Chapter 5
Chapter Five
T he envelope could have a thousand great things in there. An offer of a house? Early retirement? A prince writing to tell me I’m his long-lost cousin and there’s a spare Italian palazzo awaiting me.
But I know only one thing: it’s from my family.
I’ve put an entire ocean’s distance between us, but now the envelope is in my hands. Glossy and hideous. I can’t tell what it’s going to be. But it’s something BIG.
My parents’ wedding anniversary? A birthday? I could explain my way out of these … or so I hope. I don’t have to fly back to England, do I?
Before I can even get inside my apartment, curiosity and anxiety overwhelm me. I take the envelope and rip it open.
Miss Lulu Poppy Evans
Adam simply has to come. He would be stable and calm and familiar. He would hold my hand and have my back. He would protect me from the craziness of my family. Yes, Adam will come, and everything will be fine.
Before I can change my mind, I log into the wedding web portal – specially designed for Lulu and Chip – where it’s raining geraniums and my cursor turns into a white dove as I attempt to find the RSVP box underneath a bunch of pink blooms. I take a deep breath and click the box.
Yes, We Will Attend.
* * *
I spend the rest of the night carefully crafting an email to Lulu apologising for the delay, congratulating her and checking (pleading) that it’s still okay to bring a plus one, my boyfriend , Adam.
Marla (I try not to think of her as the floozy that bedded my dad all those years ago) responds almost immediately as it’s midday in England.
Lulu is busy at a dress fitting. So gorgeous. Can’t take our eyes off her. The wedding is packed. Donna Henry is coming! It’s taken you a while to reply, we thought you’d died (she attempted a smiley thingy here) but I guess we can make room for you and your guest.
It’s as though Marla can’t bring herself to say boyfriend or partner. Or Adam. But she’s managed to use the full name of someone – I think it’s their local mayor? – whom I can guarantee Lulu doesn’t know.
But the great news is this: Adam can come. Yes, I will be bringing a partner. I mean, he’ll be more like a prisoner, but you know, whatever.
I can’t sleep after that, and start to pace around my flat. Adam arrives to mine late after his drinks, about 2am, and I’m about to tell him about the dreaded envelope, but he’s drunk. He curls his lean limbs around me and starts snoring in ten seconds.
Around dawn, I finally fall into a deep sleep only to wake up at nine. Adam, already dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, is sitting at the end of the bed, scrolling through FX, his favourite stock exchange app.
I sit up, feeling tired and dishevelled. How do I tell him about yesterday? That I didn’t get the job. My heart sinks.
Adam is the first man I’ve met that is ambitious, driven and consistent. He supports me doing long hours at work, and loves my independence and dedication to being a successful editor. We always joke that we’re pretty similar: we’re dedicated to our jobs and we want to be successful. We’re also almost the same height and we could raid each other’s wardrobes, although that would mean I’d be wearing preppy jumpers and chinos all the time. He wore that exact get-up the first time I met him. I still remember how over red wine and a wonderfully large cheese platter he asked me, genuinely, if I paid my credit card off on time. I laughed and thought, Finally someone who is organised just like me.
My ex, Richard (the Dick), a singer-songwriter whom I dated for three years, always had an excuse for why he couldn’t pay for anything: he’d forgotten his wallet, his lease was up, his credit card was maxed. He moved in with me, and then proceeded to lie on the couch every day, pretending to be writing the next big song, when really I think he was just eating corn chips and watching Friends reruns. He never made it into the music industry, surprise, surprise, and now I think he works at a local sandwich shop.
‘So…?’ Adam says, peering over his phone. ‘How are we celebrating?’
For once, I have no words. Thankfully, Adam doesn’t seem to notice.
‘You’re a chief editor! The Nikkei is up! I start my new job in a few weeks! It’s a good day.’ He stands up and yawns. ‘How about eggs? Let me take you out.’
I get a glimpse of myself in the reflection and think I could really do with a Bloody Mary right now. Surely drinking in the morning isn’t healthy if it’s with tomato juice?
I nod. ‘Sure.’
