Chasing Chris Campbell

By Genevieve Gannon

A charming and hilarious romantic comedy from the author of Husband Hunters. For fans of  The Rosie Project and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Violet is saving money: living on rice and beans and denying herself chocolate eclairs in the name of saving for a home deposit. Once they save enough, she and Michael can buy a house, settle down in the suburbs and live happily ever after. But when Michael does the unthinkable, Violet is forced to rethink her life choices.

A chance encounter with Chris Campbell (first love, boy-next-door, The One That Got Away) spurs her into travelling to exotic locations she never dreamed she'd explore - Hong Kong, Vietnam, Varanasi - on a quest to catch up with Chris and lead a life of adventure. Armed with hand sanitiser and the encouraging texts of her twin sister Cassandra, will Violet find the true love she's looking for, or will the lure of a quiet and uneventful life back home prove too much to resist? Can she work out what she really wants before she is left with nothing?

'Refreshing, insightful and a bit quirky with big doses of humor' MBR, Goodreads

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jun 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781460704714

Genevieve Gannon

Genevieve Gannon is an award-winning Sydney-based journalist and author of four novels. She is presently the staff writer for nation's biggest women's magazine, The Australian Women's Weekly, where she covers everything from cold-case murders and cults to celebrities and sports stars.She has written in-depth political profiles, comedic personal essays and true crime pieces. Her first foray into professional writing included dating and relationship columns which she published while writing her Masters' thesis on global terrorism and the media. She then moved to Canberra to start her news career covering local issues and politics.Before she joined The Weekly, Genevieve was the chief court reporter for Australian Associated Press in Melbourne, covering some of the most notorious crimes of recent years. Her journalism has appeared in most of Australia's major newspapers and she has recently won the Mumbrella Publish Journalist of the Year.

Book preview

Chapter One

The éclair was calling me. It was sitting on a crimped doily, alone, waiting for someone to take it home. Its cream filling beckoned me to the bakery counter. Its pastry was burnished an enticing gold. The final touch, a coat of dark chocolate, promised to crack when bitten. Eat me, it said.

A white-haired woman stood guard behind the glass counter.

‘Belgian chocolate,’ she said, nodding at the last éclair.

I licked my lips and lowered my shopping bags. They held other foreign foods: cans of corn from Vietnam (six for two dollars); durum pasta boxed in the Czech Republic (eighty cents); something grey and greasy called sprats that came in tins of six from Azerbaijan. They were devoured by my boyfriend, Michael, on pumpernickel biscuits (fifteen cents a box) at a cost of five cents per sprat. I looked longingly at the éclair. It was six dollars. You could buy a lot of sprats for six dollars.

I felt through my pockets for change. I only had $3.25. All silver.

‘Do you take eftpos?’ I asked the woman.

‘Ten dollar minimum,’ she said. Her fluffy curls and gold wire glasses made me think of Mrs Claus. The shelves of bread behind her were wreathed in tinsel. I decided I deserved a Christmas present. I had, after all, been very good this year.

‘Just a minute.’

There was an ATM inside the bulk discount supermarket Michael and I had been shopping at since we started saving for a house. As I waited in line, I imagined how the pastry would collapse and melt in my mouth when I bit into the éclair. In my mind I tasted the sweetness of the chocolate, the cold, clotted cream and the stickiness of the glaze.

I excitedly pulled out my bank card as the man in front of me collected his money. I hadn’t eaten something as indulgent as a chocolate éclair in months.

I did a quick calculation. It was December twenty-third. Michael wouldn’t transfer this month’s pay to our savings account until the thirtieth. There should still be about $3,000 spending money available. I would have to withdraw twenty. He would notice twenty missing. In truth, if I’d been able to withdraw the $2.75 I needed he probably would have noticed that too. I’d just have to tell him it was an emergency. Unless I borrowed it from Mum and asked her to do an internet transfer to cover the missing amount.

Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself. Michael isn’t a tyrant. I’ll just buy the éclair, put it in the fridge at home, and we can share it tonight after our dinner of rice and frozen vegetables from Venezuela.

I tapped the buttons of the ATM, telling myself over and over that Michael wouldn’t be angry. After all, he deserved a treat too. He had done a very good job keeping a tight rein on our expenses. When we decided to start saving for a deposit he had drawn up a weekly budget and arranged all of the banking. Our wages were paid into a joint account which we both accessed with our cards, and at the end of the month he moved anything left over into a savings account we couldn’t touch. The balance had just clocked over $40,000. It was a very satisfying milestone that, I had to admit, we never would have reached if it weren’t for Michael’s strict budgeting.

But surely we didn’t have to deny ourselves everything, I thought, punching a request for twenty into the machine. It made whirring electronic noises while it considered my request. Then came a high-pitched beeping noise and a message: Insufficient funds.

‘What?’ I asked the ATM.

My card slid out of its slot as if the bank was poking its tongue out at me. I looked at it, searching for a clue as to what was wrong. The expiration date was still two years away and the magnetic strip didn’t look dirty or scratched. I rubbed it on my jeans and pushed the card back in. I punched the keypad carefully, making sure I entered the correct pin. A minute later came the same disdainful noise: Beeeep! You have no money!

Dammit. I took the card, pulled out my phone and dialled.

‘Hi, this is Michael Vaughn …’ Voicemail.

A woman behind me weighed down with shopping bags cleared her throat. A queue of weary-looking Christmas shoppers had formed behind me. I threw my phone into my handbag, picked up my misfit groceries and, with a final longing look at the patisserie, walked angrily towards the carpark.

‘I’m sure he just moved the money across early, Violet’ said Mum, setting a glass of water on the computer desk as I searched through our online account.

‘But it’s not there,’ I said, examining the columns of numbers. ‘The money came out of our spending account but it didn’t go into our savings. It’s more than $3,000. What could have happened to it?’

When I had driven to Mum and Dad’s house I had had no reason to doubt Michael had simply transferred our spending money out of our freely-accessible account early. If he had, it showed an annoying level of insight into my behaviour. Since early December I had been suggesting a range of Christmas rewards we could give ourselves after our year of austerity: a dinner at France Soir, Thai massages, concert tickets. But Michael had said no to all of them.

So it was only after kissing my mother hello and tearing apart her pantry in search of something chocolatey or creamy that it occurred to me to look at our bank account.

‘Michael is a very responsible young man,’ Mum counselled me. ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation.’

‘Then where is it?’ I asked the computer as I devoured a fourth chocolate-covered teddy bear biscuit.

‘Oh my God, it’s so obvious!’

My exasperated twin sister, Cassandra, was watching us from the couch. She had her heels propped up on the coffee table while she drew fake henna tattoos on her feet.

‘You’re nearly ready to buy a house. Christmas Eve will be your five year anniversary, and three thousand dollars suddenly disappears from your bank account. Hello?’ She held her hands up as if speaking to infants. ‘Engagement ring.’

My heart stopped. Of course.

‘Oh, honey, of course,’ said Mum, clapping her hands together. ‘There, I told you there was nothing to worry about.’ She hugged me.

‘Do you really think …?’ I asked Cass.

‘Um. Duh. What else could it possibly be?’ She blew on the black swirling pattern she’d painted over the slope of her right foot.

‘But we agreed not to even think about marriage until we had settled into a house. He said he wanted to spend a year paying a mortgage then re-assess our financial position.’

Cass rolled her eyes. ‘How romantic.’

‘He probably just said that to throw you off the trail,’ said Mum.

‘Or there was a sale on diamonds,’ said my sister. I threw a cushion at her.

‘You want a henna tattoo?’ Cass asked, displaying her feet. Her nails were varnished fuchsia and her pale skin had mottled orange marks from where she’d applied fake tan a week earlier.

‘What’s in that ink?’

Cass shrugged and began decorating her left foot.

