The Mistake

by Katie McMahon

  ‘Want one?’ he said, still leaning forward. She shook her head.

  He sat back again, put his arm back around her – although not, unfortunately, on the back of her neck this time – finished his biscuit, drank more chai. The whole time, they were talking about things: her vivacious neighbour who was all for the cable car, a pub he knew that Bec said used to be very seedy, how nice the man who ran the local café was, Netflix, The Avengers. At some point in the Netflix bit she finished her chai and put down her cup. She was letting her body soften against his. She’d obviously been very tense when they’d first sat down.

  ‘I think I ate too much,’ he said, after they’d talked about Thor and Byron Bay.

  ‘Me too,’ she said.

  ‘Yep. Good though.’ He dropped his shoulder and tilted his chin down – only a tiny bit – so he could kiss her lips. Brief, firm, gentle. ‘You taste like chocolate,’ he said. ‘Nice.’

  Then he unfolded himself and went and washed up the cups.

  She stayed where she was for a few minutes. He said he should go and check out someone’s garden while the weather stayed dry. So she put on her boots and said goodbye.

  ‘Good to see you,’ he said, at the door. He kissed her again – only a short kiss. His hands stayed on the back of her neck the whole time, even though she let her chest compress against his.

  ‘Come back soon,’ he said, lightly.

  She’d thought she’d be the one who would have to put a stop to things, that morning. But, as she walked back up the concrete path, she realised she would have been very happy to stay.

  *

  There were roadworks, so it took ages to get out of his street. She inched her car forward towards the roundabout. There was always going to be chemistry at the beginning, she reminded herself. That sort of chemistry didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean there was a real heart-to-heart connection. It certainly wasn’t worth risking a solid marriage for.

  Beginnings weren’t what mattered. And anyway, it was pointless to compare meeting Stuart with meeting Ryan, because she’d been an entirely different person back then.

  And not only because she’d been young.

  She’d been an intern. Dr Rebecca Leicester, with a pager clipped to her belt, and a stethoscope around her neck and a white ID card she could use to zap herself through the automatic double doors that led to the intensive care unit, to the operating theatres, to the residents’ quarters of the Royal Tasmania Hospital.

  From the time her alarm clock went off, she was running. She used to leave her hair to dry itself on the bike ride to the hospital. She used to twist it into a ponytail in the residents’ bathroom before morning hand-over. She used to say, ‘I’ll check her creatinine,’ and ‘So has he had the frusemide yet?’ and ‘Better grab an ECG.’

  ‘Exhausting!’ she’d say. ‘Ridiculous! Why can’t I start at nine like a normal person?’ But even she could hear that she sounded the way Kate did when she complained about the early starts and the boring make-up sessions and how modelling wasn’t really as glamorous as everyone thought. Like a mum whose kid had just made the Olympic squad, complaining about having to wash all the uniforms.

  Bec met Stuart on a Friday. She was wearing this nice blue sweater that Kate had sent her from London, in the days when it was a novelty to receive packages in the mail. It was after five o’clock, and she was doing what all the efficient interns did: checking a pile of drug charts before she went home for the weekend. You had to do that, because it caused headaches for the nurses and the weekend doctors, if a patient ran out of an order when you weren’t there.

  She was sitting on ward 5D, in a tiny alcove that was known as a work station. It had apparently been designed by someone who had no idea what it was actually used for. The white Formica ledge that was supposed to be the desk was criss-crossed with telephone cords and precarious piles of patient files, and an enormous computer monitor took up the rest of the space. In fact, it hung over the edge of the ‘desk’ by several inches.

  She’d just taken a half-finished Cherry Ripe – the healthiest chocolate bar, also the flattest – from inside the slip-cover of her Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine and had a bite. She’d missed lunch, which happened pretty often.

  ‘Hi,’ Stuart said. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’

  Stuart was from Sydney. She found out much later that, on that Friday, he was two weeks into a three-month ‘regional area’ stint in Hobart. At the time, all she knew was that he was a tall surgical registrar with curly dark hair and shoulders that went right out to the edge of his scrubs, and she surmised he was not exactly having trouble attracting women. He was sitting on a wheelie chair at the other end of the work station, and had just finished making a phone call. He’d been using phrases like ‘stat dose’ and ‘absolutely out of the question’ in a way that was as impressive and authoritative as possible, although – tragically – she’d been able to tell that the conversation was about a patient with an infected ingrown toenail.

