Campaign Ruby Part 16

'I just came in from Perth. We missed you on the media plane.'

'Who's we?'

'Me.'

'I'd better stick with Max,' I said, quickening my pace to join Luke and Maddy at the front of the scrum.

'Don't think we didn't see that flush of colour, missy,' said Maddy. 'Am I right, Harley?' But Luke was charging ahead, pea-green tie flapping behind him.

Max, Felix, Sh.e.l.ly and Nonie were at the bakery sampling hot cross buns when they were approached by a woman and her young son who had obviously just been to the pet shop. Max got down on his haunches. 'Hi there,' he said to the boy. 'I'm Max. What's your name?'

'Steve.'

'And who's this, Steve?' Max pointed at the lone goldfish Steve was holding in a water-filled plastic bag.

'Nemo 2.'

'After Nemo the movie?' asked Felix, chuffed that he knew the reference.

'No,' said Steve, 'after Nemo 1-Jaws ate him.'

Felix and Max rose to talk to Steve's mum, Nancy-it was safer up there.

'Mummy,' said Steve, tugging on Nancy's skirt.

'Don't interrupt, darling,' she said sternly and kept talking to Max. 'My husband runs a small business and it's really tough at the moment.'

Max and Felix nodded.

'BUT MUM!' A small puddle had formed at Steve's feet. 'Nemo 2's home is leaking,' he cried. 'A lot.'

Felix grabbed the bag and ran, chased by Max, carrying Steve, followed by Nancy, Flack the Cop and a squadron of snappers. Felix burst into the pet shop. 'I'm Felix Winks,' he said, competing with meowing kittens, 'and this is Nemo 2 and he needs a top-up.'

'I told management you people weren't welcome in here,' said the pet shop owner, double-bagging Nemo 2. Journalists scribbled furiously. 'You'll scare the animals!'

Max joined the fold. 'I'm sorry about all the commotion,' he explained, 'it's just that we were chatting with Steve's mum, Nonie here, and-'

'Nancy,' corrected Felix. 'Nonie's my girlfriend.'

The confused cameramen switched their attention to Nonie, who was with Sh.e.l.ly outside the shop.

'Hi,' she grinned and waved. The moment was awkward enough without the poor girl slipping in Nemo 2's puddle, and thudding onto the ground, dress well above the knee.

'Code red,' Maddy said.

Luke hung his head.

Cameras zoomed.

'The billboards look like paradise now,' I said.

In the can.

It was the middle of the night, or at least I thought it was. I knew I was in a hotel room because the sheets were tucked in too tightly and my skin smelled unfamiliar from the citrus-scented soap. I couldn't find my BlackBerry, so I hit 0 on the bedside-table phone, in search of answers.

'Good morning, Guest Relations, this is Mich.e.l.le.'

'Would you mind telling me what time it is?'

'Certainly, ma'am. It's 3 a.m.'

'Thank G.o.d it's Friday.'

'Sat.u.r.day. Will that be all, ma'am?'

'Actually, Mich.e.l.le, I was wondering whether you could tell me which hotel I'm in.'

'The InterContinental, ma'am.'

There was no way to ask the next question without sounding stoned. 'And which InterContinental is that?'

'Collins Street, ma'am-there's only one InterContinental in Melbourne.'

'Of course,' I said. 'Very kind of you.'

If nothing else, our encounter might have given Mich.e.l.le something to talk about with her graveyard-s.h.i.+ft colleagues. 'You'll never believe this,' she would say to the porter. 'Some hussy on the fifth floor has no idea where she is, let alone whose bed she's in.'

Go back to sleep, Ruby, said my head.

'I can't,' I replied. 'I'm wide awake now.'

Well, do some exercise or something. Don't just lie there. Your body and I are fed up with these sleepless nights, so you may as well do something productive with them.

'Sorry,' I said. Clearly, I was well on my way to Barking.

I opted for a swim. A plain black bra and pants would have to suffice. I threw the fluffy white robe over the top of my makes.h.i.+ft ensemble, grabbed a towel and headed for the fitness centre.

It was quiet. The plopping sound my feet made as they entered the water ricocheted off the walls. I went in up to my torso. The temperature change triggered an outbreak of goose pimples. With one deep breath, I immersed myself.

Underwater, the blue lights turned my skin the colour of powdery snow. My hair pulsed out in front of me like a blonde jellyfish and tiny baubles of air escaped my lips, shattering when they hit the surface.

I came up for air, heard the filter whirr and plunged back under, soaking up the silence. My head had stopped hectoring me; my body was grateful for the stretch. The peace was intoxicating. Not because I was distressed, but because I knew no one could hear me, I opened my mouth to scream. The sound was muted; bubbles scurried.

When we were kids, during long summer holidays in Bellagio, Fran and I held underwater screaming compet.i.tions. We would pretend we were mermaids jostling for the position of Mer Queen, which was usually determined by the loudest scream or highest number of consecutive underwater somersaults. As there were but two contestants for Mer Queen, both of whom were the compet.i.tion's only adjudicators, they were summers fraught with fights. We would jet up and down the pool for hours until our hair turned green and our eyes pink from the chlorine.

After about an hour of mermaid jetting, I was ready for a shower. I towelled off, re-robed and headed for the lift. It reached me with a ping and opened to reveal a sleepy Oscar Franklin. He was deliciously rumpled, with messy hair, faded shorts and a moth-eaten T-s.h.i.+rt. Gone was his usual pristine TV state; this was far s.e.xier. His face was still creased from the bedsheets.

