The Dating Game

by Avril Tremayne

  Plus, she wasn’t bombarding David with texts and phone calls all day long. She’d limited herself to just two texts per day, and one call (which always went to voicemail)—all versions of I love you, I miss you, How are you, Please call me, Waiting for you, interspersed with a snow dome of the day photo, shots of her underwear, and on one occasion, a video clip of an actual rain dance she’d found online. And although David never once responded, she could at least picture him smiling as he read, listened or watched, and that made her feel connected, and she had to stay connected or she really thought she’d go insane.

  At the start of week two, Sarah’s world tilted dramatically when a quick check of her diary revealed her period was two days late. Breathless with hope, she went pelting off to buy a home pregnancy test—and although a quick visit to the staff bathroom produced an unequivocal ‘not pregnant’ result, she remained convinced that she was pregnant, just too newly pregnant for an accurate test reading.

  So she bought another test to take in a week’s time, and meanwhile forced herself to eat regularly for the sake of the baby, abandoned alcohol, and pondered the best way to tell David the news. Once she told David, her life would fall into idyllic place. She just knew it. She opted to skip out of her weekly catch-up with the girls, though—that level of pretence was beyond her until the pregnancy issue was resolved.

  At the end of week two, she arrived home from work to find a parcel on her doorstep and her heartbeat went into overdrive as she caught the hint of patchouli, dark rose, and brandy cream that wafted up from it. Her heartbeat stuttered then stalled, however, when she opened it to find her red dress and shoes on top of the other clothes David had taken from her place to make room in her wardrobe for his suit. She couldn’t believe he’d posted them back to her rather than delivering them in person, and she certainly couldn’t understand why there was no note—for which she’d searched more thoroughly than a crime scene investigator swabbed for DNA.

  It was a dark moment.

  After all her texts and calls, he couldn’t pen one line, even to say, ‘Here’s your stuff back’?

  At that point, Sarah decided it was time to stop pretending everything was okay in favour of some hard-core campaign advice to effect a reconciliation with the man she loved. She needed Lane, the doyenne of cool, calm, collected; she needed the queen of street smarts, Erica the Oracle, and she finally needed to confess all to ‘do you want me to beat the crap out of him’ Adam, because he was a guy and as a recently reformed commitment-phobe he might have some tips to offer for winning over her own.

  One phone call determined that Lane and Adam were at home, and a second sent Erica haring off to meet her at their place. All that was left to do was grab her new pregnancy testing kit (because she was suddenly feeling lucky) and sally forth in a taxi.

  Adam lived in a lovingly restored historic terrace house in Newtown, which she’d considered one of the coolest suburbs in Sydney ever since she’d gone to university in nearby Camperdown. Adam’s house had been her second home—so different from the soon-to-be ex grand family home in genteel Mosman. But now that Adam and Lane were living together, Sarah knew she could no longer run tame at Adam’s, coming and going at will. It was time to hand in the key Adam had given her and move on.

  When the taxi dropped her off, she took a moment to gaze fondly at the graceful old façade of Adam’s house and say a quiet, private farewell. She felt buoyed and happy at being about to enact the key return scene—a symbolic gesture indicating she was finally all grown up and ready to live not with her mother or her father, and not with her brother, but in a place that was perfect for the next phase of her life. Like, perhaps, a glamorous, inner-city apartment, with a view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and an artist in residence.

  The buoyant happiness lasted through two whole steps towards the house—which was when the cramp hit low in her belly, doubling her over.

  She knew what the cramp meant. Knew that all her happiness was being torn away in that one irreversible, bleeding moment. Knew that she would not, after all, be living in a glamorous, inner-city apartment, with a view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and an artist in residence.

  She couldn’t move. Didn’t want to move. Ever, ever, ever again.

  She heard a car door close behind her, then Erica’s husky voice, ‘Sarah, did you drop something?’

  But she couldn’t speak, couldn’t even turn her head. She wanted to vomit. Vomit and die. Because she was never going to see David again.

  ‘Sarah?’ Hurrying steps. ‘What is it?’

