‘Will she be okay?’ she asks.
‘Oh. Yes, I don’t think it’s anything serious.’ Daphne waves a hand. ‘Although she’s cancelled a couple of times on me now. Maybe she just needs a break from me.’
‘I don’t think that would be the case.’
Daphne turns to look at her, surprised. ‘Oh?’
‘You’re hardly bad company.’ Christina almost blushes, because it feels audacious to say this, as though she’s asking Daphne to be her friend. Which, perhaps, she is. It’s not as if she has a tonne of friends in Sydney, and even though they’ve barely spent any time together Daphne makes her laugh and alsomakes her think. Plus she probably has a raft of great stories she could tell, from working in this shop alone.
‘You’re not too bad either.’ Daphne gives her a nudge. ‘For a movie star.’
Christina laughs, and for some reason it builds and she throws her head back, feeling the laugh emanating from her belly.
‘I’m notthatfunny,’ Daphne says, which only gives Christina momentum.
Soon they’re both laughing, the single earrings on the counter in front of them. It’s the most normal Christina has felt in months and she doesn’t want it to end.
Then the door opens to admit a customer.
‘Yours,’ Daphne whispers.
The customer’s eyes widen as Christina approaches, then the curiosity fades. The hair change is working, she thinks, and that makes her feel normal too. Normal the way she felt years ago, before she set in motion the events that took her over oceans and across continents, onto stages and sets and red carpets. Normal the way she thought she wouldn’t want to feel again, because that was for the life she’d left behind, not the dream she was pursuing.
If this is normal, though – to spend some of her time with a new friend and old earrings, as she tries to work out what to do with herself next – it’s a good state to be in.
When Christina returns home from her shift, she puts on a pale yellow smock dress she bought at a boutique near the frock shop for what promises to be her first actual social activity since she returned to Sydney.
She had a friend at school, Belinda, who shared her interest in French and history, so they sat next to each other in those classes. Actually, they probably weren’t friends so much as colleagues, if you can call other students that – the proof being that they didn’tstay in touch once school was over. So Christina should probably have been surprised when Belinda rang to say she’d heard Christina was back and asked if she’d like to meet for a drink. Except when you have even a little bit of fame, people come out of the woodwork, which makes her suspicious of Belinda’s motives in meeting up. It was hard to come up with a reason why she couldn’t meet her for a drink, though, given that all Christina’s doing with her time is occasionally volunteering at the frock shop.
‘It’ll be good for you,’ her mother said when she told her about the plan to meet Belinda at The Oaks Hotel at the top of the hill in Neutral Bay. ‘See someone your own age. Who knows? You might become friends again!’
It’s a nice idea but an unlikely one, because the life Christina’s been living these past few years is probably as different from Belinda’s as a Martian’s would be from an Earth-dweller’s. They have nothing in common any more, of that Christina is sure, and a smattering of French vocabulary and working knowledge of the causes of World War I won’t bridge the divide.
Obviously that didn’t stop her saying yes, though, because now she’s sitting here at The Oaks, trying to be inconspicuous and still noticing glances coming her way.
She hasn’t been in the public bar since a trip home a few years ago when Joni brought her to the pub for a drink. They intended to sit in the beer garden but it started to rain, so they ended up in here with the professional drinkers and some lonely gamblers – all because of Joni’s aversion to the ladies lounge. She spotted Christina’s father in there once with his girlfriend and hasn’t been back since.
Christina decided against the ladies lounge this evening in solidarity, but now worries that Belinda may go there first and not think to look in the public bar. She’s about to get up and search for her when someone appears in front of her, but the someone is wearing jeans and a Billabong T-shirt and is definitely not female.
‘Chrissie!’ says Duncan, putting his hands on his hips and grinning down at her.
She winces at the nickname, but she didn’t tell him not to call her that the last time he did it, so she can’t blame him.
‘Are you here on your own?’ he says, and sits in the chair opposite her.
‘Hi, Duncan. I’m, um, waiting for …’ She was going to say ‘a friend’, but that’s not right, is it?
‘Waiting, eh?’ He looks inordinately pleased to see her. ‘I like your hair. Suits you.’
She can’t help showing surprise. Henoticed? Since when do men notice women changing their hair?
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘What areyoudoing here?’
‘Drinks with the boys.’ He looks at his watch. ‘Or not. I think I’ve been stood up.’ He shrugs. ‘Never mind.’
‘What time were you meeting them?’
It’s only polite to make conversation, and besides, he’s stopped her feeling so obvious sitting alone in this place with its sagging sofas, grumpy barmaid, unfashionable carpet and a smell of beer that’s been baked into the walls over the years.