Plan B quickly evolved into quite a nasty situation during which I held the cage up and shook it as hard as I could – while he clung to the bars with his little feet and squawked at the top of his lungs. ‘Let go, let go’, I shrieked, in time with my shaking. It all ended quite dramatically when he lost his grip and ricocheted around the cage before flopping onto the table with his little eyes closed.
Shit, I thought, I’ve actually killed him.
Filled with remorse I picked him up, cradling him in my hands. ‘There, there,’ I crooned softly, stroking his feathery neck as tears welled in my eyes. And then, one beady eye popped open and glared at me. Apprehensively, I tried to place him back on the table. Unfortunately I wasn’t quite fast enough.
‘Ayeeeee!’ I screeched as he latched onto the delicate skin between my thumb and first finger and bit with all his might. Jumping up and down yelping, I shook my hand frantically trying to break his hold. Finally he launched into the air and I watched in horror as he smacked into the ceiling before thumping back onto the deck.
‘Oh crap.’
I reached out a toe to nudge him and then thought better of it. I waited breathlessly, staring at him, searching for any signs of life. Finally, he shook himself violently, squawked, ‘Fucking Bitch’, and flew off over the balcony.
The whole episode left me feeling hollow and guilty. Pushing thoughts of my mother out of my mind, I clambered back into bed and finally fell asleep.
* * *
I was woken again at 11.30 am by the burbling of my phone. It was a text from Dinah, one of my best friends.
Wake up Tara. Don’t forget Café Mudslide at 12.45
Hmmmm. I must have made lunch plans last night. I lifted my head experimentally off the pillow. No agonising pain, no head spin and no urge to puke. Fantastic. I swung my legs out of bed and stood gingerly, waiting for any nasty side-effects. All seemed to be in working order, so I texted Dinah and went to have a shower.
Natalie, Dinah and Elaine – my three best friends – were already at the café when I arrived. It was evident by the empty coffee cups they had been there a while. I wasn’t sure why, but that made me nervous. I caught the eye of a waiter to order a latte and then sat down at the table.
‘Give it to me gently,’ I said. ‘How bad was I?’
‘Not as bad as me on my thirtieth,’ Elaine informed me.
I felt a little better until Nat pushed her thick blonde hair back behind her shoulders and said huskily, ‘You drank other people’s leftovers.’
I concentrated on my few foggy memories from the night before, horrified when one of drinking remnants out of discarded glasses crystallised.
‘One of them had a cigarette butt floating in it. I only just stopped you from skolling it.’
I put my hand up to stop her, my hangover still too raw to think about things like swallowing someone else’s soggy cigarette butt.
‘You snogged the barman,’ continued Elaine, smiling cheekily.
Another slice of memory surfaced: me, kissing a stranger who stood like a statue, his arms by his side. I covered my face in shame.
‘I was actually eyeing him off myself,’ she said.
‘It was my birthday,’ I mumbled into my hands, ‘get your own barman.’ I looked up at them. ‘Probably best not to go back there for a while.’
‘Yeah, his girlfriend wasn’t too impressed,’ said Nat.
‘Oh no. I don’t remember a girlfriend.’ I slumped a little more in my chair.
Nat laughed, her blue eyes twinkling. ‘Remember that poor chick you cornered in the toilets when you were crying?’ she asked.
‘Nope, can’t remember.’
‘You were talking to her for about 45 minutes.’
I shook my head.
‘You told her all about Jake and Tash.’
A vague memory of a woman with a bored expression, handing me toilet paper to blow my nose on, floated into my conscious mind.
‘She was a good listener.’
‘She couldn’t get around you to get out.’
‘That would explain it.’
Dinah was watching me with obvious amusement. Her short brown hair, flecked with reds and caramels, framed her face, giving her a cute tomboyish look. ‘Do you remember throwing up in the cab?’ she asked.
‘Noooooo,’ I said mortified, ‘I didn’t?’
‘Nahh, just kidding.’
I punched her in the shoulder.
‘Sucker,’ she replied, rubbing her arm.
