Training Days Part 12

Or French. For the moment she was off them too.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Ally flinched as she closed her office door behind her. She had just finished deceiving her boss. Actually, deception was far too soft a word to describe what she'd done. Destruction of company property coupled with an outright lie was more fitting terminology. Initially she hadn't intended to cause any damage to her mobile phone. All she'd wanted to do was make sure Morgan couldn't keep calling, so, after deleting voice-mail message number four she'd put a block on her phone. But she'd very quickly realized that the block was only good if Morgan dialed from her mobile. She could call from any landline or pay phone, or any other phone for that matter. Plus, Morgan's number had to be stored in Ally's phone in order for the number to be blocked and so was sitting there for retrieval should she ever be tempted. Despite telling herself she would not be tempted, there was a niggling voice in her head telling her that she would . . . so blocking her phone was not enough. She needed a new telephone number. And the best way of getting one, without having to answer curly questions from her boss, was for her SIM card to suffer some sort of mishap. Because the card was safely tucked inside her phone and-having figured Josh would never believe it had simply grown legs and walked away-this morning she had purposely destroyed her entire mobile phone by running it under the tap in the office bathroom until some of the electronics short-circuited. It hadn't taken long.

She had blushed profusely when embarra.s.sedly presenting her still-wet phone to Josh. She explained how she had been desperate for the toilet, made a dash with her phone still in hand, placed it on the women's sanitary bin, but accidentally knocked it when she stood to flush. And it fell in. The circ.u.mstances she described made the blush feasible and he swallowed the whole story, even her proclamation that-thank goodness-she had backed up her SIM card only the week before. In actual fact, she had arrived at the office a good half-hour earlier than normal and backed up her SIM before giving her phone a cold shower.

Ally was relieved that Josh seemed to find the incident more amusing than annoying. Deciding not to push her luck, she shut herself in her office and hardly made an appearance all day. She also refused to dwell on the reason why she had taken such a drastic and dishonest action, choosing instead to bury herself in her work.

James called her on the office line at lunchtime, both to apologize for upsetting her the night before and to see if-as they had arranged before their argument-she was still going to spend the night at his place. He also asked why he was unable to get through on her mobile. Ally broadened the audience of her lie by telling James about dropping her phone down the toilet. She also said yes, she would be spending the night with him. She hung up from the call, bent to her work again and didn't give him another thought all afternoon.

Come the end of the day she was putting the finishing touches on the first pa.s.s of her Kalgoorlie executive residence. Tomorrow she could start inputting it into the 3-D-rendering program that would enable her client to virtually "walk through" his house. She packed up her bag and flicked off the light switch in her office, feeling quite pleased with her progress. Halfway to her apartment in Croyden she remembered she was supposed to be in Balmain. She turned her car around, aimed it for James's townhouse and let herself in.

She initially kept her "waiting for James at James's place" routine, bringing in the mail and placing it on the dining table, pouring herself a gla.s.s of wine and poking her head in the fridge to see what she might use in the preparation of dinner. She found the makings for a simple stir-fry and was halfway through transferring the ingredients onto the kitchen bench when she began loading them back into the fridge. Ally took herself and her gla.s.s of wine upstairs, removed all her clothes and lay down on James's bed.

She sipped on her wine and experimented with a series of seductive postures, imagining the reaction when James discovered her. Most likely he would be very, very pleased. But he would also most likely approach the bed with caution, not only because of their argument last night, but because of late all his efforts at intimacy had been knocked flat. On the Sunday night after the auction Ally had begged a headache, blaming the champagne. James had reluctantly turned over in bed, although he had quite sarcastically mentioned it was more likely the thought of the five-thousand-dollar check she had written that afternoon that was causing the headache. On Monday they didn't even make it as far as the bedroom. James had been watching the evening news when a promotion for Bonnes Vacances came on during an ad break. The five thousand dollars was mentioned again and Ally had let fly, accusing him of being a chauvinist pig who wanted to control her life and her pocketbook, and essentially throwing him out of her apartment. He left without putting up too much of an argument, just shaking his head and once more announcing her as "one confounding woman." Ally had slammed the door behind him and dashed back to the television. She stared at it for a whole half-hour before another promotion for Bonnes Vacances appeared. When it did she sat rigid in her seat, holding her breath until the snippet with Morgan in it had come and gone. When it was gone Ally immediately began waiting for it to appear again. It was after another twenty minutes of staring in expectation of a fifteen-second commercial that Ally reached for her mobile phone, dialed Morgan and told her of her intention to remove her from memory.

