The Soulmate, page 23
I laughed. ‘Upset? Max is the great love of my life. The only thing I ever asked of him was fidelity.’ I threw up my arms. ‘It’s bad enough that he would betray me at all, but to do it with . . .’
It was because I was so upset that I nearly said it. But I stopped myself. How ridiculous that was . . . even while freshly wounded by Max’s betrayal, I couldn’t repress my instinct to protect him.
‘I’ve spent my life keeping his secrets. Protecting him. And for what?’ I held up the USB. ‘This contains the contents of his secret computer. I could send it to the media. Or the police! I could ruin him! Maybe I will . . .’
Gabe, I noticed, was watching me warily now. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Amanda.’
‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Amanda.’ Gabe took a step towards me. ‘Take a breath. Take a minute to think about this.’
‘Max didn’t think twice before he betrayed me!’
I was talking a big game. It felt amazing. Suddenly I felt powerful – like I had control in a situation where I’d previously had none. But I knew, even then, that I would never turn over the USB to anyone. No matter what Max had done, I couldn’t do that to him. Loving and protecting him had become part of my DNA.
Gabe’s stance had changed now. Rather than the calm neutral man who’d appeared on the cliff, he appeared almost . . . predatory. It prompted a realisation. The type that comes out of nowhere and hits you forcefully. Of course. Max wasn’t the only one who could be hurt by what was on this USB. There was information on here that would incriminate Gabe. By the look on Gabe’s face, he’d realised this too.
He lunged for the USB.
For a moment, we both had it. I pulled it towards me, and Gabe pulled it back. I gripped it tightly and leaned back, all my weight in my heels. I really thought I had it. Then Gabe ripped it free, and suddenly I was falling.
Gabe tried to help. He lunged forward, his arms outstretched. He almost caught me. Then he stopped. He held his palms up flat; he stood upright. Perhaps he thought it was too late? Or perhaps he’d realised that if I went over the cliff, everything became simpler? I guessed I’d never know.
And so I plunged to my death. It’s probably a cliché, the fact that I was thinking about Max as I fell. Even though he’d betrayed me, I felt proud that, as I fell, I was taking Max’s biggest secret with me to the grave.
It served Gabe right that now he’d never know it.
84
AMANDA
AFTER
When Max told me about Gabe, it was late, and we were having one of our cheese platters. I don’t know why he chose that particular time to tell me. Perhaps it was because Gabe and Pippa had recently moved away and it felt safe to say it out loud. Maybe it was because, by that point, we’d never trusted each other more. At least that’s how it felt to me.
‘A few months after Harry died,’ Max said, ‘a young woman named Marina came to see my dad and stepmum. She was a girlfriend of Harry’s, apparently, although not one they’d met before. That wasn’t so strange; Harry had a lot of girlfriends. Anyway, she told them she was pregnant.’
Max was sitting in his armchair, holding a glass of red wine, but his gaze was far away. I sat forward and put my own wineglass on the table.
‘My parents were very wealthy, as you know, and Marina was . . . not. This is all second-hand information, of course; my parents only told me about it years later. They said she had no proof that the baby was Harry’s, and with Harry dead, she had no way of getting a DNA test to prove that it was his. It was determined – by my father, I guess – that she was angling for money. They sent her away.
‘It took me a year to track her down after they told me. That was before the days of social media. By then, Gabe was a teenager. I met Marina at a cafe and proposed we do a DNA test now. We could use my DNA to determine whether Gabe and I were related. I don’t know why I bothered, though; from the moment I saw his photo, I knew that Gabe was Harry’s son. The fact that he was already showing signs of mental illness made it even more obvious.’ Max stared into his wine, lost in the memory. ‘I wanted to meet him, of course, but since my parents had refused to acknowledge his existence, he wasn’t interested. According to his mother, he didn’t even want to know our names.
‘I offered financial support, and Marina accepted it. When she died a few years later, I quietly paid off the mortgage on her house so Gabe could keep living there. But it wasn’t enough. I should have done more.’
