Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Ambrose

I t took an hour and a half—and two different trains and a bus—to get from Ambrose's share house in Newtown to his mum's place in Macquarie Fields on Monday. He listened to a podcast most of the way, but didn't really take any of it in. He was tired, and visiting his mum always caused a low-grade anxiety in his gut that left him unsettled and made it difficult to concentrate, like sitting in the dentist's waiting room as a kid. Not that Ambrose would compare seeing his mum to a dentist's visit. He loved his mum. It was just…it was difficult sometimes to straddle the increasingly wide gap between the world his mum lived in, and the one that everyone else did.

Bella Newman was still living in 1998, when she'd been on the front cover of TV Week after being nominated for a Gold Logie for Most Popular Actress for her role as Angela in Harbour Med . She hadn't won. The lead actress for Blue Heelers had, for the third year running. She'd gone on to win it the next two years as well, blitzing the competition, while Bella's star had faded, then vanished completely. Now the only time Bella was ever on TV was for one of those ‘Where Are They Now?' specials that the networks churned out every so often to fill their schedules in the non-ratings period and to replay when the cricket finished early.

The bus dropped Ambrose three blocks from his mum's place, and he tugged his hood up as he began to walk to keep the sun off the back of his neck. He was tired, and his growling stomach reminded him that it was past lunchtime, and he hadn't even had breakfast yet. He'd slept late this morning and hadn't had time to eat if he wanted to catch the bus. He wondered if Mum had got groceries this week—another reason he visited as often as he did despite the nails-down-a-chalkboard feeling it gave him to spend too much time in his childhood home—and hoped he could at least make himself a sandwich.

He counted the cracks on the footpath all the way to his mum's place.

Bella Newman lived in the second flat in a brown-brick block. Hers was the one with the overgrown grass, most of it brown and stringy, and the front door that had once been painted red but was now pink, as faded as Bella's stardom. Ambrose stepped over the wire gate, which was easier than forcing it open, and grabbed her mail from the box. There was nothing there that screamed overdue, at least.

The doorbell had been broken for as long as Ambrose could remember, so he rapped on the door instead. "Mum? It's Ambrose."

Bella opened the door. She was too pale and too thin, and Ambrose wondered how long it had been since she'd been outside. Her dark hair was as perfectly styled as always, even though it was twenty years out of date. She was wearing the pink dressing gown that Isadora had sent her for her last birthday.

"Ambrose!" she exclaimed with a delighted smile, opening the door wider so that he could follow her past the framed TV Week and New Idea covers that lined the narrow entryway. "How are you, darling?"

"Good," Ambrose said. They entered the small kitchen. "How are you, Mum?"

"Oh," she said, waving her hand. "Busy, busy. You know how it is."

No, but he knew how she thought it was. Mum hadn't had a call from her agent in over ten years, but she still somehow thought it could happen at any moment for her. That somewhere out there, some hungry young director with just the right project was thinking, " You know who we need for this? A washed-up nineties soap star who fried her brain with cocaine back in the day."

"How's university?" Bella asked. She sat at the small kitchen table and ran her thin fingers over the cracks in the Formica.

"Good," Ambrose said. He headed for the fridge and was glad to see that there was at least butter and some ham slices. "Has Mrs. Ahmadi been giving you a lift to the shops for groceries?"

Mrs. Ahmadi lived in the last unit. Ambrose paid her fifty dollars a week to take Mum grocery shopping. It strained his budget, sure, but Mum didn't like to use buses, and she didn't drive.

"Yes, it's fine," Bella said vaguely. She was vague about most things, but the fact the fridge was stocked probably meant she was right for once. Her eyes brightened. "How is your acting going?"

"It's good," Ambrose said, plastering a smile on his face as he pulled the butter out of the fridge.

"You said you were in a play?" Bella asked.

"Rehearsing for one," Ambrose corrected, even though it was a lie. He hadn't had a real acting job, or even a callback, in over twelve months, hence his side gig.

"You should do television," Bella said. "You have the right face for television!"

Like it was that easy.

"Yeah," Ambrose said. "But I want to concentrate on getting into NIDA first, remember?"

Bella smiled brilliantly. "Of course!"

The National Institute of Dramatic Arts had already passed three times on Ambrose, but hey, what was growing up with Bella Newman but a study in how to handle rejection? Or, more precisely, a study in how to delude yourself into believing you were a working actor when nothing could be further from the truth.

The thing was, Ambrose was an actor. He was studying acting at the University of Sydney, and he wanted to go to NIDA. That right there was a solid plan. And he had credits. Okay, so most of them were over ten years old now, but he still got the occasional royalty cheque from that old cordial commercial—it popped up on the same ‘Where Are They Now?' shows that Mum did—so he wasn't totally washed up at twenty-one, right? He'd even been on Neighbours (Child on Skateboard #1). He had more going for him than most of his classmates did…just not recently , that was all.