Which is exactly what she'd done today. Via vandalism and deceit, maybe, but still, it was done and now Ally could get on with her life as it had been in the days before Morgan. She took another sip of her wine, a.s.sumed another s.e.xy posture and focused on James's reaction to finding her naked on his bed.

Too d.a.m.n bad if he wasn't into spontaneity and excitement, because that's exactly what he was in for tonight.

Two minutes later, as unbidden thoughts of Morgan kept impinging on the s.p.a.ce she had reserved for James, she sat up and checked her wrist.w.a.tch, which she'd laid on one of the bedside tables. It was three minutes to seven. Usually, James didn't arrive home until after the hour. She lay back down again.

At one minute to seven she was cold and tired of waiting. She was also feeling a little silly lying there with her legs apart. "Where the h.e.l.l are you?" she muttered grumpily, her seductive mood evaporating with the last sip of her wine. By one minute past seven she was dressed again, had smoothed down the bedclothes and returned downstairs. By three past the hour James was letting himself in the front door.

"How are you tonight?" he asked rather carefully as he kissed her on the cheek.

"I'm fine." Ally held up her refreshed gla.s.s. "Want one?"

"Yes, please. Good day?"

"Fine." Ally went to the fridge to retrieve the bottle.

"That's good." James picked up his mail from the dining table and flicked through it. "What would you like for dinner?"

Ally poured wine and shrugged. "There's the makings of a stir-fry in the fridge."

"Sounds good." James extracted the contents of an envelope as he walked into the lounge area. He picked up the remote and aimed it at the television. "Do you mind if I watch the news?"

"Go ahead." For the second time that evening Ally transferred items from the fridge onto the kitchen bench. She banged them a little onto the granite surface, not exactly sure why she was so irked. After all, she was getting exactly what she had wanted-the return to life as it had been before . . . her.

Ally grabbed a kitchen knife and chopped viciously at the vegetables as the voice of the television news presenter droned on in the background. The television would be turned off at dinnertime and she and James would eat together at the table, discussing what had happened in each of their days. With parents who took casual dining to the extreme, Ally had grown up eating dinner from a plate on her lap while perched on the couch. After graduation she'd swapped her parents for a TV-addicted flat-mate who could only conduct a decent conversation for the duration of an ad break, so this civilized method of dining was a relatively new concept that she had embraced fully.

She wondered how the conversation would go tonight.

"What did you do today?" James would ask.

"Oh, just the usual. Drew up some award-winning house plans, threw my phone down the toilet and gave up any hope of trying to stop thinking about Morgan."

James would take a piece of perfectly stir-fried chicken between his chopsticks. "Are you thinking about her now?"

"Yes," Ally would admit, poking around her bowl with her own chopsticks, looking for a still-crisp snow pea.

James would admire the perfectly cooked chicken before taking it to his mouth. "And what are you thinking?"

The snow pea would be steaming hot, causing Ally to fan her mouth with her hand. "How she was so close I could feel her breath on my face. How her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were so soft when she pressed against me. How her lips melted against mine when she kissed me . . ."

In the next instant Ally's knife dropped with a thud onto the chopping board and she yelped. "f.u.c.k!"

"Let me see." James was soon by her side and holding her index finger, which was bleeding quite profusely. He directed the finger under the cold-water tap. "What happened?"

"I wasn't concentrating." Ally looked at her own watered-down blood spiraling into the plug hole. Her finger didn't hurt-too much-yet she had a terrible urge to cry. She buried her head into James's shoulder and sniffed, trying to pull back the threatening tears. She couldn't. "I cut myself." She sobbed.

"My poor love." James enveloped her in his arms and rocked her. "What with your broken phone and now your broken finger, you're not having a very good day, are you?"

That brought on a fresh rush of tears.

James bandaged her cut and ordered in some couscous, declaring the consumption of the stir-fry, now that it contained the blood of Ally's finger, equivalent to an act of cannibalism. Ally kept telling him how sorry she was for ruining another evening, and thanking him for being so nice.

At bedtime James turned to her, maybe sensing his chivalry had earned him more than just grat.i.tude.

"Not tonight," Ally told him, almost regretfully. Why could she no longer drum up even the teeniest bit of amorous feeling for him? "My finger hurts." She turned onto her side at the same time he turned on his, so they lay back to back. And she lay awake for hours, listening to his breathing as it first turned rhythmic, then into snores.

"I do love you, James," she whispered softly, her back still to him. "But just not in the way you want me to."

She lay staring at the wall for quite a while longer after that, trying to think of a way to tell him that when he was actually awake.

