12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
To Alison’s surprise Harry didn’t insinuate a thing after Hope had left. She’d gone early, declining to order dessert, kissing both their cheeks and wishing them a happy evening, then headed off to get a good night’s sleep. Right about now she would probably be arriving home, getting ready to slip between her pale green bed sheets to rest her golden head and prepare for her day, not of cuddling puppies, but saving their lives with a highly-skilled scalpel.
Alison was feeling uneasy. It had been at least half an hour since Hope had left, the two of them now finishing their final mouthfuls of dessert, and yet still Harry had said nothing. He’d simply watched Hope vanish out the door and turned to Alison and said with uncharacteristic seriousness, “what a thoroughly lovely woman.”
Alison had cautiously agreed, steeling herself for the next sentence to come out his mouth, but Harry had only turned to discuss his own busy week ahead, the caseload he cherry-picked as he slowly eased closer to retirement. He’d insisted on paying the bill - as was his decades long habit - then taken the wheel, driving them home through the winding country roads, driving like a ninety-year-old for fear of hitting a stray wombat.
He was quiet in the car, apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, so Alison took advantage of the unexpected reprieve to daydream out the window at the dark eucalyptus forest. It took her quite by surprise when out of nowhere he spoke up.
“How long have you known you were a lesbian, Ali?”
Her stomach dropped all the way out of her body. What? ! She wanted to shriek. Why would you say something like that?
“About fifteen years or so, I suspect,” she said, instead, her breath escaping as sharply as the secret.
“Oh, my darling,” he said quietly. His hand reached over the gearbox and squeezed her knee.
“I mean, it’s not as black and white as all that.” She turned to look out the window, suddenly afraid she was going to cry. “I did love him, you know. ”
“I know.”
“We actually had quite good sex,” she continued, even as she hated remembering it.
“I mean it’s all friction, darling,” Harry agreed and despite it all, she laughed, blinking away the wetness in her eyes.
“It’s quite a thing to be so… worshipped,” she tried to explain.
“I’m insulted you think you have to explain that to me ,” he said. “Go on, my love.”
“The rush of the forbidden,” she said, “that’s how it started. And I was so young.”
“I remember,” Harry said, his voice clipped.
“Yes. Then after that, I was the new wife,” she winced. “The sexy, rather innocent model, and the mother of his only child. For a man with an ego like his, that was all rather attractive.”
“And for you? ”
“I was craved and revered. When you’re a woman that’s really all you ever get taught about desire. Your worth is being wanted. Being wanted is to feel desire. Even if it’s all someone else’s.”
Harry was silent, absorbing that.
“And then?”
“One day I started to want,” Alison said simply. “For myself.”
“Did you act on it?”
“No.” Throughout her marriage, this had been a clear point of intensely private, forever unacknowledged pride. She loved her husband, she loved her family. She wanted … oh, how she’d wanted. But Alison was so much stronger than mere want. “I’ll never forgive him for it.”
Harry didn’t say a word. He squeezed her knee again. She knew he understood. He’d been there the whole time, after all.
They drove for several minutes, both lost in their own thoughts again. Alison twitched slightly, when quietly he spoke again.
“You’re afraid. ”
Alison glared at him. Because there was perceptive in a way that could bring her catharsis and then there was this: a soft challenge in his voice that said I know you and now I’m going to use it against you.
“I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’m realistic. I’m a mess. I’m broken. I’ve got so much baggage I could build an airport. And some of my baggage is straight up dangerous, Harry. Do you really think I’ll go on forever without one of those tinderboxes my ex-husband lit exploding?”
“You’re trying to keep her safe.”
He didn’t have to say who her was. She didn’t dignify him with a response.
“I never pegged you as a liar, Ali.” Harry changed tack when it was clear she wasn’t planning on indulging him on this line of enquiry.
“Excuse me?” If Harry hadn’t been her oldest friend in the world she would have felt hurt by the tone in his voice. Harry had never hurt her in twenty years of friendship, so she didn’t move past seriously pissed off. Yet.
“I believe that you believe you’re somehow toxic,” he agreed. “As if you think that Simon’s mess will taint you forever. It’s misguided, of course, but it’s only a symptom, not the root cause. ”
“Spare me the psychobabble and spit it out then,” she said sharply.
“You’re forty-five years old,” he said clearly, “and you’ve never been truly intimate with anyone. Let alone someone who could break your heart.”
Alison’s ears popped she was so angry.
“Intimate? I was married for eighteen years.” Her voice sounded like cut glass even to her. “And I had the most public heartbreak of anyone in the world. How many people have had their personal, private heartbreak recreated on network television?”
“That’s not heartbreak,” Harry eased the car down the hill, onto the main street of Gold Hill and coasted out towards the lake. “That’s humiliation and a shattered ego, plus an intense invasion of privacy. Not to mention all the danger to your life, the threats and the fallout on Jac. Then there’s the tragedy of your son’s family being destroyed. Your career. Your sense of security,” he went on, detailing every one of the disasters that had wrecked her. “None of that is a romantic heartbreak, though.”
“Harry, I swear to god, you have no right to tell me how I felt.”
Harry paused at a stop sign and Alison seriously considered throwing herself out the door and marching off into the night.
“I don’t doubt that you loved him, Ali. That your lives were intertwined, that you were a family. Were you ever in love with him though? Did you make love with him?”
Alison stopped herself sharply before her next words could fly out her mouth. Don’t be disgusting, Harry.
She wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. All she could feel was the sharp sense that he was minimising her pain while simultaneously trying to make her risk more of it. And for what possible purpose?
Finally, he pulled into her driveway and all of a sudden she remembered that her big soulless house had once been a sanctuary. She couldn’t wait to shut that heavy wooden front door behind her, to hear nothing but silence. She unclipped her seatbelt, her eyes still anywhere but on Harry.
“You’re trying to protect yourself, Ali,” he said gently. “And that makes perfect sense. But don’t try to pretend to that woman that it’s her you’re trying to protect. She’s far too smart for that. You’ll only wind up losing her.”
Alison opened her door and escaped the car, grabbing her bag on the way.
“We’re friends, ” she said. “There’s no pretending, no protecting, no losing.”
“No heartbreak,” he said. “Well done, Alison.”
She slammed the door and walked away.