Almost Perfect (2 page)

‘Your thirty-third birthday, in case you've forgotten.'

‘I'm not going to be thirty-three.'

‘Oh yes you are, you were born the same year as me, chook. I should know.'

‘No, I mean, I'm not going to
be
thirty-three this year.'

Louise lifted her glasses again. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Jesus died when he was thirty-three,' Georgie explained matter-of-factly. ‘It's bad feng shui.'

‘Feng shui has to do with houses and furniture and stuff.'

‘Oh, you know what I mean.'

‘Hardly ever,' Louise sighed. ‘So what are you saying, you're just going to skip a birthday?'

‘I suppose.'

‘You can't do that.' She got up from her stool as Georgie carried the tray around the counter.

‘Why not?'

‘You just can't. The . . . authorities know how old you are. You can't pretend you're not your real age.'

‘Oh come off it, women do it all the time,' she scoffed, resting the tray on the counter. ‘It's not like the birthday police are going to come round and fine me.'

Louise was not put off. ‘Well, what are you going to be? Thirty-two for another year, or are you going to skip straight to thirty-four?'

Georgie shrugged. ‘Maybe I'll split the year up, I haven't decided. It's not that big a deal, Louise. It's not as if anyone even asks at our age, and if they do, it's quite acceptable to be elusive. Anyway, this coffee's getting cold.' She walked across to the meeting room.

‘Do you still want a birthday dinner?' Louise asked.

‘Of course.'

‘Presents?'

Georgie turned around. ‘D'uh.'

‘Cake?'

‘Do you really have to ask that?' she grinned, disappearing through the doorway.

The lift doors opened and Mac strode confidently down the corridor leading to his office. His eleven o'clock meeting had gone exactly to plan. He'd raised the points he considered essential, the client
had agreed to the concessions, decisions were made, goals were achieved. Mac was satisfied. This was how he preferred to operate. He was not so much the problem solver, running around putting out fires, that was not his particular strength. He'd rather assess all possible outcomes and risks, plot his approach with meticulous attention to detail and then stick to it rigidly. And he had an almost perfect strike rate. He felt a sense of power here at work that was deeply reassuring.

He had made it, and that was no mean feat considering where he'd come from. In the normal course of events Mac would never have even attended university. He could vividly remember overhearing his father talking to his cronies on more than one occasion . . .
The boy needs a trade. Toughen him up. Get him out earning a living and paying board
. But Mac had had other ideas.

He was the eldest of nine children from a working-class Catholic family who, despite being many generations Australian, still clung to their distant Irish heritage. In particular, his father diligently applied himself to the role of Irish Catholic alcoholic head of the household. But unfortunately he had never been a happy, ditty-singing Irish drunk, though he curbed his violent temper and kept to verbal abuse once a couple of his sons had grown taller than him. Mac's mother was a saint, or perhaps more correctly a martyr, considering she had all but sacrificed herself for her family. Moira MacMullen was a wonderful woman who loved all of her children, but it was no secret that she idolised her firstborn.

Mac was intensely aware of this. He had always been made to feel special, a cut above the rest of his siblings. He watched his mother, knee-deep in babies, unable to give him the attention he had been led to believe he deserved. Still only a child, he had a keen understanding of their impoverished circumstances and of the path his life would probably take unless he did something about it. He decided the only way he would be able to escape was through education. With his mother's support, he applied for scholarships to the elite Catholic high schools and was successful. He took on two runs as a paperboy to pay for his uniform when his father threatened not to let him go, given all the extra costs involved despite the ‘so-called scholarship'. Mac continued to work through high school in a series of menial part-time jobs, trudging the streets pushing pamphlets into letterboxes, washing dishes at the local Chinese takeaway or pumping petrol at the service station. He didn't care, as long as it provided him with money and an excuse to be out of the house. At uni he worked up to three jobs at a time, but his fellow students had no idea. By then he was living out of home, and he allowed people to believe his family was on the land. He never actually lied. He just found creative ways of getting around the truth. He always had the books and equipment he needed and he always dressed well. His greatest moment was when someone called him a silvertail. And when he met Anna.

Stella jumped to her feet when Mac arrived in the outer office. Bright and outspoken from a big,
loud Italian family, she had been Mac's assistant since he'd moved from the Melbourne office to Sydney, and he'd taken her with him as he scaled the ranks to director. She had exceptional organisational skills and she was highly intuitive: she knew what Mac needed before he did, when to hold his calls, what he had to take to a meeting. He'd be lost without her, though he never let her know that. He didn't need to, she was quite well aware of it herself.

‘Any calls?' Mac asked automatically as Stella followed him into his office. She hesitated, watching while he walked around the desk and set his briefcase down, flicking the catches open. He looked up at her expectantly.

She swallowed. ‘Anna.'

