Almost Perfect (3 page)

She nodded. ‘Sorry, should that be Mr–'

‘No, no, that's not what I meant. How did you know my name?'

Georgie held up his credit card. ‘Because it says so right here,' she said simply.

‘Oh, sure, of course.'

He looked a little like he didn't recognise his own name. Great, he was using a stolen card. To buy a single book. He was a pretty poor excuse for a crim.

‘It's just that I don't really go by that name,' he explained.

Uh oh, he must use an alias. Billy the Hood, Will the Wayward . . .

‘It's a family name, you know, a tradition,' he explained. ‘But nobody's ever called me William.'

‘So what do they call you? Junior?' Georgie asked, handing him a pen to sign the receipt.

He smiled, ‘No, not Junior.' He hesitated, pen poised midair. ‘My mother only ever called me Liam,' he said, staring off into space for a moment. Then he snapped out of it. ‘It comes from William, you know. It's the way the Irish shorten it.'

‘I didn't know that,' said Georgie, slipping the book into a bag. ‘Trust the Irish to do it back to front.'

The man aka Liam smiled and his eyes crinkled up again. He couldn't possibly be a criminal.

‘So what's the name on your credit card?' he asked.

‘I don't have a credit card.'

‘How do you get by without a credit card?'

‘A lot better than I get by with one, let me tell you,' she winked, passing him the bag.

‘Are you going to make me ask again?' he said.

‘Hmm?'

‘What name do you go by?' he persisted.

‘Oh.' She hesitated, fingering her necklace. It was one of those plastic ones with letters on squared-off beads strung together to spell out a name. The kind of jewellery you ended up with when you had time to fill with a precocious niece. She slipped her thumb under the necklace to hold it up as she leaned forward across the counter. Liam bent to read it, his face close to hers.

‘Georgia,' he said slowly.

‘No, it's an “e”.'

His eyes flickered up to meet hers, questioning. Their faces were very close.

‘Georg
ie
,' she croaked.

He smiled. ‘Well, it's nice to meet you, Georgie.'

‘So, married or gay?' Louise asked when he had left and Georgie had wandered back out to the office.

‘Neither apparently. It was a new shirt.'

Louise smiled slowly. ‘What do you know?'

‘Shut up.'

‘Hey, Ad, did you see Georgie and the suit in a clinch before?' Louise asked him as he walked into the office.

‘It was hard to miss. I just finished lunch and I thought I was going to bring it all back up again.'

‘He was just checking out my necklace,' Georgie insisted.

‘I bet that's not all he was checking out.'

‘And I bet he comes back before the week's over,' Louise predicted.

Adam narrowed his eyes, considering. ‘Do you want to make it interesting? I'll stick my neck out, ten says he's back tomorrow.'

Georgie rolled her eyes.

‘Ooh, high roller. Nuh, I'll give him till Friday,' Louise decided.

‘Oh, look at that out there,' said Georgie, interrupting them.

‘What?'

‘It's the real world. Excuse me, I have to get back to it.' She walked out to the shop, removing herself from the target range.

Besides, she needed a moment. A very unsettling thing had occurred when Liam had leaned across the counter to read her name. The words
I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him
had popped into her brain, uninvited and out of nowhere. Like some giant cartoonist in the sky had drawn a bubble above her head, imposing the thought on her against her will. It was ridiculous. This was all because she'd spent the entire day in the romance section. It was probably written on one of the covers.

Charlotte knew she would spend the rest of her life in Dashiell's arms
.

Lame.

Georgie took one look at the enigmatic stranger and knew she was destined to spend the rest of her life with him.

Lamer.

But try as she might to put it out of her mind, and she did try, it would not go away. Georgie had a profound respect for psychic experiences. The thought had come out of nowhere. It had to mean something, though not necessarily something good. He might be a criminal after all. Bill the Butcher, a serial killer who was going to murder her and then turn the gun on himself. There, she would have spent the rest of her life with him. Come to think of it, this had nothing to do with the rest of
his
life. He didn't have to die. It was only the rest of Georgie's life being spent here. So maybe they would go on a date and then on the way home she would get hit by a bus. Georgie tried to ignore the rather morbid direction her thinking had taken. But honestly,
I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him
? That was too fanciful even for Georgie, and that was saying something.

