Dog Handling

by Clare Naylor

  “Ben, meet Amelia with the tinkling name and body of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” How could any man resist? Well, lucky Ben, he’d certainly come a long way since his early fumblings in that Provençal barn. Liv wondered if he ever thought back to it. Wondered if as they lay on Amelia’s crisp linen sheets bathed in moonlight Amelia and Ben ever discussed their first sexual experiences and giggled fondly. Probably not. “Bloody hell, I had this English girl. Not a patch on an Aussie by the way. They’re always covering up their boobs and diving under the covers. Or in this case the straw. Honestly, talk about looking for a needle in a haystack. Except not very needlelike. More of a space hopper.” At which Amelia would turn and kiss his breastbone, her lithe body in no danger of being concealed. Why would you bother, she probably wondered, putting a dishcloth over the Mona Lisa?

  “Liv, what on earth are you doing?” Alex asked as Liv came to her senses and realised she’d been shredding the beer mat into confetti. “I reckon you need some decent sex. That’s a sign of sexual frustration.”

  “Thanks. Terribly helpful, Al, given my only candidate for romance is probably flirting with some other new girl in town at a party in his flat in Double Bay as we speak and will have taken my lack of appearance at his party tonight as total disinterest and will never even waste his breath speaking to me again.” Liv humphed and scattered the remains of the beer mat across the floor.

  “You might fancy one of Rob’s mates, though,” Alex said brightly, and uncannily on cue Rob and a couple of his less-than-Cartier mates walked in. Liv smiled and gave a little wave, hoping that after her embarrassing seduction efforts the last time she’d seen Robert she wouldn’t actually have to look him in the eye, but Alex had other ideas. She leapt to her feet and greeted Robert with the warmth an Academy Award–winning actress usually bestows upon her little gold Oscar. She fluttered a lot and even tripped up on her way to the bar. Once there she kissed her statuette, formerly Rob, demurely. “Robbie,” she said. Liv finished off the packet of Cheese Twisties in peace and watched the performance. “Come and join us.”

  Liv grinned as she shook hands with Tommo and Simmo, Robert’s burly oil-encrusted entourage. Rob ordered the obligatory round of VBs and smiled broadly as he and his boys came and sat down at the table, their large knees and wide chests making the little corner of the pub suddenly feel very full. Liv was embarrassed for all of a second as Rob kissed her on both cheeks; then she realised he was smiling so hard at Alex that even if Liv had spent her afternoon at the races demanding he demonstrate the kama sutra with her on the coffee table and not merely engaged in a bit of feeble flirting, he would have pushed it to the back of his mind in the wake of Alex.

  “So I’m surprised you’re not at Benjy’s party tonight.” Rob emerged from the shade of Alex’s eyelashes and addressed Liv.

  “Why would you be surprised?” she asked, wondering just what Alex had been saying about her puppylike crush.

  “Ah, just that Amelia was saying that she thought you had a bit of a soft spot for him. That you guys had something going when you were like ten years old. She thought it was really cute,” Rob said, with no idea that he was felling Liv’s dreams and pride like a woodcutter with a chain saw.

  “Well, as for having a soft spot for him, I hardly think so,” Liv snapped defensively. “Actually, the last thing I’m interested in right now is relationships.”

  “Oh really. That’s a bit of a shame,” Simmo, who until now had been gazing at the head on his VB as though it were the elixir of life, suddenly piped up.

  “What are you interested in then, mate?” Tommo asked, like what else was there apart from sex?

  “Actually, my work. Alex and I are going into business together and I’ve just got out of a five-year relationship, so I think love’s the last thing on my mind,” Liv said firmly.

  “Yeah, Liv’s really focused right now,” Alex chimed in.

  Thank god for some loyalty at long last, Liv thought. God knows where Alex’s head had been lately, but it wasn’t devoting much of its time to helping Liv. “So there.” Liv sipped her drink in what she hoped was a businesswoman-type way and tried to pretend she wasn’t oozing boobs everywhere.

