The Problem with Perfect Read online

  Not really? Something about that didn’t quite sound convincing.

  “But you met him here,” Marigold pressed. “How often?”

  “Every few weeks, I guess. We used to talk.”

  “Talk?” Finn seemed surprised.

  Marigold hadn’t pegged Finn as a cuddle-in-bed-and-talk sort of bloke. But Julian had been more sensitive. He was more open about his feelings. At least, Marigold had thought so.

  Sasha blushed.

  Marigold shut her eyes. She had her answer. Sasha’s reddening cheeks told her everything she needed to know. Julian had slept with Sasha.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sasha whispered. “I never meant to hurt anyone, I just…”

  Marigold opened her eyes to look directly at Sasha’s, which were quickly filling with tears.

  “There’s a café down the road. Maybe we can talk there.” Sasha looked at Marigold, a sad look on her face.

  They walked silently down the road and Sasha pointed out a small café. Finn took care of the orders while Marigold sat down and inspected Sasha. She was pretty, if you liked that sort of thing. Blonde hair, tanned, big blue eyes. She never thought that Julian had a penchant for blondes, but Sasha was as blonde as they came. Marigold ran an eye along Sasha’s figure. How long were her legs, exactly? Tiny waist. A pang of jealousy quickly made way for anger.

  Julian. What had he been thinking? It was so obvious. She really thought Julian had more character than to jump into bed with such a Barbie-Doll type. She always thought he fancied her look. Subtle, less overtly sexy, far less makeup, far more conservative necklines.

  But clearly not.

  Finn sat next to Marigold as a waiter brought drinks over. Marigold couldn’t remember if she had told him what she wanted, but then again, she didn’t even know what she wanted. What drink was most appropriate to have whilst you listened to the sordid details of what your late husband had been up to with someone else?

  An espresso materialised in front of Marigold and she shot Finn a grateful look. He’d remembered how she liked her coffee.

  Sasha looked between them, tears smudging her mascara. “I can’t believe he’s gone.” She clutched her drink with both hands. Her hands were jittery, causing a little of her coffee to spill down the side of her mug.

  “How did you know him?” Marigold demanded. Where had he met Sasha? Trawling bars? Tinder? Was she an ‘intern’ he’d met through legal circles?

  “We were on that flight together.” Sasha set her cup down and looked between Finn and Marigold.

  There was silence. Marigold felt Finn’s eyes on her. He clearly didn’t know what on earth Sasha was talking about either.

  “What flight?” Finn asked.

  Marigold shot him a grateful look. She was so thankful he seemed to know exactly what to ask.

  “The flight.” Sasha looked at them again, in surprise, as though it was all so obvious.

  “I’m sorry, I’m lost. What flight are you talking about?” Marigold asked.

  “A Sydney flight?” Finn suggested.

  Sasha grabbed her napkin and started twisting it around her hand, a worried look on her face. “About four or five months ago, there was a flight that had an emergency landing halfway between Melbourne and Sydney. It was on the news.”

  Marigold shook her head. “Julian was on a flight that had an emergency landing?”

  “It was my first week on the job. I’m a flight attendant.”

  Of course you are. Marigold closed her eyes for a moment. Julian had been hanging out with a pretty trolley dolly. What was it about her that had got him hot under the collar? The uniform? The impeccable hairstyles? The ability to serve excellent drinks?

  “And I was a bit freaked out, but trying really hard to put on a professional face,” Sasha continued. “Julian’s seat was right near mine at the front, just opposite where we sit, and I guess I wasn’t doing a very good job of looking calm. He spoke to me and tried to distract me, and I was so grateful to him. A near-death experience on your first week on the job was pretty hard to deal with, but I got through it because of him.”

  “He was very calming.” Marigold said. Her husband had a ‘near-death experience’, as Sasha put it, and he’d not even mentioned it to his wife?

  “He was. Anyway, we got talking, and a week later, he was on my next flight.”

