‘Life just doesn’t work like that, does it?’
‘No. But it goes on. And you learn to deal with what you’ve been given.’ Jenna laughed suddenly. ‘You know, I think it’s this weird end-of-the-world light that’s making us all so deep.’
‘And the fact that we could all be trapped by bushfires overnight,’ Phoebe said, laughing darkly.
‘Do you think it’s that bad? God, no wonder we’re sharing our crushed hopes and dreams.’
Phoebe smiled. ‘Everyone needs someone to have authentic conversations with. I guess my sister was that person for me.’ She was mortified to discover her face was suddenly wet with tears. She flicked them away with impatient fingers. ‘Sorry, being here just reminds me of her.’
She saw a shadow of recognition in Jenna’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry. Tommy told me what happened,’ Jenna said, her face crumpled with sympathy.
Phoebe stared out into the smoky air. She didn’t know why she’d raised the topic of Karin, or what to say now. My sister was actually a really strong person. She was dreaming of expanding her business. I would have known if she’d been mentally ill or in such a bad place she was going to kill herself. She told me everything. A small part of herself whispered, except her weekends away twice a month.
There was a patter of feet behind them. Harry was naked except for a nappy. He seemed too old to be wearing one and Phoebe’s heart squeezed with the implication of what that meant.
‘Oh, hello,’ Jenna said. ‘Daddy’s given you a bath has he? Are you hungry for dinner?’
‘Dinner. Dinner. Dinner.’
Tommy appeared behind Harry. ‘He’ll keep saying that until there’s food in his mouth.’ He tickled his son affectionately. ‘That’s one of the things with his condition. He has this incredible body clock. Dinner has to be at exactly the same time every night. We have no idea how he knows it’s 5.30 pm, but he does. Ignore it at your peril.’
Harry repeated the word over and over and Jenna smiled and took his little hand in hers. She looked up at Tommy. ‘Phoebe and I were just talking about Karin.’ She turned to Phoebe. ‘I actually met Karin at the coffee festival,’ she said.
‘Oh, you met her?’ asked Phoebe, the promise of some extra snippet of information about Karin warmed her. As though an ordinary memory of an ordinary day could bring some part of her back. People didn’t realise that when you lost someone, talking about them was the only thing you had left.
‘She was selling tea and flowers,’ said Jenna. She indicated towards Tommy. ‘You hadn’t seen her in, what? Years. It’s so lovely that you all spent summers down here.’
‘I remember that,’ said Phoebe, shaking her head, as though to set the memory free. ‘She had a stall with vintage tables and stools and served tea in second-hand china. It was in Canberra.’ Maybe that’s all it was. Business. Maybe she was going to lots of markets and trade shows around the place on these mystery weekends away, Phoebe thought. ‘Karin was the only one selling tea at a coffee festival. So typical of her. She mentioned she ran into you.’ Phoebe looked up at Tommy.
‘Gosh, yeah, I’d forgotten that,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘Well, we’d better get this one fed,’ he said to Jenna. ‘Do you know where his medicine is?’
‘I think it’s in the car. I’ll get it,’ said Jenna, checking her watch.
For the briefest moment Karin’s memory was alive. But it was over, blown away on the hot wind. Phoebe understood. To the living, the dead were just dead. It was only those who cherished them who still thought of them as alive.
The mood inside was sombre; the stifling heat of the day trapped inside the house despite the high ceilings. The wide lounge windows had been shut to limit the smell of burning bush and people were strewn over the lounge and on the floor. Everyone was drinking beer. The television was on again and droned like an insect in the background. Phoebe was unsure of where to sit and felt out of place in the face of Asha’s obvious dislike and Jez’s unpredictable behaviour, so she perched at the kitchen bench. At least Tommy and Jenna seemed like neutral territory.
‘I can’t be bothered cooking, it’s too hot,’ said the Texan, his drawl more pronounced than usual. He took a long pull of his beer. ‘I was going to barbecue but that’s not happening. What’s Harry having? Maybe we should all have that.’
‘Ah, a boiled egg and toast soldiers,’ said Tommy, who was placing a pot of boiling water on the stove.