Ally hovered around James the next morning. She hovered in the bathroom while he was taking his shower and shave, she hovered in the bedroom as he was dressing, and she hovered next to him as he stood at the kitchen bench, pouring coffee and reading the headline story in The Australian while he waited for his toast to pop up.

"Aren't you going in to work today?" he finally asked as he transferred his toast onto a plate. Usually their morning preparations were staggered so Ally would just be descending the stairs, showered and dressed, while he was finishing his breakfast.

"Yes, I'm going." Ally stared at the kitchen bench and trailed a finger across the polished granite surface. She'd better work up the courage to say now what she had practiced in the early hours of the morning, or she'd have to wait until tonight when she saw him again. "But I wanted to speak to you first."

James must have picked up the edge to Ally's tone because he put his plate on the bench, pushed his newspaper aside and turned to look her in the eye. "Yes?" he asked simply.

Ally would have preferred to spit out her words while James was still involved in his paper, and then turn tail and run. But that was not going to happen. "I've been thinking a lot over the past few days," she began.

"Yes?" James repeated, the darkness of worry entering his eyes. He had to know this was leading nowhere good.

"And I've come to realize that-as much as I think you are a good man and I care for you deeply-that I don't want to be in a relationship with you."

James's Adam's apple bobbed up and down in his throat as he swallowed twice before speaking. "What are you saying?"

"Exactly what I just said. I'm sorry, James, but I don't want to go out with you anymore."

His Adam's apple bobbed again and he ran a hand through his dark hair. "But we're good together, Alison. I know we're having a bit of a rough patch at the moment, but-"

"James. Listen to me." Ally took his cheeks in her hands and directed his gaze, which had strayed to the fridge door, back to hers. "This isn't just a rough patch for me. I've been thinking about this all night and-"

"One night?" James interrupted, his expression incredulous. "We've been together for nine months and you tell me you want to split up based on a single sleepless night?"

"It's not like that at all. Something happened to me-"

"You're having an affair!" James's voice gained its usual timbre . . . plus a bit more. It was the first sign of a building anger. "Something . . . or someone happened to you while you were away and you're having an affair!"

"No!" Ally shook her head vehemently and in her attempt to defend herself her words rushed out quicker than she could think them. "I'm not cheating on you. I kissed her, but only once."

"You don't call kissing someone else cheating?" For a single moment Ally thought James was going to raise his hand to her. His face turned red and a vein in his forehead throbbed purple. But his hands, which were clenched, remained at his sides. Then his expression changed to one of utter puzzlement. "Her? What do you mean you kissed her?"

It was very difficult for Ally to maintain eye contact, but she did. "I kissed a woman."

James stood silent, searching Ally's face as if looking for some sign she was joking. Her continued gaze, although unsteady, seemed to convince him otherwise. "But I don't understand. You're . . . you're not like that."

Ally could not hold eye contact any longer. She looked at the floor. "That's what I thought too."

"So you're telling me you're now a lesbian?"

Ally took a long moment before replying. That very same question had plagued her thoughts ever since "the kiss," and she was still no closer to a definitive answer. Was she a lesbian, bis.e.xual or just plain curious? She'd never before considered where she lay on the spectrum of s.e.xuality. Ask her before she boarded that train and she'd have answered without thinking, "I'm straight." Ask her now and she wouldn't be so sure. All she knew was that something had occurred between herself and Morgan that she had never experienced with anyone-male or female- before. Their time together on the train had been brief, their physical contact even briefer, yet Ally had the distinct feeling they were moments that had the power to be life-changing. And she also knew that, wherever Morgan sat on the spectrum, there was an invisible yet extremely strong thread drawing her to the same place. "I don't know, James. The way I feel . . ." She lifted her gaze from the floor to meet James's eyes again. His gaze darted over hers, showing his desperation for her to provide the answer he wanted to hear. But she couldn't do that, any more than she could pin a label on herself. She was just Ally, a woman who felt very much that she was in danger of falling in love with another woman. "I just don't know."

James swung round to face the bench. He rested his hands on the granite, his head hanging low. "Jesus f.u.c.king Christ."

That was the first time Ally had ever heard James utter anything coa.r.s.er than b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. But then again, they had never had a conversation like this before.

James's shoulders heaved as he took a large intake of breath and exhaled it slowly. "Last week you told me you loved me," he said, his voice so tight it cracked. "And this week you tell me you don't and that you think you've turned into-I'm sorry, Alison, but things just don't all of a sudden change like that."

"I'm sorry." Ally didn't know what else to say.