‘Did you reach out to him?’ I asked. ‘Suggest a meeting?’
‘My lawyers attempted to connect with him on my behalf, but he wouldn’t speak to them. So, I kept an eye on him from afar. When I discovered he’d become a landscape gardener, it was easy. I hired him to do the garden, and then I sat out there and struck up a conversation with him.’ Max smiled. ‘He was a shining light, Amanda. So much like Harry. I couldn’t stop staring at him. It was like watching Harry if he’d lived. I offered him at job with NewZ on the spot. I couldn’t resist.
‘Gabe had all of Harry’s magic. He had his darkness, too, but I told myself it wasn’t as bad in Gabe. I thought if I offered him a career, gave him a sense of purpose, it would help. I even spoke to his wife, Pippa, at the Christmas party and told her to call me if she ever needed anything.
‘Gabe had a picture of his daughters, Asha and Freya, on his desk. They are the most darling little girls; I can’t even describe it. I took a photo of the photo.’ He shook his head. ‘Freya is a dead ringer for my mother. And Asha, she has that cheekiness, you can just see it, even in the photo. I saved the picture onto my computer, and sometimes I would log on just to look at it. The sight of their little faces . . . often it brought me to tears.’
I thought of the time I’d seen Max looking at his computer, all misty-eyed. It all made sense now. He was looking at Harry’s granddaughters. His great-nieces.
‘Why didn’t you tell Gabe the truth about who you were?’ I asked.
‘I planned to, once we’d developed a relationship. I almost did, once. We were in my office, and he started talking about his wife and daughters. Conversation moved naturally to extended family, and I managed to ask about his father.’ Max sighed. ‘I’ll never forget the look on his face when he told me how his father’s wealthy parents had turned his pregnant teenage mother away. I thought it was the most disgusted a person could look. But then he told me about his uncle, who apparently became aware of his existence when he was a teenager. He talked about how his mum had made him do a cheek swab, which had confirmed that we were, in fact, related. He said, “Can you believe that? He’d only just discovered I existed, and instead of asking to see my face, he asked to see my DNA.”’ Max sighed. ‘That was the moment I knew that if I wanted to have my nephew in my life, I would have to keep our connection a secret.
‘When Gabe moved away, it was hard. I still worry about him every day. The same way I would have worried about Harry, I guess.’
He looked up, meeting my gaze for the first time since he’d started talking. ‘This is why I decided never to have children, Amanda. The mental illness that runs through our genes has taken so much from me. First Mum, then Harry. As soon as I’d confirmed Gabe’s existence, I promised myself I would look out for him. But I wouldn’t have children of my own. I couldn’t risk losing someone else I loved to this. It would have broken me.’
For a moment we just sat in silence, as I pondered everything he’d shared. Then Max said, ‘I’ve never told anyone about this, Amanda.’
‘Your secret is safe with me,’ I replied.
And, as it turned out, it was.
85
PIPPA
NOW
‘She said you were her soulmate,’ Gabe says.
The three of us stand together by the cliff edge as Gabe recounts Amanda’s last moments.
‘She said that?’ Max asks.
Gabe nods.
Max takes a moment to absorb that. As his eyes grow misty, a desperate sadness washes over me. For a moment I think he might cry, but instead he takes a long deep breath and says, ‘Then what happened?’
‘She was going to take the USB to the media or the police. I tried to convince her not to do that. I was thinking of what would happen if it got out. From what she said, there was some stuff on there that –’
‘That would have been damaging to you,’ Max says.
‘Yes.’
Despite the fact that I’d suspected this, it’s still a shock to have it confirmed.
‘I tried to grab the USB.’ Gabe inhales slowly. ‘But she held on to it. We struggled and I managed to pull it out of her grasp. The momentum of it sent her flying backwards and she went over the edge.’
Max closes his eyes, and sighs.
‘I didn’t mean for her to fall,’ Gabe says, emotional now. ‘I tried to grab her before she went over. But I . . . I couldn’t.’