Nat, Dinah and I all went to school together. Nat and I had hung out in the sandpit together in kindergarten. Dinah had turned our twosome into a threesome in Grade 5 when she had moved schools. Nat and I had been hiding under the stairs behind the gym from the Grade 6 bullies when we first met her. They had increased the torture they subjected us to from simple name calling to hair pulling and wedgies, and just that morning we had overheard them mentioning toilets, heads and flushing in the same sentence. We had been under the stairs ever since. Unfortunately, we were ratted out by another terrified student and had been discovered. They were poking us with rulers when a new pair of legs arrived on the scene.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the newcomer curiously. She wore battered school shoes and mismatched socks.
‘Oh look,’ said the gang leader with glee. ‘It’s the new girl. Let’s get her.’
Nat and I, torn between guilt and relief, inched out from under the stairs just far enough to watch. Dinah looked so small and vulnerable.
‘Run, run,’ I shrieked, hiccupping between my terrified sobs. But Dinah stayed calm. Then there was a blur of motion, at the end of which the bully was down on her back and the rest of the gang had disappeared. It’s one of my favourite childhood memories.
Dinah, at five foot four and a size eight, is still petite and dangerous: she earned a second Dan black belt in karate a couple of years ago. Now a dentist with her own practice, she’s also my boss. When I married Jake he had convinced me to be his personal assistant, a job I didn’t need my business degree for. Consequently, when he left me I was out of a job. Luckily for me, Dinah had been looking for a new practice manager at the same time. Not wanting to risk our friendship we had decided to give it a three-month trial. It had quickly turned into a permanent position when we realised how well we worked together.
Natalie, blonde and beautiful, is a lawyer. She has a pert little nose, wide sensuous mouth, aquamarine blue eyes and a voluptuous body. Breasts and hips; something Dinah and I are a little short on. There are always men lining up to date her, but so far she hasn’t found anyone worth having a relationship with. She has turned her eye to a partnership at the law firm she works for.
Elaine – I’ve known for four years. We met taking a boxercise class at the local gym, which had consisted of a gay instructor jumping up and down in front of us shrieking, ‘And punch, punch, punch,’ as he flicked his limp wrists around. We had started laughing and then, catching each other’s eyes, had laughed so hard we had to leave the class. I came very close to wetting myself. We ditched the gym, found a café and later enrolled in kick boxing classes. We’ve been taking various classes together since.
Elaine works in marketing. Out of all of us she is the most sophisticated and glamorous. Five-eight without her heels, (but you never catch her without them on), she has gorgeous olive skin and green eyes, and has her blonde foils maintained by the Australian Hairdresser of the Year – Tristan – who happens to be her brother. She is also a self-proclaimed cougar, being thirty-seven years old and ‘vowing never to date a guy over twenty-eight’. She says the sex keeps her lean. Her favourite man though, is her pet Chihuahua, Benny, who was just a teeny, weeny puppy when we first met. He often comes to cafés with us in her handbag.
‘Tara, there’s something you need to see.’ Elaine started digging around in her handbag, moving Benny to one side.
Uh oh. That sounded ominous. I wondered what it was. A photo of my ass in the skirt I had worn the night before
?
She finally emerged triumphantly with the Sydney Morning Herald and handed it to me, open at the social pages.
I glanced down with trepidation. Yep, there they were, Jake, with my cousin Tash – she looked gorgeous as usual. Just once I’d like to see a photo of her that wasn’t great. Maybe one where they’d caught her at the wrong angle and she had big bags under her eyes or a huge zit on the end of her nose. I stared closer, noting how perfectly straight her nose was – remembering the day she fell off her horse and broke it – and wondering how much it cost to have it fixed. In my mind I superimposed myself into the photo, taking her place by Jake’s side.
The visual swap didn’t quite work. To start with, she is a size eight; I am a twelve, maybe a fourteen on a bad day – it really depends where I shop. (All right, all right, so on occasion I’ve had to buy size sixteen pants. I put it down to the fact that most clothes these days are made in China. Everybody knows Chinese women are tiny.) She wears all clothes like a catwalk model; I look best in long pants and tank tops. She has blonde hair; mine is dark. She is petite; I’m tall. She has perfect creamy skin; mine is olive, with a few annoying freckles on my nose. She is naturally skinny; if I don’t exercise I morph into a blimp.
