Husband Hunters (3 page)

He grabbed her wrist. ‘Have you been drinking champagne?’

‘I—’ Hunter turned away from her before she could finish. He was cold to her all night. She could feel him simmering with rage. When they got home, he exploded.

‘I ask you to do
one thing!
’ he roared, slamming the door. The metal hinges and handle thrummed from the force.

Annabel froze. She had never seen him this angry before.

She wanted to hold her head up and shout: ‘What? You want me to parade myself around like a testimony to your status?’ But his rage took her breath away. ‘I was — I was working’ was all she could manage.

He slammed his keys on the bench top.

‘Why does it always feel like I’m the only one contributing to this relationship?’ His voice was deathly soft.

‘Hunter, I—’

‘You should have been there tonight.’

He strode into the lounge room where she heard him slide open the liquor cabinet. She stayed by the door, too scared to move.

‘I’m sorry I was late.’ Annabel tried to make her voice firm and steady. ‘But I spent the afternoon landing the Rustica account.’

There was silence in the dark lounge room. He hadn’t turned on the light.

She knew she had to stand up for herself. She raised her voice a little. ‘Perhaps your colleagues would be more interested in my job than in whether or not I’m wearing a push-up bra.’ Her whole body was trembling.

‘It’s not brain surgery.’ He slammed the Scotch bottle down on the sideboard. ‘Nobody will die if you cut your meeting a little short. You’re just selling people junk they don’t need.’

She heard the ice-blocks clink as he made a drink, tossed it back, then banged the glass down again. He walked into the spare room and slammed the door.

In the morning Annabel packed a bag. She told Hunter she was going to stay with her mother for a few days to clear her head. She needed space to assess things, and couldn’t think with him prowling around the house.

‘Fine,’ he had snarled, without looking up from the BRW Rich List edition.

Annabel jammed a jumper into her Oroton overnight bag. She hadn’t left their penthouse like this since they had moved in together. Things had been bad, but she hadn’t expected to be packing. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to leave.

‘He’s a very powerful man under a lot of pressure,’ she told herself, as she stuffed her Chloé cashmere knit into her bag. ‘Things might improve.’

She was looking for a pair of mules she knew was up the very back of the wardrobe when she found an old shoebox from Florence. Hunter had thrown out the fawn loafers that had come in it after they had been stained by red wine at a party, cursing because they were practically new. When she picked up the shoebox to toss it out, something in it rattled. Curious, she lifted the lid. Annabel gasped. Inside was a small red box. It was made from soft leather embossed with a gold trim. She ran her fingertip over the raised border, and popped open the spring-lid. Sitting on the satin cushion were three round diamonds set in a band of platinum.

‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered.

Annabel quickly put the ring box back in the shoebox, stashed them both down the back of the wardrobe, and started to pace the room.

She had always believed that she and Hunter would end up married. That was, until Sweet Success had started to do well. But they had been fighting so much lately that it no longer seemed like a good idea. She had told herself that it was a phase that would pass. That, in a year or two when her business had stabilised, they could think about making that commitment. But it now seemed that Hunter didn’t see a problem with their situation. It had been the toughest period of the relationship, yet he had wanted to cement it forever.

Annabel sat down heavily on the end of their king-sized bed. She knew what she had to do. She walked into the lounge room, her heart pounding.

‘Hunter,’ she said. ‘We need to talk.’

After it ended, Annabel cried for a week. While she recognised the relationship had become toxic, she mourned the love they had shared for the years she had worked as a model. She mourned the person she had thought Hunter was. She mourned the fairy-tale.

Her relationship, which had once seemed so perfect, had vanished in a blink. Like a silver carriage turning back into a pumpkin, six white horses to mice, and footmen to rats, the spell was broken. It was easy to reduce Hunter, Daniel, to the cardboard character of a superficial Gordon Gekko type; all business lunches and power suits, Friday night back-slapping at Ryan’s Bar, and rounds of networking golf on Saturdays. But in Annabel’s eyes he had once been a prince. And she had been, if not understood, loved. If not wholly satisfied, doted on. He had marvelled at her, his pretty possession, but when she had started doing things he didn’t expect, he had behaved like a little boy whose favourite toy didn’t work the way it used to.

It was Humpty who helped her through the worst of it. Ultimately, he helped restore her confidence.

