The Last Love Note(49)

‘Right, before we begin . . .’ It’s as if I’m calling this phone meeting to order. ‘Is this an Alice O’Donoghue situation?’

Grace’s friend Alice had told us a story once about the time she launched into a massive rant as soon as her partner walked in from work, detailing for him the minutiae of a frustrating day. Tech glitches. Parking ticket. Cardigan repeatedly catching on door handles. That kind of thing.

‘Anyway, how was your day?’ she had finally asked him, almost as an afterthought, having thoroughly exhausted her list of complaints.

‘My father died,’ he’d told her.

Grace and I nearly died ourselves when she told us, from vicarious mortification. There, but for the grace of God . . .

Ever since, before one of us is about to throw ourselves into a longwinded but not life-or-death story, we check that this isn’t an ‘Alice O’Donoghue situation’, before safely proceeding.

‘All is well here,’ Grace assures me. ‘Please go on.’

I hardly know where to begin. It’s like we’ve entered a parallel dimension since I last saw her, not twenty-four hours ago. ‘Okay, this is the executive summary.’ I need to maximise the debrief portion of this call. ‘After the police left last night and you all went home, I got no sleep, the car broke down, Justin answered the door at 6am naked, practically, and conveyed me to the airport on the back of his Harley-Davidson. No, it’s not a Harley. Wait, I can’t remember the genre of bike . . .’

‘They’re not books, Kate. But forget the bike!’ Grace exclaims. ‘Can we circle back to the part where Justin was naked?’

‘No, because I just had a shower with Hugh.’

There’s an extended pause while Grace recalibrates her understanding of the known universe. ‘Sorry, what?’

I know how it sounds. I just don’t know how to explain it. ‘Neither of us was naked.’ This only serves to make it more absurd.

‘Kate, stop. This needs to be a video call. You’re speaking gibberish!’ Her very confused face lights up my screen within moments. ‘Okay, my first suggestion is do not tell your mother any of this,’ she advises. It is of course a moot point.

‘Oh, I forgot that part. Mum told me, on loudspeaker with Hugh and the cabbie, that I should have a hot fling with a random Hemsworth-substitute while I’m here.’

She explodes laughing. ‘Well, you seem to be progressing at breakneck speed towards that goal.’

It wasn’t like that. Not any of it. But sometimes it’s hard to wedge the truth into Grace’s imagined narrative.

‘Some other time, I’ll tell you about the shower thing, Grace. Whatever you’re imagining – it wasn’t that.’

‘O-kay.’

Because it was elemental. Raw. A defining experience between two human beings that I’ll remember always. I’m a bit sorry I mentioned it, now.

‘Side note: are you wearing pyjamas?’ she asks.

I pan the camera down my body to confirm it. I hadn’t planned for this shopping trip. I’d both swum in the ocean and showered in my business attire. So yes, I’m in aqua and blue check cotton shorts and one of Cam’s oversized T-shirts, rescued from the donations box.

‘There was a small hiccup as I was leaving the beach house.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It’s one of those exposed staircases, with full view from the upstairs landing into the living room below – you know, like on the Brady Bunch?’

‘Got it.’

‘Hugh was on the couch, working. I think because of the shower thing, I was disconcerted . . .’

‘Understandable.’

‘And self-conscious, due to the pyjamas. Or maybe it was just to lighten the mood. Anyway, it felt like a good idea to stage one of those Old Hollywood Grand Entrances.’

Grace frowns.

‘So I pivoted on the spot, but the strap of my shoe got caught in the other and as I spun, I misjudged the top step and stumbled, grabbing hold of the banister to steady myself on the way down until I finally regained some semblance of poise on the second bottom step.’

‘I see. And Hugh?’

‘Watched me wordlessly, then said, “What am I supposed to do with that?” It was my second grand entrance of the day, and I somehow managed to look more drunk than I did falling off the motorbike this morning.’

‘You fell off the motorbike? Gawd, Kate – are you okay?’

I take a deep breath. None of this is relevant to the purpose of my call. Something’s been niggling me about being here with Hugh, even though I’m not here with him.

‘I keep thinking about you,’ I admit. ‘With The Whole Hugh Thing.’ That’s what we’ve labelled the ill-fated matchmaking fiasco.

She shakes her head. ‘Kate, there was never a Whole Hugh Thing with me, was there? He’s a lovely man, but he just wasn’t into me that way. I think I was into the idea of him for a while, but that was really just the version of him that you’d painted. I barely got to know him. It wasn’t your fault the chemistry was missing for us.’

At the time, we’d blamed the lack of vibe on the twenty-something, strikingly hot Singaporean student one of my colleagues caught him lunching with at a yum cha restaurant near the university. I’d been crushed for Grace. I’d suspected he was dating other people, which was fine – he and Grace hadn’t even had a second date. I just hadn’t understood how a woman half his age could eclipse the supernova that is my best friend.