How to Be Second Best

by Jessica Dettmann

  For six months we spoke on the phone most days. As we grew closer to the print deadline, we’d spend hours in contemplation of a sentence here, or a tricky paragraph there, together trying to sand this thing he’d written into a form smooth enough that he could bear to let it go to the printer.

  His diligence and work ethic had surprised me. Maybe because the Adam in the book was a free-wheeling, devil-may-care fellow, who would wake up one morning and decide that he wanted to be on the other side of the continent by nightfall. His writing made him seem like such a lad, but he worked very hard on that book in its final stages, polishing and refining it until it was as good as it could be. He’d been really funny, and good-humoured under pressure.

  We only met in person a couple of times — when he came into the publisher’s office once just after his book was contracted, and then again at the book launch in an inner city bar. I’m pretty sure he never knew that I had a complete crush on him. Probably my biggest author crush.

  It’s an occupational hazard, falling briefly and intensely in love with people whose work you edit, but nothing ever comes of it. There’s not enough face-to-face time.

  If an author’s going to fall in love with someone in the process of their book’s publication, it’s not going to be the person who asks them difficult questions about why a character is called Jim in chapter one and Steve in chapter three. It’s not going to be with the person who tells them that the last third of their book is self-indulgent waffle and recommends that it might benefit from being deleted, and it’s not going to be the person who has to politely but firmly suggest they cut five thousand words about a hilarious night out in Stockholm because it’s actually not funny if you weren’t there.

  It’s an editor’s job to tell an author — diplomatically and while pretending they’re doing no such thing — all the places their book could be improved, and you’d be surprised how many writers don’t want to hear it. It’s unusual for an author to find all that nagging and nitpicking to be a turn-on, and they often react less than graciously.

  If authors fall for anyone, it’s usually for their publicist. Publicists wear high heels and pencil skirts and sometimes see the daylight. They take the authors on tour, where there are hotel rooms and expense accounts to be used in bars, both things that are more conducive to romance than emails, deadlines, and ultimately snatching away the precious work before the author thinks it is ready. (They never think it is ready.)

  Besides, fancying an author you work with is usually more about loving their writing than them as a person. Authors are often their best selves on paper, and not so much in real life.

  This makes it easy for a crush to pass without doing much damage, but there was something about Adam Cunningham, in person and on paper, that I felt wistful about for longer than the others.

  Maybe because he’s so handsome. He was so good looking that the marketing department wanted to override the obligatory travel-lit cover photo of a canal with the title in a whacky typeface, and instead use a picture of Adam looking moodily into a coffee cup. Did I mention he is handsome?

  The ten years that have passed appear to have treated him kindly. They have kissed him grey around the temples and sketched a few rather charming crow’s feet around his eyes, but other than that he seems unchanged.

  Of course it’s possible that the years have left him with a noticeable paunch, which he is disguising on a daily basis with the kind of supportive underpants once reserved only for wearing under a very slinky dress to a formal. But I can’t see any evidence of it.

  I smile at him. He smiles back, without a flicker of recognition. It was a long shot, him remembering me.

  Should I say something? Should I remind him who I am? No, people hate being reminded that they’ve forgotten you. It makes everything awkward. It would get things off on the wrong foot to reprimand him for not recognising me ten years after he saw me twice, briefly.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I haven’t seen you in here before.’ I immediately realise how strange that sounds. We aren’t in a pub. It’s the Lost Property room. And I’ve just made it sound like it’s my Lost Property room, that I am the queen of Lost Property, ruler of the realm of the discarded and the unvalued.

  ‘My son just started last week,’ he says.

  ‘And he’s already lost something?’ I’m genuinely impressed. ‘Tim, sounds like you’ve got competition. You didn’t lose anything for at least a month.’

  Tim rolls his eyes at me.

  ‘Do you come here often?’ Adam says. ‘Sorry, that sounds, well you know, like a pickup line. I just meant . . . well, you said your son . . .’

  He’s getting flustered. What is this about? Is he blushing? He’s not. He is. Why would he be? He’s probably just embarrassed because I made it sound like I am the troll who lives under a bridge made of lost tennis racquets and he feels like he’s treading on my turf.

