Girl in Between Read online

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I feel like I can’t face Penny now. I think I’ll give up on the Foster family.’

  ‘Would the Foster family give up on you?’

  ‘No,’ I admit. ‘They’re fossickers. They never give up.’

  We continue to walk in silence.

  ‘Okay,’ says Rosie eventually, looping her arm through mine. ‘Let’s break this down. Why can’t you face Penny?’

  ‘Because I failed her. She stuck her neck out for me and her publisher friend didn’t like my book.’

  ‘I bet Penny doesn’t see it that way. I reckon she’d think it was perfectly normal to get knocked back on your first try. She thinks you have talent, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then don’t worry about Penny,’ Rosie says, hugging me. ‘I’m sure she’ll still love you.’ She gives me a shrewd look. ‘You’re probably a bit rattled by Ben talking about Oscar last night, aren’t you? Well, don’t worry about always having to see Ben,’ she continues. ‘I’ve just decided that I don’t want anything more to do with him.’

  I remain silent, knowing for certain she’s decided nothing of the sort, and is in fact just stating the proposition out loud to see how it might feel.

  ‘You know what we need?’ she says abruptly. ‘Retail therapy.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t agree more!’ I reply, instantly happier.

  We catch the tube from Hyde Park to Piccadilly Circus and walk to Anthropologie on Regent Street, where I promptly forget my worries among the racks of whimsical cotton tops and boho chic homewares.

  ‘When I get married, do you think Penny will come to the wedding?’ I ask Rosie over a steaming bowl of chicken and coconut noodle soup at Itsu later that evening.

  ‘Luce,’ she says, and puts down her chopsticks, ‘if you make her your bridesmaid, I will never fucking forgive you.’

  ‘She’s sixty-three!’ I guffaw.

  ‘Who are you marrying, anyway?’ she continues.

  That’s when my phone beeps with a message from Joe with the ominous words: We need to talk.

  When I arrive home, Joe leads me into his room and we sit on the bed, side by side. I glance at him, feeling the awkwardness between us, unsure what to do about it—unsure what I want to do about it. Abruptly he tells me that he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about this morning and how distant I was, and he wonders why I’d be avoiding him.

  He looks so distressed that I loop my arms around his waist and apologise, assuring him that the weird vibe he’d sensed earlier was only due to my being incredibly tired and horribly hungover.

  He places his hands on my shoulders, gently pushes me away and considers me from arm’s length.

  ‘Luce, it hit me after you left this morning how much I care about you. It’s sort of snuck up on me. I know we said we just wanted something casual, but I’ve realised that I want more.’

  I gaze back at him, not sure how to respond.

  ‘I want this to be long-term, Luce. But I don’t know if you feel the same?’ His eyes are searching mine.

  I’ve never seen him look so anxious and I feel my stomach tighten at the thought of hurting this lovely man—and for what? Because of some silly notion of caring for someone who lives thousands of miles away and who I’m not even in touch with?

  I hear myself telling Joe that I have no intention of breaking up with him or slowing things down. He grins at me with such enormous relief that I can’t help grinning back.

  We spend the rest of the evening in bed together, and as I snuggle against his chest and we laugh away at an episode of Catastrophe on his laptop, I tell myself I must have had rocks in my head to ever consider giving this simple, uncomplicated love away.

  Penny smiles at me kindly the next morning when I tell her about the publisher’s email.

  ‘Don’t give up on Diamonds in the Dust, Lucy,’ she says, as if she’d eavesdropped on my conversation with Rosie. ‘Remember, if it was easy to get published everyone would be doing it. And different publishers are always looking for different types of books.’ She picks up an armful of Room on the Broom and walks a few steps before turning to look back at me. ‘Prove her wrong. Make your writing sparkle and shine so much that it demands publication.’

  My heart swells with her words, and I vow to keep faith in my childhood dream.

  Later that day, when Margie and I are both rostered behind the counter, I tell her of Joe’s sudden keenness for commitment, and how despite my assuring him otherwise, deep down I’m not convinced I feel the same.

