The First Year

by Genevieve Gannon

The alarm blared, ripping through the morning peace. Saskia threw her arm across her face to shield her eyes and ears.

  ‘What time is it?’ It was not just the hysterical bleep-bleep that had disturbed her sleep, or the light from Andy’s phone as he checked his emails, but also the ‘clack clack clack’ of the keys as he scrolled.

  The first Saturday back from their honeymoon, as he’d caught up on his reading, reclining on the brocade pillows, Saskia had proposed — and Andy agreed — that phones should be banned from the bed.

  ‘This is a doona-island refuge from technology,’ Saskia had said, smoothing the quilt around her. ‘I mean it, Andy — no work calls, emails or texts in our bed.’

  A mere three days later Andy had pleaded for a special dispensation. It was the Tuesday after the mandatory meeting and he’d woken from a fitful dream, desperate to see if an invitation had arrived in his inbox overnight. The look on his face had stirred something deep within Saskia and she had told him it was fine.

  Now, nearly five days after the meeting, there had still been no word. She shuffled closer to him on the mattress and slid her arm across his torso, squeezing him, and kissing the curve of his shoulder. ‘They won’t fire you.’

  ‘There are a lot of good lawyers at the firm. They have to fire someone.’

  ‘They won’t have sent the email in the middle of the night.’

  ‘It could be automated.’ His voice sounded automated.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, starring at the phone as if it was a grenade.

  She rubbed his arm. She’d begun to get some sense of how much responsibility Andy had about two months after they’d started dating. He’d asked her to join him at the bar in The Olsen Hotel where he’d had a meeting he’d vaguely described as something to do with movie deal contracts. She’d arrived in a Katherine Hepburn-inspired skirt in keeping with the Hollywood theme and he’d ordered them each a whisky sour. As she’d sipped the drink she had let her eyes wander around the room. She nearly choked on her cocktail when she saw in one dark corner, quietly spreading pate on a toast point, was Tom Hanks.

  ‘I’d better get up,’ Andy said, rolling off the bed.

  Since the meeting he’d had no trouble getting to the office on time.

  *

  The lights flicked on as Andy walked across the marble lobby, the clip of his shoes echoing as always. He needed to swing by the probate team. He pressed 13 on the lift but the button didn’t illuminate. He rubbed his card against the reader and pressed 13 again as a young woman with a blond bob stepped aboard.

  ‘Are you coming to work for me?’ she asked as she leaned forward and waved her card in front of the scanner, then pressed 13.

  ‘Force of habit,’ Andy said, and jagged the button for level 15, which was where probate was now located, squeezed in between criminal and conveyancing.

  The woman squinted at the nameplate. ‘Harris, Morse and Lowe. That would make you a lawyer.’

  Andy nodded but didn’t engage further.

  ‘I’ll have to get them to change the listing.’

  ‘AdFit is your company?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She nodded.

  Alice Price filled him in on the new company that had taken over HM&L’s old floor. AdFit was the brainchild of a woman who had started a successful fitness blog at university. She’d approached companies that wanted to reach students and offered them content for a fee. She was soon making so much money she gave up her degree to start a business that paired advertisers with bloggers. Six years after she wrote her first paid post she had sixty-five staff members and drove a Mercedes Benz E-class.

  ‘Is it bad manners to talk in the lift?’ the perky AdFit CEO asked.

  Andy, harried and tired, plastered on a polite smile: ‘Some people think any conversation before 7 a.m. is bad form.’

  ‘It is early,’ she agreed. ‘But I get nervous being away from the office. I’m like a new mother with a sleeping baby — I’m worried if I look away something bad will happen to it. I’m Alexa.’ She thrust out her hand.

  ‘Andy.’ He shook her hand.

  ‘I’ve never worked in an office building before,’ Alexa said.

  He’d heard this around the water cooler too; the new company’s child CEO in her designer pencil skirts and boxy, self-conscious jackets was bright-eyed and full of wonder, like a teen playing in her mother’s power suits. Alexander Bose had chuckled and said she was just the right age. ‘An ingénue. Fresh and frisky and willing to take instruction.’