‘Forget about what Michael wants,’ Cass said. ‘What do you want? Are you ready for this?’

I sucked my bottom lip. ‘Yes,’ I said slowly.

‘This is so exciting,’ said Mum. ‘A wedding!’

‘There won’t be a wedding for a long time. We can’t afford it.’

‘Nonsense. Your father and I will help pay. You’ll have to start thinking about these things now. Planning a wedding is a very time-consuming process.’

‘You should do a destination wedding!’ said Cass. ‘Bali or Cambodia.’

‘Cass –’

‘But how will we get Nan to Cambodia?’ Mum wrung her hands.

‘Nobody’s going to Cambodia.’

‘And as your maid of honour, can I suggest karaoke for the hen’s night?’

‘Then there’s the kitchen tea to organise.’ Mum reached for a pad to begin a list.

‘Mum!’

‘Then after karaoke there’s a place I know called The Throbbing Rock where half-naked men –’

‘Cassandra!’

‘Both of you! Just calm down,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s even happened yet.’

‘This is wonderful.’ Mum hugged me again. ‘A husband. A family. A nice house in the suburbs. It’s just what you’ve always wanted.’

I first met Michael Vaughn at a Christmas party in our last year of university. I had dressed with extra care that night, and Cass had spent an hour expertly curling and pinning my hair.

‘Vy, you look great. He won’t be able to resist.’

‘I hope not.’ I smoothed my new dress over my bony hips.

It wasn’t Michael I wanted to impress, but a guy called Chris Campbell. My first love. I hadn’t seen him since he’d moved to Sydney for university, leaving me broken-hearted. Now he was back and had organised the party to promote his band, The Deadbeats.

‘I wish you’d let me do your brows,’ Cass said through the gold bobby pins in her mouth as she tousled her hair.

‘No.’ My hands went protectively to my face. ‘I don’t want you to mess them up before the party.’

‘Is this the face of someone who would mess you up?’ She batted her lashes at me.

Cass and I are identical twins but people often don’t notice. Her long hair is streaked with platinum highlights and faun lowlights. Twice monthly she has her eyebrows and lashes tinted dark brown, and she wears thick-rimmed designer spectacles with flat lenses that make no difference to her perfect twenty-twenty vision. My hair is its original hue, which is the dark yellow colour of corn, and worn in a practical, shoulder-length bob. My brows and lashes are the untouched, feathery blonde they have been our whole lives.

‘Take a risk for once in your life.’ Cass lunged at me with her tweezers.

‘Chris always liked me just the way I was.’ I swerved, dodging her.

‘You were both teenagers then.’

The invitation was the first contact I’d had from Chris in almost four years. From the day it arrived three weeks ago, I had thought of nothing but him.

‘Don’t you want to make him regret leaving?’ Cass asked, her own perfect brows arched knowingly.

I folded my arms and surrendered. ‘Okay.’

Cass beamed. Twenty painful minutes later my face was nearly bald and she was satisfied.

‘There,’ she said, unleashing a hurricane of hairspray on me. ‘You’re ready.’

The hall Chris had hired was filled with old school friends I hadn’t seen in years. The boys had grown tall and hairy and the girls had developed curves and eyeliner addictions. They all clutched plastic cups of beer and cheap sparkling wine.

The alcohol supply was reinforced by barrels of the beer Chris had brewed himself. He’d started this hobby during the last summer of high school when he secretly made a batch of beer in his parents’ back shed. He had even designed logos for the bottles, and he had to have three parties to get rid of it all. At the last one he poured it all into a kiddie pool and got rollicking drunk.

‘Stop biting your nails.’ Cass smacked my hand away as we walked into the hall.

‘I can’t see him,’ I whispered.

‘Relax. He’ll be here. It’s his party.’

I nervously touched my left earring. I’d purchased the set especially for Chris. They were hanging striped squares that were supposed to look like liquorice allsorts; an attempt at grunging-up my prim outfit.

‘Stop fidgeting,’ Cass said. ‘Let’s get a drink.’

