Marriage Make-Over

A dead-straight strand of cocoa-coloured fringe slipped from Kelly’s straining ponytail and swung before her eyes. She had to fight the urge to blow the offending lock away as, knowing her luck, she would blow a raspberry rather than the smooth, perfectly aimed puff of air she would prefer. And she wanted to remember herself in this perfect moment as the epitome of cool. Well, maybe not cool so much as not blowing a raspberry at an inopportune moment. She could hope for at least that much.

‘We will offer you a three-month contract,’ Maya continued in the face of Kelly’s strained silence. ‘Work at your own pace. Here or at home. Just as long as your copy is on my desk every Monday afternoon at five, and the work and the reader response stay on track, you will be a welcome and regular member of the Fresh family. Come on, I’ll show you to your work-station.’

Maya stood and led the way. In desperate relief Kelly raked her hand over her hair, tucking the fringe back in place. There. Cool Kelly held her ground.

And then she saw her work-station and had to choke back a gasp of splendiferous happiness. It was her very own tiny three-walled cubicle amongst a dozen other tiny three-walled cubicles. The desk was so sparse it reminded her of the first day of school when every new pencil was sharpened and no book was dog-eared or scratched. The work-station housed a corkboard, a filing cabinet, a phone, an assortment of stationery and a computer, which was turned on and opened to a fresh, hopeful Word file.

Kelly took off her faded denim jacket and fluffy pink scarf and hung them over the back of her very own bouncy office chair. She took a seat, swung back and forth and imagined dozens of happy snaps plastered over her corkboard, her ‘I Hate Working Wednesdays, They Really Cut Into My Weekends’ mug resting amidst a ring of stale coffee, and assorted funky knick-knacks balanced atop her monitor. Yep. This was her dream come true.

‘So how does that all sound?’ Maya asked.

As if the angels were singing her song!

‘Sounds fine, thanks,’ cool Kelly responded.

‘Great. First things first: your next column. You have touched on something very deep and given it a voice. So, of course, I want you to hit that vein deeper and deeper every week. Our female readers love you so, in my infinite wisdom, I have decided reader feedback will become a huge part of your page. We will start with a whammy. In amongst your legion of new fans, there was one reader who was not convinced.’

‘Just one?’ Good one, Kelly, real cool and confident!

Maya smiled indulgently, her sharp, preternaturally smooth face breaking into a zillion telling wrinkles at the unfamiliar movement. ‘One juicy one who made an interesting point. So maybe you could respond to this beauty in next week’s issue.’

Maya flicked a one-page letter onto Kelly’s desk as she left. ‘Have fun, and welcome to the Fresh family.’

Have fun? This was turning out to be the best day of her life! The best she cared to remember, anyway. She now had a real job doing something she utterly loved, her very own quasi-office with her very own bouncy chair, and lastly a real pay-packet, a regular pay-packet. How she wished she could have stapled her mother to the wall to have listened to everything Maya had said. Then her life would be perfect.

Kelly picked up the letter. She unconsciously fiddled with the corners of the folded piece of baby-blue paper.

Truth be told, Kelly was surprised there was only one not convinced. The Single and Loving It! idea had come about around a month before after a Saturday Night Cocktails session with her flatmate, racy Gracie, and her landlady, classy Cara, during which they had bitched and moaned about their conglomerate of ex-boyfriends. How they’d thrown every ounce of their energy into the relationships whereas the guys had seen them as a step above cricket practice but not so important as Mum’s home cooking. Was that love? they had asked. Was that as good as it could be?

So Single and Loving It! was born. Kelly had written her first attempt the minute she had trudged home. It had been three a.m., there had been no coffee in the cupboard, as she had not been able to afford it, so she had plied herself with chicken Cup-a-Soup. She had sold the story to Fresh within the week and had been writing weekly follow-ups ever since.

She glanced down at the letter. In her fidgeting hands lay the first piece of fan mail she had ever received. Well, except for that one old guy who once had been determined she was the only one he would allow to write his obituary (first job after uni—bad office, bad pay, bad news).

