It’s Not You It’s Me

It’s Not You It’s Me
Allison Rushby

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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ALLISON RUSHBY

Having failed at becoming a ballerina with pierced ears (her childhood dream), Allison Rushby instead began a writing career as a journalism student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Within a few months she had slunk sideways into studying Russian. By the end of her degree she had learned two very important things: that she didn’t want to be a journalist; and that there are hundreds of types of vodka (and they’re all pretty good).

A number of years spent freelancing for numerous wedding magazines (‘Getting on with your draconian mother-in-law made simple!’, ‘A 400-guest reception for $2.95 per head!’) almost sent her crazy. After much whining about how hard it would be, she began her first novel. That is, her husband (then boyfriend) told her to shut up, sit down and get typing (there may, or may not, have been threats of severing digits with rusty scalpels if she didn’t, but it’s okay, he’s a doctor).

These days, Allison writes full-time, mostly with her cat, Violet, on her lap. Oh, and she keeps up her education by sampling new kinds of vodka on a regular basis.

You can read more about Allison at www.allisonrushby.com.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Firstly, I’d like to praise the Goddesses for managing to put Karin Stoecker in the right place at the right time, and Tess for e-mailing to tell me that she was. It’s nice to know that good things do come out of gossip!

Thanks to Karin, Sam Bell and Margaret Marbury, along with the gals of the RDI NYC team, for showing me a good time worldwide. Strangely enough, all the restaurants I went to served excellent gelati and I was left wondering if my dessert reputation had preceded me.

:-) to all my Web-site buddies who read this novel in e-serial form and had the good manners to beg for each new installment.

Danken Sie Gott for Heidi and Thomas who (I hope I got that right!) speak German. Also to Jeff Zalkind of www.worldofcrap.com fame for his “Learn to Swear in German!” page, which came in very handy because Heidi and Thomas aren’t rude-on-command kind of people.

Nibble, nibble to the literate guinea pigs. Again.

But, mostly, hurrah for David. For just hanging in there.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter One

I’ve got approximately forty minutes to spare in the airport lounge, even after I’ve done the obligatory pick up and put down everything in the newsagent thing, and the ‘Ooohhh it’s lovely, but I can’t afford it, duty-free or not’ faux shop. With nothing else left to poke and prod, I find the nearest café and order a skinny latte. I’m sitting, stirring the sugar into my napkin-ringed glass on autopilot, when I hear the announcement reverberate around the airport.

‘Could passenger Mr Jasper Ash please notify the nearest Qantas desk of his whereabouts?’ the voice booms. ‘Mr Jasper Ash—please go directly to the nearest Qantas desk.’

Do not pass go, do not collect $200, I think absentmindedly.

And then the name they’re calling sinks in.

Jasper Ash.

I stand up suddenly, to see if I can spot him. I can’t. Of course I can’t. It’s a big airport, and from the sound of that announcement he’s probably not here anyway. The other people in the café look at me as I frantically search the faces walking past. When I sit back down again I realise why they’re staring—jumping up so fast, I’ve spilled most of my coffee in my saucer and it’s run over and formed a puddle on the table.

Jasper Ash.

Now there’s a flashback.

‘Jasper Ash,’ I say the name to myself quietly, as if mouthing the words will somehow make this all seem more real.

It’s a name I haven’t said, or heard anyone else say, for some time. Mainly because it’s a name that doesn’t get a lot of use any more. Not now that he’s got a new one, that is. A new name. A new name for a new life.

I wonder for a moment whether it’s actually even him—the Jasper Ash I know. But then have to admit to myself that it probably is. It isn’t exactly a common name. And it’s pretty likely he’d travel under it—being his real name, it’d be the one on his passport. It’s not unlikely he’d be in an airport, either. I’m sure he does a lot of travelling these days.

A waitress comes over to wipe down my table for me, and I order another skinny latte as most of the old one’s now retreating to the kitchen in her soggy sponge. While I’m waiting for it to arrive, I can’t help but think back to the days of Jasper Ash.

We met—it must be almost three years ago now—because he was looking for a new place to live. He was going steadily crazy where he was at the time. The guys he’d been living with—all engineering students—were too noisy for him and constantly gave him ten kinds of crap about studying voice and piano at the Conservatorium. He told me once, later on, that when he read my ad in the classifieds of the Saturday papers he couldn’t believe his luck. A cheap share on trendy, hip and young Magnolia Avenue, complete with a river view? Right near the best shops, the best restaurants and within walking distance of the Conservatorium? He’d thought it was simply too good to be true.

Still, Jasper being Jasper, he didn’t ring early about the room, and it would’ve been almost three o’clock in the afternoon when he turned up on my doorstep already over half an hour late. I was actually surprised to see that he’d made it to the door. Half the people who’d made appointments to check out the room that day hadn’t even turned up. Well, that’s probably not quite true. Most likely they’d turned up, parked, seen the place and driven away at high speed. I’d expected that, though, because 36 Magnolia Avenue—Magnolia Lodge, to its residents—was a little, um, different from the rest of Magnolia Avenue.

Different. I laugh to myself with a small snort now, making the people seated at the few tables around me in the café look over again. Magnolia Lodge, different. That’s the understatement of the new millennium.

The thing was, the rest of Magnolia Avenue consisted of trendy little townhouses with big wooden decks, cosy braziers, remote garages and low-maintenance courtyards. Scattered in between these were dinky little cafés and shops that only ever sold one kind of thing—designer products for pampered pets, frozen life-on-the-go takeaway gourmet meals, five hundred kinds of scented candles, and so on.

Well, ‘and so on’ kind of stopped at Magnolia Lodge. Magnolia Lodge was tucked up right at the end of the street, hidden in the corner as if it were a decrepit old organ that was being rejected by the rest of the street’s sprightly young body. The fact of the matter was number 36 was not so trendy, not so hip and definitely not so young. It was actually more like a pensioner palace—a thirty-apartment block full of old people and…

…me.

The token young person.

Well, at least it was a politically correct apartment block.

I could see the ‘this wasn’t what I was expecting’, mouth hanging open, shocked surprise written all over Jasper’s face when I opened my front door. At another time I probably would have had a laugh about it and asked him if he was trying to catch flies or something, but the truth was I’d just about had it with finding someone to rent the spare room in my apartment for some extra cash. This was the third Saturday that I’d been ushering people around the place. And those were the polite ones—the ones who hadn’t done a runner when they finally found the apartment block behind all the shrubbery.

‘Hi, I’m Charlie—Charlie Notting.’ I stuck my hand out.

He shook it. A good shake that made me lift my eyebrows. It wasn’t like most of the soggy Weetabix handshakes I’d been getting in this doorway lately. ‘Jasper Ash,’ he said.

I invited him in and offered him a drink, which he declined. Instead, he just stood in the middle of the living room and looked around.

‘Not what you were expecting, hey?’ I got right down to it.

‘Never—’

‘Never even knew it was here.’ I finished off the sentence I’d heard from just about anyone who’d ever knocked on my front door. I tried not to sound too defensive as I said it.

He nodded.

‘Nobody does.’ I sighed then, wondering just how many more times I could do this before someone’s blood ended up on the carpet and I lost my bond money. ‘Would you really like to see the place, or are you just being polite?’

He turned and looked at me then, and I felt bad. I hadn’t meant to snap, but I’d just about got to the end of the line with this whole showing people around thing. This was my home. I liked it. And having several people every Saturday for three weeks in a row slag it off wasn’t my idea of a good time.

I think Jasper might have got what I was really saying by the tone of my voice, because he shook his head then. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice—the apartment. Just didn’t know the street went up this far.’

I started to warm to him a bit when he said that. This guy—Jasper—he was perhaps a bit nicer than the other people I’d shown through. He seemed sincere, anyway—as if he really did think the apartment was nice—which was a start. I took a deep breath in and tried to quell my nasty side. ‘Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.’

We did the whole thing. The kitchen, the bedrooms, the two bathrooms, even the garage, despite the fact that Jasper didn’t have a car. Eventually we headed back inside and stood on the balcony overlooking the garden and, beyond that, the river.

‘Wow. Really is a river view, isn’t it? It’s magnificent.’

‘Yep.’

‘What’s that?’ He pointed at something down at the end of the garden.

‘Oh, that’s the shed. It used to be a boat shed, but the people who live here are mostly too old to be messing about in boats now, so they let me use it instead.’

‘What for?’

‘I’m a sculptor—that’s what I do. When I’m not waitressing to pay the bills and trying to finish off my degree, that is.’

‘You’re a slash person too, huh? Probably a good sign.’

I gave him a look. A slash person? ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I hoped he didn’t have a machete stuck down his pants.

He laughed. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Just that everyone our age seems to be a slash person these days. Waiter-slash-actor, waiter-slash-writer, waiter-slash-artist. I’m a music tutor-slash-songwriter myself. A waiter-slash-sculptor-slash-uni student, yeah? That’s great. Never met one of those.’

I had to laugh when Jasper had finished explaining this to me, because it was true. Everyone did seem to be a ‘slash person’, as he called it, these days.

Personally, I was trying to cut my slashes down and just be a waiter-slash-sculptor by finishing off my last subject at uni—the last few credit points before they would finally give me my BA in Fine Arts. Finally. I’d stuffed around here and there, and left all the subjects I didn’t fancy but had to do till last. While I should have graduated last semester, there was one subject—a Modern History one—that I couldn’t quite seem to pass. Mostly because of the vast number of dates the subject required me to store in my brain. There was just something about dates and my brain that didn’t click. Anyway, this was my second attempt.

I was about to tell Jasper as much when there was a knock on the door. I went over to find that it was Mrs McCready, who wanted to let me know they were about to have high tea and a game of croquet on the lawn in a moment or two.

‘Wonderful,’ I said to her. ‘I’ve got a lovely tin of lavender shortbread that I’ve been saving. I’ll bring it down with me.’

When I closed the door and turned to head back to the balcony, Jasper had moved and was now standing facing me. ‘Lavender shortbread?’

