Chapter 31
Australia
‘Mums taking a gap year could be the next big thing, Maggie. You’re a trendsetter.’
Harry held his phone across the table to show me, scrolling through the comments on the picture he put up of me in the Blue Mountains.
I was touched reading some of the lovely words of encouragement from Harry’s followers.
‘Gosh, I see what you mean. Look at that one: “Maggie has inspired me to do a solo trip for the first time. Why should my kids have the monopoly on seeing the world?” My little gap year does seem to have captured people’s imagination, doesn’t it? ’
‘An inspiration,’ Harry said. ‘It’s true, you are, Maggie. Bronte would be so proud of her mum.’
‘She’d be proud of you too, of how well you’re dealing with life without her.
’ We smiled at each other, reflecting on how far we’d both already come.
‘Mind you, it took a major life trauma for me to take time out from work. Hopefully all these people commenting won’t wait as long.
At least I’ve got the bug now. Once this trip is over, I’ll be planning more. ’
I told him that Tiff had been in touch, asking if I could go back to Nepal in November to help Meena set up some new adult reading classes. I’d said I would be delighted.
‘You should ask some of these mums if they’d like to volunteer,’ Harry said. ‘There are more than five thousand posts using the Mum’s Gap Year hashtag already. Most of them are connected with you.’
‘I’ve been swamped with direct messages on Instagram,’ I admitted, stunned by the numbers. ‘But I’ve been too busy with the grape harvest to reply.’
He laughed. ‘You’re going to need a social media manager now that you’re an influencer.’
‘Stop it.’ I grinned. ‘Can you imagine?’
Harry and I had met at Watson’s Bay, a short ferry ride from Circular Quay.
It had been his suggestion because he was staying with a friend that night who’d got a job at the hotel beside the quay.
After a breezy walk around the lighthouse, a fit of immature giggling at a canoodling couple on the nudist beach and a frantic wriggle under a gigantic spider’s web crossing our path, we’d arrived back at the quay.
Now it was late afternoon and with plates of fish and chips on order, we were sitting at a waterside table at Doyles restaurant, with Sydney’s iconic skyline gracing the horizon.
‘You look great, by the way,’ said Harry, pouring a Coke Zero into a glass. ‘Relaxed and happy. You look like Bronte, actually.’
‘That’s kind of you to say.’ I was touched, although I’d always thought that she resembled her father more than me. But perhaps the eye sees what it wants to see.
‘The Hunter Valley was good then?’
‘Loved it,’ I confirmed, taking a sip of my sparkling water. ‘I could have stayed longer. Jono asked me to, but I want to see where Bronte was planning to go next.’
‘You got on well with him?’
‘Jono?’ I said with a grin. ‘He’s a love.’
‘Uncle Pete said he’s been very bad-tempered since his wife ran off with the Frenchman.’
I’d rung Kat before dawn yesterday morning after Jono had crept out of Creek Cottage and gone back to his house.
Before I could say a word, she’d launched straight into a story about Mum and the trouble she was in with a credit card company.
To get her attention I’d had to resort to yelling that I’d just had amazing sex with a hot Australian.
The whole of Honeybourne probably heard her shrieks of excitement.
It had only been a brief chat; Sam had come into the room in search of a snack and interrupted us.
‘He isn’t grumpy anymore,’ I said coyly. ‘Jono and I got on very well. Very well indeed.’
‘Good.’ Harry nodded enthusiastically. After a beat the penny dropped and he blinked hard. ‘Oh, right. I see. Good! ’
‘So, thanks for suggesting spending time at Ruby Creek. It worked out very well – for everyone.’
‘Well, gosh,’ he stammered, clearly stuck for a suitable response. ‘I’m pleased for you.’
‘And what about you?’ I gave him a questioning look.
‘You and I had an agreement that we are going to be receptive to love, not rule it out forever. Not that what Jono and I shared was motivated by love; it was pure lust. But we enjoyed each other, if you know what I mean, and it’s given me the confidence to think that one day … ’
Harry choked on his fizzy drink and his glass clunked down on the table.
‘Sorry, too much info,’ I said, laughing. ‘What I’m saying is that I’ve kept my end of the deal. How about you?’