  ‘Yes, sadly,’ I say. ‘We’re here a lot. Tim has quite a casual relationship with his belongings.’ I continue digging through the bucket of jumpers.

  Adam smiles at Tim. ‘I don’t blame you. That’s a lot of maroon for one person to wear. If this was my uniform I’d do my best to lose it too.’

  ‘Aha!’ I say. ‘Jumper!’ I hoist it aloft. It’s a small victory. ‘Tim. Put this on and please don’t ever take it off again.’

  I turn to Adam just as the bell rings. ‘Good luck with . . . what is it yours has lost?’

  ‘His hat.’

  ‘Well, good luck with his hat. If you don’t find it, take an unlabelled one from here and wash it on a long cycle in your dishwasher. That’ll kill any nits.’

  Adam looks faintly disgusted. I must remove myself, because although that is a really valuable tip, for which he might thank me one day, it is possibly the least charming thing anyone’s ever said to him.

  ‘Anyway, bye,’ I tell him. ‘Girls, let’s go.’

  I’m rusty. Very rusty. Laura might be right about letting my skills become obsolete. I need some sort of retraining program for people re-entering the flirtspace.

  * * *

  Walking the girls back home, the day seems changed. The light is golden and everything looks sharper. This is very strange. My head is buzzing, and I have butterflies in my stomach. But they can’t be butterflies. Not at my age. Moths, perhaps.

  I haven’t seen that man in a decade. This is not the way you are supposed to feel about someone you barely know, whom you haven’t seen in a decade. I’ve been out of the game for too long and I’ve lost all perspective. The first inkling that the world may contain someone to whom I’m even slightly attracted and I’ve come over all Merchant Ivory.

  And I can tell from the existence of Bon that Adam is now, at least, distinctly second-hand. He’s probably not even single. Despite what happened to me, plenty of people manage to uphold their wedding vows. Betrayal and divorce aren’t compulsory.

  Adam was lovely, as I remember, and so probably hasn’t gone off behind his wife’s back and had a secret baby with his girlfriend. He’s far more likely to be very happily married, probably to the Dutch girl he fell in love with at the end of his book. The woman who tamed the wild man, who got him to hang up his backpack and settle down for good.

  What was her name? Something really Dutch, I remember that much. Elise? No. Ilse! Her name was Ilse and she ticked so many of the boxes of Dutch stereotypes that the publisher and I had to suggest Adam tone her down a bit so she seemed less of a cliché.

  Blonde, tall, tanned, with great teeth, Ilse had lived on a houseboat. She was a photographer, and Adam had fallen in love with her at first sight when their bikes had collided in a rainstorm on Adam’s first day in the city.

  That was a great meet cute, practically rom-com-worthy. I remember working on the book and unfavourably comparing how I’d met all my past boyfriends. I’d sat next to one in a university lecture, been flirted with by two boys at the next table during a pub trivia night and ultimately picked the wrong one to fli
rt back with . . . not a European bike bingle to be seen.

  Troy I’d met at a barbecue. It was my friend’s brother’s birthday. Troy chatted me up while flipping steaks on the barbie.

  It turns out they weren’t even his steaks. It was one of those barbecues people had in their twenties where you had to bring your own meat, and the host would just supply a three-quarters-empty gas bottle for the barbie. Troy had brought a packet of the cheapest supermarket sausages, then he ate the steak someone else had brought.

  How that failed to set off alarm bells with me, I’ll never really understand. What can I say? I was young. Our meeting was definitely no bolt-of-lightning, hearts-and-bikes-collide moment. He was pretty cute though, and charming. Not to mention sexy. That night, we’d sat side by side on an orange plaid sofa, eating stolen steak from plastic plates, Troy constantly topping up my Jacobs Creek champagne while he told me I was the most amazing woman he’d ever met. I think I was showing off about the people I knew through my job, name-dropping authors I later realised he was only acting impressed by since he had never heard of most of them. It turns out Troy wasn’t into books.

  I definitely name-dropped Wanda that night to Troy, and I possibly even bragged about working with Adam. A shiver goes through me when I consider how small my life is, how far I haven’t come.

