Luke shook his head.
“He’s not being homophobic about Billy’s parents?”
“No. He was just being a dick. He didn’t mean it.”
“Does he go round to Billy’s house?”
Another shake of the head. “No one goes round Billy’s except me.”
“Because?”
“Because Billy’s embarrassed I s’pose.”
“Right. Well that’s a shame.”
“It’s how it is,” Luke said. “Billy likes Sue and everything, but . . .”
I nodded. “Sure. I understand.”
“And we can’t go to Karim’s . . .”
“Why?”
“They have a no friends rule.”
“Do they?”
Luke nodded. “Their flat’s too small or something. So we had to come here.”
“Well, you just need to ask next time, OK?”
“OK,” Luke said, then, “They got a washing machine.”
“Who did?” I asked, even though I knew full well.
“Brenda and Sue,” Luke replied.
“That’s good.”
“They didn’t order it. It just came.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Brenda thinks it was a mistake,” Luke said. “But I think it was you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. It was you that bought it.”
“Me who bought it,” I corrected. “But, no, it wasn’t me.”
“I so know it was,” Luke said, grinning. “It came from that warehouse place you always use. Discount electricals or something.”
“Well I can assure you that it wasn’t me.”
“Yeah, right,” Luke said, still grinning and raising one eyebrow.
The gesture was so adult I couldn’t help but grin.
“Ha! I knew it,” Luke said, taking the smile as an admission of guilt.
“Well don’t tell them. Not ever. OK? Not even Billy.”
Luke nodded vaguely. “Why?”
“Because if you do something for someone, that’s nice. But if you tell them about it it becomes something different, OK?”
“Because they might think they owe you something?”
“Exactly.”
“OK. I get that. So can Karim stay?”
“Stay?”
“Till dinner, I mean. He has to go by seven anyway.”
“Sure,” I said. “But next time . . .”
“Ask,” Luke said, completing the phrase.
“And do you think you could go to your mum’s or Billy’s on Friday night?” I asked. “Maybe stay over?”
“Sure. I’ll stay at Billy’s. Is Rob coming?”
I nodded.
“I thought I was gonna meet him properly.”
“You will at some point, but not this time, OK?”
“Luke!” Billy was calling him back to the game from the lounge.
“Get back to your screen,” I said. “But after dinner, it’s switch-off time, OK?”
THIRTEEN
Hannah
A few weeks later, I asked Luke if he had met Rob yet.
“Nope,” was his simple reply, but this time – a sign of our thawing relationship – he added, “Dad doesn’t seem that into anyone meeting him. Billy reckons he must be weird or have a stupid voice or something.”
As I was laughing at this, I realised that I could enrol Luke in my plan. “If you told me the next time he was going to be there,” I suggested, “then maybe I could drop in and surprise them. See how funny his voice really is.”
“Dad wouldn’t like that,” Luke said, looking doubtful.
“No, but at least it would be done. I reckon once that has happened, we’d all be able to meet up in a civilised way instead of all this skulking around. What do you think?”
Luke wrinkled his nose, looking concerned but also vaguely intrigued by the idea. “He’s there on Friday actually,” he said. “Dad asked me to stay over at Billy’s.”
“Really?”
Luke nodded. “But you didn’t hear it from me, right? And you have to tell me what he’s like, OK?”
I parked my car at the far end of the little street that led to the car park. I was far enough away to be out of sight of the apartment, yet close enough to spot Rob’s van when it arrived at seven p.m.
I left my car and moved a little closer where, from behind a tree, I watched as the man I presumed to be my husband’s new boyfriend, climbed out. The whole thing somehow became real at the sight of him. It was a shock.
I was surprised at his appearance. It’s stupid of me, I know, but I somehow expected him to look gayer. This bearded, check-shirted gardener couldn’t have looked less like any of the stereotypes I had managed to conjure up in my mind’s eye. He was young and fit and masculine, and, I hate to admit it, surprisingly attractive.
