Set Me Free (20 page)

Charlotte
was having a shit week. It should have been a great week.

Staring at Tyson
Heller’s gloriously kitsch sculptures, she made a mental list of all the things
she should be celebrating.

Firstly, a very
sheepish and apologetic Andy dropped in to the gallery on Tuesday morning, on
his way to the airport for the flight home to Melbourne. Even the tinkle of the
doorbell was hangdog when he walked in.

When she looked up
and saw him, as much as she wanted to run to him and draw him into an enormous
hug, Charlotte waited with a white-knuckled grip on the desk before her, to see
what he had to say.

‘Hey.’

‘Hello.’

‘I fucked up,
huh?’

Charlotte nodded,
choking on the lump in her throat.

‘I’m sorry, Char.’

‘Me too,’ she
managed, before she dashed across the gallery and drew him into that hug.

‘Please stop it,
Andy,’ she begged.

After a pause he
said, ‘I will.’

They shared a
coffee at Bean Drinkin’ and talked for an hour about anything else: Emily’s
exhibition, Emily and Geoff, Dianne and her refusal to date anyone, Ben and his
willingness to date just about anybody. The discussion of the latter topic was
stage-whispered while its subject regularly interjected from behind his
espresso machine.

When Charlotte and
Andy said goodbye, there were promises made: Andy agreed to try a counsellor. It
was a small step, but enough for Charlotte. For now.

On Tuesday
afternoon, a miracle walked in to the gallery in the form of Tyson Heller. M
Talbot’s exhibition was due to come down on Friday, but Charlotte had been too
distracted to organise another exhibitor. The chaos of her life was
all-consuming. If she didn’t snap out of it soon, her financial reserves would
dry up, and she’d be out on her arse, development or not.

Before Tyson
walked in, it had just dawned on her that she couldn’t fall back on Emily any
more when she came up short. Especially now Emily’s exhibition at the
Moorehouse Gallery was less than two weeks away. Gareth Moorehouse would have
her head on a platter if she tried that on. But then, in walked Tyson with his
portfolio tucked under his arm, come to see if she'd consider exhibiting his
work.

His work was
brilliant. He was a junk sculptor who created oversized shoes, handbags and
other fashion accessories exclusively out of old, classic 1980s toys. The
effect was brilliant, colourful and nostalgic. The appeal would be broad. Charlotte
asked him if he had enough pieces to open on Friday. He was floored, then
overjoyed, and they agreed to a hasty and simplistic social media campaign by
way of advertising. By Thursday, it was clear it was already working, and the
possible turnout was looking promising.

On Wednesday, she
lodged the Boundary Street Preservation Group’s submission objecting to Morgan
Carmichael’s development proposal. After the workshop debacle; where, backed
into a corner she discovered the secret to lying was to add a hint of ridicule;
the group agreed to object on the grounds the proposed design didn’t fit with
the existing streetscape. No surprises there. They also argued the building
would be overdevelopment of the lot and drew attention to the heritage value of
the existing building, although Charlotte wouldn’t rest their case on that. More
and more she was noticing the ricketiness of the structure she spent her days
within.

The pro rata legal
advice she’d finally gotten from one of Ben’s regulars suggested they had a
strong case, but her fate, and Ben’s, and the Hoangs, was now in the hands of
the city council. They had to wait.  

It wasn’t the only
thing she was waiting for. And it was the other thing that was getting her
down, despite all the wins that were coming her way. She hadn’t seen or heard
from Craig since she’d turfed him out of her apartment. Sure, she'd told him to
stay away, but her conviction was proving difficult to stand by. Was he feeling
it too?  Probably not, given he was doing exactly as she'd requested. So there
was no point waiting, hoping he’d drop by.

Still, she
couldn’t stop herself from looking up expectantly at the sound of her doorbell.
Just as she did now, to see Ben walk in. She smiled a compulsive smile, which
vanished when she took in his grave expression.

He was carrying a
letter.

‘Oh no,’ she said
and began rummaging through the mail she’d set aside for later. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s been
approved,’ Ben informed her.

‘What?  How can
that be?  The submissions only closed yesterday!’ Finding it, she ripped open
her letter and scanned it, right down to Craig’s signature at the bottom. It
was indeed formal advice the development had been approved. They had to be out
in six weeks, before the building came down.

The doorbell
tinkled again and Li and Jin bustled in, their eyes wide.

‘What does it
mean, Charlotte?’ Li demanded, clearly confused by the cryptic piece of
correspondence.

Charlotte needed
time to read it properly. It was written in the technical language of planners
she once knew well, but it had been a while since she’d been conversant. She
needed some time to pull it apart.