  So is Ilse, the perfect photographer, the mother of Bon? Is Bon a Dutch name? Is Bon even a name? There’s Bon Scott, I suppose. And Bon Iver. But those are nicknames or stage names, surely. Maybe I misheard. Maybe Adam’s child is called Ron. Or John.

  I’ll get Tim to find out.

  * * *

  It’s a week before I see Adam again. Tim has an unprecedented run of responsible behaviour and I have no cause to go to the Lost Property room.

  Anyway, he probably hasn’t had to go back there. I’ll bet that lost hat was a one-off because he has a child who keeps careful track of his belongings. After all, he’s grown up on a houseboat, and you’d have to be pretty minimalist and organised to do that.

  My week has passed as it always does, in a repeating loop of walks to and from school and kindergarten, trips to the supermarket and ferrying Lola all over the area to her activities, punctuated by long periods sitting at my laptop, at my kitchen table, working, while Lola and Freya rabbit about underfoot.

  On Friday afternoon I’m waiting in the playground to pick Tim up. I’ve already collected the girls from preschool, and they are attempting to climb a jacaranda. They’re far too small to reach even the lowest branch, so it’s like watching a couple of puppies scrabbling at a table leg.

  I sit down on a very low aluminium bench and lean back against the wall of the school. When I was at primary school there was a bench just like this, but it was called the naughty seat. Naughty seats don’t exist any more.

  Tim’s told me this bench has recently been declared the ‘buddy bench’. The idea is that if anyone’s feeling lonely, they can sit here and that’s an indication to the other kids that they need someone to play with.

  That’s a lovely sentiment, although it doesn’t address the issue of where to put the naughty kids. Perhaps they need two seats, one for the bad and one for the lonely.

  There ought be one of these for adults. They could put it outside the pub. It could have one end for the bad and the other for the lonely, with a blurry section in between for those in the middle of that particular Venn diagram.

  Though around here, there’s probably no great need for a bench for the lonely. I seem to be living right in the heart of happy coupledom.

  I close my eyes and the sun warms my face. The burble of gathering parents and the wittering of smaller siblings wash over me.

  The bench gives slightly as someone else sits down.

  ‘I thought it was you,’ says a voice that with no exaggeration sends a tingle from my toes to my scalp. It’s like someone has just played the opening chords of an REM song on the piano, in my soul.

  It’s Adam Cunningham.

  I let my eyes stay closed for probably a fraction too long. I’m sure that seems weird. I open them and get another jolt because he is sitting very close to me.

  ‘You’re Emma, right?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.’

  ‘Of course I remember you! If it hadn’t been for you, my book would have been forty thousand words too long and the sales figures would have showed it. You saved me from being torn to shreds by reviewers.’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing to do with me,’ I say. ‘It was all your hard work.’

  I wonder how he intends to play this. Are we going to acknowledge that the book sank without trace and sold only about three hundred copies?

  Far Canal had come in the last dribble of a wave of armchair travel memoirs, many of which had sold in enormous numbers. The fashion peaked after 9/11, when people were scared to get on a plane and instead wanted to read about exotic locales. But by the time Adam’s book came along, the market was oversaturated and everyone just wanted to read about vampires.

  And sure, it hadn’t been torn apart by reviewers, but that was largely because no one reviewed it.

  He grins. ‘You know it bombed. I expect it will be rediscovered when I’m dead and considered a classic.’

  ‘Very likely,’ I tell him. ‘That is often the sales pattern we see with lad-travel lit. Have you written any more books?’

  ‘No, I had to get a proper job. As you can see, I have responsibilities now.’

  ‘Ah, yes. What’s your responsibility’s name?’

  ‘Bon.’

  I was right.

  ‘How about yours?’ he asks.

  ‘My year-one boy is Tim, and that’s my daughter, Freya, with the brown hair. And that’s Lola.’

  I pause. I’m not sure how to explain Lola. She is with me so often that I’ve had to do this a lot, but it’s always difficult. ‘She’s my kids’ sister’ usually leaves the person I’m talking to with a perplexed look. I can see them thinking, ‘Does she mean her sister’s kid? As in, her niece?’

