Alberta Clipper (7 page)

“Oh no.”  Christine looked away. 

“What is it?” 
Gavan
looked back ove
r his shoulder as Christine usher
ed him along as best she could in her own heels.

“Christine?  Christine, is that you?”

“Oh Christ,” she muttered to herself, glancing at
Gavan
as she turned and waved at Craig. 

“It is you!”  Craig was trying unsuccessfully to light a cigarette, which he then let fall fr
om his mouth, resulting in a
roar of laughter from his posse.  He decided to ignore the cigarette, and walked towards Christine instead, arms outstretched. 

“Christine! 
Princess
!”  As she was being hugged, Christine could see the doorman stooping to pick up the cigarette sullying his pavement.  “Are you out for the night?  Is, eh, what’s-her-name, Emily with you?  And who is this?”  He looked from
Gavan
to Christine and back again.

“
Gavan
, Craig.  Craig,
Gavan
.”  She looked at
Gavan
apologetically.  “Craig works at CarltonWachs.”

“
Gavan
!”  Craig hugged a surprised
Gavan
tight.  “So.
  So, so great to meet you Gavan. 
So?” 
he
elbowed Christine.  “You’re the dark horse.  I’ve never heard about you
Gavan
.  She keeping you a secret?”  He suddenly look hurt.  “Christine, I’m offended that you never told me about
Gavan
.  And he’s such a lovely bloke!”  He smiled at
Gavan
like an adoring little brother.  “And tall!  He’s tall, Christine!”  He beamed at them.  “Christine.”  Another bear-hug. 

Christine could see that one of the sparkly twins waiting for Craig was beginning to l
ook a little peeved
.
 
“So, we’d better go?”  She looked wide-eyed at
Gavan
.

“Yes.  Great to meet you, Craig.”

“Aww.  And you
Gavan
.  Christine.”  Another attempt at a bear-hug.  By now, Sparkly was pulling Craig’s hand in one direction, while
Gavan
had taken Christine’s and was pulling it in the other. 

“I’ll see you Monday.”  It sounded like a threat.

“Can’t wait, Craig.”

As they walked away from the bar, and the street became quieter, Christine realised that
Gavan
was still holding her hand.  It felt nice.  She tried to look at him without catching his eye.  So nice.  But meeting Craig.  How unlucky was that.  Although she knew that Craig frequented that bar.  It was just his style, all plush and modern, and the staff treated the customers with fake respect.  They’d had office drinks there once, a few months back, on his recommendation.  Now the office would be full of chat about Christine’s new boyfriend on Monday morning.  She knew her love life was the subject of some discussion at the coffee machine.  She’d never brought a date to an office do.  She’d resisted the advances of a couple of the dealing desk early on, and had never had an office snog, even at the Christmas party, where they were almost a pre-requisite.  She guessed half of the guys thought she might be gay.  She didn’t care.  She had no interest in sharing the details of her love life with her colleagues.  It suited her much better for them to consider her unattainabl
e.  Now
Craig would be mouthing off to everyone from the cleaning staff to the board of directors on Monday.  Her only hope was that he was too
drunk to remember
.
 
Sod it.  She wouldn’t think about it now.  She focused instead on the feeling of
Gavan
’s hand around hers. 

“CarltonWachs seems like a fun place,”
Gavan
said as they walked along.  “You like it there?”

“Sure.  It’s okay.  The guys are, for the most part, good fun.  It can be stressful though.”

“Well it sounds like you have an important job.”

Christine couldn’t help feel a little pleased.  She did have an important job.  But she remembered Emily’s advice from earlier.  She let the comment go.  They kept walking, leaving the sounds and smells of town behind them as their surroundings got increasingly suburban.  The road brought them closer to the sea, and the summer smell of the salt water was evident on the warm breeze.

“So.” 
Gavan
eventually broke the silence.

“So.”  She smiled at him.

“Why don’t you and Emily share a place?”

Oh God.  How could she answer that without sounding like a freak.

“I just,” she waited as a loud rumbling bin lorry passed them by on its nocturnal business.  “I just like living alone.  Emily understands that.  I had enough of sharing when I was in college in England.”  She looked up at him to see if he believed her.  “I like having my own place.”

He didn’t seem to question this.
 
“So it’s not that you’ve got some weird habits, like insisting that all the towels are hanging exactly in a row or something.”

Or waking, hysterica
l, in the middle of the night, she thought. 
Or sitting for hours
on a regular basis
, crying on the sofa in the dark.
 
“Of course not
,
”
she said.

“Or vacuuming naked
,
”
h
e laughed.  “Although, that’s not necessarily a bad habit.”

“
Gavan
!”  She giggled at him.  He was looking straight ahead with a smile on his face.  She could tell he was picturing her with her Dyson.  As they walked along, she tried to plan her strategy.  They would be at her apartment in a couple of minutes.  What did she want?  He was definitely coming in.  At least that had been decided.  She knew the apartment was tidy.  She also knew that she had semi-subconsciously left it that way, hoping the night would go well and that
Gavan
would walk her home. 