* * *
It’s a perfect Sydney winter’s day – blue skies, not a cloud, and warm enough that I only need a light wool cardigan and jeans for the walk to Café Soul. I fidget, trying to think of a good way to spring on the most planned man in the world that we are doing a quick trip to the other side of the world in just under two weeks. Even though we’ve only been dating a year, Adam gets a bit put out when things don’t go like clockwork according to how he’s planned them. Which makes me feel horribly worried about telling him about the wedding.
At the café, Adam orders a ham and cheese croissant and an extra-large coffee. I order poached eggs like the proper adult I am, rather than a cheese toastie, even though the children’s menu calls to me.
‘So?’ he prompts me. ‘How was yesterday, Miss Chief?’ He pauses and waits for me to respond.
He tries again. ‘Get it? You’re a words person. Miss Chief. Mischief .’
I give a little laugh, but it comes out more like a sigh.
‘Gemma?’ He looks puzzled. ‘I thought you’d be more excited?’
Ugh, I have to rip the Band-Aid off. ‘Actually, it’s just … I didn’t get it. It went to that awful guy Ben.’ I feel gutted as I remember Ben’s smirk, still fresh in my mind.
I hope that Adam will just telepathically know how bad I feel, and give me a hug. I glance at him, waiting for a reassuring, what a dick or I’m so sorry . Neither comes.
Adam cocks his head to the side, with a look that says, shit . ‘Oh babe. It’s just… There’s this really cute townhouse…’
This makes me feel a ton worse. Despite myself, I say ‘And?’
‘And we needed the extra salary, that’s all.’
I try not to sigh. All I want is an extra-long hug, a forehead kiss – and a bloody cheese toastie – but picking up on signs, subtle or obvious, isn’t Adam’s forte.
‘It’s just a blip, Adam, that’s all. We’re fine. We’ll get that townhouse. Or another one, a better one.’ I babble for a bit before I realise I am comforting him.
‘Yeah, course. I’m just disappointed for you.’ He leans over and I think he’s about to squeeze my hand, but instead he picks up a serviette and starts scribbling on it. Absentmindedly he says, ‘You’re okay, right? We’ll find you a new job. A better company. All we need is a good plan.’
Then Adam lifts the scrappy serviette he’s been doodling on and in the middle is a number crunch of how much I need to make in order for us to get this new townhouse, but to the side he’s drawn a cartoon of me at the top of a building, that says best publishing place and I have a wonky crown on. I felt a whoosh of love for him.
‘Adam…’ I get teary just thinking about how sweet he is.
‘Don’t cry.’ He looks petrified, thinking I’m going to start sobbing, something he hasn’t done since he was ten.
‘Sorry.’ But there is a big fat blob of a tear on my cheek and I’m not really sorry. He’s a sweetheart. ‘I’m just touched.’
The waitress arrives with our breakfast then and we eat in silence for a while. Adam makes cooing noises over his croissant, which means it’s a good one. And I think, Okay, it’s now or never, whilst he’s in seventh heaven enjoying a mouthful of cheese, tell him about the wedding.
‘So there is something else I need to tell you…’ I say cryptically. As soon as I start speaking, I feel a bit queasy. I mean, to some people this would be the best news – it is, after all, just a holiday, a little European holiday. But to Adam, who has already planned what to eat for breakfast for next month, it’s going to be a bit of a shock.
I tread carefully. ‘What are you doing in two weeks’ time?’
His deep chocolate eyes flick over me. ‘My taxes. Think this year is going to be a good return.’
He’s not kidding. He likes to do his taxes just before the end of the financial year, and then consider what return he may get back to put towards his mortgage fund. Like I said, he’s the prepared, calm and predictable type.
‘Well, the thing is … Lulu is getting married. In two weeks.’
‘Oh. Sounds nice,’ he says looking relieved it isn’t more serious.
‘In Italy .’
‘Wow.’ Adam reaches for the newspaper and flips through to the stock market pages, scouring it for the latest on the Dow Jones or something. I want to say, Can you look at me ? but I don’t want to start an argument.
