Читать книгу Party of Three - Joan Kilby - Страница 8

ALLY WAS SUFFOCATING in the heat despite the floor and ceiling fans whirring away. She undid her top button, lifted her ponytail off the back of her neck and fanned herself with a brochure for Lavender Farm.

Outside, the sky was nearly black and the shop-fronts across the street glowed with a weird yellow light. Papers blew along the footpath ahead of a little whirlwind of dust that rose from the gutter. It was going to rain—

Oh, no, she’d left laundry on the line. Would George think to bring it in? She glanced at her watch and picked up the phone. Ten past five. He should be home.

No answer. He must have been delayed.

She dropped the receiver back in the cradle. The door opened and on a gust of warm wind, in walked Ben Gillard.

Ally sat up so fast her chair shot forward and her bare toes flattened against the marble floor. “Hi.”

“G’day.” His dark gold hair, tousled from the wind, was lighter at the spiky tips. He had deep-set green eyes under straight thick brows and a jutting jaw that might have looked aggressive if it weren’t for the smile on his face. He reached across her desk to shake her hand. “I’m Ben.”

“Ally.” Her eyes widened at the sight of his forearm scarred with knife cuts and burns. Then her hand was enveloped by a callused palm that sent a jolt of electricity up her arm, and it took all her professional training to stammer, “O-on behalf of Tipperary Springs merchants may I wish you every success on your opening.”

“Thanks.” His smile twitched at her little speech. Casually he picked up a brochure and started to thumb through it. “I’m hoping you can help me. I’m renting the apartment above the restaurant but I need a better place to live.”

“As much as I’d like to assist,” she said primly, “the real estate agent across the road is the person you ought to speak to. We cater to the tourist industry.”

“I realize that but I’m talking short-term, until I buy a house,” Ben explained. “The real estate agents all want a minimum one-year lease.”

“I could make inquiries.” Ally pulled out a pad of paper, thinking one of the cottage owners might welcome a couple of months guaranteed income. “What are your requirements?”

“Two phone jacks,” Ben said. “According to my son life isn’t worth living if he can’t be on the Internet.”

“Two phone jacks,” Ally repeated, writing the words. “What else?”

Ben shrugged. “Just your basic house. Nothing fancy.”

“How many bedrooms?” Ally persisted. “Do you want built-in wardrobes? Gas or electrical kitchen? How big a yard? Do you need it fenced?”

“Hey!” he said. “I just want a roof over my head.”

“Perhaps your wife has some ideas?”

Ben threw her a swift glance. “My ex-wife has a great many ideas but she’s going off on her honeymoon. I’m the one paying the rent.”

“So it’s just for yourself and your son. Two bedrooms.” Ally made a note on her pad of paper. “You’d probably like to be in town so your restaurant is within walking distance for your son.”

“Good idea. I didn’t think of that.” Ignoring the visitor’s chair, Ben perched on the side of her desk and peered at her list.

“Perhaps a yard so he could play outside?” Ally suggested.

“Anything to get him away from the computer.”

Big yard, Ally wrote. “Do you cook at home?”

“Of course.”

“Then a decent kitchen with a gas stove.” She glanced up at him. “Electricity is so slow.”

“I agree.” Ben’s gaze drifted from her notepad to her chest. “Gas is hotter. Faster.”

Ally belatedly recalled her open blouse. With an effort, she resisted glancing down and drawing attention to herself. She was suddenly aware of his tanned arm with its smattering of golden hairs lying across his thigh. She could casually lean back, discreetly button up—

“Interesting brooch,” Ben commented.

“I beg your pardon?” She blinked up at him. He wasn’t looking at her breasts, after all.

“Your brooch. The little person with the pink hair sticking straight up.”

“Oh!” Heat flooded her cheeks as she stroked the long fringe of soft pink atop the silver and blue figure. “It’s called Bad Hair Day.”

“I bet you’ve never had a bad hair day in your life.”

Instinctively, Ally touched her long, smooth ponytail held in rigid obedience by a battery of ties and clips overlaid with hairspray to stop flyaway stragglers. She gave a nervous laugh. “I like to live vicariously.”

