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Authors: Kathy Lette

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BOOK: Love Is Blind
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‘It’s all right for you!’ Jane snapped, shrilly. ‘I’m tired of opening my own honey jars. And pretending to know what to do with a socket set.’ Tears ran down her cheeks. ‘You’ve never even had to change your own smoke alarm batteries, have you? You’ve always had a man around.’

Anthea wilted a little at the sight of Jane’s tears. ‘I’m sorry you haven’t been lucky in love. But face facts, Jane. Australian men will bonk anything that moves and then count the legs
afterwards.
You must want something better than that for yourself.’

Her sister instantly stopped crying. ‘You really do exceed the Daily Recommended Allowance of Smug, do you know that, Anthea? Now, move!’ Sturdily built Jane flicked her delicate sister out of her way like a fly.

Anthea’s nerves were now shrieking louder than the rusty hinges of an old door. ‘You can’t go!’ It came out as a shrill command. ‘What would Mum and Dad have said?’

‘I don’t know. But they’re not here, are they? And the one thing I’ve learnt from losing our parents, is that life is short. You must seize the day. And I’m seizing the day like there’s no tomorrow.’

‘Oh, Jane, when are you going to grow up?’

‘When are
you
going to grow down? You never do anything just for fun. It all has to be sensible and planned to the last detail with you.’

‘Jane! Dear Jane. Answer this man’s request and you’re admitting you’re desperate.’ Anthea poked her head through the passenger window. ‘Where is your dignity?’

Jane scoffed, with an expression more sour than vinegar, ‘Dignity is a waste of time for
plain
women. Like hair-gel for bald men. ‘’Bye.’ She let out the clutch quickly. Anthea just had time to jump back as the car lurched away from the kerb.

Though she was fuming, Anthea knew this idea of Jane’s wouldn’t last. Just like all her other harebrained schemes. She’d taught classical music in prison. Had put on concerts for Romanian orphans. Set up a fund in memory of their dear, departed parents … Her latest fad would fizzle out like all the rest.

Anthea took a taxi home through the leafy calm of Hyde Park. They passed the shimmering shop windows of Knightsbridge. For a moment she felt relieved that their dear mother wasn’t alive to witness her sister’s latest mad idea.

The cab cruised on past the quaint, cobbled courtyards and manicured lawns of Chelsea. Anthea wondered how anyone could hope to find a husband in the dusty desert of the Australian Outback. A place where the men had only one communication skill – to whistle or beep their car horns as they passed by. Her poor parents would be turning in their watery graves.

The cab finally pulled up outside her glittering Thames-side apartment. She had bought it with her inheritance, at Rupert’s firm suggestion. Anthea hadn’t been so sure. But he adored their modern chrome-and-glass cube sitting above the rushing tidal waters of the Thames. It had even won a prize for its design.

With its steep stairs and sharp edges, it wasn’t exactly a family home. A fact which Anthea had pointed out to Rupert. But he had promised that once they married and had children, he would cash in his shares. They’d buy a big home with land in the country. Somewhere with stables and a moat and a maze, a tennis court and tree house for their many children … But for now, he insisted, this central location suited them perfectly.

Anthea glanced up at her apartment with pride. Then shuddered at the thought of her sister’s mad trip into the windswept, dingo-infested wilds of the Aussie Outback. It would all go terribly wrong.

When Jane skulked back into London, Anthea would have to try hard not to have an attack of the ‘I told you so’s’. Two weeks – that was all she gave it. Two to three weeks, she thought, with a
long-suffering
sigh. Then she would be helping Jane put her life back on track.

She paid the taxi driver, tipping him well. She ascended the marble staircase to her flat and stepped into the arms of her perfect boyfriend.

Chapter Two

Lust At First Sight

WHEN THE WEDDING
invitation plopped through the letterbox and on to the mat exactly one month later, Anthea fell back on to the sofa in shock. Her eyes were round as light bulbs. She made a noise like a tyre going flat. Jane … getting married? Anthea just couldn’t believe her little sister was going to beat her down the aisle. Even if it
was
with some kind of caveman.

‘A brother-in-law from the Outback. Oh, a dream come true,’ Rupert drawled, peering over Anthea’s shoulder at the wedding invitation. ‘Jane’s a classical musician, for God’s sake. I didn’t think she even
liked
the Great Outdoors, with all its multi-legged insects.’

