‘Do come again, Max. You’re welcome any time.’
‘Just try to stop me.’
Dinners with Mum became a regular thing after that. Each time, Max brought flowers and Mum got out the photo albums. After a while, I wondered who was enjoying it more, Max or Mum.
Mum got sick a few years after that. I’ll never forget the day the hospital called to tell us to come in quickly. Max dropped everything and we went straightaway, but she’d already died by the time we got there. She was the only family I had left. So it was surprising that Max was the one who fell to his knees, keening. Everyone assumed it must have been his mother who’d died. I kneeled on the floor and held him while he sobbed into my skirt. I always had a feeling it was his own mum he was crying for. Either way, those are the strange, beautiful and bizarre moments of marriage that no one tells you about. The moments that, even after everything, still pierce your heart.
16
PIPPA
NOW
Amanda Cameron.
I stride along the footpath, reciting the name over and over. Amanda Cameron. The woman on the cliff was Amanda Cameron. Not a stranger, as Gabe claimed, but the wife of his former boss, Max Cameron. The media mogul who’d recruited Gabe to NewZ from a landscape gardener.
I’d left the house without even bothering to get a coat. I hadn’t even brought my keys or phone. I have that vaguely cold and sweaty feeling I get from travel sickness, the one that precedes vomiting. Why would Amanda Cameron come to our cliff? Why didn’t Gabe tell me it was her? What happened that night?
I throw open the gate of the preschool. To my left, there’s a washing line strung from the door to the fence with paintings hung with pegs; to my right is the veggie patch the kids have been working on. ‘We got our first carrot!’ the newsletter had announced proudly last week. There is a pile of tiny jumpers and hats in a lost property box, and a little table holding artwork ready to be taken home. Normally this space fills me with contentment. It’s a virtual haven of adorableness. Today all I can think about is keeping my breakfast down.
I punch in the code and let myself into the classroom. I find Gabe at a tiny table cutting up slips of coloured paper. The children are outside; I can see them through the window sitting at tables, having their morning tea. Gabe looks up, surprised but happy to see me. Until I place the newspaper on the table in front of him.
He glances at it quickly, then his eyes close.
‘I’ll wait for you outside,’ I say.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gabe says.
We are sitting on a park bench in a playground adjacent to the preschool. A few metres away, a bunch of toddlers play in a sandpit while their carers gossip nearby, clutching takeaway coffees. Outwardly we look normal. Even our body language is unremarkable as Gabe recounts the story of what happened that night on the cliff, while we sit by side on the bench, not looking at each other.
‘Why?’ I say. ‘Why are you sorry?’
He exhales slowly. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you it was her.’
Adrenaline courses through my veins. I’m not sure I’m ready to hear what is coming next. I want to run away and cover my ears. I want to turn back time and stop Gabe from going outside.
‘The truth is, I didn’t recognise her at first,’ he says. ‘I only met Amanda a few times, at office functions. Seeing her at The Drop, I didn’t make the connection. Then she introduced herself. She said, “You don’t recognise me, do you?”’
Gabe’s face is pale and intense and ravaged. He looks like a character in a film who has just accepted a suicide mission.
‘That was when I realised she did look familiar. But I couldn’t place her. It was on the tip of my tongue, but she was the one to say her name. Amanda Cameron. She said she had seen the newspaper article about me, which was how she knew where we lived. When she said that, I was relieved. I thought, Oh good, she’s not going to jump. I figured it was something to do with Max. That was when I moved closer, and I noticed she was crying. She was . . . devastated.’
A sick feeling overtakes me. I didn’t know nausea could come on this quickly until I married Gabe. Now, it’s a phenomenon I know all too well.
‘Why?’ I ask quietly. But I already know. Gabe’s face is confirmation.
‘She knew, didn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ Gabe nods apologetically. ‘She knew about you and Max.’
17
PIPPA
THEN
‘Gabe!’
‘Gabe! Over here!’
‘Gabriel Gerard, just the man I was looking for!’
We were at the office Christmas party – an opulent affair at the National Gallery of Victoria – and Gabe was like a minor celebrity. To be fair, he looked like a celebrity in his dinner suit. Everyone knew his name; everyone wanted a moment with him.
I loved watching him in action. His job brought him to life. It was like watching a performer on stage, and not just at the party. At home, whenever I heard him on the phone to a client or colleague, I’d think, Wow. His gift with people was undeniable. He had an ability to cut through the bullshit, to understand who needed to hear what. He knew what excited one person and bored another. It was this instinct that enabled him to rise through the ranks so quickly.
‘This is my wife Pippa,’ he’d say to everyone we met, and they were polite, but quickly moved their attention back to Gabe. It wasn’t just handshakes and small talk. Or maybe it was, but Gabe made it into something more. A moment of connection. A current of electricity. People’s interactions with him, no matter how brief, would be the highlight of their evening.
We were seated at the table with the top executives and their partners, including Max Cameron, the boss. I remember being surprised by that. Yes, Gabe was doing well, but Max was a big deal. A powerful Australian media mogul, he owned newspapers, TV stations and an online media network. Apparently, he even owned a footy team. Despite Max’s presence, it was Gabe who owned the table that night. He was in one of those moods where he seemed to be lit from within. Charming, funny, self-deprecating. You could have seen him from space.
‘He’s an asset to the organisation, he really is,’ Max said to me after dinner.
The dance floor was pumping by then, but Max and I sat at the table, drinking coffee and eating petits fours. There was no denying that Max was an impressive man. Not handsome like Gabe, but commanding. Even the way he sat back, relaxed but upright, as if admiring his empire, which perhaps he was. Despite the constant interruptions and people coming to say hello, he made it clear to me that I had his full attention. It was rare that a man other than Gabe turned my head, but I had to admit, there was something about Max.
I’d discovered over the course of the evening that Max didn’t have children of his own. I wondered if, perhaps, he’d wanted children and couldn’t have them. In his pre-dinner speech, he’d discussed his passion for mental health – fuelled, apparently, by the loss of his mother and brother to suicide. It was now his mission, he said, to prevent as many needless suicides as he could.
As Max and I chatted, Gabe was telling Max’s wife the story of how we’d met. He told her about the broken leg, and how it had taken him six weeks to call （it had only taken three, but Gabe never let the truth get in the way of a good story）。