The First Year

by Genevieve Gannon

  By the time the fifth bottle of red had been opened Andy had begun to relax. He leaned back into his chair and loosened his tie. The waiter brought a cheese board and cleared away the streaky dinner plates.

  ‘And some Cognac, please,’ Bose said. ‘We may as well make a night of it, it being Friday in the world’s most liveable city.’

  Hugh leaned forward. ‘Ando and I know a great place we can go next, don’t we, Ando?’ He patted his friend’s arm.

  ‘Actually . . .’ Andy looked at his watch.

  ‘What do you think, Ando, will the Menagerie on Collins be any good tonight?’ Hugh put his face close to Andy’s and lowered his voice. ‘You know that big church do you had a few months ago, with the flowers and the assembled family members, it wasn’t your funeral. You’re still allowed to be outdoors after dark.’

  Andy hated this sort of thing. Schmoozing. Or as Saskia would have called it — bullshitting. He gave Hugh a look that communicated as much.

  Hugh lowered his voice. ‘Things at HM&L are in no way assured. You know that better than me.’

  Andy sighed. ‘The Menagerie might be too rowdy. I know of somewhere more subdued.’

  Hugh slapped Andy’s back and remarked that this was top-shelf advice.

  Andy resigned himself to staying out a few more hours. Hugh was right. They needed this.

  Besides, he thought, it wouldn’t be fatal if he didn’t get in until after midnight. He had an insurance policy. Just before five that morning, restless, he’d gotten up to get a glass of water. When he’d returned the moonlight was beaming through the passage skylight into the bedroom, illuminating the bed. It had been a hot night, so they’d slept under a single sheet. Saskia was on her back, breathing gently. He could make out the dome of her breasts beneath the cotton draped over them. The air conditioner was on and her nipples stood visible like little turrets. Or round little flags on top of plump mountains. He wanted to kiss them through the cotton. But she had achieved the rest he so desperately wanted, and he knew she was exhausted. He eased gently back onto the mattress, being careful not to wake her. As he did, she murmured.

  ‘Is it morning?’ She laid her palm on his cheek.

  ‘Shh. No, go back to sleep.’ He kissed her forehead. She reached up and kissed his chin. The smell of her, and the memory of her conquering nipples, was almost too much for him to bear. She rolled over and their bodies knocked together. Her hips grazed his erection and he saw a flash of light as the moon beams shone off her teeth, which were bared in a smile.

  ‘Well,’ she’d said, sliding her singlet up and over her shoulders, ‘since you’re up.’

  He had laughed and pulled her hips over his.

  On that count he was safe to stay out all night. Somewhere between the onion soup and the steak Andy had received a message from Saskia confirming she’d seen his text that he was required at a work dinner. He began to type a reply to let her know he’d be further delayed: Would rather be home with you. But—

  His arm was knocked, and his phone flew out of his hand and skittered across the floor.

  ‘Jesussss, s-sorry, mate,’ Bose said with an armful of steins. Beer soaked into Andy’s jacket sleeve.

  ‘Bose!’ Andy examined his soggy, bitter-smelling jacket.

  ‘Let me get that,’ Bose said, his amusement barely concealed. He put the steins on the table and dabbed ineffectually at Andy’s sleeve with the corner of the tablecloth.

  ‘I’ll go clean up,’ Andy said. ‘Excuse me.’ He retrieved his phone and put it in his pocket.

  When Andy returned to the table there was a cloudy brown cocktail waiting at his seat, along with the beer he had ordered.

  ‘To apologise to my co-worker,’ Bose slurred. He shot a secret look towards the Pendulum Publishing execs, signalling to Andy that he was uncoupling himself from team HM&L and would be out to promote only himself.

  Now Andy really couldn’t go home. And yet he hoped Saskia knew he was thinking about her. He was thinking about her when they formed a wobbly chain-gang so the Pendulum Publishing team wouldn’t get lost in the alley that led to New Gold Mountain. He was thinking about her at The Long Room and Siglo. He was even thinking about her when Bose corralled them all — including the lady and her post-box-red jacket — into the line outside Goldfinger’s Men’s Club. The queue was long and unruly, and when a heated argument broke out between a freckled man and the bouncer, Andy woke up to himself, staggered towards a cab and waved it down.

