Dog Handling (17 page)

“Oh, you look fabulous in those shoes!” Alex squealed, and Liv smudged her lipstick in a bloody-looking red mess up to her nose. Alex was resplendent in jeans and a white T-shirt. Liv had on her satin trousers and hair a foot high with product. “But you do know we’re only going to the Grand National, don’t you?” Alex said as she scraped her hair back into a loose ponytail.

“What? For a quick drink before the party? Sure, that’s fine,” Liv said, thinking that it would give her time to work out the exact angle she could tilt forward so as to be stunningly sexy but not pouring her tits onto Ben’s lap. “Where’s Charlie tonight?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s gone to some conference in Canberra. So while the cat’s away I thought we’d go and play with some locals. It’s crap coming all this way just to see the same old faces. I mean how many real Australian accents have you heard yet?” Alex quizzed Liv as they hopped in a cab to the Grand National.

“Well, quite a few, actually. There’s Laura. Then there’s Justin the surf instructor. And Ben and Amelia and Rob.”

“Oh yeah, actually, Rob might just pop into the pub later.” Alex smiled.

“Great. We can all go on to the party together.”

But Alex wasn’t really paying attention. “Which is just what I mean. Rob’s about the only real Australian we know. Tonight I thought we’d leave the poncy crowd behind and meet some blood-and-guts Aussies. Dyed-in-the-wool. Okka. A bit of rough,” she whispered huskily as the cabby grinned a black-toothed all-my-Christmases-have-come-at-once-type salivating grin.

“But we are going to the party later, right?” Liv asked as she thrust a tip into the cabby’s hand and tried to ignore the disconcerting way he whistled his heavy breathing through the gaps in his teeth.

“What party?” Alex asked as they approached the Grand National, a pub that, despite a new lick of paint, hadn’t managed to shrug off the locals.

“Ben’s party. The one he invited me to last night. The one I got dressed up for. I don’t usually hoik my tits up under my chin just so some bloke in a scruffy bar can have a laugh trying to rest his pint on them,” Liv said anxiously.

“Oh, Liv, you never said. I’ve been planning this all week. Oh, shit, I’m sorry.” Alex looked genuinely guilt-stricken. “We can always go along later if you like. I mean I’m sure that Rob and the boys won’t mind.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Liv put on a brave face, knowing that later she wouldn’t feel up to it and her chest would be too exhausted to perform.

“If you’re sure. I tell you what. I’ll invite Ben and Amelia over to dinner one night next week and sit you and him at the opposite end of the table to Amelia and feed him oysters just to make up for it,” Alex promised, and looped her arm through Liv’s as she and Alex swayed in through the doors of the pub like Mae West into a Western saloon. The men on the other side wished they had their pistols at the ready. Liv ran her hand through her hair in a bid to lose a few inches and followed in Alex’s already-feted wake.

“Can I get you anything, love?” A man in moleskins took a step forward from the bar and offered Alex his stool.

“Holy shit, that’s the first time Tom’s taken his arse off that stool in thirteen years!” his mate yelled from the snug.

Liv and Alex smiled, took their glasses, and sat at a small round table under the window.

“So before the boys get here I thought we should have a bit of a chat.” Alex took a sip of her wine.

“Sounds ominous,” Liv said, hoping that it didn’t concern men, because she was actually bloody bored of being so overanalytical right now and if she couldn’t be getting hot and heavy with Ben, then she’d rather just shut the whole subject out for a while.

“Not at all. Actually, I had a business proposition for you.” Alex continued, “I’ve been thinking about Greta’s Grundies and how for James and Dave it’ll always just be a hobby. Their Saturday afternoon social club. But you know, I think it could be a really successful business. The branding’s bang on, the boys have so many contacts, and between you and me I reckon we could make it a really profitable company.”

“Really?” Liv hadn’t really thought of Greta’s Grundies as a major business proposition, but well, maybe it could work. “But what would we do? Buy the boys out?”

“Exactly. We could arrange to pay them in instalments, give them shares, and then expand, expand, expand.” Alex had clearly thought this through.

“I don’t have any money at all,” Liv thought out loud for a moment.

“Well, I can sell some stocks; you could remortgage your flat or something,” Alex offered helpfully.

Wow, clearly Liv’s accountancy brain had deserted her over the last couple of months. “Yeah. I think you’re right. We’d have to talk to James and Dave, though. It’s totally their baby.”

