Jo was beginning to lose the will to live when she realised Belle had come to an end, of that avenue at least.
‘Anyhoo, he was just so lovely,’ she was saying. ‘I mean, really genuinely likeable. Didn’t you find him just so likeable, Jo? Well, of course you did, what am I saying? So I just can’t believe that he would have cheated on you. Did he actually cheat? As in cheat cheat?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ Belle hesitated. She took a long drink from her glass then set it back on the table, gazing solemnly at Jo. ‘Did he actually sleep with another woman?’
Jo pictured the scene in his office doorway, the way Carla was pressed up against him. And more telling, the look on his face when he realised Jo was watching. Besides, he more or less admitted culpability with his ‘at least she’s not married’ remark. He cheat cheated all right.
What the hell was she thinking? Bannister didn’t cheat on her. He was a single, unattached man who hooked up with a single, unattached woman at work. This whole charade was messing with her head. But she couldn’t tell Belle the truth now, she’d dug the hole too deep already. Maybe she could still play the game without telling more lies.
‘Yes,’ Jo said finally, ‘he actually slept with another woman.’
Belle winced. ‘Okay. Now, I want to say something, Jo, and I hope you’re not going to take it the wrong way. But didn’t you say you were still seeing that man? So doesn’t that mean that technically you were cheating too, right?’
This was getting murky.
‘Did he know? Did Joe know you were seeing that man?’
Jo nodded sheepishly.
‘Then why is he in the wrong?’
‘I didn’t say he was in the wrong, I just said that he slept with someone else and we broke up.’
Belle frowned, considering her. ‘Who broke it off?’
Murkier and murkier.
Jo hesitated, anything she said would be an outright lie.
‘You did, didn’t you, Jo?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘That pride of yours. I mean, the guy knows you’re seeing someone else, you’re insisting on taking it slow, what’s he going to do? He has his pride as well. I mean, maybe he was trying to get a reaction out of you, see how you would feel, if you were jealous. There are so many possibilities. You two really need to get together and talk it out and see if you want to try again, for real this time.’ She paused, watching Jo. ‘Have you even talked about it?’
‘Not really.’
Belle sighed. ‘I just think you’ve got a real chance with this guy, Jo. I mean, let’s face it, you haven’t exactly given yourself much of a chance with anyone else, considering they’re always married. Which I’ve never been able to understand, Jo, much as I try. I mean, I know why you do it, or why you think you have to, but I’ve never understood it. And I knew you’d just think I was a prude if I said I disapproved, and well, I don’t have a right to disapprove anyway, it’s not my life, and you’re a grown woman, and let’s face it, after the example Mum gave us, maybe you couldn’t help it or something.’
Eew. Jo didn’t like the idea that somehow she had been conditioned by Charlene, much less that she was following in her footsteps.
‘Anyway, can you imagine how happy I was when you showed up with someone you could actually have a future with?’ Belle gushed. ‘I’ve been on a high, that’s why I was so devastated when you told me what he did. And so worried about you. I just can’t understand why this had to happen to you, when it’s taken you so long to trust again. It seems so unfair. And I wouldn’t want this to set you back.’
Set her back? Where to? Did everyone think she had a disability she was heroically learning to overcome?
The intercom buzzed again. Jo had no idea who it could be, but she was grateful for the interruption. She had to get Belle onto a different track.
‘Are you expecting someone?’ asked Belle, her eyes wide. ‘Maybe it’s Joe, come to apologise, beg you to give him another chance . . .’
What if it was Bannister? That could get awkward.
Jo roused herself. Of course it wouldn’t be Bannister. She was allowing herself to get sucked into this little fantasy scenario of Belle’s. She had to find a way to close the book. She walked over to the intercom and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi Jo, it’s me, and I have a bottle of bubbly in my hand.’
Jo smiled, relieved. ‘Come on up, Ange.’ She pressed the button to release the door downstairs and hung up the receiver.
