Dog Handling (5 page)

“I don’t think I follow, Fay.” Liv thought that judging by the look of compassion on Fay’s face she wouldn’t
want
to follow, either. Perhaps Fay was going to ask her to skip coming into the office for the rest of her life. Skip being paid and skip down to the Jobcentre to sign on. She hoped not; now she was a spinster she was going to have to put some money away for her pension and the one-bedroom bungalow she was going to live in with her cats when she got old. A tin of Whiskers was going to be the price of a small car by the time she was sixty, the way inflation was going.

Fay picked up a tidy pile of papers and stroked them flat on her immaculate lap.

“I found these in my in-tray.” Fay shuffled the pile of papers in Liv’s direction.

Liv squinted at them, wondering if she’d managed to fill the spreadsheets with Tim’s name in the throes of devastation. Rows of Tim and columns of fuckwit.

“I left them there this morning. I double-checked and they looked okay to me,” said Liv, instantly rising to her own defence.

“The spreadsheets are fine. As immaculate as ever.” Fay remained unsmiling. “It’s not the spreadsheets I’m interested in, Liv. You also left these on my desk.” Fay handed Liv a pile of poorly spelled documents: her fantasy obituary, a grainy Internet printout of Naked Brad, her desert island discs, her short story about Francesca the French resistance fighter, her day in the life as milliner to the stars. Liv wished for death by water. Death by lemon tea. Death by rushing headlong into the lift shaft. She wanted very much not to be in the room right now. She couldn’t imagine how her dream life had got caught up with the spreadsheets.

“I’m sorry. I’ll work late every day for the next year. I’ll sweep the workroom floors in my lunchtime. Only please don’t fire me. I need this job. It’s a distraction. God knows if I were at home right now I’d probably have drowned in my tears.”

“You need this job like a hole in the head, Liv.” Fay’s stony-faced boss look was beginning to grate on Liv’s nerves. What the hell did she know about heartache with her randy husband and perfect kids?

“No. You can’t fire me. Please.” Liv saw only mornings at home when she’d be reduced to calling daytime television phone-ins with psychiatrists and cotton-wool-haired agony aunts.

“Liv, I have no intention of firing you. Listen, love, I think this is all a bit deeper than you think. And in a way a lot more exciting.” Liv was beginning to doubt Fay’s sanity now. On the scale of fun-stuff-to-do, how exciting was getting dumped? And she was cringing as she realised that Fay would now know what a sad loser she was and that Spandau Ballet’s “Gold” was one of her all-time favourite songs and that she fantasised about wearing A-line skirts in a wartime bunker. Christ, she hadn’t even confessed that to Tim and he was, as she now knew, the only man she would ever love in her entire life. “So I’m going to help you.” Oh god, Liv just didn’t want to be Fay’s latest mission. She wasn’t a Bosnian war child. She wasn’t keeling over with chronic alcoholism. And she didn’t
think
she needed recycling. Why couldn’t Fay keep her North London worthiness for another cause?

Liv contemplated slinking away, but her boss was not to be thwarted in her crusade.

“You’re in pain right now. Your ego’s been bruised, and you feel betrayed. You don’t think you’ll ever get over it,” continued Fay. A tremble assaulted Liv’s lower lip; this was almost as accurate as a telly shrink. “But the truth is that your relationship with Tim probably suffered because you were harbouring unfulfilled dreams of a life outside your relationship with him. You wanted out of the wedding as much as he did. Only now you’re making yourself into the victim, which is fine for a moment or two, but then you have to tell yourself that this happened for a reason and the reason is that you have shit to get out of your system, young lady.”

“I do?” Liv asked. She felt a flash of strength. “I do!” she repeated. Then she realised that actually, she would never utter those words while gazing lovingly into Tim’s eyes and went a bit floppy again.

“You do.” Fay didn’t notice the collapse of spirit. “Which is why I’m sending you on a sabbatical.”

“You’re firing me?” Liv squeaked.

“I’ve watched you practically crawl into work every day for the last week; you’re wretched and pathetic” (Liv would have told Fay to go easy had she not caught sight of her stringy-haired, baggy-eyed reflection in Fay’s computer screen) “and I know that if I don’t persuade you to go somewhere, anywhere, then I won’t be passing on the benefit of my feminine wisdom. You need to get off your bum, stop dreaming, and start living. Now blame it on the fact that I went to university in an era of ludicrous idealism and hope, or blame it on the fact that I still wonder what would have happened to me if I’d married Gus the cowboy I fell in love with in Arizona in ’73. But please. For me, Liv, go. Go anywhere. Just for a while. You’re a free woman.”