"So you're telling me you never actually loved me?"

"No, James. No! I called it love because that's what it was . . . what it is," she corrected herself. "I do love you, but not . . ." She trailed off, at a loss for the words to adequately describe what she felt inside. "Love comes in many forms."

"And which form do I fall into?" James asked bitterly. "And this . . . this . . . woman. What form does she fall into?"

Ally could hear the hurt in his voice and it cut right to her core. "I don't know, James. All this is new for me. I just don't know."

James turned back around, a sudden hope glimmering in his eyes. "You said you only kissed her the once. How can you make a decision like this based on one kiss?"

"I'm not." He had just gone straight to the crux of the matter. If Ally had focused less on the embrace and more on the feelings that surrounded it, she would have come to her realization long before now. "That's the thing. I don't think I even had to kiss her the one time to know it. There was just something there. Something that, up until now, has been missing for me."

It was past ten a.m. when Ally finally turned her car into her parking s.p.a.ce located at the rear of the office premises. She made a conscious effort to put a bit of spring in her step but failed. She was emotionally wrung out, having tried to explain to James something she had difficulty explaining to herself. She hadn't done a particularly good job as all he seemed able to do was to shake his head and say repeatedly, "I don't understand." But he did manage to mumble, "There's no need. I'm leaving now anyway," when Ally suggested it may be better if she showered at home today. He picked up his briefcase and was gone even before Ally reached the top of the stairs.

Over the past nine months, a sizable amount of Ally's personal possessions had found semipermanent homes at James's townhouse. She had a share of the closet s.p.a.ce and allocated drawers in the bedroom, and she had overtaken at least half of the shelves in the bathroom. Books, CDs and even some board games and the occasional kitchen utensil lurked in various other corners of the residence. Ally had vacillated over whether to take the entire morning off work, sort through everything and load all her things into her car. Finally she decided to take the items that were in open view-such as her shampoos and perfumes- and leave the rest for later. She'd call James in the next few days to make arrangements for a suitable time to come over and take everything else, and for him to do the same at her place. Then they'd return the spare house keys and . . . that would be that. Unless-within time-she and James could become friends.

Ally dragged herself up the two steps that led to the rear entrance of her offices, thinking, regrettably, that friendship with James was unlikely. Without exception, she'd never maintained contact with any of her exes. Also without exception, she'd been the one to make the split. Maybe there was a connection there- the fragility of the male ego and all that. Or maybe it was more to do with Ally herself. Looking back, she'd never dated anyone she'd previously called a friend. Even during her school years, she either dated older boys she didn't normally mix with or ones who attended different schools and she'd met via community dances or sporting events. At uni she was often set up on blind dates or was approached in the grungy university tavern. After graduation the business of networking often turned social and she'd accept an invitation to drinks or dinner. So she dated relative strangers and-if her ability to walk out of their lives so easily after the relationship ended was any indication-she never really became friends with them even while she was in the relationship.

Maybe, since the circ.u.mstances of this particular split were a first, she could set another precedent and maintain contact with James. After all, she did genuinely like the man. She just didn't want to sleep with him anymore.

Office keys in hand, Ally gripped onto the lever-style door handle and was initially surprised to find it gave way under the pressure. Usually she was the first to arrive at work so had to unlock the door and disarm the alarm. The open door was a reminder that she was late, and a quick glance to her watch reminded her by how much. Josh was an easygoing boss and not one to quibble over a few hours here or there, but still she crept in, not really feeling up to detailing the reason why she was only just arriving for the day.

Kirsty, one of the three draftspeople who shared the open area just behind the reception, called her a loud h.e.l.lo. Ally nodded in greeting and quickened her step. But she hadn't reached her office before she heard Josh summoning her to his, located next to her own.

She entered to find him with cup of tea in hand, feet up on the desk, a newspaper opened across his legs. Another stark reminder of how late she was. Josh was having his ritual morning "tea and read" break.

He took a sip from his cup, reached over and placed it on a bamboo flooring sample that doubled as a coaster. "Am I paying you too much?" he asked.

"Err . . ." Ally faltered, not expecting this reaction to her tardiness. He may have been an easygoing boss but as the owner of the company, he was personally paying her salary. "I'm sorry I'm late. I should have rung. I . . . overslept."

While she was talking she watched Josh lower his feet to the floor and rearrange his newspaper so it lay on the desk facing in her direction. He shrugged as he thumbed back two pages. "Everyone deserves an illicit lie-in on occasion." He pointed to the bottom of the left-hand page of the paper, looked up and grinned. "I was talking about this."