  ‘My period,’ she gasped, and started to cry. ‘I’m getting my period.’

  ‘Okay, not sure why that’s catastrophic, but I can roll with it.’ Erica, the perfect person in a crisis.

  Arm going around her. Being led along the path. Firm knock on the door. Door opening. Lane standing there, Adam behind her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Adam asked, alarmed.

  ‘She’s getting her period.’ That was Erica. ‘So we don’t need you, Adam.’

  ‘Eahhgh!’ That was Adam, a flash of fear on his face that would have made Sarah laugh, except that nothing would ever be funny again.

  ‘Don’t be a dick, Adam.’ Erica. ‘Go and get some whisky, but take your time. Lane, help me get her to the bathroom.’

  ‘Through here.’ That was Lane, to Erica. And then to Adam: ‘We’ll see you in the library when you’re brave enough.’

  The library, where all the big discussions were held, all the crises dealt with.

  ‘Okay, I’ll get the whisky and see you in … in a while,’ Adam said—which didn’t make sense. He kept the whisky in the library. Should Sarah remind him? No. Too many words needed. And really, who cared?

  Things moving fast. Bathroom. Weeping uncontrollably as she confronted the physical evidence; sobbing while taking care of the physical necessities. The library. Being settled into Adam’s favourite green leather armchair; Erica tucking a rug around her while Lane dragged two other armchairs into position; Erica reaching for one of her hands, Lane taking the other.

  ‘So,’ Erica said. ‘The problem is …?’

  ‘I wanted to be pregnant,’ Sarah said.

  Erica and Lane exchanged glances. ‘To David Bennett?’ Erica asked carefully.

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘But aren’t you on the pill?’ Erica asked.

  ‘Yes, but accidents happen, don’t they? Nothing’s foolproof. So when I was late, which I never am, I thought … I thought … Oh God.’

  Erica squeezed her hand hard. ‘Okay, the tears are seriously disturbing me, so can you snap out of it?’

  Sarah pulled both hands free and wiped at her eyes. ‘Sorry, you know how much I hate crying, but it’s a desperate situation.’

  Erica and Lane exchanged another glance. ‘Yeah, I would have thought being pregnant to a man you’ve only known for a few months and who you’ve just split up with would be a better definition of “desperate”,’ Erica said quizzically. ‘So what the hell’s going on?’

  Sarah’s bottom lip was trembling again. ‘Nothing’s going on. Nothing’s been going on for two weeks.’

  Pause while Erica and Lane exchanged another look, and then Erica ventured a cautious: ‘Yes, but that was the plan. Broken curse—move on, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you still wanted to be pregnant?’ Erica asked, bemused.

  ‘Yes, because I love him, and it’s the only way I can have him.’

  Erica stiffened. ‘I hope you’re not about to tell us you were trying to baby trap him.’

  ‘Baby trap? No!’ And then Sarah frowned. ‘Oh! Oh, well, yes, I suppose I was, in a way.’

  ‘Sarah Quinn! Of all the despicable—’

  ‘No, no, it’s not like that. David would have been happy. Elated, overjoyed, thrilled—’

  ‘God help us all,’ Erica said before she could get a head of steam going. ‘No more synonyms, or I’ll slap you.�
��

  ‘Sarah.’ Lane—venturing in with caution. ‘Perhaps you could start by telling us why you really split up?’

  ‘Because he loves me,’ Sarah said.

  Erica passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Okay, now I really don’t understand.’ Erica turned to Lane. ‘Do you?’

  Lane shook her head.

  ‘Right, Sarah,’ Erica said, all business. ‘Rewind. Tell us everything, leave nothing—and I mean nothing—out.’

  ‘It started nine years ago …’

  ***

  There was a long silence after Sarah stopped talking.

  And then Lane said, ‘You know, Sarah, you’re quite lucky in a way.’

  Sarah blinked at her. That was not the reaction she was expecting. Where was the sympathy? The commiseration? ‘How so?’

  ‘Think about it. Most couples don’t know they’re going to have a conception problem until it’s too late. They’re already married, and they’ve probably tried to procreate for a couple of years, and that’s when they start thinking something’s wrong. So they go to the doctor and get a nasty shock, and then they have to start figuring out what to do.’

