HOT SET: Playing with Fidelity (A romantic suspense novel) (2 page)

Three months later,
it was a cold July day and Kate waited in line impatiently at the local post office. She’d never been patient in queues and after being stuck in traffic for an hour en route from the studio, her patience level was at zero. Traffic queues, people queues; Kate was level-headed until stuck behind someone for longer than 30-seconds, then she transformed into a steaming time bomb.

Despite her best efforts and much yelling of obscenities at the immobile traffic in front of her, she
had arrived five minutes before closing and hurried into the large room, taking her place at the end of a line as long as the Hebrew exodus out of Egypt. From her vantage point at the back of the crowd, she could see the customer service staff watching the clock tick closer towards five. Already one of them was skipping jauntily towards the main doors at Kate’s back in anticipation of locking out those caught in the Armageddon of traffic jams and would have to come back tomorrow.

The post office was crammed with stands selling far more than postal products
. Covering the white walls and brown carpet were shelves of books, gifts, puzzles, soft toys, children’s learning books, DVDs, commemorative coins, lunch boxes and by the counter was even a circular stand of watches. But, this was only a momentary distraction from Kate staring at the pattern on the man’s knitted jumper in front of her.

“
I’m sorry, we’re closing in a few minutes and we’re not taking any more customers this afternoon,” the supercilious tone of the customer service agent trilled behind Kate.

“
I know but this has to go tonight! It’s a Uni assignment and-”

“
I’m sorry, but as you can see, the line is very long and we cannot possibly take other customers this evening.”

“
But-!”

“
You’ll just have to come back first thing in the morning,” the horrible woman announced smugly. Kate felt like kicking the perm off her.

The line moved forward a few centimetres and
Kate stepped along with it, keeping her ears tuned to the commotion at the door as several more people were turned away.

It took 15-long-minutes for Kate to finally reach the service desk and hand over the little card she’d found in her letterbox. Door Lady (although her badge called her ‘June’) was behind the wide desk.

“
I’ll need to see ID,” June curly informed her.

“
Okay.”

While June
swayed a wide bottom off into the back room in search of the package, Kate took out her driver’s license and again waited, looking around the now quiet post office at the various non-essentials. June soon came back with a very large padded envelope, obviously heavy, which immediately piqued Kate’s interest. She signed her name in the registered post book and manhandled the package, turning it over to see it was from her agent. She hadn’t been told to expect anything from Susan and confused, Kate stood for a moment at the counter before a sharp “tsk” from June the Perm interrupted. She left the office quickly.

Kate
strolled around the corner to her little red, illegally parked Holden Barina. She sighed with relief there was no ticket before opening the door and sliding in. Sitting in the quiet of the cabin, she ripped open the tab and pulled out a very thick manuscript for what appeared to be a movie entitled “Red Treasure (name TBC)” and Kate felt a fizz of excitement crawl down her spine. She’d been hoping for a movie script for months. Susan’s post-it told her the lead role would be perfect for her.

First, she read the plot summary
. The head anthropologist of Cowell University, Dr Stephen Connor, is informed of a newly discovered petroglyph collection in Central Australia and with a post-grad student, Isabel Maxwell, and a small team of other academics, they head into the wilderness to check it out. Right behind him is Dr Kinney, who believed these petroglyphs contained long lost instructions to the spirit world he’d been searching for and he was determined to find it first. Through several trials, they find the petroglyphs and Stephen and Isabel end up an item. It sounded terribly corny and predictable.

She flipped over to the character synopsis page and read the paragraph
on Isabel Maxwell, a newly recruited junior anthropologist on a team at the University. Isabel was described as being in her mid-20s, disordered, danger-prone, street-wise and too smart for her own good.

Dr
Stephen Connor, the boss, was in his 30s, preoccupied, brilliant, studious and afraid of many things.

S
he turned to the first page and started reading.

Suddenly, t
here was a knock on the window and Kate pulled her eyes impatiently from the comical misadventure to notice the uniform of a parking inspector.

“
Move on, please.”

She looked at the time on the dash of the car and yelled to see it was now
ten-past-six and she was going to an architecture event in 20-minutes. She’d been reading the script for an hour. Mark’d be rampant.

“
Sorry, sorry!” She waved ineffectually at the inspector and starting the ignition, quickly pulling into the traffic, ignoring the blasts from several irate drivers. She drove home as fast as she dared and pulling in with a worrying undercarriage scape onto the driveway, jumped out of the car without setting the handbrake, yelping when it started rolling backwards. She managed to awkwardly reach in and put on the handbrake before tucking her script and bag under her arm and tearing into the house, leaving the car door open.

Mark’s black face was the first thing she saw.

“Do you realise –”

“
I know, I’m sorry!” she yelled as she tripped past him and ran down the corridor to their room, stripping off her jeans while hopping and bouncing off the wall. Her shirt, cardigan and large beaded necklace hit the floor next. Kate grabbed the first dress her hand touched in the closet and threw the light green garment over her head so fast she didn’t notice it hadn’t been unzipped. Mark stomped into the room behind her.

“
Why are you so late? You should have been here an hour ago! We’re supposed to be there by now!”

Kate
struggled to pull the dress down, realising far too late she was stuck. Her hands were wiggling wackily through the arm holes while the rest of her shimmied in one spot in her underwear trying to get the dress moving downward.

