what was he like?’ asked Derek. ‘Your fiancé.’
‘He’s hard to define, but if I had to sum him up I’d probably go with useful,’ said Charlotte. Nothing but the truth.
‘Useful as in “Honey, could you fix the hot water system?”‘ asked Millie.
‘I’m sure he could have fixed the hot water system,’ said Charlotte. ‘Had it needed fixing.’
‘Can’t everyone?’ countered Derek.
‘Sadly, no,’ said Charlotte.
‘I dare say Gil was modest too,’ said Millie, glancing pointedly at Derek.
‘What?’ said Derek. ‘I can be modest.’
‘Of course you can,’ murmured Charlotte, eyeing Derek’s frayed shirt collar and shaggy hair speculatively. ‘Gil was a snappy dresser too, in a rustic, ready for anything kind of way.’
‘Window dressing,’ said Derek. ‘It’s the body beneath the clothes that counts and don’t either of you try and tell me different.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Charlotte. ‘But just for your information, that was superb too.’
‘Well, it would be,’ said Millie. ‘What with all that paddling up the river. I bet the man had fabulous upper-body definition.’
‘I was a lumberjack once,’ said Derek.
‘Of course you were,’ murmured Millie consolingly.
A youthful waitress stepped up to their table, smile at the ready as she asked them if they were ready to order.
‘I’ll have the pork,’ said Derek. ‘But could I have it beaten first?’
‘Chef runs it through a tenderiser,’ said the waitress. ‘You know—one of those old-fashioned washing-machine wringer things with the spikes?’
‘Perfect,’ said Derek.
‘Unlike some things around here,’ murmured Millie.
‘No man is perfect,’ said Derek. ‘Especially in the eyes of women. A determined woman can turn even a man’s good qualities into major flaws of character given time and motive, and half the time the motive is optional. It’s just something you do.’
‘There’s got to be an ex-wife in your past somewhere,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘C’mon, Derek. Spill.’
‘Never.’
‘Maybe an overcritical mother,’ said Millie.
‘I’m an orphan,’ said Derek. ‘Never knew my parents. Never got adopted. Ugliest baby in the world, according to Sister Ramona.’
‘That explains a lot,’ murmured Millie. ‘Though it doesn’t explain how you got to be quite so handsome now. In a craggy, hard-living kind of way.’
‘Thank you,’ said Derek blandly.
‘You’re welcome.’
They finished ordering their meals. They started in on their drinks.
‘Here’s to the wonderful Aurora Herschoval,’ said Charlotte. ‘The best godmother an orphan could have.’
‘Hear hear,’ said Derek. ‘Good for you. And here’s to Useful Gil. May he be blessed with more brains in his next life.’
‘Derek!’ said Millie, aghast. ‘We can’t toast to that.’
‘Why not?’ said Derek, aiming for an expression of craggy, hard-lived innocence. ‘Sweetie, he may have been handy, handsome, modest, and built like Apollo, but let’s be honest here … the man got eaten.’
CHAPTER TWO
A WEEK passed, and then another, and Charlotte kept busy. She applied herself diligently, if not wholeheartedly, to her work. She considered the merits of Harold’s suggestion to hit the archaeology road again for a while and came to no firm conclusion. She inherited Aurora’s wealth and her Double Bay waterfront estate on Sydney Harbour.
And when it came to dead fictional fiancés, she kept right on lying.
Was it too late to tell Millie the truth about Gil? To tell everyone the truth?
The question plagued her. ‘When, when, when?’ her conscience demanded. And, ‘Too late, too late, too late,’ the devil kept saying smugly. Bad friend to Millie. Too late to tell the Mead that Gil had been nothing more than a figment of her imagination. That time had passed. Her detractors within the archaeology world and the university system would flay her if she did.
‘What did I tell you?’ they would say smugly to each other. ‘I always knew she was too reckless to hold down a position of responsibility, no matter what pull her family name has in high places.’ Then they’d shake their heads and say what a loss Charlotte’s parents had been to archaeology with one breath, and castigate them for being too bold on the other. ‘Crazy runs in the family,’ they’d say. ‘And the godmother was cut from the same cloth. Always chasing rainbows. No wonder poor Charlotte has trouble separating fantasy from reality …’
‘Charlotte!’
A distant voice, sharp and concerned.
‘What?’ Charlotte blinked and there was Millie. Tortoiseshell glasses framing earnest hazel eyes set in a heart-shaped face.
‘You didn’t hear me come in. You didn’t hear me calling your name.’
‘Sorry,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘Must’ve been daydream ing.’
Millie winced. Probably because she thought Charlotte had been spending a little too much time in that state of late.
‘What’s up?’ said Charlotte, determined to forestall any actual complaint about her not entirely firm hold on reality.
Millie hesitated. Millie fidgeted. Millie was not in a good place right now and Charlotte didn’t quite know why. Time to ask Millie what was wrong and see if there was any way in which she could help. Good friend, Charlotte. Good friend.
‘Don’t kill me,’ said Mille anxiously.
‘O-kay,’ said Charlotte carefully. Not quite the response she’d been expecting.
‘I was only trying to help,’ said Millie next.
‘And?’
‘And I emailed the Research Institute in PNG to see if they had a photo of Gil anywhere that they could send to you. A memento. Something tangible for you to remember him by. I, ah, signed it in your name.’
‘And?’ said Charlotte, with an impending sense of doom.
‘And his secretary wrote back and said she’d see
