The Wrong Girl (17 page)

She realised suddenly and with shock that Jack saw her as a
runner
; she was doing errands for him. How did that happen, she wondered angrily; how did she fall into this role of reliable, asexual Producer Joe who'll do anything for him, just like everyone else in his life always had. She should've said no, she cursed at herself. Do you think Simone would've done this? Alice? No. No chance. Lily was a
fool
.

Lily returned with the loot at five past one, relieved she'd got the car back in one piece, but anxious about the fact her team were meant to be departing this second. She parked hastily on the forbidden grass, got out of the ute with the shopping bag and closed the door, clicking a button on the keys to lock it. A loud wail immediately emitted from the car, and the hazard lights began flashing. People looked over, shocked and horrified at this noise piercing their margarine-ad-perfect country fair.

‘Fuck,
fuckfuckfuck,
' Lily swore as she clicked and double-clicked every button on the key. She opened the car door and closed it again, with no luck. The sound was horrific; it was cutting right through to her exhausted bones and infiltrating her poor skittish little cells.

One phone call and two horrible minutes of panic later, Jack was sprinting towards the car, smiling. Lily held the keys out to him, her face etched with humiliation and the unique brand of panic loud, shrill alarms cause.

He clicked something, and it all stopped. A few smartarses nearby clapped. Fucking country folk, Lily thought, fuck off. Just because I'm not fluent in ute.

‘Got her back in one piece! Well done!'

‘A MASSIVE and unnecessary stress, that's what this whole thing has been. For fuck's sake . . . Anyway, here's your fancy water.' She thrust the bag at him, annoyed at his calm, joking manner when she had just been the villain of the fair, thanks to his stupid car. She made to walk off, but Jack ran to walk beside her.

‘Hey, hey, Lil, I'm sorry. Happens all the time, the alarm is oversensitive. Thank you so much for doing this, I know the car is a bugger, and you probably have a hundred other things to do . . .'

She looked up at him with a half-smile, feeling a bit like a daughter getting a ‘hey, you're a good kid' speech from her dad.

‘Winners! Ay, you fuggin' idiot, whaddyoudoin'ere?'

Lily and Jack both turned to see who owned this twangy, aggressive voice. A short man in a shiny sports zip-up stood a few metres away. His balding was exacerbated by thin, shoulder-length hair and he was smoking a cigarette as though his life depended on it. He looked precisely like the kind of gent you did not want walking behind you at night.

‘
Simmo
, how's it going!'

To Lily's shock, Jack went in for a tight hug with this louse, who patted his back in an equally friendly manner.

‘Mate, so good to see you . . . You're living back here then?' Jack asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, nah, it's good, ay. Got a small place out the back of Dad's I'm livin' in, he don't bother me, he's all right. Brooke's been living with me too, she's havin' a baby, ay, spin-out.'

‘You're kidding! You got the girl and the baby. Living the dream.'

‘Yeah, nah, it's all goin' good, you know, been stayin' out of trouble and all that, goin' to the meetings and stuff, yeah, it's all good.'

‘Gleeson still running them?'

‘Nah, he left, ay, went up north with his missus. You'd hate the new bird, ay, she's a real cold bitch, no offence.' He looked at Lily in apology.

‘Oh, none taken,' she said, trying to figure what on earth the two men a) were talking about and b) possibly had in common. Gender aside.

‘Jeez, you're doing all right, aren't ya! All a big telly star and in the papers and stuff. Brooke said you were here today so I thought I'd come have a sticky and see if I seen ya.'

‘I'm glad you did, Simmo. And glad to know you're doing well. God, it's been, what, four years?'

‘Yeah, easy. Anyway, youse look busy, I just wanted to say g'day, I'm on the Facebook and that now so if you're indathat send us a message or something. I dunno, I'm new to it, but Brooke made me do it. Be good when the baby comes, she reckons.'

‘I'll do that. So good to see you, mate.'

Another affectionate hug, and Simmo turned and left. Jack watched him depart, then finally turned to Lily with a soft smile and a shake of the head.

‘Your old hairdresser?'

He smiled.

‘No . . . we used to go to the same group here but he, ah, moved away.'

‘Drama group? Knitting club?'

‘NA, actually,' he said, casually starting to walk again. Lily followed.

‘NA?'

‘Narcotics Anonymous.'

‘You.
You
at NA.'

‘Yep. Still go in Sydney. Just once a month.'

‘What on earth for?'

‘Because I had a drug addiction.'

‘
You?
' Lily couldn't disguise her shock. That he knew and was friendly with Simmo was shock enough in itself.

‘I was a drug addict. I had a bad car accident and became extremely fond of painkillers. Particularly Oxycontin, consumed with bourbon. It was ruining my life, so I got help. Well, my girlfriend at the time and sisters posed an intervention, to be honest.'

