‘Annabel?’ Harry said. ‘I lost you again.’
‘Sorry,’ she blushed. This was going terribly.
When the gas had cleared, she went back to the kitchen, put the heat on under the pasta and inspected the dressing. The spring onions, chilli and slices of garlic looked positively charred but the prawns were still translucent, and, Annabel feared, raw. All of it was cold. She stirred the pasta water. Once the spaghetti was cooked she was supposed to strain it, then transfer it into the pan with the prawns and toss the whole thing together. But the pasta water was starting to look like soup, and when she scooped up a bunch of noodles with tongs they broke and plopped back into their whitish bath.
‘Do you need a hand?’ came a call from the lounge room.
‘No, no, it’s fine. Everything is fine.’ She wondered whether she could put the prawns in the microwave. What she most feared was that they were teeming with some terrible bacteria that would cause food poisoning. She didn’t mind serving up a poorly cooked meal, but she didn’t want to kill the guy. She decided to surrender.
‘It’s such a beautiful night,’ Annabel said. ‘Perhaps we should eat out.’
‘Oh, aren’t you cooking?’
‘It’s a disaster.’
‘I’m sure it’s not.’
‘It is. You’ve had a hard enough year without adding my cooking to your problems. There’s a lovely little Italian place just three blocks from here.’
It was a perfect night for a walk. The air was crisp and not too cold.
‘Don’t worry,’ Harry said after they had strolled a little way in silence. ‘Mirabella couldn’t cook either. Our whole marriage, I don’t think she made a single meal.’
‘It’s much the same in my house, I’m afraid. I eat tuna from a can three nights a week. I pretty sure I’m on my way to a severe case of mercury poisoning.’
Harry looked at her blankly.
‘Mirabella’s idea of a hearty meal was a bowl of broth. Indulgence was a second serve of rice cakes. Her favourite food was a Tic Tac.’
‘Oh dear,’ Annabel laughed. ‘Poor Humpty.’
‘Humpty?’
‘Humphrey McRae. The new Mr Mirabella.’
‘Ah.’ Harry went quiet for a moment. ‘You’ve met him, then?’
‘Actually, yes. I know Humphrey very well.’
‘You were at the wedding?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
He winced. ‘Well, she was bound to be snapped up, an attractive woman like Mirabella.’
Annabel ignored the comment and guided Harry into La Traviata. ‘Here we are.’
Over a dish of professionally prepared chilli prawns she answered his questions about Sweet Success.
‘Congratulations, Annabel,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘That’s amazing. Mirabella would never have been able to do anything like that.’
Later when they ordered a plate of pannacotta to share, she told him about the Eve’s Garden account and how she had been lucky enough to get a tip-off about their expansion.
‘My friend Patrick told me about them. He’s a botanist and very clever.’
Harry smiled and shook his head.
‘You’re doing so well. You’ve got so much more spunk than Mirabella.’
It was the fifth time he had mentioned her name. Annabel knew this warning sign — the constant mentioning of the old flame. It sounds as though you are being compared favourably to the former mate, which some women see as a good thing. But he shouldn’t be comparing you to her: it means she is still playing on his mind.
‘Tell me about your thesis,’ she said.
‘It’s an examination of religious education in public schools. RE is offered as an elective, separate class, but I contend, in my paper, that it should be studied by all students. Like history. Religion is a vital pillar of human existence. It has coloured so much of our evolution as a society.’
‘My friend Patrick was saying something similar the other day. He thinks schools need to include more subjects that teach children about the world they live in.’ Annabel smiled, pleased to have something to say about education. ‘Where are you studying?’
Harry pushed the last of the pannacotta towards her. ‘The University of Sydney.’
‘Oh really?’ she said. ‘That’s where my friend Patrick works.’
Harry walked her home and closed the evening with a chaste kiss on the cheek. As soon as his footsteps faded from her door, Annabel called Clementine.
‘Hello?’ she answered in one ring.
‘Clem. Harry just left.’
‘Harry?’
‘Barchester. We just had the dinner.’
