by Janet Gover
With the door safely closed behind her, she started to pack. There wasn’t much for her to take. She had taken her laptop home the night before, and it was still sitting in her flat. The piles of paper on her desk were mostly student essays she was marking … had been marking. They were almost finished. Someone else could easily take over. Maybe the girl who seemed to have already taken her place in Ray’s … No, she pushed that thought aside. That was beneath her. Ray was beneath her, and all she felt for the girl was sympathy. She should go and warn her, but she wasn’t that strong, and the girl wouldn’t believe her. She took one final look around the office, lifted her framed degree from the wall, and walked out without a backward glance.
She was desperate to get to the sanctuary of home. Mandy was the only person who knew about Ray. She had disapproved from the start, but Mandy was her sister. Mandy would offer sympathy and support, a shoulder to cry on, and right now, she desperately needed that.
‘Jenny! Look!’ Mandy thrust her left hand under Jenny’s nose before the door was even closed.
‘What …?’
‘Pete and I are getting married!’ The high-pitched squeal almost hurt her ears.
‘Married …?’ Jenny forced her eyes to focus on the hand that Mandy was waving in front of her face. A thin gold band encircled the third finger, and a tiny diamond did its best to glitter.
‘He made me breakfast in bed this morning, and when he brought the tray in – there was the ring. Isn’t it gorgeous?’
‘Yes. Gorgeous.’ Jenny forced some enthusiasm into her voice.
‘He’s just so wonderful! I’m so happy!’
Mandy threw her arms around Jenny, who hugged her back. ‘I’m really happy for you,’ Jenny said, meaning it. She looked around for signs of her future brother-in-law, but he’d obviously gone to work.
‘I want all my sisters to be bridesmaids. You will, won’t you?’ Mandy finally released Jenny from the bear hug.
‘Of course I will,’ Jenny walked the rest of the way into the flat. She dropped her things on the table and fixed a smile on her face. She was struggling to cope with this latest development. She had woken this morning thinking she was about to announce her engagement. Now she was alone – and it was Mandy planning to walk down the aisle.
Life was very cruel.
‘I want a big church wedding. The full meringue dress. Lots of flowers.’ Mandy was dancing around the room, her arms outspread. Then she suddenly stopped. ‘Of course, that’s going to cost a lot of money.’
Mandy, like Jenny, was a post grad student and tutor, neither of which roles was exactly a gold mine. Their parents weren’t wealthy either and had spent their money caring for a large family. Pete also worked at the university, and his faded jeans and battered old car were ample evidence of the state of his finances.
‘That means we need to start saving right now.’ Mandy, decidedly more sober-faced, dropped onto the couch and gestured to Jenny to sit with her.
‘And …?’ Jenny asked.
‘That’s what I need talk to you about. Pete and I are going to move in together. It’ll save on rent. Not that we don’t want to live together anyway … I mean, we’re getting married. And a white dress doesn’t mean anything anymore … not really.’ Mandy stumbled into silence.
Jenny put her hand on her sister’s arm. ‘Hey. That’s fine. Of course you want to live together.’
‘We thought … Well, this place is really great. But it is a bit small for three … and …’ Mandy stammered into silence.
‘It’s fine – don’t give it a second thought. I’ll find somewhere else to live. It’s not a problem.’
‘Really?’ The high-pitched squeal was back. ‘Oh, Jenny, you are my favourite sister.’ Once more Jenny was enveloped in a bear hug. ‘Of course, you don’t have to move out right away. We know you’ll need time to find somewhere else to live.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jenny said.
Mandy paused and looked carefully at Jenny’s face. ‘Are you sure? You don’t look …’
‘I’ll be fine.’ Jenny hastened to reaffix the smile on her face.
‘Yes, you will. You always are.’ Mandy abandoned her uncertainty and leaped to her feet. ‘Anyway, I have to run. I’m meeting Pete for lunch and he’s taking the afternoon off work so we can drive up the coast at tell Mum and Dad. We’ll probably stay the night, so I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye!’
