Don't Tell Eve

by Airlie Lawson

  ‘Right,’ said Jess, careful not to show her relief as she noticed that he hadn’t answered her question.

  ‘Can we talk about you for a bit? Not work, not the dolls, just you.’

  ‘Didn’t Zoë tell you everything?’

  ‘Enough. A truce!’

  The waiter approached.

  ‘No, sorry, we’re not ready to order.’ Oliver dismissed him. ‘So what do you think your chatty friend told me?’

  Jess had been hoping to extract this information without admitting she didn’t know. ‘I’m not entirely sure actually. I know she was trying to set me up with you, but she didn’t want to tell me outright because she didn’t think I’d appreciate her efforts – because you’ve also slept with her.’

  ‘Just the once.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s not necessarily something to highlight, as I’m seeing a bit of a pattern. What did she tell you?’

  ‘That you were great, talented, gorgeous, the usual things that are guaranteed to make a guy nervous when said about a single girl – after all, if that were true, why would she be single?’

  ‘So what else?’

  ‘What she said was a secret.’

  ‘What, a different secret?’ Jess repeated. ‘You’re not just talking about the dolls are you? She told you about JJ? She knew?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that, but thanks for the confirmation. Although I’d wish you’d bloody told me earlier. Your dealer guessed immediately.’

  ‘I’d hope so, he’s been representing me for years – and he was expecting it.’

  ‘What?’

  Jess chose to ignore his question. ‘Tell me this – if you knew that he recognised the work, then did you also recognise it?’

  ‘It’s my job.’ He chose not to add that Zoë had compared the doll project to the work of JJ, whose work she found far too confronting to like.

  Jess said nothing, just reappraised him.

  ‘There was one other thing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He was so close now but suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to know. God, she’s cute, he thought instead. ‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter, forget it.’

  ‘Forget what?’

  ‘I just don’t want —’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Jess finally worked out the reason for Oliver’s nerves. ‘This isn’t about JJ. You really do believe there’s a correlation between Eve’s accidents and the dolls.’

  ‘There’s evidence.’

  Jess made it sound so unlikely, so ridiculous, but … The clothes, the accidents – Oliver had even witnessed one himself. He reflected, not unhappily, on Eve’s bustier.

  ‘Oh Oliver. Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Do I?’ asked Oliver, at last realising, with admiration, just how many steps ahead of him Jess had always been.

  At this moment the waiter approached again. ‘Would you like me to tell you about the specials?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  Jess chose quickly while Oliver dithered.

  ‘Okay, let me take you back to my school days,’ began Jess, sipping slowly at her martini, drawing out the story. Enjoying herself to such an extent that Oliver soon wondered if this was going to be another fabrication. She talked of being teased by the other children because of her unconventional upbringing, because of the way her mother dressed, the tie-dyed t-shirts, the bra-burning, the wraparound Indian skirts. The clogs. And Jess’s own homemade or hand-me-down clothes. One particular girl had been the ringleader – a girl whose mother put her straight, ash blonde hair in rags every night, producing Shirley Temple-style ringlets; a girl who turned up to school sports days in red satin disco shorts, when everyone else wore terry towelling or ordinary cotton drill. A girl with a walk-in wardrobe the size of Jess’s bedroom. One day, tired of the constant humiliations, Jess had dressed her doll up as this girl, complete with a pair of tiny red satin shorts – and then run it over on her bike. The next day, the girl herself was run over by a motorbike.

  Oliver’s eyes widened slightly, but he made no comment.

  Terrified by what had happened, Jess had confessed to her mother. Her mother had yelled, she’d thrown things, she’d slammed doors. Once she’d recovered the power of articulate speech, she told Jess never, ever to do anything like that again and to never talk of it again. This was the real reason dolls were banned from the house, along with trucks and guns for good measure.

  ‘Stereotyping was a convenient cover, if anyone asked. The girl recovered, by the way, in case you were wondering. She’s married to a mechanic now and has four small kids. Anyway, I eventually forgot about it. A shrink would say that I repressed it, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Instead I focused on appearing normal, not standing out. It’s harder than it looks. I managed it, but it did involve compromise, so on the outside I became urban, corporate. Safe.’

  ‘And on the inside, there was JJ. Safe’s a curious word. From yourself – or the world?’

  ‘You’re never safe from yourself.’ Jess studied Oliver’s face. ‘Zoë told you about that incident, didn’t she? And my mother’s odd reaction? When she told you about the dolls?’

  ‘Yeah, she did. Funny, she didn’t connect you to JJ though.’

  ‘That’s Zoë for you.’

  ‘So, that’s it, that’s the truth?’ To Oliver, the childhood incident sounded curiously plausible, in the circumstances.

  ‘That’s your story.’

  ‘I want to trust you, I do.’ He did, and not just for the sake of a story.

  ‘For your story?’ It was said with a certain acidity.