My instinct is to believe him, but I’m not sure I trust my instincts anymore. As for whether Max believes him, it’s unclear. When he opens his eyes, his expression is hard to read.
‘Thank you,’ he says finally. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
Max steps forward so quickly, Gabe doesn’t see it coming. As he wraps his arms around Gabe, he closes his eyes and squeezes them tight. He holds Gabe for a moment, then he pulls back. As he does, he locks eyes with Gabe, and something passes between them that I don’t understand. I’m not sure even Gabe understands. But there’s something powerful about it. I can’t look away.
In the near distance, I hear the crunch of feet on gravel, the soft lilt of laughter. Walkers approaching. Gabe and I take a step back, and Max looks out towards the ocean.
‘And this is where it happened?’ Max says. ‘This is where Amanda fell?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
He is very close to the edge, I realise as the walkers appear on the path behind us. I’m about to tell him to move back when he says, ‘She was my soulmate, too.’
Then he steps off the cliff.
86
AMANDA
AFTER
One thing I’ve learned about happy endings is that they don’t always look the way you’d expect. In some cases, a happy ending involves the couple walking off into the sunset together. In others, a happy ending is when, after years of lying to themselves, a couple goes their separate ways. I like to think that’s what will make Gabe and Pip happiest. I just hope they know it too.
I watched Max’s final interaction with Gabe. I travelled through every emotion with him, felt every emotion. The bewilderment at Pip’s lie. The anger at what Gabe had done. The sadness of what he was leaving behind. In the end, what I felt most from Max was love. Love for me. Love for Harry. Love for Gabe. Funny how love can remain, despite everything.
Max had confessed to the money-laundering and murder of Arthur Spriggs on the phone to Detective Conroy. He attributed the guilt and stress of this as the main contributor to my death by suicide. He maintained that Gabe had no involvement in any of it. It was the last chance he’d be able to give his nephew, he reasoned, so he had to take it. For Harry.
He’d left the house before the police arrived to arrest him. Now, they’d never get the chance.
So, here we are. Finally, it makes sense, what I’ve been doing here – stuck in this strange space between life and death. I’ve been waiting for him; the love of my life.
And now it’s time to go.
87
PIPPA
One year later
‘Are they twins?’ the woman at the park asks me, as I tandem-push the girls on the swings. She’s been looking at them for a while, trying to figure it out.
Asha beats me to the answer. ‘No,’ she yells from the swing, her little legs pumping hard. ‘Just sisters. Our birthdays are six months apart.’
‘I’m older,’ Freya chimes in from her own swing.
‘I came out of my first mum’s tummy and then she died,’ Asha adds cheerfully. ‘This is my other mummy.’
I smile and shrug at the woman, who is clearly bamboozled by this abundance of information. After a minute, perhaps just for something to say, she says to the girls, ‘Well, you do look alike.’
‘We look like our dad,’ Freya says. ‘Mummy, can we have a snack?’
I didn’t bring snacks. In the past this would have been unheard of, but lately I’ve been much more relaxed about that kind of organisation. I look at my watch. ‘Daddy will be here soon. Maybe he’ll bring some?’
‘There he is!’ Asha shrieks. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
I glance to my right just as Gabe leaps the low fence into the playground and jogs towards the girls with his arms outstretched. This is how he always greets them after a few days apart – at a running pace. As if he can’t stand one more second away from them. The girls leap off their swings in unison; the feeling is clearly mutual.
He’s even more tanned than the last time I saw him. He must have spent the past few days surfing around the clock. He seems to have come straight from the beach now, as his hair is wet and pushed back and he’s dressed in board shorts and a white T-shirt and sandals. I notice several women ogling him as the girls leap into his arms and he props them on either hip. They wrap their arms around his neck, their legs around his waist.
‘Hey,’ Gabe says to me.
‘Hey,’ I reply.
