3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Hope pushed away her beer. There was something about holding back a strange girl’s hair while she threw up into the pub toilets that really put you off alcohol. She’d found the one person she deemed trustworthy at the work party - a woman in her mid-sixties sipping coca-cola - and deposited her new, green-gilled friend at her side. Hope had paused to elucidate exactly why she’d had their colleague evicted, at which point the older woman announced herself as the office HR manager. By the steely look in her eyes it was clear the slimy piece of shit Hope had spotted plying young women with alcohol was going to be out of a job and that was his best case scenario.
Bidding them farewell, Hope returned to her friends. On her way back to the couch she tried to catch Alison’s eye, but the woman had turned her back, in conversation now with the small group of gay men she seemed to have collected. She could swear Alison had been looking at her, those slate grey eyes burning holes into her skin, but she hadn’t been able to catch her at it. Hope had felt self-conscious all night, from the moment she’d caught sight of the elegant older woman arriving at the bar.
Something about her was intensely destabilising. Hope knew she hadn’t done anything wrong in going to her aid that day by the lake, but Alison had seemed so offended by her every move that Hope felt off balance in her presence, even now. She could practically feel Alison’s disapproval, coming off her in waves. She felt a spike of irritation, on one hand wishing the woman would disappear out of Hope’s favourite pub and leave her in peace.
On the other hand though… holy shit, she was good to look at. Hope had been trying not to stare all night. Last time she’d seen her, Alison had been rugged up in her winter coat. Tonight, stalking leisurely into The Barrow like she owned it, Alison had shed her coat on her way to the bar and Hope had nearly swallowed her tongue. It wasn’t a showy dress, just a simple grey jersey sheathe, with three quarter-sleeves and a modest knee-length hem. The neckline was low and deliciously filled out, the dress hugging the fine lines of her body, including the curve of an ass that for several long seconds Hope could not drag her eyes off as it headed toward the bar. Jesus christ.
Alison was accompanied by an older man, perhaps in his sixties, greying, fit-looking and excessively gay. For some irrational reason the combination irritated her. Beautiful woman, paraded on the arm of a gay man… like she was an accessory? She reminded herself she knew neither of them, that cliches were just that, but even now as she watched the men flocking around her, she wondered if Alison was right now the butt of misogynist jokes she had to field. It irked her, ev en as she realised she was getting annoyed on a hostile stranger’s behalf, at a purely hypothetical situation she’d invented in her own head.
It had been Alison’s face, staring with horror, that had alerted Hope to the situation unfolding at the bar. She’d been stealing yet another quick glance at the icy beauty across the room, when she caught Alison’s expression and followed her gaze. It had only taken seconds to comprehend what was causing her distress. She wondered why the older woman hadn’t just stepped in, why she’d seemed so frozen, when she was clearly concerned. How hard was it, really, just to intervene? Hope had found it easy. Well, except perhaps the vomiting part, that she could have done without.
She glanced over at the work party and saw that the HR manager and the young woman were gone, hopefully safely cabbing home, none the worse for having brushed by a predator. Swallowing her anger, she looked up again to see that Alison, too, had disappeared. She pulled herself back and tried to zone in with her friends. Prisha and Flynn were both well on their way to drunk, their voices loud as they spoke over each other, arguing an obscure Monopoly rule. Camille was lounging languidly, toying with her honey-coloured hair, ignoring them all while she texted her latest conquest. Magnus was nowhere to be seen. He’d probably snuck out the front door for a quiet walk around the block.
This was stupid. What Hope should do was stay right where she was, resolve the argument in front of her and stay with her friends. Drink another beer until she’d caught up to their level, lose herself in the silliness, or just lay her head on Camille’s lap and let the sound wash all around her. Instead, Hope pushed herself up and went to try to find the woman who expressly didn’t want to be followed.
First she joined the queue for the women’s toilets. It was the obvious reason for Alison to disappear. Besides, Hope was filled with beer. She didn’t see her in the line, and by the time she’d washed her hands and filtered back out of the rowdy bathroom, she’d still not caught sight of her. She wandered out back to the beer garden.
She took a sharp breath at the cold air outside. She tried to move as if she had a purpose, friends she’d lost, smiling and excusing herself through the crowd. The Barrow was the most central pub in Gold Hill, an easy find for locals and tourists alike. Some evenings the beer garden became a dance floor; on warm summer nights a DJ played, and they danced under the stars. Tonight, groups of drinkers huddled together along picnic tables, gas heaters doing little to warm the frigid night air. Multi-coloured strings of fairy lights were the only lighting, aside from the blaze of pub windows casting golden squares across the garden.
