Set Me Free (2 page)

‘That wasn’t the
point of the trip,’ Charlotte reminded them. ‘I was getting away from a man, not
looking for one.’

‘You know,
Charlotte,’ said Emily, ‘sometimes I think you have it all back to front. Every
time you go overseas you're on the run from someone. With all this travel,
there must be dozens of opportunities to run
into
someone that go
begging. You know, a ‘no strings attached’ kind of collision.'

‘Well, that was
hardly going to happen this time with Mum in tow,’ Charlotte said to Emily. To
Ben she said, ‘She’s all talk, you know. Emily’s not a ‘no strings attached’
kind of girl.'

Ben shrugged and Charlotte
beamed at him, delighted to be there with him, breathing in the aroma of
freshly ground coffee beans. This morning, this place smelt more like home than
her stale apartment.

She zoned out
again and looked around to see if anything had changed in the last few weeks. Bean
Drinkin’ was busy as usual; the locals loved it. Mostly for the coffee, but the
atmosphere, created by the 1970s schoolroom décor, was a significant draw card
as well. Vintage wooden desks with flipping tops or built-in shelves and
matching wooden chairs filled the space. One of the walls was painted with
blackboard chalk and decorated with the scrawl of a hundred doodling customers.
The other main wall was covered in posters advertising gigs and events, which
added to the schoolroom feel. Just below a flyer promoting M Talbot’s show, Charlotte
spotted a poster advertising her brother’s band, Reality Cheque.

‘Is Andy coming up
to play?’ she asked her sister, interrupting a whispered conversation between
her and Ben.

‘Yeah, in a few
weeks. He wants to stay with you, I think. Maybe some of the band too. You
should give him a call when you get a chance.'   

‘So have you
washed Mr Jackson Phillips out of your hair then?’ Ben asked. Charlotte gave
Emily a look before she answered. Interesting that they’d both used the same
turn of phrase.

‘Indeed,’ she said.
‘What the hell was I thinking?’

‘Probably that if
he was as much fun in the bedroom as he was on the dance floor then you were on
a winner,’ said Emily, gazing out towards the street.

Charlotte groaned.
‘That’s just it. Jackson is a self-indulgent dancer, and he was a self-indulgent
boyfriend.’

Her fling with
Jackson, her swing dance partner, had lasted all of two months. They fell into
it through a mutual attraction, but as it turned out, he was a thoroughly
disinterested boyfriend who spent most of their time together talking about
himself; which made him a thoroughly
un
interesting boyfriend.  

She continued to
berate them. ‘You know, I rely on you two, my sister and my best friend to let
me know when I’m doing something stupid. Where were you?'

‘Well I, for one,
knew it wouldn’t last, so I didn’t see the point of interfering,’ Emily declared.

‘And I didn’t
think he was all that bad,’ defended Ben.

‘Are you serious? 
You men have such low standards. And you,’ she directed to Emily, ‘thanks for
the vote of confidence.’

‘Oh come on,
Charlotte. You’ve never had a relationship last longer than six months. You
have a commitment phobia,’ Emily retorted.

‘I do not. I
commit to things. Look at the gallery. I’ve been running it for five years.' Sure,
she wasn’t one for lasting relationships, but that was only because she hadn’t
found the right man. Better to be selective than to settle.

‘It doesn’t count.
I’m talking about people.’

‘I’m committed to
you.’

‘I’m your sister,
you’ve got no choice.’

‘Well, I’m
committed to Ben.’

‘Friends and
neighbours don’t count.’ Ben joined in, taking Emily’s side.

Charlotte furrowed
her brow at him.

‘Well, I think
she’s right,’ he continued. ‘You pick men who aren’t good enough for you. Ones
that you’ll get sick of and get rid of in a few weeks or months, if they’re
lucky enough to last that long.’

‘That’s rich coming
from you, Casanova,’ Charlotte retorted.

Ben had a conga
line of women dancing through Bean Drinkin’, all shamelessly fawning over him, desperate
for his attention. Tall, good-looking and a master at an espresso machine, he
had no trouble finding a date. Maintaining his interest beyond that date was
another thing altogether.

‘I’m feeling a
little picked on here,’ Charlotte said. ‘What have you two been up to in my
absence?  Dissecting my life?’

