by Alison James
I stand up. ‘I need to go there now. I need to see him.’
Then I’ll know this isn’t real. That I’m not really a widow.
‘Shall we wait for your friend?’ asks PC Gillespie. ‘She said she’d be here in a few minutes.’
I nod, and sit down again. I’m handed a mug of tea, but my hands are shaking so violently that I can’t hold it.
JoJo comes into the room, looking pale and shocked, drawing me into a tight hug. The two of us are led out to the police car and driven away through the darkened streets.
* * *
When we reach the hospital, JoJo and I are taken straight to the mortuary via a side door. We’re led to an anteroom, with a closed door.
‘If you’re ready?’ PC Gillespie asks.
I nod. DS Sutherland places a hand in the small of my back and steers me gently towards the viewing room. I clutch at JoJo’s hand, stepping into the room haltingly, as though my legs belong to someone else, and keeping my gaze down at my feet. Someone – I’m not sure who – moves me gently towards a hospital gurney.
I look up. Dominic – because it is unmistakeably Dominic – is partially covered by a sheet, naked from the shoulders up. There are bruises on his face and chest, and ugly purple gashes on his face. They say that dead people look as though they’re just sleeping, but he doesn’t. He looks as though he’s gone. He’s no longer there.
I feel a huge sob surge up through my chest and escape as a gasp. Something floats into my brain, something the hard hammer blow of shock has initially driven out. I’m pregnant, I remind myself, and my baby’s father is dead.
JoJo squeezes my hand. I turn to the police officers and give a small nod, then close my eyes tightly.
The door opens and someone else comes into the room, walking right up to the head end of the gurney. When I open my eyes, the face is familiar. It’s the man that I found on Facebook. The one who was not in Johannesburg for Christmas 2017. The man my husband denied ever having seen before. Simon Gill.
‘No,’ the man says firmly, ‘There’s been some sort of mistake. That’s not my brother.’
I stare at him.
He continues shaking his head. ‘That’s not Dominic Gill.’
Seventeen
Ben
Then
There are always girls. Plenty of girls.
Of course, they don’t necessarily look at things the way I do. There’s the odd one who’s just after an uncomplicated shag, but most of them want the happy-ever-after. They want a ring on their finger, or at least some sort of permanence. But that’s okay: you just lie to them. You pretend to them that you want that too, so that you can get a quickie, a fast and furious fuck in a restaurant toilet cubicle, or a deserted back street, or on the beach. Occasionally, if she rates herself too highly to act sleazy, in a hotel room. Because occasionally – if the girl is particularly hot – it’s worth shelling out a few hundred bucks.
‘Why online dating?’ they always ask, despite the fact that about five million Australians are doing it, which is about a fifth of the population. In other words, it’s so bloody commonplace, it barely merits the question. But what they’re really asking is what you want from the transaction. What’s your desired end goal?
I put the minimum information on my profile. A few likes and dislikes and invented fun facts, and the fact I have my own apartment in an impressive building downtown; just enough to make me sound both wholesome and alpha. The name’s fake, but the rest is mostly true. I am fit and into sports, and I do have a well-paid job in the financial sector. Not that they’re ever going to be around long enough to test it all out, but you have to bait the hook.
And the profile pictures are all absolutely real. Up-to-date and unedited. This gives me a great advantage, because so many online creeps use old or stolen ones. When they meet me and see that I’m exactly the guy in the online images, girls are ready to buy into me. They’re convinced it’s a case of what you see is what you get, and that therefore I must be honest and trustworthy. So when I tell the ones who aren’t into casual sex that I’m a one-woman guy and that I’m actually looking for something deep and meaningful, they believe it. After all, I told them I was over six foot, and I am.
Do I feel guilty about that? Hell, no. If they think the internet is the place to find someone trustworthy and straightforward, then more fool them. The internet is the playground of the fake and the fucked-up. As for what I’m looking for: I’m prepared to entertain all types. I keep my own filters fairly open, but I screen out anyone who describes themselves as ‘voluptuous’ or ‘curvy’. That just means they’re fat.
