Half Past Dead - Jane Clifton

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acquired South-East Asian hot-shot, but she was confident that she was over all that nonsense.

      Boyd was all she needed. Theirs was the real thing, the enduring love that had weathered the storms. They were a family again, with Matt luxuriating in his father's attentions. Going back to work early would give father and son some long overdue quality time together. Poor kid saw so little of his dad and, with all the love in the world, there are limits to how much empathy can flow between a nine-year-old sports fanatic and his arty-farty, nambypamby mother. But Boyd was always up to his neck in some case or other, often interstate for weeks at a time.

      'Bringing home the bacon,' was his defensive mantra. Except that he hardly ever brought it straight home and was rarely there to enjoy it for breakfast.

      'Gimme a break!' he'd bleat. 'It's not going to be for ever. Just a few more years at this pace and we'll be able to sit back and enjoy the spoils.' Sure, just you and me in our wheelchairs, was how Ronnie pictured it.

      Boyd never had enough time for Matt. Time to play ball, go to the footy, a movie or just to dag around together. He also failed to notice how handsome his son had become. Faith always maintained that boys resembled their mothers, as girls did their fathers, and Matt was living proof of this wild generalisation. Ronnie's pitch-black hair fell in thick bangs around the creamy skin of her son's angular face and hazel eyes; no sign of Boyd's auburn curls, freckles or baby-blues. Matt was just average height for his age, but a combination of swimming, basketball and cross-country had burned off any puppy fat that might have accumulated during his national-average exposure to children's TV.

      'Girl-catch! Girl-catch!' he would taunt as Ronnie dropped yet another ball at the park.

      'Yeah, well I am a girl!' she'd yell back. 'And this is how we play!'

      And then the perennial question. 'How come Dad never comes to the park?'

      'Well, your dad's very busy, darling. You know he would if he could. It's just... '

      'He's always on the phone or in the study with the door shut. Couldn't you ask him to come? Then you could stay home and cook tea.'

      'Gee, thanks Matt. I'll see what I can do.'

      Well, I got you an extra week at the beach with your old man, Matty, so how am I doing? Make the most of it while your mum gets her arse back into gear at work.

      Work that saw Ronnie back at Arthouse Studios at 9 a.m., Monday 6 January. While much of Melbourne was still on holidays, she was putting the finishing touches on sketches that would form the basis of next season's collection. The autumn - winter designs they would present to 2-SWAN were fully developed and had already had a successful test run on the fabrics, but Ronnie also wanted to give the South-East Asian group a taste of what was planned for spring - summer: a theme combining tea-roses and bone china.

      Perched on a high stool with her feet on the bar, she worked at an angled desk, adding layers to the inky drawing in front of her, occasionally glancing at the litter of open books, pressed flowers, leaves and fragments of crockery that lay strewn across a small table at her side.

      Lifting her head for a second, Ronnie spied Lawrence through the glass doors that separated the printing room from the business end of Arthouse. He walked from the lift in his languorous way, hips forward, shoulders tilted to the left. A slim briefcase in one hand, brushing his hair back with the other, he stopped at one of the long printing tables to chat with Stella.

      No problem. Ronnie felt strong; over it.

      She continued working on the delicate tracery of a leaf, shading in the varying shades of lime, chrome and sepia, trying to decide whether to intensify one or lighten the other, when, all of a sudden, there he was, at her desk.

      'Well, look at you,' he said. 'You look fantastic.'

      It was not a loud greeting, bellowed from across the room for everyone to hear; it was soft, intimate, for her ears only.

      'Thanks,' she managed, straightening herself up on her stool, tucking back a loose strand of hair.

      'I didn't think you were back until next week.'

      He leaned against her desk, his back towards the rest of the room, his cream-silk thigh a crease away from her linen skirt. Grapefruit-scented pheromones filled the air between them.

      'No, I wasn't. I decided to try and help finalise the 2-SWAN submission, you know... Dexter sort of twisted my arm... as he does.' She waved her hands in a comical 'ta-da!' way, laughing, trying to keep it light.

      'As he does, yeah.' He laughed softly with her. 'He shouldn't worry. I've told Ching Lee all about you. He loves all the pictures, he just likes' - he leaned closer - 'the personal touch.'

      Her resolve was beginning to crumble. 'Oh, good,' she said.

      'Well, kinda good,' he said, stretching out his hand and fluttering it from side to side in a 50/50 motion. 'There's buttons you can push with Ching Lee, but he's a real operator. I wouldn't want you to find yourself in deep water.'

      His lips were moving, words were coming out, but she wasn't processing them very well because she was drinking in his face. The hollow of his cheek, the sharpness of his chin, his caramel-coloured eyes with their heavily lashed lids at half-mast. And his mouth. It was all she could do to stop herself from leaning across to that sensuous destination.

      'So, listen... do you wanna have a drink later? I can explain things a bit better, fill you in.'

      Fill me in? Resolve? What resolve? She was over what?

      'A drink? Sure... that'd be... '

      'Unless you have to get home.'

      'No... no... that'd be fine. No, the boys are still down at the beach. I'm... ' Home Alone, she thought, and in big trouble '... that'd be nice.'

      'Great. And welcome back.'

      Missed it by that much.

      CHAPTER TWO

      MARTINI for me thanks,' Ronnie said and wondered why. She wasn't a spirits drinker these days; ordering a martini was a throwback to her twenties.

      The crush-as-appetite-suppressor had kicked in soon after Lawrence had said the words 'Welcome back' that morning, so the gin hit her stomach like a ton of bricks, with only a stuffed olive to cushion the blow.

      The Empire in Albert Park was a regular watering-hole for Arthouse Studios' South Melbourne-based staff. Once a notorious hangout for wharfies and small-time crims, the old pub had undergone a renaissance in the early nineties which saw so many interior walls removed it was a wonder the entire building didn't cave in. Its maroon-tiled exterior had been stripped away and replaced with glass windows. The warren of bars was rationalised into one vast room with a central bar at which you could barfly on a stool or from which you could transport your drinks and colonise one of the many circular tables, sprawl youthfully at floor level in a nook of pouffes, or even play sardines in one of the vinyl-upholstered booths that lined the walls.

      On weekends The Empire was a crush of white jeans, halter tops, fake tan, big earrings, six-packed T-shirts, Ray-Bans, vodka and Stella Artois. But at 7.30 on a hot Monday night in January people were still at the beach and the place was reasonably quiet.

      By the end of her second 007 Deluxe the room started to swim a little and Ronnie, both shaken and stirred, moved on to the next course: chardonnay and crisps.

      What did they talk about? She had no idea. Lawrence was describing his time in South-East Asia: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, even a stint in the Philippines. Then something about working for the Australian furniture chain Angstrom Inc. that she had trouble following. It sounded as if he was trying to explain what he was doing in the employ of a textile design company, why he was so qualified and why Ronnie should be wary of the head of 2-SWAN, Ching Lee.

      Did Ronnie care? Not in the slightest. Lawrence could have been explaining the Westminster bicameral system of government for all she cared.

      He was so close and, as The Empire began to fill, the

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