“The kitchen is a little small,” Sylvie said, brushing her manicured fingers along the crisp white Caesar stone bench top as though the stone had disappointed her.
Beside her, David made the careful husband noise. The one that meant he had learned, between their wedding and their third renovation, that agreeing too quickly was dangerous.
“It reminds me of Jane and Ben’s place,” Sylvie added, cutting him a look. “It’s just not practical for us.”
So, it begins.
Evelyn Hartley smiled the smile. Not her actual smile. Her professional one. The one that said Naturally, tell me more about your deep emotional relationship with pantry dimensions while I mentally calculate whether you can actually afford this house.
“It’s a very workable footprint,” she said, because Sydney real estate required women to lie elegantly before ten in the morning. “And the yard gives you that indoor-outdoor entertaining flow people are really chasing.”
Translation: The kitchen is compact, but the butler’s pantry is bigger than Jane’s entire apartment, and you both know you’ll make an offer before lunch.
Sylvie drifted toward the rear doors, already imagining herself unhappy in a more expensive way. David followed, nodding at the ceiling height with the grave seriousness of a man assessing something he had no intention of cleaning.
Ten minutes later, Evelyn waved them off as their white Range Rover pulled away from number 7 Spencer Street, the house behind her returning to its staged silence. The sort of silence that costs money. Lime-washed walls. Oversized concrete steps. Perfect lawn. A black and white Hartcliff Homes board planted on the front verge like a stylish little declaration of war.
She turned to lock up.
Not with a key. No, obviously not. That would have been too merciful. With a code.
“Shit,” she muttered, staring at the keypad. “What was the code?”
Her phone was somewhere in the depths of her black Prada tote, beneath lipstick, keys, three pens, two lip balms, a tape measure, vendor notes, emergency mints, sunglasses, a receipt from Bourke Street Bakery and the loose emotional wreckage of a woman who had built an entire career out of appearing more organised than she felt.
Ping.
That unholy notification sound. The tiny electronic whip-crack that directed Evelyn’s every movement from dawn until wine.
Showing at 9:20am Furlington Crescent.
“Fuuuck.”
Five minutes to get across Point Road. In Sydney traffic, with one ute double-parked, one Pilates woman carrying an eight-dollar coffee as if it were medical equipment, and the Prada tote not cooperating at all.
She punched in the code, heard the lock catch, and hurried down the oversized steps, already reading the next notification as she moved.
Sales meeting at 10. Bourke Street Bakery.
Ping.
Stephen: WHERE ARE YOU?
“Later,” she told the phone, which was not how phones worked, and yet felt emotionally necessary.
The shout came from nowhere.
“Hey!”
Then a horn.
The impact.
Not the car.
A body.
A huge, hard, fluro-covered body hit her sideways, and the world flipped into white sun, hot pavement, grass against her calf, and the shocking indignity of being flat on her back on the perfect lawn edge of number 7 Spencer Street.
For one suspended second, Evelyn saw only sky.
Blue. Expensive. Completely unhelpful.
Then a face blocked it. Big. Smiling. Brown eyes wide with concern beneath the brim of a council cap.
“Fuck, are you alright?”
He held out a green-gloved hand. Evelyn took it because apparently dignity had left with Sylvie and David, and let him haul her upright.
Her Prada tote lay in the gutter, its contents scattered across the road like an installation titled Woman Too Busy To Breathe. A lip gloss near the tyre of a parked Tesla. A tampon beneath the Hartcliff Homes sign. Her diary was open to a page that now had grass on it. Wonderful. Elegant. Very on brand.
“You nearly got hit,” the man said, still gripping her elbow. “Lucky Davo’s a quick fucker. Pushed you outta the way just in time.”
“By a Holden,” said another voice.
Evelyn turned.
And promptly lost what remained of her ability to form a useful thought.
The second garbo was sitting in the gutter a few metres away, one knee bent, one arm braced behind him, fluro vest bright against sun-kissed skin. Blond hair, too long for a council uniform and falling in waves around a face that had absolutely no business belonging to a man currently bleeding beside a wheelie bin. Blue-grey eyes. Rough jaw. Mouth soft in a way that made her brain trip over itself.
