by Lily Malone
Yeah, Dick, leave it alone.
“In my time we had standards.” Richard shifted in his seat and glared at Michael’s leather jacket, slung over the back of a chair.
Her father straightened his tie, fished his glasses from his breast pocket and slid them down the bridge of his nose. Glancing once at the title page he laid the papers flat, folded the spectacles and shoved them back into his pocket with a practiced flip. It was like watching one of those music clips where they ran the tape in reverse.
He looked up and smiled, his cheeks a mass of lines. “Cracked Pots hey, Christina?”
Christina’s lips curved. That’s you in the bag.
“Did you ever get the feeling we’re being buttered up, Saff? How much money do you think they want?” Richard said.
Saffah shook the business plan like she could make it rattle, stirring scents of coffee and ink. “Wait till you get to the marketing page, Dick—cartoons, screensaver games, blogs—”
Lily Malone
Christina interrupted; the knot of her scarf feeling suddenly tight. “I’ll talk you through it. But first, Mikey and I want to introduce you to Cracked Pots. We think it’s time Clay Wines had a new addition to the family.”
“A sister,” Michael added, flicking his pen against a stomach he hadn’t quite got back to its pre-honeymoon flat.
Saffah kept scanning. “Outback Brands is quoted all through this marketing section, Christina.”
“Outback Brands?” Richard reached again for his glasses. “The Newell fellow?”
“There’s a hell of a lot of our cash going his way.” Saffah waved the business plan again, vertical lines tightening above her top lip. “For what we’re paying, I would think he could have personally attended today.”
“Tate’s out of town on business but I can speak to his report. It’s all summarised in the plan,” Christina reassured them. She placed her laptop on the table and stood, fingers poised, ready to hit play on the launch cartoon.
Richard stabbed the table with his index finger, twice. “Bram said this Newell fellow was legit, didn’t he, Saff?”
Christina’s hand thumped the keyboard. Her blood ran hot, then cold. She twisted to face her father. “Abraham said what?”
“Shhh.” Mikey interrupted them both. “Saffah. Richard. Watch.”
She’d hit the start key by accident.
Outback Brands’ team had been busy in Tate’s absence. There was more detail in the cartoon now and the audio was superb. It would want to be, she thought, the voiceovers cost a bomb. Now, Muddy Pot’s accent was as broad as Mick Dundee climbing out of the billabong at Walkabout Creek.
“How big’s a decent-sized knob?”
Saffah hooted with laughter. When it finished, she wanted to see it again.
“I love it.” Saffah sat forward, eyes wide.
Richard nodded slowly.
Christina pinched the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb. Her headache had moved. Now it stretched over both temples like a helmet cinched too tight. “Bram said what?”
“It’s brilliant, Saff, isn’t it?” Mikey’s voice drowned hers.
“Hold it.” Christina’s voice whipped through the room. Every head snapped her way.
“Bram said what?”
Richard removed his glasses. “CC? Come on.” He said it like she was the one being unreasonable. “Bram told Saff you introduced him to Tate Newell at the wedding. He offered to look into him for us.”
“Look into him?” Her fingers dug into the leather chair.
“CC, you invite a guy none of us know to your own brother’s wedding and don’t bother to introduce him to anyone in the family. You ditch the day-after wedding lunch Saff had planned for weeks and we can’t reach you on mobile and then you call us on a satellite phone to say you’re camping out the back of beyond with this guy? Your aunt Vanda told me to call the police. Bram did us a favour. Unlike you he actually came along to our lunch and when he asked after you, Saff told him we were worried.”
Saffah laid the business plan carefully on the table. “The Lewises have professionals who can run a background check on someone in less than an hour, Christina. We had to be sure Tate wasn’t some shyster, you’re too important to us.”
“Tate Newell is the best marketing brain in the country. I think he’s the most amazing man I’ve ever met. He’s no shyster.” The high-backed chair hid the stamp of her boot.
All three people seated exchanged a quick look.
“Bram has only ever had your best interests at heart,” Saffah added softly.
