Almost Perfect (9 page)

Mac heard Anna coming down the stairs. It was eight-thirty – at least she'd managed to sleep in a little. He closed his laptop and stood up wearily, stretching his arms up over his head. He'd only slept a few hours, but that was not unusual these days. He
felt tired right through to his bones. Maybe Stella was right, maybe he did need a holiday.

When he walked into the kitchen, Anna was making coffee. He could feel the chill as he came closer.

‘Morning,' he said, leaning across to kiss her, but she just offered her cheek.

‘What time did you get home?' she asked crisply.

‘Around midnight I think.'

‘When you knew I'd be asleep?'

‘No, when I'd finished what I had to do.'

She reached into the cupboard above her head for cups. ‘You were up early as well, I gather. You're not getting enough sleep lately, Mac.'

‘Mm,' he shrugged. ‘Stella thinks I need a holiday.'

Anna turned abruptly. ‘Oh, does she? I suppose Stella would know, she sees more of you than anyone, certainly more than me.'

Mac sighed, leaning back against the bench behind him and crossing his arms. ‘This is going to be a fun weekend.'

Anna stared at him. He was right, she'd gone on the defensive as soon as he'd walked into the kitchen this morning. There was no reason to treat him like the enemy. ‘I'm sorry,' she said quietly. She put the cups down and turned around to face him. ‘Can we start again?'

‘If you want.'

She stepped tentatively towards him. ‘I want.'

Mac uncrossed his arms and she rested her head against his chest. ‘Good morning,' she murmured.

‘How did you sleep?' he asked.

‘Okay.' She lifted her head to look at him. ‘Breakfast outside?'

The garden was beautiful at this time of the year. The azaleas were in full bloom, as well as most of the roses, and the gardenias were budding, along with the hydrangeas and agapanthus, all ready to burst into flower in the next week or two. The lawn was lush and green, helped in no small way by the computerised watering system. The rest was courtesy of hired help. They both figured it was worth paying a gardener; they wanted to be able to enjoy the garden on weekends, not spend the little free time they had mowing and weeding. They sat at their genuine French provincial outdoor setting, sipping Italian coffee from Scandinavian china and eating bagels and Tasmanian smoked salmon.

And suddenly Mac felt ridiculous. They looked like a photograph out of a lifestyle magazine, almost laughable the pair of them. Drinking their imported coffee, sitting on imported furniture, gazing out at their impossibly perfect garden. He could almost hear Nero fiddling.

Anna followed Mac's gaze across the garden. They had originally landscaped with a child in mind. Wide, shallow steps led out from the back of the house, easy for a toddler to negotiate; level patches of soft grass provided somewhere for a baby to crawl, paved areas a place where he could ride his first little trike; and a jacaranda with wonderful, low arching branches would be perfect for a swing one day.

‘What are you thinking about, Mac?' she asked him.

He glanced at her. ‘I was just thinking you haven't told me about your clinic visit yet,' he said.

She sighed inwardly. They no longer spoke of blonde-headed toddlers playing in the garden. It was too painful. Now they talked of eggs and sperm and fertilisation and embryos, almost as though they had nothing to do with a real baby. And sometimes Anna felt they didn't.

‘It was a pretty standard visit really,' she answered him. ‘You've heard it all before. You know, how successful the procedure was up to the moment it failed spectacularly.'

Mac slowly placed his cup back on the table. ‘Did Dr Tran recommend a break?'

He watched Anna. She was squirming. Tell the truth. There's nothing left if we don't at least tell the truth.

‘He said it was up to me,' she said lightly. ‘Of course I have to take one month off, as usual, but he said I should ring the clinic when I'm ready.'

She hadn't answered him. She hadn't lied, but she hadn't answered him. ‘Anna,' he said patiently, ‘did he recommend a break?'

She swallowed. ‘He suggested that I might benefit from a slight delay before the next round of treatment. But he made it very clear that it's up to me.'

‘Up to you?' Mac raised an eyebrow.

‘To us, it's up to us.'

‘Then I think it's a good idea.'

‘Well I don't,' she returned squarely, the defensiveness creeping back.

‘Why don't you?' he persisted. ‘What difference will a couple of months make, Anna?'

