A Girl Less Ordinary

by Leah Ashton

The other man recoiled, which was semi satisfying.

  Although Jake ignored him.

  Instead, he leant forward, and said—very calmly, and very clearly—into the microphone, the following:

  ‘Go to hell.’

  Ah. Yes. That hit the spot.

  * * *

  Together, Jake and Ella exited the radio station in a very mature and unhurried manner, while maintaining a dignified silence.

  This lasted for approximately ten metres once they’d burst out onto the busy Pyrmont street. Jake grabbed Ella’s hand and tugged her down a narrow side road, where, for a few moments, they stared at each other. Trying not to laugh.

  And failed.

  It started off slow, with little bursts of mirth. But soon, it descended into totally-lost-it fits of gasping and tear-inducing laughter.

  ‘Why are we laughing?’ Jake asked, after an age.

  Ella, hugging herself in a partially successful attempt to contain her still continuing giggles, was at a loss. ‘I have no idea. You should be furious, actually.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, tilting his head as if in contemplation. ‘I was.’

  Inexplicably, this started Ella off again. ‘I noticed.’ Then added in little gaspy breaths. ‘You were...very...very...angry.’

  He smiled—a huge wide smile that she hadn’t seen in years. ‘So were you. If you’d got your hands on him you would’ve got him good,’ he teased.

  ‘I would’ve!’ she said, and meant it. Honestly, she’d been on the verge of tearing that awful radio presenter limb from limb. Familiar pain had etched itself in every line of Jake’s face as soon as his mother was mentioned—and in the moment she’d hated that man for doing that. ‘It was just that pesky wall in the way.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jake said, nodding sagely. ‘Walls can be so inconvenient.’

  Coming from Jake, that inanity was all the more ridiculous, and the laughter began afresh.

  Slowly, slowly, reality reimposed itself. Ella knew it was all kinds of wrong for her to approve of what had just happened.

  What she should be doing was a formal debrief. First, she should highlight the positives—and there were many. For ninety per cent of the interview, Jake had been near unrecognisable with no sign of the surly, reclusive billionaire.

  And then she should cover the areas for improvement. Armada would certainly expect her to. She should be implementing future strategies to avoid such a circumstance happening ever again.

  ‘That was awesome,’ she said, instead.

  He knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’

  Ella nodded. ‘We both know that. But I’m still glad you did. He deserved it.’

  They shared a different smile then. Something softer, and more subtle. For the first time since those minutes in that change room, Ella let her gaze lock for long moments with his.

  ‘He wasn’t supposed to ask me about my mum.’

  ‘Some journalists only care about the story,’ she said.

  Jake rubbed his forehead. ‘And I gave him one.’

  ‘I still think you did the right thing.’

  Continuing to hold her gaze, he spoke more quietly. ‘Are you saying that as Ella Cartwright, Image Consultant and Rebranding Guru, or as the girl who used to be my next-door neighbour?’

  She should be annoyed he was doing this, bringing up their past. She should also be annoyed he told someone to go to hell on live radio. And at herself for standing in a public street, laughing like a loon with a client.

  But of course, she was annoyed at none of those things.

  ‘I know how much your mum hurt you,’ she said. ‘I remember.’

  Jake held up a hand, ticking items off with a finger. ‘Yeah, like remembering finding her passed out on my kitchen floor. Or screaming at you like a banshee when she thought you’d stolen her precious pills. Or never being proud when I got straight As...’

  He dragged his gaze from hers, and directed it at the overcast sky.

  ‘She’s lucky to have you.’

  Jake shook his head, still not looking at her. ‘She hates me, you know,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Jake, I’m sure she doesn’t.’

  Ella said the words automatically, but had no idea if they were true.

  ‘Growing up, she always said she loved me. Remember?’

  Ella nodded. It was as if, in the short periods of time that Diana Donner had emerged from her drug-muddled haze, the woman had thought that saying You know I love you so much, Jake, right? somehow made it all okay.

