When he returned to England he found she had treacherously married her boss. He later heard rumour of an affair followed by a divorce, but he did not seek her out, telling himself that if they had got back together the same problems would have occurred, his job or hers, England or Australia. In reality he couldn’t stand the pain of losing her again and he wasn’t going to risk it. The thing about hiding in your cave – aside from the hygiene problems posed by bat droppings – is that although nothing bad happens, nothing wonderful happens either.
* * *
“Dad,” said a very sleepy voice. “What’s the time? Where are we?”
“Are we there yet?” mocked Richard. “Not yet, my love. Do you need sustenance, some tasty airline cardboard food perhaps, or a cup of coffee-flavoured radiator water?” Eliza sat up and rubbed her eyes. She felt somewhat better and was definitely hungry and thirsty.
“We’re in business class,” she reminded him. “It can’t be that bad. Although if you weren’t so tight, we could fly first class, Scrooge MacLean!”
The trolley was trundling by, which probably woke her, and whatever it was Richard had ordered, it tasted pretty darned okay to Eliza. Richard, not to be deterred, muttered “pigeon or cat? pigeon or cat?” under his breath, as the trolley approached, but was charming to the flight attendants and they all wanted to sleep with him by the time he had finished making them feel special and attractive. Actors! thought Eliza, watching her father at work, but she was impressed anyway and couldn’t help smiling.
Even the most arduous flight eventually lands, with a bit of luck before you develop deep vein thrombosis of the buttocks, and so they touched down at Sydney’s international terminal, feeling decidedly unwashed and stiff, to start their next new life. For the first time, both of them felt they wanted to settle down and grow deep roots, absorb the nutrients of the culture, and make friends.
* * *
It was about this time that Billy stepped up the action on his career. Tired of working in shops and cafes or being a labourer for his father, he found himself a decent agent and set about promoting himself. He was still finishing his degree in the performing arts, and had a good network of contacts from the academy and community theatre. He took anything that was offered, a tiny bit part or an extra. Not always the sort of stuff you would want to put on the CV, but useful experience. Billy, by now, had grown some excellent social skills. He was a really nice person to talk to, and he was pleasant to everyone, whether they were acting, producing, or cleaning the toilets. You could have a normal conversation with Billy and forget he was one of the cast. He never complained, was always co-operative. Most importantly, he was good at his job, and people started remembering him.
A part came up for an episode of a popular supernatural-themed series, A Tale for Midnight – probably an updated version of the old Thriller. He was chosen to play a prince of the faerie kingdom who, instead of sticking to his own kind, had a predilection for seducing mortal women. The trouble was, he could never find one who didn’t die on him, because of the strain of living in the faerie realm, bonking a faerie prince and so on. They all tended to just fade away. Damn, the prince would think, tossing away the remains of the latest shrivelled lover, back to the drawing board. The husband of his most recent victim decided to thwart him in his wicked plan, but the prince refused to give up the wench, and of course ended up being vanquished with a choice selection of herbs and spices.
Mailbags of fan mail arrived for the mortal-loving faerie prince, because we all know girls love the bad boys,2 especially if they are hot.
2 It’s true. You can deny it all you like. We women are quite tragic, really, in that respect.
The first time Billy realised what had happened to him, he was wandering along South Molton Street, hoping to improve his sartorial image with a few purchases, when three girls bailed him up.
“Billy, Billy,” they said breathlessly, in unison. “It is you, isn’t it?” one of them said, uncertain because he seemed genuinely unaware, for a moment, of why three young females would be clustering around him. Then he got it!
“Well, my name is Billy,” he said, giving the prettiest one his best bedroom eyes, as he signed a piece of paper with his much-practised autograph: Billy Sylvester, with lots of love … “To?” he enquired, pen poised.
“Melinda,” she told him, and promptly reached up and kissed him on the cheek. The other girls crowded around and got their autographs and kisses, too. They wanted to talk about his faerie character, and seemed disposed to scoop him up and take him home with them, but he made his excuses. It occurred to him that he could possibly have taken all three of them to a hotel and got comprehensively laid. It seemed like an ignoble thought, so he pushed it away, but the idea made him smile on and off for the rest of the day.
All the girls wanted Billy’s character to kidnap them and have his wicked way with them. The producers of the show must have been kicking themselves for killing him off, because of the potential for a spinoff series, or at least another episode with the character. So Billy was on his way, and he was able to put Eliza in her Eliza box, on her Eliza shelf, along with all the letters he wrote to her and never mailed. After all, she had never written. It’s hard to pine over a lost book when there’s a whole library available.
* * *
Eliza had just showered and come downstairs in her PJs, planning to sit and watch a bit of telly with Richard and his girlfriend, whichever one she was, before getting an early night. She was a couple of weeks off sixteen, and had just started Year Twelve.
While still in England she had been put up a grade, apparently as punishment for getting into mischief. She had been caught doing her mathematics homework in French class, and when the teacher had smugly demanded that Eliza tell her, in French, what they had learned so far today, she was able to do so, fluently. It was the additional information, sotto voce, about the teacher’s resemblance to a farmyard animal, which had earned her a detention – and the grade promotion. Apparently Eliza had been doing the work standing on her head with both hands tied behind her back, and finding it boring.
With this experience behind her, when Eliza started school in Sydney she kept a low profile, but still they had given her extra work in order to get her prepared to move up to Year Twelve the following year. This was rationalised by the excellence of her marks, the fact that her birthday was early in the year – so she was really barely more than a year ahead – and her extremely mature social skills. So next year, she would be starting her Bachelor of Psychology, which was a four-year professional degree. She would be, technically, two years younger than most of her colleagues, but she had been absorbing psychology since she was twelve, the poor sick child, so the work was unlikely to be a problem. She felt a little like a science experiment, and told Richard she was thinking of changing her name to Doogie Howser, however he failed to grasp the cultural reference. She also resented having the slack taken out of the system, because she was fond of her limited leisure time.
On this day, as she prepared to use this leisure time in front of the television, Richard called out to her. “Eliza, quickly. Come and see who’s on the telly.” She padded into the room and sat down. For a moment, it didn’t sink in that the evil, yet curiously attractive, pointy-eared faerie prince was, in fact, her Prince. She had been at such pains to put him in his Billy box, on his Billy shelf, and yet here he was, looking absolutely gorgeous, and quite unearthly. And so unlike himself because if you really analysed his features, he was not the pretty-boy movie star type. This was his stock in trade, of course, being able not only to act a part convincingly, but somehow to change his face to fit the character, so he was hardly recognisable. She had watched him over the years playing a school dork, a bully boy, a pompous twit and even, once, an old lady, and his face fitted itself into each role, like a shape shifter, so she shouldn’t have been surprised.
“He’s