  ‘For me, Jess. Forget my story, forget stories. I hear you’ve said you’ll do one interview about JJ and, yes, of course I hope you’ll choose to do it with me, but fuck it, if you do choose someone else, I’ll live. I haven’t been straight with you, I admit it. I wish I had been.’

  The tone of his voice, and his expression, convinced Jess that he was sincere. ‘If this – whatever it is – is going to go anywhere, it’s really better that you don’t think I’ve got supernatural powers. It wouldn’t be fair if I had that kind of advantage. So …’

  Their food arrived and Jess told Oliver about Todd’s design of the website; his calls to outline Eve’s accidents and exactly what she was wearing at the time; how this was the way the outfits for the dolls were chosen; that they had always been going to put the dolls up for auction, but not as the work of JJ as they were worried that her notoriety would have attracted too much attention and – ironically, as it turned out – pushed the price up too much; that the tableau had always been destined for Eve’s collection. By the time she admitted that Oliver’s involvement hadn’t changed anything – although she was extremely grateful to him for saving the dolls from Hilary, so really, his involvement was vital – they’d got through two courses.

  ‘I don’t believe it. Well, I do, I do. And it explains why you let me take the dolls, why you trusted me.’

  ‘I could afford to take that chance.’

  ‘I thought … It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I know what you thought.’ Jess grinned.

  ‘But what I still don’t understand is how you knew Eve would freak out.’ Oliver couldn’t ignore the grin. Once again he felt caught out, but not that he was being played with, which was a relief, as he was just beginning to understand quite how hard Jess played.

  ‘You fell for it and you strike me as a pretty cynical kind of guy.’

  ‘True. So Todd was involved all the time?’

  ‘Crucial, from when I gave him a bit of advice about his own ambitious project.’

  ‘What about Jack? What did he know?’

  ‘Most of it, eventually. But no, he wasn’t involved.’

  ‘What about Hilary? How worried were you about her?’

  ‘I didn’t want her to screw things up and she had the capacity to, as we found out.’

  ‘One last question, then I’ll shut up about this. Why does Todd hate Eve so much?’

  ‘If you really knew th
em you probably wouldn’t have to ask – but then your article seemed pretty perceptive. Let’s call it a case of Dr Frankenstein feeling a little guilty about the behaviour of his monster.’

  ‘But was he responsible?’ asked Oliver.

  ‘Only they know the answer to that question.’

  ‘What about Phil?’

  ‘I thought the question before last was your last question. But it doesn’t matter. Phil knew as much as you did, but he was interfering in a pretty unhelpful way.’

  ‘And Zoë? What about her? I mean —’

  ‘Everything? God no, she’s too much of a blabbermouth. All she knew, you know.’

  ‘Isn’t she pissed off about the JJ business? I mean, you guys have known each other a long time.’

  ‘Yeah, she is, but the day she learns to keep a secret is the day I’ll tell her one that really needs to be kept. Imagine if I’d told her the whole truth about the dolls!’

  There was only one more thing that Oliver had to find out. ‘Speaking of Zoë, do you really mind about her? Or Kate, for that matter?’

  ‘No,’ said Jess, thoughtfully. ‘I just don’t like complications.’ She gave him a wry smile.

  ‘Well, if that’s all it is, why don’t we just keep this simple?’

  ‘And?’ Jess raised an eyebrow.

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  For once, there was no confusion. They understood each other perfectly.

  Epilogue

  Once Eve finally climbed out of bed, she took a leave of absence from her position as managing director of Papyrus Press, and Todd arranged for her to visit the retreat where Alex had been for so many months.

  There she remains, oscillating between feeling sorry for herself and meditating and admiring the robes worn by the monks and eating contraband goods that a new protégé has managed to smuggle in. Secretly, she’s enjoying the time off, but it’s only time off, not retirement.

  Hilary is working as a manager in the human resources department at a national catering company. She still hates food and loathes people, especially those with an unhealthily close relationship to food. She spends her time on the internet, obsessively searching for information on the dolls and on Jess, trying to work out an explanation for what happened.

  When the CEO called Phil after the auction, he accepted her offer immediately. He’d always believed in his divine right to rule, it was simply a matter of having the way cleared for him. He was saved the expense of removing Eve by continually extending her leave of absence, saved the problem of firing Hilary by her resignation, and Roger, who’d always annoyed him, he simply demoted. Roger, relieved to have survived yet another restructure, swore, but that was out of habit, not in complaint.

  The company is prospering and Phil has just signed up a new book with Alex, who left the retreat upon Eve’s arrival. He’s agreed to do a tell-all memoir and the early material indicates it’s going to be explosive.

  Zoë is heavily pregnant and agreed at Phil’s insistence to redecorate her bedroom.

  Zoë and Jack’s first book was a huge success and they are now working together again on a new food and fashion project, only this time its focus is on children. Zoë is planning a tie-in range of children’s merchandise, clothes, and toys. She and Jack have also been offered a television series.

