Chapter 7
‘Which one did you say it was again, Mr Hatfield?’ I asked, squinting up at the sky and the vast array of white billowy clouds above us. None of which even vaguely resembled a human face.
‘Do you see her? Do you see my Doris?’ Mr Hatfield asked eagerly, his eyes wide behind his NHS-issued frames.
I recognised the joy on his face, the way he seemed to light up from within.
It was the same feeling I had whenever I was with Joe.
I forced a smile, trying to clear the lump lodged at the back of my throat, but it wouldn’t budge.
‘Yes, I see her,’ I croaked, blinking back the tears that were threatening to fall. ‘Jacob is just going to take a picture for the paper, OK?’
Jacob frowned.
‘But I don’t see—’
‘Just take the damn picture,’ I hissed, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but here.
‘Well, I think I’ve got everything I need,’ I said quickly, throwing Jacob a knowing look before turning and walking as fast as I could back through the bungalow, trying not to make eye contact with the many smiling iterations of Mr Hatfield and his wife that lined the wallpapered hallway.
Outside, I placed one hand against my car door, the other braced against my thigh as I gulped down great mouthfuls of air, my heart stuttering like an engine trying to jump-start into life.
‘Hey, are you OK?’ Jacob wheezed, out of breath from his short jog to the car.
He must be worried. I’d never seen Jacob run for anything in his life, except to catch the bride’s bouquet at a wedding two years ago.
He also rugby-tackled two ladies out of the way to do so, a detail he adamantly denies to this day.
‘I’m fine. Just needed some air,’ I assured him, raising my hand at a slipper-clad Mr Hatfield, who was waving enthusiastically at us from his front doorstep.
‘You don’t look OK. In fact, you look kind of .?.?. green.’
‘You get the pictures?’ I asked, ignoring his previous statement.
‘I mean, I got pictures . Hundreds actually. None of them feature dear old Doris though, whichever way you look at them.’
‘Can’t you work your magic in Photoshop or something?’
‘What, add in a pearl necklace and some pin curls?’ Jacob guffawed.
‘Yes, if that will make the difference. Who are we to tell Mr Hatfield it’s not real?
He can see it, he can see Doris up there every day watching over him, so that makes it real, and I for one am not going to take that away from him.
’ My heart was beating so loudly I swear I could hear it pounding against my rib cage. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum.
‘All right, I’ll see what I can do,’ Jacob conceded, holding his hands up when he realised I was being serious. He took another step towards me. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? That can’t have been easy—’
‘It’s fine,’ I said quickly, cutting him off.
‘I’m fine.’ I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince more, Jacob or myself.
Although judging by Jacob’s blank stare I was failing at both.
I climbed into my car before he could question me any further.
I felt guilty keeping Joe a secret from him and Alice.
It weighed heavy like a stone in the pit of my stomach.
We told each other everything. That’s the way it had always been.
But this was different. Part of me worried about what they’d say.
But the other part was even more afraid that telling someone, saying it out loud, would be like popping a bubble. Joe here one second, and gone the next.
‘Jenny, look.’
I turned to see Joe sat in the passenger seat, left elbow resting against the window, right hand pointing up at the clouds through the sunroof.
‘That one looks just like my penis!’
‘Nooo, he did not just say that!’
I hid my face in my mug of hot chocolate, shoulders shaking with laughter as I watched Joe’s wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression of horror beside me.
He’d been slowly edging further and further forwards in his seat as the drama intensified, and was now sat on the very edge of Mum’s patchwork-quilt-topped sofa.
Now, though, he shifted backwards, feet kicking off from the floor, face hidden behind splayed fingers as we watched one of the grooms admit that if he was sexually attracted to his new wife, he wouldn’t have kissed someone else. As if it was somehow her fault.
We were three episodes into a Married at First Sight Australia marathon and Joe was fully invested.
He’d reeled off his usual I don’t watch reality TV spiel for a good five minutes as I was making the hot chocolates, and as usual I ignored him.
It was a game we liked to play, where he insisted he didn’t like trashy reality TV as he called it, and I didn’t raise an eyebrow when he inevitably suggested watching just one more episode when the teaser credits started rolling.