  One of the juniors had actually given him a high-five. Standing next to this self-possessed young woman, the memory mortified Andy.

  The lift arrived at level 13.

  ‘This is me,’ Alexa said, giving her shoulders a nervous shrug. Andy sensed a touch of vulnerability in her voice and wished he’d been friendlier to her.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ he called, and smiled when she turned. ‘I’m sure your baby will do fine.’

  The doors parted again on level 15 and he stepped out. The office was solemn and busier than it normally would have been at this hour as HM&L’s employees made a last-ditch attempt to demonstrate their worth.

  As soon as Andy sat down at his desk a message from Hugh flashed up on his screen. ‘Got one. Dead man litigating.’

  Andy went cold. For perhaps the third time all year, he swore. ‘Shit.’

  He typed back, ‘Mate’, but didn’t know what else to say. ‘That’s abhorrent.’

  ‘I know. Takes the shine off the news that Tilly’s finally pregnant.’

  Andy raked his fingers through his hair. Hugh and Tilly had spent thousands on IVF. The job slashing suddenly seemed all too real. A small, superstitious part of Andy couldn’t help but feel he’d brought it upon himself by offering to support Saskia. Making God laugh by telling him your plans, and all that. And he’d done it at the Vatican, where the celestial phone reception was surely at its clearest.

  Andy frowned at his computer and wished he had a solution. He wondered if he could trade places with the Hugh, put his hand up for a voluntary redundancy. They both occupied the same position, and Hugh had the baby on the way. He couldn’t afford to be out of work whereas Andy had a safety net. One he didn’t like to use, but would, for his old friend. He’d give Hugh a kidney. Hell, he’d give him a lung.

  He decided to stay positive. ‘Hugh, that’s bloody fantastic. Congratulations. They won’t fire you. Maybe it’s a promotion. Beer after work?’

  ‘Thanks, mate. A beer would be great.’

  Andy refreshed his own browser, just to be sure, and felt a stab of relief followed swiftly by a twist of guilt when no invitation appeared. He opened the Lyle brief and started biting earnestly on the end of his pen.

  Midmorning, his assistant Nellie popped her head into his office. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr Colbrook?’

  ‘Thanks, Nellie, but I think I need to stretch my legs. Can I get you anything while I’m down there?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘How’s that grandson of yours?’

  ‘Nearly walking.’

  Rather than launch into the ten-minute anecdote that usually accompanied any mention of her grandson, Nellie stood watching Andy while twisting a floral handkerchief in her hands.

  ‘I expect downsizing the staff means they’ll need fewer assistants too,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, Nellie. As long as I’m at Harris, Morse and Lowe, you will be too.’

  Gratitude softened the lines on her face. ‘Any news?’

  ‘All quiet.’ He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘Marvellous news about little Gregory walking. Back in a minute.’

  He ducked downstairs to the ground floor cafe, feeling like a prisoner awaiting his sentence. During his years as a prosecutor he’d watched men brought up from the bowels of the court building to learn their fate — the muscles on their neck stuck out as they tried to keep their jaw’s locked and their upper l
ips stiff. The most serious offenders stood to lose years of their lives, and Andy felt the same way now.

  He’d worked hard to remodel himself as Andy Colbrook, legal maven, instead of Andrew Colbrook, of the Ballarat Colbrooks, who donated a wing to the local nursing home and were lifetime members of the Pratt charitable trust. He could not abide many of the men he’d grown up with, who loved nothing more than to stand around at the races or the Members Only rooms of the Melbourne Cricket Club, over-using words like equity and capital gains to give the impression they’d earned their right to be there.

  When he left public prosecutions he’d had to rebuild himself again. He’d chosen his law firm carefully. Harris, Morse & Lowe was a mid-sized company of self-made men. They took on risky cases and lots of no-win, no-fee civil suits. Andy knew they only did it for the press, but it was a symbiotic relationship. HM&L needed good PR, and the plaintiffs needed good representation. The mutually beneficial policy was hard to argue against.

  Hugh got one, he texted to Saskia.

