The Soulmate, page 6
He became more handsome, if that was possible. His jawline became more defined. The lines on his face gave him a rugged look. He looked like a film star. People noticed him. Women at work must have noticed him. If I ever teased him about it, though, he became serious.
‘You know you never have to worry, right?’
I did know that.
‘Do I have to worry?’ he’d say then, nuzzling my neck. ‘Is anyone paying inappropriate attention to my wife?’
But he wasn’t the jealous type, not really. We were happy. And I was bursting with pride.
‘Gabe’s working late,’ became something I’d say to friends and family. ‘His team is working on a big acquisition.’
It felt so glamorous and exciting. Then again, perhaps everything did when you worked in wills and estates. NewZ was in a growth phase, making acquisitions, building the brand. There were a lot of power lunches and after-work drinks. He was gone a lot. I was often in bed before he got home, waking in the early hours to Gabe sliding into bed beside me, his body heavy and warm. I understood. It was about networking, building trust. This was how business worked.
Before long, Gabe had the chance to be the one giving the pitch to investors. He barely slept the night before. He practically fizzed with nervous energy. I made him breakfast that morning, but he was too nervous to eat. He showered and dressed in his most expensive suit. I told him he looked like Don Draper in Mad Men and he laughed, but I could tell his mind had already left the building.
I waved him off from the front porch, like a mother waving off a child. He said he’d call me as soon as they knew anything. I waited for the call all afternoon. When I hadn’t heard from him by 5 pm, I called his phone, but it was switched off.
I wasn’t worried; Gabe was notoriously bad at charging his phone. I tried calling the office, but they hadn’t seen him and hadn’t had any news. Eventually I had to assume he and his team had gone out for drinks – to celebrate or commiserate.
I finally fell asleep about 1 am.
When I woke up the next morning to find I was still alone, I started to worry. I called his phone again, but it was still switched off. I checked the spare room in case he’d crept in overnight and hadn’t wanted to disturb me. I even checked the front doorstep in case he’d lost his key and slept outside. That’s where I was when the taxi pulled up. Gabe emerged looking decidedly less polished than when I’d last seen him. His shirt was untucked, his hair was ruffled. He didn’t appear to have his jacket with him.
His face lit up when he saw me. He ran from the taxi and hugged me so hard my feet lifted off the ground. He smelled of booze and cigarettes and sweat. ‘We got the money!’
Gabe was so excited it was hard to feel anything but excited too. It was a big deal. He just wanted to talk and talk and talk. I made coffee and told work I wouldn’t be coming in and we sat in bed all day, rehashing the events of the day before. Gabe was practically levitating with joy.
Later, it seemed silly that I didn’t think it was a sign of something. But I took it as confirmation of his brilliance, his charisma, the great choice I’d made in marrying him. Yes, he’d stayed out all night, but he’d never been great at keeping track of time. He was swept up in the energy of the first deal, that was all. It was the same excitement and energy that had helped him to land the deal, so it seemed to me that I couldn’t really complain.
13
PIPPA
NOW
It’s rare that someone studies law with a plan to become a wills and estates lawyer. It is, at best, the colorectal surgeon of law. Not the most glamorous specialty – in fact, the butt of many jokes – but on balance an important and necessary job. There are those who get into it for practical reasons – job security, work/life balance and the ability to work for yourself – and those who enter the field because they’ve seen family members miss out on inheritances or estates get manipulated by greedy individuals. I am one of the few people – heck, perhaps the only one – who did go into law to become a wills and estates lawyer. Not because I watched a family member get diddled, or because I was worried I’d get diddled myself. I chose it because, in this world where so much is out of your control, it is one time when, with the right person in your corner, you get to play God.
‘Have you had any thoughts about your funeral arrangements, Mr and Mrs Peterson?’ I ask the couple on the screen.
I’m sitting at my laptop at the dining room table, as I often do in the morning when the light is better here. Beside me is a notepad, a glass of water and a digital clock that beeps when we’ve reached the end of our allotted time. Obviously, I’m aware of the time, but the loud beep helps the oldies to stay on track.
