Marriage Make-Over

After dialling and hanging up the phone several times that morning she had given up on the idea of calling. She had to see that it was him. She had to meet him face to face.

So, first things first, she had spent hours making her work-station homey before finally making her way to the address written on the piece of paper clasped in her clammy hand. It wasn’t cowardice that made her delay this moment. The decorating project was imperative. After all, a happy working environment did a happy worker make!

Now, in the late afternoon, devoid of denim jacket and scarf, which she had thoughtlessly left on the back of her chair, she felt a shiver rack her body. A cold change was coming. In the five minutes she had been dithering outside, the sky had gone from clear to grey and a chill breeze now whipped about her. It would rain within a Melbourne minute.

The front door opened from the inside. A young woman was pushing it open with her bottom as she dragged a pram over the threshold behind her. Kelly leapt to grab the door to give her a hand.

The woman looked up, and her face broke into a beaming smile. ‘Thanks!’

‘No problem.’

Only once Kelly had watched the woman bounce the pram lightly down the steps did she realise she was still holding the door open. And it seemed wasteful to go through the whole intercom rigmarole when the main objective had already been achieved. She stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind her.

The foyer was spacious and elegant. Her high-heeled boots clack-clacked on the smooth marble floor. One solitary lift faced her. She pressed the up button, the down must have been for a hidden parking garage, very luxurious indeed in a city where all-day street parking was scarce.

The lift opened, she stepped inside and felt her last chance to run for her life slip away as the doors closed before her.

The mirrored walls reflected back a slim young woman of average height, shivering slightly in a slinky black barely-there halter-neck dress and knee-high black boots. Her long, thick dark hair, with month-old blonde streaks, was slicked back in a low ponytail, the wayward wisps of a growing-out fringe had been caught by the wind and now rested on her cheeks. Big sad brown eyes, her most striking feature, were rimmed in dark liner and lashings of mascara making them that much more dramatic.

The last time she had seen Simon she’d had short spiky hair, which she had chopped herself during her rebellious teens. She had been about a stone heavier, with enviable curves. She’d called it puppy-fat; he’d called her adorable. But living away from home, paying her own rent, with only sporadic pay cheques, had meant that certain luxuries, such as dinner, had been missed on the odd occasion. The puppy-fat had long since gone and she looked thin. Would he think too thin?

Who cares? she thought, standing up straighter, puffing out what little remained of her once ample chest. The reason she was there was to tell him that whatever he thought he should damn well keep it to himself.

The lift binged, and Kelly’s heart slammed against her ribs. Her image wavered and split apart to reveal a small private foyer with a carved white door. It was ajar and Kelly could hear kitchen noises from inside. She sucked in a deep ragged breath, tucked her hair behind her ears, and walked in as if she owned the place.

It was beautiful. Polished wood floors led onto thick cream carpet, modern furniture, soft leather couches. Very opulent and worth a fortune. It was a place in which her parents would feel more than comfortable, so on the flipside it made her feel completely out of place. She was worried about leaving dirty tread on the carpet and wondered for a moment if she should have left her boots at the door.

A homely woman with grey hair tucked into an old-fashioned maid’s cap poked her head around a doorway. ‘Hello there.’

‘Hello,’ Kelly said back, hoping her facial features were forming a confident smile and not the odd grimace she imagined. ‘Is…Simon home?’

‘Nope, sorry. Friend of Mr Coleman’s, are you?’

A friend? Hardly. And it must be Simon’s place—the cleaner had not said ‘Simon who?’ The woman watched Kelly carefully, and the broom in her hand seemed a ready weapon.

‘Actually, I am his wife.’ It felt odd, saying it out loud, but it was the only way she could think to avoid the humiliation of having to dodge a projectile broom handle as the woman became more suspicious by the second.

The woman raised her eyebrows in disbelief. ‘I’ve heard nothing about a wife.’

‘We have been…estranged.’

The woman nodded in sudden and all-too-ready understanding. ‘That explains it. But now you are back. Glad to hear it. This place could do with a woman’s touch. You wouldn’t think Mr Coleman eats in; the kitchen is always so perfect. Make him a good meal. He needs one.’

Kelly nodded, though she had to suppress a smile. Her version of a home-cooked meal would be two-minute noodles.

