‘Hello, Dad!’ she shouted.
‘Kitten, I didn’t hear you come in.’ Her father rose from his armchair, his huge grin revealing his missing lower tooth. Elizabeth noted that in this room the carpets had been cleaned, the walls painted white, and a new red recliner now sat waiting to cradle her father’s buttocks. At least they’d made a start somewhere on improving the dated home. But she grimaced in anguish, remembering the lovely floating white curtains in her bedroom in Brisbane and the double sink ensuite with glittering lights around the mirror. Her parents’ single pedestal basin in the bathroom with grout falling from between the tiles was really not going to offer her the same tranquillity or privacy.
‘How was your flight?’ Bill kissed her on the cheek. Her father still looked the same, really, just a bit greyer and a little softer in the face. That was one thing she was glad hadn’t changed much.
‘Don’t ask.’
‘She found a new boyfriend,’ Victoria said.
‘What?’ Margaret gasped. ‘You haven’t been doing any of that seven-mile-high thing, have you?’
‘She sat next to the loveliest guy on the plane,’ Victoria went on. ‘He had to help her off, actually, as she was so trolleyed.’
‘I was no such thing.’
‘We had a fine chat while you were in the toilet,’ she said. ‘He asked me lots of questions about you. Anything you hadn’t already talked about on the plane. Apparently you had quite a lot to say in between the dozens of vodkas.’
Elizabeth opened her mouth to tell her sister to bugger off but then stopped. She had hazy memories of talking to the man but she couldn’t remember him saying much in return. She might have thought he had a nice smile, though. And she had woken up with her head on his shoulder at one point.
She shook away the memories.
‘His name’s Haruka.’ Her sister was still talking. ‘I’ve got his details if you want them.’
‘Victoria, the last thing I need is a short Japanese man asking me out on a date.’
‘She’s a bit touchy,’ Victoria whispered to their parents. ‘Just because John has a wife in Japan she thinks all Japanese should be sent back to . . .’ She waved a hand. ‘And he’s not short.’
Just the mention of her husband’s name made Elizabeth tremble with anger. He’d made many attempts to contact her via Victoria’s phone in the two hours she’d been in this country. He’d sent text messages begging her to please give him a chance to explain. But there was nothing to explain.
‘Japanese?’ Margaret brought a hand to her chest. ‘Goodness.’
Elizabeth exited this conversation, escaping up the creaking stairs to her old bedroom. She stopped in the doorway. Her childhood room had been converted into a shrine to unicorns. A unicorn mobile hung from the ceiling. A unicorn bedspread covered the single bed against the wall. The books had been removed from the shelves and replaced with all manner of unicorn statuettes and figurines. Unicorn posters covered the wardrobe doors.
‘Oh, this.’ Her mother hovered behind her. ‘It’s your father’s latest thing. But your bed’s still there. It’s still your room.’
Elizabeth turned to face her mother, beaten by the jet lag, alcohol and trauma. She wanted badly to ask about the unicorns, but she was sure she lacked the energy for whatever her mother’s response would be.
‘Why am I here?’ she said instead.
‘You needed help. We couldn’t let you stay in that shameful marriage in Brisbane. You needed to come home.’
‘Home?’ she said, flinging her arm around the room, thinking this space was the size of her walk-in wardrobe at home. Her face twisted in pain.
She was totally discombobulated. Home. It seemed so strange now to think that the beautiful home she’d worked so hard on was no longer her home at all. That it had probably never really been a home. Not in the true sense of the word.
‘What else were you going to do?’ her mother said.
The truth in that question stabbed through Elizabeth. She was defeated.
There was a yell from the lounge room.
‘Quick, Margaret, it’s on.’
Elizabeth followed her mother back down to the lounge. Her father arranged himself in his red recliner, his mug of black coffee beside him (no, the mug hadn’t been updated either) and his crocheted rug over his knees—something his own mother had knitted while she was still alive.
