The Mistake

by Katie McMahon

  Finally, I checked my messages. Bec had sent a photo of Essie wearing the bright-green wig I’d given her for her birthday, one of Lachlan with his bike and one of Mathilda dressed up as Harry Potter. There was a reminder about a hair appointment.

  And him.

  Well. Seeing his name on my screen unleashed a lot of happy feelings. It was like opening the door on an overstuffed cupboard and standing there while the huge stack of towels – the ones you shoved in and hoped for the best about – falls out all over you.

  I took a deep breath and replied ‘Y’ to the hair. Then I sent a lot of my specially downloaded unicorn emojis for Essie. (Mathilda, being eight, is too grown-up for unicorns, so I sent her some blue and green hearts, and a double thumbs up to Lachy.)

  Then I read it. He had sent it at 11.37 p.m. the night before.

  Thanks for dinner. Sorry for any lack of gallantry. I got carried away.

  I picked my phone up off its special mat. I put it to my chest and squeezed it hard.

  My pleasure, I typed back. My finger hovered over the Send button for three minutes. I said, ‘For God’s sake, Kate,’ out loud. I deleted the words, stood up and made tea and when I sat back down I texted, Come over? as fast as I could and sent it. I was telling myself it was just a game, just a bit of fun, even though I could still feel the exact spot where he’d touched my back.

  He replied straight away: Can’t. At work. Tonight?

  Of course he would be working; it was 10.14 a.m. on a Wednesday.

  Yes, I texted back. I hesitated. CU at 7? K8 x

  OK K8. GR8. x

  Don’t B L8 x, I wrote, and then I stepped away from the phone before I could do anything to spoil it all.

  *

  ‘Your front door’s the same as mine,’ he said.

  He arrived at ten past seven, carrying a bottle of Spanish red wine.

  ‘But your apartment’s a lot nicer,’ he added, as I led him into the living area.

  He sounded a bit impressed. Thank God. The only thing more annoying than people asking, ‘So, where are you based?’ is when you tell them and then they try to hide the fact that they’re impressed.

  ‘Thanks. I love it here.’

  My apartment is nicer than most people’s, I forbore to say. My apartment is worth several million dollars, and I have spent a lot of time decorating it. (I’ve tried to go for New-York-loft style: lots of light and white and space, and then beautiful bits of furniture, the sorts of things that an interiors magazine would describe as eclectic, quirky or bohemian.)

  We were in the living room by this time. I had planned that the icebreaker would be pointing out interesting bits of the view, because everyone gravitates to the windows. But he didn’t come over to the windows; he went towards the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll open the wine,’ he offered. I decided not to make a big deal of that in my head. Men like doing things for women, apparently, and anyway I really wanted a drink. So I just told him where the glasses were and sat down on the couch.

  ‘So you were a model back in the day?’

  He set down the wine glasses on the kitchen counter. He was wearing a dark-green shirt that fit him properly and was not (praise the Lord) tucked into his jeans. Call me a traditionalist, but if the occasion requires that your shirt be tucked in, then you should not be wearing jeans. A little triangle of grey T-shirt peeked out from near his collar.

  ‘Yeah.’ I guess he’d googled me. I felt flattered – and also glad, because the pictures that still come up on Google are far from unbecoming. ‘Didn’t you know that last night?’

  He shook his head and I believed him.

  ‘What did you get up to today?’ I said. For some reason I had decided it’d be good to change the subject. Modest. Also, I didn’t have a clear idea exactly what work he did. He’d talked about a science degree.

  He shrugged. ‘Just work. Taking photos, actually. Not fashion though. Lots of boring waiting around stuff today.’

  I liked that he didn’t say, Of-course-I’m-not-in-Demarchelier’s-league or any of that crap. He left the wine bottle open on the counter. You could tell by the way he handed over my glass that my Persian rug and taupe leather couch inspired no apprehension in him. Some people just don’t spill drinks.

  As he sat down, he put his hand on my thigh. Knew he’d be competent, I thought, as triumphant as if I’d guessed his star sign. It was just as well, because I really needed to get the sex done and I’d accidentally sat down on the left side of the couch, and anyway, I was holding my wine. I took a big gulp. I had not eaten since the ancient grains.