  Still, while Liv had clearly deflected the attention away from the idea that she might fancy Ben, for the time being she was secretly mortified at what Amelia had apparently said. Was that how everyone saw her, the hopeless wet English girl who used to follow Ben around? Someone to be indulged like a pathetic pet? Liv imagined that Amelia definitely thought so. Well, at least she knew now that Ben was just being charitable. Probably it was Amelia’s good deed for the day to make him snog her because she’d heard that Liv couldn’t even get Fat Will to call her back. Noblesse oblige or something like that. Playing Lady of the Manor seeing to the peasants’ best interests. So Liv began to accept that she wouldn’t ever find herself on the receiving end of Ben’s lips again, apart from when he told her to get lost. And now she’d missed his party and probably wouldn’t see him for decades.

  Still, she craved the idea that she might run into him when she was looking gorgeous in some restaurant one night. Bump into him in six weeks’ time when she was out in the surf, standing atop her surfboard looking like some goddess of the deep with miraculously Australian thighs and a golden tan. Because in six weeks she was going to be beautiful and modelesque of course. It was always in six weeks. This seemed to be the optimum time for any miraculous makeover transformation to take place. If you bought a cellulite cream you had to rub it in religiously for six weeks before your thighs were no longer mistaken for the surface of the moon by Russian space stations; if you enrolled at the gym you’d continue to wobble precariously on the treadmill until the sixth week, when you became GI Jane in Adidas leggings; and if you embarked upon a draconian detox diet you had a headache and felt weak for six weeks, then became clear-skinned and happy. There was no such thing as instant perfection. One always seemed to have to wait six weeks. In theory. But Liv knew that once the six weeks were up, if you hadn’t just got bored and forgotten that you were waiting for the New You to emerge from a chrysalis, then you were generally still You. Same wonky eyebrow, same short neck, same ugly feet.

  “Well, mate, it was good to see you again.” Rob slapped Liv on the back and turned to Alex. “So give my regards to Charlie, won’t you?” he said in a bad, stagy way. There was a lot of ham acting going on tonight, Liv noticed but was too tired to be bothered to think any more about it. They had managed to pass the evening with perhaps not the most fun you can have on a Friday night, but it was in no way too boring. Liv had quite enjoyed hearing a few dirty jokes, and Rob was surprisingly sharp and clever for a stable hand. And Alex had been in fine form, chatting about her thesis and her plans for the business and proudly telling stories about her brothers. It hadn’t been too bad at all, given that it was very much not Ben’s party.

  “Good night, all,” Liv said as she clambered into the back of a taxi and waited for Alex to glide in beside her. But instead Rob shut the cab door firmly. Alex just stood there waving. “I’m off to Charlie’s. I left my toothbrush there and you know I can’t get to sleep without cleaning my teeth. I’ll call you in the morning.” Alex smiled and watched Liv sail round the corner without her.

  Liv unlocked the front door and tiptoed past the hut. She could hear the faint murmur of sobs and she noticed that there was a crack of light seeping under Laura’s door, but she also noticed Jo-Jo’s pink handbag on the coffee table in the cottage so presumed that whatever the current crisis, Jo-Jo would handle it. Poor Laura, thought Liv, what a witch Amelia must have been to crush her this much. Liv really did want to find out what precisely had happened, but the time never seemed right to risk another pasta-disasta or some tirade of chanting and mumbling, so she’d just kept her curiosity to herself. Liv spotted the answer machine flicking away in the corner and tapped the button, probably only her mum or Laura’s shrink. The two most trusty callers they had.

  “You have one new mess
age. Message One sent at eleven thirty-nine P.M.

  “ ‘Hey, this is a message for Liv.’ ” It was male, Liv could make out, but sounded a bit whispered, like the guy had wrapped a curtain round himself before speaking. “ ‘It’s Ben. Ben Parker. Listen, I’m sorry you couldn’t make it tonight. I hope everything’s okay, ’cause I was kind of expecting you and I know it’s late notice, but I was wondering if, as we didn’t get a chance to catch up tonight, you’d like to come along tomorrow to spend the afternoon on the harbour with us. There’ll be a crowd, I’m afraid, but well, I’d love to see you again. We’re meeting on Rose Bay Jetty at twelve-thirty. Erm. That’s it. Hope you can make it. Bye.’ ”

  Liv thumped down onto the sofa and stared at the machine as though it were playing an elaborate joke on her and any second now would yell, “April Fool, you idiot!”

