by Kate Gordon
I kiss my best friend on the cheek. “Thank you for that movie-style declaration of love. All we need now is for it to rain and you to say...”
Joe laughs, and we say it in unison: “Is it raining? I hadn't noticed.”
“Ahh, Hugh,” he sighs.
“And Andie,” I add. We lapse into silence for a moment as we think of them, standing in the rain, soggily in love.
Finally, Joe speaks. “I mean it, though, about keeping the faith. Are you hearing me, Maddy?”
I puff out my cheeks and exhale. “It's just, we tried Facebook and the newspaper and— “
And it's just at that moment, when I'm starting to feel just the tiniest bit despondent, that my new cheap mobile begins to ring.
30
I'm sitting by the window, on a precarious red stool, a mocha coffee in my hand, and a man who is not GA beside me, telling me all about taxation law.
His name is Pete. He's a Nice Boy, in capital letters, and we are having a Nice Time.
He saw the flyers on his way home from work. He is an accountant. He is very, very excited by accountancy.
“Sorry, I'm boring you.”
“Hmm?” I say, as I frantically wrack my brain for even the tiniest scrap of information about anything he’s just told me. Nothing. Crickets.
Pete notices my discomfort. “I get it. I’m sorry. I bet you thought you'd be meeting someone much more interesting when you answered your phone last night. I promise you, I can be interesting.”
“Really?” I say. When he looks stung, I realise how rude I must have sounded. “Sorry,” I add, quickly. “I'm on another planet. You're very interesting, Pete, I promise. I just had a long day at work.” I flash him an apologetic smile. “The thing is, I'm just wondering, Pete, why you responded to the flyer? I really thought GA — the man who actually wrote the graffiti — would be the only one to take notice of it and get in touch. Why did you?”
He shrugs and takes a sip of his flat white. “I saw the article in the paper, and then the Facebook page. I put two and two together — using my mathematical prowess—” He grins and rolls his eyes. “—and figured out that it was the same thing. I thought it all sounded really intriguing and I wanted to meet you. I'm sorry if you think I've been fraudulent, or—”
“No, no,” I blurt, shaking my head. “I don't think that at all.” It's true. I actually don't feel any ill-will towards Pete. He seems a lovely guy. I'm sure he had nothing but good intentions. “The first contact that was made was a journalist. She was being deliberately fraudulent. The second contact never showed up—”
“Oh,” Pete says, looking at the floor. “Well. That was, kind of, me...”
My head jerks up. Now that I was not expecting. “You're the person who stood me up?” I ask, my warm feeling towards Pete cooling significantly. “Why on earth would you do that? I waited—”
“I know,” he says, shame-faced. “I saw you. I was there. And I was going to approach you. I was, I promise, but … I saw this other guy looking at you. This sort of, older, businessman type. In a tweed jacket and he was just looking at you as if he wanted to own you and I thought, well, you know … he's the sort of man who should be with a woman like that. A beautiful, charming, smart woman deserves to be wined and dined and made to feel like a queen. I’m not rich. I only recently got into accountancy. Before that, while I was studying, I worked at Coles. And I'm not … handsome, like he is. Not charismatic. Not … anything, really. I'm just a guy who loves taxation law. I have no aspirations to be a rock star or a famous painter. I like my job. I like my little flat in Moonah. It's close to the shops. It's got a big backyard for Leon to play in.”
He looks into my eyes and beams. “Leon’s my rescue dog. He's part kelpie, part whippet, part God knows what else and I love him to bits. But the point is, I like my life. It may not be exciting but it's mine and it makes me happy. The only thing that would make it perfect is having someone to share it with and I thought … I don't know, I had this crazy moment when I read your article in the paper and I thought … I don’t know. It was some crazy flight of fancy, I guess.”
“But then you stood me up,” I remind him. “Because you saw another man looking at me?”
I don't add that I have a fair idea who that “other man” was. I also don’t tell Pete that I stood up that very same man, just a couple of nights ago.
I'm attempting to take a moral high ground here.
