Pants on Fire

by Maggie Alderson

  He snorted.

  “I’m going to tell you anyway. Guess who Plonker Pollock is madly, deeply, passionately in love with?”

  “A mirror?”

  “No. Glow’s editorial assistant, nineteen-year-old Seraphima. He follows her round like a lost puppy. It’s pathetic.”

  He harrumphed in an unimpressed way.

  “And Jasper O’Connor is back with Tania. And Liinda Vidovic’s new man is a gorgeous Rasta. And Maxine’s having a wild affair with one of the shrinks from Debbie’s clinic.”

  He yawned theatrically.

  “And there’s another passionate love affair. My brother Hamish . . .”

  A black eyebrow shot up above the mask.

  “Is engaged to . . .”

  Up went the other one.

  “Debbie Brent!”

  I know that would get his attention. He sat up in bed and ripped off the eye mask.

  “What? How terrible. How fabulous. Oh my God—when did that happen? Oh, imagine their children . . . Imagine them in bed together, aaaaaaaah . . .” He fell back onto the pillows. His eyes were all red. He looked terrible.

  “Well, it hasn’t actually happened yet, but it might, you never know. They look fabulous together.” I laid it on with a trowel. “What happened to your eyes, Dolly?”

  “Nothing. Tell me more about your brother and the future Mrs. Hamish Abbott. Lucky bitch.”

  “It’s just wishful thinking at this stage, but when you see them together, it just looks right.”

  “I bet it does—and I suppose Johnny adores him.”

  “Yep.”

  “Imagine all of them together . . . It’s too much. How divine. How completely sick-making.”

  “You look pretty sick right now, I must say. What did you get up to last night? Why did you have a party here instead of coming to mine?”

  “I didn’t have a party here. I spent the evening alone. I can’t bear leaving parties. I hope you had a nice time . . .”

  I glanced back at all the empty bottles. He’d wasted himself.

  “Well, I did have an OK time,” I said, slightly mollified. “But it would have been much better if you’d been there. So, are you at least going to come to the airport with me?”

  “No. You must go to the airport on your own. Saying goodbye is always unsatisfactory and you’ll find it much easier to be brave if you’re by yourself. Trust me.”

  Now I was really pissed off with him and I think it showed. He paused and then continued down even more briskly.

  “What you don’t understand, Pussy, is that I have a pathological hatred of saying goodbye. I’ve said it too many times to people I love who will never come back. I can’t bear it. It never works. That’s why I didn’t come last night—and I’m not going to say goodbye to you now either. I’m going to get up and go to the loo and when I come back you will be gone. OK?”

  I could see he was serious. I knew there was no point in arguing with Antony once he’d made one of his proclamations, but I still couldn’t believe he was behaving like this. Did a year of friendship mean nothing to him?

  “OK,” I said, with a big sigh. “But before I do my Captain Oates act—I may be gone some time, etc—I want to ask you to do one favour for me.”

  He raised one of those eloquent eyebrows.

  “Rory Stewart came to the party, but he didn’t ask for my number in London. Everybody else did. I know he could ask Billy, or Debbie, for it but I want him to know that I want him to have it. Would you ring him and give it to him? Here’s his number.”

  I thrust a piece of paper at him. He ignored it.

  “No,” said Antony firmly, and then he got up and walked out the French window, across the roof garden and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

  And that was the last I saw of Antony Maybury. But as I turned to take one final look at his apartment before closing the door, I noticed a photograph in a silver frame on the bedside table that hadn’t been there before. It was of him and me, at the Cointreau Ball.

  Lots of people rang up offering to drive me to the airport, but I decided to take Antony’s advice. It is easier to be brave when you’re by yourself. So I told them all that he was taking me and we wanted to be alone and, to be on the safe side, I said I was leaving two hours later than I really was, in case any of them were planning a last-minute surprise farewell. Antony was right. Better to make a clean break.

  Finally the time came to go. I said goodbye to my little flat, picked up my few bags—I’d given away all the homey stuff I’d acquired—and went downstairs to find a taxi. Every moment of that ride to the airport was impossibly charged with emotion and memories.

