Chapter 63
FRASER
‘Right, hand over your phone,’ Jess says when the Bookies are all set up in the family room. ‘Let’s go through this app and sort you out.’
Sudden panic hits, because I think they are sick of my dilly-dallying and they intend to throw me at one of these matches for real. Rach and I haven’t told them about us. We wanted to expand this friendship in private first, before turning the whole thing into a pep rally.
‘I want Dad to delete the app,’ Parker says, so emphatically it silences the room.
She does?
She said at the coast it was okay with her if I dated. Maybe she’s not ready after all. I can’t even look at Rachael.
‘But we went to all that trouble to make your dad sound attractive!’ April explains, as if the whole exercise was unbearable.
‘Yeah, and it obviously worked, because all these women kept messaging him the whole time we were camping! So cringe!’ Parker mimics being sick, a gesture I detest, and I tell her to stop. ‘Dad is so uncool. He doesn’t even listen to the top forty thousand, Rach said.’
‘Four thousand, I think I said.’
‘He doesn’t listen to the top four million!’ Parker replies.
‘Too busy listening to everything you play,’ I argue. ‘I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’
Maggie found a psychologist who combines traditional approaches with music therapy, and Parker has already been finding the sessions helpful.
She’s sitting at Audrey’s piano now, lid open, as it has been permanently since the concert.
No more headphones. Endless music. And she’s rediscovered a whole lot of ‘new’ tunes in Audrey’s old manuscript books, constantly filling our house with the sound of her, giving us ‘butterfly moments’, as if she is always here, in a way I’ll never be able to explain scientifically.
I look across the room at Rachael. Someone who is also always here, and who always has been, right from the start.
‘Nobody on the app is going to work,’ I say. ‘Parker’s right. We should delete it.’
‘You mean no one on the app is Audrey,’ Jess complains, groaning, echoing Rach’s earlier thoughts. ‘God, you are so predictable!’
Parker plays a dramatic few chords on the piano, lifts her hands theatrically, and says, ‘He means no one on the app is Rachael.’
The room falls silent. Rachael stares at Parker, then at me, while the others snap around to ensure they heard right.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Jess. ‘Did you just say nobody on the app is Rachael?’
‘I said what I said,’ Parker states, smiling.
‘Our Rachael?’ Jess wants to clarify. ‘Rachael Elizabeth McKenzie?’
‘Well, duh,’ says the resident teenager. ‘Where have you all been?’
‘Parks is right,’ Rachael says, from across the room. ‘You should delete the app. I told you it was a waste of time.’
‘But I’m worried about Ava. A message flashed past just this morning again, begging to meet up. How will she carry on?’
Rach takes the phone from my hand and tosses it on the couch. ‘Ava is really not my problem,’ she says, pulling me to my feet, taking me in her arms in front of the astonished Bookies. ‘My problem is that I hate camping.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘I don’t even like the beach.’
I feign shock. ‘But the beach is my line of work, Rachael!’
‘I thought you mapped climate models in a lab coat.’
‘Men always lie on the apps. I don’t even own a lab coat.’
I wrap my arms around her. It feels weird and new and right and beautiful to be doing this in front of everyone, and perfect, when she reaches her arm towards Parker, who joins our family circle.
‘I wasn’t going to invite you camping anyway,’ I confess, once the rest of them have gone home. ‘That’s Parker’s thing.’
‘I’ll settle for the midnight talks,’ Rach says. ‘Isn’t that what we put in the profile?’
‘Some soppy thing. The profile was awful.’
She leans back to put my face in focus. ‘Still worked. You were flooded with options!’
‘And you were so irritated that night. I thought you were annoyed on Audrey’s behalf!’
She laughs, threading her arms around my waist. ‘Noo. That was all me. I was furiously jealous.’ She moves her hands to my chest, as if I’m hers and we have the rest of our lives for this. ‘Are you sure Audrey would be okay with this? You and me?’
The answer to this one feels as clear as day. ‘Okay with it? It feels like she orchestrated it.’
‘I know you’re a scientist, Fraser, and don’t believe in this stuff, but do you think she’s happy, wherever she is?’
‘Look, the thing about science is that we don’t know everything about how the universe works. The more we discover, the less we realise we understand. All I can tell you for sure is we definitively rule out—’
‘Stop!’ she says, plastering her hand over my mouth, laughing. ‘I’m not asking for a lecture, Dr Miller, PhD. I’m asking you, Frase. Do you think she is happy?’
She takes her hand away, and I deliver the answer I’ve craved for more than three years, the one we both need, feeling its truth all the way to my bones. ‘I haven’t a shadow of a doubt.’