Epiphany - the Silvering

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Now was not a good time for arachnaphobia, at the start of a humble-pie session with Matthew Weissler, but Rosetta had no say in the matter. Each action was at the mercy of the wrist-tickling spider.

She jumped up and down. She shook her arm as far away from the rest of her as she could manage.

In the midst of it all, she became aware of Matthew dashing to her side, of him taking a step forward and then a step back as her maniacal dance spun ridiculously out of control.

Light from the lamp post she’d neared illuminated the back of her wrist for a second. She could see it now. Something tiny and scurrying. Not a spider. Not even a baby spider. It was an ant. A placid, harmless little ant that had ventured from the camellia. ‘Oh!’

‘Gone now?’ said Matthew.

She brushed the culprit to the ground. ‘Just an ant,’ she mumbled. She’d needed to think quicker. A moment longer and she might have realised she could keep up the spider thing to save face.

‘Ha!’ Matthew’s voice brimmed with amusement. ‘Is that all it was?’

Rosetta gulped and stared at the ground.

‘Although,’ Matthew’s tone was thoughtful. ‘I guess they’re easily mistaken when you’re going only by feel.’ His voice was deliciously warm and very close, and he had emphasised the word feel.

Going by feel. She liked that. If she were really going by feel at that moment, she wouldn’t just have been listening to Matthew. She’d have been gliding her hands over Matthew’s shoulders, sliding them over his arms to where the rolled-up sleeves of his interestingly multi-colour shirt ended and his forearms began, and enjoying the novel sensation of Matthew’s skin.

And then…Matthew placed a hand on her back and smoothed it across the ends of her hair.

Zing-Zingity-Zing!

She drew in a breath and looked up at him.

He was smiling down at her. ‘You all right now?’

His hand was moving over her back in firm, small strokes. Whirls of sparkling warmth ran over her spine and curled around her toes and fingertips.

She tried to nod. His touch had spun her into a state of unspeakable happiness.

And then...chaos.

A sharp twinge gnawed at her scalp. The twinge became nastier, sharper. No. It couldn’t have been. Not a real spider this time! Not in her hair! She squealed.

‘In my hair, in my hair,’ she said helplessly. ‘Something’s in my hair!’ She flung herself forward and swiped at her scalp. Matthew ran a brisk hand over the top of her head to flick whatever it was away from her. Something was biting. Savagely.

‘Ow!’ she said in a screech. ‘Ow! Ow!’

‘Rosetta, Rosetta,’ Matthew was saying. ‘Stop moving. Stop now.’

She froze.

‘It wasn’t a spider.’

‘An ant again then?’ Rosetta was mortified.

‘No it wasn’t an ant. It was me.’

Still doubled over, she swung her head round and gaped at Matthew.

‘I’m really sorry about this. My watch. It’s caught in your hair. Must have been pulling.’

His back-pat had caused a tangle.

Upon Matthew’s advice, Rosetta levered herself up from her cringe while Matthew choreographed his trapped arm to move with her. ‘I can’t undo the clasp,’ he said. ‘Your hair’s too caught up in it. Got any scissors?’

‘I have!’

‘That was a joke.’

‘No, seriously.’ Rosetta’s purse, which she’d strung from shoulder to hip when looking for Matthew, was on the ground, a side-effect of that unfounded ant-panic. ‘Do you think you can reach that? I have nail scissors inside a manicure set.’

‘I couldn’t do that to you.’

‘I’m fine with you going through it.’

‘Not necessary. Almost sorted.’ Appearing to know what he was doing, Matthew twisted her hair into ineffective spirals. ‘This might take some time.’

Three voices from the car park called her name. Rosetta whirled round, taking Matthew’s watch and arm with her. She winced from the needling pain it triggered.

Royston was standing beside the new luxury car Rosetta had bought him the week before. He waved to her. Eadie and Darren glanced across at her with raised eyebrows. The awkwardly close proximity she and Matthew were locked in probably looked like something special had been interrupted, like she was too lost in Matthew’s presence to join her friends and leave. Some of that, she supposed, wasn’t too far from the truth.

Eadie and Darren were gawping now and whispering to each other like gossipy sixth graders.

In a voice that only Rosetta could hear, Matthew adopted a reasonably good sit-com drawl and pretended to call to them, ‘It’s not what it looks like.’

In the moments that followed, she and Matthew gave in to peals of uproarious laughter, at the same time conscious of remaining static to avoid further damage. ‘So this is what it’s like to be a hysterical statue,’ Rosetta remarked.

‘And not a historical one?’

