‘Gabe,’ the groom said, sounding less apologetic now.
But Gabe didn’t take his eyes off me. ‘I think it’s pretty clear that the universe has spoken. So . . . do you happen to be free later? I came stag to this wedding, but I’m sure I could get them to add one to the bridal table. Right, Ant?’
Ant exhaled heavily. ‘If you sign the register right now, you can bring an entire footy team to the reception, mate.’
‘What do you say?’ Gabe said to me.
‘She says yes,’ Kat said, when I found myself lost for words.
I felt like I was floating. Gabe got out his phone, and I keyed in my number then handed it back. The entire time, Gabe kept his eyes on me.
‘I’ll call you in a couple of hours,’ he said, before he was pulled back to the wedding. When he resumed his position, the wedding guests broke into a round of applause, and Gabe took a bow. Lucy, the bride, rolled her eyes.
I hurried home and washed my hair, did my make-up, tried on three dresses. Then I waited for Gabe’s call.
But it didn’t come for three weeks.
7
AMANDA
AFTER
Death isn’t so bad when you settle into it. In fact, there’s something soothing about it; watching everything but having no bearing on any of it. Hurts from life come with you, but they don’t sting – like a mosquito bite that has lost its itch, you know it happened, but you don’t feel it anymore. I wish I’d known this when I buried my mother. It would have helped me a lot. All I wanted my whole life was for my mum not to hurt anymore. To have the happy ending she always dreamed of but never got.
My father wasn’t a good man, you see. He was hot-tempered, stupid, occasionally violent. He was extremely good-looking and charming, apparently, but that was part of the problem. He swept Mum off her feet, wooing her with promises of happy ever after. Then, like a lot of charming, good-looking men, he never delivered on any of it.
The story goes that my grandmother warned my mother about him.
‘A blind man could see that man was a player,’ my grandmother said. But Mum didn’t listen. He was her soulmate, she said. She moved away from her family and friends to a small regional town. She gave my father every cent she’d saved, as well as the car she’d worked so hard for. She became pregnant within a couple of months of their wedding, starting the family they’d talked so much about. She tried hard to make our modest house a lovely home for my father – a waste of time, seeing as he was rarely inside it.
Everyone in our small town knew what my father was up to, myself included. I was a child, but I wasn’t deaf. I heard people talking – my friends’ mothers, the supermarket cashier, the ladies at the hairdressers. People gossiping about my father’s behaviour as if it were entertainment. The worst part about it was that most people treated it as Mum’s shame – as if his behaviour was a reflection on her rather than him. Mum seemed to agree with them, because to my knowledge she never once confronted my father, and if anyone so much as implied that he was less than faithful （like her best friend Sue did once, as gently as she could）， she cut them out of her life.
I was ten years old when Mum and I saw Dad’s car parked outside my teacher’s house on our walk to school. Dad hadn’t come home the night before and Mum had told me he was ‘away on business’， which was how she usually explained his absences. I know Mum saw the car too, but she didn’t comment and so neither did I. We were about to cross the road when the front door opened and there they were. Their eyes were on each other and they didn’t notice us watching. Miss McKenzie was helping Dad put on his tie. Then she gave him the kind of kiss I’d only seen in movies.
‘Come on, Amanda,’ Mum said, tugging my arm. ‘We’re going to be late.’
When I arrived at school, I realised we weren’t the only ones who’d noticed my father’s car outside Miss McKenzie’s house. It was all anyone could talk about in the playground. Even my best friend Avana asked me if Miss McKenzie was going to be my new mummy.
At the end of the day, the other mothers made no attempt to keep their voices down as I approached the school gates.
‘Can you believe it? With the teacher, no less! Why not the nanny?’
‘When a husband strays as often as he does, you have to ask: what’s the wife not doing?’
‘Apparently she never . . . you know . . . so who can blame the poor man for finding someone else?’
Mum was standing a few metres away. I’m not sure if the other mothers were oblivious to her, or if they simply didn’t care that she was listening. I do remember how small she looked, caved in, as though she was trying to make herself disappear.
That night, when I came into the kitchen for a glass of water, Mum was crying.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’
She was startled to see me and quickly wiped her eyes. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just fine.’
‘Is Dad still with Miss McKenzie?’
Now she sat upright, shaking her head. ‘Of course not. Why would you say that? He’s working and he’ll be home soon.’
Did she actually believe that? I wondered.
‘Your father loves us,’ she added. ‘He does. He’ll be home soon, don’t you worry.’
My father left us for Miss McKenzie a few weeks later. Mum never recovered. In the years that followed, she never had another partner. It wasn’t for lack of interest; Mum had lots of potential suitors. But whenever I asked her about it, she said: ‘Your father was the love of my life. There will never be anyone else for me.’
How exquisitely, stupidly tragic.
That was when I decided I’d never marry my soulmate. From what I could see, marrying your soulmate was reckless. A commitment like marriage was best treated like a contract, with a list of terms and conditions, and the potential to extricate yourself if the terms were breached. If I left love out of it, I would never end up the way my mother had, I reasoned.
Unfortunately, as so many of us do, I turned into my mother.
Max is sitting in front of the television, in his tracksuit and socks, when he hears the doorbell. On the screen, of all things, is that plastic surgery show, Botched. I chuckle at that. He used to say he watched it for me, and he always had a thick book in his hands, but I know he enjoyed it too, because he rarely looked at his book and often said things like, ‘Surely you’d just stop having surgery, wouldn’t you?’ I wondered quietly what he thought was keeping my face so smooth and taut at fifty-two years old.
He rises from his chair and walks to the intercom, past the dining room table, where my laptop is open, the video still visible on his screen. I’d left it there for him, so he’d know I knew. He closes the lid on his way to the door.
‘Do you have news about Amanda?’ he says through the intercom before he even lets the police in.
‘It would be better if we talked inside,’ one of the officers says.
Max presses the buzzer and opens the door. Then he starts to pace the foyer. He finally reported me missing last night, after calling and looking for me in every conceivable place, but I assume he’d expected I’d show up somewhere – the farm, the city penthouse, the Portsea beach house. One thing to be said for having a lot of houses is there are plenty of places to hide. Still, the moment he’d realised I was missing, he’d had to consider the idea that something more sinister was at play. When you have associates like Max does, you always have to consider that.