  Liv looked at the clock and wondered if it was too late to call Alex. It was just gone midnight, and as Charlie wasn’t there, it didn’t really matter if she woke her.

  “Alex,” Liv said. “Still awake?”

  “Sure am, petal,” Alex said but sounded a bit preoccupied. It occurred to Liv for one split second that she might be indulging in a spot with Rob the groom, but she remembered that he was as poor as a church mouse so put that one into the “unlikely” basket.

  “I’ve been invited to Ben’s thingy tomorrow,” Liv said.

  “Ben’s thingy, eh? And what would that be?” Alex laughed.

  “The harbour thingy.”

  “Oh, the party on the Millie?”

  “What’s the Millie?” Liv feared she already knew.

  “It’s Amelia’s yacht . . . named after her, naturally.”

  “Naturally. Listen, are you going?” Liv suddenly didn’t feel like leaping up and down like a rock star on the sofa anymore as she had done when she’d first got Ben’s message. “Does that mean I have to wear a bikini, by the way?” She knew it shouldn’t matter, but lying seminaked in the unforgiving Sydney sunshine was only marginally more appealing than sticking hot needles under her fingernails.

  “Yeah, we are. Well, I’m going. You could pretend to be an English rose and wear something floaty,” Alex reassured her.

  Liv looked at the abandoned pile of beading and feathers on the sofa. She’d spent the last few days trying out designs for Greta’s Grundies, and maybe she could cobble something together. And perhaps, if she finished this tonight, she would be able to go to the ball after all tomorrow.

  “Okay, I’ll be there. What time?” Liv edged her way towards the needle and thread.

  “Ohhh, I, erm, oohhhh, I don’t know. . . .”

  “Alex, are you having sex? Only if you are don’t let me interrupt you—”

  “Sorry, Livvy, no, you’re not interrupting anything. I was just . . . cleaning my teeth. Now what time? Oh, I reckon about twelve-ish. See you there.”

  So who else could Liv call in a crisis? Suddenly she missed Tim. He used to be her late-night advice line and she felt quite capable of talking to him these days without even a glimmer of a tear, in fact, she thought, with no flicker of sadness, which was pretty amazing. Still, what would she say? “Hey, whoopee dooo, I’ve been invited to expose my pallid flesh on Ben Parker’s girlfriend’s yacht, which is named after her, tomorrow. Do you reckon I stand a chance of scoring some love?” Not exactly, she decided. Ah, Liv knew who’d she’d call, her boys.

  “Dave?”

  “Livvy?”

  “Can we talk?” she asked.

  “Okay, fire away, but you do know that you’re interrupting a pretty impressive dream scene where I was about to seduce Brad Pitt right in front of Jennifer, don’t you?”

  “Sorry, but my need is greater than Brad’s.” Liv lay back on the sofa and began to sew herself the dreamkini.

  “Brad just doesn’t know his needs yet. So what’s the problem?”

  “Problem is that . . . well, did I tell you about the beach thing? About Charlie’s party when I went and sat on the sand with Ben Parker and he tried to kiss me?” Liv asked.

  “Okay, now you have my attention.” Dave audibly sat up and listened.

  “When did I last speak to you?”

  “Yesterday morning when you were being a sad bint because the fat boy hadn’t called.”

  “Oh my god . . . okay, well the thing is this: quite a lot has happened since then. . . ,” Liv began.

  And Liv related, to the strains of much oohing and ahhhing and “lucky bitch”-ing on the other end of the phone, her past twenty-four hours. She relived it all in glorious Technicolor herself and when she was finished put her needle down and waited for Dave to say, “Lucky you. Go for it, baby.” Which was, after all, the only reason she’d called him. To confirm that she wasn’t morally bankrupt for wishing that Ben would kiss her even though he was going out with someone and that her karma wasn’t going to be kaput for all eternity because she wouldn’t be the one making the phone calls and the moves. She’d be the innocent party slayed by Ben’s devastating charm and entirely blameless. Hell, from what Rob had said earlier on it sounded as though Amelia might even sanction Ben’s seduction of Liv.

  Sadly, though, Dave said no such thing.

  “Dog handling, dog handling. Didn’t I tell you, darling?” he practically sang down the phone.