‘I’m not sure,
Li,’ she explained. ‘But I think it means the development has been approved. I
don’t really understand how it could be though because I thought all of the
objections needed to be addressed first. Given submissions only closed
yesterday, they couldn’t possibly have done that. And this letter says nothing
about a right to appeal. We should be receiving advice we have the right to
appeal, not our eviction notices.’

‘So it is an
eviction notice!’ shrieked Li. Jin put a soothing hand on her shoulder and
consoled her softly in Vietnamese. It worked a little, her pitch dropped an
octave. ‘It says six weeks. How can we find a new place in six weeks?’

Oh God. The weight
of guilt increased exponentially on Charlotte’s shoulders. Li and Jin had
apparently opted to ignore the development proposal in the good faith Charlotte
would find an answer and rescue them. Their belief in her seemed perverse right
now. They hadn’t even been working on their Plan B. Charlotte patted Li’s arm
gently. ‘Let me see what I can find out. Something seems amiss,’ she said.

She wanted to tell
them to go and get to work on that backup plan, but something held her back. Spinning
with confusion of her own, she couldn’t bring herself to panic them even more
by admitting she didn’t know what to do. Better to keep up the brave face and
take charge attitude.

After several more
minutes of questions and suppressed hysteria, Jin guided Li back to the
restaurant to prepare for the lunch crowd. Once they were gone, Ben was a
little more candid. ‘There’s something fishy in this,’ he said, staring blankly
at the letter in his hand.

‘Mmm,’ Charlotte
mused, staring at her own and feeling her stomach knot.

Ben read her mind.
‘Are you going to call him?’

Charlotte stared
at the letter for a few moments longer before looking at her friend.

‘I don’t think I
can,’ she mumbled. Was this why he was staying away?  If so, it was a good
thing she’d taken a stand when she did. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. It
was only now, when he was appeared to be winning, that she finally accepted the
truth Craig really was going to tear the gallery down. What had she been
thinking?  That he would fall in love with her and change his mind?

‘What happened?’
Ben asked gently, watching her inner turmoil play out across her face.

‘I trusted him,’
she said simply. But it wasn’t Craig who had betrayed her. She'd betrayed
herself.

Ben, thankfully,
didn’t press her. That was one of the perks of having a man in the role of best
friend. He didn’t quiz her for her secrets. He just pulled her into a quick hug
and squeezed her tight.

Releasing her, Ben
suggested they fire up her laptop. ‘Let’s see if we can make any sense of it. Then
you’ve got a launch to prepare for, don’t forget.’

Charlotte looked
around the gallery. Most of Tyson’s pieces were already in place. Her favourite
piece, a three foot high stiletto sculpted out of He-Man characters, held pride
of place in the centre of the floor. The catering was due to be delivered at
4pm, and the little kitchen was stacked with wine and beer. There wasn’t much
more than a last minute clean to do, leaving plenty of time to interrogate the
council’s online decision records.

Staring
past the sulphur-crested cockatoo that had taken up residence on his balcony
railing, Craig took in the cloudless sky and crystal clear ocean speckled with
small, lush Whitsunday islands. It was a view that should clear your mind, but
Craig’s mind was far from lucid.

He should be
relaxing, or at least pretending to enjoy the annual Whitsunday Morgan
Carmichael Christmas getaway. But he wasn’t.

Last Monday
morning, the day after Charlotte Evans asked him to stay away from her, Keith
had stormed into his office issuing orders.

‘I need you to go
to Townsville and sort out those cowboys setting up the new office,’ he snarled.

Craig looked up
from his laptop slowly. Cool and calm in the face of Keith’s red-faced
blustering. ‘You need me to fix up other people’s fuck ups again, you mean?’ he
said.

The flush of
Keith’s cheeks deepened.

‘I don’t need any
of your lip, son,’ he snapped. ‘Just get yourself on a fucking plane and sort
it out.’

Margie booked his
flight and accommodation immediately, and he was off just after lunch.

Over the course of
the working week, he had ‘words’ with the ‘cowboys’ about the property market
in regional Queensland, and ensured some of the acquisitions under
consideration were withdrawn or renegotiated. His days were busy, and he spent
the nights swimming laps in the hotel’s stunted rooftop pool, trying to wear
himself out, so he didn’t lie awake at night obsessing about things out of his
control.

Things like a
certain woman who didn’t want him around. Too late, he remembered why he stayed
away from people. In fairness to Charlotte, this time the disappointment was
indirect. She didn’t actually let him down. It was the circumstances of their
association that made things impossible.

She was right. No
good would come from any intimacy between them. No matter how right it felt.

Getting out of
town was a welcome distraction. A few thousand kilometres between them made it
far easier to keep his distance.