“I hope that doesn’t apply to your love life,” Ben said with a wink and a smile. He pushed himself off the desk. “I have to get back to the restaurant. Drop by later.”

Ally got up as he walked out and hurried to the window to watch him until he disappeared inside Mangos. I like to live vicariously. What on earth had possessed her to say that?

She went back to her desk and tried calling George again. Still no answer. Where was he? Ally paced the office, her gaze flicking constantly to the window and the coming storm. She could run home, take the laundry off the line and be back in less than twenty minutes. Plenty of time before the Americans arrived.

Thunder rolled across the leaden sky as she hurried along Main Street before coming to the side road that led up the hill. With her umbrella tucked under her arm she tugged her skirt down and leaned into the buffeting wind. Finally, she turned onto her street. Down the side of her house, between the fence covered in jasmine and the white weatherboards, she glimpsed the backyard and clothes flapping wildly on the line. She pushed through the iron gate and it was whipped out of her hand by the wind to clang shut behind her.

George’s Mercedes was in the driveway. So he was home. He must have just got there. She ran up the steps and across the veranda to turn the front door handle.

Locked. How strange. She and George never locked the door when they were at home during the day. She fumbled in her bag for her key chain and opened the door. The lounge room to her right was dark from the approaching storm but light spilled down the short hallway from the kitchen, along with the sound of voices.

George. And Kathy, his secretary.

Ally set her umbrella by the door and moved through the dim house, her footsteps drowned out by the wind keening through the trees and a branch banging against the corrugated tin roof. Overhead, a loud clap of thunder shook the heavens.

She stopped in the doorway. George and Kathy were seated at the breakfast table over cups of coffee in a scene that was oddly domestic. George looked uncharacteristically relaxed with his shirt untucked and his hair messed up. Kathy’s short brown curls were ruffled, her mascara smudged and her lipstick worn right off.

“Hi,” Ally said. “What’s going on?”

George jumped, his eyes widening. “Ally! What are you doing here?”

“I ran back to bring in the laundry. I called not fifteen minutes ago. You didn’t answer.” She hadn’t meant it to sound like an accusation but it came out that way.

Outside the kitchen window, a streak of jagged lightning split the black clouds, followed immediately by another deafening crack of thunder. A few fat raindrops splatted against the pane. She spared a fleeting thought for the clothes billowing on the line and turned to Kathy. “What are you doing here?”

“I, uh, came by to drop off some papers George forgot at the office. He, er, offered me a cuppa.” Kathy’s fingers crept to her lacy blouse and did up the top button. She could simply be suffering from the heat or…

“Where are your shoes?” Ally asked her. An idea was growing, an evil idea she found difficult to accept and impossible to let go. Before Kathy could answer Ally turned to George. “How was your meeting this afternoon?”

George swallowed and took out a white handkerchief to blot his temple. “I didn’t go. I wasn’t feeling well. I think I have a fever.”

Ally pressed the back of her hand against his forehead. “You feel clammy to me.”

“Really, Ally, I’m not a child.” The irritation in his voice was the first ordinary note in the whole surreal exchange.

“I’m going to get the laundry in.” It was all she could think of to do. Numbly, she walked into the hallway and stopped dead.

High-heeled shoes lay on the floor in front of her bedroom, a hand-painted silk scarf beside them. Ally recognized the scarf as one she’d given to Kathy at Christmas. Well, she’d picked it out; George gave it to her. Forgetting all about the laundry, Ally stepped over the shoes and reached for the doorknob.

“Wait!” George cried out. “Don’t go in there.”

Her hand on the knob, she turned and regarded him with an eerie calm. “Why not?”

George was half out of his chair, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. “Because, well, it’s a mess. I went to bed when I got home. Before Kathy dropped over.” He exhaled heavily. “Yes, that’s it. I was sick. I got under the covers. Alone. I haven’t remade the bed.”

For a so-called intelligent man he was really botching this. “You never make the bed, George.”

Feeling strangely detached, Ally contemplated strangling Kathy with her own scarf. “You two are having an affair.”

Kathy walked over to pick up the scrap of silk and wind it around her neck, oblivious to the danger. “George is going to leave you and marry me.”

George made a strangled noise and sat back down on the kitchen chair with a thump. “Let’s not be hasty, Kath.”