I stopped in my tracks, right there in the middle of the living room, as I realised that my quelling-the-nasty-side thing obviously wasn’t permanent. It didn’t seem to matter how well we’d been getting along, talking about slash persons. All it took was this one little comment and a tiny smirk from Jasper to bring the past weekends rushing back at me, pushing me over the edge into shrew territory. I put my hands on my hips then and let it rip.

‘You know, I like it here. It’s a bloody great apartment for the price, and the people here are really nice. So what if they’re old? They care about each other, and that’s more than I can say for any of the apartments I’ve lived in before this.’ I paused for a breath. ‘God, I could have died in one of those places and no one would have known until the smell wafted out or someone’s cat coughed up my eyeballs. If you had any guts you’d come downstairs with me and actually have some lavender shortbread and maybe play a game of croquet. It wouldn’t kill you.’

Jasper just smiled an amused smile. He leaned back on the balcony, calm and composed. As if he owned it, really. ‘No idea what you’re talking about. Just never heard of lavender shortbread before, that’s all.’

I took my hands off my hips, uncertain. ‘Oh.’

‘I’ll play a game of croquet. Have some of that lavender shortbread too, if you’re offering.’

There was a pause. I cleared my throat. Cleared it again. ‘OK, then. Let’s, um, go.’ And I grabbed the tin out of the kitchen, trying to avoid his gaze as I passed by. Then, together, we trundled off downstairs.

Down in the garden, Mr Nelson was setting up the trestle table and the ladies of the Lodge were hovering around him, waiting to put their darling little china plates of miniature sandwiches and butterfly cakes onto it.

‘Here, I’ll give you a hand with that.’

Jasper, to my surprise, went straight over to help Mr Nelson out. When he was done, he introduced himself. I put my tin of shortbread on the now erected table and introduced him round to everyone else. Mrs Holland, who made the best cucumber sandwiches—buttered, without crusts, the secret was to use real butter, not the low fat, olive oil, canola-based stuff that seemed to be all you could get in the shops nowadays—Mrs Kennedy, who made the best iced tea, Mr Hughes, who made the best Victoria sandwich, and the two Miss Tenningtons—identical twin sisters—who weren’t the greatest cooks, but were always able to provide the best gossip in the whole building. We overlooked the fact that they made half of it up. It was still good gossip.

Introductions over, Jasper and I made ourselves comfortable in two low-slung deckchairs to watch the first game of croquet. We had to have those chairs—everyone else claimed their bones were too old to get out of them. When Jasper had watched long enough to work out what was going on, we played a game ourselves, highly unsuccessfully—the two Miss Tenningtons creamed us with their years of experience—but we had a great time anyway.

As we played, I got to have a better look at Jasper. I hadn’t really had a good chance before, during the tour of the apartment. And then, of course, after the lavender shortbread incident there’d been a lot of deliberate non-eye contact. But now I saw he was taller than I’d first thought. Very tall. Maybe six-foot-four? Thin too—but not in the too-skinny ‘my mother never fed me’ way—and very dark, with almost black hair and equally dark eyes.

The one thing I really noticed, however, was his manner. My God, but he was lovely. He was charming, in that fifties kind of fashion which you see only infrequently these days, in women or men. Not the kind of fake ‘let me open the door for you, my dear’ sleazy charm that makes hard-core feminists want to pull their armpit hair out in frustration and leaves the rest of us wishing we’d had the good sense to grow some so we could do the same, but the kind of charm that makes everyone around the person who exudes it feel good about themselves.

It’s a gift, that kind of charm. And it was a gift that Jasper was using in full force that day. He was laying it on thick—flirting shamelessly with the Miss Tenningtons, who tittered around coquettishly, loving every minute of it and vying against each other in the way only identical twins probably can for his attention. It occurred to me that with his looks and his manner he should have been Irish. Or a film star. One of the old ones. The proper ones, like Jimmy Stewart.

I stopped myself then, realising I was letting my imagination get the better of me. What was I going on about?

When the game was finished, Jasper and I sank back into our deckchairs with some iced tea and a plate heaped full of tiny cucumber sandwiches, a few butterfly cakes and some of the lavender shortbread, which was proving to be quite a hit.

‘So?’ I eventually said to him, mouth full of butterfly cake. ‘What do you think?’

‘They’re the best.’ He held up half of the butterfly cake he was eating. ‘This place, though, it’s a bit strange.’

‘What do you mean, exactly?’

‘Er, croquet on the lawn? Butterfly cakes? Cucumber sandwiches? Bit like being in the middle of a Miss Marple film, isn’t it?’

I understood what he meant then. All too well. I’d had the same thoughts myself for the first few weeks after I’d moved in. ‘Don’t worry, sooner or later you’ll hear Mr and Mrs Ruben in apartment 21 screaming at each other and throwing the crystal around and you’ll take the Miss Marple thing back. I did.’

‘Ah. So these are just the civilised people?’

I nodded and laughed as I dusted some icing sugar off one side of my mouth. ‘Pretty much. They’ve all got their secrets, though, just like everyone.’ I leaned in towards him then. ‘Mr Hughes, for example, has been having a rendezvous or two with Hilda Tennington. I’ve caught her sneaking out of his apartment a few times now.’

‘Really? Hilda? Sly old dog.’

‘Apparently he needs his eye drops put in for him.’ I nodded as conspiratorially as I could before I leaned back out and started talking normally again. ‘What I really meant to ask you about was the room.’

‘Oh. The room. I’ll take it, if that’s all right. Long as you can promise me I won’t be the one who’s murdered at the start of the midday movie.’

‘I think I can promise that.’

‘My piano? That’ll be OK too?’

‘It’s fine with me. It’ll be nice.’

‘What about everyone else? They mind?’

I looked around at them all. Somehow, I didn’t think so. ‘Jasper, if I know them as well as I think I do, they’ll probably be knocking down the door to have sing-alongs. You’d better learn how to play “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” before you move in. It’s their collective favourite.’

‘Easy enough. Then I’ll take it.’ He stuck out his hand for me to shake to seal the deal. ‘But only if you call me Jas.’

Chapter Two

So, Jas it was.

And after the ladies had made him polish off the few leftovers on the table we waddled back upstairs. I made sure we were out of earshot of anyone else before I told him the one and only condition of his moving in.

He could only stay till the end of the year.

I explained that it wasn’t personal or anything. None of us—the whole fifty-two, three cats and two illegal dogs—who lived in the building would be here this time next year. Because, in approximately eleven and a half months’ time, Magnolia Lodge was going to be demolished to make way for a swanky new apartment complex. One hundred apartments, a pool and a gym. One hundred apartments that you couldn’t swing a cat in, but would look like all the other hundreds of apartments and townhouses in the rest of the street.

Jas said this was fine, that he’d be finished uni by then and was planning on moving to Sydney when he was done.

He moved most of his stuff in that night.

Over the next six months or so, we got on brilliantly. Even better than I’d thought we would. Our lifestyles suited each other, for a start. When we weren’t at our crappy jobs—waitressing at a café for me, piano-tutoring at a kids’ music school for Jas—or at our separate unis, we were busy at our ‘real’ work.

I’d be sweating away down in the boat shed, welding together my latest piece of sculpture, or making my way to the dump to search for interesting pieces of scrap metal to use for my next. I was thinking about holding an exhibition in the middle of the next year. Meanwhile, Jas would be tinkering away at the piano, songwriting. Sometimes, if the wind carried to the boat shed just right, I could hear him playing the same bar of music over and over again, adding a piece, subtracting a piece, the song getting longer, in fact becoming a song, as the days passed. Our work was similar in an adding, subtracting, trying things out way that eventually led to an end product after a lot of sweat and a bit of good luck.

When we needed some time off we’d head to the local swimming pool, have a barbecue in the nearby park, or just take a walk. Once I took him to Byron Bay for a week, to visit my mother. He was blown away. Not a great surprise, because most people were by my mother and the things that surrounded her: by her house, which was wooden and built over five levels down a hill to make the most of the view; and by her own sculpture, which dominated every room and the front courtyard of the house and was made entirely of sandstone—not like my metal productions at all (to tease me she would call me ‘junkie Charlie’ because of my frequent scavenging trips). But mostly by her, with her booming voice and large-enough-for-a-whole-group-of-people personality.

The real surprise was the fact that she liked him back. Suffice to say that Mum didn’t get on with all that many people. She either liked them or she didn’t, and usually she’d tell them her verdict within the first five minutes of meeting them. Sometimes it could be quite embarrassing.

She told me on the phone, a few days after we left, that Jas would be very famous one day. She could tell by his aura. When I relayed this to him, Jas thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, but he still called her back pretty smartly to see if, hopefully, she had any other nice big fibs to tell him.

Community life at Magnolia Lodge went along swimmingly too. Right from the moment he started flirting with the Miss Tenningtons on the lawn, Jas was a hit with the elders of the building. The funny thing was, after a few months of our living together, a rumour seemed to have passed around that we were married. We became officially Jasper-and-Charlotte to the people we knew fairly well, or ‘the nice young married couple in apartment 10’ to the people we knew only in passing.

One day, when we came home, there was an invitation under our door to my own wedding shower, organised by Mrs Kennedy in apartment 14. I went over, invitation in hand, to explain that we weren’t really married, but when she opened the door Mrs Kennedy and the three other ladies who were there planning the party were so excited I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth.

It was a recipe shower, as it turned out, and I still have all the recipes in the scrapbook they gave me today. I don’t use the Miss Tenningtons’ mutton one very much—never, in fact—but the caramel fudge one from Mrs Holland comes in quite handy on rainy Sundays.

Jas and I became even more involved in building life after our fake marriage. We played croquet every second Saturday, and even started going to bingo on the second Tuesday night of each month. After our first night at bingo we made a pact.

We would draw the line at bowls.

Bowls, we decided, would be taking it too far. Apart from the white uniform being expensive, and a little more than unflattering, we agreed that it was probably best to save something for our own retirement.

As we got to know the people in the building better, little treats started to turn up on our doorstep. Lemon butter. Lime butter. Passionfruit butter.

There was a lot of butter.

Pumpkin scones, fruit scones and plain scones were also popular.

