Normally I only go away for one night. Day one of three feels so much more expansive. It’s been the first opportunity to really gasp oxygen away from the child I’ve protected from the worst of my grief, all this time. Grief that is rushing to the surface safely in Charlie’s absence. I can’t upset him from here. Can’t scare him. I can fully lose it and he won’t know. I feel like I’ve never had this much space, nor this much emotion to tip into it.
I look up at Hugh through water and the steam, wondering if he regrets this. He probably wishes he’d brought the university-sponsored counsellor along for the ride. But, as our eyes meet, I realise he’s hanging in there. He’s strong.
I am fragile.
He was right. And, as the warm water thaws my skin, the unguarded tears are allowed to flow at last. He watches my face crumple and he crouches outside the shower, nearer to me. Tentatively, he reaches in and offers me his hand through the waterfall, his white shirt sleeve sodden and transparent.
I take his hand, expecting him to pull me up and get me out of here and do something sensible with me – cup of tea, perhaps – to stop whatever this is.
But this is beyond tea. He knows it. Only fragile, desperate individuals dive fully clothed into oceans and sit in showers wearing work clothes on business trips.
He lets go of my hand. Removes his watch.
‘Hugh!’
But it’s too late. He steps into the shower and sits down beside me, propping himself against the wall under the water, suit pants wet, white business shirt clinging to his body like mine is to me, water dripping off his dark hair as he looks at me in silence.
I am floored. Nobody has ever done something so incredibly, self-sacrificially kind. Hugh does not do stunts, and this definitely qualifies as one. In fact, I vaguely recall Daniel Craig doing it once, as Bond, no less.
After minutes of this, I find my voice. ‘Is this the weekend you had in mind?’
‘This is it to a tee,’ he says, leaning his head back against the tiles and closing his eyes. Then we just sit there, side by side, in companionable silence, enjoying communal water therapy, while I cry, and cry, and cry.
This is letting grief rip.
Eventually the water starts running cold and he reaches up and shuts the taps off and we’re bedraggled and dripping and I realise this is one of the most intimate moments of my life, second only to giving birth in front of Cam.
Then he suggests we pull ourselves to our feet because there’s no food in the house, and not enough dry clothes, and we should do something about both problems before nightfall.
21
‘Grace! Firstly, thank you. A million thanks. I don’t know how, but I’m going to make this up to you somehow. I promise.’
She laughs it off. ‘Pay it forward, Kate. You know I love hanging out with my favourite little person. Practice for my five-per-cent baby.’
I’m walking to an Ocean Shores op shop that we drove past on the way in. Hugh is back at the beach house, following up on the meeting cancellations with personal emails. Perhaps we both needed space, too.
‘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?’