Maybe Ally was forgetting to breathe, causing a lack of oxygen to her brain because she blurted, “You could at least have taken the clothes off the line!”

“Who cares about the laundry?” George said. “For God’s sake, Ally!”

“I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” Kathy said, not sounding sorry at all. “But really, you bring these things on yourself. If you’d come home when you were supposed to, everything would have been tidied up and we could have sat down and talked it out.”

Oh, so this was all her fault, was it? “How long has this been going on?”

“Not long,” George muttered.

“Six months,” Kathy corrected him, and said to Ally, “Remember when your uncle died and you stayed with your aunt for a week to help her with arrangements for the funeral? That’s when it started.”

Ally recalled Kathy’s promise to look in on George while she was away and remembered thinking how kind she was, especially since George never said anything nice about her. All an act. Both of them.

“You stole my fiancé out from under my nose,” Ally said, still calm. “You’re a homewrecker.” And a very convenient excuse to call off the engagement. “We’re through, George. Get out.”

“Now, Ally,” he began in his most soothing couch-side voice. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Do you love her?” Ally was merely curious. His answer, either way, wouldn’t make any difference to how she felt.

“Love is a complicated emotion, meaning different things to different people,” he replied in typical George fashion.

“Do you love me?”

“A part of me will always love you, Ally.”

Which part, she wondered. His earlobes, his liver? It certainly wasn’t his you-know-what. “Why did you ask me to marry you?”

Perplexed, he wrinkled his brow. Then he gave up and shrugged. “You seemed so normal.”

But she wasn’t normal. She was a serial dumper who’d just got dumped herself. Karma was having a field day.

Ally marched back to the bedroom, intending to get out his suitcase and throw his clothes into it, the way she’d seen in the movies. She actually snarled at Kathy and the secretary jumped out of her way. Ha! Now Kathy was afraid of her.

Then she entered the bedroom and was confronted by rumpled sheets and Kathy’s lacy black panties lying on her pillow. In her own bed.

For a moment, Ally thought she might throw up. No doubt George would have a scientific explanation for the sudden onset of nausea, but she didn’t want to know. The room would have to be fumigated before she could sleep here again.

“Never mind, I’m leaving.” Pushing George aside, she strode out the front door. George followed. On the veranda she stopped and while the wind howled around her, she yanked his ring off her finger. She stifled the urge to throw it at him, but instead dropped it in his shirt pocket. “But I’ll be back. And when I am, I want you gone. Do you hear me? Every CD, every dirty sock, every issue of the Australian Journal of Psychiatry. Especially the Journal of Psychiatry.”

“Yes,” George said meekly.

Kathy rolled her eyes, pulled George inside and slammed the door.

Alone in the wide empty street, shock set in and to Ally’s horror and disgust, she began to cry great gulping sobs. It was only shock, she told herself, but that didn’t stop the tears. Tears of anger or anguish, she couldn’t tell, but they were uncontrollable all the same. She started to run, trying to outstrip her emotions.

A small detached segment of her brain insisted she should be happy, that she’d wanted to break up with George. Not like this, she moaned. Not humiliated and betrayed, lied to and cheated on. It wasn’t just George she was crying over, it was her whole life. She wanted love, marriage, children, but she just could not seem to get it right. Why, oh why, did love always end badly for her?

She slipped and slid down the unpaved footpaths in her headlong flight down the hill. Branches reached out to scrape her cheek and tear at her blouse, already soaked by the rain. As she turned the corner onto Main Street the glowing plate glass windows of Mangos spilled light onto the shiny pavement. She was almost at her office….

IN THE RESTAURANT kitchen Ben ripped the order ticket out of the printer and shouted over the hiss and clatter, “Table Seven—prawns, risotto entrée-size, veal times two.”

Opening night was every bit the challenge Ben had anticipated. All forty-five tables were occupied and half a dozen customers waited in the small lounge by the fireplace.

Ben’s long-sleeved white chef jacket was buttoned to the neck and sweat beaded his forehead as he separated the different colored copies: pink to Baz, the pimply-faced apprentice who was working the entrée station, yellow to Beth, the sweet round-faced pastry chef on desserts. The white ticket he hung on the slide above the sauté station for himself and Gord.

