Happily Ever After? Read online

  Contents

  So she married her handsome prince

  and they lived happily ever after

  1. New place, new life

  2. One enchanted evening

  3. A fairytale wedding

  4. The prince and princess find their dream castle

  5. One sunny day in September

  6. The joys of motherhood

  7. Punch drunk

  8. Counting my blessings

  9. A lucky scrape

  10. The mysterious stranger

  11. A weekend by the seaside

  12. Motive and opportunity

  13. Stepping over

  14. The rules of engagement

  15. Madness and possession

  16. A night at the Opera House

  17. A fork in the road

  18. Glass slippers and unlikely fairy godmothers

  19. Discovering the Bay

  20. The Year of the Fire Pig

  21. The flight

  22. House hunting

  Epilogue

  Real Epilogue

  Reviews

  About the author

  Acknowledgements

  To my wonderful boys: J, M, N and S.

  So she married her handsome prince and they lived happily ever after.Ever noticed how many fairytales end with that line? Sort of unsatisfactory, really. All the interesting things that happen to our heroines - evil stepmothers, being locked in towers, coaches made from pumpkins - and then nothing? Well, nothing but dull and happy domesticity they’d lead us to believe. Was I the only young girl who wondered what happened after that: when the curtains fell, when the credits rolled? Did the princess have her own palace? How many children did she have? Did the handsome prince ascend to the throne and, if so, did our heroine turn out to be a wise and fair queen? Were there anxious times when the prince had to fight a fire-breathing dragon, go to battle, or perhaps almost succumb to the charms of a comely lady-in-waiting? These were the questions that occupied my impressionable mind.

  Lately I’ve had cause to think back to these fairytales - or at least all the girlie ones - and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s only really ‘Cinderella’ that does it for me.

  The one I really couldn’t get into was ‘Snow White’. That thing about her living with the seven dwarfs was a bit weird, I think. I don’t doubt the handsome prince was okay with this initially but what happened when they’d been married a few years and the first heady glow of romance had dimmed a bit? Did he ever wonder what Snow White and the dwarfs got up to on those long, cold, winter nights? I imagine that might have provoked some awkward conversations…Oh, and I never liked her hair. It may well have been as black as ebony but in my opinion she could certainly have done with the services of a better stylist.

  While we’re on the topic of hair, what about poor old Rapunzel? Imagine the trouble she had to go through to keep hers shiny and bouncy and prince-snaringly good. ‘No time for sex this week dear, I’ve got to wash my hair again.’ Living under the sea, every day would have been a bad hair day for the Little Mermaid. Sleeping Beauty was better but even she had to wait a hundred years before her man came along. I’m all in favour of toy boys but I think that age difference may have told after a while. And let’s not get started on ‘The Princess and the Pea’ - I can only wonder what Hans Christian Andersen was smoking the day he thought that one up.

  No, Cinderella was the only girl who ever appealed to me. For a start, she’s usually portrayed as a blonde, like myself. And she definitely gets to wear the best clothes - not unlike ‘Pretty Woman’ but without the tacky sex worker bit - designer ball gown and coordinated accessories all at the touch of a wand.

  So okay, I’m being deliberately silly here. ‘Flippant’ is the word my mother would use: ‘Eleanor, you’re being flippant again’. She could present a convincing argument too. What follows is a serious story of love, loss and betrayal and I’ve chosen to introduce it with a series of tongue-in-cheek observations about the relative merits of our fairytale heroines.

  Then again, I’m not sure that is so wrong. Isn’t everyone’s life like that: equal parts comedy and tragedy?

  Anyway, there is a serious point to this. The difference between Cinderella and most of these other girls is that they were already princesses, so by marrying a handsome prince they were just keeping it in the family, as it were. Cinderella, on the other hand, was an ordinary girl who, by dint of her good looks and charm and the odd fairy godmother, gets a free ticket into the palace and out of her life of drudgery. She’s the girl we can all aspire to be.

