but there was no point playing that game. She just nodded instead.
‘So what are you going to do about it?’
She sighed loudly. ‘To be honest, Max, I have to check my diary before I scratch myself these days. We would probably have broken up if we were still together, with the hours I work.’
‘Mm,’ Max pondered. ‘You realise you didn’t actually answer the question just then?’
‘What was it again?’
‘What are you going to do about the fact that you miss Hal?’
Sam hesitated. ‘I don’t even know if he’s still in the country.’
‘He told me he was involved in business that was going to keep him here for quite a while.’
‘Oh? You’ve never mentioned that before.’
‘You haven’t wanted to talk about Hal before,’ Max declared. ‘You haven’t let me so much as utter his name. There’s a lot I’ve wanted to say to you, but you haven’t given me the chance.’
Sam looked at her. ‘Go ahead. I’m listening.’
‘Sherl, he loves you so much. He told me he felt a connection to you he’d never felt before, and that he could be more himself with you than anyone else, something like that.’
Sam swallowed. ‘He said that?’
‘Yes, he did. I didn’t even have to twist his arm.’
She sighed. ‘Well, I think he got over it. He’s not exactly breaking the door down. I haven’t heard a word from him all this time.’
‘Give the guy a break, Sherl!’ Max exclaimed. ‘How many times is he supposed to come back only to have you turn him away again? It’s about time you put yourself on the line.’
Wife for Hire Page 50