‘Right. Sorry. My mind’s not in the game. How did it go?’
‘It went okay. I messed up the dinner, though.’
‘Did you follow the plan? Questions, compliments, no kissing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well that’s good. And are you going to see him again?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ Clementine sounded dejected. ‘So he didn’t suggest a second date?’
‘No. But I think he’ll call,’ Annabel said, trying to sound positive. ‘He seemed to have a good time.’
‘I’m sure he will,’ Clem said.
Annabel hung up feeling flat. Why hadn’t he booked a second date? And why had he kept talking about Mirabella? She tried to think of great romances that started with the hero pining for his ex. There were none.
The next morning Annabel took herself to Café Indigo for coffee and bacon. Her table was nuzzled up next to a gaggle of women planning a hen’s night.
‘We must have these,’ the bride-to-be brayed. She was holding up chalk-coloured lollies in a lace bag. Annabel brightened. They were Peyton’s Treats; the product that had launched her career in PR.
One of the last modelling shows she ever did was for the David Jones spring collection. She closed the show in a Collette Dinnigan wedding gown, then changed into a candy-bright Alice McCall swing dress and joined the after-party. She was helping herself to some goat’s cheese when a gentleman in a three-piece suit and a fedora offered her a jellybean from a white paper bag.
‘My mother always told me not to take lollies from strange men,’ Annabel had smiled.
The old man blustered in mock-affront. ‘I’m not that strange, am I?’
Bridge Peyton owned Peyton’s Treats, a family-run confectionary company that had been producing pick-n-mix products like musk sticks and sherbet bombs since the 1920s. They were getting killed in the market, and one of the big conglomerates was lickings its lips.
‘Remember when you’d go to the milk bar and get a scoop of milk bottles and a scoop of freckles for 60 cents?’ Mr Peyton asked. ‘We produced almost all of those.’
‘I used to love that,’ Annabel said, her mind filling with memories of smearing glass counters with her fingers as she pointed to chocolate buttons, bananas and clinkers.
‘Yes, but you hardly ever see it nowadays, do you?’
Over a glass of champagne, Mr Peyton told Annabel of his family’s misfortunes. In the past decade the company had moved into producing family bags for supermarkets and lunchbox fillers like jersey caramel bars. But they just couldn’t reclaim their market share. As a last resort they had sunk a heap of cash into a re-branding effort. Annabel remembered the ad campaign. Some clay-brained marketing executive who obviously fished his degree out of a cereal box had even come up with a rap song that ran on commercial radio.
‘I’m about due for retirement anyway,’ Mr Peyton said.
‘What a shame. Isn’t there anything you can do?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he said sadly. ‘We’re an old-fashioned business and we just can’t compete.’
Annabel said goodbye to Mr Peyton and collected her bag from the changing room. She walked over to the running-rack of clothes and looked at the tulle-and-pearl dress one more time. It was made from layers of fabric and lace in a vintage style. As she touched t
he floaty material an idea began to form. She called Mr Peyton first thing in the morning and asked if she could buy him lunch. He was hesitant, but she won him over.
‘It’s not every day that a supermodel asks me out to lunch,’ he chuckled.
She gave him her pitch and said she wouldn’t charge a thing until his sales picked up.
‘You say you’re an old-fashioned company, let’s capitalise on that. These days there is a great hunger for boutique products. People want to feel like they have something that’s one of a kind; something crafted from real ingredients, not pressed together from a vat of chemicals in a factory.’
Mr Peyton was intrigued. He promised that if Annabel was able to achieve the turn-around she predicted, he would pay a handsome fee.
‘What have I got to lose?’ he shrugged.