I waited a few minutes before I followed on – just long enough for Rob to have reached the apartment but not long enough for him and Cliff to have jumped into bed, I hoped. A woman was leaving the building, so I timed my strides and just managed to grab the front door before it closed, enabling me to reach Cliff’s landing without being buzzed in.
I knocked on the door and from behind it heard Cliff’s voice say brightly, “If it is, then it’s the fastest pizza I ever ordered.”
He yanked the door open, then, at the sight of me, pushed it closed again so that I could see no more than his face through the gap. “Hannah!” he exclaimed.
“Hi, Cliff,” I said. “May I come in?”
“I . . . I’m sorry,” he spluttered, “but no, it’s not convenient.”
“Is Rob here?”
“Rob? No,” he said unconvincingly, moving his foot to block the door even as I reached out to push it further open.
“Then why can’t I come in?”
“As I said, it’s not convenient,” Cliff said. “Anyway, what’s this about? Why are you here?”
“I need to meet him, Cliff,” I said. “Before I go, I need to see what he’s like. You said that you understood that. And I’m going in a few weeks.”
“But Rob’s not here,” Cliff said again.
“Cliff!” I laughed. “Stop lying. I just saw him come in. Let’s just get this over with. How bad can it be?”
“You’re impossible, Hannah!” Cliff said, sounding genuinely angry now. “Now please, just . . . ?”
“Cli—” I started to protest, but he surprised me by gently knocking my shoe from the gap with his own foot and slamming the door in my face.
I knocked on the door for a minute and even tried Cliff’s mobile and landline, but he wasn’t giving in so, disappointed at my failed plan and wishing I had simply accosted Rob in the car park instead, I gave up and headed back downstairs.
As I reached the corner of the building and Rob’s van came into view, I saw that he was there, fumbling with his keys, then unlocking the door. I realised that he must have used the fire escape.
As he started the engine, I ran towards the van, calling out, “Rob! Rob! Stop! This is ridiculous! I only want to meet you!” But the van was already screeching away.
I glanced up at Cliff’s windows and saw him watching all of this from above, shaking his head dolefully and felt, once again, embarrassed by my own behaviour.
I shrugged exaggeratedly up at him and mouthed, “What?!”
Then shaking my own head, I crossed the car park and headed up the street to my Polo.
I pretty much gave up on meeting Rob after that. Logic allowed me to conclude that if he was that afraid of being spotted, then Luke was unlikely to meet him either, and therefore my parental responsibility to vet him was a moot point. Plus, of course, I felt too embarrassed to bring the subject up again; though I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, I think that I had also sensed, at the moment I spotted him, how challenging it might be to actually meet my husband’s new partner. I had realised that it was, perhaps, better left alone.
Finally, if truth be told, I was too busy with other
things to continue giving it that much thought. Because I was leaving my job at the school, I had been given the extra responsibility of explaining to my replacement, Deirdre, how everything worked. This included showing her how to use my filing system, which, over the years, had become organic to say the least. So I had to reorganise all of the files even before I could begin to hand them over. This involved late nights at the school, and even a couple of trips in during my days off.
At home I fought a constant battle with myself over what to take, what to store and what to throw away. Like some obsessive TV hoarder, the throwing away proved most challenging of all. What to do, for example, with an elephant-shaped “piggy” bank Cliff had given me? It had, all those years ago, contained my engagement ring, and had been so wildly inappropriate that I had found it cute and amusing for as long as we had remained together. But I could hardly ship the damned thing to Australia; neither, it seemed, could I throw it out, as every time I tried, I quickly fished it back out of the refuse sack again. Leaving it behind in the house would have seemed the obvious answer, but the thought of Cliff wandering around the house and finding it was equally unbearable too. And so, for weeks, I binned and un-binned it, until finally, in a pique of frustration with myself, I ran outside and hurled it directly into the bin man’s refuse hopper. Once I got back, I felt elated with myself, as if I had managed some marvellous feat. And then within seconds I felt distraught at the loss.