‘It’s Angie?’ Belle said brightly. ‘This is really turning into a girls’ night.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Of course not, it’ll be fun.’ Then her face dropped. ‘Oh, sorry, that was a bit insensitive.’
It took Jo a second to twig what she was getting at. ‘Don’t be silly, I don’t want to sit around moping all night.’
‘Does Angie know . . . you know, the latest?’
Bugger. When worlds collide. How was she going to stage manage this? She was trying to fabricate a reason to ask Belle not to talk about it when there was a knock on the door. Too late now.
Jo hurried over to open it. ‘Hiya,’ she said, receiving Angie’s hug. ‘Just go along with whatever I say, okay?’ she whispered in her ear. ‘Look who showed up a little while ago,’ she announced, stepping back to let Angie through.
‘Hi Belle!’ she said crossing over to her. ‘Wow, footloose and baby-free. How did you manage that?’
‘The twins are two years old now. I figure Darren can handle it.’
‘Too right.’
‘Besides, I wanted to be here for my sister. You heard about her and Joe?’
‘No, has something happened?’ She turned to Jo expectantly.
‘He slept with Carla,’ Jo said quickly.
Angie pulled a face. ‘Carla?’
‘Yeah, so much for being my soul mate, eh?’ She might just be able to swing this after all.
‘Bugger,’ said Angie, plonking herself in an armchair. ‘Carla? I would have thought he had better taste.’
‘Well, that’s hardly the point,’ said Belle primly. ‘Who’s Carla anyway?’
‘Trampy McTramp-Tramp from the Trib,’ Angie told her. ‘She does the social pages. And I mean, does them.’
‘Okay, so now that we’re all up to speed, can we talk about something else?’ Jo asked hopefully.
‘No way, I want to hear everything.’
‘They broke up,’ Belle said sadly.
‘Who?’
‘Jo and Joe, of course.’
Angie looked confused, not surprisingly. But she quickly recovered. Jo knew she could count on her to improvise, but she’d have some explaining to do later.
‘So . . . you broke up?’ Angie said, raising an eyebrow at Jo. ‘Because he slept with Carla?’
‘That’s right,’ Jo said plainly. ‘What choice did I have?’
‘Well, things have certainly moved ahead at a cracking pace. Last I heard, you were thinking of Joe while you were having sex with Lachlan, so –’
‘Jo!’ Belle exclaimed. ‘This is exactly what I was trying to say to you. Angie, I said that Joe was probably confused –’
‘What’s she confused about?’
‘No, no, I mean Joe, guy Joe.’
‘Oh,’ Angie murmured. ‘So what’s he confused about?’
‘About whether she was really committed to him,’ said Belle, ‘because she was still seeing that man.’
‘That man?’
‘Lachlan,’ Jo informed Angie.
‘So,’ Belle resumed, ‘Joe – guy Joe – maybe he slept with Ms McTrampy to get a reaction out of Jo – our Jo. Don’t you think that’s possible? So I reckon Jo – our Jo – needs to decide once and for all what she really wants. And she should start by getting rid of that man, don’t you think, Angie?’
‘Couldn’t agree more.’
‘And then she should have it all out with Joe,’ Belle went on. ‘They should both
lay their cards on the table.’
‘I, for one, would certainly like to see all the cards laid on the table,’ Angie nodded. ‘Face up.’
Jo rolled her eyes. ‘Who needs a drink?’ she asked, she hoped divertingly, when the intercom buzzed again.
And Jo had thought she was going to be lonely tonight.
She walked over to the intercom. This time it had to be Lachlan. He would have told Sandra by now, and he was probably ducking for cover. But she couldn’t let him come up here, it’d be like feeding him to the lions. She picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi . . . Jo?’
It wasn’t Lachlan. Jo held her breath.
‘It’s Joe Bannister.’
She turned into the wall. ‘Look, this is not a good time.’