Annabel commissioned brand and packaging designs in old-fashioned pastel colours. The images were Art Nouveau designs in the style of Alphonse Mucha, Klimt and Toulouse-Lautrec, tinted in a wash of blush and rose. The beautiful artwork enabled her to push up the price point. Soon Peyton’s Treats were all the rage for hen’s parties, high teas, christenings and bridal showers. Musk sticks were sold by the bunch, wrapped with ribbon. As Annabel had predicted, women gaily paid $6 for a bag of lollies they would have bought at the milk bar for 60 cents when they were little girls. What they were really paying for, of course, was the crimped ribbon and an idea. Peyton’s produced a range of vintage treats dyed white for weddings, levied the bridal surcharge and made a killing. True to his word, Mr Peyton presented Annabel with a cheque and a generous bonus. Then he commissioned her to do ongoing PR work for Peyton’s. That was the start of her business.
She watched the bride-to-be and her girlfriends cooing over the cutely packaged lollies.
‘They’re so classy,’ they were telling each other.
I can do this, Annabel thought. If she could convince people to pay $6 for musk sticks just because they were wrapped in ribbon, she could convince Harry Barchester to fall in love with her. She swallowed the last of her coffee and called for the bill.
Her mind whirred as she walked home. If Harry was a prospective client and she was trying to sell him the product of Annabel Summers, wife extraordinaire, what would she do? She thought about what she knew about Harry: he had given up a high-powered, high-paying job to teach, so he wasn’t materialistic. But he was attracted to women like Mirabella who were very glamorous and sexually powerful. He had recently become involved in religion. He would respond to kindness and compassion. Annabel decided she needed to be strong but also warm and modest.
She would channel Julie Andrews circa Maria von Trapp. Simple straight hair and low hems. She looked at the gold-tipped manicure she’d just had done at her favourite salon. That would have to go.
Some proactive client management was needed. She sent Harry a text message: Thank you for joining me for dinner last night, Harry. I enjoyed hearing the stories of your adventures in the Northern Territory.
She debated adding an ‘X’, but in the end left it off. After sending the message, she immediately regretted not adding the text-kiss. It looked cold without it.
Again, she considered the advice of Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice: if a woman conceals her affection from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him. ‘There is so much gratitude or vanity in almost any attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself,’ were the words of Charlotte Lucas.
Annabel resolved that she would be as openly adoring of Harry Barchester as possible.
She opened another message to him, typed in an ‘X’ and pressed send.
That afternoon she met Patrick for a stroll through the Botanic Gardens.
‘Just quietly, I’m pleased the Ealing Studio film isn’t screening today,’ he said coming towards Annabel with a broad smile.
He had a yellow-banded iris in his buttonhole, and produced a second, paler one, which he offered to her.
‘That flower is almost the same colour as you hair,’ he said.
She threaded it through a buttonhole in her Trelise Cooper silk shirt. ‘I hope the flowers don’t mind these clouds,’ she said, looking up at the overcast sky.
Patrick smiled. ‘Hopefully, we’ll see some sun. Now, what can I tell you about Eve’s Garden?’
‘Oh, Patrick, no. I haven’t come here just to pump you for information.’
‘I know. I don’t think you need my help, either. But I also know that you’ll be doing as much research on the company as possible. Consider me a resource.’
‘Like Wikipedia?’
‘Like a musty old library book.’
Annabel laughed. ‘How did you come to specialise in botany?’
‘I wanted to do medical research,’ he said. ‘I had great plans of leading expeditions into the Amazon where I would cut open the root of a well-hidden tree and discover the cure for cancer.’
‘How very noble,’ she said. ‘And do irises have any healing powers?’
‘Sadly, no. Irises are more of a personal passion than a professional pursuit. In the Middle Ages people used to use the juice of the root to cure dropsy. It was quite effective but—’
‘I’m sorry, what’s dropsy?’
‘Oh, it was a sort of swelling of limbs. From excess water.’
‘Okay, go on.’
As they climbed a small hill, the sun came out from behind a cloud.
‘Wealthy women would also apply it to their freckles as a sort of cosmetic to remove them.’
‘I used to do that with lemon juice,’ Annabel said.
Patrick stopped. ‘Here, let me look at you.’ He squinted, pretending to study her face like a specimen. ‘You know,’ he spoke. ‘You’ve got the sweetest freckle right between your eyes. I’ve never noticed it before.’
