As he would once he knew, knowing any sympathy he had for her would evaporate faster than a spray of mist into the summer air.
“But do you know the worst thing, the very worst thing?”
He shook his head and she smiled. “I enjoyed it.” She chewed on the words like they were meat. “I enjoyed the sex. I got good at it. I enjoyed making men come for me and I took pleasure from them any way I could. I wasn’t just a good whore. I was the best. I made my father a lot of money.”
She shrugged, her jaw clenched, her eyes following the flight of a dozen sulphur crested cockatoos across the sky rather than meet his disappointed eyes rethinking his earlier declaration. Rethinking that she could ever be a mother for his children.
“What changed?” he asked, and she was surprised he hadn’t already fled in disgust. “How did you get away?”
“I ran into my old school friend at one of those parties, and she asked what I was doing now and why she never heard from me anymore. But how do you tell someone what their father has done when you know that her parents are still together? When you know her own fairy tale life would unravel or that she would brand you a liar and hate you forever? So what could I tell her other than what I did? That I worked for the family business.
She dropped her head. “And then she asked if I was still painting, because it had been my dream in school, to be a painter one day.” She turned her eyes up to his. “I’d forgotten my own dream. And it reawakened something in me, a yearning to be free, to live life the way I wanted.
“By then, my father had grown complacent. I think he believed he had me where he wanted and that I had accepted my fate like my mother had and that I was resigned to exchanging sex for a life of luxury, and being traded like a commodity. And then a chance came up. He sent me to Hong Kong to entertain a man he could potentially make millions from.” She looked at Caleb. “My father didn’t know I had seduced my bodyguard. He didn’t know that I had learned to use the tricks I had been taught against him. I pretended to be happy that we were away together, and he was happy to have me away from my fortress of a house. We had champagne and sex and when he fell asleep, I grabbed my passport and ran. That poor man. I often wonder at the punishment he must have received for letting me slip free.” She trailed off and turned to the window.
He must have sensed her guilt and her shame, because he jumped from the bed and caught her chin in his hand and forced her gaze to his. “Ava, you have nothing to feel guilty for. You were fighting for your own freedom. Your own existence.”
“I know.” She hesitated, her lip between her teeth. “Anyway, I fled straight to the airport. And straight to somewhere I thought was free, where I could hide. I flew to Melbourne. Moved to Sydney. I changed my name to Mattiske. I started a tentative new life as an artist.” She took a breath. “I need tea.” She ducked around him, heading for the kitchen.
“Is that when you got your tattoo?” he asked, behind her.
She snapped on the kettle smiling at the memory. “Yes. In a dingy tattoo parlour in Kings Cross. I was celebrating my escape. I thought I was free. And I was, although that didn’t stop me making bad choices.” She pushed her hair behind her ears. “I told you about my agent not working out?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded, thinking about Rene and all his promises. “Rene came into a café where I had some pictures for sale. He told me he was an agent and that he would make me a star.
“And for a while it was good. He got me into galleries. He sold my work. And at night he told me he loved me. But I never saw any money. It was always coming, he said, always clearing in a trust account. It never came. And in the end I discovered he had a wife and three children tucked away in western Sydney.
“Tea or coffee?”
“Ava—”
“No, you’re right, I guess you won’t be staying,” she said, putting a teabag for herself in a mug and filling it with the boiled water. “Talk about lurching from one disaster to the next.” She turned to face him, leaning against the counter. “But if it taught me something, it’s that I had to stand on my own two feet. You accused me of being made of Teflon, that I don’t let anything or anyone stick, and I guess that’s true. But that’s the way I have to be. I have to protect myself because there is nobody else to protect me.”
“I would protect you.”
“You say that now. But what I learned is that you can’t trust anyone, even the people you love, and the people who tell you they love you. That I can’t afford to trust anyone other than myself.”
“Not everyone who says they love you is out to hurt you, Ava. You have to believe that. I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“And how can I believe you won’t turn on me too? How can I believe you will be there for me, when I need it most? How can I trust you, when I can’t trust anyone? I’m broken, Caleb. I’ve picked myself up and put myself back together twice now, but the joins are still there. I can’t afford for that to happen again. I can’t go through that again.”
She watched him pacing the floor, running his hands through his hair, watched his beautiful self wrestling with finding a way to get through to
