Gabby took the phone, holding it out at a bit of a distance, an automatic gesture these days as her eyesight changed with age. She was only forty-one but she felt like a granny every time Celia held up a picture or book for her to look at and she had to recoil from it just to pull her focus into line. She was rather disgusted, actually, at this outward, bald sign of ageing.
Except, of course, she was happy to be ageing at all. Happy to be alive to even experience the disappointment of failing eyesight. Sometimes she simply forgot and Old Gabby would raise her disgruntled head.
‘Have you booked an appointment with an optometrist yet?’ Pippa teased.
Gabby glared at her. ‘You just wait. It’ll be your turn next.’ She refocused her attention on the phone. What she saw on the screen was not what she’d expected. She gaped at Pippa. ‘This is a surprise.’
‘I know!’ Pippa squealed, clenching her fists with glee. ‘He’s stunning, right?’
‘Yes, he is,’ Gabby agreed, still wondering how this had all come about so quickly. ‘Pure black?’
‘Part Andalusian! And he’s a dream ride!’
‘You’ve ridden him already? When?’
‘Last weekend. I told Harvey I had to meet a new client and that she could only meet on the weekends because she worked full-time.’
‘Do you feel bad, lying to him?’
Pippa lifted one shoulder. ‘Not much. We don’t really speak enough for me to get the chance to lie,’ she said bitterly. ‘But it had to be done. I’ve signed the papers and paid the money. He’s mine.’
‘And Harvey still doesn’t know?’
‘No!’ She looked horrified. ‘He can’t know! He wouldn’t approve at all.’
‘But how are you going to keep this a secret? He’ll cost a fortune and you’ll come home smelling of horse.’
‘My business has a separate bank account and I do all the books. I’m going to keep my riding clothes in a bag in the car and shower at the gym on the way home. Please don’t look at me like that. I need this. My marriage is falling apart and I need something that’s just mine. The children – bless them, I love them, but they take everything, including my time, thoughts, emotional energy, and half the time, my bed. I need joy and distraction and exercise and sunshine and if … if this marriage does all fall apart, it will give me something to go on with. Some kind of joy.’
Gabby nodded and handed back the phone, then poured herself a glass of lemon water from the jug Pippa always had handy on a side table. Right now, this horse was a precious, shiny bubble of hope for an overworked, overstressed mother whose world was on the brink of collapse.
‘I understand. I really do. I hope you’ll both be very happy together.’
‘Oh, we will be.’
‘I can’t wait to meet him.’ She and Pip hadn’t ridden together since they were teenagers. ‘When you find your agistment for him, there might be another horse there I could ride. One that’s terribly old and slow, with any luck. We could go out for a trail ride together.’
Pippa clasped her hands together, a beautiful rosy glow on her cheeks. Then she took one more look at the photo of her horse, inhaled a deep, satisfied breath, and put the phone next to her laptop, where a logo for a hair salon was displayed onscreen, repeated several times in different colours as Pippa tried to find the right balance. Gabby was always in awe that her sister could take someone else’s idea and vision and turn it into an image. Pippa had designed the logo for the cafe, a greyscale image of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz holding a bright red heart in his hands. Somehow, she’d managed to get such emotion into the Tin Man’s face, such vulnerability. She’d also designed the signage for the shopfront, which was simple but elegant.
‘Where are all your children?’ Gabby asked, suddenly realising how quiet the yard was, considering it was school holidays.
‘They’re at Harvey’s parents’ for a couple of nights.’ She sighed, relieved. Then she seemed to remember that Gabby had asked to come over this morning and focused her thoughts. ‘Sorry, I just hijacked your news. What’s happening?’
Gabby adjusted her position in the wooden chair, which was pretty but not comfy. ‘A woman came into the cafe when you were there the other day. There was something about her.’ She was wary of sharing this with Pippa, knowing it sounded crazy. ‘I think … I feel like … maybe she was searching for me. She kept looking at me, and when I looked at her she turned away. Then I went to go up and talk to her and she just fled.’
‘Why would she be looking for you?’