It’s clear Mrs Peterson hasn’t thought much about funeral arrangements because she looks at Mr Peterson questioningly. I’d told them exactly what we’d be covering today and asked them to make these decisions in advance. So far, they’ve argued over their medical power of attorney, their choice of executor and whether or not to hold assets in a family trust. Now, it’s 10.50 am, and I’m getting the sense this will take longer than the allocated ninety minutes, particularly since the first fifteen minutes were spent speaking to Mr Peterson’s son Nigel, who was trying to set up the Zoom call and was having trouble with the technology. I shouldn’t complain, as I have no issue charging for every minute, but today I’d like to get off the call sooner rather than later.
Gabe and the girls had bustled out the door just before 9 am, in a whirlwind of bags and lunchboxes and scooters. This morning’s drama centred around Asha’s declaration that she only wanted strawberries in her lunchbox. No sandwich. No yoghurt. Just the strawberries. Gabe had wanted to oblige, but I’d opted to sneak a sandwich into her bag in a separate container to avoid the judgement that would be forthcoming from their teacher. As they disappeared out the door, I noticed Freya was still wearing her pyjama top and Asha was wearing tights without a skirt. ‘Gabe! Asha needs a skirt!’
He’d been so confused. ‘But she’s wearing pants.’ He’d surveyed her for a moment. ‘With feet. Why don’t they make these for men?’
I’d tossed him a skirt and rolled my eyes. The girls were going to be late, but it wouldn’t matter because Gabe was dropping them off. Sarah Punch, the girls’ teacher, loves Gabe. Every time I show my face at school, she goes out of her way to tell me how wonderful it is that Gabe is such an involved parent, how he’s the only dad who volunteers, how he remembers every special day and activity. She appears not to hear when I point out that 1) he really doesn’t do any more than the other mums, and 2) I’m the one who remembers the special days and activities. Most irritatingly, she only answers to Mrs Punch – and that goes for the mums as well as the kids – but laughs giddily when Gabe calls her Sares. Gabe is staying on as the parent helper at preschool this morning, which means Mrs Punch will lose her mind. This is why men rule the world.
‘Have you thought about whether you’d like to be buried or cremated?’ I ask.
‘I’d like to be buried,’ Mr Peterson says definitely.
‘Fantastic!’ I say. ‘Anywhere particular?’
I expect this will be another twenty-minute debate, but Mr Peterson answers immediately. ‘We have a family plot in Sorrento.’
Perfect, I think. We might finish before noon.
But I’ve barely finished formulating that thought when Mrs Peterson’s head snaps up. ‘You want to be buried in the Sorrento plot? With Jilly?’
Jilly, I have ascertained from our discussions, is Mr Peterson’s late first wife.
‘It’s a family plot,’ Mr Peterson says. ‘You can be buried there too if you like.’
‘The three of us?’ Mrs Peterson looks at me beseechingly. ‘Together?’
‘Why not?’ He grins. ‘It’d be the only threesome I’ll ever have.’
Mrs Peterson gasps at the same time as I hear a knock at the door. A moment later, Dad calls out, ‘Hello!’ and lets himself in. I peer down the hallway to see him with a newspaper under his arm and a takeaway coffee cup in his hand. Mum must have sent him. (‘Go check on Pippa. Make an excuse so it doesn’t look overbearing. Take her a coffee and the paper or something!’ Dad was excellent at following directions to the letter.) I wave to him and hold a finger to my lips.
‘I’m not forcing you to be buried there,’ Mr Peterson is saying. ‘I just said that you’d be welcome.’
‘You’re unbelievable!’
‘Calm down, woman – we’ll be dead, for crying out loud. Besides, I already paid for the plot and there’s room for six!’
Dad puts the newspaper and coffee on the table beside me. I nod my thanks and take a giant slurp. Then he goes into the kitchen and starts unloading the dishwasher. (‘And clean up while you’re there,’ Mum must have said. ‘Unload the dishwasher or something.’)
