Dog Handling Part 6

"Liv. Are you still alive?" he asked two hours later as he opened the back door of the van and found Liv doing her sums in the comforting darkness.

"Sure. It's a bit hot, though," she said, gasping for air and blinking like a mole in the sunlight. "Only I'm off for a bit of a sandwich. Shouldn't be long, but would you mind"-he looked reluctantly at her, wondering if maybe it wouldn't be better just to close down the stall rather than have Liv peddling his wares for him-"taking over the reins while I'm gone?"

"Do I look so terrible?" she asked as she tried to catch a glimpse of herself in one of the van's wing mirrors.

"Best not to look, eh?" James said. "You're usually a beautiful girl, but this morning you're not far from a bushpig." He went to ruffle her hair in a display of brotherly affection but quickly pulled his hand away before it was coated in lardy gunge. "A friend of mine's got a hair salon in Double Bay. I'll fix you up with an appointment," he said sweetly, and beat a hasty retreat. "The cash tin's there. Hopefully it'll be quiet."

Liv thrust her legs into the sunlight and blinked at their terrifying pallor. Not a good look for Paddington Market, which was awash with fresh golden-baked teenage limbs. In fact, probably not a good look anytime. She plonked herself down in the deck chair behind the stall and read the balance sheet with mock fascination. If she emitted unfriendly-enough vibes she might not even have to deal with a single customer. In fact, she watched with a surly expression she'd copied from an Estee Lauder saleswoman as at least six potential customers came, fiddled with the bras, and then scurried away. Doubtless to have a few nightmares about the experience.

Then she heard another set of footsteps approach the stall. She made a few accountant noises in her windpipe and practised her own modified version of a Uri Geller spoon-bending tactic to make the invader go away. The fact that it made her puce in the face was an added bonus. But the footsteps didn't beat any sort of retreat, hasty or otherwise. b.u.g.g.e.r.

"Is this Greta's Grundies?" a man's voice asked.

"Yeah. Feel free to touch whatever you like," Liv growled, a little surprised at the man-buying-bras revelation but without looking up.

"Great. Thanks," he replied. G.o.d, he had a s.e.xy voice though, she thought. Different from the voices she'd heard recently. She tried to work it out while keeping her eyes fixed on VAT. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Chocolatey voice, she decided. Actually could be any number of other things, like warm-raspberry-jam-on-b.u.t.tered-crumpets voice or treacle-poured-on-porridge voice, but she plumped for chocolatey. Interesting this, not judging the book by its cover but by what it's got to say. When she was at Goldsmiths she'd once conducted an outrageously flirtatious phone relationship with the buyer from a trendy Soho hat shop. He was called Simon and Liv had fantasised about how he was the one for her and that there was no way they couldn't fall in love the second they met. They discovered that they had both been listening to Kris Kristofferson's "Loving her was easier than anything I'll ever do again," alone in their rooms for years. They were pa.s.sionate about reading in the bath and they both wanted to keep yaks and follow the Inca trail. So no way they couldn't fall in love. Except that when they met at a PR agency's Christmas party he had the nerve to have a shiny bald pate, gla.s.ses, and a mon.o.brow. So despite thinking that the man fiddling with the lacy knickers six feet away from her sounded like he would have her dribbling l.u.s.tily in no time, Liv knew that Mr. Chocolatey Voice was actually as hideous a bushpig as she herself was.

She put her black book and pen down and stood up.

"Sure, fire away," she replied as she came face-to-face with Mr. Chocolatey Voice. Alias . . . oh, Christ, well, of course it was going to be, wasn't it? Alias Ben Parker. No wonder he'd sounded different. She knew him. He was the man who'd told her ten years ago in fledgling chocolatey tones that her hair was as lovely as Belinda Carlisle's. It had been love then. What was it now? Well, actually, it was acute embarra.s.sment.

"Haven't we met before?" Chocolatey Ben asked.