The door clicked shut behind Mandy, and the room was suddenly very, very quiet.
Well, Jenny thought. The hat-trick. No job. No flat. No Ray. She let the full impact of that thought settle around her and waited for the tears.
No tears. Really. No tears? That wasn’t right. Surely she should be weeping buckets. She’d just lost everything that mattered. Jenny took a deep breath and mentally sat back on her heels to examine herself and her situation.
All right – if she was to be perfectly honest, losing her flat wasn’t really a problem. Flats were easy to come by – at least they were if you had a job.
Losing the job was a bit more serious, but she was a good teacher. She could always move to another university. Two weeks before Christmas wasn’t the best time for job hunting. In the New Year – maybe then.
Losing Ray? That needed a bit more thought. Could she lose something she didn’t actually have … and was never likely to have? She felt it then, a surge of emotion that caused her to drop to her knees on the carpet, her arms wrapped around her body. She was so angry. At Ray. At herself. So ashamed of her own naivety. She should have seen the signs. Ray’s refusal to spend an entire night in her flat. His desire to keep their relationship secret. She might have a university degree, but when it came to men, she was a babe in the woods. It was the oldest story in the book. Innocent student seduced by worldly professor. Ray should be the one to lose his job. Not her. But people like Jenny were no real threat to the Professor Ray Allens of this world.
‘You are a total shit, Ray Allen!’ That helped, even if no one else could hear her. ‘You don’t deserve someone like me,’ she added for good measure.
That was why there were no tears. She was too angry to cry.
At last Jenny slowly got to her feet. The clock on the kitchen wall said it was almost noon. Where had the time gone? About now Ray would be sitting at the restaurant, waiting for her. She had thought he was going to propose – but she was beginning to think he had planned to break up with her. Either way, it didn’t matter now.
‘He can just sit there!’ she declared to the potted palm near the door. She wouldn’t phone him. She grabbed the mobile phone out of her pocket and defiantly turned it off. That accomplished, she looked for something to do, just to keep her hands busy. If her hands were doing something else, they would not turn the phone back on.
She collected her watering can and began watering her plants.
‘I deserve better than him,’ she told the potted palm.
She pulled a few dying leaves off the aspidistra. ‘If he could be unfaithful to his fiancée when she’s pregnant – he would never be faithful to me,’ she told it.
‘I don’t ever want to see him or hear from him again,’ she explained to the begonia, as she ripped away the dying flowers.
‘He was just using me!’ The African violet suffered the full force of her sudden anger. Jenny looked at the spray of dirt across the kitchen.
‘Sorry,’ she told the plant as she scraped the dirt back in to the plastic pot and patted it down gently.
This was doing her no good at all. She needed something positive to do. She should start getting her life back on track.
‘First up, I need a job,’ she told the assembled flora. ‘Preferably before I have to tell Mum and Dad that I’ve lost the last one.’ Not that her parents would be angry. If she told them the whole truth, they would be supportive. In many ways that would be even harder to deal with than somebody shouting at her might have been.
She opened her laptop.
The first thing she should do was resi
gn her position at the university. That was a task she didn’t relish. She quickly typed an e-mail, and hit the send key before she could change her mind. With the semester over, she didn’t even need to give notice. It wasn’t the way she wanted to leave, but right now, it was the only way.
Then she started looking at the job sites. Not one university in Australia or even New Zealand seemed in need of a marine biologist.
‘And I’m not even sure I want to go back to uni right now,’ she muttered to the plants. ‘A change might be a good idea. But what can I do?’
She had a degree, but no real experience outside the university. Jenny modified her search words and clicked again.
There it was – the answer written in crisp clear pixels across her screen. It was perfect. It solved all her problems in one sun soaked moment.
All she had to do was make a few subtle changes to her CV.
‘It’s not lies,’ she said to the room and its silent foliage. ‘Not really. It’s just … a shift in emphasis.’