She wanted this. 
S
he felt safe with
Gavan
. 
And it had been too long.  She had to at least try
to move on.
She decided she would pour
some wine
when she got in.  Coffee was not what she needed right now.  If she sobered up too much, she might deflate.  They walked past a terrace of double fronted, single story Georgian cottages, separated from the pavement only by iron railings and
postage stamp
front gardens.  At the end of the terrace, an old stone wall rose from the ground.

“I’m in here.”  She pointed over the wall at a modern block of apartments which were tastefully lit from the outside.  There was little traffic on the road at this hour, and they could hear the sea swell just beyond the building.

“Great setting.”

She noticed his hand felt sweaty in hers.  Was he nervous? 
Or was it her own hand that was sweating?

“There was an old house here years ago.  The apartments were built on the same site.  That’s the original garden wall.”
  She could hear herself talking too fast, the pitch of her voice too high.  She exhaled and filled her lungs with the salty air. 
They came upon a wrought iron gate, modernised by an electronic key pad.  Christine pressed some buttons, and the gate clicked open. 

“After you.” 
Gavan
held the heavy gate ajar, and they passed under the stone archway and into the manicured grounds.  Christine rummag
ed in her bag for her keys,
and
they made their way up to her apartment on the third floor
without another word
. 

Despite her best efforts,
Christine was running late.  She had risen early enough, showered and had
given herself
plenty of time to get into the office ahead of everyone else.  She liked to be one of the first in on Mondays, and this Monday in particular, she had wanted to catch Craig before he
got to
inform everyone of her private business.  But just as she was eating her cereal, her laptop started to ring. 

Aggie. 

She considered ignoring it for a second, but her sisterly sensibilities won her over and she reached for the mousepad to answer.  In the couple of seconds it took for the video screen to open, she looked at the kitchen clock and did a quick calculation.  Seven-thirty
AM
.  It would be four-thirty
PM
in Sydney.  Aggie
would
be just
in
from
her shift at the hospital
, settling down to a nice Australian evening.  Sure enough when the picture came on she could see her sister, sitting in her living room, bouncing the string of a tea-bag up and down in a steaming glass mug.

“Hey Chris.  Can you see me?”

Christine disliked having a conversation first thing in the morning with someone who had finished work of the day and was in wind-down mode. 

“Hey Aggie.  You look good.  How was Monday?  A
nything
I should be aware of?”

“Eh, no.”  Aggie looked a little confused.  “No news. 
You must be on your way out to work?  Have you five minutes?”

Christine looked at the clock again. 

“Sure.  I have five minutes.  Is everything OK there?  How’s Jamie?  Is he on a trip?” 

Jamie, Aggie’s husband, was a pilot
based at
Sydney Airport.  His work meant that he was often away, and Christine and her father worried about Aggie being alone so much in
what was still, to them at least,
a strange country. 

“Yeah,
h
e’s in Perth tonight.  He’ll be back tomorrow, late.
  He’s fine.
”

“And how’s work?  Everything okay?”  Christine knew it was unlikely that Aggie had phoned to discuss work with her. 
Her job
in the laboratory of a local hospital
seemed
far from taxing, and
was probably beneath her, but
her sister appeared
to be content with
it
.  Aggie would never have liked to have a job that was more important or profitable than her husband’s.  That was just how she was.  Christine was momentarily reminded of Emily’s Saturday night pep talk.  Maybe they were both onto something.

“Work’s fine.”  Aggie drank from her
mug
.  “Look Chris, I know you’re rushing.  I just wanted to ask you something
.  A
bout
Dad.”

Christine
held her breath
.
  She could guess what was coming.

“What do you know about this Grace woman?”

Christ.
 
She knew her Dad had mentioned Grace to Aggie in passing.  Without really discussing it, he and Christine had somehow come to an understanding that it would be best for Aggie to be aware of him having a new friend called Grace, but that it was unnecessary for him to inform Aggie of every occasion that he and Grace socialised.  Christine had felt a little guilty about it, but she just kept reminding herself that it was Aggie’s choice to move to Australia, and there were consequences to that choice.  She could no longer expect to be included in every little family event or decision. 

“Grace?”  She stalled as best she could.  “Not much.  She and Dad
have gone out a couple of
time
s
.  To the cinema and stuff.  I think he made a few friends at that computer course.”  She knew she was being a bad sister, but she was trying to be a good daughter.  And she felt a little defensive of her Dad.  It was easier to move on when you physically remove yourself to another continent.  It wasn’t so easy when you were still living in the same house you had spent your whole married life in. 

“I don’t know.”  Aggie sat back in her chair. 

Christine could see a painting of the Sugarloaf mountain on the wall behind her.  Sh
e had given it to Aggie and Jamie
for their wedding.  It was whe
re they had first met
. 

“I texted him to see if he was free to skype on Saturday.”

“Yeah?”

“He texted back that he would be out all Saturday at a food fair with Grace.  And that’s the second time in a week that he'd been too busy to talk because of a prior appointment with her.”

Prior appointment.  Christ, sometimes Aggie could sound like such a snobby cow.  And her Dad.  What a coward.  Although, she had to admire him for his tactics.  It was certainly easier than phoning Aggie up and confessing to having a steady girlfriend.  Not for the first time, Christine wished she had a second sibling so that she felt less of a piggy in the middle.
  She
toyed with the idea of faking a computer glitch and switching her video link off so that Aggie couldn’t see the guilt in her eyes.