  ‘Ando, what are you doing?’ Hugh called after him. ‘And-OH!’

  Andy could hear Bose sneering and wondered vaguely how much damage he was doing to himself and his reputation by leaving. He slumped onto the back seat of the cab and gave directions. Soon all thoughts melted away as Andy drifted to sleep.

  Day 126, Saturday, February 14

  Andy hadn’t come home. Saskia had slept fitfully, dreaming of shadowy places filled with voices but not people. When she woke and discovered she was alone in a half-made bed, she felt sick. She clung to the edges of the mattress, afraid that it was happening again. With dizzying rapidly, her mind began imagining the worst — that like Seth, Andy had slept with a band mole, or some Collins Street equivalent. Logically, rationally, she knew he never would, but like the child who knows there isn’t a monster under the bed, she could help but tremble at the thought of it. The sequence of events unspooled in her mind and she was powerless to stop it: He’d been blind drunk, fumbling through some airless bar and on the verge of blacking out, when a lithe body in a tight dress but no bra, had spotted his Cartier watch and his tailored suit, and figured at the very worst she’d get a round of cocktails out of him. She slid her nails across the small of his back, stirring some base, biological response, and struck up a conversation. His synapses started firing and, without stopping to check for authorisation from his brain, his hands started roaming from her arm, to her waist; merely one body responding to the stimulus of another. Abandoned by all sense and reason, which had been drowned by knock-off beers, Bordeaux with dinner, aperitifs, then late-night whisky, Andy would follow this demon in a dress out of the club and into a cab. Saskia tortured herself with this image, lying in bed with the sheets held up to her chin. She prepared herself for the worst, picturing him now, waking up in the woman’s loft apartment somewhere.

  Nausea gripped Saskia. She was flattened by the premonition that she was about to go through it all again. She’d endured an absent father, an unfaithful fiancé, and now . . . A choking sob escaped her throat.

  She picked up her phone from her bedside table. Blank. Fear was replaced by a wave of anger that he hadn’t called. This was quickly subsumed by a deeper, darker fear that something had happened to him. Andy was no drunk, and he was certainly not a cheater. Which could only mean one thing: a car crash. A mugging. A tragic, violent accident. Bloody and painful enough that he was unable to reach her. She quickly got to her feet and ran into the lounge room to check News 24 for reports of road trauma.

  She was stopped by the sole of a size 11 Oxford lace-up.

  ‘Andy!’

  He was on his back on the couch. Both of his shoes were still on and a half-eaten souvlaki had dribbled garlic sauce onto this shirt. Saskia’s relief was followed swiftly by annoyance.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Wha’?’ He jerked awake. ‘Whatshappened?’

  There was a time when finding Seth passed out on the couch would have made Saskia laugh. One morning she’d tripped over him as he lay curled up on the bathmat after he’d had too many shots of Jägermeister and had worn himself out with a bout of vigorous vomiting. In those days she would laugh at him, talk decorously about congealed eggs and offal going cold in a dirty frying pan, teasing, as he got to his feet. She’d linger over the details of how the proteins would harden and crack in the pan. Then she would help him to bed and bring him Berocca and vegemite toast.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Her voice sizzled with anger. She swallowed, and tried to contro
l it. ‘Why didn’t you call?’ she said, marginally calmer.

  ‘Sorry, Sas.’ Andy was coming to now, taking in his surroundings. He noticed the souvlaki in his hand, and looked at it as startled as if he’d found mushrooms were sprouting from his palm. He got up stiffly and dropped the soggy wrap into the kitchen bin.

  ‘Things got a little out of hand. I guess I decided to finish my second dinner in here and fell asleep.’

  Once, Saskia wouldn’t have cared about this behaviour at all. It had been almost familiar in her previous life. But apparently Seth had fucked it up for her. He’d drained away her tolerance, leaving her with low reserves. She’d used up all of her patience on Seth, who deserved none of it, leaving nothing for Andy, who deserved all of it.