‘It could make all the difference in the world, Mac!' she said firmly. ‘You know the statistics. In the next couple of years my chances of getting pregnant drop dramatically.'

‘But what if you get sick again? That could be dangerous this time around.'

The first time Anna had suffered from OHSS, Mac had been ready to give the whole thing up there and then. Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome was usually mild, treated with rest and light pain relief. However, in some cases it was so severe it required hospitalisation, the treatment cycle had to be abandoned and the embryos frozen. The doctors had assured Mac that Anna would recover fully. Certain women were particularly sensitive to some of the drugs used and they simply needed to adjust her protocol.

She'd since had a couple of much milder recurrences, but Mac was worried she was due for a more serious bout because of the number of treatment cycles she had undertaken over the last couple of years. There was probably no medical basis to his fears, but fear did not usually have its genesis in reason.

‘I'm not going to get sick again,' Anna insisted. ‘My protocol is sound, I haven't had any problems for ages.'

‘Then why is the doctor suggesting a rest?'

‘I don't know, maybe they're overbooked.'

Mac frowned at her. ‘Why can't we talk about this, Anna?'

‘We're talking.'

‘We're talking around it,' he said bluntly. ‘And you know we are. I want to talk about what's really going on here.'

‘Okay, Mac, then why don't you start by admitting that hyperstimulation is not your main concern?'

He breathed out heavily. ‘Fair enough.' He sat up, resting his elbows on the table. ‘My main concern is us, our marriage, our lives.' He paused. ‘I'd like to see what we have together when we're not trying to have a baby.'

Anna was unprepared for that. Mac was not usually so direct when it came to expressing his feelings. ‘What are you getting at?' she said warily.

‘We've only ever approached this one way, like it's a problem that has to be fixed. We've never considered it from another angle. You refused point-blank to look into adoption.'

‘That's because I didn't want to bring up someone else's baby when there was a chance we could have our own.'

‘But what if we can't have our own?' he said bluntly. ‘We haven't even considered the possibility of not having a child, of living child-free. Can't we discuss that? Can't we stop and think about how to have a life without kids?'

Something was flooding into Anna's chest. It felt like panic. ‘Clearly you don't want children as much as I do,' she said tightly.

‘Maybe, I don't know, I've never had a chance to consider it. The thing is, I know I don't want a child so much that I'm prepared to be this unhappy.'

She stared across the table at him. ‘You're unhappy?'

Mac looked at her steadily. ‘Yeah.'

‘All the time?'

He shrugged. ‘More often than not lately.'

Anna sat quietly trying to comprehend what he was saying. She didn't want him to be unhappy, she loved him . . . but was she supposed to give up everything, all of her dreams? She wanted a baby more than anything. Was her happiness less important than his?

‘What about you, Anna, are you happy?'

She jerked her head up to look at him. ‘I, um,' she hesitated. ‘I don't know, but I do know I wouldn't be happier if we gave up.'

‘I'm not saying we give up now. I'm just asking for a little time to regroup,' said Mac. ‘Time to think, consider other options.'

Anna swallowed. Didn't he realise? There was no time. There were no other options.

Mac was watching her. ‘Could you at least think it over? You can't start treatment for another month anyway.'

‘Sure,' she nodded, smiling faintly. She would think it over and arrive at the only possible answer. And Mac would come around.

‘So what did you get up to over the weekend?' Louise asked Georgie as she unlocked the front door of the shop and flipped over the ‘Closed' sign. ‘Nick was going to call you to watch a video on Saturday night but I told him not to hound you, that you know where we live.'

Georgie smiled faintly. It was a rare weekend that she didn't spend at least some time at Louise and Nick's. A rare weekend that didn't include videos and pizza, a little babysitting, maybe the beach on Sunday, or just hanging out, drinking pot after pot of coffee, sharing the weekend papers. They were her family, and she felt more comfortable at their place than she did at her own.

‘Well, don't fall down, but Trace went away for the weekend,' said Georgie as she slid a chair off one of the tables and set it down on the floor.

‘Where'd she go, and more to the point, how did she pay for it?' asked Louise, raising a suspicious eyebrow.