The television was so old and groaning it took half an hour to warm up. Rather than risk missing any of their favourite shows, her parents just left it on all day long. Sometimes, when guests came over, they turned down the sound out of respect.
‘The Coeliac Killer is about to start,’ he said. ‘It’s a new program. Come and watch, girls.’
Elizabeth furrowed her brow. The Coeliac Killer?
Her father loved his crime shows. He highlighted the television guide each week, read all the reviews, and had even joined an online chat group to dissect them afterwards. He thought he was quite the crack punter at working out whodunnit.
‘It’ll stop me getting Alzheimer’s now I’m retired,’ he’d said on the phone during one of their fortnightly calls.
‘Dad, I think that’s crosswords,’ she’d replied, the phone jammed under her jaw as she applied polish remover to her toenails.
‘All those poor coeliacs,’ he muttered now. ‘As if life isn’t hard enough, not even being able to have a piece of toast, without a killer after them.’
Elizabeth stood at the back of the room as her mother and sister sat on the old brown couch and the theme music started.
It was a pity her father’s hearing wasn’t as sharp as his mind. It wasn’t the coeliac killer at all. It was the steely-eyed killer.
4
‘You were fired?’
‘How do you know that? And I wasn’t fired; I resigned.’
‘I can’t believe it. That was a perfectly good, well-paying, respectable job. This is just awful news and not how I raised you, Leila. And I had to hear about it from some man who picked up your desk phone.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I couldn’t hear him too well. It sounded like he was eating a sandwich or something. Something like Rafter.’
‘Carter. And it would have been a beef and gravy roll with extra onions. The greasy smell would have got into the air conditioning and been ducted through the whole floor. He would have been sitting near my desk because he wanted to talk to Eric the Humping Dog about car racing. If I’d been there, I would have told him to shove off and take his disgusting food elsewhere because it was making me feel ill.’
Leila couldn’t believe Carter could still ruin her day even when she no longer worked there.
Her mother was obviously on the road. She could hear the familiar sounds of cars passing, the tick-tock of the indicator and that tunnel sound you always got when someone was talking while driving.
‘He said you were fired for assaulting him.’
‘Again, I wasn’t fired, I quit. And I didn’t . . . okay, I did technically assault him.’
‘Leila!’
‘Can we change the topic? Are you on your way to an appointment?’
‘Yes, a new specialist medical team on the south side. I’ve got a new anti-psychotic drug used for people with schizophrenia.’ Her mother trailed off then and murmured a few thinking-related sounds.
‘Mum.’
‘Hmm?’
‘I don’t have schizophrenia.’
‘I didn’t say that. Anyway, no we can’t change the topic. How could you let this happen?’
‘He had it coming, Mum. You’ve no idea how awful and sexist and—’
‘I don’t care how unpleasant he was. That was a perfectly good job and good jobs don’t just grow on trees. Haven’t I taught you anything? You can’t rely on anyone but yourself, Leila. You should know full well the way life works, and that means you can’t have a good job and a good man at the same time. And you had a good job and no man, and now you hav
e no job and no man. You’re a single woman with no security, no backup plan, no income and not even any references for a new job.’
Leila took a deep breath. Then another. She counted to five. She closed her eyes. Breathing. Breathing.
‘Hello, are you listening to me?’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘What?’
‘Look, Mum, I wasn’t ready to talk to you about this. I think we should continue this conversation another time. I’m going to have to go now.’
‘Off to an agency, I hope. You know they’re always looking for admin temps. It could tide you over and at least pay your rent. You can’t be out of work for long. The longer you’re off, the harder it will be.’
‘Bye, Mum.’
Leila was eating chocolate for breakfast. Muffins for lunch. Frozen food and red wine for dinner.
Lucas came to see her every other night to bring commiseratory takeaway.
‘How’s Looney Leila today?’ he said, squinting in the bright fluorescent light in the hall outside her unit.
‘Shut up. Did you bring won tons?’ Leila reached out her hand for the bags of Chinese.
‘And chocolate.’