“You want me to go away?” Liv was having trouble comprehending. Did
sabbatical
mean “bugger off” in Greek?

“How about France?” Fay was resting against the bookshelf now with her hand on Liv’s shoulder.

“The French resistance thing was just because they all had great forties hairstyles and pretty noses.” Liv felt a dash to the ladies’ for the sob-bash-splash routine coming on but resisted.

“Anywhere, then. Do it for me. Go somewhere amazing; then come back and tell me all about it over a glass of wine, eh?” Fay pleaded.

“That’s okay for you to say,” Liv sniffed. “Your life’s all sorted and you’re amazing.”

“But I never rode bareback with Gus.” Fay smiled softly. Liv remembered what Alex had said about getting back in the saddle, and thought about Australia—it was the last place she wanted to be right now, but it was as far as she would ever, ever get from Tiny Tim (as he’d come to be known on account of his small-minded-not-able-to-love-Liv ways).

“Australia. I might be able to go there, you know. If you like.” Liv wiped her snotty hand on her skirt and stopped crying for a moment.

“Australia.” Fay looked as though she’d just had a mouthful of especially delicious chocolate cake. “Perfect.”

Chapter Five

New Horizons

L
iv climbed out of the taxi in front of her new address. The first thing she learned about Sydney was never to trust a taxi driver to know the way. They’d already visited 34 Seinfeld, Sussex, and Dillon Streets, taking in Sydney’s harbour, North Shore, and red-light district. All of which were perfectly picturesque but proved not to be her new address. Finally they alighted on the leafy little street near the ocean in Bronte—an area that for all she knew could have been the Acton of Sydney. Liv tipped him the grand sum of seventeen dollars, which seemed extreme even for a dumb tourist, but she wanted to be sure that he wasn’t going to come back and slit her throat at nightfall. After all, a foreign city is a foreign city, and until she knew the precise location of the nearest places to buy newspapers, tampons, and beer she wasn’t taking any chances. As the taxi rattled away down the road she hoisted the suitcase onto the pavement and paused to look at her new home for a moment.

The address had sounded fairly ordinary when she’d copied it down from her mum’s address book: Bronte Beach, New South Wales. But this was as far from Wales as it was possible to stray. For one thing, when she’d left, the other Wales was enduring the coldest October since records began and children were going to school in boats due to floods, et cetera. The usual stuff of British winters. Here on the flip side of the world it was the beginning of summer. Liv rolled up the sleeves on her fleece. The air smelled warm and sweet and the evening sky was a pale velvety blue. The cottage, though partly obscured by the most verdant jasmine tree imaginable, was painted pale buttery yellow. There was a lace ironwork balcony upstairs and the windows had been shuttered against the sun earlier in the day. Cicadas murmured in the air as Liv hauled her luggage behind her.

Liv had been right and Alex had been loving Sydney more than she was letting on. So when Liv had called after her little chat to Fay and asked if the offer of getting her bum out there still stood, Alex was delighted. Alex was going to be away in Melbourne with Charlie for a few days and wouldn’t be there when Liv arrived, but she’d left the key to the cottage with the girl who squatted in the beach hut next door.

Apparently, Charlie had let the girl stay even though she didn’t pay any rent because she was all brokenhearted and emotionally disturbed, having been dumped by a friend of his. Alex said it was a bit like having a cat. Occasionally she’d stroll in and use the bathroom, and she stored her milk in the fridge and stuff, but she was pretty quiet and did the odd bit of housework, so Alex was delighted to have her. Alex said that her name was Laura and though she was an emotional train wreck at the moment she was actually quite sweet really. Liv thought that a train wreck of a girl was exactly what she needed to take her mind off her own woes. She only hoped that Laura wasn’t quite as glamorous as most of Alex’s friends—just in case Tim should do the tail between the legs trick after three months and come and ring her doorbell in the night . . . only to decide that he preferred her neighbour instead.

But there was no sign of life at the window of the hut. Liv wondered what Laura Train Wreck might be up to on a Saturday night in the sunniest city in the world. Sitting at home being disappointed in love and playing wrist-slitting music, perhaps. Liv took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell.

