We talked shop. Things I would try and get out of Melisa when I was shooting the group date. Things he would look for in the dailies, potential bits of audio we might be able to Frankenbite together in service of the story. Things we could do to make sure Suzette wasn’t the next person Tony ate for breakfast.
He spoke. He listened. He paid attention.
But there were those dark smears under his eyes. And he kept twisting his wedding ring around his finger, over and over again.
Group date shoots included the date itself and the one-on-one intimacy time afterwards with whichever contestant the lead had deigned to choose, so I didn’t leave theWhereforeset until late. Then I had to make a stop, so it was after eleven by the time I pulled my car into the network building carpark. The corridors were deserted, and my footsteps echoed loudly. All the rooms were dark, apart from the dim light emanating through the glass door of the Romeo and Juliet production office.
Murray looked up, startled, when I swiped in. ‘Lily,’ he said, hitting pause on the dailies. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Bringing you this.’ I set the keep cup on the desk.
He looked at it for a long moment. ‘That’s not…’
‘I have temporarily lifted the ban,’ I said. ‘Fresh from my mother’s kitchen, made especially for you.’
The first time Murray ever had dinner with my family (around the time that Thuong and Michael finally came clean about their relationship – I’d brought him along to be my buffer and stop me killing both of them) he’d fallen head over heels in love with my mother’s coffee. ‘I’ve had Vietnamese coffee before, but it’s never been this good,’ he’d moaned.
‘That’s because she makes it strong enough to kill a horse,’ I’d replied. ‘Don’t pour him another one, Má, no matter how much he begs.’
He’d begged. She’d caved. Recognising the sign of another Ong woman falling head over heels for Murray O’Connell, I’d swiftly put measures into place to limit his access to her and thus her coffee, so that he didn’t develop permanent caffeine jitters to go with his eye twitch.
Murray looked from me to the keep cup then back to me suspiciously. ‘I told you I didn’t need a thank you.’
‘It’s not a thank you. It’s a trap.’
‘What?’
‘I’m buttering you up,’ I said, taking my usual seat opposite him, ‘so you’ll tell me what’s wrong.’
‘Nothing’s wrong.’
‘Don’t bullshit me, Murray. I know you’re not sleeping.’ I ran my thumbs under my eyes. ‘And that usually means you’re brooding about something.’
‘Genuinely, nothing’s wrong.’ He took a sip of coffee. ‘It’s right, actually. Julia—’
My brain filled in the wordsis pregnant, and I had an out of body experience.
‘—got a job.’
I blinked. ‘That’s great.’ Julia had told me about what a knife fight getting a permanent academic job was. ‘Did she beat that nemesis of hers? Elias?’
He cracked a smile. ‘Yeah, she did.’
‘Tell her I’m proud of her.’
‘I will.’
Murray took another long sip of coffee. ‘I should be over the fucking moon. And I am. She’s been working towards this for years. I’m thrilled for her.’
‘But…?’
‘The job’s on the other side of the country.’
The crushing sadness started, of all places, in my toes. They turned to stone first. My feet followed, then my ankles, my calves, my knees, my thighs, until it was all the way over my head and I was drowning in it.
Murray was going to leave.
‘I don’t know what to do, Lily.’ He set the coffee down and looked over at me, eyes suddenly desperate. ‘I love her. This is all she’s ever wanted. I would never, ever stand in her way.’
