The Last Love Note(2)

‘The account holder is dead,’ I’d clarified miserably after the operator had told me twice that she was only authorised to speak with him. Really, I couldn’t have made it any plainer. ‘How do you expect me to bring him to the phone?’

Where are the tissues?

‘Charlie, don’t put that stuff in your mouth!’

I stop rummaging when it dawns on me that the envelope, addressed to Cam, has the words ‘We’re sorry to see you go’ emblazoned across the front.

I tear open the seal and unfold the paper. Dear Mr Whittaker, it reads. We’re sorry you’ve decided to leave us. Please take a few minutes to help us know how we might have better met your needs . . .

And there it is.

Rock bottom. Slamming into me in the men’s toiletries section, thirteen miserable days after the worst day of my life – brutal letter to my dead husband in hand, raft of personal items he’ll never use taunting me from all sides as the truth of my situation really lands. Properly. For the first time.

The man I love does not exist.

Does. Not. Exist.

He didn’t ‘decide’ to leave the electricity company. Didn’t decide to leave any of us. And now there’s no need to buy this soap, and too few names on our accounts.

‘Oh, Charlie! What a mess.’ I’m all-out sobbing now, the way I’ve longed to sob since the funeral and haven’t been able to. Of course the tears would come now, just as I’m trying to wipe shaving foam off everything using the envelope.

Some other time, it might be cute that he’s slathering foam on his cheeks and pretending to scrape it off his face with an imaginary razor. But not now. I flash forward to a time when I’ll have to teach him how to shave for real. I don’t know what I’m doing now, and he’s only three. The idea of raising a teenage boy without Cam’s insider knowledge fills me with dread.

‘Look at me, Mumma!’ Charlie’s bright blue eyes are alight with mischief, dimpled smile beaming through the white foam. He takes my hand and places it flat on the side of his face, just like Cam used to let him do when we were helping him shave.

‘I’m Dadda!’ he says, laughing.

Oh, God.

I don’t think I can do this.





1





‘Grace, please come away from the window!’

She’s pulled back the curtains in my front room, flooding it in late-winter sunlight. Ensconced in the window seat with a glass of sav blanc in hand, she’s brazenly gawking at the guy moving in across the road.

Charlie’s been playing something other than Minecraft for more than ten minutes, and I feel like an excellent mother. It’s such a rare victory that I’ve celebrated by reopening the manuscript of the literary novel I’ve been pushing uphill since the Neolithic Age, about five words at a time.

‘Your new neighbour rocks a flannie,’ Grace says. Ash-blonde hair backlit by the setting sun, she is ethereal. I watch as she stretches her long legs across the window seat and adjusts her forest-green maxi dress over high-heeled boots, and I wonder how I ended up with such a glamorous friend.

Grace and I are so close, I struggle to believe I’ve only known her six years, since Cam and I dragged ourselves away from Melbourne and moved to Queanbeyan, near Canberra, so he could lecture at the Australian National University. Meeting her at indoor netball in our mid-thirties was like finally discovering the Diana to my Anne. The Louise to my Thelma. The Diaz to my Barrymore.

‘Wonder if he’s DTF,’ she muses, before taking another sip of her wine.

‘Department of Treasury and Finance?’ I ask. ‘Wait, no. That’s two separate departments . . .’

She drags her focus away from the man across the road for long enough to properly observe me, incredulous at my na?veté.

‘What? Oh, is that some Tinder acronym?’ I ask. I have zero intention of mastering online dating. Or any kind of dating at all. Online or off, speed, double, group – I’ll have none of it, much to Grace Randall’s everlasting disappointment.

‘Yes, obviously DTF is a Tinder thing, Kate. It means Down To—’

‘Shush!’ I say, pointing in Charlie’s direction.

‘That man does not look like a public servant,’ she observes. Grace has been public-sector-averse ever since a bad date with Gerry from the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, who mansplained commercial fish statistics over a prawn cocktail, even though she’d already told him she was vegan, and allergic to maths.

‘There are attractive public servants,’ I argue. ‘I used to be one myself, remember? A public servant. Not—’

‘Shut up, Kate, and just look!’

I’ll get no peace until I join her at the window, so I save my document and set the laptop down. As I cross the room towards her, I slide black-rimmed reading glasses down my nose and fold my arms in preemptive disapproval. Here comes the Fun Police.

She gives me the once-over and frowns. All right, yes, there’s nothing glam about black leggings, mismatched socks and a sky-blue penguin Oodie, but if I can’t be comfortable in my own house, where can I be? I’ve twisted unmanageable auburn curls into a bun that’s loosely held in place by the pencil I’ve been using to hand-write a list of inconsistencies in my novel. Thanks to rapid-fire interruptions, the list is almost as long as the novel itself. How do other mums do this?