I have three dating apps on my phone and I’ve used them to sleep with more than two hundred girls. It sounds greedy, but I put that down to the fact that I grew up in a girl drought. I come from a tiny outback town called Coonamarra, on the south-western edge of New South Wales. Population 162. Actually, we weren’t even in Coonamarra: our house was on the sheep station that my dad managed. Even driving the few miles into town was a highlight. The few local girls my age were huge, or had faces like dropped pies. The only looker in Coonamarra was Susie Duggan, and she was five years older than me. I lost my virginity to her when I was fourteen, but a year later she got married to some guy who worked on a cattle station near Binalong, so that was that.
Apart from Susie, there was only Marlene, who worked in the local bar, and Kirstie Daley, whose mum was friends with my mum. Marlene was about thirty-five, but she’d give you a handjob if you helped her clear the glasses at the end of the night. And Kirstie and I were just mates. I didn’t fancy her, and anyway she preferred girls. Even so, we made a pact that until our options increased, we would practise kissing on each other. We practised and practised. There was fuck all else to do in Coonamarra, so we became very good at it.
Oh, and there was also Kirstie’s younger sister Zoey, but she didn’t really count either. She was a clingy, homely-looking kid a few years younger than Kirstie and me, who used to trail around after us, always wanting to know where we were going and asking to come too. Kirstie used to rib me about Zoey having a crush on me, but, to be honest, I just remember her back then as being a massive pain in the arse. As it goes, I was to end up viewing her very differently. But back then I had no idea quite how much things would change where Zoey Daley was concerned.
I was happy enough at school. For the most part, I did fine academically, but my favourite subject by some margin was Theatre Arts. I took part in every dramatic production I could. Mr Powell, the head of Drama, rated me and cast me in most of the leads. As an only kid with no company at home, I had a highly developed imagination and a distinct sense of the dramatic, acting out little stories and plays as soon as I was old enough to read and write. But, of course, my practical, Calvinist Scottish parents did not regard acting as a proper job, so I never pursued it as a career, even if I did get to use my acting skills in other ways.
When I eventually got out of there and went to study Business Administration at University of Technology, Sydney, I got plenty of opportunity to use my kissing prowess. At least one new opportunity every night. Because I was an only child, my dad was sold on the idea that I’d stay in Coonamarra and work on the cattle station with him, maybe one day even take over his job. I persuaded him that that studying business would make me even better placed to run the farm. Not that I had any intention of doing that. Not ever.
My parents had emigrated from Scotland in the early 1970s and been relatively old when they eventually had a kid after years of trying. Mum’s spinster sister, Agnes, also emigrated, but the only other family contact we had was when my maternal grandfather, Dougie, visited from Scotland. He was a dour man, but with a twinkle in his eye, and he had time for me, which my parents never did. But because of the distance and the expense he was only able to make it out to Oz a couple of times, and when I was about fifteen, he died. I couldn’t even go to his funeral, which cut me up a heap.
It was only a few years later, durin
g my first term at UTS, that Dad turned yellow and lost a load of weight. It turned out to be liver secondaries from a primary pancreatic cancer that was too far gone to treat. He wasted away within three weeks and died with Mum and me at his bedside. He’d refused the offered hospice bed and insisted on staying at home to be nursed by my long-suffering mother. A gritty Highlander to the end. After he died, Mum couldn’t really stay on the station: the house went with the job. She moved up to the Northern Territory to be near to Agnes and run the local library. It’s a hell of a trek up there, and I rarely see her these days, but we talk on the phone and email a bit.
