Dog Handling (32 page)

So Laura told Liv everything. Beginning with the fact that she’d been thrown back into old behaviour patterns when she talked to Ben on the phone. Like his voice had set off some reaction in her. She’d panicked when she heard him and lied to Liv about what happened because she couldn’t face seeing him again—couldn’t face the possibility that he might be calling by, staying over the night, bumping into her in the bathroom in the mornings. Liv explained that she was perhaps taking the scenario a little too far as he was still going out with Amelia, but Laura explained that there was little that was rational about her problem. Though she’d talked to her shrink about it and they were working through it. Above all, she was very, very sorry and understood if Liv wanted to throw her out. Of course Liv wanted no such thing and the girls ended up making up.

“Now there’s not a single skeleton left in any closet, right?” Liv asked hopefully.

“Absolutely not. I know you think all this therapy is a bit extreme, but it’s really helped me,” Laura confided. “Three months ago I wouldn’t have been able to cope with this. I’d have been a complete emotional train wreck.”

“Always look on the bright side of life then, eh?” Liv attempted. It was Monty Python, but it sounded sensible enough.

“Yeah. Life’s a piece of shit when you look at it.” Laura laughed.

And they began to whistle and sing the song until they were rolling off the sofa laughing in a completely bonded and totally insane way.

“Oh, Liv, by the way.” Laura stopped for a second. “There was one more thing. . . .”

“Oh hell, what?” Liv asked as she caught her breath.

“A guy called Tim called. He said he’s staying at the Ritz-Carlton and give him a ring ’cause he’s dying to see you.”

Chapter Eighteen

The Past Is a Foreign Country—
They Do Things Differently There

L
iv could very happily not have seen Tim. She had successfully pushed him to the back of some dingy cupboard in her mind along with the time her knicker elastic had given way during the egg and spoon race. He wasn’t somewhere she wanted to go. Though she supposed that if she ever had to, then now would be as good a time as any. She was happy and glowing from her weekend away with Ben, and if she looked back to her
“I Will Survive”
days of misery and damp tissues and imagining her best-case scenario for bumping into Tim again, then this was it. She’d moved on completely and would no more want him back than put her own eye out with a knitting needle.

It was just that opening the cupboard would mean that she’d have to confront a few things—like the fact that she was still angry about the icy-blooded way he’d done it, still bitter about being replaced so quickly by the Sainsbury’s woman when he’d claimed only to want space and freedom. And she still thought he was mean and pathetic and small. But maybe she should pity him because he did have the odd sprouting hair on his back (unlike Ben) and played golf (unlike war correspondent Will, who dodged land mines for exercise) and had spent his last few months in the frozen goods section, whereas she’d had forays into club culture, had drag queens lap-dance for her, enjoyed (?) a one-night stand and sex al fresco—something Tim had always refused to do on no grounds other than he couldn’t see the point. Which made her a pretty remarkable and accomplished young woman in her eyes. And Tim was still just Tim.

All of which did not mean that she didn’t want to look as amazing as she could and play her look-what-you’re-missing card. So when she turned up at the Doyles’ fish-and-chip cafe with a sundress she’d made herself last week but had decided was a bit too Hands at Home for her weekend with Ben, she expected to attract a bit of attention. The dress was a bit short. And low. And other attention-grabbing things. But instead Tim seemed to be the main attraction in the place.

Not that the place was big and gaping and full to the rafters; it was an outdoor cafe and fish-and-chip shop on the waterfront. Leaning across his table, her skirt riding higher even than Liv’s sundress and her blond ponytail falling into his can of Coke, was the waitress. Sixteen if she was a day but nonetheless flirting outrageously. Liv just gleaned the tail end.

“Oh, I live down at Bondi; you have
got
to come and see my view. There’s a party tomorrow—” Liv was about to clear her throat to announce her arrival and, she hoped, cause the Elle Macpherson in waiting to flee when she saw the two women at the next table were also peering at Tim over the tops of their menus. Unlike the waitress, these two were only sixteen in their dreams, but presumably intended to use their throaty cigarettey voices and clanking gold charm bracelets and ladies who-lunch-but-never-cook nails to lure Tim back to their convertible BMWs. Liv was quite amused. Tim must have got himself some new aftershave. She smiled to herself as she pulled a chair up at his table and leaned over to kiss him.

