Just Breathe (11 page)

Later, while the others packed up, Dee finished her mug of delicious Roxburgh holiday house coffee and took a last look at the view before leaving.

It was beautiful here, restful. She’d enjoyed herself more than she’d expected. Lucy, whose dazzling confidence and enthusiasm were always a little daunting, had made Dee one of the gang, pulled her in like a vacuum cleaner sucking up everything in its path, made her play Pictionary, did the bump with her while they were washing dishes to seventies music. And Ethan had surprised her. Not at all what the papers suggested of the serious and seriously wealthy businessman. He was funny, quick-witted, abnormally skilled at Pictionary.

His offer of business advice had been on her mind since he threw it her way on the boat. The fact he’d made the offer out of concern for his client was disheartening but, hell, it was Ethan Roxburgh, Renowned Business Leader – who was she to knock it back? Like he said, the offers wouldn’t last forever. Although, seeing he hadn’t mentioned it again, it appeared she’d have to invoke her internal warrior and broach the subject herself.

She rinsed her cup and was stacking it in the dishwasher when Ethan said, ‘Any of that coffee left?’

Dee blinked hard to stop her eyes bulging from their sockets. He’d pulled up a stool on the other side of the breakfast bar, wearing nothing but a large beach towel draped around his hips. His torso was every inch the physique of a man who played sport to relax. The effect made her heart crack a rib.

‘Sure.’ Her eyes strayed to the dark whorls of hair between his pecs. ‘How do you want it?
The coffee, I mean.’

‘Straight up, long and sweet. Will you join me?’ He arched a seductive eyebrow. ‘For a coffee, I mean.’

She arched an eyebrow right back at him. ‘Maybe some other time. I have to pack. I’ve got a class back in Sydney this afternoon.’

She watched him pour, noticing that nice bicep swell as he lifted the jug. She shook her head. Concentrate, Dee. Assume the Pose of the Warrior. ‘About that business advice you were offering.’

‘Sure. When do you want to get together?’

That was easy. He must really be concerned for his client. ‘I know you want everything to be okay for Health Life but thank you for the offer. It was very generous.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Lucy told me you were worried about me being a PR problem for Health Life. It was a little confronting hearing that, I admit, but like you say, I should take advantage of the opportunities that arise because of the ad.’

‘Health Life has nothing to do with it.’ He put his mug down, spoke directly to her eyes. ‘I offered you business advice because I hate to see good opportunities go to waste. I think you’ve got potential for a successful business. You’re low on professional skills right now but you believe in yourself, you seem to be good at what you do, Lucy loves you and she’s hard to please. You’re honest – disarmingly so, actually – and you’re gutsy. Not everyone could’ve handled the ad the way you did. Or the rest of it.’

‘Oh.’ Wow. Dee’s ego felt like it’d been washed and pressed. Ethan Roxburgh, corporate powerhouse, entrepreneurial know-it-all, thought she had business potential. And not a single
word about getting a real job.

‘You’re also one of the more intriguing people I’ve met in a while and it would be disappointing to see you working behind an x-ray machine.’

Dee’s heart thrumped. Ethan Roxburgh, man about town, thinks I’m intriguing. ‘Well, I, um, don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t say anything. Just pass me that pen and paper.’

She retrieved said writing equipment from beside the fridge and handed it over.

‘This is my direct line. Call me tomorrow to set up a meeting.’

‘I will. Thanks.’ As he gave her the page, her belly did a funny little jingle-jangle.

‘Take a look at these.’ It was the Monday after the house party and Lucy was sitting at her desk still in her yoga tights. She turned the computer screen so Dee could see the photos from the advertising dinner. ‘I’m glad we went with that dress. You looked great.’

The screen was filled with a photo of Dee standing between Lucy and Ethan. ‘I look like my sister Amanda.’

‘Does she teach yoga too?’

‘No, she’s a management consultant.’

‘Oh.’ Lucy shot her a surprised glance then flicked to a photo of Dee and Ethan. ‘So, I hear you’re Ethan’s latest pet project.’

‘Huh?’

‘He told me he offered you some business advice and was checking I had no problem. That’s a nice one.’ She interrupted her own flow of conversation as a photo of Lucy and John popped up on screen. ‘I told Ethan he could do whatever he liked as long as you still came here three times a week.’

Dee smiled at Lucy’s roundabout compliment. ‘What do you mean by pet project?’

‘His one tiny socialist gene gets active every now and then and he feels he should spread his business talent around, let the little people benefit from his capitalist wisdom.’ She clicked to another photo. ‘Actually, he’s helped launch a few careers. He took on a couple of computer nerds a few years ago and they’re making a killing now, and last year it was a shoe designer and she’s doing really well in Europe this season. He finds someone with potential, takes them under his wing, steers them in the right direction, introduces them to the right people, that sort of thing.
They’re not all millionaires but they’re doing a lot better than they were.’