* * *
My excellence at kissing disarms the girls I meet through the dating apps. I take time over it, placing a hand on their neck and running my thumb over their lips in a teasing motion before getting my own mouth anywhere near theirs. I make soft lip contact, and only then does my tongue get involved. The fact that I go so slowly and carefully makes them think I’m really into them. It amazes me that they’re so willing to equate kissing with romance, when really it’s just all that practice Kirstie Daley and I had behind the Gully Creek Pub.
This latest girl is called Jilly. I’d been talking to her online for a week or so, while I was sleeping with Amanda. Amanda flounced off when I didn’t answer ‘married’ when she asked where I wanted to be in five years. I always overlap the preparatory chatting and the shagging, so that there’s someone new lined up when I – or the girl in this case – break off the fun. Jilly has big brown eyes and big, round breasts and a flirtatious way of running the tip of her tongue over her top teeth. She’s generally a bit of a tease, reaching out frequently to touch my hand as we talk over drinks in a trendy bar in Barangaroo Avenue.
I try to go for drinks rather than dinner with an online date. Dinner involves too much direct eye contact, and there seems to be a general expectation that the personal information shared will be revelatory. Over a dinner table, you’re expected to make a presentation, a bit like you would in a job interview. My preference is for a noisy bar; one where it’s so hard to hear that conversation can’t get past very light small talk.
After a couple of cocktails, Jilly is practically licking her lips, her left ankle rubbing up and down my shin. I lean forward. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I whisper.
There’s a cut-through from the bar to the boardwalk of the inner harbour where huge gin palaces are moored, glowing white in the moonlight. I lead Jilly down one of the unlit jetties and we indulge in a heavy make-out session. She’s an eager little thing and needs no encouragement. Once I’ve treated her to the five-star snogging experience, she’s only too happy to let me snake my hand underneath her halter top and fondle her naked tits. She’s not wearing a bra, and a cursory fumble underneath her skirt reveals she’s not wearing panties either.
Jilly pulls back, and in the faint silvery light I can see she’s smiling at me.
‘Why don’t we go back to mine,’ she whispers, her voice husky. ‘My apartment’s just round the corner.’
Five minutes later, we are inside her flat, but instead of picking up where we left off – which was basically me about to penetrate her – she fusses around opening wine, lighting candles, putting on some chill-out music.
After a few minutes of this, I’m impatient and grab her, pulling her towards me. It’s a playful gesture, but she protests with a loud, shrill ‘Owww!’
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s not mess about. We both know where this is headed.’
Jilly tries to duck my grasp and get back to the kitchen area where she was arranging glasses and tortilla crisps on a tray, but I intercept her, and this time I’m not playful. I press her against the breakfast bar, flip up her skirt and start unzipping my jeans. The more she wriggles, the harder I grow.
‘Don’t!’ she whines, ‘I’m not ready!’
‘Of course you’re ready,’ I say, as I ease myself into her. ‘You were ready back when we were in the bar, and you were stroking my dick.’
She tries to pull away from me, but I have a firm grip on her hips, and within a few seconds it’s all over. I slump forward onto her back with a gasp. She extricates herself and yanks down her dress. ‘I want you to go,’ she says coldly.
‘Aw c’mon, Julie’
‘It’s Jilly.’
‘C’mon, Jilly, you wanted to have sex, you know you did. Otherwise what was all that about back at the bar?’
‘Maybe I did. But I wanted to go at my pace. I wanted to, you know, have a bit of a convo first.’
I stare at her for a couple of seconds, sliding up my fly zipper and adjusting my shirt. ‘Okay, well we can have a convo now.’ I try to reach for the wine bottle, but she holds out an arm to stop me.
‘I want you to go.’
I ignore her and pick up the bottle.
‘Now, or else I’m calling the police.’
‘Come on, Jilly! A bit over the top, isn’t it? We just got our wires crossed, that’s all.’
But I take in her expression and pick up my jacket.
‘Okay, you win,’ I sigh, before turning round and heading for the front door.
Eighteen
Ben
Then
‘Nice flowers, mate! Who’s the lucky lady?’