  She’d said it all the time, proudly, and maybe even deliberately in front of Ella. As if she had something to prove. Which, Ella supposed, she did. She’d wanted to prove she was a decent mother.

  Obviously, on absolutely every level, she’d failed.

  But of her most spectacular motherly failure, Jake had never spoken to Ella about. The incident at the school assembly—complete with bathrobe and shrieking proclamations of love. It was before Ella had started at South Beach College, but the story had become school quadrangle legend. So she knew.

  ‘But you don’t hate her?’ Ella asked, guessing.

  His chin dropped down until he was looking at Ella dead on. ‘No,’ he said, simply.

  Now they stood together, most definitely not laughing. Memories seemed to cloak them. Not just of Jake’s mum, either.

  How many times before had they walked together down a quiet street? Hundreds? Thousands? There’d been so many long conversations—some full of laughter, some not at all—as they’d walked to and from school. Except for when Jake went off on one of his exploratory mental tangents, and then she’d known to stay perfectly silent.

  Then there was the giggling side by side in front of the TV as they’d watched comedies they’d taped onto VHS. And the hours spent together at the library during lunch breaks, happily conforming to the geeky stereotype that’d been applied to them. But Ella had been no semi-genius like Jake—she’d just loved to read. And read.

  In books, at least, the unpopular outcast always seemed to have a happy ending.

  ‘How did you get started in this?’ Jake asked, suddenly.

  ‘In what?’

  He gestured vaguely at her. ‘This. Your job. Back at school, you wanted to be a librarian.’

  He said it as if it’d been written in stone. Which, she guessed, it kind of had.

  ‘That was just so I could read books all day,’ she said, not all that surprised that his thoughts—his memories—had mirrored hers so closely. ‘I went to uni for a few years, but then my dad got sick and, well, things changed. I changed.’

  She’d had to change.

  ‘I heard about your dad,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You sent flowers, I remember.’ Ella swallowed. With time, it didn’t really get all that much easier. ‘Thank you.’

  Somewhere at the back of her mind, Ella conceded that she was being quite okay about this—about this acknowledgement of their past. Of their past friendship.

  ‘The image-consultant thing was kind of an accident,’ she said, after a while. ‘When Dad died, I didn’t know what to do. Apart from leave Perth, definitely. I wanted to start afresh.’

  ‘I get that,’ he said.

  The simple words made her smile. ‘I know you do. You as good as counted down the days until you could leave Fremantle from about age fourteen.’

  He shrugged. ‘I needed to leave.’

  She agreed. He did. Just, at the time, she’d never imagined he wouldn’t look back.

  ‘And I figured,’ she continued, refusing to dwell at all on that, ‘that I might as well do it properly. So before I left I did a lot of research. Some on the Internet, and I read a lot of books about dressing for your body type, using make-up, that sort of thing. By the time I landed in Sydney, I walked off the plane a whole new person.’

  That she had. She’d only had the one ‘Ella’ outfit at the time, but she’d stepped into Sydney Domestic terminal weari
ng it. And she’d felt better—and stronger—than she could ever remember.

  ‘I was so amazed at how differently people were treating me, that I wondered if somehow I could turn it into a career. Help out other sad cases like me. I worked for the original owner of Picture Perfect for a few years, and then bought the business from her when she sold it.’

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you,’ Jake asked, ‘how differently you’re treated now?’

  She knew what he was asking. He thought everyone should be treated the same, even if they wore a hessian sack and didn’t know the first thing about social or professional etiquette. But life didn’t work that way.

  ‘Image is everything, Jake,’ she said firmly. Then added more lightly, ‘Haven’t I managed to teach you anything?’

  He shook his head, a very deliberate movement. Then he reached forward, the feather-light touch of his finger at the bridge of her nose sudden and completely unexpected.

  Gradually, and with excruciating slowness, the pad of his forefinger traced its way down to the tip of her nose.

  The action was completely inappropriate. They had a professional relationship!

