Read Fall Girl Online

Authors: Toni Jordan

Tags: #FIC000000, #FIC044000

Fall Girl (7 page)

BOOK: Fall Girl
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‘I hope I haven't caught you in the middle of chasing some wild animal,' Daniel says.

I picture him cradling the phone in his hand, the shiny metal lined up along the white scar on his palm.

Timothy is alert now, swivelled around, leaning on the back of the chair with his chin resting in his hands. ‘Daniel?' he mouths. ‘Who's Daniel?'

I look at Timothy, the frown between his eyebrows, dumpling cheeks squeezing his eyes almost closed. I jerk my head towards the kitchen door and turn away as best I can. ‘Actually I'm at home, catching up on some dull paperwork without any student interruptions.'

The next thing I know Timothy is standing beside me; he is pretending to rinse his hands in the sink but his head is on an angle, his ear close to the phone. For a moment I tell myself that I care for him very much as a life-long friend, that he feels anxious and awkward and that I must be gentle. In fact I'd like to stick his eavesdropping head under the tap. I move to the other side of the kitchen and turn my back.

‘Perhaps I can distract you,' Daniel says. ‘Ella, look. I've been thinking about your tiger. Perhaps insanity is contagious. Let's sit down, have a coffee. Discuss it.'

Discuss it. This is not good. I've spoken to the other successful applicants; it does not work this way. This is a delaying tactic. By the next day or two I should have the cheque, feel it in my hand.

‘Daniel, look.' I sigh, more resignation than despair.
Ella look
, he says, so
Daniel look
, I say. Mirroring his words from my mouth is an age-old trick to build rapport, used by everyone from desperate car salesmen to gold-medallioned Lotharios. Age-old, clichéd, yet it works. ‘I've been trying to get someone interested in this idea for years. I've missed out on more grants than you'd believe. I know there are a lot of worthy projects around. If this is your way of saying you've awarded it to somebody else, just tell me. I'm a big girl.'

I feel two fingers coaxing their way along my spine, sliding down the silk of my night gown. Timothy's arm slides around my waist and I can feel his mouth on my other ear. I fight the urge to shake my arm like a fly has alighted on it, and cup my hand around the phone. I try to concentrate.

‘I'm sure you are,' Daniel says. ‘It's not that at all. In fact I've been thinking over the terms of the trust. I've been busy lately, with stuff of my own. I've been neglectful. I didn't realise that this is the thirtieth anniversary of my parents' first awarding the prize. I'm thinking now I should mark it with something really special. To honour them.'

‘Della,' Timothy breathes. ‘You know how I feel about you.'

I frown and bend my head toward the phone. ‘What a lovely gesture. Are you thinking of a plaque?'

‘I need to talk to you,' says Timothy. ‘About our future.'

‘I'm thinking of increasing the amount,' says Daniel. ‘Dramatically.'

My head jerks up—I can't help it. ‘That certainly would be dramatic.' How much money in a millionaire's ‘dramatically', I wonder.

‘I'm not normally insistent,' says Timothy. ‘Normally I'm very patient. But sometimes a little caveman is required. I want you to know I'm not afraid to be forceful, to get what I want.'

I shake my head at him. ‘Go away,' I mouth.

‘Della. I really wish you'd listen,' he says. ‘It's very hard to be forceful when you won't hang up.'

Daniel is speaking but I can't hear him. ‘Will you shut up? Just shut up.'

‘Sorry?' says Daniel.

‘Not you. One of my colleagues.'

‘So, me? You want me to shut up? And I'm,' Timothy makes imaginary quote marks in the air, ‘a “colleague”.' He stomps back to the sink and leans against it. ‘You're making me feel like I'm not as important as whoever's on the phone.'

‘Clearly I've called at a bad time,' Daniel says. ‘But I'd need to discuss this with you. Face to face.'

I wave my hand at Timothy, the kind of pacifying sweeps you offer a crying child. ‘I see. Professor Carmichael too?'

‘No, Ella. Not Carmichael. Just you and me. I'm feeling quite a connection to your project. I'm intrigued. I'm thinking something more personal.'

‘Personal,' I say.

‘Personal?' says Timothy.

‘Let's get together this afternoon, at the university. What time are you free?'