  Despite this revelation, she couldn’t conquer her fury.

  ‘We’ve barely been married four months and already you’re out all night.’

  ‘I let you know,’ he said feebly. He was in no state for a battle.

  ‘No, you didn’t! And that’s not the point anyway. I thought you hadn’t come home.’

  He remembered now. Bose had knocked him and he’d never sent the message. The thought of Bose stirred a ripple of dislike.

  ‘But I did come home. How can you be mad at me for something you thought?’

  ‘If you had come home at a reasonable hour, or if you’d called, I wouldn’t have thought you’d been out all night.’

  ‘You were worried.’ His voice was penitent. Andy’s stomach felt strangely okay and he suspected he was still drunk. There were oily spots of garlic sauce on his shirt. The stink made his stomach turn. ‘I’m sorry I let you worry.’

  Saskia didn’t move. Her lip quivered. He could see she wasn’t ready to forgive him yet. She was going to make him wait, like he had made her wait the night before.

  ‘I’ve got work to do,’ Saskia said, collecting her satchel and heading for the door.

  ‘Sas!’

  She paused, knowing that he hadn’t committed a grave crime. She wrestled with her anger, and turned slightly. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

  He nodded. ‘See you tonight.’

  He started unbuttoning his dirty shirt as he walked into the kitchen in search of some painkillers.

  *

  Saskia’s anger left her quickly once she was sitting at her workbench in her studio, hunched over a piece of silver, mounted on her peg.

  The air conditioning was broken and the small room was sweltering. It felt like no air was getting in at all. The metal she was working slipped from her grip.

  She put down her pliers and went in search of the old desk fan she had used the summer before. She propped it up on some books so it would blow directly into her face, but not disturb her work. Every ten minutes or so she stopped and held her palms in front of the blades so the moisture would evaporate.

  She kept a wad of paper towels from the bathroom on her bench to mop her brow. She was making good progress.

  *

  Andy texted Hugh to assess the damage but received no reply. He texted again, and later, called. When he finally answered, Hugh sounded harassed.

  ‘How’d you pull up?’ Andy asked.

  ‘All right. I’m back at the office working on these Barlow contracts.’

  ‘Was it a late night?’

  ‘Yeah, it was late. Now I feel like I’m about to bring the ghost of last night’s steak up all over my computer. Ando, I’ve really got to get back to it.’ His voice was tight.

  Andy knew he probably should head into the office for a few hours too.

  Hugh continued. ‘Look, I know you think all this schmoozing stuff is beneath you, but I’ve got a kid on the way.’

  Andy laughed dryly. ‘Hugh, come on. You know I’ve got your back.’

  ‘Do you? I’m not sure you do. Every job is going to have elements that you don’t like. You have to get your hands dirty. I can’t pay hospital bills with ideals.’

  ‘But what Bose was telling them was nonsense.’

  ‘He wasn’t giving them legal advice. He was just showing off. Spinning a yarn. Trying to raise a smile and make an impression.’

  ‘That’s just not how I do things.’

  Hugh was quiet for a moment, before he said, ‘Ando, I feel like you don’t appreciate how much trouble we’re in here.’

  *

  Saskia went to Northern Lights for her third iced coffee of the day. The footpaths were baked white and heat was rising off the road.

  ‘Easy, don’t make me cut you off,’ Hank said, handing it to her.

  She had left her phone sitting on the drawing table. A minute after she sat down it started to ring. She picked it up, surprised to see someone had tried calling three times in the few minutes it had taken her to walk across the street.

  ‘Alicia?’

  ‘Saskia, can you come by?’ Her tone indicated this wasn’t a question.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just come.’

  Saskia had a lot to do, but she dared not refuse Alicia. As she put her sunglasses back on and hurried down the stairs, she thought that maybe her jewellery was selling well, and Alicia wanted to talk to her about creating more.

  But when she arrived at Harem and moved past the glass cases, she noticed her items appeared untouched. She looked at other artists’ displays that had been refreshed with new pieces since she’d last come in, her emotional state alternating between jealousy and disappointment.