“
Mark, please help!”

He muttered a curse and stamped over to her, pulling the dress zipper down so fast it nearly tore off the fabric. The dress dropped suddenly and
Kate scanned the angry face of her husband.

“
I’m sorry Mark, I’ll explain in the car. Please do me up and I’ll be there in 30-seconds.”

The zipper went up just as fast and
Kate mentally thanked the manufacturers for making robust, anti-husband-breaking zippers and slipped into a pair of gold heels while simultaneously clipping back her hair and grabbing her make-up case, earrings, another handbag and a thick wrap against the cold. She hurried the lot down the corridor, out the front door where she was so overloaded she could barely close the door. Kate ran down the path and without Mark’s help, got his car door open and fell inside, ignoring the engine revving with impatience. At least he’d locked her car for her, she noticed with relief! Huddled in the seat, her lap full of bags and accruements, she breathed a long breath only to suck it in again quickly as Mark reversed a full-throttle down the driveway and practically did a j-turn pulling into their quiet street with a squeal of tyres and tearing off down the road.

As he swung through the suburban streets on the way to the main road
, Kate slipped in her earrings, plied wobbly make-up, quickly changed purses, put the wrap around her shoulders, tossed the unneeded bags over to the back seat and settled back, her costume complete.

Mark hadn’t uttered a word to her, so content in his justified fury, expecting her to feel remorse from his silence alone
. But Kate had been with him for long enough to know his moods never lasted. She started to explain why she was running so late.

“
A script? We are late to an important event because of a stupid script?”

Now that hurt.

“It’s a great script Mark and this is the first movie I’ve ever tried for. It’d be great to get it.”

“
Is it based in Sydney?”

“
Yes, filming at Fox Studios.”

Kate
put her hand on her husband’s leg and she felt the tension go out of him. It usually only took one touch and fortunately the anger spurts were quick.

“
I’m sorry I was late.”

“
Well, I guess these things never start on time anyway so it’ll be okay.”

Kate
ran her hand up and down his thigh, relaxing him. They started to talk about his day and within ten minutes, pulled his silver Subaru WRX into the car park at the sailing club, a smiling Mark behind the wheel.

Kate did her best to hide a yawn behind her champagne class.

These events bored the curls off her
. Mark always went because of the potential business and she could see him talking earnestly with a man of Mediterranean appearance on the other side of the room. Mark encouraged her to get better acquainted with his associates and she tried, she really did, but they had so little in common. And here she was in the corner, holding yet another glass of champagne and trying to blend in with the foliage behind her, which wasn’t as hard as she thought, considering her unfortunate clothing choice.

T
he dress she’d grabbed in her hurry was a light green summer frock embroidered with daisies, so not only was she uninteresting, she was also underdressed. The wrap hid most of her mistake but it only added embarrassment to the interminable torment of the evening.

Kate
looked at her watch again, noting with a pang that it was only one minute since her last check.

The room did have a great view across Pittwater, however, which was the only thing that entertained her
. The dark, fractured water glittered from the mass of street lights and mansions lining the narrow bay, bouncing off the pleasure craft rocking gently in the glow.

“
I see that silly husband of yours has left you alone again.”

Kate
involuntarily shivered and raised her shoulder sat the voice of Norm Treyelli, a senior lecturer at the University of NSW; a regular conversant of Mark’s and someone who always made her feel grotty. A family man and conservative Christian, he had produced seven children with his wife Patrice and yet still went out of his way to chat up other women, wives especially. He was of average height, not average girth, a bulbous nose, pallid skin and only a thin ring of black and grey hair around his head. She forced a polite smile and replied:
“
Not at all, the plant here and I have made great acquaintance.”

He laughed his horrible, grating guffaw for far longer than necessary
.

“
You’re a funny girl. Could I get you another drink?”

Kate
’s glass was still full.

“
No. As you can see I have plenty.”

“
Fair enough, fair enough. Lovely dress by the way.” He leaned forward to peer down her top for emphasis.

A small voice peeped from behind
him, “Norm, I couldn’t find any more crackers with prawns but I did find smoked salmon and beef.”

Norm
lifted his eyes toward the ceiling, puffed out an annoyed huff and turned to his wife, who was timidly holding a plate with several round crackers piled high with the procured food. Patrice was of medium build and was dressed in an above-the-knee unflattering dress of brown shaped like a rectangle. It accentuated the post-baby belly and made her wide shoulders look droopy. Plain, black flats were on her unstockinged feet. She was only in her late 30s but looked 15-years older, with her ash hair full of grey and her skin haggard.

Norm leant fo
rward and hissed quietly at her, “you silly woman! You know I don’t like smoked salmon and beef is cheap. Can’t you get anything right? Find me some prawns, now.”

Kate
’s hackles went up.

After Patrice disappeared behind the plant, Norm returned his nauseating attention back to
Kate.

“
So! Are you still acting on that little soap?”

Kate
kept her face neutral.

“
Yes.”

“
Well, good on you for having those sorts of… interests!” He looked proud of himself for that term. “I suppose children will be coming along soon and you’ll be quitting the job?”

That was enough
. The feminist and hopeful mother-to-be in Kate couldn’t shut up any more.

“
Actually Norm,” she said sweetly, “I’m not having children. My figure is far too important to be ruined by breeding and how will I become a great Hollywood actor if I’m towing a brood of brats?”