She rubbed her fingers over the fine paper, memorising the touch. She took a deep breath and dived in.

Dear Kelly

Men and women are meant to be attracted, but not for ever, you say. They come together to fill in space, time, and the void left by their parents, you say. Well, dear Kelly, I don’t believe a word of it.

I believe you are a woman who has loved and loved deeply. I believe you have convinced yourself there is no such thing as love so that you do not have to feel you have failed.

And the thing is, dear Kelly, I believe love is alive and well out there. Especially for you. You just have to be willing to lose yourself to find it.

Simon of St Kilda.

Kelly dropped the letter to the table as though it had scorched her fingers. She hastily looked over her shoulder to make sure no one had seen the words on the paper, the words she wanted nobody else to believe, as no more potentially damaging words had ever been written.

How did the writer know? How? Then out of the red mist before her eyes swam the most telling part of the read. She picked up the letter between two fingers and re-read the name at the bottom of the page.

Simon of St Kilda.

No, it couldn’t be!

If she thought her fingers felt hot before, that was nothing compared with the storm of heat that radiated from her flushed face at those words.

Kelly knew a Simon, but that had been a lifetime ago. And the last she’d heard he lived in Fremantle, on the other side of Australia. Not in Melbourne and certainly not in St Kilda. Not in the same suburb as her.

The letter was typewritten, including the name, so that was no clue. She sniffed at it. It smelled like paper and not like a wood fire at the beach, which was the smell that always reminded her of Simon. She looked closely, checking to see if any letters sat higher than any others. What that would prove she had no idea, but it was the first thing they looked for in any good detective movie.

Who was she kidding? She did not need any fancy fingerprint kit to know that the Simon she knew wrote the letter. She could feel the timbre of his voice in every syllable. She knew his language so well it made the hairs on the back of her neck tingle as though he had whispered the words in her ear.

Simon of St Kilda was Simon Coleman. Her Simon Coleman, whom she had not heard from in five years. Since a week after her eighteenth birthday. Since, for some unknown reason that she had never been able to figure out, he had been spooked and sent dashing from her, never to return.

But now he was back. And writing to her of love.

Her face burned, not from embarrassment but from a deep and abiding anger. How dare he even write the words much less about her? He was the last one to accuse her of any denial when it came to her feelings. She had always made her feelings known without restraint. She had poured them out in print to millions, had she not?

‘So what do you think?’ Maya asked as she passed by Kelly’s desk.

Kelly flinched so violently her chair continued bouncing for several seconds. ‘Hmm?’

‘The letter,’ Maya said. ‘Do you think you can explain yourself to him? Can you tell that guy where to go?’

Ooh, yeah. And you wouldn’t even have to pay me to do it.

‘I would be happy to. But didn’t you say there were nice ones? Lots of nice ones? Ones that agreed with me? Ones that said I was brilliant and should be bronzed this minute?’

‘Sure. But who wants to read those when you’ve got this guy just asking to be put in his place?’

Me! I do!

Kelly shrugged. ‘Nobody, I guess.’

‘Exactly. So, dear Kelly,’ Maya said with a twinkle in her wise eyes, ‘write me a blinder. I want it bigger and better and more controversial. I want Simon of St Kilda in the picture.’

Ha! Give me a time machine and I’ll give you my life with Simon in the picture.

Maya patted her on the shoulder and left to rouse another writer.

What did he want? Why was he back? And how on earth could she keep herself together if and when she saw him? The mental image of her wringing his beautiful neck gave her a small thrill.

She shuffled the computer mouse onto the internet icon, looked up the local phone directory, and found only one S. Coleman listed in St Kilda. Her hand shaking, she picked up the handset of her very own phone that only minutes before had given her such ridiculous pleasure, and dialled.

Because even if Maya had not insisted, she would still have to see him.

He was her husband.

Kelly stood on the sidewalk with feet of lead. Her eyes were locked on the third storey of the swanky St Kilda apartment building. The window was open, and white gauzy curtains flapped in the seaside breeze. Somebody was home. And it had to be S. Coleman.