Pete nods. “Yep. I lost my nerve.”
“And then you located your nerve again, when you saw the posters?”
“Not exactly. I'm kind of doing a favour for a friend, being here tonight.”
My head is reeling. “So, first you do want to date me, then you don't, and now you're doing a favour for a friend?” I was wrong, thinking Pete was nice and normal. He's clearly a very strange boy indeed.
“Yeah, see, I was walking with my mate who's just come back home for the holidays. We were just going for a quick catch-up drink, actually, after I finished work, and I saw the poster. I said to him, 'Hey, that poster. That's that girl I nearly dated. The one who looks like Mischa McPhee. And he said, 'You know, I used to know a girl who apparently looked just like Mischa McPhee — everyone was always commenting on it. Did my head in.' And I said, 'I wonder if it's the same girl', and he was curious too, so he sort of … sent me here. To find out.”
The mug in my hand is shaking. “Your friend,” I whisper. “What's his name?”
“Tim,” Pete says, and the floor beneath my feet gives way. “Tim O'Reilly.”
31
Tim O'Reilly and I went to university together. He was in the year above me, and he was the most popular boy in the whole faculty. Everybody knew Tim O’Reilly’s name, but for the first couple of years I was there, he didn’t even know Maddy Matthews existed. And I saw him only as the gorgeous, clever boy who all the girls wanted to be with. I never thought he’d be anything more than that. After all, I wasn’t anything special. And he really was.
It was at a birthday party, at the end of second year, that things changed. I was sitting with Joe on the couch, drinking lemonade while the rest of the students got drunk on Vodka cruisers. Joe was one of them.
I actually, did that cliché thing — I “caught Tim's eye, across a crowded room”.
And something inside me twisted.
Trouble was, he didn't feel the same about me. Our eyes might have met across the room but his very quickly moved on, scanning the other female “talent” at the party until he locked on a girl much more his type.
Bryony Edwards was in my year, but unlike me, she was model-tall, blonde and gut-churningly beautiful. She was also an honour student, and on a million different committees. She and Tim were made for each other.
He was drawn towards her, like a magnet to sparkling metal. And we were in his path.
And that’s when Joe spontaneously felt the need to vomit.
Tim looked, justifiably, horrified. “This shirt cost a hundred dollars!” he squeaked. “It's Ralph Lauren.”
“I really am sorry. He's a bit … drunk.” I gestured at Joe. Proving my point, after his Linda Blair moment, he'd fallen promptly asleep and was now snoring, bent over the side of the couch.
“It's fine,” Tim muttered. He glanced around the room. I realised he was searching for Bryony.
“I'll buy you a new one!” I blurted.
“What?” His eyes narrowed. But they were still the most amazing shade of green. “What did you say?”
“I said I'll buy you another one.” I gestured at his shirt. “Ralph Lauren. It's only fair. My friend wrecked this one. I'll buy you another.”
Tim inclined his head. “I can't let you buy me a new shirt. You … don't exactly look like you could afford it.” He gestured at my op shop dress and moth-eaten cardigan. He was right.
“Let me buy you tea, then,” I blurted, frantically, and my belly rumbled at the thought of it.
Tim heard the growling and laughed. “Sounds lik
e you need to buy yourself dinner. Didn't you eat? It's nine o'clock.”
“Plenty of places still open,” I said. I was growing in confidence as my hunger distracted me from my nerves. “Come on. Let me. Anything you want to eat, it's yours.”
“Well, I could go for some steamed chicken,” Tim said, looking thoughtful. “Or fish?”
“Steamed fish?” I gasped. “It's nine o'clock and you've been drinking. Wouldn’t most people want a kebab or a bag of doughnuts?”
Tim shook his head. “Training for soccer. Lean protein. Macros. You know?”
I did not know. But … “Well … okay.” I said, much more eagerly than I usually would at the threat of “macros”. “Let’s get some protein.”
“What about your friend?”
I looked down at Joe, still snoring. I'd forgotten about him. “Oh yeah,” I sighed. “He'll have to come too.”