We’d do little things in return. Change lightbulbs. Open tough jars. Things like that. Whatever we could, really. But while things were tottering along beautifully with everyone else, it was at this time, around the six-month mark, that Jas started to act a little oddly.

I’d always thought it was strange that he never brought any friends back to the apartment. In fact, a few weeks after he’d moved in I’d noticed this and thought that maybe he was worried that it wouldn’t be OK with me. So I mentioned it, asked if he wanted to have a house-warming or something and invite all his friends along. He just shook his head. He was busy, he said. With his work. Now, I knew that he didn’t get on with his family very well, that they didn’t agree with what he was doing—studying music—but there must be people he socialised with, and why he didn’t want them in the apartment was a mystery.

As for me, I had people over by the dozen. My mother, my aunt Kath, friends from work, the odd love interest—whoever.

I didn’t give up on the friends thing with Jas, though. I would ask again, every so often, just in case he changed his mind. Or, that is, I kept asking until things went a bit strange. Because all of a sudden Jas started bringing people home. Every weekend. Always different ones.

And all girls.

The first time, I didn’t think much of it. I got up on a Saturday morning, half dressed, and went into the kitchen to find some tall blonde girl there I didn’t know. I knew Jas had been out the night before with some people from uni, but I didn’t know he’d brought someone home. I said hi, made a hasty cup of tea and scooted back to my room with the paper. When I emerged an hour or so later she was gone, and Jas didn’t seem to want to say anything about it.

The next week, it was the same.

There was a girl there Saturday morning.

And a different girl there Sunday morning.

All blonde and all tall. Well, maybe there was one bordering on brunette and one you might have called strawberry blonde…but always a different girl.

The weekend after that there weren’t any girls. Not here, anyway, because Jas didn’t even bother to come home.

Things went on like this for weeks. Girls arrived, then disappeared mysteriously early in the morning of the next day. For the short periods of time it was just us in the apartment Jas hid in his room, working furiously. He avoided me. He avoided everyone. He stopped going to croquet, he stopped going to bingo, he even looked as if he’d stopped eating, he got so thin. The ladies pressed new recipes on me, fattening recipes for lasagne and roasts and bread and butter pudding with butterscotch sauce.

I went through stages. At first I was worried—this wasn’t like Jas, not like the Jas I knew, anyway. Why was he suddenly so withdrawn when we’d been getting along so well? I tried to talk to him, but he dodged the questions, avoided me, simply didn’t come home. It carried on and on in the same way. The girls kept coming and would leave around midday. I’d stay holed up in my room until they left.

It was embarrassing, having to go out into the kitchen when there was a 99.9 per cent chance there’d be a half-naked girl in there who always looked too good for that time of the morning. And generally with a smile that even lemon-scented Jif and the scratchy side of the kitchen sponge wouldn’t be able to wipe off her face.

I just didn’t feel comfortable.

After weeks and weeks of this, I started to get a bit shitty. I was sick and tired of being a prisoner in my own room every weekend morning. And things had heated up. Girls came over during the week. And when, one Saturday, a few of my CDs went missing, I moved up from shitty to simply furious. I didn’t talk to Jas for the rest of the week and decided that if things kept up like this he was out.

But things didn’t stay like that at all. Because after that Saturday the girl thing stopped just as abruptly as it had started. Jas didn’t go out with the friends from uni any more, either. The friends I’d never met.

During the week that it all came to a halt Jas took me out for dinner and apologised awkwardly. He said he’d been stressed, that he’d gone a bit crazy, hadn’t known what he was doing, but now knew he’d been acting like an idiot. He promised it wouldn’t happen again.

I didn’t know where to look. I mumbled something in reply and that was that. After that evening we didn’t talk about it again. And a few weeks later things returned to almost normal between us.

For a while, anyway. Because as time passed I started to realise something about myself. A thing that came as a bit of a shock.

I knew I’d overreacted a touch about Jas having all the girls over—and I’d felt as guilty as hell when I’d found the ‘missing’ CDs under my bed a few weeks after Jas had hit the emergency stop button on the chick conveyer belt. In fact, I’d worried and fretted and carried on about the girl thing so much I was behind on my sculpting. Uni was suffering too. I’d already had one extension on an assignment I couldn’t seem to get started, and it didn’t look like as if it was going to be handed in any time soon. I’d simply spent hour after hour during those weeks sitting in the boat shed doing nothing. Staring at the walls. Staring at the floor. Staring at the ceiling.

And I was still doing it. The staring thing. Especially if I could hear the piano.

It wasn’t just that, either. There was the weekend thing too. The thing where I’d wake up at five-thirty or so every Saturday and Sunday morning like clockwork and lie there, wondering if there was a girl in Jas’s room. Praying that there wouldn’t be and being overjoyed when it was true.

I kept on like this for months.

And by the end of the year, just a few weeks before we were due to move out, I was so far behind on my work I realised I was never going to catch up in time to hold my exhibition. Not that I even wanted to any more. Because I’d been slowly realising that there was something wrong with it all. Something not quite right.

I couldn’t relate to what I was doing, where I was going with my sculpture—couldn’t get involved. Up at the apartment I’d hear Jas working away, completely absorbed in his songwriting, frustrating me with every note he played on the piano. I would have given anything, anything to be able to block out the world around me like Jas and my mother seemed to be able to do for hours at a time.

Things had only got worse on the uni front as well. I’d received a conceded pass on my assignment, and was now trying to convince myself that the saying ‘third time lucky’ might just be true, because it certainly didn’t seem as if I was going to pass on this, my second, attempt. It was the worst of times. And then, as if all of the above wasn’t enough to be getting on with, I worked something out.

I’d been sitting there in the boat shed, doing little or nothing as per usual—unless you could call kicking around the bits of scrap metal on the floor doing something—when it came to me. I could hear Jas playing and singing. A new piece I hadn’t heard before, or couldn’t remember. It was perfect, whatever it was, and I knew he must have written it himself. It suited his voice, which I noticed instantly, because a lot of things other people wrote didn’t. He had a strange voice, low and raspy. Very distinctive.

Halfway through his song I became startled and coughed. I’d forgotten something. To breathe, in fact. And I needed to desperately. I felt something strange and brought one hand up to my chest. My heart was going thumpa-thumpa-thump. That’s when it came to me.

I was completely, desperately, totally, devotedly, idiotically in love with Jasper Ash.

I was in love with Jas.

Why I hadn’t realised it before was beyond me. It was so obvious.

The feelings I’d found so hard to control when he’d had girl after girl over for the night. The waking up early every weekend morning. The sitting and listening when I should have been working. The…oh, everything.

It was cringeworthy.

So that’s what I did. I sat for a bit longer. But this time, instead of staring at the walls, staring at the floor, staring at the ceiling, I cringed. Long and hard. And when I was done I wondered just what I was going to do about this. This…love thing. The L thing. It didn’t take me long to realise there wasn’t much I could do.

It was pointless.

In two weeks’ time, Jas and I would be packing our belongings into boxes. In three weeks’ time we’d be moving out. Jas to Sydney and me to my mother’s place in Byron Bay. And there wasn’t any way I could change that. Not my plans anyway, because my mother needed me. She was sick. And I was going to go and look after her.

There wasn’t any way Jas could change his plans to move to Sydney either, because he’d made this great contact. Some guy in the music industry who might be able to get him started in the business. So that was that. To say anything now would be pointless.

Futile.

Basically, an all-round waste of time.

Chapter Three

So, I shut up about it. I hid my feelings.

Oh, probably not very well. I have to say that much. I was probably as transparent as the thinnest of thin rice paper. I probably mooned around the apartment like a lovesick cow. But Jas didn’t seem to notice, or if he did he didn’t say anything, and things continued as usual.

Until our third last day together.

We’d been fairly busy up until then. Of course everyone in the building had to leave, so we’d spent the last few weeks running around and helping out with the odd spot of packing. Wrapping up endless china cups and knickknacks for the arthritic Miss Tenningtons—why old ladies always seem to own about a hundred china cups and saucers in rose patterns that never match is beyond me—and waving people off as their families came and transported them to, usually, nursing homes.

By our third last day together, our third last day in the apartment, just about everyone we were close to had gone. There was only a handful of people left in the entire building. It was quiet. Too quiet. Even the building seemed to know it was coming to the end of its days, because the day before the lift had stuck between floors—thankfully, there was no one in it—and had refused to budge for twelve hours. It had taken five workmen to get it started again.

It was almost midnight when I got home on that third last day. I’d just finished my last shift at my crappy waitressing job, and though I should have been ecstatic I wasn’t. The day before I’d been notified that I had officially failed my Modern History subject. Again. I had a million boxes to pack. I had to move. My mother was sick. All my friends from my days at Magnolia Lodge were being packed off to nursing homes around the country that they didn’t want to go to. My sculpture had died a slow and painful death. Life wasn’t exactly great.

When I got up to the apartment and opened the door I was surprised to find it was dark inside, even though Jas had said he’d definitely be up late packing. Just as I was about to turn the light on there was a noise—a chair scraping against the balcony tiles. I dropped my hand from the light switch and looked out to see Jas stand up.

‘Hey,’ I called out, wary, a part of me already sensing something was wrong.

‘Come and take a seat,’ Jas said.

I crossed the floor, dropping my bag and keys on the dining table on the way.

‘What’s up?’ I tried to read Jas’s expression as I sat down in the iron chair he’d pulled out for me. Before he could answer, something distracted me. I sniffed. Sniffed again. Spotted the small plastic bag on the balcony ledge, then the papers and the lighter. ‘Is that…?’

Jas made a face. ‘Was. Sorry.’

My eyebrows lifted. I hadn’t seen Jas smoke before. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Don’t know how to tell you this, Charlie…’

‘What? What is it?’ I started to get scared. ‘Is it Mum?’

‘No. No, nothing like that. It’s Mr Nelson.’

‘Mr Nelson? What’s wrong with him?’

Jas paused. ‘He died this afternoon, Charlie.’