It’s strange greeting him like this, even a year on. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel sad about it sometimes. There are many things I miss about being married to him – watching him be a dad to our girls most acutely of all. But I can breathe without him. This is something that has surprised me.
The other surprise is that there are so many things I don’t miss about being married to Gabe. The constant worry. A feeling that the ground could shift under me at any moment. The heightened state of awareness I lived in for years, thinking it was excitement rather than recognising it as anxiety. I still don’t know if Amanda’s death truly was an accident, nor do I know what was on the USB that was so threatening to Gabe. Nor do I have to know. Because Gabe’s problems are no longer mine. Gabe is Gabe. And I am me.
What I do know is that the bipolar disorder wasn’t responsible for his actions. In the past, I’d always found it hard to visualise the line where his illness ended and his free will began. Now I see it. His illness hadn’t lied to me. His illness hadn’t covered up his mistakes and said that it was for my sake. That was all Gabe. Which meant we were done.
The police discovered the connection between Gabe and Amanda, of course, and Gabe was re-questioned about it. Initially, it seemed as if they suspected Gabe of playing a role in Max’s death too, but the walkers had put that idea to rest; they had seen Max step over the edge while Gabe was several paces away.
In the end, it was Max’s own statement to the police before his death, asserting that Amanda had been suicidal, that exonerated Gabe.
Gabe and I were both baffled by this, until a few days after Max’s death, when Gabe received a message from Max’s lawyer explaining their familial connection. The letter included the DNA test Gabe had done when he was fifteen years old.
It explained a lot. The way Gabe had got his job with Max. The fact that he managed to keep his job despite his ups and downs. It also made me realise what Max had been going to say when he told us that Baz was never going to hurt the girls. Of course he wasn’t. They were Max’s flesh and blood.
Asha and Freya were named sole beneficiaries of Max’s estate, with the money to be held in trust until they turn twenty-one, at which time they will become wealthier than any person has a right to be. They don’t know this yet, and I have no intention of divulging it anytime soon. I plan to give them the most normal childhood I can. After the turbulence of their first four years, it feels like the least I can do. If Gabe is upset to have been denied an inheritance, he’s shown no sign of it – and I do know that Gabe had never been particularly motivated by money. And, after what Max sacrificed for him on the cliff, he only speaks about his uncle with gratitude. Which adds to my belief that, in dying, Max took the fall for something else that wasn’t entirely his fault.
‘Ah, here’s Nana,’ I say, as I spot Mum walking towards us.
Gabe and I haven’t formalised our custody arrangement, but I’ve made it clear he is not to spend time with the girls unsupervised. I want Gabe to be part of their lives, but that doesn’t mean I trust him. Sometimes it is Mum or Dad who accompanies the girls. Sometimes it is a playdate with a friend and their parent in the park. Sometimes it is me. So far, Gabe hasn’t objected. He understands he’s got off lightly. Besides, for all of his troubles, he loves his daughters. He’ll take any access to them that he can get.
‘Nana!’ Asha cries, launching herself at Mum.
‘I’ll have them back to yours by five,’ Gabe says to me.
I wave until they disappear around the corner (once, apparently, Asha turned around to give me one last wave and I’d already left, and I won’t ever hear the end of that).
Once they are gone, I leave too, wrestling with that strange, untethered feeling I always get when I walk away from my girls. It’s temporary, I know this, usually lasting only until I walk through my front door and become my alter ego, the person I get to be when I’m without them now.
Sometimes, I hang out at The Pantry with Dev, drinking coffee and chatting. We’ve been spending more and more time together, and while it’s nothing romantic yet, I’ve come to enjoy his company in a way I hadn’t expected to. A few weeks ago, he made me a three-course meal at The Pantry after it closed, and it was one of the nicest evenings I can remember in a long time.
Occasionally I will FaceTime Kat and Mei to see my gorgeous nephew, Ollie. Kat and Mei moved back to the city just before Ollie was born. Mei had more work opportunities in Melbourne, and Kat wanted to support her. Before they left, Kat told me that it felt strange to be moving away from me, but for the first time she knew I would be okay. Perhaps for the first time, I knew that too.
