Almost Perfect Read online

  ‘Well, this is a bookshop . . .’ he was saying.

  ‘Hmm, I bet a person has to get up early in the morning to fool you.’

  He was staring at her in a strange way. Not that Georgie wasn’t used to that, being stared at. In a strange way. Usually people were checking out the colour of the streaks in her hair, or the fact that quite often her earrings didn’t match or, for that matter, the rest of her outfit.

  Everyone assumed Georgie was arty like her mother and Nick, but that wasn’t it at all. Long before she first dragged on a pair of floral shorts over purple tights and topped it all off with a striped pyjama shirt, her mother’s philosophy had been that children should be allowed to make their own choices, especially about what to wear. Which was all well and good if one was born with a modicum of taste, some sense of colour, some kind of aesthetic. Sadly Georgie was not. When she hit her teens she would have dearly loved a little guidance, but none was forthcoming. Gillian insisted she always looked gorgeous, but she didn’t, she looked as though she’d been dressed by a blind person. She tried to copy Zan for a while, but she couldn’t carry off the classy, pared-down look her older sister achieved so effortlessly, aided in no small way by the fact that she was tall and statuesque, with sleek, dark hair that did exactly as it was told. She and Nick could have been clones of their father, while Georgie was smaller, not short, but finer, skinny as a kid. Everyone said she was exactly like Gillian, but Georgie knew she was nowhere near as beautiful as her mother. It was just the hair. Gillian had a glorious mane of tumbling russet curls which had somehow genetically mutated one generation down into the frizzy mess Georgie was born with. Oh sure, subtle, coppery streaks could occasionally be detected in a certain light, but in most lights her hair was just dilute brown. Until she discovered hair dye.

  ‘So, are you looking for something for yourself, or for a gift?’ Georgie asked the man whose blue-grey eyes were still regarding her curiously.

  ‘Um, a gift.’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The gift, is it for a man or for a woman?’

  ‘Oh, right. It’s for a woman.’ He paused. ‘My mother,’ he added as an afterthought.

  Georgie considered him. ‘Birthday?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he nodded.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘When’s her birthday?’

  ‘Oh.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Hm, don’t put off today what you can leave till the last moment,’ she muttered. What were the chances of that, sharing a birthday with this guy’s mother? Georgie didn’t know if it was a good or a bad omen. ‘So that makes her a Libran?’

  He shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

  She started to peruse the shelves around her. ‘Let me see. That means she would favour love stories spiked with a little intrigue, a murder, espionage perhaps, set around the 1930s or 40s, preferably in warmer climates – I’m thinking Morocco, Tanzania, Sierra Leone. She likes her heroines to be strong and wilful, and her heroes to be tall, their names to begin with B or G, though, and I’m sure there’s no need to point this out, never Bruce or Gavin.’ Georgie selected a book from the shelf and passed it to him.

  He took it, clearly bewildered. ‘You can tell all that from a person’s star sign?’

  ‘No, I just made it up.’ Georgie grinned broadly and he looked at her in that odd way again, though she noticed a flicker of amusement in his eyes this time. ‘Besides, I like to take any opportunity to say “Sierra Leone”,’ she continued. ‘Isn’t that just the best name for a place? I bet a poet came up with that name. If I ever had a daughter I’d be tempted to call her Sierra Leone.’

  This time he laughed. Just a gentle chuckle really, half a laugh if there was a way to measure such things. But it brought his face to life and made his eyes crinkle at the corners. Blue-grey eyes framed with long, dark, thick lashes. Georgie hated that. Not the lashes, the lashes were to die for. No, she hated the fact that most men had such lashes and most women didn’t. The whole mascara industry was founded on that simple quirk of nature. If it had been the other way around, men would never have bothered with mascara and women wouldn’t have needed it. She propped one elbow on the shelf in front of her and rested her chin on her hand, watching him as he scanned the book cover. He had nice hair, nut brown, cut quite short and painstakingly arranged to give it that ruffled, natural, unstyled look when in fact it had been styled to within an inch of its life. Georgie reckoned he’d need to have it cut every few weeks to keep it looking that perfect. She couldn’t imagine him letting the hair grow over his collar, he wasn’t the type. The three-day growth type.