  She says that when she’d faced a similar situation back in Cape Town, her mum had responded by quoting the first line of Elton John’s ‘I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues’.

  I smile and tell her our mums would get along like a house on fire.

  As if my conversation with Margie had summoned her, I hear from Mum that very evening.

  ‘Hello?!’ she yells after I answer her Skype call. ‘Hello? I’m trying to turn this up, love. Hang on, I can’t get it, we’ll just have to yell.’

  ‘Hello, Mum!’ I say, grinning as Glenda jumps onto Mum’s lap, totally obscuring her face. ‘Oh, look at Glenda!’ I say, then pause. ‘She’s a bit of a fatty boomba, Ma!’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about that!’ she retorts. ‘It’s your father who’s stopping by Bernie’s pie van and sharing one with her every second day. I’ve told him to cut it out. You should feel the weight of her on me now! And I’m flat out watching Grand Designs of an evening; she jumps on top of me and I can barely move. Come on, off you get, Glenda. Well, at least move your head then. Ah, there you are, my darling. You look a bit pale, Lucy.’

  ‘That’s ’cause I live in London, Ma. It isn’t exactly Townsville!’

  ‘Are you eating enough red meat?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘Don’t ever be shy of putting a chop in your pocket, Luce,’ says Dad, appearing on the screen suddenly.

  ‘Dad, what have you been feeding Glenda?’ I demand. ‘She looks like she needs a stint with Jenny Craig.’

  ‘Sorry, love,’ says Dad, looking slightly shamefaced. ‘We keep passing Bernie just as he’s about to close and he insists on giving us leftover pies. Even waved me over last time I tried to drive past without stopping.’

  ‘Can’t you just avoid going near his pie van?’ I say. ‘Or freeze them for the Men’s Shed?’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ he says, calling Glenda as he heads out of the room.

  After I hear the front door slam, I ask Mum how Dad’s going. She says he’s been good and has been spending more time at the farm lately, which is why he’s passing Bernie’s so frequently. She sympathises when I tell her it’s getting dark at three-thirty in the afternoon now in London, and perks up when I say I stumbled across a half-price cashmere sale at The Library in Chelsea the other day and bought her a scarf.

  ‘I also walked past The Ivy on King’s Road—that was one of the places in the article you sent me on “Top 10 High Teas”.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely. Why don’t you take some nice young man there for tea and scones, Luce?’ She laughs. ‘Or even Rosie would do!’

  I feel a pang of guilt for not having told her about Joe and resolve to mention him as soon as she finishes talking, but when I go to speak the words catch in my throat and instead I ask her about Suds ’n’ Thuds and whether Ruth tried to resurrect her wet t-shirt competition.

  I’m not intending to keep Mum in the dark, but for some reason I fear that if I mention Joe to her there’ll be no going back; he will creep into every future conversation and I don’t feel ready for that just yet.

  ‘You know that Oscar’s been up here, asking after you,’ says Mum unexpectedly.

  ‘Oh, was he?’ I say, super casual despite my quickening pulse.

  ‘He asked for your London number. Do you want me to give it to him?’

  ‘No,’ I say and then steer the final minutes of our conversation back to the mutually happy ground of expressing how m
uch we both love Glenda.

  Rosie arrives home from work thoroughly disgusted with her team-building day. She has me in fits of laughter as she recounts a session on ‘giving feedback’. Apparently, the new protocol at Wandsworth Dental is that you should seek permission from your colleagues before offering them feedback, as in: ‘Excuse me, Kelly, can I give you some feedback?’ Kelly can then accept or decline the invitation, depending on her frame of mind.

  Apparently, following the session, a dental assistant had asked Rosie if she could give her some feedback, and Rosie said no, that she was fed up with feedback and to try her again in a fortnight.

  After washing up our dinner plates, I return to our bedroom to find Rosie sitting on the edge of her bed, holding a small card and smiling. She glances at me and I follow her gaze to a vase of violet orchids on her dresser.

