I don’t want the new guy pitying me. I don’t want anyone doing that. I just wish this conversation would change direction by magic.
‘You going to stand around playing CSI all night, or read that paperwork?’ Hugh asks on cue. ‘Can’t wing this one, Kate. You’re leading the presentation.’
Work. A safe topic.
‘You know I’m on top of this,’ I say, even though right now I most certainly am not on top of it. Not any of it. He’d be alarmed if he knew how out of control I really feel – about everything.
‘Thanks for coming,’ I say, exhausted. It’s a general thank you to all assembled. Thanks for coming to my show.
‘Come on, Charlie. Let’s pack your bag for your sleepover at Nanna’s!’ Grace says, taking his hand. This is the part where he normally gets clingy. But as he turns to go with Grace, he shoots Justin a massive smile. Grace, in turn, shoots me a knowing look that’s meant to be private, but that the entire viewing public can’t possibly misinterpret.
‘Work trip,’ I explain to Justin. ‘Shall we rain-check that welcome drink for when I get back?’
He taps me playfully on the arm. ‘You can tell me all about your passion for ornithology.’
Hugh snorts.
I have no words.
Then Justin glances deliberately at Hugh before he leans forward, puts a hand confidently on my waist and brushes my cheek with a kiss. I’m getting intoxicating notes of hard physical labour and Giorgio Armani, a scent that lingers even after he breaks away and walks across the road to his house, carrying my attention with him.
‘See you in the morning then,’ Hugh says beside me.
When I don’t respond, he snaps his fingers in front of my eyes and says, ‘Hey, Lara Croft!’
I return to him with a mental thud. ‘Paperwork.’ Boring. ‘Got it.’
I really need this mini holiday from All The Things. All the things except work, of course. And Hugh, who comes with that territory. And who, now I finally look at him, is staring at me as if I’ve just handed Justin a rose on The Bachelorette.
5
At four in the morning, I make an executive decision to give up on sleep altogether. I was still taking notes on the briefing papers at two, and now the whole project is making me nervous. It’s an ambitious fundraising campaign to attract donors for scholarships in the university’s climate change research programs. My idea. A cinematic film showcasing the achievements of our alumni scientists, interwoven with words by the university’s preeminent writers and poets, set to a piece of music composed by a grad student in the music school after the summer bushfires a few years ago. I want to send donors the message that we’re in this together. Arts. Science. All of us. And the university is bigger than the sum of its parts.
Hugh thought the idea was beautiful. He backed me a hundred per cent. Sank a large chunk of our fundraising budget into this one campaign. And now his belief in me is giving me the heebie jeebies.
‘It’s a feel-good story,’ I’d argued late one Friday afternoon after the rest of our team had bolted to happy hour at a bar in NewActon. ‘But if we can’t demonstrate a direct boost to donations, I’m worried it will be your head that rolls.’
‘You’re shaping a bang-for-buck appeal that aligns with the university’s strategic objectives. You’ve brought several faculties into the spotlight on a global water-cooler topic. Give them cold hard science and pull at their humanity. What’s not to love, Kate?’
But now, in the hours before dawn, it all seems too complicated. After I toss and turn about work for a while, I can’t move on from the idea that I’ve had one of Cam’s treasured possessions seized from the house for destruction. I imagine it being blown to smithereens, over and over. Symbolic of our tragedy.
I roll over in bed again and, as if to cheer itself up a bit, my mind ambles across the road. I tell myself it’s not disrespecting Cam’s memory to invent an imaginary little bedtime story involving my new neighbour and the fascination he develops in me, not in spite of my bumbling single-mother-widowhood but because of it. Yes. I make him that sort of man. Attracted to the flaws. The history. The stretch marks and scars plastered on my body and soul. I almost drift off in a kaleidoscope of muscles and king-size beds and explosives and mind-boggling actuarial maths. In my fantasy, Justin doesn’t leave just when I need him most. Not like Cam.
Don’t think that!
I sit up, slammed by guilt. Cam died against his will. What sort of person lies here, grief-stricken over her beautiful husband, fantasising about another man falling helplessly for her stretch marks and history and flaws? Worse, a man who isn’t some distant Hollywood heartthrob like usual, but the very accessible hero next door.
Now I’m wide awake again, and another disturbing thought rushes in: Hugh will sack me if I fall asleep in this meeting. Well, he won’t actually sack me. I’ve done worse than fall asleep at work. The man is a saint! But the thought of letting him down again undoes all of Fantasy Justin’s work in soothing my troubled mind.
Eventually I get up, shower, and throw last-minute toiletries into the oversize tote I take on flying interstate visits. This should be a relatively straightforward, if hectic, trip. The first of several mad dashes to meet with the cast of thousands now involved in the project. Today it’s Far North Queensland to see a bunch of interested company directors, then various university-affiliated environmental scientists who can strut our stuff and attract millions in financial support.
I sit on the window seat in my front room, blanket around my knees, sipping tea, killing time and wondering how I got stuck here, in the wrong life.
I’m meant to be a writer. Am one, at heart. But cannot possibly live the life of one – not even part-time. The way the cards have fallen, I can only grasp for words in stolen moments. Pull them onto pages in fits and starts around the very real challenges of keeping a roof over Charlie’s head until he’s old enough to do that himself.
With Cam, I always had the space to write. He ensured that. Even then, though, I clung to my day job, scared of really putting my work out there. Terrified of rejection. I even struggled to show Cam my work. An English professor, of course, so professionally equipped to judge it.
‘Why do you write?’ he’d asked me once. I’d been pushing words around the pages of a short story for weeks and was staring down the last few hours until the deadline to enter it in a literary award. I’d shown him my work mid crisis of confidence, needing to hear it was good enough.
We’d had a blazing row.
‘I’m not one of your students!’ I’d shouted.
But he’d defended his question. ‘Seriously. I’m asking you why you write. What drives you?’
‘Cam! I want to know what you think,’ I’d cut back. ‘About this piece.’
His face was racked with emotion. Love, mainly. Fear of hurting me. And professional integrity. ‘I think it’s good,’ he’d said quietly. ‘But Kate, I don’t think you’ve found your place yet.’
His feedback struck a nerve. I’d been wanting to write serious literary fiction since Cam and I first met as undergrads. But trying to force beautiful words into serious stories and onto pages just so was sucking all the joy out of the process.