Husband Hunters

by Genevieve Gannon

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’

  ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Educational at the moment,’ she snapped. She was feeling combative; she couldn’t get the image of his personal phone out of her head.

  Jason nodded, then looked at his shoes. This humble side of him was new to Clementine. When they had been together he had always been rushing off; refusing her invitations to events, deflecting her requests for him to sleep over, to spend 15 more minutes in bed.

  ‘Clem, I’ve really missed you,’ he said.

  ‘What are your sisters’ names?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your sisters. You said you had bossy sisters. What are their names?’

  He exhaled a puff of breath. It was the humourless little laugh of someone caught in a lie. A technique to make light of the deception. Oh that trivial little thing, ha-ha-ha.

  ‘Ah, I only have one sister. Her name is Caitlin.’

  ‘You said you had sisters, plural.’ Clementine folded her arms. ‘I should go. I don’t know why I came.’

  ‘WILL YOU JUST—’ Jason raised his voice, then corrected himself. ‘Will you just hear me out? Please.’

  Clem knew that if she left she would always wonder what he was going to say. She looked at the face she had fallen so quickly and so deeply in love with. She knew no matter what she did, that face would torment her for some time yet.

  ‘Okay.’ Her voice was small.

  ‘It’s over.’ He stated simply. ‘I promise. It’s you I want.’

  Curiously the words had no effect on Clementine. Perhaps she had played them over so many times in her head that she was having trouble processing the fact that he was saying them for real.

  ‘Where has this come from?’

  ‘I didn’t plan to start an affair. I never expected to fall in love with you—’ Clem quivered. He had never said that before. ‘I know I cocked it up. But Amanda and I haven’t been happy for a long time. Just tell me I have a chance. I need a week to break it off. To sort things out. But give me something. Give me some hope.’

  ‘Jason.’ Clementine started twisting her ring again. ‘If you were a single man I would want to go out with you. But things are—’

  ‘I will be a single man.’ He took her hand.

  ‘But you’re not yet.’ She took it back.

  ‘One week. I promise. Then I will be separated. I’ll be a man whose marriage has ended and who is about to start divorce proceedings.’

  Divorce. The word made Clementine’s stomach turn. As is always the case when you get exactly what you want, she feared that maybe she didn’t want it any more. She felt panicked at the thought they were about to do something irreversible. Did she really miss him that much? Did she really need him so badly that she was willing to sacrifice the happiness of a woman she didn’t know?

  He moved closer to her and kissed her bare shoulders. First the right, then the left, and then the right again. They were soft, tender kisses. The type you might bestow on a newborn. He put his hand to her cheek. The word ‘divorce’ was still echoing in Clementine’s head.

  She spoke to break the spell: ‘Jason. Call me when you’re single.’ She turned and walked out of the bar.

  It was pure adrenaline that propelled her down George Street. Night had fallen and it was starting to rain. She stopped and leaned against a shop window. She wanted to cry, but her insides felt as though they had dried up. She no longer knew the value of a promise from Jason. She thought about how Damon had responded to her. He had been so calm, so nonchalant about the affair. Clementine was struck by an unsettling thought: had Jason done this before? She thought about how coolly he had delivered his offer. The soft rain was soaking through her clothes. She shivered and kept moving.

  As she walked Sydney’s shiny wet streets, she became obsessed with finding out if Jason was a serial cheater. She had a feeling Damon would tell her. She didn’t doubt Damon’s loyalty to his friend, but she also didn’t think he would lie for Jason in order to dupe her. She felt, in a way she couldn’t account for, that Damon was on her side. She didn’t have his number, but she knew he worked at Standard and Poor’s. She decided she would call him in the morning.

  When Clementine got home, her brother Will called to ask if she could take his boys on the weekend.

  ‘I’d love that,’ she said.

  Will’s sons looked just like him. They had unruly hair and stumpy fingers that were forever being poked into places they shouldn’t be. Their faces seemed permanently caked with snot, dirt and chocolate.

  ‘Thanks, Clem, I owe you,’ Will said. ‘Osc’s being a real handful at the moment. Leave the cat alone, mate. I’d better go. He’s trying to give Pickles a bath.’