“If you’re agreed in principle then that’s great. And think of the contacts we have here. I reckon Amelia will really help us, too, if we ask her. She’s so well connected,” Alex concluded.

“Yeah, and she’d want to call it Amelia’s Adorables or something pukey.” Liv wasn’t too happy about this part of the deal.

Bloody Perfect Amelia. She could very well live without her. Amelia’s Adorables. Adorable Amelia. Eugh. And anyway, why hadn’t Liv been called Amelia? The name that tinkled like a bell when you said it, instead of Lumpy Liv, who was always just a lady’s maid in Victorian England. You couldn’t help but fall in love with Amelia, could you?

“Ben, meet Amelia with the tinkling name and body of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” How could any man resist? Well, lucky Ben, he’d certainly come a long way since his early fumblings in that Provençal barn. Liv wondered if he ever thought back to it. Wondered if as they lay on Amelia’s crisp linen sheets bathed in moonlight Amelia and Ben ever discussed their first sexual experiences and giggled fondly. Probably not. “Bloody hell, I had this English girl. Not a patch on an Aussie by the way. They’re always covering up their boobs and diving under the covers. Or in this case the straw. Honestly, talk about looking for a needle in a haystack. Except not very needlelike. More of a space hopper.” At which Amelia would turn and kiss his breastbone, her lithe body in no danger of being concealed. Why would you bother, she probably wondered, putting a dishcloth over the Mona Lisa?

“Liv, what on earth are you doing?” Alex asked as Liv came to her senses and realised she’d been shredding the beer mat into confetti. “I reckon you need some decent sex. That’s a sign of sexual frustration.”

“Thanks. Terribly helpful, Al, given my only candidate for romance is probably flirting with some other new girl in town at a party in his flat in Double Bay as we speak and will have taken my lack of appearance at his party tonight as total disinterest and will never even waste his breath speaking to me again.” Liv humphed and scattered the remains of the beer mat across the floor.

“You might fancy one of Rob’s mates, though,” Alex said brightly, and uncannily on cue Rob and a couple of his less-than-Cartier mates walked in. Liv smiled and gave a little wave, hoping that after her embarrassing seduction efforts the last time she’d seen Robert she wouldn’t actually have to look him in the eye, but Alex had other ideas. She leapt to her feet and greeted Robert with the warmth an Academy Award–winning actress usually bestows upon her little gold Oscar. She fluttered a lot and even tripped up on her way to the bar. Once there she kissed her statuette, formerly Rob, demurely. “Robbie,” she said. Liv finished off the packet of Cheese Twisties in peace and watched the performance. “Come and join us.”

Liv grinned as she shook hands with Tommo and Simmo, Robert’s burly oil-encrusted entourage. Rob ordered the obligatory round of VBs and smiled broadly as he and his boys came and sat down at the table, their large knees and wide chests making the little corner of the pub suddenly feel very full. Liv was embarrassed for all of a second as Rob kissed her on both cheeks; then she realised he was smiling so hard at Alex that even if Liv had spent her afternoon at the races demanding he demonstrate the kama sutra with her on the coffee table and not merely engaged in a bit of feeble flirting, he would have pushed it to the back of his mind in the wake of Alex.

“So I’m surprised you’re not at Benjy’s party tonight.” Rob emerged from the shade of Alex’s eyelashes and addressed Liv.

“Why would you be surprised?” she asked, wondering just what Alex had been saying about her puppylike crush.

“Ah, just that Amelia was saying that she thought you had a bit of a soft spot for him. That you guys had something going when you were like ten years old. She thought it was really cute,” Rob said, with no idea that he was felling Liv’s dreams and pride like a woodcutter with a chain saw.

“Well, as for having a soft spot for him, I hardly think so,” Liv snapped defensively. “Actually, the last thing I’m interested in right now is relationships.”

“Oh really. That’s a bit of a shame,” Simmo, who until now had been gazing at the head on his VB as though it were the elixir of life, suddenly piped up.

“What are you interested in then, mate?” Tommo asked, like what else was there apart from sex?

“Actually, my work. Alex and I are going into business together and I’ve just got out of a five-year relationship, so I think love’s the last thing on my mind,” Liv said firmly.

“Yeah, Liv’s really focused right now,” Alex chimed in.

Thank god for some loyalty at long last, Liv thought. God knows where Alex’s head had been lately, but it wasn’t devoting much of its time to helping Liv. “So there.” Liv sipped her drink in what she hoped was a businesswoman-type way and tried to pretend she wasn’t oozing boobs everywhere.

