Chapter 3
Katrina stared at herself in her ensuite mirror, rubbing her eye bags with the jade roller she’d cooled in the fridge.
She needed to leave for the gala and she wasn’t even dressed.
Her face was puffy from crying and broken sleep.
Through the door behind her, she could see her walk-in wardrobe, stuffed with dark shapes.
She was trying not to think, because all trains of thought led to Craig, and that felt like pressing on a bruise: her insides seemed to be one purplish-green mass.
Not thinking was tricky, though. Even after downloading the Dhyana Dude app that Gabby was always recommending, Katrina was a meditation failure.
She couldn’t seem to empty her mind of thoughts.
As soon as she thought she wasn’t thinking, she realised she was thinking about not thinking.
Thoughts popped into her head by themselves and she couldn’t figure out how anyone, even the Buddha, managed to block them out.
Katrina was dipping her brush into her foundation, being resolutely mindful about the neutral acts of dabbing and blending, when she caught sight of a lonely hanger on Craig’s side of the wardrobe.
She and Craig still hadn’t thrashed things out.
It was two weeks since the night of the ill-fated prawns, when he’d stomped off, leaving her with the dinner-party fallout.
She’d texted everyone on her guest list: gastro attack, dinner cancelled, so sorry.
Then she’d waited for Craig to calm down and call her, so they could fix things instead of flinging wild insults around.
But he never had. And then Bailey had turned up at the door anyway, and she’d forced Justin to deal with him.
‘Brow powder, brow powder,’ she mumbled, poking about in her make-up drawer.
When she glanced up, she caught sight of the amaranth Veronica Beard sheath dress she’d bought for the gala and felt sick with shame.
Even though it had been on sale, that dress had still cost her $498, paid for with birthday cash she’d squirrelled away.
Craig was right: she was a spendthrift. He always said she didn’t understand money because she’d only come into it relatively late, as a teenager.
She ought to return the dress, but how could she, when she’d described it to half the people at school?
If she didn’t wear it, Nicola and Gabby and even Pauline would twig that something was wrong.
Katrina hadn’t spoken to her friends about any of this.
What was the point, when Craig would likely return in a few days?
Only the boys knew. Hamish, a first-year engineering student, seemed to be coping because he had a group of supportive friends – though he’d expressed some concern about the financial side of things – but Justin was devastated.
He wasn’t as mature or as social as Hamish, and he’d always been more sensitive.
In a series of texts so heartless that Katrina worried he might be having a mental breakdown, Craig had threatened to stop paying Justin’s Colville fees and proposed that Justin move to the notorious local high school.
Katrina couldn’t believe it. The emotional impact on Justin would be shattering.
She’d texted this to Craig, but he hadn’t responded.
Katrina dipped her brush into the brow powder again.
Perhaps Roxane was behind those texts? Perhaps she’d taken charge of Craig’s phone?
It made sense. Katrina had called Craig so often and left so many messages, mostly in a measured voice, telling him she missed him, a couple of times upset and weeping, and once – she felt hot and miserable whenever she recalled it – screaming with a rage she’d never known she could feel, but he hadn’t once called back.
His silence haunted her. If only they could talk, instead of all this hateful messaging, she felt sure they’d be able to work it out.
In the lonely evening hours, she had imagined how their reunion would unfold: the sound of his car in the driveway; her heart leaping into her throat; his key scratching in the lock; her hand wrenching the door open.
Then Craig collapsing onto the sofa, unable to meet her eyes, apologising for all the awful things he’d said to her.
Then hours of earnest discussion and tears on both sides, culminating in a tired, tender breakfast, with maybe some shared waffle making while singing ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ . . .
Wait, the waffles were in a scene from one of her favourite romcoms, A Little Bit of Luck. Scrap the waffle making.
Craig would be back, she felt sure. He was too intelligent to throw away more than twenty years of marriage like a dirty old band-aid.
But she would still have to keep quiet about it, since people like Gabby would judge her for allowing Craig to return.