  But that was now a lie, and she knew it.

  ‘I thought it was cute,’ he said, with no further explanation.

  He meant the bump on her nose.

  Now she took a step back, swiping her hand in front of her face to bat his fingers away.

  ‘It was ugly. It needed to be fixed.’

  ‘Did you think your name was ugly too? And the colour of your eyes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Again he shook his head. ‘You were wrong.’

  Frustration bubbled up inside her. How could she possibly make him understand? He saw the world in black and white; he always had.

  But he was wrong, so wrong, when it came to this. She had nearly a decade of success in Sydney that proved that time and time again.

  ‘We’ll have to agree to disagree,’ she said, because to say anything else would be pointless.

  The atmosphere had shifted.

  ‘Well,’ Ella said briskly. If Jake had asked again, now she most definitely was speaking as Ella Cartwright, Image Consultant and Rebranding Guru, and not the girl next door. ‘Overall, I think you did really well today. I’m so pleased with your progress.’

  Jake rolled his eyes. Five minutes earlier she would have called him on it, but now their professional boundaries were firmly back in place.

  ‘Now, tomorrow is our very last session. I bet you’re glad to reach the end, hey?’ She spoke with such false heartiness that she thoroughly deserved Jake’s dismissal of her words.

  ‘On networking, right?’

  ‘Yes. Perfectly timed with the launch that evening.’

  Jake pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket. The jacket was an industrial-looking piece she’d chosen for him—along with his white shirt, light grey jumper and, especially for him, designer jeans. He’d disregarded her suggestion to wear the co-ordinated scarf, but otherwise he looked perfect. Perfect enough that she was so momentarily distracted admiring him that she forget he was checking his phone for something.

  ‘I can’t make it.’

  ‘What?’ she said. Then swallowed, and tried again. ‘I mean, pardon me?’

  His lips quirked. And was that a cheeky sparkle in his eyes?

  ‘Something’s come up.’ He slid the phone back into his pocket with an air of finality.

  ‘Cynthia made it very clear that you required particular assistance with your networking skills.’

  ‘I completely agree,’ he said. To her surprise.

  ‘Oh. So you want to reschedule to later in the day? I believe our meeting was scheduled for ten. I’ve got another meeting in the early afternoon, but I should be available around four? Although, that won’t give you much time to get ready—’

  ‘No,’ he said, as if there was no room for negotiation. ‘I’m busy all day.’

  Flummoxed, Ella propped her hands on her hips. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you’re getting at, Jake?’

  ‘I require your services—to guide me in the gentle art of civil conversation—’

  ‘Networking,’ Ella interrupted.

  Jake ignored her. ‘—during the Armada Smart Phone launch party.’

  ‘During? You mean, have me attend?’

  Jake nodded slowly, as if explaining to something rather dense.

  ‘But I have plans,’ she said. And she did. She always did.

  ‘Can they be cancelled? It’s very important to me that you’re there.’

  The way he was looking at her, right this instant, all intense and compelling and moody and gorgeous with his icy blue eyes...

  Friday night cocktails at the Opera Bar sounded imminently cancellable.

  Mutely, she nodded.

  Then he was holding out his arm, a taxi was pulling in beside them, and she found herself bundled into the back seat, her handbag somehow ended up neatly on her lap. She looked up at Jake, outside the car, leaning with his arm propped against the top of the open door.

  ‘I’ll email you the invitation,’ he said. Then he added, with a grin more wicked than should be allowable, ‘Dress to impress. I hear the dress code’s cocktail.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  SO far, the launch party was exactly as excruciating as Jake had expected. It had it all: inane conversation. Wannabes posing all over the place. Air kisses. Overly loud laughter. An abundance of suits.

  And it had only been going fifteen minutes.

