‘You all right?’ he asks.
She shrugs. ‘I have no way of knowing.’
He doesn’t ask her why it happened, so clearly he is aware of the story. It was foolish of her to presume otherwise.
Kevin whines at her feet.
She points to the goods on the counter. ‘How much?’ she says again.
Duncan’s brow furrows, then he gives her a figure, she pays, and he puts the milk and paper in a bag before handing them over.
‘I should walk you home,’ he says. ‘To make sure you’re in one piece.’
‘I’ll be fine – I think you scared him away.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
He is looking at her with such care. Why? They barely knew each other in their teenage years.
‘Thanks but, um … I’ll be fine. I’m …’ She was going to say ‘used to it’ but she’s not really used to the way the photographers are now. Once upon a time they wanted nice pictures. Now they want her at her worst.
Another customer enters the shop. A teenage boy with a schoolbag, not a camera.
‘Thanks,’ she says, hurriedly picking up her groceries and pulling Kevin out of the shop.
Halfway back up the hill to home, the adrenaline that she must have produced during those brief, wretched seconds continues to work itself out of her system, this time knocking her sideways so that she has to put one hand on a fence to steady herself.
She’s almost glad for Kevin’s eagerness to move on. He’s keeping her here, in the present, making her focus. She lets him yank her home, then avoids speaking to her mother for an hour or so, knowing Joni will see straightaway that something happened.
Something that can’t happen again because Christina doesn’t want to live like this. She needs to find out when things will settle down. When the story will fade.
She can’t ask Patrick, obviously, and her agent Lindsay doesn’t seem to want anything to do with her. Maybe she’ll write him a letter if he won’t take her calls. He may not answer it, but she’ll feel like she’s doing something proactive and that will be a start.
THE
SALMON-PINK COCKTAIL DRESS
In the 1950s, a cocktail dress was flattering: off the shoulder, or just on it, with a cinched waist and a flared skirt. A shape that likely owed its existence to Christian Dior’s New Look and those yards of fabric indulged in after the rationing of World War II.
The salmon-pink cocktail dress was made for a long-gone boutique in the city, meant to be worn by a bright young thing at a city soiree. The label in the back of the dress is still legible, but the name means nothing to anyone but the young woman who bought it.
Orphaned at twelve, brought up by relatives, she had money from her parents’ estate and all the expectations of presenting herself to the world as slender and bright-eyed and made-up and coiffed just so. She also had no one to tell her they loved her even if she didn’t paint on eyeliner or put curlers in her hair at night. Buying dresses helped with that, at least for a little while. The thrill of looking at them, of feeling the fabric, admiring the cut, then buying them and taking them home let her indulge in the fantasy that she had an opulent life in which someone looked forward to seeing her and taking her to glamorous places – rather than her real life stuck in the back room of her relatives’ dark suburban home, listening to the dunny-can man in the lane that ran alongside her window.
The salmon-pink cocktail dress was in her wardrobe when she received an invitation from the parents of an old school chum fordrinks on Christmas Eve at their home in Woollahra. She knew the home would be fancy because the friend was fancy. The salmon-pink dress was her fanciest, so that was what she wore.
At the party, she nervously held her martini and didn’t drink it. She’d never had one before – barely even had a glass of wine – and didn’t want to risk becoming drunk amongst so many strangers.
Her friend was circulating, chatting and flirting, while she stood as inconspicuously as possible near the fireplace and read the Christmas cards on the mantelpiece.
‘I haven’t written any this year,’ said a baritone voice to her right.
‘Hm?’ she said, turning to see a dashingly handsome man with thick eyebrows and thicker hair. She felt the martini glass tilt and saw liquid drop on his shoes.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she cried, sure he would think her the clumsiest girl alive.
But he laughed and said, ‘I’m not.’
His eyes flickered and she thought he was looking her up and down. ‘That’s a beautiful dress,’ he said. ‘And you look beautiful in it.’