‘Is Lachlan there?’
‘No, Belle and Angie are.’
‘Who is it?’ they whispered loudly in unison.
‘I just need to talk to you for a minute,’ Bannister was saying. ‘It won’t take long.’
Jo was startled by Belle’s sudden materialisation at her side. ‘Is it Joe? Ask him up.’
‘Hold on a sec.’ She covered the receiver with her hand and turned to look at her sister’s expectant face. ‘Yes, it’s Joe. But I’m hardly going to ask him up here now.’
‘We’ll disappear into the bedroom, won’t we, Angie?’
Angie had stepped into the kitchen to make herself a drink. ‘Sure,’ she called. ‘We’ll still be able to hear everything from there, won’t we?’
‘Which is exactly why I’m not going to ask him up,’ Jo stated firmly.
‘But he must want to make things right,’ Belle pleaded. ‘Why else would he be here? You have to hear him out at least.’
Angie came out of the kitchen holding a glass. ‘You really should hear him out,’ she agreed with a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘What are you afraid of?’
Jo glared at her. ‘Fine, but there’s no way he’s coming up here.’ She put the receiver back to her ear, elbowing Belle out of the way.
‘Joe,’ she said, ‘give me a minute, I’ll come down.’
‘Okay, I’ll be waiting.’
She hung up the receiver. ‘Happy?’
Belle clapped her hands together. ‘Yes! As long as you’re going to be honest and open with him, and accept your part of the blame.’
Jo sighed, crossing to the coffee table and skolling the rest of her drink. She passed the glass to Angie. ‘Fill her up. I’ll be back in a minute.’
She walked out to the lifts and pressed the button for down. She didn’t like leaving the two of them alone, but she was pretty sure Angie had it covered, she was enjoying herself too much. The doors slid open and she stepped in, pressing G. As the lift descended, it occurred to Jo that maybe she could use this to her advantage. It could actually give her an out. Whatever happened, and she really had no idea what Bannister wanted to talk about, she would be able to tell Belle that she had ended it. Finito. Over and out.
Jo stepped out of the elevator when it reached the ground floor. As she crossed the foyer to the glass entrance doors, she couldn’t see Bannister, but when she pushed them open, she spotted him leaning against a lamppost. He shoved his hands in his pockets and ambled over towards her.
‘Thanks for coming down,’ he said.
She stood there, folding her arms. ‘What did you want to see me about?’
He took a breath. ‘I spoke to Leo about the Iraq trip.’
‘You did?’ She wasn’t expecting that.
He nodded. ‘You shouldn’t worry, it’s just a press junket. They hand-pick high-profile journos and take them around to show them all the reconstruction projects, the training of Iraqi nationals, the good stuff, so they’ll go home and write positive pieces.’
‘I seem to remember Lachlan suggesting something like that about what you were doing over there,’ Jo said, ‘and you didn’t take it too well.’
‘Because it’s not the same thing,’ he maintained. ‘Look, it’s dangerous going into Baghdad now, I’m not going to lie to you, but it’s in the best interests of the military to protect this group. They’ll be heavily guarded, travelling around in armoured Land-cruisers. You should see these things, they’re like tanks. It’s a Joint Task Force responsibility to provide protection for diplomats and government personnel working at the Australian Embassy. It’s what they do. And there’s the Military Police Detachment as well who primarily function as bodyguards for visiting VIPs. They will be under tight protection at all times by people who know the situation and know what they’re doing.’
Jo bit her lip, thinking. ‘What about the other place they’re going to, in the south, wasn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘The OBG-W has a security overwatch role as part of the larger coalition force. But they’ll be kept well away from any hotspots. They’ll only visit the headquarters at Tallil. I guarantee you, they won’t be taking any risks with this group. The whole point is to prove that violence is down since the surge, so they’re not going to take them anywhere that has even the potential for violence.’