Oh, my God.
Gorgeous garbo.
The five o’clock news headline wrote itself: Arsehole Agent Saved by Hot Council Worker After Nearly Dying in Designer Shoes.
Her vendors would be furious.
Her hair, by some miracle, still felt intact.
Her skull, less so.
A pulse of pain grabbed the back of her head, and Evelyn pressed her fingers there, wincing.
“What happened?” she asked, though the evidence was fairly clear. Phone. Road. Holden. Humiliation.
“You walked straight out,” the first man said. “Head in your phone. He shoved you clear.”
The man in the gutter looked up at her and smiled. Not smug. Not heroic. Almost apologetic, which was ridiculous, given he had apparently saved her life and shredded half his limbs doing it.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re bleeding.”
He glanced at his elbow, then his knee. “Couple of grazes.”
“There is actual blood.”
“Blood does that.”
It was the wrong time to notice his legs.
His legs were the first unfair thing about him.
Navy council shorts, practical and cut too high for public safety. Hair-rough thighs, scraped now, one streak of blood running toward his knee. The legs built by work rather than a trainer called Jase who said things like core engagement.
Evelyn looked away so fast she nearly concussed herself twice.
“I have a first-aid kit in my car,” she said. “At least let me clean that.”
“No need.”
“Yes need.”
The first garbo grinned. “Let the lady fix you up, Davo.”
Davo gave him a look. “Loto.”
“What? You did the superhero stuff. Get the band-aid.”
Evelyn gathered her belongings with the jerky panic of a woman aware she was late, bruised, turned on and deeply annoyed about all three. She shoved everything she could find back into the Prada tote.
Her keys to her black E63 were the last thing she found.
They had scattered near the gutter, the Mercedes fob lying face down in the dust beside a tube of lipstick and three Hartcliff tags. Evelyn picked them up quickly, almost angrily, as if putting them back in her hand could restore the invisible locks around her life.
Keys meant control. Access. The right to enter and the power to refuse entry. She had built an entire adulthood around knowing exactly which doors opened for her and which ones she kept closed.
Then the garbo in the gutter shifted, and a heavy set of keys at his belt gave one soft metallic chime.
Evelyn heard them before she looked at him properly.
Later, she would pretend that meant nothing.
It had meant everything.
Thank God for the Merc.
Magnificent, glossy, aggressively black, and currently the only thing in her life behaving with dignity.
She opened the boot and pulled the first-aid kit from the cargo net. Davo came over and perched on the edge of the boot like a schoolboy waiting for the nurse, all long limbs and quiet amusement. Up close, the smell hit her properly: sweat, sun, garbage truck, soap and something warm underneath that her body, traitorous little idiot, decided was interesting.
“Do you want me to do the wiping?” she asked, then immediately wished to walk into traffic again.
His mouth twitched.
“Go for it.”
Evelyn tore open a disinfectant wipe and dabbed at the graze on his elbow. He did not flinch, though his eyes stayed on her face in a way that made her suddenly conscious of every inch of herself: the cream dress, the black heels, the grass stain near her hem, the fact her hand was trembling slightly against his skin.
“You’re lucky we were here,” he said. “Gotta get your head out of that phone on the road.”
“I know.” She pressed the wipe more carefully. “Bad habit. Occupational hazard. Character flaw. Choose whichever feels kindest.”
“Nothing in there worth getting wiped off the road for.”
“No,” she said, thinking of vendors, buyers, pest reports, Stephen’s mounting panic, the impossible machinery of Hartcliff Homes. “You’re right.”
Then reality returned.
“Fuck. I’ve missed Furlington.”
She slapped a band-aid over his elbow with the frantic decisiveness of a woman trying to treat both a wound and a schedule. The strip was too small. Naturally, it was. She grabbed another, fumbled the paper, swore under her breath.
“Here.”
Davo took it gently from her fingers. Their hands brushed.
Nothing dramatic happened. Music is absent. A wind machine was not used. Tasteful slow-motion is absent.
