‘Something bad happened to me early in my career. A professor did something to me—’
I falter, the way I always falter telling this tale, and Beau reaches across the table. I try not to allow it to thrill me as much as it clearly does when he places both his hands over mine, his grasp warm and firm and certain, while I instruct myself not to get carried away, because he’s literally just explained that he’s heartbroken.
‘Sorry, Audrey. I didn’t mean to intrude … You don’t have to tell me unless you want to.’
Oh, I want to.‘It’s not the way it sounds. He took something from me, but it wasn’t … that.’
He looks relieved, lets go of my hands, eases back, and slowly stirs his coffee, the metal spoon tinkling against the ceramic cup, steam still rising cinematically in the morning sunlight.
‘You’re really not a viper at all, are you?’ I say before I can stop myself.
He laughs. ‘Not that I’m aware of?’
‘Your caravan. Outback Viper?’
He shrugs. ‘Oh, it’s not mine. The production company rented it so I could, quote, “sort out my shit”. They thought I’d have a clearer head here than in my Sydney high-rise.’ He glances at me. ‘Fewer distractions.’
Now I’m picturing him and a parade of alluring Alisters on some plush designer lounge, city lights twinkling across the harbour through floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s not my world. Not anywhere near it. Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to open up? Because there’s a part of this that doesn’t feel real.
‘What did the professor take from you?’ he asks, serious eyes considering me through dark lashes.
‘He was one of those charismatic lecturers. Fortyish, attractive, clever. He had all the students in his thrall, including me. You know the type?’
Heisthe type. Look at the easy way he’s extracting my secrets—information that, apart from Fraser and Rach and Sara, I’ve kept from my closest friends. I haven’t talked about this for so long, and it’s not how it started that makes it so difficult. It’s how it ended. And when. And I don’t care how many tricks he tries to entrance me with—I’m not prepared to tell him about the day Fraser died. Not on day two.
‘It was that edgy rock star vibe, you know? Except he wasn’t a rock musician. He was one of the most respected classical composers in the country. Still is. And my composition teacher.’
‘What was your degree?’
‘This was during my doctorate.’
‘Wow, so it’s Dr Sullivan, is it?’
Academic failure rises up my oesophagus like bile, and I look at him and want to run from this. ‘You’re not going to put this in one of your screenplays, are you?’ I say, suddenly overcome with my usual problem: I don’t trust people.
He crosses his heart and holds my gaze steady. I haven’t seen anyone do that since the primary school playground, and it’s extraordinarily attractive on a grown screenwriter as he sits across from you, in absolutely no hurry, while you gather your skeletons.
‘Anyway, after this incident—let’s call it academic thievery—I lost my confidence. He stole my intellectual property. My faith in people. And in myself.’ I’m awkward now. ‘Sorry, this sounds so dramatic—’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Beau says, quickly. ‘We pour so much of ourselves into what we make. If someone stole even a line or two from me, I’d be furious. I’d storm in and steal it right back!’
Joshua energy. Pre-betrayal.I’m momentarily thrown.
‘What happened then?’
‘I gave up for a while …’A decade, give or take.‘I was twenty-two. He convinced me I wasn’t talented enough to have written what I did. Turned the whole thing around in meticulous detail and accusedmeof stealing ideas from him. He told me a creative path was too hard. And that I was too thin-skinned to cope with the knocks. He planted so much doubt and made me so scared of the ramifications for my career if I spoke up that he silenced me. I thought I was going crazy.’
‘Classic professional gaslighting.’
I don’t tell him the worst bit. That it wasn’t a spontaneous response from Ridges. It had been calculated. He’d prepared for days. And the reason he even had that opportunity was because I had been double-crossed by the one friend who could have truly backed me up. The one who’d been there in the room whenI wrote the piece, watching as the notes fell out of my head. And who’d said they were brilliant.
‘I’m afraid to say that he only stole one piece of work, and I allowed it all to snowball in my mind until I might as well have given him everything. All the unwritten music. All the power. I walked away from him. And from classical music …’
‘And from yourself?’ he asks, after a pause.
I look straight at him. ‘I completely lost my way.’
Lost my way?Is this my new euphemism for what happened when the plagiarism kickstarted a nightmare that blew up everything? It did more than silence the music. The timing of my eventual response took Fraser down with it. And then it all but destroyed me.
