girls seemed to be more focused on getting inside the club than listening to her and Mel. Candice, the bride-to-be, was at the front of the line, the long white veil she wore making it obvious she was the hen on the hen’s night. The veil was longer than her dress and Scarlett thought she looked ridiculous but what would she know, hen’s nights were not really her thing.
Neither was fashion, she thought as she wriggled her toes, trying to encourage some circulation into her extremities. Her feet were killing her. She’d borrowed a pair of platform stilettos to team with her simple black dress. The shoes and her make-up were the only concessions she’d made to dressing up for the night out but the strappy sandals were proving to be a big mistake.
Scarlett’s taste in clothing tended towards timeless classics, she wasn’t a trend follower. It was a waste of good money, in her opinion, and her feet were now reminding her of her momentary lapse of reason. She couldn’t wait to get inside and sit down. The short walk from the restaurant in Leigh Street to the Hindley Street club was about her limit in five-inch heels.
She couldn’t believe she was keen to get into the club. Spending an evening at a male revue, especially one called The Coop, wasn’t something she had ever done before and she could only imagine what the experience would be like—although if the guy on the door was any example she wasn’t going to need to rely on her imagination.
Candice’s name was on the door, allowing them to bypass the queue and giving them free entry. Apparently Candice knew someone who worked here and Scarlett wondered where on earth you’d meet someone who worked in a strip club, but as the cute young shirtless guy on the door ushered them inside she decided she didn’t care, all she wanted was to sit down.
‘I want to hear all about it once we’re inside,’ Mel said, as another buffed and shirtless male greeted them and led them to their table. The club was dimly lit and it took Scarlett’s eyes some time to adjust to the lighting. A T-shaped stage jutted out into the centre of the club, the catwalk stretching into the tables that were clustered around the stage. A mirrored bar lined the far wall and a dance floor hugged the back wall and was already packed with young women dancing and singing. The noise level was high and almost unpleasant, but Scarlett hoped that might work in her favour. Perhaps the noise would make any sort of conversation impossible.
She followed the girls to their table, which was front and centre at the end of the catwalk, and sank into a chair. Jugs of bright green cocktails were delivered, promptly poured into glasses and passed around, and Mel waited only until everyone had a drink before she continued her interrogation.
‘So Richard was lying in his hospital bed, recovering from heart surgery, working up the nerve to propose, and then you knocked him back?’ she asked, as she sipped her drink. It seemed Scarlett wasn’t going to get out of this.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Scarlett protested. Surely Mel couldn’t believe she’d be that heartless.
‘Don’t tell me he was down on one knee beside his bed?’
‘No.’ Scarlett shook her head. ‘He was out of hospital.’
‘Well, that makes all the difference,’ Mel teased. ‘How did he take it when you said no?’
Scarlett could tell Mel was enjoying her discomfort but she had made her decision for what she knew were perfectly valid reasons and she wasn’t going to marry the guy just because he’d had a mid-life revelation.
‘He was okay. What other choice did he have really? It was my decision. He can’t change my mind. I think marriage is overrated and it’s not for me.’
‘Don’t let Candice hear you.’
‘She already knows. Richard showed her the ring he bought me, he wanted her opinion.’
‘He bought you a ring!?’
Scarlett nodded.
‘What was it like?’ Mel’s curiosity took another turn.
‘Gorgeous,’ she admitted. And it had been. A squarecut solitaire, over one carat in size, set in platinum. It was in a traditional setting and was exactly right for her, classic and expensive. ‘Almost gorgeous enough that I wanted to accept his proposal.’
‘So why did you say no?’
‘I was thinking about saying yes but then he started talking about having kids and I freaked out. I don’t want kids.’
‘Really? How come I never knew that?’
Scarlett and Mel had been friends for years, since meeting on the first day of med school, but Scarlett hadn’t realised she’d never shared her feelings about children. She supposed the topic had never come up before now.
‘Kids are a huge sacrifice. Believe me, I should know. I’ve seen what my mother gave up to raise me and my sisters. I’ve worked really hard to get to this point in my career and I’m not done yet. I’m not going to give it all up to raise a family.’
Scarlett could feel the effects of the cocktails they’d been drinking on top of the wine she’d had at dinner. She could hear her words weren’t as crisp as usual, a bit blurred around the edges, a bit of a lisp on the essess. She knew the alcohol had loosened her tongue too. She wasn’t normally so forthcoming about her personal life but she and Mel had shared a lot over the years since they’d been paired as lab partners on their first day at uni. They had been the only two who hadn’t already known someone—Mel had moved to Adelaide from Tasmania and Scarlett had been a mature entrant.
She’d felt years older than everyone else and hadn’t been used to the social nuances of teenagers, even though she’d only just been out of her teens herself. Their isolation had been the only thing they’d had in common initially but they’d both recognised that it hadn’t mattered. Over the years their friendship had grown until Mel felt, in a lot of ways, like another one of Scarlett’s sisters, only a lot less trouble.
‘But you don’t have to have kids right now,’ Mel countered. ‘It could wait until you’ve finished your final exams.’
‘I’d still need to establish myself in anaesthetics before I could take time off and Richard doesn’t want to wait. He’s forty-three and he’s just had a major health scare. It’s made him reassess his future.’ Richard’s recent heart attack and minor surgery had been a big shock to him at a relatively young age and Scarlett knew that coming face to face with his own mortality had been the trigger for his proposal and his reassessment of his priorities.
‘You could get a nanny. And a housekeeper. The two of you could afford to pay for whatever help you want.’
‘So I get married, have babies and then hire a nanny and a housekeeper.’
‘Sounds all right to me.’ Mel grinned.
Scarlett shook her head. ‘Having or not having kids wasn’t my only reason for turning him down. It just didn’t feel right. It was more than just his desire to have a family. When he proposed it should have felt like a moment I’d been waiting for my whole life, but I remembered being more excited about getting accepted into my anaesthetics specialty than receiving a marriage proposal, and surely that’s wrong. My heart was racing, but not with excitement, I think it was panic. There was no impending sense that this was the next stage of my life and I couldn’t wait for it to get started. I could have married him but it would have been for the wrong reasons. At the end of the day, I didn’t love him