  Sometimes they leave it at that, and sometimes they ask for clarification. If I have to explain more, I try to do it in a no-nonsense fashion that doesn’t invite further discussion. ‘She’s my husband’s child with his new wife.’ That’s what I tell Adam now.

  He looks at the girls. They are the same height. They have the same build. There’s no mistaking that they are the same age. I use this as a test with new acquaintances. Will they continue asking awkward questions until I am forced to lay out the whole grim tale for them? Or will they guess it and politely move on to another topic?

  ‘They look like they get along well,’ he says.

  Oh you kind man, I think.

  ‘Bon’s an only child. His mum’s still living in Amsterdam.’

  ‘Is she the woman from your book? Ilse, the photographer?’

  ‘You have a good memory,’ he says. ‘She is.’ He looks sad. ‘I got transferred back here for work, and she’s . . . she couldn’t come back when we did. She’ll be another few months, so we thought it would be best for Bon to get started at school as close to the beginning of the year as he could.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ I say. I want to know more about Ilse’s absence because that doesn’t sound like the whole story. But I can’t figure out how not to sound nosy. So instead I say, ‘How did you end up in Shorewood? Do you have family round here?’

  ‘My sister,’ he says. ‘She lives about ten minutes away, and our parents are on the Gold Coast. My new job’s in the city and Kit — that’s my sister — said this was a good spot.’

  Before I can delve any further into his personal life, the bell rings and a sea of maroon-clad children floods from all the doors of the building. It always reminds me of a tipped over glass of Ribena.

  Kids run to parents, to trees, and to the gates. Some hurl their bags to the ground and restart games of handball where they left off at the end of lunchtime.

  Tim runs to me, pulling a smaller boy by th
e sleeve.

  Adam’s face lights up.

  ‘Mum, I have a new kindy buddy!’ Tim’s voice is high and excited. ‘He’s just started and he’s called Ben and I have to look after him and do you know he has been to Legoland? Actual Legoland, Mum? Can he come play at our house? He has Lego Technic but it’s in Amsterdam.’

  ‘That’s excellent, sweetie. I think he might be called Bon, though, not Ben. This is his dad, Adam.’

  Tim turns to Bon. ‘Are you? Bon not Ben?’

  Bon looks up, shyly. ‘I’m called Bon.’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ says Tim. ‘Well, can Bon come for a play? Please, Mum, can he? Because he doesn’t have all his Lego in Australia yet because he used to live on a boat and his mum has to sail the boat here with the Lego on it.’

  ‘Of course he can, but not today. We have to drop Lola home and go to the supermarket.’ I don’t add that there’s no way Bon or Adam are coming to our house until it has been tidied, cleaned and disinfected to within an inch of its life.

  ‘Bon,’ says Adam, ‘would you like that? To go play at Tim’s house one afternoon?’

  ‘I think so,’ says Bon. ‘Daddy, will you come too?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think the invitation is for you.’

  ‘Of course you must come,’ I say, and my voice sounds slightly hysterical. I lower it and speak deliberately slowly, like a calm person who is not a lunatic. ‘Why don’t you both come round after school next Friday and we can have an early pizza dinner?’

  Adam looks grateful. ‘Thanks. We don’t really have any friends around here yet. It’s been so great to run into you again, Emma. Really.’ He takes my hand in both of his and squeezes it quickly. When he lets go, I let my hand fall to my side. I press it against my leg, through the fabric of my skirt.

  * * *

  That evening, as I boil pasta and grate cheese, rinse lunchboxes, unload and reload the dishwasher, I keep coming back to that word, ‘really’. It was quite emphatic. It wasn’t required. I am distracted by it. I want to tell someone about it. Mum flickers into my mind and I blink hard to make her disappear. She died more than ten years ago in a way that was so absurdly random and unforeseeable that it still takes my breath away — her first ever bee-sting, at the age of fifty-nine, while hanging out the laundry in her bare feet: an allergy no one knew she had. When will I stop wanting her to be the first person I turn to when I have news?