We collected plastic cups of three-dollar champagne and moved to the dance floor as the DJ announced he was taking a break.

‘Look,’ Cass grabbed my arm.

Chris Campbell walked to the centre of the stage with his guitar slung over his shoulder. I clutched my sister. After four years, seeing him again was like coming face to face with a movie star. He was so familiar but I felt too shy to approach him.

‘The years have been kind to Christopher Campbell,’ Cass observed.

‘He’s even more perfect than I remembered.’

He rolled up the sleeves of a shirt the precise colour of his blue eyes. He had broad shoulders, and sandy hair that pointed in all directions, like thousands of tiny antennae straining for a signal. Gravity did not affect it. Gel could not hold it. He had Elvin lips that twisted up mischievously at their edges. He smiled at you like he wanted to tell you a secret.

‘Let’s just sort this out,’ he said, fiddling with the microphone. I watched his fingers and remembered how it had felt the first time he’d intertwined them with mine as we sat, aged seventeen, sharing a Coke in the goal cage at the local hockey club after dark.

The strum of his guitar brought me back to the room.

‘It’s good to be home,’ Chris said. I could have sworn he was looking straight at me. He raised his pick above his head then The Deadbeats blasted us with sixteen minutes of original garage rock. The dance floor went crazy.

‘It’s not bad,’ Cass shouted in my ear.

‘He’s always been an amazing songwriter,’ I yelled back.

After the band finished, Chris called, ‘Thanks for coming’ into the mike and hopped into the mosh-pit of love-struck girls. He politely shrugged them off and headed for the bar.

‘Say something,’ Cass prodded me. I shook my head. ‘Now’s your chance.’ She pushed me forward. I stumbled, crashing into Chris.

‘Vy, hey.’ He turned around. I felt my heartstrings tighten. His smile was like radiant heat. It enveloped me and warmed me to be bone. ‘Glad you could make it.’

He pulled me to his body for a hug. He smelled like the same boy I’d ridden the bus with all through high school. Pears shampoo and spearmint gum. I opened my mouth to speak, but I was overcome. What do you say to your first love after four years?

He let go of me. ‘Look at you.’ He appraised me. My heart was thumping. ‘Vy, you look amazing.’

I still hadn’t said a word. ‘I –’

He spoke at the same time. ‘I’m grabbing a drink, do you want one?’

‘Sure,’ I managed.

He ordered two bottles of his home brew and passed me one.

‘It’s a new blend,’ he said. ‘Much better than my early attempts.’

‘I liked the last one fine,’ I said, relieved to have recovered the power of speech. The bottles had handwritten labels. The bubbles on the surface looked milky.

‘Cool earrings. They new?’

‘These? No, I’ve had them for a while.’ We clinked our bottles together and drank. It tasted sour and weak.

‘You like it?’

‘Mmm.’ I tried not to wince. ‘You could start your own brewery.’

I was rewarded with another grin. ‘Maybe. What about you, Vy? What’s new with you?’

I was about to launch into my pre-scripted ‘I’m desirable and interesting’ speech when a girl with a designer haircut and non-biodegradable breasts barrelled over and hooked her arm under Chris’s elbow.

‘Hello, Christopher.’

Her name was Candice Chutney and she’d been a local celebrity ever since appearing in a magazine ad for a home leg waxing kit. She snarled at me with her eyes then turned back to Chris, put her hand on his chest and whimpered, ‘I need to talk to you.’

Chris grimaced. ‘Um, now?’

‘Yes now,’ she huffed, pulling him out into the courtyard.

Chris looked at me apologetically. ‘Vy, I’ll chat to you later …’

I watched him go. My heart felt like it had been punctured. I was standing alone, deflated, when a boy in spectacles and a short-sleeved shirt sidled over. ‘How’s that beer?’

‘It’s not bad,’ I said distractedly as I peered into the bottle. It was already going flat and the suspect foam had been replaced by gritty sediment that floated near the bottom of bottle.

