Free Love Is Blind by Kathy Lette

drops.’
    His remark stung her. Anthea felt furious with herself. Stranded out there in the bush, she had lost her balance, that was all. She’d been teetering like a tight-rope walker … and had momentarily fallen from grace.
    By the time she had settled into her seat on board the aircraft, she felt her old self returning. It wasn’t fair of Jacko to judge her. She’d been terrified, jet lagged and drugged up on painkillers. Kissing him had been a mistake, that was all. Rough diamonds like him were all very well, she thought to herself, as she sipped champagne in the first-class cabin, but she liked her men with a little polish. As the plane taxied down the runway, the whole experience began to feel like a mirage to her.
    They took off and turned towards Perth. The intensity of the last few days faded away as fast as the mining town below. Eventually her sister and Jacko were both just a blip on the horizon so far as Anthea was concerned. All she could think about now was boarding the flight to London and returning to the safety of her side of the world, her home, her beloved.

Chapter Ten
    Love May Be Blind, But Marriage Is A Real Eye Opener
    IN HER ABSENCE London seemed to have changed from sparkling European gem to grubby fake jewel. The city, smeared by car fumes, looked grey and grimy. Pedestrians seemed to hurry everywhere like caged mice. And the sky appeared to be falling in. After the big blue expanse of the Australian Outback, the London sky felt alarmingly low.
    ‘Darling!’ Rupert glanced up from his spotless glass desk – which looked, now Anthea thought about it, like a case in a museum. She was about to recount the details of her accident when he interrupted. ‘Notice anything?’ He leant back in his posture-correct chair. ‘No glasses!’ he said, before she could answer. ‘I had my eyes lasered. It’s almost Biblical … “I can see! I can see”!’ he joked.
    ‘But I liked your Clark Kent look,’ Anthea said, feeling baffled. ‘Why didn’t you talk it over with me first?’
    ‘I wanted it to be a little surprise. I had to take a week off to recover.’
    ‘But you said the reason you couldn’t come with me was because you were busy selling your shares so that we could buy a house.’
    Rupert got up from his desk, crossed the room and slipped one arm around her waist. ‘Ah, well, yes, but the prices fell. It wasn’t the right time to sell. We’ll just wait another six months or so … maybe a year …’
    Anthea’s heart sank down into her shoes. ‘So, while I was out in the bush, trying to save my sister, nearly being killed by feral emus and floods and bush fires, you were merely getting your eyes lasered?’
    ‘It was supposed to be a surprise. I booked in for surgery months ago. I didn’t want to cancel … What do you think?’
    What Anthea thought was that their carefully designed, earth-toned apartment lacked character. It was seared by light yet freezing cold. Winter and summer, Rupert liked the thermostat set to Arctic level. She missed the Outback heat, the air thick with abundant birds and insects. The browny-green carpet Rupert had imported from Italy now looked to her like creeping mould. His discarded tie lay in a tired snarl of silk on the chair.
    ‘And to tell the truth, I wasn’t entirely convinced you needed to go on your mission, Annie. Jane’s miner may be rough and ready, but to be frank, with her looks, who else was she going to attract? I thought the only thing she’d ever have between her legs would be that ridiculous cello.’ He laughed at his own joke.
    ‘Jane is a highly intelligent, artistic woman,’ Anthea objected. ‘Are looks all that count with you men? When they say beauty comes from within, Rupert, they do
not
mean from within a jar marked Estée Lauder.’
    ‘I hate to think what their children will look like. I just hope they have a life guard by their gene pool,’ he continued.
    Anthea bristled, and not just because of the insult to