  ‘Like David and Rebel,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Yes, like David and Rebel. She probably thought she’d hit the genetic jackpot with David, because he’s such a beautiful man. What a shame they didn’t go for fertility testing before they got married, since that was so important to her. It would have saved a lot of time and emotional upheaval.’

  Sarah looked at Erica to see if she was as shocked as Sarah was at Lane’s unfolding argument, but Erica was leaning back in her chair, relaxed and smiling. Appreciative, even.

  ‘You, on the other hand,’ Lane continued, ‘can go into your relationship—or not, as the case may be—with your eyes wide open.’ She focused on the painting on the wall behind Sarah, but didn’t appear to be actually seeing it. ‘Hmm, I must try and find some statistics on how many people separate because of infertility.’

  Sarah winced. ‘That’s so … clinical.’

  Lane brought her eyes to Sarah. Calm and steady. ‘Well of course it is. I thought you were treating this as a clinical problem.’

  ‘It’s not clinical. It’s emotional.’

  Lane tilted her head to the side, like a curious professor. ‘Isn’t this all about conception?’

  ‘No, no, no.’ Sarah waved an impatient hand. ‘Children either come or they don’t.’

  Tilt to the other side. ‘So David is not a sperm donor?’

  ‘No!’

  Tilt. ‘So why are you both treating him as though he is a sperm donor? I mean, David thinking he has nothing to offer you if he can’t impregnate you, and you desperate to be impregnated, even though you don’t seem to think children are essential.’

  At that point, Erica burst out laughing. ‘Lane, I love you so much, I wish I could impregnate you myself.’

  ‘Hel-lo!’ Adam said, catching the tail end of Erica’s comment as he came into the room carrying a tray with four glasses and a small bottle of Coke.

  Lane smiled as she stood. ‘Let’s do an experiment, since we don’t happen to have any statistics to hand. I’ll ask Adam what he’d do in Rebel and Sarah’s situation.’

  ‘But I’m not Rebel,’ Sarah said, and was ignored.

  Lane’s shining eyes were firmly on Adam. ‘Who knows? Maybe he’d tell me to pack my bags.’

  ‘Ask Adam anything you like,’ Adam said, ‘as long as you understand upfront there will be no bags being packed, and no impregnation unless I’m the one doing it.’

  Lane walked over to him. ‘You just have to answer one very simple question,’ she said, and kissed his cheek. ‘Would you still want me if I couldn’t have children?’

  Adam smiled into her eyes. ‘You freaked me out me for a minute there,’ he said, but a closer look at Lane, then at Sarah, then at Erica, wiped the smile from his face. ‘Oh, that’s not …? No! That can’t be a serious question.’

  ‘That is a serious question,’ Lane said.

  Adam put the tray on the table where the whisky was. ‘Then here is a serious answer.’ He reached for Lane, drawing her into his arms and thoroughly, passionately kissing her. ‘Yes, Lane, I want you any way you come.’

  Which made Sarah start crying again. ‘That is so perfect! Why can’t he want me like that?’

  Erica got up to pour herself a whisky. ‘It seems pretty clear that he does want you like that, Sarah. We just need to work out how to snap him out of his sperm obsession and make him see he can have you.’

  ‘Sperm obsession?’ Adam said, looking like he’d just swallowed a glass full of the stuff. ‘Okay, that’s enough.’ He released Lane and busied himself pouring whisky into the three remaining glasses. ‘Let’s keep this simple, Sarah. Just tell me who I have to kill.’ He picked up the Coke. ‘And since I’m voluntarily adding this to my finest single-malt whisky, I’m man enough to ask what the hell getting your period has to do with it.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  For the first two weeks without Sarah, David told himself he was doing fine.

  Okay, maybe he hadn’t been doing fine exactly. A person couldn’t stop eating and sleeping, neurotically paint the same woman over and over, and dive for his phone every time a certain ring tone sounded even though he knew he couldn’t accept the calls or respond to the text messages, and still be classified as doing fine. So maybe he was doing sort-of fine rather than straight-out fine.