Only the quick, stupid punch of awareness through her chest.
She looked up.
His eyes were softer than they should have been. Blue-grey. Sunlit. Amused, but not unkind.
“So, you’re a real estate agent then?” he asked.
“Yes.” Evelyn nodded toward the house, the sign, the entire absurd theatre of her life. “This is one of mine.”
“Cool.”
Cool.
The eyes did not widen with any impression. No joking defensively about agents. There was no prompt effort to inform her about a cousin in Marrickville who had overpaid. Just cool.
She moved to his knee, squeezing disinfectant over the graze. He winced this time.
“Sorry.”
“All good.”
It was not all good. His thigh was right there, and she was crouched in front of him with a disinfectant wipe and a nervous system behaving like it had discovered electricity.
She secured the final band-aid, smoothing it down against warm skin for half a second longer than necessary.
“There. You’ll live.”
“You should get that head looked at,” he said, nodding toward her.
“An ice pack and a mocha will do the trick.”
“Medical advice from real estate school?”
Despite herself, she smiled.
“I can’t thank you enough,” she said. “This could have had a very different ending.”
“Right place, right time.”
“You have to let me buy you lunch. Or coffee. Something.”
“Nah, no need. We’re running behind now.”
“When do you finish then? A thank-you meal.”
The question came out too quickly. Too eager. Too unlike her. Evelyn Hartley negotiated reserves, not lunches with men hanging off council trucks.
Davo looked over to the driver. “Loto, what have you got after this run?”
Loto flicked his cigarette onto the road and crushed it under his boot as he came over. “School run. Everything okay, brother?”
“This lovely lady wants to shout us a meal for the morning rescue.”
“Ahh.” Loto looked between them, a grin spreading. “Davo did the superhero stuff. He should take you up.”
Davo shot him another look. Loto ignored it with professional ease.
“Okay then,” Evelyn said, heart doing something deeply unhelpful. “Davo. A meal it is.”
The name felt strange in her mouth. Casual. Intimate. Possibly a symptom of head trauma.
“Nothing fancy,” he said. “An Oporto burger will cover the rescue effort.”
“Oporto?”
“Too posh?”
“No.” Yes. “Oporto is perfect.”
His smile deepened. “Knock off at two.”
“Half-past two, then. The one on the corner at Park Road.”
She said it before checking her calendar. Before thinking. Before the civilised part of her could intervene and remind her she had once ended a relationship because a man pronounced bruschetta with a hard ch.
“Great.” He wiped his hand on his shorts. “We didn’t even get your name. I need a name to meet a lady for lunch.”
And there it was again, the cheeky squint, the spark, the absurd little tug low in her stomach.
“Evelyn,” she said. “Evie, to friends and family.”
She handed him a card. “In case something comes up.”
“Not a chance. I won’t miss a Bondi burger for anything.”
He tucked the card into his back pocket. Evelyn did not watch the movement, mostly.
Before Loto climbed in, he looked at Evelyn with the sort of grin that contained more information than it was offering.
“You should know something about this one,” he said.
“What’s that?”
Davo made a noise. “Loto.”
Loto ignored him with the ease of practice. “He’s not as simple as he looks.”
“I’m standing right here,” Davo said.
“Yeah,” Loto said pleasantly. “That’s how I know.”
Loto climbed back into the truck and revved the engine. Davo jumped onto the back step, one hand gripping the rail, the other lifting in a wave.
“Half-past two at Oporto, Evie. Don’t be late.”
The truck lurched forward.
For one last second, their eyes caught.
It was nothing.
A look across a road.
A ridiculous brief flicker between a woman with a black Mercedes and a bleeding garbage man on the back of a council truck.
Nothing.
So why did Evelyn feel fifteen again, breathless and mortified and dizzy with the urgent need for 2:30 pm to arrive immediately?
By the time the garbage truck lurched away, Evelyn was still standing beside her Merc with the boot open, the first aid kit splayed out like evidence and one of her black heels sinking slightly into the perfect lawn edge of number 7 Spencer Street.
For a full three seconds, she did nothing.
Three seconds.