  ‘I’m Stuart,’ he said. He used a fake-humble voice, as if he thought she already knew his name. She was very glad that she didn’t.

  ‘Born to rule,’ her mum would have said. ‘Sexy wanker,’ Kate would have said. ‘Can’t hurt to go on a date, though, darling,’ Marion would have added, with an encouraging look. Marion had always been a firm believer in embracing new experiences, within reason, and at that point in history she thought it was high time Bec got over James Le Dieu, the beautiful Canadian backpacker she’d met in Nepal. (Something sexual had actually happened, in James’s case. Very much so. Not in a youth hostel, though. In a yellow-painted hotel in Kathmandu, among other places.)

  Bec smiled at Stuart, swallowed her Cherry Ripe, and introduced herself as Rebecca Leicester, the orthopaedic intern.

  ‘D’you want to grab a drink after work?’ He wasn’t actually leaning back with his hands behind his head and his knees apart, but he might as well have been.

  ‘No, thanks.’ She smiled at him as warmly as she could (not very; it’d been a long day and he clearly didn’t need a smile) and went on with her drug chart rewrite.

  ‘Oh. OK.’ Stuart stood up. He told her later that no one had ever turned him down for a date before. ‘Have a good weekend,’ he said. And he walked off.

  ‘Bye.’ She turned back to her drug charts, and then something made her glance up again. As he made his way along the hospital corridor, he looked back at her over his shoulder. He gave her a quick, awkward smile and kept going. It was, she told Kate when she phoned from London a few days later, just the tiniest bit endearing.

  But after that, she didn’t meet Stuart again until much later, when Kate wasn’t calling from London anymore. When Kate was back in Hobart. When everything had changed.

  *

  The evening after visiting Ryan’s house, it felt as if her whole life was flying out into space, almost as if the planet itself had exploded. Bits of everything disappearing. No centre. All the certainties gone.

  She decided to ring Kate. They hadn’t spoken since their fight – nearly a fortnight ago – and Bec missed her, very much. It was only a matter of time anyway. One of them always had to apologise, and that one of them was always Bec.

  ‘Hi, Bec,’ Kate said, pleasantly. Bless her, at least she never sulked.

  ‘Sorry about the other day,’ Bec said.

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t mean you know nothing about marriage,’ Bec said. ‘And I’m sorry I called Adam a dick.’

  ‘I didn’t mean you’re bad at blow jobs,’ Kate replied, apparently with a straight face. ‘I’m sure you perform to your usual high-achieving standards in that department. At least I hope so.’

  They laughed. Bec didn’t want to say it – not even to Kate – but if she was completely honest, she was mildly proud of her oral-sex skills. So after the laughter finished, there was a silence. They never talked about the other thing.

  ‘How are you?’ Kate said.

>   ‘Things are quite difficult. Really crap, in fact.’ They mustn’t argue again. ‘I’m not sure what Mum’s told you? But Stuart’s basically lost his job. There’s hardly any money coming in. We weren’t that far ahead on our mortgage and we’re using up the re-draw at a rate of knots. Even the interest is just . . . and he’s being hopeless. Just sort of defeated and wafty and hopeless.’ It was good to open up, actually. ‘You know how he was always so capable. He used to make me feel like a bit of a ditz, even. And then the other day I walked into the laundry because the dryer’d been beeping for ages, and he was just standing there, staring into space. The kids’ll talk to him, tell him an excited story or ask him a riddle or something, and he just blinks.’ She had only just realised she was furious with Stuart, and if Kate fucking defended him again, she’d get furious with her, too.

  Luckily, Kate said, ‘I bet. Poor old Stuart. This is probably the first major setback he’s had in his whole charmed life.’

  ‘I know! That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.’ She had been, and right that minute Bec realised she saw that as a character flaw. ‘Not that I’ve had a difficult life,’ she added, humbly. ‘This is one of the hardest things for me, too.’

