Chapter 19
Australia
Harry was waiting on the platform of Leura station, standing tall and broad-shouldered.
His attention was on his phone screen, giving me a chance to study him, this boy who’d captured my daughter’s heart.
T-shirts, shorts and trainers, all black: his taste in clothes hadn’t altered, I noticed.
Bronte had looked like an exotic bird next to him in her thrift store florals.
Yet now he looked unrecognisable from the image I had of him at the funeral last year.
Then his entire demeanour had been one of a young man defeated by life, his stance bent and his pale face doing its best to mask his emotions.
His dark wavy hair was shorter than it had been last time I’d seen him.
He’d got a suntan too; I remembered Bronte complaining last summer that he only had to look at the sun and he turned brown.
A look of recognition crossed his face. He smiled, raised his hand.
I felt an ache of sadness that it was me, not Bronte, stepping off the train to meet him and wondered if the same thought had occurred to him.
Their faces would have been lit with love and excitement.
He’d have swept her up and kissed her, ignoring the looks from other passengers.
I knew this because he’d picked us up from the airport once and I had looked on fondly and with slight envy at the youthful exuberance of first love.
I walked towards him, dragging my suitcase behind me, conscious of the fluttering of butterflies in my stomach.
Was this a strange thing to be doing, meeting my dead daughter’s boyfriend, ex-boyfriend?
Was she even his ex? That sounded wrong, as if they’d chosen to part ways rather than being ripped apart through the actions of someone else.
‘Harry!’ I smiled shakily as I approached him. ‘I made it. Thanks for meeting me. It’s good to see you.’
‘Hello, Maggie.’ His eyes roamed my face. Bronte and I looked alike – had looked alike. Everyone told us so. He was looking at an older version of her, a version which would never exist. ‘Good trip?’
‘Really good.’ I reached for my water bottle and took a sip, conscious of my dry mouth.
‘I loved watching the landscape change the further away from the city we got. I love Sydney and the ocean, but the hills and all the trees, and looking at the countryside …’ I was aware that I was rambling, but couldn’t shut up.
‘Well, it’s beautiful. Only a hundred kilometres away, but it feels like I’m in a completely different place. ’
He nodded. ‘It’s a world away from the city. I’m looking forward to showing you around.’
‘You look great.’ My voice broke as I said it, and with it, my heart all over again.
I was pleased to see him looking well; of course I was.
But whereas he was a picture of health, my daughter was dead.
He’d survived the accident with cracked ribs and broken bones – Bronte had lost her life.
Seeing him so young, so alive, delivered a punchy reminder of what I’d lost. For a few seconds, I could do nothing other than stare, the beat of my heart crashing in my ears.
His smile was tentative. ‘I’m getting there.’
His voice still sounded the same, but there was a new, more adult edge.
We stood awkwardly opposite each other, arms by our sides, the enormous loss we shared standing between us like a fracture in the ground after an earthquake.
‘Come here.’ I opened my arms and Harry almost fell into them. ‘I need a hug.’
‘Me too.’ I heard the wobble in his voice, and hugged him tight.
Underneath his T-shirt I could feel his shoulder blades.
There was less of him than before and the thought that he’d been suffering to the point of losing weight sent a wave of shame through me.
I’d been so wrapped up in my grief that I hadn’t paid enough attention to the hearts of others around me who’d lost her too.
‘I’m sorry I’ve not been in touch more,’ I said, pulling back to look into his blue eyes.
He shook his head. ‘I’m the one who should be apologising. But I couldn’t face … I couldn’t …’ He rubbed his face roughly. ‘Shit.’ Then, ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to swear.’
‘It’s okay, Bronte’s not here to tell you off.’
He gave me a bemused look as if to say, really, you’re making jokes?
‘We’re in the way, here. Is there somewhere to get coffee?’ I asked as a family with a double buggy and a teenager pulling two suitcases attempted to squeeze past us without falling onto the tracks.
He rubbed his stomach. ‘Yeah, actually, I’m starving.’
I had a flashback to all the times he and Bronte had showed up at my house and he’d said the same thing. Within minutes they’d be in the kitchen raiding the fridge. ‘When are you ever not starving?’
Harry grabbed the handle of my suitcase, his head shaking slightly. ‘You sounded exactly like her then,’ he murmured.
He still loved her, I realised with a pang.
‘What do you think she’d say about us meeting up in Australia?’