This was like hearing that the Pope dabbled in MMA.

Still walking, he pulled up his shirt to show an enormous snake of a scar across his left ribs.

‘
Whoa.
Mr Clean-Cut Country Guy has a dark past . . . Jeez, it's all very Batman, isn't it?' Lily tried to process all of this as she shuffled along quickly beside Jack who was walking at Eliza-on-too-much-coffee speed.

‘I wasn't clean-cut then; believe me. It took three rounds of rehab and two years of hard work training in Paris and London to get me focused again.'

‘So this would be why you don't drink?'

‘Correct.'

‘Wow. You've obviously come a long way since then . . . Does Simone know?'

‘I told her, yes. Thought it might help with her . . . similar tendencies. Doesn't seem to have had any influence, but you know how headstrong she is. I was exactly the same.'

‘She's, yeah . . . Look, she's certainly not at NA level, but she could ease off.'

Lily at once felt guilty and relieved. She couldn't speak to anyone,
especially
Simone about her habits.

‘Well, good luck for this afternoon,' Lily said sunnily as they reached the van, which was sitting obediently on the ‘parking grass'.

‘I won't be there to watch you win your Scone Queen sash and tiara but I wish you good luck and strong oven temps. God speed.'

‘You're leaving?' Lily saw confusion in Jack's eyes.

‘We have to get everything back to the events company and car rental by six or we pay for an extra day. Also, I just kind of need to sleep for about twenty-four hours.'

He put his hands on his hips. Looking at her, his eyes squinting in the sun, he said, ‘You wouldn't want to stick around, would you? Help me win?'

There was no need or time for thinking music. She dialled Dale, who was back at the van.

‘Dale? You guys go without me. I'm going to get a ride home with Jack.'

Jack was intensely nervous as he waited to hear how his scones scored, which Lily found hilarious. Two rotund women in dresses and cardigans, the kind that showed no evidence of natural fibres or trend awareness, and a short man wearing a bark-coloured suit were carefully judging and rating the twelve scone entries displayed on the long, gingham-covered table in front of a sixty-odd crowd. Each judge held a clipboard, which Jack informed Lily pertained to scoring the texture, appearance and taste of the scones, and there was a plastic plate and cutlery in front of each entry for them to use. Lily had to hold in her giggles when she saw a small dab of butter, cream and jam already splodged onto each plate, ready to condiment the hell out of those scones.

Jack was standing at the back of the marquee next to his amateur sous-chef, his right arm crossed over his body, his left arm bending at the elbow so that the thumb could rest gently on his lip and be nibbled at need. The judges gave nothing away when they tasted his rosewater scones, not even so much as a raised eyebrow. Lily took photos on her phone and with Jack's permission sent them to Siobhan for the
The Daily
social media, then texted it to Simone.

She received no response. Huh. Maybe she was still overseas. Lily realised with some sadness that she hadn't seen or spoken to her friend since the tour had started, just the occasional text. It wasn't like Simone to be so off the grid. Lily quashed the bad feeling in her gut; Simone was
fine
, she was just busy.

On an adjacent long table covered in a cheap blue plastic tablecloth were the vegetable competition entries: bulbous pumpkins, gleaming squash, cartoon-perfect carrots . . . Some had blue ribbons, some gold, some white – none of it made any sense to Lily. She had somehow found herself in a Christopher Guest film and, in her sleep-deprived state, could not stop giggling.

‘There she is,' Jack murmured, nodding his head in the direction of a woman in her sixties, wearing pale-yellow slacks, a white T-shirt with a photograph of two dogs on it and the kind of stiff, starched dark-denim jacket reserved for exactly this type of woman. She'd entered the room with another woman of a similar age, the two of them smiling and cackling congenially, linking arms as they made their way towards the front of the crowd.

‘Marg Milton, reigning champion.'

‘Man. She looks like a
real
bitch,' Lily said, facetiously.

Jack shot Lily a Look. She laughed; he really was taking this all far too seriously. He hadn't even been this worked up for his first live TV segment.

‘That's her partner, Beth. Been together forever. First married gay couple in the district.'

‘Good on them. Couldn't have been easy with all the country boys hooning round in their utes, playing footy and sinking slabs and picking up chicks at the pub.'

Jack laughed and turned his head to look directly at Lily. ‘Is that who you think I am?'

‘Ssh, they're about to make a decision.'

‘Marg will win,' he whispered. ‘Mum says she puts maple syrup in her recipe. Sure, I could copy and beat her convincingly, but Nan wouldn't want it that way.'

‘And this is
all
for Nan, is it?'