  He paid for his espresso, tossed it back then rode the lift back up to his desk.

  It’s just an invitation, she wrote back. Nothing’s certain.

  When he sat down there was an event notification waiting for him. It was from Franklin Harris. He wanted Andy to attend a meeting at 8 a.m. on Monday morning in the large conference room.

  Day 23, Monday, November 3

  ‘Goddamn you.’ Saskia shook and rattled the padlock on the metal cupboard but the key was stuck. She opened the curtains to let in more light. Her studio was on the fifth floor of The Barton Building, a 1920s deco office block in Brunswick. A series of government grants in the 1970s had preserved its six floors for artists, but recent cutbacks meant newer applicants were given small allotments. Existing studios were subdivided, creating odd-shaped spaces. The resulting warren was full of dead ends and dark corners.

  In Saskia’s studio, the linoleum floor was the colour of sea-foam and speckled with drops of paint. The wooden furniture had been slathered with white enamel paint to hide its age. With sun rays shining into the space she could see filament, metal filings and silver and copper off-cuts that she hadn’t swept up properly. She swiped a strand of hair off her face and turned her attention back to the padlock on the cupboard that housed her supplies and tools. She put her foot flat against the door and pulled.

  ‘Goddamn you,’ she said again.

  Saskia worked on consignment, which meant she didn’t get paid until someone bought one of her pieces. She wanted to be stocked in specialised jewellery stores, but as it was she mostly supplied gift shops. Her stockists gave her between fifty-five and sixty-five per cent of the sale price each time someone purchased a Little Hill trinket.

  She didn’t have enough retailers or customers — or time — to warrant seasonal work, but she liked to refresh her collection twice a year. She worked mostly with silver, taking inspiration from her surroundings. Her earrings, rings and pendants were impressionistic shapes that evoked the world around her. When Saskia’s eye alighted on an interesting piece of architecture or a beautiful cobweb, her mind started to imagine how it could be cast in silver, and worn as jewellery.

  When she was starting out, she worked the morning shift at a train station coffee cart and, on a lark, made herself a set of silver studs that looked like coffee beans. Several commuters buying their morning lattes had complimented them, and asked Saskia where she got them. Saskia had offered to make each of them a pair and soon she had a nice little sideline selling silver coffee bean earrings to city workers. It gave her a taste for life as a business operator.

  ‘Every new piece you do is a new set of tastes catered for,’ her friend Annie Chen, a dress designer, always said, encouraging her to push herself more.

  Saskia knew Little Hill designs was never going to get anywhere if she wasn’t making jewellery that was exciting. But to do that she needed to be able to get to her materials, and the lock wouldn’t budge. She stopped fighting it and put her hands on her hips.

  ‘Bolt-cutters,’ she said to no one.

  She remembered seeing Ziggy Cross, a sculptor who worked with wire, carrying a pair a few weeks earlier. She had stopped on her way up to her studio, as she often did, to examine the level four notice board. Each floor had a corkboard the occupants used to share flyers for launches, call-outs for collaborators, and political leaflets.

  Nude models wanted.

  Learn Reiki.

  Professor Phil Dunning speaks on Capitalism, Power and the One Per Cent.

  Models wanted, nude.

  The flyer Saskia was reading at the time was for her friend, and Ziggy’s girlfriend, June Rein’s exhibit at Barred.

  Ziggy had sidled up next to Saskia and breathed, ‘Are you coming?’ making her jump.

  ‘Ziggy, hi, yeah.’ Saskia gave a nervous laugh and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear.

  ‘Glad to hear you’ll be there for support.’

  Saskia inched back. Ziggy always stood a little closer than necessary. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said. She had been at TAFE with June Rein, who still went by Susan back then. Ziggy nodded and folded his arms, the bolt-cutters tucked underneath.

  ‘Have you got anything coming up soon?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Just working on my stuff for the stores.’

  ‘Working hard for the money.’

  ‘Something like that.’ Saskia tried to keep her voice light. Ziggy had closed the gap between them again.

