Dog Handling Part 4

"He seems nice. And his ears aren't that big," Liv whispered to Alex, who had flipped into professional mode, smiling winningly and forgetting she had a brain.

"Sweet, isn't he?" said Alex with a little pout. "Come and meet some people."

And with that she swept Liv into a survey of the room. Liv was used to the scene and wasn't sure if she recognised most of the people from magazines or the odd time she'd been with Alex to the Met Bar. Mostly, though, they had those generic Smart People looks. All the girls had b.u.t.tery chunk highlights and approximately no hips and the men worked out and then splashed on Creed aftershave. The conversation was generally just . . . la la staying at the Hempel; la la holiday in Harbour Island; ho hum, she's put on a lot of weight. Not particularly inspiring, but then Liv decided not to judge so hastily. If you lured a whole load of accountants into one room it might not be an appealing sight, but individually they might all be as fun-loving and adventure-seeking as Liv hoped to become.

Certainly by the end of the afternoon she felt like she was the most fun that could balance (but only just) on two legs. But then by the end of the afternoon Liv was atrociously drunk. Still, if she did say so herself, she was in sparkling form and keeping everyone amused. In fact, she was feeling so insouciant that she decided that she was going to practise flirting. Perhaps it was the bikini wax kicking in or merely the effects of so much champagne that she couldn't even p.r.o.nounce Tim's name, let alone have time to lament his pa.s.sing, but she was feeling a bit saucy. And she'd never really had much cause to flirt before, having been with the same man for so long. She'd occasionally t.i.ttered helplessly and run her fingers through her hair when confronted with a ticket-wielding traffic warden, but she was absolutely hopeless when it came to holding the gaze, slowly stroking the stem of her champagne gla.s.s, making double entendres out of innocent remarks, and laughing wantonly. Flirting was as alien an art to her as jujitsu, but she'd picked her target and wasn't going to let her lack of skill stand in the way of her Labradoresque enthusiasm.

"So I've won enough money to buy what?" Liv leaned over and intimately burped in the face of a man called Robert. "A share in a racehorse?" Liv had decided that Robert was not necessarily the most attractive man in the room, but he had sympathetic freckles and seemed like a good start for her to study her new art. She was also less intimidated by Robert than the Cartier-watched Mr. Smoothie Chops types, as he looked more like a groom than a racehorse owner in his moleskins and denim shirt with scuffed brown boots. She knew the Smoothies had all been out with at least one model in their lives, and though she told herself she had a good brain and a pa.s.sably pretty nose, she didn't want to have to deal with rejection at this early stage of her Awakening to Womanhood.

"You wish. I can let you have a bit of his mane if you like. That's about all a hundred dollars'll get you." Robert laughed and hit not only his thigh but also her arm and the table. He was proving an appreciative audience for her inebriated lechery, so it was just as well that she didn't really fancy him; otherwise she'd have a lot to regret the next morning.

"Oh well. Did I tell you I was a lingerie model?" asked Liv, not looking very much like Elle Macpherson.

"That's great. Your mate Alex mentioned it, actually. Nice girl." Robert leaned over and smiled.

"You should come and buy some of Greta's Grundies from my stall. For your girlfriend," said Liv, proud of the clever and subtle way she was drumming up business and managing to find out if he was available at the same time. Clearly the secret of successful seduction was to remain one step ahead. If he was hung up on someone else she would expend her not inconsiderable skills elsewhere.

"I would if I had a girlfriend." He smiled and his freckles smudged into a splodge. s.e.xy if you like the schoolboy thing, she thought. In fact, Robert was very lovely. He hadn't once leered at Liv, yet he was still chatting away to her and let the fact that she was clearly a pathological liar for pa.s.sing herself off as a lingerie model pa.s.s unchallenged, which was the pinnacle of sweetness. Or stupidity.

"I live in the country. Don't get much time for women out there."

"The country? You're not a jackeroo, are you?" Liv asked, wondering if fate had led Robert into her path, jackeroo being the next-best thing to Cowboy and the Gus of Fay's dreams.

"Not exactly. I ride a lot, though. Got a few horses out there today. One of them won, actually," he said.