Lily looked at Jack, her eyebrows raised. She was acutely aware of how physically close they were, of how his hand had occasionally brushed hers as they baked all afternoon. The fact they would be in the truck together, just the two of them, for five hours tonight. The fact that he wasn't just a wholesome rural bumpkin, but a reformed drug-addict bad boy, which, bizarrely, she found sexy.

‘If you'd met Nan, you'd understand. She was incredible. Taught me to cook as a kid, inspired me to follow it through, and supported me even in my darkest days. She'd have loved you,' he said, smiling. ‘You're a rascal, just like her.'

‘When did sh—'

‘If we could have your attention please,' Brown Suit's feeble monotone came over the microphone. He pushed his glasses back up his nose every ten seconds, a move Lily guessed he'd done since he was in school 500 years ago.

‘We have selected the winner and runner-up. The winner will receive a plaque, which must be returned at next year's show, and a $100 cheque; the runner-up will receive a certificate and a $50 cheque. All contestants will receive a certificate of participation.'

‘God, he's
all
razzle-dazzle, isn't he,' Lily murmured.

‘Runner-up: contestant 27, Ms Marg Milton.'

A collective gasp went up, followed by slow, then robust clapping.

‘Ohmygod, ohmygod, you've won, you have
so
won
!' Lily said, clapping excitedly. Jack raised his brows and turned down the corner of his mouth.

Marg, laughing and gracious, walked up, a slight preference given to her left leg, Lily noticed, but otherwise beaming with youthfulness. She kissed Brown Suit and the other two women, both of whom seemed extremely apologetic, and then blew the crowd a kiss. Lily wished Marg was her grandma; she seemed like the fun type who would drink brandy and cheat at bridge.

‘Winner,' Brown Suit said, raising his voice over a room full of people flying into gossip about Marg not winning, because Marg always wins, who could possibly have won if Marg didn't? Jack had both arms folded; Lily's hands were up over her mouth. She had not been this excited in – she couldn't remember how long.

‘Contestant 22, Mr Jack Winter.'

‘
AHHH!
' Lily squealed, jumping up and down on the spot, grinning at Jack. In an instant, he had his arms wrapped around her and was picking her up off the ground in glee. All too quickly their faces were suddenly level, their lips only centimetres away. Their eyes met, and Jack quickly blinked and placed Lily back on the ground. Lily was blushing, deeply, but Jack was already walking to the judges, and she was left alone to clear her throat, shake her head and try to calm herself. Don't overthink it;
under
think it, if anything, she warned herself. All friends hug like that in triumphant moments.

She clapped along with the rest of the crowd while Jack had his photo taken and accepted his plaque. Marg came out of the crowd to shake his hand and kiss his cheek.

When Jack finally returned to Lily, holding his small wall plaque, his face was set into a wide, genuine smile, and his eyes were filled with . . . 
something
. Lily couldn't pick it.

He handed her a white envelope.

‘What's this?' she said.

‘Your prize money,' he said. ‘Gerald said it was the delicate rose flavour that set my scones apart, and
that
, Woodward, was all your doing. I couldn't have,
wouldn't
have won without your help.'

She blushed, handing the envelope back. ‘Not a chance. Here, let me get a photo for the show. And your mum.'

‘Would you mind grabbing one on my phone too?' He pulled it out and handed it to Lily, who was beaming for him and his ridiculous new title. His wallpaper was a photo of his dogs. Of course.

As he sent the photo to his mum, Lily glowed in the knowledge she had helped Jack, a proper, professional chef, not only cook some lovely scones, ridiculous as that triumph was, but win a title that obviously, in its own silly way, meant a lot to him.
God
, she'd had a good day.
They'd
had a good day
.
Both of them. She didn't want it to ever end.

‘I can burp on demand, you know,' Lily said, riding high on sugar and caffeine after the obligatory pit stop at McDonalds. Oh, good. She'd morphed into Alice.

‘I don't doubt it, I saw how quickly you put away those nuggets.' Jack smiled, facing the long dark freeway ahead of them. The truck was rattling, and thanks to the rain, the wipers, fresh from 1976, screeched across the windscreen with the charm of a possum being strangled. Still, it was undeniably cosy.

‘Just say the word.'

‘Will do.'

‘Was that the word?'

‘No.'

‘Okay, well, let me know.'

Lily felt incredibly playful. She knew it was probably the artificial colours and flavours and sugar spreading through her veins, compounded by the thrill of finally having finished the tour, but mostly she knew it was because she was on a road trip with Jack. In the truck. At night. In the rain. If they slid off the road in some horrible, unthinkable accident, she would die happy. She spied his iPod and headphones, which he'd grabbed from the ute before Grimmo had hooned off and, before realising the truck wasn't equipped with any speakers, had an idea.

