Chapter 58
AUDREY
I cannot sit at this table and watch Harlow acting out one of the most intimate scenes from my own life. She’ll probably clamber onto the table, pretending it’s Beau’s ute, and show us the bit where I gave him everything.
No notes, the script says. I mean, does he honestly have so little respect and so many tickets on himself he thought to include every single moment of that exchange?
I storm out. Beau follows me. Harlow tries to follow him, but he begs her to give us space and I am breathless with rage.
‘I have some notes for you, Beau,’ I bite out. ‘The moment on that clifftop wasn’t ours. It didn’t belong to us. It wasn’t yours, just to cheapen and give away to the world like this. It was mine.’
Words from years ago storm in and meet my current situation, rotating like two giant weather systems, gathering force. Josh, you know this is mine. How could you have sold me out like this?
I imagine the clifftop scene playing out on the big screen, sweeping drone footage over the ocean … and the way I would love it if it wasn’t lifted from my own life.
‘Audrey, let me explain!’
‘I know this feeling. I’ve felt it before. The plunging of shock when you realise someone has taken something sacred.’
Staring at him, I am right back where I was at twenty-two, reeling against the brazen thievery of the most personal part of my psyche.
My music. He knew that, and now he’s taken from me something even more layered and personal.
The most vulnerable moment of my life. And shared it with twenty people in that room, with the intent to share it with millions.
‘Were you going to take my music, too?’ I scream.
‘Even knowing what you know? Is that why you recorded me in the rehearsal room?’ My fury is galloping.
I am appalled, not only at what he has done but at myself, for letting him in, giving him the chance.
‘You knew I’d been deeply betrayed in the past. You knew this was my hottest trigger point.
You knew how much it took for me to open up to you about Fraser and this song.
You saw me let my darkest emotion rip, in real time.
And you sat there, watching me, doing an excellent impression of someone who really cared.
I thought you were supporting me. Were you taking notes all along? ’
He is speechless, unable to defend himself.
‘I mean, what else happens in this movie, Beau?’ I whisper now. ‘Does the protagonist become an alcoholic?’ He sweeps me further from the door, but I don’t care who’s hearing this. ‘Does she smash into his life drunk? I can’t believe I let you convince me it was okay to—’
Where is this statement going? Okay to what? Risk falling for him?
I am sideswiped by my own realisation. Devastated by it. Disappointed in myself that I could have allowed my already smashed heart to crack open again in front of someone, so fast, and let this much light flood in.
‘Audrey, you have to listen!’
But that’s not true. I don’t have to do anything. I find myself stepping back from him, hands off, turning away, fleeing this place before he can hurt me any further.
And as I grab my bag and tear past him and down the stairs, faster and faster towards the kerb, where I’ll hail a taxi, I start laying into myself.
What made you think you could slot into a world like Beau’s?
This glittering red-carpet ride that he’s on.
I don’t belong here, in the reflected spotlight of Oscar-nominated stardom.
Of course it was all fake! That’s his job!
To tell stories! Maybe I do belong in the safety of the audience.
Anonymously. Quietly. Where Professor Ridges told me to go because I had good ideas but they were never enough.
Not without him. And now I have offered my stone-cold broken heart to someone who wasn’t careful with the horrific path I’ve been thrown on.
Someone who’s rushed in, guns blazing, fireworks bursting, and trampled everything, hurling my heart at the wall.
I need to hold myself together. Once I slide into the taxi’s back seat, I try to centre myself in the eye of this storm and in the protective stillness of the car.
‘Airport?’ the driver asks, and I nod.
Airport bar …
Breathe, Audrey.
I try phoning my sponsor, Ali, but the call goes to voicemail.
Flashes of the impact of alcohol shoot through my body as if I’ve already taken several sips.
The way it buzzes through your veins. The lifting of stress.
The sense of it picking you up and carrying you away from the parts of life you don’t feel strong enough to endure.
In these crashing moments of even more loss, my mind is grappling for control over a body that is screaming for the short-term, solve-all balm for which it habitually wants to reach, even years on.
And I exhale, long and slow.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Don’t let him take this, too, a voice whispers. I’m digging as deep as I’ve ever had to.
As buildings flash by and we drive through city streets, my imagination is filled with a maelstrom of hurt and harm and disappointment and betrayal, amber liquids and easy magic swirling through the images. It would be so easy …
I pick up my phone again. I could call Rach, but Jasper is teething.
She hasn’t slept in weeks. And I think this needs an expert.
It’s another clifftop, of sorts. But not the place where I let everything go and allow fresh strength to sweep through me as a result.
A place from which it is too easy to slip, gravity pulling me into the surge, smashing me against rocks, dragging me into depths I don’t have the strength to fight again. It’s like wrestling a monster.
I dial a different number.
‘Audrey?’ Maggie says, when she picks up. ‘Listen, I already told Parker it’s okay for you to come to her concert tonight.’