‘I’m wondering if she has worked out who I am.’
‘And that is …?’
‘The person who has her loved one’s heart.’
Pippa frowned and distractedly played with a pleat in her dress. ‘What makes you think that?’
Gabby hesitated, not ready to share the awful things she’d seen in her mind and felt in her body, almost as if she’d been momentarily possessed. ‘Just a gut feeling.’
Pippa looked unconvinced. ‘Perhaps you should go and see the counsellor at the hospital.’
Gabby gave an empty laugh. ‘You think I’m crazy.’
‘No, of course not. But whatever you’re going through, you need to talk to someone.’
‘Funny, I would have thought the same applied to you and Harvey,’ Gabby said, a touch miffed. She had hoped she could talk to her sister.
Pippa glared at her, then looked away. A wind chime tinkled at the front door of the She Shed and a dog barked a few doors down. Somewhere in the street, a game of Marco Polo was happening in a pool, which Gabby fervently hoped was a heated one given the chill in the air.
‘If she is who I think she is, what do you think she wants?’ Gabby pressed on, moving past their awkward moment as only sisters could. She was desperate to know, to have Pippa even hazard a guess, despite her disbelief.
Pippa shook her head. ‘I have no idea. How would she even have found you? The security around the recipient’s identity is watertight.’
‘The newspaper article, remember?’
Pippa groaned. ‘Belly and balls! I forgot about that. Do you know, other mums at school ask me what I got up to on the weekend and I can’t recall a single thing. Every day just seems to fly past and mean nothing.’ She flopped back in her chair.
‘I know the feeling,’ Gabby said.
Pippa took a deep breath and brought her attention back to Gabby’s situation. ‘It would actually make a lot of sense, if she was looking for the recipient and then your transplant date conveniently turned up in the newspaper.’
‘She’s going to come back for me. I can feel it.’
They were both silent for a moment, each of them considering the multitude of possibilities for how that next meeting might play out.
From within her oversized handbag, her message tone sounded. It was Cam.
R u at home? Summer’s got
gastro. I need to drop the
other two back with you.
Gabby frowned, staring at the screen.
‘What’s up?’ Pippa asked.
‘It’s Cam. Summer’s got gastro.’
‘Nasty,’ Pippa sympathised.
‘He wants to bring the other kids home early.’
‘Again?’ Pippa sounded disgusted. ‘Why?’
Gabby and Cam’s parenting arrangements were shared equally, in theory. Two weeks without the kids had seemed an eternity when they’d first separated, but they’d agreed that a week-about schedule was too disruptive. Gabby couldn’t say she would ever enjoy it being this way, but so much had happened in the past five years that any sense of normality had been blown to pieces and she’d had to quickly accept a new type of normal. Ever since Cam and Meri had had a new baby, however, his commitment to his first three children had been steadily decreasing.
‘What’s going on with him?’ Pippa said.
‘I have a theory,’ Gabby muttered.
Fine, I’ll be home in half an hour, she texted. She stood, haulin
g her bag up to her shoulder. ‘I better go.’
The first time Gabby met Meri was when she’d been sick as a dog in hospital and Cam had brought the kids to visit. He and Meri had been together for some time but his former wife and future wife hadn’t yet met. Gabby had looked at the (slightly younger) woman’s kind eyes and full cheeks and thought, Thank god. Someone – a mother figure – might be there for her children, to wrap them in cosy arms. Meri was a social worker, which gave Gabby confidence that someone responsible would be there to keep an eye on Cam.
This gastro situation would be a nightmare for Cam and Meri, sure. It was the last thing anyone needed when they had a six-month-old baby in the house. But Cam knew he had to keep Summer with him. Any infectious illness posed a serious threat to someone with a suppressed immune system like Gabby. It was a tightrope she had to walk. She loved her kids. She wanted to be with them and hug them and make them dinner and hear about their days. The doctors all said, You’ve been given the gift of life, now go live it. A transplant recipient had to be careful not to take risks that could lead to infections, but also, ironically, take some risks in order to keep their sanity and live their life. It was the constant battle between becoming a petrified, paralysed germophobe and loving the guts out of life. She’d developed rules for herself, like she wouldn’t go to someone else’s house if she knew there was illness, but she would never stop herself from holding her children when they were ill.