The information didn’t really register at first. I’d waved at Mr Nelson that morning as he stood on his balcony, and only a few days ago I’d run over to his apartment to give him an old toiletries bag I didn’t need any more. He’d mentioned he needed one. And Jas—Jas had been over there all the time. He and Mr Nelson got on like a house on fire—they were always up to something. Usually no good. Their favourite pastime was swapping dirty jokes. Preferably dirty jokes about blondes. What was it with blondes?

‘It was a stroke.’

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. No protests to make. I simply stared up at him blankly, then back down again at the balcony floor.

Jas kneeled down in front of me and put his hands on my knees. ‘Can I get you something? A drink? Water?’

I tried to say no, but nothing came out.

‘Charlie?’

I shook my head, unable to meet his eyes.

Jas stood up and pulled out another of the chairs to sit beside me.

And then we sat.

We sat there for ages on that balcony. Just sat. Saying nothing. Watching the shadows move around on the lawn and the ferries travel up and down the river.

At about twelve-thirty a.m. I got up. ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ I said.

I showered until I’d used all the hot water up. Then I stood there for a bit longer as the water got colder and colder, until it was freezing, almost punishing myself. I don’t know why. Now, I think maybe the sensation of the too-cold water made me feel something other than the numbness I’d felt since I’d walked through the door and heard the news.

When I finally emerged from the bathroom, Jas wasn’t on the balcony any more. I walked into the kitchen to see if he was there, which he wasn’t, then went back to the bathroom, still drying off my hair. ‘Jas?’

‘In here.’ The voice came from his bedroom.

I hung my towel over the bathroom door before going over and pushing his door open slightly. He was lying on the bed. Face up. ‘You OK?’

‘Yeah. Just tired.’

I went in and lay down beside him on my stomach, my chin resting on my hands.

It was then that we talked about Mr Nelson. I can’t remember exactly what we spoke about, but I remember we talked for hours. In the end, not just about him, about…everything.

And I must have fallen asleep right where I was, because I remember waking up halfway through the night and looking for my bedside clock to check the time. This confused me because, of course, not being in my bedroom, it wasn’t there. I must have woken Jas up then, because he rolled over and his arm landed on top of me. Now we were both on our sides.

Kind of close.

Actually, from my point of view, more like kind of achingly close.

I stayed as still as I could. I didn’t move in case he moved. I didn’t dare.

Then, slowly, it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be able to control myself. Or my arm, anyway. Because my arm, independent of my sanity, started to snake up and under his arm and over his back. And with a little levering we were closer still. Close enough to…

…kiss.

Which is what I started to do to him. Very softly at first, so soft that he didn’t even wake up. But that didn’t last very long. Because, like I said before, I couldn’t control myself. I couldn’t help it. It just…happened.

As I leaned in even closer, my heart was thumpa-thumping again, like it had done in the boat shed all those weeks ago, and I remember this strange feeling washing over me. Half of me was petrified of what Jas would do when he woke up, the other half was so excited I didn’t think I would be able to wait until he did. It was excruciating.

And then he woke up.

His eyes flicked partly open and his body jerked, startled. I knew then that this was it. Whatever happened next was how it was. How he really felt. There was a sickening moment as Jas started to pull away…

But then he leaned in. Even closer. And he started to kiss me back.

It was—well, even now I can’t explain it. I’ve never been kissed like that before, or again. I don’t think I ever wanted anything that badly, so for it to actually happen—I wasn’t even sure I was really awake. The one thing I could tell, though, was that he wanted it to happen too. Because the moment he’d opened his eyes and realised what was going on he’d seemed relieved for a split second. As if he’d been waiting. Biding his time the same as I had.

We kissed for what seemed like for ever. Until I decided it wasn’t enough.

Still painfully nervous, I inched my way on top of him. And I mean inched. I was so scared. Scared that this bliss would stop at any moment. But we kept kissing. And I kept inching. Finally I was there. At the summit. I had climbed Mount Everest. If I’d had a flag, I would’ve stuck it in.

Charlie was here.

I became gamer then, spurred on by my victory. I ran my hands underneath his T-shirt and then, in one swift movement, pulled it over his head. His chest was just beautiful. And, yes, I know everything I’m saying is so cliché and next I’ll probably be using awful words like ‘glistening love cavern’, ‘glowing milky-white orbs’ and ‘throbbing, pulsating manhood’, but that’s how it was. I mean, after all the lusting I’d been doing over the past month or so, Jas could have had a full third nipple and I would have waxed lyrical about its lickability or something.

And, oh God, as if things weren’t good enough already, he then ran his hands up over my thighs and onto my hips, pushing my white cotton nightie up in the process.

I thought I would die.

But not before I’d remembered my manners and thanked my fairy godmother for giving me the foresight to shave my legs that morning and not to wear my rotten old men’s pyjamas with the easy-access fly panel that was, well, a bit rude at times.

He rested his hands on my hips then, on top of my undies, and I prayed, prayed, prayed as hard as I could, to the goddess Hussy, that he would just rip them off. But he didn’t. His hands slid down again onto my thighs.

I started to get impatient then. Why don’t men ever know there’s a time for foreplay and a time to get straight down to business? I’ll never understand it. I didn’t want to get bossy, though, so I decided to get even gamer instead. I wiggled my hips down, down his body, until…

Eureka!

I found what I wanted. What I needed. And, my, it was glorious. Truly glorious—there are, after all, benefits to a guy being six-foot-four. It was everything I’d been dreaming of in that boat shed and more. So, Charlie, I told myself. This is it. Really it. Not that silly flag stuff on Mount Everest, but country-conquering territory.

Slowly, slowly, I snuck my hand into his boxers. I wanted so badly just to grab it, but I didn’t. I like to think I’m a lady! Instead, I prolonged the agony. I ran my hand over his hip and down onto his leg. Over his stomach and…oh, everywhere. Everywhere but. And when I couldn’t wait any longer I went for it. But then something went wrong.

I stopped, confused. It was, um, shrinking. And, frankly, that wasn’t something on my agenda. It wasn’t something that was supposed to happen.

Oh, fuck.

‘Charlie—don’t.’ Jas had frozen. ‘Just get off me,’ he added, scrambling up, pulling my hand out of his boxers.

I moved just as fast off the top of him and onto the other side of the bed.

And inside my head I swore and swore and swore.

The one thing I was grateful for was that it was dark in the bedroom, like the balcony had been before. This was a good thing, because for that awful, quiet moment before anything was said I knew that I just never wanted to see Jas again. I wanted the bed to engulf me. For me to sink right in, where no one would ever find me. To never have to hear what he was about to say.

I waited, all the time just dying inside. Withering away. And those words kept repeating and repeating themselves in my head. Charlie—don’t. Get off me. Charlie—don’t. Get off me.

At first, sitting on the other side of the bed, Jas didn’t say anything. Then he sort of groaned, and that was it. But it was a telling groan. Or at least I thought it was. A ‘how embarrassing, my flatmate’s just jumped me’ kind of groan. Charlie—don’t. Get off me. Charlie—don’t. Get off me.

And then it started. ‘Charlie, I…’

Charlie—don’t. Get off me. Charlie—don’t. Get off me. I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Just say it. And quickly.’

He stopped. Ran both his hands through his hair. ‘Don’t know what to say…’

‘How about “you’re repulsive, Charlie”? Oh, too late. You already covered that. No words required.’

He reached over somewhere beside the bed then. I watched his hand.

Oh, no. No!

The light turned on.

As if it wasn’t bad enough just to hear what he was going to say, I had to hear it in the light. Where every expression could be read. Where he’d be able to see each word stab right through my heart. And it was so bright, that light. Worse even than the lights in dressing rooms when you’re trying on swimsuits after a sucking-coffee-through-double-choc-coated-Tim-Tams/triple-helping-of-sticky-date-pudding Winter.

‘How can you say that? That you’re repulsive?’ He looked at me as if I was crazy.

‘You obviously think so.’

He stretched his hand out to touch me on the arm.

‘Don’t.’ I pulled away.

‘You know that’s not what I meant. It’s not you. Not you at all. It’s me.’

I laughed then. Really laughed. ‘That’s original. It’s not you, it’s me. I’ve never heard that one before.’

He swung his legs over the side of the bed so that his back was to me. ‘No, I mean it. It is me.’ There was a lengthy pause. ‘I just can’t.’

‘Yeah. Right. With me, you mean. What you mean is, it’s me. Not you. Me. Me!’ The fact that he couldn’t just admit the truth drove me past crazy.

‘I…’ He ran his hands through his hair again. Hard. I flinched, wondering how much hair he’d just pulled out. ‘Just can’t. Not now. Not with you.’

I sat there, winded by those final three words. Final in every sense. Not with you. So it was me. And there it was, out in the open. Strangely enough, it didn’t make me feel any better. ‘But all those girls…’ I thought to myself, then realised the words had actually come out of my mouth. I shut it tight, but couldn’t shut out my remembering their oh-so-similar morning smiles. Their different faces. Names. Amanda. Rachel. Kirsty. Sophie. Rebecca. Theresa. What was so different about them? I became acutely aware of the bed beneath me. The bed in which, not so long ago, they’d all…

Ugh.

Something inside me started to bubble after this. I sat there for a bit longer as it churned away in my stomach. And then I worked out what it was. It was anger. It was easier to be angry than to feel embarrassed—less painful. Soon enough, it worked its way out. ‘Well, I’m sorry I’m not good enough,’ I spat, hitting the mattress with one hand.

He turned again. ‘Charlie, don’t be stupid.’

‘Stupid? What’s so stupid about it? One minute you’re sleeping with every girl in sight and the next minute you’re throwing me off. What am I supposed to think?’

Jas stood up. ‘Wish I could explain it to you, but I can’t.’

‘What’s there to explain?’ I was acting like an idiot and I knew it, but I felt that if I stopped fighting, even for a moment, I’d just break down and cry—and I couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that. Not here, anyway.

I got up off the bed and snorted inelegantly. ‘I guess I’m just not blonde enough for you.’ Jas had started to say something, but I held my hand out to stop him. ‘Don’t say it. Just don’t talk to me. I don’t want to hear it.’ My voice was getting louder and louder by the minute. I turned and left the room, slamming the door behind me.

Chapter Four

I don’t think I slept at all that night.