Instead, I say as upbeat as I can manage, ‘In Tuscany, actually. They have great wine and coffee. It’s beautiful, and it’s summer over there.’
He looks at me with his large dark eyes. ‘You’re going?’
‘Course. I have to.’
‘Wow, cool. Italy. You’ll have a great time.’ He runs a hand through his hair and he looks so sweet I just want to kiss his cheeks and say, ‘Please come.’
‘I was hoping that maybe we … we will have a great time.’ I cross my fingers on both hands as if pleading with the universe that he’ll say yes. ‘I RSVPed we would attend, since you have the time off before your new job. I just thought…’
He looks up at me slowly, perplexed, his eyebrows raised so high they almost meet his hairline.
I nervously send up a little prayer. ‘We could go to Italy and be back before you know it. Plus, Tuscany is ultra-romantic. We could do some wine or cheese tasting. I know it’s a long way, but it’s Tuscany .’
‘I can’t go.’
I feel my stomach clench. ‘I know this is totally last minute, but I was hoping, for me … you may consider it at least?’
He shakes his head. ‘You know I can’t. And, even if I could, I wouldn’t be going to Italy. You can’t start a new job as the Head of Digital Strategy jetlagged!’
‘Right.’ I feel deflated.
‘I need to be at the top of my game. I’m sorry but I’ve got so much to do around my place before the new job starts. I need to get new suits, my ceiling cleaned.’
‘Your ceiling cleaned ?’ Is that even a thing?
‘Yes,’ Adam says matter-of-factly. ‘There’s mildew gathering in the corner and I think it’s bad for my respiratory health. For ours , when you stay over. Now come on, you, let’s get another coffee and go for a walk.’
Damnit . Adam really isn’t going to come. I’m picturing how it’s going to play out and it isn’t pretty. Me, alone, trying to explain why my boyfriend doesn’t seem to exist. Adam, at home, with a weird sponge, cleaning his ceiling.
I sigh. This entire week feels like it’s intent on destroying my life, a bit like the triffids did in that post-apocalyptic world coming in with their stinging stems and just killing people?—
Adam taps me on the shoulder. ‘Gemma, you’re doing that thing you do. You’re spacing out again.’
* * *
The walk back to my unit is pleasant, even though the sky has turned grey and it’s a little windy. Adam holds my hand and warms it up by rubbing it between his. He jokes that for a Brit, I’m a weather wuss, and I’ll enjoy going to Tuscany in the summer. The thought of warm weather, the sun beaming into my cold bones, makes me feel a little comforted.
The comfort doesn’t last long though. As soon as Adam leaves, being home alone becomes a mind trap. How am I going to explain Adam isn’t coming? I have RSVPed for a plus one. How am I going to explain that ? My family aren’t the type of people that say nothing, or think it’s clearly something they shouldn’t say anything about. Nope. Lulu would probably get on a microphone and ask, ‘Why didn’t you bring a plus one, Gem-man?’ And I’d have to explain in front of the entire five-hundred-plus wedding guests that my boyfriend isn’t here because of his ceiling.
I can’t sleep or relax for the rest of the weekend because I know I’m going to have to go alone to Lulu’s Italian Weddingpalooza.
I’m also trying to ignore the messages I have received from Mum:
Oh darling, I’m so glad to hear you can make it. Lulu was beside herself you hadn’t RSVPed, but I kept telling her you’d be there to help out. You’ve always had such great organisational skills, and I can tell you, with the size of this wedding, Lulu needs all the help she can get!
And the ones from Lulu, which literally read as a list of demands:
Gemma – you’re impossible. RSVPing two weeks out! This day is my day, four days actually, and I won’t have it ruined! It’s very important you know some things. Don’t wear yellow because the bridesmaids are, and nothing that will clash with yellow – including scarlet and crimson red. Actually, all shades of orange and red, no green at all, and nothing electric blue. And of course, no black, but I think anyone knows that about weddings.
P.S. Do you think you can get to the second night’s gala dinner early – someone needs to prep the goldfish. Eight p.m. at Crinitis.
