‘Research scientist these days,’ he says. ‘But yes.’
I might have had several drinks tonight, plus the adrenaline hit of an altercation with my best friend’s ex-boyfriend, but I’m clearheaded enough to take this information, tack on Joshua’s last name, and come up withocean scientist, likes penguins.
‘You’reFraser Miller?’ I challenge him. This is Canberra, a city notorious for everyone knowing everybody else, but I cannot believe that all along I had been ‘flirting’, to quote the Dishonourable Peter Reed (as I now describe my former boss), withJoshua Miller’s brother.
‘You got me sacked!’ I inform him, quite unfairly. A jury would dismiss the charge in minutes.
He looks rattled. ‘I’m sorry, do we know each other?’
Let’s see. I am the woman who bungled your divorce account, along with a high-voltage situation at university with your brother, which I can’t be sure, given my reaction tonight, that I’m fully over.
‘You’re Fraser Miller,’ I tell him. ‘You like penguins.’
There’s a beat of silence, while our history catches up with him.
‘Audrey Sullivan?’
‘I trust Anne O’Rourke sorted your bill?’
The belated professionalism is astounding, given our celebratory whereabouts. If only Tea-Bag Brenda and Hormonal-Chicken Jill could see me now …
‘Peter fired you over that?’ I can sense the injustice pumping through his body so tangibly I could almost touch it.
‘To be fair, there were one or two other issues,’ I admit. ‘The usual suspects. Poor attention to detail. Mixing up appointments.’Do I really need to conduct a professional postmortem with this man?‘I wrote Peter Reed into my law-firm musical and called him the Antichrist …’
There’s a brief glimmer of surprise, but otherwise he has a serious poker face.
‘So that’s how you met my brother,’ he says, quietly. ‘Through music.’
Oh, I really don’t think we need to get into the details of how I met his brother. It will invariably expose the whole saga of why I dropped out and quit classical music—a story that always ends in tears.
‘And now you moonlight as a hit woman.’
‘Yes.I mean, not always. Not ever before, actually. But something came over me tonight and—’
‘You stormed to her defence.’
‘I would storm to it every time. Ihatethat man! Connor is the latest in a long line who were all charm. Then it went so badly, so quickly. Now I don’t trust men at all!’Flash of Josh.‘Even penguin-loving scientists.’Too much prosecco.
He doesn’t argue, even though I’ve tarred him with Connor’s brush, despite his unfailingly polite emails and the fact that Dishonourable Peter Reed had said Icouldn’t have picked a nicer man to financially inconvenience.
He looks like Joshua 2.0. A decade older, even though he’s the younger of the two. Josh and I were never in a ‘meet the family’ situation, but secondhand information pushes up from the murkof my memory.Insufferably serious. Painfully aloof. Barely emerges from the lab.
As I look at Fraser now, it’s not making sense.
‘I’m going to go,’ I announce quickly. ‘I suddenly feel scrambled. Not by you. Just—’Stop. Talking!
‘Can I give you a lift?’
He doesn’t know what he’s asking. Or why I can’t accept.
‘I’ll get an Uber. But thanks.’
I shoot him one last glance, my brain still striving to recast his identity, awash with conflicting details.This is definitely not Joshua. You can see it in his eyes.
He is, however, Joshua adjacent. And given the way that man makes me feel, the sensible thing, not that I’ve ever done the sensible thing in my life, would be to run a million miles.
6