“Yeah?” a woman’s voice breezed out of the hut, which was actually more of a barn painted cornflower blue. A light was filtering through a window and it looked pretty cosy.

“It’s Liv Elliot. Alex’s friend,” Liv stammered back.

“Righty ho,” the voice drifted down.

Liv waited for someone to come flying out at any moment. She assumed that the voice must be on her way to give a hand with the luggage, so she waited quietly, checking her hand for drug-induced shakes from the melatonin she’d scoffed on the plane. She could only hold her hand out for three seconds before it began to wobble dangerously. She wondered how she was going to cope when the time came for her to experiment with Ecstasy, as she’d invariably have to do in her new life as a girl who lived life and kissed cowboys. Or jackeroos or whatever the Australian equivalent was. Her liver would probably pack in. She anticipated life ahead with a yellow tinge to her skin, which, oddly, wasn’t nearly as terrifying to her as the idea that she might actually do something she’d regret on drugs. Flash her tits, fall into a trifle, be a terrible dancer. Still, wasn’t that the whole point? It would be tough being a legend without doing anything legendary.

Liv sat on her suitcase and assumed that Laura Train Wreck must be in the shower or something—or perhaps she was prising herself from a hammock and drifting heartbrokenly through the hut. But ten minutes later, by which time even Elizabeth I could have made her way through the hallways of Hampton Court in a difficult dress with a neck ruff, Liv decided to bang on the door again.

“Yup?” the voice answered.

“It’s me, Liv. I just wondered if you could let me have the key to Alex’s cottage!” Liv called out.

“Oh, right. You want me to let you in?”

“If that’s all right.”

“Coming,” the voice signed off. And didn’t materialise for another five minutes. Then, just as Liv was wondering how much of a brain cell deficit one person could exist on, the mosquito net flew open and a small red-haired girl with china-white skin and paint-splattered overalls stood before her.

“I’m Laura. Follow me. It’s all a bit hectic at the moment.” She led Liv to the cottage and through the front door. “Your room’s over there. Do you think you can sort yourself out? I’m really late for an appointment with my shrink,” she blurted out at breakneck speed before vanishing back to the hut and slamming a door. It was like an encounter with the white rabbit in Wonderland.

Liv sat on the floor on top of her suitcase and caught her breath. Which was when it all began to sink in. Here she was, on the other side of the world, boyfriendless, in fact altogether friendless, her mother, though a bit flaky and useless at the best of times, was now an impossible twenty-four hours away, and her new neighbour, and the only person she knew in the whole goddamn city, was unfriendly and had abandoned her for psychotherapy. Liv closed her eyes for a second and contemplated tears. But she was a bit bored of that whole crying scenario. Depression had taken over where tears left off. Alex told her that it was the next stage of grief, which was a good thing because now there was only Anger and Closure to look forward to. So in the face of encroaching black gloom and a month in an institution Liv did the British thing and went to make herself a cup of tea.

The beach house was possibly the most beautiful place Liv had ever seen. And while Charlie stayed at his flat in Bondi so he could keep his infidelity options open, he’d let Alex move in here and stay as long as she wanted to. It had belonged to Charlie’s mother, Jemima, in the midseventies when she was going through a sticky patch with her husband. He was spending too long at the office and flitting around in helicopters and she was sick of playing the corporate wife. So, much like Marie Antoinette, she reasoned, she moved into the beach house with just a few bikinis and kaftans and rediscovered herself via Germaine Greer and Erica Jong and with a little practical help from the nineteen-year-old lifeguard on Bronte Beach. The house was bohemian in the way that only billionaires can afford. Each room was an extension of the beach and the sea—driftwood, plaster walls encrusted with seashells, a sandpit for a garden surrounded by reeds and rushes. There was a small log fireplace and mementos of Jemima’s Awakening littered the house: a white sheepskin rug before the hearth—undoubtedly well used—Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie in the beachwood drawers, some Leonard Cohen LPs and a Barry White 45 of “Hang On in There, Baby,” and the telltale pair of yellow swimming trunks size XXLarge.

Liv had instant respect for Jemima, who until now she had only glimpsed in cream suits and clutch bags with a bouffant at some gala ball in the pages of
Hello!
Yet here was the woman twenty-five years ago, reckless, disgraceful, and, if the black-and-white photo of her next to the water bed in Alex’s room was anything to go by, plain rather than beautiful but cool and sexy as hell. Quietly Liv determined that she would try to live her time in Sydney with Jemima as her patron saint.