  ‘We should make a real night of June’s opening,’ he said, his face close to hers.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got to . . .’ Saskia attempted to disengage. She couldn’t place what it was about Ziggy that made her uneasy; he was never anything but inquisitive and chatty, albeit a little too inquisitive. He was blocking her path back to the stairwell, and had made no indication he was going to move. His feet were planted. He wore bright red Chuck Taylor’s graffitied with biro. His choice of shoes, plus the skinny jeans and shoulder-length shaggy hair, gave the impression of a young man. But when one looked at him square in the face, as Saskia was doing now, the fine lines that underscored his eyes and bracketed his mouth emerged. He had to be at least forty, this man in the ‘Fuck Jerry’ T-Shirt, who fiddled with wire for a living.

  ‘Hey, you don’t have twenty bucks, do you? Pay you back,’ Ziggy said — a refrain so common in the Barton Building, it could have been its motto.

  Saskia had given Ziggy the cash — mostly so she could get away — and had not seen it again, so she figured she was entitled to borrow his bolt-cutters. She skipped down two flights of stairs and found Ziggy’s room was empty but unlocked. The bolt-cutters sat on top of a toolbox near a concrete trough. She loped back upstairs, put the lock’s metal bar between the bolt cutter’s teeth and squeezed until it started to give, then snapped.

  The doors swung open and Saskia surveyed her tools and materials. She kept a record of what was to be delivered to which store in a spiral notebook, then hand-wrote receipts on carbon paper. Her books were messy and hard to read. For too long she had been planning to digitise everything.

  She pulled out a tray of half-finished earrings. It held forty-six flat silver crescent moons that she’d cut from a silver sheet. She needed to drill a hole in the point of each one and thread through some wire to secure the hooks that would transform them into dangling moon earrings. She picked up a moon and drew a dot where she wanted to put the drill bit. It slid out of her hand and dropped onto the floor. Saskia collected it and brushed it off.

  Her joints felt like they needed oiling. It wasn’t just disuse that was turning all of her fingers into thumbs. Her phone was propped up against the wall so she could see it as she awaited news of Andy’s meeting.

  *

  Andy’s mouth was dry. He had aimed to arrive as close to 8 a.m. as possible, knowing that sitting outside the meeting room would force him to dwell on, and compound, his anxiety. He had dressed slowly, tied his Windsor knot with car
e, and eaten cornflakes at the dining table with his iPad, trying to pay attention to the news headlines. Two hundred jobs to go from manufacturing plant, one read. The faces of the workers in the photo next to the article looked bewildered and scared. He knew how they felt.

  He could see through the glass walls to where another lawyer was occupying the swivel chair on the south side of the conference table. On the north sat Harris, broad and imposing, flanked by two senior partners. Andy didn’t recognise the lawyer in the firing line. He clasped his hands together and tried to stop his foot from jiggling.

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ Saskia had said that morning, kissing his ear as she passed through the kitchen on her way to her studio. She was wearing a fringed leather jacket, and despite everything going through his mind, Andy was able to marvel at her for a minute. She could pick any old rag off an op shop rack, alter it a bit, and you’d swear to God it was Balenciaga. She’d paired the jacket with a black and white skirt fashioned from parachute silk. It revealed the outline of her legs when the light struck it just so.

  Andy tried to focus on this pleasant image to distract himself from what lay ahead. He drummed his fingers on his knees. The wedding had been so expensive that he had put their honeymoon on his credit card, planning to pay if off over the next few months. Sure, he’d get a package if they let him go, but how long would that last? There were mortgage repayments and Christmas was coming. He’d told Saskia to give up the job she’d used to support herself for years. She was relying on him, and now he mightn’t be able to follow through.

  Nobody would be hiring this time of year. Any job ad that appeared would be jumped on by all the redundant lawyers HM&L was casting out to sea. He imagined himself, for the next three months, fronting up to interview after interview with a dozen of his colleagues. All of them fighting over the job like stray dogs.

  The door to the conference room opened and the lawyer stepped out. Andy recognised him now. Mick Chaugh from mediation. The men exchanged silent, pressed-lipped condolences.

  Through the glass, Harris made eye-contact with Andy and beckoned him inside.