Almost Perfect (32 page)

‘Go ahead, laugh, I deserve it,' said Georgie. Problem was, a part of her still believed it, even now. She felt so inextricably bound to Liam she wondered if she would ever get over him. ‘From now on, you're going to hear every foolish notion that crosses my mind, and I want you to laugh loudly and tell me how stupid I am as often as you see fit.'

‘You're not stupid, Georgie,' Nick chided. ‘You're just very trusting, and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's endearing.'

‘It may be endearing, brother,' said Zan, ‘but it's also got her into trouble. She needs to wise up.'

‘Once again, I would ask you to speak
to
me,' Georgie reminded her.

‘You go girl,' Zan laughed, punching the air. ‘This is exactly what you need to do, George, get tougher, more savvy.'

‘There's absolutely nothing wrong with the way you are, Georgie,' Nick insisted. ‘I don't think you need to change.'

‘But I have changed, Nick,' Georgie said seriously. ‘What happened changed me, I can't pretend it never took place or that it hasn't affected me. But at least Liam did one good thing for me – I won't ever be fooled like that again.'

Georgie's heart was closed for business. It was the only way. Her instincts were shot. She couldn't trust herself or anyone else. Not that she wanted anyone else.

Nick frowned. ‘I only hope you don't kill the flowers along with the weeds.'

‘Oh God, more proverbs,' Zan groaned.

‘I'm only saying that if this changes Georgie's nature, then Liam really will have done some harm.'

‘People don't change, not essentially,' Zan assured him. ‘The dickhead's a dickhead, through and through. George will always be our sweet, wide-eyed little sister, but now she's a little smarter.'

‘Hello!' said Georgie. ‘And we're going to talk
to
me from now on, aren't we?'

Zan looked at Nick. ‘See what I'm saying.'

Anna heard the doorbell and walked slowly up the hall towards the door, full of misgiving. Perhaps she shouldn't have suggested meeting here. But Mac needed to pick up some things, and they probably had to make a few decisions about how to divide up their belongings, or at least start the process. Anna had never imagined anything like this would ever be necessary, but it felt as though her life had turned on a penny and she was suddenly inhabiting a parallel universe, much like the old one but slightly off kilter. Every day felt like that. Slightly skewed, awry. She wondered how long it would be before things went back to normal, or at least felt normal. She supposed things were never going to go back.

True to his word, Mac had moved out that same weekend into a serviced apartment in the city. Anna had never been there, but she believed him when he told her he wasn't seeing the woman, Georgie, any more. There was a hollowness in his eyes that was quite poignant on some level. She was surprised to learn that he'd put his notice in at work the following Monday, though she shouldn't have been. It fitted the pattern. Mac had set a new course and he would charge along it single-mindedly, shedding his old life like it was so much dust under his feet. He'd used the apartment as his base since then, travelling almost constantly to notify his clients in the Asia-Pacific region of his pending resignation and to ease the transition for his replacement. He arranged a post
office box where his mail could be forwarded and he told Anna his mobile phone number would remain the same if she needed to contact him for any reason. But Anna had only called once. She wanted to put the house on the market, she didn't see any point putting it off any longer. He said she should do whatever she felt was appropriate.

But then she'd discovered Mac had to co-sign the contract with the realtor. She'd forgotten about that, or never really thought about it. As a couple they did those things together automatically; she had never thought much about the fact that both signatures were actually required on most documents.

Anna took a deep breath and opened the door. Mac had his back to her, gazing up the street, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. He turned around, smiling faintly at her. ‘Hi.'

‘Hello.' His hair was longer, that was the first thing she noticed. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and he looked . . . well, better than the last time she'd seen him, when he was misery on legs. ‘Come in,' said Anna, standing back out of the way.

He nodded. ‘Thanks.'

He followed her down the hall to the kitchen. Anna had laid all the papers out on the breakfast table and she had coffee brewing. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?' she asked.

‘Thanks, if you're having one.'

‘Everything's on the table if you want to start looking it over.'

‘All right.'

When Anna brought his coffee over, Mac was
already signing the contract. ‘It all looks pretty straightforward to me,' he said, turning a page and signing again.