Liv grabbed a nearby bra and pretended to sniff it, hoping to cover her face. What she wanted to say was, "G.o.d, Bill. How are you? Oh, it's Ben, is it. Oh yes, now I think I remember. Spain, 1992. Oh yes, of course, France 1991. Well, you're looking great, Ben. Oh, I am, too? Well, thanks. So how aarrrrrreeee you?" At least that was the cool and casual speech she'd prepared for when she b.u.mped into him, but she had also planned to grow a couple of inches and become lovely before she said it. This morning she was very far from loveliness. And if he didn't recognise her it would be more than her currently rather fragile ego could bear. "Don't think so, mate," she snorted instead, doing her best Aussie impression.

"You're not English then?" he asked.

"Ya kiddin', aren't ya? Next you'll be accusing Skippy the Bush Kangaroo of being a corgi." She hid her pallid legs behind the stall, thinking that even if her embarra.s.singly bad attempt to be Clive James made her sound local, then her glow-in-the dark sausage-shaped limbs would definitely give her away as English.

"Sorry. Thought you were a girl I once knew." He smiled beguilingly.

Liv wanted to hang herself with the bra. After she'd hurt him very badly with a few metres of knicker elastic. "Yeah, well, wrong chick, sorry. Did you wanna buy something?" Liv saw James approaching from the other side of the market. He was carrying two cups of coffee and a large pizza box, obviously feeling guilty about making Liv a pariah. Only he mustn't come anywhere near here right now and give her childish game away.

"I've been advised that Greta's Grundies are just what I'm looking for." Except he wasn't looking at anyone's grundies. But she could have sworn he was looking at her chest, which was dangerously unhinged in Laura's minuscule T-shirt. He was probably considering alerting the emergency services.

"Then feel free to look," Liv said, her accent dropping slightly as she panicked about how best to avert James from his path. Ben gave her a lingering puzzled look before averting his gaze to Liv's personal favourite-a velvet-trimmed corset.

Liv stepped into "distract James" mode: She tried to wave him back with her eyes, but he merely hurried even more, knocking his pizza box into a baby snuggled in a papoose on his mother's back.

Go away, Liv mouthed when she was sure that Ben had his nose buried in underwear, but James simply hurried up and piled his box and coffees onto the cash table.

"What is it, gorgeous? Are you ill? You haven't been looking well all day."

Liv kept her mouth firmly shut and just shook her head. She gave James a thumbs-up sign and smiled broadly. Then she picked up a coffee and smiled like Marcel Marceau. Hmmm, thank you for the coffee, the smile said.

"Liv?" James shoved her down into the chair and looked at her with concern.

"Can I help?" Ben piped up from behind the stall. "I didn't think she was well before. Looked a little green and breathing heavily."

"No, she's always that colour. Must say she did seem to have the power of speech when I left, though." James felt Liv's forehead and was about to attempt to take her pulse. G.o.d, b.u.g.g.e.r off back to the other side of the stall, Ben Parker, and let me look like a cow's backside in peace, why don't you? Liv thought. Now what was she meant to do?

"I can take her to the emergency room if you like. I mean you've obviously got a stall to look after. I'm doing nothing this afternoon." Ben smiled winningly, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

And as he did so, James suddenly took in that he was a very edible young man, vaguely familiar-looking-and buying female smalls, too. Maybe this could be the beginning of a beautiful, if adulterous, friendship. "Oh she'll be right. Just drinks too much. These pommy sheilas can't take their grog." He waved a dismissive hand over Liv and turned the full wattage of his smile on Ben, "Now, sir, what size can I help you to? Large, I'd imagine." He smiled, looking Ben up and down.

But Ben was too busy trying to work out how the Aussie sheila he'd just been talking to was actually English Liv. "Yeah, Large is fine, thanks," replied Ben absentmindedly, making James's Sat.u.r.day. Liv picked up her figures and hastily plugged numbers into the calculator, making up imaginary sums and faking looks of concern at the total amount.

"Liv, can you hand me three ones and a twenty from the cashbox, darling?" James asked, not taking his eyes off Ben, who was now clutching a brown paper bag full of man-sized lingerie and staring at Liv, who handed over the cash and carried on doing her sums.

"Thanks so much; erm, that's great," Ben mumbled as he turned and walked away through the market, looking around just once to make sure that he hadn't imagined that whole encounter.