‘Not at all. This
is the first time you’ve come up,’ Emily said.

‘Why don’t I
believe that?' Charlotte asked, glaring at them both through narrowed eyes. Tired
of the scrutiny, she opted to deflect the attention away from herself. ‘So what
has
come up while I’ve been away then?  What’s new?'

‘Same old, same
old,’ Ben said quickly, shifting in his seat a little and looking towards the
queue forming at the counter. Emily blurted out a sudden ‘oomph’ and reached
down under the table, glaring at Ben as she did. There was something suspicious
about the way they were fidgeting that Charlotte, in her lethargic state,
couldn’t quite pinpoint.

As Charlotte
looked docilely between them, Emily jumped up and declared she had to go. She gathered
her bag before giving Ben a kiss on the cheek, hissing something in his ear,
and then coming around the table to hug her sister. ‘I’ll drop in for lunch and
make sure you’re still awake. Bye.’

She was gone,
limping slightly, before Charlotte managed to get her goodbye out. The jetlag had
her on a time delay.

‘I should get back
to work too,’ said Ben, rising just as abruptly.

‘Hmm,’ Charlotte
murmured, puzzled. Something was certainly amiss, but she couldn’t quite grasp
it. Ben switched on the coffee grinder behind the counter and it roared into
life, drowning out her unasked questions. Oh well, she'd just have to figure it
out later.

‘I should get to
work too, I guess,’ she said to no one in particular as she dragged herself to
her feet. ‘You better keep those coffees coming,’ she called to Ben over the
top of the grinder as she weaved her way out of the café. ‘I’ll be back.’

Craig
Carmichael ran his hand through his cropped hair, leaving several sandy tufts
standing up. He loosened his tie and shrugged uncomfortably in his grey,
pin-striped suit jacket, wishing he’d left them both in the car. Damn, it was
hot out. He rubbed his five o’clock shadow and closed his eyes for a count of three,
before pushing open the door of the Evans Gallery with the weariness of a man
who had spent the day being harangued and generally told to fuck off. Thankfully,
the day was coming to an end, and he was about to have the last of those
conversations.

All in all, it had been
a very shit day. Things had started to go sour on his way to the office when
that bright yellow Morris had cut him off on Kingsford Smith Drive. After that,
the traffic had seemed to conspire against him.

Things didn’t get any
better when he walked into his 9am meeting.

His boss and late
father’s long time business partner, Keith Morgan, was in one of his
ball-breaking moods. Almost comically, Keith was the archetypal 1970s
Queensland businessman. Now in his late 60’s, he still favoured short-sleeved
shirts with ties and shorts with long socks.

There was nothing
comical about him today. Two things were putting Keith on edge:  his annual
Melbourne Cup garden party scheduled for tomorrow afternoon and the West End
community meeting they had booked in for Wednesday night.

Every year Keith felt
obliged to host the Melbourne Cup party, despite grumbling for months before
and afterwards about how much it cost him, how everyone was sponging off him
and how much of a mess it made of his lawns. His wife Miranda considered the
event pivotal to maintaining her social standing and in the interest of a happy
marriage, he went along with it, although not quietly.

Community meetings were
another thing Keith went along with, also under audible duress. At Craig’s
insistence, Morgan Carmichael Property Developments had a policy of talking
directly to the people affected by their proposed infill developments. Consultation
with the locals was a known way to minimise resistance. But Keith passionately
didn’t give a crap what the community thought and hated doing the meetings for
the waste of time he was convinced they were. In fact, he begrudged the whole
arm of the business Craig headed up. He was especially riled about Wednesday’s
meeting because the West End community in particular, had a long and troubled
relationship with developers and their proposals.

‘These,’ Keith
announced, jabbing the whiteboard at the front of the conference room with his
index finger, ‘are our current projects. Does anyone notice anything unusual
about this?’ he thundered.

Accustomed to his
habit of asking questions to which he wasn’t looking for an answer, none of the
eight men gathered around the table offered a response.

‘Five out of the
ten of them are bloody infill developments. Most of which have needed the
acquisition and demolition of existing property, and consequently, have been
dragged out to the point of almost costing us money. Or they have attracted bad
press for the company. I’ve just about had enough of this racket, Carmichael,’
he said, going for Craig’s balls first. ‘There’s still plenty of farmland in
this state ripe for development. We need to go back to basics, and I say the
new suburbs are the sites we should be focusing on. We know they make more
money, and they come with a lot less hassle. I have had a gutful of pandering
to bloody community groups.’