  And that was my story. I married my handsome prince too. However, that’s also where my story and Cinderella’s diverge - the place where fantasy and reality take their different paths and impressionable young girls who believe in fairytales find out they’ve been sold a dud.

  The ‘happily ever after’ is the hardest part, you see.

  1

  New place, new life

  I’m trying to create some atmosphere here so imagine, if you will, that you can hear the drone of aircraft engines as you read along. I’m sitting in the business class end of a Cathay Pacific Airbus, cruising several thousand metres above the dry outback of Australia as I write. If you really want to get into the mood you could even imagine a few bumps of turbulence, which would be an appropriate metaphor for my emotions at present, but in truth the flying conditions are really rather smooth today.

  I’m a relaxed flier as I’m married to a pilot. I am in fact on my way to meet him, as he’s just taken up a new position with Cathay as a Hong Kong-based first officer. It’s the final stepping stone before becoming a captain: the guy calling the shots, or as they like to say in the aviation industry ‘in command’. I once suggested to Tony that that particular expression had a few sexual overtones about it, but he said it just proved I had a dirty mind.

  My husband’s career has not been without its diversions to this point, but it appears he’s finally got things back on track. As a teenager it was his ambition to become a 747 captain by his fortieth birthday and he might yet make it, give or take a year. However, it does beg the question: assuming you do achieve your life’s ambition by age forty, what happens after that? Will he be happy continuing along the same path ad nauseam? Or will a new restlessness set in? I suspect Tony has never really thought about it. He has many admirable qualities but I’m not sure self-reflection is one of them. I just hope it doesn’t precipitate a mid-life crisis in a few years’ time as we’ve had enough crises in our marriage to last us a life time.

  We’re currently in the process of selling our Sydney home and our little family - we also have a four year old daughter called Isabel - is moving to Hong Kong to live. We are to become expats. I know I should be excited about this grand new adventure but at present I’m more inclined to sadness about leaving my loved ones behind back home. It’s going to take me quite some time to adjust, I fear.

  I booked an early morning flight, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but when the alarm went off this morning and I had to drag my protesting body out of bed and stumble around in the dark, I cursed myself for not thinking things through. Unwisely, I stayed up late last night drinking and reminiscing with my mum, dad and younger sister. ‘Let’s open another bottle of wine,’ I said. Yeah, great idea, Ellie - so now I’m going to arrive in my new home town lugging a hangover as well as jetlag in my carry-on baggage.

  As you’ve probably worked out, my name is Eleanor, or more precisely, Eleanor Cooper (née Parkes). The younger sister I mentioned is called Emma, although pretty qui
ckly after her birth Dad re-christened her the Divine Miss Em. I think Mum must have been channelling Jane Austen when she chose names for her daughters, but she claims otherwise. I’m a great fan of Jane’s writing myself but I do feel that Pride and Prejudice, for all its charms, is just a witty and particularly well-written version of the Cinderella myth. It’s no secret that Austen never married in real life. Also my admiration didn’t extend to me liking my name as a child and I always insisted that people called me Ellie. As a consequence I’m rarely called Eleanor these days, except of course by my mother when I’ve behaved in a way she’s disapproved of. It is probably an interesting reflection on our relationship that she calls me Eleanor almost all of the time.

  Having said that, there was a young man recently who called me Eleanor for completely different reasons and I found I quite liked it, so perhaps it is time to embrace my real name and the maturity that goes with it. We’ll see.

  I am, at the time of writing, thirty-five years old, the middle child of Dianne and Trevor’s three. I also have an older brother, David, who’s the family’s brightest star. At the tender age of thirty-eight, he’s a leading heart specialist in Adelaide, married to a GP, and the father of three bright little kids. As children we lived an ordinary middle-class existence, but David was always the one who seemed destined for bigger things. Dad spent most of his working life as an engineer with the Department of Main Roads, a solid, dependable guy. Mum worked as a combined teacher/librarian at the local primary school. They’re both retired now. We didn’t have a fancy lifestyle but things were okay. Mum and Dad still live in the same family home that we grew up in - a three-bedroom brick bungalow in a suburb so obscure that even most Sydneysiders ask, ‘Where?’ when I mention it.