It was because I was so upset that I nearly said it. But I stopped myself. How ridiculous that was . . . even while freshly wounded by Max’s betrayal, I couldn’t repress my instinct to protect him.
‘I’ve spent my life keeping his secrets. Protecting him. And for what?’ I held up the USB. ‘This contains the contents of his secret computer. I could send it to the media. Or the police! I could ruin him! Maybe I will . . .’
Gabe, I noticed, was watching me warily now. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Amanda.’
‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Amanda.’ Gabe took a step towards me. ‘Take a breath. Take a minute to think about this.’
‘Max didn’t think twice before he betrayed me!’
I was talking a big game. It felt amazing. Suddenly I felt powerful – like I had control in a situation where I’d previously had none. But I knew, even then, that I would never turn over the USB to anyone. No matter what Max had done, I couldn’t do that to him. Loving and protecting him had become part of my DNA.
Gabe’s stance had changed now. Rather than the calm neutral man who’d appeared on the cliff, he appeared almost . . . predatory. It prompted a realisation. The type that comes out of nowhere and hits you forcefully. Of course. Max wasn’t the only one who could be hurt by what was on this USB. There was information on here that would incriminate Gabe. By the look on Gabe’s face, he’d realised this too.
He lunged for the USB.
For a moment, we both had it. I pulled it towards me, and Gabe pulled it back. I gripped it tightly and leaned back, all my weight in my heels. I really thought I had it. Then Gabe ripped it free, and suddenly I was falling.
Gabe tried to help. He lunged forward, his arms outstretched. He almost caught me. Then he stopped. He held his palms up flat; he stood upright. Perhaps he thought it was too late? Or perhaps he’d realised that if I went over the cliff, everything became simpler? I guessed I’d never know.
And so I plunged to my death. It’s probably a cliché, the fact that I was thinking about Max as I fell. Even though he’d betrayed me, I felt proud that, as I fell, I was taking Max’s biggest secret with me to the grave.
It served Gabe right that now he’d never know it.
84
AMANDA
AFTER
When Max told me about Gabe, it was late, and we were having one of our cheese platters. I don’t know why he chose that particular time to tell me. Perhaps it was because Gabe and Pippa had recently moved away and it felt safe to say it out loud. Maybe it was because, by that point, we’d never trusted each other more. At least that’s how it felt to me.
‘A few months after Harry died,’ Max said, ‘a young woman named Marina came to see my dad and stepmum. She was a girlfriend of Harry’s, apparently, although not one they’d met before. That wasn’t so strange; Harry had a lot of girlfriends. Anyway, she told them she was pregnant.’
Max was sitting in his armchair, holding a glass of red wine, but his gaze was far away. I sat forward and put my own wineglass on the table.
‘My parents were very wealthy, as you know, and Marina was . . . not. This is all second-hand information, of course; my parents only told me about it years later. They said she had no proof that the baby was Harry’s, and with Harry dead, she had no way of getting a DNA test to prove that it was his. It was determined – by my father, I guess – that she was angling for money. They sent her away.
‘It took me a year to track her down after they told me. That was before the days of social media. By then, Gabe was a teenager. I met Marina at a cafe and proposed we do a DNA test now. We could use my DNA to determine whether Gabe and I were related. I don’t know why I bothered, though; from the moment I saw his photo, I knew that Gabe was Harry’s son. The fact that he was already showing signs of mental illness made it even more obvious.’ Max stared into his wine, lost in the memory. ‘I wanted to meet him, of course, but since my parents had refused to acknowledge his existence, he wasn’t interested. According to his mother, he didn’t even want to know our names.
‘I offered financial support, and Marina accepted it. When she died a few years later, I quietly paid off the mortgage on her house so Gabe could keep living there. But it wasn’t enough. I should have done more.’
‘Did you reach out to him?’ I asked. ‘Suggest a meeting?’