Dee felt a small nervous spasm. Was he expecting her to build an empire?

Lucy glanced up at Dee. ‘If he’s tagged you as his latest project, take advantage of it because he’s gifted when it comes to business.’ A photo of Ethan and his dinner guest flashed onto the screen. ‘Pity about his social life. Did you see his date?’

‘She’s gorgeous. Is she a model?’

‘God, no. A travel agent or something. She’s already been moved on.’

Dee studied the picture for a moment. It was the same one Pam had shown her in the Sunday paper. The woman was standing partially in front of Ethan so it appeared she was leaning against him, her head inclined towards him, her eyes swallowing up the camera. Ethan’s lips were curved in a smile that hadn’t made it to his eyes.

‘I thought they seemed … close.’

‘Nah. Just another Roxburgh Girl. Most of them are happy just to be seen with him and live off the kudos. Did you see that
Playboy
centrefold a couple of months ago? She was described as a former Roxburgh Girl and she only went out with him once.’ They came to the end of the photos and Lucy closed the file, stood up.

‘What about Toni?’ Dee remembered how she’d flirted endlessly with him over the weekend.

‘She’s still throwing him her best efforts.’ She shrugged. ‘My brother is spoilt for choice. There’s a bottomless pit of attractive women panting to go out with him and he’d rather have a beautiful woman on his arm than not.’ She pulled her purse out of a drawer in her desk. ‘He got that from our father. All three of his wives were stunning. My mother still is, with a bit of help.’ She mimed a Botox shot to the forehead. ‘John and I call Ethan the Date Master. Great at dates,
hopeless at relationships. Content to take them out but prefers spending time with his business interests. He got that from our father, too.’

She paid Dee and walked her to the door. ‘By the way, Ethan can get a little fixated so let me know if he’s a pain and I’ll tell him to back off.’

Dee scrunched a piece of paper and tossed it off the bed, where it fell in with a small pile of similarly crumpled sheets. Damn. This was the third night in a row she’d sat in her bedroom and scribbled unsuccessfully.

‘Pam! Can you turn the TV down? I can’t hear myself think.’

Not that there was a lot of thinking to be heard. She was flattered at the prospect of becoming the pet project of a business tycoon until it came to fulfilling her end of the deal. When she rang to set up a meeting with Ethan, he was businesslike and efficient, asking her to put together a breakdown of her business – money in, money out, that kind of thing. Her business plan, he called it. Projected income, expenditure forecasts, possible schedule for expansion.

Pretty hard when she had a self-imposed golden rule to never make plans more than two weeks ahead.

It was how she interpreted the yoga philosophy of living in the moment – take each day as it comes, resist the temptation to look beyond it. It was like a two-week boundary fence around her life. Not very practical, she realised, but it kept her anxiety under control.

She took a deep breath, let it out, reminded herself that, if she wanted to avoid financial ruin and get Val off her back, she really did need to get her shit together. And getting advice from Ethan was the best method available. Even if it meant making a small hole in the boundary fence.

She picked up a pile of recycled flyers from the yoga school, neatened the stack with a tap
against the big yoga book in her lap and started again. MONEY EARNED, she wrote, underlined it. She clicked the end of her pen a couple of times, drew an asterisk in the top corner, a matching one on the other side.

Of course, living in the moment wasn’t the only reason she didn’t think ahead. She drew another asterisk. There was another very practical reason. Why plan for the future when it can be ripped away from you? When you can be sitting in a car one minute knowing exactly where you’re going, then be totally lost the next. Broken and frightened and alone and lost. She shook her head, drew circles around the asterisks, wrote ‘FEES’. If you don’t plan for the future, it won’t hurt when it’s torn off like a strip of paper at the bottom of a page.

She thought about her wedding day, how she’d cried all through the physiotherapy session and eaten dinner that night with Val and Ken in front of the telly instead of at the bridal table. How she’d wanted to ring Anthony but couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone in case his new girlfriend answered.

She refocused on the paper and realised there were so many asterisks there was no room left for anything else. She scrunched it up, tossed it over the bed.

‘Pam! Can you turn the TV down!’

‘Hey, look at these.’ Pam was standing in the doorway, dangling long, purple acrylic nails.

‘Mmm,’ Dee said absently.

Pam invited herself in, flopping on the bed. ‘I bought this lip gloss too. What do you think?’ She puckered shiny lips.

Dee pulled her yoga fliers from under Pam’s butt. ‘Aren’t you afraid of catching flies in that stuff?’