‘We can come back to this,’ I say to the Petersons, ‘when you’ve had some more time to discuss it. In the meantime, I think we should move on to the –’
‘Everything comes down to money with you, you cheap bastard!’
‘And you wonder why I don’t want to be buried with you.’
Dad chuckles as he unloads the water glasses and puts them back in the wrong spot.
‘For all of his foibles,’ Mum always says, ‘at least your father does what he’s told.’ I wonder what my marriage would have been like if I’d married a man like that. Someone dependable. Responsible. I suspect Mrs Peterson is wondering the same thing.
‘What if you get cremated?’ Mr Peterson is saying. He has his reasonable, mansplaining voice on now, which will irritate Mrs Peterson no end. ‘You could be sprinkled somewhere nice. Down at the golf club, perhaps.’
‘The golf club? While you’re getting cosy with Jilly down at Sorrento?’
Dad finishes unloading the dishwasher and looks around. He must have run out of specific jobs that Mum told him to do and has graduated to ‘then look around and see if anything else needs doing’. I wave at him and point to the door, giving him permission to leave, which he does with obvious relief. I look back at the screen.
Mr and Mrs Peterson are now facing each other, hurling insults. They may have forgotten I’m here. Outside the window, a woman slows down at The Drop. Keep walking, I will her. Keep walking! Thankfully, she does. I keep an eye on her until she’s disappeared from sight.
‘Look, I think we might have reached an impasse,’ I say to my bickering clients. ‘We can either move on, or we can pause things here and set up another meeting when we have reached some agreement. I will remind you that we have gone over the ninety minutes now, and while I’m happy to wait for you to work this out, I’m sure you’d rather not pay me to listen to you argue.’
Talk of the hourly rate is usually an effective way to move things along, and certainly Mr Peterson seems to snap to attention, but as Mrs Peterson is intent on resolving the issue, they decide to end the session and book another meeting in two weeks. As I end the Zoom call, Mrs Peterson is already asking if he’d like to be in the same coffin with Jilly too.
I close the lid of the laptop and walk to the kitchen to move the items Dad unloaded into the right cupboards. I don’t have any more meetings this morning, so I make a cup of tea and flick through the newspaper. Dad had brought the local paper rather than the national, which suits me, because I get the national news via podcast anyway. I flick past an update on the latest attempt to fix the beach that was ruined by dredging – the community was up in arms about it two years ago but have become increasingly apathetic – and skim-read an article about how suburban councillors and mayors have voted to pay themselves the highest amount permissible under state government legislation. I am looking for the horoscopes – I do not for one second believe in them, but I do like to read them, and it is spooky how sometimes they are very accurate – but before I find them, my eyes land on a picture of a woman who looks vaguely familiar. I scan the article. It’s about the unexpected death of a woman, two nights ago. There’s no information listed about how she died. But when I read her name, the air leaves my lungs.
14
AMANDA
AFTER
My body has been identified by dental records. It’s probably for the best because, unsurprisingly, I’m not in great shape after my fall from the cliff. Twisted, bloody, broken. Half my teeth have been knocked out and there is some gnarly facial damage. It probably would have been enough to make Max bring up his breakfast.
Although . . . Max hasn’t eaten breakfast. Not today. Not yesterday. Usually, he is militant about his All Bran and peaches and black coffee, but he hasn’t been doing well since the police told him about me. I’d like to think it’s the grief of losing me. I hope it is. I know it’s not only that, though. Max is many things, but he’s not stupid. He knows something isn’t right about my death. He knows that while I would have been upset about what he’d done, I had plenty of ammunition with which to retaliate. Taking my own life isn’t something that I’ve ever talked about, ever considered. It doesn’t make sense and Max knows it. It’s driving him crazy and I have a front-row seat to his misery.
But I don’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
15
AMANDA
BEFORE
I wouldn’t say I was nervous the first time Max came to my mother’s house. ‘Worked up’ would probably be a better description.