Richard unfroze and pocketed his glasses again. “Clay Wines is your responsibility now, Christina, that’s a hell of a lot of trust we’ve placed in you.” He eyed Michael. “In both of you.”
He’s calling me Christina. That can’t be good.
“Flying off to the middle of Australia for a dirty weekend isn’t the most rational decision you’ve ever made, especially with Michael away on his honeymoon. You left the winery without either of its key people for a week. Wouldn’t you say that was a bit loopy?”
“You think I acted loopy?” A red haze danced behind her eyes.
“Whoa!” Michael’s chair rocked back and he leapt to his feet like he’d been stung.
Richard jumped so hard his thigh bashed the table. Ice clinked in the water jug.
“Christ, Michael, I nearly threw coffee in my face,” Saffah complained.
Mikey walked around the boardroom table. “All this stuff about the marketing; I haven’t even mentioned the wines and they’re the most important part.” With his back to his parents, he gave Christina a hard look they couldn’t see. “Is my Powerpoint ready, CC?”
He turned to the table and opened his hands wide, lit his hundred-watt smile. “You’ll love this, Richard. It’s real hands-off winemaking. Minimal intervention. Letting great fruit express itself in the bottle.”
Christina hovered over the laptop, minimised the cartoon file and booted Mikey’s presentation. The simple actions helped her regain her cool.
“It’s ready,” she said to Mikey, then addressed the others. “Michael will run you through the winemaking program then I’ll tell you why Cracked Pots makes perfect sense for Clay Wines and why if we don’t launch this brand now, we’ll miss the best opportunity we ever had.”
The laptop scraped as Mikey pulled it toward him over the glass.
“And then we vote.” Christina put steel in her voice.
****
The door to Christina’s office shut.
Mikey made a move toward her, the smile wide on his face, but Christina stopped him, her hand raised in the air and whispered: “Hang on.”
Outside she could hear her father’s deep voice teasing Marie. A few moments later, Saffah crossed the car park and entered her studio. Richard’s long legs continued down the driveway, heading for their house. For the first time that morning, Christina let herself relax.
She turned away from the window and pumped her fist at her brother.
Mikey let out a whoop and trapped her in a hug that threatened to break her ribs.
“Like they were ever going to say no.”
“They didn’t exactly say yes.” A sigh huffed from her lips. “Nine months isn’t long enough to build a brand.”
“Saffah wanted six. You got better than that.”
“I wanted two years. Richard wouldn’t budge.”
Lily Malone
Outside the window, an Asian couple wandered hand-in‐hand toward Saffah’s studio. They were so damn lovey-dovey Christina wanted to tap on the window to shoo them apart. She didn’t, of course. Frightening customers only worked when you ran a house-of‐horrors theme park.
Mikey picked up her favourite pen, twirled it, toggled the button like a track-coach with a stopwatch. “They’re worried about the costs, even more while the wine industry’s in free-fall like it is. If you and Tate go belly-up they think the whole thing will fall apart. They don’t want us to over-
extend. They don’t want to risk Handcrafted.”
“I know. I get it. But it’s such a shitty double-standard. I’d bet you anything if you were the wine exec and Lace was the marketing guru and the pair of you were bonking like rabbits they wouldn’t bat an eyelid.” She unwrapped her scarf and tossed it at her desk. The beret followed.
Michael bounced the pen into a stapler. “Saff’s more worried about costs than revenues. Outback Brands is Cracked Pots’ biggest external cost in the first six months.
They’ll be all over Tate’s invoices. But that’s okay, you’ve budgeted for it. When they really look through the business plan they’ll see that. What we have to do is show them we’ve got it under control and then nine months down the track we’re laughing.”
“Since when did you get so tolerant?”
“I want Cracked Pots too, remember.” He picked up her hole-punch, turned it to and fro. Cut-out white circles of paper floated to the carpet like confetti. “So I’ve been thinking about the brand launch.”
Her gaze flicked up from the mess he was leaving on her floor. “Since when did you think about marketing?”
