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‘What?’
‘A photo. Of your fiancé.’
‘Somewhere I do.’ The lies, they just kept coming. ‘Honestly, Millie. I’m okay. I may have embellished Gil’s importance for Aurora’s benefit. Just a little.’
‘You should dig out a picture,’ said Millie gently. ‘Put it up. Swear at it if it makes you feel better. Even if he wasn’t the marrying kind, even if your engagement was a colossal mistake, you should celebrate the time you spent with him. It’s okay to feel conflicted about his death, Charlotte. It’s okay to get angry with him for putting himself in a position to get eaten. It’s all part of the grieving process and it’s perfectly normal.’
‘It’s really not,’ said Charlotte faintly. Nothing about these last two months had been normal. ‘Everything’s gone a little bit crazy. Starting with me.’
‘That’s because prolonged bedside vigils will do that to a person. Which is why you shouldn’t be here,’ said Millie earnestly. ‘Seriously, Charlotte. Why don’t you take a few days’ leave? Head for the coast. Rent a lighthouse. Refresh your spirit. Allow yourself to grieve.’
Charlotte shook her head, hot tears not far from falling. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I need to keep busy.’ She gave Millie the truth of it, and felt marginally better for doing so. ‘I need to be around other people, people I know, even if they do think I’m a spoiled archaeology heiress with fading networking skills and no brains.’
‘Says who?’ said Millie sharply. ‘Did the Mead say that to you?’ And without waiting for Charlotte’s reply, ‘Moron.’
‘He didn’t say that.’ Charlotte felt obliged to defend him. ‘He was really very kind. He just …’
‘Implied it,’ said Millie darkly. ‘I know how he works.’
‘Maybe he didn’t imply it,’ said Charlotte. ‘Maybe I did. Maybe it’s just a big day for self doubt.’ And loneliness. It was a hell of a day for that. ‘Thing is, I need to feel as if I’m part of a community today, and this community is the only one I’ve got. Does that sound needy?’
‘No.’ Millie’s smile came free and gentle and washed over Charlotte like a balm. ‘It sounds like your community needs to lift its game.’
For all her inquisitiveness, Millie Peters had a good heart and for the rest of the day she did everything in her power to ensure that Charlotte had company. Half the archaeology department went to the cinema with them that evening. The following evening Millie and her latest beau, Derek, invited Charlotte to dine with them at a local pub.
Derek was an archaeology student with a builder’s licence in his back pocket, a double degree in geology and ancient history, and a blissfully practical outlook for someone bent on becoming a field archaeologist.
They found a small round table over by the window, not too sticky, not too wobbly, and settled in for the duration. Derek bought the first round of drinks and the barman went back to filling his fridges, and the pool players went back to smacking their balls around as lazy jazz played softly through oversized speakers. Not bad. Infinitely better than being at home.
‘The crispy pork sounds good,’ said Derek, and Millie glared meaningfully at him.
‘The crispy pork does not sound good,’ countered Millie. ‘Have the beef. Or the duck. No mistaking duck for anything but duck.’ Millie’s face disappeared behind her menu. ‘Remember what I told you about the long pig incident,’ she muttered to Derek as quietly as she could, which wasn’t nearly quietly enough.
Derek slid Charlotte a lightning glance and promptly disappeared behind his menu too. ‘Where’s the duck?’ he said.
‘Halfway down the specials list,’ murmured Millie. ‘Have it braised.’
‘Why not barbecued?’ Derek whispered back. ‘You’re just assuming he was barbecued. They could have braised him. They could have boiled him.’
‘You’re right,’ muttered Millie. ‘Order the vegetable combo.’
At which point Charlotte reached across the table and pulled Millie’s menu down past eye level. ‘Psst.’
‘What?’ Millie eyed her warily.
‘Millie, let the poor man eat pork. I don’t care if he wants it crucified, I promise I won’t see it as a metaphor for him eating Gil.’
Derek’s menu dipped slowly. Derek’s eyes appeared, followed by a nose, very nice cheekbones, and a wide wry smile.
‘I knew she was saner than you,’ Derek told Millie and barely winced when Millie’s menu clipped his shoulder. They were very broad shoulders. Millie might just have to keep this one.
‘So what was he like?’ asked Derek. ‘Your fiancé.’
‘He’s hard to define, but if I had to sum him up I’d probably go with useful,’ said Charlotte. Nothing but the truth.
‘Useful as in “Honey, could you fix the hot water system?”‘ asked Millie.
‘I’m sure he could have fixed the hot water system,’ said Charlotte. ‘Had it needed fixing.’
‘Can’t everyone?’ countered Derek.
‘Sadly, no,’ said Charlotte.
‘I dare say Gil was modest too,’ said Millie, glancing pointedly at Derek.
‘What?’ said Derek. ‘I can be modest.’
‘Of course you can,’ murmured Charlotte, eyeing Derek’s frayed shirt collar and shaggy hair speculatively. ‘Gil was a snappy dresser too, in a rustic, ready for anything kind of way.’
‘Window dressing,’ said Derek. ‘It’s the body beneath the clothes that counts and don’t either of you try and tell me different.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Charlotte. ‘But just for your information, that was superb too.’
‘Well, it would be,’ said Millie. ‘What with all that paddling up the river. I bet the man had fabulous upper-body definition.’
‘I was a lumberjack once,’ said Derek.
‘Of course you were,’ murmured Millie consolingly.
A youthful waitress stepped up to their table, smile at the ready as she asked them if they were ready to order.
‘I’ll have the pork,’ said Derek. ‘But could I have it beaten first?’
‘Chef runs it through a tenderiser,’ said the waitress. ‘You know—one of those old-fashioned washing-machine wringer things with the spikes?’