"Congratulations. All that training and getting up early must have paid off then. But no girlfriend. That's a bit sad," said Liv, who was actually just reflecting her own concerns about being a sad single.

"Maybe." He smiled enigmatically. "I've sort of got my eye on somebody, actually."

Liv was a bit taken aback at her early success in flirting. He means me, she marvelled to herself. She couldn't be so bad at all the lip licking and erotic eyebrow raising as she'd imagined. In fact, she was suddenly sober enough to feel a bit mean for leading him on. Until a second later, when Liv realised that she could not have been further away from being his object of desire if she had major cosmetic surgery, a limb extension, and head transplant with Claudia Schiffer.

Walking towards them was a girl who, although more casually dressed than any other woman in the room in leather pants and a slim-fitting white shirt, still managed to look a million times more captivating than anyone had a right to be. She had the boyish blond crop of a twenties flapper and the kind of figure that not only would make a bishop kick in a stained-gla.s.s window but also might cause the pope to develop Munchausen syndrome and start bashing himself over the head. She smiled at full wattage and leaned down and kissed Robert on the cheek, her hair skimming his cheek and undoubtedly smelling of orange blossom. Not two kisses as an acquaintance might, but warmly and only once.

"Robbie, don't have a light, do you?" she asked, smiling fleetingly at Liv, just long enough to acknowledge her presence but not so long that she'd have to engage her in conversation. Obviously impeccably bred.

"Where's that b.a.s.t.a.r.d bloke of yours, Amelia?" asked Robert, glancing the end of her cigarette with his lighter as she inhaled.

"He'll be along later. Got things to see to." The gorgeous Amelia winked at Robert, nodded again at Liv, and went back to join a group of men who were slapping one another's backs, celebrating their wins. And smoking. Each and every one of them with a cigarette or cigar of his own. And not a light among them? Liv found that very hard to believe. Obviously Amelia had made the special trip over here to make sure Robert was behaving himself. Though it seemed she had her own boyfriend. So what purpose did lovely, freckly Rob serve in Amelia's life? Liv wondered.

"Well, Robert," she teased, after they'd both caught their breath, "I think I know exactly who you've got your eye on."

But instead of keeping up the jovial spirit of their conversation, Robert turned quickly to Liv and blushed. "It's not what you think. Really." And he drew heavily on his cigarette and looked the other way across the room where Alex was practically catatonic with boredom. Liv dashed Robert off her list of men to flirt with but decided that she'd keep him as a friend and then could use him for target practise whenever she wanted to try out a new flirting technique. And she hadn't had a male friend in years. Well, not a straight one, anyway.

Later, as Liv and Alex lay in a crumpled heap on a sofa and the party continued around them, with various dissidents vanishing to the loos in pairs to get high, Liv observed Robert by the bar as he talked intently to Amelia. She was nodding seriously at him and occasionally blowing smoke from her lips, to one side. A paragon of consideration. Liv thought how sad for Robert. Robert the stable hand who was clearly in love with Lady Chatterley but didn't stand a chance. Even if they were having a rampant affair, Liv didn't imagine that Robert would last long.

"Who's the blonde?" Liv asked Alex, pointing towards Amelia.

"Amelia Fraser. She's a friend of Charlie's. Her father owns a lot of property in the Western Districts. Best catch in Sydney if the boys are to be believed. And I guess that's her perfect boyfriend," Alex added as a tall, broad man walked up to Amelia and kissed her wallop on the mouth. Even with his back to Liv and Alex they could see he cut a formidable and very f.u.c.kable figure. With one arm draped casually over Amelia's slender shoulder and the other patting Robert on the back, he seemed relaxed and confident in his white T-shirt. His damp hair was straight from some Calvin Klein universe of nice-smelling men on beaches.

"Well, he looks pretty all right to me." Alex smiled, admiringly.

"Hmm, not my sort. I prefer them a bit less obvious," Liv said, and downed another gla.s.s of water, feeling sorrier than ever for poor Robert.

"Well, I'm going to find out. Coming?" Alex smoothed the creases in her skirt and stood up.

"Nah, I think I'll sit this one out. Take a moment." Liv grinned. She and Alex had a mutual obsession with cheesy-speak and loved taking moments and having alone time.