She typed in her details, attached her modified CV and hit send.
Chapter Two
Jenny was having another conversation with her plants next morning when the phone call came. She had spent the previous evening curled up on the sofa, with a glass of wine – well several glasses of wine – watching movies. Not weepy chick flicks, but thrillers with lots of gunfire and explosions and gory deaths. It had made her feel a lot better and there was a good chance most of the plants were going to survive her attentions this time.
Mandy hadn’t come home last night. Jenny was glad of that. At some point she was going to have to tell her family what had happened. She could almost imagine the scene. Her father and oldest brothers would be all in favour of some rearrangement of Ray’s face. Her mother would cope by making endless pots of tea and baking more cakes than even her large brood could possibly eat. Her eldest sister, Lisa, fancied herself a white witch, and would be casting spells, while her youngest brother, Mickey, would launch an internet campaign to expose Ray as an evil seducer of innocents. She was just telling the plants that she wanted to avoid all of that for as long as possible when the phone rang.
She sat looking at it for a few seconds. It couldn’t be Ray. He only ever called on her mobile, which was still switched off.
‘Hello.’
‘Miss Payne? Ahh … Jenny Payne?’ The voice sounded almost as if the speaker was ill.
‘Yes …’
‘Schofield here. Southern Cross Cruise Lines. You sent us your CV.’
‘Yes. Yes. I did. Yesterday,’ Jenny tried to keep the excitement out of her voice.
‘Indeed. I have to ask you Miss Payne, when you would be able to start, if we were to … ahh … offer you a position?’
‘I could start immediately.’
‘Yes, well …’ the voice dripped disapproval, ‘normally we would have gathered some references, and gone through a rigid interview process, but we find ourselves in something of a … ahh … dilemma.’
This was getting more and more interesting. ‘What sort of dilemma?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Two of our expert lecturers have been taken ill with suspected salmonella.’
‘Oh.’ She didn’t like the sound of that.
‘No reflection on any of our vessels of course,’ Mr Schofield continued. ‘Something to do with children cooking at a school event.’ He sounded as if he disapproved heartily of both children and schools.
‘I understand.’
‘The problem is that both were due to leave today on our new showpiece cruise. We might consider going with one less expedition lecturer, but we couldn’t possibly go without two.’
‘No. No. Of course not.’ Jenny bit her lip, willing the man to talk faster.
‘No … Unfortunately, none of our … ahh … existing crew are available on such short notice. They are all assigned to other expeditions. We need someone immediately.’
‘I’m ready and willing to go!’ She almost shouted down the phone.
There was a moment’s silence. She bit her tongue and prayed.
‘Yes, well. Ahh … This is most irregular. The ship sails this afternoon. You will, of course, need to pass an interview before we allow you on board.’
‘Of course,’ Jenny was practically jumping up and down on the spot.
‘Yes …’ She could feel his hesitation. His uncertainty.
Please! Please! Jenny lifted her eyes to the heavens. This was perfect! A couple of weeks cruising the South Pacific. Sun. Sand. Drinks with fruit and umbrellas in them. It solved the problem of a job and where to live all in one go. As for her former love life? Well, a tropical cruise was probably the best remedy for that as well.
‘Where would you like me to come for the interview?’ Jenny prompted, resisting the urge to add ahh. ‘And at what time?’
‘Circular Quay,’ Schofield appeared to have made his decision. ‘Two o’clock.’
‘I can be there!’
‘Very well. And Miss Payne, please bring your things with you. And your passport. If you are suitable, you will … ahh … need to board the Cape Adare immediately. She sails at four.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Jenny snapped to attention and saluted.
