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“Sunday night was four hundred,” Kelly said, and Liam’s jaw dropped.
“For a bad date?”
“Yep—his rates start at a hundred, but he charges extra for the full bad boyfriend experience. Still, if it means Greg gets the tick of approval, it’ll have been worth every cent.” She leaned in and pecked Greg on the cheek, and Liam ignored the tiny stab of envy he felt that Kelly had someone she was willing to go to such lengths for.
Which reminded him. “Hey, does he know anyone who does nice dates?”
Kelly’s eyebrows raised. “Why? Finally ready to break your dry spell?”
“Shut up,” Liam muttered. “No, I told Mum I was dating someone, and if I don’t bring them to family dinner on Saturday, she’s threatening to hook me up with this ferret-faced guy I knew as a kid.”
Kelly winced, and Greg made a hissing noise as he sucked air through his teeth. “It’s rough when your mum sets you up,” he said.
“Oh, I know. Which is why I need to magically pull a date out of my arse by Saturday.” Liam groaned and dropped his head onto his folded arms. Why hadn’t he just stood up to his mum?
“Why not ask Ambrose?” Kelly asked.
“Because I don’t want a bad date. I want someone who’s at least halfway decent.”
Kelly leaned across the table and shoved his shoulder. “Listen. He pretended he was a porn star and referenced the state of my mum’s vagina post-childbirth. He’ll literally do anything you ask on a date if you pay him enough. And I’m pretty sure his acting skills stretch to being nice to an antisocial git like you.”
“I’m not antisocial!” Liam protested, lifting his head up.
“Well you’re sure as shit not the life of the party,” Kelly observed. “Anyway, my point stands.” She dug around in her handbag and pulled out a card and slid it across the table. It was plain black, except for a tiny row of curlicued script that said BB Inc. Liam flipped it over to find a phone number. “You don’t flash that around, all right?” Kelly warned. “Ambrose only works on personal recommendations, so when you call him, tell him I sent you.”
Liam considered it. The guy had been hot, and Liam couldn’t deny he wouldn’t mind taking a second look at those eyes and that perfect profile, but still… He wasn’t exactly filled with charitable thoughts towards someone who’d been responsible for trashing his table and making him work late, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to pay the guy any money. “I’ll think about it,” he hedged.
“Well, if you want him for Saturday, you’d better think fast or he’ll be booked, and next thing you know your mum will call your bluff, and you’ll be on a date with ferret face. And it’s a better idea than trying to get a date on your own. I mean, you haven’t managed it in over a year, so it’s not likely you’ll pull it off in a week.”
Liam hated Kelly a little bit right then, sitting there all content with her wannabe rock star boyfriend and having opinions that he couldn’t even argue with—because it wasn’t like she was wrong, was it?
Still, Liam had to admit that Ambrose had put on a hell of a performance the other night. Maybe he was a good enough actor to convince Liam’s family that he was there of his own free will. Liam pushed away the unbidden thought that whispered how pitiful it was that he was reduced to hiring someone to act like they wanted to spend time with him and reminded himself he was single by choice. Mostly.
He sighed, took in Kelly’s expectant expression and pocketed the card. “Fine. I’ll call him.”
Chapter Three
Ambrose
It took an hour and a half—and two different trains and a bus—to get from Ambrose’s share house in Newtown to his mum’s place in Macquarie Fields on Monday. He listened to a podcast most of the way, but didn’t really take any of it in. He was tired, and visiting his mum always caused a low-grade anxiety in his gut that left him unsettled and made it difficult to concentrate, like sitting in the dentist’s waiting room as a kid. Not that Ambrose would compare seeing his mum to a dentist’s visit. He loved his mum. It was just…it was difficult sometimes to straddle the increasingly wide gap between the world his mum lived in, and the one that everyone else did.
Bella Newman was still living in 1998, when she’d been on the front cover of TV Week after being nominated for a Gold Logie for Most Popular Actress for her role as Angela in Harbour Med. She hadn’t won. The lead actress for Blue Heelers had, for the third year running. She’d gone on to win it the next two years as well, blitzing the competition, while Bella’s star had faded, then vanished completely. Now the only time Bella was ever on TV was for one of those ‘Where Are They Now?’ specials that the networks churned out every so often to fill their schedules in the non-ratings period and to replay when the cricket finished early.
The bus dropped Ambrose three blocks from his mum’s place, and he tugged his hood up as he began to walk to keep the sun off the back of his neck. He was tired, and his growling stomach reminded him that it was past lunchtime, and he hadn’t even had breakfast yet. He’d slept late this morning and hadn’t had time to eat if he wanted to catch the bus. He wondered if Mum had got groceries this week—another reason he visited as often as he did despite the nails-down-a-chalkboard feeling it gave him to spend too much time in his childhood home—and hoped he could at least make himself a sandwich.
He counted the cracks on the footpath all the way to his mum’s place.
Bella Newman lived in the second flat in a brown-brick block. Hers was the one with the overgrown grass, most of it brown and stringy, and the front door that had once been painted red but was now pink, as faded as Bella’s stardom. Ambrose stepped over the wire gate, which was easier than forcing it open, and grabbed her mail from the box. There was nothing there that screamed overdue, at least.
The doorbell had been broken for as long as Ambrose could remember, so he rapped on the door instead. “Mum? It’s Ambrose.”
Bella opened the door. She was too pale and too thin, and Ambrose wondered how long it had been since she’d been outside. Her dark hair was as perfectly styled as always, even though it was twenty years out of date. She was wearing the pink dressing gown that Isadora had sent her for her last birthday.
“Ambrose!” she exclaimed with a delighted smile, opening the door wider so that he could follow her past the framed TV Week and New Idea covers that lined the narrow entryway. “How are you, darling?”
“Good,” Ambrose said. They entered the small kitchen. “How are you, Mum?”
“Oh,” she said, waving her hand. “Busy, busy. You know how it is.”