Georgie had been dreaming of Mr Right since she was a little girl. He changed persona every few years but he never disappeared altogether. It had started with Ken, though that infatuation didn't last long. At the age of six the absence of genitals didn't bother her, but the total absence of personality did. He was, she discovered, merely a handbag for Barbie. The boys from
The Famous Five
and
The Secret Seven
got a look-in after that. Georgie couldn't even remember their names any more, but she had definitely never
liked the nerdy one. Though thinking of it now, they were all pretty nerdy. Growing up and moving on, Greg Brady never did anything for her, but when George Michael sang ‘Wake me up, before you Go–Go' she was gone, gone. The fact that he was gay the whole time was something she preferred not to dwell on. As her teenage years drew to a close, pop stars gave way to movie stars, and movie stars were interspersed with the occasional real, flesh-and-blood man. The wedding fantasies got serious – she'd mentally size him up for a suit, choose her dress, flowers, cars, the venue, even invitations. But she was perennially disappointed. Real men never lived up to her expectations. Or her fantasies.

So that explained it. Mr Liam Nice Suit Great Haircut was just the latest in a long line of fantasy dream men. She should be able to see them coming by now.

Mac pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. He sat for a minute, staring down at the bouquet of roses placed carefully across the passenger seat. Lush cream roses, their buds just opening, their long stems wrapped in thick brown paper, tied with a raffia bow. Classy, elegant. Because that's how Anna liked things, and that's how he liked things. Stella said to get her
something nice, but it always ended up being flowers. Roses usually. How could Anna still find them beautiful, find any comfort in them at all, when they were associated with so much loss?

He sighed, picking them up as he climbed out of the car and walked across the lawn to the front door. It had given him an enormous sense of pride and achievement to buy this house. Sure they had sold their souls to the bank to pay for it, but they were making the repayments and it was worth it to buy into Mosman. Not the eastern suburbs, they didn't appeal at all. Flash and glitzy, all new money, very Sydney. Mosman had prestige, respect, it was like Melbourne but with harbour views. The people who lived here had grown up with privilege and they took it for granted. And now Mac was living as one of them.

He turned his key in the lock, but as the front door swung open his heart sank. The maudlin music drifting from the back of the house meant only one thing. Mac had no reason to expect Anna would be anything else but sad, but there were two ways she generally coped with this kind of bad news. She would go quiet, withdrawn, take to her bed and not want to talk about it. He'd worry about her, but he had to admit it was easier to deal with than this, which had lately become her preferred mode. Getting smashed every time the procedure didn't take, and then the tears, and then being sick usually, later on. He couldn't blame her, but he didn't know if he could stand it again.

Mac followed the music out to the sunroom. On
the real estate blurb it had been referred to as a family room, but it upset Anna to call it that. In her less rational moments, her hormone-driven, hysterical, defeated moments, she talked about tearing it down.
We don't need a family room, we're never going to need a family room. It's mocking me, that room.
So now they called it a sunroom and pretended it was ever thus.

As he walked to the end of the hall he could see the back of her silky blonde head nestled into the cushions of the sofa, a shoeless foot perched on the coffee table, and one long, slender, elegant arm stretched out across the back of the sofa. He was not surprised to see a bottle in her hand.

‘Hello hushband,' she slurred, tossing her head back and looking upside down at him. ‘Wanna drink?'

She thrust the bottle up at him and Mac took it from her, momentarily distracting her with the flowers.

‘Oh, they're so beautiful!' she gushed. ‘I have to put them in water straight away.'

She struggled to get up but Mac stayed her with a hand on her shoulder. ‘I'll do it.'

He walked into the kitchen and laid the flowers on the bench. Opening the corner cupboard, he tried to focus on finding a vase and ignoring the feeling of desolation creeping up his body, into his chest, making his breathing laboured. His mouth and throat went dry. He wished he could be somewhere else, be someone else.

Anna burst through the door unsteadily, waving
a cigarette in one hand. God, if she was smoking as well she was going to be sick sooner rather than later. ‘You took the bottle, naughty boy!' she scolded, picking it up off the bench where Mac had left it. She looked around vaguely for a few moments, frowning. ‘Where did I leave my glass?' she muttered, before shrugging, and drinking straight from the bottle.

Mac eased it gently from her. ‘Anna, keep going like this and you know what's going to happen.'

‘I'll get pissed.'

He decided not to point out that she already was. ‘You'll get sick,' he corrected her, deftly plucking the cigarette from her fingers. ‘Especially if you smoke as well.'

‘Oh, Mackie!' she pouted, but she didn't stop him from tossing it in the sink. Instead she looped her arms around his neck and slumped against him.