  ‘So you’d recommend this?’ he was asking, turning the book over in his hand.

  ‘Mm,’ Georgie had to tune in again. ‘Depends on what your mother likes. What does she read?’

  He scratched the back of his neck. ‘I don’t really know.’

  Georgie smiled. ‘Maybe you should have got your wife to do this.’

  He looked at her. ‘What makes you think I’m married?’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, like I was saying to Louise–’

  ‘Louise?’

  ‘My partner, also sister-in-law. Because she’s married to my brother, not the other way around. That is to say,’ Georgie added for the sake of clarity, ‘I’m not married to her brother. In fact, Louise doesn’t have a brother. She has a sister. And, you know, the law doesn’t allow single-sex marriages yet. Not that I’d be interested,’ she hastened to add. ‘It just came into my head because of my own sister. But that’s a whole other story.’

  There was the odd look again. No flicker of amusement this time.

  ‘Anyway, I was saying to Louise that I thought you were too well groomed to be single.’

  ‘You can’t be well groomed and single?’

  ‘Well, you can, of course. But it really all comes down to laundry.’

  ‘Laundry?’

  Georgie nodded. ‘You see, women separate darks and lights, it keeps whites whiter. The difference is indiscernible for the first few washes, but after that it does start to affect the whiteness. It really does, but I don’t know whether guys just don’t get it, or they don’t believe it, or they don’t care. I’ve never met a straight man who will separate his darks and lights willingly – he has to have a partner or a wife doing it for him or telling him to do it. Now, look at your shirt.’

  He glanced down at it.

  ‘Positively glowing,’ Georgie remarked sagely.

  ‘So that means I must be married?’

  ‘Or gay.’

  ‘You thought I was gay?’

  ‘No, I thought you were married.’

  He considered her for a moment and Georgie detected the flicker again. He was amused. ‘It’s a brand-new shirt,’ he said. ‘First time I’ve worn it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Kind of blows a hole in your theory, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Or it could be the exception that proves the rule,’ she suggested.

  He leaned against the shelf, considering her. ‘Do you subject all your customers to this kind of scrutiny?’

  Georgie shrugged. ‘Only when I’m trying to suss out if they’re available,’ she said bluntly. ‘Are you going to take that?’

  He looked perplexed for a moment, till he glanced down at the book he was still holding. ‘Sure, why not.’

  Georgie walked over to the register and he followed, handing her the book and his credit card.

  She swiped the card through the machine. ‘Will that be credit . . .’ she glanced at the card, ‘William?’

  He seemed surprised. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I was asking if you want to pay for that on credit.’

  ‘Did you just call me William?’

  She nodded. ‘Sorry, should that be Mr–’

  ‘No, no, that’s not what I meant. How did you know my name?’

  Georgie held up his cre
dit card. ‘Because it says so right here,’ she said simply.

  ‘Oh, sure, of course.’

  He looked a little like he didn’t recognise his own name. Great, he was using a stolen card. To buy a single book. He was a pretty poor excuse for a crim.

  ‘It’s just that I don’t really go by that name,’ he explained.

  Uh oh, he must use an alias. Billy the Hood, Will the Wayward . . .

  ‘It’s a family name, you know, a tradition,’ he explained. ‘But nobody’s ever called me William.’

  ‘So what do they call you? Junior?’ Georgie asked, handing him a pen to sign the receipt.

  He smiled, ‘No, not Junior.’ He hesitated, pen poised midair. ‘My mother only ever called me Liam,’ he said, staring off into space for a moment. Then he snapped out of it. ‘It comes from William, you know. It’s the way the Irish shorten it.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Georgie, slipping the book into a bag. ‘Trust the Irish to do it back to front.’