  Then, on the fifteenth day, the calls and texts stopped, and David stopped pretending he was doing anything remotely close to ‘fine’. He was not fine. He was the antithesis of fine.

  Telling himself it was for the best that their last connection had been severed didn’t have any positive impact on his daily suffering. It didn’t seem to matter how many times he told himself over the following contact-free weeks that now Sarah was moving on and living the life she was meant to live, he himself would soon achieve some semblance of normality. He simply wasn’t normal.

  Unless ‘normal’ equated to wandering around the apartment like a ghost, hating everything about it.

  Unless ‘normal’ meant sleeping with his own fucking sweater, which he refused to launder because it smelled like every perfume Sarah had ever worn—only worse, because the Sarah potpourri was mingled with his own scent, and having the evidence of the two of them trapped in the one place was a special kind of torture.

  Unless ‘normal’ was avoiding Lane at the office—not only because seeing someone who was in Sarah’s life was like physical torture, but also because he didn’t want to risk a breakdown should Lane volunteer any distressing information (like, say, that Sarah was dating some useless fucker). Was it ‘normal’ to run away on three separate occasions when he’d seen Lane walking in his direction? Run away, at work, like a scared little boy?

  Well, he was scared, goddammit. Scared he’d start crying like a baby if someone said Sarah’s name out loud. And being scared over that wasn’t ‘normal’, it was pathetic.

  When he received the news that his portrait of Sarah, which he’d titled Bluebell, was a finalist in the Langman Portrait Prize, the first thing he thought of was Sarah on that last morning asking, ‘Can I see it? At the exhibition at least?’ It had been six weeks since he’d seen her, and yet her voice, asking that, was still as clear as a bell in his head.

  Would she still want to see it? If he sent her an invitation to the opening, would she come? Could he bear to see her knowing nothing had changed and he still couldn’t have her?

  After another sleepless night, he caved and asked the organizers to send Sarah an official invitation to Opening Night. And then a whole raft of new questions started thrashing around in his head. Feeble, pitiable questions. What should he wear to the opening? How should he do his hair to hide the grey? What time might Sarah get there? What time should he get there? Should he perhaps have his eyelashes tinted?

  Yes, he was teetering on th
e brink of madness.

  But when the opening night of the Langman Portrait Prize exhibition finally rolled around four weeks later, and David arrived with his eyelashes blackened (God help him!), scoured to within an inch of flaying the flesh off his body, doused in the scent Sarah loved, with his hair arranged in a perfect state of dishevelment, dressed in his suave-but-not-so-suave-as-to-look-like-a-dickhead black pants and a slim-fitting dark blue shirt that matched his eyes …?

  Sarah didn’t turn up.

  It was a night of hectic schmoozing, made all the schmoozier for him when Bluebell was named runner-up, and David had consumed way too much substandard sparkling wine—but he felt flat and dull and despondent.

  Because Sarah didn’t turn up.

  Her brother, however, did.

  There were only twenty minutes left until the event was scheduled to end when Adam Quinn strode into the gallery and parked himself squarely in front of Bluebell as though he had no intention of moving from the spot for the next millennium, or until he was good and ready—whichever came first.

  David, watching him from across the gallery, experienced the same desire to run away as he’d experienced with Lane in the office, but there was no way he could indulge such cowardice man to man. So he simply waited for the summons he knew would come.

  And yep, there it was. A turn of the head, eyes zeroing in on David as though Adam had known exactly where to look. At that moment, David had to marvel at the hundred and eighty degree turnaround in Lane’s taste in men, from him to Adam, because they were as different as the Archangel Gabriel and Lucifer.

  And then Adam smiled coldly, and crooked his finger, and David knew Gabriel was in deep shit. But hot on the heels of that, he realized he actually wanted the confrontation. In a warped genealogical way, Adam was as close as he was going to get to Sarah, and that was worth the risk of public dismemberment.

  So he headed across the gallery, which was starting to empty, and held out his hand to shake. ‘Adam,’ he said. ‘Do I need my shield?’