The Game You Played (23 page)

Kate had given birth to twins without looking any different afterwards. I almost felt like I had to excuse all the weight I’d gained and lost. It was a weird thing, weight-guilt. You felt you had to go around apologising for every extra kilo you were carrying or for every loss of a kilo that made people think you were one step closer to becoming anorexic. Your body belonged to other people.

“Yep, she looks like the old Phoebe Vance. Thanks to me.” Grinning widely, Sass snatched Kate’s headband and fixed it onto her own head.

“Hey,” said Kate. “I would have asked first. Maybe I should analyse why you’re so grabby.”

Kate was either Luke or Pria. Pria analysed people for a job. Luke analysed them for a hobby. Then I remembered that Luke wasn’t in this.

“You’re Pria,” I told Kate. Then I turned around to Pria. “That means you’re me.”

Pria took my hands in hers, her warm eyes suddenly serious. “I know you, Phoebe. You’d take someone else’s burden if you could. So, for a night, offload everything. Hand it over to me.”

“Wish I could,” I told her.

“Pretend that you just did.” She gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. “Just . . . don’t go too crazy being our resident wild child, Sass. Use your new powers wisely.” She shot Sass a pointed sideways glance.

“Hey!” Saskia pretended to look offended.

We used to carry out a clothing swap then at this point. When The Moose was invoked, clothing always used to be swapped. Luke had been the only one who was exempt from the swap. But we’d all been around the same height and weight then. Now, Sass had grown tall, and I’d grown thin, and Kate had model-slim hips, and Pria had boobs that made the rest of us jealous. The clothing swap wasn’t going to happen, and as we looked at each other, I knew each of us could tell we had the same thought.

“Woo!” cried Saskia. “Let’s go get our party started!”

Sass grabbed my reluctant hand, and we headed back to our table.

The guy with the intense eyes looked up as we headed in his direction, and he did something close to a vaudevillian double take.

“Remember,” Saskia said close to my ear, “you’re me. Just think, what would Sass do?”

“That’s the problem,” I told her quietly. “I know exactly what Sass would do.”

A thought half-formed in my mind.
The guy didn’t look at me like that before Sass slapped the contents of her makeup kit on me.
But that was only partly true. He’d still spoken to me. I couldn’t even wallow in a pond of murky, indignant water.

“If you were me, you’d be telling me to stay right away from him right now,” I said under my breath.

“Once again, just lucky I’m not you,” Sass said flippantly.

“Did you hear his lame pickup line earlier?”

“So what? He’s hot, and he probably knows how to make a girl laugh.”

And that was when I knew that Sass had engineered the call of the Moose.
Of course she had. To help me step out of my skin for a while. The fog had just made it easy for her.

We hadn’t yet seated ourselves when a guy wearing what I could only describe as a hipster Santa suit stepped out from the restaurant and boomed a hello to everyone. “Hear ye. Hear ye. Christmas dinner is served. And afterwards, we dance! And merry-make! And celebrate! Rumour has it that there might be mistletoe.”

Everyone surged inside. People tended to behave like they were in some Dickenson novel when food was announced.

The tables and chairs had all been cleared away inside the covered section of the restaurant, leaving open spaces of shiny wooden flooring. A buffet of Christmas foods ran the lengths of long rectangular tables that were dressed with white cloth and silver-sprayed flowers.

People loaded their plates, ate fast, and mingled. The air grew increasingly warm, and coats were shed.

Dessert consisted of sweet creations from the chef that were mostly admired and not eaten, because everyone was stuffed full of rich food and alcohol already.

The band switched back and forth from piano and drums to violins to the accordion, playing festive songs from around the world. Right now they were playing some kind of German folk music.

People were instantly drawn to the dance floor.

“He’s looking over at you—the guy,” Sass narrated to me. “Wait, now he’s walking this way.”

“I don’t—” I started.

“Life will happen with or without you . . .” Sass stepped lightly away. That was such a Kate thing to say. Sass had chosen her words well. Kate was full of pithy, Zen-like sayings. All delivered with a
freshly-squeezed-orange-juice
smile.

The man stopped in front of me, forcing me to look at him.

Fashionable stubble. Carefully tousled hair. A mouth just on the edge of flickering into a grin.

“You didn’t have to go to so much trouble for me,” he said, gesturing towards my hair and clothing. “I was already sold.”

Flirting. Right. Yes. I can do this. Sass-style.

“I can go to a lot more trouble than this,” I told him, raising my eyebrows

His face showed momentary surprise, but he recovered quickly. “Bet you can.” He shot me an amused frown. “I want to ask you to dance, but I don’t know if I can drop my standards for a girl who doesn’t iron her clothing.”

He tugged at my shirt. I glanced down. I hadn’t ironed it, but it was made of a material that didn’t look bad unironed. At least, that’s what I’d told myself.

Touching me lightly under the chin, he tilted my chin up. “But hey, I’ll forgive it.”

His hand closed around mine, and I let him lead me onto the dance floor. Straight away, he was holding me, dancing close. A warm charge sped through my chest and up to my neck.

“Relax,” he whispered close to my ear. “I’ve got you.”

If I were eighteen, I’d be falling for his routine—hook, line, and sinker. If I were really Sass, I’d let myself fall for it. Saskia was all about experiences and losing herself in the moment.

I’d never lost myself. Not in any good way. Not voluntarily. Except when I was acting in a role.

A new song started, but the guy—
what was his name?—
didn’t let go.

Dashiell.
I remembered now. His name was Dashiell.

