‘What’s your third thing, Daddy?’ she asks, twirling her dark curls through her fingers. It’s a self-soothing stim according to Maggie, who believes that Parker may be somewhere on the autism spectrum, something we intend to investigate properly once we’re through all this family disruption.
The email exchange with Audrey Sullivan floats to mind. But how can I tell Parker the highlight of my day was a few chatty messages about financial administration with the office assistant at the firm handling our divorce?
‘I saved six hundred dollars,’ I spin it instead. ‘When I get back from this trip, why don’t we have a little holiday at the beach?’
And there’s the iridescent little smile that I live for.
3
AUDREY
‘Can you see where you’ve gone wrong?’ Peter booms, pointing at the second page of the employee agreement I skimmed when I started work here. I feel like I’m starring in a police procedural.
I amsobad at boundaries. Obviously, I buried that lead during the interview for this job, given we deal in highly sensitive material, but now it looks like I’m going to bring on my own demise.
‘The error was your fault,’ he accuses me.
‘It’s only six hundred dollars!’ I argue. A minor issue surely, given the amount of money this place turns over. ‘And Fraser Miller wasn’t angry about it!’
Fraser Miller was quite charming.And I’m used to dealing with an endless parade of cranky, incompatible couples citing no-fault ‘irretrievable breakdown’. I take their coats and shuffle them into our fancy lounge while I deliver inane niceties like ‘Did you find a spot okay?’ knowing there iszeroparking near our office, they’ve probably had a blowup about it in the lift, and now they’re glaring at each other, and at me like I caused it.
‘Fraser Miller wasn’t angry because he is a good person!’ Peter says. ‘In fact, you couldn’t have picked a nicer man to financially inconvenience!’
Usually, I go the other way. I am magnetised to the bad boys. Historically, I’ve selected the type of relationship that burns up like space junk reentering the earth’s atmosphere in the kind of spectacular crash that makes everyone look up and say,Ooh, did you see that? What’s happened to Audrey now?
Not that a brief email exchange over an accounting discrepancy with one of our technically still-married clients falls into the relationship category.
‘And then, instead of investigating the complaint properly or fixing it,’ my boss continues—unfairly, I might add, because Iwasinvestigating it—‘you chose to flirt with our client, pressing him for details about his personal itinerary!’
Flirtwith him?
He waits for me to dig myself further into this hole, and of course I oblige within seconds. I’m one of those people who crumple in the face of expectant pauses.
‘He was going to Antarctica!’ I argue. ‘Wouldn’t you be intrigued?’
He smacks the desk with the contract, nostrils flaring. If he doesn’t settle down, he’ll bring on a medical episode and I’ll have to whip out my half-baked skills from the first aid training I auto-piloted through.
‘It is not your role to beintrigued,’ he says, shouting. ‘It’s your role to get the accounts right so that our valued clientele do not have to contact you in the midst of their busy and important lives—which in Dr Miller’s case involvesrescuing us from extinction—to discusspenguins!’
I stifle a smile. And a crush. On Dr Miller, obviously, not my rage-fuelled boss.
‘Perhaps this would be more amusing if it was your only offence,’ Peter suggests.
Sorry, is a SWAT team going to pop out from behind the leather armchair and arrest me?I’d known this job would be a fiasco from Day One. My attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (self-diagnosed until I can find the doctor’s referral) means I am not cut out for things like keeping on top of the filing and sending entirely accurate bills. What Iamgood at is fetching boxes of tissues when warring couples break down in the conference room. Or when I break down in the toilets, wondering if my parents ever looked at me as a baby and thought,I hope she grows up to follow her dream of always ensuring there’s enough toner in the office printer.
Actually, knowing my parents, that’s exactly where they envisaged me—rummaging through filing cabinets in my mid-thirties, inventorying the paper clips.You want a nice, safe job, Audrey. There’s too much uncertainty in the world. Just choose this one predictable thing in your life and you’ll thank us.
What they really meant wasDON’T CHOOSE MUSIC.
Thwomp!Peter dumps a big pile of manuscript paper onto the desk, and I recoil in horror. These are very familiar lines and dots and squiggles and lyrics. Myshow.
‘This was discovered on the photocopier,’ he says. Exhibit B. My work in progress. Not my ‘work work’, obviously, but in my spare time I’m crafting a musical set in a divorce lawyer’s office, starring an unlucky-in-love millennial receptionist—
I thought my document had failed to print. ‘Who found this?’ I ask. Some joyless stickler for office etiquette, no doubt. Surely everyone uses the office printer for private matters every so often?
‘It’s not just the fraudulent use of office supplies, but the fact that you’re clearly working on this theatrical masterpiece on company time.’
‘That’s not true,’ I insist, jumping up, finally having an inaccuracy to defend. ‘I can’t think creatively in the office.’Believe me, I’ve tried, but the vibe at Bates, Scrivener and Daley is lethal to the imagination.