“Tim,” Liv said, then stopped dead in her tracks. This was not the Tim she had known and loved and been engaged to. This was the new, improved formula. Until this minute she’d been so busy sniggering at the hordes of admiring women she had only really recognised Tim by his shoes and watch poking out from behind the waitress. The shoes and watch were, in fact, the only things of Liv’s Tim that remained. Or so it seemed.

“Liv. Hi, darling.” He leaned over and kissed her chastely (the indignity of it) on the cheeks. “You look gorgeous. Very sporty.” Tim smiled as he sank back into his chair. “Just fish and chips; thought we’d walk along the beach and eat them,” he said with quiet assurance.

Liv nodded weakly. Sporty? She didn’t want to look sporty; she wanted to look heartbreakingly sexy. Beddable. Weddable. Once upon a time she had been. She wouldn’t have minded getting the impression that he was just a tiny bit still in love with her. Not so he couldn’t sleep and eat and stuff, but just a little “I’ll always be a bit in love with Liv Elliot” type effect.

“So how have you been?” He spoke because Liv wasn’t going to. She couldn’t. It was actually just a physical shock to see him again. The cupboard door flew open and she nearly threw a vinegar bottle at his head for the pain he’d caused her. Instead she smiled.

“Fine. You look tanned already. Been to the Electric Beach sun-bed parlour on Fulham Road?” she asked as she wished she’d left her Hands at Home dress at home and worn one of Alex’s ball gowns.

“We stopped over in Hong Kong for a week before we came,” Tim said. “You should go. You’d love it. The food’s amazing. And the markets. Right up your street.” Hong Kong. Hence the tan.

“We?” she asked, preparing herself for the body blow of full disclosure.

“A friend from Freuds,” he said mysteriously. Liv racked through all the girls he’d worked with at Freuds and saw only the Glamazons, not the mousy ones. Who was it? Who was he seeing, the elusive bastard? The waitress brought her legs over to the table to distract Tim and placed two bags of sharp vinegar-scented fish and chips in front of them. Well, she sort of threw them at Liv’s foot because she wasn’t looking at Liv; she was scribbling her phone number on the bill.

“Here. There’s a trance party tomorrow night in Avalon. I’m Martha, by the way.” She flicked her long blond ponytail in Liv’s face and made her sneeze seven times. She was clearly a witch.

As they walked along the beach Liv was grateful for the huge amount of chips she had to carry (Martha the Witch Waitress had given Liv a double helping of lard to improve her own chances in the Race against Tim) because it meant that her puzzled hands were occupied and didn’t keep wandering out of habit to his back trouser pocket or tucking themselves through his elbow. Postengagement etiquette was a bit of a problem if you’d never actually made it as far as the altar.

“So I sprained my ankle in Vail; it’s still a bit dodgy. Do you think I walk like an old man?” Tim limped ahead of Liv on the beach and made her watch him. She looked at his legs and realised with a huge sense of relief that though he may have set the waitress alight with his very Merchant-Ivory brand of good looks, his legs just weren’t her type anymore. Whereas once they’d seemed impossibly elegant, now they only looked spindly. Now she preferred a more . . . Australian . . . leg. She marvelled at how clever the subconscious is to completely protect you from yourself. If she’d still found Tim attractive, the fact that he was here with the Freuds Glamazon whom he’d clearly fancied all the time he’d been going out with Liv would have been fatal. As it was, it was just irritating and made her curious. So Vail? Excusez-moi? Since when did Tim go to glammy American ski resorts with hot tubs and ankle-spraining activities? How dare he have had a soul-searching journey of his own?

“Looks fine to me,” Liv said, “but then maybe your left one’s bit wonky. Is that the one you sprained?” Liv averted her gaze to the harbour. “Sydney’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?” she said as she sat down on the damp sand and watched the waves lap a few feet away.

“I knew you loved it here. I could tell,” Tim said, crashing to the ground next to her and taking off his shoes.

“How?”

“The silence had something to do with it. I figured either you really loved it here or you really hated me.” He laughed.

“Actually, it was both. I did hate you.”

“You did?”