“Since my alter-ego became a movie star.” Mikey’s face split into his familiar wide grin. “I thought we could coincide the launch with the Bush Bash in August. An off-beat brand like Cracked Pots, an off-beat launch would be perfect.”
“Well check out the big brain on Michael,” she said. “That’s a great idea.”
Mikey’s grin turned sheepish. “It was Lace’s idea really. The Bush Bash is Mad Max meets Thelma and Louise for her, you know how she gets about old cars.”
“I know.”
“Yeah, well listen, we’ve already got the perfect vehicle. We’ve got Richard’s old Landrover. She hasn’t been out the shed since I ditched it in the creek when you were trying to teach me how not to drive.”
“I said you should steer with the skid.”
“Of course you say that now.” He flicked his hand. “It has to be a pre-1980 car and it has to pass a pre-race safety check. That gives me a few weeks to do her up. New shocks. A visit to Lonsdale Wreckers for some secondhand Yokahama Supes.”
Her eyes must have glazed because the next thing Mikey said was: “Hey! Stay with me here. The car’s the most important part.”
“The brand’s the most important part and that’s my baby,” she shot back. “I don’t know if Tate’s people can swing the launch so soon, the timeframe’s tight. I don’t even know if we can still get an entry registered in time.”
The lovey-dovey couple emerged from Saffah’s studio, all short and shiny black-bobbed hair and matching cardigans—no accounting for some people’s taste. The man carried one of Saffah’s trademark glazed square platters. The woman tucked herself under her partner’s free arm and something she said made him look down and smile. CC Pot would have shot them.
God, I miss Tate.
“What’s with you this afternoon, CC? You’re off with the fairies.”
“Sorry. Headache.” She hadn’t heard a word he’d said. “What did you say?”
“I said: Bram’s electorate runs through part of the race route. He drives in the Bush Bash every year. He could help us scam a late entry.”
“I just bet he could. Bram loves doing people favours, don’t forget that. The only thing he loves more than doing someone a favour is calling one in,” her lip twisted. “I’m not asking Abraham Lewis for a thing. You can if you want—only hurry. It’s the middle of July and that race is in August.”
Michael put his hand to the doorknob.
She called after his retreating back. “And check the Bash doesn’t clash with the City to Bay. Lacy won’t let me get out of the fun run now.”
He closed the door. A minute later he was back with two soluble Panadol tablets in foil wrap.
“Bless you.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry I’m grumpy. I don’t know why I feel so flat. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his pants, swayed on the balls of his feet. “You know why Richard laid that Clay-Wines‐is-your‐responsibility-line on you, don’t you?”
“Sure. I’m the CEO. The buck stops with me.”
“It’s more than that.” He scraped a shoe across the carpet. “He’s terrified you might take-off without warning one day, like Isabelle did. He’s afraid he’ll lose you. I don’t think anything could scare him more than news you’d jumped in a plane and taken off with some guy he didn’t even know. He figured loading you with responsibility would make you stay in one place. If you’d married Bram four years ago and bought a mini-van and filled it with babies it would have made him the happiest man in the world.”
“A mini-van?” She couldn’t bring herself to say married. She didn’t need to. Mikey knew.
“Did you mean what you said before, CC, about Tate being the most amazing man you’ve ever met?”
“You mean next to you?” She smiled.
“Don’t dick around. I’m serious.”
She considered for a second. “Yes. I guess I meant it.”
“Hmm.” He turned for the door. “Marriage isn’t all bad you know.”
“Like you’re such a veteran. How long is it now? All of seven weeks?”
“Nine but who’s counting?” The door clicked shut behind him.
Christina flipped the Panadol tablets into a glass of water and listened to the fizz. The lovey-dovey Asians carted a box of wine from cellar door to a hire car the size of a wheelbarrow. The guy couldn’t shut the boot. He had to rearrange wine, pottery and luggage and then he drove out of the driveway so slowly, it was as if the car boot held live grenades.