‘My lawyers attempted to connect with him on my behalf, but he wouldn’t speak to them. So, I kept an eye on him from afar. When I discovered he’d become a landscape gardener, it was easy. I hired him to do the garden, and then I sat out there and struck up a conversation with him.’ Max smiled. ‘He was a shining light, Amanda. So much like Harry. I couldn’t stop staring at him. It was like watching Harry if he’d lived. I offered him at job with NewZ on the spot. I couldn’t resist.
‘Gabe had all of Harry’s magic. He had his darkness, too, but I told myself it wasn’t as bad in Gabe. I thought if I offered him a career, gave him a sense of purpose, it would help. I even spoke to his wife, Pippa, at the Christmas party and told her to call me if she ever needed anything.
‘Gabe had a picture of his daughters, Asha and Freya, on his desk. They are the most darling little girls; I can’t even describe it. I took a photo of the photo.’ He shook his head. ‘Freya is a dead ringer for my mother. And Asha, she has that cheekiness, you can just see it, even in the photo. I saved the picture onto my computer, and sometimes I would log on just to look at it. The sight of their little faces . . . often it brought me to tears.’
I thought of the time I’d seen Max looking at his computer, all misty-eyed. It all made sense now. He was looking at Harry’s granddaughters. His great-nieces.
‘Why didn’t you tell Gabe the truth about who you were?’ I asked.
‘I planned to, once we’d developed a relationship. I almost did, once. We were in my office, and he started talking about his wife and daughters. Conversation moved naturally to extended family, and I managed to ask about his father.’ Max sighed. ‘I’ll never forget the look on his face when he told me how his father’s wealthy parents had turned his pregnant teenage mother away. I thought it was the most disgusted a person could look. But then he told me about his uncle, who apparently became aware of his existence when he was a teenager. He talked about how his mum had made him do a cheek swab, which had confirmed that we were, in fact, related. He said, “Can you believe that? He’d only just discovered I existed, and instead of asking to see my face, he asked to see my DNA.”’ Max sighed. ‘That was the moment I knew that if I wanted to have my nephew in my life, I would have to keep our connection a secret.
‘When Gabe moved away, it was hard. I still worry about him every day. The same way I would have worried about Harry, I guess.’
He looked up, meeting my gaze for the first time since he’d started talking. ‘This is why I decided never to have children, Amanda. The mental illness that runs through our genes has taken so much from me. First Mum, then Harry. As soon as I’d confirmed Gabe’s existence, I promised myself I would look out for him. But I wouldn’t have children of my own. I couldn’t risk losing someone else I loved to this. It would have broken me.’
For a moment we just sat in silence, as I pondered everything he’d shared. Then Max said, ‘I’ve never told anyone about this, Amanda.’
‘Your secret is safe with me,’ I replied.
And, as it turned out, it was.
85
PIPPA
NOW
‘She said you were her soulmate,’ Gabe says.
The three of us stand together by the cliff edge as Gabe recounts Amanda’s last moments.
‘She said that?’ Max asks.
Gabe nods.
Max takes a moment to absorb that. As his eyes grow misty, a desperate sadness washes over me. For a moment I think he might cry, but instead he takes a long deep breath and says, ‘Then what happened?’
‘She was going to take the USB to the media or the police. I tried to convince her not to do that. I was thinking of what would happen if it got out. From what she said, there was some stuff on there that –’
‘That would have been damaging to you,’ Max says.
‘Yes.’
Despite the fact that I’d suspected this, it’s still a shock to have it confirmed.
‘I tried to grab the USB.’ Gabe inhales slowly. ‘But she held on to it. We struggled and I managed to pull it out of her grasp. The momentum of it sent her flying backwards and she went over the edge.’
Max closes his eyes, and sighs.
‘I didn’t mean for her to fall,’ Gabe says, emotional now. ‘I tried to grab her before she went over. But I . . . I couldn’t.’
