Dog Handling (33 page)

“But, Liv . . .”

She remembered the shrine she’d built to him on her dressing table in London and how she’d meditated on his passport photo for a whole week in a bid to conjure him up by witchcraft. And he hadn’t so much as called her to make sure she hadn’t hurled herself under a bus.

“Besides, getting back with an ex is such a cliché. It’s like fancying Brad Pitt or being turned on by a man driving a Ferrari. Sure, it happens, but not to people with any taste.”

Chapter Nineteen

It’s My Party and I’ll Ruin It
if I Want To

L
iv knew that her alarm clock was droning away for a reason, but through the fog of sleep she couldn’t remember quite why. Not market stall. Even through the fog, she worked out that it wasn’t Saturday. It was . . . ? What day was it? What had she done last night? Ah yes. Last night she’d had supper with Alex. Pizza. Beer. Not much out of the ordinary. So today was Thursday. No market stall. Ben? No, she hadn’t shaved her legs so she knew for a fact that she wasn’t planning to see Ben again until the party. On Thursday. Today. Tonight!

Liv caused trauma to every single one of her vertebrae as she leapt out of bed seconds later. It was more a cat on a towering inferno type leap than a cat on a hot tin roof jive. She was up and at ’em. Today was indeed the day when everything receded into the background apart from canapés, cocktails, RSVPs, having her hair professionally “done”for the first time in her life, and still making it to the venue on time. It was a displacement wedding. She was about to marry her career. It was make or break for Greta’s Grundies. If only three fashion assistants arrived on their way to a book launch and the waitresses had to take home the canapés wrapped in bacofoil at the end of the evening, then Liv didn’t have a job, a future, or an income. If, however, the supermodel snogged the politician in front of the Greta’s Grundies’ large pink cardboard logo and seven hundred people lined the street outside in a bid to squeeze through the doors of the overcrowded party, then Liv and Alex had a hit on their hands. The latter, of course, was absolutely the dream-come-true-but-first-you-have-to-sell-your-soul-to-Beelzebub so was a bit unlikely. Somewhere in between would be gratefully appreciated.

“Alex.” Liv banged on Alex’s bedroom door. “Getting up?”

“I don’t feel well!” Alex called out.

“Morning sickness? Then have a glass of water. It’s mind over matter,” Liv chided as she took a dry handful of Just Right and threw it at her mouth, though most of it escaped to the kitchen floor.

“Laura. You will be finished painting the giant G-string, won’t you?” Liv panicked as Laura walked into the dining room rubbing her eyes and still wearing her nightie.

“Sure.” Laura sat down on the sofa and reached for the television remote control, flicking on MTV. How could she choose this moment to get over herself and become a normal human being again? How dare she stop obsessing about her work and running round like the cat fresh from the aforementioned towering inferno and instead be as cool as a cold thing?

“Is something wrong, Laura?” Liv asked as she took to her guest list with a pen and began counting ticks next to names.

“I’m fine. In fact, I really am fine. You know, this whole thing between you and Ben has given me closure. I’m really, really well.”

“You mean you’re better? No more shrink?” Liv asked, astounded yet horrified. Did this mean that Laura would no longer use work as a tool to manage her emotions and so Liv wouldn’t be getting her giant painted G-string for tonight’s party anytime this side of Christmas?

“I feel fine. In fact, I’m not even going to take a single beta-blocker before tonight’s party. Isn’t that great? I realise that Ben’s just completely ordinary, farts sometimes, gets the odd spot, and has smelly feet bloke. I really like women much better.”

“Actually, Laura, that’s the man I love you’re talking about,” said Liv. “But if you go and paint my G-string now I won’t hold it against you!” she yelled as she headed for the bathroom before new, chilled Laura had a chance to become a reclining redhead among the bubbles and commandeer the loofah for the day. Right now she looked so relaxed she might just slide off the sofa and evaporate into a puddle on the floor.

Thankfully Alex emerged from the bathroom before Liv could administer any more bossy kicks to Laura’s behind.