The cleaner grabbed up her bits and bobs and headed for the front door. ‘He should be home soon enough. Do lock up after if you’re off first.’ And she left, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

Kelly couldn’t believe her luck, having time to case the joint, to get her bearings, to familiarise herself with all exits.

She walked about the apartment, trying to find signs of the boy who had stolen her heart when she was eleven years old, the teenager who had shared her first magical kiss at fourteen, and the young man who had married her in a secret ceremony on St Kilda beach at midnight on her eighteenth birthday.

No photographs lined the walls or side tables. No ornaments or collectibles showed signs of travel. There was simply no sign of the Simon Coleman she knew. Nothing of the sculptor, nothing of the sailor, nothing of the free spirit. She suddenly felt wary that this was not him. This guy with the cool, personality-free apartment could not be her Simon.

Hearing the jingle of keys at the front door, she spun on her heels. The world turned in agonising slow motion. The door banged lightly and the handle jiggled. Finally it opened and she stole a head-to-toe glance at the owner of the apartment: Simon of St Kilda.

And without a hint of a doubt Kelly knew she looked upon her husband.

CHAPTER TWO

KELLYISM:

LOVE SAYS LISTEN TO YOUR HEART?

‘SINGLE AND LOVING IT!’ SAYS LISTEN TO YOUR STOMACH.

THAT AIN’T BUTTERFLIES, THAT’S PURE ADRENALIN,

AND IT’S TELLING YOU TO RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

SURE it was Simon, but if Kelly thought she had changed he was a revelation in evolution.

Caught in one of those surprising Melbourne rain showers, Simon was drenched from head to toe. He was slick with rainwater, his wet dark hair had been raked back by his fingers, and his jet-black T-shirt clung to every muscular curve of his chest. This was the lanky guy she had married five years before? This was a god!

Along with the new classic short back-and-sides haircut, his face had changed. The newly flat planes of his smooth cheeks book-ended his lovely straight nose and revealed the most glorious cheekbones Kelly had never guessed were hidden there. The delicious hazel eyes below his furrowed brow were still deep enough to drown in, though they too were changed. Where they had once been so very kind they were now cool, closed, guarded.

But if all else had altered, the mouth would have clinched it for her. That mouth would have reeled her in all on its own. The natural curve was just so kissable and the corners were for ever turned with the hint of a private smile. Added to that those lips were now sleek with fresh rainwater.

From deep down in places she had forgotten even existed, a concoction of sensations and emotions dragged themselves to the surface. Her reaction to him was out of practice but as it always had been. Inevitable. Knee-weakening. And blinding. She had always found him beautiful. Inside and out. So much so her heart raced so that she could hardly breathe. And he hadn’t even yet looked her way.

Get a grip, Kelly. Cool. Think cool.

She swallowed down her clambering ardour, because now she knew how little these feelings meant in the grand scheme of things. In the course of writing Single and Loving It! she had talked to dozens of other women who had been in similar boats, and had changed her view dramatically.

Her feelings for him had been understandable teenage lust and now she was just experiencing an echo of those sensations. Like her belly ring, her chopped hair and her hippy aspirations, it had been the perfect rebellion against her conservative parents. It had never really been love in the first place. Relentless passion, and unceasing adoration, sure. But love? That she now very much doubted.

‘Hello, Simon.’

His head snapped up, his eyes narrowed. A moment later they softened, lit from within, their hazel depths flickering with warm gold, and beneath the altered exterior her Simon gazed back at her. And she all but melted.

‘Hello, Kelly.’

His smooth, low voice washed over her like a warm sun shower. The five years since she had heard him speak slipped away and it felt as if it had been no more than five minutes.

‘I assume you got my letter,’ he said and Kelly remembered why she was there and she was much obliged as the gulf between them widened once more.

This was no happy reunion with her long-lost best friend. This was no time to fall into a hopeless, trembling puddle at her former lover’s feet. This was an intervention.

The day she signed a freelance contract doing the perfect, made-for-her job, writing about how to live without a man, her husband turned up on the scene. He was a thorn in the side of the wonderful new life she had created for herself and he had to be removed, fast, before he became too deeply imbedded.