She got into her car and texted Cam again. Can you get Summer to call me, please? At thirteen, Summer didn’t yet have a mobile phone, though it wouldn’t be long. Soon, Gabby’s mobile rang and she put the call on speaker while she drove towards the family home in Camberwell.
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Oh, sweetie, you don’t sound well.’ Summer’s usually cheerful voice was flat and wobbly. ‘Have you had some electrolytes or something?’
‘Not yet. Dad’s going out to get me some soon. Don’t worry about me. I’ll stay here till I’m better. I don’t want you getting sick.’
Tears filled Gabby’s eyes but she bit her lip. Still, her daughter read the delay in response for what it was.
‘Don’t cry, Mum. It’s fine, really. I’ve got Netflix. I was supposed to go to that sleepover at Freddie’s tomorrow, which is a bummer, but I’ll see her at school next week.’
Gabby’s middle child was blessed with a huge circle of friends and optimism for life. Gabby swung between thinking Summer would either become leader of the free world or a weather reporter on the nightly news.
‘Call me, any time you want,’ Gabby said at last, wiping her eye with the heel of her hand.
‘I will.’
‘Or use your iPad to message me, you know, about anything, even just to send me selfies of yourself ghastly green and flaked out in bed.’
‘Okay.’
‘Or if you want to watch Ninja Warrior with me over the phone, we can do that.’
‘Okay, stop now. You’re being clingy.’
‘Ninja Warrior is too far?’
‘Yep.’
She was being clingy, it was true. Had she always been this needy? Or was it one of those ‘before and after’ things, the line in the sand – the fracture line that ran through her life, the one that said that the old Gabby was gone forever and a new one was here. Sometimes, the two lives got muddled.
‘Bye, Mum. Love you,’ Summer said, with what Gabby thought was a slight wince of pain.
‘Love you too, sweetie.’
Cam and the kids arrived not long after Gabby entered the house. He must have really been in a rush to get them home. She tried to give Cam the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just didn’t want Charlie and Celia to get sick too. Maybe it had nothing to do with his increasing inattentiveness since baby Mykahla was born – the unwashed lunchboxes, the lateness in picking up the kids, the way they looked ruffled and a bit sad when they came home.
Charlie was first out of the car, his ginger hair glinting in the afternoon light. A duffel bag of clothes was hoisted on one shoulder, his school bag on the other. Even during the holidays he was working hard on his assignments. He was heading into the final term of Year 10 and feeling the pressure, while also struggling to choose subjects to study for the Victorian Certificate of Education in his senior years. His head was lowered, leaning forward against the weight on his back. The sight pinched Gabby somewhere inside her chest – when had her little boy grown up into a young man with the weight of the world on his shoulders?
‘Hi, Mum,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek.
‘Hi, baby,’ she said.
He rolled his eyes to the sky, exasperated.
‘Sorry,’ she said quickly, putting a hand on his arm as he passed by. ‘Not baby. Big boy.’
‘That’s not better,’ he sighed, disappearing down the hall towards the staircase, where he would dump his gear on the floor until he went up to his room later. But first he would check the fridge. He was always checking the fridge, even if he wasn’t planning on eating anything. It was some sort of touchstone ritual he had, perhaps to know he was home safe again, or some kind of caveman thing where he had to check on the supplies at regular intervals to know whether or not he needed to go hunting.
‘Big man, then?’ she hollered after his retreating back.
‘Nope!’
‘Young man?’
‘Hi, Mum,’ Celia said, throwing herself against Gabby’s hip and wrapping her arms around her.
‘Hi, baby,’ Gabby said, kissing the top of the brunette head. Thank goodness there was at least one of them she could still call her baby. ‘Are you feeling okay?’ she asked, placing her hand on her daughter’s forehead.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Celia muttered, her breath hot against Gabby’s ribs. ‘Grandpa home?’