‘I don't know and I don't care,' Georgie dismissed. ‘The thing is, I had the place to myself, and that's rarer than . . . oh, I don't know, what's something incredibly rare?'

‘Hen's teeth is how the saying goes.'

Georgie paused, gripping the legs of a chair still upturned on top of a table. ‘Do hens have teeth?' she frowned.

‘I don't know,' Louise shrugged, walking across to the counter.

‘I'm pretty sure they don't, they have a beak. So saying that something is rarer than hen's teeth would mean that it's nonexistent, not rare.'

‘I guess,' Louise murmured, turning on the cash register.

‘So it would be better to say that something or other is rarer than . . . the Hope diamond, for example.'

Louise thought about it. ‘Isn't there only one of those?'

‘I think so.'

‘Then that's not much better than hen's teeth, is it?' said Louise.

‘You're absolutely right,' Georgie mused, leaning back against a table. ‘It has to be something there's more than one of, but less than . . . well, I guess it depends on–'

‘Georgie?' Louise interrupted. ‘What the hell are we talking about?'

She frowned. ‘I don't know, but you started it . . . didn't you?'

‘Oh no, you can't pin this one on me,' she declared. ‘I believe sometime back in the Middle Ages I innocently asked you how your weekend was, as you do, on a Monday morning.'

‘That's right!' Georgie said triumphantly, walking across to another table. ‘I was saying that it was rare to have the flat to myself for a whole weekend, so that's why I stayed in.'

Louise looked up from the cash register. ‘So what did you do?'

‘Cleaned mostly.'

Georgie turned around when there was no response. Louise was just standing there, apparently in shock.

‘Now we're getting to a definition of rare.'

‘Oh, ha, I get it, you're trying to be funny,' said Georgie, deadpan.

‘No, I was aiming more for smug sarcasm,' Louise replied. ‘You don't think I pulled it off?'

‘Whatever you say can't touch me because I'm basking in the sense of satisfaction you only get after a really good spring-clean.'

‘Which would be a whole new experience for you.'

‘Now
that
was smug,' Georgie retorted. Housekeeping was certainly not her forte, in fact it did not appear anywhere in her repertoire. She defended herself on the basis that their mother wasn't much into keeping house, so Georgie had therefore never had a role model. Nick had developed skills because he'd had no choice. And Zan, well, she was just anally retentive. It was an architect thing.

‘Anyway, I washed everything that was washable and vacuumed everything else.' She grimaced. ‘The things I found under my bed and behind the lounge, well . . . best left unsaid. And then I moved on to the bathroom. Do you know there was stuff in the medicine cabinet that predated Tom and Nicole's divorce?'

‘You could have poisoned yourself, Georgie,' Louise shook her head.

‘Oh, that was nothing compared to the fridge.'
She paused, shuddering. ‘It was like an archaeological dig. In one container I swear I found something that looked like the pods in
The Matrix
. I didn't know whether to toss it or liberate it.'

Louise was laughing.

‘Then on Sunday–'

‘You did all that just on Saturday?'

‘I did,' Georgie said proudly. ‘On Sunday I cleaned out my entire wardrobe. I can actually close my drawers now. I even put new lining paper in them–'

‘Okay, stop right there,' said Louise, leaning forward across the counter. ‘You weren't hanging around all weekend waiting for him to call, were you?'

‘Who?' Georgie returned innocently.

‘Cut the crap,' Louise smirked. ‘Were you waiting all weekend for Liam to call?'

‘No!' she insisted. ‘I've been meaning to put new lining paper in my drawers for ages.'

‘No one puts
new
lining paper in their drawers, Georgie,' Louise maintained. ‘You do it once when you move house, or get new furniture, and never again. Unless you're filling in time waiting for a boyfriend to call.'

‘He's not my boyfriend,' said Georgie as she continued unstacking the remaining chairs.

‘Oh,' Louise's face dropped. ‘Didn't he call?'

‘No and I didn't expect him to. He told me he was working this weekend–'

‘I thought you said he was a lawyer?'

Georgie turned around to look at her. ‘I did.'

‘What's a lawyer doing working weekends?'

‘You think he only puts in a forty-hour week?' Georgie declared airily. ‘He's involved in major international deals. He can't just work nine to five, five days a week.'