  ‘Wow, they’re beautiful,’ I say.

  She hands me the card.

  Even if I saw you part-time I would be happy! B x

  I smile, then leave her alone with her thoughts.

  Over the next two months, I successfully banish Oscar to the back of my mind by recalling Einstein’s famous quote that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result, and so Joe and I settle into a happy groove. I find his turns of phrase, such as referring to strollers as ‘pushchairs’, quite adorable. And he, in turn, is highly entertained by my banter with Rosie and my Australian expressions. ‘Wouldn’t shout if a shark bit him?’ he echoes in bewilderment when I describe one of the managers at Scribe who’s particularly tight.

  I also point out all the amusing British idiosyncrasies he takes for granted.

  ‘Listen to this,’ I say when we’re cooking together one night, and proceed to read from the top of a jar of pasta sauce: ‘Do not use if lid depressed. What if the lid’s just having a down day? Surely you’ve got to give it another chance?’

  To my great delight he responds with, ‘You silly duffer!’

  Joe gets into the habit of swinging by Scribe when I finish work, to stroll home with me. And I find myself looking forward to stepping out into the afternoon darkness, knowing he’ll be there.

  On the bank holiday weekend, Joe takes me on a surprise visit to his parents in Fraserburgh, a quaint coastal fishing village in Scotland’s far north-east. I still haven’t told Mum about Joe, and as I stand with him among rolling green fields dotted with sheep and gaze at rugged cliffs that drop hundreds of metres into the ocean, I realise I’m perilously close to the Outer Hebrides.

  ‘What are you chuckling at?’ asks Joe, pulling me close.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I reply, kissing him to prevent further interrogation.

  We drive back to his parents’ place and Joe points out the landmarks that are woven into the fabric of his past. I smile as we pass the football field where he scored the winning goal in the 1992 Scottish Junior North Premier League final, and laugh when we look down upon the stretch of coastline where he tried and failed to impress the local ladies with his kitesurfing. When I say that I’ll have to show him around Rocky sometime, he responds lightly he’d love to see where I’m from and that if I ever want to go back to Australia he would follow me home like a lapdog.

  ‘Fraserburgh used to be the largest supplier of white fish to Britain, but now it relies more on tourism to keep it ticking over,’ explains Joe’s dad in such a thick Scottish brogue that I wonder whether I mightn’t need to invest in a lip-reading course.

  ‘Would you like a fancy piece?’ he asks with a twinkle in his eye, then meets my dumbfounded look with a proffered plate of jam biscuits.

  ‘We call cakes and treats “fancy pieces” in Scotland,’ says Joe with a grin.

  ‘Ha,’ I reply and reach for the plate. ‘I thought I might have to offer your dad a knuckle sandwich!’

  Joe’s parents guffaw with delight, although I later learn they had just as much trouble deciphering me.

  Over endless cups of tea and fancy pieces, I recognise Joe in his mum’s smile and his dad’s eyes, and feel like I can place more of this man now I’ve met his family. I joke I’ll no longer be a fancy piece if I continue to dine on fairy cakes and fresh butter, and so we spend a couple of days walking and exploring the Scottish countryside.

  We visit the eerily atmospheric clifftop ruins of Slains castle, which apparently provided the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and cruise on Loch Ness. I sample haggis, and take photos of seals that have fled the wintery North Sea and are sunbaking on the rocky Fraserburgh foreshore. I find such joy in these sights and sounds, so distinctly different from Central Queensland, that I don’t even mind when a giant seagull, referred to as a scurry, flips our parcel of hot chips up and onto the pavement.

  ‘How can you be laughing, Luce!’ exclaims Joe, standing and shooing away the scurries with a curse.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, grabbing the back of his jeans and pulling him down beside me. ‘When we get home we can have a jam fancy!’

  ‘Mmm,’ he murmurs, before kissing me. ‘I fancy that.’

  Back in London, Rosie ushers me into her room as soon as I walk through the door and tells me she and Ben barely spent a moment apart over the long weekend.