‘So you’ve said
before, Keith,’ Craig responded. This was generally the tone of the weekly Director’s
meeting whenever a community forum was imminent. ‘And as I’ve said before,
hiding away from the locals will only make them more hostile. We need to let
them feel like they've been consulted, even if we do disregard what they want.'

Craig continued
before Keith had a chance to jump down his throat. ‘You know, you might also
want to ask yourself why half of our current projects are being driven by one
division and every other division of the company is just delivering one major. Although,’
he drawled, ‘it’s not really my place to comment on that.' Craig eased back
into his chair and listened with satisfaction as the sound of fidgeting filled
the room.

He had to work
five times as hard as the other directors to sustain his division, and it was
blatantly obvious to anyone who paused for thought that the other five
divisional heads were coasting, riding on his success.

Unfortunately, as
Craig well knew, although the apartment market was booming when he established
the Infill Development Division at Morgan Carmichael; the wave of success had
crested, and they were on the verge of getting dunked in the wash.

Mark Andrews,
always the peacemaker, was quick to add to the discussion. Mark was the head of
marketing, and not one of the divisional heads failing to bring in new projects.
‘Keith has a point,’ he said. ‘We aren’t making as much money as we used to. The
apartment market has turned to shit. The young and upwardly mobile haven't only
stopped buying, they’ve stopped moving out of the family nest. The only ones
still in the market are young families with upper middle-class aspirations
demanding a McMansion for under $500K. And they’ll live in the middle of
nowhere and drive an hour to work every day to have that.’

Craig had a
healthy deference for Mark and his cynical disrespect for his fellow man. It
made him brilliant at his job.  

Although he shared
Mark’s disdain for humankind, the idealist in Craig hadn’t yet been crushed. He'd
grown up watching his father lead the charge of turning farmland into suburbia,
buying up great swathes of property, subdividing the life out of it and selling
it with promises of the perfect lifestyle. It never sat comfortably with him.

After school, he declined
the offer to move straight into a well-paid job under his father’s wing and
instead insisted on studying town planning. It was there that he discovered a
whole world of possibilities that Morgan Carmichael was ignoring, and things
began to fall into place. He learnt that the perfect lifestyle came in as many
different shapes and sizes as the people living it.

He also found his
true passion in discovering the potential of the forgotten parts of the city. The
old factories, warehouses and other disused buildings that littered the inner suburbs
captivated him and became his obsession. The promise of realising their hidden
potential and concocting the perfect mix of past and present drove him to want
to design buildings and neighbourhoods of character and distinction. They were
a sharp contrast to the monotony and isolation of the suburbs his father built.

They’d had a good
run with the infill developments. But now, eight years later, the market was
slowing. The crusader in him wanted to persevere; however, he was finally
willing to admit that if they didn’t make a strategic move soon, they would
start to lose money, especially given the rest of the team were riding his
coattails. There was some satisfaction to be found in the knowledge that if it
weren’t for his accursed infill projects, Morgan Carmichael would have ground
to a halt already.  

‘Too bloody
right,’ agreed Keith, referring to Mark’s observations about the market. He
proceeded to ball out each of the divisional heads one by one, demanding an
explanation for why they weren’t bringing in the goods and turning over the
profits. The room quickly filled with a lot of hot air and excuses.

After an hour of
it, Keith had had enough.

‘Alright then. This
is what we are going to do about it. Craig, no new projects for you – I want
you to focus on wrapping up the ones underway. Ditch any new ideas and ones
we’re yet to invest in. I want half of your team redirected to helping out the
rest of these bozos.’

Craig interjected.
‘Are you shutting me down?’

‘No. You can keep
your little hobby. But let me warn you, this bloody Boundary Street development
in West End had better work out, or there’ll be hell to pay.’

Craig’s patience
had worn thin. He was working his arse off, and Keith’s amplified attack on his
division was unwarranted. He was not going to lie down and take it.

‘I’d hardly call
fifty per cent of the company’s projects a little hobby,’ he said, leaning
forward in his chair and resting his forearms on the edge of the table.