He ought to know, she supposed, he had a law degree after all. Anna sat down as he returned his attention to the papers. Who the hell was this man sitting here, forging William MacMullen's signature? Anna didn't even know him any more. He looked so relaxed, so self-possessed. Had they really been married for fourteen years? Anyone watching the two of them would be forgiven for thinking they were barely acquaintances. If he intended to leave here without some mention – no, more than that – some discussion about what had happened between them, well, Anna was not going to tolerate it. They needed closure. Or at least she did.

Eventually Mac laid the pen down on top of the papers. ‘What do you think it'll go for?' he asked.

Anna shrugged. ‘The realtor is optimistic, but they always are.'

‘And you're happy going to auction?'

She nodded. ‘The market's crazy, which is the perfect climate for an auction apparently. You wouldn't catch me dead at one, but I'm more than happy to auction my house off.' She swallowed. ‘Sorry, our house.'

He looked squarely at her. ‘I wanted to mention, Anna, that you should work out how you'd like to split the difference. I know your parents helped us out early on–'

‘They helped us with a deposit when we first got married,' Anna interrupted. ‘You've been earning
more than me all our married life, Mac. You're entitled to your fair share.'

‘I won't be taking any more than half,' he said flatly.

‘And neither will I.'

He picked up his cup and drank from it. As he put it down, he regarded her for a moment from across the table. ‘How are you, Anna?'

She wasn't prepared for that. How did he expect her to answer?

Casually?
Fine, and you?

Guilt-inducing?
I'm desperately unhappy.

Provocatively?
How do you think I am, you bastard?

‘I have my days.' That certainly didn't let him off the hook, but she hoped it didn't sound desperate either. ‘How are you?'

‘Good . . . not bad, you know, getting along.'

‘You've been away a lot?'

He nodded. ‘That'll all wrap up this week. I won't officially be on the payroll any longer, but I might have to do some consulting until the new guy is up to speed.'

‘Is that what you're going to do now, consult?'

‘No way,' he shook his head. ‘Actually, I'm going for a position with an NGO.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Well, I've only just put in an application–'

‘With whom . . . or what, did you say?'

‘Sorry, an NGO, a non-government organisation.'

‘Yes, I know what the acronym stands for. What's the organisation, what's the job?'

‘It's with the Small Business Agency, and it
involves working with members when they've been audited, or are about to be, helping them prepare submissions, representing them to the taxation office, that kind of thing.'

Anna was gobsmacked. ‘That's a change of direction.' To say the least.

He shrugged. ‘Thought it was maybe time I gave something back, you know?'

God, what was this, penance?

‘The thing is, Anna, I've been following the one path all my life, since I was a kid. I never considered another direction, I barely even stopped to look at the scenery along the way.' He seemed lost in thought. ‘Sorry, I'm rambling,' he said, snapping out of it. ‘I want to do something useful with the skills I have. Not just make rich people richer.'

Anna didn't know what to say to him. It was not so long ago that he was striving to be one of the rich getting richer.

‘Guess who I caught up with in Malaysia a couple of weeks ago?' Mac was saying.

Small talk now? Anna shook her head, she had no idea.

‘Sean. He's backpacking across Asia, you know, surfing, generally bumming around.'

‘Your little brother Sean?' He was the youngest of the nine MacMullen children and had been page-boy at their wedding. He'd barely started school at the time, as Anna recalled. ‘Is he old enough to be travelling around like that?'

Mac smiled. ‘That's what I said to Mum when she first told me. But Sean's twenty-one and not
exactly my “little” brother any more,' he went on. ‘He's taller than me. You should see him, big swarthy bloke, rides a surfboard, drinks beer. Nice kid, though. I don't think he knew what to make of me at first, I suspect he always thought of me more like an uncle.'

‘Well, you left home when he was born, didn't you?'

‘Just after.' He became thoughtful. ‘It was so great seeing him, spending some time with him.' He shrugged. ‘Maybe it was because we were in a foreign country, I don't know, but I felt this really strong bond, that we were brothers . . .' Mac looked across at her, sheepish. ‘Sorry, I'm rambling again,' he smiled.

Anna didn't think she could take much more of this. So Mac had abandoned his corporate career to become a crusader for the little people, and he was embracing the family he had kept at arm's distance for all these years. Did this make him a great guy all of a sudden? Did it make up for the fact he turned to another woman when his marriage was floundering and his wife needed him the most?

‘I can't do this, Mac.'

‘What?'

‘Sit here talking about everything but the obvious. Don't we have anything else to say to each other?'

Mac took a slow breath in and out. ‘I don't know, you tell me, Anna.'