‘I don't get it. What kind of lawyer is he?'

‘He's a tax law specialist. He has to minimise the taxes for companies when they're buying and selling other companies, and merging and stuff like that.'

Louise lifted an eyebrow. ‘Doesn't exactly sound like your type.'

‘Aha! Now we have the definitive definition of rare!' Georgie raised her hands in exasperation. ‘What exactly
is
my type anyway? And why can't it be Liam?' She paused, dropping her hands again. ‘Besides, I promised Nick.'

‘What did you promise Nick?' Louise frowned.

‘That I'd go on more than two dates with Liam.'

‘Why did you promise him that?'

‘Because he thinks I don't give guys much of a chance.'

‘He has a point,' Louise agreed. She considered Georgie. ‘Do you like him though?'

Georgie sighed. ‘I do,' she said quietly. ‘There's something very sweet about him. I mean, you'd think being a big-shot corporate lawyer he'd be a real wanker.' She paused, wistful. ‘But he's not. He seems almost out of his depth sometimes, even a little shy.'

‘Somebody's smitten.'

Georgie looked plainly at Louise. ‘I'm not a teenager any more, you know. I think I'm too old to
be smitten. It's different this time,' she insisted. ‘There's this connection I can feel, it's almost eerie–'

‘Oh don't, Georgie!' Louise interrupted her, wincing.

‘What?'

‘You say that every time.'

Georgie was wide-eyed. ‘I do not!'

Louise looked at her dubiously. ‘Come on, Georgie! “This is the one, I feel it in my bones”, “I had a dream about him”, “I've never felt so in tune”. Doesn't any of that sound familiar?'

Georgie pushed a chair into place roughly. ‘I haven't said anything like that since I was fifteen, Louise. Give me a little credit.'

‘Remember that David guy you met at the Reillys' dinner party?' Louise persisted. ‘You told me that you could actually see yourself with him for the rest of your life. Two weeks later you wanted to know where you could buy a gun because if you had to spend another second in his suffocating company you were going to shoot yourself. That was all of four months ago.'

Georgie felt an ache in the back of her throat. She knew if she tried to speak her voice would come out all broken and pathetic, and then she'd probably cry.

Louise was watching her, frowning. ‘Are you okay?'

She nodded, turning abruptly and walking briskly towards the back of the shop.

‘Georgie!'

‘Just going to the loo,' she called without looking
around. She made it to the tiny staff bathroom, closed the door behind her and locked it. She sat down on the lid of the toilet seat and drew her knees up, hugging them, while she tried to swallow down the wretched lump in her throat. At least the ‘tears the rest of the year' prophecy appeared to have some truth in it. Unlike her own ridiculous predictions. She felt so stupid. Why hadn't she seen this in herself before? Obviously everyone else had. She knew she was a romantic, a dreamer, but she hadn't realised she was such a joke. Uh oh, Georgie's met another guy, here she goes again, off with the pixies.

But even as she was staring her own foolishness in the face, she couldn't ignore the powerful attachment she felt every time she so much as thought of Liam. She barely knew him, yet she couldn't shake the idea that they were meant for each other, that he was the one, that he was perfect.

It couldn't all be in her imagination. Liam had done the pursuing so far. He'd come in the second day looking for her, he'd asked her out to lunch, he'd kissed her. He'd acted weird afterwards, but then he had held her close, and in his eyes she'd seen the same sense of this being something bigger than the both of them.

Oh, what the hell does that mean? Georgie banged her head against the wall beside her. ‘Ow!' That was harder than she'd expected.

‘Are you all right?' Louise called from the other side of the door.

‘Yep. Be out in a minute.'

The cold, uncomfortable truth was that Liam
hadn't called all weekend. She hadn't expected to see him, but a phone call would have told her that at least what had passed between them was real. And now she had to face the fact that it wasn't. It was just her overactive, hyper-romantic imagination that knew no bounds and couldn't tell reality from fairytale.

That was enough. She was going to stop this nonsense and act her age, thirty- . . . in another year she'd be thirty-four and knights in shining armour did not exist, perfect men certainly did not exist, and you don't meet someone for the first time and decide you're going to spend the rest of your life with him. That was the stuff of books and movies and . . . other people's lives.