‘Let's play a game. I'm bored. How about I press shuffle on your iPod, and before I hit play, and I don't look, by the way, we both have to try and guess the song. No, the artist.' She popped one headphone in her left ear and switched the iPod on.

Jack laughed. ‘You won't know who I have on there, that seems a bit unfair.'

Lily scrolled through the albums and artists quickly. A
lot
of rock, fair amount of moody folk, Bon Iver, Kings of Convenience, Grizzly Bear and The Shins, and more than enough soundtracks.
Millions
of soundtracks.

‘Like soundtracks, huh?'

‘That's how I find new music I like.
Natural Born Killers
is unbeatable.
Django Unchained
is pretty good too.'

‘Hmm. It's going to make my game hard, but let's try anyway . . . Okay, shuffle, pause and . . . call it.'

‘Um, Powderfinger.'

‘I'll go with Destiny's Child.'

‘I don't have any Destiny's Child on there,' he said, laughing.

‘We'll see.' Lily looked down.

‘Damn. Foo Fighters? Okay, go again.'

‘
Okay
, Kanye.'

‘Keeping in theme, I will go with Jay-Z . . . 
damn
. Led Zeppelin.'

‘I am starting to see flaws in your game. Also, I can't hear the song, so you could potentially cheat.'

Lily sighed. ‘Give it a chance, the suspense will make the win even sweeter. Go.'

‘Cold Chisel.'

‘Ooh,
good
one. I will say . . . The Police.'

She looked down.

‘OHMYGOD, OHMYGOD,
it's The Police
, I shit you not, I SHIT you not, look, look, no, no, definitely safer if you don't look, but here, if I press play, listen!' She popped one of the headphones into his left ear and the first strains of ‘Roxanne' piped through. A smile spread over Jack's face. She gently removed the headphone, beaming at him.

‘Very clever, you shonk.'

‘I
promise
on Marg Milton's grave I did not rig that! That's why it is SO amazing, don't you see? Jesus . . . What are the
chances . . .
'

‘
Right
, so you just made up this game and happened to nail a one-in-a-probably-ten-thousand song choice.'

‘YES! And that's why I am flipping out! First the scones, now this. I gotta buy a scratchy when I get home . . .'

‘You didn't cheat?'

‘Eat a leek and chicken pie, cross my heart and hope to die.'

He said nothing, just kept a closed-mouth smile and watched the road.

‘Unbelievable. Statistically unthinkable.'

Lily shook her head and stared at the iPod. A good luck omen? Who knew.

‘Okay, well, when you're ready to marvel, let me know.'

‘Are you always this chatty on car trips?' Jack asked, still smiling.

Lily most definitely was not. She had barely said a peep all week on the road, except to talk work, or chat
Homeland
plots with Mackenzie, who was equally obsessed. In fact, Lily usually put her headphones in and worked until the vague nausea of motion sickness kicked her in the stomach.

‘I can shush now,' she said, trying to not sound defensive or wounded. Maybe she
was
being a bit hyper. She had a flashback to how she used to feel around Jack, back when he was mostly mute and rude.

‘No, no, I like it. I've done this trip a thousand times, and it's usually so boring. It's nice having you with me.'

Lily went quiet. Wasn't that the kind of thing the guy said in the movie before some kind of ‘I like you' confession fell from his mouth? Maybe this road trip was a bad thing. This whole day was a bad thing. She should've left with Dale and the crew.

‘Hey, we should call Sim,' she said suddenly, guilt mingling with obligation in her head. ‘It'll be fun. Tease her about all the cool baking contests she's missing out on.'

She pulled out her phone and called Simone's mobile. It rang out. She tried again. Same thing.

‘Does she
ever
answer?' Lily muttered.

‘Not for me either.'

‘I haven't seen her for
ages
,' Lily said. ‘Miss her.'

‘Yeah, busy girl,' Jack said, his tone unreadable.

‘Everything okay between you two cats?' Lily probed, telling herself she was not being disloyal to her friend, they were all friends and this was all fine.

He didn't say anything at first, and Lily figured he was also probably tossing up how loyal it was to Sim to discuss her with her friend. Guys who talked about their girlfriend to other girls were creeps.

‘Never mind. Hey, so, I think I have some work news,' Lily said, knowing she had to drop a bomb to create a thorough and authentic conversational shift. The rain was coming down extremely hard now, and the truck had been expertly, carefully slowed to around 50 k's.

‘You're quitting,' he said, face serious, the strength of the rain clearly unsettling him in an unfamiliar vehicle.

Lily reeled a little. How did he guess?

‘Quitting sounds a bit harsh, I think of it more as
leaving
. And I haven't even decided for sure yet.'