‘Well, you win, progress-wise. I’ve downloaded a couple of dating apps and I’ve been talking to a few girls. You met one of them, actually.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’
‘The waitress in the café in Leura.’ He cleared his throat, and I noticed a slight blush to his face. ‘Lola.’
‘I remember her!’ I’d thought I’d sensed a spark between them. ‘She’s lovely.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. We’ll see.’
‘Baby steps,’ I patted his arm. ‘But steps all the same.’
Our food arrived and for the next few minutes we busied ourselves with condiments and more drinks and Harry taking photos of our plates with the picturesque bay as a backdrop.
‘I’ve been thinking about work,’ said Harry, once our plates had been cleared away. ‘And what I might want to do for a career.’
‘Go on.’ I nodded encouragingly.
He told me that he’d been looking into courses back in the UK, and that he was thinking of training to be a counsellor.
That the popularity of his Instagram posts had made him realise how many people out there were hurting and how much he felt drawn to help them through their trauma.
He’d also been contacted to appear as a guest speaker on a couple of high-profile podcasts.
I was impressed with the way he was getting his life together, and told him so.
‘Do you mind?’ he asked warily.
‘Why would I?’ I gave him a blank look.
He shifted in his seat. ‘Because none of this would have occurred to me if Bronte hadn’t died. Sometimes I worry that I’m somehow profiting from losing my girlfriend.’
‘Oh, love.’ I covered my hand with his. ‘No one could ever accuse you of that. The truth is that life does go on. We have both been changed by losing her. The things we took for granted have gone, the goalposts have shifted. In fact, I don’t even know where my goalposts are any more.
But I do know that my future will always be shaped by the absence of my daughter.
If a path is emerging for you from what you have experienced, embrace it. ’
He smiled with evident relief. ‘Thanks. It feels good to be doing something positive. Like it’s given me a purpose.’
‘That’s what I need,’ I said wistfully. ‘A new sense of purpose. Following Bronte’s itinerary has given me one for the time being. But soon I’ll get to the last page and then what?’
‘Create your own?’ suggested Harry. ‘Now you’ve got the travel bug, what’s to stop you planning the sort of itinerary she did? You’ve just said Nepal is on the cards for winter.’
He got up from the table to find the bathroom, leaving me to think that through.
‘There’s more to life than work, Mum,’ Bronte had said during our last conversation.
She would hardly recognise this version of her mother.
I’d barely thought about work at all since the day I talked George out of resigning.
I’d had one text from him saying that Anna and her family had gone on a skiing holiday and bumped into Lee and his family and they had come back best buddies – but nothing else.
That had shaken me a bit, if I was honest. Anna had always been my friend.
Not that she wasn’t allowed to have more than one friend, obviously.
But I supposed I’d been relying on our bond to help strengthen my route to the boardroom.
Now that Lee had established himself as her friend too, that link no longer seemed so secure.
My Honeybourne life seemed so far away now, inhabited by a sepia version of me, a woman living half an existence.
The idea of spending every day at a desk only to go home, eat, sleep and repeat, felt so alien that I wondered how I’d cope when the day came to don smart clothes and proper shoes and head to the office.
I smiled to myself, recalling that this was exactly what I’d predicted for Bronte.
That she’d get a taste for travelling and not want to come home.
Would it have been so bad if that had happened to her? Or did happen to me?
I shrugged off the notion. Of course I’d be going back to work, I had bills to pay, a pension to build.
But the woman who’d be stepping back into her career was going to be setting boundaries.
Emails received at the end of the work day would go unanswered, annual leave would be taken; no letting it roll over to the next year.
There was a world out there, and I was going to explore it while I had the chance.
Once Harry returned, we settled the bill and gathered our things. The next ferry to Circular Quay wasn’t for another half an hour, so we took a stroll along the beach and ogled the beautiful properties lining the shore.
‘Listen, there’s something I’d like to do while I’m here with you, if you don’t mind.’ I reached into my bag and took out the small pot of Bronte’s ashes I’d brought from home. I told him the story of sprinkling some of them at the temple in Nepal and that I wanted to do the same here.
‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’
Together we walked to the edge and each took a pinch of the ashes.
‘I miss you, darling,’ I whispered under my breath as I flung the ashes out into the water. ‘Thank you for bringing me here; thank you for bringing Harry into my life. I love you.’