  ‘Was that when you looked at my pictures?’ I said. When I try to act modest, I can never keep it up for long. ‘In the waiting-around bit?’

  ‘Yep.’

  I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or what. His hand on my leg was like an entire planet. I wished – yearned, craved, ached – to slide my own hand along it, slip a delicate, teasing, pseudo-casual finger along the margin of his heavy silver watch. Instead I turned a bit so I was sort of facing him.

  ‘They’re pretty amazing, Kate,’ he said. I wondered if he’d seen the undone silk shirt ones. Prada let me keep that shirt, but I don’t have it anymore.

  ‘I know.’ I sounded so wistful that I quickly added, ‘Good old airbrushing.’

  He made a little face that could have meant either airbrushing alone can’t make people look like that or, alternatively, no amount of airbrushing will ever make you look like that again. Both those sentiments are true, of course. I slurped my drink.

  He was still holding his glass in one hand, and he lifted his other one off my leg and used it to brush my hair behind my ear. He stroked my cheekbone with three attentive fingers, then ran his thumb over my lip. I opened my mouth and he turned his wrist. He moved his thumb a little way into my mouth, deliberately, gradually. He was watching my face. I skimmed my tongue along his thumb.

  I felt as if I was impersonating a woman who knew what to do, but I must have been getting something right, because after a moment he made a tiny little sighing sound. He took my wine glass out of my hand, and put both our drinks on the coffee table, in the middle, where we wouldn’t knock them.

  He put his hands on the back of my neck. I could feel his palms on my skin. Then he slid them down to my shoulders. Our faces were close together. Even with the wine on board, I remembered to raise only my left arm to go around his neck. When I saw that his eyes were closed, I closed mine, and we started kissing.

  *

  ‘So, what do you do with yourself now you’ve stopped bringing playful Aussie naturalness to the catwalks of Paris?’ said Adam.

  It was later that night, and we were in my bed.

  I laughed. My most famous campaign showed me with slightly unkempt-looking hair and minimal make-up. At least it had looked minimal in the pictures. Around that time everyone else was doing glossy crimson lips and glossy enormous hair, so just about all the stories written about me used the words ‘playful’, ‘natural’, or (in the more high-end publications) ‘insouciant’. ‘Sultry’ got a red hot go as well. He must have read quite a lot about me on Google.

  ‘I study medieval history,’ I said. My Masters degree is about the types of textiles ordinary women wore – and made – in the 1500s, and how that influenced the economy. Even I knew that was not great post-sex conversation, so I said, ‘King Henry VIII sort of era?’ Then I added something about treason and Anne Boleyn. (I’ve noticed that Anne is the one most people remember, perhaps because she was the first of Henry’s wives to be executed. Catherine Howard – fifth wife; probably still a teenager when Henry had her head lopped off for extra-marital shagging – seems to have been largely forgotten.)

  ‘Brutal times,’ said Adam. Then he looked around my room and said, ‘Student flats have certainly moved on.’

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell him that I hadn’t made all the money through modelling. I made lots, obviously, and because I had my dad advising-slash-nagging me
, I managed to keep most of it. The pound was very strong then. I had income protection insurance and excellent, excellent lawyers. I made sensible investments. All adds up.

  ‘Yep. But you better get dressed, my flatmates’ll be back around now.’

  It took him much less than half a second to realise I was teasing. He laughed, probably more than he would have if we hadn’t just had really very good sex. At least, it had seemed good to me. But maybe community standards had changed, the way they have regarding home cooking and smacking children.

  ‘Want some tea or something?’ I said, sitting up and shaking out my hair.

  He looked a bit surprised, but said, yeah thanks, that tea would be nice. I could see him making an effort to keep his eyes on my face as he spoke. I smiled and looped my knickers around my foot and then pulled them up my legs and on. Retrieved from under my pillow the T-shirt that I’d placed there earlier – in anticipation of exactly this moment – and found my way into that. Awkward but whatever.