My instinct is to believe him, but I’m not sure I trust my instincts anymore. As for whether Max believes him, it’s unclear. When he opens his eyes, his expression is hard to read.
‘Thank you,’ he says finally. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
Max steps forward so quickly, Gabe doesn’t see it coming. As he wraps his arms around Gabe, he closes his eyes and squeezes them tight. He holds Gabe for a moment, then he pulls back. As he does, he locks eyes with Gabe, and something passes between them that I don’t understand. I’m not sure even Gabe understands. But there’s something powerful about it. I can’t look away.
In the near distance, I hear the crunch of feet on gravel, the soft lilt of laughter. Walkers approaching. Gabe and I take a step back, and Max looks out towards the ocean.
‘And this is where it happened?’ Max says. ‘This is where Amanda fell?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
He is very close to the edge, I realise as the walkers appear on the path behind us. I’m about to tell him to move back when he says, ‘She was my soulmate, too.’
Then he steps off the cliff.
86
AMANDA
AFTER
One thing I’ve learned about happy endings is that they don’t always look the way you’d expect. In some cases, a happy ending involves the couple walking off into the sunset together. In others, a happy ending is when, after years of lying to themselves, a couple goes their separate ways. I like to think that’s what will make Gabe and Pip happiest. I just hope they know it too.
I watched Max’s final interaction with Gabe. I travelled through every emotion with him, felt every emotion. The bewilderment at Pip’s lie. The anger at what Gabe had done. The sadness of what he was leaving behind. In the end, what I felt most from Max was love. Love for me. Love for Harry. Love for Gabe. Funny how love can remain, despite everything.
Max had confessed to the money-laundering and murder of Arthur Spriggs on the phone to Detective Conroy. He attributed the guilt and stress of this as the main contributor to my death by suicide. He maintained that Gabe had no involvement in any of it. It was the last chance he’d be able to give his nephew, he reasoned, so he had to take it. For Harry.
He’d left the house before the police arrived to arrest him. Now, they’d never get the chance.
So, here we are. Finally, it makes sense, what I’ve been doing here – stuck in this strange space between life and death. I’ve been waiting for him; the love of my life.
And now it’s time to go.
87
PIPPA
One year later
‘Are they twins?’ the woman at the park asks me, as I tandem-push the girls on the swings. She’s been looking at them for a while, trying to figure it out.
Asha beats me to the answer. ‘No,’ she yells from the swing, her little legs pumping hard. ‘Just sisters. Our birthdays are six months apart.’
‘I’m older,’ Freya chimes in from her own swing.
‘I came out of my first mum’s tummy and then she died,’ Asha adds cheerfully. ‘This is my other mummy.’
I smile and shrug at the woman, who is clearly bamboozled by this abundance of information. After a minute, perhaps just for something to say, she says to the girls, ‘Well, you do look alike.’
‘We look like our dad,’ Freya says. ‘Mummy, can we have a snack?’
I didn’t bring snacks. In the past this would have been unheard of, but lately I’ve been much more relaxed about that kind of organisation. I look at my watch. ‘Daddy will be here soon. Maybe he’ll bring some?’
‘There he is!’ Asha shrieks. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
I glance to my right just as Gabe leaps the low fence into the playground and jogs towards the girls with his arms outstretched. This is how he always greets them after a few days apart – at a running pace. As if he can’t stand one more second away from them. The girls leap off their swings in unison; the feeling is clearly mutual.
He’s even more tanned than the last time I saw him. He must have spent the past few days surfing around the clock. He seems to have come straight from the beach now, as his hair is wet and pushed back and he’s dressed in board shorts and a white T-shirt and sandals. I notice several women ogling him as the girls leap into his arms and he props them on either hip. They wrap their arms around his neck, their legs around his waist.
‘Hey,’ Gabe says to me.
‘Hey,’ I reply.
It’s strange greeting him like this, even a year on. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel sad about it sometimes. There are many things I miss about being married to him – watching him be a dad to our girls most acutely of all. But I can breathe without him. This is something that has surprised me.