Oh my God, it’s only now that I remember the problems with Parker and how I’ve promised to be there, and wonder if Parker or Josh has spoken to her yet. Why did I phone Maggie of all people, when we’ve already got so much going on?
‘I’m sorry for calling,’ I say, hearing the strain in my voice. ‘I just need to say I’m heading to the airport in Sydney. Now. I came here for …’ I can’t tell her I’ve been at a table read for a movie—she’d accuse me of intoxication!
‘Is everything all right?’
I wait to catch my breath and my thoughts.
I’d have to be crazy to divulge this to Maggie now, when I’m still hoping she’ll let me back into Parker’s life, but the fact is, I’m desperate.
‘I haven’t had a single drop of alcohol in nearly two and a half years,’ I explain.
‘Not since my first AA meeting. But something happened today that really gutted me. I tried calling my sponsor. She didn’t answer—’
‘Okay, I’m glad you phoned.’ Her whole tone shifts to accommodate a conversation very different from the one she’d anticipated.
I sit back in the car and close my eyes.
‘I’ll stay on the line with you until this passes. It will pass, Audrey. You’ve triumphed over it repeatedly. Every single time. I can’t tell you how impressed I’ve been.’
If she’s been that impressed, why can’t I see her daughter?
‘Can we talk about something else?’ The taxi flies onto the Harbour Bridge, and I try to focus on glimpses of the Opera House through steel girders.
Strong sunlight flickers through the shadows as we rush past. It only makes me more anxious, and now I’m reminded of a time when I was standing down there with Fraser and Parker, the weekend we went wedding shopping. ‘Anything at all, Maggie …’
‘I need to thank you for talking to Parker with Josh,’ she says, calmly.
‘She came home that night and confided in me about how she’s been feeling and the self-harm.
She said you convinced her to and told her about that time we went to the doctor together.
You didn’t have to go into all of that in front of Josh. I’ve kept your confidence.’
‘Some things are more important than my pride. I’m glad she came to you. Is she going to be okay?’
There’s a long pause, during which I feel like she is carrying the world.
Sometimes I forget what she lost when Fraser died.
Her co-parent The only person who loved Parker in quite the same way, who knew her from birth and was there for every first step.
A person now glaringly absent from everything, without any clear label for her loss.
Maggie isn’t widowed, but as a sole parent, she might as well be.
She’s still shepherding a grief-stricken child through life and doing it all on her own.
‘Audrey, I think I need you,’ she says eventually. ‘In her life. In mine. I’m sorry I shut you out for this long.’
Has she forgotten the purpose of this phone call, and the fact that I seem to be almost back to square one, furiously craving the substance that tore down my life for a time and put her daughter in harm’s way?
‘I’ve literally just called you to say I want a drink, Maggie.’
‘Yes, and you’re not going to have one. Are you?’
I shut my eyes and listen to my body. Inhaling fortitude, exhaling anger and fear and grief. I picture myself arriving at the domestic terminal in Mascot, getting out of this taxi, walking through security, straight past the bar to the coffee shop …
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m not going to drink.’
‘I can stay on this call until you board,’ she explains. ‘You’ll only have to get through the flight itself, but I believe you can.’
I imagine the flight attendants dragging the trolley up the aisle, little bottles rattling, within reach. I see myself ordering water. Maybe a chicken wrap. And I believe that Maggie and I have averted my current crisis together. How do any adults get through their lives completely alone?
‘I’ve only ever wanted to support you with Parker,’ I tell her. ‘I know she and I have music, but I will never replace you, Maggie. I never could.’
‘Can I save a seat for you at the concert beside Josh and me?’ she asks. ‘I don’t want her looking for us in three different parts of the audience.’
Much as I could do without seeing Josh after all of this, I agree. Parker has enough going on. She needs a united front.
‘I’d love that.’ It’s as if, in one conversation, the tension in our entire relationship has ratcheted down several notches. As if we’ve been on opposing teams all this time and one of us has crossed sides. Are you watching this, Fraser, wherever you are?
‘Do you want to call me from the other side of security?’
The airport is in sight now. ‘I think I’ll be okay.’ That horrible, itchy static that was screaming for alcohol has dissolved, and I’ve got the music back in my head.
We end the call and I cue Fraser’s song. That invisible, powerful thread I’ve always felt between us. Grounded by what we had. Guided by it …
Except now the song also reminds me of Beau, and I can’t hear it without my brain layering the new sounds over the top.
What I must not do is let this latest betrayal harden me, or let this one tumultuous week close off my life. I must protect Parker, my music and my sobriety over everything.
As I climb out of the taxi and enter the airport terminal, there’s an incoming message from Josh.
Audrey I really need to speak with you. Before tonight.
For fuck’s sake. There is nothing he could tell me at this point that would fix things between us. Men like Josh and Beau—the type who dazzle you with their creative admiration, luring you skyward—promise to keep monsters at bay.
Then they feed you to them.
Sully, this is bigger than you and me.