As far as I’m concerned red and orange look great with yellow, so does green. Thankfully I have a powder lavender blue lace dress that will blend nicely into the background. And maybe I could sneak a black dress in and she won’t notice. But ‘prep the goldfish’? Whatever does that mean?
Thankfully, Tony approves me taking a week off work. ‘Take two, Gemma, you have the time and HR are bugging me. You haven’t had a holiday in two years apparently. But why is everyone going to Italy?’
‘Everyone?’ I ask him.
‘Fraser’s going to some lemon place and Amy’s over there somewhere and—’ Tony says before being interrupted by his mobile phone vibrating and leaving to take the call.
I was going to tell him Amy’s in Greece not Italy, but I leave him to the phone call and pop into the junior editors’ room for a quick check-in to find Ruby by herself eating a slab of chocolate cake.
‘Carve me a chunk,’ I say sighing and falling into the chair opposite. ‘A big one.’
‘So, who are you going to take?’ Ruby asks with big eyes when I tell her my predicament.
‘God knows. I just know I can’t go alone.’
I’ve done a solid hour of ringing people too. Even considered calling my ex, Richard, at the sandwich shop and inviting him to come, but then sanity washed over me. Hannah has jokingly suggested she could come as my surprise lover, and I loved that idea for a second. But springing on my parents I was a lesbian would have longer-term ramifications that I wouldn’t really want to deal with.
A few hours later, over a few too many bottles of Sauv Blanc, I drunkenly tried to convince both Jess and Hannah to come. We could pretend we were a long-term wonderful throuple, and after the wedding, spend a week wine tasting in Tuscany. But Jess is turning thirty, and being a plus one to Lulu’s wedding isn’t exactly how she wants to ring in her new decade.
Desperate, I tried other friends – even guys I haven’t spoken to in over a year – and everyone wanted to go, except no one actually could. I almost pulled out, but then I thought of Italy: delicious pasta, glittering oceans, stunning vineyards, sunshine and chilled wine.
‘Well, have you thought about…’ Ruby winks.
‘What?’ I raise my eyebrows.
‘A bit of a … side piece?’
‘You mean an escort ?’ I say, whipping my head around to check no one had heard. ‘Absolutely not.’
Ruby laughs. ‘Don’t look shocked. Many people do it.’
Many desperate people . ‘But don’t escorts offer sex?’
Ruby shakes her head, ‘They offer sex, but you don’t have to. A guy I knew at university used to do it. He said it was like three hundred for dinner, and a thousand if you wanted to sleep with him. I think he was trying to break into movies, and was very good at characters so he could be the perfect businessman, or a personal trainer – apparently the girls loved that one – or a photographer, arty and complex.’
God, that sounds grim. I simply could not bring an escort.
‘I’m just going to go by myself.’ There, I’ve said it. The only possible answer to this predicament.
‘Isn’t that worse than a little pseudo boyfriend and some role playing?’
I think about it. Everyone would cluck and say, Oh, poor Gemma, thirty-four and still hasn’t found anyone. They’d set me up with someone at the wedding. Likely someone probably my father’s age, and they’d think, Oh well, that’s what you get at this time in your life, scraping the very bottom of the barrel. I can almost hear Lulu now. Well, at least he’s rich, she’d be saying about the balding, obese, handsy man in the corner. Damn it, Ruby was right.
Ruby chews the end of her pen. ‘Why don’t you let me see who I can find for you? No escorts. Promise. I have a wonderful little black book.’ She winks at me, again.
‘Hmmm, I don’t know.’
She claps her hands. ‘Please, let’s do this! It’s so fun! Maybe we could even write a book about it? It’s kinda romantic if you think about it.’
I roll my eyes. ‘We sell romcoms here; we don’t live them. And besides, I have someone already – Adam.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Ruby looked a little flat when I reminded her of that. ‘Does he mind that you’re going to take someone else?’
