Page 11 of People Skills

‘Tell me now,’ she says. There is the slightest edge to her voice. Her spidey sense is tingling. Hillary famously started her career as a weather presenter before quickly losing patience with, as she says, ‘smiling and pointing and being told what to say’, and she moved into journalism and never looked back. She went from segment producer to political reporter to Washington correspondent to headlining one of the biggest news and politics shows on Australian TV for years, interviewing politicians every week. There is a famous interview she did, over fifteen years ago now, but footage of it still goes viral online. She was talking to the prime minister of the time, and she interrupted him and said, ‘No, that’s not right, actually, and I need you to answer the question,’ and her voice was like a knife, sharp and powerful with not a hint of hesitation. She suddenly held the power, and the prime minister stumbled his answer, caught in a lie. The audio of it was trending online last year, over funny videos of girls pretending to interrogate their boyfriends, mothers pretending to interrogate their toddlers.

‘I’d rather not,’ Xavier says to her now.

There is a beat of tense silence.

‘I’m just going to go and checks the mics,’ I say, and I head backstage, where I find Kat holding a mic and looking as if she’s about to whack it against the table.

‘You have to turn them off, then when you turn them on again, you hold down the green button for thirty seconds,’ I say.

‘I knew it was something like that. Thank you,’ Kat says. ‘How’s Xavier? He made it here?’

‘Yes, but I think he’s about to have a fight with Hillary.’

‘Oh, just what we need,’ Kat says.

Hillary’s moods are like the weather in our office. Is a storm coming in? Do we need to prepare for a period of rain? A run of sunny days leaves everyone in a great mood, but sometimes the sun can burn, it can dehydrate you, it can get too hot.

‘Maybe I should interrupt them and head it off,’ I say.

‘Good luck,’ Kat says. She releases the microphone button, and it turns on.

I walk back into the main hall, but I can’t see them. Audience members are starting to wander in, even though it’s too early, and the other speaker for tonight, Antonia Li, still hasn’t even arrived. But this town is full of educated, wealthy, highly engaged retirees who love an event, who will be early to ensure they get a good seat and, more importantly, a glass of wine. They want to chat and socialise beforehand, and would rather die than be late. And they are all terribly excited that Hillary Hobbs has moved back here to live full-time and can’t wait to see what she has planned.

I am watching a woman arguing with her husband about whether he should be wearing a long-sleeved shirt (‘You say you’re fine now but you’re going to be hot, the minute they shut those doors the temperature will go up five degrees, Brian.’) and so I almost miss him when he first walks in. But as I turn, I see him out of the corner of my eye.

Grady Anderson.

My blood runs cold, and my heart jolts. What is he doing here? Did we know he was coming? I look away before he can spot me, and hurry in the other direction, towards the stage. I have nowhere to go, so I head backstage to the green room. I knew this moment would come at some point, now that I am back working in the book world, and I had accepted running into people from my past as an eventuality. My safe little bubble of Barwon Bay is only two hours from Melbourne, after all, and Hillary is inviting authors from all over Australia to attend the festival. But not tonight. I wasn’t expecting it tonight. And of all people, not him.

Grady Anderson is the reason I left Melbourne. He’s the reason I lost my career, he’s the reason I lost my boyfriend, he’s the reason I lost myself. Directly, and indirectly.

I burst into the green room, sweating, feeling a little nauseous, wondering if I can hide in here for the rest of the night, and I walk right into the middle of a heated discussion between Hillary and Xavier.

‘We broke up, okay! Are you happy? We broke up, and she has the car and the apartment and—’

He stops talking when he sees me.

‘Sorry,’ I say, and I know I should retreat but I cannot go back out there with Grady hovering in the hall and not enough buffers between us. The very sight of him turns me into this pathetic breathless person with shaking hands and a racing heart and sweat sliding down my spine. I cannot handle actually speaking to him.

I walk to the bathroom at the back of the small green room and go inside. Hillary keeps talking because my presence doesn’t really clock as an intrusion to her. I know her passwords, I read her emails, I sort her mail, I build her schedule, I sit in on her meetings, I do her online shopping, I do her in-real-life shopping, I make her reservations, I remind her of when she needs to take a medicine and when Aggie needs to take a medicine, I go with her to appointments, I help her pack for trips, I book her travel. She’s single, and I’m single, and I think that factors into how quickly she opened up her life to me. I have no one waiting at home to tell her secrets to. We are two women equally obsessed with work. And I think she understood that I was running from something when I came here, that I was leaving everything behind. I was an empty vessel, ready for her to pour all her needs into.

‘Honey, you and Lana broke up?’ Hillary is saying to Xavier now. Her voice has softened.

I stand at the door of the small bathroom, a door about as thick a piece of cardboard and even less soundproof (I am certainly not going to actually use the toilet) and I listen.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And I know what you’re going to say.’

‘What am I going to say?’

‘I’m making the biggest mistake of my life—’

‘You ended things?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, Xav.’

‘Mum, please.’