It didn’t seem to matter what I tried to think about, that one moment in time kept running itself through my head again and again. The awful moment when I knew it had all gone wrong. The moment when the, um…tower crumbled and fell, for want of a better way of putting it.

What I didn’t understand, though, was that I’d been sure he was interested. At the start, that is. After all, he was the one who’d pulled in—he’d kept kissing me. So why pull away later instead of as soon as he’d got a chance? It just didn’t make any sense. And the more I thought about it, the more convoluted the whole thing got. So convoluted that it gave me a headache, and at five a.m. I had to get up and take some paracetamol. Which must have worked, because the headache was gone when I woke up again at eleven-thirty.

I lay there for fifteen minutes or so, just listening, to see if I could hear Jas in the apartment, hoping that he wouldn’t be around so I could get up and go down the hall safely to the bathroom. I didn’t hear anything. And when my bladder couldn’t stand the stress one minute longer I got up. As I went down the hallway I had a quick scan around. He wasn’t there.

But things had changed.

After my trip to the bathroom I took a closer look. Most of Jas’s stuff that had been packed away earlier in the week was gone. I went down the hallway to his bedroom and opened the door. All that was left was his bed and some clothes. I closed the door smartly—the last thing in the world I wanted to see right now was that bed—and made my way to the living room.

There was a note beside the phone.

Charlie

As you’ve probably already noticed, I’ve moved most of my stuff out. I’ll come back and pick the rest up around one. Not sure if you’ll be there or not, but you know you can always get me on my mobile if you want to talk. Either way, I’ll give you a call at your mum’s in the next few weeks. I don’t want this to be the end of us.

J.

I don’t want this to be the end of us. I re-read it, holding the note in my right hand.

Ha! Us!

What ‘us’? There was no ‘us’. There was only me, lusting after Jas, and Jas who wasn’t returning the favour. Unrequited love. There’s nothing quite so embarrassing. I did the cringing thing again, thinking about it.

And what made me feel even worse was that I’d seen a friend go through it once. Unrequited love, that is. I’d watched her make a fool of herself for months on end over some guy. Seeing everyone else watch the proceedings like a spectator sport had been equally as bad as the point when the guy had finally turned her down and she was heartbroken.

Exactly how Jas must have been feeling about me. Utterly embarrassed for me. Udderly, I thought, as I remembered the lovesick cow once more.

I checked the clock on the wall. Just past midday. I had to get out of the apartment. And fast.

I had the quickest shower of my life, dressed in anything I could find and ran to the bus stop. I didn’t care where I went, didn’t care what I did, just so long as I wasn’t there when Jas came back. I didn’t want to be around to see that embarrassment of his when he came through the front door.

I went to the movies and saw something. I can’t remember what it was, just that it was bad and something I never would have seen if I’d had any real choice about it—which I didn’t. The fact was, it was on, it was a two-hour time-filler, and that was all I cared about. After that I bought a shirt I didn’t like nor want, and definitely couldn’t afford, then picked up some groceries that I didn’t need. At five p.m. the shops closed, and as I couldn’t bear to see another film I wasn’t remotely interested in I caught the bus home.

Jas wasn’t there, and everything—every last possession that was his—was gone.

I went into his room and just stood there. I couldn’t even smell him. It was as if he’d never been there at all. As if he’d never existed. I walked around the room slowly, running one hand against the wall, taking everything in. I stopped when I came to something rough.

Oh, nice.

The bed-head. Jas’s metal bed-head had made a mark on the wall. No prizes for guessing how that had happened. And who it hadn’t been with.

I turned and left the room, wondering why I’d gone in there in the first place. It had been a stupid thing to allow myself to do. I had to keep busy, to try and forget about what had happened.

I made my way to the kitchen, stopping by the phone on the way to turn the answering machine off. And then, when I had, I thought better of it and switched it back on again to screen any calls.

In the kitchen, I was surprised to find another note from Jas. Well, not another note. The same note as before, with a sentence or two scribbled onto the bottom. He’d added:

Hoped you’d be here so we could talk. Will call.

J.

He did call. Several times, in fact. But I didn’t call back. And funnily enough it wasn’t me, but my aunt Kath who saw him next, three months later. We were both staying at my mum’s, looking after her while she was unwell. Watching a rare spot of TV one evening, she suddenly hollered, ‘Charlie—Charlie, come here, quick.’

I rushed into the living room. ‘What?’

She just pointed at the TV ‘Isn’t that, um, what’s-his-face? Your flatmate? The guy you were living with?’

After a good few minutes of wide-eyed staring at the TV my brain kicked back in. I was surprised she’d even spotted him. Because it was Jas, all right. But at the same time it wasn’t Jas. It was someone called…Zamiel. Apparently named after one of the original fallen angels—not to be confused with the original Charlie’s Angels, of course.

He was wearing a full black leather bodysuit held together with what looked like safety pins, along with thigh-high boots and a whip. He’d been made-up with a whitened face, lots of kohl eyeliner and blood-red lipstick. His hair, black as black, was doing things that hair simply can’t do by itself, and it was so hideously razored I just knew some celebrity hairdresser had been paid a very large wad of money to get the desired effect.

I flinched seeing it. Him. The closest I can come to describing it would be Edward Scissorhands meets Liz Hurley’s famous Versace dress on acid.

I sank slowly down onto the floor and watched the rest of the programme. It was one of those half-hour current affairs shows that like to expose mechanics who are ripping the general public off, banks who are ripping the general public off and, every so often, run another story as well. Naturally, they’d gone to town on this baby.

It seemed that Jas—sorry, Zamiel—was the lead singer in some band called Spawn. The presenter seemed to be under the impression that everyone knew about Spawn, so I presumed they’d been in the media for a while now and, being so busy looking after Mum, I just hadn’t heard about them. Apparently the group was promoting some less than desirable things, like devil worship. There was lots of lovely information specifically about Zamiel too. Like Playboy, they’d arranged these things into two categories—his likes and dislikes.

Likes: eating live animals, sleeping in his custom-designed coffin, seducing young boys.

Dislikes: organised religion, old people, vegetarians, Britney Spears.

But then they got to the biggie. Zamiel as the new homosexual pin-up boy. And his new boyfriend. A very, very famous actor.

Cue footage of very, very famous actor sticking his tongue down Zamiel’s throat.

Cue presenter saying how disgusting it all was and that society was obviously falling apart at the seams.

End of story.

‘Oh,’ Kath said, and I jumped a bit. I’d been so engrossed in watching the TV I’d forgotten she was even there. ‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘And I thought he was such a nice boy. I guess I’d better go check on your mother.’

And then she left me by myself. But I was never really alone, was I? Not when I had my acute embarrassment to keep me company. It was back again now, in full force. Jas was gay. He was gay. He was gay.

And then, inch by inch, the redness crept its way up my neck and took over my face as I realised what it was I’d done. He was gay. And I, Charlie, had jumped him and then screamed a million things at him to cover up my embarrassment at being rejected. When really what he had been trying to do was tell me something.

He was gay.

Oh, God.

I put my head in my hands then and stared blankly at the TV. There was a sitcom on and I suddenly wished that all my problems could be solved in the final five minutes of every half-hour too. A tall blonde had chosen that precise moment to walk into the kitchen on the show and I was suddenly reminded of something. Those girls. Over that month. In the Magnolia Lodge kitchen. The ones with the smiles. What about them? That was the one piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit.

I sat and thought about it for ages. I tried to work back through the whole thing. Tried to see it from an impartial point of view, rather than that of the lovesick cow.

Moo.

First there were no girls. There weren’t even any friends. Then, for a short period of time, there were lots of friends and lots of girls. Then there were no friends and no girls again. So most of the time there were no friends and no girls. It just didn’t make sense. But maybe…

Maybe that was the whole point? That it didn’t make sense. Perhaps that was where I was going wrong in trying to sort this all out. After all, he was at uni, he dressed nicely and he’d bought us both tickets to The Sound of Music. Oh, no. That was it. No wonder it didn’t make sense to me. It hadn’t even made sense to him. Because that was what he’d been doing—he’d been working it all out, the sexuality thing. Like you’re supposed to do at uni. And now he’d worked it out. He was gay.

Charlie, my girl, you’re a genius.

Just three months and a very embarrassing incident in Jas’s bedroom too late.

I really couldn’t call Jas back after that, and when he phoned again, around a month later, it was at a bad time. Mum had been really sick for a few days and had finally let Kath and I take her to the hospital. She hated the hospital, so we tried to stay with her for as many hours of the day as the staff would let us. To make matters worse, it was hard for me, being at Mum’s—seeing her sculpture and realising I was getting nothing done. Going nowhere fast. Then there was skipping around the subject of uni every time someone asked when my results were coming out.

I was preoccupied.

And by the time Mum was home again I’d conveniently lost Jas’s number. So I didn’t call him back that time either. Yes, I know it’s a poor excuse, but I had other things on my mind. Mum, taking care of the house, catching up on sleep…plenty of things that seemed far more important at the time.

Life went on without Jas, until eventually it was time for me to move back out of my mum’s and get on with my life. It felt like an eternity since the days of Magnolia Lodge, but in reality it had only been six months. Six months since I’d seen Jas. Well, that’s not entirely true, because since the night that Kath and I had seen him on TV, Zamiel was suddenly everywhere. The media had gone Spawn mad, and I couldn’t turn on the TV or buy a newspaper or magazine without some piece of scandal in it about him.

Packing my bags, I came across Jas’s phone number—in my undies drawer, of all places. I held it in my hand for a few seconds, entertaining the thought of picking up the phone and actually calling him. Having a laugh like the old days. Giving him some well-deserved grief about his long hair and leatherwear. But only for a few seconds. Then I shoved the piece of paper in my jeans pocket—out of sight, out of mind.

I found it again the next day, when I was in the kitchen. Once more I held it in my hand. I think I might have even reached out for the phone this time. But if I did I wrenched my hand back smartly and then busied myself pouring a tall glass of water, because the next thing I remember is taking the glass outside with me to sit in Mum’s sculpture courtyard.

