Almost Perfect (36 page)

Kath Oliver peered through the glasses resting halfway down the bridge of her nose as she read the resume in front of her. She was a world-weary woman in her fifties, the grey hair and the deep furrows in her face brought about as much by the passing of time as the manner in which she'd passed it.

‘So, is it William, Will, Bill?' she murmured without looking up.

‘None of the above.'

Kath lifted her head, her eyebrows raised, clearly expecting more information.

‘William's a traditional family name, I've never really gone by that name,' he explained.

‘So what should we call you, Mr MacMullen?'

He hesitated. ‘Ah . . . Liam. You can call me Liam.'

She looked intrigued. ‘How'd you end up with that?'

‘It's short for William.' He smiled faintly. ‘The Irish do it back to front.'

‘Oh,' she nodded, thinking about it, ‘I never realised that.' She cleared her throat. ‘Well, apologies for the delay in setting up this interview, Liam, but this is what happens in chronically under-funded and understaffed non-government organisations. We desperately needed to hire someone but couldn't spare anyone to process the applications.' She paused. ‘Am I turning you off yet?'

Liam smiled. ‘We've only just begun.'

‘Mm,' said Kath, narrowing her eyes. ‘I just don't want you to have any illusions from the get-go.' She sat back, folding her arms as she considered Liam sceptically. ‘For example, are you aware of the kind of drop in income you're looking at? I figure we're offering somewhere in the vicinity of a quarter of your present salary.'

‘It's probably more like a fifth,' he corrected her. ‘But I'm not actually on a salary at present. I've already left my previous position.'

He had found a flat to rent only last weekend. When he hadn't heard from the Small Business Agency he was unsure about whether to stay in Sydney. He thought about travelling, or going back to Melbourne, or moving somewhere new altogether. The house was sold and he and Anna had divided up their belongings. There was nothing keeping him here, but something was making him stay.

And that something was probably Georgie. He missed her dreadfully. Every single day. It was so bad at first he used to drive past the shop and try to catch a glimpse of her, but he never had. He had, however, almost managed to drive up the back of another car on one occasion. He'd felt like some kind of pathetic stalker that day, picturing the scene out the front of her shop if he had had an accident, Georgie coming out, seeing him there.

So he stayed away, but he couldn't leave Sydney. Not yet.

‘I imagine you were swamped with offers once it got around you were leaving Morgan Trask,' Kath was saying. ‘I'm intrigued as to why you would
choose to work for an under-resourced, decidedly unglamorous NGO for a fraction of your previous salary.'

‘There have been offers,' he acknowledged. ‘But I'm not interested in that kind of work. I left Morgan Trask because I'd been feeling restless for months. Right now I can't see myself ever working in that kind of environment again.'

‘Be that as it may, I need to be sure of some level of commitment on your part, that this isn't midlife angst and as soon as the going gets tough, you'll get going.'

He was beginning to find Kath Oliver's attitude galling. If working in this environment made you bitter and twisted, perhaps he was better off elsewhere. Or perhaps she was. He wasn't giving up that easily.

‘If you're asking me where I'll be in ten years time,' said Liam, ‘I can't tell you that. But as you operate on a tied government grant and you can't guarantee my position beyond three years, you can most certainly count on me till then.'

‘You've done your homework,' she admitted grudgingly.

‘Do you think I'd take this on lightly, on some kind of a whim?' he returned. ‘I've worked on some of the largest corporate mergers in the Australasian region over the past decade. It was my job to make sure I knew all there was to know about the stakeholders, the risks, the gains, everything.' He paused, taking a breath. ‘I know you have a permanent staff of twelve, plus a fluctuating army of volunteers,
primarily law and commerce students. Your funding is tied to demonstrating you have achieved stated outcomes, and you have been able to do that for sixteen years now. Predecessors in my position have typically handled a bottomless caseload and have significantly altered or reversed tax department decisions, not an easy thing to do, in an impressive percentage of those cases.' He leaned forward in his chair. ‘I believe I have skills that could be useful to your organisation, but more importantly from my perspective, I'd like to feel I was doing something worthwhile.'

‘Very noble,' she remarked. ‘No need to get tetchy, Liam, this interview is only a formality. If I don't hire you, the committee will have my head. I'm merely interested to know what brought about your change of heart from big business to this.'

Liam thought about it for a moment. ‘Maybe I just want to be able to sleep at night,' he said quietly.

‘That's as good a reason as any,' said Kath. ‘How soon can you start?'

Anna walked into the room to find she was the first one there this evening. She sat on the side like last week, but a little further back, and was occupied finding pens and paper in her bag when Deb
appeared in the doorway. Anna looked up and smiled politely. Deb headed straight over.