  The man aka Liam smiled and his eyes crinkled up again. He couldn’t possibly be a criminal.

  ‘So what’s the name on your credit card?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t have a credit card.’

  ‘How do you get by without a credit card?’

  ‘A lot better than I get by with one, let me tell you,’ she winked, passing him the bag.

  ‘Are you going to make me ask again?’ he said.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘What name do you go by?’ he persisted.

  ‘Oh.’ She hesitated, fingering her necklace. It was one of those plastic ones with letters on squared-off beads strung together to spell out a name. The kind of jewellery you ended up with when you had time to fill with a precocious niece. She slipped her thumb under the necklace to hold it up as she leaned forward across the counter. Liam bent to read it, his face close to hers.

  ‘Georgia,’ he said slowly.

  ‘No, it’s an “e”.’

  His eyes flickered up to meet hers, questioning. Their faces were very close.

  ‘Georgie,’ she croaked.

  He smiled. ‘Well, it’s nice to meet you, Georgie.’

  ‘So, married or gay?’ Louise asked when he had left and Georgie had wandered back out to the office.

  ‘Neither apparently. It was a new shirt.’

  Louise smiled slowly. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Hey, Ad, did you see Georgie and the suit in a clinch before?’ Louise asked him as he walked into the office.

  ‘It was hard to miss. I just finished lunch and I thought I was going to bring it all back up again.’

  ‘He was just checking out my necklace,’ Georgie insisted.

  ‘I bet that’s not all he was checking out.’

  ‘And I bet he comes back before the week’s over,’ Louise predicted.

  Adam narrowed his eyes, considering. ‘Do you want to make it interesting? I’ll stick my neck out, ten says he’s back tomorrow.’

  Georgie rolled her eyes.

  ‘Ooh, high roller. Nuh, I’ll give him till Friday,’ Louise decided.

  ‘Oh, look at that out there,’ said Georgie, interrupting them.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the real world. Excuse me, I have to get back to it.’ She walked out to the shop, removing herself from the target range.

  Besides, she needed a moment. A very unsettling thing had occurred when Liam had leaned across the counter to read her name. The words I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him had popped into her brain, uninvited and out of nowhere. Like some giant cartoonist in the sky had drawn a bubble above her head, imposing the thought on her against her will. It was ridiculous. This was all because she’d spent the entire day in the romance section. It was probably written on one of the covers.

  Charlotte knew she would spend the rest of her life in Dashiell’s arms.

  Lame.

  Georgie took one look at the enigmatic stranger and knew she was destined to spend the rest of her life with him.

  Lamer.

  But try as she might to put it out of her mind, and she did try, it would not go away. Georgie had a profound respect for psychic experiences. The thought had come out of nowhere. It had to mean something, though not necessarily something good. He might be a criminal after all. Bill the Butcher, a serial killer who was going to murder her and then turn the gun on himself. There, she would have spent the rest of her life with him. Come to think of it, this had nothing to do with the rest of his life. He didn’t have to die. It was only the rest of Georgie’s life being spent here. So maybe they would go on a date and then on the way home she would get hit by a bus. Georgie tried to ignore the rather morbid direction her thinking had taken. But honestly, I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him? That was too fanciful even for Georgie, and that was saying something.

  Georgie had been dreaming of Mr Right since she was a little girl. He changed persona every few years but he never disappeared altogether. It had started with Ken, though that infatuation didn’t last long. At the age of six the absence of genitals didn’t bother her, but the total absence of personality did. He was, she discovered, merely a handbag for Barbie. The boys from The Famous Five and The Secret Seven got a look-in after that. Georgie couldn’t even remember their names any more, but she had definitely never liked the nerdy one. Though thinking of it now, they were all pretty nerdy. Growing up and moving on, Greg Brady never did anything for her, but when George Michael sang ‘Wake me up, before you Go–Go’ she was gone, gone. The fact that he was gay the whole time was something she preferred not to dwell on. As her teenage years drew to a close, pop stars gave way to movie stars, and movie stars were interspersed with the occasional real, flesh-and-blood man. The wedding fantasies got serious – she’d mentally size him up for a suit, choose her dress, flowers, cars, the venue, even invitations. But she was perennially disappointed. Real men never lived up to her expectations. Or her fantasies.