‘Sounds perfect,’ said the Texan.
‘Come on, you’ve got an army here to feed. We need our sustenance,’ said Wendy. ‘What about I boil up a big pot of pasta and you can whip up that basil pesto you make from the garden?’
‘Sounds great,’ said Jez. ‘We need something to line our stomachs. We’ve all been drinking since midday.’
‘Did we even have lunch?’ asked Asha. ‘Oh yeah, I had an apple. In my alcoholic apple cider.’
‘So, you’re all wasted and we’re possibly looking at having to deal with a bushfire either drunk tonight or hungover tomorrow,’ said Tommy, placing two eggs into the saucepan. ‘Great work, guys.’
Phoebe could tell by his tone that he was only half joking.
‘See, you’re failing in your role as chef,’ said Wendy, elbowing the Texan in the ribs. He made a huffing sound and eased himself off the lounge. ‘As long as the possums haven’t attacked the basil, or the heat hasn’t wilted everything.’
‘It’s not like we can prep the house now,’ said Jez.
‘Well, actually we could,’ said Tommy. ‘I’ll hose as much as I can tonight, give everything a good soaking. Wendy and Phoebe, we could do that for your places tonight too. But I think everyone should stay here to sleep, just to be safe.’
Phoebe’s eyes flew to Asha, who was stretched out on the lounge with the insouciance of a cat. She and Flick had changed the channel to a soapie, their legs intertwined despite the heat, as they fished strawberries out of a punnet on Asha’s belly. There was no way Flick wasn’t going to tell Asha what Phoebe had admitted about her husband. She glanced over at Jez who was gazing out towards the river, sipping the dregs of his beer. Everything felt so surreal.
The unrelenting heat of the day took its first casualties early in the evening. Jenna and Harry went to bed while they all ate the fragrant, herb-laced pasta the Texan had thrown together with lashings of garlic and good-humoured grumbling.
‘He gets tetchy when he’s drunk,’ Wendy explained. ‘But who can complain when he whips up meals like this?’
Phoebe had avoided eye contact with Jez all night, instead drinking more wine than she should have and chatting with Tommy and Wendy about having been through the terrible Canberra bushfires in 2003. Wendy looked at her watch; everyone else had gone to bed.
‘Gosh, it’s nearly eleven. We should get some sleep. You take the spare room, Phoebe; I’ll sleep with grumble bum. He snores . . . that’s part of why it’s best that we live apart.’
Phoebe laughed. ‘If only more people were so honest, there’d probably be a lot more happy couples in the world.’
She thought of Nathaniel. Had they been honest? No, they hadn’t, obviously. Had Nate just not had the courage to say it out loud? It was easy to think that she’d missed the signs but maybe she hadn’t wanted to see them. The way she’d always seek out his hand to hold, but it was never reciprocated. Excuse: he’s not as physically affectionate as me. The way she told him things sometimes but when she looked into his eyes they had a vacant expression, as though he wasn’t really there. Excuse: he’s tired. The way she’d interpreted his quietness and lack of excitement leading up to Hawaii as him having a lot on his plate with his new job, or maybe nervousness. There were so many ways to stay blind to the truth in relationships, so many ways to hold on.
‘Snoring is the enemy of love. Take it from a woman who’s had two husbands,’ Wendy said.
‘I don’t doubt you. You’re very wise.’ Phoebe squeezed Wendy’s arm, feeling a rush of liquor-induced affect
ion. ‘I think you should take the spare room, I can just sleep on the sofa,’ she said, in no hurry to be in the room next to Jez and Asha.
‘You’re a sweetheart. You sure?’
Phoebe nodded.
Wendy widened her eyes and nudged her, whispering. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’
For all the joking and ribbing, Wendy clearly adored the Texan. There was a difference between Wendy’s playful teasing and Asha’s snide teasing. She thought back to Wendy’s comment that Jez and Asha’s relationship was full of resentment. But maybe it wasn’t even that. Maybe as soon as a couple stopped being kind to each other, it was over.