‘Are you okay?'

Anna shook her head and let out a sob. She had descended to the next level. Tears.

‘Come on. Let me take you up to bed,' Mac said gently.

She threw her head back to look at him. ‘Okay,' she crooned, attempting to sound seductive. ‘Take me to bed.' She kissed him hard on the lips. She tasted of alcohol and cigarettes and desperation. It was all he could do not to push her off, instead he slowly eased back from her.

‘Come on, Mackie,' she persisted. ‘We'll do it properly, for real, like we used to. I'll even be on top if you like.'

‘Let's get upstairs and we'll see.'

Mac knew she would barely make it up the stairs, he just wanted to get her moving in that direction. She blathered on about something the whole way, but he wasn't paying attention. He was almost carrying her by the end as they staggered through the door to their bedroom and across to the bed. Anna fell back like a dead weight, closing her eyes and sighing loudly. Mac loosened his tie and removed his jacket, arranging it carefully across the back of a chair nearby. He stared down at her. She was still so beautiful, as beautiful as the day he first laid eyes on her. They'd met at one of those murder-mystery parties that were all the rage at the time. Anna was still at uni, completing the fourth year of her psychology degree before she started an internship as a clinical psychologist. Mac had finished uni and was celebrating being accepted into the graduate intake of an international firm of management consultants. It was a dream come true. And so was Anna. She was dressed as a 1920s flapper in an authentic hired costume, not the makeshift outfits the rest of them had put together. She'd literally taken his breath away. All in white and silver, fair and fragile, like a porcelain doll. She was perfect, and he knew he had to have her. Not just for the night, he had much longer term ambitions. So he didn't come on to her at the party. He was polite and attentive, even charming he hoped, though it was never easy to get that right. He didn't even have a drink, so he was one of the last men standing at the end of the night and could offer to drive Anna and her friends
home. When he saw where she lived he was even more determined. It was not simply that Toorak suggested her family had money, Mac knew he could make his own money. It was the kind of money it suggested. Old money bought respect, position, a certain status. People said Australia was a class-free society. When you came from the lower class, you knew better.

So Mac did not make a pass at Anna at all that night. This was too important. The next day he sent flowers to her house, the right kind, the kind that cost him what he'd make in an eight-hour shift at the pub where he was still working until he took up his graduate position. He let another day pass and then he phoned. He said he would feel honoured if she would consider going out for dinner with him some time. Whenever Anna retold the story she would say that his formal, old-fashioned manner was quaint, it had intrigued her, and impressed her parents. Which was exactly what he'd counted on.

Mac sighed heavily, resting one knee on the bed as he leaned forward and began to unbutton her blouse. Anna roused, blinking a couple of times and rubbing her eyes. She reached out and hooked her fingers around his belt, yanking him forward.

‘Anna,' he chided gently, resisting. He sat on the bed beside her. ‘Come on, you have to get out of these clothes.'

‘Can we make love then?' she murmured, raising her hand to stroke his hair. ‘We never make love any more.'

‘Of course we do,' he dismissed, concentrating
on the buttons of her blouse. But of course they didn't. At first they did, all the time. They had to mark it off with a cross on a chart which they presented nervously to a nurse at the clinic. And she would assess if they were doing it at the right times, according to the right pattern. Sometimes it was important to save up his sperm for a while so that it would be a good potent hit when the conditions were right. Other times they had sex as often as they could manage. But nothing had worked. So then they had sex at a time prescribed by the doctor, after which Anna would go to the clinic for a post-coital examination to determine just why his sperm and her eggs weren't hitting it off. But no one could tell them. And so they moved onto ‘assisted reproductive techniques', and ever since Mac had had more intimate moments with a plastic specimen cup than he'd had with his own wife.

‘We're so busy trying to make a baby, we never make love,' Anna said quietly. Mac looked down into her eyes and she stared steadily back up at him, lucid in that moment. Sometimes the truth reared its ugly head when they least expected it. And then it would disappear again before they had time to really grasp it. Mac knew Anna would remember nothing in the morning; there was no point pursuing it now.

‘Come on, you have to sit up,' he said, pulling her upright. He peeled the shirt off her shoulders and she obediently lifted her arms out of the sleeves. He stood up and walked across to her chest of drawers to find her a nightie. When he turned back Anna was standing up. She had removed her bra and tossed it
aside, and now she was unzipping her skirt. She stood looking at him plaintively as she let it drop to the floor. Mac didn't say anything. A moment passed, followed by another. She was breathing heavily, waiting, anticipating, her eyes almost pleading. He walked back towards her, raised the nightie over her head and pulled it down, covering her. He heard her sniff as she pushed her arms through the sleeves. Then she leaned against him, burying her head into his shoulder.

