Read an Excerpt
It's Not You It's Me
Chapter One
I've got approximately forty minutes to spare in the airport lounge, even after I've done the obligatory pick up and put down everything in the newsagent thing, and the 'Ooohhh it's lovely, but I can't afford it, duty-free or not"
faux shop. With nothing else left to poke and prod, I find the nearest café and order a skinny latte. I'm sitting, stirring the sugar into my napkin-ringed glass on autopilot, when I hear the announcement reverberate around the airport.
"Could passenger Mr Jasper Ash please notify the nearest Qantas desk of his whereabouts?" the voice booms. 'Mr Jasper Ash - please go directly to the nearest Qantas desk."
Do not pass go, do not collect $200, I think absent-mindedly.
And then the name they're calling sinks in.
Jasper Ash.
I stand up suddenly, to see if I can spot him. I can't. Of course I can't. It's a big airport, and from the sound of that announcement he's probably not here anyway. The other people in the café look at me as I frantically search the faces walking past. When I sit back down again I realise why they're staring - jumping up so fast, I've spilled most of my coffee in my saucer and it's run over and formed a puddle on the table.
Jasper Ash.
Now there's a flashback.
"Jasper Ash," I say the name to myself quietly, as if mouthing the words will somehow make this all seem more real.
It's a name I haven't said, or heard anyone else say, for some time. Mainly because it's a name that doesn't get a lot of use any more. Not now that he's got a new one, that is. A new name. A new name for a new life.
I wonder for a moment whether it's actually even him - the Jasper Ash I know. But then have to admit to myself that it probably is. It isn't exactly a common name. And it's pretty likely he'd travel under it - being his real name, it'd be the one on his passport. It's not unlikely he'd be in an airport, either. I'm sure he does a lot of travelling these days.
A waitress comes over to wipe down my table for me, and I order another skinny latte as most of the old one's now retreating to the kitchen in her soggy sponge. While I'm waiting for it to arrive, I can't help but think back to the days of Jasper Ash.
We met - it must be almost three years ago now - because he was looking for a new place to live. He was going steadily crazy where he was at the time. The guys he'd been living with - all engineering students - were too noisy for him and constantly gave him ten kinds of crap about studying voice and piano at the Conservatorium. He told me once, later on, that when he read my ad in the classifieds of the Saturday papers he couldn't believe his luck. A cheap share on trendy, hip and young Magnolia Avenue, complete with a river view? Right near the best shops, the best restaurants and within walking distance of the Conservatorium? He'd thought it was simply too good to be true.
Still, Jasper being Jasper, he didn't ring early about the room, and it would've been almost three o'clock in the afternoon when he turned up on my doorstep already over half an hour late. I was actually surprised to see that he'd made it to the door. Half the people who'd made appointments to check out the room that day hadn't even turned up. Well, that's probably not quite true. Most likely they'd turned up, parked, seen the place and driven away at high speed. I'd expected that, though, because 36 Magnolia Avenue - Magnolia Lodge, to its residents - was a little, um, different from the rest of Magnolia Avenue.
Different. I laugh to myself with a small snort now, making the people seated at the few tables around me in the café look over again. Magnolia Lodge, different. That's the understatement of the new millennium.
The thing was, the rest of Magnolia Avenue consisted of trendy little townhouses with big wooden decks, cosy braziers, remote garages and low-maintenance courtyards. Scattered in between these were dinky little cafés and shops that only ever sold one kind of thing - designer products for pampered pets, frozen life-on-the-go takeaway gourmet meals, five hundred kinds of scented candles, and so on.
Well, "and so on' kind of stopped at Magnolia Lodge. Magnolia Lodge was tucked up right at the end of the street, hidden in the corner as if it were a decrepit old organ that was being rejected by the rest of the street's sprightly young body. The fact of the matter was number 36 was not so trendy, not so hip and definitely not so young. It was actually more like a pensioner palace - a thirty-apartment block full of old people and ... ... me.
The token young person.
Well, at least it was a politically correct apartment block.
I could see the 'this wasn't what I was expecting', mouth hanging open, shocked surprise written all over Jasper's face when I opened my front door. At another time I probably would have had a laugh about it and asked him if he was trying to catch flies or something, but the truth was I'd just about had it with finding someone to rent the spare room in my apartment for some extra cash. This was the third Saturday that I'd been ushering people around the place. And those were the polite ones - the ones who hadn't done a runner when they finally found the apartment block behind all the shrubbery.
"Hi, I'm Charlie - Charlie Notting. 'I stuck my hand out.
He shook it. A good shake that made me lift my eyebrows. It wasn't like most of the soggy Weetabix handshakes I'd been getting in this doorway lately. "Jasper Ash," he said.
I invited him in and offered him a drink, which he declined. Instead, he just stood in the middle of the living room and looked around.
"Not what you were expecting, hey?" I got right down to it.
"Never -"
"Never even knew it was here. 'I finished off the sentence I'd heard from just about anyone who'd ever knocked on my front door. I tried not to sound too defensive as I said it.
He nodded.
"Nobody does. 'I sighed then, wondering just how many more times I could do this before someone's blood ended up on the carpet and I lost my bond money. 'Would you really like to see the place, or are you just being polite?"
He turned and looked at me then, and I felt bad. I hadn't meant to snap, but I'd just about got to the end of the line with this whole showing people around thing. This was my home. I liked it. And having several people every Saturday for three weeks in a row slag it off wasn't my idea of a good time.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from It's Not You It's Me by Allison Rushby Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