  ‘Oh, Will—’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We’re definitely doing Christmas at my place this year, aren’t we? You and Rebecca and the boys will come?’

  ‘Clem, it’s June.’

  ‘I know, but I thought I’d do a croquembouche. I found a great recipe, but it’s really not worth it if it will just be me and Dad again.’

  Will was silent. His wife Rebecca’s parents lived in Perth, and when they flew west for holidays and birthdays it left just Clementine and their father, Lionel.

  ‘Will?’

  ‘I’ll talk to Bec.’

  ‘Okay. I was thinking we could do seafood this year, instead of turkey.’

  ‘Yeah. Sounds good. I’ll see what Bec thinks.’

  They arrived on Saturday morning. Finn was in the stroller, singing the first two lines of ‘Old MacDonald’ over and over. Oscar was hanging onto one of the handles, reprimanding his little brother.

  ‘That’s wrong, Finn. Pop! He’s singing it wrooooong.’

  Lionel Crosley released Finn’s clips and lifted him out of the stroller. Like a little wind-up toy, Finn immediately started running down the hall, shouting. His brother followed, joining in with the excited noise.

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Clem gave Lionel a kiss.

  There was a rucksack hanging from the handlebars. Clementine heaved it off.

  ‘A change of clothes and some nappies for Finn. Just in case. There’s powdered formula in there, too, some sippy cups and a bottle if he won’t drink from the cup,’ Lionel said.

  ‘Don’t forget dinner on Tuesday, Dad.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up.’ Clem wheeled the stroller down the hall.

  After her father was safely away, she turned to the boys and asked them what they wanted to do. They were dismantling a vase of flowers on the coffee table. They looked up at her guiltily. Finn coughed. Some chewed-up petals dropped to the table in a thread of dribble.

  ‘Shall we do some cooking?’ Clementine had supplies to make gingerbread men. ‘Come on, lickety-split!’

  ‘Cooking, yuck. Cooking’s for girls,’ said Oscar.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ she said, reaching for a bag of jelly snakes. ‘Because I was going to make mud people and worm biscuits.’ She picked up a bag of brown sugar. ‘I went and got this special dirt and everything.’

  Finn held his hand out towards the packet of snakes. He made a baby noise that was half-word half-gurgle.

  ‘Gross,’ said Oscar. But his eyes were glued to the lolly snakes.

  Clementine went into the kitchen and waited for them to follow. There were smarties (lizard’s eyes!) and liquorice straps (guts and gizzards!) laid out next to the flour and honey.

  ‘Honey!’ cried Finn.

  They helped her roll the gingerbread, and giggled as they cut little men from the sheet of dough. After they had eaten a mud man each, they curled up on the couch and fell asleep. Clementine tidied the kitchen, then swept the hallway. Finn hadn’t so much eaten his mud man as used the power of his saliva to disintegrate it into soggy crumbs that were now littered throughout her lounge room. Some were matted into his T-shirt. She tried to wipe them off without waking him. Finn leaned against his big brother like
a rag doll. She looked at their peaceful, sleeping faces and realised she hadn’t thought about Jason all day.

  Chapter 11 Annabel

  He leaned in to kiss her.

  ‘Archer,’ Annabel stepped back. This part never got any easier.

  ‘Uh-oh.’ He pulled away.

  ‘Yeah. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What will it be? You’re just not looking for a relationship right now, you want to be friends, it’s not me it’s you …’ His voice was bitter.

  Annabel smoothed her new Zimmermann skirt. ‘I really like you, but—’

  He interrupted with a black laugh. ‘They all do. Funny, if they all like me so much, why don’t any of them keep dating me?’

  ‘It’s just not a right fit,’ she said truthfully.

  He snorted. ‘Yeah. Well. I hope you enjoyed your free meal.’ He stormed off, leaving Annabel standing on the street wondering what had just happened.

  ‘Good-bye, Archer!’ she called out feebly. ‘It was lovely to meet you.’ He was halfway down the street.

