‘Could we go to your house instead?’
April glances in the rear-vision mirror at them. ‘Do you know where your dad is?’
They shrug in unison.
She leaves a message for him on his mobile and on his work phone, and then she tells them they are going to her place — ‘for a feast’.
‘What of?’ Catherine wants to know.
‘We’ll see when we get there.’
It has been so long, and April starts to sing as she drives, silly made-up songs that slip and slide, until both the girls are giggling, and outside the rain drives down, the wipers going back and forth, back and forth, the demister loud, all of their voices rising and falling in unison as they skip from one song to the next with no need to name the tune.
THREE YEARS EARLIER
IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE Lawrence began to wonder whether he had gone temporarily insane.
Sleeping alone in his newly rented office, he couldn’t let his mind alight for too long on any of his actions or words over the past week. Like hot coals, everything he had said and done was spread out before him — incendiary, molten, terrifying to witness.
He had a sleeping bag on the couch, the vinyl slippery and sweaty. In the middle of the night, he slid onto the floor, dragging a glass of water down with him and waking with a start from a sleep that had only ever hovered on the edge of any depth. Cold and wet, he sat up, back against the tin wall, which had now come to remind him of a prison cell, and the hollow inside him was vast.
‘I want to go home,’ he said to no one.
He stood, clutching the vinyl around him, and looked out the single window behind his desk to the emptiness of the street. Across the road, there was a light in the café, and inside he could see Leon, who lived upstairs, reading the paper. He ran the place alone, and lived by himself, his wife long dead. When he heard Lawrence was having ‘home problems’, he said he could use his shower in the morning.
‘No worries by me,’ he grunted each time Lawrence came down the stairs and thanked him. ‘You sort out soon.’ He nodded when he said this, his eyes on Lawrence, an old man who knew the importance of a resolution.
But when all was burnt to char, there was no rebuilding, no return, no way home. Just waste, waste that Lawrence could never speak of, and shame that gripped his heart and his tongue, clammy and cold.
If it had been insanity — and who knows what insanity looks like or how it speaks — then he had been released from its clutches the moment he told April of his confession to Ester.
‘Oh God,’ was all she’d said. ‘You don’t love me. Why would you think that? Why would you say it?’
It was as though she’d pulled out a brick from the bottom of a pile, causing everything to tumble before his eyes. How could he have believed in the structure when it was so very flimsy?
The night before, he’d been bold. He’d put the girls to bed, and come back to the kitchen, where Ester sat, a half-finished bottle of red on the table in front of her, the grey-green of her eyes cool as she appraised him. She was the one who spoke first, her words the careful words of a therapist, all her solicitude useless in the face of the onslaught he was about to deliver, but she didn’t know that. How could she?
‘I feel we need to talk.’
‘We do,’ he agreed.
‘I haven’t been happy.’ She looked across at him, about to continue, but he cut over her, his words coming out in a rush.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘This isn’t us. Or it’s not me. I’m so glad you don’t want it either —’
Her hand, which had been resting around the stem of her glass, withdrew. He wasn’t observant enough to slow down, to let her take the lead. Exhausted and confused and afflicted by temporary insanity, he kept speaking, the words of a madman tripping over each other as he said he’d come to a realisation when he was at the river. He had loved her, oh how he had loved her, but they weren’t right for each other. He knew that, and she knew that. He loved April. He shook his head with the wonder of it. Ester would be so much happier with someone else, someone who was more like her, and he too would be happier. They were alike, he and April. They were of the same spirit. It could work, he had even said. They could build a new structure, a different kind of family. It would be all right.
And there, at the edge of the precipice, he had foolishly failed to realise that the fall was calamitous. In those moments, she had been silent, confused, floundering, and then all the horror of his confession appeared to fill her, and she had pushed back her chair and rushed to the sink, where she had vomited.
Each morning, Lawrence woke wondering where he was. He opened his eyes to the corrugated tin, chalky grey, and the silence of his near-empty room. Sometimes he reached for Ester, certain that if he stretched a little further he would feel the smooth curve of her hip, and he would be able to curl in close to the place he now wanted to return to: one arm draped around her waist, breathing in the sweet lavender of her hair, the richness of her skin.
And if he stayed perfectly still, completely quiet, he might just will their footsteps, Catherine and Lara, both of them running down the hall, one skidding along the rug, followed by the slam of cupboard doors, the scrape of a stool along the ground. One pulling down every cereal packet from the cupboard, the other taking out bowls, glasses, spoons, milk, sometimes closing the fridge door behind her, sometimes not. And then he would shuffle into the kitchen, eyes still bleary from sleep, hoping his pyjama bottoms were tied up properly, telling them it was the weekend, a time for all sane people to ‘sleep, sleeeeep little ones, go to sleeeeeeep, tick tock, tick tock’ as he swung an imaginary chain in front of them, trying to hypnotise them, until one or the other obliged and pretended to collapse into a deep enchanted slumber, right there on the floor.
April was his only visitor in that first week.
She looked as bad as he felt.
