Chapter 4
FRASER
‘Can I steal you for a second?’ a woman says, slipping her hand through the crook of my arm, disturbing me from the breather I was taking on the back balcony.
I’d barely returned from my three-month trip when my colleague Zoe insisted I attend her costume party to ease back into normalcy—and now some stranger is dragging me down the steps into the courtyard garden, not that I’m putting up a fight …
Even after a full week with Parker (mostly spent wrestling her maths homework, hosing a meltdown over the read-a-thon, then sending emails back and forth with Maggie about whether or not we should be concerned that Parker seems to be scratching her arms—is it anxiety?), I’m still acclimatising to ‘real life’.
Frankly, I’m missing the singing of the ice and the creak of the ship’s bow as it slices through slush, broken ice sheets roaring as they thunder into the ocean.
And the boundless space I had on the research trip to get my head together.
Give me the eerie silence under a dazzling aurora sky over this blast of music and lights, and this throng of people shouting to be heard while I’m forced into small talk with humans.
Or with this woman. Who seems to be dressed as a cat.
She glances towards the costume party as she pushes me behind a hedge, black latex suit pressed against me as she adjusts her whiskers, champagne on her breath, and says, ‘I told some lecherous drunk in there that you were my fiancé.’
What is happening?
‘Actually, he’s not some random,’ she confesses, falling onto a concrete seat beside us and pulling me onto it next to her. ‘He’s my ex-boyfriend.’
‘Shit, really?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t serious! In fact, it was a giant mistake. The Everest of dating debacles—’
This sort of thing doesn’t happen at the South Pole. That’s why I like it. No anonymous Catwomen entwining me in their failed romantic exploits.
‘I know all about mistakes,’ I start to say.
Where am I going with this? I haven’t been on Tinder.
Nor do I see my marriage that way. That was more a case of two people getting involved before our brains had matured, dazed on the idea of love.
But now I’ve broken Zoe’s rule: No thinking about Maggie at the party.
And for God’s sake, shave off that beard and make an effort, Fraser, unless you’re in costume as a reclusive scientist.
I am a reclusive scientist. But I did what she said. The closest thing I had to a nineties costume was a David Beckham jersey that I dug out of one of the boxes I have yet to unpack in my new rental. Maggie stayed in the house and is in the process of buying me out. Stop thinking about her.
‘Don’t worry,’ Catwoman reassures me. ‘This isn’t going to snowball into one of those full-blown fake dating sagas, like in Hallmark movies and romance novels.’
I wasn’t worried, because I didn’t know fake dating sagas existed. They sound hideous. And the way she’s still got one eye on the house is unnerving. Eventually, she drags her attention from the balcony, thrusts her face uncomfortably close, inspects me in the moonlight, and says, ‘Have we met?’
As her features are obscured behind a shiny mask with pointed ears, it’s difficult to say. ‘Perhaps in one of your eight other lives?’ I suggest, diplomatically.
She laughs, loudly, then clamps a hand over her mouth and puts a finger to my lips as if to shush me, too, not that I have any intention of blaring our whereabouts to the alleged thug she used to date.
‘Could we have met at the university?’ I ask quietly, after I remove her finger. ‘I’m in the School of Science.’
She shakes her head. ‘Not likely. I’m a very boring cybersecurity analyst. Currently researching international espionage, but I can’t really talk about it …’
The woman takes self-deprecation to a new level. ‘You do seem quite dull,’ I volley, deadpan. She shrinks a little, clearly one of those brilliant people with no sense of irony. ‘Between the false engagement, the spy-wrangling, the whole’—I wave my hand at the costume—‘cat situation.’
She laughs and seems to relax, forgetting the house and turning to face Zoe’s climbing roses, illuminated by a string of party lights. ‘I hate costumes,’ she admits. ‘This is not who I am.’
Isn’t that the whole point? Before I can argue, the back door bangs open and we’re silenced by the heavy tread of boots on the wooden planks of the deck above us. Shadows flick through the cracks, over her face.
‘Rachael!’ a voice booms over the banister.
We’re stock-still, then she moves closer to me as footsteps tramp down the stairs into the fenced-off courtyard that we’re trapped in.
I rise to my feet before he sees us, a tattooed brick of a man who looks like he was born in a gym. His eyes narrow furiously at the sight of me, but I stand tall and straighten the glasses on my nose. Not exactly a power move. Rather a nervous habit. Unfortunately not a more intimidating one.
‘Just move on, Connor!’ Rachael says. From where he’s standing, he might not have heard the crack in her voice, but I can. ‘It’s been over for six months!’
Six months?
‘And you’ve had time to get engaged?’ he roars.
Exactly! I try to invent a story that explains how I’ve apparently met, fallen for, and proposed to this woman, not half a year after they split.
But inventing stories is not in my wheelhouse.
I deal in scientific fact. Perhaps it’s the Beckham getup that makes me artificially confident, but I step forward and extend my hand—a civility Connor resolutely declines.
Rachael is probably wondering why she picked a partner for this ruse who’s conducting the altercation in the manner of Colin Firth.
‘It’s been a whirlwind relationship,’ she says, by way of explanation.
A tornado, from where I’m standing.
Connor’s eyes roam over me, his hands balling into fists. ‘You don’t look like the whirlwind type,’ he points out, quite fairly.
‘I’ve been pretty gun-shy since my divorce,’ I admit, throwing my arm around Rachael’s latex-clad waist, deciding the only way I can be remotely convincing here is if I’m honest. ‘We just clicked.’
Five minutes ago.