  ‘It doesn’t look like many of my items have sold.’

  ‘None have,’ Alicia said.

  ‘What, not one?’

  Alicia shrugged. ‘It’s only been a few weeks. And people often come here looking for something specific. You need to work on building a profile for your work and let people know it’s available here.’

  ‘But how do I do that?’

  Alicia smiled. ‘That’s why I wanted you to stop by. Have you heard of Dressage?’

  Day 132, Friday, February 20

  ‘Now remember, it’s just a meeting,’ Alicia said to Saskia as they sat, knees together, on a pair of very stylish, very uncomfortable hairpin stools.

  Saskia licked her lips. ‘Yes. But it’s good, isn’t it? They wouldn’t set up a meeting if they didn’t like the jewellery.’ She had been giving herself this pep talk for the past five days.

  Alicia smiled. ‘Yes, I think it’s very good. Jan and Lorelei McIntyre have a sixth sense that is tuned into what women want to buy. They sell all over the world.’

  ‘If I’m going to make this work, I need some large stockists who will place regular orders,’ said Saskia.

  ‘That’s exactly right,’ said Alicia. ‘With Dressage selling online for you, you won’t have to do all the admin of processing orders. It will free you up to spend more time making beautiful jewellery.’

  ‘It would be such a time saver to have someone else take care of the shipping. I spend my life looking up postcodes. Why does nobody include them when giving their address?’

  The Dressage receptionist handed them each a Chai latte. Saskia put hers on the side table, also very fashionable, too nervous to drink it.

  The reception area was impeccably decorated. A navy Delphine rug was soft underfoot and there was a subtle equestrian flavour to the furnishings. On a shelf behind the receptionist’s head was a row of plaques and trophies. Sisters Jan and Lorelie McIntyre had started their style-forecasting blog and store while on maternity leave. Jan had previously worked in inventory for Nike and Lorelie managed the supply chain for designer kitchen supplier Maidment. Five years later, Dressage was one of the most successful online stores in Australia.

  Even Millie had been impressed when Andy had told her the women behind Dressage had requested a meeting, prompting Saskia to wonder if winning her mother-in-law’s approval was as simple as forming an affiliation with an organisation that Millie deemed reputable.

  ‘They’re ready for you,’ the receptionist said.

  ‘Here we go,’ Alicia whispered.


  They stepped into the Dressage office and were greeted by identical blondes who were tall, broad-shouldered, and had foofy hair. They only thing that distinguished them was that Lorelei had a small infant latched onto her breast, suckling quietly. Bootied feet with leather soles poked out from under a heathery blanket that was draped over her mother’s shoulder.

  ‘Saskia, welcome.’ Lorelei gestured to a chair. After pleasantries were exchanged she said, ‘So, tell us about Little Hill.’

  ‘Well, I started selling pieces to friends, and around the campus at TAFE. At first I had wanted to be a sculptor, but there isn’t much demand for that type of work.’ Everyone in the room laughed indulgently. ‘I realised that by pursuing silversmithing I could still create sculptural pieces of art, but instead of just sitting in a gallery, or gathering dust on a shelf, they could be things people actually wear.’

  ‘That’s very impressive,’ Lorelei cooed approvingly, jiggling her baby.

  ‘I love that dress,’ Jan McIntyre said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s very Goth-rocker-chic. Do you mind telling me where you go it?’

  Saskia had revived a long-sleeved, 60s-style black swing dress of her mother’s by taking it in and replacing the wool sleeves with slim-fitting black lace.

  ‘This? I made it. Well, I altered it.’

  ‘You make clothes as well?’ Jan raised an eyebrow at her sister.

  ‘Just for myself. I’ve never really had the money to shop where I’d like . . . Anyway, I like to sew but my business is jewellery. Silver mostly, and a bit of gold.’

  ‘I’m not going to beat around the bush,’ Jan said. ‘There’s so much silver out there that for us to take anything on, it really has to be something. We’re interested in your brand. But there’s not enough. We’d need you to make more.’

  Saskia’s heart jumped into her throat. ‘How much more?’