They managed, in the end, to exercise what the good folk on Sesame Street called ‘co-operation’. Matthew edged crab-like to Rosetta’s purse, and Rosetta edged crab-like alongside Matthew. He leaned sideways to retrieve it from the ground. Rosetta leaned along with him. She didn’t have much choice. It was either that or stay unmoving and risk baldness with a strand yanked from its roots.

Matthew located the mini manicure set, looked dubiously down at the scissors and passed them to her. ‘Can’t do it,’ he said. ‘Can’t hack into your hair.’

‘You wouldn’t be hacking into it, you’d only be freeing up the ends.’

‘Still couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, it’s gorgeous hair, for a start. I’d feel like a vandal. I’d feel like I’d gone and shot Bambi.’

Rosetta pushed a thumb through one of the looped scissors handles. ‘You’ve got to remember, Matthew, that the only thing you’d be guilty of vandalising is other people’s Amaretti’s gelato.’ She walked her fingers along the strands connecting with Matthew’s Rolex and efficiently snipped them free.

‘Well done,’ Matthew said, taking a step away from her.

He placed both his hands on her elbows then, making her feel effervescently light, as though she were wading through rivers of champagne. His effect on her was immense. Powerful. It took all her willpower not to melt right into Matthew’s formal semi-embrace, despite a wild hope of every formality deserting them.

‘I’ll let you get back to your friends,’ Matthew whispered.

‘Ah yes. My friends.’ Finally able to tear her gaze away from his earnest face, she looked across at Royston and Eadie and Darren. They were now in Royston’s car, looking discreetly in the other direction.

‘Rosetta...’ Matthew’s voice had become deep and suggesting.

‘Mmm?’

His hands fell away from her. ‘I’d like, if it’s okay with you, to keep in contact.’

Determined not to bypass another opportunity, Rosetta took a freshly printed business card from her purse.

Matthew examined the card. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘I like the holographic design.’

Rosetta shrugged this off. Silver holographic lettering was easy when you could afford the best printers in Sydney. And how she presented herself in a card didn’t matter anymore. Even if she’d had only her former ‘cards’ to hand over: one of the flimsy gold-texta-squiggled squares she’d improvised with during her struggling single mother days, as long as the contact details were legible to Matthew, she wouldn’t have cared.

‘Er...I’m sorry. I thought...’ Matthew was puzzled. ‘But your name’s Rosetta!’

She’d forgotten that her business cards had her new professional name on them, the name she now used at uni. Avoiding the question-prompting revelation of having been adopted, she told him how Odetta had been her mother’s choice. ‘But my friends have always called me Rosetta.’

‘I like Rosetta,’ said Matthew.

His looking at her for a very long time after saying that, caused her to answer with lowered eyes and a voice that gained speed like a schoolgirl’s. ‘My baba’s choice. He named me after the Rosetta Stone.’

‘You’re Egyptian? You have to be from somewhere exotic like that.’

‘I’m a New Zealander. Half Maori. But I was raised by Greeks.’

‘An exotic blend then.’

Ushering the subject back to Matthew, she said, ‘And you’ve spent your younger years in England.’ He’d mentioned it at Amaretti’s, but the initial giveaway was the charming accent and quaint way with words.

‘Yeah. I’m catching a flight there tomorrow morning, believe it or not. I’ve got to go to London about a possible career change.’

‘Tomorrow!’

‘Tomorrow. It should be good actually.’

England. Rosetta froze. Working in London and not Sydney. She was about to lose him again.

‘It’s just to check out a few things. I’m sort of in a quandary as to what to do. My brother wants to introduce me to a few people.’ Matthew hesitated. ‘Just business people. And, whatever the case, whatever I end up deciding, it’ll be good to catch up with the family.’

He hadn’t decided yet!

Matthew nodded towards Royston’s car. ‘I came here on his advice. Returned Our True Ancient History to him, and he subtly threw into the conversation that you’d be here on Tuesday night.’

‘Ooh, did he really, now?’

‘He did. I enjoyed the book actually and...Rosetta, are you seeing someone at the moment?’

‘No!’ She’d said it in almost a shout. If she hadn’t wanted to seem desperate before, she sure sounded that way now. ‘How long are you going for?’ she asked, trying not to appear too hopeful. ‘Or is it a one-way ticket?’

‘I’ll be there for a month,’ he said. ‘If I do decide to move, I’ll need to come back and sell everything up.’

Realising she’d been holding her breath, Rosetta relaxed her shoulders and exhaled softly. Not a one-way ticket. A month. She could live with that. As for Matthew leaving Australia for good...well that didn’t bear thinking of. It would mean having to forget about him forever.

Tonight Matthew had become a friend.

The friendship, though, was fragile. It might have to end.