Mac frowned, tapping the lid of his briefcase, looking away. ‘How did she sound?'

‘She was crying.'

Stella saw his shoulders drop as he breathed out heavily. He reached for the phone and she stepped noiselessly from the room, closing the door behind her.

Mac listened to the buzz in the earpiece as the phone rang, pictured in his mind where Anna would take the call, steeled himself. She was probably in bed. She'd have kicked off her shoes, perhaps let her jacket drop to the floor. She'd worn a cream suit today, he was pretty sure. Maybe white. Light coloured anyway.

‘Hello.' Anna's voice, barely.

‘Hi, it's me.'

He heard the shallow gasp as she let go of
whatever composure she had mustered to answer the phone. ‘Mac . . .'

‘What happened?'

‘It's negative.'

He wasn't surprised. It had never been any different. Except for that one time, when was it? Probably three years ago now – their first and only positive result, prefaced however by a po-faced warning that her hormone levels were really not high enough to sustain a pregnancy. Eight days later that prediction was fulfilled, taunting them.
Fooled you! Made you dream, made you hope!

‘We have to try again, straight away,' Anna was saying.

‘Didn't the doctor mention taking a break?'

‘Only if we wanted to, and I don't want a break, I want to keep going . . .' Her voice was strangled by a sob.

‘But Anna, you know that was the last of the frozen embryos. That means you'll have to start a full drug cycle.' The whole fucking nightmare all over again. ‘You need to give your body a rest.'

‘But Mac–'

‘We'll talk about it when I get home.'

‘When will that be?'

‘As soon as I can get away, Anna.'

‘Promise?'

‘I promise.'

Stella let an hour pass. Mac had not buzzed her, had not reappeared. The phone call to Anna had lasted
only a minute and he hadn't made another, not on the main office line anyway. It was time. She knocked lightly on his door, opening it and stepping inside without waiting for a response. Mac was sitting low in his chair, turned sideways towards the window, staring out.

Stella cleared her throat. ‘I cancelled your two o'clock, and I let Bob know you won't make the directors' meeting.' She paused. ‘You can go home.'

Mac swivelled around slowly in his chair and looked squarely at Stella. ‘Maybe I'd rather keep my two o'clock and go to the directors' meeting,' he said quietly.

‘Go home, Mac. And buy her something nice on the way.'

‘Everyone in the whole world is having sex except for me,' Georgie declared petulantly, strutting into the office.

‘What, right now?' said Louise.

‘It wouldn't surprise me,' Georgie grumbled, plonking herself down on a chair.

‘Are you having sex right now, Adam?' Louise asked as he appeared in the doorway.

He looked momentarily confused, glancing furtively around himself until he realised they were
having another one of their inexplicable conversations. It was best to give straightforward answers that could not be misconstrued.

‘No, I'm not having sex right now,' Adam stated categorically. ‘Though I would like it noted for the record that I am open to all reasonable offers, and come to think of it, all unreasonable offers as well.'

Simultaneously, as though they had rehearsed, Georgie and Louise picked up the nearest object and threw it at him. A roll of masking tape and a box of tissues hit the doorjamb but Adam had already ducked away. He'd forgotten what he had gone in there for, and besides, he didn't want to hang around and be drawn into their strange little clique.

Over the years, Louise and Georgie had gradually assembled a cohort of trusty casuals, mostly uni students who were willing to work weekends and the odd shift through the week. But eventually they had needed another full-time staff member, particularly after Louise fell pregnant the first time. Enter Adam Bevan, shop assistant extraordinaire cum computer whiz, and also coffee machine, photocopier, fax and just-about-everything-else whiz. They wondered how they had ever got by without him, and he wondered too, given the sorry state of their technical skills. Not that Louise had any trouble operating a computer, but she did have a tendency to bash the top of the monitor with a clipboard or a stapler or whatever was at hand when it didn't do what she wanted, a habit Adam had attempted to break, before she broke something first. Same with Georgie. She was the coffee machine virtuoso, but if it malfunctioned for any reason she
would shout at it, often swearing and sometimes even kicking the cabinet below, which really was pointless, Adam had tried to explain, as they weren't even connected. The coffee machine was not a naughty dog, he went on, and scolding it wasn't going to achieve anything. Except make her feel better, Georgie had maintained.

Adam was indispensable, which was a relief considering the basis on which Georgie and Louise had hired him. He was no more qualified than the four women they had interviewed for the position, in fact he had virtually no relevant sales experience, but he did have a degree in contemporary literature and the most gorgeous azure blue eyes, a devastating smile and impressive biceps straining through the shirt he had worn on the day of the interview. And a cute bum. Georgie and Louise figured they had a right to hire him for those reasons alone. Men did it all the time. Why shouldn't they have some eye candy at the workplace as well? There had to be some lurks to owning their own business. It was all very innocent; Louise was married and Adam was too young for either of them anyway – he'd barely graduated when they first hired him. He was just nice to look at. Fortunately he turned out to be the consummate employee and they could keep their sordid secret to themselves.