"Well, I think that one's truly in the bag, both metaphorically and literally." James grinned as he fingered the crisp $100 bill that Ben had handed over. "He's certainly hot enough to pitch my tent."

"What are you talking about?" Liv asked, slamming down her calculator. "How dare you put your s.e.x life before my health!"

"Oh, darling, I knew you were faking it just to get that gorgeous beast to drag you off to be hooked up to a drip." James gave her a tart look. "But isn't he Amelia Fraser's fella? Jeez, there'll be a great big fat scandal when I tell the blokes at the Albery about him."

"He's not gay, so get over yourself. And for your information, I don't need to fake illness to make him drag me anywhere," Liv said, albeit unconvincingly. The way she looked today, the only place anyone would drag her was to the recycling plant.

"Oh yeah?" James smiled, his hands on his hips. "Dying to hear this one. And he does wear women's undies, by the way."

"We used to be lovers." She tried an insouciant flick of her hair, but it wouldn't budge. Her coup de theatre was short-lived, as James laughed out loud.

"Yeah, right. So why didn't he recognise you?"

"As a matter of fact he did. I just pretended not to be me so that on another occasion I can wow him with my wit and beauty. Today, as you've astutely pointed out, I'm neither witty nor beautiful." Liv slunk back into her chair and contemplated exactly where she was going to begin with this transformation that would stop Ben Parker in his tracks and make him marvel at how he could ever have forgotten Liv Elliot.

"Not witty?" James laughed. "You're hilarious, Liv. If that bloke's not a tranny, then why did he buy fourteen pairs of Large knickers?"

"That I don't know. But they're definitely not for Amelia Fraser," said Liv, thinking that perhaps as good a place as any to begin a transformation was her back end, which would have resided comfortably in each of Ben's fourteen pairs of knickers. Then she decided that she wasn't sharing a single thing more with James. And certainly not the secrets of her love life. Not that she'd had one for a whole week, but just in case, well, just in case one happened to strike her down. Like the flu.

"Oh, come on, sulky chops. Tell me what's wrong." Dave had just finished his Mardi Gras rehearsals and was looking as spectacular as ever in his Ursula Undress outfit complete with dagger. He and Liv were sunning themselves in front of the stall. "Is it because James didn't believe that you and Ben Parker had ever smooched?"

"We didn't smooch; we had s.e.x. Heaps of it in the hay." Liv pouted as Dave sat on the deck chair next to her. "But that's not what I'm miserable about."

"What is it, sweetie?" He lit a cigarette and tuned in to listen.

"Why hasn't Will called me?" Liv bit back a tear. "Am I so awful?" She'd been holding it in since Wednesday and was trying to look on the bright side, but there was just no escaping the fact that a man she didn't even think was particularly attractive didn't fancy her. Her ego was fragile right now and the last thing she needed was to be rejected again.

"Liv, you didn't even fancy him very much. You talked yourself into it because you needed a rebound flingette. For heaven's sake, you told me that by Monday you'd decided that you'd been deluding yourself and that the s.e.x was only about a six and that you suspected he was self-obsessed. Now, a week after he hasn't called, you think he's the most amazing man alive," Dave reminded her.

"Yeah, but even though he wasn't good enough for me it still hurts that he doesn't want me."

"It's not you he doesn't want. It's just that I did warn you, didn't I?" Dave stroked the tear away from her cheek and took her hands in his big one.

"You told me not to sleep with him, but surely that can't have been the problem."

"Liv, my love, I know it sounds Victorian, but you gave away the goods too soon. If you want a man to beg, you have to treat him like the dog he is." Dave lit a cigarette and began to ponder the problem. "There are a few rules when it comes to men, or dogs, for the purposes of this conversation, and the sooner you learn and use them the better."

An hour later Dave was half a packet of cigarettes down and Liv's legs were char-grilling dangerously in the afternoon sun, but neither really noticed, as they were very much involved in the principles of dog handling.

"Okay, now you've got the gist, I want you to repeat the dog-handling basics to me." Dave flicked his ash on the floor and watched Liv closely, hoping for great things from his new star pupil.