The Panadol stopped fizzing and she drank it down.
****
Christina threw the trade magazine to the other side of her desk. She’d just read the same paragraph about wine export to China for the twentieth time.
Lily Malone
Her email inbox sat grey and depressing. Not even a Nigerian banking scam to delete.
Google offered no news on the live cattle export trade ban and there was nothing from Tate. For a while she toyed with her blog, watched the cursor blink on a blank screen.
Black flash on— Tick.
Black flash off— Tock.
Her stomach flipped.
Switching Outlook to calendar view, she tapped the months back to May. A pop-up on May 24 carried a note about Lacy’s Hens’ party, a reminder to pick-up hats, handcuffs and champagne.
Adrenalin flooded her system. Her fingers flew over the keys.
May 31. Brand Consultation. Tate Newell.
June 1. M&L wedding.
June 12. M&L back from Bali.
Could she really have skipped June—half of July—without realising she’d missed a period?
God! At Binara, getting herself knocked up was all she could think about but since then, with Tate, with the way he made her feel? And Cracked Pots. She’d been so busy!
Her heart picked up speed. She sprang from the chair to pirouette before the window.
It was impossible to find her reflection while the afternoon shadows played hide and seek in the glass but her hand stumbled to her belly anyway. It wasn’t flat. It never had been. Right now she was as toned as she’d been in a decade.
All that running.
Beyond the window, evening crept up the valley. Newly pruned vines that had been basking in the rare winter sun turned to hillsides of gnarled stumps with fairytale claws.
Christina reached for her hat, threw the scarf around her shoulders. Flicking the light switch off, she turned back for one last check of the room. In the window, a woman in a purple beret smiled a Mona Lisa smile.
Chapter 16
It took Christina two weeks to get an appointment to see Doctor Busby, and in that two weeks every time Tate rang, she ached to tell him the news, but didn’t. For three hours after the second blue line appeared in the window of the pregnancy test kit, she’d walked on sunshine. For
every hour since, she’d rowed up shit creek.
She told herself that Tate had so much on his plate with PR for the live cattle export trade lobby, and it wasn’t like he could do anything about the baby from Canberra or Darwin or Binara. The news would only be a distraction he didn’t need.
She told herself she should tell him in person, face to face. Not over the phone. And it wasn’t like she’d told anyone else. Not Lacy. Not Michael. Not Richard nor Saffah.
I wanted you to be first to know, Tate. And I wanted to tell you in person. That was the way to start the conversation, she told herself. Once he came home.
And maybe by then I will have figured some perfectly good explanation for why I lied to you.
The thoughts spiralled through her head as she parked the Golf one road back from Doctor Busby’s rooms and walked the rest of the way.
“Christina Clay?” Doctor Busby called from the doorway.
Christina slapped the New Idea back on the reading pile and picked up her handbag.
Doctor Busby had shaved his beard since their last routine fibroid appointment and he’d done something strange with his hair. All that was left were two wispy grey rainbow shapes over his ears. He’d re-decorated too. Paint the colour of stepped-on spearmint bubblegum ravaged every wall.
Christina followed him past the rooms of the ear, nose and throat surgeon who shared his building, listening to the sound of muted voices behind closed doors.
“All the brochures said you Antipodeans had summer year-round. I left Yorkshire for this muck and now I can’t find any bugger who’ll give me my money back,” he ushered her into his office and closed the door.
Christina smiled politely. She’d heard his banter before. His room smelled of antiseptic, reverse-cycle heating turned up too high and steam-cleaned carpet. Over the top of all that was a sweet scent she couldn’t quite place.
“Take a seat, Christina. Do you have a referral for me?” He eased into a deep-seated chair behind a desk that she thought would make a superb shelter in an earthquake.
Perhaps I can get one like it for when I next see Tate.
Digging her GP’s letter out of her handbag, she handed it across the desk, sat, and spent the next twenty seconds trying to decipher the navy motif on Doctor Busby’s badly-tied tie. Fairground clowns? Gargoyles?