  I work in marketing: pharmaceutical marketing to be precise. I’m the girl that sells the pills that dear old granny and grandpa line up to pop every morning. Or rather, I was that girl until a few weeks ago. I had to resign from my job to move to Hong Kong so I suppose I am officially, at present, unemployed. Apart from the few months after Isabel was born, it’s the first time in my married life I’ve ever been a stay-at-home mum. Ask me again in six months how I feel about that.

  And how would I describe my looks? Well the nitty-gritty is: average height, average weight (although fluctuating), brown eyes and blondey-brown hair (aided by six-weekly visits to the hairdressers). I have a small smattering of freckles across my nose and, by general repute, a nice smile, but that doesn’t give a proper picture does it? It’s a bit loaded, commenting on your own attractiveness. You don’t want to sound too full of yourself, but then again it’s also no place for false modesty. As I have a background in science I think I will describe myself graphically - on an attractiveness scale it would be something like this:

  So definitely not bad, but remember that there are millions of girls between me and the genetically-blessed Ms Jolie and on a bad day I seem to see them everywhere. There have also been a couple of periods where I have moved down the scale: notably during that awkward stage commonly known as puberty and before and after the birth of Isabel, although there were extenuating circumstances there.

  On that topic, why do parents always decide it’s a good time to get professional family portraits done when you’re at the absolute pinnacle of your hideousness? Emma is several years younger than my brother and me and when she was a baby Mum and Dad thought it would be a good idea to capture the family on film for posterity. They enlisted the services of a professional photographer and thus we were immortalised: Emma, the gorgeous blonde cherub; David, the gawky teen; and me, the unfortunate twelve year old with what looks suspiciously like a home-job fringe cut and a healthy layer of puppy fat laid down in preparation for a growth spurt that hasn’t happened yet! Even worse, I have these tragically unsupported little breasts. Didn’t think to buy me a bra for the occasion, Mother? And because they spent so much money on those bloody photos my parents insisted on hanging them throughout the house, helping to scare off any potential suitors. They’re hanging on the walls even now. When I think of those photos I marvel that Tony ever thought it would be a wise idea to marry me.

  Conventional wisdom would suggest that a woman’s attractiveness declines slowly from age twenty-five or thereabouts. Maybe for most people it is that way but for me it’s been more up and down. I’ve recently lost a bit of weight and am currently enjoying an ‘up’ stage, attracting extra attention from the opposite sex, including, interestingly, my own husband. As a matter of fact, I’ve noticed a few business types on the plane checking me out, that is until they see the sleeping Isabel beside me. However, at thirty-five I can see the writing on the wall and I’ve got to make the most of the next decade or so before decrepitude truly kicks in.

  The story I want to tell is really that of the last year of my life, but as we are all products of our pasts and our personalities it’s essential I go back right to the beginning, as the conventions of fairytales dictate, to understand how the events of 2006 unfolded and why I happen to be sitting on a plane that is winging its way to Hong Kong as I write.

  During my childhood I resided in the pink bedroom at the rear of the family home, which overlooked Dad’s vegetable patch and the dog kennel: home to three successive generations of not-very-bright golden retrievers. If I can think of one word to describe me in those early days it would be ‘dreamy’. Mum, by virtue of her position as school librarian, fed this tendency by bringing me home lots of story-books to read. I particularly loved all the unfashionable ones, like Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series and National Velvet and, of course, the fairytales I critiqued earlier. I could never decide which of my favourite fantasies I wanted most to come true: to get a pony for my birthday and win a jumping ribbon in a gymkhana or to be plucked from obscurity to play Cindy Brady in a re-make of The Brady Bunch.