‘So clearly, Georgie, not everyone in the world is having sex right now,' Louise resumed. ‘There's a couple of people out in the shop who appear to be keeping their hands to themselves. And,' she continued, getting up from her desk and peering out to the
street, ‘there are more people going past, some in cars, I don't see how they could be having sex–'

‘All right,' Georgie sighed, ‘maybe not everybody is having sex, it just seems like it.'

‘Did you finish the romance section?'

‘I did. It's been emptied, dusted, culled, sorted, repacked and restocked.'

‘Well, there's your problem,' said Louise drily. ‘You've been absorbing the stuff through osmosis. I bet you got to reading the covers, didn't you?'

Georgie shrugged despondently. ‘I still think a lot of people are having sex and I'm not one of them.' She started spinning around in the chair.

‘Don't do that,' said Louise absently, opening the door of the stationery cupboard and staring inside. ‘What am I looking for, Georgie?'

‘How should I know?'

Louise sighed. ‘See, you've put me off. I knew exactly what I was doing before you came in and started with all the sex talk.' She closed the doors again and leaned back against them, gazing out into the shop. ‘Speaking of sex . . .' she murmured.

Georgie swivelled around. ‘What? Who's there? I can't see anyone,' she said, craning her head.

‘If you get up off that chair you might actually be able to see over the shelves, dodo,' Louise groaned.

Georgie stood and came to lean against the doorjamb, peering out. She spotted him straight away. Not bad looking at all, nice height, great haircut, schmick suit.

‘Mm, cute. But he's not single,' Georgie decided.

‘What makes you say that?'

She watched him wandering aimlessly between the shelves. ‘His shirt's too white.'

‘Mm, good point,' said Louise dubiously.

‘He could be gay.'

‘He could be divorced.'

‘He could be a gay divorcee!' Georgie quipped. Louise winced, shaking her head.

‘Anyway,' Georgie continued. ‘He doesn't have that wounded divorced look.'

‘It could have happened a while ago,' Louise suggested.

‘Then he doesn't have that hungry look.'

‘No he has that “does anybody even work in this place” look,' said Louise pointedly.

‘Okay, okay, I'm going.' Georgie walked out past the counter and along the row of shelves parallel to where he was standing, looking pretty blank, it had to be said.

‘I bet I know what you're after,' said Georgie.

He looked startled as he lifted his gaze to meet hers. ‘Pardon?'

‘You're after a book. Am I right?'

She noticed his expression soften slightly as a smile flickered across his eyes. Blue-grey eyes. Matched his tie. She wondered if that was intentional.

‘Well, this is a bookshop . . .' he was saying.

‘Hmm, I bet a person has to get up early in the morning to fool you.'

He was staring at her in a strange way. Not that Georgie wasn't used to that, being stared at. In a strange way. Usually people were checking out the
colour of the streaks in her hair, or the fact that quite often her earrings didn't match or, for that matter, the rest of her outfit.

Everyone assumed Georgie was arty like her mother and Nick, but that wasn't it at all. Long before she first dragged on a pair of floral shorts over purple tights and topped it all off with a striped pyjama shirt, her mother's philosophy had been that children should be allowed to make their own choices, especially about what to wear. Which was all well and good if one was born with a modicum of taste, some sense of colour, some kind of aesthetic. Sadly Georgie was not. When she hit her teens she would have dearly loved a little guidance, but none was forthcoming. Gillian insisted she always looked gorgeous, but she didn't, she looked as though she'd been dressed by a blind person. She tried to copy Zan for a while, but she couldn't carry off the classy, pared-down look her older sister achieved so effortlessly, aided in no small way by the fact that she was tall and statuesque, with sleek, dark hair that did exactly as it was told. She and Nick could have been clones of their father, while Georgie was smaller, not short, but finer, skinny as a kid. Everyone said she was exactly like Gillian, but Georgie knew she was nowhere near as beautiful as her mother. It was just the hair. Gillian had a glorious mane of tumbling russet curls which had somehow genetically mutated one generation down into the frizzy mess Georgie was born with. Oh sure, subtle, coppery streaks could occasionally be detected in a certain light, but in most lights her hair was just dilute brown. Until she discovered hair dye.

‘So, are you looking for something for yourself, or for a gift?' Georgie asked the man whose blue-grey eyes were still regarding her curiously.

‘Um, a gift.'

‘Man or woman?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘The gift, is it for a man or for a woman?'

‘Oh, right. It's for a woman.' He paused. ‘My mother,' he added as an afterthought.