And so, Tim and I dragged a groggy Joe down to Mures, where I had an ice cream sundae, Tim had fish and something green, and Joe fell asleep again under the table.
And Tim and I talked.
Well, mostly, Tim talked, but it was fascinating. The sound of his voice was mesmerising. Hypnotic, almost…
“Madeleine?”
“Hmm?” I blinked my eyes a few times. I was aware, all of a sudden, of a wet sensation on my knee. I looked down. The ice cream that had been sitting on my spoon had melted. It was now in a big pink blob on my second-hand dress.
“Sorry!” I rubbed at my leg with a serviette. “I was listening. I’m just … I'm a bit tired. That's all. It's late.”
“Yes, we've been talking for hours,” Tim said, smiling. “But did you hear what I asked you?”
“Um … no,” I admitted. Tim's forehead creased in annoyance. “Sorry, I was just … worrying about Joe.” I poked him with my toe. He emitted a little squeak, then rolled over and rested his head on my foot.
“I think he's fine,” Tim sighed. “I'll ask you again. Will you help me with my English assignment? I have to write an essay on the poems of John Donne and I don't understand a single word the man's saying. I mean, compasses, and humours and metaphysics and harmonies and paradoxes and … arggh! But that's your thing, isn't it? Metaphors and similes and whatever? You’re doing the Arts thing for real, aren’t you? Whereas I’m just taking a few electives, along with my finance degree, so I’ll look well-rounded on my CV. You can help me?”
My heart nearly exploded. I was! I was good at English! And Tim O’Reilly had noticed!
“Yes!” I cried, maybe a bit too loudly. Tim looked startled. “Sorry.” I tweaked down my volume to a more normal-person level. “Yes, Tim. I'd love to help you with your assignment.”
And after that, I would quite like to marry you, I didn't add.
And so began my association with Tim O'Reilly. I'd call it a relationship — and, at the time, I did — but in hindsight that would be giving it a weight it didn't actually have. I loved him. I called him my boyfriend to anybody who'd listen. I told Joe I was going to marry him.
And it wasn't as if he didn't give me any encouragement. He kissed me a lot.
I let him touch me, too, in places I’d never let boys touch me before. I didn’t even mind that he touched my belly, which — at the time — I was deeply self-conscious about.
We only met at my house. I was never allowed to touch him in public, and he told me I shouldn’t say “hello” to him at uni.
I never questioned it. I never questioned anything much that Tim said, or did.
He didn’t like to be argued with. He didn’t like to be called wrong.
It made him angry. I didn’t like it when Tim got angry.
It frightened me, a bit.
The whole thing went on for nine months. He started getting better marks in English. He started getting me to do more and more of his assignments — in Social Studies and History, too, now. He kissed me. I planned our wedding.
Of course, I told Dad all about him: my “new boyfriend”. I told him how wonderful and charming and smart Tim was.
Dad said he was happy for me. “As long as you're happy, Poppet,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “But I would like to meet the fellow at some point.”
I brought the subject up with Tim, after a late-night study session. He just cocked his gorgeous head to one side and said, “Why?”
In fact, that was Tim's response every time I suggested we do something together that wasn't school work or kissing. I got the same answer when I suggested we should go out to tea for our six-month anniversary. I didn't mention it was our six-month anniversary, of course, just in case he'd forgotten.
He hadn't forgotten. He just hadn't realised we had an anniversary, because he hadn't realised we were dating.
Joe tried to tell me.
Time and time again, he'd ask little, leading questions like, “So have you two ever been on an actual date?” (“No, but—”)
Or “So, on semester break, when you texted him for a whole week and he didn't reply and you had no idea where he was, did he ever give you a reason for that?” (“No, but I'm sure —”)
“Have you hung out with his friends?” (“Okay, still no, but there could be dozens of reasons why—”)
And then there was the kicker: “Has he ever called you his girlfriend?”
No.
No, Tim never did introduce me to anyone as his girlfriend. He never really introduced me to anyone at all.