‘You’re so funny. By the way, I love your shampoo. It smells so spicy.’

‘You used my shampoo?’

‘Yeah, I ran out yesterday. You’re getting pretty low too, by the way.’

Dee clenched her teeth. There was at least a third of a bottle last time she looked. She couldn’t afford to buy another one this week.

Once again, Dee was tempted to tell Pam to park her shampoo in someone else’s bathroom but then where would she be? Sans flatmate, in desperate need to share the rent again, and the next person willing to move in might be worse.

‘What’re you doing?’ Pam pulled the flyers from Dee’s hands.

‘Just something for the yoga school.’ She took them back, putting them out of reach.

Pam made a long, lingering inspection of her room. Suddenly, she was off the bed, picking up one of Dee’s stained-glass boxes. ‘This one’s pretty.’ She opened it and fingered the hair pins inside.

Dee scrambled up, grabbed the box and put it back on the shelf. ‘Yes, I bought it in India. How about a cup of tea?’ She went to the door, waited with her hand on the knob, closed it firmly when Pam walked through.

‘Hey, did Leon tell you Breck and Chantal are back together?’ Pam hoisted herself onto the kitchen bench. ‘Thank God. It’s so tense in the make-up room when they’re fighting.’

With her back turned, Dee rolled her eyes. Letting Val take over her life might almost be better than listening to any more stories about soap stars Breck and Chantal. She opened the canister. ‘Where’s the tea?’

‘Oh, I forgot. I used the last of it this afternoon. Never mind. I wasn’t desperate for a cuppa anyway.’ She jumped off the bench, waltzed back to the sitting room and turned the TV back up.

Roll on Shit Together.

Dee heard once that if you pressed your tongue into the roof of your mouth it stopped you from crying. So while Emily took long meditative breaths, Dee pressed her tongue so hard she thought she’d bruised it.

Emily seemed to have shrunk since her last session. Her face looked grey against the white hospice sheets and her thin hair had lost its auburn hue.

‘Start to become aware of your surroundings. Feel the sensation of the air on your face and the clothes on your skin.’ Dee watched Emily’s eyes begin to move under her lids. ‘When you’re ready, gently bring some movement to your fingers and toes.’ Emily winced in pain as her hands made weak fists. Dee pushed harder on her tongue, reminding herself the class was about what Emily needed, not her own grief at her student’s pain.

For the last two weeks Dee had lugged around a textbook on pain and breathing techniques, using any spare time she had to read up on what might help Emily. She smiled at her student as she opened her eyes.

‘Thanks, Dee,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Can you pass the water?’

Dee held the cup with its bent straw to her lips while she sipped. ‘Was that okay? I didn’t tire you out too much?’

Emily’s voice was a little stronger when she spoke this time. ‘No. It was good.’ She curled her fingers in and out on the bed, gesturing for Dee to take her hand.

She placed her warm fingers over Emily’s cold, bony ones. She’d never taught anyone so sick. She’d had a couple of sessions with her when she was in the hospice during her last relapse and she’d spent time with another student after he had neck surgery. But this was different. All the usual boundaries between teacher and student were pointless. The touching that Dee usually avoided seemed to be what Emily needed, as though the connection was as important to her as
the breathing. It felt strange at first, like kissing a girl friend accidentally on the lips, but during the last couple of sessions she kept a hand or her fingers on her all the time, like a link to healthy energy.

‘Thank you so much for coming. It means a lot.’ Emily’s smile was weak but her eyes spoke with an inner strength. ‘I’m going to sleep now. Can you let Mike know?’

‘Sure. I’ll see you soon. Sleep well.’

Dee crushed her tongue some more as she quietly closed the door. She found Mike in the family lounge with his daughters, Lauren doing homework and Kate watching TV.

‘How is she?’

‘She’s sleeping.’

Mike took his wallet out. ‘You’ve stayed half an hour over this time so I’ll give you some extra.’

Dee stopped him with her hand. ‘I don’t want anything for today.’

‘I know you’ve cancelled classes to come here. I don’t want you out of pocket.’

‘No, Mike. There’s not much I can do for Emily but I can do this. I’d like it to be my gift.’ New furniture could wait.

His eyes went all shiny. ‘Thanks, Dee.’

‘I can come again on Thursday, if you’d like.’

Mike pressed his lips together, ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not sure how long she’s going to be here but that would be great. It really helps.’

‘No problem. So you think she’ll be going home soon?’

‘No, Dee. Emily’s not going to be with us much longer. It’s down to days now.’

Her breath caught in her throat and she forgot to press her tongue in her mouth. Two big fat
tears tipped over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Mike. I didn’t realise. I just thought she was going to get better like all the other times. I’m so sorry.’