Georgie considered him. ‘Birthday?'

‘That's right,' he nodded.

‘When?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘When's her birthday?'

‘Oh.' He cleared his throat. ‘Tomorrow.'

‘Hm, don't put off today what you can leave till the last moment,' she muttered. What were the chances of that, sharing a birthday with this guy's mother? Georgie didn't know if it was a good or a bad omen. ‘So that makes her a Libran?'

He shrugged. ‘If you say so.'

She started to peruse the shelves around her. ‘Let me see. That means she would favour love stories spiked with a little intrigue, a murder, espionage perhaps, set around the 1930s or 40s, preferably in warmer climates – I'm thinking Morocco, Tanzania, Sierra Leone. She likes her heroines to be strong and wilful, and her heroes to be tall, their names to begin with B or G, though, and I'm sure there's no need to point this out, never Bruce or Gavin.' Georgie selected a book from the shelf and passed it to him.

He took it, clearly bewildered. ‘You can tell all that from a person's star sign?'

‘No, I just made it up.' Georgie grinned broadly and he looked at her in that odd way again, though she noticed a flicker of amusement in his eyes this time. ‘Besides, I like to take any opportunity to say “Sierra Leone”,' she continued. ‘Isn't that just the best name for a place? I bet a poet came up with that name. If I ever had a daughter I'd be tempted to call her Sierra Leone.'

This time he laughed. Just a gentle chuckle really, half a laugh if there was a way to measure such things. But it brought his face to life and made his eyes crinkle at the corners. Blue-grey eyes framed with long, dark, thick lashes. Georgie hated that. Not the lashes, the lashes were to die for. No, she hated the fact that most men had such lashes and most women didn't. The whole mascara industry was founded on that simple quirk of nature. If it had been the other way around, men would never have bothered with mascara and women wouldn't have needed it. She propped one elbow on the shelf in front of her and rested her chin on her hand, watching him as he scanned the book cover. He had nice hair, nut brown, cut quite short and painstakingly arranged to give it that ruffled, natural, unstyled look when in fact it had been styled to within an inch of its life. Georgie reckoned he'd need to have it cut every few weeks to keep it looking that perfect. She couldn't imagine him letting the hair grow over his collar, he wasn't the type. The three-day growth type.

‘So you'd recommend this?' he was asking, turning the book over in his hand.

‘Mm,' Georgie had to tune in again. ‘Depends on what your mother likes. What does she read?'

He scratched the back of his neck. ‘I don't really know.'

Georgie smiled. ‘Maybe you should have got your wife to do this.'

He looked at her. ‘What makes you think I'm married?'

She shrugged. ‘Well, like I was saying to Louise–'

‘Louise?'

‘My partner, also sister-in-law. Because she's married to my brother, not the other way around. That is to say,' Georgie added for the sake of clarity, ‘I'm not married to her brother. In fact, Louise doesn't have a brother. She has a sister. And, you know, the law doesn't allow single-sex marriages yet. Not that I'd be interested,' she hastened to add. ‘It just came into my head because of my own sister. But that's a whole other story.'

There was the odd look again. No flicker of amusement this time.

‘Anyway, I was saying to Louise that I thought you were too well groomed to be single.'

‘You can't be well groomed and single?'

‘Well, you can, of course. But it really all comes down to laundry.'

‘Laundry?'

Georgie nodded. ‘You see, women separate darks and lights, it keeps whites whiter. The difference is indiscernible for the first few washes, but after that it
does start to affect the whiteness. It really does, but I don't know whether guys just don't get it, or they don't believe it, or they don't care. I've never met a straight man who will separate his darks and lights willingly – he has to have a partner or a wife doing it for him or telling him to do it. Now, look at your shirt.'

He glanced down at it.

‘Positively glowing,' Georgie remarked sagely.

‘So that means I must be married?'

‘Or gay.'

‘You thought I was gay?'

‘No, I thought you were married.'

He considered her for a moment and Georgie detected the flicker again. He was amused. ‘It's a brand-new shirt,' he said. ‘First time I've worn it.'

‘Oh.'

‘Kind of blows a hole in your theory, doesn't it?'

‘Or it could be the exception that proves the rule,' she suggested.

He leaned against the shelf, considering her. ‘Do you subject all your customers to this kind of scrutiny?'

Georgie shrugged. ‘Only when I'm trying to suss out if they're available,' she said bluntly. ‘Are you going to take that?'

He looked perplexed for a moment, till he glanced down at the book he was still holding. ‘Sure, why not.'

Georgie walked over to the register and he followed, handing her the book and his credit card.

She swiped the card through the machine. ‘Will that be credit . . .' she glanced at the card, ‘William?'

He seemed surprised. ‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I was asking if you want to pay for that on credit.'

‘Did you just call me William?'