“Ah, my partner. Thank god we’re in this together,” Liv proclaimed as she dragged Alex bodily into the bedroom to help her decide which dress she was going to wear tonight. “Then we have to go to the flower market, then the hall, and make sure everything’s in place.” They had decided to hire out an abandoned church in Woollahra on the simple grounds that they could afford nothing else. Thankfully all the pews had been stolen so they’d just have to decorate the place with twinkling fairy lights, sweep the floors, and fill it with flowers to achieve their desired champagne-fountains-and-marble-staircases effect. Well, almost. They were also borrowing a few of Laura’s old sets of Venice and Umbrian hillsides and Paris by moonlight and other schmaltzy things that looked better than mouldy old church walls. That was if Laura ever surfaced again now she’d locked herself in the bathroom. Only violet wafts were coming out from beneath the door.

“Actually, we’re not quite in this together because I’m not quite together.” Alex sat on the edge of the bed on the exact dress Liv had just planned to wear and burst into tears. “I dumped Rob!” Alex wailed.

“You did what?” Liv didn’t really have the time for a crisis, but this was pretty earth-shattering and potentially party-ruining.

“Late last night. I told him I couldn’t marry him because I have to stay with Charlie.”

“Why?” Liv sat on the bed beside Alex and put her arm around her shaking body.

“It’s Luke—he’s won this amazing scholarship to a sports academy in the States. His future’s guaranteed. How selfish of me would it be to say he couldn’t go just because I love Rob? In time maybe we can be friends. But I’ve got to do it. For Luke. I’m so proud of him. Just it’s a fortune, twenty-five thousand dollars a year for three years. I mean our business is okay, but it’s not going to make up twenty-five thousand dollars in the next few weeks, is it? I can’t afford to leave Charlie. It’s as simple as that.” Alex sobbed.

“And you told Rob that?” Liv asked, stroking wet strands of hair back from Alex’s face.

“Yeah. And he just left. You know what he’s like, Livvy: he’s uncomplicated. It had never really occurred to him that I was only with Charlie for the money. I mean Charlie knows that and to him it’s not such a big deal, but Rob took it badly. I tried calling him all night, but he wasn’t at his flat.” Alex burst into fresh tears and clung onto Liv.

The minute Alex was tucked up exhausted and asleep in her bed with her pashmina over her and a glass of water and box of tissues beside her in case she woke up, Liv scribbled her a little note telling her to rest and sit in the sun for the day and that they’d work it out later. Then she stole Alex’s mobile from her handbag and headed off to the flower market, calling her troops on the way.

“Dave, you’ve heard of Black Monday?” she said.

“I’m a stockbroker, I live in terror,” he replied while also selling grain, just in case Liv had insider information she was about to impart.

“Well, today’s Pitch-Black Thursday. Please help.”

She also called James and said the same thing, only he said he’d never heard of Black Monday, but he had a fuck of a hangover so would gladly come and hang out in a silent, darkened church hall for the day. If she provided him with a can of Diet Coke and an Egg McMuffin he’d be there in fifteen. Result. Liv also called Tim, but he wasn’t in his room. She imagined him in his green silk jacket on a Captain Cook Cruise on the harbour with his Glamazon, who didn’t know that he also liked shorter, darker, less attractive girls. She left a message telling him where the church was and asking him to pull on some old jeans and come along. Cheeky maybe, but if ever there was an hour of need it was now.

So by the time Liv got back from the flower market with a fieldful of antique roses in the back of Laura’s car there was a lineup of unwilling men sitting on the wall of the church, smoking and basking in the sunshine. Well, lineup of three, Dave, James, and Tim, and they seemed to be getting on well, with James using Tim’s green jacket as a parasol and Dave and Tim locked in conversation.

Liv screeched the car to a halt and fell out before either could impart incriminating stories about her to the other. “Boys, oh, thank you so much.” She ran around the back of the car and opened the boot to unload her roses. “I’ve got the key. James, will you open up?” Liv handed over the key and James creaked to his feet.

“Where’s my Macca, Livvy? You promised.”

“I’ll zip down to Bondi Junction and get you one in a second. And, Tim? James? Big Macs all round?”

They nodded as they removed the boxes from the boot and carried them along the cracked concrete path to the church. As Liv lurched up behind them under the weight of boxes of fairy lights she wondered if she and Alex had done the right thing in hiring this place. It had only cost fifty dollars and she hadn’t seen the inside yet. They should probably have taken Amelia up on her offer of her apartment, but given the circumstances Amelia might well find out the Terrible Truth and leave them high and dry.

Though it was looking terrifyingly as if they were high and dry now.

“Are you sure this is the right place for your rocking, glitzy party?” Tim asked as he looked suspiciously at the six-foot spider’s web obscuring the rotting church doors.