  Up through Victoria Street, Darlinghurst, where I’d drunk so many lattes. Past the Albury, where Antony, Betty and Trudy had taken me to see a drag show. Past the Grand Pacific Blue Room, where I’d downed so many cocktails. Look—there was a gum tree. There was a frangipani. There was the clear blue sky. Oh Sydney. Oh Australia. When would I see it all again?

  So much for being stronger on my own. By the time I reached International Departures I was weeping solidly. Fortunately I was so early for my flight there was no one there to see me, except for a kind man who materialised next to me at the counter and handed me a clean white cotton hanky.

  It was Rory Stewart.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, grabbing the hanky. “I always bump into you by chance, when I’m making a total prat of myself.”

  “That’s what you think. Chance can be carefully contrived you know, Georgia.”

  I looked at him, bewildered.

  “We’ve only met by accident once,” he continued. “The first time.”

  “But I’ve bumped into you loads of times—at the rodeo, at the hospital, at Michael and Cordelia’s, at the races, at Debbie’s clinic . . .”

  He was shaking his head and smiling.

  “All carefully staged, Georgia. I knew you were going to the rodeo. I just hung around until I found you. Billy told me you were going to be at Cordelia’s party—except he told me you’d be alone—and Debbie told me you were going to the races. Then Jenny let me know when you’d be at the hospital—and the clinic—so that I could accidentally turn up at the same time. And Antony Maybury told me you were going to be at this check-in desk right now.”

  I stared at him like a halfwit. Antony. My dear darling Dolly.

  “Is that how you knew I was on QF1?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  My mind was still racing. “But what about that time at your parents’ house? You seemed pretty surprised to see me then.”

  He made a face. “Yes, you’re right. That was a surprise. There were several surprises that night. Let’s just say you were the pleasant one, OK?”

  I stood there looking at him, trying to take it all in. I was expecting him to leave at any moment, based on his usual form.

  “Well,” I said eventually. “Lucky you’re here, because now I can give you my bloody phone number, even though you’ve never asked me for it.”

  I scrabbled around in the bag at my feet for one of Antony’s new address cards to give him. Rory bent down and stopped me, pulling me up.

  “I don’t need your address, Georgia.”

  What was wrong with this man? Did he have some kind of phobia about telephones?

  “And I don’t need your phone number—because I’m coming with you.”

  He kicked something and I looked down and saw he had two suitcases by his feet. He pulled a ticket out of his back pocket and slapped it onto the counter next to mine.

  “Two seats—next to each other, please,” he said to the girl behind the desk.

  I just gawped at him.

  “But what about the farm and your parents and Scooby and everything?”

  “You’ve always said I do things for other people, so I’ve finally decided to do something for myself. I’ve got a place at the Royal College of Art in London. And you don’t have to worry about the farm—Dad’s r
elieved I’m going.” He laughed. “He says I’m the worst farmer he’s ever come across and he’ll be glad to have my sour puss off the place. They’ve hired your brother Hamish to manage it for them—and he’s promised me he’ll take good care of Scoobs.”

  I was still binking at him like a goldfish.

  “Rory, I’m so happy for you, it’s great that you can go back to your painting,” I said.

  He laughed again and put his hands on my shoulders.

  “You still don’t get it, do you, Georgia? I’m coming to London to be with you.”

  He was right. I couldn’t take it in.

  “But I still don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? You’ve never even asked me for my phone number, and you’ve had so many opportunities.”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK. At first I couldn’t because you were sort of Billy’s squeeze, and then I wanted to but you’d seen me with, er, another woman and I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of a playboy. Plus you were with that plonker fellow and I didn’t think you were interested. And then I read an article in Glow called something like ‘Phone Torture.’ It was about women who give men their phone numbers and then wait in agony for the men to call them—and I decided I was never going to do that to you.”

  He stopped and held my face in his hands, looking at me the same way he had on that hilltop at Welland.

  “Because I love you.”

  And then he did kiss me.