Chapter 43
FRASER
It takes Rachael and Parker about five minutes to cook up a scheme that we drive an hour away to hike Pigeon House Mountain.
Parker and I love hiking. Rachael prefers an airconditioned gym but appears to be undergoing a personality transformation, and after her bombshell Ireland announcement, this feels like one of our family ‘lasts’.
And that, there, is the problem. This feels exactly like a family.
The whole car ride, the two of them prattle on about TV shows I’ve never seen, podcasts and viral reels on social media, and it occurs to me that Rachael speaks fluent ‘teen’.
Or perhaps it’s that she speaks fluent ‘Parker’—that fluency having crept up on me, along with so many other things, it seems.
‘You know this one, Dad!’ Parker says, playing a snippet from a song on her phone, which has apparently inspired some weird viral dance.
‘No?’
‘How can you not? It’s everywhere!’
‘I don’t listen to the top forty.’
‘Parker, your father doesn’t listen to the top four thousand. You should have seen him the night the three of us met! Absolutely no idea who either me or Audrey was dressed as—’
‘Tell me the story again!’ Parker says, delighted. ‘Especially the bit about the ice bucket!’
Rachael smiles, the memory no doubt sinking in of when her best friend came to her rescue. She and I have talked about this before, about how helpless we’ve always felt that we couldn’t rescue Audrey right back when she needed it.
‘Well, the party was nineties themed—’ she begins, swivelling in the passenger seat so she can look at Parker while she recounts the evening.
‘As in the late nineteen hundreds? So you were all, like, wearing antique clothes?’
‘Gosh, Parker. Yes. Last century. And let’s go with the term “retro” rather than “antique”, shall we?’ Rach says, indignantly.
‘Technically the industry term is vintage,’ I add. ‘For anything thirty-plus years old.’
Rachael thumps me on the arm. ‘Anyway, your stepmum went as Britney Spears. You know, “… Baby One More Time”?’
There’s a blank look from the back seat.
‘“Oops! … I Did It Again”?’
‘Did what again?’ Parker asks.
‘No, that’s a song title. Anyway, your dad was as clueless as you are about who she was—’
‘But you were alive last century, Dad.’
‘Parker, will you stop referring to the nineties as if we’re talking about the Middle Ages?’ I order her, laughing.
‘You are middle-aged. The Bookies think you’re having a midlife crisis!’
Rachael laughs off this suggestion and forges on. ‘Audrey was dressed as Britney. Your dad as David Beckham.’
‘Oh my GOD. Why were you dressed as Brooklyn Beckham’s dad? He’s ancient.’
Rachael and I explode now.
‘Who did you go as, Rach?’ she asks.
‘Catwoman,’ I reply, confident I’ve got this one right, at least.
‘Victoria Adams,’ Rachael says, frowning at me.
‘Who the fuck is Victoria Adams?’ I ask, forgetting for a second that Parker is in the car.
I am thoroughly confused. ‘I thought you were Catwoman. You know, from the 1940s comics? Always thought you’d got your decade wrong, or the only thing you had hanging in your wardrobe happened to be a latex catsuit … ’
We exchange a look that seems to convey my thoughts about said outfit.
‘Fraser, you are hopeless,’ she accuses me. ‘I was Victoria Adams, circa the “Say You’ll Be There” music video? Please tell me you’ve heard of the Spice Girls?’
‘Wait!’ Parker says, sitting bolt upright and then leaning forward from the middle back seat.
She grabs both of our shoulders as if she has finally pieced all this together, like the chief inspector in a murder mystery.
‘Dad went as Brooklyn Beckham’s dad, and you went as his mum?
You two basically went to this party as a married couple! ’
She lets us both go, falls back and rolls around laughing. ‘It’s like you fell in love with the wrong pop star, Dad!’
This is endlessly amusing, apparently.
‘Parker, your dad is a brilliant man, but this level of pop culture complexity is well beyond him.’
Rach touches me on the arm as I swing onto the turnoff to the mountain trail. ‘To give you credit, Frase, that was a good line. Remember the one about my eight other lives?’
It hadn’t got a rise on the night. What with my ineptitude over the brewing brawl with Connor, my woeful lack of cultural knowledge, and ice and water raining down from the deck overhead, I’m amazed she even recalls it.
According to the hiking notes online, the final climb to the summit involves a series of steep metal ladders bolted to the side of vertical rock faces.
If your legs haven’t already given out, your nerve might, and there are warnings to avoid the ladders if you’re anxious.
Parker scurries straight up the first one without even taking a breather after our punishing climb.