But at night as he
swam, he was haunted. The soft warmth of her in his arms; her jasmine-scented
hair, the taste of her kisses, and the small sighs that escaped her as he
explored her, consumed him as he counted the laps.

For an amateur,
she was damn good at the game they were playing. She was easily as good as him,
if not better, at manipulating crowds. He floundered when she turned it on, and
that was unheard of. She kept him on his toes. Just when he thought he knew
what was coming, she turned around and surprised him again. He never expected
to find an amateur architect hidden in one of the Boundary Street tenancies. And
a good one at that.

He considered what
was driving her. It would be easy enough for her to relocate, so it wasn’t just
self-preservation pushing her. And given she'd been willing to compromise, she
wasn’t being resistant for the sake of it. Charlotte was looking out for her
friends and neighbours: the ones who would lose a lot, if not everything, if
they had to start over. She was looking after everyone else again.  

All in all, her
determination and her passion made her one intriguing woman.

That fortitude,
and the glint she got in her eye when she was readying herself to take him on,
was what he loved about her. Liked about her. Actually liking a fellow human
being was novel enough. He didn’t need to overdo it.

He’d once had that
vigour. His hunger was for placemaking: for making cities and suburbs
extraordinary, not bland, carbon copies of each other. But with each passing
year at Morgan Carmichael, his appetite waned. And now it had become an epic
battle to get just one decent building constructed. Remarkable suburbs or
neighbourhoods were nothing but a delusion.  

Looking out over
the top of his laptop towards the vista before him, Craig felt the weight of
his fatigue. The cockatoo eyeballed him.

‘Don’t look at me
like that,’ he told it.

After only one
night of the annual company getaway, he was already suffocating in the hot air,
both literal and metaphoric. With his impatience pushed to breaking point, for
the first time ever, he refused to give a crap whose wife had already busted
her husband copping a feel of the French activity co-ordinator, nor whose wife
slipped off the dance floor at 2am to follow the Italian chef back to his
kitchen. He was done covering other people’s tracks. This year they could sort
it out for themselves.

Turning his
attention back to the laptop, he started searching. The deeper he dug, the more
intent he became on his task. He opened the archive folder first and explored
the drafts stored there. Version after version opened and closed without
showing him the figures he was looking for. He opened his email and clicked
into the sent folder. He trawled through the ones he’d sent Keith. No luck.

Earlier that
morning he’d received a phone call from the financier of the Crimson Street
development. Although the figures had already been revised down once, they were
being reconsidered yet again. He needed the precise calculations he'd sent
through last time, but he wasn’t sure where they’d been saved, if at all, given
there had been some ‘back of an envelope’ accounting involved.

He ran his hand
through his hair. Where the hell were they? 

They wanted to
shave another $500K off the construction costs, and Craig needed to see where
they’d cut the corners last time to determine if skimping on the tap fittings
and door handles was still an option. He also needed to prove $150K for
marketing was the revised figure, not the original, because they were trying to
drive him down even further. Any lower and there was no point in doing any marketing.
The apartments would have to sell themselves.

After another
fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, he closed the laptop and went looking
for help.

A collection of
Morgan Carmichael employees were gathered by the resort pool, reclining on sun
lounges. Some were sipping cocktails, although it was only just after 10am. Some
were sensibly positioned in the shade, out of the burning sun, but most were
not. He waved to Mark and Clare, but his eyes swept passed them, intent on his
search. He found Simon, Morgan Carmichael’s most personable IT expert, basting
on the opposite side of the pool, his pale skin turning a magnificent shade of
pink.

‘Hi, Simon,’ he
said, lowering himself onto the sun lounge beside him.

Simon turned his
head in Craig’s direction and lifted his sunglasses. The pale skin beneath them
contrasted with the pinkness of his cheeks, making him look like an animated
panda.

‘Hey, what’s up?’

Craig looked at
the laptop in his hands. So did Simon. ‘Sorry to do this to you, but I need
your help finding something.’

Contrary to
Craig’s expectations, Simon’s face lit up. He all but bounced out of his chair.
‘Let’s set up inside,’ he said, heading towards the bar.

Craig explained
what he needed. Simon, absorbed in the challenge, took the laptop off him and
started clicking and digging.

Unfortunately,
like Craig before him, he soon came up blank. After unsuccessfully trawling
through Craig’s emails, Simon suggested they try Keith’s. They opened his
account using Craig’s access.

Scanning through
the subject lines Craig looked for anything that might be relevant. Then he
recalled he’d tacked the figures on to an email chain about a corporate dinner
at which he and Keith had shared a table with the financiers. Unable to recall
the precise subject line, he had Simon open a few ‘maybe’ emails at random
until they finally found what he was searching for in Keith’s trash folder. Craig
breathed a heavy sigh of relief and reclaiming the laptop, saved it to his own
files.