He doesn’t need to know I’d be the last person to rush into a premature betrothal. Not when I’m still painstakingly removing the splinters from the last one.
The sight of my hand on her waist gets his hackles up.
‘Mate, she’s asked you to leave her alone,’ I hear myself say, pulling her tighter to my side.
It’s the first time in my life I’ve used the term ‘mate’ in a threatening manner, and I’m trying to remember anything—even a single move—from my teenage tae kwon do classes.
‘Did you even wait for my side of the bed to cool?’ Connor pushes on. ‘No surprise, I guess, the way you look tonight.’
I don’t even know this woman, but suddenly all my hesitation gives way to anger. Fighting words, still rather Firth-esque, burst forth: ‘That is fucking it.’
He laughs—a high school bully picking on the science nerd behind the bike sheds—and makes his move.
I push her behind me, certain I’m about to be introduced to the inside of an ambulance but ready to involve myself anyway, when he’s unexpectedly brought up short by a deluge of water and what looks like hundreds of ice cubes.
Having dumped them precisely on his shaved head from above, the bucket-yielding woman yells, ‘Leave her alone, you pathologically self-serving, insufferable twit!’
Whether he’s stunned by the ice or the insult, I can’t tell, but I capitalise on his confusion, grab Rachael’s hand, and pull her past him as he shakes off the frozen shrapnel.
We rush back upstairs, where I deposit her into a swarm of concerned friends and outraged strangers.
Before we can exchange another word, she is spirited away, glancing back at me as she’s pulled through the house, out the front door, and into someone’s car, like a celebrity exiting a New York restaurant.
She’s down the street before a humiliated Connor decides to leap the fence.
The whole ruckus simmers as Zoe, ever positive, attempts to reassemble the fractured vibe.
‘Wow! I’m so sorry, Fraser,’ she says, cornering me in the living room once things are back on track. She’s in one of those MC Hammer–inspired fluorescent parachute tracksuits that she’s probably had in her wardrobe for three decades. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘Who was she?’ I ask.
Her eyes sparkle as she looks at me, thrilled at my interest. ‘That was Rachael McKenzie,’ she says. ‘She works for Defence. Secret Squirrel stuff that she can’t talk about—’
‘No, I mean ice-bucket woman.’ I’m describing her as if I’ve discovered some missing link from eight million years of human evolution.
‘Oh! Britney Spears over there?’ Zoe says, looking at her across the room. ‘She’s hilarious. And very single. No crazed ex-boyfriends lurking in the wings, which is obviously an asset …’
This is not a dating agency. Even if it were, Zoe wouldn’t have to worry about me getting tangled up with Rachael. As talented and attractive as she clearly is, guest-starring in that soap opera for five minutes was enough.
Her rescuer, though, holding court with a small group near the dining table, is all big eyes and dramatic energy, gesticulating wildly as she spins the story, admirers entranced.
‘If anyone needs some hilarity in their life right now, it’s you, Fraser,’ Zoe nudges. ‘You and Maggie were miserable for years, obviously—’
Was it that obvious? I thought we’d staged quite the convincing act of marital bliss.
‘I know for a fact Maggie’s on the apps.
’ As Zoe breaks her own ban on Maggie Chat, I’m surprised at the measured way my body greets this news.
Calmly, as if we’re talking about an acquaintance and not my wife of nine years.
Strangely, it’s almost a relief to know Maggie is focused on something other than project-managing our breakup.
But dating? Why touch a flame when you know it’s going to burn?
‘It’s time to get back on the horse, Fraser!’
Britney Spears pulls her audience closer with the conspiratorial body language of a practised raconteur. ‘I’m not sure I have the energy …’ My sentence drifts as I’m distracted by a peal of laughter from her fan club.
‘For horses?’ Zoe teases.
I snap my focus back to her. ‘For hilarious women.’
‘You don’t have to marry her, Frase! Just have a chat. Win her over with your scintillating intellectualism.’
This week’s atmospherics lecture springs to mind. A pencil case loudly hit the floor, knocked off the desk by the hypnagogic jerk of a sleeping student, who was obviously captivated. This is a woman who breaks up fights and is besties with a spy specialist.
‘I’ve no intention of marrying her.’ Or anyone.
I’m just struggling to take my eyes off her at present—a fact Zoe has clocked.
‘What’s her story, then?’ I ask, the question and Zoe’s reaction to it dislodging my equilibrium as she clasps her hands, tightens her black ponytail, and draws up a barstool, pulling me into a huddle.
‘Well, we met at the conservatorium. She was brilliant. Gifted, really. Infuriatingly talented but tortured, you know, the way composers can be?’
Stuffy visions of Beethoven and Mozart are kicked aside by this backyard vigilante in the preppy skirt, shirt tied at the waist, over-the-knee socks, Doc Martens, blonde wig, and wide-open smile.
‘Tortured and infuriating,’ I parrot, playing down my enthusiasm. ‘Got it.’
‘But then something awful happened …’ Zoe begins. ‘Hey!’ she calls across the room, wheeling her hand in the air to encourage her over.
‘Zoe, please don’t—’
And what awful thing happened?
But it’s too late. Ice Woman is on the move. Barrelling towards me while my heart hammers the way it should have done at the earlier mention of my ex-wife’s activity on the apps.
As she approaches, her face cycles through a range of emotions. Surprise. Confusion. By the time she reaches me, she seems incredulous, somehow, that I appear to be standing here at all.
I didn’t realise I’d made such an impression. She’d seemed so focused on Connor and Rachael. But then she speaks, and it takes just one shaky word for her startled expression to make complete sense.
‘Joshua?’