  I was pretty good at school work, but nothing like my gifted older brother. I attended the local primary school and, when the time came, transferred to the local girls’ high school, where I received a patchy, state-sponsored education in science and the arts, of which I retain very little.

  Once my hormones kicked in my daydreaming took on a different quality. I spent a large chunk of my teenage years lying on my bed listening to music and dreaming of my Prince Charming. For a long time I was certain it was to be John Taylor, bass player from Duran Duran. My bedroom, plastered with posters, became a shrine to my idol and I’d visualise elaborate scenarios of my life as the rock star’s girlfriend. The fact that we lived on opposite sides of the globe was a minor obstacle in my adolescent eyes. What was 17,000 kilometres where love was concerned? If only I could just meet him, I reasoned, he would see through the unfortunate pimples and puppy fat, ditch his supermodel girlfriend, and sweep me off to London for a makeover, where I would emerge, swan-like, only to lord it over all the more popular girls at school (the last part probably being my favourite bit of the fantasy).

  There was also an embarrassing, but mercifully brief, period when I forsook John for George Michael from Wham! (boy, was I barking up the wrong tree there), although I quickly saw the folly of my ways and returned to my first love. In my fantasies he was very forgiving. As far as I know, John is still kicking around with Duran Duran, and still looking pretty good if the photos are anything to go by. And you’d have to have been living on another planet to not know what George Michael has been getting up to in recent years. Fortunately I did eventually move on.

  I occasionally went out with real boys during this period, but they always seemed so unsatisfactory compared with John and George - so spotty, so skinny, so real. And the boys I really liked were never the ones who liked me. It was always their less attractive, less cool friends who asked me out. Most of these relationships were short-lived - I think two months was the record. Occasionally I was the dumper but sadly more often the dumpee. I can’t say I really blame those boys as I am sure I came across as being incredibly dull. Whilst devastatingly wit
ty in my own mind I was so terrified of making a fool of myself that most of my clever remarks remained stuck in my throat, only to wither and die before being given the chance to dazzle. We’d go on these excruciatingly embarrassing dates, these boys and I, where he’d hold my hand and I’d hold his and we’d never actually look at each other. Going to the movies was a favoured activity as then you didn’t even have to talk. A series of inexpert kisses and the occasional furtive grope was the sum total of my sexual experience during that time.

  While I was having trouble getting it on, Mum and Dad were having more success. They’d only ever planned and budgeted on having two children, but that’s not how things panned out. One quiet night when I was about eleven and on a sleepover (I never found out why my mother thought it necessary to reveal this particular detail - did they never have sex when I was in the house?), Mum had one too many Tia Marias and milk, Dad got amorous, and they found a few weeks later, to their equal surprise and dismay, that Mum was expecting. That was Emma of course, Mum and Dad’s little ‘afterthought’.

  If my little sister has ever sensed she was a mistake she’s never let on. If a baby could exit the womb twirling a cane and doing high kicks to music, that would have been Emma. She beamed at us all at age four weeks and that smile has rarely left her face since. From the moment she could walk, she danced and sang and entertained and charmed her way through childhood. We all adored and indulged her from day one and I don’t think any of us could imagine life without her. She’s twenty-three now - a grey-eyed, dark-blonde beauty managing her own thriving beauty therapy business - but she’s not planning on relinquishing her baby of the family status anytime soon; on the contrary she continues to milk it for all it’s worth.

  My career path has been an interesting one. It started in customary fashion with lust, specifically lust for Adam Donaldson, my Year 11 biology teacher. Imagine the frisson of excitement that spread throughout our all girls’ school, when Mr Donaldson, the new science teacher, turned out to be not another fifty-something with dandruff and a tendency to wear long socks and polyester shorts but a tall, muscular, twenty-five year old with hazel eyes and honey-brown curls. Up until that time science had - apart from the occasional opportunity to make rotten egg gas and fill Emily Wilson’s pencil case with copper sulphate solution - been no more interesting to me than any other subject, but Mr Donaldson’s arrival sparked a fascination with all things biological.