‘Ah, but she does like being bitten all over by desirable men … And the best place to find
them
is in the Great Outdoors. Apparently.’ Anthea scrunched up the invitation and threw it in the vague direction of the waste-paper basket. ‘It’s the snooze alarm.’

‘The what?’ Rupert put down his Italian leather briefcase and unknotted his Armani tie.

‘The snooze alarm’s gone off on her biological clock.’

‘But the silly girl’s only known the man for a month. Where did she find him … a fiancé vending machine?’ Rupert asked, retrieving the crumpled invitation from the floor and placing it neatly in the bin. ‘He can only be after her money. She must have told him how much money your mum and dad left you both in their will.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’ Anthea handed him a glass of rich, golden wine. ‘My sister’s wedding vows should state, “Do you take this woman to the cleaners, from this day forth, for richer and for richer? … I now pronounce you Man and Mansion.”’

‘Looks as though this is one lucky miner who has finally struck gold,’ Rupert agreed.

‘I tell you what, if our parents hadn’t died in that boat accident, their daughter marrying a
gold-digging
low life would have killed them instead.’

‘I fear so, my darling. If only there were something I could do to help …’

Anthea still could not help feeling protective towards Jane. ‘We’ve got to stop them. We must leave on the first plane.’

‘For the Australian Outback?’ Rupert shuddered. ‘Yes, great place to visit – if you’re a sheep. How did Jane find this … Aussie?’ He uttered the word with distaste, as though it tasted foul and was tainting his tastebuds.

‘I told you, don’t you remember? She answered that ad in a newspaper, from the mayor of some mining town. He suggested ugly women should move there because the men were so desperate, they weren’t too fussy.’

Rupert shook his head and gave a world-weary sigh at the stupidity of mere mortals. ‘Why is it that all the other members of the animal world pair off happily, without the aid of speed dating and internet love sites? Why is it only the human of the species who needs encouragement to mate? We didn’t need any help getting together, did we, darling?’ He drew her towards him for a soft, lingering kiss.

For Anthea and Rupert it had been love at first sight. She’d adored him from the day she’d accidentally eaten Exhibit A. Truly. She’d been waiting in his office to discuss a legal case and had consumed the evidence – a piece of chocolate which had been left lying on his desk.

When Rupert discovered her crime, instead of throwing her off the case, he merely commented that any judge would go ahead and hold her in contempt of court – or just hold her. She had laughed with relief. To apologise, she’d bought him a drink that very night. Two days later, they were in bed together. ‘I’m a human rights lawyer,’ Rupert had pleaded, with mischief in his eye. ‘I’m so depressed about the state of the world, I really don’t think I can spend the night alone …’

Anthea looked up at her fiancé now as he swept one hand through his schoolboy mop of dark, floppy hair. It fell over his forehead in an endearing sweep. His smile was so bright it could act as a beacon for round-the-world yachtsmen adrift on the ocean. He flashed it at her now as he unbuttoned his shirt. He flexed his gym-toned muscles – muscles so perfect
they
wouldn’t have looked out of place on a marble statue – and ran one hand up under her skirt while staring into her eyes. Rupert’s even profile, square jaw and black-rimmed glasses always made her think of Clark Kent. By day, he looked so earnest, go-getting and smart in his pin-stripe suit. Then at night he was wild as the Caped Crusader. Removing his glasses was Rupert’s signal that he was in the mood to go over to the Dark Side …

Anthea watched her fiancé place his specs on the coffee table and, taking her cue, snuggled herself deeper into his arms. She inhaled his familiar scent as he pulled her down on to the shag-pile rug.

Afterwards, they lay entwined on the living-room floor, as if their limbs had been deliberately styled for an advert. The waves of the incoming tide lapped at the stone wall below the apartment. Their living room, a glass cube, hung suspended over a private infinity pool. ‘An infinity pool? Oh, where will it all end?’ Rupert had joked the day he’d advised her to put down the deposit.

‘So I’ll book flights for Friday then, shall I? We have to get there before it’s too late.’ The
June
sunlight flickered through the fronds of a potted palm. Despite the calm all around them, Anthea felt her boyfriend jerk in surprise at her question. ‘Rupert?’