  ‘Well, you only have to look at his parents,’ Kate said. And then they had a comforting talk about Stuart’s family, Essie’s new haircut (a cute little fringe; she’d send Kate a photo straight away), their dad’s hip, their mum’s Earl Grey tea cake (Adam had tried it and used too much bicarb; Kate hadn’t finished her piece), the pile of essays Kate had to mark, Lachlan’s sore gums, Mathilda’s rolled ankle, and Kate’s friend Juliet who was, as they spoke, on a date with a freelance graphic designer who had once been in jail for some sort of protesting. (Perhaps the Melbourne dating scene was rife with creative single people who had slightly shady personal histories. Maybe, Bec thought, Adamdick was the best of a bad bunch.)

  ‘Well,’ Bec said, when they were wrapping up. ‘Maybe you could come down soon? And Adam, too, of course.’ Obviously, she hadn’t mentioned to Kate that straight after Adam’s visit, she’d ordered a true-crime book about a woman who was defrauded by a lover. It was taking ages to come, actually.

  ‘All right,’ Kate said. ‘He said something or other about Tassie rock-climbing, anyway.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Bec.

  She hung up. She took a cauliflower out of the fridge.

  If Adam was lying, she thought, it was probably just because he was married. That had to be more likely than a financial scam. Maybe Kate even sort of knew. Maybe Kate properly knew.

  Bec peeled off the leaves, and found herself reflecting that it was possible that Adam’s wife also knew. It might just be one of those understandings. They were apparently very common.

  Bec put the leaves in the bin, and walked back over to the bench. She began to chop the stalk off. Maybe understandings like that could work, she thought. People might even be happier. Maybe long-term monogamy was just impossible. Maybe infidelity wasn’t always wrong.

  Bec paused, with her hand still on the knife. She stood motionless, in her quiet kitchen, for almost a minute. Then she started chopping again.

  She saw she was already sliding down a very slippery slope. Maybe there was still time to stop.

  Chapter Nine

  Kate

  Bec would never actually ask for my help, in case anyone got the impression she wasn’t perfect, but it was clear she needed a bit of company down in Hobart. This time Adam and I both seemed to take it for granted that he was coming with me.

  We decided without properly talking about it to stay somewhere more modest this trip. He’d paid the last time, but I’d somehow been able to tell that the beautiful hotel room with its view over the wharf and its extensive supply of mohair throws had been meant as a special treat. So I found a teeny-weeny bungalow on Airbnb, halfway between the mountain (handy for his dolerite bouldering, whatever that may be) and Bec’s house.

  ‘It’ll be warm, anyway,’ I said. There were multiple forms of heating: I had been very careful about that. ‘Freaking freezing Hobart. Even in autumn.’

  In the end though, that Saturday was one of those blue-and-golden days where the frost melts by eight in the morning and a sprinkle of early snow gleams white on the mountain. The sun warms your back and the river sparkles in the still, cold air and all the tourists wonder why anyone ever complains about Tasmanian weather. (The locals wear shorts and down jackets, and grunt in a superior way about last week’s horizontal rain and vitamin D deficiency.)

  As promised, Adam went climbing in the morning – he left while it was still dark – and came back just as I was finishing up some yoga. My phone pinged as he walked in, so that for a second I thought our shabby-chic accommodation must be equipped with some sort of sensor alarm. He was glowing from his ‘bouldering’ and carrying two coffees and a loaf wrapped in paper. I checked my phone. (Juliet texting to ask if I thought the ‘b’ in ‘obviously’ was silent; she was settling a bet with her jailbird, she said.) Adam started cutting bread.

  ‘How was it?’ I said, walking the four paces into the kitchen.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘Amazing. Stellar morning.’ Then, like he hadn’t thought about it, he added, ‘And how’s my beautiful girlfriend?’

  ‘Oh, is that what I am now?’ Same bantering tone. I was just feeling bantery, though. ‘You take quite a lot for granted, Adam.’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, happily, smiling down at the chopping board.