The other surprise is that there are so many things I don’t miss about being married to Gabe. The constant worry. A feeling that the ground could shift under me at any moment. The heightened state of awareness I lived in for years, thinking it was excitement rather than recognising it as anxiety. I still don’t know if Amanda’s death truly was an accident, nor do I know what was on the USB that was so threatening to Gabe. Nor do I have to know. Because Gabe’s problems are no longer mine. Gabe is Gabe. And I am me.
What I do know is that the bipolar disorder wasn’t responsible for his actions. In the past, I’d always found it hard to visualise the line where his illness ended and his free will began. Now I see it. His illness hadn’t lied to me. His illness hadn’t covered up his mistakes and said that it was for my sake. That was all Gabe. Which meant we were done.
The police discovered the connection between Gabe and Amanda, of course, and Gabe was re-questioned about it. Initially, it seemed as if they suspected Gabe of playing a role in Max’s death too, but the walkers had put that idea to rest; they had seen Max step over the edge while Gabe was several paces away.
In the end, it was Max’s own statement to the police before his death, asserting that Amanda had been suicidal, that exonerated Gabe.
Gabe and I were both baffled by this, until a few days after Max’s death, when Gabe received a message from Max’s lawyer explaining their familial connection. The letter included the DNA test Gabe had done when he was fifteen years old.
It explained a lot. The way Gabe had got his job with Max. The fact that he managed to keep his job despite his ups and downs. It also made me realise what Max had been going to say when he told us that Baz was never going to hurt the girls. Of course he wasn’t. They were Max’s flesh and blood.
Asha and Freya were named sole beneficiaries of Max’s estate, with the money to be held in trust until they turn twenty-one, at which time they will become wealthier than any person has a right to be. They don’t know this yet, and I have no intention of divulging it anytime soon. I plan to give them the most normal childhood I can. After the turbulence of their first four years, it feels like the least I can do. If Gabe is upset to have been denied an inheritance, he’s shown no sign of it – and I do know that Gabe had never been particularly motivated by money. And, after what Max sacrificed for him on the cliff, he only speaks about his uncle with gratitude. Which adds to my belief that, in dying, Max took the fall for something else that wasn’t entirely his fault.
‘Ah, here’s Nana,’ I say, as I spot Mum walking towards us.
Gabe and I haven’t formalised our custody arrangement, but I’ve made it clear he is not to spend time with the girls unsupervised. I want Gabe to be part of their lives, but that doesn’t mean I trust him. Sometimes it is Mum or Dad who accompanies the girls. Sometimes it is a playdate with a friend and their parent in the park. Sometimes it is me. So far, Gabe hasn’t objected. He understands he’s got off lightly. Besides, for all of his troubles, he loves his daughters. He’ll take any access to them that he can get.
‘Nana!’ Asha cries, launching herself at Mum.
‘I’ll have them back to yours by five,’ Gabe says to me.
I wave until they disappear around the corner (once, apparently, Asha turned around to give me one last wave and I’d already left, and I won’t ever hear the end of that).
Once they are gone, I leave too, wrestling with that strange, untethered feeling I always get when I walk away from my girls. It’s temporary, I know this, usually lasting only until I walk through my front door and become my alter ego, the person I get to be when I’m without them now.
Sometimes, I hang out at The Pantry with Dev, drinking coffee and chatting. We’ve been spending more and more time together, and while it’s nothing romantic yet, I’ve come to enjoy his company in a way I hadn’t expected to. A few weeks ago, he made me a three-course meal at The Pantry after it closed, and it was one of the nicest evenings I can remember in a long time.
Occasionally I will FaceTime Kat and Mei to see my gorgeous nephew, Ollie. Kat and Mei moved back to the city just before Ollie was born. Mei had more work opportunities in Melbourne, and Kat wanted to support her. Before they left, Kat told me that it felt strange to be moving away from me, but for the first time she knew I would be okay. Perhaps for the first time, I knew that too.