  So that explained it. Mr Liam Nice Suit Great Haircut was just the latest in a long line of fantasy dream men. She should be able to see them coming by now.

  Anna

  Mac pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. He sat for a minute, staring down at the bouquet of roses placed carefully across the passenger seat. Lush cream roses, their buds just opening, their long stems wrapped in thick brown paper, tied with a raffia bow. Classy, elegant. Because that’s how Anna liked things, and that’s how he liked things. Stella said to get her something nice, but it always ended up being flowers. Roses usually. How could Anna still find them beautiful, find any comfort in them at all, when they were associated with so much loss?

  He sighed, picking them up as he climbed out of the car and walked across the lawn to the front door. It had given him an enormous sense of pride and achievement to buy this house. Sure they had sold their souls to the bank to pay for it, but they were making the repayments and it was worth it to buy into Mosman. Not the eastern suburbs, they didn’t appeal at all. Flash and glitzy, all new money, very Sydney. Mosman had prestige, respect, it was like Melbourne but with harbour views. The people who lived here had grown up with privilege and they took it for granted. And now Mac was living as one of them.

  He turned his key in the lock, but as the front door swung open his heart sank. The maudlin music drifting from the back of the house meant only one thing. Mac had no reason to expect Anna would be anything else but sad, but there were two ways she generally coped with this kind of bad news. She would go quiet, withdrawn, take to her bed and not want to talk about it. He’d worry about her, but he had to admit it was easier to deal with than this, which had lately become her preferred mode. Getting smashed every time the procedure didn’t take, and then the tears, and then being sick usually, later on. He couldn’t blame her, but he didn’t know if he could stand it again.

  Mac followed the music out to the sunroom. On the real estate blurb it had been referred to as a family room, but it ups
et Anna to call it that. In her less rational moments, her hormone-driven, hysterical, defeated moments, she talked about tearing it down. We don’t need a family room, we’re never going to need a family room. It’s mocking me, that room. So now they called it a sunroom and pretended it was ever thus.

  As he walked to the end of the hall he could see the back of her silky blonde head nestled into the cushions of the sofa, a shoeless foot perched on the coffee table, and one long, slender, elegant arm stretched out across the back of the sofa. He was not surprised to see a bottle in her hand.

  ‘Hello hushband,’ she slurred, tossing her head back and looking upside down at him. ‘Wanna drink?’

  She thrust the bottle up at him and Mac took it from her, momentarily distracting her with the flowers.

  ‘Oh, they’re so beautiful!’ she gushed. ‘I have to put them in water straight away.’

  She struggled to get up but Mac stayed her with a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll do it.’

  He walked into the kitchen and laid the flowers on the bench. Opening the corner cupboard, he tried to focus on finding a vase and ignoring the feeling of desolation creeping up his body, into his chest, making his breathing laboured. His mouth and throat went dry. He wished he could be somewhere else, be someone else.

  Anna burst through the door unsteadily, waving a cigarette in one hand. God, if she was smoking as well she was going to be sick sooner rather than later. ‘You took the bottle, naughty boy!’ she scolded, picking it up off the bench where Mac had left it. She looked around vaguely for a few moments, frowning. ‘Where did I leave my glass?’ she muttered, before shrugging, and drinking straight from the bottle.

  Mac eased it gently from her. ‘Anna, keep going like this and you know what’s going to happen.’

  ‘I’ll get pissed.’

  He decided not to point out that she already was. ‘You’ll get sick,’ he corrected her, deftly plucking the cigarette from her fingers. ‘Especially if you smoke as well.’

  ‘Oh, Mackie!’ she pouted, but she didn’t stop him from tossing it in the sink. Instead she looped her arms around his neck and slumped against him.