  She climbed into a waiting taxi. As it drove past Archer, he shouted: ‘You know, you could be waiting your whole life for the right fit.’

  The cab driver smiled and rolled his eyes.

  ‘You’d be amazed how often I see things like that. Where to, love?’

  ‘Double Bay,’ Annabel said distractedly. The cab driver chuckled and started re-telling arguments he had heard between couples.

  Disquiet had settled over Annabel. She had heard enough giddy tales of chance encounters that had ended at a church altar to know how easily meeting the love of your life could be missed. When she was much younger, she would often try to imagine her as-yet unknown future husband. Pinning her hair up in front of the bathroom mirror, she would think, ‘He is probably shaving right now’, and would try to picture him, flicking a blade upward in short strokes to catch the stubble on the underside of his chin. As she grew older, her hope that she would one day collide with him faded. Now, approaching thirty-five and still single, there was nothing for it but to start really properly searching for someone. But there was the niggling concern that some small error in judgement somewhere along the way had thrown her off-course.

  Part of her was convinced that by turning left instead of right one day, or by choosing one restaurant over another in a last-minute change of mind, she had failed to collide with him. He was still out there, waiting to be bumped into, perhaps now imprisoned in an imperfect marriage because Annabel had never come along. Had her life been thrown off-course because she had bought orange juice instead of coffee one morning? She pondered this as she opened the door to her apartment. Then Fate stepped in.

  A little red light was flashing on her hall table next to her heavy, black resin telephone. Nobody had called her home number in months. There was something near-magical about it. Like a message from another time. She pressed play. A man’s voice spoke. ‘Hi, um … Hi there, Annabel. It’s Harry Barchester here. Melanie Sissowitz gave me this number. I have just arrived back in town, and I was reading the newspaper and there you were. I mean, I’m used to seeing your face in magazines. But wow, you’re doing really well. Anyway, I just wanted to call and say well done. And, also, perhaps I could buy you a drink sometime.’ He left a number.

  Annabel smiled. Harry Barchester. She often wondered about him.

  Harry was Mirabella Burbage-Jones-McRae’s high-school sweetheart and first husband, but apparently he had never made good on his potential. When Mirabella had married him he was on-track to become a Martin Place henchman who would guard the retirement funds of the middle class in a uniform of Ermenegildo Zegnapin-stripe. But he dropped out of the Macquarie apprenticeship programme to teach English in Africa, then parlayed his two years of undergrad credits into a degree in education. He had taught at a school out west for a decade before Mirabella spat the dummy and left him. He then fled to the red centre.

  Now and then Annabel would imagine him walking up dirt roads in the Northern Territory, wearing khaki shorts and sandals, surrounded by little children who had to skip to keep up with his large strides.

  Before Mirabella had claimed him, Harry had kissed Annabel at the wrap party for their high-school play. Lampton Ladies’ College had partnered with St Stephen’s Boys’ School for a production of Alice in Wonderland. Annabel played Alice, and Harry was the Ace of Spades. They were celebrating the last night of the show with plastic cups of Fanta fizzing in their hands when he led her into the wings.

  ‘You were really good,’ Harry said. ‘You could be an actress.’ He touched her face.

  The stage lights were off. There, in the darkness among rows of wooden rose bushes, he gave Annabel her first kiss. It tasted like orange sugar. Annabel touched his chest and giggled.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, pressing his nose to hers.

  ‘I can feel your heart beating.’

  The next day, still glowing, she received a phone call from a modelling agent who had seen the play (he was the Cheshire cat’s father) and wanted to meet with her. At an office in Woolloomooloo, he took her measurements and a couple of Polaroids, and asked her whether she would be interested in going to Melbourne for a weekend of teen catwalk shows at a shopping centre. They paid Annabel $300 and she got to keep the clothes. She rode the bus to school on Monday feeling worldly and proud.

  But when she arrived at the bus stop she stopped smiling. Mirabella was sitting on Harry’s knee, one arm draped casually over his shoulder. When Mirabella saw Annabel, she leaned over and, not letting her gaze shift from Annabel for a minute, gave Harry a slow, deliberate kiss. When Annabel got home that night, she hid in her walk-in wardrobe and cried.