‘I know you specialise in food,’ he said, sitting on the other side of Annabel’s second-hand desk in her little office. ‘But I have been following your company’s progress and I think you’re marvellous.’

His large frame was boxed in by piles of product samples and swaying towers of brochures. Annabel thought it seemed unlikely that somebody like Humpty would need the PR services of somebody like her. His tech accessory empire had made him one of the richest men in Sydney. But she couldn’t turn down his offer. They shook hands. It soon became clear that he had her in mind for another role, however.

At first it had been harmless. ‘Brains and beauty,’ he would say after a meeting. But as his profits grew, so did his confidence.

‘Humpty, you know I really like you, but I’m just not interested in you that way,’ Annabel would say gently. He agreed they were friends only, but she would still have to insist that he not hug her after each positive quarterly report; that another big sale not be celebrated with a kiss.

In the modelling world she had endured a lot of this sort of thing. Photographers and designers were forever grabbing a part of her and moving it this way of that, shouting ‘Have we got some electrical tape for these flat fried-egg tits?’ or ‘She’s got more muff than a tsarist — Julio, bring me that wax pot!’ But she wasn’t willing to put up with it in George Street offices. She enforced a strict no-touching policy.

Still, he was persistent. He invited her to the Lexus black and white charity ball.

‘You scrub up very well Humpt— Humphrey,’ Annabel told him.

He smiled and coloured a little. ‘Well, black is very slimming.’ He put his hand on the small of her back and led her to the bar. She walked ahead a little so as to be out of his reach. He leaned forward.

‘Annabel, I just wanted to apologise to you for the way I have been behaving,’ he said. ‘I’m no good at this courting business. There’s a certain type of woman I attract. But I know it’s not really me they’re interested in. I’m sorry if I over-stepped the line. It’s just … well … I think you’re terrific.’

Annabel smiled.

‘I understand, Humpty,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I don’t feel the same way, but I think you’re terrific, too.’

‘Friends?’

‘Friends.’

‘Let me buy you a drink for a good cause?’ he asked, eyebrows raised hopefully. She linked her arm with his and walked towards the bar.

‘Only if you let me buy you one back.’

They toasted each other with Chambord cocktails, and then he told her about his latest expansion plan.

‘Coloured latex headphones, in jellybean blue, pink and green. An extension of the existing line of rubber accessories.’

‘I love it,’ Annabel said. ‘It could make you millions.’

She felt a slosh of liquid on her foot.

‘Oh, I
am
sorry — Annabel?’ a voice cried in her ear. It was Mirabella Burbage-Jones. With her flame-red hair piled on top of her head and a thickly painted mouth, she looked like the Red Queen from Wonderland.

‘I can be such a klutz,’ she said. ‘And on your beautiful shoes. I do hope the stain comes out. Oh, I see they’re from last season, so they won’t be in stores any more.’

‘That sort of thing isn’t as much of a problem now with online shopping,’ Humpty interjected. ‘I can still get Lord Diamond shirts in the cut just the way I like them from three seasons ago.’

‘Lord Diamond?’ Annabel saw the light of recognition in Mirabella’s eye. In the past month Annabel had organised for three profiles to be written on Humpty. Two had been in financial publications, and one had formed part of a women’s glossy magazine spread titled ‘Eligible Entrepreneurs’. Mirabella looked at Humpty as though he was prey struggling in a web.

‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’ She held out her hand. ‘Mirabella Burbage-Jones.’

‘Aren’t you lovely?’ Humpty introduced himself. ‘Chambord cocktail?’

Four months later they were engaged, and shortly after that came the wedding.

‘Such a beautiful reception,’ Humpty was saying now, admiring the room from the ruby table. ‘I can hardly believe it’s mine.’

The perma-babes were right about one thing: dressed in a new tux, it was clear that Humpty had been remodelled to better suit Mirabella’s taste. He was wearing onyx-and-silver cufflinks, instead of the novelty pairs he usually wore, his OPSM house-label glasses had been replaced with sharp-framed Ralph Lauren’s, and she had ditched his comfortable slip-on loafers for high-shine lace-ups. Annabel recognised them as the same semi-brogue that Hunter used to wear. They cost $500, which was far more than Humpty would normally have spent on shoes.

‘I’d glad you’re happy, Humpty,’ she said.