Phoebe moved to the longest sofa under the windows, set the cushions up to support her head and pulled a light throw from the other lounge. There were tea cups on the coffee table and the stub of a cigarette in an ashtray. No one else smoked. She thought about how odd it was that humans self-sabotaged. Why was she smoking when they were trying to conceive and why was Asha so angry at Jez? Why didn’t she leave him if she was unhappy? Why punish him? Was it just habit? Financial security? And yet Asha seemed jealous and protective of Jez. Phoebe remembered her arm around him when they’d first met on the jetty. She’d thought they were happy. And yet the more she saw the less she believed they were. She wondered what went on behind closed doors between them; she just didn’t want to find out tonight.
She must have fallen asleep mid-thought because she woke with a jolt. She raised her head. A sliver of artificial light came from the kitchen. It was just someone getting a drink from the fridge. She closed her eyes again and felt the soft pull back into sleep.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Jez was above her, holding a glass of milk.
Phoebe rubbed her eyes. ‘What? What is it?’
‘I didn’t realise you were sleeping out here. Can you see that glow?’
Her limbs were slow and heavy as she sat up, as though she’d been asleep for hours. The tops of the trees on the opposite side of the river looked lit from behind. A spike of adrenalin needled through her, snapping her awake. ‘They’re not on fire, are they?’
He shook his head and rubbed the back of it, as he was prone to do when thinking. ‘No, but I think it’s the glow from fires burning across the river somewhere.’
She straightened, instantly on alert. ‘Should we wake the others?’
He skolled the milk in his glass and put it down among the empty beer bottles. ‘Maybe. Let’s go down to the jetty and take a closer look.’
Phoebe slid on her thongs and followed Jez out the French doors. The air outside was thick and she resisted the urge to pull her top up to cover her mouth and nose. ‘It smells worse.’
Jez picked up a torch at the door. ‘Look at the air.’
In the bright torchlight tiny particles floated like ashen snowflakes. Phoebe felt a chill run along her bare arms despite the suffocating heat.
‘I can’t see the glow from here,’ she said, pointing towards the treetops.
‘Strange,’ said Jez, starting down the narrow track towards the river.
Phoebe looked back at the dark house, her instinct telling her to wake Tommy and the others, but instead she followed Jez as he picked his way down to the water. The air on the river was fresher, cooler. They walked to the end of the jetty and Jez switched off the torch. The night rumbled around them, as though in protest at being set on fire.
‘It feels . . . a little easier to breathe here,’ she said, relishing the feeling of fresher air in her lungs.
Jez turned to her and she could see the whites of his eyes flash in the dark. ‘You know having you here—’
‘Jez, I’m so sorry.’ The words rushed out of her. ‘I know it’s all just too weird. As soon as it’s safe, I’ll go.’
‘No, that’s not what I was going to say.’ He sighed and looked up. ‘No stars. Must be too smoky. Will you sit with me here for a bit?’ He must have felt her hesitation. ‘Please?’
She swallowed. What she wanted was to sit here with him and talk while the rest of the world burned—that was the problem. She sat anyway, feeling a wave of tiredness well up through her bones.
‘I was going to say that having you here has made me realise just how unhappy I am. And ironically, I’m taking it out on you.’
Her heartbeat rose in her throat and she took a deep breath to calm herself. She licked her lips. They tasted like smoke. ‘Jez,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve got a wife. You’re trying to have a baby.’
‘I need to know if what you said was true.’
Her chest was aching now. Phoebe turned away so Jez couldn’t read her expression. She’d never admitted it to herself, she realised, until right now. She had loved Nathaniel, she was sure, but how to explain the difference between her love for Nathaniel and her love for Jez? The love she felt for Nathaniel was the practical sort. They had always liked the same things, had the same friends, and they’d talked of their future as though it was inevitable, sensible. It was the same way they’d done everything; even their love-making was a need to be met. It all just fitted. And she was not naïve. Such a thing was not easy to find or manufacture. Her life with Nathaniel had been full and good. But somehow they had manufactured it, the both of them. Nathaniel had felt the absence too—he’d just been braver in deciding that he wanted more. Phoebe wondered if she would ever have admitted this to herself if it hadn’t been for Jez, turning up right when her wounds were so exposed.