She grunted, pulling out two plates.
‘How’s work?’ Without me.
Lucas was working as part of a proposal team. She’d been working in the same team with him for months, bidding to win a job to design and construct a new prison. Lord knew what the writers were doing to her carefully designed templates. Screwing them up, no doubt.
‘It’s fine. Alex is giving me the runs but I just need to find a way to use his expertise without letting him bulldoze over the rest of the procurement group.’
They sat on the couch with their beef and black-bean sauce, fried rice and lemon chicken.
‘What exactly do you do?’ she said. It was a running joke.
Lucas’s job title seemed to change every few months. He was a good manager without a team to manage, and was moved around from project to project, and sent overseas and interstate for conferences and training seminars. Apparently he was some kind of systems manager. Whatever that meant.
‘I’m between jobs right now,’ he joked.
‘No, I think I win that title.’
‘Ouch. Sorry.’
She put her plate down on the coffee table and went to open a bottle of wine. ‘White or red?’
‘White.’
‘Really? Don’t you think this is a red wine kind of meal?’
‘Red then. I don’t care.’
‘Then again, we’ve got both chicken and beef. What does one do in this situation?’
‘Beer?’
She opened the white.
‘I really must do some kind of wine appreciation course,’ she said, handing him a glass. ‘Be nice to know what I’m talking about. I’ve got time up my sleeve now.’
‘If it tastes good, drink it down.’
She clinked her glass to his. ‘Sounds reasonable to me.’
He leaned across her to reach for the lemon chicken and a whiff of his Polo scent made her lose her train of thought, her skin receptors suddenly primed for his touch.
Her desire was as strong today as it had been a year ago, when she’d first met him.
Her first day at work had, unexpectedly, coincided with her division’s annual team-building day. She’d had to swap her brand-new charcoal suit for army greens, as the overwhelming number of men in her new place of employment had voted for an afternoon of paintball. She, Lucas and three others had found themselves in the blue team and were running for their lives from the green team, whose goal was to annihilate the blues using their combined knowledge, skills and workmanship. It didn’t sound very touchy-feely to Leila, but she’d been used to working with women before this job, and their idea of team building involved lashings of cake, chardonnay and gossip. To say Leila felt out of her comfort zone was a huge understatement.
Lucas had caught her eye as she’d struggled to pull down her safety goggles, feeling a wave of anxiety as the blue team’s captain barked out orders to spread out and hide in unexpected places to launch an unforgiving counterattack. Lucas had grinned at her, an almost-dimple in his left cheek, his teeth white against the black and green camouflage paint he’d smeared across his face.
‘Stick with me,’ he’d said. ‘I’ve got your back.’
She gave him a grateful smile.
They rushed off into the bush, Leila thudding along behind Lucas’s broad back, wondering where he was taking her in the assembly of walls, towers, pillars, staircases, netting, gullies, trees and bushland. She carried her marker—a fake gun that shot bright orange paint—awkwardly down near her hips and it swung from side to side as she loped along.
Out in the field, Lucas appeared every bit the team leader his current job title said he was. The other men naturally looked to him for direction and he obliged with hand signals and encouraging nods, which they followed without question. She caught up to his side, breathing heavily while he whispered instructions into a comrade’s ear. Then, when the comrade took off to hide inside a cement tunnel at the base of three huge eucalypt trees, Lucas grabbed Leila by the elbow, his touch sending a bolt right to her spine, and led her into a wooden maze.
They crept along a wall, now able to hear the smashing branches and bushes as the green team galloped towards them. Apparently, stealth wasn’t going to be one of their tactics.
Leila was genuinely nervous. She was being hunted by large men in a surprisingly dim forest. Her breathing was much louder than she would have liked. Lucas turned to wink at her and motioned with his hand for her to crouch lower, even though the walls of the maze were several feet higher than their heads. And so they kept creeping, every now and then passing a peephole, which Lucas peered through to see what might be coming.
Leila fiddled with the trigger on her marker gun and wondered if she’d be able to shoot someone before they shot her.