My feelings towards Luke amplified day by day during those final weeks and I did everything I possibly could to make sure not only that we spent time together, but that it was good, enjoyable time, and what’s more, good, enjoyable time recorded on camera for posterity. I bought a new point-and-shoot digital camera (I had never been able to get the old one to take a decent picture) and took as many photos of the two of us as I could. I wanted his memories, once I left, to be not of the emotionally unstable, hysterical character I had recently been drifting towards, but of a wonderful, loving mother a son might feasibly want to visit.
And then, on the first of June, I flipped over the kitchen calendar, and there it was, staring me in the face. The twentieth of June. Less than three weeks to go!
From that moment onwards the preparations went into overdrive and my feelings for Luke became so fierce that despite all the activity preparing for departure, I regularly awoke thinking, No, it’s impossible. I simply can’t do it. On three separate occasions, I dropped Luke off at the school gates and because I couldn’t help but picture that final goodbye on the twentieth, I collapsed, as soon as I reached the car, into floods of tears.
But each time my willpower began to fade, I would have a conversation with James and remember the light in Brisbane, or the sensation of his arms around me, or the joy of lying beneath him, and would think, No. I deserve this. I can’t possibly turn back now. I have to be brave.
The final week was the worst. I had stopped working, and the packing and cleaning were done. The only tasks that remained were to drop dust sheets over the furniture and switch off the water and electricity – a five-minute list.
With nothing to occupy myself, the only thing left to do was ponder my impending separation from my son, and this wreaked such havoc with my mind that I suspected that I really might not leave when the time came. My fiction that this was a temporary trip had, because of the scope of my preparations, become untenable. Instead, I felt as if I were preparing my part in a farce, preparing for something that clearly could never happen.
Three days before my departure, I handed Luke his breakfast, and at the thought of never doing it again, burst, yet again, into tears. It was the third batch of tears Luke had witnessed in twenty-four hours, and it proved to be too much for the boy.
He looked up at me, watery-eyed himself, and said, “Mum. I know you’re upset, but this is all really weirding me out. I know you’re going on Saturday and everything, but would you mind if I just stayed at Dad’s from now on?”
I couldn’t hold it together, and my emotional crises were ruining my strategy of shaping Luke’s final memories, so I dried my eyes, forced a smile, nodded and drove him to Cliff’s.
My sister Jill was worried and phoned me constantly, but because her gentle how-are-yous were enough to provoke fresh floods of tears which scared her, while doing nothing for me, I started to filter even her calls.
And so it came to pass that the final three days were spent alone, without my son, in the so-clean-it-felt-like-a-morgue house. I sat and stared at the muted TV, constantly on because I needed the company to distract me from what I was about to do, constantly muted because that very company interfered with my ability to think about the gravity of what I was about to do.
The night before I was due to leave, I became overwhelmed again by a sense that the entire idea had been stupid, that it was the worst, most selfish, idiotic idea I had ever entertained – that it was no less than madness.
I waited until it was late enough to be morning in Brisbane and then phoned James to tell him that it was all over, to tell him that I couldn’t come, that it had all been a terrible, terrible mistake.
Having just woken, his voice was sleepy and sweet, and it reminded me of how safe and happy I felt when I woke up next to him. He asked me how I was, and because I was unable momentarily to reply, he continued, telling me that he had been looking at trips we might make for my birthday in July. Did I want to drive to Byron Bay or go sailing on The Great Barrier Reef? he wanted to know.
And I heard myself croak, “The Great Barrier Reef. Yes, take me there.”
The next morning, I woke up early and, feeling like a zombie, I walked around the house completing the final tasks on my list. Sofas dust-sheeted: tick. Refrigerator defrosted and unplugged: tick. Bed stripped, toiletries packed, water turned off. Tick.