On the stovetop half a dozen sauté pans sizzled and small saucepans were situated according to their heat requirements. Ben called, “Fire on twenty-six,” and Gord slammed a couple of seared fillet mignons into a hot oven to go with the tuna Ben placed in the bamboo steamer, heaped with chili and garlic, lemongrass and ginger.

“Someone stole my effing spoon!” Gord roared suddenly. “Baz, was it you? I told you to keep away from my meez!”

“Sorry.” Baz slid Gord’s favorite slotted spoon across to him then looked to Ben. “What’s meez again?”

“Mise-en-place, your station prep, your assembled ingredients, condiments, tools,” Ben explained as he swiftly stacked slices of rare lamb fillet atop a puddle of buttered polenta. “Everything at the ready, the squeeze bottle of sauce placed just so, the metal pans of chopped condiments arranged in a precise order so that you can reach for a specific item without looking.” He wiped the rim of the plate with a clean rolled napkin and sprinkled on chopped parsley. “You don’t mess with another chef’s meez.”

Ben slapped the lamb on the pass-through window next to a veal marsala. “Pick-up on fifteen!”

Across the steamy kitchen Gord, his face as red as his flaming hair, berated Mick, the dishwasher. “Get those effing plates washed or I’ll shove them up your effing arse.”

Ben spotted Danny sitting on a sack of rice in a corner, munching on garlic prawns. While Ben swirled butter into a demi-glace heating in a saucepan he said, “How’s it going, mate? How are the prawns?”

Danny shrugged. “You need kid food on the menu.”

“There’s no such thing as kid food, just uneducated palates,” Ben told him. “Why, I was eating Szechwan and loving it when I was your age.”

“Ben!” Julie was shouting at him through the serving window as she stacked plates of seafood risotto on her arm, ready to whisk away. “Cassie’s way out of her depth and going down for the third time. Where did Steve get her, Hungry Jack’s?”

Not far off. Cassie, the maître d’ Steve had hired because she was his wife’s cousin, had last hosted at a family restaurant in suburban Melbourne. “Cut her some slack, she’s new.”

“We’re all new here,” Julie said bluntly. “Table Six wants to compliment the chef.” She lowered her voice. “It’s the mayor.”

“I’ll be right there.” This was no time to be away from the kitchen but he couldn’t ignore the mayor. She’d been very helpful about Mangos’s liquor license.

He turned back to Danny. “Go on upstairs. Take something from the pastry cart if you want.”

“When are you coming home?” Danny said. “I don’t like it up there by myself.”

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Tomorrow we’ll go swimming.” Ben gathered his son in a rough one-armed embrace. “Turn on the TV but don’t watch garbage. I’ll be up to check on you as soon as I can.”

He pushed through the swinging wooden doors that led into the dining room and wove his way through the tables, smiling at unfamiliar faces and calling greetings to those he recognized.

Table Six, next to the window, held two women in their late fifties, both blond, well-dressed and well-preserved. To Ben they looked almost identical. A panic-stricken thought swept through his brain—which one was the mayor?

“Evening, ladies,” he breezed, automatically making a mental note that the woman on his right hadn’t touched her kipfler potatoes. He directed his next words to her. “I hope you’re enjoying your meal.”

“The steamed tuna was delicious,” she said.

Above the aromas of food and wine, the scent of White Diamonds tickled his sensitive nose, triggering a memory of their earlier meeting. “Thank you, your Honor. I—”

A movement outside caught Ben’s attention. Through the window he recognized the priggish young woman from the cottage rental agency next door stumbling along the rain-soaked footpath. Her sleek brown hair had fallen out of its tight ponytail and was plastered to her cheeks in wet ropes. Even through the blurred glass he could tell she was crying.

Leave her be, Ben told himself. She wasn’t his problem. God knows, he had enough of his own waiting for him in the kitchen or upstairs. Then she turned her head and he saw her contorted face. Something shifted inside him, and he couldn’t ignore her pain.

“Excuse me,” he said to the mayor and her guest. “There’s something I have to attend to.”