  “To Sydney?” Finn asked.

  “Yes. I thought it was fate, and then I realised he was married and figured that nothing would happen. But he slipped me his number.”

  Marigold’s heart skipped a beat. Julian had instigated things. Had he done this before? Or was Sasha particularly desirable? Or had they bonded over the experience of the emergency landing?

  “The more experienced flight attendants warned me about men slipping us their numbers, and even though I knew he was married and nothing could happen, I did want to speak to him again. He was just so lovely, so I rang him and we had coffee.”

  “Did you give him a pair of cufflinks?” Finn asked.

  Sasha looked at him, surprised. She nodded. “Yes, to say thank you for helping me on that flight.”

  “Propellers.” Marigold had almost forgotten about those.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “They were in his drawer at work. There was a note from an ‘S’.”

  “That was from me, too.” She looked down. “I’m sorry, Marigold. I knew he was married but I really did like him a lot.”

  “And you slept with him?” Marigold asked.

  Sasha took a sip of her drink: a frothy-looking cappuccino with a lovely flower on top created out of chocolate powder. Finn really had ordered the right drinks. A simple strong espresso for the widow, and a pretty chocolatey fantasy creation for the mistress.

  “Just once.”

  “Just once,” Marigold repeated. Just? As though that made it not so bad, or not quite adultery.

  “He was so stressed about the complaint. And one night, one thing led to another—”

  “What complaint?” Finn interrupted, cocking his head to the side in his English Pointer look.

  Sasha winced and took another sip of her pretty drink, as if for courage. She swallowed and replaced her cup on the saucer.

  Answer the question! Marigold watched this routine with frustration. “Complaint? What complaint?” she asked Sasha.

  “I don’t know the ins and outs of it exactly – when he spoke lawyer things, I’d get a little confused – but basically, he had a client who didn’t win their case and they blamed him.”

  Finn furrowed his brow. “Blamed him how?”

  “Exactly. Cases don’t always go the client’s way,” Marigold added.

  Sasha took another sip from her cup. “I asked him the same thing, but he said that perhaps he should have done more. They were going to complain.”

  “A formal complaint?” There was a process for reporting the conduct of barristers, but it was for serious misconduct.

  Sasha nodded. “And he was worried it would cause you problems, and your family. The client knew this, and Julian thought they were exploiting the fact that he was married to you and that your family would want to avoid scandal. So they were blackmailing him.”

  “The money.” Finn looked at Marigold. “That’s what it was for.”

  That made sense as to what had happened to the sums of cash Finn had found unaccounted for. And little wonder there was no trace of them, if he was handing them over to someone under the table. Oh, Julian. Marigold felt her heart sink. This sort of thing could have got him disbarred. How could he have been so reckless? He should have let the client make the complaint and fought it, rather than giving into them. It was so unlike him.

  “So he talked to you about this.” Marigold sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. Her husband, who she thought was a brilliant barrister, was being blackmailed by a client and she hadn’t heard a word from him about it – but he’d told Sasha.

  “He was stressed. Sometimes we’d have dinne
r or just chat.”

  “And you met here?” Perhaps it explained the proximity of the apartment to the airport. Easier for him to catch up with Sasha.

  “Sometimes.” She blushed and looked down. “I hadn’t spoken to him in ages – after that night when we… you know, he said he needed to think about things. We agreed to take some time apart, but yesterday, I just couldn’t take it. I was so desperate to see him.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I wanted to see if he’d made any decisions.”

  “Decisions?”

  “He said that he loved you, Marigold, but he didn’t feel like you had a marriage. He felt like you were a business partner and a good friend.”

  A business partner? A good friend? That was how he saw her? “Was he going to leave me?” she asked quietly.

  Tears formed in Sasha’s eyes. “He still wasn’t sure. He got the apartment while he figured things out. He said he tried to talk you into counselling but you didn’t agree.”