As it happened, I chose to sit on Jas’s favourite piece of hers—a full-size table and four chairs. Some people thought it was weird when they saw it, but what they didn’t know was that it was our kitchen table and our chairs. Mum’s and mine before I’d moved out of home the first time. I’d watched her photograph it from every angle one day when it was at its messiest, complete with the Sunday paper, leftover bits of crusty bread, a tub of butter, a jar of honey, the chairs we’d been sitting in pulled out and left at angles. And that was the sculpture, the scene frozen in time.

I smoothed the phone number out on the table, eyed it until I’d finished my glass of water, and then systematically tore it into the smallest shreds I could. As I tore I went about convincing myself that everything really was different now. Not just between the two of us, because of what had happened at the apartment, but truly everything. The small world we’d built together was no more, just like the apartment block we’d lived in. There was no point in calling him. I wasn’t part of his new life and I didn’t want to look like a desperate groupie, wanting to be remembered now he was famous.

It would be almost another year and a half before I saw Jas in person again.

Chapter Five

‘Flight 624. Flight 624 to London via Singapore is now boarding. At this time we would like to ask that first and business class passengers, and passengers in rows 50 and higher please board first. Other rows will be called shortly.’

I stop thinking about Jas and Magnolia Lodge and wake up to myself. That’s me. My flight. I check my boarding pass, see that I’m in row 55, and get up hurriedly to board. As I leave I notice my coffee. I haven’t drunk a drop of that second cup.

I wait in line to swipe my boarding pass and collect my headphones, wait my turn for the flight attendant to tell me which side of the plane I’m on, wait for people to stow their bags. Finally I make it to my seat. An aisle seat, just like I’d asked for…but right next to the toilets.

Well, I think, I didn’t see that coming.

And, even better, I’ve been lumped with the oldest plane in the world. No personal TV screen for me, and the nearest communal one is miles away.

When I’m settled in, I check the in-flight magazine to see what movies I’ll be missing out on. Seen it, seen it, seen it and don’t want to see it anyway, so I’m fine. I try not to move on to thinking about the other downsides to flying on the oldest plane in the world—the fact that it might not stay in the sky. I ditch the in-flight magazine then, and memorise the safety card.

When I’m done, I crane my neck, looking out of the window to see if I can spot the viewing lounge, wondering if Kath and her husband Mark and my two favourite people in the world—their newborn twins, Annie and Daisy—have stayed to watch the plane leave. I’d offered to catch a cab out to the airport, but Kath had insisted that they take me—they were hunting for an excuse to go on their first big outing as a family and I was it. I squint, scanning the airport windows. They might still be here. I don’t think they’ll be rushing home after all the effort it had taken to get to the airport in the first place.

In order to see me off they’d had to get up early and practise assembling and disassembling what we’d come to call the mega-stroller of death and destruction. They’d been trying to reach the record time of a five-minute set-up, but so far couldn’t break the seven-minute barrier.

Frankly, crossing the carpeted airport floor, we’d looked as if the five of us were about to make a trek through the Himalayas rather than one of us was flying to London.

I still had to step back in wonder every time I saw that stroller. You couldn’t even call it a stroller, in my opinion. I went shopping with Kath and Mark to buy the thing and quickly became stroller-flabbergasted. First of all, there were whole shops devoted to the things. Just to strollers! Then there was the choice these shops offered. There were strollers for running and strollers for shopping, and even strollers with little flags that you pulled along behind your mountain bike.

The one Kath and Mark finally decided on was the biggest smash-’em-up-derby stroller of them all. Hence the name—the mega-stroller of death and destruction. The mega—for short—was a double seater that, like eighties limos, seemed to go on for ever, with a tray down at the bottom that you could carry things in—like three weeks’ worth of groceries, if you had to—and all kinds of things that flipped in and out. It probably even had indicators and side mirrors that I hadn’t discovered yet.

I bought them a bumper sticker for it—‘This is my other car’.

Still, there obviously wasn’t enough room for everything in that stroller, because as we’d made our way towards Immigration, Mark had had to stop every so often to pick up the bits and pieces he was losing off the contraption as he went. A teddy bear here, a Teletubby there. Annie and Daisy had simply gurgled happily.

‘Here we are,’ Mark had said, pulling up the stroller in front of my stop. I’d given Kath a hug then. And Mark a hug. And Annie and Daisy a kiss. And then another kiss. And then another one.

I was going to miss the twins terribly. I’d prepared myself for it because I knew I’d got all too used to having them around for the last four weeks. The whole four weeks of Annie and Daisy’s lives. Not having them as my sun—the thing my eating and sleeping and just about everything revolved around every day—was going to feel strange. Very strange indeed.

I gave them both one last kiss. ‘I’m going to miss you guys,’ I said, taking one each of their tiny hands.

‘Ring me when I’m up at four a.m. feeding them and I’ll swap places with you,’ Kath groaned.

I looked up at her and laughed. She didn’t mean it. But then I took another glance. Noticed the bags underneath her eyes. OK, so she might mean it a little bit.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, giving Kath and Mark one quick, last hug. ‘Thanks so much. For everything…’

‘Stop it,’ Mark said. ‘We should be thanking you. You’ve been a huge help this month.’

‘Go on.’ Kath urged me over to the Immigration queue. ‘Have a good time. Enjoy yourself. And don’t think about…things. Just have fun.

‘And call us as soon as you get off the plane,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘OK, I will.’ I turned around and headed off. I didn’t look at the twins again, or I knew, just knew, they’d give me one of their silly googly smiles and I’d end up kissing them for ever. Such a sucker.

But that’s the way aunts are supposed to be, isn’t it? Well, honorary aunts, anyway. I’m really a cousin, but because of my age, and the amount I hang around them, I’ve been promoted to the glorious rank and title of Auntie Charlie. Or Auntie Charlotte, if they’re going to be a picky pair and insist on the name I was lumped with—after my grandmother—which I’m sure they won’t.

Because cool Auntie Charlie will make sure of that.

I’m planning on being the bad auntie, you see. The one who lets them have double ice-cream cones and takes them to get their ears pierced when they’re staying on holiday even though they’re not supposed to get them done till they’re thirteen. The popular auntie.

I did the bag in the X-ray machine thing, then made my way through uneventfully to line up and have my passport stamped. Don’t turn back. Don’t turn back, I told myself.

So of course I turned back. Looked for the four of them. Saw them. Waved. They waved back. I waved a bit more, then turned back again to take a step forward as someone left the queue.

And that was it. When I turned around again I couldn’t see them any more.

Instantly I felt a pang of loss for a family that wasn’t really my own, but who treated me just as if I were.

Like this trip, for instance. A present from Kath and Mark. And, I guess, sort of from my mum. A present that I’d only received last night. They’d sat me down after dinner and given me the envelope.

‘For you.’ Kath had passed it to me without any great aplomb. Almost as if it were just a piece of mail I’d overlooked. ‘You don’t have any plans for the weekend, do you?’ she’d said.

I’d taken the envelope from her. ‘No—why?’

‘Open it and see.’

I’d opened it up…and then I’d almost died.

It was a plane ticket. And an itinerary. For me. For tomorrow.

Mark was standing beside Kath when I looked up again. I opened my mouth to begin to say something to them, but nothing came out. I tried again, opening and shutting it, my tongue suddenly feeling ten times larger than usual. Kath gave me a glass of water and, after drinking it in its entirety, I was able to speak again. Not much, however.

‘But, why?’ was all I could come out with.

So they told me. The trip was just something they thought I deserved. Something they’d heard me talk about—something they’d been thinking would be good for me for a while and were waiting for me to get around to. But I hadn’t. So they had. It wasn’t much—not a big trip, they said, and they’d left the ticket home open, so I could stay on if I felt like it. They added that if I was wise I’d take it and run, as there wasn’t going to be much sleep going on in the house for probably quite some time.

Not much—not a big trip. I couldn’t believe they’d said that. Here they were, just having had not one baby but two, and they were paying large sums of money over to travel agents…for me. I had to come right out and say it. I was going to pay for it. I’d give them the money back. I’d meant to book something myself, but kept putting it off.

And that was when Kath spoke up, cutting me off. ‘It’s, um, from your mum, Charlie,’ she said. ‘She gave me some money for incidentals. Things you might need but that you might not know you need, if that makes any sense.’

The three of us had simply looked at each other, blinking, for a bit. Until, that was, Kath’s eyes slid over to Mark and she sighed. ‘And now it’s probably time for Mark to apologise for the trip he chose.’

Mark had got a very sheepish air about him then. ‘I thought you were meant to be having fun. And this looked like fun. To me, anyway.’

I checked the itinerary more closely. London and an open ticket back. Fantastic—just as I thought I’d read. Oh, but there was a tour attached. Wait…

To Oktoberfest?

Kath shrugged. ‘I’m afraid it’s non-refundable. I hope you like beer. And sauerkraut. And big fat sausages. For five days.’ She poked Mark with one finger as she said each sentence.

Now, I’m what I call a sad vegetarian—as in, the kind of person who lusts after large pieces of steak but can’t eat meat directly after seeing actual live cows, lambs, pigs, chickens et cetera. I’d seen a truck full of chickens whizz past me on the highway not long before this, and a feather had landed on the windscreen. So I knew I was going to be vegetarian for at least a week or so. Or until someone offered me a plate of something that just looked far too good to pass up.

So, anyway, the sausage thing. It didn’t sound very appealing. And as for beer—I don’t drink the stuff. Never have. Oh, I’ve tried a few times, but I just don’t seem to like it.

But I waved my hands as if I couldn’t believe what they were saying. No, no. The trip was great. It’d be fun. Educational. I might even learn to like beer. And big fat sausages. And, um, sauerkraut.

Bleh.

Plus, it wouldn’t be all artery-hardening activities like sausage-eating. I’d get to see heaps of other things. Munich, for example. And the ticket home was open. I could do whatever I wanted. It’d be better than great.

And as I picked up the ticket and itinerary and turned them over in my hands, I realised that Kath and Mark knew me better than I knew myself. It didn’t matter where it was—around the corner would have been fine. I just needed to get away. To do something different. And if I had some fun along the way—well, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?

Of course not.

