The Last Love Note(44)

Does she have an actual point?

‘Anyway, is Hugh there? Put the phone on speaker.’

‘That depends, Mum. Are you about to change the topic?’

‘Yes, yes. I have news!’

‘Brace yourself,’ I whisper to Hugh as I hit the speaker button.

‘Look. Both of you. We’ll have no argument about this,’ Mum starts. ‘Grace and I have organised everything and it’s all settled and paid for.’

Okay, now I’m nervous. Hugh catches my eye, wary.

‘You’ll be staying for three nights in a two-bedroom beach house in New Brighton.’

My stomach flips and I look at Hugh, dismayed. What have they done?

‘Grace said you’ll want to go to the Byron Bay Writers Festival and I said I couldn’t think why. Of course, you were always scribbling away as a teenager but I thought you were over that now you’re an important executive at the university.’

Hugh somehow maintains a straight face.

‘There are two separate bedrooms, Kate . . . And this is your first proper child-free break. All I’m saying is you’re a young, single woman and it’s time you started acting like one.’

‘Mum! Please!’ I can’t even look at Hugh.

‘Nonsense! If you’re at the beach and you happen to hit it off with some aimless young Byron Bay vagabond . . . It doesn’t have to be a Hemsworth brother.’

‘MUM!’

Even the cabbie’s shoulders are shaking now in the front seat. How is this my life?

‘Grace is going to move into your place on the weekend with Charlie. She’s got some ludicrous scheme to overhaul your front garden, not that the poor girl would recognise a weed if she tripped over one in all that Gucci.’

I get a mental picture of Grace flailing around in my rock garden in this season’s chambray denim Valentino coveralls and patent Prada boots, Fendi bag swinging from her shoulder, developing an urgent data science quandary requiring the assistance of a mathematical genius.

‘I told her there’s no point tidying the yard. You’ll only let it go to rack and ruin again because you’re addicted to that machine. What do you do on there all the time, Kate? I’m sure it’s not work. Is it an internet beau? Just make sure he’s not one of those puffer fish. I saw a story about that on A Current Affair and they prey on desperate, lonely women.’

‘Mary,’ Hugh interrupts, taking the phone out of my hand altogether. ‘It’s thoughtful of you and Grace to organise this for us.’

‘Oh, Hugh, it’s our pleasure,’ Mum says, her tone transformed.

‘Now, we won’t have either of you paying for it,’ Hugh explains firmly. ‘I’ll sort that out with Kate when we get back. No arguments. But a break is probably what we both need, for different reasons.’

Hugh has reasons? Have I become so absorbed in my own problems that I’ve neglected to check in on his? I know he errs on the side of undersharing his personal life and seems to have it all together, nearly all the time, but I feel like a very bad friend if I’ve missed something important. Perhaps a weekend away could fix a few things.

‘Mum, what if Charlie isn’t on board with this plan?’ I ask. I couldn’t possibly relax if I knew he was pining for me.

‘Oh, he’ll be ecstatic about a weekend with Grace. I must tell you, he made up a distressing story about you having had some sort of police incident over a bomb, Katherine. Said he would have brought the bomb to school for show and tell but it exploded in Sydney. Do you think he needs more counselling?’

No, but I think I do.

‘Where the child inherited this propensity for dramatics I’ll never know,’ she adds, wrapping up the call as the cab pulls up along the main street in Bangalow. ‘Maybe he’ll be the writer in the family.’



Two hours later, we’ve caffeinated and confirmed that Bangalow bakery is indeed a state leader in jam donuts, caught an Uber to a Byron Bay car-hire service and picked up a cute little MG3. Back on the highway again, we head north, past the escarpment that rises from Ewingsdale and Myocum, towards Mount Chincogan, near Mullumbimby. In the distance, the silhouette of the ancient volcanic plug of Mount Warning rises out of the haze.

‘I hope that’s not a sign!’ I nod at the mountain as I drive.

Hugh flicks through a tourist brochure he picked up at the car hire office. ‘It’s okay. It’s not known as Mount Warning any more,’ he explains as he reads. ‘To the Bundjalung people it’s Wollumbin. The scars on the mountainside are said to be the battle wounds of warrior spirits.’

Battle wounds of warrior spirits.

Something within me longs to emulate that mountain. Wants to erupt with such violence and heat and force that the very foundations can’t hold. An inevitable collapse. A changed shape rising out of falling ash – scarred, strong and with an afterlife so fertile and mineral-rich, luscious rainforest springs from the soil for millions of years . . .

The knowledge that I’m not there yet – that I haven’t erupted and collapsed and cooled and grown solid after all this time – stings. I’ve worked so hard. Wanted so much to intellectualise and overcome my loss. I’ve read the literature. Joined support groups. Had counselling. Yet, here I am, years in, still pushing myself up the wrong side of this mountain.