My mind goes blank for an instant, and when I look up Timothy is in front of me, hands on his hips, mischievous smile on his face. ‘You know, when we were kids, you could never resist it when I tickled you. Whenever you were tickled, you'd cave straight away.'

I back away and mouth ‘don't you dare', but he's already giggling and he makes a sudden grab for my ribs. I hold the phone with one shoulder. With both hands I grab Timothy's ears and pull hard until he squeals. He drops to his knees.

‘Ella?' Daniel says. ‘Are you there? Are you all right?'

‘Yes, fine. I'm fine. I'm just checking my diary,' I say. ‘It… squeals. It's a squealing diary.'

‘A squealing diary,' Daniel says. ‘Of course.'

‘This afternoon, this afternoon.' I mentally run my virtual finger down the appointment column of my imaginary squealing diary, then I let go of Timothy's ears and with one hand grab his nose tight between my thumb and forefinger. He groans. I hold the phone again. ‘I'm so sorry. I just can't do it. I've got my hands full.'

‘Monday morning, then. I'll come to your office, at the university. I want to see the biologist in her natural habitat. You're in the Zoology Department, right? What's your room number?'

I let go of the nose; Timothy sinks to the floor. ‘My room number is…now, is it 216 or 316?' I say. ‘Actually maybe it's 361. I'm terrible with numbers. They've just moved us all around in there. I used to have a window looking over the garden. Now I'm in a broom cupboard.'

‘Don't worry. I'll ask at reception. I'll see you Monday at ten, Ella.'

Under seventy-two hours. It's too tight. I open my mouth again but he has gone and the phone is cold in my hand. Then I look down to see Timothy on his back on the kitchen floor, holding his nose, looking like he's about to cry.

‘That was completely unnecessary,' he says. ‘You might have broken my nose. I was trying to be playful.' I bend over and offer a hand, intending to help him up, but he goes on. ‘A squealing diary, Della?' he says. ‘Nice one. Classy.' So instead I kick him in the ribs.

‘And that,' I say, ‘is for messing with a defenceless girl with one brother and three male cousins. For God's sake, Timothy. That was a mark. I'm working. What on earth has got into you?'

‘Sam said you'd like it. Be playful and persistent, he said. Women like that. Act like George Clooney, he said.'

I should have recognised Sam's sticky fingerprints on this. ‘Timothy. Trusting Sam for advice about women? Just don't, please.'

Timothy grumbles to his feet, prodding his nose with one finger. He picks up his BlackBerry, which has fallen from the holster, and holds it to his ear. ‘And anyway, I know a mark when I hear it. I heard the way you said “personal”. That didn't sound like a mark to me.'

‘I'm reeling him in, you idiot. He's super rich. This one could be worth a fortune.'

He drapes one arm over my shoulder. ‘And that's another thing I admire about you Della. You never give up. You just keep trying. Just because you've had a few years where the deals have been smallish. It's been a bit…lean, recently, I know. You don't let it get you down.'

‘Smallish? Lean?' Bloody Sam again, blabbing my business all over south-eastern Australia. ‘What would you know about big deals anyway, Timothy? Half the things you sell get change from a hundred.'

‘There's no use getting snippy about it,' Timothy says. He pats my shoulder. ‘But maybe it's worth handing this one over to Sam. You know, if the mark really is as rich as you say. Handball it to the full-forward.'

‘Sammy, a full-forward?' I say. ‘Half backward more like it. And if you don't get out of here right now, I'm going to shove that phone where it will never be seen again.'

‘Threats, eh?' He smiles like a Labrador. ‘I know what's really going on. It's Freudian. You can't keep your hands off me. Besides, what are you going to do? Run mini-scams forever? Until you're a little old lady, panhandling other pensioners for their small change? In the next year or two I'll be taking over Dad's business. I've got big plans, Del. Big. Together we could really make it into something. Maybe it's time you thought about settling down.'

I may be a smallish woman wearing nothing but my pyjamas but when Timothy sees the look on my face, he runs. In the hall, he passes my father.

‘Hello, Mr Gilmore. Goodbye, Mr Gilmore,' he says as he runs.

‘Timothy, dear boy,' my father says. ‘We don't see enough of you these days. Will you be staying for lunch?' He turns his head as Timothy bolts past. ‘That's a “no”, I expect.'

‘Just keep running,' I yell after Timothy, and then I hear the long sequence of clicks that tells me the front door is opening, ‘if you know what's good for you. Keep running and don't stop.'