  “What?” Julian had never suggested counselling. “He never said anything…” Oh. The thought hit her. He’d mentioned something about seeing some therapist, but he’d been so vague that she’d thought it was more of a general thing. Like a check-up or a car service. Not an ‘I’m-thinking-of-leaving-you-because-our-marriage-is-like-a-business-arrangement’ counselling session.

  But clearly, it had been. And she’d not paid any attention.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Finn

  Finn drove Marigold back to her house. She stared out of the car window and was silent. He made a move to turn on the radio, but she cleared her throat and shook her head, so he pulled his hand back to the wheel. Their nice little chat before meeting Sasha felt like a million years ago.

  “He cheated on me,” she said, finally as he pulled the car into the driveway.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear all that.”

  “He slept with another woman, he had a secret apartment, he was plotting to leave me, and he was being blackmailed by a client. And I was only focused on a business merger. What the hell is wrong with me?”

  She said this with such detachment, as though she was running through a shopping list, though each word made him angrier. How dare Julian do this to her?

  “This isn’t your fault,” Finn said firmly.

  “Oh, and apart from the merger, I seemingly made him so ashamed of gaining a couple of kilos, he started binge-eating chocolate in secret and taking diet pills at work, which probably caused his heart attack. If he was ashamed about eating some extra chocolate, no wonder he didn’t tell me about the potential malpractice.”

  She opened the door and climbed out. He followed her to the door as she unlocked it, her hand shaking as she did.

  “You didn’t cause his heart attack,” he said.

  “I didn’t help it.”

  “Marigold, this isn’t your fault.”

  She shook her head as she unlocked the front door of her house. “Of course it is. Everything I touch is a disaster. Just ask my dad.”

  “That’s not true. Your dad relies on you.”

  “Not lately.” They walked through into the foyer of her house where she put her handbag down. She turned to him, tears in her eyes. “And she was so obvious, yeah? Blonde, blue eyes, 22 years old. Seriously, the typical mistress.”

  She clearly needed to have a rant about Sasha and he’d let her get it off her chest. He’d say nothing.

  “You thought she was beautiful, didn’t you?” She looked at him, almost accusatorially.

  There was no good answer to that. No-one would say Sasha was unattractive. He didn’t want to be busted lying. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”

  She scoffed. “Of course you did. I bet she’d be just your type.” There was a bitterness to her tone. “And I get it, I do. She’s all cute and blonde and smiley with her pert little figure and big blue eyes. But Julian? No, I didn’t think Julian would ever go for that sort of thing. I thought he had more class.”

  More class? Finn felt a stab of heat in his chest. Had she just insulted him? That finding Sasha attractive meant he was without class? Or that somehow Marigold and Julian were of a higher class than himself?

  “What does that mean?”

  “What it means. Julian wasn’t the sort of guy to have a one-night stand with some stewardess he met on a plane.”

  “And men like me, what? That’s all we want?”

  Marigold stared at him, a puzzled look on her face. “No. I’m not saying that. You don’t understand what it’s like, the life Julian and I had. The life I thought he wanted, where we achieved things.”

  He took a step closer to her. “Why wouldn’t I understand?” He narrowed his eyes. “Because I don’t have the fancy degrees that he did, or the money? Well, I’ll tell you what, Uptown Girl, I may not have had any of that, but I wouldn’t do anything like what he did. He was a gutless coward who ran off and hid rather than face his own wife. He was a liar and a cheat. He was pathetic.”

  “Don’t you dare say that about him,” she whispered.

  “What? You’re defending him?” Finn couldn’t believe this. What was she doing defending that liar? He was about to say this, but paused as it felt as if a giant switch had just been turned on inside his brain.

  As much as he’d tried to deny it, the reality was that for months now, he’d been incurably jealous of a dead man.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Marigold

  They faced each other, the buzzing in her ears becoming more intense as she felt her heart race. Finn had stepped in closer to her, as if to challenge her on her points.

  “You don’t understand,” she said.