‘Um … not really.’ In fact, when I mentioned that I could go with someone else, he told me that was a great idea, and even suggested a data scientist from his work, which I politely declined, since said scientist is twenty-two years old. ‘Everyone else,’ he said, ‘is pretty much taken.’ Then I said, ‘So you wouldn’t mind if someone pretended to be you?’ and he looked at me with a calm, smooth face and said, ‘Not at all.’ Something about that bothered me at first, but then I sat with it, and after a few hours, I realised this is what secure, mature couples do. They trust each other.
Ruby is looking at me, concern all over her face. ‘He’s okay with it. That’s weird, isn’t it?’
‘Is it? I think it’s just Adam. He’s very trusting. We’re good. I trust him; he trusts me. Trustworthy. We both are.’
Ruby eyes me up and down suspiciously. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone use the word trust so many times in ten seconds. I mean, do you think he’s the One?’
I laugh. ‘The One ? I’m going to file that under things that don’t exist.’
‘Maybe that means … you just haven’t…’
I laugh again and shake my head. ‘No, don’t go all goo-goo on me. Next thing you’ll start talking about twin flames and that butterfly feeling you get when you meet someone. Some elusive spark.’
That’s the thing, when your entire world is books, you know all the tropes.
The workaholic city girl who goes to the country and finds the handsome man of her dreams.
The whodunit (the husband, always, or the jealous best friend).
The search for self (in a place like Bali or India).
And, of course, the elusive tracking down of the One.
After twenty-something years of dating and editing, I know it doesn’t happen like it does in the movies, where a man sees you buying a croissant at your local bakery and he knows in an instant you are the One so he follows you (in a romantic non-stalkery way) up the street. Approaches you. You giggle. You are wearing a long floaty dress. You are a goddess infused with a feminine, ethereal beauty. You always smell like flowers, and don’t leave sweat from your nether regions on gym equipment.
He is handsome, but more than that, he is kind. He doesn’t stare at your breasts. Not until you want him to. Then he stares all the time like you are the Goddess of Perky Breasts, and they don’t need constant underwire to remain north of the belt border.
He offers you a coffee, and when he does, his hand grazes yours. You feel butterflies. You manage to flip your hair in a carefree, rather than I-have-this-neck-pain way. He finds you enthralling, endearing. If some girl walked past in a slutty cowgirl outfit, or a bedazzled high-cut bikini, his eyes would never leave you. He walks you to where you are going, on the traffic side, of course. He is built to protect you. You both talk. He likes books! And good music! He likes sports, but only enough that it makes him manly. Not so much that he’ll ditch you for a football game.
He takes your number. Calls straightaway. Takes you to coffee. To dinner. On road trips. He wants to hug you and watch stars with you. He brushes the hair out of your eyes, softly. It’s easy with him. Different. He’s your best friend and lover. He wants to talk. He doesn’t sexualise you. But when he does sex you up, wow, just wow.
He hugs you when you cry. He fixes things around the house. He talks about how he feels and makes grand love gestures. Your house is full of flowers. He never ghosts you. If you have to wait even a moment for his call, for his message, you can be sure he is going to declare, ‘ You’ve been on my mind the entire time. The first thing I wanted to do was call you. ’ He comes to your house one evening when it’s raining because he was overcome with a thought and it had to be said aloud. He pulls you into the rain. You laugh (rather than telling him, ‘ Jesus, I just had my fucking hair straightened. ’) He gets down on one knee and proclaims, ‘ I love you. Marry me .’
Jesus, Mary and Jake, it does not go like that. Haven’t we all watched enough of The Bachelorette to know how most things end up? With an ugly cry, and saying, ‘I’ll find someone who wants me’ even though we all know it’s not really going to happen.
At times like these, when I remember how badly love can go, I feel infinitely better about my own situation. So what if Adam can’t come to a last-minute wedding on the other side of the world? He’ll be here for me when I get back.
I say that aloud. ‘Adam’s great, and it’s only a week, isn’t it…’
Ruby picks up a pen and grabs a sheet of paper. ‘Okay, so, are we actually doing this?’
I swallow hard. What’s the harm?
Ruby’s looking at me expectantly. With a sense of trepidation, I find myself nodding.
‘Great! Tell me exactly what you want, and I’ll help you find the perfect faux partner.’