‘She’d say …’ He shook his head and smiled. ‘She’d say, Charming, where’s my bloody invite? ’
I laughed, grateful to release some of the tension that had been building. ‘That is exactly what she’d say.’
I took his arm. I’d never done that before, but it felt right. And together we headed down the hill towards the centre of town.
Leura’s high street was not at all what I was expecting.
The buildings on either side of the road had a familiar Edwardian feel about them, with ornate balconies and little gable windows set high up in the eaves.
There was a plethora of boutiques, art galleries and restaurants, many of which were painted in pretty pastel shades.
Down the centre of the road was a wide grass verge full of mature trees, which Harry informed me had earned the town the description of ‘the garden village’.
We stopped outside the Leura Café and Deli and he gestured for me to go in.
The interior was divided into two: a deli at the front selling an array of salads and pies, pastries and sandwiches; and a café behind with a glass wall at the back.
We chose a table with an incredible view across what Harry informed me was Katoomba, another popular town in the Blue Mountains.
Harry tucked my suitcase out of the way, and we ordered – coffee for both of us and banana bread for him – and for a moment my brain froze.
I shifted in my seat, fumbling for the right words.
This was the first time we’d been alone together since Bronte died.
In fact, he and I had never spent any time alone; Bronte had always been there.
He seemed to feel the same and for the next few minutes we traded banal comments about the café, the menu and the view.
I remembered that our last face-to-face conversation had been stilted, a few exchanged words before the funeral service.
I had no clear recollection of what had been said.
The day had gone by in a blur of tissues and tears, and platitudes and promises from everyone to help with anything, anything at all.
And now here we both were, four thousand miles from home, facing each other across a café table; the two most important people in Bronte’s life.
After we’d exhausted our small talk, we finally looked at each other directly.
‘There’s so much I want to say,’ I began, ‘but now I’m here, I’m struggling to find the right words.’
‘Yeah.’ He ruffled his hair, self-consciously. ‘Same here. It feels a million years since I sat in your cottage in Honeybourne making pancakes with …’ He clenched his jaw and glanced away. It struck me that he hadn’t said her name out loud yet.
‘Look, we’re here now and we’ve got plenty of time to chat,’ I told him. ‘Let’s take the pressure off and not worry about the big stuff yet.’
‘Cool.’ He shot me a grateful smile. ‘It’s … it’s good to see you, Maggie. Weird to have you sitting opposite me in a café in the Blue Mountains. It’s like two worlds colliding.’
He laughed gently under his breath, but it was without humour.
‘I think you’d got an internship lined up for last year,’ I said, changing the subject for him. ‘How did it go?’
Before he had a chance to respond, someone called his name and we both looked up to see a man approaching our table carrying a takeaway coffee and a paper bag.
‘G’day, my friend.’ The man patted Harry’s shoulder.
‘Karl.’ Harry stood and shook his hand.
‘I won’t interrupt you,’ said Karl, giving me a look of apology. ‘But I wanted to say thanks for the post you tagged us in. We sold out of the poetry book you linked on your story. The author was really pleased too.’
‘No worries.’ Harry looked uncomfortable with the compliment. ‘Happy to help.’
‘Well, I appreciate it, mate.’ Karl sipped his coffee. ‘There’s a proof of a new book arrived at the shop that I think you’ll like. I’ll save it for you. Drop in again soon.’
‘I did a post on Instagram about his bookshop,’ Harry explained once his friend had gone. He cleared his throat. ‘And, er, the internship thing didn’t work out.’
‘Oh?’
He scooted his chair in closer to the table and kept his eyes lowered. ‘My head wasn’t in the right place for it, so I left.’ He shrugged. ‘They were good about it; said I can come back next year if I want.’
I nodded. ‘And so you decided to travel instead?’
I knew from our recent WhatsApp conversations that he’d been travelling since the New Year, staying in the Blue Mountains with his uncle for a while planning to go to New Zealand and on to the Philippines. An impromptu gap year, he’d called it. I hadn’t needed to ask why.
‘Yeah, I wanted to be somewhere new, no memories, you know?’ He looked up at me from under his dark lashes. ‘I hope that doesn’t sound bad?’
My heart ached. ‘No, Harry, it sounds entirely reasonable. Going away and getting a fresh perspective on life is a great idea. I’m doing something similar myself.’
He grinned. ‘It was a surprise to get your message. The last place I expected you to be was Sydney.’