‘No. Grandpa’s doing a shift at the club.’
Monty still worked a couple of days a week, at their local RSL club. Not because he needed the money – Though you always need more money, he would say – but because he’d read studies about people who retired only to die a short time later and he didn’t want to be a statistic. Which was determined, Gabby thought, considering his wife had passed away a year ago and she’d still been working too.
‘Hi,’ Cam said, rolling Celia’s small suitcase across the weathered concrete path to the front door. His hair was swept to the side and particularly curly today.
‘You need a haircut,’ Gabby said, without thinking.
Cam snorted.
‘Sorry! Old habits die hard,’ she said, waving a hand in the air, while surreptitiously checking to see if his eyes were bloodshot. They were, a touch. But lack of sleep could do that too. ‘Your hair’s fine. Perfectly okay. Are you growing it?’
‘No. Just too busy to get a haircut.’
‘In the school holidays?’ Gabby teased. Cam was a special-needs teacher and, usually, he adored kids, other people’s and his own, which was one of the reasons why his falling levels of attentiveness to their own kids was making her so suspicious.
‘I’m still working,’ he grouched. ‘There’s always so much to do.’ He rubbed at his forehead in a classic gesture of overwhelm.
‘Sorry,’ she said, placatory. ‘It was only a joke. I know you work hard year-round for your students.’
He took a deep breath and adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. ‘Nah, it’s not you, it’s me.’
‘It’s okay, we’re already broken up,’ she teased again.
He laughed then, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, the same way Charlie’s was starting to do. ‘It’s the new baby thing. It’s really wearing me down.’
‘Sleep deprivation?’
‘It’s killing me,’ he said, staring into the middle distance as though he had shell shock – which, if her memory of having babies served her, he likely did. ‘There’s a lot to be said for having kids when you’re young.’
Celia released Gabby from the hug and reached for her suitcase to take it inside. ‘I’m
going to find Sally,’ she said.
They watched her disappear inside. Gabby teetered on the edge of lecturing Cam about how he could improve his parenting of their three kids but made herself bite her tongue. He’d already confessed he was struggling. And he was looking after Summer while she was sick to help keep Gabby safe from what could be, for her, a potentially deadly bacterial infection or virus. Perhaps she should cut him a bit more slack, just for a while longer.
‘It will get better,’ she said. ‘One day, Mykahla won’t want your constant attention and she will be riding around with boys on bicycles and smoking in the toilets.’
‘Gee, thanks. And I still won’t be getting any sleep,’ he groaned.
‘True.’
‘Right, I’ll be off. I’ll drop Summer back as soon as she’s right to go.’
Just like that, all of Gabby’s feelings of generosity disappeared. He couldn’t wait to get Summer out of his house.
4
All four children wanted the meatball wrap at Chuckle Park, the funky laneway cafe and bar in Little Collins Street.
‘Well, that’s easy,’ Roxy said, taking the menu from Kyan, who had been reading out options to the younger three. She took their drink orders too – four glasses of juice. ‘What would you like?’ she asked Krystal.
‘I think I’ll have the mushroom sanga.’
‘And to drink?’
Krystal cast her eyes over the menu. She had an unexpectedly strong craving for an espresso martini. She could almost taste the burn of the vodka, the hit of the caffeine and the thick cream on top. But that was crazy. She’d never been a big drinker, and never during the day. She shook the feeling away. ‘The peppermynthle tea sounds good, thanks.’
She stayed with the kids at the wooden tables – two square ones pushed together, all of them crowded around on fire-engine red metal stools – while Roxy ordered at the window of the caravan parked at the end of the lane. An abundance of synthetic leaves and flowers cascaded from the top of the van in pinks and greens. More colour spilled from similar installations on the walls above them. Fake grass lay beneath their feet. Burnt-orange glass lanterns swung from electrical cords crisscrossing the laneway above their heads, and blue sky peeked at them through awnings and corrugated iron shades. Dark multi-storey buildings towered above them on either side, with Chuckle Park a riot of colour and charm squeezed in between.
The Gift of Life Page 3