‘Home-brew,’ he said. ‘Interesting pastime.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I was trying to get a view of Chris and Candice out in the courtyard but there was a palm-tree in the way.

‘It’s cheaper just to buy Melbourne Bitter from Dan Murphy’s,’ he went on. ‘I’m Michael.’ He held out his hand.

‘Nice to meet you, Martin,’ I said.

‘Michael.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I craned my neck.

‘Do you want me to get you something else? You don’t really look like you’re enjoying that.’

‘Ah, no that’s okay. Thanks.’ I took a deep gulp. It had warmed up and the tang had disappeared. Its flavour had mellowed to what I imagined building putty would taste like.

Michael started telling me that he preferred international beers. Japanese was his favourite, he said. Chris and Candice had moved from behind the tree. I watched them out of the corner of my eye. She was taking it in turns to pull at his sleeve and then pout and fold her arms. Chris threw his hands up and walked off. I smiled and tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ear, ready for him to come back and talk to me. Candice’s face crumpled and she began to cry. Chris stopped.

He turned and put his arm around her shoulders. She sniffled and nodded as he spoke.

‘Or Korean. You’d be surprised. Some really tasty brews come out of Korea.’ Michael was still talking about beer.

‘Korea, right,’ I said.

Chris and Candice sat on a stone wall. He handed her a tissue from his pocket. She dabbed her eyes, careful not to smear her eye make-up.

‘Dammit,’ I whispered.

‘I like your earrings,’ Michael said after a moment. ‘Are they real liquorice allsorts?’

‘No.’ I touched them again. ‘They’re plastic.’

‘It would probably be cheaper to buy plain earring hooks and real liquorice allsorts. Then you could eat them at the end of the night.’ He shifted, cutting off my view of the terrace.

‘You know what.’ I held up my home-brew. ‘This is really bitter. Maybe you could get me something else?’

‘How about a shandy?’ Michael offered eagerly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Beer and lemonade. Most girls really like them, I’ll get you one.’

I shrugged. ‘Okay.’

While he was at the bar I sneaked out into the courtyard.

Chris and Candice had left the wall. I couldn’t see them. The paved area was crowded with smokers. I searched until I spotted them in the corner. Candice had her arms around Chris’s neck and she was pulling him towards her – somewhat forcefully from my perspective. Chris seemed to resist. He said something. Don’t do it! my brain shouted. Then he closed his eyes and pressed his lips to hers.

I could feel the prickle of tears in my eyes.

‘Here you go.’ Michael handed me a pint of beer. ‘Seven parts beer, one part lemonade.’

‘Thanks,’ I said weakly. Numbly. I took a sip to be polite. It was sweet.

‘Good, huh?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ I answered vaguely. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘Really?’ He looked like a puppy that had just been rewarded for fetching a stick. ‘Say, I don’t suppose you want to go out sometime?’

Out of the corner of my eye I could still see Chris ensnared in Candice Chutney’s arms, his face pressed against her wet cheeks. My bottom lip trembled. The worst had happened. He was over me.

‘Sure,’ I said sadly.

‘Maybe a movie or something?’

‘Sure.’

And so I had starting dating Michael. Comforting, available Michael, whose hair folded itself obediently into neat curls and whose lips were straight and sensible. I hadn’t expected it to last. But it had. Far longer than I expected. And now it seemed it was going to last forever.

Chapter Two

My heart was galloping as I drove from Mum and Dad’s home in Essendon to the place Michael and I rented. We shared a little terrace in Coburg in Melbourne’s inner north-west with another couple. It had fireplaces and ceiling roses, bad plumbing and dodgy wiring. It was as old as Federation, and every time we got more than a few millilitres of rain the kitchen flooded. The house wasn’t really big enough for four people, but it was nice and cheap. Michael and I saved ten dollars a week each by opting for the smaller of the two bedrooms. Our room didn’t have any windows and shared a wall with the bathroom and its ageing pipes that moaned like a dying donkey every time someone took a shower. But Michael had insisted, because ten dollars a week was more than a grand over two years.

