Lara didn’t have any friends to speak of. After uni, most of her school friends had gone overseas to travel and work in pubs or use their degrees, meet love interests and share cramped flats in dodgy parts of London. She’d finished her arts degree last year, but had never made any real friends there either. She hadn’t joined any sporting teams or theatre groups, and alcohol was not a great mix with her medications, so the uni bar was never in her sphere.
Unlike most of her peers, she wasn’t hooking up with guys; she’d been so lucky to find her love early on and to have skipped all that messy dating business. Not to mention the STDs and pregnancy scares. No, she was blissfully happy with her reliable, steady guy, thanks very much. He was exactly what someone like her needed. He sheltered her from the many ups and downs that could have come along to destabilise her, and for that she was deeply grateful. He was her anchor, always knowing what to do.
She’d looked for jobs, but there wasn’t a lot on offer for an arts graduate. She’d picked up acting gigs in local shopping centres during school holidays, and she waitressed a little, but the hours were mostly in the evenings and Dave missed her.
‘I work all day at the clinic or at the hospital and then you work at night,’ he’d said one evening, placing in front of her a bowl of macaroni cheese that he’d made himself. He sat down to join her. ‘Maybe this would work better if you saw your job as being my personal assistant or something. Then you could work from home, so to speak, and we’d be able to be together at night like normal couples.’
She put a forkful of macaroni in her mouth. ‘Mm. That is good.’ She chewed and then swallowed, while Dave sipped his wine and gazed at her. It was an intense gaze that took in everything about her so he could be one step ahead, and she knew meant he would get his own way. Still, she went through the motions.
‘But what about money?’ she said. ‘How would I help to pay the rent, or have money of my own?’
‘Why do you need money of your own?’ he asked.
She scoffed. ‘Everyone needs money to, I don’t know, buy clothes and a coffee here and there, pay for car repairs or go to the movies.’
‘But that’s the beauty of this arrangement,’ he said, placing a hand on her wrist. ‘You look after me and I’ll look after you. I have more paperwork and admin than I know what to do with most of the time.’
That was true. Being a psychologist seemed to require almost as much time on paperwork outside of the consult room as it did actually counselling; Dave was forever writing in his leather-bound book. Add to that studying for a medical degree and it took a lot out of him. He needed her to help him. Then maybe he would rely less on Vicki.
Many times he’d mentioned Vicki, a doctor in the same surgery where he practised psychology. She seemed to have become something of a mentor. He spoke to her on the phone frequently, quick conversations that always made him laugh, and for which he never offered an explanation, which made Lara feel spiky with jealousy, something she was ashamed to admit. Dave was so wonderful; she owed him so much. Besides, he talked to Vicki in front of her, so it wasn’t like he was hiding anything.
Still, Vicki’s name made Lara’s body go hot with misplaced suspicion. Dave was faithful to her, of that she was sure. He whispered to her in the dark, telling her how much he loved her and how he didn’t know what he’d do without her, that she was a beautiful, unexpected gift that had landed in his life. He wanted more of her, not less. That was why he wanted her to be at home at night.
He had high needs. He had to lose himself in her to cope with the stress of his career and study. He craved her skin. He wanted her. It was the least she could do to be there for him.
‘I spend way too much money at the corner shop near the surgery, buying third-rate sausage rolls and toasted sandwiches,’ he said. ‘You could earn money, right there, by making my lunch each day.’
‘That wouldn’t take me much time. I should be doing it for you anyway,’ she said, feeling guilty she hadn’t thought of it already.
‘Well, what about that screenplay you’ve been saying you want to write?’ he said, picking up his own fork and loading it with pasta. ‘You’d have the time and freedom to work on that.’
Okay, that was appealing. She’d enjoyed the acting jobs she’d done, but really knew that her talent, if she had any, would be more suited to an off-stage role. She’d been wanting to write a screenplay for years, a historical piece set in Melbourne after the Second World War, with the influx of European migration and the booming businesses that followed.
Still, she wasn’t entirely convinced. Would she really find cleaning, cooking and being a little homemaker at Dave’s service satisfying? But then, did she find waitressing, washing dishes and mopping floors in cafes and restaurants satisfying? Not really. And it would make Dave happy, and that was what you did in relationships, wasn’t it?
And what if this was Dave’s way of moving them closer to something more official, like marriage, or maybe children? Not that she was even sure if she could or should have children. There were a lot of medication and genetic questions around that. But if anyone could help her through it, surely it was Dave.
‘Look, no pressure,’ he said, getting up, withdrawing from her, the slight tilt of his chin alerting her to his swiftly changed mood. He was miffed.
Shit. She owed him so much. She reached for his hand as he passed her chair, and pulled him to her. ‘Don’t leave, please.’ She needed him. ‘Thank you. I accept.’