Not once did Jake ever make it to the social pages when he was out with me, but Tash – who is the same age as me – has been making them since she was a little girl. While I was still an awkward, gangly, 15 year old, she was attending the races, the opera, gallery openings and even the occasional ball.
My Mum’s sister – Jackie – had done very well in the marriage stakes, snaffling up one of Sydney’s most desirable bachelors. I love my Uncle Edward. He’s a lovely and generous man. It didn’t change the fact that for our twelfth birthday’s I got a cabbage patch doll, while Natasha got a pony. For our 18th’s I got a silver locket, while Tash sported a diamond tennis bracelet. And for our 21st’s, I got a silver cutlery set while Tash got a BMW sports car. I tried not to be jealous, I really did. I mean it wasn’t like I even wanted a pony. (I wouldn’t have minded the BMW.)
When we were kids we had fun playing together. But once we hit puberty she became a real prima donna and a bit of a bitch, always putting me down and assuming airs over me. I guess we were just maintaining the friendship more for our mothers’ sake than our own. Shame. If I hadn’t bothered, maybe I’d still have my husband.
I looked up. The girls were watching me, obviously expecting some sort of outburst. The arrival of my coffee broke the tension. I relaxed as I took my first sip, feeling rather proud that the social pages no longer had the power to hurt me. When Jake first left me I had used it as a kind of obscure torture. On Sundays I would crawl under the doona with the paper and a box of tissues. It was a good week when he and Tash hadn’t made it. Then, I could find the strength to get up and do some housework. But if they were there, I would spend the rest of the day in bed going over the events leading up to him leaving, wondering how I could have prevented it.
Everybody was still watching me. It was, to be frank, a little unnerving.
‘It’s just a wine tasting,’ I finally said.
Elaine sighed. A look of sadness in her green eyes, she reached over and touched me on the arm. ‘Honey, have another look.’
I picked up the paper and studied the picture, gasping when I saw the huge, glittery rock on her left hand. I couldn’t believe I had missed it the first time.
‘There’s more,’ said Elaine, pointing at the caption.
More than an engagement? More than the two of them getting married? More than him never, ever being mine? Slowly I read the caption unable to make sense of the words that were jumbling around inside my head.
Jake Wellington and his fiancée, the fabulous Natasha Rawson, on the eve he announces his intent to run for Lord Mayor.
What? Surely they had got the captions wrong?
‘He’s running for Lord Mayor? I don’t understand,’ I muttered.
‘He’s decided to run for councillor, but as an independent attached to no parties, he can also run for Lord Mayor. There’s an article on page 14.’
I flipped to the page and read the short but succinct article. Jake was running for Lord Mayor and Uncle Edward was financing the campaign as part of the happy couple’s engagement present. It just made me want to put my fingers down my throat and puke.
I looked at the photo again, zeroing in so I could see just his face.
I remember when I first met Jake. I remember every single detail. I remember it was a soft, balmy November evening. Nat and I had just finished our degrees and I had gone to her graduation ball with her. The University had booked out a bar and restaurant overlooking Darling Harbour for the event and lawyers from different firms had been there, romancing the new graduates.
There was a soft breeze blowing off the water and I was standing on the balcony enjoying the feel of it ruffling my hair and moving my dress against my skin. That was when I first saw him. He was inside at the bar, staring past me to the reflection of the sunset on the clouds over the harbour. He was tall – much taller than me – and had olive skin and dark brown, almost black hair. I stared into his chocolate brown eyes and studied his ruggedly handsome face and felt something uncurling inside me. It made me catch my breath and I swear, when he moved his eyes from the sunset to my face, that my heart skipped a beat. He smiled slowly – a confident smile, before swivelling back to the bar. I remembered turning away deflated, surprised by his sudden appearance as he offered me a glass of champagne. I smiled shyly and sipped while we chatted, feeling gorgeous and special.