  Before, I had never minded being undressed in front of lovers. It just seemed to me to be part of the intimacy, part of the whole thing. For years I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Now, of course, I understand. But my bottom in a G-string is still more an asset than a liability, in my honest opinion, so once my T-shirt was on I stood up and walked into the kitchen. He whistled, in a parody of a bogan guy driving past in a car. It was nice. A couple of times when people – men – have whistled, they’ve stopped halfway through, as if they’ve made a mistake. It’s sort of heartbreaking and funny at the same time.

  When I came back with his tea, he had his grey T-shirt back on and was sitting up, leaning back against the pillows. He has the kind of very short hair that is impossible to mess up, so he looked pretty much the way he had when he arrived. I handed him his drink and went back to the kitchen for mine.

  He was staring so much that when I got back into bed, I leaned against the bed-head, sipped my Milo and said, ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. He gave his head a quick shake. ‘I was thinking about work stuff.’

  ‘Oh right!’

  ‘Kay Eight? That was a joke. I was thinking how nice you look.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He’d made nice sound the opposite of boring. I let the silence stretch out.

  ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’ he said, comfortably.

  ‘Milo. Want to taste?’ I held out my cup. He used one of his hands to steady it as he had a sip.

  ‘Yum. I’m having Milo next time.’

  ‘Well, that’s rather presumptuous,’ I said. I would have thought it was obvious that he was on safe ground, but he looked a bit embarrassed.

  ‘Sorry.’ He smiled a quick smile. ‘You – want to catch up again later in the week?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and sipped my drink. ‘That might be nice.’

  I was as cool and sexy as anything, like Anne Boleyn was, at the beginning.

  Chapter Two

  Bec

  ‘It’s so hard not to!’ Bec heard herself say.

  She was talking about towels, and had just implied to Allie Vincent, her best friend out of the school mums, that it was practically a super-human act to not spend the afternoon buying bags full of top-quality manchester. As if Allie deserved some sort of Everyday Hero community award because she’d spent only $220 at Bed Bath N’ Table.

  The two women were sitting on a low sandstone wall that bordered some flowerbeds, waiting to collect their daughters from school. The afternoon air was perfumed with heirloom roses, and voices of what sounded like the senior choir floated through unseen windows. It might have done some of the girls good, Bec thought, to see a bit of graffiti or a dented old station wagon, but they certainly wouldn’t be exposed to such atrocities within the grounds of Briarwood Independent Girls’ Grammar.

  ‘They sound pretty good actually, don’t they?’ said Allie.

  Allie was wearing black exercise leggings with muscle-supporting panels in the sides; her sunglasses flashed, but in a discreet sort of way. It was almost impossible to tell whether she was naturally pretty or just so well-pampered she had achieved the appearance of being so. Some days, the way Allie seemed so happy about herself and her life was almost inspiring. Other times, Bec felt she’d rather stab out her own eyes than spend another second hearing about how much genuine personal fulfilment Allie got out of her new ‘job’ as a Thermomix consultant. (‘It’s just so me. So who I am. Totally rewarding!’ she’d said, the day after she’d hosted her first party.)

  ‘So how are the plans coming on?’ Allie asked. There was a conspiratorial edge to her voice, as if they were discussing a mission to liberate political prisoners instead of Stuart’s fortieth birthday party.

  That was the nice thing about Allie: you could chat to her about slightly trivial stuff and she would take it seriously. Stuart, on the other hand, would say things like, ‘Just tell Essie she’s younger, so she doesn’t get to go,’ or ‘No one’s going to care if the pass-the-parcel’s not perfectly fair.’

  Kate was good to talk to, but she knew straight away if you were hiding something. ‘Why are you doing your Kylie-Minogue-after-the-cancer voice?’ she’d ask. (Kate thought Kylie’s bubbliness masked a whole lot of tension.) And Bec’s best friend from medical school, Laura, had become so direct and so serious and so lacking in humour that you simply couldn’t hold a normal conversation with her.

  Anyway, it wasn’t that Bec didn’t like Allie. When Stuart once joked that her initials stood for Absolutely Vacuous, Bec had defended her, even though she sort of knew what he meant. Allie tended to take personal grooming and the need to eat superfoods just that bit too seriously. Still. She was a really sweet friend, so Bec looked down at her new ballet flats and allowed the trace of a wince to cross her face.