Ally relaxed at the issue of the grin. She placed her bag on the floor, perched on the edge of the seat that fronted his desk and peered at the article. Then her eyes nearly fell out of her head. Right there in black and white was a picture of Morgan and herself. The photo was a tight head and shoulders shot, taken at the charity auction. A single paragraph article accompanied the picture.

"Five thousand dollars . . ." Josh's voice intruded on the silence as Ally read the text for the second time. "That's a bit rich, isn't it?" He paused, the twinkle in his eye in opposition to the stern set of his mouth. "Obviously, I'm paying you far too much."

Ally, stunned to see the photo there at all-wasn't it just supposed to be in the school newsletter?-stopped midsentence in her excuse about it being a donation for the children. She folded her arms. "If you paid me half of what I'm actually worth, I could have made it ten."

That caused Josh to erupt into laughter. "Nice try." He reached across the desk and presented her with a colorfully printed box. The photo on the front gave away the contents. It was a new phone. "While you were dozing this morning I was out getting you this."

"Thanks." Ally turned the box around in her hands. It looked like a pretty snazzy phone with a largish color LCD screen. From all the bullet points listed next to the picture, it was also packed with features, most of which she was never likely to use. "I'll go get it charged up straightaway." She pointed to the line of numerals printed above the barcode. "Is this my new number?"

"Only if your SIM card is as drowned as your phone." Josh grinned, obviously still finding the supposed circ.u.mstances behind the death of her phone amusing. "The sales a.s.sistant told me there's a chance-if you didn't leave your phone floating in the loo for too long-that it might still work. You did keep your SIM, didn't you?"

"Yes." Ally planned to drop her mobile into the recycling box at her nearest phone shop but as yet hadn't done so. "I'll try it as soon as the new one's charged up."

Josh nodded, closing the paper and folding it. "Tea and read" was over, his attention already moving back to the ma.s.sive twenty-two-inch flat-screen monitor that sat at one end of his desk. "Any chance we can have a catch-up tomorrow afternoon, to make sure everything's in order before I leave?"

"Sure." Josh was flying to Barcelona on Friday to attend a global conference on sustainable housing. He'd be gone for nearly a week, arriving in Spain on Sat.u.r.day morning, sightseeing until the two-day conference commenced on Monday, and then flying back on Wednesday, arriving in Sydney on Thursday. If it weren't for the awfully long flights both before and afterward, Ally would have loved to attend such an event and soak up a bit of Spanish sun into the bargain. But taking into account airfares, accommodation and conference fees, sending one delegate was expensive enough. Sending two, especially in a firm the size of theirs, was madness. Ally would keep an eye on things while he was gone, and he could tell her all about the new developments in their field of specialization when he returned. "Five o'clock?"

"Sure," he said.

Ally reached for her bag and stood to leave, her eyes fixed on the folded up newspaper. "Are you finished with that?"

Josh peered over the rims of his spectacles as he held it out. "I guess you may as well have some tangible evidence of your investment."

Ally s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from his hand and stalked out of his office. She closed her own office door behind her and thumbed through the paper until she found the page she wanted. She extracted it, folded it so the photo of her and Morgan was face up and placed it under her keyboard. Satisfied she could now safely glance at it whenever she felt like it; she pulled her new phone from the box and plugged it into the new charger. Then she pressed the b.u.t.ton on the hard drive of her computer.

She looked under her keyboard twice in the time it took for her computer to boot up.

Within two hours her new phone was fully charged; she'd inserted her old SIM, but it was as dead as her old phone. Thank goodness she'd backed it up or she'd have to spend half the morning plugging names and numbers into her new handset. As it was, she had to contact all and sundry to advise of her new number. Plus she'd have to order new business cards.

There was one other hiccup in the transition from her old phone to the new. She'd deleted Morgan's number from her phone memory before she backed up her SIM. So now that she had finally admitted she actually did want to speak to her, she couldn't. Not immediately anyway. Ally closed her eyes and racked her brain, trying to recall Morgan's number. One would have thought, given she'd spent so much time staring at the piece of paper that had been slipped under her compartment door, that the number would be hard-wired into her brain. But it wasn't. Not in its entirety anyway. For the life of her she could not recall with certainty the last three digits.

Three digits effectively meant nine hundred and ninety-nine permutations. Or was that one thousand? Whichever, it was an awful lot of dialing. Even if she struck it lucky after only ten percent of the possibilities, that was still one hundred numbers. Ally sat at her desk, staring at the beginnings of her 3D rendering of the Kalgoorlie executive residence.