He winced. ‘I don’t think I can get away from work right now, darling. Besides which, maybe Jane’s right? Single, hetero men in London are definitely harder to find than Melanie Griffith’s birth certificate. Jane has at last found a man who wants to marry her. Maybe we should just let her go ahead?’

‘Are you insane! The point is, if I intervene now there will be less of a mess to clean up later.’

‘But face facts. If Jane were any uglier she’d need to get her mirrors insured. And maybe that mayor’s got a point? What other chance do plain Janes like her have?’

‘The best thing about having a sister, Rupert, is that when she doesn’t know what she’s doing, there is always someone else who does. Namely me. In our teens, I stopped Jane from going out with more inappropriate men than I care to remember!’

‘But being single in her thirties probably does make a woman rethink her view of what is “inappropriate”, Annie.’

Anthea gave her future husband a flat, measuring look. Whenever he called her ‘Annie’, it meant that he was trying to get out of something – taking out the rubbish, a function at her office … naming their wedding date. ‘So, I take it you’re not coming with me to Australia to save my sister?’

‘Think about it, babe. If I walk into a bar in a mining town, I’ll accidentally set off the Wanker City Lawyer Detector and get pulverised. Besides, I’ve had a tip off about the markets. I think the time is nearly right to sell my shares …’

Anthea’s eyes lit up. ‘Really?’ Selling his shares was Rupert’s coded way of saying that he was finally ready to marry her, settle down and have children.

He squeezed her closer to him. ‘I think the time is right, don’t you?’ he said, in a voice dripping with honey, ‘to make the ultimate long-term investment …’

‘Oh, sweetheart, I do, I really do.’ She kissed him deeply.

‘I’m sure you’ll do what’s best for that sad sis of yours.’ Rupert was nodding his head sympathetically, but his mind was somewhere else. He was thinking about the stock market, his
current
case … Anthea was too excited by the prospect of her own wedding arrangements to be annoyed by his distracted manner.

‘Besides, you’ll be back in no time.’ There was a tone of smug certainty in his voice. ‘Jane’s just trying to get one up on you. There probably is no fiancé.’ Then he snatched the invitation out of the bin where he’d tossed it earlier. ‘She’s calling him Bill Jackman, eh?’ Rupert sounded amused. ‘Well, even if he does exist, one peep at your sister naked and it will all be over.’

Anthea felt a flicker of irritation. Yes, Jane was annoying but she was still family. ‘My sister’s not that bad-looking, Rupert.’

‘I know … I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that she will insist on stuffing herself with fast food. She should take a heavily pregnant woman with her everywhere she goes, just to make her look slimmer.’

Although tempted to laugh, Anthea clicked her tongue in disapproval.

Rupert stroked her thigh. ‘
You
won the genetic lottery though, didn’t you? Sometimes I can’t believe you’re not adopted. And I can’t wait to make you my wife. Just think of the beautiful children we’ll produce.’

Anthea smiled indulgently at her husband-to-be and nestled securely in the crook of his arm, like a baby.

Chapter Three

Hate At First Sight

WHEN ANTHEA FIRST
saw the Outback town near to which her sister intended to make her home, it was hate at first sight. It was hard to say what she hated most about it. Was it the heat? The air was so dry the trees were positively whistling for dogs, and the chickens were laying hard-boiled eggs.

Or was it maybe the ‘super pit’? The open-cut mine looked as vast and deep as the Grand Canyon. Massive trucks, each wheel the size of a seaside bungalow, toiled up and down its raw, red slopes – day in, day out.

No, the sewage pit had to be worse. It sent up an unspeakable stench in the sun and attracted a black fog of flies. Worse even than that was the Aboriginal settlement. There were rows of windowless dormitories where she was appalled
to
discover that whole families lived. These identical cement structures were built between the two pits – the sewage and the super.

But surely the worst aspect of Broken Ridge mining town was the casual racism. ‘What did Jesus say to the Abos when he was up on the cross?’ her cab driver bantered on the way there. She tried not to stare at his vast buttocks spilling over the bucket seat. ‘Don’t do anything till I get back!’

Anthea had recoiled in horror. But even more unnerving than the casual racism were the many bars and brothels she saw. Her driver had bragged that they were all open ‘24/7’ to accommodate the men on shift work. ‘They offer around the cock service,’ he guffawed, running his bitten nails through his thinning hair. ‘Those girls are working away at, well, beaver pitch!’

BOOK: Love Is Blind
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