No mysterious brunettes in sight, Hope was about to head back indoors, when she realised she simply didn’t want to. While the beer garden was packed, it was at least fifty-percent as loud as the pub inside. She loved her friends, but it had been a long week and she felt, all of a sudden, like she’d entirely run out of her quota of words for the day. The cold night air felt like a balm, so finding a quiet space in a dark corner, she took a seat on the long wooden bench at the outer perimeter of the garden .
“Looking for someone else to rescue?” The voice came from her left and Hope almost jumped out of her skin. Alison had been hidden from the garden by a stone pillar, seated on the same bench, and Hope had practically sat down beside her before she’d announced her presence in the dark.
“Holy shit, you scared me!” Hope clutched her hand to her chest. “Why are you hiding out here?”
Alison rolled her shoulders back and shot Hope a flat stare. As Hope’s vision adjusted to the low light, she saw Alison was still without her coat. She tried not to linger on the neckline of that dress, but it was… really something.
“I’m not hiding,” Alison said, unconvincingly. “I’m taking a moment.”
“Right,” Hope dragged out. “So I can stand down, then. No rescue required.”
Alison crossed one bare leg over the other. She wore heels, something that seemed incongruous with a country pub but oh , how well she wore them. “Looked to me like you found another damsel in distress to save.”
“Jealous? ”
Alison’s breath audibly hitched at Hope’s audacity. She didn’t take the bait.
“On the contrary, I was going to thank you.”
“Really?” Hope couldn’t help the note of disbelief that entered her voice at that. Alison’s glossy dark hair was gathered low at the back of her neck, but her fingers had reached up to tug a lock forward to toy with, like a nervous tic. Or a flirtatious one, if you squinted really hard and wanted it badly enough.
“Yes. I appreciate what you did for her. She needed someone to have an eye out for her when no one else did. And you did that for her.”
“Who else would have done it?” Hope asked. “She was all alone out there on the lake.”
“I meant the girl at the bar-” Alison sounded aggrieved, before cutting herself off. “You knew that,” she realised aloud. “Very clever.”
“Thank you.”
They were silent for a moment. Hope was aware her heart rate had picked up. There were worse ways to spend a Friday night than sparring with a beautiful, if wholly odd woman .
“To your point,” Alison said quietly. “Thank you for coming to my rescue the other week. You didn’t have to, and even though I didn’t exactly express it gracefully, I very much appreciated it.”
“ My hero, ” Hope added. “You forgot that part.”
Alison looked exasperated, but finally her veneer cracked and a small laugh fell out her mouth. Hope was fascinated. The hint of warmth in those eyes thoroughly suited her.
“My hero,” Alison amended, drily. “If I’d known my escape route was going to involve so much grovelling in gratitude I’d have thrown myself into the lake instead.”
Hope laughed.
“Then you have no idea the level of duck shit we’re talking about. I promise you I’m infinitely preferable.”
“What a compliment.” A small smile teased the corner of Alison’s mouth. She uncrossed and crossed her legs again and Hope’s mouth went dry.
“Hope? ”
They both looked up as Camille appeared out of the darkness, her eyes suddenly widening as she looked from Hope to Alison and back again.
“Hey,” Hope greeted her, about to introduce her best friend to Alison, despite feeling a sharp hit of disappointment at the interruption. Camille jumped in fast though.
“We’re heading off. Are you ready?”
“Um-” Hope hesitated. What she wanted was to stay where she was, finding more ways to keep making this increasingly fascinating woman unwind. To keep those grey eyes on her face. To figure her out.
“I’m tired,” Camille added abruptly. “Please?”
Hope frowned. Camille was being borderline rude, which was absolutely not like her at all. Her friend had one hand on a willowy hip, her huge blue eyes filled with distaste as she surveyed the two of them.
“I won’t keep you,” Alison said gracefully, getting to her feet. She glanced from Hope to Camille and came to some kind of conclusion. She didn’t bother with Camille - for what was probably the first time in Camille’s gorgeous life - instead holding Hope’s gaze for a few seconds. “Don’t be a hero,” she said in a low voice, with the tiniest hint of a smile. Then she walked away. Hope couldn’t stop her startled grin as she watched her disappear.
“Hope!” Camille elbowed her sharply. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Literally nothing, now,” she huffed at her friend in the dim light of the garden. “I was just talking to a ridiculously attractive woman-”
“Hope! ” Camille’s voice came out high. “Are you kidding me right now? Do you know who that is?”
Hope tilted her head in confusion.
“I mean… no? Who is she?”
“That’s Alison Hartmann!” Hope was blank, trying to place the name and Camille put both hands on her hips now. “The gangland fixer’s wife? They made a fucking TV show about her! Universe Below?”