  “No, I’m not interested in dog handling anymore, Davo. What I want is to know if it’s really awful to be wanting to kiss someone else’s boyfriend. I mean I know that it is, but he was once mine and possession is nine-tenths of the law and so maybe I still have a stake in him and I’m really only reclaiming my right. Right?”

  “Shut the fuck up a minute, honey. For starters, where Amelia Fraser is concerned we have no qualms about morality. She wears fur and once shagged a friend of mine whose pregnant wife was actually in labour as she was getting her gums around his plums. So lose that concern.”

  “Holy moley. That’s fantastic. God, thanks, Dave, now it’s all going to be fine and—”

  “I said hush. Has something really significant not occurred to you here?” Dave asked, now getting out of bed to locate a can of Coke—this was going to require energy.

  “Like what?” asked Liv, but she was losing interest. She’d heard all the good bits, and the best was surely just filler. Now she needed her beauty sleep.

  “Like the fact that you have completely proved my theory on dog handling.”

  “How?” Liv wondered.

  “Okay, you went to the party and because you saw the fat guy at the other end of the room you were so busy trying not to be seen by him that you completely abandoned Ben Parker. Right?”

  “Well, yes, but I didn’t mean to. I mean I would have stayed and talked to him if I hadn’t seen Will.”

  “But Ben didn’t know this. All Ben sees is a girl who doesn’t want to talk to him. A girl with a ball who doesn’t want to play.” Dave was very excited at the confirmation of his closely held theory. “So naturally our dog is intrigued. He wants more, so he comes back to the girl as she’s about to run out of the door and leave the party and begins to sniff her.”

  “I was only going to leave because I was so worried about escaping Will.” Liv frowned; she really should be asleep now if she wasn’t going to have shopping bags under her eyes in the morning.

  “And then . . . god, my darling, you were abso-bloody-lutely wonderful. Because then came the pièce de résistance. My clever dog handler gave away just a little; she strolled out onto the beach in an insouciant fashion with her cardigan cleverly buttoned up and she chatted sweetly and showed our dog what a lovely, loveable girl she was and then . . . she refused to kiss him. Perfection. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  “But, Dave, I would have kissed him if I didn’t pong to high heaven,” Liv said, though she was beginning to see a pattern.

  “But he was still on your case, wasn’t he? He didn’t think oh, she doesn’t want to kiss me, so I’ll go eat worms and die. He invited you to his party and then—h
ow I love you, my darling clever Liv—when you didn’t show tonight he dashed into the bedroom when Amelia wasn’t looking and called you, desperate to know you better, to have you. And all because he thinks he can’t have you.” Dave collapsed back on the bed in a heap. “This is almost better than Brad’s perfect little legs wrapping themselves around me in my dream. I’m so glad you called me.”

  Actually, Liv wasn’t terribly glad she’d called Dave at all now.

  “Does that mean that he doesn’t fancy me and it’s only because I’m dog handling that he wants me?” Liv was a bit concerned.

  “No, he doesn’t do this to check out chicks in the supermarket. Just that if he does fancy you and you press the right buttons and don’t give him what he wants when he wants it then YOU RULE.”

  “I do?” Liv was unconvinced and nervous. “Then how do I get to kiss him and carry on ruling?”

  “So simple you’ll choke. All you need to do tomorrow is rock up on the jetty wearing something divine, not look at him at all, and barely even acknowledge his presence. But when you do, you have to be heaven on a pole or he’ll just think you’re a bitch.”

  “But do I get to kiss him?” Liv was bursting to know. “Or else really what’s the point?”

  “The point comme toujours is that you make him fall in love with you. You’re not just a one-night stand or some floozy in a bikini. You’re the real McCoy. The love of his life. But the good news is that you do get to kiss him tomorrow. But then you have to back off. Right away. Say thanks, but no thanks, I could not possibly, as you have a girlfriend and, frankly, this isn’t on my agenda right now.”

  “I say that?” Liv was not convinced.

  “Not in so many words. But this isn’t until you’ve shown him that you’re a very competent girl in the bedroom department and can do whizzbang tricks. Or at least just give him the impression that you might. Don’t actually perform for him yet.”

  “Fuck. Like what?”