"Sure thing," Alex drawled and did her panther prowl over to the bar to investigate.

But Liv didn't have even a moment of alone time to worry about poor Robert or even feel inadequate for coexisting in the same room as Amelia, because no sooner had Alex clasped the mystery boyfriend's hand warmly than there was a low whisper in Liv's left ear. "Can I get you a drink?" it asked.

Liv turned to see a small, slightly pudgy man with a raised eyebrow smiling at her. "G.o.d, no thanks," she said, then in case he thought she was being superoffensive about his clear lack of handsomeness, chimed, "I mean I've drunk so much this afternoon that it's a wonder I'm still standing. Which is probably why I'm sitting, in fact. So . . . no thanks all the same."

"Do you mind if I sit here?" he asked, sitting there anyway.

"Not at all."

"You're English," he observed as he put his gin and tonic down on the table.

"Ha. You're right." She smiled, half wanting Alex to come and rescue her but also half feeling so unthreatened by him that she didn't mind engaging in a bit of small talk with someone normal-looking.

"I'm Will." He held out his hand.

"Liv."

And it was another two hours before either of them drew breath again. Liv discovered that Will was a foreign correspondent for one of the Australian news networks and so spent a lot of time abroad and roaming war zones, and though he didn't look as though he was exactly born in khakis and could flee dangerous scenes in a s.e.xy manner, she was beginning to detect a certain something in his eye.

"We've got a connection, Liv. I mean is that a really weird thing to say or do you know what I mean?" he asked as she paused before launching into her dreams of leaving accountancy behind for a more scintillating career and telling him why she thought Apocalypse Now and all those boy movies were basically just a w.a.n.k in the bath. Things she'd never have dared say to Tim for fear of being thought a philistine.

"Yeah. We do get on, don't we?" Liv said, noticing that his eyes were exactly the same colour as her favourite sofa at home-a kind of velvety green. Well, he wasn't a stunner at all, but yeah, she knew what he meant; they did get on.

"It's just so easy talking to you. I love a girl with a mind." He smiled. "Look I've got to go to Bosnia tomorrow, but I'm back next week. Do you think we could maybe hook up and have dinner or something?" he asked, his hand resting on her knee.

"I'd love to," Liv found herself saying. And, even more weirdly, meaning. Will could not have been further from her ideal man if he'd tried. While Tim was tall and blond and rangy, Will was not. Most emphatically not. But there was something about him. He was smart and funny and made her laugh like n.o.body had made her laugh in ages. And when she looked him dead in the eye she found herself not minding that his hand was on her knee. Though with anyone else she'd have been sending telepathic messages across the room to Alex to come and save her or telling them that now was not the best time for a man to put his hand on her knee because she didn't really want a relationship, as she was bruised and battered from her last one. But not with Will. Hmmm, she thought. That's odd.

"Okay, one more drink for the road and I'd better be off. I'm supposed to be at this party . . ." Will looked at his watch and shrugged. "Oh, about an hour ago."

As he walked towards the bar Liv picked up her handbag and surrept.i.tiously did a few repairs to her booze-impaired complexion and unfashionably random hair. And then as she turned and watched him put his arm around some girl at the bar in a matey-friendly way she suddenly felt weird. Kind of like it should be her he was putting his arm around and wondering whose party he was going to. But that was ridiculous. She liked him, but no way did she fancy him. At all. He wasn't her type. He had stocky little thighs and sofa-coloured eyes, but . . .

Well, clearly she did fancy him somewhere. Either that or she'd been besieged by some strange Darwinian need to wrest him from the grasp of the other girl and have him for herself. In fact, she spent the next five minutes wishing to G.o.d he'd come back and talk to her again. That he'd ask her where she lived or even just press his phone number into her hand. And when he did finally come over and begin to tell her about a story he'd covered on diamond smuggling in Africa she saw not sofa-coloured but dazzling green eyes and not stocky thighs but legs she'd like to feel protected by and feet she'd like to see peeking from beneath a sheet at the bottom of her bed. So this was it. This was what happened when you finally got close enough to a man to feel the charge of chemistry. It was something that she'd mythologized over the years but never quite comprehended. And when she'd finished telling him about her first pony she took a sip of her drink (mineral water, not some drink-him-kissable c.o.c.ktail in case she were looking for an excuse) and found herself looking into his eyes with all the intensity of someone hanging onto a cliff face by her fingernails. She knew what that look meant. Though she may not have used it on anyone in a very long time. She knew that any second now she was about to kiss the first man other than Tim in five years and if she were going to slap his face it had to be . . . oh, about five seconds ago.