‘There you are,’ he said when I walked in the front door. ‘Did you go all the way to Azerbaijan for those sprats?’

‘I’ve been at Mum’s,’ I said dully.

He kissed my cheek and took the shopping. ‘Dinner’s nearly done.’

We didn’t have a dining table, there was no room. Each night we ate on the couch, balancing our plates on large coffee-table books covered in tea towels.

This is how Michael and I sat on that eve of Christmas Eve – eating bowls of lentils off The History of the World’s Killer Diseases (mine) and Erotic Art through the Ages (our housemate Lydia’s).

‘It’s quite economical, this no-meat thing of yours,’ Michael enthused, scooping some lentils into his mouth.

I murmured in agreement. Even my own sister couldn’t bring herself to eat my vegetarian cooking. It was a weekly custom for her to try and tempt me with some of Mum’s Sunday roast.

‘Are you sure?’ Cass would say, holding a cube of pink, tender meat on the end of her fork out to me.

I’d have to turn my nose away and remind myself of the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Britain that had been one of the reasons I’d taken up vegetarianism. The accounts of the victims of the human strain had been enough to put me off cow for life. Pain. Depression. Certain death. No burger was worth that.

‘You don’t have to worry about organising anything for tomorrow night,’ Michael continued. ‘I thought I’d cook dinner.’ As he spoke he used his knife to divide his lentils and rice into half, then half again and again until he had a series of small, bite-sized spoonfuls.

‘Really?’

‘Sure. It’s our anniversary,’ he said through a mouthful. ‘And I feel bad. I know you hate that job. I know you only took it because you wanted to earn more for the house.’

‘That’s not true, I wanted a change.’ I put my lentils and the disease book onto the couch next to me. If I ate one more lentil, one more grain of rice, I would scream.

Michael leaned over and kissed my forehead. ‘I know you hate it,’ he said.

Until recently I had been a research assistant at Victoria University, caring for mice used in the testing of treatments for multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease. Each day I’d had to remind myself of the lifesaving therapy my boss had already helped develop. Professor Sach’s office wall was a collage of gold plaques, certificates, and smiling children who’d benefited from her work. But I still felt sorry for the test subjects who had to die so we could study them. I always made sure their beds were filled with dry, soft sawdust and that they had fresh water and carrots and lettuce leaves, as well as the pellets. It tore at me when the time came to euthanise them. But I told myself that if I didn’t do it, someone else would, and they may not have been as gentle. It was my job to make their short lives as happy as possible.

My new job involved allergy testing for a cosmetics company called Lustre Labs. I was working on their chemist label, CityPrity; a cut-price brand that tried to market its metallic eye shadows and glittery body creams as the height of metropolitan sophistication. The money was almost double what I was being paid at the university and the hours were steady. Plus they didn’t test on animals. But Michael was right. I hated it.

‘It was my choice,’ I said.

As an insurance salesman, his salary was almost double mine. He picked up my bowl and took it into the kitchen. I could hear him putting my leftovers in Tupperware so I could eat them for lunch the next day. I sighed, wishing I’d bought the éclair and crammed the whole thing into my mouth in the shopping centre car park.

‘Besides,’ he said, standing at the door. ‘I have a surprise for you.’

I looked up sharply. ‘You do?’ The éclair was forgotten.

‘Yeah,’ he smiled at me. ‘It’s a big surprise. I think you’re going to really like it.’

‘What is it?’

‘Uh-uh.’ He waggled a finger at me. ‘All will be revealed tomorrow night.’

The next morning I drove our 80s-era Toyota to Mum’s place. I took narrow, one-way streets and avoided main roads. The radio in the old rust bucket had given-up and the brake lights were both broken. It wheezed and gasped like it had emphysema every time I accelerated, and the left indicator went on hiatus intermittently. Michael and I had decided that as soon as we hit $45k on our house fund we’d buy a new car. In the meantime we were stuck with this. I frowned at the