‘I could never be ashamed of this,’ I whisper, my eyes closed.
‘I didn’t mean to say all that stuff,’ she says, stroking the back of my head.
‘Let’s go home.’ I smooth my thumb over her mouth.
Much later, I try again, winding a curl of her hair around my finger.
‘Being married is a hard habit to break, Cleo, I’m a monogamous kind of guy,’ I say, quiet. ‘I like the certainty, the finality of the “us against the world” thing. Losing that from my life has been like losing who I am. And lonely, so unbelievably lonely. And then I came here and you blew into my arms, with your crazy curls and your clever wit and a heart the size of Jupiter. But tonight, being seen out in public with you … I felt as if I was doing something illicit, something wrong. The kind of wrong that took me right back to being that kid who walked into his father’s office and found him banging his dental nurse. The unsettled feeling in my bones – it’s not about you, or us, but about infidelity, how much it screws families up.’
Cleo moves slightly, her body a warm weight along the side of mine in bed. She’s quiet for a little while, and I know she’s processing the things I’ve said.
‘You won’t screw your kids up,’ she says. ‘What’s happening here, between us, it’s temporary. Temporarily perfect. You’re not doing anything wrong, and you’re not breaking any promises. And afterwards, when you go home again … Mack, it’s up to you whether you decide to tell anyone or not, not because it’s a dirty indiscretion you need to keep to yourself – but because it isn’t. It’s here and now and ours alone.’
I appreciate her understanding more than she knows. ‘I like that. Temporarily perfect.’
She traces slow circles on my chest. ‘If you really need things to stay just between you and me, even here on the island, then I can do that. I can absolutely do that. The lodge can be our personal snow globe.’
The compassion and understanding, honestly, she slays me. In my head I lower a protective dome over the lodge, the bay, the hill. ‘You’re probably the coolest woman on the planet, you know that?’
‘Yeah, I know that,’ she says.
I feel her eyelids drift down, butterfly wings against my chest, and I close my eyes too, tired. I feel as if I’m walking a tightrope between two stages of my life and, right now, Cleo is my safety net. I’ll tell her that tomorrow, if I can think of a way to say it without sounding like a dick.
Cleo
23 October
Salvation Island
AM I BRAVE ENOUGH?
It’s my last day of my twenties today. Goodbye to the girl I’ve been, hello to the woman I’m going to be. I don’t know quite who she is yet, what she’s going to do or where she’s going to go, but I do know she’ll steer her own ship, calm waters or high seas. No icebergs, hopefully.
I’m ready, I think, for my ceremony tomorrow. Ready as I can be, anyway. I’ve drafted some words, the creases have fallen from my dress, and I’m sitting in the café with Delta and Dolores having just tried to explain self-coupling to them. Delta gets it, but Dolores has a look on her face that suggests she’s trying not to check my forehead for a fever.
‘But you don’t have a ring?’ Delta frowns. ‘You totally missed a trick there. You could have put it on expenses, right? A whacking great emerald or something.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘Mack said the same. I don’t know how I didn’t think of it myself.’
‘There’s a lot more to marriage than jewellery, Delta,’ Dolores says, folding her napkin.
‘Like a groom?’ I say because it’s written all over her face.
‘It’s all very unusual.’ Dolores chooses her words carefully, but it’s obvious that what she actually thinks is that I’ve lost my marbles. I’m not offended.
‘I think it’s romantic,’ Delta sighs. ‘I don’t love myself enough to marry myself.’
‘Delta, you should.’ I cover her hand with my own, taken aback by her unexpected despondency. She oozes confidence and positivity; I don’t like the thought that she doesn’t feel the way on the inside that she looks on the outside.
She bats my hand away and laughs, but I see uncertainty on Dolores’s face too at her daughter’s lack of self-love. I think about the father of Delta’s child, the hapless computer gamer who rides a scooter, and I find myself admiring her all the more for having the strength not to settle. Coming home pregnant and alone can’t have been easy.