Hope still felt dazed as she gazed out the passenger window in the backseat of Magnus’s car. She remembered that past summer, hot hazy evenings, her air conditioner malfunctioning. She’d spent two weeks staying in Flynn’s spare bedroom, and every evening that first week, Camille had joined them to binge Universe Below.
The newly released series was the latest instalment of six previous seasons, an only slightly fictionalised retelling of Melbourne’s gangland wars. Covering all the big crime families, the feuds, the delicate politics, the big egos of the different factions. The three of them had watched as multiple murders, drugs and arms trades, betrayals and double-crossings had kept them enthralled.
And then, in series six, there was the fixer. Simon Hartmann: a respected QC, the highest level of barrister you could be, a top dog in the cut-throat Melbourne legal world. Talks of a political career, his reputation impeccable. The man depicted in the series was a suave silver fox, the actor portraying him carrying a solid whiff of George Clooney. Hartmann had overturned a huge miscarriage of justice case - releasing a man falsely imprisoned for decades - becoming a celebrated media darling in the proces. But that was before the underworld had found him.
Hartmann agreed to represent a key figure in the criminal Grant family, accused of multiple crimes - including accessory to murder - proclaiming to the whole world his client’s innocence.
At first, he’d gotten the man off, only for him to be rearrested merely weeks later on more serious charges. This time, the gang lynchpin had landed in jail for two years. On his release - if the TV series was to be believed - the gangster had swiftly dispatched of his brother-in-law to become the head of the faction. The man’s name was Mike Grant: a perfectly innocuous name for a spectacularly frightening individual .
It wasn’t long before he was rearrested for his suspected role in the murder, but as it turned out, this was no coincidence. As a whistleblower at the justice department found in a wide-ranging enquiry, it was Mike’s own lawyer - Hartmann, the fixer - who was feeding confidential material about his client directly back to the police, violating every ethical rule in the book. His motive? His extramarital affair with the gangster’s wife.
As the car wound through the quiet streets of Gold Hill, Hope tried to remember the fixer’s wife, the woman Hartmann betrayed. She had a hazy recollection of a beautiful brunette actress - which now made sense - a storyline of murky motivations, of who knew what and when. One image stuck in her mind: the wife in the witness box, stony and unmoved. Had that, in real life, been the same woman she’d just flirted with in the pub? Her mind spun.
She bid Magnus and Flynn goodnight, and Prisha and Camille trailed up the back steps behind her into the house. Camille lived forty-five minutes out of town in a gorgeous bungalow with an epic studio where she worked. Up until recently, Prisha had lived at home with her parents, but a couple of months ago she’d moved into Camille’s spare room, the two of them adding squabbles about dishes and bathroom duty to their many years of friendship. On nights like this, they both stayed at Hope’s place. Hope was glad; she was dying to process this.
The very second they’d entered Hope’s living room, low-lit by a single lamp to help them find their way, Camille had pushed Prisha down onto the couch and tumbled in next to her, landing in a tangle of limbs .
“Hope,” she announced, “is in love with a mafia wife now.”
“ What?” Prisha squeaked, slightly more gullible than usual, approximately five beers in.
“Camille,” Hope returned, “is a dramatic drama queen of epic proportions.” She flopped down in the adjacent armchair. “I literally just spoke to a woman and now she’s losing her mind.”
“That tracks,” Prisha agreed as she ran her fingers through her sleek black hair, lightly disheveled now from her position on the couch. Camille huffed against her side.
“We’re rewatching Universe Below right now ,” she announced.
Two hours later, Prisha and Camille were fast asleep in the television’s glow, Prisha curled on her side and Camille’s head snuggled against her belly. Hope had never felt more awake in her entire life. Using the remote to fast forward through every scene that didn’t involve the fixer, she watched Alison’s life unravel on the screen before her, feeling more and more sober with every second.
She watched Alison as she drifted glamorously through Melbourne’s high society life, had unsatisfying sex with her hot husband and pretended not to notice his blatant affair. She watched her shield her teenage son from the news headlines and stroll into courtrooms, her husband’s hand in hers, elegant chin held high. She watched her lie on the witness stand, claiming no knowledge of the affair and swearing before the court that her husband was faithful.
Hope watched Alison stare straight ahead with icy resolve as the red-hot mistress testified about her three year affair with the fixer, spilling sordid details before the court and weeping at the fallout upon her dangerous world. Hope watched Alison finally break - one, violent, body-wracking sob - locked alone in a courtroom bathroom stall before the camera panned to the mistress listening in the cubicle next door, Mike Grant walking freely down the courthouse steps, getting away with murder as theme song played and the credits rolled.
Hope let the screen go blank. She remembered the fear in Alison’s eyes at the lakeside, the man in the suit, Alison warning her that she’d put herself in danger. What the fuck had she just stumbled into?