‘After you, Mrs Beckham,’ I say when Rach and I have caught our breath and had some water.
She shakes her head and takes another swig from the drink bottle. ‘I think I’ll wait here—you two go ahead.’
‘Oh, Rach, you can’t give up now!’ Parker begs from above. ‘Please come with us!’
Rach is the fittest out of the three of us, but I forgot she has a thing with heights. Audrey used to talk about the time they had to be relocated when they’d inadvertently purchased the nosebleed seats at a concert in one of Sydney’s Darling Harbour theatres.
‘You don’t have to,’ I tell her before looking up the ladder and calling out, ‘Don’t pressure people to do things they don’t want to do!’
Rachael glances upwards, squinting and shielding her eyes from the sun, then back at Parker. And at me. ‘I could go a little way up? Just give this first ladder a try?’
It’s probably part of her newfound resolve to extend herself. The fertility treatment. Emigrating. Settling down in some picture-postcard cottage with a rugged Irishman and his good craic, delivered with the kind of irresistible lilting accent that leaves the rest of us—
Where am I being left, here, precisely?
‘Dad will help,’ Parker says, scurrying up the second ladder. ‘I’ll get the content for TikTok.’
‘Please don’t, Parks!’ Rach begs, turning me around so she can stash her drink bottle in my backpack.
She takes the first few steps up the ladder, and I watch from the ground. So far, so good, as she makes it to the first landing. I follow her up and wait while she tackles the next one, watching as she slows her pace, hands gripping the railings tightly.
‘You’re fine,’ I call from below. ‘One step at a time.’
She’s gone quiet. Then she makes the mistake of glancing down, and I see her press herself forward on the ladder, both feet on one rung, frozen.
‘Fraser,’ she says, her tone urgent. I step up behind her, two rungs at a time, until I reach her lower legs.
‘You’re okay. Take a step down.’
She shakes her head, and I pull myself up until my feet are planted a rung below, my body right behind hers.
‘Come on, Rach!’ Parker shouts from well above.
‘Just ignore her,’ I say, calmly. ‘There’s no rush.’
She’s shaking, and I’m trying to work out the best strategy to help her back, when I feel her foot lift up as she reaches slightly higher with one hand. God. Here I was trying to get her down.
‘That’s it,’ I say, and she pulls herself up, her body rigid with fear while I shadow her.
It takes a full five minutes to ascend the next eight steps, and by now we’re being chased by a boisterous family with young kids, whooping and squealing below us.
Reaching the next landing, Rachael runs her hands along the rail as if she can’t see, pushing herself into the corner, facing the rock wall, and not the increasingly sweeping views towards the coast and the hinterland, letting the family past. Parker is long gone now and hopefully behaving herself at the summit.
I don’t want to point this out, but the higher we go, the harder it will be to clamber back down. I’ve got visions of Rachael having a mental health crisis at the top and having to be helicoptered out.
‘Talk to me, Fraser,’ she says, determined progress being made as we set off towards the next landing. I’m right behind her, wrapped around her, more proud of her than I can articulate for even attempting this.
‘I think I’ve been taking you for granted for years,’ I blurt out.
I’m sure she meant for me to deliver some lighthearted, distracting banter and not a hard-hitting personal revelation. It’s just, if she’s going to cling to the side of a rock face and stare down her fears, maybe I should as well.
In any case, she’s not moving now. She’s got a vice-like grip on the upper rung, as a coastal breeze whips around us, wisps of blonde hair teasing my face.
‘We’re almost there.’ I bring a steady hand to her waist, palm resting on the soft Lycra at her hip. ‘We’re closer than you think.’
There’s another gust of the sea breeze, and I’m overwhelmed by the duelling scents of sunscreen and salt and eucalyptus and that perfume she always wears, that I always like, until it’s me who feels unsteady, and I have to release her hip and take the railing again.
‘Don’t let go,’ she whispers, moving her body back into mine, and I instinctively press forward to secure her between me and the ladder.
She doesn’t see how hard I swallow as I place my hand back on her waist and shut my eyes for a second as we push upwards together.
We’ve held each other through the detonation of losing Audrey.
We’ve seen each other at our best and worst. But what she’s oblivious to is the fact that her turning up here and flinging her crossroads in my path has brought me to a crossroads of my own.
It’s me with the vertigo. Suddenly, deeply, and in a time-sensitive, potentially life-altering way, everything I haven’t dared feel about this woman has rushed forward.
I can’t tell her now, because what if we both let go and fall? But I am even more afraid than she is.