‘Cheers, mate,’ he
said to Simon. ‘You’ve saved my arse from certain kicking.’

Simon smiled. ‘No
worries,’ he said. Looking at his shoulders he added, ‘You saved my arse from
certain roasting. If I had been out there any longer, this would be third
degree burns.' Simon gingerly touched his forearms and watched the skin whiten
momentarily before it returned to its fuchsia shade.

‘Why were you even
out there anyway?  Surely you know better than to sunbathe?’

Simon snorted. ‘There’s
nothing else to do,’ he said. ‘No offense, but these weekends suck. And I’m not
just saying that because I’m an IT geek who’d rather be holed up in a basement.
Seriously, who wants to come to North Queensland in December?’

Resisting the urge
to snort in agreement, Craig asked, ‘Why do you come then?  It’s not compulsory.’

Simon eyed him
speculatively, assessing whether he could trust him with the truth. Seemingly
he decided in the affirmative.

‘Rumour has it
things aren’t exactly sailing smoothly between you and Keith,’ he said. ‘So
with that in mind, I have no reservations in telling you the vast majority of
the staff who come along, do so purely to piss Keith off. We know he hates it
as much as we do, but he keeps on doing it thanks to his misguided
understanding of modern corporate leadership. So we keep coming, eating and
drinking our way through his profit margin, through some misguided need to be
subversive little shits.’

A laugh erupted
from Craig’s belly, shaking him to his core and releasing some of his tension. If
Simon’s shoulders didn’t look so pink and tender, he’d slap him on the back.  

‘Bloody hell,’ he
gasped eventually, pulling himself back together. ‘We should drink to that.'

‘My shout,’
offered Simon with a wink.

With one final
snort, Craig turned his attention back to his laptop. As he moved the mouse up
to the cross in the top right corner to close out of Keith’s inbox, a name
caught his eye. Wally Carter.

The remnants of
Craig’s laughter faded immediately. Wally was the local councillor he’d been
speaking with about the Boundary Street project. Why was Keith emailing him? 
Craig looked up. Simon was at the bar, and no one else was around. He opened
the email.

500K good. As
planned.

Damn it, Keith. Craig
sat back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair, staring at the words
on the screen.

Over the years,
the white noise of the last argument he’d had with his father had diminished to
a dull hum. But now, it came rushing back, replaying word-for-word in his
memory. Damn it, Dad.

He ran his hand
through his hair again. God, was he that naïve?  No, he wasn’t. He knew the
company’s success had been built on more than just buying land and building on
it. Craig had grown up with Morgan Carmichael. He knew the business model
included a few strategic payments along the way. It wasn’t uncommon for a diverse
mix of people to come calling late at night. The whispered conversations in the
front hall were most often followed by hasty departures. The rougher they
looked, the faster they left. Occasionally someone in a suit might stay for a
scotch in the drawing room. Someone like Wally Carter.

As a young
idealistic graduate, he thought he could stay removed from that side of the
business. Until his father had dragged him into it. And now he was in the thick
of it again. Approval for the damaged project that had his career hanging by a
thread, was being bought.

What was most
disturbing was how easily he'd come across it. Wally Carter was newly elected
and obviously an amateur, but Keith had done no better with his feeble attempt
at erasing this record of the deal. Maybe he'd meant to come back to it. He
hoped so, because he hated to think what else could be uncovered by someone who
was actually looking for something.

Craig stared at it
for a while longer and then saved a copy a second before Simon sat a beer down
in front of him.

‘Sorry, mate,’
said Craig. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Don’t
you dare report it,’ Nana Gwen said. ‘A payment to a pollie here and there is
par for the course darling. You know that.’

They were rocking
gently in a canoe on the calm Whitsunday waters, a few hundred metres from the
resort and out of earshot of anyone. Even with a life jacket over her pale-blue
linen pant-suit, Nana looked formidable as she spoke.

Craig sighed, ran
his hand through his hair and leaned forward, resting his forearms against his
thighs, his hands tightly holding his paddle. The pain of his secrets was
piercing his heart. ‘There’s no honour in this business,’ he said.

Nana Gwen’s stiff
spine softened. She was thinking about his mother, and how much he was like her.
She often remarked his principles weren't a Carmichael trait.  

‘Of course there’s
honour in it, love. Think about all the people you're building homes for. Think
about all the people you employ and put food on their table and rooves over
their head. Bypassing some bureaucratic red tape is not dishonourable.’

Craig eyed her,
one brow raised.

‘Well, accepting
it might be, it’s a well-established and accepted practice in your industry,’
she amended.