'Hi,' I said, trying to normalise near-nudity with small talk. 'Why are you up so early?' I tightened the belt around my robe.

'I could ask the same of you.' He stopped the lift doors from closing with an outstretched arm, the kind of limb I thought belonged only to plastic action-hero figurines.

'I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to go for a swim.'

He scanned my face. 'I can see that.'

I dabbed at lingering water droplets with the collar of my robe. 'Well, I'd better go.' My heart beat a little faster for seeing him, but it was easy enough to tell myself that it was nothing more than swim-related breathlessness.

'Why? What's there to do at 4 a.m.?'

'You're a political journalist. You should know the day starts in half an hour.'

'I was going to hit the gym,' he said, swinging his iPhone headphones around his finger, 'but if breakfast with you was on the table, I'd ditch the treadmill in a heartbeat.'

'Sorry,' I said, 'I've got to get showered and read the papers.' I stepped into the lift. He didn't leave it.

'See you, Roo,' he said after a moment. 'Let's grab a drink sometime.'

The airconditioning was freezing on my wet skin.

'That would be nice,' I said, fumbling with the key card. My eyes wouldn't stop looking at his until the doors closed between us.

Descending, I exhaled in a bid to regain control of my erratic heart beat. I examined myself for stray bra straps in the mirrored walls of the lift.

Ruby, pooh-poohed my head, he's a journalist.

'I know,' I whispered.

After a hot shower, I decided that today was the day to break out the little black dress. I'd heard from Di that Sat.u.r.day night was drinks night, and I wanted to be a little bit gorgeous for it. I dressed, repacked my bag just in case I had to leave again, then went to the temporary office, where Archie was leafing through the fat weekend papers over tea and toast.

'Morning, Roo.'

'Morning, Archie. Need a hand?'

He frisbeed a copy of the Sat.u.r.day Herald. 'Go for your life.'

A campaign diary piece from Gary Spinnaker on the front page read like a time-lapse video of my week. 'Spinnaker says we won the week.'

Archie nodded, brus.h.i.+ng crumbs from his jeans.

I read aloud. 'Masters gets kudos for transforming the rude shock of this early election into a golden opportunity. In contrast, our new Prime Minister started her week as patriot and strategist but ended it rather on the nose.'

'We're copping it on other fronts, though,' said Archie. 'The Weekender has homed in on the preselection situation- there's a feature on the quality of candidates-and in Adelaide, they've cottoned on to the billboard situation. On the bright side, yet another member of Brennan's Bruterati has come out to play today.' He gleefully handed me a copy of the Queenslander.

A leaked voicemail message from a disgruntled backbencher had made its way into the inbox of a senior journalist. The transcript was delectably detailed.

Mate, it's Gabby. Listen, we can't do this without you and, as I said, you'll be rewarded for your support. I need to be able to count on you [inaudible] the transition as smooth as possible if we're going to do this at all. Give me a call when you've decided.

'That's just careless,' I said.

'Yeah, well, today's mould can be tomorrow's blue cheese in this game.'

The LOO burst into the room dressed in a grotesque pair of sweat pants and a T-s.h.i.+rt, followed closely by Di and Luke. 'Okay, girls and boys,' Max said, 'where are we?'

'Melbourne,' I said, thinking he might have felt as bamboozled as I had at 3 a.m.

He laughed.

Luke, who was wearing a tie that resembled spaghetti bolognaise, gave a more businesslike answer. 'We might have won Week One, but there's a dangerous perception out there that we're a shoe-in because Brennan's honeymoon was over before it began. We have thirteen seats to win in twenty-seven days, and that's if we hold on to the ones we've got.'

'Way to p.o.o.p the party, Luke,' joked Max.

'The fact is,' Luke continued, 'they haven't even begun to probe our policies because they've been so distracted by our opponents. The Sunday papers are working on something for tomorrow. I got a call this morning to ask if I would be around early this afternoon if they needed comment. I reckon it's going to be the preselection angle.'

'Me too,' said Di. 'I got wind of it last night on the plane-one of the guys knew off the top of his head how many outstanding preselection battles there were. We've only got three days before the nominations close.'

'But they're not winnable seats,' said Archie. 'They're all safe government seats.'

Max dropped the spoon in his cereal bowl with a clunk and stared at Archie. 'There's no such thing as an unwinnable seat, mate. We need to be running great local candidates in every seat. It's our f.u.c.king duty. People need choice.'

'I was just saying-'

Max cut him off. It was the first time I'd seen him angry. 'You were just saying that some seats aren't worth fighting for. Let me tell you something: every seat matters to me. Luke's right. The party's inability to organise itself reflects poorly on us, and there's no way we're going to take any of this week's coverage for granted. Understood?'

'Sure,' said Archie, 'I didn't mean to-' Max shook his head dismissively and resumed eating his cereal. 'When's this ad shoot?'

'We leave in ten minutes,' said Luke. 'Milly has all your gear-she'll meet us there. You can change when we get to the studio.'

'Roo,' said Max, 'can I see you for a minute?'

Now what have you done?

I gulped. 'Sure.' Had I overstepped the line with Sh.e.l.ly? Had he seen me in the lift with Oscar? s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t.

'Mate,' he said quietly.

I leaned in.

'Would you mind getting me some shaving cream?'

Relief. 'Any particular brand?'

'Well,' he said, his voice even quieter, 'I don't mind that stuff you gave me.'