‘Oh, do I?’ Annabel’s hand went self-consciously to her face. ‘I suppose I wear quite a bit of make-up.’
‘It’s like a bullseye,’ he said. ‘Not a very nice thought. Steer clear of shooting ranges.’
He was holding her jaw gently as he gazed at her face. For the first time all day neither of them was speaking.
Priiing.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Annabel said, fumbling for her phone. The name on the screen was Harry. It went silent before she could answer.
‘Someone important?’ Patrick asked.
‘I can call back later.’
‘I’m glad the lemon juice you used wasn’t successful in erasing your freckle,’ Patrick said, walking on. ‘It’s very dear and … unique.’
‘So there’s no point in taking irises to a sick friend in hospital?’ Annabel said.
‘How could you say such a thing?’ Patrick’s hand went to his mouth. ‘They are the only choice of flower. They have no medical powers, but they are useful for all sorts of other things.’
‘Like decoration?’
‘Yes. They’re very beautiful. But that’s not why I love them. I like to look below the surface. But enough about flowers: tell me more about your ideas for Eve’s Garden.’
Chapter 15 Daniela
Mannaggia. Daniela had been sitting in her car out the front of her flat for fifteen minutes. A taxi honked her. She leaned on her horn and honked back. She was double-parked, but it wasn’t her fault. Parked in the spot reserved for her Peugeot 407, with its five-star NCAP rating and diesel-powered fuel economy, was Liz’s tinnie little Barina, with its purple metallic paint and vanilla-scented car-freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror. A sticker on the bumper declared Magic Happens!
Stupid car.
Dani weighed up her choices.
Option one: She could slink off and have dinner at her parents’ place and hope that the Barina was gone when she returned.
Option two: She could go in and be polite and act as though nothing had happened.
Option three: She could go in, brew some coffee and casually mention how much she had enjoyed the cunnilingus Simon had performed on her the other ni
ght.
Daniela sat and indulged in overblown fantasies that included setting fire to their house. It was true that she was in the wrong, sleeping with Liz’s boyfriend. But it wasn’t Liz Dani was mad at. It was Simon. Living together had become a nightmare, because he had refused to acknowledge what had happened. There was etiquette to deal with these things. His response was to treat Dani as though she had anthrax, shrinking away if she passed him in the hall and leaving a room if she entered it. It was late on Sunday evening and she had hardly seen him all week. On the Friday morning he had dashed through the lounge while she was making breakfast.
‘Simon, wait!’ she had called. Reluctantly he had stopped and turned from the door. Daniela could feel a discomfiting combination of guilt and resentment radiating from his direction.
‘Um, how have you been?’ She tried to ease into the conversation.
‘Good. Look, Dani, I’m running really late. I’ll see you another time.’
She had wanted to assure him that things didn’t have to be weird. She had wanted to ask for them to let things go back to the way they used to be. He slammed the door. Daniela figured he must have felt guilty, so she let it be. She had had to work a few hours on Saturday morning and so had called him from the office. He didn’t answer. The house was empty when she came home. His toolbox and wallet were sitting on the dining-room table. He wouldn’t get far without those; he would have to come home. Dani planted herself on the couch and turned on the television. She would confront Simon. They would talk, make awkward jokes about the mistake, and everything would be okay. At half past eleven, he still wasn’t home. As she had to be on site at six, she decided to give up and go to bed. She had just drifted off to sleep when she was woken by the click of the lock. She sat bolt upright and listened for footsteps.
She sent a text message to Simon: I need to talk to you.
Through the wall she could hear the buzz as the phone received the message. A minute ticked by. He didn’t answer. Another minute passed. She wondered whether he realised she was in the house. Deciding to make her presence known, she walked down the hallway to the bathroom, taking slow and deliberate steps past his door. She ran the tap, flushed the toilet, then ran the tap again. On the way back she stomped loudly. Her phone remained obstinately silent. She didn’t hear from him the next day, either. And now this: the purple Barina invasion.
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