I caught sight of Pria. She was dancing with a tall, bearded, arty-looking man. That kind of guy used to be my type.

Panic began to make the food in my stomach feel like poison. I couldn’t hand the job of being
me
over to Pria, not even for a night. The cloak of worry and anguish was mine. I needed to plan what I was going to do tomorrow night. Pria didn’t know about the duck-head umbrella or the nightlight boat or the scent of caramel mochaccino. She didn’t know how to be me. She couldn’t.

I turned my head, looking out past the people to the dark mist over the water.

I desperately, desperately didn’t want to be me. I didn’t want to count down the days and hours since my son went missing. I didn’t want to feel the terror of not knowing. Where he was and what had happened to him. I didn’t want to feel the hollowness of my husband’s deceit. I wanted to disappear from all of that. Let the war go on without me. Maybe, in the deepest part of me, I was worried that if I was someone else for too long, I’d want to run away and never be Phoebe Basko again.

I was startled out of my thoughts as bunches of silver leaves on silver strings were let down from the ceiling. Like oxygen masks suddenly appearing from above on a plane, fifty or so bunches of leaves now dangled above everyone’s heads.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have mistletoe,” announced the hipster Santa.

When I glanced back at my dance partner, a wide grin had spread across his face. He moved in to kiss me. A long and lingering kiss that took my breath.

Tiny flakes of white tinsel floated down from above.

“You feel tense.” He ran his hands up and down my arms. “I think I need to kiss you again.”

“I’m a bit woozy. Too much wine, I think.”

“Oh yeah? Come outside—we’ll get you some air. Getting a bit hot in here.”

Phoebe would refuse his offer.

But Sass would just go. No hesitation.

I walked with him through the restaurant and across the boardwalk to the water. The cold, damp air cooled my skin instantly.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Fee . . . Saskia.”

“Say what?”

“Saskia.”

“Nice. You know my name already.”

“Dashiell.”

“You remembered. Dash for short.”

“Cute.”

“It’s a curse. I know I sound like something out of a Christmas musical.” He opened his arms wide and sang in a deep, almost operatic voice:
Dashing through the snow, in a one-horse open sleigh
. . .

I laughed. “I wasn’t thinking that.”

“What were you thinking? That you’d like to take a man named Dash home? Imagine the bragging rights.”

“Damn, you’re smooth.
Not.
”

“Just being me.”

“Must take a lot of practice to be you.”

He gave a wry laugh, stepping in front of me. “Do you like the end result?”

“Do you ever give the pickup lines a rest?”

Stop, Phoebe. This isn’t Sass. Sass isn’t this cynical. She’s open. Open and free.

He snorted, staring up at the inky sky for a moment. “Okay. But would you do something for me?”

I shrugged, smiling. “Maybe?”

“Can we finish our dance out here?” Shooting me a dejected look, he took a pretend-timid step towards me. He put his arms around me again the same as he’d done inside the restaurant and started a kind of waltz.

His hands slipped into the back pockets of my jeans. He pulled something from my pocket.

I gasped at the sight of my notebook in his hand.

Hell,
I’d forgotten I left it in this pair of jeans.

Spinning around, he opened the notebook. Ignoring my attempts to get the book back, he read, “
Midforties man, in a suit that’s seen better days. Probably working in low-level management
.” Dash flipped through a few more pages. “
Something, something about a woman in a red coat
.”

He turned back around to me, his eyes different. Snapping the book shut, he handed it back to me. “Okay, I get it now.”

Hurriedly, I shoved the notebook back into my pocket, my heart bumping against my ribs. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re a journalist.”

“What?”

“You can drop the act. You’re a player, just like me.”

“They’re just notes about imaginary people. For a book.”

“Complete with times and dates? Not buying it.”

I gave myself time to breathe and put a smile back on my face. “What would it matter if I was a journalist anyway? Have you got something against them?”

“No. But you played me well.”

“That’s kind of nuts. I’m just out with friends.”

“Yeah? So, here we have a woman who goes out at night in a button-up shirt and jeans, without a scrap of makeup on her pretty face. Suddenly, she does a one-eighty and she looks like a bombshell. Seems to me that she sniffed an opportunity for a story and went for it.”

Bombshell?
“Why would anyone want to do a story on you? Who are you, anyway?”

“You can cut the act.”

“I would if I knew what the act was. Are you that notorious that journalists would bother chasing you down?”

“Maybe. Evolutionary psychology is always good for inspiring a bit of outrage.”

“Evolutionary psychology? You mean like the study of human nature?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s what you do?”

“Yup. We’re out here in Australia to run a series of seminars.”

“All of you? The guys you’re with?”

“Yes.”

“And why would you think me changing my look would get me a story with you?”

“I specialise in relationships between men and women. The science of attraction. So, you thought you’d turn it around on me and get one of those sneaky undercover stories. Wouldn’t be the first time a female journalist has done it to one of us.”

“So,” I said, “what ideas do you believe in that get people so worked up?”

“I see straight through people. No one likes that. Everyone likes to think they’re so deep and mysterious. And you, lady, are either a journalist or a whacko who takes notes on strangers. Which is it?”

“How about we just forget this? Let’s head back inside.”

“You’re giving up that easily? What are you, new to the job? A rookie?”

I decided it didn’t matter if he thought I was a writer, but it
did
matter if he thought I was taking notes on people. No one was supposed to know that.

“I just write for a website,” I told him. “Nothing special.”

“Okay, well, I’ll do you a deal. You can tag along with me to the seminars and get your story. But it’s got to be fair. Deal?”