Later we danced; slow and heated, swaying to the music, our bodies moving in sync. The material of my dress snagging on his legs as we entwined ourselves on the dance floor. And later still, back on the balcony we kissed; the kiss developing slowly, painfully. Our faces moving closer and closer, until finally I could feel the heat of his breath on my mouth, and then the softest brush, the gentle tug of skin on skin as our lips met and our tongues touched for the briefest of moments. The movements so slow and sensual I could feel my blood heating and rushing around my body.
We stayed for hours whispering and hugging; kissing slowly and shyly. Finally I realised it was not the sunset we were witnessing but the sunrise, and that the rising sun was washing away the magic of the night. I was torn between wanting to stay and wanting to rush away before I appeared not sexy and glamorous, but smudged and tired.
We exchanged phone numbers and Nat (who had spent the evening dancing with one of Jake’s mates) and I left. I remember turning to look at him as we neared the exit, to make sure he was no dream, or phantom of my imagination. He was watching me, and when he saw me turn, lifted his first two fingers to his mouth and blew me a kiss.
‘Earth to Tara, Earth to Tara.’ I snapped my eyes back into focus. Dinah was waving her hand in front of my face.
‘I’ve always felt guilty about you hooking up with Jake,’ said Nat.
‘Why would you feel guilty?’
‘I just wish you had met someone nicer that night.’
I could feel the heat in my face. ‘What do you mean nicer?’
The girls shared a look before Nat bravely pushed on. ‘Well he wasn’t always that supportive of your career.’
‘I chose to work as his PA – he didn’t make me.’
‘Sometimes he didn’t treat you very well,’ she said.
Flashes of arguments we’d had flickered before my eyes like a slide show. I shut them tight and shook my head.
‘What about the pregnancy?’ she asked.
I looked at her in disbelief; tears threatening to overflow.
‘I’m just trying to highlight that he wasn’t very nice,’ she said, sounding guilty.
‘He was just scared,’ I said.
‘Will you please stop defending him,’ Nat said in exasperation.
Elaine clapped her hands, breaking up our argument, and Benny, who had his head stuck out of her bag, barked in response. ‘Enough of the
self-pity,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a year to get over this and you haven’t managed.’ She pulled a tatty old magazine from her handbag. It had Dinah’s practice stamp on the front.
‘Hey,’ Dinah protested, reaching out a hand to grab it.
‘Oh come on. It’s two years old, like you even missed it.’ Elaine moved it out of her reach. ‘You know you really should update your magazine collection sometime,’ she said, flicking through the pages. ‘Give me something decent to read while I’m waiting for you to finish work. Ahh here it is.’ She handed me the magazine, tapping a perfectly manicured nail onto an article. ‘Go on, read it.’
I flipped back to the cover of the magazine. ‘Cosmo?’ I asked incredulously, looking between Dinah and Elaine.
‘It’s a reputable magazine,’ said Dinah defensively.
‘It’s not where it came from, it’s what you can get from it,’ said Elaine. ‘Now read it out aloud.’
‘Yes Mum,’ I grumbled.
CLOSURE IN SEVEN EASY STEPS.
Hey girlfriend had your heart broken? Having trouble moving on from the bad boy that broke it?
I looked at Elaine who made read-on-shushing-hand-motions at me. Rolling my eyes I continued.
Well, have I got a treat for you. Seven easy steps to closure – guaranteed to mend your broken heart and get you back out there where the wild animals roam.
‘Oh please. Elaine,’ I said in a whiny voice.
‘Just keep reading,’ she replied from between clenched teeth. Sometimes Elaine can be a little scary.
Follow these steps in order – we promise that by the end you will be so over him, you won’t even remember his name.
‘Well I doubt I’ll forget that – what with the election and everything.’
‘Tara. Just read the damn article,’ Elaine said, running her hands through her shoulder length hair in frustration.
‘Yeah,’ said Nat. ‘What are the seven steps?’
‘Seriously?’ I looked at her.
‘What have you got to lose? Last night you were sitting on the floor of a grungy public toilet crying your eyes out. How can this be any worse?’
Donna Joy Usher - Chanel 01 - Cocoa and Chanel Page 19