She sat down next to Anna. ‘So you came back?'

‘You too?'

‘Wouldn't miss it for the world,' Deb grinned. ‘Did you start a journal?'

‘Yes, I did actually,' she said, a little wistfully. ‘Made me feel like a teenager again.'

‘Speaking of teenagers,' Deb muttered as a group of their classmates spilled into the room, laughing and talking amongst themselves. They didn't notice that Vincent was at the tail end of the group until he broke away, veering towards the desk at the front of the room.

Deb and Anna watched him as he removed books and notes from his bag and arranged them on the desk.

‘I bet he'd be great in bed,' Deb murmured.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘There's nothing like the brooding sexuality of the intellectual. And he's one damned sexy man.'

Anna glanced at her. ‘Aren't you married?'

‘Yeah, but I'm not blind.'

She smiled. ‘He reminds me of somebody, it's been bugging me all week.'

‘Ooh, he's coming over,' Deb hissed like a schoolgirl.

‘Evening Deb,' Vincent nodded, settling himself on a desk in front of them. ‘You're back, and on time.'

‘I am,' she smiled, chuffed that he remembered her name.

‘So it wasn't too painful last week?'

‘What do they say, no pain, no gain?'

He laughed lightly. ‘And what about you, Anna Gilchrist?'

Anna's eyes flew up to meet his. ‘You have a good memory.'

‘Yeah, considering it's been over twenty years.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘You don't remember me, do you?' he said, smiling down at her.

She regarded him curiously. ‘To be honest, I thought you looked familiar. I was just saying to Deb that you reminded me of somebody. But I can't place you.'

‘You lived in Meredith Street and we lived around the corner in Carrington Parade.'

Anna was listening, intrigued.

‘You went to school with my sister, Bronwyn.' He paused, watching her face. ‘Bronwyn Carruthers.'

Anna's eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open. ‘You're not!'

Vincent smiled. ‘I am.'

‘Incey Wincey Vincey!'

He flinched. ‘You realise I don't go by that name these days.'

‘Oh my God!' Anna exclaimed, still barely taking it in. ‘But you've changed so much.'

‘Anna, I was eleven when we moved away. I hadn't even hit puberty.'

‘I know. You were a tiny little fellow. And damned annoying as I remember.'

Vincent laughed. ‘I really have changed, I promise you.'

Anna still couldn't get over it. ‘But how on earth did you remember me?'

‘Come on, Anna, I was an impressionable boy and you were a gorgeous sixteen year old. You were pretty hard to forget. And you've hardly changed at all,' he added.

Anna felt self-conscious. Deb felt invisible.

‘So how is Bronwyn?' Anna said in an attempt to shift the focus.

‘Oh, she's married, three kids, you know, the usual,' he nodded. ‘How about you?'

She breathed out. ‘Oh, you know, separated, no kids, the usual.'

‘Well,' he said, unfazed, ‘we should have a drink after class. Catch up properly.'

‘Sure, we'll have to do that . . . some time.'

‘What's wrong with tonight?'

‘Oh . . . Deb and I made plans,' she blurted.

Deb stirred with the mention of her name, nodding vaguely.

‘Rain check?' Vincent said, standing up.

‘Sure,' Anna nodded.

People had been filing into the room and the hubbub was gradually building.

‘Okay everyone,' Vincent said loudly, getting their attention. ‘Glad to see you were all brave enough to show your faces again. Obviously I'm going to have to work harder to frighten you off.'

When they were packing up at the end of class, Deb glanced awkwardly at Anna.

‘Um, Anna,' she said in a low voice, ‘if you were serious about going for a drink, I'll have to give my husband a call–'

‘Don't worry about it,' Anna dismissed under her breath. ‘But we better leave together, okay?' she said, furtively eyeing Vincent across the room.

When they had walked down the corridor to the stairs, Deb turned to Anna. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?'

‘Go ahead.'

‘Why didn't you want to go out with Vincent? If I was single and he asked me . . . in fact, I'm not even sure I'd have to be single,' she mused.

‘I guess I'm not used to being single yet.'

‘You haven't been separated long?'

Anna hesitated. ‘No, not long.' They stopped at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Where are you parked?'

‘Just over there.'

They stepped off the kerb to cross the street. ‘How long have you been married, Deb?' Anna asked.

‘Nine years.'

‘Any children?'

‘Mm, a boy and a girl.'

‘Pictures?'

‘Pardon?' Deb stopped next to her car.

‘Do you have pictures?' said Anna. ‘I bet you do.'