Just then, there was a sudden burst of fire on the other side of the wall, and yelling and more breaking of branches. The green and blue teams were in full combat. She and Lucas froze. An almighty crash against the wall right next to Leila shook the wood and made her squeal and jump. Lucas grabbed her, one muscly arm braced across her chest, narrowly missing her breasts, the other hand clamped over her mouth. She gasped as best she could while breathing through her nose. His hand smelled of ink and peppermint and she had an unprecedented desire to poke out her tongue and lick it.
She could feel his heart banging through his chest against her back.
He held her steady while the engagement continued only feet from them. And then the noise disappeared and the silence of the bush returned, leaving her and Lucas alone.
He gently released his hand from her mouth and let his arm drop from her chest. She turned slowly to face him. His eyes met hers and held them for a moment. Then he suddenly checked himself and took half a step back, raising a hand to run it over the back of his hair.
‘Well. We appear to be the only ones still alive,’ he said.
‘Right. Yes,’ Leila said, lost for words. She wanted him to put that strong arm back where it had been and pull her to him.
‘Must be time for a beer then,’ he grinned.
‘I’ll say.’ And Leila followed him back through the bush, her heart now racing not from fear but with unsatisfied lust.
‘What are you going to do with all this free time?’ he said, licking lemon sauce from his finger and leaving a shine on his lower lip. She supressed a strong urge to kiss it off.
She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe play tennis.’
‘Tennis?’ He laughed. ‘Didn’t I see you trip over your own shoes last week?’
She poked him with a chopstick.
‘Besides, the way you throw paperweights, I think we should be looking at something like softball.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I haven’t played a team sport since high school. It could be fun. How about a mixed team? You could
come too.’
‘Assuming I could find the time,’ he said. He held her gaze, his amber eyes lingering on her own for longer than was comfortable.
She looked away first and reached for her wine. She took a deep breath, gathered her courage and said, ‘Maybe I’d meet someone. Or you’d meet someone?’
She was on shaky ground, deliberately testing what had remained unspoken between them since the night on the boat all those months ago.
Lucas was her work husband—someone she confided in, had coffee with daily, laughed with and went to for advice. They joked about it often and around the office she was known as ‘the little woman’ in Lucas’s life.
But more than once she’d caught herself wondering what it would be like to be his real wife.
Unfortunately, Lucas had his reasons for keeping Leila at arm’s length, though they frustrated her no end. She knew she should give up hoping for anything more, but she still longed for him to take this opportunity to say he wasn’t interested in anyone else, that it was only her he wanted. He could reach out a hand to touch her face, lean in slowly, silently asking permission, and kiss her, right now.
She wanted it so much it hurt.
But he didn’t move. He didn’t speak.
Her nerves frayed and she jumped to her feet. ‘I need some water.’
Early in her new job, Simone warned Kate about the dreaded Judy.
‘She’s a witch,’ she said. ‘No talent, judgemental and with a profile like a Scottish terrier—and yes, her eyebrows do stick out just as much. She hates everyone. Couldn’t see the funny side of a clown’s arse.’
Kate wasn’t sure if she was supposed to laugh or not.
‘Would you like some tea?’ she offered. She’d recently made a fun afternoon blend of lavender, mint and orange peel in a base of hibiscus—something reviving for the team.
‘Hell no,’ Simone said. ‘Awful stuff.’
Kate couldn’t keep the shock off her face.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Kate. I’ve drunk so much tea since I opened The Tea Chest the mere sight of it sends me to the bottle.’ She paused. ‘Of course, I’m sure it’s lovely. It certainly smells lovely. Discuss what sort of packaging you’d like with the graphic designers. Then go home. You’ve been here far too long.’ Simone looked at her gold watch. ‘Blimey, look at the time. No wonder tea’s turning my insides. It’s positively cocktail hour. On second thoughts, go straight home to your man. You can chat to the designers in the morning.’
The Tea Chest Page 4