  At the start of Harry’s second year of university, he married Mirabella.

  Annabel looked at her watch. It was just after 10pm. She wondered if it was too late to call. She couldn’t tell what time he had left the message. Damn archaic technology, she thought. She wrote the number down and decided to phone him from her office.

  ‘Mrs Annabel Barchester,’ she said as she rubbed night cream into her face. ‘I won’t let him get away this time.’

  Annabel had decided she would call Harry after lunch. By 10am she was dialling his number.

  As his mobile rang she tried to figure out what his sudden re-entry into her life meant.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Harry? It’s Annabel Summers.’

  ‘Annabel! How have you been?’

  He told her he was back in town for six months while he finished off his thesis. Annabel talked about Sweet Success and waited for him to renew his offer of a drink. But he didn’t.

  ‘Shall we have a drink?’ she suggested. She could hear Clementine’s voice in her head telling her to let him do the chasing. ‘Or dinner.’ Damn. Backtrack. ‘You could drop by.’ Yes. Good. That was more casual.

  ‘You mean come over for dinner?’

  Oh no.

  ‘Uh. Yes. Sure.’

  Oh no!

  ‘Great. That would be lovely,’ he sounded surprised. ‘I’ve got some night lectures, but I’ll call you.’

  Annabel had just invited her first love to dinner. ‘Why did I do that?’ she asked herself. Possibly because of a subconscious desire to appear like a domestic goddess. Possibly because she had never really cooked for a man before and the 1950s housewife inside her blamed this for her current unmarried state.

  ‘Great,’ she said, hanging up the phone. Then she panicked.

  When it came to food preparation, the most Annabel ever did was remove packaging. She had even been known to eat olives straight from the jar and call it cuisine.

  On the other hand, she loved salmon and cream and cheese and dark chocolate and herbs and garlic and liquorice. How hard could it be to put it all in a pot and make something delicious?

  The next day she went into the office early to comb through food magazines in search of dinner-party inspiration. Sybilla interrupted her at 8.30, weighed down by an oversized Chloé tote
bag.

  ‘That looks like fun,’ Sybilla said. ‘What are you doing?’

  Annabel was crouched on the floor surrounded by open magazines.

  ‘Is there a launch party coming up? Are you trying to capture the essence of a brand with the perfect meal? That’s what I was trying to do with the pancakes I sent you. Food is so evocative.’

  ‘Um, no, this is for something else.’ Annabel slid the magazines into a pile. Being the embodiment of flat, soggy pancakes didn’t seem like a compliment. Sybilla was staring at her like a bright-eyed bug.

  ‘This morning, can I get you to carry on with updating the copy for Farouk’s online material? I’ll read over the draft when you’re done.’

  ‘I’ve already finished.’ Sybilla beamed as she pulled a brown leather portfolio from her bag.

  ‘Oh, great. I’ll take a look. I have a meeting with their new regional director this afternoon. Maybe it would be good for you to come along.’

  ‘I’d love that,’ Sybilla gushed. She was keen to please, Annabel had to give her that.

  She took Sybilla’s draft into her office and read it with a red pen poised. It needed a few changes and corrections, but mostly just for style. At 9.30 Annabel had a conference call. Then she took the corrected copy back to Sybilla’s makeshift desk, which Sybilla had already decorated with a silver stationary set, a scented candle and picture frames that held photos of her and her girlfriends. Sybilla looked at Annabel expectantly.

  ‘It’s good,’ Annabel told her. ‘Once you’ve finished with that, could you address these envelopes, please?’ She handed Sybilla a bundle of invitations. ‘There’s a spreadsheet in the folder marked “Contacts”.’

  Sybilla took the orders with good grace. Annabel went into her office and shut the door. She was facing a morning of cold-calling. She really wanted to take the larger office, but to justify it she had to be sure there would be more work coming in.

  Kicking off her high heels, she started making her way down a list of potential new clients. At 11am she took a break and phoned Delores Peck at the Herald.