Liv sat up straight and took a deep breath. "The first thing to remember is that men are exactly like dogs. They pant and salivate and like to sniff your bottom and basically have loving hearts, but they have to be trained if you're ever going to get the best out of them," Liv began.

Dave nodded encouragement. "For example?"

"For example, if a dog drops a ball in your lap he wants you to throw it so that he can play. If you hold onto the ball, the dog will not go away. He'll look at you expectantly for a second, and then if you still don't throw it, he'll sit down and wait. If you continue to hold onto the ball, he'll raise the stakes and lie down and pant. If you hide the ball in your pocket, he'll come closer and sniff you and then stare at you for hours in a heartbroken way. So that when you finally toss the ball for him he's so excited he runs around and barks and can barely contain himself. By playing this game with him you've made him a happy, fulfilled dog."

"And then?" Dave quizzed.

"And then he brings the ball back to you and you're back where you started. The ball's in your hands."

"Exactemondo." Dave slapped Liv's thigh in triumph. "Hence?"

"Hence, do not give your ball away. For as long as you have the ball you are in control of the game. Be a tease. Hold onto the goods. Give a little away, but then back off. Never let them know that you want to play ball, too. Men, like dogs, prefer life this way," Liv concluded.

"And how else are men like dogs?" Dave had by now run out of matches so just chewed his nails.

"Men, like dogs, are hunter-gatherers. But like dogs they have been domesticated. They no longer have to go out and slay supper, but the instinct is still there in their genes and behaviour patterns. So in the absence of cute little deer and adorable bunnies to kill they hunt women. This is a law of nature and if you deprive them of the hunt then they will go elsewhere to satisfy that need. A man must always be kept slightly hungry, six feet away from his prey. This way he will remain in constant pursuit."

"Fantastic. You're getting there. Already all the men you want are panting at your heels. Pleading for dates. s...o...b..ring on your sandals," Dave said excitedly. "Now all I want is for you to sustain this position of power. How will you achieve that?"

"Well." Liv cracked her knuckles in a businesslike fashion. "The thing is that dogs are pack animals. They need a leader who is firm with them. While they may gaze adoringly at the leader forever, the leader must not show signs of weakness, because they'll think he is being submissive and appoint themselves pack leaders. Then they run amok."

"Which, translated from doggy language to boy language, means what, Liv?"

"That if you want to remain in control you must never back down. Let them gaze adoringly at you and all will be well. You may sneak sidelong glances at them and feed them and be nice as can be, but you must never gaze back too adoringly at them. Never let them know you love them as they love you. If you do, the game's up. The man appoints himself leader of the pack and runs amok."

"Bravo." Dave sprang from his chair and kissed Liv right on the lips.

"And you're saying that's all I have to do to make any man want me and stay?" Liv asked, not quite able to believe it.

"Absolutely b.l.o.o.d.y right it is," Dave said. "Now the sooner we set you to work on your dog-handling exercises the better, my darling. The big question is who will be dog number one?"

Liv spent her afternoon break wandering around the stalls pondering the merits of dog handling. She loved boys generally. How would she ever manage to treat them meanly and keep them at arm's length? And wasn't that c.r.a.p, that you had to spend your entire life playing stupid games and being a controlling old witch in order to make a man love you? But then she thought about what Alex had said. Certainly Alex never had trouble getting a man to return her calls. She genuinely didn't care very much and had never been known to gaze adoringly at any man. Ever. So it certainly worked for Alex.

Then Liv remembered Will. Ordinarily she would have had a bloke like Will eating Pedigree Chum mix out of her hand, but she had been so keen to rinse away the past, to kick the ghost of Tim to the kerb once and for all, that she'd been positively gagging for it. Panting desperately in his lap. And the result was that he'd vanished. Left her high and dry. Kicked her to the kerb like a worthless piece of rubbish. It should definitely have been the other way around, she admitted, given his propensity for self-obsession and frankly plain unattractiveness (which she had previously turned a blind eye to because she wanted s.e.x so badly). So maybe Dave was right. Maybe she should try a bit of dog handling. Just a bit.