  He sipped on his beer, surveying the room from where he stood, braced against the bar. Armada had booked out the opulent Darling Harbour restaurant for the launch, and beyond the crowd of Armada staff members and the aforementioned wannabes large windows opened out to a balcony. The sun had long ago set on this late winter evening, so the water was just a black nothingness, reflecting the multicoloured lights of the casino that loomed above it. Jake knew this, as he’d been out there on the balcony a few minutes earlier. Unfortunately, his tolerance for pointless conversation was as low as usual, and so he’d excused himself to get a drink.

  He was fully aware his time alone would not last.

  He was supposed to be out there, schmoozing. Regurgitating the Armada ‘mission’ and ‘message’, just as he had on the radio yesterday. Except for the bit at the end, of course.

  It was only another couple of weeks of all this hoo-ha, and then he would schmooze no more.

  He couldn’t wait.

  ‘Jake.’

  At Ella’s soft voice to his left, he rested his glass back on the bar.

  ‘‘Evening, Ella,’ he said as he turned to face her.

  He’d planned to say something further, but the words were suddenly clogging his throat.

  She looked—and there really was no other word to describe her—spectacular.

  She wore a dress of some clingy black fabric that did its job and clung all the way from just above her knee to her shoulders. Or, rather, shoulder, as the fabric flowed from just one, leaving the other bare.

  Chunky, flat jewels were embroidered densely to the fabric at her collarbone, becoming increasingly more sparse as they travelled towards the upper curve of her breast before blending entirely into black.

  Too late, he remembered to look at her face.

  When he met her gaze she raised one perfectly arched and bemused eyebrow.

  He didn’t quite know what to say. Instead, he blindly reached for his beer, and took a long, long drink.

  ‘You look,’ he tried, eventually, ‘great.’

  There was an appalling understatement.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and her gaze dipped to the floor for a moment. He recognised the action for what it was—a throwback to shy Eleanor, who’d always had difficulty accepting, or believing, compliments. ‘I was about to say the same about you.’

  She flicked her eyes over the outfit she’d selected for him. ‘Nice suit,’ she said, wryly.

  ‘I suppose it’s not so b
ad,’ he said. This elicited exactly the response he was after—narrowed and flashing angry eyes.

  ‘You’re the best-dressed guy here, and you know it.’

  He grinned, shrugged as if he couldn’t care less and enjoyed Ella’s obviously frustrated reaction. She knew perfectly well he was teasing her, and yet she still reacted, despite her best efforts.

  In that way, at the very least, Ella hadn’t changed at all.

  Then she did her little shoulder-straightening thing, and Jake knew he was in for a few minutes of Ella in image-consultant mode.

  He didn’t mind.

  After all, he was the one who’d conspired for her to be here. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider in too much detail why he’d done it. If he wanted, he could justify it as a logical business decision. His image consultant ‘on tap’, so to speak, as he navigated through the treacherous waters of small talk, thick with its heavy infestation of snapping, circling journalist piranhas.

  But the real reason had something to do with the woman who’d been prepared to go to battle for him. Who’d laughed uncontrollably with him. Maybe even the woman he’d held in his arms.

  He’d missed her.

  As he attempted to compute that unexpected possibility, he realised that Ella had been speaking for some time.

  ‘...remember, networking is a lot about listening to what people have to say, rather than... Jake? If you’re not listening to me, this is terribly ironic.’

  He went to take another long draw of his beer, but it was empty. He busied himself with ordering another drink for the next minute or two. Thinking. Needing not to be looking at her right this instant as he pulled himself together.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, when he turned back to her. ‘I’m listening now.’

  She’d crossed her arms in front of herself, which had the rather wonderful side effect of emphasising the curves above and below said arms.

  ‘Jake,’ she said. Did she guess the direction his thoughts were taking? ‘Come on, this is important. You need to focus.’

  He nodded, giving all appearances of being suitably contrite. But, in all seriousness, he was having major difficulties concentrating. Ella in that dress did not a work-focused Jake make. He liked her hair loose, too! It was much, much longer than she’d had it as a teenager, and arranged into generous curls that cascaded down her shoulders.