He looked very earnest about it all, like it really mattered to him.
But it couldn’t matter to him.
‘Why do you care?’ Jo asked.
‘I don’t particularly. But you do, so . . .’ He shrugged, staring down at the footpath.
She felt self-conscious, and a host of other feelings she did not care to name. ‘Look . . . Joe . . . I owe you an apology for the way I behaved today, the things I said to you. It was inexcusable.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘You were upset.’
Why was he doing this? Guilty conscience over Carla? He didn’t need to feel guilty, he was a free man, he could sleep with whomever he wanted. So why was he here, and what did he want from her?
‘So you came here just to tell me this?’ said Jo.
‘There was one other thing . . .’ He hesitated. He seemed nervous. ‘Um . . . I just wanted you to know that Carla was a mistake. A knee-jerk reaction.’
Jo frowned. ‘A knee-jerk reaction to what?’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m just saying, it’s not going to happen again. With Carla.’
Though her heart was doing strange palpitations, Jo tried to appear nonchalant. ‘Well, that has nothing to do with me.’
‘Yes, it does.’
She looked up at him and he was gazing unblinking back at her.
‘We both know that it does, or if you don’t know that it does by now, then I guess I’m trying to make it clear that it does. For me.’ Christ, was he even making any sense? ‘Anyway, it’s on the record now.’
Jo didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure she wanted whatever she said to go on the record.
‘So, I’ll let you get back to it . . .’ he said, backing away from her. She still hadn’t said anything, but she did look a little rattled. That was probably a good sign, he decided. And she was watching him, her eyes were locked on him, in fact. He’d had that urge to kiss her again, which is why he’d backed away. If they were in a movie he would have pulled her into his arms and held her just so, and she might have resisted, for a moment, and then their lips would have met and their noses wouldn’t bump or their teeth knock against each other . . . But this wasn’t the movies and he had to bide his time, play this right. And he wasn’t going to become entangled in some kind of weird interlocking triangle with Mr and Mrs Lachlan Barr. He’d made his position clear, and Jo knew where he stood. Now it was up to her.
She was still watching him. ‘See you at work,’ he said, raising his hand in a wave, and then he turned and walked away up the street.
‘So, what happened?’ said Belle breathlessly as Jo walked through the door a few minutes later.
She had been trying to make sense of it on the way up in the elevator, but she wasn’t any the wiser before the lift doors opened on her floor. What just happened? Had Bannister actually ‘declared his intentions’? Or had Jo got the wrong id
ea, having missed some vital piece of information, some crucial scene in a film. She hated when that happened, when she drifted off in the middle of a movie and was never quite sure after that if she was supposed to be confused or whether she had missed some essential plot point. That’s what this felt like. Nothing had happened between them, they’d been trapped in an elevator, after which they were not exactly friendly, then they were friendly, then not friendly, and then all of a sudden he’s telling her he’s not going to sleep with Carla again and it has everything to do with her. What exactly did he expect her to do with that?
Angie and Belle were still waiting for an answer.
‘Um, well, we . . . talked,’ she said, attempting to sound offhand. But Belle was not going to leave it at that. Nor was Angie, by the look on her face.
‘What did you talk about?’ Angie prompted her.
Jo dropped into the vacant armchair and leaned across to pick up her drink. ‘Um, Iraq mostly,’ she said, before downing half the contents of the glass.
Belle’s face dropped. ‘What?’
‘He came to tell me about the envoy of journalists that’s going to Iraq.’
‘Is he going back?’ asked Angie.
‘No, Lachlan’s going. They made an announcement about it at work today.’
Belle frowned. ‘I don’t get it, what’s that got to do with Joe?’
‘Nothing. I was upset about Lachlan going, and he wanted to reassure me that he’ll be safe . . .’
‘That’s a little weird,’ said Angie.
‘But sweet,’ Belle added. ‘Is that all he said?’
Crossing Paths Page 26