Ambrose made his sandwich and glanced at his mum, and wondered if in twenty years they'd both be sitting in this flat, believing that a call from their agent would come in any second now.

Maybe he should have been an accountant like Isadora.

His nose wrinkled at the thought of it.

All that maths…fuck that.

He sat down at the table with his mum and ate his sandwich while she smiled at him .

"Tell me about your play," she said.

"It's by a new writer," Ambrose said around a mouthful of sandwich. "I have no idea how he got the funding. I think he must be the producer's nephew or something. Every week it's like a new rewrite, and someone quitting or getting recast."

The imaginary play had to be a disaster, he figured, so it would make sense when there was no opening night.

"Not you though?" Bella asked, her brow furrowing.

"Nah," Ambrose said with a grin. "They like me."

And Bella's smile was so proud that Ambrose had to look away.

A walk, a bus and two different trains got him home again to Newtown. It was already dark, but the house he shared with a bunch of mates from uni was warmly lit—their former housemate's ex-girlfriend never did come back for all those strings of fairy lights, so they were still hung up all around the place—and welcoming. The house was an old terrace house, and definitely the poor cousin of all its neighbours. It'd be worth millions if it ever went to auction, and it leaned just on the charming side of decrepit. Ambrose had often thought the only things holding it up were the places on either side. Their terrace sagged like a drunk being supported home by two mates after a big night out.

Their landlord, Mr. Erskine, was very, very old, and very, very crazy. He was also a lifesaver, because no way in hell could Ambrose and his housemates afford to get a new place if Mr. Erskine ever decided to sell, but he'd told them a bunch of times they were safe until he died. Which would have been more reassuring if he wasn't ninety-three, but Ambrose supposed it was a valuable daily reminder that there were no such things as certainties in life.

Harry was in the small kitchen staring unhappily into the microwave when Ambrose got home. "Oh, hey. How's your mum?"

"Good," Ambrose said. "How did you get masala on the ceiling?"

"Reheating leftovers," Harry said, grimacing.

"You're supposed to keep the door closed."

"I did. But it turned out it hadn't finished exploding when I thought it had." Harry waved at the mess in the sink, which appeared to be where he'd dumped his disastrous attempt to reheat his leftovers.

Ambrose winced. The dishes stacked in the drainer beside the sink were also no longer clean. Neither was Harry. He was splattered with orange sauce. Looking around, Ambrose wondered what a ‘Where Are They Now?' TV crew would think about his living conditions, if they were here to see it. Not that he'd ever be on those shows in his own right—in order to become a has-been, he'd have to make it first.

He shook off the depressing thought. He was young. He had time. He had talent. Just look at his performance on Saturday night. That family had been convinced that he was a total oxygen thief, and even the waiter had looked like he wanted to clock him one. He'd been kind of cute actually, under all those layers of disapproval, and Ambrose found himself thinking about the guy—his long legs, lean body and the dimples that had appeared when he'd smiled.

Not that he'd smiled much once Ambrose had started doing his thing.

"My fucking masala," Harry said mournfully, his shoulders slumping. "Mate, I really need to be an escort like you. That masala was the fanciest thing I'd had in weeks , and now it's dead." He jutted his bottom lip out, like a toddler. "I want to eat nice food. You've had restaurant food three times this week!"

"It's not escorting," Ambrose said, although he supposed it actually was. Just, it was intentionally bad escorting.

He'd fallen into it in his first year at university, when some creep wouldn't leave a girl in his class alone, and she'd announced loudly that she had a boyfriend. The guy had sneered, and demanded to know who it was, so Ambrose had swaggered up, put his arm around the girl, given the guy a death stare and said, "It's me, dickhead."

The girl—Emma—had bought him a packet of salt and vinegar chips for lunch, and that, Ambrose supposed, had been his first paid gig. He and Emma were still mates, too, which was an added bonus. It had actually been Emma who'd volunteered him as Fake Emergency Boyfriend for a few more of her friends—there were way too many creepy guys in the world—then, a few months in, she'd come to him and said, " My friend Therese needs you for a date ."

Ambrose had wrinkled his brow. " Isn't she dating that guy with glasses ?"

" Yes ," Emma had said. " But her parents hate him. And… " Her eyes had glinted with evil. " And we thought that maybe if they hated someone else a little bit more, they'd appreciate that Paul is actually a good guy ."

Ambrose had gone to dinner with Therese and her parents and channelled every shitty loser his mum had ever dated—and there were a lot of them to channel. He'd come across as rude, arrogant, self-absorbed and an utter arsewipe. Ambrose had had to stop himself apologising for his own behaviour half a dozen times throughout the night, but he'd managed to pull it off—those acting lessons had come in handy—and by the end of the night her parents had absolutely hated him. It had been kind of fun, and from Therese's viewpoint, wildly successful. He'd been happy to do it for the free meal, but she'd been so stoked with his performance that she'd paid him a hundred and fifty bucks, cash, and called the next day to ask if she could recommend him to her friends.