‘Oh God, I think I'm going to be sick,' she gasped suddenly.

Anna fled to the bathroom, making it just in time before she started throwing up violently. Mac followed her, took a face washer from the cabinet and wet it under the tap. He dragged the stool over and sat beside her, rubbing her back, wiping her face between bouts. He stayed even though it turned his stomach to watch his wife hunched over a toilet bowl, heaving her heart up. Sometimes he hated everything about IVF. The scientists who had developed it, the clinics that administered it, the hope it fostered, the pain it caused. IVF had changed their lives. They had thought they were incomplete without a baby, unhappy somehow. But Mac had never been so unhappy in his whole life. And he didn't know how they could ever make it back to where they were before.

When it was over, he helped Anna over to the sink, where she washed her face and rinsed out her mouth. She was still shaky as he walked her back out to the bed and turned down the covers for her. She
climbed in gingerly, turning on her side and curling up. Mac leaned down and kissed the side of her head, and she reached up to grab his arm. ‘Please stay with me,' she said in a small, fragile voice.

He patted her hand. ‘Sure.' He went around the room lowering the blinds, collecting Anna's clothes from the floor and laying them neatly across a chair. He took off his shoes and climbed onto the bed behind her, on top of the covers. He brought one arm around her and she laced her fingers through his.

‘I'm sorry,' she whimpered.

‘It's okay.'

‘You must be disgusted.'

‘Don't say that.'

She was quiet for a while, and Mac sensed her breathing settling into a sleeping rhythm.

‘I want to try again, Mac,' she said, her voice faint but distinct. ‘As soon as we can.'

His heart froze.

‘Shhh . . .' he soothed. ‘Go to sleep.'

He remembered being surprised when Anna agreed to move to Sydney so readily. Mac had been offered an irresistible promotion, but Anna had built up a solid case load within a reputable practice and he was unsure how she would feel about leaving it to start all over again. Moreover she was unusually close to her parents, and they to her. That had never bothered Mac, they were decent people and Anna was their only child.

But she had jumped at the chance to leave Melbourne and had set about enthusiastically updating her resume and researching real estate. They decided to rent an apartment in the city for the first six months, and Anna set up interviews with a number of practices. One evening after they were settled, she sat Mac down with a drink and announced she wanted to start investigations into their infertility.

That was the first Mac had heard anything of their apparent infertility. He knew they hadn't been using any birth control for . . . maybe a year? But she had corrected him – it had been almost two years.

When Anna first suggested going off the pill she had assured him it would take her some time to fall pregnant, if she was anything like her mother. That was fine with Mac, whatever she wanted. He was too involved in his work to dwell on it much and Anna hadn't mentioned it again. It had more or less sunk to the back of his mind. The reality of a baby or a child had not taken shape yet.

But it had never been far from Anna's mind. She didn't want to think the worst, so she came up with dozens of rationalisations for why she wasn't falling pregnant. She was becoming as bad as some of her clients. Then she started to track her cycle obsessively, but even if they had sex every night at the appropriate time of the month, she still didn't conceive. She read everything she could find and began to form more educated opinions to explain why she wasn't falling pregnant. Finally Anna had to face the fact that there was a problem. She didn't want to follow it up in Melbourne because it would have been
impossible to keep it from her parents and she didn't need the added pressure. When the chance to go to Sydney presented itself, she grabbed it. It would be a fresh start, a change of scenery. And Mac didn't know it, but part of her enthusiastic research had included fertility clinics.

Her announcement therefore left him understandably stunned. He was reluctant at first. It caught him by surprise, and besides, he had a niggling feeling that if Anna was doing all the right things, it must be him, which was not the easiest thing for a man to face. But Anna was relentless. She convinced him he couldn't possibly be the cause, considering he was from a family of nine children, and Anna was an only child born late in life when her mother had given up any hope of ever having a baby. Mac underwent a simple test which confirmed her theory, so she insisted that as further investigations and treatment would all be undertaken by her, he had to agree to let her go ahead. Mac had never been able to refuse Anna a thing, and he was beginning to understand how important this was to her. In fact, he could see in her eyes that she would quite possibly do anything to have a baby.