My sister came to pick me up at eleven, and found me numbly staring at the muted television screen.
“Are you OK?” Jill asked.
“Tell me I’m doing the right thing here,” I said.
“Of course you are!” she enthused, sitting on the sofa beside me and taking my hand. She was tanned and healthy-looking from her recent trip to France, and the contrast between the two of us couldn’t have been more marked. “You have to take chances in life,” she said. “And the best thing is that if you don’t like what you’ve chosen, you simply go back to whatever your life was before.”
I thought about pointing out that my life, as before, was no longer really an option, but restrained myself. I knew what she was trying to say.
We loaded my two suitcases into the car – the two chests had been shipped a week before – and drove to Cliff’s.
Prompted by a call to his mobile, Cliff and Luke came to the kerbside to meet us – we were running late.
I got out and Cliff and I hugged rigidly. “Have a great trip, Hannah,” he said. “Enjoy Australia. And say, ‘hi’ to James for me.” He sounded genuine enough.
It wasn’t until Cliff had gone back inside the building that Luke, who had been lurking in the shadows, stepped forward. “Hello, Luke,” I said, my voice already trembling.
“Dad says I should tell you what I really think,” Luke said. “He says it’s really important that I tell you.”
I looked at my son through tearing eyes and remembered every step of his life, from the first moment when the nurse had handed him to me to the present moment, and the pain in my heart was such that I wondered if I could remain standing. People say that when you die, your whole life flashes before you, and I wondered now what these churning images of Luke’s life meant. “It’s probably best,” I croaked – I could barely speak.
“I love you loads, Mum,” Luke said, his eyes wet too. “And I’m gonna miss you like crazy.”
Tears were rolling down my cheeks. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. Instead, I opened my arms and stepped towards him. “Me too, Luke,” I said as I wrapped my arms around him, thinking, madly, My flesh! My flesh! “You have no idea how much I’m g
oing to miss you,” I said.
“That’s not all,” Luke said ominously. “There’s another thing I want to tell you.”
I pushed him away just far enough to be able to stare into his watery blue eyes – in tears so like mine.
“I really want you to be happy, Mum,” Luke said, his voice cracking. “Dad said it was time for you to be happy now, and that’s exactly the same as what I think.”
I collapsed against him. “How did you get to be so amazing?” I sobbed, pulling him tight and nuzzling his hair. “How?”
“I think I got that from you and Dad,” Luke sniffed.
Eventually we separated. Jill was fidgeting from one foot to the other at the corner of my vision, and I was aware that we were running out of time. “I’ll be back,” I told him. “I’ll be back in September, even if it’s just for a visit, you know that, right?”
Luke wiped his nose on his sleeve and nodded.
“I’m so sorry, Luke,” I said. “It was never meant to be like this.”
“It’s OK,” he said, calmer now, then, amazingly, “Shit happens.”
I laughed through tears. “Shit happens?” I repeated, resisting the urge to tell him off.
Luke shrugged.
“Han’, we really have to go now,” Jill said, checking the time on her phone.
“I know. I’ll call you when we get there, OK?” I said to Luke.
He nodded again, screwed his face up against a fresh round of tears, then turned and, waving over his shoulder, ran back inside.
Jill took my arm and tried to pull me towards the car. “Come on, Sis,” she said. “We have to go.”
“I can’t do this, Jill,” I replied, and it really felt in that moment as if it was an impossibility. There seemed to be no way to separate my body, so dramatically, so geographically, from Luke.
“You can!” Jill said.
“I really don’t think . . .”
“You can!” She laughed nervously, now pushing me towards the open car door. “It’s just a flight. You’ll be back in September. It’s just a holiday, for god’s sake. Now get in!”
I let Jill push me into the car, and I let her buckle me in. With my head twisted back in the hope of catching a final glimpse of my child, now almost a man, I let her drive me away.
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