"Wow," said Liv as she sat back and smiled a very small smile to Will. She looked at him and leaned in to kiss him again. It was nice. Really, really nice. But odd. She put her hand to his face and felt his cheek. It was a well-upholstered cheek and soft. With none of the chiselly hardness and cut bones of Tim. Will's earlobes were soft and his hair kind of spikey. Liv felt like a blind person as she discovered this new man, cupped her hand around the back of his neck, explored his mouth. And she inhaled deeply and smelled the very different smell of his skin. The kiss was much the same as any other kiss, she supposed, but the taste of him was different. Was quite simply delicious. Liv wondered if other men smelled this good. Was this what she had been missing out on? she wondered as Will began to kiss her neck. Something she'd never been able to get Tim to do beyond Date Three. And something she was discovering she loved.

"I have to go." Will gently pulled his face away from hers and raised his eyebrow at her. "Just promise me you won't fall in love with anyone else before we have our first date."

"Hmm," said Liv with all that was left of her vocabulary.

"I'll get your number from Charlie." He ruffled her hair and walked off, leaving Liv watching and wondering how a man an inch shorter than she, with very unattractive tennis shoes on, could make her feel this way.

"Oh my G.o.d, oh my G.o.d, oh my G.o.d," Alex shuttled across the room chanting in a footbally " 'ere we go, 'ere we go" way.

"Yeah," said Liv, sort of looking into s.p.a.ce and seeing stars. "What was that all about?"

"You just snogged Will." Alex was bouncing up and down on the sofa. "What was it like?"

"Nice. Really nice, Al. I mean . . . lovely. He kissed my neck, which was insanely nice. And now he's gone. That's my first kiss with anyone other than Tim for-"

"Five years, yeah, I know, but . . . well, you've broken the spell, Livvy. You've done it. I am so proud of you." Alex hugged a still grinning and slightly bemused Liv. "Do you like him?" Alex asked.

"I don't know. I mean he was funny and sweet and tasted lovely but soooo not my type."

"You liked him. Wow." Alex kissed Liv on the cheek and danced around on the sofa a bit more. "Which is a bit of a shame, actually, because, well, here you are about to have a new boyfriend already and I've just been over at the bar talking to Ben Parker."

"Whhhaaaaaaa?" Liv swivelled her head round, but the fug of smoke was now so dense that she couldn't see a thing. "Where?"

"He's living in Paddington apparently. Working as an archaeologist in the city."

"But how? I mean, Alex, oh my G.o.d."

"My G.o.d, you didn't tell me how gorgeous he is. I mean that boy is so handsome it's wrong. And such a rocking body."

"He's still good-looking?" Liv asked.

"I would pay money to watch him chew gum." Alex grinned.

"In which case I would probably pay money to watch the gum that he had chewed."

"Great, because we're all going to dinner, so hurry up."

Liv scooped herself together and filled in the cracks with her concealer in the back of the taxi while Alex and Charlie discussed their next skiing holiday in Sun Valley. She was glad of the break as she was able to scoop her thoughts together. Not only had she just been snogged deliciously by an unlikely man, but she was about to go and have dinner at the same table as Ben Parker. She hoped he hadn't seen her snogging Will and planned her opening gambits, which ranged from witty to saucy to prosaic. She knew she'd be chicken and have to settle for prosaic, but it was going to be accompanied by enough eyelash batting to start a wind farm and power the national grid, so it didn't really matter.

"And you're sure he's not balding? Not receding?" Liv quizzed Alex as Charlie paid the cabdriver.

"Not even slightly. I told you he's perfect," Alex rea.s.sured her.

"Maybe just a bit paunchy, though?" asked Liv. Then realised that she did seem to be doing paunch these days, so what did it matter? She grinned to herself and thought of Will and the neck kisses.

"Not even slightly paunchy. Washboard all the way. I told you-it's wrong."