‘Miss, can you fasten your seat belt, please?’ The flight attendant is standing over my seat staring at me as if I’m a loon. By the look on her face I think she might have asked me more than once already. Hastily, I grab the two ends of my seat belt and buckle up. When I’m done, I have one last crane of my neck to check for Kath and Mark and the twins before I concede defeat.

Left with nothing else to do, I get my book out of my backpack and read right up until they begin the safety demonstration. When that starts I put my book down on my lap and listen carefully. I even get the safety card out of the seat pocket and read that too.

Like I said before, the oldest plane in the world…

I’m watching attentively as the flight attendant shows us how to fasten and unfasten our seat belts when I hear it. This clunk…

And something lands on my lap.

I drop my safety card on the floor in fright.

I’m stunned for a moment, unsure of what’s happened. But when I look down, there’s a videotape in my lap. Instinctively I reach my hand up to my head as I realise that one side of it hurts. As I feel around, I notice there’s a little lump on it. No, hang on, a mid-sized lump. Wait a second—quite a big lump, actually. Quite a big lump, which is starting to throb.

‘Hey, are you OK?’ the guy in the seat beside me asks.

I turn to him. No, I want to say. No, I’m not. I’ve got a lump on my head. Not a little lump, not a mid-sized lump, but quite a big lump, actually. But I can’t get the words out. Instead, I bring my hand down off my head to see if there’s any blood.

There’s not. This is probably a good sign.

The flight attendant comes and crouches down beside me. She picks the safety card up off the floor and puts it back in the seat pocket in front of me. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s never done that before.’

I look at her blankly and she picks the videotape out of my lap and holds it up. ‘It’s the safety video. It ejected out of the VCR stored above you. Is your head OK?’

I keep looking at her. ‘I’ve got a lump.’

She feels the side of my head. ‘Oohhh, you do too. Does it hurt? Do you have a headache? Should I see if we have a doctor?’

Too many questions. ‘It doesn’t hurt much,’ I say, before I realise what the implications of what I’ve just said could mean in today’s litigious society, and add a little disclaimer, ‘Yet’.

She pauses, thinking. ‘Well, maybe we should move you up to the front, just so we can keep a better eye on you. We’re about to take off, so I’ll have to leave you for a minute or two, but I’ll come right back, OK? Don’t go anywhere, now.’ She walks down towards the front of the plane.

As I watch her go, I wonder where she thinks I’d run off to. I mean, I’m on a plane, here. I don’t have too many options.

True to her word, she comes back as soon as we’ve levelled off. She gives me her arm to help me get up. ‘Jessica will keep an eye on you up front. Just tell her if your head starts to hurt, all right? Now, do you have anything overhead?’ She gestures at the lockers.

I shake my head, no, and she turns and starts walking back up to the front of the plane. I follow.

We keep going. And going. And going.

Then, suddenly, as she parts the swishy curtain that divides the have and the have-nots, the clean and the unwashed, I realise she’s putting me in business class. Excellent. But, no—wait. We keep going. We pass another swishy curtain. And we enter…first class.

Ta-da!

I look around me in awe. Toto, I don’t think we’re in economy any more.

The people in the few seats around the doorway turn and stare at us. Under their gaze, I try to look as if my head really hurts now. As if it hurts in a first-class-this-seat-reclines-all-the-way-back kind of hurt.

There are about five people in first class, and—I count them—about twenty seats. What a waste.

Another flight attendant—Jessica, I presume—comes over. Yes, it is Jessica. I read her name-tag as she gets closer and note she speaks French and German and Japanese, which I’m sure would come in very handy if I did too. The flight attendant who’s been with me till now, Lisa—the economy-model flight attendant who speaks nothing but plain old English—leaves.

‘Just take a seat here,’ Jessica says, directing me into a seat behind a man and sitting me down. ‘And do tell me if you start to feel sick or you get a headache, won’t you?’

I nod.

‘Would you like a biscuit and some apple juice? Everyone’s just had a snack.’

I nod again, never one to say no to a biscuit. Or apple juice. And certainly never one to say no to first class biscuits or first class apple juice that I can eat in my fully reclined seat, watching my own cable TV all while I’m on my personal phone if I so feel like it.

‘Yes, please,’ I say politely.

Jessica turns around and leaves. I watch her go with interest. I’ve never seen a first class flight attendant before. I inspect her closely. I may never get another chance to see one in captivity. She has really expensive stockings on. I can tell. Because they look nice. All shimmery. And very unlike anything I’ve ever worn waitressing that usually came three in a packet and were holey by the time I left the apartment.

I’m impressed, to say the least.

And, after a good inspection, I have to admit that first class is fantastic. Everything about it is—well, first class. The flight attendants, for example, like Jessica—they’re better-looking and they speak four languages and wear expensive stockings. Even Jessica’s red lipstick is first class, I think, as I watch her lean down and talk to another passenger.

I realise then that she’s a Woman. I’ve always wanted to be one of those. Yep, I know—I guess the breasts and all the other equipment give you instant qualification into the club, but that’s just to be a woman. The kind without the capital ‘W’. What I’m talking about is a Woman. With the outfits and the shoes and the smell. The kind of Woman who sashays instead of walks. The kind of Woman men trample each other over in order to get to her first and light her cigarette. A Woman like Marilyn Monroe or Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

A vavoom, boom, boom kind of Woman.

And, yes, I realise that you can’t go out till five p.m. when you’re a vavoom, boom, boom kind of Woman, because you have to spend all day getting ready, but what the hell? It’s a great look. I catch another glimpse of Jessica as she smiles her perfect red-lipsticked smile at another passenger, making me wonder if her lipstick is a magic lipstick that’s reapplying itself every five minutes—a magic lipstick that’s resistant to leaving even a smidgen on her glossy white teeth. Maybe she’s done that trick—the Vaseline on the teeth thing that they do in the beauty pageants.

Or maybe I’m taking it all a bit too far now? Either way, I’m distracted—distracted away from Womanly things by material things.

By my seat, actually. Because, I think—wriggling my satisfied behind around a bit—it is sooo comfy. It’s really more like a lounge chair. I snuggle back and fold my hands neatly on my lap, wishing I’d worn something a bit classier than my old denim jacket, black stretch pants and grey felt Birkenstocks.

Like the pale pink pashmina the woman a few rows up is wearing.

I almost laugh out loud then. Me in a pale pink pashmina? How long would that stay pristine and pale? Well, I know the answer to that—until right before the apple juice and the biscuit arrived, that’s when. I’m not a pashmina kind of girl anyway. Mark brought me one back from overseas once and I accidentally put it in the wash. It was more like a short, gnarled scarf after that.

I spot the arm of the guy in front of me as I think this. He’s wearing a denim jacket quite like mine, which makes me feel a bit better—because I figure he’s actually paying to be here. At a cost of approximately $7,000 one way or $11,000 return, if I remember the figures on the whiteboard of my local travel agency correctly. It’s even a pretty old and daggy denim jacket he’s wearing, which makes me wonder for a second or two—but then I tell myself it’s probably meant to be that way, it’s been professionally beaten up and most likely cost ten to fifteen times the price I paid for my one, which I think came from Bettina Liano and was already way out of my budget.

I lean forward a bit to see if I can read the label on the bottom of his jacket. It’s sticking out over the side of his chair. There’s a patch there with some writing on it that seems vaguely familiar, and if I just…

There’s a clearing of a throat above me, which makes me glance up. It’s Jessica. With my biscuit and apple juice. On a plate. A real plate! And in a glass. A real glass! I’m sure my eyes are completely round by now, and I probably look very much like a character in a Japanese cartoon.

I smile at her. She doesn’t smile back.

Uh-oh. Bye-bye Woman; hello economy-class-passenger-eating-Rottweiler, I think.

‘If you’re going to disturb the other passengers, I’m afraid I’ll have to move you back to—’ She starts to lecture me, but stops when the guy in front turns around.

‘Oh my God,’ I say a little too loudly as I recognise him.

He just stares.

‘That’s it,’ Jessica hisses under her breath, and I get the distinct feeling she’s going to throw me out of first class.

The guy keeps right on staring at me.

It’s Jas.

Chapter Six

And without his make-up, long black hair, leather bodysuit and whip, he’s a lot easier to recognise.

I think he might even be wearing the same denim jacket he had when we were living together.

Beside us, Jessica is still making annoyed first class flight attendant noises.

‘It’s OK,’ Jas says, standing up next to her. ‘We know each other.’

‘Oh.’ She doesn’t look particularly pleased with this, as if we’ve broken the rules somehow—me coming from economy and all—and moves her attention to smoothing her skirt with one hand for a moment.

Somehow, I feel it would be an appropriate moment to break into a rousing, economy meets first class ‘breaking down the barriers’ rendition of Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Ebony and Ivory’, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it.

‘Right. I’ll leave this here, then, shall I?’ She puts down the tray with the biscuit and apple juice onto another seat’s table and stalks off.

I stand up too. Awkwardly, not sure how Jas is going to react. After all, you hear stars complaining about it all the time—people claiming they went to high school with them etc. Confused, I mumble, half looking at the floor, ‘I heard them calling for you. At the airport.’

He makes a face. ‘Late. Still.’

This makes me smile and I raise my eyes to meet his. ‘As usual.’

There’s a pause then, as if neither of us knows what to do next. I’m about to sit back down, thinking I’m making a nuisance of myself, when Jas makes a move.

‘What am I waiting for?’ he says, and steps forward to give me a kiss on the cheek and a hug. I hug him back. He smells shockingly familiar. But the hug feels right and puts me at ease.

‘Come on. Sit with me,’ he says.

And this time I don’t need to worry about the convenience of an aisle seat. You could put on a production of Cats between the rows up here if you wanted to. I make myself comfortable beside the window and Jas passes me my biscuit and apple juice. I pull out my tray-rest. ‘Somehow I don’t think they’re getting homemade wild fig and wattle-seed biscuits back there.’ I nod my head in the direction of economy and tell Jas the story of the wayward videotape and how I ended up here with the famous people.

When I’m done, he feels my head for the lump.

‘Ow!’ I yelp as he finds it.