“Oh course I did, you fucker; you broke my heart and ripped my world apart. I mean I’m fine now and would . . .” She was about to say “no more want you back than put a knitting needle,” et cetera, but thought it a bit harsh. “Well, I think we did the right thing by having space and experiencing life and learning about ourselves. It was right for me anyway.” She looked at him and recognised the person she’d once known as he turned the sand over with his shoes like a schoolboy. Suddenly she wanted to tell him all the funny things that had happened. She wanted to ask him if he had gone through a phase where he was only attracted to women who were her complete antithesis—like Will had been Tim’s antithesis with his sausage legs and black hair. She wanted to tell him how great it was to own her own business and not be an accountant anymore. She wanted to show him Sydney and her amazing new life.

“You hated me?” He looked shocked. “Liv, I thought we were in agreement. I thought that what we did was right for both of us.”

“Yeah, it was, but you were still an unfeeling arsehole. So out of the blue and then just never calling me. We were engaged, for Christ’s sake.”

“I just thought that I should give you space.”

“And you did. Listen, Tim, I thought this might be weird, but actually it’s not. Looking at you now, I know that I don’t fancy you anymore. And if I’m truthful, I hadn’t been in love with you for a while. So really it was for the best. I’m glad I’ve seen you because now I know it’s really over.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. We’ve both moved on. Life’s good and I think we can be friends. I’m glad you came.”

“You think we should just be friends?”

“Yeah. Now why don’t we have dinner one night, you, me, and your”—Liv balked at saying “new girlfriend”; she wasn’t
that
sorted—“person that you’re here with.”

“Okay. That sounds great. I just want to have a chance to see you properly and stuff.”

“Sure.” Liv smiled at him and felt remarkably grown-up and free. And she’d never noticed before how little she liked the way he sniffed all the time. Had he done that for five whole years and she’d never noticed or was it a new sniff?

“So have you met anyone?” he asked quietly.

“Not really.” Liv shrugged. To tell or not to tell about Ben? she wondered. “But I do have a business empire. Well, more of an empire-ette. In fact, you’re just the person I need to talk to,” Liv said matter-of-factly. So she picked his brain about marketing initiatives. They talked business; their hands were waving around, drawing graphs in the sand, emphasising how important it was to have the right advertising budget. And as they walked along the small beach at Watson’s Bay, up the hill towards South Head, Liv gleaned so much invaluable advice from Tim on the marketing strategy for the first six months of Greta’s Grundies that she was beginning to remember that she’d like him for his mind. He was sharp and she was certain he’d already increased her first year’s turnover by a zillion percent. Which was a good enough reason for her to have an ex-fiancé.

Well, that and the fact that as they looked out over the Heads, onto the sea, he put his hands on her shoulders and gave her ego the friendliest stroke she could ever have imagined. He tried to kiss her.

“Tim, what are you doing?” She took a step back and looked at him in bewilderment.

“I still love you, Liv,” he said.

“No.” She couldn’t believe it. Had the world gone mad? “Have you gone mad?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. I really am. I just . . . I just don’t know if splitting up was the right thing to do. I still think about you all the time, you know.”

“Bloody hell.” Liv walked away from Tim for a moment’s breather. “Just give me a minute, will you, Tim?”

She sat on the grass as he pretended to look around the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage. What about the Glamazon? Could Tim really be serious? She also thought extra hard for a second because until that moment she and Tim had been getting on so well. It had been easy, fun, nice, and light, and she knew that even if they were to walk along the beach until they were fifty years old they’d still have something to say to each other, still laugh together. It wouldn’t be all fluttery and Ben Parker wonderful, but it would be nice. Was she being mad, being in love with Ben? He still had to chuck Amelia; imagine if he couldn’t bring himself to at the last minute. Then she looked back and watched Tim loping around the cottage, caught his profile, the way he smiled at her. And she didn’t feel anything. She really wasn’t in love with him anymore. No matter how flattering all this was, it was only that. Inconveniently, she was in love with Ben.

“Listen, Tim, I think we should be getting back.” She stood up and walked towards him.

“But, Liv, that’s why I’m here. I came to get you back.”

“You know that’s not what I meant. I have a meeting at four o’clock. Anyway, like I said, I don’t know that I can ever forgive you for what you did.”