So all was well. Liv was well and truly back in the saddle. Bye-bye, Tim, she thought as she walked through the restaurant door. Let the good times roll.

The table was at the far end of the room and Liv strained to see Ben Parker without looking. That Could I Be More Casual If I Tried thing. She was, of course, seated in Purdah at the wrong end of the table, being neither rich nor Julia Roberts. It was the same crowd as the races but looking a bit more gla.s.sy-eyed and blotchy. There were at least twenty people munching bread rolls at the intimate little gathering, and all of them were waving so many knives and flashy watches and suntanned arms about that it was all Liv could manage to read the menu three inches in front of her face, let alone spy the last man she loved but one through the sea of swaying drunkenness.

"So we want to hear all the details about last night." Charlie slapped a short man on the back. "How was it, mate?"

As the man revealed to the table how he'd scored with a supermodel (funny how a fat wallet can compensate for a height discrepancy, Liv mused; maybe he stood on it), Liv and Alex deliberated over Greek salad or something that would make them miserable tomorrow for a starter.

"Deep-fried Camembert." Liv decided on miserable tomorrow so as not to look like a vain anorexic tonight. "So where is he?" she whispered behind her menu to Alex.

"Over there." Alex pointed with her seventy-seventh gla.s.s of white wine in the direction of a strange two-headed monster in the corner.

"But that's Amelia," Liv said, taking in the back of Amelia's blond hair, then noticed that there was indeed someone attached to her face. "And . . . that's Ben Parker," Liv hissed as she suddenly realised that the two-headed monster wasn't that at all. It was Amelia and Ben. Ben Parker was the guy from the bar earlier. Calvin Klein beach-scented Ben who had put his arm around Amelia-Ben whom Liv could now see quite clearly, the mouth, the long legs, the smooth back, the green eyes that . . . she hadn't seen, hadn't gazed into, for nine years. Ben Parker. And oh, Ben Parker who was, Liv realised with a lurch of her heart, unless she was completely mistaken, Perfect Amelia's boyfriend.

"Didn't I tell you he was going out with Amelia Fraser? I must have missed that bit out, Livvy. I'm sorry, babe; it totally slipped my mind. Too much of this stuff." Alex sloshed wine from her gla.s.s onto her bread roll and giggled. Liv didn't. "And he's quite bright, too, Robert was telling me. Got a Ph.D.," Alex said, not noticing that Liv had ground to a halt. She was neither chewing nor talking nor moving. But she was thinking and watching Ben as he and Amelia got cosy. As he muttered something delicious in her pink little ear and she smiled and whispered something back. Liv was thinking that Ben Parker was indeed very bright. And, true to Liv's dreams, hadn't lost anything. Merely gained. A lot. Including a girlfriend. Neither had he lost his effect on Liv's glands. She nearly laughed out loud, vomited, and ran away at the same time.

"I promised Laura that I'd help her alphabetise her self-help library tonight," Liv murmured to Alex as she feebly stood and picked up her bag. She cast one more glance over her shoulder at Ben Parker. She was nauseous with wishing she were back in that farm building lying on the straw with him now. Just one last time. So she could die happy. His hair was short and chestnut brown, his face and arms tanned, with a few freckles; he was no less and much, much more than she had remembered. Even in her dreams, the ones where he'd do all the things to her that Tim had long since stopped doing, Ben had never looked this good. "Bye." And Liv staggered, only slightly, but there was a definite weakness in her knees, out of the restaurant and into the balmy darkness.

Chapter Eight.

You Have New Male Waiting Paddington Market on a Sat.u.r.day was definitely somewhere to be in Sydney. If not exactly the place, it was certainly a port of call for every self-respecting Sydney-sider who wasn't on the beach, a yacht, or lunching a deux on the waterfront. As the sun rose, the stall holders would a.s.semble outside the church on Oxford Street and lay out their wares. Not a manky cauliflower to be found anywhere. There was the inevitable mixture of muesli-type people in Birkenstocks and high fashion-candles and joss sticks next to beautifully hand-beaded bodices, corn fritters baked by chicks in dreadlocks, and a bearded Aborigine selling herbal lotions and potions. Antique stall holders locked horns with the man selling Gregorian chants and Techno whose tinny tape deck scared away potential toby-jug buyers. In a baking hot sun-soaked corner at the back of the market, dangerously close to the noodle-and-dumpling stall, Liv wiped the sleep from her eyes. Coming to, she began to fumble with a few pairs of knickers as James a.s.sembled an expert sun canopy from a piece of tarpaulin and turned the rough planks of wood into a leopard print backdrop for Greta's Grundies.