‘Geez, if married life is this full of drama, I’d say we dodged a bullet.’
I stared resolutely ahead at the TV, refusing to take the bait. Joe puffed his cheeks out dramatically.
‘Yeah, just seems like really hard work.’
‘Oh, and you’re not?’ I scoffed, shooting a fiery look towards his end of the sofa.
‘It’s the men in this that are all psychos.
Except that farmer guy, I guess, but then he’s just weird.
That’s all us women have to choose from – psycho, or weird.
’ I juggled both hands in front of me like a scale, weighing up which was the lesser of two evils.
‘And which category do I fall into?’ Joe pondered, twisting himself around so that his full attention was on me – my decision apparently far more interesting than the argument currently playing out on the TV. I looked up at him from beneath my eyelashes.
‘Honey, we both know you’re a massive weirdo.’
‘Takes one to know one, my dear.’
Crash.
I jumped, sloshing the dregs of my no-longer- hot hot chocolate down the front of my t-shirt. Well, Joe’s t-shirt. One of his old ones that I liked to wear to bed, the material soft and familiar against my skin.
‘ Ow, what the—? ’ came the muffled protests of whoever had just tried to let themselves into the flat.
I’d taken to locking the door whenever I was alone, not wanting Mum or Matt to silently appear and find me talking to Joe.
The few seconds it would take them to wiggle their key in the lock was all the warning I needed to avoid a very awkward conversation I did not want to have.
Rat-a-tat-tat .
‘Jenny, it’s me. Open up,’ came Alice’s voice through the door.
I pressed the mute button on the remote, turning towards Joe with a conspiratorial finger to my lips.
Maybe they’d think we weren’t home. That I wasn’t home.
But my stomach did that weird flip-flop thing when I saw the scratchy patchwork quilt was empty.
The material pulled taut in a way that seemed to scream no one was sitting here, you are alone . My heart sank.
‘Jenny, we know you’re in there. Your mum said you haven’t left the flat all day.’
I rolled my eyes with a sigh, trying to fix my face into something that resembled less of a smacked arse as I opened the door. Alice and Jacob were crammed into the narrow stairwell, Jacob two stairs below Alice, who was busy rubbing her shoulder with a pained look on her face.
‘What are you guys doing here?’ I added a smile to try and soften the accusatory tone of my voice. I saw Alice’s gaze linger over my t-shirt, her lips pressed tightly together as though she were physically trying to restrain herself from passing comment.
‘You didn’t think we’d forget what day it was, did you?’ Alice raised a palm to her chest in mock offence, her dimpled smile somewhat ruining the act.
Today was 19 th April. The day The Simpsons first appeared on TV.
The day the American Revolution started.
But most importantly, it was the day Joe was born.
The day he would have turned 30. A calendar reminder had pinged up on my phone at 8 a.m. this morning – complete with accompanying party hat emoji and two clinking champagne flutes that once upon a happier time I’d spent way too long selecting – like a punch to the stomach.
I hadn’t forgotten, of course, but time passes differently for the heartbroken.
It moves to a different rhythm, dragging and skipping backwards like a broken record, forcing you to relive the past on repeat, making you believe that moving forward is impossible.
‘We brought the essentials!’ Jacob brandished a bottle of rosé in one hand and two tubs of Ben but also twinged with sadness at the thought of no longer spending it with Joe.
This constant feeling of being torn between the past and the present was exhausting, and either way I felt like I was missing out.
‘Can we come in?’ Alice frowned questioningly at the still half-closed door, my fingers firmly gripping the handle. I hesitated for a second, only a second, before pulling it wide open.
‘Sure, yes, come in.’
‘Did we hear you talking to someone just now?’ Jacob asked, disappearing into the kitchen and coming back with three wine glasses and three spoons.
‘What? No, must have been the TV,’ I said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the muted television and immediately wishing I hadn’t. Thankfully one look was all it took for Jacob to recognise his favourite show, his attention swiftly diverted.
‘Oh my god, have you seen the episode yet where Tracey lobs a prawn at Harrison during the dinner party?’ Jacob squealed with delight, plonking himself down in Joe’s spot and peeling the lid off one of the tubs of ice-cream. Alice, on the other hand, was not so easily distracted.