The next instant he was out the door, grabbing Ally, whirling her to a halt. “Whoa! What’s your hurry, sunshine?”

She struggled in his arms, kicking at his shins. “Let me go.”

“Ow! Stop that,” he said, ignoring her request. “Ally, are you hurt? Tell me, so I can help you.”

Hearing her name, she stopped struggling and pushed back her lank hair to peer at him. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Yes, me. You’ve lost a shoe.” For some reason this sparked a torrent of verbal abuse directed at men in general and some poor sap named George specifically. Ben took her by the shoulders. “What is it?”

Ally took a huge gulping breath. “I went home and found my fiancé and his s-s-secretary drinking c-c-coffee together!”

“Sorry, I’m not getting it,” Ben said with what he thought was commendable patience while the rain soaked through his chef whites. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Her underwear was on my p-p-pillow! They’re having an affair.” Ally gave a violent shiver and her teeth began to chatter. She bent over and started retracing her steps, looking for her missing shoe.

He swore under his breath. “You’d better come in out of the rain or you’ll catch your death.”

“I want to die,” she said fiercely.

“Not outside my restaurant, you don’t. People will blame the seafood.” He found her shoe floating in the gutter and plucked it out just before it was sucked down the storm drain. Handing it to her he offered his arm to lean on while she put it on.

“Come inside,” he urged, intending to park her in front of the fireplace with a glass of brandy until she calmed down and dried off.

“I can’t go in there,” she wailed. “I don’t want everyone in town seeing me like this.”

“You’ve got a point. We’ll go in the back way.” He started to tug her around the side of the building. “I’ll take you upstairs to my apartment.”

“I don’t know you,” she said, resisting.

“Trust me, I’m not going to attack you.”

“Why should I believe that? I saw the way you looked down my blouse this morning.” She was shivering and soaked to the skin, her arms crossed protectively over her chest. The rain had rendered her blouse transparent, revealing a plain cotton bra, about as alluring as her pinched white face, although the nicely rounded breasts that filled it had potential.

“In the name of Good Samaritanism I’ll do my best to resist. Anyway, I have to get back to my restaurant.”

“But—” She broke off to sneeze violently.

“Come on, at least you’ll be warm and dry. My son is up there. I’ll send up some food. Are you hungry?”

She’d started to shake her head when her stomach gave a rumble that was audible over the drumming rain.

“When did you last eat?” he persisted.

“A salad at lunch.”

“I thought as much. Do you like pasta?” Reluctantly she nodded. “Creamy chicken and wild mushroom sauce?” She swallowed, as if salivating already. Ben took her arm and tugged gently. “Sundried tomatoes, avocado, parmesan…”

She let him lead her past the Dumpster and the empty produce boxes, past Baz sneaking a smoke outside the back door and up the steep narrow staircase to the apartment.

Ben gave his coded knock, three short, two long. A moment later, the latch turned and Danny opened the door.

“What the—?” Danny’s wide-eyed gaze took in the pair of them.

“This is Ally,” Ben told him. “She got caught in the rain. She’s going to stay here for a bit and dry off.” Beneath his arm he could feel the faint tremor in her shoulders. “You okay?” he said to her.

She nodded, and Ben steered her into the lounge room. On the TV, Sharon Stone was undressing in front of a mirror while a man looked on in the background.

“For crying out loud, Danny,” Ben said, switching it off. “What did I tell you?”

“You told me not to watch garbage. This movie got four stars in the TV guide.”

“Don’t be a smart aleck.” Ben left Ally and rummaged in his dresser for track pants and a T-shirt. He threw them onto the bed and then found a towel and handed it to Ally. “You’d better change before you catch pneumonia.”

He ran downstairs, ordered a meal for her and came back with a bottle of Remy Martin. Ally emerged from his room, dwarfed in his clothes, her hair wrapped in the towel. He poured out half a tumblerful of cognac and handed it to her.

She took a gulp of the thirty-year-old liquor and choked.

“Easy. Pace yourself,” Ben said.

Ally took another sip and with a deep shudder, swallowed the fiery liquid. “I’m going to get blotto.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“On the contrary, it’s the best idea I’ve had in a long time.” She drank again then held out her glass. “More.” Hiccup. “Please.”