How can someone likeBeaube insecure about a romantic rival? Particularly one who is dead!
‘The journal was only ever meant for me,’ he explains.
‘But even if what you’re saying is true, it doesn’t explain how she ended up in possession of this private source material, does it?’
He has the courtesy to look sheepish now. ‘Harlow’s got a key to my caravan.’
Well, that’s just great, isn’t it?Because on top of the existing debacle, he appears to be admitting that tabloids don’talwaysmake things up. It’s no surprise, of course, after that first night, when she waltzed in and opened that bottle of wine like she owned the place.
‘She’d been helping me with the film admin. The mentoring had been going well. She wanted to try her hand at writing a scene herself, but I wouldn’t let her. Not with this project.’
I feel some tiny piece of anger dislodge and dissolve inside me, even though I still don’t understand.
‘I can only assume she came looking for me after you and I had left for Canberra, let herself in, and found the notebook I’d left on the bed.’
‘Does she have no respect for privacy?’ I ask. I’m furious that she’d take something so desperately personal and do this.
‘I didn’t write your name in my notes. She must have read them, recognised the cinematic potential, and, when days passed and it didn’t appear in the script—especially with so much riding on it all—sent the scene to Lucinda, who had already been called in. They were trying to rescue me from failure …’
What am I doing with this man?As annoying as all of this is, I can almost believe it makes sense. He’s been nothing but kind and caring and thoughtful and compassionate since the second we met, and didn’t I just decide only last night that I had cut ties with everything that’s held me back all these years? My distrust of people, included.
‘Anyway, I want you to know I’ve written you out of the story,’ he says firmly. ‘You don’t have to worry anymore. And I had my lawyer draw up a new NDA and had everyone who was at thatmeeting yesterday sign it. I won’t bother you from now on. You can keep going the way you are and write music and travel and expand your world again the way you wanted to at the start. But as far as I’m concerned, don’t think about it for another second. All traces of you from my story have been completely erased. You can forget we even met.’
He touches me on the arm, just once, offers a weak smile, and steps backwards towards his caravan.
‘Drive safely, Hepburn.’
63
FRASER
‘Right, hand over your phone,’ Jess says when the Bookies are all set up in the family room. ‘Let’s go through this app and sort you out.’
Sudden panic hits, because I think they are sick of my dilly-dallying and they intend to throw me at one of these matches for real. Rach and I haven’t told them about us. We wanted to expand this friendship in private first, before turning the whole thing into a pep rally.
‘I want Dad to delete the app,’ Parker says, so emphatically it silences the room.
She does?
She said at the coast it was okay with her if I dated. Maybe she’s not ready after all. I can’t even look at Rachael.
‘But we went to all that trouble to make your dad sound attractive!’ April explains, as if the whole exercise was unbearable.
‘Yeah, and it obviously worked, because all these women kept messaging him the whole time we were camping! So cringe!’ Parker mimics being sick, a gesture I detest, and I tell her to stop. ‘Dad is so uncool. He doesn’t even listen to the top forty thousand, Rach said.’
‘Four thousand, I think I said.’
‘He doesn’t listen to the top four million!’ Parker replies.
‘Too busy listening to everything you play,’ I argue. ‘I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’
Maggie found a psychologist who combines traditional approaches with music therapy, and Parker has already been finding the sessions helpful. She’s sitting at Audrey’s piano now, lid open, as it has been permanently since the concert. No more headphones. Endless music. And she’s rediscovered a whole lot of ‘new’ tunes in Audrey’s old manuscript books, constantly filling our house with the sound of her, giving us ‘butterfly moments’, as if she is always here, in a way I’ll never be able to explain scientifically.
I look across the room at Rachael. Someone who is also always here, and who always has been, right from the start.
‘Nobody on the app is going to work,’ I say. ‘Parker’s right. We should delete it.’
‘You mean no one on the app is Audrey,’ Jess complains, groaning, echoing Rach’s earlier thoughts. ‘God, you aresopredictable!’