Liv moved over to try out one of the hand-crocheted Mexican hammocks in a nearby stall and dreamed of having a snooze. She felt a bit woozy actually-too much time studying dog handling in the blazing sun. Her earlier run-in with Ben Parker wasn't exactly settling, either. Such close proximity when she'd been so unprepared to see him had made her sick with panic. She wondered if she had managed to fool him. Had he really recognised her from that French holiday or had he caught a glimpse of her at lunch the other day or even at the races? There was no way of knowing. She hoped he'd got it totally wrong and just mistaken her for a waitress who'd served him at Hugo's last month or something. But that was a slim hope. She stuck out like a sore thumb, so he'd certainly recognise her when he saw her again. Thanks to all the sunshine and Just Right breakfast cereal, Australia seemed to grow its women tall and lithe. Liv was neither. She was convinced that she was the stoutest, palest, doughiest girl in the whole city. And being rejected by a fellow stout, doughy person, namely Will, wasn't exactly encouraging. Of course Ben would recognise her if he saw her again. In which case she was going to have to look so wow that the memory of today's weirdness would be obliterated from his mind with her explosion of gorgeousness. Not going to happen, actually, she thought as she climbed out of the hammock and tried on an ostrich feather skirt.

"Buy, buy, buy," a voice demanded behind her. Liv turned to see Alex laden with bags and almost obscured by a huge bunch of flowers. "James told me you were around and about. It'll look fantastic at the party."

"What party?" Liv asked, helping Alex to deposit a few of her purchases on the ground.

The stallholder smelled a woman on a spending spree and came over to them to encourage a sale. "It does look divine. Just the thing for a party." He grinned, paying more attention to Alex's legs than Liv's ostrich-swathed hips.

"What party? And why've you got a bagful of watermelons?" Liv asked.

"Tonight. Huge surprise. It's Charlie's birthday and that's all I'm going to say. I'm holding it at his apartment in Bondi. So you have to come and you have to wear ostrich," said Alex, picking up her bags again and turning on her heels. "Seven-thirty at Charlie's. And only ostrich, okay?" And she vanished, leaving Liv to contend with an overexcited stall owner and the horrifying prospect of socialising when all she wanted was to phone her mum and sc.r.a.pe the grime from under her fingernails as she watched Seinfeld.

"You know, if you've not got a date for this party . . . I guess Cameron Diaz won't be too disappointed if I stand her up to come with you," the Stall Slime said to Liv as he watched Alex sway through the crowds towards Oxford Street.

"Yeah, you're right. I'm sure Cameron Diaz won't mind at all that you're not going out with her," Liv said, and prized the skirt down over her shorts. "And actually, I'm engaged to be married," she hissed, and stormed off. Sometimes Alex as a best friend was not a picnic.

As James squeezed his van the wrong way up her street he looked at Liv in bewilderment. "Why don't you want to go out tonight with that lot?" he asked Liv as he pulled up in front of her house. "They're the happening young Sydney crowd. To tell the truth, I'm pretty impressed with your social rise."

"I don't belong up there. I believe you should find your level in life and stay there." Liv sc.r.a.ped her bags and grocery shopping up from the crisp packetstrewn floor of the van. "I know where I belong. And it's not at Charlie Timpson's surprise birthday party. I should have taken the Stall Slime up on his offer and considered myself a lucky girl."

"I'm sorry if I called you a bushpig, honey. You know I'd never really call you that if you were," James said, salvaging a can of organic baked beans that had rolled under his seat. "I'm sure Ben Parker would fall over himself to spade you if he wasn't a poof."

"He's not gay. I told you, he's going out with Amelia."

"Yeah, right. And that's not denial? The girl he chooses has the backside of a Polynesian deck boy. Figurewise she's the next best thing to . . . well, to me, I suppose. Well, me as a boy, without my falsies," said James.

"So for a girl I'm all right?" she asked as she opened the van door and jumped out.

"All right? You're amazing. Liz Taylor before the ice cream and painkillers, I'd definitely say." He pinched her cheek, which hurt a bit, but she smiled anyway.