  ‘What?’ Allie looked suddenly, genuinely horrified. She turned to Bec and gripped her arm. ‘Not the caterers?’

  ‘The catering’s great.’ Bec watched one of the teachers carry a cardboard box along a camellia-lined path. The junior school girls – blazer-ed and boater-ed and carrying enormous navy-blue backpacks – would be arriving any minute. She turned to Allie.

  ‘A couple of weeks ago, Stuart announced he wanted to have a fire-eater.’ She kept her tone very light and very girly. She met Allie’s gaze and shrugged in a husbands-what-can-you-do-with-them? way.

  ‘No!’ said Allie. ‘I love how Stuart is so random!’

  ‘I know,’ Bec said, and paused.

  She thought back to last year’s Easter Lantern Parade. Lily Pianno’s dad and his New Young Girlfriend had unexpectedly turned up, and Allie had been almost manic with industrious delight. Within thirty seconds, she had dragooned Bec into keeping Lily’s mother engaged in conversation and hissed at one of the grade fours to go and offer the girlfriend a mini pizza from the oval plastic platter. Later, while they were helping wipe crumbs off the kindergarten tables, the two of them discussed it. ‘Major crisis avoided.’ ‘Well done us!’ ‘Can I just say, what is he even thinking, though?’ The whole thing was so exciting that it had been a struggle to keep their voices sufficiently low. But the next morning, recalling it all, Bec had felt sick. What a pair of petty bitches we are, she’d thought.

  She suddenly decided not to say anything.

  Texts were so hard to interpret anyway, and she’d probably got the wrong idea. After all, she was hardly in the business of deciphering the sexual intentions of gorgeous young fire-eaters. She and Stuart had been together forever. Fourteen years, in fact. God. She was thirty-eight.

  ‘So,’ she back-pedalled, making a flicking gesture with her hand, ‘I’ve had to track a suitable person down.’

  Allie’s face implied Bec was an admirably stoic survivor of a violent crime.

  ‘It’s been so hard.’ Sometimes she really hated herself. ‘And apparently, I need to meet him at some point, which of course is yet to be made clear, and I’ve just got so much else to do this week.’ Her angst sounded entirely
authentic, which was sort of a worry. ‘Hair. Waxing. The dry cleaning. God, the coffee van. And, of course, Stuart never notices things like the spare room and the deck and what have you, so that’ll all fall to me. I’m going to look like a wreck by the time Saturday night rolls around.’ She threw that in for good measure, and realised too late it probably sounded as if she was fishing for a compliment.

  ‘Oh, you’ll look fabulous.’ There was the thinnest possible strand of envy in Allie’s voice, more heart-warming than any flattery. ‘But can I just say again, you really do need to engage with laser hair-removal once all this is over, Bec.’

  ‘Mmm. I really must.’ Bec waved a hand to indicate she’d hogged the conversation long enough, and was about to make time for Allie’s issues. ‘Now. Have you decided yet about the holidays?’

  Allie started to say something about Vanuatu, but just then a smiling Mrs Wilkinson opened the child-proof gate, and three dozen backpack-laden girls from the junior school came lumpily along the concrete path towards them for the sweet, never-to-be-taken-for-granted flurry of hellos and chat-laters and hurry-because-we’ve-got-to-go-and-get-your-brother-straight-aways.

  She hustled Essie (exhausted and grumpy about everything, mainly because she was five, but also because of the thick cheese Bec’d accidentally put in her sandwich) and Mathilda (uncharacteristically excited for reasons that remained elusive) all the way across to the car and into the back seat. On the road to Lachlan’s school, she gave up trying to get the girls to tell her anything significant about their days. They were looking out of the windows.

  Diving back into her own thoughts was a vast relief, like snuggling into bed.

  That you on facebook? Cos nice bikini

  Oh god years ago now

  She’d omitted the punctuation on purpose, obviously.

  There was only one bikini photo of her on Facebook – Stuart’s sister had posted it after their family holiday in the Cook Islands, and Bec hadn’t worked out how to get it off her public profile. Actually, she hadn’t tried all that hard. She was still breast-feeding Essie a bit when it had been taken – Essie had gone on and on forever – and the light was good. It was really a very flattering photo.