My colleague, Brad Chapman, stares at the huge bouquet of exotic orange and scarlet blooms on my desk at the offices of Spectrum Group, a financial consulting consortium in a high-rise glass tower in Martin Square.
‘Just some bird I went on a date with.’ I sigh and return to looking at the figures on my screen.
‘Jeez, don’t go overboard with the enthusiasm! Why drop a hundred bucks on flowers if you’re not keen?’
There’s no point trying to explain to a boring married man like Brad that these are an attempt to build bridges, fast, after an evening of casual sex got a little bit messy.
‘I had to cancel on her, so I just thought I’d say sorry,’ I offer, without looking up.
‘You’ll be into her undies with those and no mistake.’
Brad is genial enough but a bit rough around the edges. He has a ruddy complexion and a belly from drinking too much beer, and lives in the suburbs with a wife and four kids. The sexual exploits of colleagues like me are a source of both entertainment and envy.
‘Maybe,’ I say, and force a smile.
When I’ve finished work, I walk from Martin Place to Jilly’s apartment block in Haymarket, ignoring the curious glances at the forest of garish blooms. We’d had a few drinks the night we met, but I wasn’t so blotto that I couldn’t remember where she lived.
The expression on her face when she opens the door mutates through surprise, to anger and then finally settles on something like begrudging curiosity. She’s wearing her trackies, and no make-up, and she’s distinctively less hot than I remember.
I compose my features to convey contrition.
‘These are for you,’ I say redundantly.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she spits, but she takes the flowers from my arms and inspects them, no doubt tallying up how much they must have cost.
‘Can I come in?’ I ask.
She hesitates.
I hold up my hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Just give me five minutes, then I’ll leave you in peace, I promise.’
She opens the door wide to let me in and I follow her into the lounge room.
‘I really wanted to apologise in person,’ I say, ‘I need you to know that I’m really, really sorry for upsetting you last night.’
‘Upsetting me? You assaulted me!’
‘Come on,’ I say gently, and with a lot more patience than I feel. ‘That’s a strong word, given the circumstances. I misread the signals, that’s all. We’d only just met, and when it comes to communication, we obviously have different styles. It’s no one’s fault; it’s just a function of being strangers. That’s all.’
Jilly looks at the flowers. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Look, I’m perfectly willing to accept
that I got it wrong,’ I hold up my hands again, to illustrate my culpability this time. Of course I want to say something about her acting like a little tart and leading me on, but I don’t. ‘Can’t we start over? No physical stuff, just a dinner somewhere nice – my shout, obviously – and a proper chat.’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, but I can tell she’s just playing hard to get.
‘You probably need some time to think about it: that’s completely fair enough. Just text me and let me know what you think, okay, and if you want to give me the chance to get to know you properly, that would be ace.’
I flash her my best, most modest smile and leave her to stew.
Sure enough, the next day, Jilly messages me saying she’s free on Friday evening. I call in favours and get a table at super chic and sought-after Cellar Seven in Surry Hills, and endure a tedious ten-course tasting menu just to keep the girl quiet. Without the background noise of a bar, she turns out to be very dull company, lacking any opinions of her own and instead parroting those of her parents or her sister or her girlfriends, in whose lives she seems to be annoyingly over-involved. By the time we reach the dessert courses, I know all about her friend Noleen and the ins and outs of Noleen’s relationship with her flaky fiancé. I’m bored to tears.
We go for a stroll afterwards, and Jilly is on for some snogging, but this time I’m just not feeling it and my dick remains as soft as a slug. Sensing this, Jilly asks me back to hers, but I gallantly refuse. I give her some bull about wanting to take things slow and get to know her properly, and she swallows this happily enough.
On my way back to my flat in Darling Harbour, I chuck my dating burner phone into a dumpster, having first blocked Jilly on all my online accounts. I buy a new one in my lunch hour the next day, load up the apps again and set about making contact with a fresh batch of willing women.