I was aware how her house would look to someone like Max. An unrenovated single-fronted two-bedroom next to a petrol station in Melbourne’s inner west, before the inner west became trendy. I suspect that until he met me, Max thought the inner west was only for factories and industrial estates, not a place where anyone actually lived.
I knew Mum had spent the day cleaning the house from top to bottom. She’d made a roast chicken using a Jamie Oliver recipe she’d found online. When I arrived, I found her in her best floral dress, and she was wearing lipstick. Something clutched at my heart when I saw that. She was on her best behaviour. Max had better be on his best behaviour too, I decided. If he looked down his nose at my mother’s house, the relationship was over.
Max arrived exactly on time, with flowers and a bottle of wine. He greeted Mum with a hug. Before he arrived, she’d worried about whether he’d give her one kiss or two . . . she’d even asked her friend, Rhonda, she said. The hug had been disarming and Mum had been surprised.
‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Max said.
‘Ditto,’ she said shyly.
It was a surprise, how well the evening went. By that time I’d seen Max dine with businesspeople, but this was something quite different. He appeared invested in impressing my mother. He asked thoughtful questions and gave intelligent answers. He talked about my (still-fledgling) photography career as if I were Annie Leibovitz. After dinner, he told my mum to relax while he cleared the table.
Mum was beside herself.
‘He’s the one,’ she whispered, as he carried the plates into the kitchen. ‘He’s your happy ending.’
The house was small, and her whisper was loud. When I turned around, I saw Max looking very pleased with himself. But I wasn’t pleased. ‘He’s a good choice,’ I corrected her. ‘It makes sense.’
After dinner, we sat on the couch and ate Sara Lee Sticky Date Pudding with ice cream and looked at photo albums. Each time Mum produced another one, she said, ‘Look at me – I’ll be boring you to tears, Max!’ and Max shook his head and insisted she continue. At the end of the night, Mum was the one to hug him.
‘Do come again, Max. You’re welcome any time.’
‘Just try to stop me.’
Dinners with Mum became a regular thing after that. Each time, Max brought flowers and Mum got out the photo albums. After a while, I wondered who was enjoying it more, Max or Mum.
Mum got sick a few years after that. I’ll never forget the day the hospital called to tell us to come in quickly. Max dropped everything and we went straightaway, but she’d already died by the time we got there. She was the only family I had left. So it was surprising that Max was the one who fell to his knees, keening. Everyone assumed it must have been his mother who’d died. I kneeled on the floor and held him while he sobbed into my skirt. I always had a feeling it was his own mum he was crying for. Either way, those are the strange, beautiful and bizarre moments of marriage that no one tells you about. The moments that, even after everything, still pierce your heart.
16
PIPPA
NOW
Amanda Cameron.
I stride along the footpath, reciting the name over and over. Amanda Cameron. The woman on the cliff was Amanda Cameron. Not a stranger, as Gabe claimed, but the wife of his former boss, Max Cameron. The media mogul who’d recruited Gabe to NewZ from a landscape gardener.
I’d left the house without even bothering to get a coat. I hadn’t even brought my keys or phone. I have that vaguely cold and sweaty feeling I get from travel sickness, the one that precedes vomiting. Why would Amanda Cameron come to our cliff? Why didn’t Gabe tell me it was her? What happened that night?
I throw open the gate of the preschool. To my left, there’s a washing line strung from the door to the fence with paintings hung with pegs; to my right is the veggie patch the kids have been working on. ‘We got our first carrot!’ the newsletter had announced proudly last week. There is a pile of tiny jumpers and hats in a lost property box, and a little table holding artwork ready to be taken home. Normally this space fills me with contentment. It’s a virtual haven of adorableness. Today all I can think about is keeping my breakfast down.
I punch in the code and let myself into the classroom. I find Gabe at a tiny table cutting up slips of coloured paper. The children are outside; I can see them through the window sitting at tables, having their morning tea. Gabe looks up, surprised but happy to see me. Until I place the newspaper on the table in front of him.