With Jez, what they’d had when they were young had never been predicated on practicality. They saw each other infrequently, and yet every time they were near each other it was there. With Jez it was always a feeling, as simple as it was strong. Phoebe had once heard a woman talk about how when she looked at her husband after many years of marriage, she still felt moved that this handsome, amazing man had chosen her. Phoebe was with Nathaniel when she’d heard this, and she’d thought it slightly insipid and overly romantic. She suspected she’d had this kind of connection with Jez, but she could always dismiss it as the freshly plucked yearnings of first love.
But now, here they were, both injured from the ravages of half a lifetime. So much time had passed, and yet in the still quiet of the night, in the small gap between their bodies, they could have been teenagers again. A wave of emotion ran through her and she wrapped her arms around herself. Perhaps it was the chill lifting off the water, perhaps it was realising that it might be possible for a love like this to erase so much of her pain.
‘It was true, what I said, Jez. You know it was true.’
‘It was, or it is? I mean, have you thought about us over the years? You were about to get married. Were you happy?’
Phoebe sighed. She would never tell him that he crept into her dreams, and she’d wake with the sound of his voice in her mind. ‘Yeah. Marriage was the plan. It was what I wanted.’
‘But you weren’t marrying the love of your life?’
She slipped her hands under her knees. ‘I think we both know that it’s a bit more complicated than that.’
‘But why? Maybe it’s not, actually. Feeling those fires so close, you start to think about what matters. What you’d leave behind, what you would save, no matter what. And it brings everything into focus. Why live life being so fucking unhappy? Trying and failing so hard. Maybe this thing . . . this meeting of minds, or hearts, whatever it is we have, maybe it’s that simple.’
‘But, Jez, it wasn’t that simple, remember? We wanted different things.’
‘That’s changed. We’ve both grown up. I think we were both naïve, don’t you? I’ve lived my life, and what we had . . .’
He trailed off but she knew what he meant. When you were young and deeply in love you thought there would be other loves, that they would be waiting, lined up to be tried on, discarded and replaced until you found exactly the right fit. But then you found that love wasn’t a dazzling costume shop. You found that a love that had sparkle, that was pure and deep, was elusive. You realised that love could be a dull thump in your heart, or a
need to be met, or a wound to soothe, or a monotony.
‘What if what we both want has changed?’ Jez asked, his voice low and steady.
Hers wasn’t so calm. ‘That’s what dating is for . . . seeing if you’re compatible with someone and I’m not going to date another woman’s husband.’
The low growl of a boat motor from high up the river echoed around them.
‘I’m going to leave her, Phoebe.’
Her heart felt like it slowed. ‘Jez.’
‘Will you promise me you won’t go? Not yet.’
‘Jez. I have work next week. I . . .’ I’m on the rebound, I’m lost, I’m weak and too needy, I’m still grieving, she wanted to say.
‘Use the fires as an excuse. They might not even be an excuse anyway. You’re probably stuck here for a while.’
Phoebe could feel the heat coming off his body. The right thing to do would be to leave. The truth was she couldn’t afford to jeopardise her job, especially now she was single. Even though it didn’t fulfil her, she had to make a living and everyone would think she was crazy giving it up. The illusion she peddled was strong. Would she miss it? Why did she need fancy events and free wine? So she could boast on social media about how cool her life was? Phoebe cringed at the thought of her last status update—a pair of cocktails sweating lazily against the setting sun. A post that was meant to convey the dreamy perfection of their lives in a single image. The sound of Nathaniel’s exasperation came back to her as she arranged the glasses just so for the picture. Of course, she hadn’t read it as contempt. She hadn’t read it for what it was: her arranging their lives, as though happiness would be inferred by the tilt of a straw.
How far away that moment seemed now. But this river. Jez. Karin. They felt more real to her than any small detail from that life.
‘I think that’s really courageous,’ she said softly. ‘If you’re really unhappy and you’ve tried and tried to make your marriage work, then maybe leaving her is the right thing to do. But if you leave Asha, it can’t be because of me,’ she said, turning to face him.
The Lost Summers of Driftwood Page 10