I walk up the stairs and on the landing I kick open the door to Sam's room hard so it crashes against the wall. He is lying on the bed on his stomach, shirt off, headphones on, practising a new signature upside down on a white pad with blue lines. A waste of time. There's no need for it anymore, not with the quality of the scanners we have. But Sam shares with my father a nostalgia for the old days of the pen-and-ink man, and signatures are Sam's speciality.

His room is a disaster as usual: bed unmade, three old safes in a jumble in a corner, stamps and inks for making government documents, papers piled up in various states of senility, assorted dumbbells for his incessant flexing and preening. In the middle of the room is a pile of basketball clothes from last night's game and a pair of exhausted runners. It stinks to high heaven in here.

Sam looks up with an angelic smile and takes his headphones off. ‘What?' he says.

‘What have you been saying to Timothy?'

‘Nothing. Just some friendly advice about how to manage my little sister. The poor boy's in lerve.'

‘Do not talk about me with Timothy again, ever, or I swear I'll let the air out of your girlfriend and nail her to an apple tree.'

‘No need to thank me, really. All this romance warms my heart.' He waves his hand with regal grace. ‘Della, seeing a man. Who would've guessed? I thought you'd taken holy orders.'

‘You are a skunk.' I wind the headphone cord around his neck. ‘If I didn't need you downstairs in five minutes for an emergency meeting I'd smack you into the middle of next week.'

‘Emergency meeting?' He worries a finger under his noose. ‘Don't tell me. You want me to work this weekend?'

‘Yes. But not just you.' I step back to the landing where my father is waiting. ‘I'm going to need everybody. We have a problem, and we have an opportunity.'

By nine Monday morning, as Daniel Metcalf 's black Beemer pulls out of his driveway and purrs around the corner into Toorak Road, we are watching. We watch him sidle around a tram then queue at the lights at the entrance to the freeway, and then we watch him drive all the way through the city. The university I have chosen is the city's oldest, built back when the land was newly stolen and a gracious seat of learning was considered the height of old-world glamour. It sprawls with entrances and accesses like a small city, yet we watch Daniel find a park with spooky ease. He parks at exactly the right entrance, on Royal Parade between the Percy Grainger Museum and the Conservatorium of Music.

For this job we need two wall men, responsible for keeping one eye on the mark while scanning for potential trouble. Beau is the first, the one who waited for Daniel outside his house and followed him on the drive. From his car on Royal Parade, Beau whistles into his mobile.

‘He has good parking karma, I'll say that for him. It's been a while since I've seen parking karma that good.'

‘Right,' I say. I am inside the Zoology building, with my mobile. ‘Thanks for that. I'll make a note.'

In the last twenty minutes of Daniel's drive, Anders will have entered the Zoology building by the front door. He is wearing the uniform of the university's Property and Campus Services Division, who really should deadlock their storage cupboards. Anders wears steel-capped boots and a set of keys hangs off his belt loop. The navy and fluorescent-yellow shirt is slightly tight around his chest; the trouser legs were let down by Aunt Ava very late last night but are still a little short. Anders carries a long thin aluminium strip and walks with the hip roll of someone who has not much to do and all day to do it. He looks sleepy but works fast. Using a tool from his collection, he will open the dinky locks on two glass display cabinets in the building's foyer. Students and academics will walk back and forth past him—they will not give him a second glance.

Anders does not suffer from nerves and has no fear of discovery. He knows the magic power of the uniform, a lesson his father taught him; for one whole year when my Uncle Syd was young, before security tags on clothing, he made a good living wheeling racks of expensive frocks right out the front door of department stores. Not only are people in uniform never questioned, but no one ever looks at their faces. To make doubly sure of his anonymity and freedom to do as he pleases, and also in cases where a uniform is not appropriate, Anders knows to carry a clipboard and pen.

The first display cabinet he will have opened is where the department displays its publications, showing off its successes to visitors and students and staff.
Zoology members in the news
, it says. White scientific papers are displayed there, glued onto blue cardboard. He will have removed two and replaced them with papers that look identical except that the lead researcher is now Dr Ella Canfield. They cannot be overlooked, unless you have seen them a hundred times, in which case they look the same as they always have.

BOOK: Fall Girl
12.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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