‘Sorry. It’s pretty big. Sure you’re all right?’

‘I’m certainly a lot better now,’ I say, holding up the biscuit and taking a big bite. With my other hand I feel the lump one more time as Jas watches me. I can’t help noticing he looks exactly the same as he used to.

‘Charles. Your hair.’

My hand still on my head, I pat what’s left of my hair, knowing precisely what he’s talking about. We used to have this joke. We’d been swimming one day, a few months after he’d moved in, and I’d pulled my wet hair back into a pony-tail to get it out of the way when we were done. Jas had fallen about laughing when he’d seen the end result. It was my ears. They were—well, of the sticky-out variety, which is why I kept my hair medium to long and down. Always. Thus, the second nickname—Charles.

I realise my face must have fallen a bit when he mentioned it again because Jas touches me on the arm. ‘No. It’s great. Just different, that’s all.’

I shrug. ‘I’m growing it. I had to have it short. It was damaged.’

‘Damaged?’

‘Um, over-processed, actually.’ I roll my eyes and take another bite of biscuit. ‘It was the only option. Hair extensions cost a fortune, you know.’

‘Tell me about it.’ He shakes his black hair at me.

I realise then that he probably does know. ‘You’ve had yours cut too,’ I say. It’s a lot shorter than I’ve seen it in all the magazines and on TV.

He nods and picks a bit of hair off his jacket. ‘Only this morning. Hated it. That’s why I was late.’

I notice something then—hair lying on Jas’s right shoulder, the one next to me. Without thinking, I reach over and dust it off. ‘It’s all over you! I don’t know how you could get on plane after a haircut. I always have to rush straight home and jump in the shower.’ It’s only as I reach the end of my sentence that I catch on to what I’m doing. Slowly, I pull my hand away and look up to meet Jas’s eyes. He’s staring at me again. ‘Sorry, I can’t believe I just did that.’

His eyes don’t move and I get that feeling again. The one where I wish I could just sink down and disappear. This time into my plush first class seat.

But then something unexpected happens. Jas laughs. ‘Hair might be different, but you haven’t changed a bit, have you?’ he says, starting to laugh even harder.

This makes me pause. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He laughs away. ‘Hey!’

‘Sorry. Just funny seeing you again, that’s all.’

I raise my eyebrows at this one. ‘Funny seeing me?’ I halt for a moment before I decide it’s OK to go for it. After all, it’s going to have to come up some time, isn’t it? ‘Funny seeing me?’ I repeat. ‘It’s been pretty funny seeing you in all your get-up, that’s for sure.’

Jas moans. ‘Ah, man. Knew that’d have to come up sooner or later.’

‘Really? Did you? And here I was, almost forgetting the fact that you’ve been tramping around for approximately two years posing as a devil worshipper, eating live animals and seducing young boys.’

‘A guy needs a hobby.’

I snort delicately so that apple juice doesn’t fly out of my nose—who says I don’t belong in first class? I could handle that pale pink pashmina. ‘No, really, tell me the whole story.’

So he does.

And it goes pretty much the way I’d imagined it. Jas had gone to Sydney and met up with his contact in the industry at exactly the right time. One of the big record companies was putting together a ‘let’s go for maximum shock value and freak the public out’ kind of band, and he’d gone along and auditioned. Apparently they liked his ‘look’—tall, dark, pale, thin. But not so much that they decided to leave him how he was. Instead, he was signed up and kitted out in a full black leather bodysuit. A few weeks, a stylist, publicist and hairdresser later, he was Zamiel and Spawn was on the road. Apparently it was just a bonus that he could actually sing.

‘I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw you on TV.’ I’ve listened to the story open-mouthed.

‘Not surprised.’

‘But it’s great, isn’t it? It’s what you always wanted?’

Jas pauses. ‘No. What I always wanted to be was a songwriter. You know that.’

‘But you write Spawn’s songs, don’t you?’

‘Course,’ he laughs. Then, looking around furtively, ‘No,’ he whispers.

‘Oh.’ There doesn’t seem to be much more to say to that, so I move on. ‘So why the trip to London? Are you going to see your, um, boyfriend?’ I mumble the last word.

‘Boyfriend? What are you on about?’

‘You know.’

‘Yeah?’

I say the actor’s name.

Jas laughs. ‘You’re kidding me, Charlie. You, of all people. You don’t actually believe all that stuff?’

‘Well…’

‘Come on—tell me that you think I worship the devil, that I eat live animals, that I got town planning to change my house number to 666.’

‘I never said I thought it was all true.’

‘You think I’m going out with piglet-face?’

‘Piglet-face!’ I laugh, then cover my mouth with my hand. It’s not very nice, but he’s right. The actor does have a bit of a piglet-face. He is a bit of a Babe.

‘It’s his nose.’ Jasper puts one finger on the tip of his nose and pushes upwards.

It’s highly realistic. I laugh a bit louder.

Standing a few rows in front, Jessica gives me a dirty look and instantly I remember the Eleventh Commandment—there shalt be no rowdiness in first class. I cover my mouth with my hand again.

‘You really think I’d go out with him? You crazy? I do have some taste, you know. Wouldn’t go out with a guy like him.’

‘He had his tongue down your throat on TV one night. Or do you let just anyone do that now?’ I regret the words as soon as they come out of my mouth, as they remind me of That Night, our last night in the apartment together, but Jas doesn’t seem to notice.

‘That? All him. No idea he was going to do it. Amazing what you can make something seem like when you cut it down to ten seconds of footage.’

‘What do you mean?’ I’m confused.

‘What really happened—he grabbed me, mauled me as I was coming out of some club. Wasn’t expecting it. Didn’t even know he was there until after it all went down. Guess I knew he had a bit of a thing for Zamiel, but I didn’t think he’d actually pull a stunt like that. Used up a whole perfectly good bottle of Listerine that night. Think he’d just eaten Indian for dinner or something.’

I make a face at this. ‘So you’re not going to see him?’

‘Cross the road not to see him.’

I wait expectantly for further explanation about his trip, but I don’t think it’s coming. ‘Well…?’ I try, wondering if he’s being deliberately evasive.

‘Right. Sorry. Nothing exciting. Just a break, I guess you’d call it. Holiday.’

I nod. Fair enough. Everyone takes holidays, don’t they? Even fallen angels.

We both rest our heads back on our seats at the same time.

‘What about you?’ Jas says then. ‘How’s your mum going now? All better?’

Silence.

‘She’s dead, Jas.’

His head lifts up slowly as I turn mine. The horror is already in full force. ‘Shit. Charlie, I’m sorry. Should’ve…’

‘It’s OK.’ I’ve known about it for some time, after all. I just didn’t need to be reminded. Like Kath had said at the airport, ‘Don’t think about…things.’ And this was one of them. One of the doozies.

‘When?’

‘Ages ago. The January after we left the apartment.’

‘But that was only a few months. Thought she was just sick?’

‘It took us a long time to convince her to see a doctor. By then it was only a matter of weeks.’

‘Cancer?’

I shake my head. ‘No, not at all. It was a blood thing. A clotting thing. Technical. Things might have been a lot better if she’d just seen someone earlier. You know what she was like. She thought waving around a few sticks of incense would do the trick.’

Jas pauses. ‘Remember that week we spent at Byron with her?’

I nod.

‘Remember how she made me try that old pottery wheel? Always thought that looked so easy, but when I tried it, it felt like my hands were being ripped over gravel. She was one tough lady. And her sculpture. That courtyard. Blew me away first time I saw it.’

I nod again.

Jas lifts his head up. ‘Gave you a call about that time— January. A few times before and after that too. Why didn’t you call back?’

‘I know. I’m sorry. It was bad of me. I was busy with Mum and then, I don’t know…’ I look away.

‘Don’t worry. Doesn’t matter.’

It does matter, but I don’t know how to explain it.

‘Tell me what you’ve been doing since then,’ Jas says.

I think about it. ‘It’s not very exciting compared to you.’

‘You’d be surprised. Everyone thinks my job’s ultra-glamorous. Isn’t at all, really.’

I shoot him a look. Oh, sure. After all, what could be more glamorous than the life of a rock star?

‘Seriously,’ Jas protests. ‘Spend most of my time travelling just like this.’ He runs his hand over his jacket. ‘Dressed in 1998 couture. Very good year in my opinion. So tell all. I’m waiting.’

I pick up the last few biscuit crumbs on my finger and pop them in my mouth before I begin. I explain how I was kept quite busy after Mum died, settling her affairs, selling her house and buying myself a tiny cottage in Byron Bay.

‘And your mum’s sculpture?’ Jas asks.

‘I, um, only kept a few pieces.’ I flinch when I say this, thinking of her work in someone else’s house, but the fact was I’d needed the money to pay for medical treatment. I hadn’t had much choice.

‘The table and chairs? You kept them, didn’t you?’ Jas says quickly.

I shake my head. ‘I sold them. To a gallery.’

‘Oh.’ I can see the disappointment lying behind Jas’s eyes. ‘And your own exhibition? How’d that go? Was one of the reasons I called. Wanted to come.’

I busy myself drinking the last bit of apple juice. ‘That, um, sort of fell through.’

‘Fell through?’ Jas frowns. I pretend not to notice.

‘It just wasn’t the right time.’

‘But you’re working?’

‘Working, working? Or sculpting, working?’ What is this, an interrogation?

‘Either.’

‘I haven’t been able to. Not since after…’ I don’t finish the sentence, not wanting to go there. ‘I’ve been sketching a bit. Now and then.’ More then than now, truth be told.

‘Sketching?’ Jas knows this is what I do before I actually start a piece and that I obviously haven’t been sculpting much lately. Which is true. I haven’t.

‘At least you’ve got your degree now. That must be a bonus.’

Silence again.

Jas looks at me as if I’m joking. ‘You do have your degree now? You must have finally passed that subject. It’s been two years, Charlie.’

More silence. Telling silence.

But I have to say something. Explain it somehow. ‘It was just that it was all a bit much…’

Jas butts in then. ‘Jesus. Sorry. I’m doing it again. Course it was hard after your mum died.’

And, as this is partly the truth, I leave it at that.

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