‘There you are, darling,’ Mirabella huffed. ‘I’d forgotten how draining being a wife could be. Come along: Mummy and Daddy want to introduce you to some of their friends, and the Heffernans are dying to meet you. He used to be an MP you know.’

‘Of course, my love,’ Humpty smiled. Mirabella straightened his tie and tried to pat down some of the thinning hairs on his head that had broken free of their gel restraints.

Annabel bit her lip. She didn’t want Humpty to end up like Mirabella’s crumpled, discarded first husband, Harry Barchester.

‘Save a spot on your dance card for me, Annabel,’ Humpty called back, as Mirabella dragged him towards their seven-tiered cake.

Annabel decided it was time to leave. She grabbed her Stella McCartney clutch, and was headed for the exit when she spotted some familiar faces. At the very back table, which had a peculiar muddy-red motif, were Clementine Crosley and Daniela DeLuca. She called out to them, waking them from a bored-looking stupor.

‘Oh my God — Annabel Summers?’ Daniela came towards Annabel with her arms outstretched. ‘How are you? Come, come and say hello.’ She brought Annabel to the mud table (a place-card claimed that it was garnet), where a sweaty man in a synthetic suit was telling a story.

‘Half a mil on commissions alone,’ he said. ‘See this shirt? It’s bespoke. I know a guy in the city. Does them up just for me, to my measurements and my specifications.’

‘It
is
unique,’ Daniela said, eyeing the chartreuse/pea-and-ham-soup shiny blend fabric.

‘Hello,’ the pea leered at Annabel’s chest. ‘Where have you been all my life? You can sit next to me.’

He moved one seat across, knocking his neighbour onto the lap of another man and causing a musical-chairs-style domino effect along the table.

‘Annabel, you look amazing,’ said Clementine as she kissed her. ‘Just like Mae West.’

‘You’re going to put the makers of Viagra out of business in that dress,’ said Daniela.

Annabel told them about the Stepford table, where modified minxes were congratulating Mirabella on snaring poor Humpty. Daniela poured them each a glass of wine, snatching the last untouched bottle from a supply in front of the pea.

‘I’ve got a whole cellar full of wine at my place,’ he boasted, wheezing alcohol fumes into Annabel’s face. ‘Would you like to see it?’

She leaned closer to the protection of her old school friends.

‘No, thank you.’

‘I’ve got a hot tub,’ he stated. Annabel nodded, but didn’t say anything.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘You think you’re too good for a guy like me? You bitches are all the same.’

‘Excuse me,’ Clementine snapped.

‘You’re excused,’ he slurred at her, leaning across Annabel. ‘I just want to make friends,’ he told her. ‘Won’t you be my friend?’

His arms came slowly at Annabel, as if for a hug, but at the last moment he brought them together, closed his hands over her breasts and squeezed.

Daniela shrieked in shock and hit him over the head with her bag.

‘Get off, get off!’ she yelled. Annabel stood up, breaking free. Clementine leapt to her feet.

‘Who do you think you are?’ she demanded.

The pea groaned. ‘Settle down,’ he wailed drunkenly.

‘I think you should go and get some air,’ Clementine told him.

‘Oh yeah?’ he said, standing and giving her shoulder a shove.

Daniela jumped between them.

‘Look at this little spitfire,’ the pea chortled. ‘What do you wa—’ He didn’t get to finish the thought. Daniela’s fist flew at his face, connecting with his nose with a crisp crack. The next sound was a thump as the pea hit the floor.

‘Bravo!’ cried a man in a green tweed suit.

‘Are you alright?’ Clementine put her hand on Annabel’s shoulder.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’ Her heart was skipping. She had experienced far worse on the modelling circuit, but had forgotten how humiliating it could be.

‘How’s your hand, Dani?’

Daniela rubbed her fist. ‘Harder than his head.’

A man in grey at the next table handed Daniela a napkin full of ice-cubes. She thanked him and pressed it to her knuckles.

‘I’ve wanted to do that all night,’ he said.

‘Let’s get some air,’ said Clementine. She put her arm around Annabel, who scooped up three glasses and a bottle of champagne.

Outside the sky was a deep, dark blue with pinprick stars, like salt spilled on velvet. The cool air on Annabel’s face was calming after the fuss and commotion inside.