  “Maybe I understand more than you think. Maybe you don’t understand the sort of life you were leading here with him. Clearly one he didn’t want to be a part of any more but didn’t have the guts to actually leave.”

  “How dare you? You don’t know the first thing about me,” she whispered. Her life was not perfect.

  “Oh, don’t I? Miss Marigold Agnes Doyle, born 10 July to Peter Michael Doyle and Odette Marie Doyle, née Guilian. Sister of Frederick and Rose. Educated at only one of the most expensive and exclusive girls’ schools in Melbourne, Law/Commerce at Melbourne University, a charmed career in Daddy’s transport and logistics empire. Married Julian on the 29th of September at the Cathedral in Bendigo, officiated by the Bishop, of course, and a reception at the Doyle’s Mulberry Estate where guests were treated to a seven-course meal by a chef flown in from Paris, and you wore a Vivienne Westwood couture gown. You never go to bed before eleven o’clock, you run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You drink a blend of coffee called Romano, and the only champagne you drink is Veuve. Your housekeeper comes Tuesdays and Thursdays. Your gardener likes to listen to Talkback Radio while he tends the box hedges. Is that enough for you, Uptown Girl? I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “How do you know all this?” she whispered.

  “Because I’m always being sent to watch you. I’m meant to be keeping an eye on you now, to make sure you’re ok, but instead I’m searching for clues about your husband. Not to mention the times last year when I sat every day outside this house, watching you and that husband of yours for weeks on end. And you know what? Both of you were so wrapped up in your own little lives that you never even noticed me.”

  “What?” What on earth was he talking about? “Watching me now?”

  “Your dad asked me to check in to make sure you were ok.”

  “And last year, why were you watching me?”

  “You were being stalked by a crazed ex-employee who was trying to get revenge on you for sacking him. Your father hired me to watch you, to make sure he didn’t attack you, until the police could lay charges.”

  “What? Why didn’t my dad tell me?” she demanded.

  “Because I seem to be the go-to person. Any little problem, your family gets me on to it, sitting outside your house, checking up on you or running around checking out someone F
rederick was seeing or Rose knows. Why don’t you just talk to each other instead of hiring private investigators to find dirt on each other?”

  She crossed her arms. “You should go.”

  “Oh, I’m going.” He marched to the door. “I told you from the start that you might find out stuff you didn’t want to know, but you had to go ahead, didn’t you? You couldn’t help yourself. So now you know that your husband was a pathetic coward.”

  “Don’t you dare say that!”

  “It’s the truth,” he growled.

  “You will never work for our family again!”

  “Fine!” He slammed the door behind him with such force that one of the lamps on her hall table rattled as she collapsed onto the floor. Every single fear she’d had, ever since the day she’d found out about the apartment, had come true.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Finn

  Finn sat in his car and hit the steering wheel with his fist. What a disaster. He’d just potentially lost his biggest source of income.

  Marigold would tell Peter what had happened, and Peter would be furious Finn hadn’t told him about the investigation into the apartment. He was meant to be looking out for Marigold, after all.

  Not to mention what he’d said about the family spying on one another. Charming. That was a brilliant way to repay the faith and support he’d received from them.

  He sank his head onto the steering wheel. He was usually so restrained. He’d been trained to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. Where had that vanished to ten minutes earlier?

  He should have just shut up. He shouldn’t have got involved. He should have just nodded and done what he’d do for any client, and then end it. Telling her about the inquest, about Simon, letting her come with him to visit his mum, going to Mulberry that weekend… It had clouded things.

  The truth was, he’d become too attracted. But was attracted even the word? Was he love with Marigold? No. He couldn’t be. He swallowed. Lust? Well, yes, he did think she was gorgeous, but it was the wanting to support her. Not take care of her, she didn’t need that, but supporting her and wanting her to know that whatever her husband had done, it wasn’t her fault. Julian hadn’t appreciated how lucky he’d been.