‘You fucked up,’ she shouted at him, and she hit him, over and over again. ‘It was a mistake. You should never have said anything.’
And he had nodded. Because she was right.
She looked around his room. ‘How long have you been here?’
He told her.
She had cried. ‘It’s not just your life that’s fucked up. It’s mine, too.’
He pulled out a seat for her, letting her speak because it was a relief to hear someone else’s troubles, even those so closely linked to his own, and it was a relief to see her, to see anyone. As she rolled them each a cigarette, he offered her a drink, which she refused at first, but then changed her mind about, pouring the whisky into a glass, the fire on the throat nowhere near enough to compensate for the heaviness in the pit of the stomach.
Ester hadn’t spoken to either of them since he’d left.
‘I need to see the girls,’ he told April.
And he did. The ache was visceral.
‘Have you called her?’
He shook his head. He had wanted to, lifting the phone to dial so often, but each time he had stopped, scraped bare by the knowledge of what he’d done.
‘I’m sure she won’t stop you.’
‘I just feel so ashamed.’
And April stood up then, and told him she had to go.
It was two weeks before Hilary came to see him.
She was at the door when he returned from his morning coffee, and he almost went back around the corner, wanting to hide away until she was gone.
‘Will you come in?’ he offered, and she shook her head.
She had known for more than a fortnight. ‘When Ester told me, I wanted to come around and set fire to you.’ Her eyes were on his, harsh blue. ‘I hated you for what you’d done to my girls. Imagine,’ she said, ‘if it were Catherine and Lara. Imagine.’
He could only look at the ground.
‘I was incensed. I have never been so angry,’ and she shook he
r head, wiping at the sting of a tear in the corner of her eye. ‘Don’t,’ she said as he reached for her. ‘I’ve been waking up most nights, imagining telling you how I felt. There were times when I thought I would drive around here at midnight, and pour it all out on you. All my rage. But I have to concentrate on helping my girls. That’s what I needed to tell you. That’s all I wanted to say.’
She looked straight at him, her fine-boned face fierce and sure, and then she nodded once, and turned and left, her walk brisk and erect, her back to him as he watched her go, alone in his doorway.
That night, he drove back to where he used to live, the place he still thought of as home although he knew he had no hope of ever returning. He sat in the car, two doors down, on the opposite side of the road. Inside the lights were on, but the curtains were drawn.
He could walk down the path now and open the door — he still had his key.
It was all a mistake, he would tell her. A brief loss of his mind. Surely she had to understand and forgive, surely this was what she dealt with daily — the mess we are all capable of, the possibility of an eruption always just beneath the skin? If she were her own client, wouldn’t she suggest repair?
He imagined himself standing before her in the hallway, uttering those words, laying himself bare, the eloquence he was capable of his to use, words unspooling like a ribbon to draw them both together again. And the vision was so strong, he let himself be carried by it, opening the car door without thinking, walking straight to the gate, past the frangipani he had planted when they first moved in, home again, key in his hand.
She had changed the locks.
It took him some moments before he realised this, the metal not slotting into the grooves, nothing fitting, and when the realisation had sunk in, he hammered on the door with his fists, a parody of a broken man, locked out of his own home, calling her name.
It was Catherine who opened the door, Lara right behind her.
‘Daddy,’ she screamed.
He knelt down low, arms wrapped around them, determined not to cry.
Ester stood in the hall, right behind them, back against the wall, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
‘Can I take them with me?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.
She nodded again.
When she eventually spoke it was to tell the girls that they were going to have dinner with their father, ‘get your shoes on,’ she said, waiting until they had run down the hall before turning to face him. ‘Bring them back by nine,’ she instructed.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she silenced him.
‘Not now.’ Her tone was curt. ‘I will text you and set up a time. But I don’t want to talk to you now.’
IN THE FIRST WEEK, Ester woke each night to find she had been crying in her sleep. She would sit up, the pillow damp, the silence of the house so suffocating that she was afraid of not being able to breathe.
It was just a bad dream, she would tell herself. But it wasn’t.
He had fucked April, and he had gone.
She took everything he owned and put it in the garage.
‘I’d like to set a match to it all,’ she told her friend, Sophia.
Sophia had never really liked Lawrence, which was why Ester sought out her company in those first few weeks. She avoided most of her other friends, particularly those who would try to reason with her, or, worse still, might let her know they had seen Lawrence. Sophia was safe. She had worked with Lawrence briefly when she’d been between jobs, which she frequently was. Sophia was sullen and moody, according to Lawrence. She was rude to clients. He’d told her there wasn’t enough work to keep her on, and she’d been furious, coming round to their house one night and declaring that Lawrence was a smooth-talking asshole, a nasty liar. She’d stood in the doorway, her long black hair framing her pale face, her voice loud, her skin and her breath reeking of booze.
‘Look at you,’ she’d said. ‘In your comfortable life, not giving a shit about anyone but yourself. You used to be an artist.’
And so they hadn’t seen her for a long time after that, but when Ester bumped into her outside the local café, she’d asked her if she wanted to have a coffee.