‘I need you in
other areas, Craig. You need to be bringing in profitable business, not these
little macramé projects.’

‘These little
macramé projects are profitable, Keith.' Well, for now.

Craig picked the
wrong day to push Keith’s buttons. Keith exhaled a long, furious gust of wind. ‘You'd
better fucking prove it then, son. If you don’t make sure this Boundary Street
development works out, I will shut you down and put you on to something else
whether you like it or not.’

Equally livid,
Craig rose to his feet. ‘I’ll tell you what, Keith. If this Boundary Street
development doesn’t succeed, I will do you one better. I will leave Morgan
Carmichael, and you won’t need to suffer me and my hobbies any longer. But when
it does succeed,
when
it succeeds, you're going to back off and let me
run the division how I want. I can assure you, the money will keep rolling in.’

The silence was
deafening as their colleagues passed furtive looks amongst themselves.

‘Very well then,’
seethed Keith, glaring at Craig. Turning his attention to the rest of the room,
he barked, ‘and the rest of you, sort your shit out.' The men scampered from
the room as Craig gave Keith one final glower.

No sooner had
Craig returned to his office, than he took a call from the financier of the now
pivotal Boundary Street development. Their financial backers were concerned
about the timeframes for the project and needed some movement on it before
Christmas. He was pushing Craig to bring forward the planning approvals, which
was not something Craig had a lot of control over.

His stress levels
elevating, Craig hung up the phone and asked Margie, his personal assistant, to
summon the team together. He broke the news to them that some of them were to
be reassigned, and the ones who would remain now had their careers riding on
the success of Boundary Street. He studied their reactions. The best people
were forming their plans to leave right before his eyes. All of them were
pissed off. They were a strong team who were good at their jobs, and they didn’t
appreciate having them threatened.

By lunch time,
Craig was beginning to regret his provocation.

By late afternoon,
he found himself in West End talking to angry locals.

The Evans Gallery
was his last stop before he called it a day. It was next to the Vietnamese restaurant,
where he’d been called all manner of names, none of which were interpreted by
the teenage girl blushing furiously and trying to calm her confused and
panicked parents. On the other side was the café called Bean Drinkin’, where
the coffee was the finest he’d tasted in a while, but the owner was surly and
scowled at him with pure distaste.

He anticipated
more of the same when he entered the gallery. A little golden bell above the
door tinkled daintily as he walked in. He noticed two things immediately: the
intriguing painting on the wall to his right and the beguiling woman smiling
lazily at him from behind a sleek-looking asymmetrical 1960s Danish-styled desk.
Unsettled by the pair of slightly smoky grey eyes that came with the lazy
smile, he moved directly toward the painting to take it in.

The canvas was
large; it took up almost a quarter of the wall. The image was a view down a
narrow alley corralled by stark grey skyscrapers that, thanks to the wash of
the paint strokes, appeared to be crumbling. At the end of the alley, a small
dog with a broken tail lay beside an old-fashioned dustbin, chewing a small,
bright red ball.

‘Hi,’ welcomed the
woman behind the counter. Her voice was as tired as her eyes and smile, but
there was still something smouldering under the surface, like a combusting rain
cloud. ‘Can I help you with anything in particular or would you just like to
browse?’

‘Can you tell me
anything about this piece?’ he asked, unwisely. She stood up to join him, swinging
her hips as she walked, subtly but hypnotically. This might turn out to be the
hardest conversation of them all; particularly given he was struggling to keep
his eyes on her face and off those swinging hips. He looked up. Nope, no
respite there. Her soft face was just as absorbing.   

‘This piece is by
of one of our regular exhibitors, Emily Evans,’ she told him. ‘The whole
exhibition is her work, if you’d like to look around.’

He did, briefly,
though remaining rooted to the spot. He took in a room of stark white walls
covered in similar work and noticed a small archway leading to a second,
equally simple room, within which he glanced more. Emily Evans appeared to have
some talent.

‘This is good,’ he
said, and meant it. He gazed intently at the picture. It was the safest thing to
look at in the room.

‘I know. She’s
clever isn’t she?' The swinging hips had inched a little closer. There was a distinct
tone of pride in her voice.

‘Emily Evans,’ he
pondered aloud. ‘Any connection to the gallery?’