‘You want to see them?' she frowned dubiously.

‘Of course.'

Deb rested her bag on the bonnet of the car while she dug around for her wallet. She flipped it open, passing it to Anna.

Anna stepped under a streetlight to see more clearly. ‘They're gorgeous. What are their names?'

‘Max and Ruby. That was taken about a year ago, she's not really a baby any more.'

‘You're very lucky.' Anna handed her back the wallet.

‘So you said you didn't have any children, Anna?'

‘That's right.'

‘Well, I guess that's something.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Oh, you know what they say about separation, it's better . . . um, better if there are no children involved.'

Deb wished the ground would swallow her up. She had said the wrong thing, she knew it from the look of astonishment in Anna's eyes.

‘I'd better keep going, I'll see you next week,' Anna said abruptly, turning on her heel and walking briskly down the street.

Georgie was going to burst. This was some kind of cruel and unusual torture. Not only had she had to drink two huge glasses of water, she was expected to hold it in for an hour till her appointment at nine-thirty. And foolishly she'd had every faith they would do their utmost to be on time, what with all these
poor pregnant women with compromised bladder control. But no, the clinic was operating on some time scale all of its own. Everyone was walking around in slow motion; forms were twice as long and took three times longer to fill out, and none of the clocks appeared to be working. Nick had tried to assure her they had only kept her waiting ten minutes past her appointed time, but she didn't believe him. He was just trying to make her feel better. That wasn't working either.

And after all that, when she finally made it into the screening room and up onto a bed, the technician squirted a big blob of the coldest substance Georgie had ever felt in her entire life. She wondered how many women, then and there, had simply wet themselves from the shock. Wouldn't that piss you off, literally, after waiting so long? The final insult was this interminable digging with the sensor thingo, poking and prodding around her bladder. Didn't this woman realise what was likely to happen? Had she never played with a balloon as a child until it burst? Georgie started to wonder if the technician even knew what she was doing. Did she know where to look? Surely the baby couldn't be hiding? Where would it hide anyway? Behind the kidneys? Georgie was no expert but she didn't think that was possible and besides–

‘There, did you hear that?'

It was a heartbeat. Which made Georgie's own heart stop beating as she listened breathlessly. She didn't want to miss a second of it. She grabbed Nick's hand and held it tight.

‘Where's the baby?' she asked the technician.

‘I'm trying to move him around a little. He's lying low, probably having a snooze.'

‘It's a he?'

‘Nick!' Georgie warned.

‘You don't want to know the sex?' the technician asked.

‘No!'

‘Yes!'

‘So Dad wants to know but Mum doesn't?'

‘He's not the dad, he's the brother.'

The woman frowned, looking in disbelief from Nick to Georgie and back again.

‘No,' Nick explained. ‘I'm
her
brother, not the baby's.'

‘Oh, rightio. Well, sorry, Brother, Mum always gets the final say.'

‘Story of my life,' he told her.

‘Now, so you don't read anything into what I say, Baby will be referred to as “he”, because I really don't like calling him “it”. Okey dokey?'

Georgie smiled. She was beginning to like this woman. Maybe she'd call the baby after her if it was a girl. She glanced at her name badge. Gretchen. Or maybe not.

‘So, let's see if we can't get Bub to come out and play.' Gretchen manoeuvred the sensor around Georgie's abdomen. ‘I hope that's not too uncomfortable?'

Georgie realised she wasn't feeling any discomfort at all now, she didn't even feel like going to the toilet any more.

‘There we go, that's his head, obviously, now let's
move down . . . oh, look, he's waving for the camera.'

And there it was, right there on the screen, her baby's hand. Somewhat cartoon-like, but it was a hand. With five fingers. It was the most beautiful hand she had ever seen. And after that she saw his arms, elbows, legs and knees and feet. He was so beautiful, he had everything, just like a real baby, a real person. Georgie watched, mesmerised, tears streaming freely down her face.

‘Now let's get a profile shot,' said Gretchen, continuing her running commentary. ‘See the forehead, tapering down to the eye socket, right there, and the nose, look at that, only tiny, but perfect. And you can just make out his mouth, right about there. This is a very good-looking baby,' she declared.

‘Like his mother,' Nick murmured.

Georgie stared at the screen through a haze of tears. ‘And his father,' she said quietly. She turned to look at Nick. ‘I have to tell him, don't I?'

‘You don't have to do anything, Georgie.'

‘But it's not fair.' She looked back to the screen. ‘He has the right to see this, to know his baby.'

She felt Nick squeeze her hand.

‘Now,' said Gretchen, ‘let's work out how old Bub is, shall we?'