  I became aware that I was wearing only a singlet on top, and that the room was bright daylight. I felt a bit self-conscious, but I made a valiant attempt to put body-hating thoughts aside and walked over to the fridge.

  When I passed Adam, he caught me around my waist with one arm. He pushed me against the cupboards and started kissing me and we sort of tottered to the bed, and he kept saying my name. I was kneeling over him, he was tangling his hands in my hair, I wanted to be naked, I wanted him to be naked, we were kissing, scrabbling, a condom, finally, and I thought, now or never, and then I was sitting astride him, and he was holding my hips down hard onto him and staring, staring up at my face.

  I had a really amazing orgasm at the same time he did. I lay down next to him, and then gently, and most unexpectedly, I slid into very soft tears. He tightened his arms around me, and stayed quiet, and stayed still, and stayed awake. As soon as I stopped crying he kissed my head and stroked my hair, and our bodies curled in toward each other, and I was thinking, we mustn’t fall asleep and be late for lunch, because that would be rude, but in that skippy, twisty way thoughts go when you’re going to sleep I also was thinking that I must stay awake, awake, awake or I would fall in love with him.

  *

  Lunch was lasagne at Bec’s house. Mum and Dad came. No one was horrible to Adam. I had already told Bec about the not-a-photographer-but-a-data-analyst thing, and she chatted perkily about stone fruit and Spotify, and refrained from mentioning anything about his occupation. Stuart barely spoke. Mum said, ‘Now tell me, Adam, what are your views on Extinction Rebellion?’

  After lunch, Mum and BFG went home to plant out some broccoli seedlings, Stuart took Mathilda to her friend’s house and Lachlan went mountain-bike riding with Tom From Soccer. Bec accosted me in the butler’s pantry to ask if the two of us could have A Talk. The way she said it, I thought she was going to tell me either that a second woman had come forward with an accusation, or that someone we loved had a life-threatening illness but they’d decided to wait until after the banana cake to tell me.

  ‘All right,’ I said. I went back into the dining room and said, ‘Adam. Essie! Want to go and practise kicking goals?’

  ‘Nah, it’d just be mean,’ Adam said. ‘There’s no way Essie could get any past me.’

  Essie looked a bit abashed.

  ‘And, Kate, if I raced her down to the tennis court, there is absolutely no way she would win,’ he added.

  ‘He has four nephews and a niece,’ I told Bec, proudly
, as we watched their departing backs. ‘So? What’s wrong?’

  She gestured for me to come and sit down at the dining table. ‘I think we’re going to have to switch the girls’ school,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! School.’ I was very relieved. I said something about how I didn’t think changing schools was that big a deal. The two of us both went to state schools, after all. (Well, until she was fifteen and got her scholarship.)

  ‘I know.’ Her tone made me remember how there’s nothing much useful you can say when people are very sad. I offered to pay the fees, but Bec said she didn’t think Stuart would be ‘comfortable’ with that.

  ‘He doesn’t have to be comfortable,’ I said. ‘You just have to let me.’

  ‘Oh, Kate,’ she said, so miserably that I kept quiet. ‘Thank you for the offer. But it’s too big a commitment. Even for you.’ She added that Lachlan’s school had some sort of different system, and they’d already paid his fees until the end of the year. ‘Back in January,’ she said. I could tell from the way she moved her jaw that her throat was all squeezy and tight. ‘Before any of this.’

  I said surely they had enough equity in the house to get them through for a bit, and she said their mortgage was enormous and they’d paid too much for their new kitchen and their cars were leased and Stuart wouldn’t ‘let’ her sell her jewellery and she, Bec, was about to start a part-time job as a receptionist.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. For some reason, the thought of Bec going to work seemed ridiculous, like a school principal dancing on a podium, or a fancy interior decorator getting into a brawl at the football and telling someone to go shove a Chiko roll where the sun don’t shine.

  ‘Can’t you ask his parents?’ I said.

  She shook her head. Tears were in her eyes and she was holding her face still.

  ‘Pride,’ she said, as if that single word was an iron-clad reason for whatever irrational, alpha-male bullshit Stuart had talked her into. Sometimes I really think she’s more stupid than she once was.