“I think so.” Liv was glad she’d given James the key and was about to offer him an extra cheeseburger if he opened the door for them. But thankfully his glasses were so dark that he couldn’t see anything as minor as the bird-sized spider that was waiting menacingly for lunch in the corner of its web. Instead he lumbered straight into the doorway, bouncing back slightly as the web resisted him, but putting it down to bad coordination due to his hangover.

“Ooohh, bit unsteady there,” he groaned as he broke through the web and tried to fit the key into the door.

As it creaked open on its hinges and a smell like an old tomb engulfed them, Liv decided this was karma for her affair with somebody else’s boyfriend. Lust had brought her here, to this dark, festering hole, instead of to the camellia-scented Designer’s Guild waftiness of Amelia’s immaculate apartment. Liv was the Damned, Amelia clearly Exalted. With wings.

“Okay, who’s going in first?” James said as even his somewhat diminished senses railed against the stench from the tomb. The tomb where they were going to host tonight’s party for three hundred of Sydney’s best-dressed and most celebrated Clean People. If it had been vampires or smeggy hippies with dogs on string, no problemo. But they were Fashionistas. These were Exalted Amelia’s friends in Colette Dinnigan.

“I’m off to McDonald’s. Won’t be long.” Liv backed away from the potential horrors within and sprinted to her car, leaving the boys to deal. Which was presumably what boys were for.

As Liv picked up her three brown bagfuls of burgerish things Alex’s phone rang: “We need Vim.” It was Tim. “And Domestos. And a kettle to boil water so buckets, too, and cloths. Oh, and, Livvy?”

“Yes?”

“Humane mousetraps. But big ones. For rats,” he said gravely. Though he could have said it in a light and trifling way and it would still have had the same effect on Liv’s arm hair.

“Okay,” she whispered, and hung up. She wasn’t in the mood to hear about the vampire bats clinging to the rafters. Or was that what the Vim was for maybe? She made her way to the hardware store across the road from McDonald’s and increased their annual profits by a lot.

And of course Sydney, city of sparkle and weather and the like, chose that lunchtime to have one of its downpours. Not sprinkles of pretty April rain like England in spring. Not even the added interest of an electric thunderstorm. Quite simply, it pissed down torrents. Elizabeth Street was inches deep in slapping, lapping waves of water. The drains gurgled like the underworld was about to pop out for an Away-Day break. Liv couldn’t park the car near the church because she couldn’t see if there were yellow lines or not. And by the time she made it back inside, the hamburgers were soup and the brown paper had disintegrated in her hands.

“Sorry, boys.” Liv ducked through the church door in trepidation.

“Don’t panic, Livvy. I think it’ll be okay!” Tim called out of the darkness, but it was too late. Liv had seen it and should have been struck blind or turned to stone, so unspeakable was the sight. A hole in the roof the size of . . . ohhh, a tennis court . . . an Olympic swimming pool . . . something like that. Big.

“Heellpppp!” It was a wail from a deep dark place. Liv dropped the burgers to the floor and they floated away on a slipstream that, had she brought her boogie board along, she could have surfed beautifully. “What are we going to dooo?” she cried.

“We’ve got a plan.” Tim came and stood beside her, seemingly ignorant of the rat that had just run off with his lunch, and looked at the church hall as though it were a house in Hampstead that just needed a lick of paint to make the pages of
World of Interiors.
“See, what we thought was . . .” He waved his arm around the room and began to describe his vision.

And Tim was right. All it needed was several hours of scrubbing and slopping out water and for the rain to stop and more Vim than you can shake as stick at and the dismissal of the rodent population to the garden of a nearby pub (yes, they had some bad karma coming their way for that one, but hopefully it wouldn’t arrive till tomorrow) and a lot of sweeping and just a bit of weeping (James), and there they had it. A work of art. Well, maybe not. Maybe just a church with a few cracked stained-glass windows and no pews, but still . . . Dave rigged up some electricity (again courtesy of a cable to the local pub and not necessarily legal, but . . .) and Liv scattered her flowers liberally and then at three o’clock Laura arrived with Jo-Jo on the bus with the scenery. And at four-thirty Alex arrived with very puffy eyes and a bagload of scented candles. But she was there and everything was in place, and just as Liv was about to stand on a chair and thank her team from the bottom of her heart and stuff, she remembered. Hair. Five o’clock. Double Bay.