blackness outside. I felt vulnerable with the darkness looking in so, after dropping my satchel on the table, I went to the blinds and tugged on the cord to draw the verticals into place.
Finally, I turned to face Monty.
He stood across the slate tiles from me, an appreciative half smile illuminating his face, eyes oddly intent. 'Looking good, Antsy.'
My body, oddly, surged with desire at his compliment. The depth of my reaction surprised me and I turned away. 'It's not me,' I said, smoothing down the cream suit I'd worn to impress Arthur. 'I'm more at home in trackie daks.'
'No. I meant you're looking good for someone who nearly died.'
'Oh, that.' I slipped off the overcoat and hung it over the back of one of the bench stools. Who would have thought the garden tap was a killer? I'd turned it on a thousand times but the family home was old and, as we later discovered, mice had chewed through the wiring.
'Lucky for me our neighbour was a retired nurse.' I felt an odd surge of panicky guilt because, less than three weeks later, she'd dropped dead of a heart attack and there'd been no one around to save her. 'Mrs Ormiston saw it happen from her kitchen window. She was the one who got my heart started again, got me breathing on my own. No brain damage, thank god. I'd hate to be a vegetable.'
I paused, seeing the lurking smile in Monty's eyes. 'Okay, so I wouldn't know if I was, but I hate the thought.'
He nodded. 'Tell you what. If I ever end up in a coma with no brain function, promise you'll pull the plug.'
'Sure. And you do the same for me.' I'd meant it lightly, but Monty nodded in all seriousness as if we'd just signed a pact in blood. That was the thing about Monty, he liked to play mind games. Back at the Queensland College of Art I'd always met him with a counter bluff, now I wished I knew what he was really thinking.
As I tried to see past his handsome face, past the trickster to the real Monty, the burn scar on my palm itched and I rubbed it, turning my hand to the light. 'That's all I've got to show for dying and coming back to life. We couldn't afford to rewire the whole house so we cut our losses and sold up. And here I am, sinking my share of the family home into a project I'm trying to get off the ground.'
And here I was with Monty watching me far too closely. I closed my hand feeling the scar pull across my palm. Trust Monty to come back into my life by scaring 10-year's growth out of me. 'Did I mention you're a shit, Monty?'
'Frequently,' he smiled. His black leather jacket made a soft, brand-new sound as he pulled a bottle of wine from the pocket, standing the wine on the metal bench top in front of me.
'What's this, a peace offering?' I studied the label. A Pinot Gris. He knew I was a sucker for a nice white.
'Nah. Bribery. I know what you're working on. I want in.'
I glanced up at him. Monty looks like the kind of a man you wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley. He's tall and black. From Mauritius originally, he was descended from European privateers and locals. His grandmother emigrated as a child and married a Scotsman, an amateur Celtic historian, hence the McArthur surname.
Even I can recite Monty's life story by heart - no matter where you go with him, his background eventually comes up in the conversation. Monty had perfected his way of handling this halfway through first year at QCA. It all sounds very romantic but, after his mother died, he was reared by his Scottish grandfather's older sisters. These maiden aunts managed to rationalise strict Methodist leanings with weird Celtic beliefs. Think fibro suburbia meets Druids. Being reared by 'aunts', with a long two-generation gap between them, meant Monty made the occasional comment the dotcom generation didn't get. I usually recognised the references because we were both out of sync with our peers.
And we were both devoted to film. Monty brought an innate visual flair to his role as director of photography. A bunch of us used to frequent the art-house cinema to watch obscure black and white films. Monty and I would sit side by side, nudging each other at the good bits - great camera movements, subtle foreshadowing, that sort of thing. One night while watching an Eisenstein he'd turned to me and said, 'You see, they had to work harder when they only had black-and-white.' And he was right.
I was a mature-age student at QCA, when Monty got in on a scheme to help underprivileged youth. But he didn't need it. He was brilliant. In the four years I'd studied with him we'd worked together on several projects. He'd been one of the gang, but I never let him get too close because of the almost seven-year age gap between us. After we graduated I'd heard he'd gone to Europe looking for work, but obviously it hadn't panned out.
That calf-length coat fitted him like a glove. He'd always had style, now he had it in spades. I caught myself staring.
With a mental shake I focused on Monty's offer. Did I want to work with him? I'd be mad not to. I knew what he could do with lighting and camera angles, but I hadn't mentioned this project to anyone. 'How did you know about my plans and the Tap Incident?'
'Tap Incident?'
'Back from the dead.' I hummed The Twilight Zone theme.
'Speaking of-' He fixed me with intense black eyes as an eager note crept into his voice. 'What was it like?'
'I don't remember a thing between turning on the tap and waking up in hospital.' His face fell and I had to laugh.
'You were clinically dead until that woman revived you,' he persisted. 'Sometimes-'
'No tunnels of light, no voices. Nothing. Sorry,' I shrugged, but caught myself picking at the scar on my palm. Time for more cream. One of Nan's friends was into alternative medicine and swore by the cream. I had been lucky though, no impairment of use, but the scar kept flaring up and itching. And it was worse since I'd moved to Melbourne.
'Sometimes, people who suffer a near-death experience discover a psychic-'
'No,' I said. I didn't want to go there. I could feel the beginnings of a panic attack - racing heart, sweaty palms - threatening to take control. I hated being out of control, hated it that Monty could push my buttons. 'Maybe this won't work out.'
CHAPTER 2
'Whoa!' Monty edged closer, hands lifting to calm me.
I backed off, stomach cramping. One of the bench stools hit the back of my thighs and I felt trapped. This was an ideal time to practise my meditation. Naturally, I couldn't. But I was not going to have a panic attack. I hadn't had one for five years and I was not about to start now.
'Whoa, just an idle question, Antsy.' His voice was deep and soothing.
It did calm me and, against my will, I had to smile. 'What are you, the Horse Whisperer?'
A bark of laughter escaped him. 'I love it when you do that. You're the only person I know who can get one jump ahead of me.'
Really? I studied his face, I realised I liked making Monty laugh.
'Didn't mean to upset you, Antsy.'
No, and I didn't want to brush Monty off. The silence stretched. I placed my heel on the stool crossbar and sat on the seat, putting more distance between us. Showing more thigh than I intended. I resisted the urge to pull the skirt down. 'So how did you find out about my project?'
He accepted the change