‘After fourteen years I would like to think so.'

‘That's exactly what I tried to say to you,' he
returned calmly. ‘That's why I was prepared to stay and work it out. You were the one who asked me to leave.'

‘Because you didn't want to be here!' she insisted. ‘You stayed out of some cavalier idea about right and wrong, but you didn't do anything to rebuild the relationship. You just moped about, pining for your girlfriend.'

‘And exactly what did you do to rebuild the relationship, Anna?' he said tightly. ‘This didn't start with Georgie and you know it. I was unhappy for a long time, but you wouldn't talk to me. You shut me out–'

‘–because I was frightened you'd want to stop the treatment!' she cried. She paused, catching her breath. ‘And I was right. Quitting was the only solution you could come up with. You never coped with IVF from the beginning.'

‘That's not fair, Anna, I always supported you.'

‘Yes, you did. But you were never happy about it.'

‘Show me someone who is! It's not exactly a picnic.'

‘That's not what I mean. You couldn't stand the idea of having to seek treatment in the first place, that we couldn't have children ourselves. It was hard for you to accept that we weren't the perfect couple after all.'

‘That's rubbish. I was completely prepared to give up having children. You were the one who was obsessed, who started the whole thing in the first place. I hadn't even thought about kids at that stage.'

‘But you would have,' Anna said, calmer now.
‘Eventually. You expected to have the perfect family, Mac, part of the perfect life you had planned. And one day you would have wanted a child, and if we had found out then and it was too late, you would have been devastated.'

‘Oh for Chrissakes, Anna, this is all hypothetical. What's the point arguing about it? Besides, if I was so determined to have the perfect family, why did I suggest a break from the treatment, even giving up?'

‘Because you couldn't face the failure any more. You don't handle crises well, Mac, it's not one of your strengths. You'd rather walk away.'

‘Don't psychoanalyse me, Anna,' he said grimly.

But she was on a roll. Ever since she'd found out about the affair, she had been tormented, trying to understand what had gone wrong between them, to make sense of it from the ruins, sifting through the debris, looking for clues, like some kind of emotional archaeologist.

‘You know what I think, Mac? We were perfect, maybe a little too perfect. Like some delicate piece of porcelain that's flawless but incredibly fragile. The slightest knock is all it takes to destroy it.' She paused. ‘I don't think you and I ever had a chance of withstanding the knocks.'

‘Then it's just as well we never had children,' he said ruefully. ‘You think parenthood wouldn't have knocked us around?'

Anna swallowed. It was painful to hear Mac talk like this.

‘We'd had nothing but knocks for years on end, Anna. Our life together wasn't perfect, it was
miserable.' He sighed, leaning forward on the table. ‘I still don't think you have any idea how unhappy I was. It got so I didn't even know if I wanted a baby any more, but I couldn't talk to you about it. You were so driven to keep going, no matter what. You didn't seem to care how I felt as long as I kept filling that cup.'

‘You keep going back to that one stupid remark.'

‘It wasn't just one remark, Anna, it was every day, our whole lives. And I couldn't do it any more. You gave me no choice.'

She glared at him. ‘I beg your pardon? Are you trying to say I forced you to have an affair?'

‘No, no,' he shook his head. ‘That's not what I meant. But I didn't see how we could keep going the way we were. I was beginning to hate my life, Anna. I dreaded coming home–'

‘Thanks.'

‘Because I couldn't stand to see you so unhappy,' he tried to explain. ‘And I couldn't do anything to fix it. I felt useless and hopeless. I don't know how you couldn't see how miserable we both were. It wasn't a life, it was an endurance test.' He paused. ‘The first time I met Georgie she made me laugh. And I kept going back to see her because I felt good when I was around her.'

‘It had nothing to do with being weak and selfish?'

‘I'm not pretending it was right, I've never said otherwise. I'm just trying to get you to see how it was for me.'

‘Well I'm sick of hearing how hard it was for
you, Mac,' she cried. ‘Think about it from my perspective for a change! After everything I've been through, can you imagine how it feels to be discarded like this, like I'm faulty goods–'

‘That had nothing to do with it,' he said loudly, standing up. ‘I would never have left you because you couldn't have children. And if you think for a second I could do that, then you don't know me at all.' He pushed his chair in, holding the back of it. ‘Truth is, Anna, you didn't know me at the end. And I think what upsets you most is losing your chance to have a baby, not losing me.'