"Thanks, James. Sure you don't want to be my date tonight?" Liv yelled back from the pavement.

"Ta very much, but I'm going dancing with my very own Richard Burton. Ciao, bella. Oh, and by the way, Dave and I expect full reports on how the dog handling goes. No slacking, gorgeous." And he drove off and honked his horn enough times to rouse a few grunts from lawn-mowing neighbours.

"Laura, how do you fancy painting the town a lurid shade of scarlet with me tonight?" Liv yelled out towards the hut as she dumped her grocery shopping and scurried into the bathroom to pull off Laura's T-shirt before its absence was noted. She quite wanted a bit of moral support tonight in case she had to endure further public humiliation.

"Sounds good; don't think I'm doing much other than working on the colour of death. Jo-Jo's gone riding in the Blue Mountains for the weekend," said Laura, appearing at the back door and shaking her hair loose from her ponytail. When she smiled she wasn't bad-looking at all, Liv thought. If she dabbed a bit of white spirit on her eyebrows to get rid of the paint she might even be pretty.

"I'll just call Alex to check out the details," Liv said, shoving the phone down as she got Alex's answerphone. "She must be out buying balloons or something."

"Sure she won't mind?" Laura asked. "Only I feel as though I haven't seen a soul in days. It'll restore balance to my life."

"Not at all. You'll be my date," said Liv. "Mind if I have first shower?" Liv added, heaving off her shorts and heading for the bathroom before Laura could object. Even though it wasn't strictly her house, the girls felt a certain obligation to include Laura. Possibly because she was the only one of them who knew what Mr. Clean was for.

Later Liv sat on the sofa wrapping a pair of faux-cashmere socks she'd bought Charlie from the market. She wasn't accustomed to buying gifts for billionaires so had opted for almost-luxury goods, which she felt sure he'd be able to wear as he tottered around the first-cla.s.s compartment on the Concorde or something.

"All set." Laura emerged from her bedroom obviously having employed a few litres of white spirit somewhere along the way. Her hair was actually wavy and auburn when not under a head scarf and two coats of Dulux and she had a face-tiny, pretty, little bit of red lipstick and blob of mascara and her green eyes went all glittery. Like the Lady of Shallot after a few gla.s.ses of red wine.

"Laura, you're lovely," Liv said, wishing that she'd dolled herself up a bit more now instead of settling for Ameliaesque minimalism, which made her feel that she should be on her way to a third-form chemistry cla.s.s and not a party where she planned to fell Ben Parker with her glory and tame a few of the neighbourhood strays so she could impress Dave and James.

"Whatever," Laura drawled, replacing the rusty nails at the bottom of her rucksack with a lipstick and credit card. "Someone I know . . . used to know . . . said that being wanted I'd be more wondered at."

"What did that person mean?" Liv asked, knowing full well that it was The Heartbreaker who had said it.

"I think that I had a much bigger impact on that person when I was dressed up because I was usually covered in c.r.a.p. But actually, that person was c.r.a.p, so let's not go there." Laura shoved the rucksack over her shoulder and picked up her car keys. "If we're having just too good a time we can ditch the car and get a cab home, eh?"

"Sure," said Liv, still shaking her head in shock at the beautiful spitfire who was taking her to the party.

Bondi had become one of Liv's favourite Sydney places. Although it was just slightly tatty round the edges, it wasn't Sydney's most famous attraction for nothing. The beach was perfect, there was a swimming pool that sat just above the sea and was lapped and filled with water from the ocean (some called it the pee pool, but Liv chose to have more faith in human nature), and then a skip and a belly flop away from the beach were more cafes than you could shake a stick at. Or rather shake your fat behind at, as Liv had pretty much eaten her way through: macadamia nut cookies, fried breakfasts, and endless, whippy, creamy smoothies. It was very possible to spend the entire day at Bondi and be well fed, well read on the beach, and exercised by the time you caught the bus home over the hill to Bronte with the workaday crowd in the evening. Tonight all the beach crowd had gone and, apart from a lone surfer who was doing things with a board that gave Liv nightmares, the place was deserted.