  Along with running The Beached Whale, working on the new book, and doing publicity, Jack is coaching Kate’s twins’ under-10s football and cricket teams and teaching the boys to surf. They’re teaching him magic tricks, which he’s not very good at, mainly because they make him nervous, even though they’re only pretend, as the boys keep telling him. He and Kate plan to marry once her divorce is finalised.

  Kate has been signed up to write a series based on her stories about the boys. The first one is due out in time for Christmas.

  Chris’s novel was in fact that rare combination – a bestseller as well as critically acclaimed, although to his mortification one of the scenes in the first chapter won the year’s Literary Review ‘Bad Sex’ Award. He’s currently dating Phil’s soap actor/ess, who has been promised a starring role in the forthcoming film version of his book. The two met at an acting class. Chris had been advised to do it to help him get over his fear of speaking in public; the actor/ess had chosen to do it in order to be taken more seriously. Chris is working on a new book – a farce, featuring dolls, fashion accidents, blackmail and a larger-than-life central female character.

  Ilona, while swamped with offers after leaving Papyrus, decided not to return to publishing. Instead, she’s now living happily with the Traitor, who did just one book with Papyrus before returning to Zest, and writing about her lifetime of romantic adventures. Many are worried, but just as many can’t wait to look up their names in the index. Phil is hoping she’ll let him publish it, but Zest is offering a lot more money.

  David is still with Zoë’s PA. He can’t stop smiling. She burned his trendy wardrobe and made him go back to cardigans, mothballs and corduroy, saying she already had enough fashion in her life. Zoë has promised a breathtaking dress for the wedding. The only thing David knows about the dress is that it’s not going to be white. Phil now lets David buy the projects he likes, which has resulted in a list of mixed commercial success but growing acclaim.

  Oliver has been lured off the island and is now editing an international design magazine. Jess is with him, working on several new projects as JJ, aka Jess Johnson, as was officially revealed in her only interview after the auction, a feature written by Oliver in a national newspaper. She’s keeping rather quiet about what her new projects actually involve and Oliver isn’t quite sure that he wants to know.

  After installing Eve in the retreat, Todd moved back home. Not back to the house on the island, but home to the other side of the world. He found a charmingly restored nineteenth-century farmhouse with a huge garden and four long-haired sheep.

  The house is decorated with furniture discovered mainly in junk shops, though he still has the lampshade, the beanbag and the pony-skin daybed. He also has the doll tableau, as Eve’s final words to him were GET THAT FUCKIN’ THING OUT OF HERE. Reverse Garbage was sold, along with everything else, when Eve’s collection was auctioned, on her request. She’d had enough of art, not to mention craft. Living with Todd is Alex, the no-longer-missing chef, whom he’d finally let himself fall for during their many hours on the plane on the way back from the retreat.

  Alex returns to the island periodically, mainly to talk business with Jack about restaurants and with Phil about his memoirs.

  One morning, not so long ago, a flamboyantly dressed Todd went on his morning walk to the end of the drive to collect the mail. When he got home, instead of opening his letters immediately, he went to the kitchen and put the Atomic on the stove. That done, he opened the tin that Alex had filled earlier in the week, took out an Anzac biscuit, wandered over to his desk, picked up his pearl-handled letter opener and slit open the envelope on the top of the pile. Before reading the contents, he made himself a flat white and sat down. The letter was from the accounts department at Zest and enclosed was a cheque featuring a very satisfying row of zeros. It was payment for the sale of the foreign rights of his book to MaxMedia. Along with the cheque there was a short note from the CEO herself.

  Todd,

  I never doubted your ability – you just needed an appropriate incentive. Life is all about rising to challenges, after all! Congratulations on an extraordinary piece of work. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how you can top it.

  PS I destroyed that picture a long time ago.

  The book in question was a management book, with a cover that featured a femme fatale observed by a man in a trench coat.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  Reverse Garbage does exist and is by sculptor Alexander Seton. The Beached Whale is not, as some have suggested, located in Whale Beach. Trauma Teddy patterns, in Australia at least, are available from local Red Cross branches.

  w
ww.airlielawson.com

  Acknowledgements

  First, I would like to thank all at Random House Australia, in particular my publisher, the wonderful Meredith Curnow, and my sensitive, insightful editors, Roberta Ivers and Catherine Hill. I couldn’t have hoped for a more professional, supportive, inspiring and – hmm – brave team. I’d also like to thank my agent, Sophie Hamley, who read the manuscript and loved it immediately at a time when I was completely over it, had lost all confidence in it and was thinking it deserved to hide in the bottom drawer. (Not that I told her this.)

  I’m also hugely grateful to my friends, both in the publishing world and outside, who had many useful and often entertaining thoughts and suggestions about the novel.

  And I owe a particular debt to the Dixons, who let me stay for several months in their cottage, allowing me time and a gorgeous, peaceful environment in which to finish the second draft, when the book went from sketchy idea to actual manuscript.

  Finally, I couldn’t have done without the support of my family who, throughout the gestation period, fed me often, housed me occasionally and endured without complaint my constantly changing opinions of, and ideas about, Eve – and her friends.