  ‘That’s great, Rosie!’ I say, then, seeing her concerned expression, ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Well, he wears a singlet to bed which says, I’ve got 99 problems but a bench ain’t one, and below that is a picture of a bench press.’

  ‘Hilarious,’ I say sincerely.

  ‘He doesn’t let the tea draw.’

  ‘Maybe the tea’s not creative.’

  ‘He doesn’t know what he’s going to do next.’

  ‘Neither do I half the time but you still love me, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, Luce,’ she says and buries her head in a pillow. ‘I really like him. Fuck! He just sparks joy like that cleaning book by the Japanese woman.’

  ‘Marie Kondo,’ I reply, intimately acquainted with the bestseller.

  ‘I really didn’t want to like him so much, but then his bloody shoes got me.’

  ‘What, does he wear great shoes? Oh, that was on your top five list, wasn’t it? Something about wearing decent shoes?’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not what I mean,’ she says quickly. ‘When you were gone, he stayed over, and I left early the next morning to get some milk, and as I was walking back, I was in two minds about whether I wanted him to be there when I got home. And then I got home and saw his shoes still outside my door and my heart did this little jump, and I realised that I wanted him to be there!’

  She looks at me with such despair that I can’t help laughing.

  ‘He’s even got a good Uber rating!’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard the Uber-rating theory?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When you meet a new guy or girl, you check their Uber rating, and if it’s anything below a 3.5, then you start asking questions. Why are they getting marked down? Are they an arsehole when they’re not with you? Is it only a matter of time before you find this out?’

  ‘And what’s Ben’s Uber rating?’

  ‘Fucking five!’ she exclaims.

  ‘Ha-ha!’

  ‘Shit, Luce. I really, really like him.’

  ‘But that’s okay, isn’t it?’

  ‘No! It’s not! I’m out of my depth. I’ve never liked someone this much.’

  ‘Well, I’m absolutely certain that he likes you just as much, Rosie.’

  ‘I know he does,’ she says miserably. ‘He tells me all the time—that’s what frigging freaks me out too!’

  Later that night, aided by wine, Rosie and I formulate a ‘Ben game plan’, which consists of her continuing to see him without freaking out.

  We end up halfway sozzled and I eventually creep into Joe’s room before remembering he’s gone out to catch up with a friend. As I
lie down I spot a note from him on my pillow with a drawing of a giant scurry. Beneath it he has written: I love you, Luce.

  ‘I love you too,’ I whisper as he snuggles beside me hours later.

  Over the next month I observe Rosie and Ben fall madly, wildly, head over heels in love. They’re so clearly besotted with each other it’s hard to imagine any flames existed before they got together, and, like that line from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, it is inconceivable that they should ever part.

  I too have a spring in my step, thanks to Rosie’s great idea.

  ‘It struck me when I was on the tube this morning,’ she says one evening. ‘You should send Diamonds in the Dust to some Australian publishers. They’d get the setting, and your sense of humour—they’re Aussie!’

  I look at her in wonder. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

  I take a week off work to get my manuscript spick and span. Checking out agents and publishers in Australia, I see that several publishers actually encourage writers to email the synopsis and first three chapters of manuscripts. Crossing my fingers, I follow their submission procedure and press ‘send’ before I can have second thoughts, hoping against hope someone will respond without signing off ‘all the best’.

  After that, I decide to shelve my book and relax when I’m not at Scribe.

  Over the next few weeks Joe is really busy with work, consulting on Heathrow’s third runway proposal, and I end up spending a lot of time with Ben and Rosie. Ben’s renting a room at mate’s rates from a friend on safari in Africa. It’s in a flat on Broadway Market, a shopping street that sits between Regent’s Canal and London Fields in hipster Hackney and he’s sharing with a guy in high finance who never seems to be home. They have a washing machine that works, a hot shower with great water pressure, and their light-filled lounge room overlooks Off Broadway, one of our favourite bars, on the corner opposite. When you step outside, you’re in the heart of the East End’s quaint cafés, gourmet food markets and indie music stores.