Gabby, so protective of her friends, would twist Craig into the villain of the piece, turning the Colville crowd against him.
And Nicola, for all her sterling qualities, could never keep a secret.
No, Katrina couldn’t tell her friends. And as for her mother . . . definitely not.
The thought of her elegant, exacting mother made Katrina’s hand jerk, leaving a deep red streak of lip tint on her jaw.
The wetsuit. Oh, the wetsuit! For years, Maureen Quigley had insisted on buying Craig presents like shaving kits and driving loafers, which he’d dutifully unwrapped and shoved in the back of his wardrobe.
‘She wants to remodel me like a kitchen’ was how he put it – and he had a point.
So this year in June, Katrina had worked up the courage to suggest a list of Christmas presents that Craig would actually like.
After a lot of arguing, her mother had surrendered.
With pursed lips and flared nostrils, she’d stepped into a surf shop and spent ‘far too much’ on a men’s XL zip-free compression wetsuit.
Despair welled up inside Katrina. If Craig wasn’t back by Christmas, her mother would never forgive her for that wetsuit.
Craig was now renting a luxurious apartment overlooking the beach with Roxane.
Katrina knew this because he’d been insensitive enough to invite Hamish over on a father-and-son surfing Saturday.
According to Hamish, Roxane wore lots of silver rings and walked around barefoot in something that looked like a nightie.
After making Hamish an organic yerba mate tea, she’d sat cross-legged on the sofa, her hand on Craig’s thigh, asking Hamish penetrating questions about sustainability in electrical engineering.
A hot flush started in Katrina’s chest and spread up her neck.
Even though she changed her HRT patches religiously, these flushes still came when she got upset – and Roxane was enough to upset anyone.
Infatuation or not, Roxane wasn’t dull and suburban.
She understood risk assessment, sustainability and how to convince Craig to spend $17 on a box of tea.
She was probably also a certified Zen master who could stop her thoughts on command.
Katrina fanned her face with her Centenary Gala invitation, wondering again if Craig was sick of shouldering the financial burden alone. Had she been taking advantage?
Two days earlier, Katrina had phoned the physiotherapy board, whose representative – a curt young woman – had explained that most people rang to renew after a three-to-five-year lapse.
Since Katrina had last practised as a physiotherapist, ah, fourteen years ago, she would need to find an employer who would supervise her for at least 450 hours.
She would also have to engage in a year-long professional development course, for a hefty fee – providing the board agreed to let Katrina register at all.
The woman’s tone suggested that Katrina was an idiot for giving up her career.
How could Katrina explain? Before they’d had kids, Craig and Katrina’s relationship had been more balanced.
Sure, Craig had earned more money and Katrina had done more housework, but the gap hadn’t been so big.
Everything had changed when their first child was born.
For a new mother, it had been exhausting to work even part-time, let alone keep the house and take care of Hamish.
Then, after Justin’s arrival, Katrina’s salary had barely covered the cost of childcare, and the sheer scale of the caring and cleaning and cooking had ballooned.
Besides, once she’d met her precious boys, she’d wanted to be there for every moment of their childhoods.
In fact, she’d been relieved she didn’t have to become a multi-tasking wonder woman.
After that call to the physio board, Katrina had realised her resume contained a desolate void.
But she would gladly take a cleaning job to support Craig, because she knew, with the quiet confidence of someone who owned a ten-piece bottle-brush set, that she would make a terrific cleaner.
She’d texted him this very thought – and many others – but he’d never replied.
Surely Roxane wasn’t deleting his messages . . .?
Thinking about jobs made Katrina panicky, so she had to stop.
Right now, her job was to pay attention to what was around her: the smell of her hand cream, the squeeze of her shapewear, the zipper purring along the back of her dress.
Slip on her gold heels, add a bracelet, her engagement ring.
She sucked her teeth as she jammed the two-carat diamond onto her finger, then stopped to consider what it was worth.
Perhaps $20,000? But she could never sell the ring Craig had given her.
It was a symbol of their love; a love she could save.