And so Bad Boyfriend, Inc was born. Not that it was an official Inc, because that implied taxes and a declared income and shit that Ambrose had no interest in, but Therese was a graphic arts student and had made up business cards and everything, and she said the Inc made it look cooler. And Ambrose wouldn't have dared argue cool with a girl with green hair and a nose stud. She'd beat him every time.

And wow, was there ever demand for his services. Ambrose only took on clients via personal recommendation, and he wasn't cheap, charging anywhere between a hundred bucks for a mildly obnoxious coffee date to four hundred for dinner and a tantrum, but on a busy week he booked around three disaster dates—which cut down on groceries as well, so double win. Plus, he got to eat at some really nice places, for as long as he could before they threw him out.

This week he'd dated John, Lucy then Kelly. He was tired as hell, but his stomach thanked him for it.

He grabbed the dishcloth from the sink and helped Harry dab at the masala that had exploded down his front, while he thought of the seafood platter from Saturday night at Bayside. God, it had been nice. Lobster, prawns and Moreton Bay bugs. All stuff that he never got to eat on a university student's budget. The meal had been so nice that Ambrose had almost regretted leaving so much of it on the floor at the end of the night, though to be fair he'd actually meant the tablecloth trick to work. He'd practised it for days beforehand, to the applause and cheers of his housemates, but maybe the table in the restaurant had been too big, or the wrong size or something, or maybe it was the bottle of champagne he'd drunk, because, wow . What a mess! And the poor cute waiter had looked like he'd wanted to murder Ambrose, which was a completely understandable response.

"I did the tablecloth trick on Saturday night," he said as he dabbed at Harry's shirt.

"Oh, yeah?" Harry raised his eyebrows. "How'd it go?"

"The restaurant looked like this kitchen does now," Ambrose said, and Harry winced. "I'm probably lucky they didn't call the police."

Harry tilted his head on a thoughtful angle. "Is yours the sort of job where instead of putting money in a super fund, you put it in a bail fund?"

Ambrose wrinkled his nose. "God, I hope not. Do you think I need a bail fund?"

"I think that the time to think about needing a bail fund is right now. Before you're arrested, not after." Harry slapped him on the shoulder and grinned brightly. "I mean, if you get arrested, I expect you to call me, but unless the cops are willing to take, like, no more than thirty bucks and whatever change I find down the back of the couch, you're going to be sitting in a cell for a long time."

"It's not illegal to be a dickhead," Ambrose said.

"It is if you cause a public disturbance," Harry said. "I started off studying law, remember?"

"I remember you went to one introductory law lecture, then panicked when you realised how much reading was involved, so you changed to a Bachelor of Education instead."

Harry hummed. "My point is, I'm the closest thing in this house to a legal expert, and you absolutely can get arrested for being a dickhead. It's called offensive conduct. And you can imagine the headlines in the Herald —‘Logie-nominated actress's son in public debacle'. Your mum would love it. "

She probably would, was the thing, especially if it meant her name was back in the papers. "Maybe I won't do the tablecloth trick again," Ambrose mused.

Harry grinned, his cheeks dimpling. He was stupidly cute. Ambrose had always thought so. He was also ambiguous when it came to his sexuality, or maybe he was just shy. In all the years Ambrose had known him, Harry hadn't had a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or even a one-night stand as far as Ambrose could tell. Ambrose had once tried to drunkenly kiss him at a New Year's Eve party, and Harry had just laughed it off like he couldn't possibly have meant it.

And, okay, it turned out it would have been stupid as hell if they'd gone through with it, because he and Harry were like brothers, but in Ambrose's defence he'd been completely maggoted that night—which actually wasn't much of a defence at all. The point was, he and Harry together would have been a disaster, so it was best that nothing had happened between them.

Not much happened between Ambrose and anyone, actually—a side effect of his side gig. It was kind of difficult to explain that your job was going on dates but that it didn't mean anything because you were only there to be a wanker for hire, because it sounded like utter bullshit. He'd tried explaining it to a guy he wanted to date exactly once, and it had gone down like a brick and tile glider. So Ambrose made do with fantasies about cute guys and the internal reassurance that it wasn't forever, just until he got a decent acting job. Then he'd have people falling all over themselves to date him. He just had to make it as an actor first, right? Easy-peasy.

He tried not to think of his mum's entryway, lined with dusty framed front covers of TV Week and New Idea , and of just how personally he knew how the odds were stacked against him. He'd know, wouldn't he, when it was time to put the dream to bed? He wasn't his mum. He'd know.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked softly, his brow creased in concern.

"Yeah, fine," Ambrose said. His phone rang and gave him a reason to look away. He glanced at the screen. It was a number he didn't know. "Hello?"

There was silence for a moment and the sound of someone breathing. Just when Ambrose was about to end the call, a voice that was almost familiar said, "Um, is this Bad Boyfriend?"