Max arrived home fifteen minutes late, which wasn’t bad for him. But then he looked around as if confused. ‘What’s all this?’
‘Dinner,’ I said proudly. ‘I told you I was cooking Spanish tonight!’
In his defence, he did look ashamed. He closed his eyes and swore under his breath. He was apologetic when he said, ‘I have to go back to the office. I’m so sorry. It can’t be avoided.’
I’m not sure who was more surprised when I threw the paella at the wall. The worst part was that it was very unsatisfying. There was no thud or smash. Just rice and seafood all over my new Shaker cabinetry and marble benchtop.
Careful, Amanda, I thought. You’re following your heart. Look what it’s doing to you.
‘Sorry,’ Max said again, and then he went to the bedroom, changed his clothes, returned with another briefcase. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
He stepped over the paella as he left.
When I was forty-one, I had a late period. Not very late. Two days. But it was unusual for me. And when you don’t have much else to do, you notice these things.
‘My period is late,’ I said to Max when he came home from work that night. It was after midnight, and I’d been staring into the dark for hours. ‘I’ll do a pregnancy test in the morning, and if I am I’ll take care of it. I just thought I would . . . should . . . let you know.’
Max came around to my side of the bed, sat down and switched on my lamp. ‘Are you all right?’
It wasn’t the question I’d been expecting. That’s probably why, though my eyes filled with tears as I said it, I answered, ‘Yes.’
He slid into bed beside me that night and held me close. It had been years since we’d fallen asleep like that. And in the morning, instead of heading off to work, he cancelled his meetings and changed into casual clothes.
‘Shall I go to the pharmacy to get the test?’ I asked him.
‘How about we just have breakfast together first,’ he suggested.
So we ate breakfast, talking about everything other than the crisis we were facing. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d breakfasted together. I loved every minute of it.
Then, while I loaded the dishes into the dishwasher, Max said, ‘I’ll go get the test now.’
When he returned, I went into the ensuite while he sat on the bed and waited. When I emerged a couple of minutes later, he stood.
‘Not pregnant,’ I said, holding up the stick showing only one line.
Max closed his eyes, his relief palpable. ‘Just one of those things, eh?’
‘I guess so.’
He told me to make a doctor’s appointment, just to make sure everything was okay. Then he kissed my forehead, got dressed and went to work, and I crawled back into bed and wept.
31
PIPPA
NOW
Our morning routine is different. It doesn’t look different – in fact, to an outsider, it would be conspicuous in its sameness – but I feel the difference and I know Gabe does too. We go about our tasks – making cereal, unloading the dishwasher, cutting up strawberries and placing them in bento-style lunchboxes – with careful precision. We talk to the girls in a louder, more intentional way, as if we are Play School presenters rather than weary parents.
‘I don’t want my strawberries cut up!’ Asha cries. ‘And no sandwich this time!’
The girls are cranky and on edge, perhaps picking up on our energy. There are three sets of tears before 8 am, all Freya’s, mostly caused by Asha （although, in her defence, her crimes were ‘eating too loudly’， ‘singing’ and ‘looking at me’）。 As for Asha, she is inconsolable to learn that it is Tuesday, ‘because words that start with t make me sad’。 Asha’s ability to understand and communicate her emotions always arouses equal measures of fear and pride in me. A few months ago, I found her lying in her room with the curtains drawn and the lights off because ‘I want the outsides to be as dark as I feel on the inside’。 The whole episode had lasted only thirty minutes, but I’d been alarmed enough to book an emergency appointment with a child psychologist, who declared Asha a ‘delight’ and also ‘one we need to keep an eye on’。 Luckily, I’m an expert in keeping an eye on people. I make a mental note to talk to the psychologist about her recent trouble with ‘t’ words, and avert catastrophe in the present by pointing out that Tim Tams make her happy.
When they finally leave for preschool with Gabe, I seek comfort in my regular activities. I organise the buckets of toys, placing like with like, removing the pieces of Lego from the bottom of the basket of dolls, until everything is in order. I go through the girls’ closets, removing clothes that are too small or too worn, arranging them in bags by size for donation. Then I make a list of wardrobe deficits – new underwear for Asha, warm coat for Freya, leggings and pyjamas for both.
As I perform each task I find myself wondering: What do the police know? What does Max? Are Johnno and Aaron at the station right now, talking about how they can’t believe they were duped, that Gabe had always seemed like such a nice normal guy? And what about Max? Is he truly the kind of monster who wouldn’t care what happened to his wife? And then there’s the inescapable question: No matter which way this goes, will I ever be able to live with myself?
Gabe will be out for most of the day. After dropping off the girls he’ll go for a surf, then he’s going to help Dad clean out the gutters. ‘He’s a godsend,’ Mum had said when Gabe offered his services. Mum was, rightly, worried about Dad getting up on the ladder （‘He’ll do his hip and then who will have to look after him?’）， but Dad flat out refused to pay someone to do the gutters for him. Fortunately, Gabe stepped into the breach. I wasn’t the only one who relied on him; the entire family did.
Turning my attention from domestic to paid work, I sit at my laptop and complete an application for probate. Then I sit through a meeting about a complicated will dispute. I am answering an enquiry to my website about my services when out of the corner of my eye I see the figures appear at my back door.
‘Surprise!’
I scream.
‘Sorry,’ Kat says, sliding open the door. She gives me a strange look. Mei is with her. They are rugged up in coats, and their faces look pink and flushed. ‘We’re going to The Pantry. Wanna come? Apparently, they’ve got the clam chowder on.’
The Pantry was a new cafe on the main street, next to the pub – a little shopfront that butted up against a grassy area that, in turn, butted up against the beach. Last week Mum had tried the clam chowder and declared it the best she’d ever had. （I pointed out that she hadn’t had a lot of clam chowder before, but she said that was beside the point.）
‘Come on,’ Mei says. ‘We’ll have you back at your desk in an hour.’
I want to protest, but Mei is already getting my coat, and there’s something about the gentle authority of this that I am helpless to resist.
On the short walk to the cafe our conversation focuses on the light and trivial. Dad and his obsession with crosswords. （He thinks they stave off dementia.） Property prices. Kat’s suspected scalp skin cancer that turned out to be a stain from her box hair dye. Asha’s decision to consume only strawberries from now on. What surprises me is how easily I play my part in the discussion, as if drawing on muscle memory. It feels like it should be a pleasure, but today it leaves me feeling empty. I am incapable of conversing properly with my sister now that I am keeping this secret from her. Maybe from now on our relationship will be nothing more than this, a series of repetitive brain spasms.