‘Perfect,’ said Derek.
‘Unlike some things around here,’ murmured Millie.
‘No man is perfect,’ said Derek. ‘Especially in the eyes of women. A determined woman can turn even a man’s good qualities into major flaws of character given time and motive, and half the time the motive is optional. It’s just something you do.’
‘There’s got to be an ex-wife in your past somewhere,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘C’mon, Derek. Spill.’
‘Never.’
‘Maybe an overcritical mother,’ said Millie.
‘I’m an orphan,’ said Derek. ‘Never knew my parents. Never got adopted. Ugliest baby in the world, according to Sister Ramona.’
‘That explains a lot,’ murmured Millie. ‘Though it doesn’t explain how you got to be quite so handsome now. In a craggy, hard-living kind of way.’
‘Thank you,’ said Derek blandly.
‘You’re welcome.’
They finished ordering their meals. They started in on their drinks.
‘Here’s to the wonderful Aurora Herschoval,’ said Charlotte. ‘The best godmother an orphan could have.’
‘Hear hear,’ said Derek. ‘Good for you. And here’s to Useful Gil. May he be blessed with more brains in his next life.’
‘Derek!’ said Millie, aghast. ‘We can’t toast to that.’
‘Why not?’ said Derek, aiming for an expression of craggy, hard-lived innocence. ‘Sweetie, he may have been handy, handsome, modest, and built like Apollo, but let’s be honest here … the man got eaten.’
CHAPTER TWO
A WEEK passed, and then another, and Charlotte kept busy. She applied herself diligently, if not wholeheartedly, to her work. She considered the merits of Harold’s suggestion to hit the archaeology road again for a while and came to no firm conclusion. She inherited Aurora’s wealth and her Double Bay waterfront estate on Sydney Harbour.
And when it came to dead fictional fiancés, she kept right on lying.
Was it too late to tell Millie the truth about Gil? To tell everyone the truth?
The question plagued her. ‘When, when, when?’ her conscience demanded. And, ‘Too late, too late, too late,’ the devil kept saying smugly. Bad friend to Millie. Too late to tell the Mead that Gil had been nothing more than a figment of her imagination. That time had passed. Her detractors within the archaeology world and the university system would flay her if she did.
‘What did I tell you?’ they would say smugly to each other. ‘I always knew she was too reckless to hold down a position of responsibility, no matter what pull her family name has in high places.’ Then they’d shake their heads and say what a loss Charlotte’s parents had been to archaeology with one breath, and castigate them for being too bold on the other. ‘Crazy runs in the family,’ they’d say. ‘And the godmother was cut from the same cloth. Always chasing rainbows. No wonder poor Charlotte has trouble separating fantasy from reality …’
‘Charlotte!’
A distant voice, sharp and concerned.
‘What?’ Charlotte blinked and there was Millie. Tortoiseshell glasses framing earnest hazel eyes set in a heart-shaped face.
‘You didn’t hear me come in. You didn’t hear me calling your name.’
‘Sorry,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘Must’ve been daydream ing.’
Millie winced. Probably because she thought Charlotte had been spending a little too much time in that state of late.
‘What’s up?’ said Charlotte, determined to forestall any actual complaint about her not entirely firm hold on reality.
Millie hesitated. Millie fidgeted. Millie was not in a good place right now and Charlotte didn’t quite know why. Time to ask Millie what was wrong and see if there was any way in which she could help. Good friend, Charlotte. Good friend.
‘Don’t kill me,’ said Mille anxiously.
‘O-kay,’ said Charlotte carefully. Not quite the response she’d been expecting.
‘I was only trying to help,’ said Millie next.
‘And?’
‘And I emailed the Research Institute in PNG to see if they had a photo of Gil anywhere that they could send to you. A memento. Something tangible for you to remember him by. I, ah, signed it in your name.’
‘And?’ said Charlotte, with an impending sense of doom.
‘And his secretary wrote back and said she’d see what she could find and was it okay to send everything to your university address. To which I said yes.’
‘And?’
‘And there’s a huge packing box downstairs, addressed to you from PNG. I think it might be Gil’s effects.’
Charlotte blinked. ‘His … effects?’
Millie nodded. ‘I swear all I asked for was a photo. I never once implied that you were his next of kin or that you wanted all his stuff. I mean, he does have other family, right? Parents and so forth.’
‘Right,’ said Charlotte faintly.
‘And you know how to contact them, right?’
‘Er … right.’
‘So, do you want the box up here or in your car? At the moment it’s sitting by the stairs on the ground floor.’
Charlotte blinked again. ‘I think I need to see it.’ Hopefully the trip down two flights of stairs would give her time to think.
A dozen flights of stairs would have been better.
All too soon, Charlotte and Millie stood at the bottom of the stairs, staring at a large removalist box with her name and university address on it. A nervous giggle escaped Charlotte. She countered by putting one hand to her mouth and the other hand to her elbow. The Standing Thinker pose.
‘So …’ said Millie. ‘Where do you want it?’
‘I’m thinking we take it upstairs for now,’ Charlotte muttered finally. ‘I may need to send it … on.’
There was no lift in the building.
‘I’ll get a trolley,’ said Millie. ‘And Derek.’
‘Thanks,’ murmured Charlotte, still staring at the box.
They got the box upstairs and into Charlotte’s office eventually. Neither Millie nor Derek seemed of a mind to linger. They fled.
Charlotte tried ignoring the box, at first. That didn’t go well.
The compulsion to open the box and find out exactly what the good souls at the PNG Research Institute had seen fit to send her took control. A pair of office scissors later and the flaps on top of the box sprung open. Tentatively, Charlotte folded them back.