"They look fabulous." Liv lifted up her sungla.s.ses and peered at the improved garments. And they had improved dramatically. With Liv's chest as the model 36C and Alex's as the 34B they had spent all week pinning each other into newspaper patterns and worked out the sizes in between and beyond and had the spectrum pretty much covered. They'd even designed and made up beautiful gold labels, which they'd spent the last two nights sewing carefully into the seams.

"Just as long as business is a bit better than last Sat.u.r.day," sighed James. "Apart from the couple of bras we sold to Nicole Kidman, we barely covered the stall hire."

"Ah, but I wasn't here last week." Liv winked. Thankfully James and Dave had overlooked her peccadillo on the grounds that it made her One of Them, as both had, at one time or another, slept through an entire day's trading on the stock market, numerous lunches with friends, and on one occasion James had failed to wake up for his own birthday. "You see, I'm your secret weapon. I can bond with women . . . perfect ploy, eh?" she said, smoothing a turquoise bodice out onto the display.

In fact, Liv had spent the entire last week feeling good. Despite the fact that Ben Parker was quite clearly beyond reach until he realised that life with Amelia was shallow and superficial and he wanted a real future with a woman who might not have pinp.r.i.c.k thighs but was funny and lovely and kind to animals and could balance the household accounts with the precision of a tightrope walker. Or an accountant. At which point he'd have to divorce Amelia and marry Liv. And it was okay, Liv was prepared for the fact that this may take a few years, marriage, and several children before he realised this, but in the meantime she had decided she was going to have lots and lots of s.e.x. It was the new balm for her wounded heart, and then when Ben did come round she'd have that glint of terminal satisfaction.

"So you're having dinner with w.i.l.l.y tonight?" James asked Liv, who had not wiped the smile off her face all morning. Even when she'd smashed her shin on the door of the Greta's Grundies van.

"Yeah. I can't wait. What I'd really like to do is skip dinner and just have him kiss my neck for a couple of hours. I just know that he'll be an amazing lover. I mean you can tell, can't you?"

"Pretty much. But you can't sleep with him tonight, you know that, don't you?" Dave had just arrived back from a wander around the market clutching a banana smoothie and wearing his Dorothy look-plaits, gingham dress, and red shoes in case he wanted to go home. It was Mardi Gras in a couple of weeks and all the drag queens in Sydney had launched into a frenzy of compet.i.tiveness, which meant that Dave now had to shave his legs at least three times a day if he had a hope of being invited to the best parties.

"Not sleep with him? What are you talking about? Of course I'm going to sleep with him." Liv looked shocked. "Why else would I be going out to dinner with a man?"

"Because you like him and want to get to know him better."

"Uh-uh. I only go out to dinner with men that I want to sleep with; otherwise you spend all your time worrying that they're going to kiss you and try to get into your knickers and it spoils a perfectly nice dinner." Liv was adamant.

"I hate to say this, Liv, but how would you know? You might as well have been locked up in a dark cupboard for the last five years for all the experience you've had." Dave slurped on his smoothie and checked his cheeks for stubble.

"I want s.e.x. I haven't been getting any. Can't it be that simple?"

"Sorry." Dave shrugged. "Are you going to explain to her or shall I, James?" James pointed at Dave, but Liv wasn't prepared to let them talk her out of this. She'd been religious about body lotion all week. She'd be b.u.g.g.e.red if her new soft skin was going to waste.

"This is about displacement. I kissed Will and felt great because it meant that I could actually fancy someone who wasn't Tim. I feel liberated. But imagine how great I'm going to feel if I actually have s.e.x with someone else. I'll be on cloud nine and forget all about the pain and Tim and stuff. I'll be happy again."

"Cla.s.sic rebound, darling, which is all as may be, but you just cannot f.u.c.k a man on the first date."