In Evelyn Hartley’s world, three seconds of doing nothing during business hours was basically a wellness retreat.
Then her phone screamed again.
Not literally, obviously. It made the same bland little notification sound every other iPhone in Sydney made, but Evelyn had trained her nervous system to interpret it as a personal attack.
Stephen: WHERE ARE YOU?
Lucille: The Jacobsons are already asking about pest reports. I have smiled twice. Come quickly.
Evelyn stared at the screen, then looked back down the street where Davo — gorgeous garbo, roadside menace and possible concussion hallucination — had disappeared around the corner hanging off the back of the truck like some ridiculous council-sponsored romance cover.
“Right,” she said to absolutely no one. “Normal. We are being normal.”
She gathered the used disinfectant wipes, the torn band-aid wrappers, her dignity, and what remained of her schedule, then shut the boot.
Her reflection flashed back at her in the black paint of the Merc. Hair still immaculate enough to pass from a distance. Dress only slightly shifted. One faint grass stain near the hem. Eyes too bright.
No.
That would not do.
She leaned closer to the car window and fixed her face into something more appropriate for a woman who sold aspirational lifestyles to people currently lying to themselves about school catchments.
Cool.
Capable.
Entirely unaffected by garbage men with thighs.
Her phone rang before she could unlock the driver’s door.
Stephen.
“I’m alive,” she said as soon as she answered.
“That is not where you are meant to be,” Stephen replied, with the brisk terror of a man who had once managed a six-couple open home during a plumbing emergency and still considered tardiness the greater sin.
“I had a slight incident.”
“Define small.”
“Near-death adjacent.”
Then, softer: “Evie.”
Stephen could switch from brassy P.A. to chosen-family panic in half a syllable, which made lying to him very inconvenient.
“I’m fine,” she blurted. “A P-plater, a garbage truck, a mild pavement situation. Nothing broken except possibly my pride and a bottle of Aesop hand sanitiser.”
“Do I need to come get you?”
“No.”
“Do you need medical attention?”
“No.”
“Do you need me to reschedule the Jacobsons?”
Evelyn glanced toward Spencer Street, where the house sat silent and perfect, entirely unaware that it had just hosted what was perhaps the least professional meet-cute in inner-west real estate history.
“Definitely not.”
“You’re sure?”
“Stephen, if I miss one more appointment today Lucille will start showing buyers through properties with a cigarette holder and a vendetta.”
“She already has the vendetta.”
“Exactly. Don’t arm her.”
Stephen exhaled. “Fine. But come via the office afterwards. I want eyes on your head.”
“That sounds romantic.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
She hung up, got into the Merc, and for one dangerous moment sat still with both hands on the wheel.
Half-past two.
Oporto.
A garbage man.
The thought should have been absurd. It was absurd. Evelyn Hartley did not meet men at Oporto in the middle of workdays. Evelyn Hartley met men at restaurants with linen napkins, polished concrete bathrooms and wine lists that required both confidence and a minor in geography. Men who owned blazers for reasons other than court appearances. Men who used the phrase “my broker” without irony, and yet.
Her body, still operating on its own agenda, remembered the warm brush of his fingers when he took the band-aid from her. The amused squint. The blood on his knee. The way he had not made her feel silly for nearly dying in designer shoes, even though, objectively, she had been extremely silly.
Her phone pinged again.
Lucille: They are asking if the butler’s pantry is load-bearing. I may resign.
Evelyn laughed despite herself, started the Merc, and pulled away from the kerb.
Sydney resumed around her instantly. Leaf blowers. Dog walkers. Builders in utes pretending not to block driveways. A cyclist yelling at a courier. Jacaranda petals mashed into the gutter like purple confetti after a council-approved wedding. Million-dollar terraces with bins out front, because even wealth had to deal with Tuesday collection.
By the time she turned onto Point Road, she had almost convinced herself that lunch was simply polite gratitude, almost.
Then she remembered Davo’s mouth forming the word, Evie.
Her thighs tightened slightly.
“Absolutely not,” she told herself.
The Merc purred through traffic like it disagreed.