‘You were right,’ she said. ‘He was a smooth-talking asshole.’
And all that she’d once found repellent in Sophia — her dark intensity, her simmering anger, her snide remarks about everyone they knew — became attractive.
Sophia had been a dancer and a choreographer who’d never quite made it. She had a teenage son, who spent all his time locked in his room on the computer. She had very few friends. She came to visit frequently, happy to drink Ester’s wine and voice her disgust at everyone and everything.
Ester showed her the pile of Lawrence’s clothes and books in the garage.
‘You should burn them,’ Sophia encouraged her. ‘Here, I’ll help you.’ She stepped forward, slightly unsteady in her high-heeled black leather boots, and began to pour the remains of the bottle of white wine she was holding over the lot. She took her cigarette out of her mouth and threw it on top.
Nothing happened.
She was about to bend down with her lighter when Ester stopped her. She scooped the clothes up in her arms, the smell of wine and Lawrence and her own tears pressed close as she told Sophia to just leave her alone. ‘This is mine,’ she said. ‘I’ll get rid of it in the way I want to.’
They were both drunk.
Sophia glared at her. ‘You were always alike,’ she said. ‘Both of you thought you were better than everyone else. You deserved each other. And now look at you. All alone and clutching the clothes of a bastard who fucked your sister.’
That night Ester went to April’s, barging through the door, sweeping everything onto the floor, trying to pull curtains off the railings, ripping pictures from the walls.
‘Why can’t I trash your life the way you trash mine?’ she shouted.
And then, as April tried to contain her, to hold her, the fury of her anger so pure she could not bear to be touched, she pushed her sister away and told her she never wanted to see her again. Ever.
The next morning, Ester booked an appointment with Victoria.
Each day she called, oscillating between rage and sorrow, see-sawing up and down and up and down until, on the tenth day, Victoria stopped her.
It was enough. You could only burn out of control for so long. Turn down the oxygen, Victoria said. Let’s start focusing on the practical.
The clipped directness of Victoria’s tone silenced Ester, her words of fury and self-pity halted before she had a chance to utter them.
‘Of course, you’ve been angry,’ Victoria continued, her tone smooth, not dissimilar to the modulation Ester would use when she wanted to offer firm, detached sympathy laced with the implicit instruction that it was time to take those first steps in a different direction. ‘But is that anger achieving anything other than very brief momentary relief?’
‘No.’ Ester sounded like a child. ‘But it’s bloody good.’
‘There were times when you spoke to me about a desire to change your relationship with Lawrence. I’m sure you didn’t want it to be changed in this way, but there’s no reason why you can’t take some control of the situation, instead of letting it control you.’
And so began the many sessions that Ester liked to term her ‘lessons in how to talk to her husband’. There were even practice attempts, with Victoria pretending to be Lawrence while delivering techniques Ester could use to stay calm as they tried to negotiate all that needed to be divvied up: bank accounts, the house, time with the girls, means of communicating in the future, even the redrafting of wills. The business of dismantling a marriage was like the business of organising a funeral, a distraction for which she could be grateful.
And so she made lists, pages and pages of th
em, all saved in a file she labelled ‘the end’. What she didn’t tell Victoria was that she also saved letters in this file, long missives in which she let her anger off the leash again, sometimes her sorrow as well, correspondence addressed to both Lawrence and April, never to be sent.
She also didn’t speak of the dreams she had.
She had loved him once, and it was to this love that she returned in her sleep. There was no conversation, just the deep slate of his eyes on her, his mouth warm and alive, his skin, the sensation of being wrapped in another. It was like she had submerged herself, and the sweetness of it was like a drug, a haze that she did not want to emerge from. But she did. She always did. Waking, gasping for air, the sorrow right there in her ribs, separating the cage that encased her, pulling her apart.
Sometimes she did not know if the heaviness of the loss would ever lighten.
‘It will,’ Victoria assured her, leading her back to the practicalities.
Finally, Ester was ready to talk with him.
As she dressed herself that morning, she remembered the care with which she would choose her clothes when they’d first started seeing each other, the shiny glitter of knowing he was hers, the desire to just take him home and get him into bed, and afterwards to lie there, the silkiness of his skin, the slow roll of their talk, all of her a-sparkle with him.
So long ago.
And so sullied now.
She brushed her hair, and told herself to be brave.
Courage, Maurie used to tell her when she was in a panic about having to give a speech at school, or present her work for a crit. ‘You have far more strength than you ever give yourself credit for.’
It was not that she feared he would argue with her about all they needed to discuss. He was ashamed, and would agree to what she wanted. It was the threat of falling apart again — the fierceness of her anger, the blackness of her sorrow still too present.
And so she walked to the café she had chosen, wanting a public place to meet, somewhere she was less likely to shatter. She had her list in her bag, carefully worked out arrangements that would be unlikely to cause dispute. As she felt for the piece of paper, she wondered whether she would vomit, the nausea so high and dense she realised she might not even be able to open her mouth and speak.
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