It didn’t take long to pack. After all, she wouldn’t need much. Swim suits. Shorts. Tank tops. She tossed in a couple of skirts and shirts. She probably needed to look a bit more professional when she was lecturing the passengers. But even so, no one got formal on a tropical cruise – did they? Then she thought of the captain’s dinner. She’d sighed over Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic. Not the iceberg bit – the elegant dinner. Ball gowns. Champagne. Dancing. She knew how it worked. She pulled out her best (only) cocktail dress – a sexy wisp of dove-grey silk and added that to the pile along with her five-inch Jimmy Choos (bought at a sale but still an extravagance she couldn’t afford) and some underwear bought from a mail order catalogue. Underwear that she had never worn, because Ray …
No. She wouldn’t go there.
As a concession to work, she tossed in a couple of books about marine mammals and ocean currents, not that she’d need them. She had a degree in marine biology. She wasn’t going to have any trouble talking to a bunch of middle-aged cruise passengers about the lifecycle of the humpback whale. That was, of course, between long periods on a sun lounger with a cocktail in her hand as she sailed as far away from her old life as she possibly could.
She glanced at the phone and thought about calling her mother. She winced and decided against it. An e-mail would do just fine. She scribbled a quick note for Mandy, telling her not to expect to see her for a few days. That would do for now. She’d deal with the rest of her family if – when – she got the job. She could tell them everything from a safe distance. Walking out the door was difficult because she was wearing her rucksack and carrying both a suitcase and a laptop bag. Walking away was actually easier than she thought.
It shouldn’t be called Circular Quay, Jenny thought as she lugged her things down from the overhead railway platform to ground level. There was nothing circular about it. Sydney Cove was almost entirely square – from the walkway leading to the Opera House, to the ferry docks and the great ugly passenger ship terminal.
She weaved her way through the crowds of busy tourists and smiled at the aboriginal busker playing a didgeridoo. Overhead, the sun was shining. Some tanned teenagers were kicking a soccer ball around the lawns outside the Museum of Modern Art while children were buying ice cream from a vendor in a brilliantly coloured van. The water of Sydney harbour was a pleasing shade of blue, and the graceful arc of the Harbour Bridge was looking its picture postcard best. All the omens were right and Jenny was beginning to think she might just survive this day. Then the next, and maybe one day she’d find herself enjoying life again.
The ship was huge and exactly as she had imagined it. She stopped and stared. The top half was painted a blinding white. The lines of the hull sloped gracefully to the water. Even from
this distance, she could see the lace curtains decorating the portholes. In fact, if she squinted, she could see a dining table set with silver cutlery and elegant long-stemmed wine glasses. A few passengers were leaning on the rails on the top deck. There would be a swimming pool there, she guessed. Deck chairs and a bar. There might even be handsome young men wearing bow ties serving drinks. It was the perfect remedy for her broken heart.
The cruise ship terminal was big and square and busy. Two tour buses were parked outside: one loading passengers, the other unloading them. Security men in bright green vests seemed more interested in sneaking outside to smoke cigarettes than giving directions. A tall wrought iron fence separated the public from the dock. On the other side of the fence, two fork lifts darted back and forth, loading pallets stacked with cardboard boxes through an opening in the side of the ship. Jenny checked out the labels on the boxes. Champagne. That was just the ticket. She would feel right at home on a ship that ordered champagne by the pallet-load.
Mr Schofield was short, round and grey, with a harassed frown on his pale face. Jenny had a feeling that expression was not caused by his urgent need to find crew for his ship. It looked permanent. He met her in the foyer of the terminal and showed her through to a small office.
‘Thank you for coming on such short notice,’ he said, the frown growing deeper. ‘This is highly … ahh … irregular.’
‘It’s no problem at all,’ she assured him.
The interview seemed the take forever. Mr Schofield must have read her CV in advance, but he went through it again, almost line by line. Then he pulled out the cruise company’s rule book for another line by line review. Jenny was hard put to pay attention, when just outside the window, she could see passengers starting to board the ship. She just wanted to walk up that gangplank and sail away to somewhere with sun and surf and single men – honest single men.
‘Have you got any questions, Miss Payne?’ Schofield dragged her back from her daydreams.
‘No. You’ve explained it all quite clearly,’ she said.