I made excuses for all of it: He was a private person, he still hadn't come to grips with his new iPhone, he preferred to save his money in a term deposit, rather than going out to tea all the time. That was wasteful. Tim was sensible. And of course I really was his girlfriend.
I made excuses for his temper, too. I made excuses for the marks on my shoulders where the textbooks sometimes connected, when he was frustrated. I pretended I wasn’t as nervous as I was, all the time.
I'd never had a proper boyfriend before. Maybe this was all normal.
Dad changed his tune soon enough, too. “Any young bloke who won't meet your old man after all this time doesn't rate very highly with me, Poppet,” he said bluntly one day, over cake to sweeten his words. But they still hurt, because I cared what Dad thought. And because a small part of me knew what he was saying was true.
It all came to a head when uni wrapped up before Christmas. In a weirdly ironic twist, we both got invited to Bryony's Christmas party.
Or, at least, I thought it was ironic, until I arrived.
I knew Tim was going, and I asked if we'd be going together. He told me he'd be meeting up with some friends from soccer beforehand and maybe he'd see me there. I asked if I could come with him and his friends but he just waved his hand and mumbled something about it being an “invite-only” sort of thing, with a “tight-knit group”.
“You'd feel out of place,” he said, kindly, I thought then. “Better you just go with Joe. I'll catch up with you at Bry's.”
At the time, I didn't notice how casually he said her name — Bry. I was too focussed on the way he kissed my cheek after he said it; how good he smelled, how gorgeous he looked in his angora jumper and cashmere scarf…
Joe and I arrived at the party fashionably late. He’d helped me choose the perfect outfit — a flouncy knee-length skirt, sandals and a tight fluffy cardigan. “I still don’t know if I like the boy,” he’d told me, as he helped me put on my shimmer eye-shadow — “but regardless of that fact, you do have to look incredible. And you do.”
As we walked in the door to Bryony’s enormous house, Joe was grabbed by the elbow by some of his friends, in the middle of a debate about some obscure Andy Warhol movie. It was before his car accident; before he dropped out of uni; before his art school friends slowly, silently, ghosted him. “Do you mind if I go with them for a bit?” Joe asked, looking at me apologetically.
“Of course not,” I said. “I'm off to find Tim anyway.”
I searched for him in Bryony's huge front room, but the only people the
re were some ferals, smoking weed and nodding along reverently to a Fleet Foxes CD.
I finally spotted him in the backyard. He was sitting with Bryony, a couple of boys from his year, and some others I didn't know. There were maybe twenty of them. I assumed they were Tim's “close-knit” group of friends.
I called out Tim's name but he didn't hear me. I started to make my way over to him, ducking and weaving between the party-goers. I called out to him again but still he didn't notice.
Finally, when I was a couple of metres away, he looked up and caught my eye. I smiled and waved.
But instead of smiling back, Tim looked away, towards Bryony. He pushed her long shiny hair away from her neck. He pointed above his head, where a string of mistletoe hung. And then, slowly and tenderly, he kissed her.
32
I should have turned and walked away.
I wanted nothing more than to be able to walk away.
My body was, for the first time, but not the last, betraying me.
My chest was screaming. My heart was tearing. My lungs were empty and my brain was full; crammed to the brim with pain.
My feet were welded to the design-catalogue pavers of Bryony Edwards' garden path. I could feel tears dripping from my chin. I could hear myself gulping and choking.
I could feel the eyes of the party crowd slowly turning their focus to me. I could hear their whispers.
“What's up with her?”
“Is she drunk?”
“What is she doing?”
“What a weirdo.”
“Isn't that Mischa McPhee?”
Finally, Tim looked up from Bryony’s angelic face and saw me still watching. He rolled his eyes and whispered something to the supermodel in his arms. She looked my way and her ridiculously pretty face wrinkled in concern. She nodded at Tim; kissed him tenderly on the lips.
My heart collapsed.
By the time Tim reached me, I was shuddering, sobbing so hard my body was convulsing.