Still, while Liv had clearly deflected the attention away from the idea that she might fancy Ben, for the time being she was secretly mortified at what Amelia had apparently said. Was that how everyone saw her, the hopeless wet English girl who used to follow Ben around? Someone to be indulged like a pathetic pet? Liv imagined that Amelia definitely thought so. Well, at least she knew now that Ben was just being charitable. Probably it was Amelia’s good deed for the day to make him snog her because she’d heard that Liv couldn’t even get Fat Will to call her back. Noblesse oblige or something like that. Playing Lady of the Manor seeing to the peasants’ best interests. So Liv began to accept that she wouldn’t ever find herself on the receiving end of Ben’s lips again, apart from when he told her to get lost. And now she’d missed his party and probably wouldn’t see him for decades.

Still, she craved the idea that she might run into him when she was looking gorgeous in some restaurant one night. Bump into him in six weeks’ time when she was out in the surf, standing atop her surfboard looking like some goddess of the deep with miraculously Australian thighs and a golden tan. Because in six weeks she was going to be beautiful and modelesque of course. It was always in six weeks. This seemed to be the optimum time for any miraculous makeover transformation to take place. If you bought a cellulite cream you had to rub it in religiously for six weeks before your thighs were no longer mistaken for the surface of the moon by Russian space stations; if you enrolled at the gym you’d continue to wobble precariously on the treadmill until the sixth week, when you became GI Jane in Adidas leggings; and if you embarked upon a draconian detox diet you had a headache and felt weak for six weeks, then became clear-skinned and happy. There was no such thing as instant perfection. One always seemed to have to wait six weeks. In theory. But Liv knew that once the six weeks were up, if you hadn’t just got bored and forgotten that you were waiting for the New You to emerge from a chrysalis, then you were generally still You. Same wonky eyebrow, same short neck, same ugly feet.

“Well, mate, it was good to see you again.” Rob slapped Liv on the back and turned to Alex. “So give my regards to Charlie, won’t you?” he said in a bad, stagy way. There was a lot of ham acting going on tonight, Liv noticed but was too tired to be bothered to think any more about it. They had managed to pass the evening with perhaps not the most fun you can have on a Friday night, but it was in no way too boring. Liv had quite enjoyed hearing a few dirty jokes, and Rob was surprisingly sharp and clever for a stable hand. And Alex had been in fine form, chatting about her thesis and her plans for the business and proudly telling stories about her brothers. It hadn’t been too bad at all, given that it was very much not Ben’s party.

“Good night, all,” Liv said as she clambered into the back of a taxi and waited for Alex to glide in beside her. But instead Rob shut the cab door firmly. Alex just stood there waving. “I’m off to Charlie’s. I left my toothbrush there and you know I can’t get to sleep without cleaning my teeth. I’ll call you in the morning.” Alex smiled and watched Liv sail round the corner without her.

Liv unlocked the front door and tiptoed past the hut. She could hear the faint murmur of sobs and she noticed that there was a crack of light seeping under Laura’s door, but she also noticed Jo-Jo’s pink handbag on the coffee table in the cottage so presumed that whatever the current crisis, Jo-Jo would handle it. Poor Laura, thought Liv, what a witch Amelia must have been to crush her this much. Liv really did want to find out what precisely had happened, but the time never seemed right to risk another pasta-disasta or some tirade of chanting and mumbling, so she’d just kept her curiosity to herself. Liv spotted the answer machine flicking away in the corner and tapped the button, probably only her mum or Laura’s shrink. The two most trusty callers they had.

“You have one new message. Message One sent at eleven thirty-nine
P.M.

“ ‘Hey, this is a message for Liv.’ ” It was male, Liv could make out, but sounded a bit whispered, like the guy had wrapped a curtain round himself before speaking. “ ‘It’s Ben. Ben Parker. Listen, I’m sorry you couldn’t make it tonight. I hope everything’s okay, ’cause I was kind of expecting you and I know it’s late notice, but I was wondering if, as we didn’t get a chance to catch up tonight, you’d like to come along tomorrow to spend the afternoon on the harbour with us. There’ll be a crowd, I’m afraid, but well, I’d love to see you again. We’re meeting on Rose Bay Jetty at twelve-thirty. Erm. That’s it. Hope you can make it. Bye.’ ”